He had a headache. Once again kicking back in his chair he drew his weary arms up to rub his temples. He could feel blood rushing to his cranium, pulsating with the irritating pain in his forehead. He yawned, opening bloodshot eyes to stare at the black screen of his computer. The machine had been turned off for quite some time, the administrator having lost patience to work a long time ago. Stein was alone in his laboratory, deserted by near no-one, save for Marie. Leaning backward in his feeble chair he suddenly got the desire to sleep. His sleep deprivation finally getting the best of him. Accompanied with bags under his poor dull eyes, his mental state was wearing thin as well, with the Kishin on the loose he had naturally been in an unfathomable state of worry and stress, but he was also haunted by a very old and natural was it always this dark in his laboratory? Was it always this empty? This cold?Feeling ridiculous for doing so, he slightly jolted his neck up to look cautiously over his shoulder. He surprised himself with how unsteady his breathing was. Stein laughed at himself, quietly. The man leaned back into his chair, feeling pathetic for being caught up so quickly in his own mind's delusions. He sighed with his mouth pointed towards the ceiling. Pushing himself off his patchwork chair he took off his glasses to better rub the weariness from his face. "I'm fine," he reassured himself. The feeling of dullness and stupidity came once again when he registered that he was comforting himself. How human. How 'normal'. He sighed, catching himself weakly by the counter-top of the sink after having stumbled down the hallway towards the bathroom with abnormal clumsiness. He rubbed his eyes after taking his spectacles off and sighed hesitantly, wondering if he would be awake enough to walk down to the end of the hall to reach his bed. The scientist filled a glass of water, and dug blindly through his over-stashed medicine cabinet to find a sedative pill. He leaned against the wall behind him in exhaustion. He never remembered feeling this desperate to fall asleep, he found it almost comical. Stein tried hard to focus on the little things that he could remember about himself. How calloused his hands were, how overused his eyes were, how abused his body was. The subtle pulse he could feel in his neck, the dryness of his mouth, they were all so calmingly familiar. He sighed…relieved. "I am fine….I am…" he never remembered feeling so small in his home, so alone and heat ridden. Was the temperature always this cold? It didn't matter, not now anyways. He relaxed, trying to induce himself into believing that the pill was already working. His shoulders slumped and he felt his eyes set comfortably into his skull.
He sighed peacefully once more in a drowned state of rapture before he felt a disturbing grazing touch rake down his chest from his jugular. He opened his eyes in mild fearful assumption, glancing at the broken mirror from his last encounter with his over-reacting imagination. This touch was softer, subtly stroking the creases of light muscle in his neck. Failing to see a darker figure of himself in the wasted mirror he looked down towards his chest, where, perhaps a hand was exhaled heavily in anguish at a familiar top of dark golden spun hair. His eyes dilated with a furious speed as Her hand hunted gently up to his neck again, Her touch being cold as her other hand rolled up under the bottom of his shirt, resting on his abdomen. Stein jolted against the wall and yelled in shock at the witch he was hallucinating so darkly about. Medusa tugged downward, smoothly yet feverishly at his sweater shirt's collar. Her nails itching against his skin, past his collar bones. Stein jolted against the wall, his head slamming backwards. Subsequently, he took a sharp breath in with the pain and pleasure that followed. Medusa had stood on his feet to get closer to his head, she exhaled gingerly on his neck, giving him goose bumps. She dug her cool hand down his shirt, placing it in his armpits and gently lifting the entirety of his arm upwards so he was further sprawled on the wall. She smiled as his heaves of feral breaths, obviously in an attempt to get more air, to clear his head, to make his 'hallucination' disappear. He hissed in air between grinding teeth as she rubbed her lips suggestively up and down his neck, his muscles racing and tensing against his will. "If there's nothing real enough in your mind to hold on to, perhaps you should just hold on to me…" she cooed, her words leaking from her wet lips to his harassed neck. Her subtle screams to his sanity were clear as day to him, but barely heard over his now painful whining and