♡ Angel Autopsy (Yandere! Il Dottore x Reader x Yandere! Various! Multiverse).
♡ Word Count. 8,256 words
You learned early that complaining was a luxury item, like truffle oil or inner peace—nice in theory, violently punished in practice.
So you complained quietly.
In your head.
Where the echo was mercifully soundproof and no one could accuse you of being ungrateful with pitchfork-level enthusiasm.
Because on paper, you were obscene.
Endless money. The kind of money that didn’t have a number, just a vague suggestion of infinity. The kind that made financial advisors sweat and whisper reverently, like monks before a relic.
Power, too—unreasonable amounts of it. Political, social, existential. Doors opened before you reached them. People smiled before they knew why. Luck bent so hard around you it looked like worship.
And that was before the other thing.
The thing no one knew about. The thing that made probability flinch and reality comply. The thing that ensured no backlash, no consequence, no equivalent exchange.
You didn’t pay prices. You didn’t lose limbs, sanity, loved ones, or yourself.
Fate looked at you, sighed, and said, fine.
Blessed. That was the word people used. Whispered. Spat. Thrown.
Blessed like a loaded gun left on a playground.
You were born into the top one percent of the top one percent. Bloodline money. Old money. The kind of family tree that didn’t branch so much as loom. Generations of success calcified into expectation. You could fail spectacularly and still land on silk cushions. You could disappear for years and reappear richer, cleaner, untouchable.
And somehow, miraculously, insultingly, you also had everything else.
Talent. Intelligence. A face that cameras adored and mirrors tolerated. Health that bordered on mockery.
You didn’t even have the decency to be miserable about it. Tragedy slid off you like rain on waxed marble.
Which meant, of course, that you learned to hide.
You hid competence behind laziness. Hid brilliance behind apathy. Hid power behind jokes, half-effort, and an aggressively unserious attitude toward life. You cultivated the art of being underestimated—not because you needed to, but because it was quieter that way.
People hated quiet success.
Quiet success felt smug to them.
You didn’t want attention.
You didn’t want thrones or halos or history books.
You wanted friends who didn’t count your worth in net assets.
You wanted laughter that wasn’t nervous.
You wanted to eat cheap food without someone commenting on how “refreshing” it was that you were so down to earth.
You wanted a family that wasn’t strategic.
You wanted to be normal.
Which, frankly, was hilarious.
Because destiny had a sense of humor, and it was cruel.
You knew this because destiny kept showing up uninvited, dragging prophecy and inevitability like a drunk plus-one. Every time you tried to live small, it escalated.
Every time you said, no thanks, it said, too bad.
You coped the only way that didn’t involve screaming at the sky.
You became a lazy bum.
Not the romanticized kind. The real kind.
The kind that sleeps in, skips responsibilities, avoids ambition like it’s contagious. You did whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, because if you didn’t, the universe would assign you something worse.
This wasn’t rebellion. This was damage control.
You treated fate like an aggressive dog—don’t run, don’t make eye contact, don’t give it ideas.
People mistook this for arrogance.
They always did.
They called you entitled. Ungrateful. Cold. They said you had everything and still looked bored. That you didn’t appreciate what you were given.
That you lacked humility.
You never corrected them.
Explaining yourself never worked. It only made them angrier.
How dare you complain, they said. How dare you feel empty when others were starving for a fraction of what you had. How dare you look tired when life had never punched you in the face.
They didn’t know that being untouched by suffering didn’t make you immune to it.
It made you lonely.
You weren’t allowed to hurt.
Pain, apparently, had income requirements.
You weren’t allowed to want less.
Wanting less was offensive. Wanting out was blasphemous.
And the irony—the cosmic joke that made you laugh into your pillow at night—was that your desires were embarrassingly small.
You wanted two things.
Option one: you wanted to die.
Not dramatically. Not tragically. Just… cease. Rest. Be done. Close the book without fireworks. No legacy. No aftermath. No mourners performing grief like a social obligation.
Option two: you wanted to live a normal life.
A boring one. A quiet one.
The kind where nothing world-ending happened on a Tuesday. The kind where your biggest problem was burnt toast or a missed bus. The kind where your name didn’t mean anything to anyone outside a small circle of people who loved you for no reason at all.
You were flexible like that.
Fate, unfortunately, was not.
Too bad you couldn’t get both.
Too bad you couldn’t get either.
Immortality—or something offensively adjacent to it—meant death treated you like a rumor. Close calls happened around you, not to you. You watched people leave while you stayed, unchanged, like a bad constant in a beautiful equation.
And normalcy? That was a joke.
Normal lives didn’t bend reality. Normal people didn’t accidentally solve problems by existing near them. Normal people didn’t have destiny breathing down their neck like a disappointed parent.
So you did the only sane thing left.
You complained internally.
You whined about fate like it was a bureaucrat who kept losing your paperwork. You mocked destiny for being obsessed with you. You joked about how the universe had clearly peaked creatively and was now recycling you as a plot device.
You laughed at the absurdity of being blessed into a corner.
Because what else were you supposed to do?
You couldn’t scream. People would call you unstable.
You couldn’t cry. People would call you manipulative.
You couldn’t be honest. People would call you cruel.
So you smiled vaguely. Shrugged. Played dumb. Acted lazy.
Let them think you were wasting potential, because wasted potential was less threatening than fulfilled prophecy.
They didn’t see how carefully curated your irresponsibility was.
They didn’t see how much restraint it took not to fix everything.
They didn’t see how often you chose inaction over intervention, because every time you stepped in, the world tilted toward you, expectant and hungry.
