wasn’t sure if i was going to upload this one but uhhh fuck it
Feitan x reader x Chrollo (or at least the beginnings of it)
Warnings: torture, mentions of torture, implied violence, mentions of death, threats of violence, possessive behavior
It wasn’t terribly unusual to hear more than one pair of footsteps coming down the stairs. However, it was strange to hear them coming at such a calm, steady pace.
Usually it was Feitan dragging down another unfortunate victim of his to be tortured, and that would be accompanied by their panicked yells for help as they attempted to escape their captor’s grip. That never worked, as Feitan was much, much stronger than he looked. Something that you knew very well from experience.
The sounds of Feitan bringing down his soon-to-be torture subjects signaled you to prepare yourself in your spot next to the wall, your wrists in cuffs and your hands pulled up by chains that lifted you so high you needed to balance on your toes. If you didn’t do that, you’d be forced to hang by your arms, something that was incredibly painful to do for long periods of time as it would eventually feel like your arms were going to pop out of their sockets. But it was impossible to get any sleep while trying to focus on keeping your weight on your toes, so the only times you could get any rest was when you couldn’t keep going and you were granted a bit of a reprieve as your body attempted to catch up on much needed sleep that would only last for a few minutes before the pain in your arms would force you back awake. The only real break you got was when Feitan would unchain you and allow you to go to the bathroom, making you walk up the stairs on your own so your muscles wouldn’t atrophy.
Warnings: Yandere themes, unhealthy relationships, Chrollo is awful here Big Time oh lord oh god oh no, unbalanced power dynamics. Word count:2.3k.
It was a testament to the poor quality of your company when every red light you received felt akin to personal torture.
Optimism, that’s what you need. Some adjustment in your mindset that will allow you to view this glass as half full rather than half empty. Optimism. How you loathe the word. You felt optimistic this morning, while eating warm pastries from the hotel’s continental breakfast on your room’s balcony. At lunch when you visited a café and found your drink was already covered, another customer had paid it forward. There was no way you could’ve predicted the sweet taste of the day turning dry and sour a few short hours later.
He’s saying something, you think, spinning pretty words from the loom that is his mouth. You pay him no mind. Rather, you find interest in the shifting landscape of your hometown, as observed from the passenger seat’s tinted windows.
The video rental shop you looked forward to visiting every Friday has been replaced by a liquor store. Your favorite diner is gone now too, the land bulldozed and the signs standing upon its grave promising ample warehouse space as soon as next year. How odd, since the day they promised potential leasers the project to be complete passed about five years ago. A waste, what a waste.
“Are you intent on ignoring me all night? That isn’t very mature of you, [First].”
Maybe you’d think better of it if you were in a clearer state of mind, since alcohol’s pleasant buzz holds you prisoner now, but you respond with unbridled antipathy.
“Did you expect me to be in a talkative mood?”
“When there’s so much to discuss, yes.”
He’s not wrong on that front. You’d rather cut your own tongue out than admit it, though.
“There isn’t anything to discuss,” your rebuttal comes swift. Panicked. “I just want to get back to my hotel and sleep.”
“Hence my driving you, dear.”
“No, you’re driving me because my mom insisted—”
The words lodge themselves in your throat and you make no effort to free them. It isn’t right. For him to be here, where you grew up. In the town where you got your first part-time job, begged your older sibling to drive you to the mall on the weekends so that you could hang out with your friends, crushed over a cute boy from your class who worked at the movie theater. Chrollo didn’t belong here. It’s intrusive, a violation, a breach of your personal privacy to the highest degree. If your body rejects foreign pathogens that would seek to do you harm, it only makes sense that you would give him the same treatment.
Home is supposed to be your sanctuary — his presence is defiling that. Corrupting and warping it as if to say you could never be rid of him. It didn’t matter if you locked the doors and held them shut. He would always find a way in. Always.
“Did you lose your train of thought?”
“Yes,” you lie without hesitation. He knows it, you’re certain he does, but he’s already claimed victory. In the aftermath of a battle, the victor takes inventory of what they’ve gained. That has to be what he’s doing now. Sorting through the spoils and gloating.
