Too Indecisive for This

@leighsartworks216 thank you for motivating me to finally post this🤩I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy your work❤️

The rest of his collection is a jumbled mess that clatters when he pulls it open, which is more often than he'll ever admit. Keychains adorned with charms roll around with piles of hard won coupons from the arcade. However useless they may be, he holds onto every single prize: matching candy rings, toy harmonicas, tacky plastic gems.

Your personal accessories have also migrated to the drawer over time. Sylus tells himself he's not stealing. He simply notices a misplaced piece of yours on occasion—perhaps in the crevices of the couch, under the bed, or in one of the cars, and they're simply spirited away and remain missing. Even the wrappers of the candy and chocolate you snack on around the base are preserved here.

There's an ancient greed that roots in his mind, demanding to possess and gather all that it desires, and you are its singular focus. You, and everything within your orbit. Everything you touch.

These ephemera, unremarkable to anybody else, serve as crucial reminders to him that you're truly here. They embody the life he strives to nurture using this unthinkable second chance he's been gifted with you.

The promise of a kinder, gentler story resides in the scraps he collects; one shaped not by grandiose games of fate, but sweet drinks and cakes, idle pastimes, and quiet evenings steeped with your presence. Desolate spaces transformed into somewhere comfortable, safe. A place he regards as a home—for you both.

And so these tangible traces of you are infinitely more precious to him than any material thing could be in this universe. Forget the mountains of gold and dragonslaying weaponry from long gone days. This unassuming drawer of junk, entwined with your memories, is a treasure unlike anything he's ever known.

Sylus's bedroom is dim, the thick velvet blackout curtains holding back the sleepless N109 zone night, the dark, gauzy curtains around his bed further layers of protection against his sensitive eyes. When he wakes, sweaty but refreshed from a good night's sleep—so rare more than a year ago, but these days, the norm instead of the exception—slow consciousness brings him the awareness of an unfamiliar weight pressing down onto him. It doesn't even occur to him, anymore, to move in order to throw open open either set of curtains. It doesn't occur to him to listen to the needs of his body and go to the toilet, or check his phone or tablet.

But this morning, the reason for his utter stillness is something he had almost given up hope in ever happening.

Why would he ever consider moving, when finally, finally, after over a year of patience, restraint, and questioning his own sanity, he finally has everything he's waited for in his arms.

He isn't lying, when he says that he expected no less than the magnificently beautiful creature now glaring, defiant eyes bright, from where she is draped over his body in his bed. Her skin is delicious along his own—soft, silk, glorious. Her chest presses against his own, and he must pointedly ignore its curves, the softness between her legs where his thigh is wedged.

Luckily, Sylus Qin is a master of restraint. He is not surprised by his body's reaction to his kitten's human form. Her personality in her feline form is intriguing enough to have had his full attention for over a year now. And though her feline form is adorable, sleek and wild, her human form is simply a masterwork of perfect proportions, a sculpture in lively motion. As if she was designed to his exact specifications by a master artisan, without his ever knowing that he had such preferences before seeing her in the flesh.

He lets himself look his fill in the silence that follows his genuine declaration that seeing her other form was worth the wait. Lustrous hair, with two black, furred-feline ears shifting agitatedly from those beautiful locks, the little tufts of fur at each tip as tantalizing to him as a feather toy to a cat. It's as if she's straining to hear every single sound in the building while she contemplates the meaning of what he just said. Her eyes, luminous even in the dark like the little predator she is, are narrowed and calculating as they observe his face. He must once again restrain his excitement, the excitement of being seen in a way that he is rarely, if ever seen, and never before by her in particular. Her human eyes are shrewd in an entirely different manner than her cat eyes as they gleam, watching him in the dark. She flares the nostrils of her perfect nose as if desperate to read a scent that she can no longer detect. It must be jarring for her to experience the limitation of human senses after being in her animal form for so long. It will likely take her awhile to adjust. Of course, her human mind makes up for the loss of the acute senses required for animal survival, but Sylus knows from experience that the longer one remains in one's animal form, the more time it often takes to re-adapt to the gifts and restrictions of the human body. Her mouth, her soft lips are slightly parted as her breathing grows more shallow, further testing his restraint.