You were kind. Deeply, stupidly kind. It just didn’t show on your face.
Your kindness wasn’t loud. It didn’t announce itself. It didn’t demand gratitude. It looked like walking away when you could have dominated.
Like letting people have victories they didn’t earn. Like choosing silence over truth when truth would have shattered them.
You loved people in ways they never noticed.
And somehow, that was the loneliest part.
You knew the rules, even if no one ever taught them to you explicitly. You understood balance, consequence, sacrifice—not because you suffered them, but because you refused to impose them on others.
You could have been terrifying.
Instead, you were tired.
Tired of being a miracle. Tired of being a secret. Tired of being the answer to questions you never asked.
So you drifted. You floated through life with the casual irreverence of someone who had seen behind the curtain and found the wiring sloppy. You treated existence like a sandbox because taking it seriously only encouraged it.
Destiny loved your sorry ass.
It really did.
It kept circling back, rephrasing the offer. What about now? What about this version? What if you cared more? What if you tried?
You didn’t.
You kept your desires small and your expectations smaller.
You wanted laughter. Warmth. Mundane joy.
A place to rest that didn’t feel temporary.
You wanted to belong without being essential.
You wanted to love without being worshipped or feared.
You wanted to exist without meaning something cosmic.
And every time you thought about saying this out loud, you laughed instead, because the world had already decided who you were.
Blessed.
Lucky.
Ungrateful.
Arrogant.
Entitled.
They never saw the joke was on you.
Having everything meant you couldn’t want anything without being punished for it.
So you stayed quiet.
You kept coping.
You stayed lazy. Stayed unserious. Stayed alive.
And you waited—patiently, irreverently—for fate to get bored.
Because surely, eventually, even destiny would realize it had overdone it.
Right?
Right.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
At some point—somewhere between your fifth existential crisis of the day and your third nap—you realized that observing Zandik was… entertaining.
Not comforting. Not safe. Definitely not healthy.
But entertaining in the way watching a controlled fire is entertaining. You didn’t want to touch it. You didn’t want to be near it.
You just liked knowing it existed, burning on its own terms, asking nothing of you.
Which was refreshing.
You were opposites in ways that felt cosmically deliberate, like the universe was experimenting with contrast ratios.
You were born drowning in excess—money, power, safety nets stacked so high they blocked out the sun.
He was born with nothing but a brain that refused to shut up and hands that refused to stop working. No inheritance. No cushion. No divine insurance policy. Just effort, obsession, and teeth clenched so hard they could have shattered bone.
You had always been told you were lucky.
He had never been told anything at all.
Zandik didn’t believe in destiny. Or if he did, he treated it like an enemy combatant. Something to outpace, outmaneuver, dissect. Fate, to him, was a problem to be solved or crushed underfoot.
You, on the other hand, had learned that destiny was less a path and more a clingy stalker with boundary issues.
He moved forward like the world owed him nothing—which it didn’t, and he knew it.
You drifted sideways like the world owed you everything—which it did, and you resented it.
He was ambition sharpened into a weapon.
You were potential intentionally dulled for public safety.
And yet.
You never found him irritating.
Which, frankly, should have concerned you more.
Zandik didn’t soften himself around people.
He didn’t perform warmth or courtesy. He didn’t pretend morality was anything other than a social convenience. His values were brutally simple: efficiency, progress, truth stripped of sentiment.
You would never agree with him. Not fully. Not ethically. Not spiritually. You believed—quietly, stubbornly—in restraint, mercy, balance. In stepping back when you could step on someone.
He believed in stepping forward, always.
And still, you respected him.
Because he didn’t lie about it.
There was something deeply relieving about a man who didn’t dress his cruelty up as kindness. Who didn’t pretend his ambition was altruism. Who didn’t ask for forgiveness in advance.
He wanted power because power worked. He wanted knowledge because ignorance was inefficient.
No speeches. No false humility. No savior complex.
He didn’t want to fix the world.
He wanted to understand it well enough to break it properly.
You shouldn’t have liked that.
You did anyway.
Mostly because Zandik never expected anything from you.
Not reverence. Not gratitude. Not usefulness. Not even obedience.
You were not a resource to be optimized.
You were an anomaly.
And anomalies, to him, were interesting—not disappointing.
He observed you the way a scientist observes a phenomenon that shouldn’t exist. Methodically. Patiently. With an intensity that bordered on invasive, but never tipped into possession.
He documented your behavior. Your inconsistencies. Your absurd contradictions. He took notes like you were a new law of physics that occasionally forgot its own rules.
And somehow, miraculously, that felt… freeing.
Everyone else looked at you and saw potential screaming to be harvested.
A gift meant to be used. A blessing that demanded performance. They wanted you productive, grateful, inspiring. They wanted you optimized into something palatable and profitable.
Zandik didn’t want that.
He didn’t want you to be better.
He wanted you to be accurate.
There was no dominance in the way he watched you. No desire to own or reshape. Just analysis. Observation without interference. He didn’t push. He didn’t prod unless curiosity demanded it. He didn’t correct your laziness or question your choices.
You could be stupid around him.
Gloriously stupid.
You could waste time. Ramble. Say things that made no sense. Make jokes that went nowhere. Do nothing at all. He never reacted with disappointment. Only notation.
Like, interesting variable: subject displays intentional inefficiency.
You loved that.
Loved the space it gave you to breathe.
To exist without being turned into a project.
You could tell—because you weren’t blind, just tired—that he liked it too. Liked that you didn’t try to impress him. That you didn’t seek his approval. That you treated his intellect with casual irreverence instead of worship. Most people either feared him or tried to mirror him.
You did neither.
