so curious how many children do you think yandere dick would want? (compliant darling ask for me thinking)
warnings: yandere, hints to dubcon, pregnant! Reader, dick and his breeding kink, restraints, captivity, use of iv, dude is straight up in love man idk, mdni
Mmmm, about ten? Twelve?
Dick would probably laugh when he says it too - he knows the number is absolutely ridiculous.
He'd be curled up beside you with his head propped on one hand, the other spread warmly over your swollen belly. Your first. He keeps rubbing small, soothing motions whenever the baby moves, smiling as if the world is in his palm.
One of your wrists is cuffed to the bedpost. Your other arm rests beside you with an IV drip feeding fluids and nutrients into your vein.
Dick barely seems to notice either.
"Ten might be a little ambitious," he admits, leaning down to kiss the corner of your mouth. "We can start with six and see how you feel."
He says it with that soft, teasing smile, like you're discussing what color to paint the baby room instead of how many pregnancies your body can actually handle.
Then he starts talking about houses.
"Clark says farm life isn't bad. Fresh air, lots of room for the kids to run around." His fingers tap gently against your belly. "We'd still be close enough to Gotham. And Bruce has all that land near the manor just sitting there. I'm sure he'd give us a piece if I asked nicely." Dick pauses and ponders for a second too long. "Or if I offer to name the baby after him."
He laughs at his own joke and presses another kiss to your cheek, then your temple, then the damp corner of your eye.
"Hey. Don't cry."
His thumb wipes the tear away before it can travel down the apple of your cheek.
"I know it's scary right now, but you're doing so well. You're eating. You're sleeping. The baby's healthy." His smile softens as his hand settles over your belly again. "We're healthy."
As though the cuff around your wrist is simply part of the decor.
"I never thought I'd get this," he whispers. "A proper family. One that's mine."
His blue eyes meet yours.
"Someone who can't leave."
Then the sweetness returns so quickly you could almost convince yourself you imagined it. His fingers drift down to your inner thigh while he peppers light kisses across your face, murmuring about nurseries, first steps, and which of his siblings would be the worst babysitter.
When his hand slips between your legs, his smile turns unbearably fond.
TW: Fem!Reader, Non/Con, Omegaverse, Alpha!Reader, Rampant Pseudo-Incest, Familial Neglect, Nonconsensual Touching, Bitching, Knotting, Controlling Behavior, Slight Dehumanization, and Choking. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.
Wayne family meals were sparsely attended events.
Not for lack of trying. Alfred kept a strict schedule, unyielding to the scattered lives of your eclectic siblings. Breakfast at 7:00 AM, dinner at 8:00 PM, and lunch left out for the scavengers some time in between. Who would actually show up was anyone’s guess. Dick was fairly consistent, Cassandra a close second, Stephanie a distant third. Tim would attend religiously for three or four before disappearing off the face of the planet for six months, and even when Damian was at the table, he had his nose in a book. The only constant was Bruce, of course, stern and statuesque at the head of the table. The dominant alpha, eager to lord over his pack. He’d never missed a meal.
Neither had you, for the record. But who’s really keeping track?
This morning, the table was fuller than you’d come to expect. Dick and Tim bickered on Bruce’s right and left respectively. Cassandra sat a couple seats down from Tim, watching the fight in her unblinking, owlish way. You were on Dick’s side of the table, but like her, you’d left a gap between yourself and the worst of the noise. With so many alphas crammed into one estate, minor spats were common. Tension always seemed to be thick in the air, whether from territoriality or resource anxiety or the bitter, curdling tang of a pre-rut haze. None of it made any sense, obviously. The manor was big enough to wander for hours at a time, Bruce Wayne was closer to owning every square foot of Gotham than he was to ever going broke, and there were plenty of places for your siblings to spend their rut cycles that weren’t the manor. Not that any of them seemed to realize that.
You clenched your teeth, fighting the urge to swear. It was that kind of thinking — petty, avoidant, conflict-adverse — that had led to this, that had kept you as distant from the Waynes now as you had been when Bruce first adopted you. It was awful, really. Even in a family of black sheep, you were still somehow an out—
“(Y/n).”
The sound of your own name barked in Bruce’s low monotone dragged you from your spiraling thoughts. Right. The second part of this daily ritual. At breakfast, Bruce would go around the table, asking for updates on his wards’ lives with all the love and all the care of an army general demanding status reports from his ground troops. You must’ve missed Dick’s turn. That was probably for the best. You didn’t need his latest modeling gig or shiny new girlfriend distracting you during what came next.
“…I got accepted into the program I applied for,” you explained into your lap. “For my post-grad. It starts in fall.”
Dick laughed and patted you hard too-hard on the back. You had to catch yourself on the edge of the table. “Good job, kid. I remember— you mentioned that a couple months ago, right?”
You hadn’t, but you nodded anyway. Bruce hummed.
“Congratulations. Gotham University—”
“It’s not in Gotham,” you said, too hastily. That might’ve been the first time you’d ever interrupted Bruce. “I… I thought it might be nice to try something a little farther from home. You know how it is.”
Bruce, for what it was worth, did not know. He loathed Dick’s apartment in Bludhaven, hated the winters Damian spent with his mother. You’d hoped that staying at home during your undergrad years might endear you to him. In reality, he’d continued to treat you with the same frigid apathy and what embers of a social life you might’ve had in the city proper had been smothered by the distance. It didn’t help that Jason — the only other person who didn’t seem to intrinsically belong in Bruce’s pack, the only person who spared you a second glance at all — had bolted the minute he turned eighteen. For the past four years, you’d been a ghost haunting a house that wasn’t your home. For the past four years, you’d been huddled in the corner of the pack’s den, left to shiver while the rest of your family huddled for warmth.
This time, when Bruce spoke, you were giddy to cut him off.
“Metropolis is a long commute, but I’m sure you’ll—”
“It’s Gateway, actually. In California.” Finally, the glaze over his grey eyes fell away and you knew that you had his full attention. You had to bite your cheek to keep from smiling. “I leave next month.”
You could feel Bruce’s gaze burning into you. Dick’s, too. You’d never been happier. “Oh. Housing might be difficult to arrange on such short notice.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. There’s this grant, and—” And you were the legal ward of the man with the fattest trust funds on the east coast. This felt too obvious to warrant mentioning aloud and so you broke off into a breath of a laugh. “It’s all taken care of. Even the flight.”
First class on a luxury airline. With no return trip in sight, of course.
A wrinkle formed at the corner of Bruce’s lips. Not quite a frown, but not quite his usual icy stoicism, either. “I’m sure you can understand why this would feel rather sudden.”
You made a show of nodding, simpering. “I know, but—” You paused, shrugged. “I figured it was about time for me to spread my wings. That’s what alphas are supposed to do, right? Especially ones without a pack.”
Something flashed across his expression. Your lack of claim was a sore spot. The rest of your siblings had gotten their pack mark — a ring of Bruce’s teeth dug into the underside of their wrists — as soon as they turned eighteen. But here you were, four years into adulthood with no scars to show for it.
But if Bruce was ever going to care, the announcement of your upcoming departure would have been an odd time to start. The phantom of emotion passed — there and gone within the second. Wordlessly, he nodded to Tim, silently signaling that your conversation had come to an end.
You took no small amount of satisfaction in the fact that, even as Tim began to prattle on about his newest business venture, Bruce’s eyes remained on you.
~
In your worst moments, you believed that Bruce gave you such a terrible bedroom on purpose.
You’d been ecstatic the first time you opened the door. Young, hungry, and freshly orphaned, you hadn’t stood a chance against the manor’s silk sheets and wrought-iron terraces and huge crystal-clear windows. You’d spent weeks luxuriating in the extravagance of it all, mistaking Bruce’s wealth for paternal affection. Two months passed before you realized the flaw in the design. You had to walk down four hallways, down three flights of stairs, and past two much more interesting turn-offs to reach your bedroom. No one had a reason to wander so far, not unless they were looking for you. And, of course, no one would ever think to look for you.
You were used to the isolation. You’d come to expect it. Which might’ve been why it was so distressing to wake up smothered in Dick’s heady scent.
Mint and pine and arctic chill — like a bad flavor of gum. You recognized it automatically, but it took you another long moment to process the dead weight crushing you from above, the jagged pressure of his arm wrapped too tightly around your waist. Your eyes flashed open to find his body draped over yours, his head buried in the crook of your neck. Your dormant instincts flared to life, screaming for space, for security, for dominance. You shoved him away and retreated to the far side of the mattress, wrapping the comforter around yourself. Dick groaned, rolling onto his back and shooting you a lazy smile through his curtain of dark hair.
“Morning, little wing,” he chirped, voice deep and raspy with sleep. How long had he spent on top of you? “Gotta say, there are nicer ways to wake a guy up.”
His tone was light, playful. You weren’t so carefree.
“Why are you in my room?”
“A man can’t spend a little quality time with his favorite sister?”
You shook your head. He let out a breath of a laugh.
“Just come a little closer, alright?”
You hesitated, but Dick didn’t waver. More problematically, he’d positioned himself between you and the door so, short of jumping off your balcony, there wasn’t a way to escape without going through him. You shuffled closer, keeping the comforter wrapped around yourself, but if Dick noticed your aversion, he didn’t take the hint. As soon as you were within arm’s reach, he lashed out — catching you by the midriff and hauling you into his lap. He forced your head against his chest, pressing your ear to the muscle over his heart. You recognized the gesture. It was the same way someone might’ve soothed an agitated pup, a distressed omega.
You squirmed on reflex, but Dick was so, so strong. Yet another thing the rest of your family seemed to have in common.
“I really am proud of you,” he muttered. “You’ve always been so passionate about— uh—”
“Art history,” you filled in. There was only so long you could spend alone in Bruce’s mansion, tucked away among so many dust-covered priceless treasures, before you took an interest in other forgotten novelties.
“Right. Art history.” He moved on quickly. “But it got me thinking. It feels like we haven’t been paying enough attention to you.”
Your traitorous heart soared. You did your best to stamp it back down. “It’s a little late—
“Better late than never, right?” You tried to draw back, but his fingers rooted in your hair, keeping you in place. “We never really got a chance to bond. I know you’re leaving in a few weeks but—” He paused, chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you purr.”
Purr? He had to be joking. Alphas didn’t purr. Even betas had trouble doing it on command. You laughed, but Dick only drew you in closer.
“Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart.”
You tried not to sound as confused as you felt. “I… I can’t do that. Like, physically.”
“Give it a try. It’s not like we don’t have time.”
Whatever. This was embarrassing, but Dick’s attention span was short and he was right — you had nothing but time, here. He’d get bored eventually, slink off and forget this brief break from the status quo. He would leave you alone, and this time, you would remember to be grateful for the cold shoulder.
You let a minute slip by. Dick didn’t move.
Another. He began to hum, leading by example.
By the time you reached five — his heartbeat counting out the seconds like a metronome — you were uncomfortable, sweating, and desperate to get away. Your vision blurred. You missed Jason. Your skull felt too thick. His scent had poured into you, leaving the taste of mint nauseatingly thick on your tongue. Anything would be better than this. Even utter humiliation.
It was a terrible, creaking sound — starting at the base of your throat and leaking out through your pursed lips. You would barely call it a whine, let alone a rumble, let alone a purr. Still, Dick laughed and let go of you, dragging his hand through his disheveled hair. “I don’t know why we never noticed how cute you are,” he said, finally, finally getting up and moving towards the door. “See you at breakfast, little wing.”
Once he was gone, you stewed in your embarrassment for another minute or so before deciding to treat this like what it was: a fluke. An exception. Some form of hazing administered too late to have its desired effect — whatever that effect was supposed to be. Face still warm to the touch, you dragged yourself out of bed, got dressed, and slinked out of your bedroom, determined never to think about Dick’s sudden outpouring of brotherly affection again.
Your self-inflicted amnesia might’ve lasted, too, had the first thing you’d seen upon stepping into the dining room not been Dick’s smile as he whispered into Bruce’s ear.
~
It quickly became very, very difficult to remember why you’d ever hated being ignored.
Dick was the worst by far. Suddenly, he had nothing better to do than trail after you through the mansion, asking constantly what you wanted to do with your big brother that day— like you were ten rather than twenty-two. Tim was just as much of a menace, albeit not half as clingy. He always seemed to be just outside of your peripheral, only as close as he needed to be to steal away your half-finished drinks. Stephanie suddenly wanted to take you shopping, insisting that she pay despite your reminders that both of your credit cards were linked to the same account. More than once, Cassandra sat too close to you at dinner, nearly in your lap.
Even Damian — young, stoic, frigid Damian — once made the trek to your bedroom to ask for one of your blankets in the middle of the night. You were too confused to think to refuse, but as you handed off a spare quilt, you managed to ask him why he’d want yours. Another alpha’s. He only pursed his lips, shaking his head.
“I don’t know,” he said, glaring at the floor. “You’ve smelled different, recently. Sweeter.”
Through it all, Bruce never said a word to you.
To make it worse, all the attention made you sick. Literally, physically sick. Your head felt light, your body hot. You had no appetite but ate like a starving animal. You slept more, left the house less. More than ever, you dreaded the thought of being left alone.
Worst of all, being around your family became excruciating. Their voices were too loud. Their mixed scents were too overpowering. You’d never had a very strong constitution, but you were still an alpha, still meant to be able to withstand the juxtapositional pheromones and verbal disputes that would terrify a beta and reduce an omega to a sobbing mess. Suddenly, though, you were as sensitive as a pup — barely able to tolerate your siblings’ usual bickering. Even the smallest argument left you fleeing the room to hide away in some long forgotten part of the manor.
That might’ve been why it’d been so easy for Jason to catch you alone.
You’d just locked yourself inside of one of Bruce’s seven (count them, seven) auxiliary libraries when the tell-tale tapping on the window, a muffled voice calling your name through the bullet-proof glass. You were at the window in a second, unlocking it in another. You barely had time to step back before Jason hauled himself through and pulled you into a blissfully suffocating bear-hug.
He looked rough. Rougher than usual, though you hadn’t seen him in the better part of a year. You felt the worn leather of his jacket against your skin as he pulled you against him, spotted a few splotches of red hair where his cheap black dye hadn’t stuck. He stunk of metal and gasoline and chemical fire, and you’d never been so happy to see him. You melted into him for as long as you could, only letting go when his hands found your shoulders, gently easing you just far back enough for you to see his grinning face.
“There’s my pretty girl,” he drawled. You swatted him in the arm and he went on, feigning offense. “Hey, that barely hurt. The rest of Bruce’s acolytes must finally be softening you up.”
“Please don’t talk about them,” you whined. “They’ve been— God, it’s terrible. Ever since I told them I was leaving—”
His smile widened, showing teeth. “Finally. You have a place lined up yet? I’ve got a spare bedroom downtown, if you don’t mind—”
You cut him off with a bubbling laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going back to school. Gateway City.” And then, softer, “Like we always talked about.”
His hands twitched. His scent took on a smokier note, not unlike a freshly snuffed cigarette. Still, that lip-splitting grin held strong. “I mean, that’s what you told Bruce, but—” He broke off, clicking his tongue. “California’s pretty far. I won’t be able to look out for you all the way out there.”
“You don’t look out for me here.” You couldn’t help it. Your voice broke on the last word, your joy draining away as his grew colder. Panic flashed across his expression. He started to draw you closer again, but you waved him off — pressing a hand into his chest. “I’m sorry, I just— I thought you’d be happier for me. Considering how quickly you got out.”
“It’s not the same, though, is it?” The question had a cruel lilt to it. “I’m an alpha, kid.”
And just like that, you’d forgotten why you were so happy to see him.
“I know. I am, too.”
“Really? ‘cause you don’t smell like one to me.”
Your shoulders dropped. You started to turn away, but he caught your wrist, jerking you back against him. His arm locked around your neck, cutting off your airflow. You gagged, clawing at his sleeve, but Jason only held his ground.
“It’s not that complicated.” His grip tightened. Black spots dotted your vision. You would’ve coughed if your throat hadn’t been clenched so tightly shut. “If you want to be an alpha, you’re gonna have to act like one.”
But you couldn’t. You were Bruce’s least favorite for a reason. The muscle hadn’t taken. The strength training hadn’t stuck. You hadn’t inherited his discipline. And, worst of all, there was that little, traitorous voice in the back of your head urging you to submit, submit, submit. It was yours, but you didn’t recognize the inflection, the cloying lilt. Wherever this instinct had come from, it wasn’t from you.
You tried to kick, to thrash, but your body was sluggish, resistant. The idea of hitting Jason left you light-headed in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the oxygen deprivation. Behind you, he sighed. If you hadn’t known better, you might’ve thought he sounded disappointed. “C’mon, kid,” he said, barely loud enough to be heard over the blood rushing past your ears. “Don’t make me do this to you.”
But you couldn’t stop him. You couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t even make the only person who cared about you, the only person who might’ve even come close to loving you, stop hurting you.
Your body gave out a moment before your mind did. You were vaguely aware of your legs giving out, of your form going limp against Jason’s chest. His arm fell away from your throat, catching you by your waist instead. The last thing you felt was his shoulder biting into your stomach before your brain caught up with your lungs and the world went dark.
~
The first thing you felt upon waking up was warmth.
Awful, needling, searing warmth. The kind of uncomfortable heat that came from falling asleep in the sun and waking up hours later, dying of thirst and too disoriented to remember how to open your eyes. It took you long, aching seconds to grasp any other sensation, only to wish that you hadn’t bothered trying when you finally did. Something hard and cold bit into your back — laminated wood, the surface of a desk. There was something lodged between your legs. You could feel hands cupping the outside of your thighs, a tongue moving over your—
Reality came flooding back in too quickly, too roughly. New instincts be damned, you were going to be sick.
You wanted to bolt, but your body still felt heavier than it should’ve been. It was all you could do to force your eyes open, to take in the moulded ceiling and dim yellow lights of Bruce’s office. You tried to sit up, but a pair of hands caught your shoulder, easing you back down onto the desk. Bruce’s desk. You were on Bruce’s desk.
And you weren’t wearing any clothes.
The sight of your own skin was more startling than it should’ve been. You watched in horror as your exposed chest heaved weakly, as your bare knees shook and twitched where they were propped on someone’s shoulders. Dark hair formed a black hole in the center of your vision, and for a terrible moment, you thought it might’ve belonged to Dick. But then the rough edge of a scar pressed into the inside of your thigh and even an even worse possibility dawned on you.
Jason.
The horror was immediate and all-consuming. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t think. You felt his lips seal around your clit and suck, and it was all you could do to let a miserable whine slip through your gritted teeth. There was a groan — deep and satisfied and brought on solely by your sounds of distress. His attention dipped lower, touch slipping into your cunt, and involuntarily, you strained against the hands pinning you down. There was an airy chuckle, a hushing-like noise, then Dick’s face dipped into view, peering at you from above. “There she is,” he cooed, in the same cloying, saccharine lilt he’d used the morning he’d trapped you in your own bed. The morning he’d tried to make you purr. “We were wondering when you’d wake up. Jason always gets a little rough, doesn’t he?” And then, his eyes skirting to the side, “Too rough to handle something so delicate. In my opinion, at least.”
Jason pulled back just far enough to speak. “Shove it, Richard.”
“And such a temper.” Dick sighed, leaning towards you. “I just thought, if we had to find our little sister a mate, it should be someone more like—”
“That’s enough, Dick.”
A new voice. Cold, steady, commanding. All the warmth left your body at once.
Knowing Jason was willing to do this to you hurt. Knowing that Bruce was in on it, too…
You didn’t even know what to call that type of pain.
Maybe it would’ve been better, had he at least been an active participant. But he wasn’t even trying to touch you. He sat on the lounge against the far wall, elbows resting on his knees and hands clasped professionally between his legs. His expression was set in the same unfaltering neutrality he always wore, the neutrality you’d once mistaken for disinterest. His eyes — half-lidded and impassive — were fixed on you. He didn’t look away as you stared past Dick to meet his gaze.
There was a thin sigh, a readjustment to his posture. Jason’s tongue curled inside of you. “Jason has a more dominating presence. There’ll be less resistance if he initiates the bond.”
“But that doesn’t mean he’ll be a good mate.” Immediately, Dick was on the defensive. You’d always wondered how someone so quick to argue had managed to stay Bruce’s favorite for so long. “And he’s so far. We might as well have just let her move to the other side of the country.”
“The necessary arrangements have been made. Jason’s agreed to stay with us — for a time, at least. Until the worst of the bond sickness passes.” Bruce paused, pinched the bridge of his nose. You would’ve sworn his eyes were closed, and yet when Jason smirked into the inside of your thigh and began to speak, Bruce cut in before he could get a word out. “I’m already giving you my daughter, boy. Don’t make me change my mind.”
Dick frowned. “I mean, by that logic, aren’t you technically giving her your—”
“That’s enough, Dick.”
He frowned, but didn’t spend long licking his wounds. His attention fell back to you, his eyes widening as he bent down to your height. “I tried to volunteer,” he whispered, close enough for his lips to ghost over the shell of your ear. “But Jason beat me to it. I think he’s had this on his mind for a while.”
It was an awful thing to say. It was a vile thing to say. It was a cruel thing to say. You wanted to tell him to shut up, to leave you alone, but when you opened your mouth, all you managed to do was cry out. The knife-sharp bridge of Jason’s nose ground into your clit. He’d fallen into a steady pattern of lapping, twisting, shoving the most invasive part of his body that much deeper into the most vulnerable part of yours. It shouldn’t have felt so terrible. It shouldn’t have felt like anything at all. Alphas were insensitive, lumbering things. Alphas were strong enough to withstand something like this.
So why weren’t you?
His tongue slipped out of you, two thick fingers immediately taking its place. He spread you open as his tongue lapped the slick off your thighs, your skin. A few strokes later, his tongue found your clit and circled it, and your body cracked apart underneath him. The pleasure — if you could even call it that — was too hot, too smothering, too much. You waited for the backlash, the pressure of an internal knot clamping down around nothing, but it never came. There was only the burning heat, and beneath it, a voice that didn’t belong to you begging for more.
Jason nursed you through the aftershocks before pulling away. He dragged the back of his hand over his mouth and pushed to his feet, placing his body between your dysfunctional legs. Again, you sought out Bruce. “You did something to me.”
Immediately, Dick was there. “We just gave you a nudge in the right direction, that’s all. You said it yourself. We were running out of room for another alpha.”
You’d never said that, but it wasn’t worth the breath it would’ve taken to correct him. You met Bruce’s eyes. “Please, Dad.”
To his credit, he didn’t so much as hesitate. “You’re not a good fit for our pack. I must have known that, but—” He broke off, shook his head. “It’s better, this way. You deserve a mark. I’m sorry we denied you one for so long.”
But he wasn’t getting up. He wasn’t bearing his fangs, wasn’t asking for your wrist. He was just watching — staring on as Jason traced the head of his cock over your entrance, as he began to ease into you. You acted on reflex— hands flying to his shoulders in a vain attempt to push him away. That was a mistake, too. Before you could so much as make contact, you were on your stomach, both wrists pinned to the base of his spine while he thrust into you unopposed. You braced yourself for blinding pain, for a bone-deep sense of wrongness, but it never came. Instead, a pleasant buzzing filled the empty corners of your mind. Your body relaxed, welcoming him in. Liquid heat pooled in your veins, weighing you down and turning you into something heavy. Something wrong. Something else.
It felt right.
Understanding dawned on you in a single, horrifying flash. The gifts. The forced proximity. The shows of superiority. The way they’d observed you so unfalteringly over the past few weeks. An old term glanced over in textbooks and on the category listings of sketchier porn sites resurfaced from the forgotten depths of your mind — bitching. But that wasn’t supposed to be real. That wasn’t supposed to be something your family could do to you, no matter how little they loved you.
It was impossible and it was happening. You could feel Jason’s chest against your back, his tongue on your neck as he rocked against your ass. In front of you, Dick cooed and shrugged his jeans low on his hips, freeing his own painfully stiff cock. He tapped the leaking head against your lips and you locked your jaw in place, determined to safeguard what little dignity you had left. Dick only clicked his tongue, forcing his thumb past your lips and wrenching your teeth apart. He shoved himself into your mouth before you had a chance to bite down, his tip ramming into the back of your throat and making you gag.
There was an airy moan, a pleased sigh. Dick let his eyes fall shut, resting a hand on the crown of your head and petting. “Good girl,” he murmured, blunt nails raking over your scalp. “Let’s not talk about leaving anymore, alright? Just lay back and let your pack take care of you, from now on.”
His tone was light, soothing. It might’ve been more comforting if he hadn’t followed it up by tangling his fingers in your hair and jerking you forward, forcing your nose against his pelvic bone and fucking his cock into your throat.
The fullness was the worst part. Tearing you open, weighing you down. Your jaw throbbed where it was stretched around Dick’s cock, your cunt aching under the bruising force of Jason’s abuse. His hands were too tight around his hips, his pace too brutal to make you feel anything but scared. There was a rumbling growl, then you felt his mouth on the curve of your throat, nuzzling into you. A terrible, alien pressure beat against your entrance once, twice before he managed to force that much more of himself inside of you. Immediately, every nerve in your body flared to life. It took you a moment to understand the source of your agony, but not much longer. Honestly, the only surprise was that you hadn’t thought to dread this part sooner.
He’d knotted you.
But that couldn’t be right. Alphas only knotted their—
His mouth, moving over the tender flesh above your jugular. You tried to scream, to thrash, but Jason was so heavy on top of you and Dick only groaned as his cock smothered your voice. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t tell him to stop. You couldn’t do anything as Jason’s teeth sunk into your throat, breaking skin and drawing blood. Marking you — albeit, not in the way you’d spent so, so long waiting for.
In a daze, you looked toward Bruce. He hadn’t moved, of course, only leaned forward — propping his cheek on his fist. His dark eyes were cold as steel, but that wasn’t the worst part.
For the first time you could remember since he’d taken you in, Bruce Wayne was smiling.
You can't win unless you save the innocent! That's the premise of this game. Our protagonist is a gaming addict, here to replace a foolish girl who let her family die. Now the new soul gets to try again. She has to lie, flirt, fight, and flatter to earn her new life. She might even end up liking it.
Who was she?
Oh, the usual.
A special loser.
Irel Elorence had it all. The looks. The loving family. The money. Her brother is a goofy fitness addict. Her mother and father dote on her.
....she has no friends and lots of men are stalking her for some reason??
Is it her beauty???
I bet it is!!!
It's not.