But he is no animal, after all. She finally feels safe enough to shift, and he's not going to ruin it with his own base instincts in response to her proximity, her beauty, the affection he already feels for her after a year spent watching and waiting for her to reveal herself to him.

Her indignant glare following his request to call him Sylus since she has been a little voyeur in his home for the past year fades, her lovely brows furrowing, lips tightening.

He doesn't have to be an animal to sense the dawning comprehension, and with it, the fear now surging through her.

"What do you mean, worth the wait?" she whispers, vocal cords rasping with lack of use. He wonders how long exactly it has actually been since she shifted. "Did you… Did you know?"

Sylus Qin, if nothing else, is a very thorough man. It's a point of pride. His enemies may call it arrogance. But is it really arrogance, if it's true? And the opinions of others have never bothered him, anyway. Not in any way that mattered.

Admittedly, he didn't know. Not for sure. But he's a thorough man, and when he went into business with his kitten's former captor, he had gathered a file with sufficient detail on that cockroach to know that he was likely illegally keeping two cat hybrid evolvers prisoner. The illegality was hardly surprising, considering the nature of both his and Sylus's business. The cruelty of this particular flavor of illegality, however, was distasteful. Unfortunately, the cretin's skill, sufficient to draw Sylus's attention for a business relationship in the first place, meant he was skilled enough to evade Sylus's curiosity-driven efforts to concretely confirm the truth of the rumors.

Ultimately, it was simply a stroke of luck that the fool decided to try to extort Sylus first, giving him all the excuse he needed to torpedo the business relationship that he had only ever considered temporary to begin with, as he worked his way back through the idiot's contacts in order to cut the useless middle man loose. When the simpleton finally invited Sylus into his own territory, and Sylus saw the cat, crouched tense and miserable in her 'owner's' lap, he was both infuriated and pleased. He wouldn't have to go hunting for her after obliterating the pathetic, human-shaped excrement subjugating her to such cruelty. The final meeting with the imbecile was a stroke of efficiency. He could wind down the useless business relationship and satisfy his curiosity—he hadn't met many other hybrids aside from the twins. Freeing her was just another way to rub salt into the wound before dealing her captor the final blow.

That was all it was. Curiosity. A little spite, driven by a personal distaste for seeing gorgeous, unique, wild things handled and caged by men undeserving of their lethal beauty.

He had no expectations, when he removed her collar. It was the collar, really, that convinced him that she was indeed the rumored, priceless hybrid in this shambling moron's clutches. Why would an ordinary housecat require a shock collar with an evol-suppressing protocore embedded in its unwieldy clasp?

He had no expectations, when she sat staring at him with those uncannily intelligent golden eyes instead of running as far and as fast as her little legs could take her, now that she was free.

He had no expectations as he propped open the base's basement exit door with an open can of tuna, nor when he casually left one of his own custom-made Berluti biker boots to prop open the emergency exit leading directly into his penthouse in the base.

He had no expectations as he plucked a raw steak from the fridge, originally destined to be cooked by his personal chef, and began grilling it himself.

His heart didn't knock against his ribs in the same way she didn't knock on his door when a little shadow slipped into the kitchen, nor did a deep satisfaction soak warmly into his chest like fine wine as the little shadow crept under the chaise lounge at the end of the living area and fell right asleep without further ado.

It was just curiosity, after all.

But then the first night passed. And the second. And though he did his best to convey that he knew, that he knew and that she was finally safe, his little kitten remained a kitten. His reputation took hit after hit as he told himself that it was for her sake, and not his own, that he refused to be parted from her if at all possible as he conducted his business within his empire. She ignored his provocations, never giving any truly convincing indication that his little kitten was in fact a human being.

