He takes you in when you’re fifteen. Since then- throughout the course of around six years, he’s become softer. Less ambiguous to you. There’s things he keeps under wraps and always will despite the harmless pestering on your end (like questions regarding his work, the silhouettes that trail you both constantly— and the curious glances thrown to the blood on his collar after he returns late in the night). But he’s not longer as obscure to you, his person.

Trust blooms in the parts of you where an impoverished lifestyle of scraping by carved out gaps. And you’re used to hiding- that’s not much different now- but instead of diving for shady alleyways, you find refuge in him.

He’s dangerous. That was established early on; since the first moment you met him, really, knelt before him in fear after grabbing his pant leg for help (an action he mistook for a foolish attempt at pickpocketing), that was obvious.

He’s threatening.

Never to you. Not now.

Sylus is a man of impressive decorum and somehow all the blood coating his hands doesn’t take away from his class— he extends those hands to you, callouses and all, and gives you a patient look as if he’s expecting you to take them.

At sixteen you start calling him dad (more of an accident than anything else- it’s not a conscious thing that compels you to view him as something paternal).

He doesn’t object to it.

Things fall into place in weird ways.

When all the pieces settle, you find yourself looking at a semblance of a home— a safe place that the self-proclaimed beast curated with his own paws through painstaking efforts. (Whether you were fully cognizant of them or not didn’t matter: he tried his damnedest to be what you needed, and could only hope it was enough.)

The two of you are always on the move. He barges into your room panting at night and tells you to hurry and pack a bag, or just outright scoops you up in his arms and tucks you into the car’s backseat seconds before you hear the tires revving off. Your surroundings are perpetually changing around you and yet he remains the same; a citadel, a rock in your life.

Sylus provides an air of safety. Despite it all, the abrupt ‘field trips’ (at least, that’s what he called them when you were a bit younger) taken to ward enemies off your location, the bullets that fling by your periphery on furtive nights out and the red threads that coil behind him like talons- destroying anything before it can so much as harm a hair on your pretty head- you feel safe with him.

Predator or not- he’s good to you, a lighthouse fixed firmly amidst rolling smog and cyclones.

You can’t count a time he’s lost control or been unprepared for a frenzy, and he’s taken the proper precautions to keep you from him whenever he suspects one is coming on. The broken activator just solidifies his vigilance. And he’s instructed you plenty on what to do if he does lose it, God forbid, albeit your agreement to it was utterly uneasy.

He figures he’ll spare you the little horror show, he’d joked just to smooth out the worried crinkle in your brow.

Yet- Figures he’ll spare you your life, is what he doesn’t say, despite it being a shared thought between you both.

He teaches you how to wield a gun early on.

You’d told him you didn’t wanna use it, but something as trivial as guilt had no place in Linkon as it collapsed into decadence and carnal ruin. And something like sympathy, he’d also added, was stupid. An invitation to get yourself killed.

(Silly, that. Silly and hypocritical of the man who takes pity on runts.)

Conversation is kept at a minimum at first, and clipped, but he sprinkles in tips and tricks at self preservation— life hacks in the most literal sense— and he keeps an eye on you. Watching always. He makes sure you’re holding up well and even lets you hold down the fort while he’s gone doing God knows what. It feels like a privilege when he entrusts things to you, no matter how seemingly small.

Sylus is special to you. You love him as a teacher, a protector, a warm chest to snuggle up to on the sofa when you’re restless and can’t sleep but you know he’s downstairs with a cushion waiting—

You love him as a father, too.

Not everything about him is clear to you, though... You learn many things but one you have more difficulty understanding is the way he perceives you.

You don’t know if he loves you as a daughter, or a welcome nuisance, or a stray (because he has a penchant to root for the underdog). At first, you questioned if he even loved you at all.

But you’re older now,… and you see it, the heart he wears on his sleeve to bleed for you. He cares for you. And he’s there for you.

And when he asks you to leave with him- less of a hurried demand now and more of a gentle, imploring breath amidst chittering sounds of crickets and night bugs as he stands as a single shadow against your bed frame—

You take his hand.

✦

Boxes piled in every other corner, the building feels less like a home and more like a warehouse- a very tiny, cozy warehouse, with each of your scents intertwining in the unassuming spaces where you meet.

It’s no feat of architecture- just a small apartment nestled in the innards of the southern district, and it certainly isn’t a product of exorbitant spending (the place is deceptively… humble, for what Sylus can afford), but for what it is, you like it.

You’ve dwelled at several different addresses before, and you expect this arrangement will be more of the same. You stopped mourning over the loss of houses that could’ve been homes some time ago; you bounce between streets and domains like rabbits. However, there’s a strange comfort that builds in your chest as weeks pass and, for this reason or that, your guardian shows no signs of jilting the flat.

One day, he calls you to the living room after you’ve showered, and he sits you down.

You lie in a makeshift cage between his long legs as they hang over the couch, one hand smoothing over your damp hair while the other brushes it through.

He’s never in much of a hurry to speak, so when you reach for the TV remote to fill the silence, and he stops you- you concede to the quiet, knowing whatever he’ll say to break it will be worth some thought.

Still, he seems more contemplative than usual. It warrants pause on your end.

Internally, you consider your belongings- the deliberate choice you made to keep most of them boxed- and find relief in the fact that you’ll have less to pack if Sylus were to inform you right now of another move.

It’s a little sad, but it’s just the way things are. You won’t cry over the hand that you were dealt. If nothing else, you’re just thankful, what with the squeeze this city of sin has on its people, that somewhere along the way, Sylus came to loosen you from it.

You owe him. But he never names his price.

Long, rough fingertips meticulously weaving through your hair, gentle despite the callouses as he twists it into braids, you fall into the belief that he won’t.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but you can’t find much in you to debunk it save for the tiny, deep-rooted fear that one day you’d wake up, and- just like your parents on the day of outbreak- he’d be gone. There was plenty of doubts in your head, but most if not all were born from an old trauma, and Sylus seemed… content, weirdly enough, at your side.

It becomes an easier and easier thing to believe that’s where he’ll remain.

“Sweetie,” he eventually says, “I wanted to… discuss something, with you.”