Irel Elorence was supposed to live a shining life, untouched by even the slightest pain. She can't handle the truth. The original Irel Elorence foolishly hid behind her family. She believed they could protect her...or maybe she was just in denial.
Irel Elorence is destined to be drained dry by the heroes of this world. Those blessed and cursed by godly magics. Only human energy batteries like Irel can heal their pain.
It's a necessary sacrifice. This world needs magical heroes.
Without magical heroes all is lost. The Kitan, monsters blessed by a jealous god, will end mankind. Regular men can't even scratch them. The fluffy fantasy realm Irel Elorence resides in relies completely on the heroes. They can do whatever they want with no consequences.
These special men almost always take multiple wives, because the magical battery women they marry tend to die quickly.
The most special batteries can cough up stones of impurity and survive....longer. Most of the women just rot from within as their husbands fight an endless battle.
Nobody wins, but the batteries, who get no respect (or money or power) clearly have it worse.
The men pretend to be in love.
This one "saves" Irel Elorence from a Kitan, but it's all just a ploy. That handsome man planted the Kitan, so he could become her savior.
She doesn't fall for it, because she has a bigger monster to appease.
The original Irel Elorence watched her entire family die. She was a mere "first wife". A useful battery that caught the attention of a powerful man.
Her family insulted him. They let her hide and cry and in the end they all perished.
Irel died last. A side character who was indeed innocent as well. Her unjust fate did leave a stain on the world. Even the "heroes" felt guilty about ruining her perfect life, but it doesn't matter. Not one bit.
She still lost everything because she was too soft.
He may be the strongest and most troublesome man, but she is attracted to him.
Barkan, the hero blessed by fire, took everything from her. He's supposed to be the enemy. A sociopathic brick wall.
The new Irel is horrified with herself when she starts to catch feelings for him, but hey she's not the original Irel.
Plus she's willing to fight to the death to save her new family. New Irel was a useless and unloved gaming addict with no close friends. She is deeply touched by the love she gets from Irel Elorence's family.
She doesn't let them bark at Barkan.
She does it all on her own, while she "pretends?" to be in love with him.
Soon enough Barkan accepts his in-laws and then new Irel can move on from the first chapter.
Into a den of snakes where literally everyone wants to kidnap her.
She's one of those rare batteries that will last longer.
Yay?
Barkan is overjoyed to have a useful "first wife", but the story has been the same for centuries. The batteries die quick and their husbands all eventually go mad and die in battle too. There's no love there. He thinks its all a game, mixed with brief pleasure.
It's nice that she's pretty and useful.
He knows she's only pretending to care, but his emo monologing doesn't last forever. It's impossible for him to not notice his new wife. How she lusts for him and even sometimes worries over him. He returns it all tenfold. In a mess of confusion things change.
Could it be? Do some of the heartless heroes actually care about their wives?
Barkan has no hope when he meets new Irel. He threatens her and he needs a way to relieve his pain. It's selfish and evil and he objectifies her too.
He seems shallow.
He has trouble hiding his emotions, though.
He gets mad for her sake.
He falls for her flirting.
He's a pretty reliable protector too.
Maybe there is a good husband in there.
He just has to believe his wife loves him.
New Irel starts using her battery powers to save other women, and Barkan is totally supportive????
Perhaps there was another way all along, and their kind was simply lost in the misery of war???
Irel starts pulling stones out of suffering ladies left and right, and a fog lifts.
There is a way.
Irel isnt the only one.
All of the batteries can learn some new tricks, and become something more. Something more equal and powerful. Maybe there is a future where there are no "first wives" and the heroes can be real partners with the women they choose.
Pairing: Yandere!Dick Grayson x Reader (+Batfam) [DC].
Word Count: 3.8k.
TW: Non/Con, Fem!Reader, Omegaverse, Alpha!Dick, Beta!Reader, Kidnapping, Forced Mating, Knotting, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Ideation, Forced Proximity, Fingering, Group Sex, and Nonconsensual Touching. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.
Every morning, you woke up underneath Dick Grayson.
That was to be expected from an alpha, or so you’d been told. They tended to be clingy, physical, never satisfied unless their mate was within their sight or, better yet, in their arms. It was perfectly natural, but knowing that did little to alleviate the hot, damp weight of him on your back, didn’t make the smell of sweat and bodies that dragged you from your sleep any less smothering. His arm was a steel bar across your waist, his legs a pair of writhing snakes that tangled around and immobilized yours. Regardless of how much distance you put between yourself and him in the night, his face always seemed to find the crook of your neck, his mouth never more than an inch or so from your mating mark.
The mating mark you, biologically, weren’t supposed to have. But you guessed what was ‘natural’ mattered more for him than it did for you.
Worst of all, he always woke up after you. It was a shared symptom of his late-night patrols and the domestic, homebound instinct most alphas felt to make their den and maintain it. You were left to lie awake for the better part of an hour, swallowing back the feeling that you ought to find a way to crawl out of your own skin, before he began to stir – groaning as he groggily lifted his head. He squeezed your body against his once before rolling over to drag a hand over his face, wiping away lingering exhaustion. You savored the distance the same way an alcoholic savored fine wine: already desperate for another glass.
You made a valiant effort to get away, shuffling towards the edge of the mattress as you muttered some excuse about showering or brushing your teeth. Of course, Dick was quick to stop you and of course, his chosen method of persuasion was touch-based. He sat up, resting his back against the headboard. An arm lashed out, curling around your midriff and dragging you into his lap. Your knees landed on either side of his waist, your ass slotted against his crotch. You could feel his cock pressing into you, stiff and leaking. Your revulsion must’ve shown on your expression, because Dick laughed and rolled his hips against you.
“Can’t help it,” he muttered, voice still thick with sleep. “You just smell so good in the morning. Guess you wouldn’t know that, though.”
Right. Obviously. Because, of the two singular drawbacks to being a beta, there was only one Dick would ever dare to mention out loud. He loved holding your weak sense of smell over your head, reminding you that there was a whole, invisible world defined by scents and pheromones that was entirely inaccessible to you. It’d never been an issue before you met him. From what you’d heard, pheromones were just another way to tell how a person felt, easily replaced by a keen eye for micro-expressions or a careful ear for tones, and you didn’t find being able to tell the exact notes of a person’s unique musk all that appealing.
Then again, if you did have a better nose, you might’ve been able to tell Dick (or, rather, Nightwing, at the time) was going into a rut the night you met, the night he saved you from an armed robber and so heroically offered to walk you home. You might’ve been more aware of the pheromones you were radiating – scared, helpless, in need of protection – and what they would do to alpha at his most eager to lay claim. You might’ve been able to get away from him before he pinned you down on the floor of your living room, dug his teeth into your throat, and bound you to him permanently. His family had told you, afterward, that splitting up a bonded pair was dangerous. Separation from his mate could make Dick irritable, obsessive, hyper-violent. No part of you liked being stuck with him, but the Waynes had promised that you would like version of him that distance bred less. Moving in with his pack, playing mate – that was the safer option. The more humane option.
It also conveniently ignored the second drawback to being a beta: your unwavering preference for your own company. You weren’t supposed to have a mate. You weren’t supposed to join a pack. That was for alphas and omegas with their primal, hormone-driven brains; the ones too busy sucking and fucking to notice people like you quietly keeping society on-track in the background. You’d been made for long periods of isolation, peaceful nights in empty beds, the muted tranquility of mental silence. Crowds made you anxious. Too many voices in one room left you on the verge of hyperventilating. The thought of gushy, romantic sex (the type with lots of skin-to-skin contact and so, so many fluids) made you want to throw up. These were undebatable facts of your existence and traits which Dick trampled over daily with no small amount of zeal.
He grinned, easy and loose, as he slipped a hand into your panties. Two fingers found your slit, tracing over it as the heel of his palm ground into your clit. Sex, real sex, was thankfully off-limits. His dick (or, more accurately, the knot at its base) would kill you. Literally. His constant, pleading pawing wasn’t much more bearable, though.
“It’s stronger in the morning.” Right. Back to your scent. His fingers slipped inside of you, pushing in to the knuckle. “I mean, I can always pick it up, but right now, I don’t even have to try. ‘s like I’m drowning in it.”
You swallowed back a whimper, forcing your tongue to work the way you needed it to. “That sounds terrible.”
“It’s perfect.” He curled his fingers, interrupting his otherwise lazy pumping, then ground into your clit with that much more force. “You’d drown in me if you had the chance to, right?”
You could hear your own slick noises echoing off the walls of his bedroom. “I’d rather just drown you.”
He laughed, bowing his head and pressing an open-mouthed kiss into your collarbone. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Irritation sparked, hot and fierce. Your hands shot for his neck, but Dick’s grin only widened. Without pulling out of you, he rolled over – throwing you down to the mattress and landing on your back. His arm was trapped underneath you, but he didn’t seem to care, didn’t let it slow down the harsh way he flicked his wrist or the invasive curling of his digits inside of you. You thrashed, then when that failed, clawed at the sheets, as if tearing through silk and cotton would do anything to get him off of you. Not that your resistance lasted long enough to matter. It only took short, pitiful seconds for him to make you cum – dragging a miserable whine out alongside your climax. Immediately, you went limp underneath him, and Dick kissed the nape of your neck, humming as he pulled away. Over your shoulder, you could hear an awful, wet sound, like a tongue running through fingers. You did what you could not to put an image to the noise.
When he was done, Dick rested a hand on your back, rubbing circles in your shoulder blade. “Sorry, baby,” And then, stifling another laugh, “You’re just so cute when you’re all—”
His touch drifted south, skirting over the length of your spin. You shrieked into the mattress, arching your back on reflex. Trying to get away from him. Dick sighed.
“Can’t run from me forever.” As if to prove his point, he gathered you up in his arms, pushing himself to his feet and starting in the direction of the en-suite. “One day, I’m gonna have to make you see that.”
You could only groan in response.
~
Breakfasts at Wayne Manor were always difficult to get through.
Late in the morning, after the brunt of the pack had a chance to sleep off the worst of last night’s patrol, every available member of the family gathered around a single, narrow table to clack utensils against porcelain and scrape chairs across the floor and speak to each other as loudly as they possibly could. The others were allowed to choose seats at random, but somehow, you always seemed to end up near the head of the table, stuck between Dick and the Pack Alpha, Bruce.
You hated it. You hated the proximity, too many bodies crammed into too small of a space. You hated the paranoia, never able to eat in comfort knowing another hungry mouth could steal the food off your plate at any time. Most of all, you hated the volume. So many voices layered on top of one another, you couldn’t be bothered to differentiate between Stephanie’s laugh and Cassandra’s quiet hum, Jason’s sardonic drawl and Tim’s mechanical droning. After a while, it was all just noise.
You felt a headache coming on. This was to be expected at this point in the day and thus, warranted no reaction more apparent than a half-hearted scowl and a pair of eyes narrowed toward your plate.
As always, you ate too quickly and were forced to stay too long. When you tried to get up from your seat, Dick’s hand found its way to your thigh, gently urging you back down. He was smiling, again – the golden boy grin, all clear blue eyes behind dark, disorderly hair. You hated that smile more than you hated every other part of Dick combined. Without it, you never would’ve trusted him. You never would’ve let him into your home. You never would’ve found yourself trapped in his.
You never would’ve let him touch you.
You started to turn to him, to make it clear that you were finished and you needed to leave, but someone cleared their throat to your right. Of course.
How could you have forgotten about Bruce.
You braced yourself before turning to him. Dick squeezed your thigh by way of reassurance. It didn’t help.
Bruce Wayne was the Pack Alpha of secondary sex bio-essentialists’ collective wet-dream. Well over six feet tall with the build to match, he towered over the rest of his family with an air of calm, analytic judgement. Even his gaze felt too heavy, as if a weighted pole had been dropped onto your shoulders whenever he deemed you worthy of a stray glance in your direction. Your loathing for him was no less intense than the loathing you held for Dick, but the tone of it was different. You hated Dick because of what he’d done to you, what he continued to do to you. You hated Bruce because of how easily he could fix it and how consistently he decided not to.
“Don’t forget your medication,” he started, slowly, drawing out each word as he gestured to the small collection of multi-colored pills on the edge of your plate. Supplements, you’d been told, to make up for the general lack of activity in your current life. You tried not to take them when you could get away with it, if only because it was one of your precious few ways to maintain your independence. “You won’t like that happens if you miss a dose.”
An order, albeit not a cruel one. He was talking to you like one of his children. Like a member of his pack.
Your head pounded.
“I—” You paused, swallowing. The juxtaposition was dizzying. He was an older man and you were in his home. You wanted to do what he said and be done with it. He was an alpha and you were nothing. You wanted to do anything but listen to him then run as far as you possibly could. “I don’t want to.”
His cold gaze flickered from you to the rest of his table. In turn, the others went quiet, their attention naturally gravitating to Bruce, who then directed it to you. The noise had been unbearable, but the silence was worse. Six pairs of eyes, all focused unblinkingly on you. You would’ve sat through a thousand family meals if it meant they would all stop looking at you like that.
With shaking hands, you snatched up the pills and choked them down dry. Bruce nodded. Dick beamed.
You wanted a long second for their attention to disperse, then another. It never did. Your vision blurred around the edges as you scrambled out of your seat, muttering excuses. This time, no one stopped you.
You wanted your bedroom – safe and dark and isolated – but the kitchen was closer. Your temples throbbed. Your heart threatened to beat out of your chest. So busy trying to steady your own frantic breathing, you didn’t notice the footsteps until you were leaning over a counter, eyes clenched shut and hands flat against the cool marble. You thought it might be Dick, at first, come to check on his upset mate. You should’ve known he wouldn’t be so attentive, that the world wouldn’t be so kind.
A lean arm wrapped around your midriff, its owner’s chest soon pressed against your back. You saw a flash of gold in your peripheral, felt soft lips on the shell of your ear.
Stephanie. Another alpha. Perfect.
She was surprisingly quiet. There was a slight hum, a breath of a laugh, but nothing else as she nuzzled into your shoulder. Rather than an act of mercy, her silence came off as a show of further sadism. It meant you had to be the catalyst for your own misery.
“What are you doing?”
“Comforting you.” A purr started up deep in her throat. You felt the reverberations against your skin. “You should see the pheromones you’re releasing, right now. I’ve rescued hostages giving off weaker distress signals.”
Another set of footsteps, another body placing itself too close. You glanced to your left and found Tim pulling himself onto the counter, his dark eyes wide. He was an omega, but that did little to endear him to you. Alphas tended to be more aggressive, but there was something about the cloying, saccharine way omegas held themselves that made you uneasy. They went through life expecting to be loved. Your lack of affection was regarded less as an inability and more as stubbornness. Something meant to be resented or, better yet, overcome.
“It really is strong,” he mumbled, edging that much closer to you. “Not that I’m complaining. It’s nice. Calming.”
Stephanie snickered. “Don’t listen to him. He says you smell like the ocean.”
Your nose wrinkled. Every soul born and raised in Gotham knew the coastline’s dead-fish, rotting-trash stench by heart. Tim scowled.
“I did not. It’s more like—” He cut himself off, pausing to think. When he went on, his voice was more distant, as if drawing from a well-loved memory. “Bruce took me to Italy for a case, once. The air was so—so fresh. There was salt, and sunlight, and something sweet, like—”
“Caramel,” Stephanie finished. Her purring was getting louder. Her hands began to wander, slipping under your shirt and pressing flat against your stomach. She was unbearably warm, and you could feel her palms sliding up, up, her breath against your throat as she sought out your—
“Please,” You were so quiet, you could hardly hear yourself above the static in your ears. “Stop.”
Her grin pressed into the curve of your neck. “Why would I do that, sweetheart?”
“I don’t like being touched. It’s not—” Your body was too hot. You were burning alive. “It’s not right.”
She laughed – loud and bold and searing. “Of course it is, honey. This,” She dragged her blunt nails over your chest for emphasis. “is how we show we care. Don’t you want us to care about you?”
No. You didn’t. You wanted something, anything else. You opened your mouth to say as much, to scream, but Tim was fast.
“Let her go, Steph.” Sweet, soft, nearly pleading. Obediently, Stephanie pulled away, and you sucked in a deep breath. Those piercing, beady little eyes of his never fell away from you. It seemed to turn the air hostile, filling your lungs with acid in the place of relief. “She’ll come around, soon.” And then, quietly, almost to himself, “She’ll have to.”
His words rang in your ears for seconds. She’ll have to.
Meaning, they’d make you.
All the warmth left your body at once. It was strangely calming – the rush of cold; the way your heart beat so fast, it might as well have not been beating at all. Without a word, you slipped out from underneath Stephanie, and she let you. Tim whispered something and Stephanie laughed, but the details were lost in translation. It didn’t really matter. They’d said what they needed to.
You couldn’t get to the roof, so you settled for Bruce’s office. It was on the uppermost floor, with a balcony that looked out over the manor’s gardens. His door was unlocked, so you let yourself in. Bruce was at his desk. You passed by him without acknowledgement.
He only got to his feet as you stepped outside. The guardrail was tall enough to press into your stomach as you peered over it. Fifty feet to the ground, more or less. You’d been hoping for more, but it would do the trick.
You leaned forward, bowing your head low and using your arms to better ease your body over the side. Eventually, your center of gravity tipped, your feet kicking off the ground as you teetered on the railing and started to—
A fist curled around the collar of your shirt, jerking you back and throwing you to the ground. You blinked, and then, Bruce was kneeling above you, his hand around your neck and his gaze steely. Your skin crawled underneath his palm.
“I had higher hopes for you,” he muttered. His free hand slipped into his coat pocket, drawing out a thin black box. “We thought you were coming along.”
You hesitated to respond, but there was only one thing you were ever going to say. That you could say, anymore. “Please don’t touch me.”
He scoffed, the noise dry and humorless. The box was placed next to your head, the lid carefully removed. You saw the flash of something long and silver in your peripheral, felt a pinch at the base of your neck. Heat flooded into your veins, thick and primal. You caught the distant scent of something sweet, and then, you were gone.
~
The room stank of sweat, salt, and sugar.
You came into consciousness slowly, only able to take in one foggy detail at a time. You were in an unfamiliar bed, too large to be your own. Dick was above you, kneeling in between your legs, his face flush and his hands planted on either side of your head. In the corner of your eye, you could see Tim and Stephanie on the other side of the too-big mattress – Tim on his back and Stephanie moving above him, bouncing on something you couldn’t see. Behind them, of course, was Bruce. He leaned back in his armchair, expression bored but cold eyes watchful. The Pack Alpha, residing over the rituals of lesser creatures.
Dick’s breath hitched and you realized, rather belatedly, that he was inside of you. Really, actually inside of you. Deep, deep inside of you.
Oh no.
Your hands shot to his shoulders, nails burrowing into muscle. “Dick, Dick, you have to—”
He hushed you, falling that much lower. His lips found the curve of your neck, ghosting over a patch of scarred skin. Your mating mark. “’s alright, baby. You’re so—” He moaned, rolling his hips against yours. “So tight.”
“You need to pull out.” You could feel it – beating against your entrance, a swollen mass at the base of your cunt. It was too thick, too hard, too big. He was going to split you open. He was going to fucking kill you. “I’m not supposed to—”
“But you are, baby. You are.” He pulled away, his pace falling into something blissfully lethargic. A hand slipped between your body and his, two fingers finding your clit. Dread and pleasure pulsed through you in tandem. You didn’t want this. You couldn’t. It wasn’t in your nature. And yet, your hips bucked against him and your cunt ached. Your mind was suddenly in the backseat, watching in horror as your body begged to be taken care of.
“Tried to let the pills do their work, take things slow, but B decided it was time to go all the way.” He grinned, kissing your forehead. You could smell something on him, underneath the sweat and closeness. Sharp mint and chalk in sunlight. Then, below that, something else. A steady, indescribable reek that seemed to whisper ‘love me, love me, love me’ into the back of your skull. Your pussy clenched that much tighter around his cock. “Tim even offered to help. Having another omega’s pheromones to copy should make the first time a little easier.”
Another omega? He made it sound like Tim wasn’t the only—
Understanding dawned on you, cruel and terrible. Of course. The pills. The shot. The pack’s insistence that, one way or another, you’d come around. It was all you could do to blink up at Dick. Your voice was weak, when you finally found it. Cloying and submissive. “I’m a beta.”
“You used to be,” he sighed, the contentment in his voice only rivaled by his sheer, unrelenting joy. One of his hands fell to your hip, steadying you. “I couldn’t stand to watch you suffer like that. Not when we could make it so much easier.”
You opened your mouth to protest, but all that came out was a long, desperate whine. You’d never felt so empty, so cold, so in need of something hot and warm and filling. Dick seemed to sense the change. He groaned as he thrust into you, forcing your cunt to take him to the hilt, then deeper still – bullying his knot into your unwilling body. You stretched to accommodate him. It was painless.
It was natural.
You felt him pulse against the walls of your cunt, locking your bodies together. Something hot and thick flooded into you, filling you up in a way you’d never thought to conceive of. Above you, Dick panted, his hair hanging over his face and his eyes half-lidded. His smile was pulled wide enough to strain.
You took a deep breath and regretted it immediately. It hung thick in the air, inescapable despite your best attempts to block it out.
Sea salt and caramel – so strong and so defined, you could only wonder how you’d never noticed it before.
This little number graced me after a nice little nap, and I figured I'd better write it now rather than later because I will forget such a wonderful idea. Hear me out next time we're using the escrima sticks.
Warnings: Dick Grayson eats ass, slight dub-con, mild humiliation, photos taken, fingering with gloved hands, fem! reader, mdni
Now, normally, Dick Grayson doesn't particularly care if you touch yourself. Hell, sometimes he'll jerk off if you're not home, a beautiful video on his phone of you riding his cock from behind, watching your ass bounce against his hips. The cute little whines you make when he hits a little too deep, but you can hardly stop bouncing on him.
However, there's something about coming home to you with your hand down your panties that really irked him. Not out of anything malicious, but more so... you couldn't have waited a moment or two for him to get home and help you out a little? That you were lying there in his bed, with his shirt on, touching yourself like he wasn't already crawling through the window with a body more than willing to give you exactly what you needed.
He catches your sheepish gaze immediately. How your eyes widen, glossy and startled, your hand yanking out of your panties the moment you notice him crouched by the window. You scramble for the sheets, dragging them over your bare thighs with a shaky little gasp, as if he hasn't seen every inch of you before.
"Dick," you breathe, voice thin with embarrassment as you cling desperately to the blankets, "I didn't think you'd be home yet."
Something mean curls up inside him. So much before either of you can process it, he's crossing the room and pinning you face-first into the bed, the sheets twisting beneath you as your ass arches instinctively into the air, rubbing against his hardening length under the Nightwing suit. He could've sworn he heard a moan fall from your lips, muffled into the pillow he nudges beneath your cheek, his gloved hand firm against the nape of your neck.
"Didn't think I'd be home?" He repeats, voice kept low, but there's amusement hidden there, "I come home at the same time every night, and that's your excuse?"
Your words break off into a soft, humiliated whine, protests probably, when his other hand slides between your legs, pressing against your damp slit through your panties. He can't feel exactly how wet you are through the gloves, but he can surely feel the heat of you. See the way the fabric darkens at the center, clinging shamefully to your cunt.
"Touching yourself, huh?" he murmurs, thumb dragging lazily along the soaked spot. "Getting a little greedy?"
You shake your head the best you can against the pillow, cheek warm and squished, "N-no. I just - I - missed you."
That warmed his heart a little. He missed you, too. But the cute tremble of your voice only makes that mean streak dig its claws in deeper. He's never been the humiliation type, you know that. He's usually warm and sweet praise kissed into your skin. Always wanting you to feel loved in intimate moments like these. But right now, something has chained his usual softness in place, leaving only this hungry version of him behind.
His slender fingers slip under the delicate fabric, pushing your panties aside so he can get a better look at your glistening cunt.
You make a small embarrassed sound, "Don't look so much."
"Don't look?" Dick echoes, almost laughing before biting his lip at the way he watches your hole twitch. "Baby, you were touching yourself in my bed. I get to look as much as I want."
Your hips twitch the second his glove fingers drag slowly up and down your slit. Forcing you to swallow your words as the smooth leather teases against your hole before you're grinding against the heel of his palm.
"N-no," you stammered, breath catching as he slowly circled his gloved fingers, teasing your little hole that was begging to be filled.
"No?" he hummed, biting the inside of his cheek from the ache of smiling so much. "Then what did I see? Tell me."
The words made his own cheeks heat, but the look on his face said he was enjoying this more than he expected. He listened to the way your cunt greedily took two fingers, a soft whine slipping past your lips as your hips instinctively matched his shallow thrusts into your weeping hole.
"Because she's telling me otherwise," he added, quieter now. "Why's she so wet, huh?"
You buried your face into the pillow. "Because of you," you mumbled, barely audible.
He should've stopped there - kept thrusting into you while his thumb dragged slow circles over your clit, applying just enough pressure to make you cry into the pillow about how good he was making you feel.
But instead, he pulled away for a second.
"Dick - " you breathed, a soft protest leaving your lips. His fingers were already sticky with your slick, something that would definitely earn him questions when he went to make his report tonight. He dragged your panties down just enough so he could get full access to the view you were giving him, your thighs shifting slightly as if to close.
He takes a quick picture. Just in case. Something for a lonely night.
"You gonna stay there for me?" His voice softens into something almost sweet as the hand that was on your neck moves to spread your cheeks, his other hand returning to its rightful place between your thighs. He eases back into you - not too rough, not too gentle - scissoring you open before curling his fingers just right.
You spread your legs wider for him without thinking, letting him move closer, letting his tongue circle that tight little hole you always try to hide from him. You jump at the first unfamiliar touch, but the moan that spills from your throat only encourages him to press the muscle inside. The tip of his tongue traces circles, allowing salvia to pool, before pressing in, just enough for the building pressure to make your breath hitch, his fingers moving faster, deeper inside your aching cunt.
He's not sure when he loses himself - whether it's when he starts fucking you with his tongue, sucking and slurping at your pulsing hole, or when you come so sweetly on his fingers, and he has to drag you back down onto his mouth because he's not finished yet.
The only thing that pulls him out of it is his phone ringing.
Bruce.
The Bat's ringtone cuts through the room just as you come for the third time, slick running down your thighs, drool shining on his chin as he pulls away.
He missed check-in.
Fuck.
"Be good and stay there, yeah? I'll clean you up after."
He pockets your panties on his way out, leaving you dazed, sleepy... pressing a soft kiss to your ass before he goes.
