Work Text:
The Goth Grand Hotel looms overhead, dark against the moonlit sky. Lisa fists and unfists her hands at her sides. The Fatui agent at the door stares boredly at her.
“Do you have business here?” He asks.
“I’m meeting an old friend,” she replies. An old friend. The words taste strange. They’re true, but also the code she was instructed to use, which makes her unsettled. Lisa Minci is a good sort of person, not the type to cavort with villains, especially not the bloodstained Fatui.
And yet, here she is, walking into Mondstadt’s grand hotel to meet a Fatuus.
An old friend, indeed.
The masked guards who escort her say nothing.
The hotel is familiar. She’s been here dozens of times to visit fellow academics from abroad. The architecture and decoration are classically Mond in their simplicity, electing solid jewel tones over the intricate patterns and rich palettes of neighboring Liyue. It smells vaguely of potpourri and dust. Lisa can nearly taste the dandelion wine chilling in the cellar, ready to be poured and sipped over late-night discussions. Since Regrator rented out the entire building solely for Fatui use, however, regular citizens have been barred from entering. It chills Lisa to think that the Fatui wield such influence, that even from across the globe they can seize whatever they like with an endless stream of gold and violence.
Their footsteps thump dully up the carpeted staircase. The long hallways suddenly seem impossibly short, presenting them with the last door in a matter of steps. They pause at the door and the Fatui agent to her left leans in.
“I’d advise against causing problems, Miss Minci. It won’t end well for you,” he growls in a low tone. Lisa scoffs and glares at him. The audacity of a low-level grunt to try and boss her around—was that on his orders?
The door opens before them, pulled by an unseen hand. Her stomach clenches as a long-grieved lover stands before her in the parlor, a ghost turned flesh, waiting patiently for her. It simultaneously feels too real and too fantastic. She is ushered in with a push.
When she enters, he smiles and dismisses his guards. He isn’t afraid of her.
He should be.
“Lisa!” Il Dottore spreads his arms invitingly, greeting her as warmly as any old friend. She holds up a palm to stop his approach.
“Take off the mask.” Her voice is like steel in the quiet parlor. Il Dottore pauses, but complies, unclasping the mask. He tosses it onto the table.
Lisa swallows around a lump in her throat. It is the same man from her youth, though slightly older and more grown into himself. Gangly limbs are now proportionate, a round boyish face cut like stone into a man. His red eyes peer at her from under pale lashes. He looks well, but tired. He’s always looked a bit tired, terminally unable to put himself to bed when hidden knowledge still beckons from between brittle pages. A shiny, pinkish web of scar tissue creeps across his face, blooming at his temples and curling across his eyes and nose like ivy. The sight of it makes her aghast and tender, sad to see the damage he has wrought on himself and enraged to see evidence of the suffering he has inflicted on others.
It seems that some things haven’t changed through the years, she thinks, but what has changed surpasses all else.
“So you are the man behind infamous Il Dottore?” The question burns as it spills from her throat. Her brilliant classmate from Akademiya, now this…monster. In their studies, he was unorthodox and argumentative, but to her knowledge his work had never strayed outside the realm of normalcy. To see his true identity confirmed makes her blood run cold.
“In a way.” He shrugs.
“In a way?”
“I’m just one part of a larger machine. It’s hard to explain—I doubt you’d believe me if I did.” He steps closer. She can smell the faint aroma of peppermint and acetone. “However—I didn’t ask you here to discuss the complexities of my life.”
She laughs.
“You expect me to simply ignore that you are a high-ranking Harbinger working against my homeland and chat with you like any old chum?”
“Just an old chum?” He cups her chin in a gentle hand. She can feel the heat radiating between their bodies. Despite her confusion, her surprise, her anger, her body sings to his, and they can both feel it.
“Come now, Lisa,” Il Dottore murmurs. She allows him to press his gloved palm against her cheek but doesn’t break her stony stare. Perhaps, if she looks long enough, she can see the young man from the Akademiya instead of the Fatui Harbinger.