You treated him like weather.
Dangerous, fascinating, and not something you could argue with.
There was a strange intimacy in that mutual non-demand.
He didn’t ask you to care about his work. You didn’t ask him to care about your morality. You existed in parallel, occasionally intersecting, neither trying to overwrite the other.
A truce without negotiation. An understanding without confession.
You saw his ambition the way one might see a sharpened blade: beautiful, necessary, and incapable of affection.
He saw your apathy the way one might see a locked door: frustrating, but undeniably deliberate.
You both recognized restraint in each other, even if it came from different places.
His restraint was calculated.
Yours was compassionate.
You would never condone what he did.
The experiments. The lines he crossed without hesitation. You knew—without needing proof—that his work would horrify anyone who believed suffering was sacred.
And yet, you also knew he wasn’t pretending to be good.
He wasn’t delusional.
He wasn’t hiding behind excuses.
That mattered to you more than it should have.
Because you were surrounded by people who did the opposite.
Who cloaked their greed in virtue. Who justified their cruelty with righteousness. Who committed violence with smiles and prayers and called it necessary.
Zandik didn’t pray.
He didn’t justify.
He simply acted.
There was a brutal honesty in that.
A truth stripped bare of ceremony.
And sometimes—late at night, when your thoughts got loud—you wondered if that was why fate kept dragging him into your orbit.
Not because he was your opposite, but because he was your mirror, flipped along a different axis.
You were both anomalies.
You both didn’t fit.
You both existed outside the moral averages of the world.
The difference was choice.
He chose ambition.
You chose restraint.
He built himself from nothing.
You dismantled yourself from everything.
And somehow, in that quiet, observational space between you, neither of you demanded the other to change.
That was rare.
That was precious.
That was dangerous.
Because intimacy didn’t always look like affection. Sometimes it looked like recognition. Like being seen clearly and not corrected. Like being allowed to exist as-is, unredeemed and unredeeming.
You didn’t trust him.
He didn’t trust you.
And yet—you trusted the space between you.
A neutral zone where you could be lazy and irreverent and quietly kind, and he could be ruthless and brilliant and unapologetically himself.
No expectations.
No destiny.
Just observation.
And for someone whose life had been scripted since birth, that felt like freedom.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
You were, by all reasonable metrics, the stupid one in whatever it was you had with Zandik.
Not stupid as in unintelligent. That would have been boring.
You were stupid in the more dangerous sense: chaotic, unserious, allergic to dignity, and deeply committed to asking questions at the worst possible times.
You did it on purpose.
Mostly.
You asked things like, “If a soul hypothetically existed, would it be recyclable?” while he was elbow-deep in something that absolutely should not have been asking philosophical questions. Or, “If I died in this room, would you be annoyed or just disappointed?” while he was calibrating instruments worth more than small countries.
You asked, “Do you think morality is just delayed self-interest?” and then followed it up with, “Do you want coffee?” as if the two questions carried equal weight.
From an external perspective, this should have gotten you escorted out. Or dissected. Or at least verbally eviscerated.
Instead, he answered.
Always.
Bluntly. Directly. With surgical honesty. Sometimes without even looking at you, like his attention was a distributed system capable of multitasking your nonsense alongside his work.
“No,” he said once, without pause. “Souls, if they exist, are not recyclable. They’re more like… data corruption.”
You blinked. “Wow. That was poetic.”
“It wasn’t,” he replied, still not looking at you.
Or the time you asked, “If you had to choose between saving one innocent person or advancing your research by ten years, which would you choose?”
“Research,” he said instantly.
“No hesitation?” you pressed.
“Why would I hesitate?”
You grinned, delighted. “Love that consistency. Terrifying, but efficient.”
He made a noise that might have been a snort. Or a suppressed sigh. Or the beginning of a migraine.
You liked that he never lied to spare you.
Most people softened answers around you, like you were fragile porcelain or a public relations hazard. They wrapped truth in politeness and expectation and hope you wouldn’t notice the manipulation.
Zandik didn’t care enough to do that.
And somehow, that felt safer.
You messed with him constantly. Pushed boundaries that weren’t labeled as such. You touched things you shouldn’t—not to sabotage, but to see if he would stop you.
He didn’t.
He would glance over, assess the risk, and say things like, “If you break that, I’ll have to recalculate three weeks of work.”
You held it mid-air. “So… don’t?”
“Yes.”
You put it back. Obedient, but smug.
He never told you to stop being stupid.
Which was the strangest part.
You knew his reputation. Everyone did. Zero tolerance for inefficiency. For incompetence. For irrationality. He was known to verbally vivisect people for less. You’d heard stories. You’d seen the way others stiffened around him, walking on mental tiptoes, terrified of being deemed useless.
And then there was you.
Interrupting him. Distracting him. Arguing with him. Dragging him into nonsense.
You once forced him to play a game with you.
Not a simulation. Not a strategy exercise. A game. A stupid one. With bright colors and questionable physics.
“I’m Jungle,” you said decisively, already locking in your character. “I’m main damage.”
He stared at the screen. Then at you. Then back at the screen.
“That allocation is inefficient,” he said flatly. “Statistically, I would perform better in—”
“No,” you said. “You’re support. Tank build.”
“I refuse.”
“You absolutely are not Jungle.”
“I am objectively better suited—”
“I don’t mess around with games,” you cut in, dead serious. “This is non-negotiable.”
He paused. Slowly leaned back. Studied you like a puzzle that had started insulting him.
“…You are irrational,” he said.
“Correct.”
“And stubborn.”
“Also correct.”
“And deliberately handicapping the team.”
“Yes.”
