‼️TW: Needles, blood, medical settings‼️

—

It's become routine by now. You take one step forward, the rabbit yanks you two steps back.

Oscar, you remember. You suppose you should call him Oscar now. Somehow, giving a name to that thing feels wrong. You've only ever encountered this elusive "him" in the dark, and with only the rabbit's face to match him to in your mind. The hair on his arm, the heaving of his ribs under your hand, his breath on your face—and now he has a name. Somehow, you wish you were back to night one, when you weren't even sure if there was a person living inside that suit. This is becoming too confusing.

Though on the bright side, the two of you seem to be approaching some kind of stalemate. If you can call that a bright side.

A truce, you decide instead. That sounds better. You and the rabbit have a truce. You have its name, it has...

Alright. It has everything over you.

The events of your dream haunt you the following days, as well as the chilling ecstasy that came after. You wonder, dangerously, if you can catch him out of the suit again and really hurt him. You do seem much more evenly matched when he isn't hiding inside that stupid rabbit. You could wrestle him to the ground again. Keep a kitchen knife inside your shirt, stab him over and over until that low, rumbly, confident voice fades into the gurgle of blood in his throat. The idea teases you until you're giddy. It's pointless, though. That would require such patience, such docility and coaxing that you're not sure you can stomach.

Please? I've been good. You nearly retch, imagining yourself placating it like that.

You're free to roam the halls after that night. Oscar seems to have taken your deal very seriously, as the rabbit has made itself scarce. He's taken you at your word that you won't break any rules—it's a kind of trust that you aren't particularly comfortable with. You tell yourself he's just trying to get your guard down, that he isn't stupid. Why does he keep hurting you, holding you down, then relinquishing control as if nothing's happened? He's been quick to threaten, sure, but at the end of the day he seems to forgive you so easily. Is it...love?

You grimace at that word. Absolutely not. If he "loved" you in the slightest you would've been free long ago. Is he just a wishful thinker? Is he hoping with every punishment dealt, every promise made, that he's slowly molding you into what he wants you to be? Does he think giving you all these chances will soften you enough to change you?

Is it that he really is that stupid?

—

Upstairs has intrigued you for some time. Before now, it was a problem for future you. Now you are future you. The rabbit has been handling you with such leniency for several days now; it can't hurt you for daring to explore a bit.

The stairs are against the wall outside the parlor, flanked by the beginning of the hall leading down to the cellar, and the hall to the dining room. It's completely dark up there. The wooden newel is old, grayed, and when you put your hand on it you collect a layer of dust. You try the first step with the toe of your shoe, stepping gently. It doesn't creak. Odd.

You lift your other foot and shift your full weight onto the step, waiting for something to bend. To break. It doesn't. Considering the rabbit has roamed every inch of this house, you don't find this surprising. It must be far heavier than you are. You start ascending the stairs, slowly. You give a thought to putting a hand on the railing before the image of black mold and fungus on the wood's underside flashes in your head. You grimace and keep your hand to your side.

You can't see a thing upstairs, a sensation you've long grown accustomed to. When you reach the landing, your face hardens in preparation, your hands clenching into fists as you draw them up in front of your chest. The floor below your feet is dry, a sandy scuffle accompanying each step you take on the old boards. You try not to breathe too deeply; who knows what's floating around in the air up here.

A jaunty piano begins to play from below.

Your heart leaps into your throat, then you settle back down. Dear God. It's just the phonograph. It scared you half to death. You shake the nerves from your shoulders and keep walking.

It's a song you feel like you're heard before. It sounds...happy. Calm. A muffled horn of some kind begins to accompany the piano, and oddly enough, you start nodding your head to the tune. It's some kind of old ditty, no words, just good vibrations. Good vibrations. Wah waaah, you drone in your head, lamenting that you can't hum out loud without fearing something will horribly interrupt.

The phonograph is on.

You stop in your tracks as you remember what that means. The other things in the house have practically been sent to graze. Whatever the rabbit is doing now, it doesn't want them to see.

Is it looking for you?

You take a few more careful steps ahead and breathe through your nose, letting the music sink into your head. Oh no, the tune begins to warble to you.

