Anonymous said:could you do any variation on a hero x villain type of snippet, preferably with hero held prisoner by the villain //
Anonymous said:I absolutely love your writing!!! Could I request a snippet about a villainous crush?
“You’re having nightmares again,” the villain said quietly.
The hero’s shoulders stiffened. They bit back a ‘no wonder’ and did their best to smooth their expression blank, but bleary from lack of sleep and still gasping from a quick awakening hiding their face completely seemed the better option.
The cold seeped through the bare soles of their feet. The hero’s fingers tightened on the window edge.
The villain’s footsteps came closer behind them. The hero clamped down on the instinctive urge to turn - seeing what was coming didn’t make much of a difference anymore. A warm hand rubbed (presumably) soothing circles against their corded muscles.
“Was it me again?” the villain asked.
It seemed a spectacularly cruel question to ask in so soft and concerned a voice, as if that didn’t just make it worse.
The villain’s gaze burned into the side of their face. One hand reached up, capturing their chin to turn their head for a better look. A gentle thumb wiped away a tear. “Ah, of course it is.”
It had been two months. Two months, three days, and one hour. A murky early morning so early as to still be called night, swollen and heavy with rain clouds as oppressive as the ‘kind’ hand on their back.
The hero’s jaw clenched. They jerked their head away.
“I told you that you should take those pills I got you,” the villain said. “They’ll help you sleep. You need rest. Look at you, you’re getting all worn around the edges.”
“Heavens forbid,” they spat. Heavens forbid that the villain’s trophy be anything other than perfect. “I’m not taking anything you give me!”
The villain sighed.
It seemed a threat. To have them sedated and groggy, drugged food and drink, or maybe just strapped down with a needle in their arm if they refused to come down to dinner. Because three square meals a day was healthy and they were clearly incapable of looking after themselves. The hero wanted to snarl. Mostly they wanted to sob.
“Come on, come back to bed.”
The hero let themselves be pulled along, mostly because they were too tired not to and because they didn’t want to see what the villain would do if they didn’t.
The villain switched on the bedside lamp, picked up the hero’s book discarded on the bedside table (what else was there to do, except read and plot and fight and the fighting was like mashing their head against the wall - painful and getting them nothing but a dull ache). They started reading aloud.
The hero studied their face, uneasily.
Two months, three days, one hour and twenty minutes, and they still didn’t know what to make of this. Of any of this. If they ever got themselves caught they expected death, or public humiliation, or some other unamed and awful thing.
This seemed an unnamed and awful thing, but far more difficult to get at. It was too cruel to be kindness, and too merciful to be cruelty. The villain had simply said they couldn’t allow the hero to keep fighting them. They hadn’t, overtly, tried to persuade them to switch sides. They hadn’t questioned them for information. They’d just…kept them. It was unnerving. Kept them in a nice room, supplied them with paints and books and whatever food or drink they asked for within reason.
None of it made any sense at all! Worse, they had their growing theories.
Two months, three days, one hour and twenty one minutes and they had yet to see what the trick was, see the mask crack if this was some attempt at stockholm syndrome, some manipulation.
“I dreamed,” the hero said, an edge in their voice, “that you were in love with me.” It was a lie, and a truth, and they wanted to see what the villain would say.
The villain’s voice cut off. Their hands froze around the book.
“Truly, a nightmare,” they murmured. “I can see exactly why you woke up screaming and crying. It’s by far my worst crime yet, love.”
Shit. The hero released a breath..
The villain touched them, frequently. A hand on their arm, through their hair, on their cheek. But not like that. It hadn’t been like that, they had never even raised the suggestion. The look on their face was obvious sometimes, but they’d hoped it was just an empty heat. Without heart. The hero could have dealt with that, used that, grabbed a fistful of the strings of that and used it to choke the bastard with.
People in lust were predictable. Easy. What they wanted was relatively simple and, in essence, it was always the same. People in love were the most dangerous creatures in the world. They didn’t all love simply, or kindly, or with reason. Lust faded. Love did not.
“It is when you don’t love someone back.”
“I wouldn’t need you to love me back. I need you to be safe and not to fight me.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing.” The villain glanced over, then, and the look on their face was utterly cold. “It’s a nightmare. I meant every word.”
The hero…honestly didn’t know what to say to that. The silence stretched, them wide-eyed and the villain watching them flatly. The silence stretched more, until the hero simply couldn’t bear the weight of it - thick with the early morning, the unsaid things, the heartbreak that anyone would love like that or think their love a bad dream.
They looked away, first. “Keep reading.”
It was the only thing they both enjoyed in these late night early mornings - to be someone else for a while. Just until the sun rose.