I think he comes home with ice cream and profusely apologizes for his actions. (and is desperately hoping you let him do that again) Prepare for lots of kisses and him explaining his gloves were clean over and over.
Warnings: praise kink, hand pinning, sex while a literal crime is happening outside, reckless vigilante behavior, inspired by a scene in Narcos, MDNI
a/n: I fear Jason would actually do this in one of his more deranged moods. The others are probably more willing to leave you high and dry, finish the job, and come back later. Jason knows Bruce raised enough children to cover his ass.
Jason Todd is probably one of the few vigilantes who would rather finish what he started with you than rush off to help with the burning building caused by a car explosion a few streets away.
Don't start thinking that Jason doesn't care about Gotham. He loves Gotham, actually. Enough that the city has shaved years off his life and been the reason for his demise more than once. But does he care enough to pull out of the sweet, velvety walls of your pussy?
No, actually.
Bruce raised enough Bat-children for that particular reason.
You tried to get up when the first blast rattled the windows, but Jason was far faster. One broad hand caught both of your wrists and pinned them above your head while the other dragged your ankle to its rightful place over his shoulder, rough fingers curling around your calf as he settled his weight over you again.
"Jason, you have to go. What even was that?"
"Car bomb," he practically purred, pushing the leaky tip of his cock back into your pussy like the explosion had been nothing more than a minor interruption.
You tried to form a protest. Really, you did. But your protest amounted to little more than slapping one of his biceps when he cooed about how wet you were for him. His hips moved in slow, lazy strokes, making it increasingly difficult to remember the rest of the lecture you had prepared for him.
Another siren screamed somewhere outside, followed by the distant crackle of fire and shouting. Red and blue light flashed through the broken blinds of his safehouse, moving over Jason's naked body in restless streaks. It illuminated the sweat running between his pecs and caught in the pale scars scattered across his chest as he folded you deeper beneath him.
His green eyes never left your face, not even when another siren joined the first, while Gotham continued doing what Gotham did best.
Falling apart.
"Y-you need to go, Jay," you insisted, forcing the words between the moans slipping from your lips as he continued hitting that weak spot
"In a minute," he answered with a wink and a firm squeeze around your wrists.
God, Jason could be mean when he wanted to be. Today just happened to be one of those days.
Apparently, a minute meant whenever he was finished pulling every pretty sound he could from your lips, listening to the wet drag of your pussy around his cock whenever he found the spot that curled your toes.
"Couldn't leave you like this. So needy," he muttered against your throat, planting a constellation of kisses along your skin. The scrape of his stubble followed each one, rough enough to leave you warm before his lips soothed over the same spot. "Look at you. So wet for me."
"Jay," you breathed.
His palm pressed against the bulge his cock made low in your stomach, buried so deep inside you that you could barely breathe. You had a perfectly good argument prepared about how wrong it was for him to still be inside you while people were probably panicking in the streets, but then he pushed your leg farther back and rolled his hips again, and suddenly civic responsibility became a very difficult concept to hold on to.
"Gorgeous," he mused against your throat, kissing the hollow beneath your collarbone.
He finally released your hands, only so you could claw at his broad shoulders while he cupped your breasts. Jason muttered under his breath about how soft you were and how perfectly your breasts fit into his palms while you melted beneath him.
"I know, baby." His thumb and forefinger circled your nipple as it budded beneath his touch with a soft tug. "Gotham's falling apart." His teeth grazed your throat, leaving behind a mark that would darken by morning. "It does that every night."
The radio on the floor beside his helmet and your overnight bag had been going off nonstop by then, voices overlapping through bursts of static.
"Red Hood, respond."
Tim.
"Hood, I didn't come to Gotham to pick up after you. Where the hell are you?"
Dick.
Obviously, Jason was far too occupied to turn off the radio or do anything about the situation outside.
His grip around your breast tightened as his thrusts grew harder, matching the desperate movement of your hips. The mattress shifted beneath you while he watched your face with an unbearably smug, yet adoring look.
"Pretty thing," he groaned, eyes falling shut as his dark brows pinched together. He muttered about how close he was before catching your mouth with his. "What if I just let the city burn for you, hm?"
A burst of gunfire cracked through the radio and echoed from two streets down, sharp enough to make you flinch and tighten around his cock. Jason only paused long enough to listen, still toying with your breast as he cocked his head slightly.
"Modified M4," he confirmed against your pout. Another burst followed, as did his hips. "Cheap suppressor, too."
The radio crackled again with several increasingly annoyed demands to know where he was. Jason groaned for an entirely different reason and pressed his forehead against yours. His fingers left your breast and slipped between your bodies, finding your clit with practiced ease.
Your back arched before you could stop it.
"There you go," he praised, his mouth brushing across your cheek. "That's it, dove. Let me feel you."
His roughened thumb moved in slow circles, cruel and steady.
"You gonna come on my cock?" he asked, his voice dropping lower. "That what you need?"
The words kept spilling out between kisses, each one rougher and more desperate than the last.
Then Dick mentioned something about tracking Jason's suit and dragging him out himself.
That finally got a reaction.
Not the reaction Dick wanted, obviously.
Jason hooked an arm around your waist and hauled you upright until you were straddling him, your knees sinking into the mattress on either side of his hips. His hands settled at your waist, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh of your sides as he guided you down again.
"Then we'd better finish before he gets here."
"Jason, I swear to God - "
"Yeah?" His green eyes glinted beneath lowered lashes. "Tell him how good I make you feel."
You made an offended little noise, but Jason only laughed and caught your lower lip between his teeth before kissing you again.
"That's my baby," he murmured, hands tightening around your waist as his thrusts grew meaner beneath you. Chest pressed against yours. The sound of skin hitting skin and all the lewd noises of your cunt filling the room. "So soft. So perfectly made for me. Don't know how you expect me to leave when you feel this good."
Outside, sirens wailed. The radio kept spitting out his name. Red light slid through the blinds while Gotham tried to tear itself apart a few streets away.
"You are genuinely the worst vigilante in Gotham."
"But I'm your favorite," Jason laughed as he pushed himself impossibly deeper.
You could bite, scratch, curse, and remind him that people were literally depending on him, but he answered every protest with another kiss and harsh thrust.
He was not leaving until both of you came.
And even then, Jason Todd had never been particularly good at stopping after one round.
Sum: There is a dead body in your freezer, a vigilante at your door, and unfortunately, only one of those things is about to become your biggest problem.
Inspired by the Webtoon I Dare You and this little blurb.
Yandere! Dick Grayson x Reader // 5.4k
Warnings: Yandere, fem!reader, paranoid/unreliable reader, stalking, murder/corpse disposal, dead body in freezer, minor character death, memory loss/traumatic brain injury, medical abuse, forced medication, restraints, captivity themes, gaslighting, unhealthy relationships/hella toxic dynamics, corrupt police, abuse of power, blood, attempted violence, non-con touching, coercion, reader is definitely not okay, Dick is extremely not okay but we should all expect that, Dick is a cop, MDNI.
There’s a dead body in the freezer.
That is all you can think about as you stare at the dark-haired vigilante standing on the doorstep of your shabby apartment in downtown Blüdhaven. The hallway light flickers behind him as he stares down at you with startling blue eyes. His easy expression falters the moment he sees you, his gaze widening as though the past has opened the door wearing your face.
He is one of those masked bats. Birds. A hero from television who could take you away and lock you in a cold cell where the lights never turn off, and you have to pee in front of prison guards.
What if they have a piss fetish?
Okay so, there's a dead body in your freezer, a vigilante at your door, and a very real possibility that your future involves forever-turned-on lights, communal toilets, and a prison guard with suspicious interests. School does not prepare you for situations like these.
You don't quite remember much of school, only that you passed enough classes to secure a nine-to-five and afford an apartment with electricity. Electricity keeps the freezer running. The freezer keeps the body cold. Until tonight, that has been enough to prevent situations like this.
The vigilante seems far more concerned about your well-being than whatever crimes might be waiting inside your apartment. He keeps trying to peer past you, tilting his pretty face toward the narrow gap you have left between the door and its rotting frame.
Your fingers blanch on the knob.
“Is anyone else home?” the vigilante asks. His tone is easy, almost careless, but his gaze keeps moving over your face. The way his eyes move makes you uneasy. Does he know? Is he going to take you to prison? Are you going to end up on death row?
“I was expecting somebody else.” He laughs softly, then adds on quickly, “Not that finding you instead is a bad thing. It’s just…” His eyes flick past your shoulder toward the apartment. “Could I come inside for a minute? I need to check something.”
The door is open exactly six inches. Any narrower is rude; any wider, he’ll see the kitchen. Then he might ask about the deep freezer.
You certainly don't care about a man dressed like a bum with a hero suit underneath: joggers, an unzipped jacket, and the dark blue bird stretched across his chest. He does seem familiar.
But everyone does when you lose your memory.
“It’s too late to let strangers in,” you say rather flatly. You wouldn’t want a bum like him in your apartment anyway. Dead body or not.
His brows pinch, disappointment sliding across that perfect face.
Wrong answer.
Adjust.
A practical thought clicks into place: if he sees the freezer, punishment follows. A pre-emptive correction would be simply killing him. But there is no physical room beside the meal prep. Shifting him to the fridge would evict five days of carefully portioned meals, and the power bill is already stripping your bank account. Spoiled food means no food. No food means starving.
You can’t afford to get stupid.
A gentle tap-tap on the doorframe pulls your eyes back up. He smiles, soft and warm, igniting an unwelcome heat in your cheeks. To your surprise, his cheeks are pink as well.
“I’ll just… call her,” he murmurs, fingers drifting toward his pocket.
“She’s on vacation,” you blurt, too loud and way too quick to be considered normal. Another wrong answer, if the brief, puzzled tilt of his brow means anything.
But then he smiles, thinner this time, as though he is masking a bruise of disappointment. Either he is already suspicious and plans to alert the authorities, or he will try again on some quieter night. For the moment, you survive the encounter.
Still, a problem remains: there’s no freezer space for a second corpse, not unless you ditch the meal prep.
You watch him retreat down the dim hallway, one hand lifted in a genial wave before he disappears into the rattling elevator cage at the far end. Only when the doors slide shut do you slam the deadbolt, shove the chain back in place, and glance at the freezer.
Preparations will have to begin tonight.
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The week passes without sirens, arrests, or freezer re-arrangements. You almost believe the vigilante was a fever dream - until a new voice slides through the paper-thin wall.
The building has been hollow for two years; anyone with sense either fled or wrapped themselves in the same caretaker-cocoon that once shielded you. Six months ago that cocoon tore, and routine became sedative: clock-in, clock-out, corpse check, reheated meal prep. The caregiver’s old tablet still pings PAID each month, money shrinking in an account you can’t access. Don’t think about investigations. Investigations ask questions.
The scrape-and-thud of furniture next door means fresh eyes. You crouch on cracked linoleum, snapping dry ramen into crooked shapes beside the chained freezer, and listen to a mid-twenties male voice on speaker: boxes, deliveries, parking permits - ordinary words that grate because ordinary people notice smells and knock on management’s door when your apartment is too loud. You swallow brittle noodles and run tonight’s checklist: finish the last stir-fry, rewrap the feet - frostburn is creeping, drain the drip tray, and smile if the newcomer says hello.
Caregiver’s Rule #12: smiles disarm.
Across the wall, you hear a door close. His front door. Footsteps echo down the hall, unless it’s only your heartbeat. It’s difficult to tell. The sound seems to move through the floorboards instead of over them, each step pressing closer, until the apartment feels too small to hold you, the freezer, and all the terrible inside it.
Is he going to introduce himself now?
You click the lock shut on the freezer. The faint sound of safekeeping does nothing to stop the dread that fills you with every step outside your door. Then comes a light tap against the wood, just like before.
You slowly ease yourself up, trying to seem neither too willing to open the door nor too afraid of what waits behind it.
Afraid people invite questions.
You force a smile onto your face. Do you look normal? Does the body smell, and have you simply gotten used to it?
The math is getting ugly: one freezer, one body, two possible problems.
Play smart.
Unlocking the door proves to be more difficult than it was a week ago. Your hands shake as they slide the lock out of place, and you do your best attempt at a cheerful smile. “You must be the new neighbor,” you force out.
Unease settles low in your stomach as you glance up at him. Same height as the vigilante who came by last week. Less of a bum, however. He wears a cardigan over a white shirt, with nice-looking pants that seem dry-cleaned, which is odd for a resident in this slum of a building. Same blue eyes that pin you in place and the same familiar dimpled smile that reminds you of your nightmares from the other night.
It would be easier if they were the same person. Then you would only have one body to worry about, but the chances of them being the same are awfully slim, and you are not one to take chances. Especially when there’s a cell waiting for you.
“I am,” he says, voice coated in honey. “Thin walls, huh?”
He’s friendlier than the vigilante from last week, though that does nothing to comfort you. His voice is nothing but warm, neighborly, and harmless. Suspicion builds in your stomach. Or maybe you’re just hungry. However, you don’t quite enjoy the caged-animal feeling that licks up your spine when his arm comes to rest against the wall, blocking your view of the hallway and any possible exits.
Nice guys - those are the ones you worry about.
“Dick Grayson,” he offers, extending a hand you refuse. Too risky to exchange DNA when there’s a felony cooling five feet away. “Blüdhaven PD. Anything you need…”
Shit. Sirens begin to scream inside your skull. The freezer rattles awake behind you. Your sins are already mocking you.
You manage that it must be “nice” - wrong adjective.
His smile slices: “Nice isn’t the word.”
You scramble for “safe,” tack on “for you” as if that helps. Since cops get wrist-slaps for killing, your brain mutters - you choke the thought down.
He softens, coaxing: “It’s not always safe.” Bait. Your gaze returns to his hands - broad, sure, the sort that could pry a freezer lid or close over a throat. Your stomach tightens. He keeps the patter light, claims he didn’t want to be rude, asks if you’re always like this.
“Yes,” you say, which somehow amuses him. You don’t really get the social cue behind it all. Then the real kicker, delivered with a wink: “Have a good night - and don’t forget your medication.”
Your smile turns to ice. You never mentioned the pills.
You should really kill him.
First plan: poison - too slow. Second: ceramic vase - probably shatters. Third: push him down the stairs - lobby cameras.
Should’ve checked the cameras.
Sirens howl in your head; even the freezer seems to vibrate with them. He knows you’re unmedicated. Worse - he knows you’re alone.
This is still normal, you insist, bolting the door a second time now. The padlock’s click echoes louder than his footsteps retreating down the hall.
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You’ve been hiding ever since Dick Grayson moved in two weeks ago. Since then, he has learned your schedule like the back of his own hand. He knows when you leave, hears the tardy shuffle in your step, counts the key fumbles when you chase the bus. He even indulges himself by stopping at the same coffee shop every morning, just to say hello before you scamper off to your pitiful nine-to-five. On Fridays, you return late with plastic bags full of discount groceries, shoulders hunched beneath the weight of marked-down items.
You used to leave the apartment more. Not much, but enough. A trip to the mailbox before work. A stop at the corner store after. Sometimes you would linger outside the laundromat with your tote bag pressed to your side, watching people through the glass like you were trying to remember how normal worked. But now that he has moved in beside you, your schedule has changed, and so have the dark circles under your eyes. You avoid him more often than not. You keep your curtains drawn shut, the cheap fabric pulled tight even in the middle of the afternoon. You only access the mailbox when he leaves for work, even if the morning paper you are so insistent on grabbing is already a day behind.
A sigh escapes him as he lies on his bed, shoulder pressed against the shared wall, listening for any sound from your apartment.
Nothing.
That bothers him more than noise would. The breaker tripped a few hours ago. He heard the electricity die through the wall, that low mechanical hum in your apartment cutting out all at once, leaving behind a flat, ugly quiet. It would be easy to climb onto your patio, pick the lock, and flip the switch back on for you. An easier option would be to check whether the caregiver he hired took the money and left you all alone.
His jaw tightens. You shouldn’t be working in your condition.
He groans into the hands resting over his face, dragging his palms down until the heels press against his eyes. Then he turns, burying his face into your old pillow. It barely smells like you anymore, but he still keeps it tucked beneath his head every night like a comfort plush.
How long have you been alone? It has to be at least six months. Maybe seven. You were fine when he left for Gotham. Or fine enough. The accident had left you different, sure. More numb. A little damaged in a way even the best doctors could not fully smooth over. But you had been alive and mostly manageable.
It has been two years now since the accident. Two years since the ring box sat heavy on the car’s center console, black velvet catching the passing streetlights every time the vehicle moved beneath them. He had asked you too soon. He knows that. You knew that. The two of you had been fighting more. He had been getting rougher with you, quicker to grab, to corner, to tell himself it was only because you scared him when you talked about leaving. You had threatened to leave. He had started acting too much like Bruce, all paranoia.
He has always been too hasty. Asking for your hand in marriage was never the mistake. Just the timing of it. You had stared at him with tears in your eyes as you tried to set boundaries, your face losing color as he promised he would keep you safe. No matter how badly you misunderstood him. Your fingers had curled around the seat belt, pressed hard against the buckle.
He had thought you were overwhelmed. Even tried the calming techniques first, using a low voice that typically worked with your outbursts. His hand open. Breathe with me, princess. You’re okay. But you kept shaking your head and reaching for the door, so he had started reaching for the tranquilizer dart in the back seat, just to get you quiet until he could bring you home and keep you safe until the wedding.
You were probably just afraid of happiness. Maybe that’s why you did it.
You were quick to unlock the car door. Quicker than his hand as he lunged across the console. Even faster than the desperate grip of his fingers against your sleeve before you slipped through them and threw yourself out of the vehicle.
Did you have to jump?
The question is as familiar as the guilt that ate him alive when he saw you in the hospital, your head wrapped in white, tubes taped to your skin and down your throat, machines clicking and breathing around you. Severe brain damage, they said. A long recovery. But money fixed enough of it. Bruce’s money. The best doctors the area could offer, even some who flew in. Bruce’s hand clamped heavy on his shoulder as the old man told him, “Don’t let it get to you. There are plenty of fish out there.”
But you were the only one he wanted to catch.
Did you have to throw yourself out of a moving car to get away from him? Was life with him that hellish?
He hates that word. Hellish. It doesn’t belong in his memories with you. Not in the kitchen, where he cooked meals and set bowls in front of you even when you glared at him as if he had poisoned them. Sure, you threw one at his face once. Called him a pervert. A fake hero. But you were simply cranky some days. Overwhelmed. Easy to brush off, the same way you brushed away the blankets he laid over your shoulders when you pretended not to be cold.
It doesn’t belong with the little doodles and notes he left on the fridge either, even if some of them came back shredded into death notes. Or with the scissors he had to pry from your hands while you threatened to slit your throat if he didn’t let you leave.
Of course, there were nights when you slow-danced with him in the living room to old love songs, your cheek resting against his chest as you finally got tired of fighting. Or even the mornings when you woke soft and quiet, blinking up at him like you forgot why you were angry. The afternoons when you asked so prettily for fresh air after he had kept you locked in the bedroom for too long, voice hoarse, fingers curled into his shirt.
Sure, spanking worked when you got too difficult, but so did a good timeout from time to time. You always melted against him after being alone long enough.
You could be sweet when you wanted to be. That was love. It had to be love.
He had loved you enough to try to move on with Barbara back in Gotham. It worked for a couple of weeks. Better than sitting at your bedside, loving you through recovery while you could barely remember who he was, watching your confused, frightened eyes fill with fear when he leaned too close. The times when he needed to remind you with a hand pinching your air tube that he was still the person you were supposed to kiss back.
His hand curls against the bedsheet where you would have slept.
If the Joker had not been loose for six months, Dick would have come back to you sooner. He would have continued his weekly checkups while you were drugged and less observant. Your caregiver was always good at giving you more than you needed to help with the nightmares she claimed were about him.
They’re just dreams. He’s not your monster.
You slept deeply enough then that he could sit beside your bed, brush the hair from your face, adjust your blanket, and pretend the quiet between you was peace instead of punishment. You never flinched in your sleep.
He cut things off with Barbara when he came back here. Watched her cry as he held her, her face tucked against his shoulder, her fingers twisting in the back of his shirt. He felt bad. Of course he felt bad. But her tears didn’t make him want to choke sense into her. They didn’t make him want to kiss her until she stopped making that awful, broken sound.
Yours did, however.
You’re not the same as before. He expected that. Certainly much healthier than you were in the hospital, at least. Your social skills are lacking, but that is expected when a lamb first learns how to walk again. If anything, it works out for the best. You’re more relaxed around him now. You don’t keep the lock in place like you used to when the two of you were first seeing each other. You don’t insult him. You stopped crying. The list could go on and on about how oddly perfect things would be between you two.
Finally, he hears your footsteps down the hall. Should he greet you? No. That would be too eager. He shouldn’t frighten such a delicate creature after work.
Your front door unlocks. He listens to the stumble of your shoes against the floor, the rustle of a plastic bag, the small irritated sound you make when something bumps into the wall. After a handful of minutes, the breaker clicks back on. The apartment gives a faint electric shudder through the wall, and the hum returns. You must have noticed by now that it has been off for a couple of hours. It’s a heatwave, after all. You probably have too many appliances plugged in.
Maybe he could offer to cook for you tonight. Something simple. Pasta, maybe. Open that fresh bottle of wine he got from a buddy. He can show up at your door with a friendly neighbor smile, pretend he hasn’t spent the last few hours listening for proof you are still breathing. You might let him in if he plays his cards right. He can pour you a glass, make you laugh, kiss you before walking you back to your door like the old days.
Then he hears it.
Your door opens again.
Are you leaving?
Dick pushes himself upright, head tilting toward the wall. Your footsteps are quick this time. Frantic. You mutter under your breath, the same word over and over.
Ice.
You must be going to the convenience store. All your food must have spoiled, or at least enough of it to scare you. That refrigerator was never the greatest. It was never his idea to keep you here for two years. You were supposed to move in with him after one, but work got busy. Gotham got loud. People kept needing him, and you had been safe enough. Or he thought you were.
He’s already moving before he finishes the thought, tugging his work uniform back into place, smoothing a hand over his glossy dark hair in the mirror by the door. The uniform helps. A good excuse for running into you at the convenience store down the road.
A friendly neighbor coming home after a long night of police work.
Not a man following you into the night.
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If Dick had known you could make such a horrified expression and still look so painfully cute, he might have pulled a stunt like this sooner. The convenience store is nearly empty at this hour. Outside, the heatwave fogs the beer-ad glass; inside, you stand in front of the ice chest with both arms full, eight plastic bags stacked awkwardly against your chest, as if you’re trying to carry a body instead of save one. He taps your shoulder; you nearly drop everything.
“Throwing a party?” he teases, bright and harmless, as though meeting here were a coincidence either of you should believe. His gaze flicks from the bags to your face - eight is a lot of ice for someone with no friends in any file he’s pulled, no emergency contacts who call more than once, no coworkers who walk you home. You’re usually alone.
That has always made things easier.
Your eyes jump to his uniform, then his badge, before Dick lifts a hand in an open-palm wave.
“Easy,” he says. “Just me.” Your grip only tightens; water runs from a corner of one bag and slides down your wrist. You don’t seem to notice. You're so much stranger and more calculated - so unlike the version of you who once snapped at him for thrills and shoved him away after too many kisses. Different isn’t ruined; it’s just leverage.
Your reply is lost to the freezer hum and the cashier’s squeaking stool.
“What was that?” he prompts. You glance at the bored clerk, then back at him, and repeat too loudly: “It’s for coffee meal prep.” He nearly laughs. Eight bags for morning coffee? Adorable. He props a shoulder against the glass, frost blooming behind him. “You need eight for one cup?” A beat. “Tired of seeing me in the mornings?”
You look away, try to brush past. “It’s melting - I won’t have any to practice with if it melts.”
Practice? Before you can retreat, he lifts six bags off your pile. You jerk for them, a small startled sound, but he’s always been stronger. For an instant he sees the old fury in your eyes, enough to make his heart kick before he reins in the teasing.
“How about I help?” he offers gently.
You huff and push toward the register while meltwater stipples the floor. Dick follows, shifts the bags against his hip, and - before you can fish out your wallet - taps his card: beep. You freeze mid-reach.
“I had it,” you mutter.
“I know,” he smiles. “And now you still have it.”
Tension moves between you, louder than the compressor rattle; the cashier pretends not to listen.
Why eight bags? Maybe the breaker scare sent you spiraling, food spoiling after the caregiver vanished. No reason for you to budget groceries or lug ice through Blüdhaven at night when he’s right here. He’ll audit the caregiver’s spending, see where the money went.
The bell jingles as you step into wet heat. Sidewalk puddles shine under streetlights; a distant siren wails and fades. You walk too fast - shoes slapping pavement in a nervous tempo - bags swinging hard against your legs. Each time you edge toward the curb, Dick glides between you and traffic. “Careful,” he says. You flinch. “I’m careful.” Twice you reach for the ice he’s carrying; twice he shifts it easily away.
“They’ll melt faster if we stop to argue,” he reminds you. That quiets you, though your eyes keep darting: his hands, the street, the apartment looming ahead. Plastic crackles whenever your grip flexes, leaving a thin trail of meltwater. When you veer to the curb again, he blocks you.
“Walking on the outside,” he explains - seat-belt muscle memory, sleeve slipping from his grasp.
“That’s not necessary,” you protest.
“Humor me,” he smiles, and you swallow the argument.
The lobby smells of old mail and cherry-lemon cleaner that never makes the place look clean. But it does take the smell of mold out. Elevator’s Under Construction - crooked sign over the button - so you climb the stairs. Halfway up, you freeze, alarmed to find him behind you.
“Go on. I’m not in a rush.” He motions ahead.
You don’t like his eyes on your back; good to know. He takes the next flight first, listening to your uneven breathing and the ice shifting in your arms.
Hallway air is thicker than outside, trapped under flickering bulbs. Your door waits - paint chipped, peephole cloudy, chain probably dangling because you left in a hurry. His door is beside it, close enough to hear everything. You whirl, blocking your knob.
“I can take them now.” Your smile appears a beat late - the wrong mask worn the wrong way. Dick’s chest warms.
“Should I help you get these inside?” he asks, voice honey-soft. Helping is love; love lets him in.
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You have gotten yourself into a spectacular pickle.
Bargaining at the threshold proves useless: your arms are full of melting ice, his arms are full of melting ice, and technically all of it belongs to you. You assure him - politely, firmly, repeatedly - that he doesn’t need to come inside, the bags aren’t heavy, it’s late, he must be tired, you’d hate to be a bother. Normal words for normal people. Dick Grayson only smiles and hoists the bags higher as they start to sink again.
Nice people are harder to shake; your caregiver warned you about that. They treat no like an invitation to try harder. Eight bags were a mistake. Four would have meant coffee prep or a broken fridge - anything ordinary. Eight screams emergency. Eight screams hidden freezer. Eight screams a smell you’re praying belongs to yesterday’s trash.
Behind the door, the apartment waits. So does the smell.
Sweet, damp, wrong - probably already leaking from the freezer seams after hours without power in a heatwave. Please be trash, please be trash. Maybe it isn’t bad yet. Maybe the chain kept the lid sealed. Maybe the trash under the sink reeks worse. You have never hoped for trash before, but there’s a first time for everything when a corpse is thawing in your kitchen.
Open the door and risk the odor. Refuse and risk the neighbor’s suspicions. Stand here and the ice keeps melting, the body keeps warming, the officer eventually calls someone. The officer is someone.
Slower disaster is better than fast. Keys slip in your wet fingers; metal clinks too loudly. Laugh. Harmless people laugh. You laugh like a woman you’ve seen in movies over misplaced keys, not like a woman calculating whether she can drop a policeman before he draws his gun. Dick doesn’t laugh back - he only watches.
Finally the lock turns. You step in first; he follows, gently shuts the door - then locks it. Fine, be creepy. Warm, stale air greets you, carrying a faint, rotting sweetness. Trash. Just trash. You clutch the ice, march past the chained chest freezer, swear you won’t look - then look anyway. Chain still tight. Good. Bad.
“Should I put these in the freezer?” he asks, kindness itself. For one absurd beat, you almost answer yes, right beside the dead woman. Then you see where he’s staring: not at you, but at the chain around the lid.
“Do you have a key?”
Words jam in your throat. A lock for sleep-eating? A safety latch? All terrible.
Your gaze darts to the ceramic vase by the door- heavy, blue-flowered, dusty. It has held receipts, dead pens, a spare button. It could hold blood. You edge one bag against your hip, freeing a hand. His head is turned. His hands are full. You might have a second. Handle’s chipped - won’t slip. Good.
Aim for his perfect face. If he falls, the entry rug is dark, good for soaking. Ice buys time. Boxes in his apartment for the body parts. One problem at a time.
He starts to turn.
You grip the vase and swing with all your might.
Sorry, officer.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
Dick should have expected it. Your fire never truly burned away - no amount of medication or brain damage could smother that stubborn spark. Of course you fought him: manic smile at the door, polite excuses stacking. Of course you lunged for the vase. You were a frightened animal that didn’t know what was good for you.
He whistles low as he crouches by the chest freezer, one knee sinking into damp flooring, bobby pin clamped between his teeth. Picking the padlock feels crude but easier than ripping off the chain or searching for a key. The apartment smells off - wrong, even by your standards. Beside him, the ice bags sweat into widening puddles. He glances over.
You glare from the floor - cheek pressed to the fake tile, hair pasted to your face, both wrists cuffed to the radiator pipe because you refused to sit, to stop kicking, practically refused every warning he gave you. Pride props your hips at an uncomfortable angle; muffled sobs stutter as you try to swallow them. Stubborn thing. Makes him nostalgic for every time you mistook courage for good odds.
“You’re in trouble!” you shout, yanking the cuff. Metal rattles; skin scrapes raw, a thin red line blooming toward your palm. His smile fades. “Careful,” he murmurs.
You ignore him. “There’s a vigilante around here.”
Bobby pin pauses. He meets your eyes, smiles. “I know, baby. If only he were here.” Fury and panic twist your features - here you are. Not healed, but flickering under fear: sharp mouth, wounded pride, fight that proves you need someone stronger.
Click. Chain slithers to the wet floor like a dropped leash. You go still. Breath hitches in tiny bursts; his palm rests on the lid, not lifting yet, enjoying the desperate set of your face. Beg me not to.
“What’s in here?” he asks, voice low. Your lips tremble. Silence. “Baby, what did you do?” Thumb stroking the lip, he waits.
“A body.” The words leak out - tiny, broken.
He studies your face first: eyes wet, cheek glued to tile, wrist bleeding. Embarrassed, not remorseful - cornered, not guilty. Pulse steadies.
“A body,” he repeats, then lifts the lid. Cold sighs out, followed by sweetness gone sour. Plastic-wrapped limbs, frost-blurred features - the caregiver, tucked in with practical care. His gaze traces corpse, chain, puddled ice, then you: still glaring, still calculating whether biting helps. Optimistic.
“Well,” he breathes. Lid stays open; smell dulls. A cop should radio this in. Nightwing should. Instead he thinks: six months alone, one corpse, no help until now.
“You’re going to need someone, aren’t you, princess?”
“Don’t call me that.” Sharp even now.
He smiles with a fond look in his eyes. “I can make this disappear - body, payments, reports.” You stop struggling to listen. Good. “But you’ll do something for me.” He crouches close. Hard not to kiss your tears away.
“You’ll stop hiding. Take meds when I say. Eat real food.” His thumb grazes your torn wrist, voice softening, while his other hand trails down your spine. “And you’ll quit hurting yourself trying to escape the only man trying to help.”
A strangled sound escapes as his palm settles over your heat, giving you two soft, almost patronizing pats. His smile widens as you look over at him, cheeks warmed and dewy. His fingers find their way between your legs and glide along your slit, earning such pretty sounds from your lips. You probably haven't been touched for months. Years, even. So loyal, aren't you? Willing to do anything to cover up your little mistake, huh?
“If you’re lucky,” he whispers, “maybe I’ll marry a cruel thing like you.” He kisses the tear-damp cheek, tasting salt, watching your lips purse back. Pulling his hand away just to watch the frustration on your face. Maybe he'll save such things for marriage. Shouldn't get too hasty. Especially not after last time.
“It was a year ago, I think. I’m not sure. He made it difficult to keep track of time.”
Your voice was meek, not unsteady, but quiet enough to give the same impression. It was almost inaudible, and part of you regretted refusing to stay in Jean’s office, where the doors could be locked and the windows could be shut and the rest of the world blocked out appropriately, kept at a distance. The openness of the garden square behind the Knights’ headquarters made you feel vulnerable, melodramatic, the sky too clear and the breeze too gentle, like Teyvat itself was trying to tell you to lighten-up. You felt small, exposed, but you couldn’t stand the idea of being inside, of not being able to get away, of feeling like you were there, again, even for a moment. This was better. You could be vulnerable, you could be exposed. You just couldn't be trapped, again.
“He caught me on my way out of Angel Share, and he offered to buy me a drink – something mild, for the road. I could barely hold myself up, at that point, but he was being so nice, and he has such a reputation, I thought it’d be rude to refuse. I didn’t want to let him down.” You paused, and Lisa rested a hand on your shoulder, squeezing gently. Jean, sitting on the opposing bench, nodded encouragingly, and you took as a sign to go on. “I remember blacking out at the bar, and when I woke up, I was in his flat. I was chained to the bedpost, and there was a deadbolt on the door – they should both still be there, if that helps with the investigation. He was out, at the time and when he got home…”
You sighed, breathily, shaking your head. Jean pursed her lips, and Lisa hummed, drawing shallow, comforting circles into you back. “Do you want to take a break, sweetheart?”
“If that’s alright,” You answered, bowing your head. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d be more composed, when I finally got to do this.”
“Take all the time you need.” Jean, as calm and as commanding as always. You were glad you’d caught her, that she hadn’t been occupied with something else, something more important. For the first few weeks, while the desperation was still fresh and your heart still skipped a beat every time he raised his hand, you pictured running through the streets, screaming and crying for help, throwing yourself at the first person, knight or otherwise, that you saw. You thought better of it, eventually. He was so well-known, so well-loved, you could hardly imagine any common citizen or rookie knight taking your word over his. Jean was smart. She was rational. She’d been willing to look at the raw skin around your wrists, the bruises on the side of your neck, and she hadn’t turned you away when you started talking about deadbolts and kidnappers and year-long abductions. You were thankful you’d come to her, over anyone else. You were thankful she’d been there for you to come to. “I’ve cleared my schedule for the rest of the day, and Lisa’s agreed to oversee the matter beyond that point. If there’s anything you need or any concerns you have, please, don’t hesitate to let one of us know.”
“Thank you, but that really isn’t necessary. I appreciate your help, but… I’m just so tired, and it’s been so long since I’ve been anything but afraid of him.” You dropped your eyes to your lap, beginning to relax. “To be honest, I just want to go home.”
“Of course.” Lisa, now, her tone softened, melodical in a way clearly meant to comfort. “Is there anything we can get you, before you leave? A cup of tea? A change of clothes?”
You frowned, but didn’t protest further. “No, that’s alright, I really just want to go home.”
Again, Jean nodded, but she didn’t move to stand. “We’ll have to arrange an escort, just to ensure your safety. It shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
“What? No, no, I told you, it’s alight.” You tried to smile, but your expression faltered quickly, and you settled for pushing yourself to your feet, instead, for brushing Lisa off as politely as you could, when she followed in-suit and tried to take your arm. “It’s only Springvale. I think I can keep myself for—”
“Thank Barbatos,” A hand on your shoulder, too heavy to be Lisa’s, and an arm around your waist, pulling you into a broad chest. “I was afraid you might’ve gotten away from me, my love.”
Part of you had expected this, wanted it, planned public arrests and drawn swords and drawn blood, when you let yourself lull into fantasies of proper justice immediate retribution. Your gaze flickered between Lisa and Jean, waiting for a flash of silver, a catalyst pulled from thin air, something that could tear him off of you and something that could keep him away.
A second passed in silence, then another. His head found its way to your shoulder, and Lisa sighed, the tension in Jean’s posture already beginning to dissipate.
“Kaeya,” Jean started, her relief palpable, tangible, horrible. “I’m glad you could make it.”
You heard him laugh, but the sound was distant, cold. Your sight was blurred, dark around the edges, and you wanted to sit back down. You wanted to run. “Of course. I’m can’t thank you enough for letting me know – if she hadn’t come to you, she might've taken to wandering though the city, or worse, found her way to the forest.” He exhaled, closing his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand. Exhaustion, agitation, repose – all the right feelings for a man newly reunited with a lover who’d been in harm’s way. All the right masks, slipped on and off with the ease. “It’s my fault, really. She’s just been… She’s been showing so much improvement, and making so much progress, I thought I might be able to trust her to—”
His voice cut out, decisively fragile. Lisa reacted first, her eyes taking on that tempered, empathic light, and something in your chest cracked, your residual panic mixing with something new, dread and fear and anger. “You’re already doing more than enough. You don’t have to blame yourself for slipping-up after months of barely holding yourself together.”
“If you need help, all you have to do is let us know,” Jean added, suddenly so warm, suddenly so eager to please. “There’s always room in the barracks, if you need a few days to rest. I can call in a physician, someone to act as her caretaker while you—”
“He kidnapped me.” You wanted to yell, shout, scream, but the words come out smaller, weaker than you would’ve liked, weaker than you meant for them to. “He—He kept me locked in his home, and he’s been—”
“And I’ve been trying to take care of you, but you’re certainly not making it easy.” Another laugh, an idle gesture, something caught between a wave and a roll of his wrist. “I've told you about this, haven't I? I’m afraid whatever happened to her, that night, she’s utterly convinced it was my doing. I’m just not sure how much good separating her from the source of her perceived suffering would do, especially when she's already so entrenched in her own delusions.”
“He’s lying!” You were struggling against him, by then, prying at his arm, burying your nails in his skin. You felt him tense, but his posture didn’t change, and he didn’t struggle to keep you restrained, to hold you back, not that he'd ever had to before. He wanted to make it seem like you weren’t really fighting back, like he didn’t really have to hold you at all. You were used to that. He liked to flaunt his strength, to pin your wrist to the mattress or a counter and watch you struggle against him, to stare you down and wait for you to break free, like you could, like he’d let you. After he got tired of that, he’d take you by the chin, instead, or by the collar of your dress, and he’d—
“Can’t take you anywhere, can I?” His hand dropped to your waist, and immediately, you regretted letting yourself think at all. “She’s prone to daydreaming— disassociating, according to the doctors. Between that and how confused she can get, sometimes, I can’t say I trust her in anyone else’s hands. It’s easier, knowing she’s safe with me.” There was a pause, brief but purposeful, and when he went on, he spoke slowly, like he was struggling to put the words together. Like he didn’t know which lie to spout next. “I can’t help but think that, since I’m the only one she seems to hate, I must’ve done something to earn her animosity. It’s only right that I do what I can to earn her forgiveness.”
Lisa hummed, approvingly. Jean nodded, firm, but not stern. Willing to acknowledge, but not to look any deeper.
You wanted to scream.
You let go of him, going for the sleeve of your left arm, instead. You tried to pull at the white, gauzy material, but he caught your hand in his before you could make any progress and mimicked your actions himself, moving quickly, dramatizing the change in his own demeanor, the way you struggled against him, the reveal of the raw, reddened skin, lined with bruises and scratches and other, minor injuries, all small, but all telling. It would’ve been telling. It would’ve been damning, if—
If he hadn’t gotten to it first.
“Oh, princess,” Cooing, mumbling. Like he’d forgotten there were other people, around you, watching. Like that wasn’t the only reason he’d bother with the theatrics. “Are you hurting yourself again?”
“I’m not.” Not to him, but to Jean, Lisa, to the rookie knights, trying to pretend they weren’t listening. “I swear, I’m not, I’m not, he’s— It’s from the shackles, it’s because he—”
You were lifted from the ground entirely, one of his arms under the bend of your knees, his other hand pushing into the back of your neck, keeping your head pressed against his chest. He was apologizing to Jean, making promises of fine wine and repaided time to Lisa, and he was talking to you, too, scolding you, as he started down the spiraling stairway, away from the cathedral, towards that tiny, locked-up, awful apartment. Towards somewhere small, somewhere cut off from the rest of the world. Towards somewhere you’d be trapped with him.
You must've cried out, called for help, said something in a tone that was lost to the beating of your own pulse in your ears, because you heard him hush you, and you felt him bow his head, press his lips to your forehead, so calmly and so smoothly, no observer would've seen anything more than a show of affection, a knight comforting a distressed loved one. No observer would've thought to look for the smirk, as it burnt into your skin, or listened to the way he spoke to you, so slowly, so condescendingly, you could hardly bring yourself to listen. Not that he'd ever given you another choice.
"That's why you shouldn't wander off, princess," He muttered, his grin only growing wider, sharper.
sometimes I’m reminded that there are still people who don’t know ao3 was literally created by incest shippers — and the site’s sole purpose is to 1. be completely against censorship and 2. host all kinds of dark, taboo fics that are banned on other platforms — and the first ever fic that was posted on ao3 was a fic about an incest ship from supernatural.
you are in the house that was created by freaks. for freaks (affectionate). every disgusting thing you can think of is rightfully allowed and welcomed on ao3, because they are exactly the reasons why ao3 was created in the first place.
ao3 was created because its creators got tired of censorship, they got tired of dark and taboo fics getting banned on pro-censorship platforms, and they wanted a place that was safe for ALL FICS THAT WERE DARK AND TABOO.
ao3’s main principle is being against censorship and being proship / profic.
there are some things in fiction that make me uncomfortable, but instead of shaming people who are just minding their own business and not harming anyone in real life, I choose to curate my own internet experience by blocking/muting what I don’t want to see. ao3 has excellent tagging system, so instead of being rude, instead of asking why the world doesn’t revolve around your personal comfort, use their tagging system properly and you won’t see the things you don’t want to see.
it’s your job to curate what you see. it’s not other people’s jobs or responsibilities to censor themselves for your personal comfort. the world does not revolve around you.
also you cannot censor “only the things you personally hate” without expecting everything else, that isn’t of conservative beliefs, to be censored too. because censorship is a slippery slope and a fascist tool. I promise you there are people who think “why do tags for queer love even exist on ao3? they’re grooming children”.
if you allow the things that you hate to be censored — because someone with enough power gets to control what other people can and cannot create/consume, it will not stop at the things that you hate.
SYNOPSIS : An irrational desire to incorporate somebody's body into your own.
WARNINGS : Graphic Depictions of Violence, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Major Character Death, Psychological, Trauma, Gore, Torture (Implied/Off-Screen and On-Screen Depictions), Mind Break / Mental Breakdown, Grief / Emotional Distress, Manipulation, Psychological Horror, Obsessive and Possessive Behaviour, Yandere Behaviour, Disturbing Imagery
A / N : in my defence you all asked for this
INTERACTIONS AND REBLOGS ENCOURAGED!
You are still alive when they begin.
Every instinct in your body insists that you should not be. Every nerve screams that there must be some limit to suffering, some invisible line where consciousness finally gives way and mercy takes over. Yet no such mercy arrives. You remain awake, trapped behind your own eyes as your body is dismantled piece by piece, reduced from a person into ingredients.
You watch as your bones are pulled from you, one after another, stripped clean and fed into the grinding stone. The sound is unbearable, not the sharp crack of breaking bone, but the slow, relentless crunch as something that once held you upright is crushed into pale powder. Flour made from your skeleton. Then comes your blood. What spills from you is not wasted, it is collected in bowls and basins, stirred together with the powder of your own bones until it forms a thick, sticky paste. Red and white become pink, your flesh and skeleton become dough. The transformation is nauseatingly domestic. The motions are familiar, almost comforting in another context; hands kneading, folding, shaping. The sort of thing you might have seen in a kitchen countless times before.
And somehow, impossibly, you are forced to sit as witness to it all. An audience to your own post-mortem fate before death has even had the decency to claim you.
Perhaps, under different circumstances, you would have laughed. If this were a novel assigned in one of your literature classes, or an obscure poem buried in a curriculum no one actually cared about, you might have appreciated the irony. You would have pointed out how the line between human and animal was often thinner than people liked to admit. How old cookbooks, medical texts, and household records rarely treated the human body as something entirely separate from the natural world around it. You remember learning that in early England, blood, bone, urine, even human flesh found their way into remedies and recipes. Human remains were ingredients. Medicines and commodities. Something that could be consumed and traded. Back then, the thought had seemed absurd. Grotesque, certainly, but distant enough to be fascinating. Now there is nothing fascinating about it. Not when hands reach for your head with the same casual certainty a baker might reserve for a lump of dough. Not when you realize, with mounting dread, that they are going to make a pastry from your own head.
The last thing you ever see is the Joker’s gloved hands reaching toward you through the dim, flickering warehouse light, the certainty arriving all at once and without mercy that he will not arrive in time, that the distance between rescue and failure has already closed and locked itself shut, and that your life is ending not as a possibility but as an inevitability already in motion, consumed and taken before the thought of escape can even fully form. Hours later, the same man who lives so sharply in your final thought steps into that same warehouse, Red Robin moving through the silence with controlled urgency until he comes face to face with the figure responsible, the Joker standing there plainly.
"Where are they?" Tim demanded, his voice cutting through the cavernous warehouse with a sharpness that echoed off rusted beams and stained concrete walls. Every muscle in his body was wound tight beneath the uniform, every second stretching thinner than the last as his eyes swept across the room in search of some sign of you. He searched for movement, for anything that might indicate where the Joker had hidden you, but the building offered him nothing. The vast space was almost empty, stripped bare of anything useful, leaving only the clown himself standing beneath the harsh industrial lights and a long metal table positioned directly in front of him. Resting atop it was a large object concealed beneath a spotless white sheet.
The Joker's response came in the form of laughter. It burst from him suddenly, loud and grating, filling the warehouse until it seemed to crawl into every corner of the room. He doubled over slightly as though overcome by amusement, one gloved hand pressed dramatically against his chest while the other gestured aimlessly through the air. The sound was familiar enough to make Tim's stomach twist.
"Oh, don't be so serious!" he cackled, eventually straightening and wiping at an imaginary tear beneath one eye. "You'll see 'em in time."
His fingers moved to the bright purple bow-tie sitting crookedly against his collar, adjusting it with exaggerated care. The white gloves flashed beneath the warehouse lights as he fussed over the knot, appearing almost absurdly pristine compared to the grime surrounding him. Then the Joker's grin widened.
"In fact," he said, lifting a single finger as though struck by a brilliant idea, "you can see them right now." He seized the edge of the sheet and pulled. The fabric slipped away in one dramatic flourish, floating briefly through the air before collapsing onto the floor at his feet. Beneath it sat a pie. For a moment, Tim simply stared, steam rose from the pastry in thin twisting ribbons, carrying the scent of warm butter and spices into the room. The crust had been baked to a flawless golden-brown, every inch of it looked carefully prepared, delicate latticework crossed the top in neat overlapping strips, each one woven together with meticulous precision. It looked freshly made, the surface still glistening with an egg wash that caught the overhead lights. It was the sort of pie that belonged cooling on a kitchen counter or sitting in the display case of a bakery, not resting on a metal table in the middle of an abandoned warehouse while the Joker stood beside it grinning like the maniac he is.
Tim's eyes narrowed behind his mask. By all appearances it was completely ordinary, and that was precisely what made it suspicious. It was most likely drugged in some way or form, or poisoned. The clown circled the table slowly, dragging his fingertips along the edge of the pie tin as though admiring the craftsmanship of his own work. There was a strange tenderness in the gesture, an affection that made Tim's skin crawl. "You know," he began conversationally, "people don't appreciate baking anymore. It's a dying art. Everybody wants the big stuff these days. Giant plants, death rays, toxins. Nobody appreciates the dedication that goes into making something with your own two hands."
Tim remained silent. The smell continued to drift through the warehouse. Everything about it felt wrong. The Joker stopped beside the table and placed both palms flat against the metal surface, leaning forward slightly as his grin stretched wider and wider until it seemed almost painful. There was excitement shining in his eyes now, a barely contained anticipation that immediately sent alarm bells ringing through Tim's head.
"You eat this pie, Boy Wonder," the Joker said, his voice dropping into something almost gentle, "and I'll tell you exactly where your lover is."
Tim's gaze shifted from the Joker to the pie and back again, studying both with growing unease. He had spent years dealing with Gotham's worst criminals. He knew how the Joker operated. He understood threats, riddles and traps. Yet none of those instincts were helping him now because the Joker wasn't acting the way he normally did. And as Tim stared at the steaming pie resting between them, a terrible feeling began to unfurl in the pit of his stomach. The Joker had gone to far too much effort for this to be meaningless.
He had to consider it, despite every instinct in his body warning him not to. The pie sat on the table beneath the warehouse lights, steam still curling from the lattice crust. It looked absurdly normal. Too normal. The Joker had your last known location, and every trail Tim had managed to uncover ended here, in this rotting warehouse with its rusted beams and stained concrete floors. If you were alive, you were close. If you were dead, the answer was here. The pie would almost certainly be contaminated with something, a toxin, a hallucinogen, some grotesque chemical experiment hidden beneath the pastry, but Tim had already dosed himself with a temporary antidote before entering the building, a cocktail designed to counter most known poisons and keep his body functioning long enough to finish the mission. It was not a guarantee, Gotham had taught him that guarantees did not exist. The antidote might fail and the pie might kill him. But refusing it might mean never finding you. The only certainty was that he could not walk away.
He had spent days tearing through Gotham searching for you, throwing himself into the work with a desperation he refused to name because stopping long enough to think meant confronting the guilt that had been gnawing at him since the moment you disappeared. Every lead that went cold left him imagining a hundred ways he could have prevented this. If he had paid more attention, if he had answered sooner, if he had insisted you stay with him instead of letting you leave. The thoughts circled endlessly, starving for acknowledgement, but he shoved them down with the same ruthless discipline he used on every mission. Regret could wait. Self-hatred could wait. Finding you came first. Slowly, Tim stepped toward the table, his staff remained collapsed in one hand while the other reached for the waiting slice. The plate felt warm beneath his fingers, and the scent rising from it was rich and inviting in a way that made his stomach twist. The Joker watched him with a smile that was maniac, and that expression unsettled Tim more than any threat could have.
He forced himself to move before doubt could take hold. The pie sat between them, still warm beneath the warehouse lights, steam curling from the lattice crust in delicate wisps that carried the scent of butter and spices through the stale air. Everything about it felt wrong. Not because of anything he could immediately identify, but because it existed at all. The Joker was many things, but subtle was rarely one of them, and yet here sat a perfectly baked pie in the middle of an abandoned warehouse as though it belonged there. As though it were the most natural thing in the world. Tim's jaw tightened. Whatever game the clown was playing, he was running out of time to solve it, and if there was even the slightest chance this would lead him to you, then he would see it through. His fingers closed around the fork waiting neatly beside the plate. The utensil felt strangely ordinary in his hand, its polished metal catching the light as he lowered it into the pie. The crust cracked beneath the pressure with a soft crunch before giving way entirely, revealing the filling beneath. Fresh steam escaped immediately, carrying a richer scent than before. It smelled savoury and warm, layered with herbs and spices that blended together so seamlessly he struggled to distinguish them individually. There was no sharp chemical tang hidden beneath it, no warning hidden in the aroma. If anything, it smelled good.
That alone unsettled him. Slowly, he lifted the fork toward his mouth. The filling settled onto his tongue, and despite himself, his attention immediately shifted toward analysing it. Years of training had conditioned him to catalogue details instinctively, to observe and evaluate everything around him whether he wanted to or not. The texture was the first thing he noticed. It was soft but substantial, tender enough to break apart easily beneath his teeth without becoming mushy. It reminded him vaguely of beef, though the comparison never quite fit. There was something different about it, something he couldn't immediately identify. The flavour itself was surprisingly mild, lacking the stronger characteristics he expected from most red meats. There was no gaminess to it, none of the lingering heaviness that usually accompanied richer cuts. Instead there was a subtle sweetness buried beneath the savoury notes, faint enough to remain pleasant while still noticeable enough to catch his attention.
His eyebrows furrowed slightly as he chewed. There was another quality present as well, one he struggled to place. A faint nuttiness lingered in both the scent and flavour, delicate enough that he might have overlooked it under different circumstances. It sat at the edge of perception, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. By itself it meant nothing, plenty of ingredients could create similar notes. Yet his mind continued returning to it regardless, turning the sensation over as he swallowed. Tim waited for the telltale signs he had spent years learning to recognize, but they never arrived. The flavour lingered briefly before fading. His pulse remained steady and his vision remained clear. Whatever else this pie might be, it did not appear to be laced with any obvious toxin.
Across the table, the Joker watched. The silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant hum of old warehouse lights overhead. Tim became acutely aware of the man's gaze fixed upon him, following every movement with unnerving intensity. It was impossible not to notice. Refusing to acknowledge the growing discomfort in his chest, he cut off another piece and brought it to his mouth. The crust shattered delicately beneath the fork, the filling remained warm, rich, and perfectly cooked. Every bite confirmed the same unsettling conclusion: whoever had made this knew exactly what they were doing.
The Joker's grin widened. Tim tried to ignore it and tried to focus on you instead. Yet with every swallow, with every passing second spent standing in that warehouse while the Joker watched him eat, the feeling of unease continued to grow, curling tighter around his ribs until it became impossible to separate from the taste lingering at the back of his throat. Something about this was wrong. "You wanna know a secret?" he asked, his voice dropping into something conversational and intimate. Tim paused and the Joker leaned forward slightly, eyes glittering beneath the harsh lights. "They've been here the entire time," he said, drawing out the words with obvious delight. Then his grin widened. "Right there in that little pie."
The sentence landed without meaning at first. Tim heard it. He understood the individual words and yet his mind refused to assemble them into anything coherent. The warehouse seemed to grow strangely distant, as though the world had shifted several feet away from him. The slice remained in his hand, warm and solid and real. Then understanding arrived, not all at once but in a series of horrifying connections. The smell and the careful preparation. The Joker's excitement, the way he had insisted Tim eat, the way he had spoken about craftsmanship. A cold, nauseating dread opened inside his chest as the pieces locked together.
He looked down at the pie. The golden crust was unchanged. The dark filling sat beneath it exactly as before but nothing about it was ordinary anymore. Every detail became unbearable, the warmth against his fingers felt wrong, the scent turned sickening, the thought that this really had been your last known location. His mind replayed the taste he had already swallowed, now stripped of ignorance and recast in something monstrous. The realization hit with crushing certainty, and the world seemed to tilt beneath him. He had been eating you. The fork slipped from his hand and struck the concrete with a metallic clatter that echoed through the warehouse, but Tim barely heard it. His throat tightened until it hurt to breathe. His stomach lurched violently, and every instinct in his body screamed to reject what he had consumed, yet he remained frozen, staring at the slice as if it might somehow transform into something else if he looked long enough. Across from him, the Joker's laughter began quietly, almost tenderly, before building into uncontrollable hysteria. He doubled over, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes as he pointed at Tim with trembling fingers.
"There it is," he wheezed through the laughter. "That's the face I was waiting for. All that training and you never once asked what was in the pie."
The sound filled the warehouse, bouncing off the metal walls until it seemed to come from everywhere at once. Tim could not answer. The silence where your voice should have been felt suddenly enormous, a void stretching through the room and through him. In that awful stillness he understood the final cruelty of it: the Joker had never brought him here to rescue you. The entire performance, from the covered table to the warm pastry to the bargain he had offered, existed for a single purpose. The punchline had always been Tim's realization. Your life had already been consumed long before he ever managed to lift the pie to his mouth.
The laughter stopped. Not completely, not forever, but long enough for the interruption to become noticeable. The Joker's grin remained fixed in place, stretched across his pale face like a wound, yet genuine surprise flickered behind it as Tim reached for the fork again. For the first time since revealing the truth, the clown appeared momentarily uncertain of what he was seeing. He had expected anger and had expected denial. He had expected the young hero to throw the plate across the room or collapse beneath the weight of the realization, maybe even attack the clown himself. Instead, Tim's shaking hand closed around the utensil and drove it back into the pie with desperate determination, carving through the ruined crust and lifting another mouthful toward his lips before his mind could catch up with what he was doing.
His thoughts had become fragmented, scattered beneath a crushing tide of grief and horror that refused to settle into anything coherent, images forced themselves into his mind whether he wanted them there or not. He imagined cold metal tables illuminated by sterile lights. He imagined butchers' hooks and cutting boards and the mechanical indifference of processing flesh. He imagined you reduced from a living, breathing person into something measurable, something that could fit inside a tin dish and disappear beneath a woven lattice crust. Every instinct in him recoiled from the thought, every rational part of his mind screaming at him to stop, yet none of those instincts were stronger than the overwhelming certainty that after days of searching, after every sleepless night spent tearing Gotham apart piece by piece, this was all he had left of you. He moved with frantic, broken urgency, forcing the meat into his mouth in rapid, unthinking motions as if desperation alone could make this real in a way that didn’t destroy him, as if by swallowing he could undo distance, loss, and time itself, returning you, impossibly, horribly, to the only place his mind could still frame as safe, locked away inside the hollow, trembling certainty of his own body.
The bite disappeared into his mouth. He barely tasted it this time. The warmth remained, the texture remained. Yet the flavour itself had become irrelevant beneath the knowledge attached to it. Somewhere deep inside himself, buried beneath the shock and nausea and grief, a desperate, irrational part of him clung to the fact that he had finally found you, not alive, not safe, and not waiting to be rescued but found nonetheless. The search was over, the uncertainty was over. The horrible possibility that you were still out there suffering somewhere beyond his reach was over.
The Joker's silence shattered beneath another burst of laughter, louder than before and infinitely more delighted. The sound rolled through the warehouse in waves, echoing from rusted walls and steel rafters until it seemed to come from every direction at once. It became part of the atmosphere itself, an omnipresent noise that filled every corner of the room, yet Tim barely registered it. The world had narrowed to the pie sitting before him and the unbearable reality it represented. His staff slipped from his fingers and struck the concrete floor with a sharp crack, bouncing once before rolling away into the darkness, but he paid it no attention. The weapon that had accompanied him through countless battles suddenly felt meaningless compared to the object sitting on the table.
Tears had begun falling without his permission. They slipped down his face in silent streams, blurring his vision until the edges of the warehouse dissolved into indistinct shapes and shadows. He could feel them gathering at his jaw before dropping onto the table, onto his gloves, onto the remains of the pie itself. His chest ached with every breath, each inhale feeling too shallow, each exhale catching painfully in his throat, but the physical discomfort barely registered beneath the crushing pressure building inside him. At some point the fork ceased to matter. It remained abandoned somewhere on the table as Tim's hands moved forward instead, fingers digging into the shattered remains of the pastry with frantic desperation. The carefully woven crust collapsed beneath his touch. Flakes scattered across the metal surface. Filling stained his gloves. The pie that the Joker had presented so proudly only minutes earlier was reduced to a ruined mess beneath his hands, yet he continued gathering pieces of it, bringing them to his mouth with a determination that bordered on self-destruction. It was not hunger driving him. Now, as you had once been brought into him through sex, you would be taken into him again, but in a form stripped of warmth or tenderness, reduced instead to something consumed and swallowed.
You had occupied every corner of his life long before this. You had existed in his routines, in his thoughts, and in the spaces he made for you without realizing he was making them. You had become woven into the fabric of his existence so thoroughly that imagining a future without you felt impossible. Now that connection had been twisted into something grotesque and horrifying, transformed into a joke crafted entirely for the amusement of a madman, yet even then Tim found himself clinging to it. And somewhere beneath the crushing horror of what had been done to you, beneath the revulsion and the heartbreak and the unbearable weight of loss, there existed a small, desperate part of him that refused to leave anything behind. If this was all that remained, if this was truly the only piece of you the Joker had allowed to survive, then he would not abandon it. He would not turn away from it and he would not leave you alone in this warehouse.
His love devoured him, and yours devoured you in return.
First Prompt! And I just so happen to find a character that I thought would really match the vibe I wanted to go for. I’m so excited to write for him since I’ve been mostly keeping out of writing for LaDS, but I do love the characters ♥
Fandom: Love and Deepspace
Pairings: Yandere!Sylus x AFAB!Reader
Warnings: Yandere, Sexual Content (Dub-Con, BJ, Gagging, Non-Con Touches, Lingerie, Reader is a virgin and inexperienced, Pet names, Degradation, Nicknames), Mention of Body Issues, Forced Captivity, Swear Words, Long Post
Prompt: @sintember
Innocence - What would you do to preserve it, what will be done to tarnish it?
»»———————— ♡ ————————««
“Come now, you make me look like the bad guy.”
Legs quivering, you could barely stomach looking down at yourself. It didn’t help that you felt how skimpy the outfit was with every move you made. Felt the strings that kept the fabric together pressed into your skin, bit you as if the shame was not enough harm. But looking up and straight ahead was not an option you had either. Not when you knew the smirk on the face that awaited you. Knew about the hungry, predatory sheen in Sylus’ eyes if you met them head-on.
Why you? Why did he choose you? You kept wondering as you stood in his bedroom, barely two steps from the man who had ruined your life. You couldn’t think of a good reason as to why he needed to keep you to himself, lock you up like an exotic animal, and demand to be the only one to put their eyes on you. Maybe if you had been especially pretty or incredibly rich, his infatuation would have made sense. But it really didn’t. None of his actions made sense.
And by now, you didn’t even know if you wanted to cry or be angry with him anymore.
Evil request/idea. I love the idea of Caleb being obsessed about taking care of you like a sense of "roleplay" almost. I can imagine one day, our act isn't good enough so he makes us take poison so our act is better.
Oh! This is indeed a little evil, but sometimes evil is what we need for it to scratch the itch, right? (;
Thanks for requesting!
»»———————— ♡ ————————««
"Want me to rub your belly? Make the pain go away?"
Your chest heaved with a deep sigh as you kept staring at the TV screen. There was very little you could do from your position, caught between all of Caleb's limbs, his legs around and crossed over yours to keep you in place, arms holding you tightly against his chest—restricting you.
His hand was already on your stomach, feeling scorchingly hot as he slipped it underneath your shirt, caressing you with his thumb.
"It's already over," you mumbled, gently pushing down his hand until it went back to rest on your hips. Neither was a good placement for hands so curious and grabby, but you didn't want him to gain more access to your body than he already had.
"Oh?" Caleb hummed, playing with the bow at the front of your sweatpants instead, letting the string run through the gaps in his fingers. "Do you need some 'medicine' then?"
At that, you noticeably tensed up, your body turning rigid against his as your gaze lowered submissively. Every fiber in your being loathed this man. Hated the actions he took to keep you pliable. And most of all, you despised the way your subconscious and your body yielded to him.
But there was no alternative.
Frustratingly, Caleb had cut down every one of your rebellions. He implanted a tracker and broke your ankle when you tried to flee, making a big show of helping you through the hard times, not even letting you use the bathroom on your own. When you went on a hunger strike, he wouldn't give you anything long beyond your decision not to eat. And even then, you only got to eat it from his hands, lick it off his skin, or receive it through his mouth. And the worst of all?
Once you got sick or hurt from all the stress and oppression, Caleb found out how much he loved you being vulnerable and defenseless.
Immediately, you grabbed his hand from your waist, clawing your nails into it as you pulled it back over your stomach. "Ow," you whispered faintly, not very convincingly. It was humiliating. Frustrating and shameful to behave this way, pulling up your own shirt so he could crawl his fingers over your stomach. But despite your negative feelings towards it, even this behavior was better. Everything was better than the alternative.
Everything but 'medicine'.
"Hm, if it hurts this much..." Caleb mumbled, faking concern and knowing exactly that you weren't actually hurting. "Maybe you really do need 'medicine'."
You gulped, turning your head into his chest and rubbing it against him in denial. "Only need you," you whispered into his shirt, bile rising into your throat, but you weren't sure whether it was from your own words or the fear of receiving Caleb's famed 'medicine'.
Letting out a happy "Aw!" Caleb pulled his hand from your stomach, wrapping his arms around you tightly and squeezing you in his hug, moving you side to side. The motion reminded you of a shark shaking its prey, and you felt even more nauseated by his closeness. He knew that you noticed him inhaling your scent deeply and felt his nails scratching over your exposed arms as he clawed into them, but Caleb didn't care.
He knew he had the upper hand, and there was nothing you could do.
That's how well he had trained you. Against your will and through tears, sweat, and blood, his chipping away at your resolution had left scars much deeper than those on the surface. At least those healed. But the ones he left deep inside, on your heart, your psyche, your very soul—those couldn't heal, Caleb scratching them open at any given chance so he could stay in control.
"You still need to take your medicine, though, you sweet thing."
These words instilled fear inside you, worse than anything you had ever experienced in your life. Every time he disregarded your efforts and did what he wanted without taking your wishes into consideration, he broke yet another piece of you down, intending to mend it with his own hands when the time was ripe. But secretly, you knew he'd never do that. He'd never give you the help you actually needed to feel better. Caleb liked you broken so that he could pretend to be the hero that would fix you.
Maybe someday.
You tried not to give him any attention, staying completely still, face pressed into his chest. Ironically, this was the safest place at that moment, the only one where he'd feel even an inkling of regret pulling you from.
But above you, you heard him uncap the little brown bottle he always kept nearby. The one that housed something so gruel and vile, you started to shiver just from knowing it was close to you. There you were, like a scared little mouse, clinging to him desperately, trying to avoid the fate he had chosen for you. You hated yourself for it, even though it was your body protecting you as best as it could.
But it was all futile.
"N-No!" you yelled as Caleb pushed you away from him.
"Time for your medicine," he singsonged, and you struggled with all your limbs, trying to keep up enough distance between you two. Before you knew it, he toppled you over, your back landing helplessly in the couch cushions. Your legs were pressed up against his chest, your arms shielded your face, and yet, Caleb still managed to claw his way through your barricades, pushing away your legs with his own, his body pressing between them to keep them apart while his free hand reached beneath yours pulling them up before they were crossed behind your back.
"Don't be such a child," he chided gently, a smug, sadistic smile plastered on his face. "It's just medicine to make you feel better."
"No!" you yelled back, the panic audible in your voice as tears shot into your eyes, knowing you wouldn't be able to keep Caleb off you for very long. "I don't want it!"
"You're being so stubborn! This is good for you! Here."
Caleb placed the bottle to your lips, and you pressed them together as hard as you could. You felt the cold liquid splash into the groove of your mouth, but you only pressed harder in response, the fluid wasted as it ran down the sides of your face.
"You're being very difficult today, I must say," Caleb grumbled, barely any emotion in his voice as he kept trying to force the bottle into your mouth.
"Fine!" he finally resigned, and you looked up at him with tearful eyes. You couldn't believe you had finally won! That you finally made a dent in his winning streak and got your wants through to him!
However, instead of putting the bottle down, Caleb brought it to his own lips, letting the medicine run down his own throat in much too large quantities. You were filled with the horrifying awareness that if taking just a little sip of it hurt you as much as it had the last few times, this amount might kill him. You had no idea if it was actual medicine or poison, considering it only ever hurt, not healed you. But if Caleb died... what would happen to you?
"No! Stop!" you yelled, reaching upwards and bringing your face closer to his as you sat up. You didn't see the trap he set before it snapped into motion, Caleb's arm catching and holding you in place as he crashed his mouth to yours, your eyes widening in shock as you were caught in an unexpected kiss with him.
Caleb's tongue tangoed with yours as you tasted the bitter, putrid smell of the medicine sloshing around your mouth. You had been utterly misled, the strange fluid running down your throat as Caleb's lips pressed harder onto yours. He enjoyed the kiss thoroughly while your tears ran in thick pearls down your cheeks. Maybe you'd die this time, you almost hoped, but Caleb wouldn't let go until you had drunk the last drop.
Immediately, your stomach grumbled, a stinging pain erupting left and right. When Caleb's support on your body slipped, you doubled over, clutching your hurting belly, sweat collecting on your forehead as you breathed heavily.
"Aw, does it hurt, pretty? Do you want me to make it stop?"
"Y-Yes!" you gasped, the pain growing stronger with every second passing. You felt like there were invisible little soldiers inside you, poking you with their knives and bayonets. Firing bullets at your sensitive stomach walls.
"Well." You forced yourself to look up from the couch cushion, feeling and watching with your unfocused eyes as Caleb laid back, opening his arms wide for you. "Come 'ere, and I'll make you feel better, babe."
Really, what were you supposed to do?
What was there but go to him, hoping for an antidote or a potent medicine to solve the pain you were in? No matter how much you hated yourself, you had to obey. Had to try to stop this pain wrecking through you mercilessly.
But when Caleb simply began rubbing your stomach, you realized, despite the pain, that you had completely and utterly been fooled by him. That there would be no relief, only what he wanted from the beginning. Only now, because of your own refusal, it would be so much more painful.
Alright folks! It's time for visuals for our boy Kousuke! I will keep updating this post with new art once we get more references! If you haven't seen my post about it before — there have been some changes from our original polls. Not all decisions had the expected outcome and as to not make him look... frivolous (I wish I was kidding, but some things just didn't work out), I took some liberty in the decision making. Regardless, I hope you guys enjoy these references, I had lots of fun working on him and am still working on different outifts and details!
If any of you want to do fanart, you are more than welcome! Please @ me if you make a post so I can reblog it! Alternatively, you can send it to me directly and I will add it to this post, too, of course!
Without further ado, here are the references! (Please note that tumblr lowers the quality of pictures! :')
Normal/Everyday Outfit
Kousuke's daily outfit when he's out doing whatever-a-kitsune-does-while-needing-to-look-human.
Can be worn with and without the mask, with or without tail(s) and ears.
Emotions (from top left to lower left): Disappointed/Saddened; Content/Attentive, Angry
Not shown here: His hair reaches below his butt (yes, it tangles with his tail(s))
His eyes are open here for reference purposes. They are more likely to be closed on average (see: his happy face) unless his emotions are stirred.
The Fox God Saga - The Legend of the Wishing God - Chapter VII
And the first story is finished! Honestly, it was an up-and-down to write but it still made a lot of fun ♥ We'll see when I finish the second story, but thank you all for reading this far, hope you enjoyed it!
Warnings: Yandere, Sexual Content (AFAB!Reader, Fucking, Creampie, Knotting, Biting and drawing blood), Long Post (3k words)
Somewhere between the sizzling of pain and the waves of pleasure, you could feel it.
Despite your strength of will and your innate instincts, you couldn't help but yield to the pull on your soul, your very being shuddering every time Kousuke's skin brushed against yours. A few hours ago, it would have been unimaginable that you'd find yourself in this situation. Yet, with your legs clinging loosely to his body, and your pussy clenching around his cock, there was no doubt of what was happening.
Lewd sounds echoed through the stone cave, moans and gasps that dropped from your lips amidst tears staining your cheeks. Your body had been agitated at first, thrashing around to escape the pain and causing you to cling to Kousuke's upper arms. You tried with desperation to find hold on his scarred skin as if he were the only solid surface between waves of feelings that crashed into you with full force. And he was, in a sense, the only support you could lean on.
Even if that support was a restless beast.
Lips as soft as cotton but as hungry as a starving animal sought out yours for as long as he could. His body, although he claimed it to be strange and new, worked like a perfectly calibrated machine as he kissed you breathless before moving on to savage other parts of you. All while below, his hips snapped in place, making sure to sink skintight against yours so he could fill every inch of you with his overwhelming presence.
Everything about him was a rough, crude blur, and yet, when he spoke to you, you reacted like you were just as much in heat as he seemed to be.
"You're doing so well for me. Don't be shy, let out your sweet voice, human."
Unlocking your jaw, biting down on your lip to keep the sounds sealed away, you did as he enticed you to, unable to hold back the myriad of huffs and squeals. Your head fell back into the fur below you, your moans carrying further inside the cave as Kousuke busied himself with your neck, pecking and sucking at the soft flesh there as if it were his to enjoy and devour.
You were losing your mind as his cock kept advancing forward, his hips angling differently ever so often, making it impossible to anticipate his next push. A part of you wanted to wrap your legs around him tightly, keep him in place as you shuddered helplessly beneath him. However, he escaped them swiftly and easily every time, anticipating your moves. He was playing his own game with you, clawed fingers running down your sides, burying in the supple flesh of your ass while your muscles tensed and released, causing you to arch your back.
Kousuke's claws never drew blood, and yet, they sent thrilling tingles from your skin to your spine, to your brain, and down to your cunt. It wasn't a miracle that your walls wrapped around his cock tightly, making him hum and chuckle in delighted response. Sometimes, an unexpected, unsettling yet short purr escaped him, almost sounding like a growl rather than what you were used to from the cats in your village. His tongue would savage the sensitive area between your neck and your shoulder, and his breath would be extra hot as it landed there, as if it was preparing you for something.
Every time he pushed into you, you wished you could have ignored the warning signals of your body, reminding you that there was something wrong going on. That behind the mind-fuddling pleasure, there was malicious intent in every one of his actions. Whenever you felt his sharp fangs run over your body, or his fingers gripping you tightly as if wanting to bruise you, it wasn't an accident but a controlled threat. A predator holding down its prey, ready to break its neck.
You had promised all you could give to this creature, posing as an all-knowing, merciful ruler of the mountain. A god, even, no matter how much he seemed to despise those who had been known to you all your life. Yet, he couldn't hide what he really was, a wrathful, powerful beast that you had let loose on the world again. The future was as unclear to you as it was to anyone in your village. But Kousuke made it look like it was already decided either way.
From the corners of your eyes, you thought you caught a glimpse of your soul leaving you. With every one of his pushes, you felt weaker, yet blissfully unaware of your deterioration. When Kousuke's cock filled you fully, all you recognized was the feeling of his shaft throbbing inside you, hardening and twitching as if to please every inch of you. When he spoke, he was nothing like the ill-tempered being that had cursed at you for breaking a promise. It was like you had gained a compassionate master, allowing you to feel again what you had been missing since the first time you had met him.
"It must have been hard," Kousuke cooed, gently brushing hair out of your face. Strangely, you immediately understood what he meant, your body acting on its own, nodding at him. "You must have felt like you weren't yourself anymore, right?"
This time, you didn't lie idle as he kissed you, slowly understanding the rhythm of his lips pressing against yours, and testing the delicate movements as you reciprocated. Kousuke managed to speak to a part of you that had long been dormant, tickling out a response as if your soul was answering his summons.
"Yet, you were so fearless. Came back here to save everyone. How brave you are."
Tears filled your eyes as he acknowledged what you did. Until then, all you had felt—when you felt at all—was guilt and fear. But when Kousuke lifted himself high enough to kiss your tears away from your eyes and brushed your hair from your face to place his lips gently on your forehead, you finally felt like you had done the right thing. As if it had all been worth it.
A god listened, and he accepted your efforts despite your misgivings.
Even when you lacked half of your soul and were powerless in his eyes. Couldn't even fulfill the original promise with him—he still accepted your offering, proved that your devotion to do whatever you could to help your sister, your mother, your village, finally paid off. No one else had listened, and they wouldn't have managed to contain the evil either. But you had done it. You managed what no one else could.
Even when the goal didn't quite justify the lengths you had gone to.
Waves of pleasure were crushing you, fogging your mind as you clung to Kousuke. He was almost as vocal as you, grunting and sighing blissfully as your orgasm built around his shaft. You were overcome by a feeling akin to a summer haze, where time simply moved on; however, you were barely aware of it, as you shuddered beneath him.
"Let go," Kousuke breathed, cupping your cheek and directing your gaze towards him. You couldn't see him in the dark, but you felt his eyes on you. Demanding, authoritarian. His words were orders, veiled in suggestion that made your heart jump all the way into your ribs. It was laughable, really. As if you had a choice.
"Give yourself to me."
Like a gust of wind, your mind received permission from you cunt to cum, surging waves of your orgasm crashing over you before finally losing power. Kousuke could feel you tighten around him, keeping his pushes slow, neither going too far, nor leaving you as you breath hitched, head falling back. Your muscles spasmed as the orgasm ravaged through them, and with it, you felt another part of yourself chip away.
There was no sound, no announcement. But as if another edge of a broken window was broken, you felt a part of your soul escape from you. It stole your breath as you lay there, conscious this time, feeling it sizzle through your body and drill through your skin as it threatened to escape. But before it could, you felt your miserable cunt clenching and gripping around Kousuke's cock as he pushed it further in again.
Mercilessly, and with no regard for your earlier orgasm, he pumped himself into you, over and over, using your hole as if it belonged to him—which, absurdly, it did, now. You clung to him, shivering, arms around his neck, trying to get over the discomfort of the sudden overstimulation. Your body wanted to build another orgasm, but you still hadn't recovered enough to go through it. And although on a silver thread, the rest of your soul clung to you, denying you to take more pleasure frantically.
All you could do was hang on to the kitsune, tears wetting your eyes as he buried his face between your neck and your shoulder, his length stirring you up deep inside. Your entrance began burning as you felt the base of his cock expanding, not giving your body enough time to get used to the sudden mass it was forced to accommodate. More flashes of pain made your body reject Kousuke, even tethering your soul in place while he growled threateningly into your skin.
"Let go," he repeated, his words no more than an impatient, sharp grunt.
"I- I can't!" you rasped.
"No more breaking promises, human!"
"I'm trying!"
"LET! GO!"
With a savage push, Kousuke bottomed out inside you. You gasped before feeling your throat closed off as sharp fangs buried into your flesh, holding you down in place while the inflated base of his shaft buried deep, his tip pressing all the way to your womb before releasing his hot and sticky seed right there.
Perhaps it was the pain, blood dripping down your chest, your pussy aching as it clung to his size. Or maybe it was the feeling of your soul finally tearing off you, pulling out, and vanishing somewhere you could no longer see it. But as you lay beneath the monster in the skin of a human, a gruesome, second orgasm hit you. Bashing your mind into oblivion and dulling your senses. Your ears were ringing, lungs deflating. All you could do was stare into the darkness, pleading with it to take you, as it had last time.
It didn't.
You felt all of it. Every spurt of seed dripping and pooling inside of you, Kousuke filling and marking you possessively with his fluids like an animal would. The length of his fangs lodged and shivering inside your flesh, his tongue swiping around the bitemarks and licking up the blood as if he was enjoying the taste of it. And every new crack of your soul, some small, some big, as it escaped you, your body handing it over to its rightful owner, and you having no say in it, only praying he wouldn't take it all.
For once, your prayers were heard. They came with the pain of teeth pulling out from your body and the damp wetness of blood immediately creating rivers on top of your skin. You couldn't turn your head, even when panic made you jittery. And when you tried to scoot up and away from the beast, you yelped in surprise as you found his cock locked inside you, the bulbous knot tying you two together.
"You did well," Kousuke praised you, but it was flat, almost as if he had expected more from you.
Reaching up to your throat, you could only feel the blood immediately coating your shivering fingertips, a single touch to the bitemarks burning enough to make you shy away. To your surprise, Kousuke's fingers tangled with yours as he pulled your hand from your body, pinning it down next to your head instead.