Oh no.

Oh no, no no.

Oh no no no no no no no.

You blink in quick succession, as many times as it takes for your eyes to begin adjusting to the dark. You can make out the faint frame of some doors to your left; three of them, if you had to try counting.

You dare to approach the first door, not optimistic about being able to see a thing inside. Slowly, you reach towards the scant glimmer of the doorknob.

Something wraps tightly around your waist from behind.

A scream rips from your throat before you can think, and you start writhing in the grip of whatever's holding you.

"There you are!"

The stilted but bubbly voice that erupts behind you freezes you in place. That's not the rabbit.

"Billy?" you blurt, your arms falling limp to your sides. God. That thing nearly gave you a heart attack. Your chest is still tight with breathlessness. For whatever reason, though, you don't feel like fighting him; it's like you're being attacked by an overactive child.

"I finally found you! I thought you were asleep, but when Pumpka checked your room you weren't there."

The cellar. My room is a cellar. You barely hold in the scathing words and try to push what must be Billy's arms loose from your torso. He's immovable. You scoot your hand around the plush material of his sleeves, oddly snug around the shape of your body; how many times are they wrapped around you? Are his arms just...rubber-hose, like that?

He's a doll. I don't know how he moves. You bite the inside of your cheek, trying to ignore the continuous pounding inside your chest.

I suppose I've finally been "kept."

Your heart spikes again and a breath is knocked from your lungs when Billy starts dragging you back. Back towards the stairs.

"Oh my god," is all you can manage. "What are you doing?"

"Seeing Pumpka."

Worse.

"Hey," you say, mind racing, eyes darting about the nothingness you can see. Billy clops down the first step, rocking the both of you so that you fear you'll start falling. "I don't need to see him. I—I was actually—"

"He wants to see you!"

You grimace as Billy hobbles down another step, then a third. It's a sensation you can't prepare yourself for no matter how many times it happens. You plant your hands on Billy's arms in a feeble attempt to brace yourself.

"Why does he need to? I mean, we had a nice chat just a second ago—!"

"Pumpka says don't worry."

"Well, I can never trust a word that thing says—"

"You can't?"

Your next breath gets stuck in your throat. The scratchy voice of the rabbit hums right over your head. You crane your neck to look over your shoulder. You've reached the bottom of the stairs; you can see again, and the rabbit is there, hands folded behind its back. You look it square in the face with wide, angry eyes.

Oscar, what the hell? you nearly blurt out, but bite your tongue in time. Not around another soul. Right. Who knows what he'd do to you if you made that stupid mistake.

The rabbit leans down and reaches out a spindly metal hand. You brace yourself for impact.

It instead pats Billy on the yarn and tilts its head fondly.

"Thank you, Billy." It extends an arm to its left. "Bring them to the drawing room, won't you?"

The parlor? You think for a moment, puzzled. That moment is all you get, however, since Billy begins dragging you in the most uncomfortable style down the hall the rabbit had gestured to, and all rational thought dissipates to make way for unbridled anxiety.

"I—hey, I can walk, Billy," you attempt to reason with him again. "It's fine."

Billy doesn't seem to hear you. You can't find it in yourself to be mad.

"Okay," you mutter, and hang your head to let it drag behind you.

You're surprised to find the rabbit doesn't follow the both of you down the hall. It stays right where it is, watching you leave with...you want to say expectancy. It's hard to tell when the thing can only ever smile. All you can conclude is that a few more seconds without the rabbit are seconds you can relax.

Billy stops in front of an oaken door that looks slightly less weathered than others you've seen in this house. Still with color, still a bit of polish to it. He unravels one arm from your waist—in such a quick motion that it leaves a slight friction burn on your skin; you wince—and his hand clacks onto the glass door handle. He turns it.

The room Billy opens the door to is dark, with only the little light from the hallway to illuminate its furnishings: white tiled floor, counter with cabinets, wheeled stool, sink. What grabs your attention, though, is the leather dentist's chair in the middle of the room with its affixed overhead lamp and medical tray. You stare, blinking, at the chair while Billy hoists you into the room and finally sets you down. You stand on unsteady legs, paralyzed at the center of the room, as your eyes focus on the tray's contents.