Abruptly, she shoves two fingers in his mouth. Her gloves catch on his sharp teeth but he parts his lips gladly and sucks devotedly, ruby eyes hooded with desire as they continue their stare down. Lisa presses her fingers down his throat. He doesn’t even gag, muscles fluttering around the digits with ease.
“Tsk, I’m going to ruin my gloves.”
She pulls her fingers from his mouth, watching long strings of hot saliva drip down his chin. They stare at each other for a heartbeat and then he’s pulling her in by the waist, holding her close and bringing their faces together. She licks at the seam of his lips, pulling off her soiled gloves and throwing them next to the discarded mask.
She laughs when Dottore’s hands immediately go to grab handfuls of her ass, bringing her hips tight against his. He parts his lips and lets her deepen the kiss, letting out a small groan when Lisa drags her nails across his scalp and grabs a fistful of his hair. She sucks on his tongue, faintly tasting Mondstadt’s famous dandelion wine, and hooks a thigh around his waist. He’s so wonderfully solid under her touch. It’s unreal to her still, how someone can be so terribly different and yet exactly the same as remembered.
With one swift motion he pulls down her flimsy bodice and caresses her breast, soft leather gloves sending goosebumps across her skin. Lisa moans against him. His hands are warm, even through the gloves, and she wants to be touched more, harder, to have him take her like the brute he is. She grinds their hips together, hungry for friction. The pair stumbles into a side table and nearly sends a vase clattering to the ground. Lisa breaks the kiss to catch the antique in the nick of time. Dottore opts to bite at her neck, licking hot stripes along her pulsing jugular.
“Why don’t you take me to a proper bed, sweetheart,” Lisa murmurs, running her fingers through his hair as he kisses down her chest. She doesn’t want him to stop, but a change of scenery would be welcome.
“As you wish.” He places his other hand under her other thigh and lifts her up, causing her to shriek with surprise. She wraps her legs tightly around him as he carries her to the bedroom with no small amount of haste. She can hear his breath stutter when she bites his earlobe and tugs.
They fall onto the plush bed. Their lips meet in another frantic kiss, gasping and lapping hungrily. She keeps her legs wrapped tightly around his waist and rolls her hips up into his, moaning at the feeling of his body pressed against hers. He sighs into her mouth and starts to pepper hurried, wet kisses down the pale column of her throat. Big, warm hands push up under her dress and the Harbinger makes short work of her clothes, which are admittedly easy to take off by her own design. The sensation of his shirt rubbing against her pebbled nipples makes her whine. He soothes his thumbs across her skin and catches her mouth again once she is laid bare, save for her stockings and underwear. The weight of him on top of her is delicious. She loves fooling around with Jean, but she’s missed the pressure of being pinned down and rutted into like a beast claiming it’s prize.
“You are exquisite,” Dottore breathes, dragging his face down between her breasts, drool pooling in the warm valley. Lisa giggles and runs her hands through his hair, tugging gently.
“Show me exactly how exquisite you think I am. I cannot abide by a claim without sufficient evidence.”
“Ever the academic,” Lisa hears the Harbinger chuckle low in his throat as he starts to lathe his tongue across one of her nipples. She cries out as he bites down around it, tongue lapping up the blood seeping to the surface. He pinches and rolls the other one between his fingers, only switching sides when she whimpers.
Dottore kisses down her torso toward her pussy, letting his hands roam her body once more. Lisa smiles at his devotion, the way his red gaze sweeps across her skin to take in the sight of her. He’s always looked his best when adoring her, when his fiercely independent spirit melts like wax under her command. Lisa imagines she is one of very few privy to the more compliant side of the Fourth Harbinger and it gives her a thrill to recognize the power she has over him.