“A pity,” Chrollo confesses. Though you don’t look at him, you can tell he’s smiling by his voice alone. “I would’ve loved to hear your thoughts.”
“Somehow, I’m doubtful about that.”
Yet again, in another show of mockery from a cruel and indifferent universe, the traffic light overhead turns red upon your approach. Just like its predecessor. And the one before that. You’d think it was rush hour by the traffic lights alone, but it’s eleven o’clock at night, and you haven’t seen another car in minutes.
“On the topic of your family…” he trails off, purposeful in prolonging the silence, so that your suspense might accumulate. You grip your clutch tighter. “I wish I’d gotten to meet them sooner. We never got around to it, did we? Ah, the stories from your childhood were especially a delight. The senior photo in your father’s wallet was too. You’ll have to tell me what quote you picked sometime.”
You don’t want to think about it, you don’t want to think about it. How a murderer shook hands with your father. Made pleasant small talk with your mother. Discussed cars and current events with your brother. All the while you sat sinking in the restaurant’s booth, your appetite lost, forced to regurgitate some flimsy excuse about why your family had never met your oh-so charming ‘friend’.
“To think I’ve been your first boyfriend in such a long time, too. Your ex still lives in this town, doesn’t he? Working at that… hm, what was it… gas station. I wonder if I’ll get to meet him as well.”
“We are notdating, not anymore,” you remind him, aghast. “And that’s a respectable occupation, anyway.”
“By your father’s tone, he certainly didn’t seem to think so.”
That’s right. What an excellentjob Chrollo did at establishing himself as appealing in every prospect, from the choice sports car sitting in the parking lot for them to ogle over, to paying for everyone’s dinner by the night’s end. How they must’ve thought reciprocating his affections would be a no-brainer. Still, you place no blame on your family — everything is his fault from beginning to end. There was a time when you were similarly so blinded by his presence that you assumed there was no darkness to be found.
“You have zerobusiness judging the employment of others with the line of ‘work’ you’re in.”
“Perhaps. And yet,” with the hand not on the steering wheel, he motions to your person. “You have no problem wearing a dress I obtained from my despicable ‘line of work’.”
Heat rises to your face and situates itself there, letting you know it won’t be going away anytime soon.
The garment had already cast guilt on you. After discovering the truth behind Chrollo’s weeks of absence and seemingly endless pit of money, you rid yourself of every material item he’d ever given you. Bags, jewelry, purses, shoes, and clothes; they were either donated or thrown out as looking at them for too long nauseated you. This dress was the lone exception, not that arguing this point would do you any good. You were reminded of your cousin’s wedding and the subsequent need to fly home for it while ridding yourself of his gifts.
The high-end places you’d undoubtedly be attending for such an event spurred you to save one, just one, of his expensive presents. Never had you expected to “coincidentally run in” to him and be subjected to his torments over the moral ambiguity.
After what feels like an eternity, he turns into the hotel you were able to reserve on a limited budget; a potential light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe he’ll part ways with you here. Sever whatever connection bound you in the past, giving you freedom to pursue a future without him in the picture. He should feel satisfied over the agony he subjected you to this evening. For months, if not years, you’ll endure questions from your family about that fascinating stranger who happened upon you that one night and proved himself a desirable bachelor.
“Did you not work out? Have you ever thought about contacting him again? Maybe smooth things over?” Queries such as this would be your personal agony, handcrafted by the man in question himself.
“There’s no need to sit there and pout,” Chrollo reassures, though his words promise the opposite of that. “You look lovely in it. And as you said, I have no business judging others.”
He doesn’t, but he’s going to anyway.
You shrink into yourself when he places his arm behind the passenger seat, a habit you noticed he has whenever he backs up. Before, it birthed life to butterflies in your stomach, but now, you want to create as much distance as possible. No space would ever feel like enough.
He turns the keys in the ignition and the car’s humming falls silent.
For some time, the both of you sit there, neither moving nor making a sound. Your eyes remain firm on your lap while you can feel his stare searing into your profile. You’re agitated, at a loss on what to do, and most pressing of all, you’re tired. His presence promises more than ill-timed appearances and caustic words meant to eat away at your high defenses. Considering this, your stomach twists painfully. No amount of faux bravado on your part can hide your apprehension from him. He smells it out, like a shark sensing blood in water.