You perk under his hands, spine straightening. You give him a sidelong glance over your shoulder and find his eyes, a sharp red, surprisingly mellow as they flit across the bridge of your nose, reading your expression carefully.

“What’s wrong?”

That (the instinctive response to believe something’s gone amiss) almost brings a wry smile to his lips, but he wets them a moment later and opens them to speak. “Nothing. Not this time,” he explains smoothly. “You… You’re used to moving around, the both of us are. I’m sure it’s been… tiring, at the best of times.”

“Well,” you start as a reply, but find your speech cropped short because you’ve no real way to deny that: it was exhausting. Of course it was. But wherever he went, you’d follow. That’s just how it’s always been.

Besides, if not fixed firmly at his side- you’d be choosing the hell that is overrun, lawless Linkon; to be tossed back into its maw for the predators or, if you’re more fortunate, a not as brutal death by starvation.

Noting your silence- your agreement- Sylus continues.

He ties off the end of the tuft with a colorful band and moves to work on the other, surprisingly deft. He’s only done your hair a million times- but still, his odd expertise in it was as surprising as it was endearing. The fact that you’re twenty-one now doesn’t change this common arrangement- or the mutual fondness the two of you have for it. You like when Sylus dries or does your hair, and evidently, he does too, for whatever reason.

Maybe it’s just therapeutic for him to feel something soft in his hands. He’s better acquainted with the opposite.

“So what if we were to stay?”

The words take a moment to click.

Because you don’t stay anywhere. You don’t stay, you just run and drive and hide. Live life perpetually on the down low. On the run.

Sylus does not settle.

Still, his voice, thoughtful and velvety, rumbles behind you in a continuous, comforting sound and forces you to take what he’s saying seriously.

“This place- you don’t dislike it, do you? It’s nice. Nothing gaudy or impressive. But it’s… homey,” he muses aloud. “Off the books. You’re safe here. Safer than what the other addresses had to offer, at least.”

You ponder it for all of five seconds before answering. And to be fair it’s not actually hard to; an inner part of you assumed you’d be on the move for all your life, but you’re weirdly pleased at the idea of… not being on the move for all your life.

Some anchorage sounds nice.

You tuck your head to your chest. “I… I think I would like that.”

He perks a bit. You feel it in his hands when they pause, done with their task, and one shifts to rest on your crown.

His knees, flanking either side of you, close in. Without thinking, you latch onto one’s calf and lean into it as you grab the remote. This time he lets you.

“Yeah?” He goes, a little breathless. “Are you sure? You realize it’d be a little more… permanent.”

“Okay.”

Sylus looses a sigh somewhere behind you.

“What I’m getting at is that you’re no longer a little squirt in desperate need of me,” he clarifies in a more pointed tone, and you resist arguing that- you have no time to, really, “so if you want to leave, you can feel free to. Don’t think you’re being shackled here by me.”

For as genuine as his words sound, you quickly cotton onto the expectancy that undercoats them- the mite of something that almost makes you believe he’s waiting for affirmation on your end. A rare thing. Usually it’s the other way around.

It pulls a huff from you, though. Peels of laughter rattle from the screen in front of you (he managed to unpack your TV, but as it stands, most of the house is still pretty bare) but you ignore your favorite show for the moment to turn and frown at him.

You grab his knee while you do, saying, “Of course I don’t think that. If anything, I feel like I’m holding you back.”

Scarlet eyes blink and widen, but just slightly. White hair falls over his brow (his locks loosening from gel after a long day) when he gives his head a tilt. After a beat, he laughs at you, a deep, rumbling sound- and pats your head directly after to fix the flustered knot in your brow.

“Well, I guess we’re both wrong then, hm?

He stoops forward to kiss your cheekbone- a chaste, quick thing- and then he gets up with a grunt to head for the hall.

You watch him with a strange flutter in your chest (one that you label affection; not a wrong guess but it also fails to fully encompass just what he means to you) and stare at the wall even as he disappears behind it.

But he calls over his broad shoulder to you, “Don’t sit too close to the screen, by the way. Someone tends to get headaches when watching cartoons.”

Crossing your arms with a pout, you lean your back into the seat of the couch and splay your legs out on the fluffy rug. You’re glad for that being unpacked, but quickly find yourself planning for the following days and all you’ll have to take out and assemble- which admittedly wasn’t much, but it was still enough to trigger your lazy streak.

Sometimes you just want to lounge around all day and do nothing: a fantasy that feels more possible after your guardian’s suggestion.

You holler back, “Oh, just go to sleep, old man.” Distantly, a door opens, but it doesn’t close.

He’ll be out later.

✦

He doesn’t come out later, contrary to your belief, but his open door does make a little more sense to you when it’s deep into the night and you emerge from your own room, scared, and traipse down the hall.

The remnants of a nightmare that felt too-real grip you. Five fingers on, they don’t let go.

But Sylus- the quasi foreboding man who took you in- knows how to pull you from a pinch.

You seek his warmth as the swath of wooden tiles cooling the balls of your feet blends into carpet- that of his bedroom- navigating in total darkness as you enter.

“Sylus-?” You can’t even get the word out before he startles upright and you hear the clink of something steely and dangerous—

“I-It’s me, daddy!” You assuage quickly, voice a frail, shaken sound that’s made even smaller by the dregs of a bad dream that still hangs fresh over your mind.

Even as the images peter out— claws wrapping around your throat, a dumpster rattling as you and other ragamuffins brawl over veritable trash as food, the roar of a predator as it holds you down, saliva dribbling into your ear— the emotions are harder to shake.

You feel dizzy and a little out of place as he lets out a deep sigh of relief, flicking on the lamplight, and blinks heavily at you.

The fingers that have dipped beneath the mattress retract and return to his lap. You observe it with a relaxing of your shoulders.

Some of the tension fades from him too, but not all of it.

He asks, concern entangled with gravely bits of exhaustion, “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

You say nothing, your own voice failing you as you mentally struggle to not only find your thoughts but string them together in a coherent way.

Everything around you was blurry. Felt unstable. A cold, clammy sweat licks up your palms and forehead. The ground beneath you grows a mouth and threatens to swallow you whole- the shadows in the corner ominous and great, watching.