She cards her hands through his pale curls as he bites up the insides of her thighs. Her pale skin will surely bruise but she relishes the idea of his marks on her again, reminding her for days how he’s adored her. His thumbs press into the soft crease where thigh meets hip, rubbing slow, affectionate circles as he squeezes. Lisa bites her lip and smiles. He has such strong, gentle hands—she can’t wait to have them inside her. He placed the broad of his tongue against her panties, drool seeping into the delicate fabric.
Lisa hums encouragingly, voice hitching as Dottore mouths at her clit. His sharp teeth gently graze over the sensitive spot, making her thighs tighten instinctively around his head. His tongue draws broad strokes over her, breath puffing hot against her skin. His nose presses against her clit as he nuzzles against her sex, sucking her swollen lips through the damp satin. She shifted her hips forward to grind against his face.
“Oh, dear, it’s been years, please don’t make me wait any longer.”
Dottore’s hands slide lovingly along her inner thigh to pull her underwear to the side. Lisa sighs with delight as his mouth finally makes real contact. He alternates broad strokes and quick licks, aquiline nose pressed against her clit as he slides his tongue inside her, hot and wet against her walls. She rolls her hips against his face, urging him deeper, and grabs her own breast, squeezing and rolling the tender flesh until it nearly hurts. She can hear how slick she is in the quiet of the empty hotel and it makes her shiver with hot excitement. His drool and her wetness spilled down between her legs to pool on the bed, dampening the silk underneath their bodies.
She grabs a handful of his hair and pulls, making him moan against her. Obediently, he takes his hand from along her hip and easily inserts a finger. He wraps his mouth around her clit and sucks hard as he strokes her. His other hand grips her hip to hold her still. The witch clenches her thighs tight around his head when he adds a second finger and crooks them just so, petting over her g-spot. She sinks both hands into his hair and rocks him into her, fucking herself on his wicked fingers and grinding against his tongue.
“Zandik,” she breathes. He surges up to kiss her and she can taste herself on his tongue. He trails his mouth down her neck to suck more dark marks across her skin as he thrusts his fingers in and out.
“Tight as ever, aren’t you?” He murmurs, breath hot against the shell of her ear. She smacks his chest, scoffing.
“And you’re as crass as ever,” she replies scornfully. She feigns fury but his words set her alight. All her other lovers have been doting, kind—only Dottore had ever met her unspoken need for a bit of impertinence. It makes her wet to be treated so whorishly.
“Don’t tell me you’d have it any other way.” He presses his thumb hard against her swollen clit and makes her buck against him with a pitched cry.
“Remember how we’d sneak off into the stacks during study hours? Subclass QM for anatomy,” he whispers to her. “My sweet little instigator, touching me under the tables in the library because you wanted me to take the hint and go eat you out.”
Lisa clenches down around him, panting against his neck. It’s all true. Dottore has a brilliant and terrible way of making her feel delighted and ashamed of her desire. He’s always brought out the baseness in her—time, apparently, has not diminished this skill. She pulls his other hand from her hip to her breast and he begins to knead, pulling her sensitive nipple between calloused fingers.
“Who would think Academia’s finest would be such a slut?” His fingers move faster and she whines as heat builds inside her. Her whole body is hot with a delicious shame. “An intelligence only outclassed by her lust.”
Dottore’s drool drips down Lisa’s neck, pooling by her collarbone. Her body is tacky with sweat as she fucks herself on his fingers. She grabs a fistful of his hair and drags his face to hers, eagerly sucking on his tongue. He feels so good against her skin, biting and grabbing and petting across her core with his skilled hands. Her heels dig into his waist as she cums, moaning into his mouth and biting down on his lip.
His pace slows but he fucks her through it, coaxing out trembling aftershocks. She laps at the coppery blood pooling on his lower lip. The crudeness of blood smearing across their mouths makes her sigh with a demented sort of bliss. Dottore presses a kiss to her temple and pulls away, gently sliding his fingers out from inside her. Her pussy twitches at the loss.