But just as he truly despaired, wondering if the rumors about him and his grip on his own sanity were correct, he passed the heavy wooden doors of his home gallery and noticed that they were slightly ajar, just wide enough for a kitten to slip through. He paused, moving silent as a raptor, glancing through the doors.

His art gallery is not extravagantly large, but it does have a vaulted ceiling with murals in a Renaissance style depicting mythological beasts in flight across a night sky. The midnight marble floors depict the points of golden compasses in repeating patterns, gleaming under the spotlights highlighting his most favored paintings in his possession. Benches with crimson velvet cushions dot the expansive space, waiting for him to sit in quiet contemplation before whatever art he's in the mood to admire at any given moment. As with his weapons, and his jewelry, antiques and cars, he loves collecting fine art. Art, a manifestation of human creativity, a reminder that not all humanity is worthless on nights when he wonders why he doesn't simply pull down the sky, raze everything to the ground, and move on from this wretched planet. Art, a reason to pause the apocalypse.

That night, he spotted her sitting with unnatural stillness in front of one of the particularly dramatic painting in his collection. Still silent, he melted along the wall in the shadows behind her to observe her unnoticed, just a little black form sitting precisely on the northern point of one compass-star, gazing up with her wide golden eyes, tail flicking, flicking, flicking across the stone. She admired the behemoth of a painting, depicting a battlefield in which a tyrant is being beheaded with a guillotine by the successful revolting forces. A woman, hair wild, cloak billowing in the wind of an oncoming storm, pulls the cord with a ferocious grin on her face.

It was one of his favorite paintings too.

Then, one evening, he quietly watched her very deliberately knock a heavy art history coffee table book onto the floor and then bat at the pages with studied determination to turn each one, and then would stare at the page for several minutes before moving to the next one.

And sometimes, she'd make the most heart-wrenching, excruciating sound in her little throat, a sort of high keening mewl—and in those moments, he would recall the intel in his files indicating that the walking amoeba he had eradicated was supposed to have had two cat hybrids.

He told himself it was out of curiosity when he ordered the twins to look into that particular matter.

But the nights passed, and then the months, until it was over a year later, and she still showed no interest—or capacity—in shifting.

Until tonight.

Sylus is a thorough man. He had his suspicions. And the opinions of others have never bothered him, anyway. Not in any way that matters.

But as his laughter fades, and that terrified, hollow panic creeps over his kitten's face as she asks him, "Did you know?" he finally understands for the first time what it means to care about someone else's thoughts in a way that matters.

As she begins to shake again, he's slammed with the understanding of what it feels like to be willing to do anything—anything and everything—to keep that fear from ever dimming those bright eyes again.

Mr Qin's—

no, Sylus's, bedroom is dim, but even in your human form, you can see him clearly in the dark. His eyes, steady and focused, glint like a nocturnal predator's in the shadows. The only sounds are the shift of Mephisto's wings on his perch beyond the curtained bed, the fading of Sylus's laughter, and the agony of your racing heart.

It was worth the wait.

What does that mean?

Your mind sharpens, awakening after too many years in a simple animal state. The pools of your feelings, the puddles of your comprehension, deepen, deepen, opening below down into the yawning depths, underwater caves, tunneling into a bottomless void.

All at once, you must see the truth that your kitten heart dismissed, driven by the illusion of safety, his gentle hands, his easy acceptance of your presence at his side, in his life, in his bed.

He knew? All this time? He knew and he said nothing?

It was worth the wait.

Is that why he left his base wide open the night he killed your owner? Because let's face it, that man owned you. He crushed you and Caleb under his boots by twisting the bond you shared, keeping you each in line with threats to the other. Caleb would absorb anything on your behalf. But you? You didn't conform to the rules, even when you knew the risk. You kept fighting instead of resigning yourself to the reality that you were just a caged animal, fit only to fulfill the whims of a bad man.