Of course, it was only a nightmare, an unpleasant dream that you’d laugh about and forget easily enough come morning. But right now, it’s not. It’s vivid and horrifying and amalgamating into the atoms of reality to create a special kind of paranoia. It won’t let you sleep tonight.

…Not unless something’s there to hold you, at least.

Sylus’s own voice is groggy, a bit confused. Almost unthinkingly, though, he extends a hand to welcome you.

“C’mere,” he lifts the blanket and you’re instantly drawn to the empty space beside him.

You assume it with eagerness and all but barrel into his chest, punching out a grunt from him before he chuckles faintly, reaching over to pull on the thin, beaded chain. Darkness paints across your surroundings but a small highlight swims in cherry-red eyes as they soften at you.

Strong, lean arms wrap around you, helping you burrow into him without objection.

“Was it a nightmare?” He murmurs just above a whisper, voice warm but rough as the fluffy comforters, the same ones he tucks you both under, hug him back in. “Haven’t had one of those in a while, hm?”

He feels you jerkily nod under the dip of his chin and makes a sighing response. Callous finger pads close around your back and rub little circles there meant to soothe. “S’okay, kitten. It’s over now,” he breathes, languidly pecking your temple with open lips, smearing away the part of your fringe that’s been pasted there by a cold sweat.

He has this weird habit of taking you under his wing despite his serrated edges and the natural intensity of his stone face; right now, you curl up closer to his breast, finding a tenderness he perhaps only reserves for you, and he exhales overhead.

Fears are fast to flee, wrapped up by him. As moments pass, and your erratic heart rate resumes a more normal pace, you sound your gratitude in a low murmur. Vaguely, you wonder if you’d also stirred Sylus from a nightmare of his own upon stumbling into his room, because his own pulse- typically extremely slow- undulates in his sternum.

It thumps against your ear, creating a cadence almost considered fast. A touch uneven and a lot loud.

“…Thank you, daddy,” you mouth against him, nuzzling into his pajamas- a thin, linen shirt that oozes a domesticity you’re hard-pressed to come by.

Beneath your ear— a skip.

“For… for always being there for me.”

It sounds a little sappy, but in the moment, none of that phases you. Evidently- with a low, contented hum emanating from deep within his chest- it doesn’t phase Sylus, either.

You wonder if it’s your imagination or a real, bonafide smile that curves against your head.

“Well, that’s where I belong, isn’t it? At your side,” he murmurs, and after a beat you feel his lips press a kiss to your crown, mild but lingering. “And you belong at mine, if you want it. I’ll always be here for you, sweetie,” he promises, “no matter what.”

Finally, you let your eyes flutter shut.

✦

Weeks pass. They do so pleasantly; slowly, but not in a bad way.

The quiet- mainly the lack of wandering from point A to B all for the sake of anonymity- is a welcome reprieve. Some doubts linger surrounding the agreement you and Sylus came to, but it becomes a more solid idea in your head as days pass without interuption:

This can be home.

So you start acting like it.

When noon hits, you don’t go with Wolfe, Sylus’s most trusted contact, for the usual training session when he swings by- bidding him farewell with a small wave- but instead stay back to work on the house.

Noon comes and goes. The sky turns dusky and your belly howls for food but you pay none of it any mind, too engrossed to care.

Because this is exciting.

You decorate all throughout the day, unwrap furniture from cardboard and feel anticipation swell inside you. You sing and twirl.

Before Sylus returns, you buzz with excitement while picturing his face upon walking in- not to a barren space but to a cozy one- and the rare show of his surprise. It’ll probably be nothing beyond a flare of his eyes or a soft sound of acknowledgement, but you pine for it all the same.

You’d like to make him happy. To make him feel more comfortable, at home. Especially after a long day spent weaseling throughout the blind spots of the city. He’s only allowed so much time to kick off his shoes and relax, and you want to highlight those moments for him.

It’s the least you can do, you think with a small smile, stepping down from a stool to appraise a photo you just hung (one with his hand around your waist, pulling you to his side— a would-be perfect photo if not for the crow that blurs in the corner of the lens).

Focused, you stick your tongue out and square your fingers, closing one eye because that’ll definitely help you make a better judgement on whether or not the frame is straight enough—

It slants sharply when the front door opens and slams.

You jolt, ripped from your small trance as you spin your head towards the entryway, only an iota prepared to run for the hallway and bird dive into the closet- that’s if you even make it in time. Bullets will always be faster than your little legs and if you’re correct in your belief that it’s those shady men who hate Sylus, come to retaliate against him, then there’s no way they’ll deliberate and give you a chance to escape—

Sock-clad feet halt on the floor. The stop in momentum hurls your head inches beyond your axis of balance, but the figure that freezes in the threshold, familiar, tall but hunched over, somehow seems more surprised.

Not at the new touch-ups on the walls and the neat, embellished rooms- no, but at you.

Trudging into the apartment, he looks worse for wear and you take the sight of him in with a different, growing kind of alarm.

Your shoulders ease up, just slightly. It’s not an intruder, a pack of big, unscrupulous men barging in to avenge some grievance related to the assassin who took you in- which is relieving, but the concern is tight in your brow all the same.

When he speaks, his voice is ragged. Half man half animal.

“Sweetie- what are you-?” He cuts himself short to make a sound of displeasure that comes from deep within his throat. Raw, brutal.

“You shouldn’t be here-!” You give a little flinch in response to the ferocity in his tone, phlegm catching in his trachea before he looks down, shakes his head with a hard blink, and stomps into the bulwarks of the apartment.

“Dad, you-?”

Ignoring your startle (perhaps blind to it; you think his mind is on other, more inward matters as something wild glints in his eye- paired with a conflict that worsens with each heaving breath), Sylus grabs your wrist, and he does it tightly.

“There’s no time- I need you to hurry. Help me with my suppressants- now!”

Something clicks in you, then, a distant memory lighting itself from a foggy space of remembrance.

“And kitten, listen to me. If I ever… lose control,” he starts, words a gentle, almost resigned mumble against a backdrop of city sirens and a snarling engine as the car veers into a more secluded road. You stare at his profile with a flicker of unease. But he remains composed, saying as if it’s a topic as simple as the weather, “I need you to handle me,” he glances at you, gaze steady, a brilliant, solid red, even as your mouth opens to bluster out a denial of that possibility.

