Delirium (Creepypasta x reader)

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The sparring matches were becoming less like beatdowns and more like a free-for-all skirmish.

You never had the advantage fighting the Masked man; he was bigger and stronger, physically, in ways you had no chance of countering. Things would never be even between the two of you. But his lessons helped you learn how to place your feet, how to use an opponent's weight against them, and how to be wily. If you couldn't beat them, don't get caught.

You had wiggled out of more holds than you could count.

The guy never made his training easy, but he didn't react badly if you were slow to learn something new or if you caught him unawares and actually won (the rare times you were able to, anyway). He seemed focused at best and detached at worst. He wasn't volatile like Goggles or even as punishing as the Hooded guy. Just... apathetic. Like he was doing a chore or something.

He was almost as non-verbal as his orange-clad buddy. If he wasn't teaching you something new or making a comment for you to improve, he was silent. Huffing breaths through his mask.

In the beginning of these frequent appointments, you'd feel more like a slab of raw meat than a human being. Bruises from being slammed against the ground, scrapes from the grass and dirt. Your throat and lungs would flare in pain with every gasp. As you got smarter and stronger, the injuries dwindled. Your breathing got easier. It began to feel like regular exercise.

Most injuries came from sore or stretched muscles after one point. You weren't stretching before sparring, obviously, and you hardly had the wherewithal to do it while nursing your hurt body.

But the Masked man did. You noticed him stretching his arms after beating you to a pulp, and then you started copying him.

He noticed this in turn. It even seemed like he went slower for you to follow – arm, neck, torso, and leg stretches in that order.

You didn't like him, and it was a touch uncomfortable, but you did feel looser and hurt less after doing them. He wasn't staring and he wasn't commenting on your form, just seemingly focused on his own routine.

The two of you began stretching side by side. He started taking his tan jacket off to enable more movement – he usually had a grey or black t shirt on underneath. There wasn't much of an exchange besides pants of breath that slowed into normal breathing over time.

It felt intimate. More intimate than literally touching him because those times always felt like fighting for your life. Performing and improving in such a way to allow you another day to exist. Here, there was no combat, physical or verbal. There were no barbs to navigate, no underlying threat. Just two people winding down, loosening their sore muscles.

He kept his mask on even here. You wondered, idly, if he ever felt uncomfortable fighting in the mask. It was some kind of hard plastic, thick enough to be threaded by fabric straps and side buckles. The flat kind you'd push on either side to release. Easy to access, though you never had the gall to actually try to rip his mask off while fighting. Something told you it would be a really, really bad idea.

It seemed less forgiving than the Hooded guy's mask. At least his was black fabric, able to absorb some sweat and condensation from breathing. Was his face constantly doused in sweat? Could he smell his own breath constantly in that thing?

"... You're staring." He said flatly, startling you out of your reverie. Fuck, you had been – stopping mid-stretch to gawk at him, basically broadcasting your thoughts. He had given up the ghost of ignoring you at this point, placing his hands on his hips. You jerked your head away, feeling embarrassment overflow from your stomach up to your cheeks.

"How do you even breath in that... Mask thing?" you blurted; voice pinched.

You could almost see the raised eyebrow as he snorted, scratching at his sideburns.