It was worth the wait.

And what did you do?

The first taste of freedom, and you followed another bad man home.

He knew. He knew, and he said nothing.

Why didn't he say anything?

Is that why he spoiled you, petted you, carried you everywhere with him? Not because of friendly affection, genuine care, but to keep you always under his supervision, lying in wait for you to shift?

It was worth the wait.

Self hatred you haven't felt in years—not really, with your muted cat's emotions, your instincts overriding complex emotions contrary to survival—for why would a wild cat have need of the feeling of guilt? Of self-recrimination? A cat acts according to its nature, unapologetically.

But you, your faulty, human self—you should be groveling before the universe for your existence every day you still draw breath.

And if not the universe—then at least to Caleb.

You went from one villain's lap to another, without even a question. What an insult to your brother's sacrifice.

You hate yourself, and you're terrified of the cost of your accidental shift.

You should have seen it coming. But you wanted to believe that such simple bliss could last forever.

You needed to rest, so, so badly, after the long years, scared and lonely and enraged in your owner's cruel cage.

But all that's over now.

You have to hear him say it.

He knew.

And then you have to figure out what he wants.

What's the price you'll pay this time?

"Did you know?" you grind out, throat still so raw with disuse. More of an accusation than a question. You should be cautious. Roll over, show your belly. Or, now that you're naked against him in human form, rub your chest lasciviously against his, roll your hips a little, hope that he'll feel generous if he thinks you'll do your utmost to please him.

But you've never known how to play it safe.

As he just stares at you, those maddening, glowing eyes narrowing a little in thought, you lose your patience.

"Did you fucking know? This entire time? Without saying a word?"

Heat, under your skin. Nausea, in your belly. Animal sensations in your human body. Your lips are trembling as your nervous system can't decide whether you want to scream in rage or cry in despair.

"Such accusations from a little intruder who waltzed in and made herself at home," he marvels, unruffled by your meltdown right on top of him. He continues cupping your cheeks, stroking his thumbs along your skin. You hate yourself for not wanting to jerk away from his gentle touch. But he's touched you so tenderly for over a year now—how can you be blamed for having grown dependent on its soothing reassurance? "I didn't know know for sure." He shrugs, big, bare shoulders lifting a fraction. Shoulders you've spent the last year curling around like a scarf. "But I hoped."

Now you do pull away.

He hoped?

What was he hoping for?

What does he want from you? How will he hurt you now that he knows what you are?

You pull away, away from his hands caressing you, the silk sheets slithering down your back, pooling around your waist. Straddling him, bare before him, you steady yourself by placing your hands on his massive chest. It's not much, but it's better than sliding along the length of him, skin to skin, slightly slick with sweat. You can always just shift back. You can shift back, claw him, and flee. If all else fails, you'll use your evol. Something you haven't risked in… a long time, even before the collar.

"What do you want?" You tense, preparing for violence. For last resorts.

"To piss."

You tilt your head, utterly confused.

"I see your ears twitching, so I know you heard me, Kitten. Care to stop crushing me under your massive weight?"

Indignant, you slide off his lap, plopping onto the bed next to him. "A rhino couldn't crush you, let alone me whether in human or cat form."

"Is that so? Tell that to my bladder. It took you so long to wake up I thought I'd be forced into watersports without the proper preliminaries, as is polite." Rolling to the side, he gracefully rises to his feet, throwing open the dark, gauzy curtains around his bed and heading to the bathroom. The blackout curtains pull themselves back at the touch of his fingertips against the wall next to the bathroom door before he disappears.

You stare after him, alone in your puddle of sheets, absolutely confused. "I'm not into watersports!" is all you can think to yell after him.

"No? Just voyeurism then?" His voice, drifting from the bathroom, is filled with mirth.