A butterfly needle.

Drawing room.

The door closes behind you and you jolt in your place. You don't turn around.

"Oh, please. Sit down," the rabbit says. You don't have much choice.

You shakily approach the leather chair—what you can see of it, anyway. Christ, it's dark in here now—and, after a lingering pause, sit down.

Why am I here? You nearly ask, but the question sticks in your throat. You know what you're here for, of course, but why the change? Why can't it just take bits of your blood by night with the pinprick as usual?

You come to the conclusion that it just likes seeing you miserable and afraid, and decide not to think any more of it.

The light flickers on and you shut your eyes with a gasp. That's bright. Too, too bright. Even the parlor wasn't this severe. You really are in some fucked up dentist's office. You crack open one careful eyelid, your face contorted in a squint, and find the room is near completely white. Your hands clench on the arms of the chair.

The rabbit stands by the shut door. When it catches your eye, it lifts one finger to its static muzzle. Shh.

It presses another into the cavity of its chest, and from that emits a click.

Its chest splits open at the middle.

You jump in your seat and swallow another gasp. You're frozen as you watch the rabbit's arms pop open at the seams next, then its legs, then its belly, until it's just the head resting on top of a jittering, naked mass of joints and wires.

An arm—a real, human arm—rips from the felt-and-metal one, wiggling its leather-gloved fingers as if to stretch. Then another.

Then, rabbit head attached, a lanky man in brown leather shoes and a slate blue mechanic suit steps out.

Even without the costume, he's...tall. Very tall. With the head, well over six feet—with the ears, almost eight. His arms are a deep olive color, and when he lifts the rabbit head from his own, a mess of wavy black hair is glued to his face with sweat. He swings the head down to carry under his arm and combs the hair out of his eyes, and you see it reaches down to the tip of his long chin. His black eyes are sunken into his face, his cheekbones low and angular. But what catches your attention when he turns to face you is his mouth. His top lip is marred, pinched to a nostril as if by thread. The name evades you a moment—cleft palate. That's it. Though his mouth is closed, through the gap between his lip and nose you see a sliver of blood-red gum.

Your gaze flits to the rabbit head under his arm.

Oscar—the real Oscar—gives you a thin smile and waggles his gloved fingertips.

The empty rabbit suit has stopped moving. It chills you to see it like that: limp, lifeless, helpless. Just a tool, it occurs to you. Like everything else in this house.

Oscar makes his way to the cabinets across the room, leaving you to mull this all over.

"Why am I here?" You finally pluck up the courage to ask. Oscar seems to do a double take; he stops where he is and eyes you over his shoulder with a raised brow.

"You can't guess?"

His voice comes out so much clearer, so much crisper than in the suit that you can only respond with a surprised blink. It's only while he's rummaging through a cabinet that you say,

"I know why I'm here, but—I mean, why?" You try your best to not sound like you're whining. You shift in the chair, fists clenched. "It was working fine before. With the pinprick thing. I-I complied, I let you do—"

"Yes, and you'll comply now."

You bite back a cuss and pick at the leather chair arms.

"Now, I can forgive the secrecy before," Oscar continues. He's removed his leather gloves, snapped on a pair of white latex ones, and plucked several things from the cabinets overhead—syringes, tubes, a roll of gauze. He rolls them between his fingers as he makes his way over to the chair. You tense by reflex.

"We were strangers. But seeing as I already know your blood type, and you've..." The corner of Oscar's mouth pinches up, and you catch a glimpse of his upper teeth as he releases a breath of irate laughter. "...discovered as many things about me as you have..."

He picks up the needle from the tray, pointedly flicks its tip and eyes you.

"...I would consider this a good time to tell me your name."

You can't imagine a more obvious threat. You could refuse again, of course, but this is very different from when he first asked you. Now, it's as if he's taking this personally. If you hold back anything he asks of you, he'll make it painful.

You try to weigh the odds as rationally as you can, given your circumstances. As far as "impersonal" goes, he is the rabbit, and you are the bunny. Ever since you choked his real name out of him, things felt different. You have something over him, ever so slight as it is.

