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naffeclipse · 3 months ago

Text

Brain Damage

Reader x Sebastian Solace

Commission Info

Thank you so much to @o-cinnamonstickz for requesting the hot fish we've both been obsessing over for a hot minute! After a blow to the head, the reader wakes up in none other than the merchant's arms, and he has a few things to check before he'll allow you to continue on. You know, just friendly fish shopkeeper things!

Content Warnings: Injuries. Violence. Mentions of gore.

———

Pain draws you out of the darkness you were so sweetly nestled in. A blunt ache furiously pulses in your right temple, demanding attention. A groan slips from you. You weakly writhe and arms tighten around you.

A thrum works in your ears, blending into a monotonous buzz before your consciousness begins to splice the noises. A thick stream of water falling in a dull roar. The constant echo of something just beyond the walls and doors, someone screaming or turrets firing. You never did like to focus on those.

A voice springs into your awareness. Lowered into a hiss, it slithers against the edges of your consciousness in a familiar timbre.

“Wake up.” Two firm hands shake your shoulders and you whine. “That’s it, come on. Wake up.”

“Leave me alone,” you mewl. You try to twist away and kick out your feet but a heaviness surrounds you. The sharp pressure points of claws dig into your flesh. You stop at once.

“Not a chance,” the voice chuckles.

The pain persists, and you’re forced to crack open your eyes. A light blue face blurs against the gray facility walls—the north side is ripped out completely. A burst pipe sends a waterfall down into the darkness. The ground is cool but you’re propped up on something solid but slick. One arm slips away from you. Three glowing eyes pierce through the haze of your vision.

Sebastian?

A few seconds trickle by as your vision focuses on the sharp-tooth grin looming over you. The fluorescent lights are pale, sterile, and cold. Sebastian’s angular fish lure is warm and yellow and soft, dangling above you as his eyes hungrily sweep over your person.

You didn’t think he ever left his safe room. Of course, he does, but you didn’t know he’d leave it for you.

You grunt as another wave of pain taps into your skull. The blunt ache chisels away at your concentration as if someone with a vendetta and a hammer decided to open up your head.

“Welcome back.” Sebastian pulls away slightly. He sweeps back his dark hair from his face, and his eyes squint slightly in concentration. In a harsher tone, he commands, “Hold still. Stop squirming.”

“I’m not,” you mutter, but your defiance echoes childishly. You wince and aggravate the pain in your skull.

Sebastian smirks. A smugness decorates his inhuman face as he leans closer. A spark of indignation burns through you but it dies as quickly as it flares.

Okay, fine. You stop trying to escape from your position, caught against his tail and where he hovers over you. His hands pin down your shoulders. Bulky sensations of packs are tucked behind your shoulders, propping you up in a manner of really, really awful pillows. Slowly, you huff, blowing a piece of hair out of your face.

“There, now is that so hard?” he purrs condescendingly, eyes impish and superior. “You should be a lot more grateful for help, friend.”

Sucking in a sharp breath, your eyes narrow into slits sharp enough to form daggers at the merchant who so decidedly has you in his grasp.

Through gritted teeth, you ask, “What are you doing here?”

His mouth quirks at one corner. You stare as he lifts a hand from your shoulder to brush your hair up your forehead, exposing the side of your face currently engulfed in pain. His large palm settles delicately above your head wound. Your flesh prickles at the slightest graze of his claws over your scalp, triggering a sensitive input of nerves down your neck that nearly causes you to squirm again.

“I was going to scavenge a few things off of your corpse. Lucky for you, you’re not dead.” His glowing eyes hold your gaze. “What happened? I found you unconscious on the floor.”

“Uh, yeah, that,” you draw out slowly.

Sebastian drums his other hand’s claws along your shoulder, his expression shifting into displeasure or suspicion. You’re not certain.

Your attention shifts. Memory ripples with waves of pain, but you drag a hand through your murky recollection.

You were walking through a dark room. There were two doors, each with glowing number signs. One held a slight static, but it was closer. You didn’t think anything of it—the facility is compromised in every way, so why not the screens as well? But that was your mistake.

“It was a fake door,” you sigh deeply. “I didn’t know Good People was behind it.”

Sebastian’s stare could pin you to the floor like a bug and write your classification as “stupid.” To your dismay, you can’t rebuttal him.

“You didn’t check to hear if there was growling or breathing?” His voice is so sharp and abysmal with judgment, you flinch. The thick, corded muscles of his tail tense around you.

“I… I…” you murmur, a heat filling your cheekbones, but you're stalling. Did you check?

It was a blur. You shoved the door open only to freeze at the sight of a red mass of viscera. It moved. A smiling white mask snapped in your direction and three large claws on the end of its three-fingered hand struck, knocking you off your feet and backwards. Your temple hit the ground with a solid whack that reverberated within you.

Darkness rushed into your vision. You remember the slam of the door, the inhuman growl, and then the slight smell of fish.

Sebastian’s hands flex along you. He lowers himself closer, face to face. You try to lean away but his thick serpentine body prevents you from regaining any more precious space.

“What do you remember?” His glowing gaze flashes from one eye to the other, peering into them so deeply, you fear what he’ll find. “Do you have trouble recalling anything else? Concentrate on me.”

“What? No,” you stubbornly shake your head but his palm grips your skull and holds you still. You only achieve a strain on your neck. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What’s my name?” he asks firmly. His anglerfish lure slips into view, dusting your face in its soft yellow glow. You squint against its proximity.

You growl under your breath. “Sebastian. Are you happy now?”

He nods. “Yes, that’s my name.” But there’s no joy spilling over his expression now that you’ve uttered what he wanted to hear.