A long silence.
Then—unbelievably—he clicked accept.
You stared. “Wait. Really?”
“If this results in failure,” he said calmly, “you will be held solely responsible.”
You beamed. “Deal.”
He played support like he did everything else: aggressively competent, begrudgingly patient, and visibly annoyed by mechanics he could optimize but refused to out of spite. He saved you constantly. Shielded you at the last second. Took hits meant for you.
You carried. Loudly. Recklessly. With zero fear.
“You’re overextending,” he said.
“I’m vibing.”
“You will die.”
“I have faith.”
“That is not a strategy.”
You survived. Barely.
He made a noise. Not disapproval. Something closer to reluctant amusement.
You pretended not to hear it.
You were noisier than him. Which surprised people, considering you were the introvert. But alone—just you and him, in the sterile quiet of his lab—you filled the silence like a cat knocking things off shelves.
You talked. You complained. You joked. You narrated your thoughts. You made commentary on his work like it was a cooking show.
“And here we see the mad scientist gently seasoning his ethical violations.”
“Be quiet,” he said, without heat.
You didn’t.
And he didn’t make you.
You argued constantly. About everything. Ethics. Free will. Whether ends justified means. Whether mercy was weakness or restraint. You pushed him on his values. He dismantled yours with terrifying precision.
You hated it.
You loved it.
Your debates escalated into fights. Verbal sparring matches sharp enough to draw blood if either of you were less careful. You accused him of cruelty. He accused you of hypocrisy. You accused him of arrogance. He accused you of sentimentality disguised as apathy.
“You could change things,” he said once, voice cool. “You choose not to.”
“I choose not to become you,” you shot back.
“That is not an argument.”
“It’s a boundary.”
He watched you for a long moment. Something unreadable passed through his expression. Not anger. Not approval. Recognition, maybe.
You had a suspicion—one you never voiced—that he enjoyed baiting you.
That he liked poking at your values just enough to make you flare. That he deliberately took the most infuriating positions, not because he believed them more strongly, but because he wanted to see you react.
To see you care.
He never smiled when he did it. Never laughed. But his timing was too precise. His comments too calculated.
He liked watching you get mad.
And you hated that you liked rising to it.
Because under the arguments, under the chaos, under your stupidity and his severity, there was something soft and unspoken.
He let you exist in his space.
That was not nothing.
His lab was sacred. Controlled. Ordered. A temple to intellect and obsession. And there you were—lounging in a chair you weren’t supposed to touch, eating snacks near sensitive equipment, asking if his coat was washable.
He didn’t stop you.
He adjusted around you.
He tolerated your inefficiency. Your noise. Your mess. Which, by all accounts, was insane.
And sometimes—rarely—you caught it.
The pause before he answered your questions, like he was choosing words more carefully than necessary.
The way he positioned himself just slightly between you and danger without acknowledging it.
The patience.
Unreasonable, inexplicable patience.
You never mistook it for kindness.
You knew better.
But it was something.
Something carved out of mutual recognition. Of respect that didn’t require agreement. Of intimacy that didn’t need softness to exist.
You were stupid.
You were chaotic.
You were loud.
And he let you be.
Which, in his world, might have been the closest thing to affection he was capable of offering.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
Between the two of you, you were the physically affectionate one.
This was not a personality flaw. This was a lifestyle choice.
You did it knowingly. Intentionally. With full awareness that you were, at your core, a cat wearing human skin.
A creature fueled by curiosity, mischief, and the uncontrollable urge to touch things that had clearly not consented.
Zandik was one of those things.
You hugged him first. Casually. Like it meant nothing. Arms slung around him while he was reading data, chin dropped onto his shoulder as if you belonged there. Like this was normal.
Like he wasn’t a man whose reputation made people flinch.
He didn’t react.
Which, obviously, made you do it again.
You leaned into him more. Put your full weight there. Let your presence become an inconvenience.
“Your posture is abysmal,” he said, eyes still on his work.
“You love it,” you replied, cheek pressed to his coat.
“I tolerate it.”
“That’s basically love.”
“It is not.”
You smiled anyway.
You learned quickly that physical affection didn’t unsettle him in obvious ways. He didn’t freeze. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t shove you away.
He simply… adjusted. Shifted slightly so your weight distributed better. Continued working like you were a variable he had already accounted for.
Which was infuriating.
You escalated.
You cuddled him. Sat on the edge of tables and leaned against his back. Rested your head in his lap while he was seated, scrolling through notes. You treated his personal space like a suggestion rather than a rule.
He never told you to stop.
He did, however, respond.
Not with reactions—those were too generous.
With comments.
“You are obstructing circulation,” he said once, when you were sprawled across him like a lazy animal.
“Wow. Romantic.”
“If you lose feeling in your legs, do not attribute it to destiny.”
You slept on him.
Literally.
Fell asleep mid-conversation. Mid-argument. Once, mid-insult. You curled up against his side, cheek pressed to his arm, breath evening out like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He stopped talking.
Not dramatically. Just… paused. Let you sleep.
Adjusted his arm so you wouldn’t slide off. Continued reading with his free hand.
You woke up hours later, drool threatening his sleeve.
“Good morning,” you murmured.
“You snore,” he said.
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
You grinned and went back to sleep.
You offered him food constantly. Snacks. Drinks. Things you had stolen from somewhere else. You fed him like he was a stray you’d decided to keep.
He refused verbally. Accepted physically.
“You should eat,” you said, holding something near his mouth.
“I am occupied.”
“You’ll starve.”
“That is statistically unlikely.”
You didn’t move the food.
He sighed. Took a bite. Didn’t thank you.