“But- your suppressants- We can use them—“

“Maybe,” he turns to look out the windshield, at the road ahead. Dust and debris scrape in the wind. Even for the southern district, the place was ratty, but this is where the deal was to be had, and Sylus needed those vials before morning. “But things don’t always go as planned, you know that, sweetie. So… If something ever fails, or I become immune to the dosages— I taught you how to shoot.”

“I- I wouldn’t shoot—!“

He snaps his head over and barks, fingers whiting around the wheel. “You would! You would and you will.”

Startled, your vision blurring despite the hand you close firmly over your breast- as if balling your emotions in your palm, holding them at bay- you swallow. Scarlet eyes ripple, irises dancing around a black orb as it shrinks and becomes frantic. Unease flutters in your chest as his cold instructions turn over in your mind- but for all his hammering of them into you- you don’t bite the hand that feeds. It’s just not in your nature.

You don’t even bite the hand if it asks you to.

Begs.

Noting your shock, the stunned expression that barely masks a confused kind of hurt, your guardian blinks. Sighs and looks away.

Exhaust blows out from the back of the vehicle; you catch it in dark tails from the rear view mirror, in whiffs as the air around you becomes sour and noxious.

“I taught you to shoot,” he says again after a beat. Softer, this time. “When it gets to the point where it really matters,… don’t let your daddy down, okay? Please, sweetie. Just… agree on this one thing.”

For once in a handful of years, not considered easy by any means- but enjoyable at his side- you stare at the man who took you in and find him cruel.

You dip your chin, more out of hurt than anything else, highly uncertain as dread contricts your lungs, and nod.

It does what it was meant for: It placates him. You think it even convinces him.

He’s putting all his faith in it, in that wordless assent you’d given him years ago, for the sake of the present.

Though, Sylus still thinks it’s manageable. That there’s still a shot that this frenzy- triggered by an enhancer after a gloved hand squeezed glass to the point of bleeding, vindictive and bent on getting the last laugh- can be resolved. So you hurry to lay him on the couch as his breathing picks up, scuttling towards his room before coming back with arms full of a briefcase.

You crash to the rug and prop the case on the coffee table, fishing out a syringe before sidling up to him and taking his arm.

With some resistance- and a grunt that sounds more wolfish than man- he lets you, and you line up the needle with his arm. You say a curse under your breath when tears smear across your lids and make fuzzy the room around you.

“Hurry,” he rasps.

Shakily, you dig at the crook of his arm with your thumb to plump up the vein before- with little coordination- you feed the needle in with a sharp breath.

It mingles with Sylus’s as he makes an uncomfortable noise, the glittery fluid disemboguing into his bloodstream.

Split seconds feels like eons.

Time moves slow as molasses and you chew on your lip until something like metal sours your tongue.

Between fingers that tremble wildly just to keep it inside him, steadily injecting him with the suppressant, and a heart that pounds with uncertainty in your ears— given no assurance whatsoever that you’re not too late to pacify him— you don’t realize all the gawking on his part.

The ardency in his gaze, fleetingly tender, as it remains fixed to you. Some unspoken battle happening behind it.

…The darker thing, with a name you can’t assign, is winning out.

He feels it, too; conscious thought lending itself to his baser person— instincts, ugly and primal and overwhelming— all against his will.

“You were supposed to be with Wolfe,” He forces out with great difficulty, sweat beading his temple. He’s hot to the touch, skin like a kiln, baking your fingertips as they hover over him.

Light as feathers, you still feel the burn.

“I would’ve never came.”

Thickly, you swallow, rubbing his forearm soothingly even as the veins there bulge and glow, putting a fright in you that you do well to ignore.

He needs you right now. He needs you and you won’t fail him.

“Shh, shh,” you hush, folding your upper half over the sofa to plant your head against his shoulder.

One hand, between your bodies, gradually plies him with the suppressant; the other slips to the nape of his neck and intwines with his mullet, tugging softly.

He lets out a soft sound at that, temporarily appeased.

“It’s okay, daddy. It’s okay.”

You need it to be true.

For what it’s worth, he does seem just a touch comforted by that.

It’s not lasting.

He’s dangerous, and he knows. He’s losing out to the predator instinct, and he knows and he’s terrified but he remains rigid. Has to.

“I want you to inject all of it into my veins,” a sonorous voice rings at your ear, dry, open lips moving against your head as he smushes a kiss there. You think it’s more subconscious a move than anything as the cognizant trace in him fades out, albeit you still appreciate it.

A large hand, hanging off the couch- shaking not because it’s weak but because it’s trying its best to be- shifts to rest over your back.

He continues, “And then I want you to leave me. If we’re lucky, I’ll pass out and ride it through that way…”

Clenching your jaw, you nod against his neck, under his chin, and bite down on a whimper.

“You’ll be okay, daddy. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be all better. The suppressants w-will make you sleepy, and—“

Something surges in him, then, a growl cutting through your eardrums as you flinch back and he- before the second little vial even reaches the halfway tick- knocks it from your hands.

It collides with the coffee table and shatters.

The rug- the fluffy one you’d happily picked out with him some months back- darkens with a splotch you can’t easily scrub out.

Like an animal in a cage he’s revolted. You’re not naive enough to not see the movement for what it is; no matter how watered down, it’s still a version of it: a beast lunging.

Whatever’s left of his conscience is just barely barring that monster off, but as you fall back on your ass and gape at him, you realize with horror he will not turn out as the victor.

Fear brews in your belly. Butterflies swarm the pit of it, leaving nausea in the wake of their wings as they make quick work of your bravery- or the pretense you held of it.

A drop of blood pricks from the crook of his arm, the syringe made useless as it lay broken on the carpet: you watch it with shock, numbness almost, before looking up to him.

He forces himself to go recumbent, five fingers splayed over his face. The gaps in them, though, reveal grimacing, pearly teeth.

Canines bared no different than a hungry predator, defensive and bold.

Unlike you, very real in their display.

For a number of seconds, you do not breathe. Eyes wide and scared.

“Go,” he croaks out after a moment.

It takes longer than it should to register.

