#aaaaAAAAAAAAh its finally done!! i was such a nasty perfectionist with this one but i feel its still not perfect

[myers-meadow]

A sneaking suspicion: Mischa (OC) x reader

Title: A sn(e)aking suspicion

Pairing: my OC Mischa x reader.

Summary: During a ghost hunting case in an old university, things don't add up. There's a strange sound in the walls, and as you dread having to tell the headmisstress about the bullying that took place, you search deeper. And deeper. There you find a sorcerer, a being of magic, who has a proposition for you.

Warnings: threats of violence, mentions of bullying, a snake. Nothing graphic. Reader has long hair.

Word count: 2324 words

Here he is!! I hope you enjoy this first introduction into this new world (that isn't all too different from ours), and that you have fun meeting Mischa! ✨ Please let me know what you think; reblogs, comments are all very welcome! If you have anymore questions about this universe or about the characters - don't be shy, I'd love to answer them <3. Thank you so much again for your encouragment and kindness @vincent-sinclair-deserved-better @devil-doll13 @house-of-slayterr <3

Dividers by delishlydelightfuldividers

“So, this college,” I started, looking at the headmistress’ stern face, “is haunted?”

Sharing a look with my ghost hunting partner and boyfriend, Timo, just as his gaze flickered over to me with the same concern. Something really serious must have happened here if the haunting was legitimate. Which will unavoidably be something headmistresses don’t like having to deal with.

“The students said the apparitions manifested mostly in the girl’s bathroom on the second floor. Follow me.”

Her heels clacked on the pristine marbled floors, and before long, the door to the haunted bathroom swung open. It smelled strange inside, like a mix of food gone bad and pine scented cleaning supplies. Timo stepped in first, setting down his big backpack to take out some equipment. He handed me the tripod to set up as he took the camera from its case. Walking around the space, white with bright LED lighting, I tried feeling a spot where it would be good in. Nothing felt out of the ordinary yet, so I settled for in the corner, with sight of the mirrors and the door to the hallway, rather than the toilet stalls.

“All good?” Timo asked, and I nodded. He screwed the camera on top of the tripod, as he did so, I checked out the stalls. To see if there was any writing, any cold spots, weird gusts of wind… Nothing. Only a very strange sound from the pipes overhead. As if something… slithered. Not water, no, and not the creaking of old pipes either. There was no toilet cover, so instead I hiked up my skirt and stepped up on the seat to see if I could hear it better. Just as I reached up to the ceiling, Timo pushed open the door to the stall.

“What you doing in here?” he asked. The noise faded.

“Thought I heard something,” I mumbled, letting him help me down.

“And?” the headmistress started, tapping her foot impatiently. “What did you find?”

“Nothing yet, ma’am,” said Timo, and took out some more equipment. Temperature sensor, listening device…

“Are there any other locations that are said to be haunted?” I asked, to keep the headmistress occupied.

She shook her head. “But I wouldn’t know, perhaps you’d better talk with the students.”

And so I did. The weird sound seemed to follow me through the walls or ceiling. When asked, the headmistress said it was old copper pipes, but it seemed unlikely. The rushing of water when someone took a shower was also audible, but this was distinct. The interviews with the students were as expected; no, they didn’t see much, no, they never messed with the occult, no, they never went left their rooms past curfew. They were lying, of course. There was one girl, more quiet than the rest, who received strange looks from the others. After I said we were done with the questions, the group relaxed. On the way out, it just so happened I was heading in the same direction that the lone girl was: the library. She looked clever, with sharp brown eyes.

“I can tell there’s something no one’s telling me. And I don’t mean sneaking out after curfew, I don’t care about that.”

She regarded me from the side, clutching her book bag to her chest. “You’re not gonna tell the headmistress?”

I shook my head with a laugh. “I frankly don’t care if you went out after curfew, did drugs or went to the boy’s wing. This is just my job. If we solve whatever’s going on, we get paid. The rest doesn’t matter to me.”