You counted that as a win.
And then there was the kissing.
Not on the lips. Never the lips. That would have been… something else. You weren’t trying to cross that line.
You kissed his temple. His cheek. The corner of his jaw. His knuckles when he handed you something. Quick, fleeting, affectionate taps like punctuation marks in a sentence you weren’t finished writing.
You did it to tease him.
To provoke a reaction.
To see if he would finally snap.
He never did.
Instead, he retaliated.
“You are behaving like a poorly socialized animal,” he said once, after you kissed his neck and grinned like you’d just committed a crime.
“And yet,” you replied, “you let me.”
“That says more about you than me.”
“No, it really doesn’t.”
He learned your patterns faster than you liked. Learned when you were about to pounce, metaphorically or otherwise. He’d shift just out of reach. Or—worse—anticipate you.
You leaned in to hug him from behind.
He stepped sideways.
You almost fell.
He caught you by the wrist without looking.
“You lack coordination,” he said mildly.
You glared. “You did that on purpose.”
“Yes.”
You gasped. “You’re learning.”
He poked fun at you relentlessly. Subtly. With surgical precision. He flipped the script so smoothly you didn’t realize you were being baited until you were already annoyed.
“You are unusually tactile today,” he remarked once.
“So?”
“Has your cognitive function declined?”
You spluttered. “Excuse me?”
“You are compensating with physicality.”
“Oh, you’re dead.”
“You say that often,” he replied calmly. “And yet, here I remain.”
You climbed onto his chair. Sat sideways in his lap like you owned the place. Wrapped your arms around his shoulders.
“Say it again,” you challenged.
“You are heavy.”
You stared at him.
He stared back.
Unblinking.
You laughed so hard you nearly fell off.
He didn’t smile. But there was something there.
A faint shift. A loosening around the edges.
You knew better than to call it affection.
But it wasn’t nothing.
He insulted you the way someone insults a familiar thing. Not with venom. With precision. With an intimacy that came from knowing exactly where to poke.
“You are distracting,” he said.
“You love it.”
“I do not love distractions.”
“And yet.”
“And yet,” he echoed, tone dry, “you persist.”
You did.
Because touching him grounded you. Because teasing him felt safe. Because he didn’t misinterpret it. Didn’t demand more. Didn’t turn it into expectation or obligation.
You weren’t offering devotion.
You were offering presence.
And he accepted it on his terms.
He never held you first. Never initiated. But he didn’t pull away. Didn’t correct you. Didn’t punish you for closeness.
Sometimes—rarely—you caught him responding without thinking.
A hand resting on your back when you leaned too far. Fingers adjusting your sleeve. A subtle shift to accommodate your weight when you climbed onto him like gravity was optional.
You noticed everything.
You just never said it.
Because you knew the rules. You knew what you were doing. You were teasing the lion, fully aware it could bite—but also aware it wouldn’t, not like this.
Not without cause.
You weren’t trying to tame him.
You were just… touching the edges. Seeing where the heat was without burning.
You liked that he pushed back. That he mocked you. That he refused to play the role you assigned him. That he annoyed you on purpose, calmly dismantling your attempts to fluster him.
It made it a game.
And for someone like you—someone who had been worshipped, feared, resented, used—being allowed to play without consequence felt sacred.
You curled up against him again, humming quietly, fingers idly tugging at his coat.
“You are incorrigible,” he said.
“You love it,” you replied.
“I endure it.”
You smiled, eyes closed, already half-asleep.
And in the quiet hum of his lab—where creation and destruction blurred into the same careful motion—you stayed there, teasing, touching, existing.
An angel pretending to be a cat.
A devil pretending not to notice.
Neither of you pretending as much as you should have.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
You didn’t get it the first time.
In your defense, you rarely got things the first time when they involved feelings, implications, or anything that smelled even faintly like emotional responsibility. You treated life like a sandbox game with friendly fire permanently enabled and romance like a side quest you never unlocked because the rewards looked suspiciously like restrictions.
Zandik, unfortunately, had noticed.
He had noticed a lot of things about you. Most of them alarming. Some of them fascinating. This one, in particular, had been filed under persistent anomaly: behavioral avoidance pattern.
You had hugged him, clung to him, slept on him, fed him, kissed him everywhere except the one place that would have made things inconveniently explicit. You flirted like a cat knocking a glass off the table—slowly, deliberately, maintaining eye contact the entire time.
And then you walked away.
No escalation. No claim. No expectation.
You treated intimacy like a toy you could put down whenever it stopped being fun.
Which, to him, was statistically improbable.
So one day—an otherwise unremarkable day, full of sterile light and humming machinery and your legs draped over his chair like you owned him—he decided subtlety was no longer efficient.
“You are aware,” he said calmly, eyes still on his work, “that what you are doing is typically classified as courtship behavior.”
You blinked.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” You considered this. “Weird.”
“You have never attempted to kiss me on the lips.”
You turned your head slowly. “Wow. You’ve been thinking about my mouth.”
“That is not—”
“Obsessed.”
“—accurate.”
You grinned, expecting the usual exchange.
Tease, deflect, escalate into nonsense.
Instead, he continued.
“I am proposing that we formalize this relationship.”
The words landed wrong. Not heavy. Not dramatic.
Just… wrong.
You stared at him.
“…Like,” you said slowly, “a Google Calendar invite?”
“No.”
“Because I’m booked.”
“I am referring to dating.”
That—that—caught you off guard.
Not because it scared you.
Not because it thrilled you.
But because it violated the rules of the game you thought you were playing.
You slid off his chair, annoyed more than anything else. Like someone had suddenly paused your favorite game to explain the lore.