When it does, you gasp as if stirred from a bad dream. It’s precious- the sign he gives that he’s still in control- and you don’t take it for granted. You rise to wobbling knees, frenetically glancing between the dazzling shards and his heaving chest.

You extend a cautionary, worried hand, something in you utterly wrecked at the sight of him- your savior, your shield, your father figure- crumpled in on himself.

“Daddy—“

“Go!”

Silence strobes across the living room, but just for a second. It bites into you where it settles.

Unthinkingly, you turn. His words and their grating tone cut better than any knife ever could. Tears clinging to your lashes, you steel your legs (because they’re gelatinous beneath you), whip around, and start for the front door.

You don’t know where you’ll go apart from Sylus tonight, but that’s all to be figured out later after you calm your nerves down a bit and convince yourself it’ll all be fine—

The couch groans atop its wooden frame.

Suddenly, a hand snatches around your wrist, scorching hot, and when you swirl around, his head is bowed.

A whit of hope strings you along—

“D-Dad?” You breathe, “Are you okay now?”

Scarlet eyes peer up from a silvery curtain of hair, aflame, near glowing, and you let out a gasp.

—And drops you.

“I thought you wanted to help little old me? So…” he muses darkly, “where are you going?”

The reality of your situation takes a second to catch up to you.

Something that can accurately be called fear clamps in your chest— not for what he could be but for what he is now. Some change has happened in him, some sickness taken root, and until it passes, you’ll be victim to the beast that wears your savior’s face.

Stunned, you listen. “Has your father ever left you hanging? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same?”

“Sylus-“

He tuts, a belittling sound. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. C’mere, kitten, sit.” Long fingers entwine around your wrist and you’re reminded of wolf paws trampling over twigs in forests. It’s not unbearably tight a grip, not yet, at least, but he’s certainly applying more pressure than what he generally does.

You wet your dry lip, dread wringing you from the inside out. You feel oddly parched.

“But Sylus- you’re not-“

“Sit,” he suddenly growls, something undeniably dark glittering in his eye.

You’re without opportunity to argue or even try to reason with him, because he yanks you into his lap and loops his arms around your middle.

You liken yourself to a bird in a cage. His limbs your bars and your soft sounds of fear like twittering.

Using the last of your rational thought- your brain losing ground to fight or flight instinct- you try to think back to his instructions (funereal as they were), but find yourself creating other options. Even if you did want to shoot Sylus like he’d made you promise all those years ago, it’s not like you’ve got a gun lying around for it… No, the one he gave you (the one you keep as a token of him, like a locket) is sandwiched between your mattress and its framework.

A-And that’s where it’ll stay. No matter what.

Because you don’t bite the hand that feeds. You don’t bite the hand that feeds even after it pleads to be.

You decide, right then, that it’s better to play dead.

Sat perfectly still in his lap, your plan succeeds for all of half a minute before a hitch appears. To begin with, it was one born out of desperation, with low expectancy- but damn it all you still flinch when you become aware of his teeth and your proximity to them.

Fangs brush against your throat, uncomfortably sharp. It raises alarm in you, but it’s quickly lost in the other warning bells clanging in your skull.

You shiver. To your horror, Sylus chuckles.

“Are you scared I’ll hurt you?” He murmurs, breath searing your neck where it fans against it. It’s labored and fast; the depravity amplified against your earlobe.

Somewhere in you, you find the courage to answer. “A- A little,” you feebly admit. “I couldn’t get all the suppresants in.”

Sylus hums, low and satisfied, but you don’t quite miss the undercurrent of decadence in it- as much as you might want to.

“Good,” he quips. “Frenzies feel so much better without the pushback. You shouldn’t have injected any in me in the first place.”

“But you said-“

“It’s in my DNA to want to bite. It’s a little cruel to keep me from that… don’t you think?”

A debate happens within you, short-lived but tumultuous. You deliberate on answering because really, how can you? What is there to say that can temper him when he’s like this? A predator in the flesh.

And the thing about predators is that, somewhere in the equation, there must be prey—

But no. No- you refuse to believe he’ll succumb to that animalism, not when he’s more or less like blood to you. Your trust for him runs as thick as it, anyway. Blood is thicker than water, and poison, too- so the toxic lilt in his voice means nothing. Nothing at all.

You swallow, unable to offer any real reply. “I- I-“

“No,” he snips, a palm drifting lower. Positively impatient. Ever the obliging, albeit sometimes brusque man, the Sylus you know is nowhere to be found.

“Tell daddy what you really think of him. Think he’s a monster, don’t you?”

Finally, he nips at your neck, cutting himself loose from the self restraint he stubbornly moored himself to, groaning at the softness. Seamlessly, he suckles a hickey into your throat and you mewl.

The single thread of whatever the hell it is that’s keeping him at bay- his buried conscience, perhaps- snaps.

He makes a hot, ferocious sound, pawing at your breast now, drawing a startled yelp from you that his gums throb at. “Should he act accordingly? Hm? Use your words, kitten.”

Words? No. No, you think actions would suit you better- he’s not in his right mind right now and you need to leave like he’d ordered before your image of him, the one you’d put on a precious pedestal, collapses.

Daringly, you get up to try and bolt out again, mind single as your eyes dart to the front door.

If you can just leave the apartment, maybe you can lose him in the weaving, shady paths that are labyrinthine Linkon. Surely, he’ll find someone else, someone deserving (culpable men are not hard to come by here), and make them his glorified plaything instead.

By the time the sun rises, he’ll have woken from this awful, twisted trance—

He lets out a roar, angrily snatching you back onto the couch.

This time, though, there’s no semblance of freedom as he pins you under him, hovering close enough to bump his long nose against yours as he grips your hips tight enough to bruise.

“Nawh, you wound me, sweetie… And here I thought…” he rasps, ruby eyes glossing as the lid droops, blatantly ogling your jostling breast, “You had daddy’s better interest in mind.”

That’s unclear. But yours? Your better interest?

There it is again- blitzing across your frazzled conscience, stark against the dreadful haze: Play dead.

You do.

The blow will come, that’s definite. But if you play your cards right, maybe, a small hope in the back of your head says, you can lessen it.