“I hope you don’t think we’re done yet, cutie,” Lisa purrs, watching through half-lidded eyes as Dottore sucks his fingers clean. She nudges his knees apart with a stockinged foot. His readiness is apparent between his legs and the sight of it makes her arousal blossom anew.
“I wouldn’t dare hope for such a thing, my love.” He finally begins to shed his clothing, tossing the layers carelessly to the floor. Lisa trails her eyes over his body and slips off her soiled panties.
She touches her wet fingers to her lips as she watches him. He had called her exquisite but she finds him equally bewitching, a lovely mix of hard edges and soft planes. She can identify old, pale scars amongst the many ones new to her—she wants to map his skin with her mouth, to absorb every story his body has to tell of their time apart. She wants to run her hands across his chest, to drag her nails through the trail of hair that leads to his dripping sex.
He leans back onto his hands with a wolfish grin, thighs spread apart invitingly. She can see how swollen and wet he is. The sight makes her pride swell in her chest. It takes all of her self-control not to lunge and bury her face in that damp thatch of hair. She can almost taste him as she crawls over, swallowing a flood of saliva as she imagines the damp, sweaty scent. She guides one of his thighs over her shoulder and straddles him. They both sigh at the heat between them as their bodies meet.
Lisa starts to move her hips in a slow rhythm, savoring the wet sound of their cunts sliding together. She loves watching Dottore’s body roll and shiver as he returns the motions in kind, broad thighs taut with exertion and stomach rippling with each languid gyration of his hips. A flush creeps up her body as she watches him drink in the sight of her, red eyes blown out with lust. Lisa scoots forward, pressing their sexes together even harder, and they both moan at the perfect pressure.
“I forgot how pretty you are,” Lisa coos. He looks so good like this, flushed hot and dewy with sweat, gazing hungrily at her and trembling with need. She digs her nails into his calf as she bears down.
“Oh, stop—“ he huffs, snapping his hips faster. She watches beads of sweat roll down his chest and licks her lips. Not the Second Harbinger of the Fatui embarrassed, she thinks with amusement.
“Shy, now? What happened to all that bravado, cutie?”
“Archons, Lisa, I’m trying to—fuck!” His complaint dies in the wake of a moan as she reaches between them and lets a small electrocharge burst from her fingers.
“You witch,” he laughs through short pants. She giggles and pets across his swollen clit, keeping the low charge thrumming from her hands.
“I’ve never stopped researching the practical applications of electro, you know.”
Words fade from their lips as animal need builds, reducing them to moans and whines. The two work their bodies together, sweat-slick and panting. She’s digging long red gouges into his leg but neither party can be bothered enough to care—the only thing that matters is the pleasure between them, the sounds they draw from one another, the magnetic draw between their bodies that drives them to madness with its magnitude. The years apart have only made them hungrier. The friction between them burns hot, overheated by the electro. Dottore fists his hands in the sheets as he thrusts up against her, eyes squeezed shut and sweat pouring from his brow. The pressure inside is mounting with each desperate roll of their hips, coating their thighs with wetness and making it harder to grind down. Lisa shoves her hand further between them, pressing her knuckles against his clit.
She sends out a strong bolt and the pulsing crackle of magic sears through their bodies, ripping its way across every tender nerve ending and setting it alight. Lisa lets out a gasp as her orgasm tears through her, knees buckling under her. She falls back onto the bed as shivers run up and down her spine. Her eyes are still closed but she can sense Dottore, can feel the way his body stiffens, can hear the stuttering breaths that she so loves when he cums.
They lay panting in the quiet, limbs still tangled as cum seeps into the sheets.
“Did you have fun?” Lisa asks cheekily, a small smile forming on her lips.
Dottore launches himself at her, pinning her underneath his weight as he kisses and licks across her sweaty skin. He buries his face in her neck, hot breath puffing against her damp skin. She soothes her hands across his back, gently tracing across the web of scars. His hands roam her body greedily, palming and squeezing as though trying to memorize every curve and contour by touch alone.
“I am not often presented with an opportunity to be sentimental, and so I must admit: I’ve missed you, Lisa Minci.” His voice is low and raspy. It sends shivers down her spine to hear the softness of the words.
With a nudge of her hand against his cheek she brings his mouth back to hers, and she melts. The kiss lacks all previous ferocity, replaced by a tenderness that makes her heart ache. She presses their foreheads together and takes a deep breath, peering into his eyes.
“I’ve missed you, too,” Lisa says, the words throaty with long-suppressed heartache. She cups his face in her hands and traces her thumbs along the raised ridges of old burns.
She leads him back to her again, hands gentle and voice sweet. He is pliable under her touch, now, and seems content to follow her lead. The rooms of the suite fill with sweet nothings and breathy moans. The night is endless, bubbling over with desire and opportunity. They oscillate between gentle and rough, feverish and languid, tearing into each other as if they can find the lost time within themselves. By the time the two are sated, they are sticky and sweaty and wine-soaked. The bed sheets are damp but neither of them can be bothered to fetch fresh linens.
She curls up against him, resting her cheek on his chest. She shouldn’t, even though it feels divine to rest her heavy head and feel his heart beat under her. She should kill him now, take advantage of the vulnerability of the afterglow and send a bolt straight to his heart.
Her fingers twitch with unreleased magic but she can’t bring herself to break the spell.
As she watches his chest rise and fall, her eyes and fingertips wander to his scars. The injury runs from his face down his chest and to his palms. He must have held his hands up for protection during the explosion. She wonders how long it must have taken to heal. She didn’t see him after the laboratory burst—he’d been chased from town by a mob.
What easy pickings for the Fatui: an outcast genius capable of horrendous monstrosities, wounded and angry and dripping red blood into the fresh snow. She supposes given the nature of his experiments at the Akademiya, his fate with the Fatui had been inevitable. She never could have saved him.
It pains her to think of the path he has taken. Can she do this? Can she separate the man from the Fatuus? To be literally sleeping with the enemy—the consequences of getting found out are beyond her imagination. Shame floods her body and she pulls away, shuffling toward the side of the bed.
“Leaving so soon?” Dottore asks lazily, propping up on his elbows. He watches her slip on her wrinkled clothes with love-drunk eyes.
“It’s nearly dawn,” she points out. “I’d like to leave with as much cover of darkness as I can.”
He grunts in agreement, seeing her point but clearly unhappy with her departure. He moves to sit on the edge of the bed and watches her finish dressing in silence. Lisa clasps her capelet and turns to look at him, trying to push away a wave of undeserved affection that rises in her chest. He looks at her, gaze soft, and holds out a hand. Against her better judgement, she takes it. His scarred, callous skin is warm. She smooths her fingers over his scars.
“And if I wish to see you again?” His voice is quiet.
Lisa’s gaze flickers uncertainly from Dottore to the doorway.
“Send me another letter, and I will consider it.” It is the only answer she can offer him. She should not meet him again.
She wants to.
She pulls her hand back and leaves him in the pre-dawn quiet. His gaze pierces her skin as she walks away. The two agents are still posted outside the door. They dutifully escort her to the entrance without a word. The hotel doors close behind her with a decisive click, and she is suddenly very alone in the empty streets of Mondstadt.
The air is cool outside the hotel, sending a welcome chill across Lisa’s skin. Her body blazes still from Dottore’s touch, bruises creeping to the surface and quilting her skin in a dappled mosaic. A slight breeze blows, ruffling her mussed hair. She raises her gaze to the statue of Barbatos and says a small prayer for forgiveness. Surely the god of freedom would extend his grace to her—is bodily autonomy not one of the things he’s sworn to assure amongst his people? She isn’t sure, but it’s not like she would be able to ask one of the Sisters without giving herself away.
She takes a deep, steadying breath.
It is only human to make a mistake, and this is not one she will make again.
Probably.