#i'll probably write more once i get ms. teacup down

[purpleqilinwrites]

you.

a/n: i fell in love with homicipher and i couldn't help writing a little something for the most off-putting of all the potential love interests (affectionate)!!! i just had some thoughts about mr. scarletella's origin story and wrote a little something for him.

fandom: homicipher

character: mr. scarletella

genre: general (can be read as romantic)

info: reader can be read as mc

warnings: -

synopsis: mr. scarletella recognises the human who fell into the ghost apartments.

word count: 0.7k

Mr. Scarletella

There was someone new in the apartments.

It wasn't something that happened very frequently. As the self-proclaimed watcher of the apartments, Mr. Scarletella sped through the shadows to the place where the stranger's presence could be felt most keenly.

Irritation prickled across his skin when he noticed the crawling man had found the human first. He scratched his nails against the handle of the umbrella in his hand uselessly, thinking of how best to separate them from the other man. However—

YOU..?

(He looked up at you, peering down at him with a curious look on your face.

Scrubbing at his tear-dampened eyes, he quickly masked his sniffle with an unnecessarily loud series of coughs. Your expression never wavered, and he wondered if you were dumb. Couldn't you tell that he had been crying and was trying to cover it up? Dummy. Dummy, dummy.

You pressed something cool against his forearm. The carton of strawberry milk had begun to sweat in the late afternoon heat, a trio of droplets veering off-course and trailing down his skin instead. The dampness made him feel yucky. It reminded him again that while you were dumb, he was a crybaby. Weak. He was weak. Weak, weak, weak!

He was worse than you.

"Don't cry anymore, okay? They're gone!" You gave him a wide smile, your lips stretched as thinly across as your face as it could go and he could see most of your teeth. He was counting them, including the few gaps between where your new adult teeth hadn't yet sprung up, before he could stop himself.

"—'m already done!"

He snatched the strawberry milk you were offering him, remembering his manners and thanking you only after he had taken a large gulp of the sweet beverage. You didn't seem to care whether he would show appreciation or not, sipping noisily on your own carton of milk.

"Why did you give me strawberry?" he asked. He made sure that he had finished his milk before speaking. That way he wouldn't have anything to share, even if you wanted to try some.

You blinked slowly, keeping your eyes on the playground sand beneath your shoes and the patterns formed in them by the soles. "No reason!"

He snapped his head in the direction opposite of you. There was another yucky feeling in his chest. He knew it was because you'd be smiling at him again. If he looked, he would offer to buy you a new carton of strawberry milk from the vending machine, even if the last of his allowance was for his bus fare home.)

Not a lot of time had passed since you arrived at the apartments, but you managed to make a constant travelling companion of the crawling man. The other man was not a social creature. None of them in the apartments were.

YOU.

I KNOW YOU.

Something about your arrangement with the crawling man rubbed Mr. Scarletella the wrong way. At every instance when he spotted the two of you together, there was that prickle of irritation again, getting hotter each time.

It was almost funny, really. When was the last time he felt like this?

WHY HIM?

He intentionally announced his presence from down the seemingly endless hallway, dimming the already murky lights and artificially painting the whole place red. As far as his eyes could see, he made sure his presence could be seen and felt. If the human was who he thought they were, they would recognise him too.

They liked red. He liked red too.

I LIKE YOU.

The panic in the crawling man's voice was palpable as he approached. Mr. Scarletella swiped his tongue across his lips with much gusto. This was fun. He liked that the other man was afraid. If the human was really you, he would hope someone was keeping you safe in this savage place full of creatures that were worse.

He rounded the corner to where he knew the two of you were and peeked.

It was a mistake.

His blood boiled at the sight. You were cowering at the far edge of the hall, and the crawling man was kneeling to shield you from him.

NO. BAD!!!

WHY HIM?

WHY NOT ME?