You go limp beneath him and his hands. Even as they grope your tits through your shirt before he quickly foregoes that charade in favor of ripping open the collar, you remain still. You clamp your eyes shut and bite down on a pathetic sound.

Each and every one of your intentions evade riling him up, and yet your mere presence, pliant but shivering beneath him, does a good enough job at that on its own.

Still, as his energy builds into a devastating force, you’re quietly thankful for the amount you did manage to get in with the syringe. Likely, you realize with a heavy swoop of your heart, the determining factor in your life.

H-How much was it again-? Two vials? Or a vial and a half-?

Briefly, you glance over to the table where the case lay, open but half empty, and contemplate something stupid before the man- beast- above you laughs. Asserts himself in your face.

He’s all you see when he says, “I guess you don’t have your better interest in mind, either. Hm, kitten?”

And you’re all he smells, feels, knows, as he ruts his clothed cock against your thigh and you feel the swollen bulge. You shiver again. He’s really, really hard and is he actually planning to fuck you with that-?

You?

The pleasured, but not close to satisfied, grunt he makes says yes. Yes, absolutely he’s going to fuck you.

Rip off your panties after uncivilly pulling off your shorts and stuff his flushed length inside with a—

—“Fuck, kitty!”

He’s met with resistance.

And you forget your plan completely, terror taking over entirely as you begin to wriggle and plead for him to hold off, to reconsider— you’re a virgin and he’s mean and given your relationship, you two were never supposed to end up parallel to one another on the couch, desire brewing between your naked bodies. Well, you’re naked- or growingly; but Sylus isn’t.

Scraps of leather cling to sturdy, lean muscle, but he’s broiling in them still, skin licked with sweat. Evidently, heat has fried his neurons- his memory of himself- too.

“Please, daddy, I- I’ll—“

Oh, break. You’ll one hundred percent break but you keep from saying it aloud because you suspect it’ll warm his blood all the more. A correct guess, but it’s a little late for taking back what you did say. Sylus cottons onto it and groans.

“Don’t do this, Sylus,” you try to remind him of who he really is, even if your voice is small and untrustworthy. “Y-You don’t have to. J-Just remember who you are- who I am!”

His precious girl.

Once, he’d even said, his treasure.

Your heart stings.

Taking out the engorged, weeping head of him and rubbing it at your mostly-dry entrance (in hopes to prime it after failing to push his way inside), he’s hardly lucid as you babble.

Cute… But unimportant, he decides.

…Yet, he does somehow find it in him to look up, and you do find a trace of… something in him, human-like and guilty, when he does. It’s quicksilver. Gone when you blink.

Your pussy lips try to spit him out but it just works him up further.

The darkness in his gaze returns in tenfold.

He manages a scoff. “Oh, c’mon. Of course I remember~ You’re daddy’s little girl, aren’t you?” He hums meanly, suddenly immune to the wide, kicked look you send him. It’s always done wonders on him before, but you’re met with failure.

“So how come you can’t take his cock? I know you could, if you just tried a little harder. Relaaax. Ease up. From now on, someone’s gonna have to be the calm one between us when I get into my frenzies. You can be that, right?” That sentence instills dismay in you for many reasons, but you have no time to think on them.

He husks, “Now, go on. Help guide me in.”

You don’t reach a hand down between you two like perhaps he wanted, but you do hear a faint squelch right then as he cants his hips forward an inch, and it does make you gasp. Despite yourself, you slick up for him- for God knows what reason, maybe just as self preservation or some deeper, pitiful attempt to please him- and it becomes obvious.

Sylus notes it with a shaky breath that blends with his other labored, ragged ones, and a grin that’d better suit a bastard.

He delves inside, by a small miracle, but you can’t stop from crying when he reaches halfway in and blood rings around the thick base of him. Inwardly, you try to separate the sin from the face, telling yourself between strained breaths that he’s not in control, that this frightening, terribly unfamiliar side isn’t the real him.

You whimper more when you realize you’ll be squinting at him for months to come, losing sleep over the question of, was he helpless to the beast, or hiding it in him all along? Was he a mere victim to the predator instinct forced onto him? or willfully steering it—?

No. No. Because he’s like blood to you. And blood is thicker than water, and poison, and the niggling doubts you feed on until gluttony.

“I-It hurts,” you try when he bottoms out with a resounding groan. Shameless and frenetic. He stoops over you after pressing your legs all the way back to the couch, rough as he purrs in your ear.

“You say it hurts, but your pussy just squeezes tighter around me… So you’d understand why I’d be getting mixed reactions, don’t you?”

He whispers. For the second documented time, you find Sylus cruel. Very, painfully, cruel.

It’s hard to argue with him, even when you know he’s wrong. You think if he was more awake right now, more him, then he’d side with you as well. And yet he’s completely untrustworthy right now, morally black and mean. So, so mean.

That devilish smirk on his blissed-out face might bring on an even sharper sting than his cock as it spears inside you and starts a brutal pace.

Well.

Not quite.

Your eyes flare. So do his, want and pure, unadulterated need zipping between your bodies as his perspiration dribbles onto your collar. He hangs his head into your shoulder and you feel droplets slip between the valley of your breast.

It doesn’t take long for the heat to feel sweltering; sweat running like the Nile between you both.

“Silly little bird. You just- hah, fuck- have no clue, do you? How tempting you are?”

You ignore it all because it’s better to. Maybe ignorance won’t shield you from his hands as they clench around the fat of your hips, but it’ll certainly help you later on down the line when you want to forget and are thankful for the kickstart.

You try to focus on the ceiling, but even that blurs behind him when he leans back some just to stare, moaning at what he sees.

Even beasts can appreciate beauty, he distantly observes.

Those eyes on you, not gentle per usual (albeit sometimes tinged with a harmless tease) but ravenous and sharp- are even harder to ignore. You can’t stop your hands from lifting to push at his face to try to block him out.

All for naught, of course.

With a choked moan, he chuckles. “Ugh- look at you. These little hands keep swatting at me, even though your face is full of pleasure. Fuck,” he curses, his face handsome but a bit unnerving as it dons a more perverted look, eyes half closed, “You feel…. good. I always knew you would.”

No. No. Shut up, shut up—

“You wanna be good for your daddy?”

Yes.

Not like this.