Between the hand gripping your head and the one holding your shoulder, he has you secure like a mouse in the mouth of a cat. You curse as his third arm, slightly smaller than the other two, reaches for your face.

“Open your eyes wide.”

On a reflex of spite, you nearly close them, but the nature of his questions finally slots into place in your pain-riddled mind.

“Oh, please, I don’t have a concussion.” You would roll your eyes but you’re a bit preoccupied with how his hand cups the side of your face.

“You were bleeding and unconscious when I found you,” he retorts. Sebastian’s claws frame the socket of your eye, pressing into your skin to hold your eyelids up. “Open your eyes wide. Let me watch the dilation and then I can see if all of your complaining is due to true brain damage.”

A seething retort sits behind your teeth but your muscles draw taut under his cool skin and wicked talons only centimeters from your precious vision.

Willingly, you allow him to draw his anglerfish lure back and forth in front of you, into your view, and back out. In the time you’re trapped under his diagnostics, you study him in return. His eyes are wide and bright, unnatural for humans but they refract like fish caught in a flash of a camera in the abysmal depths of the sea. His teeth are razor-sharp. Frills stick out between the locks of his hair in place of ears. You feel the slight wiggle of his tail behind you, his flukes flipping in the slightest while in his concentration.

“At least your mind seems mostly intact,” he hums. His hand falls from your face and you blink at last. “So you just can’t remember because you weren’t thinking, were you?”

“Can it, tuna fish,” you huff. “I just want to sleep this off and be on my merry way.”

His tail coils slightly tight against your back. You glance down to his shiny scales intercut with belts and straps of pouches from where he stuffs the goods he pillages from around the facility.

“I’m afraid you can’t sleep. Not for the time being,” he muses as he draws his claws over your scalp to cradle the back of your head. “Unless you’d like to never wake up again.”

“And you’re going to keep me awake?” you breathe, exasperated. “I’m not bleeding anymore and—wait, how did you find me?”

Now you skew you with a look, your brow furrowing with a splash of hurt along your temple. Sebastian shifts in the slightest, caught off guard in a way you haven’t seen the saboteur before. His claws curl.

“Just a little tracking device. No big deal.”

Your eyes widen, furious beyond words. You lift your hands to shove him away from you, but he catches your wrists. You try to get to your feet but his strength easily overwhelms your own, and he firmly keeps you pressed against his tail.

“You put a tracking device on me! Of course, you did—I’m not even surprised!” you snarl. “Where is it?”

“Let’s not worry about that right now,” he grins.

You clench your fists. Your hands are so small, balled up above his three-fingered hand shackles. He reminds you how tiny you are underneath him.

The tracking device has to be on your air canisters. You would have felt it on your clothes.

“Why did you put a tracker on me?” you demand, almost thrashing while pain pulses in your temple. You feel rabid like you want to bite him. Could you? Probably, but you have a gut feeling he’d throw you over the ledge if you did.

His grin remains unchanging despite the slight twitch at the end of his tail. “Like I said, I was going to scavenge a few things off of your corpse.”

A bonfire ignites within you. You can hardly snap your teeth as heat fills your mouth.

“I’m going to smoke you and dip you in tartar sauce.” You test his grip but he holds firm, and you remain trapped. “Let me go!”

“If you want to take a nap and never wake up, be my guest,” he hisses, the sound curling in your eardrums and sending a shudder through your body. He presses closer, each sharp tooth in his maw on full display. “But if you don’t want to pay the ferryman, I suggest letting me help you, friend.”

You hold his unyielding gaze, licks of furious flames still eating away at your ribs. There’s logic in his argument. Though you’re not so sure why he’s offering to help you without a price tag attached. He’s helped you, yes, allowed you to buy some of his scavenged goods, and told you to be careful, but this seems to be more than a merchant’s role. Can you refuse his offer? You may very well be concussed. And if you die, do you want to spare a coin for the ferryman?

Slowly, you breathe out.

“Fine,” you jerk your chin at his hands still engulfing your arms. “Give me back my hands. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I thought so,” his smugness is not much better than a fire poker stirring up your rage. A chuckle rolls out of his mouth.

His large hands unfurl, releasing you, and you cross your arms over your chest with a scoff. You smell the slight scent of salt-like sweat and the musk of fish. You wonder how long his essence will stick to your skin. Sebastian settles back onto his tail, still close to hovering over you, but no longer bursting your bubble with his three hands.

You froth with rage. Sitting in the crook of his tail, propped up, almost child-like in your pouting, you search for barbs with which to spur Sebastian, and you do not come up empty-handed.

“I used most of the stuff I bought off of you,” you announce, baring your teeth in something that could be a smile were it not for the internal fire you’re still fueling. “You would have gone to a lot of trouble just for a broken flashlight and one flash beacon—oh, wait. I forgot. You love flash beacons, don’t you?”

His scowl could curdle your blood, but he shifts, jostling you slightly and causing the wound in your temple to pound. You lift a hand to it, cursing under your breath. Growling low under his breath, he leans forward and sweeps a few locks of your hair back to study where you hit your head against the floor. You hold still at his touch.

“At least I’m not the idiot who chose the door that had the Good People behind it.” He hisses quietly under his breath, mumbling something more; most likely more insults while he studies your wound. “Keep talking. We’re going to be here a while and I will keep you awake.”

Your arms slowly loosen from around you. Sebastian reclines, resting his face in his hand as he remains draped around you, a coil of safety against the dangers and unknowns of the facility.

“You’re enjoying this too much,” you mutter, but give a nod of agreement.

#naff's writing commissions #sebastian solace x reader #come get your hot fish #he's obnoxious and smug hehe #naff writing

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