Could you maybe write a continuation to the snippet you posted on tumblr for valentine's day?
First part included for ease of reading...
“I swear,” the hero slammed the paperwork down on the desk. “Every villain you send me to is just wrong. I’m starting to think you’re trying to get me killed.”
“Mm.” The admin didn’t look up, utterly disinterested in them. “I don’t suppose you’ve tried online dating?”
“I don’t want to sleep with them.” The hero dropped into a seat, with a frustrated sigh.
“You just want them to want to sleep with you?”
“No! I-” The hero slunk lower in their seat, feeling ridiculous. They dragged a hand over their burning face. “This is your service,” they hissed. “You know what it’s about.”
“A nemesis can mean different things to different people. That’s why we had you fill out the questionnaire.”
“Ugh.”
It wasn’t, so much, about something happening. More, the fizzling possibility that it could - the way their eyes would meet across the room, the seductive promises and meaning the whole damn world to someone, the pinning them up against the wall but never doing anything to actually really hurt them. Someone who challenged them. Someone who made them feel alive.
Ridiculous. They couldn’t believe their sidekick had signed them up for this. It was, simply put, ridiculous. People didn’t have arch-nemesis’s anymore, and if they did, they were hateful things and not some version of affectionate-adversarial. Real villains were more concerned with riches than romance, and lots of people wanted a nemesis who was willing to sleep with them. Femme-fatale style.
“I’m starting to think,” the hero grumbled, around their mortification, “that you’re sabotaging me on purpose.”
“Mm.” The admin’s fingers clacked relentlessly across the keys. “That would be very villainous of me, wouldn’t it?”
The hero’s gaze shot up.
Their eyes met across the desk.
The admin offered them a bland little smile. “Imagine my eyes glinting with mischief.”
“Wait.” The hero’s mouth dried. “What.”
The admin looked down at their computer screen again. “Don’t worry, you are only talking to my mouth piece today. They’re very good. Efficient.” The admin sounded pleased. “But I can’t just have anyone be my nemesis. You could have been rubbish. Lacking flair. Lots of people jump on the band wagon, you know?”
“Your mouthpiece.”
The admin gave a sardonic little wave, waggling their fingers, and then tapped the earbud wedged in one of their ears. “Mouthpiece. Hi. They’re telling me what to say to you.”
“Oh.” The hero wet their lips. “Who is...Have I met them?”
“Oh, darling.” The admin still sounded completely bored. Their gaze was still on the screen, busy with whatever they were doing. Then they snorted, and pulled the earbud out of their ear, offering it over the desk.
The hero took it with a pounding heart, utterly unsure what to expect. The voice in their ear was, somehow, perfect.
“If you’d met me,” the villain said. “You’d know. My assistant is printing out an address for you. Come along.”
“To actually meet you?”
“You’re adorable.”
The hero could hear the grin, full of teeth and delight, in the villain’s voice.
“No,” the hero corrected themselves, slowly. “You’re going to give me a clue, to find you. Cat and mouse.”
“What’s a proper nemesis for?”
The hero smothered a smile (ridiculous) and snorted. “You better be worth the effort.”
“Oh, darling.” Unlike from the admin’s mouth, this time the voice sent an electric shiver down the hero’s spine. “I am. Ciao.”
And then, they were gone.
The hero handed the earbud back over with numb fingers.
The admin handed them a piece of paper.
“This last one,” they said, “should do the trick for you nicely.”
---
The two of them grew closer in increments. Their nemesis would set them elaborate, personalised puzzles and challenges – each new one a little more tailored, a little more refined with the villain’s growing knowledge of the hero’s strengths and weaknesses. The hero would chase. They would successfully follow the breadcrumbs their nemesis set them around the city, comfortable in the knowledge that failure might lead to the mysterious and often dramatic and temporary disappearance of some priceless artefact or other, but never death.
The villain was considerate about their timings, too, the hero increasingly found. They seemed to know when the hero was having a bad week, or an otherwise horrendously busy week. One time, they’d been fighting off a cold, and the test had been far easier than normal and ultimately led them to an honest to god care package designed to look like the treasure from the hero’s favourite childhood video game.
Possibly, the hero should have been concerned by the clear stalker-ish tendencies that showed, but mostly within the parameters of their weird dynamic, they’d been flattered. It had made them feel warm for the first time in days.
There would also often be a burner phone number at the end of new trials; usually ready and ringing a few seconds after the hero picked it up, or with a few texts already waiting on it behind a pass code they had to piece together from clues. They got most of their scraps of the villain through those, always longing for the electric intimacy of their nemesis’s voice purring in their ear.
Months passed in such a manner, until the thought of actually ever meeting their enigmatic villain was almost dizzying. There had been a few close calls. The signs of someone having only just vanished; the hero only a few inches away from their heels.
But, with a strange and giddy inevitability, the day came.
At the end of one puzzle, instead of the usual burner phone or elegantly scrawled message, was a sleek blood red box containing a sleep mask. It was designed to look like the hero’s usual upper-face mask, only without obviously including the eye holes. The hero could have taken it, and ran. They could have foraged through crafts shops and clothing stores and down any avenue that could have given them a lead on who might have bought the necessary items to make such a specific garment. They could have ended the game for good or changed it beyond return.
Instead, they considered the little note with a thundering heart.
Put it on.
The hero ran their fingers over the material. It was soft. High-quality. No doubt, it was intended to be comfortable.
The hero replaced their mask with the new one provided, and for a second, standing seemingly alone in an abandoned cave at the edges of the city, they felt utterly foolish. Blind, and foolish. The previously dimly lit space was plunged into total darkness by the blindfold.