"Don't," he whispered, sounding a lot less annoyed than before. "Remember who you belong to. You don't get to hurt yourself."
"Sorry," you mumbled back, feeling the tears shoot to your eyes and slowly overflow. The reaction felt strange to you as you realized you weren't even afraid or ashamed anymore. Even when you were still overthinking his tone of voice, it somehow didn't wound or rouse you.
Ever so slightly, you shimmied your hips as they were pinned beneath his, feeling his long shaft move with you, and Kousuke let out a long breath as you clenched around him and immediately released again. "Just stay still for now," he sighed, but although he sounded as if he didn't care much, you could feel his shaft pulsing inside, making you realize that his cock would undoubtedly take longer to calm down if you did anything to arouse it more.
It wasn't comfortable, but you tried to ignore the strange situation you were in now.
"What's going to happen… from now on?" you mumbled quietly, your voice hoarse.
"We need to rebuild," Kousuke answered matter-of-factly. "Clean the shrine, rebuild it to be presentable. Then, we gather the villages, explain what you failed to do previously."
You expected a pang of guilt to shoot through you at the accusation in his words. But you merely gave a slow nod in understanding. Your previous mistakes no longer rattled you, and you wondered whether losing another part of your soul was becoming a good or a bad thing the longer you stayed in your mind.
"Will they… the village. Will they be okay now?"
This time, Kousuke shifted uncomfortably, his cock trying to escape the tightness of your cunt that held on to it. You whimpered as pain shivered through you, and he stopped, sighing. "Well, if you had done what you promised, I could have made sure their recovery was swift. But unless we convince them to pray and send offerings so I can recover more strength, it might still take a while to save everyone."
"You didn't say that before," you pointed out, your brows furrowing. It should have angered you. It didn't.
"Ah, there it is. Do you like challenging me, human? Are you rational now, trying to find loopholes in what I said?"
"One of us has to be."
Silence dominated the cave before, suddenly, a sputter of laughter rang out. Confused, you almost reached for your own throat to see if it came from you, but it didn't. Instead, you felt the shaking of Kousuke's body above you—felt the vibrations going through his cock.
"'Suppose so," he admitted between chuckles, clearing his throat to regain his composure. "But while I quite like our banter, do not forget your place here."
To drive the point home, he tugged his hips back, and your body followed, arching and trying to adjust while you squealed in pain. It was quite clear what Kousuke wanted to say; you might not feel emotions as much, but he was still in charge of you. He still decided when you'd receive pain or praise, perhaps even pleasure if he so wanted.
"Once we rebuild… will you kill me?" you whispered after a while of settling back into the furs. Exhaustion fell over you; now that tension was fleeting, and the instincts that had once warned you were silenced. You could still feel your body, every ache, every pulse of Kousuke's length inside you. But even when you asked your question out of morbid curiosity, you didn't feel scared about either answer he could give.
"Maybe. If you keep being annoying."
You had no idea what was happening on your face. Resignation, understanding, disinterest? Whatever it was, it prompted Kousuke to swallow audibly before adding. "Or not. I will need to readjust to things after being away for so long. And there's a lot to rebuild. And communicate with the people. There's… You have your uses, alright?"
Reaching up your free hand, you somehow managed to find his face in the dark, carefully cupping his cheek. You felt him flinch before remaining impossibly still, neither leaning in nor pulling away from your touch as you brushed your thumb over his cheekbone.
"Uses like this?" you asked, making a point of rolling your hips against Kousuke's, causing him to hiss out. "You didn't need to get intimate last time. Have you been feeling lonely after all?"
"You are overstepping. Again," Kousuke hissed back, grabbing your wrist and pushing away your hand. "I have told you it's easier to extract your soul this way. I do not need to explain myself any further."
"Yes, yes," you sighed, slowly closing your eyes. You felt incredibly tired by now, the night having been way too long, and your sprint up the mountain, followed by the romp in the furs, had not helped with keeping your exhaustion at bay.
"I'm not scared of you anymore, you know?"
"With how you behaved before and now, I might argue you never have been."
"Oh, I have." A grin curled the corners of your mouth as you readied yourself to deliver your final blow. "You're just much scarier when you're a big, mean beast instead of a human with cute fox ears."
Kousuke sighed.
"You might just be the most irritating human I have ever met."
"And you are stuck with me."
"So I am."
Taking a deep breath, you couldn't feel the base of his cock shrinking any time soon, but your exhaustion was slowly winning, as the darkness and silence lulled you into a mix of sleep and passing out. Losing part of your soul must have been more strenuous than you had anticipated. Still, without fear or adrenaline to keep you awake, you dozed off, knowing that more work and learning to live this new, strange life by the kitsune's side awaited you come morning.
"I wonder what you'll do next," you heard Kousuke's voice in the back of your mind as you were almost asleep. Warmth wrapped around you, together with a comfortable weight pressing down so you could nuzzle your face into something soft and plush. Nothing could pull you out of your sleepy mind, not even the feeling of claws brushing through your hair, or Kousuke's knot slowly releasing you from its agonizing hold.
But you, too, wondered what life had in store for you, now that you were claimed as property by a moody fox spirit.
And what else you'd have to lose before you'd finally fulfill your promises to him.
[You can find the masterpost with all chapter's here!]
tw; yandere, non-con, forced marriage, misogyny, mentions of suicidal ideation, objectification of women, unhealthy relationships, hurt no comfort, dead dove: do not eat
dc nightwing/dick grayson x fem reader | 1980s pilot x flight attendant au | unedited | 6.8k w/c | navigation
Dick Grayson, a well regarded pilot for 'Wayne Airlines', has his eyes dead set on the you—the poor flight attendant. Despite it being abundantly clear that you want nothing to do with him—only dreaming of making it as an independent woman in a world made solely for men.
You’ve always wanted to be independent, as silly as it sounded to your mother—who found your utter incompetence in mundane household chores reason enough to know you wouldn’t last long. Despite this, you were compelled to do anything in your power to realise this dream, regardless of how difficult it was for a woman of your standing to earn a liveable wage.
If asked what it was that pushed you to become a stewardess, as they were called back then, you probably couldn’t answer it. Maybe it was a combination of things, the pretty uniform, the opportunity to travel to places you could only dream of—exhausted as you may be from a day of work, or maybe something else entirely, there was no single event you could remember to cause this fixation.
But for the few years after graduating high school all you could do was apply and reapply from one airline to another. It was only after a few rejections that you managed to get a spot, something you could only consider sheer luck, and at a respectable airline at that!
Suddenly, your mother—who kept nagging at you to settle for a more ‘traditional’ job as a secretary or something of that nature—was giddy with excitement, ready to brag about her daughter who made it as a stewardess for Wayne Airlines to anyone willing to lend her an ear. She still made snide remarks here and there, about how you’d be out of a job before the wrinkles on your face fully formed and how you’d be too old to marry by that age. She held conservative views even for the time, not to mention your father who was ready to fully cut you off when he heard what you’d be doing but after some persistence they both begrudgingly caved in.
It was only uphill from there, at least for the first year where you managed to get a small apartment, not too worried about its size or look as you rarely spent any time there. Meeting amazing people both at work and during your travels but they were all overshadowed by one man. Dick Grayson, the bastard, he was a pilot, a few years your senior—not by much though. But there was no expiry date on a pilot as there was on a stewardess so nobody gave them strange looks once their grey hairs started showing.
The dark haired man was recipient to the affection of many of your colleagues, and although even you acknowledged he was handsome, he was never really your type so you treated him in a civil manner as you would anyone else. Or at least tried to.
”Be a doll and get me a cup of coffee won't you, [name].” He said. Flashing you that smile of his, the one that had all the other women in the cabin swooning every moment. However, you merely acknowledged his request with a hum and went off to fulfil it, stopping by to assist any passengers that asked for it.
You had a sneaking suspicion he held onto his requests until you were in the periphery. Even just verbalising the thought made you feel crazy. Sharing the concern with anyone else would have gotten you nothing beyond the moniker of a delusional girl obsessed with a promising man way above their station. Nevertheless, you were sure he gained some sort of sick pleasure from having you specifically perform all those menial tasks for him, he wouldn't be the only man. It made you feel like a glorified maid but you can't have your cake and eat it too. Plus, the novel and exotic sights you were able to witness almost always made the humiliation of the job well worth it.
If only you could've stayed on that path, spent the lesser part of a decade on the job and eventually settled for one on land. Even if it paid a little less and didn’t come with the same air of ‘prestige’. Maybe even settle down and marry, but not too soon, not until you enjoyed every bit of freedom you had clawed out for yourself in your little corner of the world.
If only Dick Grayson had kept his damned hands to himself.
"You know, [name], you look really cute in uniform.” He commented walking beside you, his suitcase bumping into yours once or twice as you tried to speed up and walk away, doing your best to ignore his remarks, as irksome as they may have been. Nothing he ever said was too outrageous. Just enough to get a chuckle and 'warning' given between laughs and knowing glances. Enough to push your buttons, god did he know how to get on your nerves, but never crossing the line. Just enough that your coworkers called you overly sensitive the first—and last—time you voiced your annoyance.
“We're work colleagues—not friends, sir. These comments are not appropriate in the workplace.” You said, emphasising the ‘sir’ in hopes that perhaps it might remind him that he is, one way or another, your superior.
Everyday you pray he is not the captain for the flight, hope for a cockpit crew with a less hands-y pilot, someone with even an ounce more of professionalism would do. But few pilots are as good as Dick Grayson. Few are more amiable and charismatic than the tall , ever so sun kissed man.
Had he kept his mouth shut and treated you as he did any other woman, with respect and common decency, maybe you too would be one of his many fan-girls. He was annoying in every sense of the word but damn was he good at his job. A job with all the benefits of working for Wayne enterprises, one he would be able to do well into his old age, after which he enjoy generous retirement plan. You weren't sure if your borderline irrational hatred for Dick stemmed from jealousy or discomfort anymore.
At least one small luxury you could enjoy the same as he was the various hotels the airline would book for the cabin crew. The tall skyscrapers of cities like Metropolis or the classic architecture abundant in any one European city, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
But right now, none of that mattered. After landing in a city that had long since been on your bucket list, with an unnaturally generous schedule that allowed you a few hours in the morning to take in its sights, you had been nothing short of elated. A small skip in your step the entire day until you learnt your room was right next to his.
Looking back, you don't even recall how you either of you found out. All you remember is how any positive emotion you felt up until then disappeared—as if it had never been there to begin with. Appetite dying on the spot.
"You sure you don't want to come with us?" One of the girls had asked you afterwards as they prepared to explore the city at night, a little surprised at the sudden hesitation when you were so eager earlier.
"Aww, you're not coming, neighbour?" Dick added with a juvenile, sort of high pitched tone. Not meant to be malicious or anything beyond light banter between coworkers. But it did prompt your immediate answer, no longer dressed with faux consideration and disappointment.
"I'm not feeling too well, you guys have fun." Offering a weak smile so really sell the act.
It was a little childish at your age, as a grown woman who had lived alone and travelled to all parts of the world for a few years now. To think you still didn't like leaving the house—or hotel room— at night. A self imposed curfew, remnant of your strict upbringing. Because 'everyone knows what happens to unruly girls who go out at night like strays.' That's what your mother had said while sat with a few acquaintances of hers many years ago. Gossiping about so-and-so's daughter who had returned from the big city. Paying no heed to you who played with whatever toys sprawled across you at her feet. She probably wouldn't remember the event if you ever brought it up.
But you remember.
It replays vividly in your head when you get off work a little later. Fear of that same tone of voice being used when talking about you leading you to grip your bag just a little harder. Craning your neck to look behind at every turn and eyes memorizing every passerby whose route matched a little too closely to yours.
You had zoned out, thankfully not missing much as your eyes scanned the surroundings. People heading off and saying their goodbyes, no one bothered to say much to you after that. You wondered what it would have been like had you not been born in some no-name town in the middle of nowhere, or maybe just to different parents. Maybe you'd fit in better if you could follow their conversations. Gossip about someone from the school they all seem to have gone to. Compliments to new bakery in some well known street of Gotham. 'What do you mean you don't know where that is? Everyone in Gotham knows!' One of them had said between laughs before she went back to whatever she was talking about before.
If you were to pinpoint when your fate became set in stone, it would be that night.
The earlier bittersweet thoughts had done a number on you. So you made the error of leaving your room. Assuring yourself nothing would happen and that you would stay within the confines of the hotel, it would be better than continuing to wallow in your room.
Door securely locked and key tucked away in some inconvenient pocket by the time you realised that, by some sheer coincidence, you had run into the dreaded pilot.
Dick was in the process of opening his room. His brows knit together to form a wrinkle accentuated by the moonlight as he struggled to insert the key. By the time you had realised he was there, the taller man was already looking up from his door handle to you. The previously frustrated expression washed away and replaced, initially with a blank face but one that slowly morphed into a smile as his eyes adjusted to the dark and recognised your figure.
“Anyone ever told you how good you look in the moonlight, sweets?” He got his door to open, but to your dismay, left it ajar—keys still in the lock—opting instead to approach you. Back straightened now as he towered in front of you, blue eyes looking down in search of a reaction.
It felt like a matter of pride, like you would lose some competition you didn't know you were participant in if you didn't look up to meet his eyes as you spoke.
“I appreciate the compliment, sir.” By now unsure if the honorific was for his sake or yours. Attempting to walk away—eager to cancel your walk preemptively as any desire for fresh air died out.
Dick could usually brush off your attempts at setting professional boundaries with butter smooth shamelessness, but tonight he seemed unable to. Maybe it was the alcohol speaking.
“Drop the ‘sir’, sweets. Won’t change a thing, in fact, how about we make this easy on both of us and you become my woman?” You visibly cringed at the line which earned you a chuckle from the male. His inebriated state combined with the cartoonish tone he used left you unsure of what he was playing at. The scenario imitated something straight out of a garbage-tier novel but dim moonlight combined with his freakishly blue eyes made it resemble a horror story more-so than romance. It didn’t help how every time you blinked he felt closer than you recalled.
“So?” Dick continued, close enough to place his hands on your shoulders now, essentially trapping you in his grasp. His jet black hair shone with a navy blue undertone as light passed through them, you noted as the strands tickled your forehead. Forcing yourself out of your mesmerised state, switching focus to his face which seemed dead set on holding you until a response was given. The lack of which prompted him to finally close the minuscule gap left between you two and smash his lips onto you in an instant. The initial sudden contact hurt, eliciting a gasp which he took full advantage of as he shoved his tongue into your mouth. The sounds combined with the spit slipping past your lips felt disgusting. But your body wouldn't move how you wanted it to, nothing made sense. You could feel his knee pressed between your legs and one of his hands under your shirt and firmly groping your chest. It was warm and kind of sweaty. Every time you tried to think of how to get away, you were brought back your reality by his hands which invaded yet another part of you. Like the sudden pinch to your nipple which made you wince in pain.
Thankfully he stopped kissing you at that point so you could catch your breath. Your tone a little less sure of yourself than usual as you spoke, looking around, wide-eyed and with blood flushing your cheeks.
“Sir, I really don't think this is appropriate–.” Out of habit you said what you normally would have, hoping it distracted him enough to not notice you fishing out your key from within your pocket.
The discomfort that you usually concealed was for once clear in your voice but your words were the same. Robotically polite, distant even in your panicked state and that irked Dick Grayson more than anything else. The imaginary line that you had drawn for yourself, never letting anyone get close to it, your textbook formal speech and rehearsed lines.
“There you go again…." He let go of you, looking up and pushing both of his hands up his face as a frustrated sigh left his lips.
"God damn it [name], can’t you see how much I like you?!” Your eyes closed instinctively, flinching as he spoke. Hunched down to your eye level as he spoke between heavy breaths. The first time you heard him sound anywhere near angry. Out of instinct you tried to shrink into yourself, a pathetic sight which lowered his guard just enough for you, in a sudden moment of clarity, to push him with all the strength you could muster. Shuddering at the thought of what could have happened if he had been sober at that time.
With your legs were ready to give out at any given moment, its only though sheer luck and adrenaline that you were able to take advantage of his stupefied state to lock your room door before finally falling to the ground. Gasping for oxygen that never truly reached no matter how much you heaved and clutched your chest. At least he didn't pursue things further that night, the sound of his door locking offering some solace as you were left in silence for the remainder of the night.
It wasn't the first time you had to deal with unwanted advances but it was the first time the heart palpitations could be felt so violently through every inch of your body. It was the first time an encounter left you unable to sleep and fear jumbled your thoughts and memories.
By the end of it, you were unsure what was a product of your imagination and what was an accurate recollection of that night.
Dick Grayson was a flirt, and a bit of a bastard but he's harmless! As a pilot, he wouldn't do something to jeopardise his job like that! At least that's what you told yourself in order to calm the tremors. The following morning was the first time you realised how inconvenient the multiple buttons on your blouse were to fasten. Practically a herculean task when your hands shook uncontrollably but you managed in the end. Mind dazed as you worked through your usual routine hesitating in the final moment as you reached for the no-name brand lipstick in your makeup bag. Its case scratched and chipped from being stored with coins and whatever other clutter was in your bag.
Maybe your mother was right, maybe it was the way you looked. You thought as you looked into the mirror. Not particularly beautiful, just plain and average. A fact that was evident as you opted to wash off the makeup, despite being basically done by that point. Not loud or charismatic—you enjoyed your job but you weren't that close with any of your female co-workers. Maybe the way you did your makeup made men like Dick assume you were desperately vying for their attention. If you stop doing that he'll realise how average looking you are and move on!
The lack of sleep combined with stress didn't do any favours as you walked across the lobby, hyper-aware of your surroundings as sat down for breakfast with the other stewardesses—god how you hated that word. Some of them gave a concerned glance or two your way but that was to be expected, you didn't change the way you did your makeup for the whole time you worked there, until that point. However, nobody said anything—you weren't close enough for that.
"Good morning, ladies! How are we this fine morning?" You almost jumped at the sound of his voice. Back the his usual suave tone a stark contrast to just a few hours back. For a moment, it made you hope he had no recollection of the events of last night, but the way his eyes lingered on you for just a second too long unnerved you.
Dick didn't approach you at all afterwards but you weren't sure if it was an improvement from his usual flirtatious remarks and cheesy grins. Not when the alternative you were faced with was finding him staring at you intently from across the room every time you glanced his way. No readable expression—just an empty, unblinking stare dead set on you.
You were noticeably out of it for the remainder of the day. Not letting your thoughts wander lest you break down in tears on a plane or airport. Robotically performing all your tasks with. A little life returning to your face only as you exited the airport now back home.
"What do you say, [name]?" One of the men from the crew, a co-pilot, asked. His hand suddenly plopping onto your shoulder. It took you by surprise so you couldn't react in time to suppress the loud yelp that escaped your lips. Earning you an equal mix of judgemental and concerned stares. Feeling yourself burning in embarrassment you looked to the ground in front of you. Only realising how much your body had stiffened when he removed his hand.
He smiled awkwardly, unsure of what to do before asking if you were okay. But you couldn't think straight by then, thoughts rushing back to your mind as the proximity of his face to yours reminded you too much of the incident. Was he after your body too? Would he also try to take what he wanted from you, even by force?
You looked visibly unwell by then, glancing up to the noticeably concerned man before walking away, just short of running out of the airport terminal.
Finally catching your breath in your apartment. Taking off your blazer as you examined yourself in the mirror for the second time that day. Was it your skirt? Maybe your father was right, maybe it really was too short. Did it make you look like easy to men? A one-time fling to take their frustrations out on before they went back to their nice homes and found a proper lady to actually settle with?
The problem with thoughts like that, as you would realise all too late, was how quickly they devolved into a vicious cycle.
Moving from makeup and skirts to the cadence of your speech, maybe if you were less assertive, if you kept your mouth shut.
What if it was none of those things but your body? Who are you trying to seduce by taking care of it so much? The way you do your hair—it makes it look like you're asking for it!
At first it was just Dick Grayson, but by the end of it, having any man at all nearby terrified you. When you looked at their faces, all you could see was lust filled eyes ready to corner you like prey. Whether what you saw was real, you were no longer sure.
Even if you couldn't trust your own eyes and ears, there was one thing you now knew was real. His piercing blue eyes that were always so fixated on you that others pointed it out to you.
However, none of it mattered all too much, not when you were let go of. Once your appearance became so unkept that it was brought to the attention of management, they didn't even ask if you were okay despite your performance which had been excellent until that point. No chance to explain yourself. Not even a warning to rectify the situation with a threat of 'next time'. Just a 'Meet me in my office.' followed by a swift firing.
Oddly enough, for the first time in a while, you felt momentarily at ease. Surrounded by clutter in your home, away from prying eyes and the endless whispers that you could no longer distinguish as real or cruel figments of your imagination.
Reality donning on you as you though of how you would tell your parents. They would undeniably chastise you and have their 'I told you so.' moment before regressing to how things were before.
Shoving one eligible marriage partner after another until you finally settled with someone of their choice. Maybe they would be even worse now that you were a little older and had failed—just as they had warned you would happen. If you told them about the events that took place in the hotel. Would they hug you?
Would they tell you it wasn't your fault?
A loud sob left your body as the tears started coming out one after another. After all this time, it was only then that the weight of your reality sunk in. Body recoiling as you saw yourself in the full-body mirror in front of you.
Dirty and unkept.
A shaking hand grazed the lips he had kissed that night, the memory of it all caused you to wretch. Kneeling on the floor coughing loudly but nothing left your mouth and despite how much you tried, no air entered it. Maybe you would die like that, as a cautionary tale for little girls who dream too big and ask for a seat at a table they have no business with.
A knock at your door could be heard faintly beneath the ringing in your ear but you didn't react to it immediately. Hoping they would leave after the lack of response. Only after it evolved to louder, more impatient, slams on your door that you wiped your face however well you could and got up. Slowly dragging your feet to the door. Whoever it was, you wanted to get the interaction over with as soon as possibly. Forgetting to look through the peephole in your restlessness.
You shouldn't have opened the door. You should've checked to see who it was. You shouldn't have immediately fallen back onto the floor without slamming it shut and double locking it safely. But it was too late for regrets like that. He had already invited himself in, even secured it shut with the usual confidence, as if he owned the place.
"Poor thing, you look terrible." His expression was somewhere between concern and a small smile. Likely out of pleasure from seeing the woman that rejected him in such a pitiful state you has assumed.
Dick knelt in front of you, hand cupping your cheek in spite of how it made you clutch your chest and gasp for air.
Three things you could see.
His face that felt like it was inching closer. The door locked securely behind him. His shoulders that engulfed anything else behind them.
Three things you could hear.
Heart palpitations. Rough, uneven breathing. The subtle sound of his thumb rubbing circles on your cheek.
Three things you could—this wasn't helping.
"Was it worth it? To have your way?" That was something you expected to hear your father say. Not the pilot that was barely older than you and at times acted even more childishly.
"Shh. Its okay." His other hand also reached for your face, trapping you between them so you couldn't physically turn away from him—even if your eyes remained diverted.
"A sheltered girl like you doesn't know any better, it's not your fault these things are so new and scary to you." You didn't like how he spoke to you, like you were a child. Not when the insane look in Dick's eyes couldn't hide his carnal lust.
"Honestly, its your parents' fault. To let such a sweet thing wander to the big city all alone after sheltering her for so long." His voice was barely above a whisper by then.
"Pretty things like you should be kept safe and sound at home." His grip tightened a little as he continued.
"If you went back now, to your hometown, what do you think would happen? Would they marry you off to some stranger? Maybe an old man that could be your father's age, or a violent one that'll take his anger out on you. Someone that won't love you at all, not like you deserve…" You were already a mess, unsure of what he was trying to accomplish that he felt the need to continue with his cruel words. All while caressing your face with the gentleness of a lover.
"…Worst case scenario, you get labelled the town harlot. We both know you're not like that, are you [name]?…" You couldn't help but shake you head, desperate as if it would prove anything.
"…But that's never stopped people from talking before. They'll talk as you pass by, half-whispers. Loud enough that you can hear as mothers warn their daughters to not turn out like you or as men jeer at you, laughing amongst themselves. Your old parents will have to spend their years with their heads cast down in shame."
"No, no, no, no, no—." You repeatedly mutter, as if that scenario was already your reality. Maybe you'd be better off dead?
"I can save you, I just want to help." It didn't occur to you in that moment, in the state that you were, that the circumstances he was offering to save you from were his doing to begin with. Not even as you brought your eyes up to face him and were met with his wide smile. A look that by all metrics, the human mind would class as friendly. The slight dimples combined with the smile lines that crinkled around his eyes almost made you forgot who you were talking to.
"You don't have to worry about things like work, or what people will say. Not if you agree to marry me." That's what finally brought you back to reality. You weren't sure what you thought he would do, but this certainly wasn't it.
How can he when you look like this? In that moment you tried to tried to push yourself back, away from him. But he didn't let you go far, leaning past you before grabbing your wrist, using his other arm to push you flat onto the floor and with him on top.
"You know, I'm a little disappointing. But it's okay, you don't know what's good for you yet. It's okay, you'll learn… I'll teach you." He didn't pay much mind to your squirming. Using one of his arms to support his weight and the other one to grip your chin, turning your face away to give him a clear view of your neck. Nuzzling into your neck before starting his assault with light kisses peppered down until your collarbone, eyes looking up to your face. Still held to face away from him but undeniably lulled into a false sense of security, expecting another light kiss. An airy laugh left his lips as he bit down, hard. You gasped as fresh tears escaped the corned of your eyes. Head straining to look at him to no avail.
His legs straddled yours and head laid firmly on you as he continued to bite down and suckle at your skin, only stopping to admire the marks he was leaving behind. Using the arm once supporting his weight to instead rip the work blouse and skirt you were wearing. The top's buttons popped out and the sound of a tear reverberated across the walls. Suddenly giving him so much more of your exposed chest to work with.
Your eyes were forced shut in anticipation for his next action but you weren't expecting the man to lift you off the ground all together. Headed towards your bedroom which was not that hard to find when you lived in a dingy one bedroom apartment. Gently closing the door behind him as he did. Turning the lock to keep you from darting out at the first opportunity you presumed.
He placed you on the bed so you were sat upright before speaking.
"God you have no idea how much I love you, no one else could make me feel like this." He whispered in your ear followed by more kisses as his hands worked to remove your bra.
You sat there unmoving, a passive bystander in your own assault. Unreactive beyond observing Dick wide eyed as he removed your skirt, stockings and finally panties until you were fully naked.
He sat you on his lap, back against his chest as he went back to your neck. With the ferocity of a man who had something to prove.
His dark hair tickling as it hit your skin. One of his hands playing with your chest rolling between his fingers the same nipple he pinched that time. His other hand dug between your legs. Just one finger that pumped in and out of your dry vagina. It hurt. But he kept going until everything became covered in slick.
Realising that you were face to face with the mirror again, the same one from earlier as you looked up from his hands between your legs. Witnessing the subtle ways your face contorted when he went from one finger to two and eventually three. Their every bump and imperfection felt in the deepest parts of you.
And yet, throughout it all, the only thing you could think about was how ugly you looked next to him. Next to a man like Dick Grayson who even through his clothes was build with care, like a Greek statue.
Hair on the once meticulously waxed parts of you. Eyes sunken in and lips chapped if not for the mix of spit, tear and snot both wet an dry that dripped from your face. Your recent inconsistent diet was also evident.
You could imagine how your mother would react in disgust if she could see you as you are now. 'A lady should always look proper!' She'd say as she scolded you for how you dressed as a child.
You weren't entirely clueless. As you bit down on your lips to suppress any noises. You wanted to save yourself, until you were older and more mature, until you found someone you loved. But things moved so fast and his grip regressed to rough and harsh. Manhandling you as it became harder to suppress the grunts and moans, his hand left your chest and began flicking your clit. It was improper and embarrassing but your body climaxed nonetheless.
Satisfied, Dick decided you were ready. He could be patient and edge until you begged for him next time, for now, this was all the confirmation he needed to line his cock to your entrance hungrily and slam in before you could speak a word in protest. Gravity working in tandem with his newfound grip on you meant he could reach parts of you previously untouched. The burning sensation induced as a result made you almost miss the bites, or his fingers. Neither of which held a candle to the feeling of being split apart and convinced the sheer force of his thrusts would tear something in you.
He grunted once or twice before finally exiting. Eliciting a gasp from you at the sudden emptiness and consequent wince and the gaping pain.
All his previous gentleness replaced with a depraved hunger as he threw you onto the bed, climbing back on top before slamming inside you again. You weren't sure how to take his professions of love when he slammed into you like he wanted it to hurt. Ignoring your hand which tapped the side of his shoulder, begging him to get off of you. However, Dick instead opted for taking your lips to silence the whimpers and not have to look at your tears. He could pretend you weren't repelled by him since day one, that you actually loved him back and didn't just huff in annoyance at his many advances—he could pretend you didn't act like you were too good for him.
It was ruthless and painful. If there was any pleasure amongst the savagery your mental anguish made it difficult to recall. As you laid wrapped in his arms, with an unfamiliar pain between your legs and your juices leaking out from your entrance—a state that would eventually feel routine— you were determined to remember this as the violation it was. No matter how loving his embrace felt.
"What if i get pregnant? People will find the timing suspicious." The thought had just occurred to you.
Dick shifted behind you a little, you could feel the smile on his lips forming as his hand, previously playing with your hair now rested on your bare stomach.
"In that case, we better get married soon." He said voice a little strained from exhaustion. In spite of which he didn't stay put for long, getting up to draw a bath. Eventually returning to pick up your aching body and lay it in the warm water.
"I liked how pretty you looked once you stopped doing your makeup, you know." He said, pinching your cheeks like a child but to no avail as you didn't reply to him, opting instead to just lay there as he rubbed shampoo on your scalp.
"A fragile thing like you shuffling in cramped cabins like a glorified maid on air." That one stung. You weren't particularly weak but next to him, you suppose even some grown men might seem fragile. However, the final part—especially when coming from someone like Dick for whom the world would submit to with just a smile and handshake—it got your blood boiling. Maybe the charismatic and sharp Dick Grayson, from his position of privilege could never understand. But being a 'glorified maid on air', as he so crudely put it, even just that had been the greatest freedom a woman like you could experience. Almost as if he could read your mind, the male continued.
"Don't get upset, this was bound to happen the moment you stopped looking young and appealing to those old geezers, or decided to get married—you know that better than anyone." He placed a kiss on you forehead and he continued washing you.
"But don't worry, I'll keep you safe, I'll protect you."
His words, swung from one extreme to another at the drop of a hat. Needlessly cruel remarks, poorly disguised as 'reality checks' for foolish girls who didn't know any better in one breath. Whispers of consolation hand in hand with professions of love in another, the kind that made you cling to him. Desperate for any morsel of comfort.
Realising that now, he was the only one who could provide you with that. Nobody, not even the mother that carried you tirelessly for months, would accept you in the damaged state you found yourself in. A direct consequence of growing up as the times changed. Remembering how almost overnight so many doors started opening for women that were previously thought unthinkable. Those women on the TV stared back, each daring to hope. That one day you too could fly beyond the backwards town, to become you own person one day.
And yet, as Dick firmly held onto your waist, emblematic of a warden's grasp on his prisoner, the oppressive air of that town felt light.
The hawk-like eyes of its inhabitants who carefully examined your every breath felt liberating compared to his.
Your parents' embrace felt like the greatest comfort when compared with his which always carried a silent promise of forever.
Their apprehension at the site of an unknown man washed away in seconds as he introduced himself.
The ward of Bruce Wayne, owner of Wayne Enterprises and by extension, of the airline you had barely scraped by into being hired by and had just before being fired abruptly. You almost couldn't contain your shock at his introduction. Feeling renewed bitterness at the realisation that he, despite having the best of the best at his disposal, felt the need to take from you who was only had meagre crumbs in comparison.
By the end of it, your father shook Dick's hand—as if his cattle was finally sold for a profit. Your mother treating him with more maternal affection than she had ever spared you. People who scoffed and sneered at the mention of your achievements under the guise of jokes hugged and kissed you that day, beaming with unabashed pride.
There was so much you still wanted to do, so may things you had yet to see. But you only spectated, like an outsider looking in, as your parents excitedly brought out two rings. 'Invaluable family heirlooms passed down for generations.' Is how your mother described them.
Your father, smiling brighter than you ever recalled him doing, insisted on putting it on for their new son. You mother went on and on about how it was a family tradition, and the history of the rings. Both looking so pleased with themselves, all because the simple but elegant band fit Dick's ring-size perfectly. Worn from the decades and with visible marks of its size having been adjusted in the past if you looked closely, but still timeless and ready to endure many more generations to come.
In comparison, when Dick asked for their blessing to put the ring on for you himself—already matching your father's humour and laughing on beat to his jokes in anticipation of this moment—neither of your parents showed signs of the same stubbornness. Dismissing it as a meaningless gesture or an outdated family tradition as they gladly handed it to him.
You didn't know what to be in awe of more. The way your parents, who normally turned their nose and nitpicked everything in sight suddenly accepted Dick as family? Who, flawed as they were, you boldly presumed held some endearment towards you at least as the daughter they dutifully raised for over two decades.
Perhaps you should applaud your now husband-to-be instead? Who's present demeanour made it so nobody would assume he was the same deceptively capable pilot from work—or even the gentle man who you had gotten used to lately. The one that did nothing but profess his undying love. With a face that could fool you into thinking he just might kneel at your feet if you asked him to.
Now turning your attention to the ring he slipping onto your finger, its gaudy design which was decidedly outdated and made it uncomfortable to wear. The ornamental gems and size which was not right for your finger made it weigh down on you like a shackle. One which would finally ground you to reality with no deluded hope of soaring that close to freedom ever again.
As such, in that modest home. Which for once echoed sounds of laughter off of its bleak walls. In the very the place your every dream and ambition had been born, you decided to bury them for good. Too worn to offer anything more than a prayer for whichever girl came after you.
A silent hope that maybe she could see a world beyond the white picket fence which disguised prisons as loving homes and wardens as fathers and husbands—which would not relent until you kissed the feet of your oppressor in sincere gratitude for protecting you from himself.
SYNOPSIS : A winter getaway turns into a nightmare when an unexpected reunion with Tim Drake leaves you stranded in an isolated mountain cabin during a blizzard. What begins as a chance encounter with a familiar classmate quickly unravels into something far more sinister.
WARNINGS : Rape/Non-Con, Sexual Content, Yandere Behaviour, Obsessive and Possessive Behaviour, Kidnapping, Abduction, Drugging, Stalking, Manipulation, Forced Isolation, Psychological Horror, Loss of Bodily Autonomy, Delusional Behaviour, Forced Proximity, Female Reader
a / n : this was meant to be for christmas but so just pretend its not practically summer okay thanks bye
REBLOGS AND INTERACTIONS ENCOURAGED!
“Tim?”
The man pivots at the sound of his name, shoulders tightening as his brows draw together in brief confusion. His gaze cuts down the aisle, sharp, until it finds you. Recognition washes over his features, the tension ebbing like a retreating tide. The hard glint in his eyes softens, shadow warming into something gentler.
“Hey,” he says, his voice a low rumble edged with surprise. His arms are full of grocery bags, sleeves shoved up his forearms, if you squint you think you can make out faint traces of bruises on his arms, but with the amount he's carrying you leave it to be the fault of the plastic bags. “What are you doing out here?”
Whatever brought you to the produce aisle slips cleanly from your mind. You step away from the neat rows of fruit and crisp vegetables, drawn toward him without thinking. You probably should’ve grabbed something, anything, for your basket. It was your responsibility, after all. The cabin cupboards would be bare without your foresight, and cooking had never been your family's strong suit. But all of that feels distant now, rendered insignificant by the unexpected closeness of him.
“I’m just spending a few nights away with my family. Needed a break from Gotham for the weekend,” you say, the explanation slipping out with a faint huff of amusement. You barely manage to stifle a laugh—because of course you’d try to escape Gotham only to run into someone who embodies it so completely. Some things, it seems, cling tighter than distance ever could. Tim nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose, a small, instinctive gesture you recognize immediately. An easy smile curves his mouth, softening the sharp focus he so often wore. The sight loosens something in your chest.
“What about you?” you ask, your voice quieter now.
You and Tim were never close in high school. Different circles. He’d been the quiet, brilliant presence tucked behind a laptop or a tower of textbooks, and you—well, you’d spent those years trying not to draw attention in a school where everything felt too expensive, too carefully curated to ever feel welcoming. You’d shared the same halls, orbited the same space, without ever truly colliding. It wasn’t until university that your worlds finally collided. Somehow, by sheer cosmic accident or the universe’s questionable sense of humour, Tim Drake ended up in nearly every one of your classes. After years of never so much as brushing shoulders in high school, he was suddenly everywhere: a row ahead of you, the desk beside yours, offering a quiet nod or a small smile whenever your eyes met.
Your opinion of him shifted gradually, almost without you noticing.
If someone had asked you the day before university began what you thought of Tim Drake, you would’ve pictured the tall, handsome, undeniably brilliant boy from high school—and nothing beyond that. No strong opinions or lingering impressions. Just a sharp-edged presence who moved through the halls like a ghost with perfect grades. But the boy you remembered and the man you came to know were not the same. Where you’d once assumed distance and quiet mystery, you found instead an awkward, gentle warmth. A man who listened more than he spoke, who smiled softly when a joke landed a beat late, who pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose every time he grew flustered. And the angles of him—God, the angles. Time had sharpened them, his frame filling out just enough that when summer came and he dared to wear T-shirts to class, his toned arms were impossible to ignore. The butterflies were new. It felt absurd to experience that magnetic pull toward someone you’d barely looked twice at just a few years earlier. He hadn’t been unattractive back then—far from it. You just hadn’t been interested. Not until he stopped being an idea of a person and became the real thing: complicated, quietly charming, and standing right in front of you.
Tim shrugs lightly, the motion snapping you back to the present. “Touché.”
He guides his cart a few steps forward to clear the aisle as a couple squeezes past, the wheels clicking softly against the linoleum. When he settles again, he’s closer—near enough that you’re suddenly aware of the space between you, or rather, the lack of it.
“It’s been a while since we talked, since break started,” he says, offering that small, earnest smile again. “What have you been up to? It’s nice seeing someone from our class.”
It isn’t exactly an answer to your question—but the clumps of snow melting into his jacket seams and scattered through his cart say enough. He must be here for the same reason you are: to breathe air that isn’t thick with Gotham’s noise. A quiet escape.
“God, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” you say, keeping your tone light, easy—the practised softness of casual conversation. It isn’t awkward, not really. You’re just… inelegant when things veer unexpectedly personal. Before you can cringe at yourself, something else slips free. “Did I mention you look good? I mean—uh—what have you been up to?”
For a heartbeat, something flickers across his face. It isn’t the reaction you expect. It’s something sharper, something that lands low in your gut with an instinctive jolt of unease. His lips twitch, just barely, the ghost of a smirk. There’s a fleeting, almost triumphant glint in his eyes, a look that feels like confirmation. Like he’s just proven something to himself. Something you were never meant to notice.
Then it’s gone.
Wiped clean so quickly you almost doubt it was ever there at all. Blink, and he’s Tim again: polite, mild, harmless. Familiar. You tell yourself it’s exhaustion, the long drive, the shift in scenery, the mental fog settling in like static. It’s Tim. You’ve known him for years.
“Thanks—and nothing much,” he says easily. “Just work for me too. Finally got a bit of free time, so I figured I’d get away for a while.” His tone is casual, almost breezy, but something about it feels deliberate—too smooth, too carefully sanded down. Before you can pull the thread, another shopper shoulders past, casting you both an irritated look for clogging the produce aisle, as if your quiet catching up is an unforgivable obstacle to their urgent vegetable-related mission. You take the hint, lips stretching into a small, apologetic smile. “I get that. Anyway—I should probably finish up before the others get here and empty the pantry with junk food. It was nice seeing you, Tim.”
His answering smile comes easily, practised warmth softening the sharp lines of his face. His arms uncross, hands dropping to his sides as he shakes his head lightly. “Nice seeing you too. Have fun at the cabin—and don’t get caught in the blizzard.”
You dip your head in acknowledgement, already stepping away, retreating toward the next aisle. But before you turn fully, you glance back and offer one last smile. And then you’re gone, leaving behind the faint, unsettling sense that something just passed between you—something unnoticed… and very much not accidental.
It’s noon, technically.
The clock on the microwave insists on it, glowing a stubborn 12:07 PM, but outside the cabin windows the sky has already collapsed into something dark and heavy, clouds bruised purple-Gray and rolling low over the trees. Snow drifts sideways past the glass, thick and relentless, blurring the world into a smothered white hush. The phone call comes just as the kettle begins to scream. You fumble to answer, cradling the phone between shoulder and ear while you reach for a mug. Your mother’s voice crackles through the line, strained, apologetic. It turns out something had stalled them on the way to the cabin. A burst tire. Everyone’s safe, no injuries, but the car’s been towed miles away, and the parts they need are delayed because of the storm. They won’t be coming. Not today and certainly not tomorrow. A few days, at least. They try to reassure you over the phone, voices light despite the strain beneath it. They’ll figure something out, get there another way if they can, make the most of the holiday anyway.
“Oh,” you say, stupidly, as if that single syllable might rearrange reality. You reassure them, promise you’ll be fine, that the cabin’s stocked and warm and—
The call ends with a soft click, the screen going dark in your hand. For a moment, you just stand there, phone still pressed to your ear, as if the conversation might resume on its own if you wait long enough. It doesn’t.
The kettle continues to shriek on the stove, sharp and insistent, cutting through the sudden quiet like a reprimand. You flinch and reach for it, shutting it off a little harder than necessary. The sound dies abruptly, leaving behind a ringing silence that makes your ears ache. You pour the water into your mug, the stream unsteady. Your hand trembles—only slightly, just enough that you notice. Tea sloshes dangerously close to the rim, steam curling up around your face, fogging your vision for a second. You manage not to spill, though it’s a near thing. A single drop splashes onto the counter, darkening the wood.
Alone, then.
The word settles heavily in your chest.
Not alone alone—you remind yourself of that quickly, stubbornly. Your family is coming. They’re just… late. Delayed. Stuck an hour out, according to the last text you’d received before the signal began to waver. Roads are closing fast, the storm swallowing everything in its path. You’d volunteered to come up early, to unlock the cabin, start the heat, make it feel lived-in before everyone arrived. It had seemed harmless at the time. Responsible, even.
You cradle the mug between your hands, letting the warmth seep into your palms, and drift toward the window. Outside, the snow comes down thick and sideways, driven by a wind that bends the trees until they creak and groan in protest. Branches sway like dark, skeletal arms against the bruised sky, their shadows stretching and distorting across the glass. The cabin answers in kind—soft pops and groans as the wood settles, adjusting to the cold. The sounds are normal. Expected. And yet each one lands a little too loud, a little too close, in the hollow quiet that follows the call. You take a sip of tea, barely tasting it. You’re halfway through the mug when the knock comes.
Three firm raps against the door.
Your stomach drops, a cold weight sinking low and sharp.
Don’t be ridiculous, you tell yourself immediately. This is a cabin in the middle of a snowstorm, not the opening scene of a horror movie. There are reasonable explanations. A ranger checking on occupied cabins. One of your family members who managed to get closer than expected before the roads worsened. Still, your grip tightens around the mug as you turn toward the door, heart beating just a little too fast.
"Tim?"
The name escaped you in a breath of unmistakable relief, the tension that had been coiled tightly beneath your ribs easing almost instantly as recognition settled over you. Surprise coloured your voice as you stared at the man standing on your doorstep, and for a brief moment all the unease that had accompanied the unexpected knock at your isolated cabin simply melted away. It was only Tim. Familiar, trusted, and entirely out of place in the middle of nowhere, but nevertheless a far more welcome sight than any of the possibilities your imagination had conjured in the seconds before opening the door.
"Hey."
His response was accompanied by a small smile, his tone carrying an almost absurd level of calm considering the circumstances. There was something remarkably casual about the way he greeted you, as though the two of you had happened to run into one another while shopping for groceries rather than meeting on the porch of a remote cabin during a winter storm.
Snow dusted his dark hair and shoulders, tiny white flakes still caught in the fabric of his coat despite the shelter provided by the overhang above. The cold had painted his cheeks a vivid shade of red, the colour stark against skin that was already pale from the freezing weather. A thick winter coat concealed most of his frame, hiding the details of his physique beneath layers of dark fabric, but it did little to disguise the athletic build underneath. Tim had never been particularly imposing in terms of sheer size, yet there was a quiet strength to him that years of training had etched into the shape of his body. It was clear he worked out. Even beneath the heavy coat, you could still make out the broadness of his shoulders and the subtle definition of muscle beneath the fabric if you looked closely enough.
"What are you doing out here?" you asked, your voice noticeably steadier now that the initial shock had worn off.
The smile lingering on his face widened slightly before he answered. It came easily to him, softening the naturally sharp angles of his features and lending him the kind of approachable warmth he usually held towards you. Yet now that you were actually looking at him rather than simply reacting to his presence, you noticed something beneath that easy charm. The confidence he had displayed when the door first opened seemed to falter ever so slightly, replaced by a faint nervousness that revealed itself through small, almost imperceptible movements. His hands dropped from where they had been tucked against his body, his posture opening up as though he were unconsciously trying to appear less threatening. The shift was subtle enough that most people likely wouldn't have noticed it, but it was there all the same.
"My car broke down a little way down the road," he explained, glancing over his shoulder toward the snow-covered stretch of forest behind him. "I couldn't get any signal, so I figured I'd keep walking until I found somewhere."
For a brief second, the smile on his face seemed oddly misplaced. There was something almost pleased about it, a flicker of an expression that didn't quite align with the story he was telling. The feeling was gone so quickly that you almost convinced yourself you had imagined it. An apologetic smile replaced it a moment later, softer and more natural, settling comfortably across his features. "Pretty ironic that it ended up being your place, huh?" His laugh was quiet, accompanied by a small shake of his head as snow continued to drift down around him. Standing there beneath the porch light, framed by darkness and falling snow, he looked every bit like someone who had stumbled across the cabin by sheer chance. Yet something about the coincidence felt almost too unlikely, even if you couldn't quite explain why.
His hands fell to his sides as he shook his head slightly, sending a scattering of snowflakes from his dark hair. The movement drew your attention immediately, your gaze lingering for a moment on the melting droplets caught amongst the unruly strands. Up close, he looked even colder than you had first realised. The tips of his ears were red from the wind, and there was a stiffness to the way he held himself that suggested he had been outside for far longer than was comfortable.
"Anyways," he said, offering another small smile, "sorry to ask, but would you mind if I stayed here until the signal comes back?"
The question snapped you from the dazed state you had found yourself drifting into since opening the door. Your mind seemed to stumble over itself trying to catch up with the situation, and you quickly stepped aside to make room for him. "Oh! Yeah, of course. Sorry—come in. Let me get you a towel." The words came out in a rush as you ushered him inside, suddenly aware that you had left him standing out in the freezing weather while you stared at him in disbelief. As soon as he crossed the threshold, a gust of cold air followed him into the cabin before the door swung shut behind him, cutting off the howling wind outside.
You took his coat as he shrugged out of it, hanging the heavy, damp garment by the entrance before hurrying down the hallway towards the linen closet. Your movements felt clumsy, driven more by instinct than thought as you rummaged through the shelves in search of spare towels. It wasn't difficult to justify your concern. Tim looked half-frozen, and the last thing you needed was for him to come down with a cold while stranded out here. Being snowed in with a sick classmate in the middle of nowhere, with no phone signal and limited access to help, sounded like exactly the sort of situation you wanted to avoid if possible. By the time you returned to the living room, Tim had settled himself on the couch. He sat with an ease that suggested he was trying not to inconvenience you, despite the fact that melting snow had already begun dripping from his clothes onto the wooden floorboards beneath him.
"Sorry about the mess," he said, glancing down at the damp footprints and small puddles trailing behind him. There was a hint of embarrassment in his voice, accompanied by a sheepish smile.
You dismissed the concern with a wave of your hand.
"It's fine. Trust me, the floors will survive." The reassurance seemed to ease whatever lingering guilt he felt, and he relaxed slightly against the cushions. Outside, the storm continued to rage against the cabin walls, wind rattling the windows and sending snow swirling through the darkness beyond the glass. Just to be safe, you grabbed a few extra towels before heading back into the living room. The trail of melted snow stretching from the front door to the couch wasn't particularly dramatic, but it was enough to make you nervous. The cabin wasn't yours, after all, and if the owners decided to charge an additional fee because water had soaked into the floorboards, your parents would never let you hear the end of it. It wouldn't matter that a snowstorm was currently burying the entire area under several inches of snow or that you had unexpectedly found yourself sheltering a stranded classmate for the night. Somehow, they would still find a way to make the conversation about responsibility and property damage.
With that thought in mind, you set about drying the floor, following the damp footprints and small puddles left in Tim's wake. The task gave you something practical to focus on, which was a relief after the strange whirlwind his appearance had thrown you into. Outside, the storm continued to batter the cabin, the wind occasionally rattling the windows hard enough to draw your attention. Inside, however, everything felt warm and oddly peaceful. The fire crackled quietly, filling the room with a comforting glow, while Tim sat on the couch behind you, the simple presence of another person making the cabin feel considerably less isolated than it had only half an hour ago.
By the time you reached the last traces of water, you had gradually worked your way closer to where he was sitting. Kneeling beside the couch, you focused on wiping away the final damp marks from the wood, only for the sound of Tim clearing his throat to draw your attention upwards. The movement was automatic. Before you could stop yourself, your gaze lifted from the floorboards and settled on him.
Immediately, that familiar fluttering sensation returned.
From this angle, he looked annoyingly attractive. The warmth of the cabin had softened some of the harsh effects of the cold, leaving a faint flush lingering across his cheeks that contrasted against the paleness of his skin. His hoodie, borrowed from the collection of clothes he'd brought for the trip, stretched across shoulders that seemed broader than you remembered, the fabric outlining the shape of his frame in a way that made it difficult not to stare. Tim had never been the kind of person who deliberately drew attention to his appearance, but there was something almost unfair about how effortlessly put together he always seemed. Even after being stranded in a snowstorm and arriving at your cabin soaked through, he somehow still managed to look good.
Your attention drifted higher, settling on his hair. Usually it was kept at least somewhat neat, pushed back enough to keep it from falling into his eyes, but the weather had thoroughly ruined that effort. Damp strands hung loosely across his forehead, darker than usual from the moisture. Tiny droplets of water still clung to them despite the towel you'd given him earlier, and without meaning to, you found yourself following one as it slid downward. The droplet traced a slow path from his hairline, moving across the curve of his cheek before continuing lower. When it finally caught briefly against his lips, reflecting the warm light from the lamp beside him, your gaze lingered for a second longer than it should have.
Far longer than it should have, actually.
The realization didn't fully hit until his eyes lifted and met yours. Heat immediately rushed into your face as awareness crashed back into place. You had been staring. Not absentmindedly looking in his direction. Staring. There was no way around it. Your mouth opened as you scrambled for something to say, some completely normal explanation that would make the last several seconds disappear from existence, but before you could form a single coherent word, the sharp whistle of the kettle suddenly cut through the room. The sound startled you both, though you were fairly certain your reaction was stronger. Relief flooded through you so quickly it was almost embarrassing. Right. The kettle. You had completely forgotten about it after the knock at the door, the water probably having sat boiling for several minutes while your brain occupied itself with far less productive matters.
Clearing your throat, you pushed yourself upright and brushed your hands against your knees, focusing perhaps a little too intently on the now spotless floorboards. "Well, that's the floor sorted," you said, gesturing vaguely towards the area you'd just cleaned before turning in the direction of the kitchen. The comment felt absurdly mundane after the awkwardness of the last few moments, but perhaps that was exactly why you clung to it. Normal conversation was significantly easier to handle than whatever had just happened.
Pausing at the entrance to the kitchen, you glanced back over your shoulder at him. "Do you want tea?" you asked, grateful to finally have something else to focus on besides the fact that you'd nearly been caught admiring your classmate from two feet away.
Arguably, looking at him from above was even worse. From the couch, Tim had looked attractive enough, but standing over him only seemed to highlight every detail your brain insisted on focusing on. Damp strands of dark hair hung across his forehead and occasionally dipped in front of his eyes, no longer styled into the neat, controlled appearance he usually maintained. The remnants of melted snow still clung stubbornly to him despite the warmth of the cabin, tiny droplets visible along his skin as it melted and caught in the ends of his hair. Combined with the faint flush lingering across his cheeks from the cold, it gave him an oddly dishevelled appearance that should have made him look worse. Instead, it somehow had the opposite effect. There was something distinctly unfair about it. The entire look gave him the appearance of a soaked stray cat that had wandered in from the storm, and you were entirely certain there were people on campus who would lose their minds over it. Considering how many people already found Tim attractive under normal circumstances, seeing him looking like this would probably be enough to cause an incident.
"Tea would be nice."
The sound of his voice pulled you from your thoughts before they could become any more embarrassing. You nodded a little too quickly and turned towards the kitchen, grateful for the opportunity to put several walls between yourself and whatever was currently happening to your common sense. The warmth lingering in your face hadn't faded in the slightest, and you were becoming increasingly concerned that it was far more obvious than you wanted it to be. Leaving Tim in the living room, you crossed into the kitchen and immediately abandoned all pretence of composure.
The moment you were out of sight, you leaned forward against the sink and squeezed your eyes shut. Reaching for the tap, you ran cold water over your hands before splashing some across your face. The chill immediately cut through the lingering heat, and you stayed there for a few seconds longer than necessary, staring down into the sink as water dripped from your chin. It was nothing. Seriously, it was nothing. You were snowed in at an isolated cabin with one of the most objectively attractive people you knew. Anyone would be having a slightly unusual reaction under the circumstances. Cabin fever was probably a real thing. If it wasn't, it should be. There was no reason to read into any of this beyond being stuck in a confined space with a classmate who happened to be annoyingly good-looking.
Satisfied with that explanation, or at least willing to accept it for the time being, you straightened up and focused your attention on making the tea.
The process was familiar enough that it required very little thought. You retrieved a second mug from the cupboard before dropping tea bags into both cups, following them with sugar. The kettle was still hot from boiling, and the steady stream of water filled the mugs with a comforting hiss of steam. After allowing the tea to brew for a minute, you removed the bags and added milk, watching the colour shift from dark amber to a softer brown as you stirred. The routine was simple, repetitive, and reassuring. There was something comforting about following familiar steps when everything else felt slightly off balance. Measuring sugar, stirring the tea, lining the spoons neatly beside the mugs; each small action gave your mind something tangible to focus on. By the time you finished, the frantic embarrassment that had sent you fleeing from the living room had dulled into something far more manageable.
At the very least, making tea gave your hands something to do other than stare at Tim Drake.
You had calmed considerably by the time you returned to the living room with the mugs balanced carefully in your hands. The short retreat to the kitchen had given you the opportunity to collect yourself, and the familiar routine of making tea had done wonders for settling your nerves. At the very least, you no longer felt as though every glance in Tim's direction was capable of completely short-circuiting your ability to think.
"Here," you said, passing one of the mugs over.
Tim accepted it with an appreciative smile, his fingers curling around the ceramic almost immediately as he welcomed the warmth. You smiled back automatically, but as your eyes met his, something caught your attention. It lasted only a fraction of a second before disappearing, replaced by his usual easy expression, yet you were almost certain you had seen it. There had been a strange glint in his eyes, something that looked remarkably like satisfaction. Not arrogance or smugness, but the quiet, private sort of triumph someone might feel after succeeding at something they had invested a great deal of effort into. The expression was so out of place that it left you momentarily confused, and by the time you had properly registered it, it was already gone. Deciding you were probably reading too much into things, you lowered yourself into the armchair opposite him and wrapped both hands around your own mug. "So much for getting away from Gotham, right?" you joked, gesturing vaguely towards him with the cup.
A laugh escaped him, soft and genuine. "Apparently not."
The conversation fell into a comfortable lull after that. The fire crackled steadily in the hearth, filling the room with warmth that contrasted sharply with the storm still raging beyond the windows. Snow continued to strike the glass in intermittent bursts whenever the wind picked up, but from inside the cabin it felt distant and strangely peaceful. You took a sip of your tea and allowed yourself to relax into the cushions, enjoying the warmth spreading through your hands.
"Thanks, by the way," Tim said after a moment. "You left your cup over there."
You blinked before following the direction of his gaze. Sure enough, your original mug sat abandoned on the small table beside the window.
"Oh."
A quiet laugh escaped you as you shook your head.
"Thanks. I honestly don't even remember putting it there."
Considering how distracted you had been since the moment Tim had first knocked on your door, it really should not have come as a surprise that you had managed to misplace something as simple as your own mug. Your thoughts had been scattered in every direction at once ever since opening that door, constantly catching on the storm outside, the unexpected arrival of a classmate, and the uncomfortable awareness of just how isolated the two of you were in the middle of it all. If Tim had not casually pointed it out, there was a very real chance you would have gone through the rest of the evening without even noticing its absence, only to eventually find it hours later and feel mildly defeated by your own absent-mindedness.
You retrieved the mug without much fuss and settled back into your seat, allowing yourself to sink into the cushion as the warmth of the drink gradually settled into your hands. The silence that followed was not uncomfortable in the slightest. It sat easily between you both, softened by the crackle of the fire and the distant, persistent presence of the storm outside, which now felt more like a backdrop than a threat. There was something unexpectedly grounding about it, about simply sharing a room with another person without the need to fill every pause with conversation, especially after having spent so much of the day alone in the quiet of the cabin.
Eventually, however, Tim spoke again, his voice cutting gently through the stillness.
“Did you say you and your family were staying here?”
The question pulled your attention back with ease, and for a moment your mind was transported to earlier that afternoon, to the supermarket aisles filled with bright lights and neatly stacked produce, where the conversation had seemed so casual and unremarkable. At the time, it had been nothing more than passing small talk between two people comparing holiday plans without any real significance. Now, however, it felt strangely distant, almost as though it belonged to a different version of the day entirely, one that had not yet been disrupted by snowstorms and stranded cars.
“Oh, right,” you said after a brief pause, shifting slightly in your seat as you adjusted the mug against your knees. The heat from it grounded you as you briefly searched through the chain of events in your mind, trying to make sense of how quickly everything had unravelled into the current situation. “Yeah. Funnily enough, they got caught in the blizzard too.”
A soft laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it, more from disbelief than humour, as the absurdity of it all settled more firmly in your thoughts. “We were supposed to meet up here a couple of days ago, but the weather completely ruined those plans. Last I heard, they were stuck further down the mountain waiting for the roads to reopen.” You shook your head slightly, staring into the surface of your tea as if it might offer some kind of explanation for the situation. “Honestly, at this point I am starting to think this entire trip was cursed from the beginning.”
“It’s the opposite for me,” Tim replied after a brief pause, his tone shifting into something a little lighter as he adjusted his posture on the couch. He sat up slightly straighter, as though unconsciously mirroring the way you had settled in, giving you his full attention in a way that felt unexpectedly deliberate. There was an easy attempt at humour in the way he continued, a faint smile tugging at his mouth as he added that, if anything, he was glad you were here, because otherwise he would have likely frozen to death in the storm outside. The joke was light enough to pass on the surface, but there was a steadiness in his voice underneath it that made you pause without quite knowing why. It was not the kind of statement that sounded entirely casual, even if it was dressed up as one. For a second, the weight of it lingered in the air between you, softened only by the crackle of the fire and the warmth of the room around you.
In response, you found yourself relaxing further into the cushions of the sofa, your body sinking more fully into the unfamiliar softness as the tension you had been carrying without realising began to ease. The material still had a slightly scratchy texture against your clothes, something you had noticed when you first sat down, but now it barely registered at all. Your muscles loosened as you exhaled slowly, letting the comfort of the moment settle in properly for the first time since he had arrived. The tea had cooled considerably now, no longer steaming as it had been when you first made it, but instead sitting at a lukewarm warmth that was still comforting enough to hold between your hands. Nevertheless, your hands made up for the lack of warmth, wrapped firmly around the mug as you let its residual heat seep into your palms. The cabin itself was comfortably warm now, the fire doing more than enough to counteract the storm still raging outside, and you found yourself beginning to feel almost too warm in your own clothes. The thick sweater you had thrown on earlier suddenly felt heavier than necessary, clinging slightly as the heat built beneath it, and you became increasingly aware of the faint discomfort of it sticking to your skin. It occurred to you, distantly and without much urgency, that you probably should have taken it off earlier. The combination of the fire, the tea, and the enclosed space had turned the room into something bordering on stifling, and you shifted slightly on the couch in an attempt to get more comfortable. A thin layer of warmth had gathered beneath the fabric, enough that you could feel the beginnings of sweat at your back and collar, and the thought alone was enough to make you consider finally shedding the extra layer.
You glanced at Tim properly then and offered a small smile, one that came more naturally than the earlier awkward ones had. “What are friends for?” you said, lifting your mug slightly before taking another sip.
If you had been paying closer attention, you might have noticed the way Tim went quiet for a fraction of a second too long. There was a brief stillness in his expression, something unreadable passing across his face before it smoothed itself out again. A faint twitch at the corner of his mouth suggested the beginning of something different from his usual smile, something that he quickly settled into place as though correcting himself.
“Yeah,” he agreed after a beat, his tone perfectly even once more. “What are friends for.”
You had just been on the edge of excusing yourself when exhaustion finally settled over you properly, no longer something you could ignore or outpace. It arrived all at once, heavy and insistent, as though the long day had simply been waiting for a moment of stillness to collapse into you. You had already begun forming the words in your head, something about needing to lie down for a while and letting Tim keep the couch until the blizzard passed, when your phone suddenly rang out in your pocket. The sound startled you more than it should have. You fumbled for it quickly, pulling it out and squinting at the screen as the name of your mother lit up in the dim light of the room. The timing felt oddly relentless, as though the world outside the cabin had decided it could not stop interrupting you. You glanced from the phone to Tim, offering him an apologetic look as you lifted it slightly in explanation.
“I’ll be a few minutes,” you said as he nodded, his expression attentive. His voice followed you softly, telling you to take your time, but you were already ready to get up to move toward the corridor, phone pressed to your ear but it was only when you pushed yourself up from the couch that something in your body shifted sharply. The movement, so simple and ordinary, seemed to tilt the world in a way it shouldn’t have. Dizziness washed over you in an uneven wave, sudden enough that your vision fractured at the edges, dark spots blooming across your sight like ink spreading through water. You reached out instinctively, your hand catching the arm of the sofa to steady yourself, and for a brief moment everything seemed to narrow into the pressure of your palm against fabric and wood.
Behind you, you could hear Tim shifting, the faint rustle of movement suggesting he had stood up or was about to, concern likely pulling him forward before you quickly lifted a hand in his direction without turning fully around. “I’m fine,” you managed, though your voice came out thinner than intended. “I just stood up too fast.” It wasn’t entirely convincing, even to you, but the sensation began to ebb just enough for you to convince yourself it was manageable. You forced your breathing to steady and continued toward the corridor, each step feeling slightly more deliberate than the last as you focused on the phone still pressed to your ear.
“Hey, Mom, what’s going on?” you asked, attempting a tone of casual normality as you reached the front of the cabin.
Her response came through slightly distorted by the line, but clear enough to make you pause mid-step.
“We’re just outside the cabin, honey. I don’t see any lights on. Did the blizzard knock the power out?”
A short laugh left you almost automatically, born more from disbelief than humour, and you shook your head as you reached for the door. “You need to get your eyes checked,” you replied lightly, though there was a faint strain beneath it now that you couldn’t quite place. “The porch light is literally on.”
Your hand closed around the door handle and turned it, the lock giving way with a familiar click as you pulled the door open. The moment it swung outward, the storm hit you like a physical force. Cold air surged into the cabin, sharp and immediate, cutting through the warmth and pressing against your skin with an intensity that stole the breath from your lungs. Snow-laden wind rushed past you, carrying with it the soundless weight of the blizzard, and for a moment you simply stood there in the threshold, bracing yourself against the frame as your body reacted to the sudden temperature shift. But something was wrong. Not just cold, not just wind, but a deeper, more unsettling sensation spreading through you as though your body was no longer responding properly to your commands. Your limbs felt distant, as if they belonged to someone else, the strength draining out of them in a way that made no logical sense. The sensation crept upward through your legs and into your chest, numbing rather than weakening, leaving you suspended in an uncomfortable state of detachment.
You tried to focus your eyes beyond the doorway, searching for the familiar outline of the porch, the road beyond it, anything that confirmed the world was still as it should be. Instead, there was only darkness and shifting white, the storm swallowing every recognizable shape and replacing it with endless, chaotic movement.
“Mom?” you called again, but the word felt strange leaving your mouth, distant even to your own ears.
The phone remained pressed to your hand, but your grip on it felt uncertain, your fingers slow to respond as though they were losing coordination one joint at a time. The last thing you registered clearly was the overwhelming sense that something fundamental had shifted beneath you, that the ground was no longer entirely where it should be.
Then the world tilted without warning.
You never felt yourself hit the floor.
You blinked awake slowly, consciousness surfacing through a haze so thick and oppressive that for several long moments you couldn't properly distinguish dream from reality. For a fleeting moment, exhaustion tries to make itself known once more, you found yourself fighting the overwhelming urge to simply close your eyes again. The bed beneath you was warm, the mattress soft, and the heavy comforter draped across both of your bodies seemed determined to pull you back beneath the surface of consciousness. Everything felt distant as though there was cotton packed behind your eyes and beneath your skin. Your thoughts came sluggishly, dragging themselves into coherence one at a time while you stared unfocused at the ceiling above you. A loose strand of hair had fallen across your face at some point, brushing irritatingly against your cheek, and instinctively you tried to lift a hand to move it. The command left your mind but seemed to die somewhere before reaching your muscles. Confused, you tried again, concentrating harder this time, willing your arm to move, willing your fingers to curl, but the effort yielded the same result. Your body felt impossibly heavy, every limb weighed down by a strange numbness that left you feeling disconnected from yourself. A slow pulse of unease began to spread through your chest as you stared upward, struggling to understand why something as simple as moving suddenly felt beyond your ability.
The sensation of a hand against your face finally dragged your attention away from your own body. Warm fingers rested gently against your cheek, the touch soft enough that for a moment your exhausted mind accepted it without question. It wasn't until several seconds later that realization arrived. The hand wasn't yours. Those fingers belonged to someone else entirely. A cold knot formed in your stomach at the discovery, and although every instinct immediately urged you to pull away, to recoil from the unfamiliar touch and put distance between yourself and whoever had placed their hand on you, your body remained stubbornly still. You couldn't even turn your head. All you could do was lie there and feel the weight of the palm against your skin while your pulse gradually began to accelerate beneath it. Awareness came in pieces after that. First the warmth pressed against your side, then the unmistakable weight of another body partially draped over your own, a head was buried against your shoulder, tucked comfortably into the space between your neck and collarbone as though it belonged there, one arm was looped securely around your waist beneath the blankets while a pair of long legs had been carelessly thrown over yours, effectively trapping you beneath their weight. The realization settled over you slowly but completely, each detail making the situation clearer than the last. Someone was lying on top of you, someone had been lying on top of you long before you woke up.
"I missed you."
The words were spoken directly into your skin, muffled by the curve of your neck. Warm breath ghosted across your throat as the voice vibrated softly against your shoulder. Under different circumstances the confession might have sounded affectionate. Sweet, even. Instead, the words settled heavily in your stomach.
"Bruce would've noticed me missing from patrol," Tim continued, speaking with the casual ease of someone discussing the weather. "But I was clearly distracted." There was a subtle shift against you as he spoke. You felt it more than saw it, the faint movement of his jaw against your shoulder and the slight adjustment of his weight as he settled more comfortably against you. His voice softened further when he spoke again, losing some of its amusement and becoming something quieter, more thoughtful.
"It's fine if he comes by. We won't be here."
Until that moment, confusion had still lingered around the edges of your thoughts, clouding your understanding of what was happening. Those few words shattered whatever remained. Panic arrived all at once. It surged through your chest so violently that it nearly made you nauseous, your heartbeat slamming against your ribs hard enough to hurt. The implications crashed together inside your mind with horrifying clarity. You wanted to sit up, to shove him away, to demand what he meant and where he intended to take you. Instead, your body remained motionless beneath him, every desperate command ignored by numb, uncooperative limbs. The helplessness of it was almost unbearable.
Tim, meanwhile, seemed perfectly content. If he noticed the change in your breathing or the way your pulse had begun racing beneath his touch, he gave no indication of it. Slowly, almost lazily, he shifted closer. It shouldn't have been possible considering how little space remained between your bodies already, yet somehow he managed it. The hand resting against your cheek slid away only to travel lower, fingers tracing along the line of your jaw before settling against the side of your neck. His palm curved there naturally, thumb resting beneath your ear while the rest of his hand spread across the opposite side. It wasn't a threatening grip, that was what made it so unsettling. It was the kind of touch that suggested he simply expected to be allowed to hold you this way. The room was silent enough that you could hear everything. The slow rhythm of his breathing and the faint rustle of fabric whenever he shifted. The steady beat of his heart somewhere against your side and time seemed to stretch unnaturally, every second dragging into the next until it felt impossible to measure. Without meaning to, you found yourself counting anyway, one second, then another, then another. The numbers became something to cling to amidst the panic threatening to consume you whole. Somewhere during that endless stretch of silence, you became aware of how dry your mouth felt. Your tongue seemed strangely heavy, unfamiliar in a way that made speaking feel impossibly complicated. Even so, you tried. You forced your lips apart and struggled to form words, desperate to ask a question, to demand an explanation, to say anything at all. The effort produced nothing but a weak, broken sound that barely resembled speech.
The arm around your waist tightened ever so slightly. The hand at your neck shifted too, his thumb brushing slowly against your skin in a gesture that might have been comforting if it didn't make your stomach turn. You kept your gaze fixed stubbornly ahead, staring at some indistinct point beyond the room because you couldn't bring yourself to look down. You already knew what you would find if you did. You could feel his attention on you with an almost physical certainty. It lingered heavily against your skin. The thought alone made your chest tighten because deep down you knew that if you gathered enough courage to lower your gaze, if you finally forced yourself to look at him, you would find Tim already staring directly back at you. "It's fine, you don't need to say anything." His voice was soft, almost unbearably gentle almost as if carrying the careful cadence of someone attempting to soothe a frightened animal. Under different circumstances it might have worked. Instead, every syllable seemed to settle beneath your skin like a splinter. The warmth of his breath brushed against your throat as he spoke, and the proximity made it impossible to ignore how completely he had surrounded you. The blankets, the weight of him, the arm still wrapped around your waist, everything combined into a suffocating reminder that there was nowhere for you to go. Even the comfort of the bed had become something oppressive. "Even if you did, it wouldn't matter." The words were accompanied by the faintest trace of amusement. You couldn't see his face, but you could hear it in his voice and feel it in the subtle movement against your shoulder. It was as though he had shared a private joke with himself.
"Honestly, I feel like you could say anything to me and I'd find a way to love you for it."
For a moment your mouth parted on instinct. A response rose automatically, driven by panic and disbelief, only to die before it could take shape. There was something disturbingly sincere about it, something that made it impossible to dismiss as a joke or an exaggeration. He wasn't trying to convince you. He sounded as though he were simply stating a fact he had accepted long ago.
"You're so beautiful."
The words emerged so quietly that you almost didn't hear it. They felt less like part of a conversation and more like a thought that had slipped free without permission. His attention remained fixed entirely on you, you could feel it as surely as you could feel the arm around your waist. The silence that followed seemed to stretch endlessly. Your pulse thundered in your ears while tears gathered slowly at the corners of your eyes. You hadn't even realized they were there at first, one moment your vision was merely blurred by exhaustion, and the next there was a sharp sting behind your eyelids, pressure building until it became impossible to ignore. You blinked hard, trying to force it away, but the effort only made the tears swell further, fear sat heavy in your chest, tangled together with helplessness and exhaustion until you could no longer distinguish where one feeling ended and the next began. You didn't want to cry. More than that, you didn't want him to see it. Yet the tears continued gathering anyway, betraying you as thoroughly as your own body already had. The room seemed distant and unreal around the edges, narrowed down to the space occupied by the weight of his body. Every instinct screamed at you to do something, to move, to push him away, to make him understand that this wasn't right. But your limbs remained heavy, your thoughts sluggish beneath the lingering fog clouding your mind. Even speaking felt impossibly difficult.
Still, somehow, you managed it. The words clawed their way upward from somewhere deep inside you, rough and uneven from disuse. Your throat burned with the effort. "I don't— stop." Three small words spoken in a voice so weak it barely sounded like your own. The tears finally spilled over as soon as they left your mouth, warm tracks slid down your cheeks while your vision blurred completely. The effort of speaking had drained what little strength you possessed, but the terror remained, lodged firmly beneath your ribs. Yet even as the words hung between you, fragile and trembling in the silence, a terrible uncertainty settled over you. Because nothing in his tone, nothing in his behaviour, suggested that your refusal would change anything at all. It didn't change anything. If anything, the words seemed to draw Tim closer, as though your refusal had only reinforced something in his mind. He pressed himself further into your space, burying his face against your neck until his breath fanned across your skin in uneven bursts. The desperation in him was palpable, threaded through every movement and every quiet sound he made. It felt suffocating. You had finally managed to force words past your lips, had finally found enough strength to tell him to stop, and yet nothing around you shifted. The room remained unchanged and his arms remained wrapped around you. The weight of his body remained draped over yours.
"Please," he breathed against your skin, the word emerging strained and almost pleading. "I'll be gentle." The promise settled heavily in your stomach.
You kept your gaze fixed on the floor beyond the bed, unable to bring yourself to look at him as you felt his hand dip lower, fingers tracing your folds before pushing in. Staring anywhere else felt dangerous. Your arms remained stiff at your sides, your fingers weakly curled into the sheets beneath you as you fought to maintain some semblance of control over yourself. Panic and exhaustion churned together inside your chest until it became difficult to distinguish one from the other. Every instinct urged you to pull away, to escape, to do something, yet your body felt disconnected from those desires, sluggish and unreliable beneath the lingering haze clouding your thoughts. The worst part wasn't the fear, it was the humiliation. The awful awareness that your body no longer felt entirely your own, that every involuntary reaction filled you with a sense of betrayal you couldn't properly put into words. You wanted to be angry, wanted to direct that anger somewhere, at him, at yourself, at the situation that had led here. Instead there was only a crushing sense of helplessness settling deeper into your bones with every passing second.
Tim seemed completely consumed by you as he eased two digits into your cunt. The distracted quality he'd possessed earlier disappeared, replaced by an intensity that bordered on obsession. It was as though nothing else existed beyond this room, beyond you. The realization made your chest tighten painfully. When your body finally responded enough for movement to return, it wasn't in any way that mattered. Your limbs remained weak, your thoughts sluggish, your strength nowhere to be found. The small motion that escaped you felt less like a decision and more like instinct, born from exhaustion rather than intention. Tim reacted immediately, tightening his hold around your middle and pulling you closer against him, supporting your weight as though you belonged there.
A broken, humiliating sound escaped you before you could stop it, low and strained as it clawed its way from somewhere deep inside your chest. The reaction seemed to encourage him, drawing a noticeable shift in his focus, his fingers curling against something soft inside of you. The worst part was the way your body continued betraying you. Moments ago you had felt trapped inside yourself, unable to command your own limbs no matter how desperately you tried. Now movement returned in frustrating fragments, just enough to make your helplessness feel even more acute. Your back arched involuntarily, your body seeking stability and warmth despite the panic flooding your mind, pressing you closer against Tim's chest before you could stop yourself. The motion was small, barely noticeable, but he reacted immediately. His arm tightened around your waist, drawing you firmly against him as though afraid you might somehow disappear if he loosened his grip for even a second.
"Used to kill me," he murmured quietly, his voice rough with emotion. "Having to stand there and watch you stress without me able to take care of you." The confession sounded old, worn smooth from being repeated silently inside his head for far too long, the only distraction was the way he was fucking his fingers into you. "There were days it was unbearable." His lips brushed your cheek.
A sob escaped before you could stop it, broken and miserable as it left your throat. The sound seemed to affect him immediately. His arms tightened around you, holding you closer, almost protectively despite the fact that he was the source of your distress. The contradiction made your stomach twist. Your eyes squeezed shut. For a moment everything blurred together, the warmth of the room, the pressure of his arms, the tears sliding endlessly down your cheeks, the exhaustion threatening to drag you under once more. By the time the tension finally broke and you came around his fingers, relief never came. There was only a sickening sense of panic in your stomach.
The thought of being trapped out here with him was somehow more frightening than anything that had already happened. What terrified you wasn't the present. The present was awful, but it was familiar. Fear was easier to endure when it had clear boundaries, when you could identify the shape of it and understand where it might lead. Somewhere outside these walls stood a cabin isolated in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of wilderness you had never seen and couldn't navigate even if you were somehow capable of leaving. No one who might hear you if you screamed. The realization settled heavily in your chest because if nobody knew where you were, then nobody knew where to look. Your thoughts drifted unwillingly toward the future, toward all the possibilities waiting beyond tomorrow and the day after that. The questions came one after another, each more terrifying than the last. How long did he intend to keep you here? What had he told everyone else? Had he told anyone anything at all? Was someone looking for you already, or had he planned carefully enough that your disappearance wouldn't raise alarms for days? You couldn't stop imagining the endless number of paths your life might take from this moment onward, each one branching into another until the possibilities became impossible to count.
The future was waking up tomorrow in this same cabin.
That uncertainty frightened you more than anything else. Your exhausted mind continued turning the possibilities over and over until they blurred together, each scenario bleeding into the next. Eventually the effort became too much. Fear demanded energy, and you had none left to give. Every muscle ached with exhaustion. Your thoughts felt sluggish, dragged down by a heaviness that had been pulling at you since the moment you woke. Even your panic was beginning to dull around the edges, worn thin by sheer fatigue. Tim's hold on you loosened slightly, you felt him move, just enough to tilt your chin upward. The gesture was gentle.
A moment later, soft lips brushed against yours.
You didn't respond. Your eyes drifted shut instead, the last fragments of resistance finally slipping through your fingers. The fear remained, lodged deep inside your chest where it would be waiting when you woke again, but for now exhaustion proved stronger. It wrapped around you like a heavy blanket, pulling you steadily downward into darkness. The last thing you were aware of was the steady rhythm of Tim's breathing beside you and the feeling of his arms tightening around you as your consciousness slipped away, holding you close as though he was afraid that even sleep might somehow take you from him.
So, back when Dracula first released in 1931, it came with an epilogue where Edward Van Sloan (who played Van Helsing) basically reassured the audience that vampires exist. They apparently removed it out of fear it’d anger religious groups. After almost a century, it’s now available