But it's your name. You don't want him knowing that. You don't want him calling you that, thinking of that, having that. But what's the alternative...?

Little bunny. Ew.

He's got a needle. And you aren't getting out of here for a while, anyway.

It can't be worse than being called a bunny.

After a tense minute, you bite the inside of your cheek and mutter,

"[Y/N]."

Oscar rests one knee on the stool beside you and wipes down the tray with an alcohol pad. "Could you speak up?"

"It's [Y/N]." You speak a bit more forcefully than you mean to; you swallow, feeling queasy, and mutter again.

"Just—don't, like, use it too much." You keep your eyes on your feet. "Please."

There. Done. You've given it up. This is mountains compared to the little stunt you pulled to get a measly Oscar. Feeling ill, you accept that this is a net loss.

Oscar lets out a small, curious hum—you start to think that maybe you should have just made up a fake name—and when he's done wiping the tray, rolls the stool closer and leans over you on the arm of the dentist's chair, his nose about two inches from yours. Your breath hitches; you would squirm away if there were anywhere to go.

"[Y/N]." He draws your name out low and sweet, like stretching a piece of gum from his teeth, and regret floods you in an instant. His voice scrapes your spine and goosebumps start to trail down your arms. The circles under his eyes pop out up close, dark, like bruises. He tilts his head and studies you like a work of art.

"Lovely."

You need someone to love you, don't you, [Y/N]?

The blurry voice surfaces in your memory and you clench your jaw. You're angrier than you think you've ever been.

Die. Die horribly and painfully.

Oscar pulls back when you don't respond to his blatant mockery and places the tools between his fingers one by one on the cleaned tray, each with a satisfactory little clink.

"Does it make things easier?" he asks.

You stay silent. Oscar sits on the stool and flashes you a friendly smile. His teeth are jarringly square. "That I'm a person now?"

You narrow your eyes. So that's what this play is. Could he have known what this, the back-and-forth, human-or-not game, was doing to you? Could he really be throwing you a bone now?

Is this your truce?

"Sure," you say, tentative.

"I'm so glad." He taps the arm of the chair, still with that unwavering smile. "Give me your arm."

Your blood runs cold. You had hoped to be able to stall this process a bit longer. Your muscles stiffen and you can't help but give Oscar a wary stare. But if you don't cooperate with him now, he'll find a more unpleasant way of doing this. You force yourself to rest your arm, upturned, on the arm of the chair.

Oscar doesn't hesitate to press your arm down flush against the leather and begin to squeeze along its length, as if to check the pressure. He then takes another alcohol pad from the tray and rubs it along the crook of your elbow. You're about to flinch away, or at least avert your eyes to the ground, when he picks up a glass vial. Then the needle. He brings the point to your skin without warning.

You release a small, guttural noise and jerk your arm out of his grip, rattling the tray and nearly knocking the butterfly needle out of his hand. Your heart has started racing, your face flushed once the realization dawns on you of what you just did. You're frozen, askew on the chair. Oscar's eyes are wide; you tense in anticipation before his shoulders slump and he gives you a sickeningly soft look.

"Oh, sweetness, do you need me to count down...?"

"No," you spit, overcome with shock and nerves. You swallow and bite your tongue, ducking your head. You wish you had better control of yourself. Now, of all times. But seeing the needle inch towards your skin, without even any preamble, set off a deafening alarm bell in your brain.

You think of correcting yourself—Actually, yes, please, sticks in your throat—but you're paralyzed.

"Give me your arm again, little one," Oscar says. His hand hovers, outstretched, in your peripheral vision. "I'll be slower."

You'd rather this be over as quick as possible. You manage to move your arm, against every will of your body, back to its place and Oscar grabs hold of it, almost greedily. He pushes your arm down flat again, then glances up at your face. He doesn't move until you look back into his eyes.

"And stay still."

There's an edge to his voice now. You want desperately to comply. For this to be over. You'd gladly take a few seconds of discomfort over whatever the alternative may be.

Still, you can't keep yourself from shaking, sweating, from pulling the slightest bit away when the needle point closes in on your skin again.