With a strange look, she leaned in closer and said: “Have you ever seen Carrie?”

It was almost unbelievable; a case of bullying so severe that the poor girl left school (some say she went home, others say she died, we can’t know for sure), and now her ghost and residual bad memories haunted the place. After this came out and I confronted the earlier students a second time, they had more details to share. Some recalled ‘buckets worth of blood falling from the ceiling’, or pipes bursting. Weird whispers in the library, things levitating, all of that was seen, according to students. The girl who talked to me was one of the reluctant bystanders of the bullying, and it was a great relief to her to finally have adults involved. Something still bothered me, though. What was the noise then? Those could hardly be described as whispers. We’d have to talk to the student who went home after this phase of research was done, and it felt like an idle hope to have our questions cleared up fully. None of it added up.

Checking in with Timo went as usual, he said we needed more evidence (partly for the case, partly for on the blog), so even though I wanted to get out of there, we’d be there for a while. He wasn’t one to listen to feelings and dismissed my suspicions. Sometimes a case is just too easy, but to him that was just a lucky one. Not particularly feeling like keeping the headmistress company and hearing her “How could this happen, and right under our noses!” for much longer than needed, so I went off following the strange noise in the walls.

The university was inside of a strange, old building, older than I previously thought. And larger, almost maze-like. Some parts of it had bullet holes still in the walls, and I traced my fingers over them as I listened for the direction of the sounds. Deeper, and lower, my search took me. There was a cellar, with racks for wine, and behind one of the large barrels was a wooden door, that led to a backroom. The deeper I went, the more the feeling that something wasn’t right with this school crept up on me. After descending a ladder – which should have really been a red flag – there were tunnels. That in itself wasn’t strange, lots of old buildings have tunnels, right?

It was dark, but decently lit enough with the flashlight on my phone. The space smelled of dirt and stale water, a natural scent. The stones of the small tunnel were worn down in spots, moss growing in the cracks. After a bit, symbols lined the walls and my heart hammered in my chest. This wasn’t a simple ghost, this was occultism. I was right, something’s down here! Timo’ll never believe me. Some of the symbols reminded me of old sigils, but it was hard to tell, as they were crudely etched into the imperfect bricks. I turned a corner, trying to listen, but there was only the echo of my footsteps and the blood rushing in my ears. A sound echoed, different, almost a voice, and I halted, heart skipping a beat. Again, it was… hissing. The hissing of an animal. Covering my phone flashlight with my hand, I inched closer, letting the smallest bits of light be enough. The sound moved away. Not wanting to lose whatever was down here, wanting so stupidly badly to find out what it was, I followed the sound hastily. Another corner and- a door. Light shone from under it. There was only half a thought of how strange it was, for this tunnel system to end in such an ordinary looking door, but it didn’t stop me from opening it.

Inside was a room, lit by candles and oil lamps. A much more welcoming space, compared to the damp tunnels. A somewhat normal room, a study, with a desk, chairs, a bookshelf. The back wall was lined with pillars, gaping darkness beyond them. And by the desk in the middle of the room a man. He turned as he heard me come in, and beckoned me in.

I wanted to say something, ask what he was doing here, who he was, but nothing came out, as I stared at the symbols drawn on the floor. They came to a central point and I made a mental note to avoid its centre.

“Welcome,” the man said, “make yourself at home.”

At first I thought this could be a misunderstanding, but the shivers that ran down my spine were sure this was nothing good.

“Who are you?”

“I’m surprised you got this far. You are here because of the,” he waved his hands around, “happenings upstairs?”

“That was you? They thought it was a ghost.”

There were markings on his face, small ones, but enough to show he wasn’t an ordinary man. A sorcerer. I’ve only heard the stories, enough to make my heart skip a beat. He smiled as if he knew.