"If you didn't want company while you were—"

"Who said anything about not wanting company while I'm pissing, or anything else for that matter? The door's wide open. According to your rules, that's an engraved invitation, so what are you waiting for?"

Hesitating, you sit very still, not understanding what game he's playing.

The resounding sound of a big man peeing ricochets out of the bathroom, followed by the flushing of the toilet. Water begins to run.

You don't know what game he is playing, but you're determined to find out.

Curiosity and the cat and all that blah blah blah, with all that entails for you and the unwise decisions you've made your whole life.

After all, what's the worst that can happen?

Caleb's already dead.

You follow him.

It's strange—your bare, delicate, human feet against the cool marble floor. Your height, your slightly dulled senses, your human body in space. You'll adjust quickly, but it's still strange, after so long. Silently, you pad across the room and march into the bathroom like you own it. He basically handed you an engraved invitation, after all.

Steam billows from the walk-in shower and then scent of some fancy, citrus, bergamot shower gel wafts through the air, pungent even to your human nose.

Planting your ass on one of the fancy benches he has scattered about the unnecessarily large bathroom, you stare at his massive ass partially visible through the steam. It's so round. It's so big. You should have bitten it while you were a cat. You want to bite it now.

Your tail puffs at the thought.

Sylus 's off-tune humming envelopes you like the steam, and it takes you a second to realize it's What's new, Pussycat?

How did you never realize how obnoxious he is while you were a cat?

You wait, but he says nothing. He's using the same tactics on you that he does during negotiations. Some spiteful part of you wants to wait him out, force him to speak first, to lose. But fuck it, you're no businessman and you've never had much patience to begin with. "What do you really want?"

"How long has it been since you've taken a shower?" Ignoring your question, he lathers his hair, a dark pewter now that it's wet.

"What, do I smell?" you demand, scoffing. Impossible. You keep your fur very clean, and always have, thank you very much.

"Yes."

Bristling, you pull your bare feet up on the bench, wrapping your arms around your knees, your tail wrapping around your ankles. "I do not—"

"You smell incredible. But let me rephrase: how long has it been since you were in human form, and thus had a shower?"

With every question and response, with every unexpected reaction to your questions, your fear, your demands, Sylus Qin sends you reeling faster and further, the disorientation of your unexpected shift and his unpredictable responses making you question your sanity. You're confused, deflated, disarmed.

You should be cautious. You should persist in divining his true intentions, give nothing away, get out of here as quickly as possible.

But where will you go?

Caleb is dead. Your owner is dead. You have no education, no job, no source of income.

And now that he knows you're not actually a cat, there's no way he'll let you stay and live out the rest of your days peacefully as his pet like you had dreamed of doing for the past year.

You're so scared, and lost. You've been so scared and lost for so, so long.

You tell yourself that all you can do is give him what he wants, and see what he'll do once he gets it. You refuse to consider the possibility that he had tamed you, long ago.

"What year is it?"

Pausing with his hands in his hair, he turns his head, his profile severe and achingly beautiful. He tells you the year.

When you don't immediately answer, he thrusts his head under the water, rinses the shampoo out of his darkened hair, and then turns to fully face you.

He really is just like a sculpture, except unlike the statue of David, his dick is huge. You stare at it, at the soft silver hair surrounding it and arrowing up to his navel, instead of meeting his eyes. Your mouth waters.

"How long have you been living shifted as a cat, Kitten?"

"Ten years."

Your lips are shaking again, eyes hot, throat thick.

Ten years.

Almost a third of your entire life.

As the fall of the shower's water shushes any other sounds and the quiet stretches, you lift your eyes to Sylus's. His right eye flares hot. "I should have taken my time with him."

Once again, you're left confused. "What?"

He looks away, throat bobbing as he swallows, before glancing back at you, eyes now their customary soft ruby glow. "Time for a shower then. Care to join me?"

He's asked this so many times over the past year. You always thought it was a private joke, a silly man doting on his pet and asking her questions he already knew the answer to, an answer she could never actually give.

"You knew, but you said nothing."

As he runs his long middle finger thoughtfully over his lower lip, you can't help but watch its trajectory across the wet softness of his mouth. "No. I suspected, and you're lying to us both if you didn't notice the very loud hints that I've spent the last year trailing behind me like bait."

"You bait a trap. So what now?" You clear your own throat now. "Now that I've finally walked into your trap."

The water pounds over his shoulders, streams over his broad chest, the slick fur around his nipples. He looks both stronger and more vulnerable, naked and wet like this. Glorious. It hurts you to look at him, knowing that he's looking at the real you now, naked and vulnerable in turn, and not your disarming, soft little cat form.

He stands, hands easy at his sides, as if to drive home the point that he's unarmed. At least physically. The heart beating in his chest may be his most powerful weapon, though. At least against yours. "What do you think I want?"

You look away, unable to bear how much you care about him, even as a human, when you know nothing about him. Not really. Just how he takes his coffee, his preferred wine, his soft-hard hands, his favorite records, the scent of his sweat right after he's done boxing, his tuneless humming, his ruthless efficiency in killing and signing contracts.

You know him in all the ways that don't matter.

"To use me."

He laughs, low and intrigued. "Are you useful?"

You glance back at him. Maybe he doesn't know how you're useful. You refused to perform for your owner, after all. And he put the evol suppressor collar on and left it, after he resigned himself to never earning your trust. Maybe Sylus is so easy-going because he has no idea what you're really capable of.

"Not at all."

He smirks, eyes flashing red only for an instant, only an imagined beast circling the firelight. "Then what use have I for a useless cat, other than to spoil her rotten?"

You watch him, a beast yourself. "None at all, I suppose," you agree, carefully. "What now, then?"

"Come join me."

You tilt your head again, confused.

"Join you?"

He lifts his hand, bicep bulging, water dripping, and beckons you with a flick of his fingers.

"Join me in the shower, since you've spent the last year refusing my offers, and we can talk about what's next."

Through the hot steam, Sylus watches every single emotion flit across his kitten's face with increasing fascination. Having been so long in cat form, it's no wonder that you have lost the art of schooling your expressions, shielding your emotions from anyone with eyes to see. He wants to teach you again, or for the first time, if you never learned, because he wants to be the only one who gets to see the unveiled beauty of your confusion, indignation, sorrow, cunning and now, outrage.

Black tufted, velvety cat ears swivel, flatten against your lovely hair. Bright eyes narrowed, fists clenched, the appealing, bared curves of your body tense—fight or flight, you clearly haven't decided yet. Sylus forces his eyes to keep moving, not lingering on your pretty nipples, the dip of your belly button, the shadow between your legs. Instead, he admires your tail, long and fluffy, puffed wide as it whips behind you in agitation.

You're so mad at him, and it's the cutest thing he's ever seen. He wants to eat you.

He's very, very pleased with himself. The fear is nowhere to be seen, and you haven't run yet. His tactics, since the beginning up till now by acting like nothing was extraordinary about your shifting to your hauntingly beautiful human form, continue to pay off. You walked into his life of your own accord, and the only way he'll accept your continued presence by his side is if you continue to choose to stay with him, as a human and not just as his pet.

He thought it was just curiosity at first.

Simple intrigue. A puzzle to be solved, a riddle to unravel. A novelty to turn in his hands for his amusement until she slipped away again, on silent paws into the neon night.

But now, seeing the truth of you?

If nothing else, Sylus is an honest man. More honest than most, in fact.

And he's honest with himself as he admits that perhaps, it's never just been curiosity.

Maybe, fate already had plans for him the moment his eyes met your golden gaze, and for once, such plans weren't cruel.

He wants to eat you. He wants to keep you.

Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was fate.