"One, two—[Y/N]!" Oscar jerks the needle away from your arm and lets out a quiet chuckle, cooling down as soon as he ignites, with a small shake of his head. "If you don't keep still, this will never end. You want it to end, don't you?"

"I—"

"Maybe I shouldn't warn you before I stick you. Give you a little shock. Is that what you want?"

"No!" Your voice wavers, and the longer you stare at the needle the more it feels like your veins are about to burst out of your skin. You swallow and shut your eyes tight. After a moment, Oscar sighs, and the tray on your right gives a light rattle. You crack an eyelid.

He's holding out his other hand.

"All right. Hold my hand." He wiggles his fingers and you couldn't be any less enthused at the idea. You glance up; he's stone-faced.

"Excuse me?" you say in an unsteady lilt. Oscar raises an eyebrow.

"Did you not hear—?"

"I'm not holding your hand." You start to flush, and the words come out in more of a sputter than a sentence. Oscar purses his lips, shrugs, then brings the needle back to your arm.

"Suit yourself."

Your skin starts to prickle with chills. You clench your free hand at your side and squint at the ceiling as Oscar counts again.

"One, two..."

You feel a pinch just below where his gloved finger is pressed on your inner arm, and your heartbeat spikes. Throwing away your last shred of dignity, you squeeze your eyes shut again and fumble across the tool tray for Oscar's other hand. Everything goes still—you assume he's frozen out of necessity, to make sure nothing goes wrong while drawing the blood. When he finally clicks a vial into the syringe after a good fifteen seconds, though, you start to feel that your change of heart surprised him just as much as it did you.

You both are silent as he takes your blood. What must be two minutes feels more like two years; every time he replaces the tube and you're met with another pinch, you squeeze his hand tighter, and a wince of a breath manages to slip through your teeth. After the third vial, and the third breath, Oscar clicks his tongue.

"Good bunny."

You swallow, and only then realize how dry your throat is. "Could you not say that right now?" you ask, strangled. You crack one eye open and look at him sideways. He spares you a glance up from the vial.

"What would you prefer me to call you?"

You give a weak laugh and shake your head, gaze snapping to the ceiling. "Uh, not that."

"Really. I'm asking. What should I say?"

You open your mouth—though you don't know what you would have said—when Oscar wrings his other hand free from yours, presses a gauze pad to your arm and pulls the needle out at an excruciating pace. He plucks the roll of medical tape from the tray and wraps a strip around your elbow, securing the gauze in place. He then pushes the tray aside, inches closer on the stool and grabs your chin delicately with a thoughtful tilt of his head.

"'Good job giving up your blood for me, my precious little [Y/N]'?"

The latex on your chin as he tilts your face up sends cold ripples through your skin. You blanch and fix him with your deadliest glare. "Absolutely not."

Oscar shrugs and stands up, and a crooked smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. "It's between that and calling you a bunny. You'll have to pick one."

Your eyes stay trained on him as he taps a thumb over each full vial he's collected from you, as if to check they're all there, and a dark look of self-satisfaction flashes over his face. He's right; this is certainly more of a person than the rabbit ever was.

The thought unsettles you. The rabbit has always been a piece of shit. It's always been snide, smug, always taunted you. But something about Oscar's constant cracks feel different. They're annoying, sure, but far less conniving, venomous. Far less fanged. It's almost as if he's treating you like a friend.

You need to decide whether or not that's a good thing.

—

Author's note:

(probably the first and last time I'll do an author's note right on the chapter waow)

I'm so sorry for the severe hiatus between this chapter and the last!!! Because of school and other projects I've chosen to prioritize, this fic got pushed to the back of my mind and I haven't been able to make much meaningful progress on it for a long time. Thank you to everyone who has been waiting for your patience <3 That said please don't expect consistent updates, this was a real struggle to get out and there will likely be another long wait between this chapter and the next. But I'm not abandoning the story, rest assured!!

Again thank u for reading and especially for those who comment, reading people's reactions to my work always makes my day and even when I'm not updating I'm so happy when someone finds this story and has something wonderful to say about it :)

Until next time

Sky