He gathers your unruly hands and cuffs them above your head. “Then lie down and take it. If it hurts as much as you pretend, I’m sure it’ll… feel better that way, if you give in.”

There’s a very small window in between Sylus hovering over you and then Sylus dipping down to bite the fleshy bit between your neck and shoulder: in it, there’s no time to prepare.

Ice tingles in your veins, shock stealing your breath.

It’s the pain, first dull and uncomfortable as his teeth sink in, but then quickly all-consuming, that helps you find the scream.

The scream— a small, broken cry.

It doesn’t make much noise, not enough for any possible neighbors to hear- in Linkon, none would even bat an eye to it, anyway- but he covers your mouth regardless. He eats up the pathetic sounds with rough lips and hungry groans.

You don’t know how much blood he’s drawn, but there’s a little on his teeth that he makes you taste.

“Ngh, you’re delicious,” he heaves after a break. Saliva connects you both in a fleeting strand. “I’m sure your pussy tastes even better- but kitten, I really don’t have the time right now to try it. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?” He chuckles in your ear. You know he does not care for the answer. It’s deep and mean-spirited.

This side of Sylus- this rotten caricature of the man who took you in— All the hurt for it turns to loathing.

“For later,” he decides after a beat, resolved as he ignores your sneer.

You’re used to ambition on his end, but not greed: right now, his goals gravitate more towards selfishness than anything else.

All of it nears its end and quickly.

As he ruts into you, though, frenzied thrusts reaching their mark with loud grunts, it feels more gradual for you… Painfully slow. Seconds might as well be minutes, or hours, even.

It’s feral, the glint in his eye as he reshapes your walls to fit the outline of his massive cock, your virgin pussy spasming around him. Responsively, he gives a twitch, and you swear you feel his balls jump when he pauses- just for a moment- and they rest above your ass.

Sylus looks down at you, breathless and wild, and you shake at the lack of familiarity in his gaze. Ruby red eyes survey you almost frantically, with one intent only- to fuck you within an inch of your life, undoubtedly. Full of need. It’s a bottomless gaze. You think right then that you can’t give him what he wants because he’ll always be left wanting for more.

You’re not an ocean— if he reaches his hand in, he’ll inevitably reach the bottom but that clearly doesn’t stop him from trying to pull everything from out of you anyway.

It scares you. You feel small, mouse-like, but when he snatches your jaw into a sultry kiss, all canines and spit, you realize that even amidst the tumult of his predator state, you still mean something to him.

You’re all he sees. Feels. Understands to want for.

He burns inside you, the juncture of your thighs becoming sticky, gross. He ploughs inside without care for it, chasing his end and choking out moans along the way.

He coaxes some out of you, too.

Maybe it’s out of fear but you suckle on his tongue experimentally and he shakes, damp skin shivering under your finger pads as you dig them into his forearm.

Maybe you can’t play dead, but if all else fails, you can still play nice.

That’s in your best interest.

“F-uck, sweet thing, you’re gonna make me-“ a primal noise rips through his chest and rings in your ears. He lowers himself to your neck again and suckles at the orbs of blood that prick at the surface, lapping away at the small mess he made.

You wonder if after all this is over, you’ll be able to pretend it was just a love-bite, a hickey or something minor. Healable. Something able to be forgiven. Even if that would also be hard to reconcile with, considering you’d never thought he do something like this to you, the precious girl he’d flip Linkon upside down for—

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He’s classy, but not now. Cursing up a storm at your clavicle and pounding into you without thought, blunt nails embedding into your hips. Aching to brand himself wherever he can.

There’s no ceremony to it all (though there is a build-up, his pelvis quickening but stuttering against the underside of your bent thighs) when he comes.

He shouts and you scream, holding onto him for dear life as a torrent of something hot and thick floods you. Your legs shake, poor cunt desperately trying to push its intruder out but it flutters when he throbs inside you and quivers. A wisp of pleasure paralyzes you- it’s so good.

Warmth trickles between you; all along the seam of you when he withdraws until only the tip remains, his cheeks flushed, eyes unfocused.

You let your head bounce against the cushion when he slides it all out with a wet ‘pop’, squeezing your eyes shut in shame. But relief joins it, too, your jaw (that had went slack only to howl with delight) closing as you catch your breath.

It’s done. It’s over. You went through the hard part and now you just have to wait the aftershocks of it out until morning, when you’ll finally be given the chance to recuperate and forget the monster your daddy was acting the night before—

Something thick, straightening back to life, nudges at your sopping hole again as it clenches around nothing. Your eyes snap open.

A large, callous palm holds you down, bracing you by the collarbone. He tuts, leaning over you with a dazed but wholly vicious grin.

Far from satiated.

“Ah-ah, kitten. It’s a little early to tap out, isn’t it? I’m far from done with you.”

He drives himself back home, slamming into you with a moan you brokenly mirror.

✦

Morning birds tweet outside the window. Bickering back and forth to one another.

The sheer curtains glow with sunlight as the onset of dawn makes its way in. Rays of it slur together in blocks on the floor.

Sylus’s room, you realize groggily. Not the living room with its new sofa stained with sweat and sex or the rug with its shattered, neon vials.

A strong arm holds lazily to your waist. Warm breath at your ear tickles you into slight wakefulness. The body slotted behind yours isn’t scorching hot like your nerve endings remember, though, almost flinching in response, and his sounds aren’t ragged. No, it’s…

Peaceful.

The events of the evening before come back to you in increments.

Your mind, with the natural want to protect you, chalks it all up to a bad dream.

The ache between your sticky legs and the fat cockhead that sits limply above the cleft of your ass- appeased- says otherwise.

You let out a soft gasp. The man behind you grumbles out a low, noncommittal sound before his lashes flutter over the blade of your shoulder.

“…Baby? What’s wrong?”

He untucks himself from there and is given great pause when his nakedness- and yours- clicks. His limbs harden around you— horrified and confused as every fresh memory from last night comes barreling into him as well.

Stunned, he lifts his head from its perch at your shoulder, but his hand remains above your hip, feather light and hesitant.

Wearily, you turn to meet him when his other hand gently steers your chin to look his way.

