Dead By Daylight [OneShots]

The Mastermind X (Male) Reader X Chris Redfield [P1]

"Lets go! I wanna show this to everyone. I bet my ass the cavemen would spit at us in jealousy! We're making it out alive with this one." She gave out a loud sassy laugh and then led you through the fog towards the smoke in the darkened skies, "Chris would be the proudest, but I ain't giving it out for free."

"He would surely be glad to see it." You hoped he would be.

Maybe he would give you a word or two of encouragement. Or even better, if he is truly happy, he might pat your back and tell you that you had finally done it...like your father should have.

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"Why do you always have to be hard on him?" She asked with the same strained eyes, "He's but a boy. A boy, can't you see?! What do you expect from him, a child? You're a man!"

"And so he should be when he grows up!" Each time his tone was raised, at anyone, at anything, you saw a little of you disintegrate in the dark where you always stood, hoping that he couldn't see you. Or maybe just a silhouette, a shape of something that was one with that dark, that was maybe everywhere and so he couldn't define it in its entirety.

And each time he spoke with that sharp voice, it made you think of that feeling which could mostly resonate with a bitter taste of rusted iron rod, or the pungent scent of it in a rotten room. Why you had to draw parallels between them when there wasn't any? You had thought about it, but that little learned brain of yours looked more for resemblances than it could conjure independent thoughts. It was sharp, and it was rotting.

It was rotting like you in the dark that had become your home, a safe home from which you didn't dare to run. The dark that concealed you for you were scared. You were scared of what you were to the man you loved, but you feared so much that the love had been dissolved into that repulsive solution you had no name for, eroding into nothingness.

"The boy needs love, and you're giving him none of it."

"What do you want me to do?" He lashed out again, those massive big calloused hands clenched into a fist so hard you feared it might break itself, "Coddle him?! Take him into my arms like an infant and shush him as he cries?!"

"Listen to yourself!"

"No!" He raised his fists, and you doubled up. This is it, you told yourself, your mother won't have to bear no more of this and you will man-up.

You will...man-up.

The fists however never came down on that frail form. It remained in the air, but the damage was done. She was hit...she had seen it, she was told her place once again. Their place. Beneath him. Beneath those fists so high in the air no eyes dared to raise to that level.

And he remained in the dark. Cowering away in terror, head held down with invisible weight.

"He ain't no boy, no infant! He has to stand up, not cry and whimper among others like a girl. He's a fucking boy. Tell him to stop being a fucking pansy!"

"Watch your words, he's here!"

Your mother was always so kind. She never told you what to be. She let you prosper in your safe space. And she always shielded you. You admired her for her silent affirmations, which were stronger than your father's fists. They did what he couldn't, they made a difference. They seeped within your veins and nurtured you, strengthened you from inside.

After all, it made sense to you. What could you do against three boys twice your size? Curl up in a ball, indeed. That's what a pup does in a pack of wolves growling at him. You knew you were powerless, and you accepted it. At least the scared pup in your arms got to live instead of watching its tail shredded to pieces, or whatever the rowdy coke-addict boys in the dirty alleys of your neighborhood chose to do to it afterwards if it was unfortunate enough to live.