Softly, he spoke words in an entirely different language and the sound from before returned, closing in, growing louder. Then, through the pillars, the head of a giant monstrosity of a dragon- no! A snake! I stared at it, slapping my hand in front of my mouth in shock at the size of it. Those horror movies with the giant snake in the rain forests hold no candle to this one. To witnessing it in person. Like standing in the middle of a storm, aware of the brute force of nature, of how small and insignificant my tiny human life is. The creature, flicking its tongue out to smell the air – smell my fear – and slid more and more of her into the room. Her body was long too, and soon she blocked off the exit I came in here with, and kept going. I turned around to keep looking at her, in a circle. It was as if there was no end to her.

“You and that boyfriend of yours make a nice team.” The man spoke again and in my amazement, I’d almost forgotten he was there. My eyes snapped up to his.

Bewildered, I pointed to the snake, who coiled more of itself into the room, already pushing the desk aside to reach its master.

“She is yours?”

“It's easy to tell you're the real brain behind your operation," he continued without answering the question. "A bit reckless though, going down into an old tunnel system all by yourself. No one knows you're here."

That settled like icy water in my veins. He smiled, the crow’s feet around the corners of his eyes made him look almost kind. The snake finished another lap around the room and I had to move closer to the centre of the room to avoid touching her.

"Why pick this place, this university?" I asked, perhaps to find out his motivations, to buy time until the snake gaped open its maw and devours me. Feverishly looking at any possible exit but all there was, was the snake and its glistening scales.

"Are you afraid of her?" Between the slithering and the glimmer, he stood perfectly still. “Her name’s Belle.”

“Nice to meet you, Belle,” I said, sarcastically, not daring to take my eyes off of him. The body of the snake was cold to the touch, it pushed me closer to the centre of the room.

“Will you not introduce yourself?” and he said my name. It rolled off his tongue with ease, the lilt in his voice making it sound foreign, like a spell. How did he know?

“Seems there’s no need.” Another cautious step closer, feeling the snake behind me, touching the braid that hung down my back.

“I’m Mischa,” he said, reaching out to touch her skin absentmindedly. I thought she’d stop moving at his touch, but she didn’t.

Took a sharp breath, and answered with politeness. Another “pleased to meet you”, and a proper introduction. The sorcerer nodded in acknowledgement. Every few breaths I had to shuffle closer, the space quickly growing cramped.

"Someone as hard-headed as you, with wits like you, would make a great partner. Too bad the one you have now is this slow and incompetent."

We were at arms distance then. He smelled of moss, of wet dirt. Lazily his gaze trailed over me, the growing panic didn’t affect him. "You must've noticed you’re not leaving here alive-" I nodded, both hands bracing against the snake at my back, as I leaned as far away from him as possible. "But that would be a waste, would it not? Would you hear my proposition?"

If he keeps talking this slowly I’ll be crushed before he finishes. I nodded wildly.

"Why don't you give up your silly ghost hunt, and become my partner instead?" Just as the distance shrunk as the snake forcefully pushed me closer, only the length of a forearm left. Mischa’s hand fell into the hair at the nape of my neck. He dragged his nails over my scalp idly. When he spoke again, his voice dropped lower, an intimate, secretive tone. "Be my apprentice… I'll teach you the language of snakes, or how to shape fire, how to conjure elementals, how to sprout a tree from a seed, levitate objects with just your mind... Just say the word, and leave that pesky boyfriend behind. Great deeds are waiting for us."

I avoided his eyes, my silence taken as resistance. With cold fingers he tilted my chin up to look him in the eye.

"You might want to consider if there's much of your partner left to go back to, if you think it best to refuse my offer." And his smile then was anything but kind. A tongue, forked like that of a snake darted out to wet his lips, and my predicament was claustrophobic. The fright of my heart, irregular, a sharp gasp instead of an answer. What was there to answer? There is no retort for this but- anything but death. Mischa saw my thoughts form, reading me like an open book. Saw how my resilience crumbled, and leaned down to seal my fate with a cruelly tender forehead kiss.