𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭 !? ♡ [BL]

⟢ 04 .

( warnings! 💬 ) brief mention of su!c!de .

• ───────────────── •

"What. The fuck."

You blinked, hard, then several more times in quick succession until the dancing patterns before your closed eyes became a little too much to bear.

Lain Vandenberg.

"Are you excited to see me?" He smiled, inching not so subtly closer. His servantly decorum had been utterly abandoned without a second thought, and now he stared at you with glittering eyes that surely spoke of his jubilance. Just when had he closed the door?

Fuck, had he locked himself in with you?

He didn't seem to pay it any mind, and instead just took another step nearer. "You missed me, didn't you? Say you at least thought of me, since I really, really, really missed you!"

You pushed him away before he could lock you in a familiar, tight embrace. "Missed? I thought you were dead, Lain." You decided to ignore his question. It couldn't possibly be that Lain was some sort of hallucination, or worse, an imitation, but you wouldn't put it past that damned prince to press himself so far.

That, and Lain himself was behaving oddly. He'd always been quite the energetic person, even when he was still in training in the year after yours. Of course, there was the matter of his mood swings, but while admittedly frequent, they were still squashed under his dominantly sunny disposition, almost too much so. It was he who had breathed some life into your monotonous work life.

Ah, what you'd do now to return to such dreary and bland times.

"You've always had your hair short too, so don't be too upset about me taking longer than it should've to recognize you, yeah?" You'd usually ruffle his hair at a time like this, though it was best to stay cautious.

He didn't seem to notice the way you dodged his query, and instead chuckled, running a hand through the locks that fell past his shoulders subconsciously as if to confirm what you said was true, even if he knew the answer full well. "It's for the immersion... C'mon, m/n. I didn't just lounge around for six months... I've been working hard, I'll have you know." He pouted, an uncanny action that reminded you of the way Nikolai-

On second thought, there was no need to think about the vile man — you were getting sidetracked. A part of you wanted to hit yourself. Maybe then you'd be able to knock some sense into that brain of yours. Usually, your thoughts traversed on a relatively direct path without any distractions. Had it been the panic settled in your veins the moment Nikolai grabbed you by the neck, that made it so the simplest of thoughts couldn't be conjured without five other irrelevant topics surfacing alongside it?

You made yourself semi-comfortable on the other end of the bed, eyeing the door absentmindedly. "Immersion?"

"Right, immersion!" His voice, all of a sudden, rose in pitch, and he snapped his fingers with a grin. It was as if the figurative mask over his features had shattered, and now he beamed at you with a familiar merriment. "Now that I'm with you, I can stop being all, uhm... mysterious, right?"

"...What?"

With those words said, he catapulted himself into your arms, wrapping his own around your waist firmly and burying his face into the crook of your neck, and began the only natural course of action, of course, complaining. Something about the way it all happened made it so you couldn't refuse. "Blegh, it's so tiring acting like this moody servant all the time! I know he died last year, and I'm supposed to impersonate him or whatever, but what's with this awfully cheerless personality of his?? Of course impersonation is an easy task for someone as skilled as me, but they didn't tell me work would be so boorinnggg-!"