gasping. As she continued to roll her mouth up and down on his neck she caressed his navel and then harshly shoved him back into the wall. He growled as hit slammed against the wall again, whining with irritated pleasure at her nails stroking his stomach. His eyes rolled back into his head forcefully, he had had enough of this. Biting his lip until he drew blood he kept his eyes closed and refused to move. All the while he was standing still, Medusa continued to conquer his neck. Her right hand, the one clinging to the bottom of his arms, slithered around to grasp his shoulder, slightly tearing the weak fabric his shirt was made of near the neck from 's face peeled back to a sardonic grin, her eyes crinkling with lust and contemplation of what to do next…Her left hand traced up along the faint creases of his stomach to rest casually over his diaphragm and sternum, directly over his quivering soul. She smiled demonically as he went limp and gasped as she gave him a slight pulse of her wavelength while her hand rested over his soul. Catching him by his waist and his shoulder she stopped his seizure flight downwards, gingerly laying him on his back against the concrete floor. She straddled him on top his waist, and bent downwards, her hips in the air and her lips very close to his neck his shaking hadn't been noticeable before, it was now painfully obvious. "There's blood on your lips Stein. It must hurt…" she cooed with a dove like expression and kissed his lips, sucking on them ravishingly and wildly, drinking as much of his salty, fear soaked blood as she could suck out. Licking his lip, she pulled up slightly and opened her serpentine eyes to stare lustfully at the crumbling man beneath her. His eyes were in a realm of their own with the pupils dilated to an unsightly miniature size, his shoulders were curled up and inward towards his chest, feebly, weakly, and wearily. He coughed and panted like a dehydrated animal, but so tiredly. He was reeling forward and backward, pulsating and shaking so feverishly. His stomach lurched upwards at her touch. Pushing up his shirt even more, nails and cold dry hands grabbing stiffly onto his rib-cage. He gasped again and shut his eyes, his face contorted with pain and disturbed rapture. Stein quivered at her touch, bumps growing all over his body. He coughed, flem and bile leaking out from the corner of his mouth. Witch smiling sadistically, amused, she tore calmly and patiently at the many pointless seams on his shirt until there were nothing more than shreds that she parted off to his sides. She kissed and bit him as the base of his neck, in the dip of his collar bone. He lurched again, leaking pathetic noises of discomfort while she traced his ribs. "You haven't been eating right…" she worthlessly noted. Pitying him and his shaking she spread her body down and breathed hotly out slowly, working her way from his waist up to his neck. She lay on him, covering him in a light blanket of heat. "I know it hurts, stay with me, Stein." she cooed, "stay with me, I won't leave you. I'll make you feel better."There was an over-powering slamming of metal coming from the front of the lab. A faint, angelic voice rivaling the one belonging to the witch, the witch who had disappeared…"Marie?"Footsteps…."Stein?""Marie!" a dry and beaten whisper, hoarse and whimpering for door to the bathroom opened, hitting the scientist's out-stretched life-less left arm. There was a clarifying call of disbelief, then a sudden shout and gasp of fear. Marie flew herself down on the ground, flooded with water. The sink had long been forgotten about, the tap left running. There was a dent in a high corner of the wall, tinted with a splatter of blood. Marie quickly and cautiously picked Stein up by his protruding rib-cage. His shirt was slightly rolled up at the bottom and he was desperately reaching over his body with his right hand, nearly choking himself with how tightly he gripped his neck. He was shaking, whimpering… There was a large part in his scalp where blood flowed from like a river, it seemed as though he had bashed his head repeatedly in the same place, and none to gently. She cradled him across her legs, supporting the back of his neck gingerly and caressingly wrapping her arm around his back to clutch as his ribs. She bent over and kissed his forehead, crying. "Come back." she repeated, soothingly. He was so cold to her touch. Soaked in water and blood he lay shaking helplessly in her arms, whimpering. She knew this would happen, his sanity would finally leave him, new nightmares coming to haunt him in place of the ones he had grown accustomed to. He was so now knew she could never leave him alone again. "Come back."