It occurred to them that it might be a trap. Hell, it could even have been someone other than their nemesis, who was taking advantage of their strange game. If it was their nemesis, it occurred to the hero that maybe they wouldn’t entirely mind a trap – even if they didn’t want to poke or examine that impulse too closely.
They didn’t have to wait long at all.
“A perfect fit, no?”
For once, the villain’s voice didn’t come to them through the distance of a burner phone, or an earbud handed over by one of the villain’s many assistants.
“We are.” The hero was proud that they kept their voice even, confident.
The villain laughed.
The hero heard footsteps sounding from behind them, traceable to some secret alcove or other where the villain must have risked hiding that time. The hero could, of course, have ripped the sleep mask off there and then, as far as blindfolds went. They could have whirled around. Maybe the villain would be wearing a mask of their own to hide their features anyway and they wouldn’t see anything. The hero turned, slowly, following the sound of the laughter but didn’t move their hands up to the sleep mask. No matter how much the temptation to look burned through them.
It felt like a test, an offering of trust. Because the hero could. The hero could look. Their hands were not restrained after all.
They felt the villain’s breath caress their cheek, a whisper of sensation, and shivered. Was the villain leaning up? Leaning down? Were they roughly the same size in height? Reaching out to touch, to map, to explore was surely permittable…the hero only knew they were close.
The villain caught the hero’s hand as it rose, but there was no admonishment or annoyance to the gesture. After a squeeze of fingers, their two palms settled flat against each other in the air. The villain’s fingers were longer than the hero’s.
Did that mean that their nemesis was tall? If so, was it the tallness of a bulk and broad shoulders, hefty and intimidating? Or something more slender?
The hero wet their dry lips, hyper-aware of the fact that the villain could gaze upon them all they liked. But then, the villain had already been watching them unseen for quite some time, hadn’t they?
“What’s brought this on?” the hero managed. “You’re normally so shy.”
The villain laughed again, their voice like velvet as they spoke. “Shy? Is that what you think I am?”
“Coy.”
“You’ve done well on my tests,” their nemesis said. “You’ve even foiled some plans I thought would fool you.”
“Wouldn’t be much of a nemesis if I made it easy for you.”
“True.”
The hero could hear the smile in their nemesis’s voice again.
“It’s my birthday,” the villain continued, after a moment.
“And seeing me in person is your gift to yourself?” Something about that idea, that reality, made the hero’s stomach flip hot. Because if that was also true, and they did think it was true…well. It was oddly sweet, wasn’t it? Certainly a softer first meeting than the hero had sometimes envisioned. “You see me all the time, I thought,” the hero pressed. “Or do you only receive second-hand reports from your many, many minions?”
“Mm.” The villain’s hand moved on from the flat press of their palms to the gentle scrape of a nail trailing down the hero’s arm, easy to track. “The second-hand reports of your reactions are certainly not enough. I always find myself wanting more of you.”
The hero bit down on their lip at the words. They wondered if the villain’s eyes dropped down to –
The villain’s free hand brushed their mouth, smudging where the hero’s teeth had been only an instant before.
The villain had definitely noticed.
The hero swallowed, and raised their second hand too, finding the shape of the villain in the darkness. Solid. Not some ghost, some phantom that the hero sometimes half-feared they’d conjured out of nothing.
“I find myself wondering at your expressions,” the villain said, “when you find a new clue, or inspiration strikes. When you pass messages through my employees I find myself debating the exact intonation of your words when you say them.”
The hero did the same thing, and more. They would be eating dinner at night, and catch their mind drifting to what the villain might be up to. What their favourite food was. If eating at all was a pleasure, or simply something that had to be done.
“And now you know.”
“It’s not enough.” The villain’s hand moved from the hero’s lip to their chin, and by the slight upwards tilt the hero guessed that the villain was indeed taller than them.
The hero smirked, and pulled free, taking a step back. “You’re the one who won’t let me see you. You can only get so much for that.”
They felt the villain step close into their space again, pressing the hero back against the uneven stony wall.
The hero’s breath hitched.
“I never said.” The villain’s voice, their breath, their warm mouth, skated against the hero’s ear. “That I didn’t enjoy the exquisite torment of it. Of you. There is something to be said of delayed gratification, no? Patience is, besides, a virtue.”
The hero’s grip caught a fistful of the villain’s shirt on instinct. It was silken and slippery beneath their touch. “I have many virtues. Patience isn’t one of them.”
“Well, then you’re being dreadfully good for me, aren’t you?”
Even behind the sleep mask – and lord, they were suddenly so grateful for it – the hero closed their eyes tight.
Exquisite torment. Yes, perhaps that was the right word for the almost agonising anticipation.
Happy Birthday,” the hero said.
The villain laughed a third time, the sound untangling and tugging at something in the hero’s chest. It was such a caught-off-guard laugh – nothing seductive, just so damn pleased. Like the hero was the best of the best things that had ever happened to them.
“Yes,” the villain said. “It rather has been, thanks to you.”
“I would have brought cake if I’d known. Maybe next time.”
“Next time?” The villain’s hands dragged down the hero, carefully mapping them out in turn, just as interested. “Oh, darling.” They said it in the same way as they had the first time, full of promise and danger and something else entirely. “I’m not anywhere near done with you yet today.”
They found the hero’s hand, captured it, and led them carefully forward.
“I’m kidnapping you, you see,” the villain said.
“Ah.” The hero smothered a (ridiculous, always so ridiculous) smile. “Hence the blindfold.”
“Precisely!”
There was indeed a secret alcove in the cave.
And, there was cake.
And the hero headed home some hours later knowing just a little bit more about their nemesis.
The villain was definitely worth the effort.