But he's never been one to sit back and let fate decide the course of his life. He'll take its machinations into his own hands now that the gears are in motion, tinkering with an engineer's agility to ensure that it runs exactly how he wants.

"I'm not doing anything until you give me a serious answer! What now?" you demand, and Sylus can perfectly picture the bristle of your raised hackles if you were still in your cat form.

Sighing, he turns, twists the handle of the faucet, and the water stops abruptly, the silence a relief after its steady pounding. It was worth the attempt. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and so forth. He pads to the towel rack, chooses the smallest one that can still wrap around his waist, and proceeds to dry himself with it. "Whatever you want."

He can't help the twitch of his lips as your tail continues to whip wildly in agitation.

Agitation, but not fear. As long as you're confused, or indignant, or mad at him, you're not scared. That's enough for him, for now.

"What do you mean, whatever I want?" Ducking your head, resting your chin on your knees, your voice is heavy with suspicion and doubt.

"What do you mean, what do I mean? What's not clear about that, Kitten?" He wraps the towel around his waist so that his muscular thigh will be revealed with each step.

He likes it when you stare at his body and the tips of your human ears turn pink, and the saliva pools in your mouth so much so that you have to swallow. He feels the same way, looking at the curve of your hips, your rounded shoulder, your parted lips. All the places he wants to bite, and they're not even typically understood to be erogenous zones.

"You'd let me leave, just like that?"

He turns abruptly, disliking the smallness of your voice.

Striding over to where you sit curled over your knees on a little vanity stool, he takes another gamble. He gives in to the desire to run his fingers through your lustrous hair, rubbing gently at the base of your kitten's ear. "Let you leave? Who was the intruder who barged her way into my home in the first place? You've always been free to go. Why would that change just because you're not just a cat?" As you don't pull away, he pushes his luck, "Then what, do you think I'm broke, and can't keep a human in the same state of luxury that I can keep a kitten?"

His heart hitches, starts again, as you lean into, instead of away from his touch.

Snorting, you mutter. "You should be guillotined, your wealth is so obscene. The least you can do is re-distribute it to me." Glaring up at him, your defiant gaze is a gunshot straight to his heart. "Even if I wasn't invited, I'm not leaving. You can't make me leave."

Over a year in the waiting. One short morning fraught with possible missteps, possibly undoing it all. Sylus Qin will never tire of the taste of triumph. Of successful schemes. Of plays with giant payoffs.

"Okay." He gazes down at you, satisfaction surging through his tense muscles, relaxing as you meet his gaze with renewed confidence.

The shower drips, but the steam is slowly dissipating. You're crystal clear in his hungry gaze.

You don't shy away from whatever you see on his face. "Okay. So what now? Like, right now?"

"What do you want?" he shrugs, feigning nonchalance.

"I have a choice?"

He scoffs. "Again, when have you not had a choice?"

"Fine, I get it."

"Do you?" he mocks, laughing.

Over the giant bathtub, your bright eyes track the city beyond the windows as it glitters, beckons as the condensation from the shower fades.

"I guess I need some clothes."

Eyes flicking to the curve of your spine, the swell of your ass against the bench, the idea of you hiding yourself from him is… displeasing. "No one said that."

You laugh. "I said that."

It's the first time he's heard you laugh.

The reality, once again, exceeds his wildest expectations.

"As you wish, sweetheart."

Oops i lied about finishing it in this part. I'm going to try to finish it in the next part. and no, i will not be addressing sylus's hypercapitalist war profiteering in any signficant way, because i've written other fics that address that. but yes, i am posting this after wine time on a friday afternoon, so please excuse the typos, I edited it more than once but i only see glaring mistakes after sharing stories publicly. if you have thoughts to share, i love to see them in comments and tags! if you leave tags, i will assume you don't want a response so if you want one, just @ me and i will come out of your walls thanking you for every thought you shared.

I hope this tag list is better than the last. tumblr is a confusing labyrinth of dysfunction: