Summary: A doctor is a lifeline. In the Jack of Hearts game, Chishiya strives to be yours.
yeah, i took the physician reveal and ran with it. i tried to get into his head to portray him as well as i could in writing this and accidentally fell head over heels. let me know if i did him justice?
warnings: large helpings of anxiety, chishiya-esque emotional manipulation, though affectionate. mentions of sex, fwb setup, my attempt at sounding medically educated.
word count: 2741
It's human nature to fuck up. He should've known to expect it from you.
It was beginning to wear him down, your constant knee bouncing and nail biting since the third hour of this game. All he needed to do was watch. He was wildly curious to see how this would all play out, and he knew he was safe. Knew you were safe.
All things considered, it was a low-risk game: only trust was required, and he'd scored that easily by taking you under his wing. However, The idea of the Jack of Hearts was a poison injected into the bloodstream of the prison's population. The symptoms of distrust and paranoia would migrate through the ranks, and the masses would spiral and die.
It was a simple game. The key was to not let your protector get infected.
But the symptoms were visibly taking a hold of you. The cafeteria table shook with your anxious tics, the water in your bottle sloshing enough to disrupt his attention on the surrounding cafeteria. He wouldn't complain though. You weren't annoying, no, but you could soon put him on edge if he let you spiral like this, and then he'd be infected too.
"Chishiya," you called softly, clearly nervous to disrupt his spectating.
He didn't tear his eyes from the scheming girl in the dress. She was particularly interesting in this setting; and by his deductions, not likely to be the Jack. "Hm?"
Your voice came meeker than normal. "What's my suit again?"
He turned slowly, a brow quirked over a relaxed eye as he finally gave you his attention. "You forgot?"
"No. Just tell me."
He sighed silently through his nose, calculating your thoughts. To ask this after he'd told you twice already, you must've been anxious about one of two things. One, that your addled mind would fool you into speaking the wrong suit. Or two, that you couldn't trust him.
"Heart," was all he said.
And you nodded. Your eyes hardened, clearly visualising the shape before your eyes. 'Heart,' he could practically see your mind reciting. 'Heart.'
Or... Was that a calculating look? He flexed his jaw. Were you possibly tallying up the likelihood that he'd lied to you?
He focused on the accidental downturn of his lips. He shouldn't be double reading you like that - his own intuition was the only concrete thing he had. He'd never been wrong before. He'd kept the both of you alive for this long based on his skill alone, and he'd not let your lives slip away in a measly Jack's game.
With a slow blink, he made the conscious choice not to chip away at his own trust in himself, as was undeniably the Jack's aim in this game.
Chishiya's gaze lowered to where your fingertips danced on the tabletop. A heart shape. Over and over. Frantic, disturbed. You were slipping.
Against his better judgement, he reached out a hand to clasp over your fingers, quietly amused when those sweet, round eyes fixed on his face. You were so scared, so anxious, and the part inside of him that felt for you lit a soft smile on his lips.
You'd never been good at heart games with that anxious disposition, but that was why he'd kept you by his side. You were an easy window into the minds of his surroundings with how easily he could read you. Your distress on the outside showed blatantly the fear of the people in this game. Everyone under the roof would be feeling it. Even the Jack... Especially the Jack.