He looks tired. Fucking exhausted, the fine wrinkles in his face emphasized under the weight of the night prior. He looks—

Devastated.

“You-…” A sharp, shallow breath beats from his chest. His eyes, wide and unsteady, flit between yours, searching desperately for something he can’t quite find or recognize as you wet your lip to speak.

“Yesterday, I… Started decorating the house. I was excited to show you,” you say without really knowing why. Sylus’s shoulders sag ever so slightly at your apparent calmness, but the fear in his eye remains as he surveys the bruises- all the discoloration in your otherwise supple skin- and blinks.

You inhale shakily, looking down to his chest and all its striations, put on full display in the afterglow of what transpired however many hours before.

It feels wrong to call it a night of love-making, or even a term more raw, unfeeling, as sex. No, it was…

He fucked you within an inch of your life and that was all you really knew. He fucked you until you passed out and then sometime afterwards, apparently snapped out of his trance just enough to carry you back to his bed and sleep the remnant of his frenzy through.

But it wasn’t his fault. Couldn’t have been.

(Whose, then?)

You murmur, “I should’ve went with Wolfe.”

“No,” and there it is again, that fucking snarl, searing you through to the core but before panic can settle, he’s cradling your cheeks and pressing his forehead to yours.

His eyes are intense, but not scary. No, they’re tender and beaten and lovely as his chest shudders and he shakes his head. “No, sweetie. What happened…” he starts, just as unsure of how to label it, “had nothing to do with you. Don’t ever blame it on yourself. Do you understand?”

Blearily, you nod.

You see him in double when he sighs and carefully thumbs away a tear you didn’t realize had formed and fell.

…But Sylus appears a mite uncertain with himself when his eyes fall to your breast before quickly averting, self aware to the point of near pain and definite discomfort. “I’ll clean us up,” he ventures, glancing at you again.

For permission, you realize. To scoop your jelly limbs up and carry you to the shower, bridal-style, where he’ll wash the both of you naked, intimate and-

And should-be alarming.

But it’s not. Not now when you’re still dazed and bruised and his dried cum is caked to your thighs in white rivulets- and he’s just as wounded, but ready to fix. Ready to repaint over the peeling bits of you both in the aftermath of it all. Hang a picture over the hole in the wall of your heart.

“…Okay.”

He wastes no time in picking you up, but he’s gentler than ever when he takes you with him to the bathroom adjoined to his room. It’s awkward: you note that even in the bone-deep fatigue. You can tell he’s trying not to look at all the places instinct tells him he should, and you do well to blot out the sight (and memory) of his softened cock as it dangles between his legs.

The shower starts. Sylus keeps you upright so you don’t fall because your joints will literally fail you otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” he laments as the water pours overhead, holding you against him. He means it in more ways than one. And yet, before you can voice your acknowledgement, and an unsure forgiveness, a small hope stirring in your gut that says this can be moved on from—

His lips press to yours. Chaste but searing; somehow even more world-shattering than last night.

It’s different. He’s… awake.

Jaw slack, you blink at him, water clumping your lashes both. He’s as handsome as a wolf is hungry but- for the moment- domesticated. Even his crow’s feet seem to soften.

“I’ll help you unpack the rest today,” is all he says as he reaches behind you for the soap, gaze unwavering even as you latch onto him and your perfect tits jiggle, his hand dipping below to carefully lather at your marks.

“This house can still be a home. I’ll show you.”

you’d admire his dedication if you were a little more lucid, but right now, the better part of your rationale has faded.

he feels good. so good. you can’t even be mad at him for going against his coach’s advice, being warned off intimacy before a match because it’ll sap him of his strength- his physical vigor- completely. there’s no room for frustration when you’re damn near certain his cockhead is rearranging your guts as you hold onto him for dear life, when he bites into your neck- not to a painful degree, but just to leave a pretty mark, proof you’re his- and moans.

he tuts when you whimper. bastard. but to his credit, and sometimes to your displeasure, his cocksure attitude is grounded: he wins all his battles. he has every right to brag, but that doesn’t mean that sometimes you won’t get fed up with his bravado and try to knock him down a peg… you think it’s good for him; you’re like his tether to planet earth as he makes a small empire off the boxing industry.

(albeit, he seems less interested in that and more so in impressing you with its wages.)

“nawh. what’s wrong, sweetie?” he asks, honey-sweet, tone deceptively cloying for the wicked, self-satisfied glint in his eye. and you make a silent swear right then and there that you’ll get him back for this later. (but not now. he feels delicious inside you and you can hardly swat his hands away as they grasp your hips to anchor you as he bullies his way in.)

“if i’m not mistaken, you were telling me just moments ago how we shouldn’t do this, how bad of an idea it is that i… touch you.” he breathes, playful.

maybe he’s being a little meaner now, okay, he’ll grant that much, but he hopes you know that adrenaline’s already coursing through him, that he can’t help the testosterone that spikes in his veins preceding a fight. it’s hard to not act on it. coach’s words be damned- sylus feels more hyped up, thrilled, than anything when he’s fucking you within an inch of your life in his temporary room’s bathroom. certainly not tired, or drained, or any other thing he sagely warned him about, painting sex before a match like it was anathema in itself, a ticket to a sure loss.

oh, okay, that’s great and all, but sylus doesn’t lose.

you manage a pout between gasping, delighted breaths. “you-! i- i hope you lose!”

pearly teeth flash at you, spotting your lie easily. his broad, muscled chest rumbles with a deep chuckle, the bass of it making your legs all the more weak where they wrap around his hips. “ouch, kitten, you’re hurting my feelings now. if i don’t have your support during the match,… then what’s the point in it?” he quips back, lighthearted, though you can tell he means what he’s saying.

that bold grin of his falters when he hits particularly deep and you clench around him, nails digging into his traps. he slants into you more, if that’s possible, bowing his head in the sweaty juncture of your neck and collar.

“y-you’re lucky i even go to your stupid matches,” you mewl back, brows furrowed with all the indignity you can possibly muster.

he gives a low hum, voice strained, words meaningful beneath all the layers of want and hunger. “i am lucky,” he pants. “and you’ll watch me again tonight, hm?” he plants a doting kiss to your clavicle, oddly tender for the moment, peering up at you with ruby eyes aflame.