“No,” you said immediately.
Not loud. Not emotional. Just flat.
He nodded once.
“Expected.”
You frowned. “You’re not even going to ask why?”
“I am,” he replied. “I am simply not surprised.”
That irritated you more.
You crossed your arms. “You’re supposed to look disappointed.”
“I do not perform disappointment.”
“This is terrible customer service.”
“You have commitment avoidance tendencies,” he continued, unbothered. “You engage in intimacy without attachment. You maintain control by refusing escalation. You live exclusively in the present.”
You stared at him. “Wow. You make it sound pathological.”
“It is.”
You scoffed. “Rude.”
“You exhibit a strong aversion to dependency. Likely rooted in an overabundance of autonomy paired with—”
“Okay,” you cut in, “no. Stop psychoanalyzing me like I’m a malfunctioning toaster.”
“You are the one who treats reality like a game,” he replied. “I am merely identifying mechanics.”
That did it.
You bristled.
Not flustered. Not embarrassed.
Annoyed.
“You don’t get to just… change the rules,” you snapped. “We were doing fine.”
“We were stagnating.”
“We were having fun.”
“Fun is not mutually exclusive with progression.”
“For you,” you shot back. “Everything is progression. Everything has to go somewhere. Be something. Mean something.”
You paced, agitated now. “I don’t do that. I don’t build my life around volatile emotions and expectations. I don’t sign contracts I can’t break.”
“Relationships are not contracts.”
“They absolutely are.”
He watched you carefully now. Not predatory.
Analytical. Curious.
“You associate commitment with loss of autonomy,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You believe emotional attachment creates leverage.”
Correct.
“You consider romance a vulnerability.”
You didn’t answer.
You didn’t have to.
“That,” he said calmly, “is fear.”
You laughed.
Loudly. Brightly. Like a bell rung to shatter the moment.
“Oh, please,” you said. “Fear is for people who think they can lose.”
“You can,” he replied.
That hit closer than you liked.
You deflected immediately. “You’re projecting. This is your experiment talking. You’re curious. You want to see what happens if you poke the anomaly.”
“That is part of it,” he admitted.
“And the rest?”
“I am interested.”
You rolled your eyes. “See? That’s the problem. Interest turns into expectations. Expectations turn into control.”
“I have not attempted to control you.”
“And I plan to keep it that way.”
There it was.
The line you never crossed.
You didn’t say it out loud, but the truth sat sharp and immovable in your chest: to be controlled was unacceptable.
Not because you wanted to dominate others—you never did—but because your freedom was non-negotiable.
The one thing you protected with teeth and claws.
Love, to you, was a leash disguised as silk.
Zandik tilted his head slightly.
“You equate vulnerability with weakness,” he said. “Yet you show affection freely.”
“Affection is cheap,” you shot back. “Commitment is expensive.”
“Only if you assume loss.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
You smirked. “Because I’ve read the patch notes.”
He watched you for a long moment. Silent. Unblinking.
“You deflect emotional inquiry with humor,” he said. “You intellectualize avoidance. You mask intensity with irreverence.”
“Wow,” you deadpanned. “Do I get a prize?”
“You are afraid of being known.”
That one annoyed you enough to snap back instantly.
“No,” you said sharply. “I’m afraid of being owned.”
Silence.
That was new.
Not for you.
For him.
He didn’t argue. Didn’t push. Didn’t soften his stance.
He simply noted it.
“Very well,” he said at last. “Then we will not formalize.”
You relaxed slightly. “Good.”
“But,” he continued, “the variable remains.”
You squinted. “You’re still going to observe me, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
You sighed. “Figures.”
You expected tension. Awkwardness. A shift.
None came.
He went back to his work. You went back to leaning against the table. The world resumed its hum like nothing had happened.
Except you felt… off.
Not shaken.
Just… aware.
He hadn’t been offended.
Hadn’t tried to convince you.
Hadn’t demanded reciprocation.
He had asked.
You had answered.
And he had accepted it.
Which, annoyingly, made him harder to dismiss.
You cracked a joke to regain equilibrium. “For the record, if I ever date someone, it’ll be because I accidentally clicked the wrong dialogue option.”
“Noted,” he said.
“And I’d reload the save immediately.”
“Unlikely,” he replied. “You dislike repetition.”
You glanced at him. “See? You do know me.”
“Yes.”
You hated that you liked how simply he said it.
You hated that he hadn’t tried to kiss you.
You hated that the game hadn’t broken.
And you hated—most of all—that for the first time, someone had looked at your refusal not as rejection, but as data.
Not wounded.
Not angry.
Just curious.
You stayed.
Because of course you did.
Still teasing. Still touching. Still refusing to cross that line.
And he let you.
Still watching. Still learning. Still very much interested.
An experiment ongoing.
A game still uncompleted.
Neither of you winning.
Neither of you quitting.
Yet.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
Love, to you, was a logistics problem disguised as a fairytale.
You loved people easily. Effortlessly. Casually. The way sunlight loved dust motes—present, warm, non-exclusive. You were affectionate by default. You hugged. You fed. You protected. You forgave. You gave without keeping score, because keeping score implied scarcity, and you had never lived a scarce life.
Humans, to you, were… precious.
Messy. Loud. Fragile. Endearingly temporary.
You treated them like pets in the most sincere sense of the word. Not condescendingly. Tenderly. You let them climb on you, bite you, adore you, resent you. You loved them knowing they would never understand you fully, and that was fine. That was the point.
They weren’t meant to.
But the moment someone tried to become more than that—
The moment they tried to step out of the category of loved and into equal—
The moment they reached for you with hands that said claim instead of touch—
Well.