All you had in your arsenal were words, sharp yet ultimately harmlesswords. What he boasted in his… you dread the thought.
“What do you want, Chrollo?”
It’s not that you want to ask, but that you feel there’s no other option available. This was a merry-go-round ride that would keep spinning until one of you fell off, and if anyone was going to fall, it would be you.
“I’ll let you decide that.”
He sounds sincere, however, you know better than to believe that. Suspicion must be written all over your face. He takes your hand in his and you let him. You wonder if he knows it’s his hands you fear the most, rivaled only by his hollow eyes that at times appear omnipotent. As they do now. At any given moment, he could see all of you, while you saw a mere fraction of him.
Maybe it’s a blessing he revealed only so much. If you witnessed the full depths of his depravity, you might never surface for air again, drowning in a vat thicker than tar.
How can so much darkness permeate from another human being? It was times like this where you couldn’t be certain if he wasone.
“I’ll either stay or leave by your discretion,” he announces, causing your eyebrows to scrunch together. Just when you thought you’d taught yourself to expect the unexpected with him, he finds new ways to throw you off-balance.
This has to be a trick. Something is hiding in the fine print, and you’re intent on finding out. “What does you staying look like?”
“You were always quick on the uptake,” he’s pleased, evidently, a factor he makes known by pressing a chaste kiss to your hand. All your self-control goes into not pulling yourself free. It may have been intuition or paranoia, but something told you he’d sooner let you dislocate your shoulder than allow you to pull away. Not after he’s waited months for this.
“We’ll get out of this car together. You’ll let me into your hotel room — your bed — then your life. Your parents invited you to breakfast tomorrow, didn’t they? I’ll come with you. I’ll see your childhood home, look at old photo albums at your mother’s behest and laugh at the stories she tells me from your youth. I’ll compliment the arrangement of the furniture, how the colors go together just so. She’ll be simply taken with me. Your father, too, naturally. I’ve already begun to make excellent progress on that front.”
You don’t think you could breathe if you wanted to.
Chrollo leans in closer, his lips brushing against your ear, his voice dropping to an intimate whisper that made your earlier dinner want to claw back up your throat.
“I will attend your cousin’s wedding this weekend as your date. I’ll charm your aunts, impress your uncles. Play with your nieces and nephews. You can introduce me however you like. A friend, a colleague from work. They’ll know. They’ll read between the lines. They’ll ask when they can expect to see you walk down the aisle to me someday in the future. You can cry, if you so please, but they’ll simply mistake it as a maiden who is head over heels in love. I’ll tell them to keep their calendars free next June, and they’ll laugh, perhaps you will too.”
He squeezes your hand to anchor you. Otherwise, you think your mind would’ve given you the reprieve of going someplace else, someplace safe and sane and anywhere but here. Hell itself may be preferable, if you weren’t already there.
“I will insert myself so deeply into your life, that to cut me out, you’d have to slice into yourself as well.”
You’re trembling now, like a leaf caught in a hurricane, with no hope of ever reaching solid ground again. Pushed and pulled by the whims of a being that so plainly outclasses you in every category.
What could you do? What could you say? Did it even matter what approach you tried to take? The web was spun and you were caught. The more you struggle the deeper embedded you become.
So you play by his rules and voice yet another question you don’t really want to know the answer to.
“And…” your lips are dry, so terribly dry, as is your mouth, “If… if I ask you to leave?”
He pulls back — not that it matters. It still feels like he’s there, the warmth of his breath, the woody notes of his cologne. Haunting you. Dominating you. Asserting that this nightmare isn’t over, oh no, it’s just getting started.
“That’s simple,” Chrollo takes your pallid face in his hands, stroking your cheek, gazing down at your through thick eyelashes. What gleams in his lifeless eyes, you can’t say for certain. You think it might be best if you remain ignorant to it. “You’ll come with me.”
A kiss to your cheek. He lingers this time, you’re in no position to protest. He savors the closeness he brought by interlocking you to his person with ironclad handcuffs.
“So, what will it be? I stand by what I said earlier. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Be a dear and share them with me.”