You’d have to kill them.
You laughed when you thought it.
Mostly.
The day you said it out loud was the day Zandik finally stopped pretending romance was a social ritual instead of a biological hazard.
It started innocently. As most dangerous things did.
You were sitting on the lab table, swinging your legs, eating something you’d definitely stolen, when you tilted your head and asked, “So why’d you ask that, anyway?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Which was unusual.
Zandik answered things. Immediately. Precisely. Silence from him was not empty; it was deliberate. Processing. Reframing.
Instead, he asked, “Define romantic love.”
You froze mid-bite.
“…Ew.”
“That is not a definition.”
You grimaced. “Why are you like this?”
“Answer the question.”
You sighed theatrically, leaned back on your hands. “Okay. Romantic love is when two people mutually agree to slowly ruin each other’s lives through expectations, exclusivity, and poorly communicated emotional needs.”
“That is… imprecise.”
“It’s accurate.”
“Try again.”
You stared at the ceiling, thinking. You didn’t do this often. Thinking about love meant thinking about limits, and you hated limits.
“Romantic love,” you said slowly, “is when someone wants to be seen by you. Fully. Known. Chosen. Special.”
“And?”
“And that’s where it goes wrong.”
He waited.
You continued, tone lighter, joking—but not entirely. “Because the moment someone wants that, they stop being human and start being… dangerous.”
“Explain.”
You smiled. A bright, easy smile.
The kind that usually meant deflection.
“Humans are lovely because they’re small,” you said. “They don’t ask for much. They want warmth. Safety. Attention. You give them that, and they’re happy. They don’t need to be everything to you.”
“And lovers?” he asked.
“Lovers want to be the thing.”
You looked at him then. Really looked.
“And I don’t do singularities.”
Silence stretched.
You laughed suddenly. “I mean, think about it. If I actually fell in love? Like, really fell in love?” You snorted. “I’d have to kill them.”
You laughed harder. “And probably my own heart while I’m at it. Just to be safe.”
The words hung there.
Light.
Casual.
Murderous.
Zandik didn’t laugh.
He didn’t react at all.
He simply… noted.
That was the first time he’d ever heard you say something violent that wasn’t wrapped in absurdity. Not a joke about destruction. Not a hypothetical about chaos. A statement of intent, disguised as humor, backed by something old and immovable.
You noticed his silence belatedly.
“…That was a joke,” you added, half-heartedly.
It wasn’t.
He knew it.
You knew he knew it.
You shrugged, filling the space immediately. “Mostly. I just don’t do that whole ‘give someone power over me’ thing. Romance is just… emotional hostage-taking with better lighting.”
“You are describing attachment trauma,” he said calmly.
You waved a hand. “I’m describing self-preservation.”
“You are affectionate.”
“Yes.”
“You are loyal.”
When it suits you.
“You are capable of intimacy.”
“Platonically. Casually. Recreationally.”
“You are not incapable of love.”
You smiled thinly. “I’m incapable of allowing it.”
There it was.
The truth you never said directly.
You leaned forward, elbows on your knees. “See, love like that? The kind you’re talking about? It changes things. It creates leverage. It introduces fear. Suddenly, there’s something to lose.”
“And you dislike loss.”
“I despise vulnerability that isn’t chosen.”
He tilted his head.
Studying. Cataloguing.
“So you love without permitting escalation,” he said. “You distribute affection freely to prevent exclusivity. You maintain control by refusing singular attachment.”
You beamed. “Gold star.”
“And if someone attempts to breach that boundary?”
You shrugged lightly. “Then they stop being safe.”
He didn’t ask what you meant by that.
He didn’t need to.
Romantic love.
Pain point identified.
Weakness located.
Zandik felt it then—not satisfaction, not triumph—but something sharper.
Interest, refined.
You, oblivious as ever, kept talking. “It’s not personal. I just don’t want to be worshipped or owned or… prioritized. I don’t want to be someone’s meaning. That’s a lot of pressure.”
“You prefer to be transient,” he observed.
“I prefer to be free.”
You hopped off the table, wandered closer, poked his shoulder. “You, on the other hand, seem like the kind of guy who’d dissect love just to see how it screams.”
“That is an emotional projection.”
“Is it?”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t tell you that you’d just handed him the first real leverage point he’d ever found.
He didn’t tell you that the idea of conquering something that couldn’t be dominated conventionally was… invigorating.
You were not drifting because you were empty.
You were drifting because you were guarded.
And guards could be bypassed.
He didn’t plan to force you.
Force was inefficient.
He would observe. Adapt. Apply pressure where you didn’t realize it existed. He would turn your own kindness against your isolation. Your affection against your autonomy.
Not to possess you.
To solve you.
To conquer the anomaly without triggering its defenses.
Predator and prey, yes—but not in the crude way.
In the way the inevitable hunts the eternal.
You, meanwhile, had already moved on.
You filled the silence with nonsense. Asked if he wanted food. Commented on the lighting. Made a joke about murder being your love language.
He listened.
He always listened.
And as you laughed, angelic and careless, joking about killing love before it killed you—
Zandik decided, very calmly, very rationally—
That this was no longer an experiment he was merely observing.
It was a problem.
And problems were meant to be solved.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
You stopped joking.
That alone should have been warning enough.
The shift was not loud. There was no dramatic crash, no visible explosion of power, no theatrical declaration. It was quieter than that. Quieter in the way pressure changes before a storm. In the way air thickens just before something collapses inward.
The lab did not move.
Reality did.
It felt like the world took a single, involuntary breath—and held it.
You straightened slowly, movements precise, deliberate. The lazy slouch you wore like armor fell away. The careless drape of your body against furniture ceased. Even gravity seemed uncertain about how firmly it was allowed to keep you.
Zandik noticed immediately.
Of course he did.
His body reacted before his mind finished labeling it. Muscles tensed. Breath adjusted. His perception sharpened, instincts screaming not danger—he was long past reacting to danger—but scale. The kind of instinct that recognized when a threat was not approaching, but already present.
Already everywhere.
You looked at him.
Not with amusement. Not with teasing irreverence. Not with the fond mockery you usually reserved for him.
You looked at him like something ancient assessing a variable.
The air pressed down.
Not physically—not yet—but conceptually. As if space itself had been reminded, very suddenly, that it was allowed to bend. Lights flickered, not from electrical failure, but from hesitation. Instruments registered noise where none should exist. Time, for the briefest moment, felt misaligned—like a skipped frame in a film no one else noticed.
Zandik did not move.
He watched.
You stepped closer.
The distance between you folded strangely, shortening without you seeming to walk it. One moment you were several feet away. The next, you were directly in front of him, close enough that your presence displaced the air between his lungs and the room.
He did not step back.
He raised his mental defenses instead, layers of cognition locking into place, analysis racing not to understand—but to survive the comprehension.
You spoke softly.
“Listen to me.”
Your voice was calm. Gentle. Almost kind.
And it carried weight.
Not volume—authority.
“I like you,” you said. “Genuinely.”
The pressure intensified.
The lab groaned—not audibly, but structurally, like something deep in its foundations had been asked an impossible question. Zandik felt it then: the unmistakable sensation of being measured by something that did not need to prove itself.
You tilted your head slightly, studying his face.
“I enjoy you. I enjoy your mind. Your honesty. Your ambition. Your cruelty,” you added casually. “You’re interesting.”
A compliment.
A dangerous one.
“But,” you continued, and the word landed like a blade placed gently against skin, “you need to understand something very clearly.”
You lifted a hand.
The space between your fingers and his face warped, just slightly. Not visually—not enough for a lesser mind to notice—but perceptually. Distance lost meaning. Zandik felt it in his bones, in the way his body failed to instinctively recoil because it could no longer accurately determine where here ended and there began.
You touched him.
Your fingers traced his cheek with reverence, not possession. Like one might touch a relic. Or a sacrificial blade. Your touch was warm. Too warm. And beneath it—something vast, restrained only by intent.
“If you ever try to cage me,” you said quietly, “if you ever try to make yourself special to me—”
Your thumb brushed the corner of his mouth.
You leaned in.
Your lips touched the edge of his—not a kiss. Not quite. A suggestion. A promise that went in entirely the wrong direction.
Your eyes were empty.
Not cold—absent. Like the sky when it decides to erase a city without emotion.
And beneath that emptiness burned something else.
A fierce, terrible passion. Not desire. Not love.
Conviction.
“If you are arrogant enough,” you murmured, voice still gentle, “to try to make me fall for you—”
The pressure peaked.
For a fraction of a second, Zandik felt it.
Not fear.
Recognition.
The sheer, incomprehensible scale of you.
Space bent inward around your form, as if reality itself were bowing, uncertain whether it was allowed to refuse. Time stuttered—his thoughts lagging a heartbeat behind the present, then snapping forward too quickly, as though chronology itself was struggling to stay aligned in your vicinity.
He saw it then.
Not with his eyes.
With something deeper.
A glimpse of what you truly were—not metaphor, not symbolism, but fact. A being unbound by linear consequence. A presence that did not move through time but over it. That could fold moments together like paper, crush probability into certainty, erase existence with the same ease one might exhale.
You were not threatening him.
You were stating a condition.
“I would kill you,” you said softly.
No hesitation.
No anger.
No regret.
“I wouldn’t hate you,” you added, smiling peacefully. “I wouldn’t mourn you. I wouldn’t even feel conflicted.”
Your fingers traced his jawline slowly.
“I would simply end you.”
The lab shuddered.
Not violently—obediently.
Zandik’s defenses held, barely. His mind did what it did best: compartmentalized, reinforced, anchored itself in rationality to withstand the impossible weight pressing against it. His breathing remained steady by force of will alone. His heart rate elevated, then stabilized.
He did not look away.
You watched him endure.
That, too, seemed to amuse you—faintly.
“I’m telling you this,” you continued, voice almost affectionate, “because I respect you.”
The pressure eased.
Just enough.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” you said. “I like you too much for that.”
You withdrew your hand.
Stepped back.
The space between you unfolded normally again. Distance reasserted itself. Time resumed its proper pace with a soft, imperceptible click.
The lights steadied.
The instruments quieted.
The lab breathed out.
You smiled—your usual smile. Lazy. Teasing. Light.
“Well,” you said brightly, clapping your hands once. “That got intense. Anyway, did you eat yet?”
Zandik remained silent for a moment longer.
Then, calmly, he adjusted his gloves.
“No,” he said evenly. “I was occupied.”
You nodded, satisfied. “Figures.”
You wandered off, rummaging through something, humming to yourself like nothing extraordinary had just occurred. Like the universe hadn’t briefly been reminded that you were not bound by its rules.
Behind you, Zandik watched.
Not shaken.
Not frightened.
But irrevocably changed.
The experiment had escalated.
And for the first time, he understood—truly understood—that if this ended in death…
It would not be yours.
The lab returned to normal.
As if nothing had happened.
As if the warning had never been given.
As if the angel had never let the monster show its wings.
𝐆𝐨𝐝'𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭 