Chapter 1: Update!!!
Summary:
hi :3 this is the story of a girl who made one (1) bad decision and is now being emotionally and physically dismantled by a rich psychopath with control issues and a thing for interior design. if you’re here for fluff, please turn back. if you’re here for trauma, chains, and a bedroom that feels like an IKEA showroom designed by Satan—welcome. Derek is the worst. mutt deserves a nap. no one is okay.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
So yeah, the story is gone.
I know that might be scary or disappointing to hear, and I’m so grateful to everyone who’s followed this twisted little journey so far. But the truth is, looking back, I hated how it read. It felt like a bunch of disconnected thoughts strung together with duct tape. The story didn’t really start for me until the maid scene, and now that I’ve seen what I’m capable of what Mutt and Derek truly deserve I know I can do better. A lot of the fog has lifted from my head, and for the first time, I’m writing with real clarity.
So here’s the good news. I’m reworking the entire thing.
I’m redoing the chapters, adding new scenes, building in more drama, more tension, and more depth. I want to bring out the full horror, heartbreak, and twistedness of this story. I’m so sorry if you were looking forward to the next update I just couldn’t do it. I don’t want to post something rushed or stitched together just to say look what I can do, everyone pay attention to me. I want to post something I’m truly proud of.
Lately, I’ve been digging deep into Derek’s character. I’ve been researching, reflecting, and putting in the work to be a better writer. I use Grammarly and Google Docs to help with spelling and grammar because I do have dysgraphia, and I want to make sure I’m doing these characters justice.
The best part? I have the entire story plotted out from beginning to end. I know exactly where we’re going. The foundation is solid. And I’m going to take my time and build something brutal, beautiful, and worth the wait. I hope you all enjoy the story, whether you’re reading it for the first time or coming back for another round.
Here’s to the new chapters
Notes:
this story started as a quick scene, this whole mess started in my notes app while i was recovering from working under a narcissistic boss who made me question reality, cry in bathroom stalls, and forget who i was. writing this was supposed to be venting. emotional exorcism. trauma processing with ✨vibes✨ i genuinely considered putting a disclaimer: “written during a dissociative episode, do not judge.” but now it’s better! kind of. if your idea of “better” includes a sad lady chained up in a designer room being emotionally obliterated by a man who thinks affection is spelled C-O-N-T-R-O-L.The other chapters are getting the same treatment—don’t worry. everything’s being gutted and rebuilt with extra dread.
if you read this and it made you feel anything—rage, sorrow, claustrophobia, a strange urge to throw a minimalist ottoman—please consider leaving a comment. i am just a little creature typing in the dark, feeding on feedback like it’s oxygen. even a single “wow” or “what the hell is wrong with you (affectionate)” would make my day.thank you for reading. more horror incoming. 🖤
Chapter 2: Home
Summary:
You didn’t move when the door opened. That’s growth, right? No scrambling, no crying, just the floor in your teeth and a nice clean silence for him to step into like a showroom. The shoes arrive first, shined, speckled, probably not muddy. Then the voice, sharp and smug, like he’s already decided what you are today. Not a person. Not really. Just furniture with trauma.
Notes:
This chapter took approximately four breakdowns, two existential spirals, and one unholy alliance with Grammarlyvery comma was a battle. Every paragraph was a hostage negotiation. If it reads smooth, just know it was sandpapered down by sheer spite and caffeine. You're welcome.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
You should have killed him, you should have driven the dagger deep into the side of his neck, felt the cold steel slip through the flesh, the skin splitting open like paper. You should have watched the blood spray out in wild bursts, hot and red, the color of life, life that was no longer his. You should have pressed harder, harder still, until his last breath was a slow, gurgling exhale, his eyes wide and pleading. You would’ve seen the pain, the terror, and you should have savored it. The rage would’ve felt righteous then, wouldn’t it? You could have wiped your shaking hands clean in the flood of it, the proof of your vengeance, the final act that would’ve set you free.
You should have spoken up. Said something. Anything. A breath, a sound, a tremor in your voice that acknowledged the girl who begged with her eyes long after her throat had stopped working. The poor girl whose head got chopped off like it meant nothing, like she meant nothing. You could have moved, intervened, or screamed. You could have made yourself a target. You didn't.
You were so afraid of your rage and helplessness that you couldn’t face it. You couldn’t face what you might do if you stayed. So you ran, leaving the men in masks behindleaving her body to be cleaned up. You were so afraid of your rage and helplessness that you couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face the sound your voice might make if you let it rise. Couldn’t face the feel of your hands if they clenched too hard, or the look in your own eyes if you didn’t turn away. You didn’t trust yourself—not with grief, not with fury, not with the aftermath. So you ran.
You ran because staying meant reckoning with what they’d done to her—and worse, what you hadn’t done. It meant standing there with the warm stink of blood in your nostrils and the heavy silence of men in masks around you, watching to see if you’d crack or kneel. Staying meant proving them right: that you were just another coward playing audience, too fragile to intervene but too complicit to leave untouched.
So you left. Left the men in masks behind. Left the girl’s slack body like a mess someone else would mop up. You told yourself it wasn’t your place. You told yourself she was already gone.
So you ran. You turned your back on the carnage, and you made survival into an excuse. You abandoned her to their silence, and you never looked back because if you did, you’d have to admit that there was more blood on your hands than your own.
But you didn’t, you couldn't, so you ran. You ran from the blood, from the violence, from the part of yourself that you knew would awaken if you stayed.
Instead, you doubled down and turned your back on HIM, left him to rot, your tongue and throat still burning from pain. But, Jacqueline, on Tom. You left them there in the dark, in that cave, with nothing but their fear and your promise to survive. You told yourself it was for them. You told yourself you needed to find help, to scout ahead, to make sure you all made it out of there alive. But it was just an excuse. The truth, buried beneath the layers of self-justification, is simpler than that: You were scared, terrified, even. Terrified of what you might become if you stayed.
You didn’t give Jacqueline the knife. You didn’t even think to do so. She had the training, but no weapon, no, she was left with no means to defend herself; you kept it for yourself. You left her and Tom there, vulnerable, trapped, and the thought of it claws at you like a wild animal.. Why didn’t you hand her the blade? Why didn’t you at least give her a chance? You could’ve said it, just those few words, “Use it if they come.” But you didn’t. You didn’t even think so. Instead, you just slipped away, convinced that your flight would be the thing to save you all.
You were very wrong.
Now, when you close your eyes, you can still see it. The dark, the flickering light from the cave cracks, the silence that hung heavy in the air before the chaos started. And the thought of Jacqueline, of Tom, left in that cave, faces frozen in fear, helpless without you, or the only weapon you kept hidden from them. It twists inside you, sharp and unforgiving. You can still hear the hollow sound of their breath, their footsteps echoing in the silence as you disappeared into the night, leaving them to face whatever horrors awaited them.
You told yourself they'd be fine. That they’d survive. But they didn't. Not without you. Not without the knife. You turned your back, and you know it, deep down. You know the truth that you left them to die, they're dead.
And in doing so, you left a piece of yourself behind, too. Every night, the memory of that moment comes back to haunt you. It claws at your chest, a reminder that you could’ve changed it. You could have done something. Anything. But you didn't.
Now you’re here, broken, hollowed out by your own choices, walking around in a shell of yourself. A coward. A traitor to them and you. You’ll never forget their faces, not as long as you live. And every time you breathe, every time you look at the blood on the floor from Derek's abuse, you’ll know there’s no escaping what you did. There’s no undoing the damage you caused. The guilt is yours to carry, and it will never let you go.
You wish you had lied about being a virgin. The thought haunts you constantly, that one small truth you never should have told, and the way everything changed after you said it. If you had pretended, if you had claimed you'd done it before and that it never meant anything, maybe he wouldn’t have looked at you like that, like something untouched he could destroy.
You should have asked for the blue one. They were bickering, the red and the blue, one voice smooth, one voice sharp, both watching. You should have said you wanted the smooth voice, the one that didn’t try to frighten you, the one that waited. But you froze up, and when they pressed you to choose, you pointed to the red. You don’t even know why. Maybe you thought it didn’t matter. Maybe you thought someone like you didn’t deserve gentleness. And now the blue one is gone, and the red one never stops talking.
You did kill them, the ones in the lizard masks. There was no question, no room for denial. The memory stuck to you like sweat, lingering, suffocating. You could still hear the sound of their bodies crumpling to the ground, the sharp, final exhale of breath leaving their lungs, one last reminder of what you’d done. It didn’t matter that they were already dead, their faces twisted in the grotesque masks. They were the ones who stood in your way, and in the end, you made sure they couldn’t stand anymore.
But Richard… Was that even his name? The thought of it makes your stomach twist, because it doesn’t matter, does it? You left him to die out there in the desert like he was nothing. Just another casualty. His screams were swallowed by the wind. He begged, didn’t he? You didn’t stop to listen. The wind had been so loud, or maybe you just didn’t want to hear. You had already made your choice, and you went back into the cave, nearly throwing a rock at his head.
But it's Tom and Jacqueline who follow you into every dark corner of your mind. They won’t let you sleep. They sit there, waiting, just behind your eyelids, like the thrum of an oncoming storm. By then, you had already run out of nerve. Hadn’t you? The weight of it was too much. The thought of raising that blade again, this time at that man’s throat it was too much. Too much, even for you. So, you left them. You left them with nothing. No weapons, no warning. You left them wide open, vulnerable. And you know it’s true—the masked man found them. You didn’t see what happened next, but your gut churns with the certainty of it. You know.
You know what they did to them, and you can’t stop repeating it.
Then it's Derek. It's always Derek. The memory of that moment claws at you harder than anything else. That was the one that broke you. The feeling of driving the blade into his stomach wasn't the same. It wasn't like lizards. It was him. The warmth of his blood on your hands. His eyes, God, those eyes. You had just killed two people, but the moment that blade sank into Derek, your hands started shaking. You couldn’t even make sense of it. Why him? What was it about him that had turned everything into something else entirely? While the lizards were hidden behind masks, you could somewhere in your mind see them as monsters, not humans, but Derek, the full face of seething rage as he taunted you to kill him.
You try to tell yourself it was mercy that your body just refused to kill another human. That you refused to do any more harm, as you had once thought. You didn't want to admit that you had run because of fear.
The man with the machete had been standing there over him, silent and imposing like an executioner. Ready to finish what someone else had started. You remember the way the wind stirred as you stood frozen, unable to move. The machete, gleaming in the low light, poised above Derek’s broken form like it was all a matter of time.
And that’s when you reacted. You didn’t think, it wasn’t a decision, it was a scream, a desperate, guttural cry. A plea, raw and broken, begging him to stop.
In that moment, when the world went still, that’s when you saw him.
You saw Derek. Wounded, like he was barely clinging to life, but still alive. And behind him, that man, the one with the machete, stood looming, a silhouette of violence and death. The air was thick with everything you had done, with everything you couldn’t undo. You didn’t think so. You didn’t give yourself the time to think. You cried out, a sound that felt like it came from somewhere deep, somewhere you didn’t know you had left. It was a plea to stop it all, to stop him from finishing what you had started, to stop the blood from flowing.
And that was when Machete turned and left,You knew, right then, that you had made a mistake.
The look in Derek's eyes wasn’t one of surprise. It wasn’t a reaction. It was rage, old, blistering, and personal. It was the kind of rage that burned through him, a rage that had been festering long before you ever came into the picture. His eyes locked onto yours with a fury that was born from more than just this moment. It was the kind of rage that knew your name, knew your face, like your voice had torn open a wound he had been trying to bury. A wound he could never kill.
And then Derek moved.
The knife was in your back before you had a chance to even think. A crack of pain, sharp, brutal, and then the darkness swallowed you whole. One second, you were standing there, breathing, trying to catch your wits, and the next, you were crumpled in the dust, your body suddenly weightless, the heat of the desert giving way to something colder, darker, your world blinked out.
When you came to, you were dangling like an animal, chained. The weight of your wrists pulling down on you, the metal biting into your skin as you hung there, helpless. Every slight movement sent a flare of pain through your shoulders, your body screaming in protest, but you didn’t dare make a sound. The chain clinked against the air with every inch you shifted, a sound as cold as the reality you were trapped in.
This was where he brought you.
This was home. The man who had hunted you, who had tormented you, stalked you through the dirt on a dirt bike like you were prey, already dead meat. The one who had bided his time, playing his twisted games, drawing out your terror until you were too exhausted to fight. When he took you down and when you did what he asked, he said you deserved a “reward” and tossed the canteen at your feet like it was something you should be grateful for. Your throat ached from what he did to you, torn raw from the inside, and the water only reminded you of it each swallow, sharp, stinging, like swallowing glass. Your tongue had been cut, and the wound throbbed with every movement; you were barely able to talk. The word rings in your head, echoing like a sick joke.
He didn’t end your life. No, he dragged your limp body across some invisible line, some border you couldn’t even see, and dropped you here, into this place that twisted what it meant to be alive. And here, in the cold shadow of whatever nightmare this place was, he called it home.
Now he had you exactly where he wanted you, his rage still burning but no longer wild, controlled and cold and deliberate, nothing like the unhinged monster who had chased you through the desert like something out of a nightmare. This was worse because it was personal. He had told you he would use you for a long time, and he kept his word. You had stabbed him, and he never let it go. He made you into an outlet, a living punching bag. Every strike, every shove, every sneering insult came with the same message: that this was your fault, that you were the reason he suffered, and now you were going to pay for it until he decided you had paid enough. You no longer resisted because what was the point? The fight had all but been beaten out of you, and all you could do was hope he would get bored eventually, hope he would move on, hope it would end.
His voice still clings to your thoughts, low, final, the words wrapping around you like a noose: “No one’s coming.”
At first, you had cried, sobbed like you hadn’t in years, your chest heaving and your ribs aching with the force of it, begging him through cracked lips and a trembling voice, pleading with whatever ounce of dignity you still had to make it stop. You told him you couldn’t take it, that you would do anything, be anything, just to end the torment, to make it all go quiet for a moment.
But it didn’t matter, it never mattered, because he was never going to grant mercy. There was no escape here, no way out, no promises and no bargains, only this place and only him. No one else heard your voice but him, and the worst part was that he liked it too much to ever let it go silent. The way his eyes would linger on you when you spoke, the cold satisfaction in his gaze as he soaked in every crack in your voice, every flinch, every sign of weakness.
His name still feels like a curse on your tongue. Derek Goffard. The man who held the world in his hands and twisted it into a playground for his cruelty, bending it to his will with the ease of someone who had never been told no. And you? You were never more than an object to him, a possession, something to be broken down and rebuilt in whatever shape entertained him most. Your voice, your screams, your silence—they only fed him, deepened the hold he had over you, until even your soul didn’t feel like it belonged to you anymore.
You had known of him, He just seemed like one of those rowdy, untouchable bachelor types, the ones that are charming in a reckless way, the kind of man who laughed too loud and drove too fast, always with someone clinging to his arm and someone else watching from across the room. There was something dangerous about him, something thrilling, and people gravitated to it like moths.
Women wanted him. Men did too, and some of them just wanted to be him. He looked like he belonged in the middle of a party, gold watch catching the light, drink in hand, always the center of gravity. From a distance, he seemed like a mess you might almost want to make. But that distance was everything because now, up close, nothing was charming about what lived behind his eyes.
You did think he was handsome once, when you saw his photo in a magazine, something glossy and staged, with his hair perfect and his smile sharp, just dangerous enough to make it interesting, but that was where it ended. He wasn’t real to you then, just another face among the rich and reckless, a name that meant nothing in the rhythm of your everyday life.
You didn’t even recognize him at first. Not out there, when he knocked you into the dirt with a bat. It wasn’t until a couple of days into your captivity that it hit you, sudden and sickening, like a jagged rock dropped straight through your chest into your stomach. Derek Goffard, The heir. The ghost from a magazine cover and whispered rumors, and now, the man who owned you.
You wish that you’d died out there. That you’d bled out under the merciless sun, lying next to Derek in the sand, watching the world fade to black. It would’ve been your death. Yours to claim. A brutal end. But this? This was worse. This slow, methodical erosion of everything that made you who you were. The way he unraveled you piece by piece, each day a little more of yourself slipping away, leaving you hollow.
Out there, in the desert, you had been a person. You had been alive. Now, you were something else entirely.
Here, everyone answered him. Every footstep outside the door was a reminder of the iron grip he had on this place, on everything that moved within it. Every sound was another echo of obedience, a warning that no one would help you. Not now. Not ever. No one dared challenge him. No one dared stand between him and his will.
You were property now.
Not even a person, not anymore. Just something he owned an object to be used, tested, and trained like a dog on a leash. A belonging, something kept in chains for his personal use. The idea of freedom seemed as distant as a dream, like a far-off shore that would never come into view. You were never going to leave here. Not unless he decided it. And there was only one way that could go.
And in those moments, when the room fell silent, when he was gone and the pain in your body was the only thing you could feel, you wondered.
How long?
How long did he plan to keep you? How many more days would you have to endure? Would he grow bored of you, like everything else he's tired of? Or would he break you first, piece by piece, until you were nothing but a shell, something that barely resembled the person who had once walked free?
You didn’t know how much more you could take. The thought of it makes you sick, but you know one thing for certain: he knew. He understood the limits of your body, your mind, and your soul better than you did. He had measured every moment, every sigh, every crack in your resolve. He knew how much you could endure—and he would push you to the edge.
Because every day here, in this place, was another flavor of hell. It wasn’t just the pain, the isolation, the coldness. It was the way time twisted itself, the way you were made to feel every second stretching out until it became a kind of madness.
Derek’s room, though it was its kind of prison. It was as lifeless as a showroom, a space that didn’t feel like a room at all but a sterile cage of control. Everything inside was deliberate, calculated, a perfect display of order and silence, a frozen moment where nothing ever moved. The bed, sitting at the center of the room like a coffin, was tucked in so tightly that the blankets didn’t look like they had ever been touched. No wrinkle, no crease. Nothing to betray the fact that it had been used. The glass table near the wall reflected the harsh light above it, its surface untouched, immaculate, the way everything else in this room was. Even the ashtray, a sleek, black slab of ceramic, remained spotless, untouched by the use it was meant for. You never once saw him smoke, but the ashtray stayed, a testament to the rules that governed this place.
Clean. Sleek. Minimalist. Modern.
But more than anything else, it was empty. It wasn’t just the emptiness of the room that stood out, though. It was the emptiness in your chest as you stood there, staring at the walls, feeling the vast hollow space between you and the man who ruled it all. No warmth. No sign of life. Just the harsh lines of order, the sterile perfection of a space that reflected only one thing: control.
No sign of life. No clutter. No softness. Just the cold, clinical precision of a man who needed control in every inch of his space, especially the inches where he brought you.
Your gaze flicked around the room again, lingering on the far wall, where the only warmth in the entire space came from the electric fireplace. It hummed quietly beneath its stone façade, but the artificial light it cast was harsh, too bright, too white—like the room itself was trying to scrub any trace of humanity from the air. Even the shadows felt too sharp, too defined, as if they could cut through you just as easily as the air itself.
And still, your eyes traced the contours of the room, unable to pull yourself away.
To the right, the exit stood, a reminder of the freedom you’d never see again. A white tree sculpture stood in the corner like a twisted form of nature branches that stretched out like antlers, as if the space itself were trying to grow something that didn't belong here. Its presence felt like an affront to everything else, deliberate, fake warmth, like it was mocking the coldness of the room. Nearby, mounted on the wall, was a wine rack, eight bottles, each pristine and untouched. None of them would ever be opened, you knew. Derek passed them every time he left the room, his footsteps echoing in the silence as he walked past the single stiff chair that sat against the wall. The hallway beyond stretched out like a narrow artery, leading to the heavy door that he always slammed shut behind him. Every time.
To the left, a baby blue curtain hung, so soft and so out of place in the harsh geometry of the room. It almost seemed comical, like something a child would pick out to decorate their room, a futile attempt to inject warmth into a place that felt like it had none. Behind it, you knew, was the restroom. You’d only glimpsed it once or twice, but it hardly mattered. The rest of the room was all you needed to know.
Then there were the Ottomans. Three of them, perfectly aligned at the foot of the bed. They were positioned with such precision that it almost hurt to look at them, as if even the smallest imperfection would unravel the fragile order of it all. Two nightstands flanked the bed, each one adorned with a lamp perched atop it, their light spilling into the space, casting sharp angles across the sterile surfaces. Each drawer held something, though you didn’t need to open it to know what. You already knew. You knew what lived inside those drawers.
Even a glance at them made your stomach twist, your breath catching in your throat. The sight of them, the thought of what they contained, brought a dry, acrid taste to your mouth. You didn’t want to look. You didn’t want to give them the power of your attention, but despite every attempt to avoid them, your eyes always found their way back.
Because this was it. This was the room. In this lifeless space, every detail screamed of intent. Of purpose. Every inch, every carefully placed object, everything in its place was deliberate. Thought-out and designed for performance. And it wasn’t for anyone but you.
It wasn’t just a room, it was a cage with designer walls. A place where the line between control and captivity blurred, where the walls weren’t just physical but psychological too. Each corner, each item, each piece of furniture, they were all part of the same plan. A trap built not to imprison your body alone, but your mind, your will. A space constructed to break you without ever needing to raise a hand. To ensure that even the smallest act of rebellion felt pointless. That every move you made was an echo of his control.
The only sound in the room was the soft clink of chains pulling taut each time you shifted, a constant reminder of your helplessness. Your wrists burned beneath the metal cuffs, arms suspended just high enough to keep your shoulders in an unrelenting throb. Numbness crept in at first, like a merciful fog that dulled the ache, but that was fleeting soon; it would pulse out with sharp, electric stabs of pain, each movement reminding you that the body you used to control now belonged to someone else. Every shift, every twist, felt like you were carving a path through a jagged sea of needles.
You sat awkwardly on the cold hardwood floor, your spine and hips pressed against it, the thin strip of cotton he allowed you to wear doing nothing to soften the cruel pressure of the hardwood beneath you. You’d long since stopped hoping for comfort. That part of you was gone, buried beneath layers of exhaustion and suffering. But there was still a fragment of you, pathetic and trembling, that wished, just for a second, for something softer. Something... human. A pillow. A blanket. Even the simplest comfort, like a dog bed to curl up on, would’ve been a dream.
He wouldn’t even need to say anything. The silence between you would speak volumes, his amusement at your vulnerability a sharper sting than any words could inflict. That’s how he was. Every minute, every second, reinforced the power he held over you, and your weaknesses were nothing but entertainment.
The room offered you nothing. Nothing to cushion your bones, nothing to hold onto. No warmth. No softness. Just the sterile chill of a cold, calculated space, a modern minimalist nightmare. The walls, shades of stone and bone, cold and unyielding. The surfaces, too clean to be real, as if they had never touched the hands of another human being.
You had counted every bottle on the wine rack, every line of grout between the floor tiles. You had tried to hold onto something to give you a sense of time, and at first, you’d focused on the patterns in the light of the fireplace. The way it flickered, how the LEDs cast sterile white light over everything, blurring the shadows, making them sharp enough to cut you.
But even that was a lie. The passage of time was an illusion here. Hours bled into each other until they no longer held meaning. Days. Weeks. Maybe longer. You didn’t know.
You knew it hadn’t been hours. That you were sure of. Because Derek, in his twisted way, sometimes slept in front of you and passed out in one of those cold, cruel places he called rest. And his sleep was never brief. No. They stretched on and on until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. His sleep was like everything else here, unreal, too long, suffocating, something out of your control.
There were no clocks, no windows. No way to gauge the world beyond these walls. No way to know what time it was outside. Only the low hum of the machine was buried in the walls and your breath. That was the only sound that grounded you, the only sign that you were still alive. Derek had his clocks, his alarms, his timetable. But he never gave you a hint of it. Never a glance at his phone. Never any clue about the passing of time or the world beyond your prison.
You floated adrift in a timeless, wordless void. Each moment is the same. A blurred nightmare of nothing. Of being held in place, with no escape, no movement but your own. You were suspended in this purgatory, feeling both the crushing weight of time and the agonizing absence of it. Your body and mind are stretched thin under the strain. And then the door slammed open, the sound sliced through the silence like a knife.
The chains dug into your wrists, the sharp, biting metal yanking your body upright in an instinctual jolt. Your stomach dropped in that familiar, sickening plunge that came every time you knew he was here. A wave of dread and tension swept over you, freezing you in place. You stayed still, too still listening, your breath shallow, your heart hammering in your chest. The air in the room thickened. Every muscle tensed, every nerve alive with anticipation, but you didn’t dare move. You couldn’t.
The footsteps came heavy and deliberate, each step reverberating down the hallway like a drumbeat. Shoes thudded against the wooden floors, then shifted to the hollow sound of wood beneath them. The rhythm was unmistakably slow, controlled, uneven. The weight of each step was like a warning, a foreboding sign that something was off. The tension in the silence between them, thick and suffocating, told you everything you needed to know: Derek was back.
You didn’t dare lift your eyes, keeping them trained on the floor, knowing the punishment would come if you dared to look up. Your heart raced, pounding harder against your ribs with every step he took—like it was trying to escape, clawing against the flesh, begging you to move, to do something. To fight. But you knew better. You stayed frozen, every instinct screaming at you to stay small, out of his sight, and not provoke him.
The shoes came into view first—polished, dark leather that caught the overhead light and threw it back in sharp, surgical gleams. They were speckled with something. Dust? Dirt? No. Too dark. Too wet at the edges. Blood, maybe. Not yours. Not yet. You didn’t dare look up to confirm, didn’t dare move your gaze from the wooden floor beneath your boards worn smooth by footsteps you couldn’t count, stained in places you weren’t supposed to notice. The grain ran in long, splintering lines that blurred under your breath. You fixed your stare there. Let the chill of it leech into your skin. Let the edges bite into your cheek where you’d folded yourself down. Anything to keep from meeting his eyes.
He didn’t speak. Not right away. He just stood. A looming figure at the edge of your vision, his presence louder than any sound. His shadow stretched over you, slow and deliberate, a creeping stain that settled across your shoulders and throat like it meant to drag you under. It made the room feel smaller. Made your lungs stutter. You could taste the air, sour and close, pressing in around you like it resented your breathing.
Then his voice. Low. Casual, but clipped, like it had passed through something serrated before reaching your ears. That rasp was always there when he wanted to hurt without shouting. A threat wrapped in velvet, voice soft where his intentions weren’t.
"Miss me, mutt?"
There was a smile behind it, you could feel it, not on his face, but in your spine. It moved through you like static, subtle and invasive, crawling under your skin before you could brace for it. That quiet little uptilt of satisfaction he wore when he thought you’d learned something. When he believed the silence had worked on you like acid, stripping away resistance until all that was left was compliance. He didn’t need to see your face to know. He could read it in your stillness. The way your breath shortened. The way you didn’t speak.
And maybe he was right. Maybe the worst part wasn’t that you flinched at the sound. Maybe the worst part was how much you’d missed it. That voice. That weight. That reminder that you weren’t alone not really, not anymore. Because in the dark, in the silence, it hadn’t been the pain that hollowed you out. It was nothing. The unbroken stillness. The way time lost its edges when there was no one to mark it, no footstep, no breath, no threat.
Down here, alone, you’d started to forget what a person felt like. Even him. Even this. You’d drifted so far into the quiet that you’d almost convinced yourself he wasn’t coming back. Maybe you were done. Abandoned and left to rot in a room that didn’t care if you starved, or screamed, or vanished into the floorboards.
Notes:
If you made it this far, congratulations you’ve survived more red flags than a migratory bird dodging wind turbines. May your next emotional support animal be something with talons.
—With love and mild concern,
Birdie
Chapter 3: Wait
Summary:
Waiting is the worst part, don’t you think?
Notes:
I haven’t abandoned this fic I’ve just been busy chasing some freelance gigs (and getting absolutely nowhere, lmao). But hey, the fic lives. It breathes. It's not dead, just... pacing.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The silence in the room wasn’t just still. It was crushing. It closed in from every angle, thick and heavy, like the air had curdled. Breathing felt wrong. Every tiny sound punched through the quiet: the low hiss of the electric fireplace and the faint metallic clink of your chains when you shifted even a fraction. But it was your heartbeat that betrayed you most. Loud. Clumsy. Panicked. It slammed into your ribs like it was trying to escape.
Derek stood above you.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. Just stared, expression unreadable, as if deciding whether you were worth the effort. His presence filled the room like a storm cloud, dense and inevitable. The firelight flickered across his face, catching the sharp angles, deepening the shadows in his eyes.
Your throat clenched. You couldn’t swallow. Your body had already made up its mind before your thoughts caught up, muscles tensed, breath held, bracing. He knelt slowly, the motion deliberate and predatory.
“I warned you,” he said, so quietly you barely heard it. “But you didn't listen.”
His shadow stretched across the polished floor, long and slow, swallowing everything in its path. The artificial light above buzzed faintly, flat and sterile, casting the room in a sickly glow that did nothing to warm the cold sinking into your skin. The shine of the floor caught the shape of him first, distorted in the reflection like a warning, like something unreal inching closer.
Then came the shoes, flawless, polished to a high sheen that caught every flicker of light. They were almost surreal in their cleanliness, gleaming despite the smudge of earth clinging stubbornly to the soles. They stopped just inches from your legs, close enough that you could feel the faint pressure of his presence in the air around them. Your legs, bare and bruised, curled inward instinctively, as if that would somehow erase you from sight.
You didn’t look up. The urge to raise your eyes twisted in your gut, but fear held your gaze down, locked on the floor like it might open and swallow you if you stared hard enough. Looking up meant risk. Looking up meant engaging. And you hadn’t yet measured the temperature of his mood, hadn’t found the crack, the tiny shift that signaled which version of him had arrived. Until you knew, everything stayed still.
He had spoken already. A single phrase, smooth and sharp all at once, tossed casually like a coin with a blade's edge. “Miss me, mutt?” A mocking purr, falsely warm, soaked in condescension. It wasn’t a real question. You knew better than to think it was. His words weren’t invitations to speak. The sound of them wasn’t meant to start a conversation, only to remind you of your place
Your mouth had gone dry the moment he spoke. Not from thirst, just from panic. From the sudden shrinking of the world to the narrow distance between his voice and your spine. He didn’t need answers. He already had them. He owned the silence just as thoroughly as he owned the space you occupied, your time, your name, your body, all of it.
But nothing came. Not a word. Not a breath. Your mouth stayed clamped shut, your lungs locked in shallow, uneven gasps that didn’t feel like breathing at all. You sat frozen, muscles locked, heart slamming against your chest with wild, frantic urgency. Every nerve in your body was awake, coiled, waiting, tense and taut and hollowed out by too many moments like this.
Moments where time stopped and stretched, warped by dread. The anticipation was always the worst part. That awful limbo between stillness and reaction, between the moment he arrived and the moment he chose what you were for today. You never knew who you’d get. Not until it was too late.
Would he hurt you? Laugh at you? Pretend you weren’t even there? You could never tell. The uncertainty was a weapon in itself, he wore it like a second skin.
And maybe, though you hated the thought, hated yourself for it, maybe a part of you had missed him. Not him, not Derek. But the terrible clarity that came when he entered a room and took up all the air and space and thought. Because when he was gone, it was worse. Silence became a void you fell into. Fear multiplied in the quiet. It had too much room to grow. And your mind, left alone, filled in the blanks with horrors he hadn’t even thought of yet.
At least when he was here, the guessing stopped. At least you knew the shape of the danger. You could read it. You could brace for it. Prepare yourself for the impact, even if you couldn’t soften it.
But even that comfort, the thin, sick comfort of predictability, was ripped away just as quickly as it arrived.
His fingers snapped, and the sound cracked through the stillness like a shot, clean and jarring, too loud in the silence you’d been buried in. Your body reacted before your mind could catch up. You flinched, instinctively and immediately, and hated yourself for it.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
His voice was cold. Precise. No need to raise it. He didn’t have to shout right now. He knew exactly how to thread menace into quiet words, how to make stillness more dangerous than rage. There was steel in it, tightly wound cruelty held in check, not out of mercy but because he enjoyed the waiting. Because he wanted you to feel it build.
You didn’t hesitate, hesitation was a luxury you’d been stripped of long ago, beaten out of you until nothing was left but reflex. It had been torn up by the roots and replaced with something colder, sharper. Obedience and fear had carved their lessons into you deeper than love ever could, faster, more permanently. Love asked. Fear demanded. And you had learned.
So you obeyed.
Your head lifted, slow and mechanical, like something wound too tightly, like every movement had to be forced through grit and rust. The pain was immediate. Not sudden nothing about your body was sudden anymore, but deep, ingrained. Your joints screamed with every shift. Shoulders ached from being held upright too long, muscles trembling from the effort to stay still.
Your wrists throbbed, raw and swollen where the cuffs had bitten too deep, too long. No part of you wasn’t hurting. Pain had become background noise, steady and predictable, as constant as breathing. You didn’t brace against it anymore. You didn’t fight it. You let it live inside you. You let it settle in your bones and stay.
Your spine, stiff and trembling, straightened by sheer will. The floor beneath you, cold and unyielding, had shaped itself into you over time. You didn’t know how long you’d been there. Hours? Maybe days? Time blurred when all that marked it was hunger and hurt and the occasional sound of footsteps that meant too much.
Still, you raised your eyes, just enough to show him you’d heard that you’d understood. That you knew the rules.
And then your gaze met his.
Derek stood above you, watching with a calm, dispassionate interest, like you were something inert. They stripped you bare without touching you, dissecting you piece by piece. They caught the twitch in your jaw, the way your throat tightened when you swallowed, the small betrayal of your lip trembling before you bit down hard to stop it.
"You seem nervous," he said, his voice smooth, mild, disturbingly casual, like he wasn’t looming over you like a guillotine just waiting for the signal to drop. He let the words hang in the air between you, gave them time to settle. Then he leaned in just enough for his voice to soften. "Am I making you nervous?"
Your mouth opened automatically, a reflex—like a machine reacting to a command. But no sound followed. Not even air. The breath stalled in your chest and stayed there, like your lungs were suddenly part of the silence.
You didn’t answer, you couldn’t. The silence wasn’t defiance. It was weight crushing and solid in your throat, pressing down like stone. You’d forgotten how to speak under that gaze. Forgotten how to move. Forgotten that your voice used to belong to you. But it didn’t matter, he didn’t need your words. He already knew.
He studied you for a long, simmering moment, the kind of pause that made your insides twist and clench, your stomach turning over itself in slow, helpless knots. A pause that wasn’t empty, it was charged, calculated. He was deciding something. You could feel it. Weighing the moment like a coin in his palm and choosing not between kindness and cruelty because there was no kindness here, but between degrees of damage. Then he made a sound low in his throat. A hum. Thoughtful. Almost amused. The kind of sound people make when they’re rearranging things in their mind. Or preparing to break them.
“Hmm.”
It hung there, deceptively soft. A murmur of false curiosity. Casual on the surface, but beneath it, intent. Movement. The shift of a predator deciding how close to get before striking.
“Good, can’t have you getting too comfortable.”
He leaned in slowly just enough to cross the invisible line that separates torment from something that mimics intimacy. Just enough for you to feel his breath against your face.
And then snap.
His fingers flicked hard against your forehead. It landed like a slap to your dignity. A sting so light it almost didn’t register, until it did.. The pain was beside the point, the meaning was the weapon.
Your head snapped back before you could stop it. A sharp, automatic recoil. The movement yanked at your wrists, chains tugging tight with a dull metallic clink that echoed far too loudly in the stifling silence. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud. But it was enough. A slip. A crack. You managed to catch yourself—swallowed the noise that tried to rise in your throat, forced your breathing into something slow, something steady. You told yourself it was fine. Controlled. Contained.
But it didn’t matter, Derek had seen it.
His gaze didn’t even flicker, but you felt the weight of it settle over you like a second chain. He saw everything. Always did. Every flinch, every hesitation, every involuntary movement your body betrayed you with.
“Your poker face needs work,” he said softly. The smile he gave you was small and precise, perfectly shaped. It didn’t reach his eyes, it never did.
Derek's hand was on you in an instant. A crushing grip, fingers clamping down hard on either side of your face, forcing your cheeks inward until your jaw opened just slightly. Just enough to make you vulnerable. Your lips twisted, stretched into an ugly, trembling shape, the pressure making your whole face feel warped. The pads of his fingers dug into your flesh, and your molars scraped the inside of your mouth where your face was forced against them.
Pain bloomed not sharp, but deep. A kind of pressure that sank into bone, radiating up through your jaw and into your temples, a slow, searing heat that left no space for anything else.
You didn’t cry out; crying would only make it worse. You knew that intimately, knew the way even a single tear could light something up in him. Derek thrived on reaction. He watched for the tiniest cracks, the smallest betrayals of pain or fear, and when he saw them, he smiled.
So you stayed still and you didn’t flinch again. You didn’t let the ache in your jaw or the pressure in your throat push you into giving him more than what he’d already taken. The pain stayed locked behind your eyes, behind clenched teeth and tight lungs. It was the only resistance you had left.
His hand shifted, lifting your face into the light as if checking for flaws. His thumb found the soft place beneath your ear, pressing in just enough to make your pulse jump. It wasn’t a chokehold, not yet, but the potential sat in the pressure, clear and undeniable. It made your breath shorten.
“Honestly,” Derek said, his voice low, edged with mockery that sounded smooth until you heard the bite underneath, “how has a pathetic little mutt like you even made it this far?”
You stayed quiet. His grip made speech impossible, your jaw locked in his hand, your breath catching in uneven bursts. But even if you could have spoken, you wouldn’t have. There was nothing safe to say. Nothing he wanted to hear that wouldn’t just lead to more of this. That wasn’t why he spoke to you. He didn’t ask questions to understand. He didn’t want a conversation. The words were another way to exert power. Just like the silence that followed them. Just like his hands.
He leaned in slowly, closing the space between you inch by inch until your vision blurred and his face was all you could see. There was nowhere else to look. Nowhere is safe to shift your gaze. The harsh lines of his features loomed, too close, too sharp, but softened by the sheer proximity until they lost their edges and became a single, suffocating presence. His breath hit your lips first, warm and damp, and then filled your lungs without permission.
That scent, him, curled around you thick and clinging, expensive in the calculated way that wealth always smells, sharp with spice and leather, but underneath it all, there was something cleaner. Not fresh or pleasant. Clean in the sterile, metallic way that surgical tools are clean, sanitized, clinical, indifferent to suffering.
“Can’t even hide your true feelings,” he murmured, voice low and smooth, shaped like sympathy but hollow at its core. “You can’t even keep yourself together when you’re around me.”
There was a faint note of amusement beneath the words, not laughter but the suggestion of it. A smile that never made it to his mouth. His eyes moved over your face with surgical precision, catching every flicker and twitch, every involuntary motion your body gave away. He watched the way your pupils shifted, the slight tremor in your lower lip, the way your breath hitched just a second too soon. Every tiny betrayal was catalogued, analyzed, and appreciated like a butcher watching the tension in muscle just before the blade made contact.
Worse still was your own body. It refused to lie for you. It answered him honestly even when you wouldn’t, when you couldn’t. The stiffness in your spine, the tremor in your limbs, the sweat cooling on your skin, it all betrayed the fear you were trying to hide. No matter how hard you tried to hold the line, to stay motionless, composed, it wasn’t enough. He saw through it, He always did.
The trembling worsened, no longer something subtle you could disguise or control. It wasn’t just a faint shiver that could be passed off as cold or nerves, it was a full, uncontrollable shaking that started deep in your chest and radiated outward, until even your breath came out in short, broken gasps.
Each inhale was a struggle, catching in your throat, shallow and uneven. Your bones felt hollow, your muscles weak, as though your body had finally decided it couldn’t hold itself together any longer. This wasn’t a tremble—it was a collapse in slow motion. You weren’t trembling like a leaf anymore., You were a leaf in the final stages of detachment, already halfway torn from the branch, barely clinging to whatever thread still held you upright.
Derek saw it immediately. Of course he did. He was watching for it, waiting for it, and the moment it broke through, his smile shifted. It grew wider, more deliberate, and took on a sharpness that didn’t belong in something as seemingly soft as a smile. It wasn’t warmth or pleasure. It was cruelty shaped into something falsely gentle. He leaned in just slightly, his eyes narrowing with something that might have passed for admiration if it weren’t so laced with contempt.
“Look at you,” he said, his voice low and smooth, silk dragged slowly across a blade. Each word was dipped in mockery, crafted to hit where it hurt, not to provoke but to puncture. “Trembling just from being this close to me.”
His hand adjusted again, tilting your chin higher until it ached. The pressure of his thumb against the underside of your jaw intensified, not enough to leave a mark,he was always too careful for that, but enough to make your throat tighten and your pulse leap again beneath his fingers. You could feel the beat of it hammering against his touch, frantic and exposed.
“It’s almost…” he paused, exhaled a quiet, amused breath through his nose, “embarrassing.”
That was all it took. The last fragile thread inside you gave out. The tears came fast and hot, spilling from your eyes before you could stop them, before you even realized you’d lost the fight to hold them back. They slid down your cheeks in silence, each one a quiet admission of defeat, of exhaustion, of something too broken to hide anymore.
It didn’t matter how tightly you clenched your jaw or how fiercely you begged yourself to hold the line. Control had already slipped from your grasp, your body had made its decision without consulting your will, betraying you with the kind of finality that left no room for pride.
The tremble hadn’t stopped. The tears hadn’t slowed. You could feel them hot, helpless, cutting a path down your cheeks, no matter how much you tried to will them away. You weren’t sobbing. You weren’t making a sound. But it didn’t matter. The silence only made it more raw.
Derek’s expression barely shifted. The curve of his mouth held steady, the angle of his brows unchanged, but something in his eyes turned. It was subtle, but unmistakable a flicker of satisfaction.
He just watched, silent and still, as your tears soaked into his skin where his hand still held you. Then, with slow, calculated care, he lifted his thumb and dragged it along the edge of your eye, catching the wetness at the corner. He didn’t wipe it away with any kindness. He smeared it downward, a deliberate stroke across your cheek, as if marking his claim, tracing your shame where it would stay visible. His touch wasn’t rough, but it didn’t need to be. The intent behind it did all the damage.
And that moment that quiet, devastating unraveling was what he’d been waiting for. You saw it the instant it landed. His mouth pulled wider, opening into something far too pleased to be called a smile. It split across his face like a wound tearing open—sharp, gleaming, and feral. There was nothing soft about it. Nothing human. It was the grin of someone who had just broken something fragile and enjoyed the sound it made as it shattered. Wolfish. Predatory. Triumphant.
“Aw,” he crooned, his voice dropping into something syrupy and slow, the mockery rich and thick with condescension. “Is the mutt crying?”
The word struck harder than his hands ever had. Mutt. It landed like a slap, cutting past your skin and straight into the part of you still trying to hold onto the idea that you were something more than this. You flinched without meaning to, your body giving him the answer you couldn’t say aloud.
You couldn’t speak, couldn’t argue. Your lips shook where they pressed into a tight line, your teeth biting down hard enough on the inside of your cheek to draw blood. The copper taste spread across your tongue, sharp, metallic, groundin,g but even that wasn’t enough. It didn’t clear your mind. It didn’t steady your breath. It didn’t stop any of this from happening.
Your throat closed around itself like a fist, tight and constricted, trapping each panicked breath before it could fully form. Your chest rose in quick, shallow bursts—once, twice, then again—each inhale thinner than the last, desperate and unsatisfying, like breathing through gauze. A cold, crawling numbness began to seep into your hands, spreading slowly from the tips of your fingers inward, and behind your eyes, the familiar burn bloomed.
The warning signs were all there. You knew what was coming, could feel the panic threading itself through your veins, curling up behind your ribs. You blinked hard and fast, trying to push it back, trying to hold the line just a little longer. Not here. Not now. Not in front of him. You whispered it like a prayer, like a threat to yourself.
Don’t cry.
But your body was already slipping past the point of control, the pressure mounting too fast, too high, and then it broke barely, quietly, just a small sob forced from between clenched teeth. It was soft enough to almost miss, but not soft enough. He heard it. Of course, he heard it. And that was enough to make the shame dig in deep, settle in your stomach like a rock.
His eyes lit with something electric, something vile and eager. It wasn’t joy, not in any real sense, but it carried the same spark, the kind of people get when watching their favorite scene unfold, knowing every beat, every moment, and still thrilled to see it play out. His smirk pulled wider, deepening into something uglier, more pronounced. He leaned forward slightly, not closing the distance so much as hovering in it, savoring.
“There it is,” he breathed, voice low, reverent, delighted in the way a cruel god might relish a prayer made in desperation. “Go on. Let the tears flow.”
You shook your head fiercely, trying to dislodge the moment like it was something physical pressing against your skull. You bit down harder, the sting of your teeth breaking skin in your cheek, the copper warmth flooding your tongue.
You dug your nails into your arms, carving crescent moons into your skin like they might hold you in place. If you hurt enough, maybe the tears would stop. Maybe pain could anchor you where nothing else could. But it didn’t work; the tears came back faster now, harder. They blurred your vision, made your face twist against your will, and you felt the internal wall you’d spent so long building split clean down the middle. You started to cry in earnest, loud, full-bodied, shaking sobs that rattled your ribs and stole the breath from your lungs.
You knew what that sound meant to him. You could feel how it fed something dark and bottomless in him, how your pain didn’t disturb him but fulfilled something instead. And still you couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t hold back the tears that kept sliding down your cheeks and definitely couldn’t stop your voice from breaking again and again, each sob like a child’s cry torn from an adult body too exhausted to hold its shape.
“That all it took to get you bawling like a fucking baby?” He sounded incredulous, but his delight was unmistakable, twisted up in every syllable, every sneer. Like he’d just confirmed something he’d always suspected, and now it was gospel.
His hand left your face with a shove, and the absence was its violence. Your skin stung in the aftermath, not just from the pressure but from the loss of it from the sudden drop into nothing. And then came the mockery, slow and deliberate, his fingers tapping your cheek with a feigned gentleness that stung worse than the blow would’ve. It wasn’t a gesture of comfort. It was ownership. Approval. A pat on the head for a dog that had finally broken the way he liked.
“Oh wow, that’s pathetic.” The words dropped from his mouth with a weightless ease, his tone drifting into something almost idle, disinterested, like he was commenting on spilled coffee instead of a person unraveling in front of him. He gave a half-shrug, as if the conclusion had been obvious all along. “But I guess that’s to be expected from you, huh?”
And with that, without ceremony or closure, he turned his back on you. No final insult. No look of lingering satisfaction. Just the soft, indifferent rhythm of his footsteps receding into the distance, tapping lightly against the stone floor like a clock ticking past your pain. He moved slowly, without urgency, like your breakdown had been just a brief interruption in his evening—a passing inconvenience already filed away and forgotten. He didn’t look back when your sobs choked louder in your throat, when your legs gave a violent tremble and forced you to sag into the restraints just to stay upright.
The cuffs dug deeper into raw, torn skin, the sharp kiss of metal on flesh more grounding than painful, but even that felt like it was happening to someone else. Humiliation thickened around you like smoke, cloying and suffocating, wrapping tight around your throat until you couldn’t tell the difference between shame and grief. And still, he moved on, untouched. Unmoved. As if your suffering had no more weight than background noise. Just before disappearing through the door, he glanced back—casual, careless—the ghost of a smirk still playing at his lips, like he’d remembered something mildly amusing. “Well,” he said, light and breezy, “I need to unwind from work, so I’m gonna take a shower. Don’t go anywhere, okay?” Then he was gone, and the silence he left behind wasn’t still. It was a wound.
The curtain at the far end of the room—the pale, baby blue one, faded and childlike in a way that felt grotesquely misplaced against the backdrop of concrete and steel—shifted gently as he slipped behind it. Its movement was slow, rhythmic, as if it breathed with the room, as if the air itself exhaled in his absence.
The soft sway clawed at your nerves, made your skin crawl with a nausea that went deeper than your stomach. It was a sick kind of contrast, that curtain. Something meant to comfort in a space built for control. It didn’t belong. But then, neither did you. Not as a person. Not as a whole thing. You didn’t fit in the world beyond this room, and you didn’t fit inside yourself anymore either. All that remained was this place and him. You didn’t belong to anything but the shape he carved out for you.
You stayed still. Not out of obedience, not even from fear anymore, but because your body had simply stopped responding. Like something had filled your limbs, something too thick to move through.
Grief, maybe. Or despair. Or that strange, hollow version of both that lived in your bones now. You stared at the spot where he’d vanished, eyes glassy and unblinking, your face streaked with dried tears, your throat raw and aching, your heartbeat dull and uneven like it was limping forward under someone else’s weight. Then came the sounds so mundane in another context, but here, in this place, they cut through the stillness with eerie clarity. The shuffle of clothing, the metallic slide of a belt unbuckling, the quiet thud of shoes dropped carelessly onto the tile.
Each noise rang out like a signal, echoing too loudly, too sharply against the bare walls, each one reminding you he was still there, just beyond the curtain, close enough to reach for if he wanted to. Then his voice filtered through..
“Don’t keep a man waiting too long, mutt.” The words drifted over you, heavy and inescapable, burrowing into your skull like they always did. And then came the hiss of water, sudden and steady, rushing into the silence like an invasion. It filled the space he’d left behind, and somehow made it worse, like even in his absence, he was everywhere.
The hiss of the water filled the room, far too loud in the silence he’d left behind—too mundane, too normal, like the world on the other side of that curtain hadn’t stopped to notice your suffering. It was the sound of routine, of comfort, of someone rinsing away the remnants of the day while you stood motionless, shackled and broken, your sobs swallowed by walls that didn’t care.
That sound didn’t belong here, not in this place, not after everything. And yet it filled every inch of space your pain couldn’t reach, smoothing over it like a clean sheet over something rotting beneath. You hung in your restraints, your body still limp with the weight of everything you’d already endured and everything still to come. Because you knew what came next, you always did. That was the worst part, not the pain, not the blows, not the cold intimacy of his warm hands.
Each second dragged you closer, and you felt the timeline winding down in your bones like a fuse you couldn’t snuff out.
Your breathing came in shallow gasps. Not from crying anymore, but from anticipation. The slow, torturous way your fear began to sharpen. It grew teeth in the silence, stretched its claws inside your ribs. The knowing. The countdown. The slow, steady unraveling of your nerves while he did nothing, just left you there, dangling in dread, your body still wrecked from sobbing.
Eventually, the water stopped. The sudden hush left in its wake wasn’t relief. It was a silence that pressed against your ears like pressure at the bottom of the ocean, deep and merciless. And then, breaking through it, came the sound of the hairdryer.
Then the room filled with a low, steady hum. It was the kind of sound that shouldn’t have meant anything, it belonged in a bathroom on a morning filled with routine and normalcy. But here, now, it felt like a metronome ticking off the final seconds of your sanity, rhythmic and relentless, a private countdown only you could hear. Just that smooth, methodical whine of heated air as he took his time, drying his hair and getting comfortable. As if he had all the time in the world, every second of that sound was another second he spent getting clean, feeling good, preparing himself, and not for something innocent.
Your mind was already spiraling ahead, helpless against the flood of imagined outcomes, none of them good, all of them vivid. Because you’d been here before. You knew the pacing. The shape of the evening. The exact weight of the pause. You knew him. You knew how he liked things clean. And you knew exactly what that final silence meant when the hairdryer shut off.
Notes:
HAHAHAHA I FINALLY DID IT. PART TWO IS DONE. IT'S EDITED. IT ONLY TOOK ME SPLITTING IT INTO TWO PARTS AND WAITING A MONTH TO FEEL SOMETHING AGAIN. WOOOO!! 🪦✨
anyways enjoy it or don't or scream or cry or whatever just maybe leave a comment so i can pretend this was a reasonable use of my life. thank u.
Chapter Text
The air felt colder when he returned, his hair wasn’t even fully dried, he must have been too excited to start. Or maybe it was just you, stripped thin by anticipation, skin prickling as his footsteps padded across the floor. He was humming to himself, something tuneless and faint, as though he were the one who had just gotten out of a massage. He didn’t even glance your way as he made his way to the nightstand, bare feet ghosting over the tile, putting his slippers on.
His pajama shirt hung open, unbuttoned and loose, the soft fabric swaying slightly with each step. His pants matched the top, comfortable, coordinated, domestic in a way that felt grotesquely out of place. It gave the moment a kind of surreal edge, as if this were just another quiet evening routine, something ordinary, something safe. But then you saw it,the smile.
Not broad, not obvious, just the faintest curl at the corner of his mouth, barely there but unmistakable. That particular smirk, the one that never touched his eyes, never softened the rest of his face. It was the look he reserved for a certain kind of moment, the kind where he didn’t need anger, where he wasn’t punishing or correcting, just reminding. Reminding you of the rules, the hierarchy, the order of things, what you were, what you weren’t, what he could do to you without consequence, and what you could never do back. That was the purpose of the smile, not to warn, not to threaten, just to assure you that nothing had changed.
Your breath caught the instant his hand moved toward the drawer. It wasn’t sudden, he didn’t lunge, didn’t perform. It was a smooth, practiced motion, quiet, fluid, casual—a flick of the wrist, like he was selecting a tie or a cufflink, something elegant and routine. And then the riding crop appeared, rising from the drawer in his hand like it had always been there, waiting. Sleek black leather, perfectly kept, no frayed edges, no signs of wear. Your stomach dropped, hard and fast, a solid weight pulling everything else down with it. You didn’t need to see what came next to know. You already did.
A sound rose in your chest—half-formed, raw—but it stalled before reaching your lips. A sob, a plea, something close to speech, trapped beneath the pressure in your throat. It stuck there, tight and useless, while your eyes remained locked on him. He held the crop between his fingers, slowly turning it, inspecting the length with an idle kind of curiosity. Not like it was a weapon. Not even like it was serious. He handled it the way someone might examine a long-forgotten toy rediscovered in the back of a drawer. Something familiar, something beloved. Something he was eager to use again. And in that awful second, you almost missed the silence before. Almost missed the space where he hadn’t yet made a decision, where things still existed in potential, not reality. Because now he had. Now there was no guessing left. No room for hope. It was real.
He moved toward you without urgency, each step slow and deliberate, like he was pacing himself for his own amusement. The crop spun lazily in his hand, a quiet rotation that made your skin prickle with every pass. There was no rush in him. No impatience. That was part of the cruelty. You weren’t something he needed to reach. You were already his. The time he took wasn’t hesitation—it was indulgence. And he was already smiling, already basking in the anticipation, in your stillness, in your silence.
“Even an idiot like you knows what this is, right?” His voice was light, almost friendly, the kind of tone used for jokes shared between friends. It was so at odds with the moment that it twisted your stomach. And then the crop met his palm with a sharp, clean crack. The sound split the air with surgical precision, nothing wild or chaotic—just exact. Controlled. You flinched hard, your whole body jerking before you could stop it, another reaction surrendered without permission. And you knew he saw it. Knew it was exactly what he wanted.
You couldn’t stop the way your body reacted. The sound of the crop striking his palm tore through the room like a gunshot—sudden, jarring, and unmistakably final. It wasn’t just noise. It was a signal. The end of stillness. The death of whatever fragile silence had been keeping you suspended in the in-between. That sharp crack echoed off the walls, cutting clean through the clinical quiet like it had been waiting for its moment to strike. It told you everything you needed to know: he was done playing with silence. Done letting the air stretch taut between you.
Then he laughed.
Low, almost intimate, like he’d just shared a private joke and expected you to smile along. There was amusement in it, yes—but beneath that, something more unsettling. Warmth. Familiarity. As though this was just a routine you were both part of, as if you were a willing participant in the performance.
“Ouch,” he said, flexing his fingers casually. “That stung a little. And I didn’t even try.” He wasn’t bragging, Derkes voice held the kind of smug ease that only came from total control effortless, certain, cruel.
Your stomach twisted hard, bile threatening to rise. Every muscle in your body froze, locked in place by the violent collision of instinct and futility. You wanted to run. Wanted to throw yourself away from him, from this, from the inevitable. But there was nowhere to You were on the floor, shackled, trembling so violently your teeth nearly chattered, the rhythm of your fear making the chains at your wrists drag and clink with each shallow breath. Even that small sound felt dangerous, too loud, too obvious, exposing you completely.
You said nothing. You didn’t dare, the way your silence broke open under pressure. That was the real reward. And you felt him draw closer. The soft thud of his footsteps was almost gentle, but it carried the weight of a shadow stretching over you slow and inevitable.
You felt the warmth of him before you heard the movement—his presence cutting into your space with quiet inevitability, thick and oppressive, like smoke creeping in under a sealed door. It wrapped around you, suffocating in its closeness, and you stayed frozen, eyes fixed on nothing, body locked in place.
Then you felt it, the touch of the leather crop met your shoulder with the gentlest pressure, feather-light, as though he were brushing away dust. The softness of it made your skin crawl. There was something almost tender about it, and that was what made it worse. It was the deception. The calm before the certainty of pain.
“I’ve only used this on horses,” he murmured, his voice contemplative, reflective. Like he was sharing a memory, not a threat. The words felt like they were for him more than you, as if he were indulging in a passing curiosity rather than looming over someone else's dread. Then his voice dropped, smoother now, heavier. “Always wondered what it would do to something... thinner.”
The crop slid down your arm, slow and aimless, dragging across your skin like a pencil over paper, like he was sketching something invisible.. You could feel it in the steadiness of his hand, in the way he seemed to weigh every inch of you a frame meant to hold whatever came next. You kept your gaze locked forward, unblinking, fighting against the urge to move, to flinch, to breathe too loudly.
Then it came the sound. One, clean, shattering crack that split the silence like glass.
Agony exploded across your chest in a single, perfect line a slash of fire so sharp it cut through everything at once: skin, fabric, thought. There was no time to prepare. No warning. Just the sudden, absolute break between before and after. For a moment, your mind couldn’t keep up, suspended in a stunned, static pause while your body reacted on its own. You jerked violently, the force of it ripping a cry from somewhere deep, but your lungs gave out before the sound could fully form.
Then it hit. Pain, in full. White-hot, all-consuming, crashing over you like a wave that drowned thought and breath alike. And when the scream came, it didn’t come with words. There was no sense left in it. It was raw. Animal. A sound pulled from the depths of your being, the kind of scream that didn’t beg or plead—it simply was, because it had to be. Because there was no other way to survive the moment.
Your ankles gave way instantly, the strength in your legs collapsing under the weight of pain and panic. But the chains caught you before you fell. The abrupt stop wrenched your arms upward, a jolt that sent a searing bolt through your shoulders, white and electric. Your skin felt slick, the wet warmth of blood spreading slowly across your chest in a thick, tacky bloom. You could feel it more than see it, and that was enough. You didn’t need to look. You couldn’t. Every nerve was burning, every breath a wound. Even existing felt like too much.
And behind it all, threading through the haze of pain, came the sound that made your stomach twist and your heart collapse in on itself. Laughter. Sharp, wild, delighted. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t hidden. It was loud and full and unashamed, Derek’s voice, lifted in a kind of twisted celebration. He was breathless, giddy, drunk on the sound of your scream.
“Oh, that was good,” he gasped between laughs, still riding the high of your suffering. “Come on. Let’s do it again.”
There wasn’t time to beg, and even if there had been, it would have meant nothing. Pleading was useless. He didn’t want words, he never had. Words could resist, argue, plead for mercy. What he craved were the things that couldn’t lie: your trembling, your flinching, the panic in your eyes. He wanted fear stripped bare and helpless, and he wanted to know he was the one who had put it there.
The second strike came lower, cutting across your ribs with brutal precision. It didn’t lash wildly. It landed like a decision, measured, intentional, the product of thought rather than rage. You didn’t scream this time. The sound caught in your chest and stayed there, buried under the weight of pain and shock. Your body folded inward without thinking, instinct taking over as you tried to shield yourself, to protect something,anything but the bindings yanked you upright before you could curl away.
Your arms still strained upward, held in place by metal and posture, locked in a pose that felt more like punishment than restraint. It forced you open. Exposed. Vulnerable. The pain surged through you, sharper now, fuller. It burned beneath your skin, deep and reverberating, and you felt the slow spread of warmth as blood seeped beneath the fabric, sliding down your side in a sickening, quiet trail.
Breathing was no longer a rhythm, it was a struggle. Each inhale arrived in short, desperate bursts, catching on the edge of broken sound. Each exhale came with the taste of blood and salt, sharp and metallic on your tongue. Your body didn’t feel like yours anymore. It was a vessel for reaction, for endurance. For him.
But the worst part wasn’t the whip.
It was what followed. That moment after, the one where he paused. Where everything went quiet again. Where he waited, letting the silence fill the space with tension so heavy it suffocated. That moment was where the real cruelty lived. In the stillness. In the certainty that he wasn’t finished. Not yet.
That quiet second when everything slowed, and the weight of the strike sank into your bones,
And then you felt it, really felt it, the moment you started to slip. Not from the pain itself, but from the unbearable weight of remaining inside your body while it happened. Your mind began to peel away, backing out slowly, like someone edging out of a burning room they knew they wouldn’t survive. Your consciousness retreated into blankness, into numb corners of thought where sensation dulled and time unraveled.
The edges of the room blurred, the light warped into something distorted and distant. You could still hear him, distantly. Derek’s breath, steady, fast, uneven in the way someone sounds when they’re trying not to laugh, or trying too hard not to enjoy themselves too obviously. He was there, just outside your reach, living in the way your body trembled under his hands.
You squeezed your eyes shut. Tightly. Desperately. As if darkness could offer protection, as if blindness could turn pain into nothing. You weren’t crying anymore not in the way that meant anything. The tears kept falling, slow and quiet, not out of grief or panic but because your body didn’t seem to know what else to do. They slipped down your face in a steady leak, like water from a cracked pipe, silent and involuntary. There was no sobbing. No breath caught in your throat. Just tears. Mechanic. Meaningless. Exhausted.
He circled you again. You didn’t see it, but you felt it, his presence moving, the sound of bare feet and shifting weight. He wasn’t in a hurry. He didn’t need to be. He had time. He always had time. And now, so did you. You were stuck in this suspended place, hung like an unfinished sentence, broken and held open to whatever he chose next. No control. No chance to plead. Just the creak of the leather handle tightening in his grip as he lifted the crop again, the soft whisper of movement slicing through the thick air around you.
Then it landed, fast, hard, and without warning.
Thigh.
The crack tore through the air again, sharp and immediate, followed by a deeper, spreading ache that sank into your thigh like a stone dropped into water. It didn’t stay at the surface. It pulsed through the muscle, vibrating outward in waves, each one worse than the last. Your body convulsed before you could stop it, your leg jerking violently against the restraints. A wet, involuntary gasp broke in your throat—too raw to be a cry, too sharp to be breath. It escaped before you could bury it, before you could remind yourself to stay silent.
The crop didn’t rest.
It rose and fell again, striking lower across your stomach with brutal accuracy. Just beneath the ribs. A blow that felt chosen, not random—delivered with purpose, with understanding of where it would hurt the most. The pain ripped through your core like fire, like a wire pulled tight and searing. You doubled forward, your instincts overtaking thought, trying to curl in, to protect your softest parts.
But the chains yanked you back in an instant, pulling your arms high, sending agony lancing through your shoulders as they were wrenched into place again. The movement forced your chest open, exposed, defenseless. You couldn’t scream. Couldn’t cry. Your mouth opened, but nothing came, just a dry, choking spasm, the sound of a voice that had given out long ago.
Chest
The second line tore through you, parallel to the first, neat, intentional, like it had been measured out in advance. Skin split with a sickening precision, and blood followed, slow and warm, seeping into the ragged fabric before sliding down your sternum in thin, uneven rivulets. You felt it bloom, not sharply, but with a spreading heat, a creeping awareness that your body had opened again, offered more. Your mind flinched, pulled back from the image, even if your body had stopped reacting. Even if your muscles had long since lost the ability to resist. Your breath came in shallow gasps, stunned and uneven, like your lungs couldn’t decide whether to keep trying.
Each strike was a sentence, punctuated by the steady rhythm of Derek’s footsteps as he moved around you. There was no rush, no randomness—just a slow, deliberate orbit, each step calculated, considered. He moved like an artist surveying his work, pausing only to deliver the next correction, the next improvement. You could feel him watching, weighing, refining. There was nothing frantic about it. Only control.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, the sharpness began to dull.
Not the pain, it never left. The pain was constant, honest. But it stopped standing out. It stopped screaming. It slid into the background, humming beneath your skin like the buzz of a faulty light or the soft hiss of static that never quite disappears. It was still there, but it no longer defined the moment. Your body, battered and treacherous, began to adjust, to absorb it, to make space for it. You felt yourself surrendering, not in defeat, but in inevitability. There was no resistance left to give. Only the quiet, slow collapse into what had already become normal. Your body let it in, let it have you.
Your hands hung limp in the cuffs, fingers curled loosely, no longer trying to grip, to fight, to hold on. Your knees had buckled long ago, legs folded beneath you like paper, too weak to bear the weight of everything that had already come. The only thing keeping you upright now was the metal collar fastened tight around your neck, its cold edge digging into your skin with every breath. It tethered you in place like a leash, like a hook through flesh, holding your body against gravity when everything else in you wanted to fall.
Your eyes blinked slowly, heavy and blurred. The edges of the room bled into one another, stone and shadow melting into indistinct shapes. Sound grew muffled, distant, as if you were slipping under the surface of something thick and dark. You felt yourself leaving not with panic, but with strange acceptance. A sideways kind of departure, quiet and detached, like your mind had decided to watch from elsewhere. And still, he didn’t stop. Still, he kept going, rhythm unchanged, breath steady, as if your breaking point was just another part of the process.
Eventually, the whip no longer burned. The sting dulled. The pain didn’t slice, it thudded. A heavy, pulsing rhythm that landed with the weight of something final. Each blow pressed deeper, sank farther, no longer sharp but dense, like a heartbeat made of iron slamming into your skin. There was no telling where he hit anymore. Your body had become a blur of messages you couldn’t parse, pain signals misfiring, piling over one another until they stopped making sense. You weren’t sure if he was hitting the same spot again and again, or if he’d moved on to new ground. It all felt the same.
You slumped forward without thinking, your spine bowing in surrender. The chains caught you with a harsh jolt, yanking your arms taut and sending a new bolt of strain through your shoulders. The metal bit deep into raw, swollen skin. And for a moment, you welcomed it. The iron’s bite, the pull of your joints these were different kinds of pain. They weren’t fire. They weren’t made of leather and memory. They were mechanical, clean. Simple. And in their own way, they reminded you that you were still here, still inside this body, still tethered to a reality you could almost feel, just barely, just enough.
Your head hung low, too heavy to lift, your neck long past the point of resisting gravity. Strands of hair clung to your cheeks, matted by sweat and the salt of your own tears, plastered to your skin like a second layer you couldn’t peel away. Your lips parted, a soft gasp fluttering out,weak, broken, but no voice followed. No cry. Just the wheeze of air dragging through your lungs in shallow, jagged pulls. Even breathing felt like labor. Even existence asked too much.
Tears continued to fall, slow and endless. Not in waves, not with sobs, but with the quiet persistence of something mechanical, automatic. They slid down your face with no urgency, no drama—just gravity and grief, stripped of everything but the raw impulse to release. Each one dropped to the floor with a soft patter, delicate and cruel. Small reminders that even if your mind had numbed, your body still grieved. Still leaked sorrow in droplets. Still mourned for something that couldn’t be named. You weren’t crying anymore, not really. You were simply draining.
The tears fell into blood.
It was spattered beneath you in thick, ugly blooms, some dried to rust in the cold tile cracks, others fresh and slick, glistening in uneven trails. You watched one tear undeniably yours, drop and vanish into a red pool, you couldn’t look away.
Somewhere behind you, you caught the cadence,his laughter spilling open, stretched wide with cruelty, sharp-edged and practiced, but his words never truly landed. They hovered, muffled and meaningless, like sound filtered through a pane of glass. You heard the shape of the sentence, the rise and fall of the syllables, the smugness curled into each one, but your brain refused to make sense of them. The meaning had become too heavy, too sharp. Your ears dulled it for you, like a final mercy, blunting the blade before it could cut.
Your head sagged farther, chin brushing the damp, raw edge of your clavicle. The same strands of hair clung to your skin, soaked through with everything, sweat, tears, blood. The room itself had begun to recede, pulled into a fog that closed in at the edges of your vision. Light faded. Sound thinned. The walls seemed to stretch away, the ceiling melting into shadow, the floor breathing under you like something alive. Even the air no longer felt like it belonged to you. Everything,the world, your body, the pain blurred into haze.
Your throat felt raw. You had screamed, sobbed, and gasped until the noise had emptied you, until even breath felt like a luxury too distant to claim. There was nothing left to push forward no sound, no resistance and no plea. Only the stillness that follows after something has been drained dry. You weren’t holding back anymore. There was simply nothing left to say.
Derek stepped back. You didn’t see it, but you heard it, the faint scrape of his Slipper l dragging across tile, the quiet shift in weight as his stance changed. Even that small movement registered in your body like a jolt, not because it startled you, but because it proved the world was still moving around you, even if you couldn’t move with it.
Derek exhaled, soft and low, and the sound broke the silence like a thread snapping. There was no satisfaction in it, no tension. Just something practiced. Like punctuation. Like a man closing a door behind him.
He looked clean. Serene, even. Like he’d just stepped out of a spa, not the aftermath of a scene soaked in violence. His hair was damp but neatly combed back with lazy fingers, water droplets catching the light as they slid down the hard lines of his collarbone. His chest was bare, sleeves rolled carelessly up, the soaked fabric clinging to his arms. He hadn’t even bothered to dry off properly, and yet he radiated calm, composure so perfect it made your suffering feel theatrical by comparison.
You were bent at the knees, spine bowed, arms stretched overhead and bound in cold metal. Your shoulders trembled from the weight, not just the strain of your position, but the unbearable heaviness of being reduced to this.
He tilted his head, studying you with the detached interest of someone examining damage they’d deliberately inflicted.
“Look at you,” he muttered, the words soaked in a venomous blend of disdain and amusement. “Didn’t even make it five minutes!”
You didn’t need to see his face to know he was smiling. You could hear it. That slow curl of triumph in his voice, the satisfaction of seeing his prediction come to life exactly as he intended.
There was no anger in it, he didn’t need to raise his voice or bare his teeth. The smile was in the sound. You could hear it, the slow, satisfied curl in his tone, the quiet thrill of watching a prediction come true. This was always how he expected it to end, and the fact that he was right only made it sweeter for him.
The weight of your own head had become too much, as if gravity had turned against you, pressing down with cruel persistence. Your neck throbbed, bruised and stiff, every muscle in protest. Your shoulders burned with a deep, pulsing ache skin rubbed raw where the chains had bitten in, where strain and resistance had never been allowed to ease. You stayed curled inward, spine hunched and rigid, like a fist clenching tighter with every breath.
Your breathing came in short, fractured bursts, shallow, uneven, every inhale dragging across your raw throat like splinters, every exhale a soft, shuddering push to stay conscious. Your lungs didn’t feel like they were working with you anymore; they strained, stuttered, pulled air like it was something heavy and unfamiliar. It wasn’t pain keeping you tethered to the moment, it was the awful necessity of survival.
“God,” Derek muttered his voice cutting through the thick quiet like a dull blade sawing through fabric. “All that fight when we met.”
It wasn’t mockery. There was no cruelty curling the edges of his tone, no pleasure taken in your collapse. Just cold detachment. The kind of disappointment someone reserves for a tool that didn’t work as advertised. You heard in it a faint trace of something worse than anger—disinterest. Like he’d once seen potential, but now all he saw was failure slumped in chains, no longer worth the effort.
Then he began to move.
The sound of his slippers whispered across the floor, smooth, controlled, deliberate. Each step was placed with care, a steady rhythm that carved an orbit around you, slow and dreadful. He wasn’t in a hurry. He had no need to be. This wasn’t the climax. It was the unraveling. The part where you came apart in silence and he got to watch it happen.
“I almost respected it,” he added, his voice tilting into a sneer now, just enough disdain to coat the words. “Thought maybe you’d last longer.”
Then his foot struck your knee.
A calculated spark to the nerves, just enough to jolt your system, to remind you how little control you had left.
He laughed, It was the kind of laugh that came too easily, the kind born not from humor but from habit. Disbelief, amusement,maybe both, curled through it, like he’d just heard the end of a joke he’d long since stopped finding funny, but still couldn’t resist smiling at. There was history in that sound. Familiarity. A private joke, and you were always the punchline. The tears came again, not in a burst this time, but slow and steady, slipping free without permission, without warning.
It felt like betrayal. As if even your own body had given up the performance, had stopped pretending you had any dignity left to hold onto. You felt the last pieces of it fracture, anger, pride, defiance, all of it eroding with every step he took closer.
It didn’t matter what you wanted to project, didn’t matter what you told yourself you were holding onto. The truth was already showing, bleeding out through your eyes, Your breathing turned ragged, every inhale catching like broken glass in your throat. Shallow, fast, panicked. You couldn’t control it.
Couldn’t slow it down. Your chest tightened, your lungs burned, and all you could hear was the pounding in your ears, a dull, relentless drumbeat that drowned out everything else. It was like your body had turned against you, giving him exactly what he wanted: proof that he’d won.
It was slipping, whatever scraps of defiance you still clung to, shaking loose from your hands like sand through open fingers. And he saw it all.
“And now?” Derek said, voice sharp and precise as he circled back to your side. “Crying on the floor like a kicked dog.”
The words didn’t just land, they sank in. You felt the truth of them press against your chest, even if you didn’t want to. Felt the way his gaze pinned you in place—hot, smug, unrelenting. He dragged his eyes over you like a brand, slowly, possessively, like you weren’t a person anymore but a display.
He stood close. Too close. The kind of closeness meant to be felt more than seen. You didn’t have to look at him to know he was smiling. It was there in the weight of the silence between his words, in the satisfaction thick in the air, There was no pity in him.
Just the ugly delight of someone who had hunted long enough to know exactly how this ended. His enjoyment didn’t come from the fight—it came from this. From the cornering. From the slow, systematic collapse of something that once had teeth. He picked through the remains of your resistance like a man stripping paint from a ruined wall, layer by layer.
“Where’s that bite now, mutt?” he asked, soft and amused, as if you might actually answer. As if there was anything left to say.
He stood with a low, contented groan, arms lifting into a slow, lazy stretch. His joints cracked softly in the quiet, the sound oddly domestic, like someone rising from a nap instead of peeling himself away from what he'd just done. Then came the yawn it was gentle, unhurried, the kind made by someone entirely at ease. You caught his silhouette shifting in the corner of your eye, blurred by pain and exhaustion, his body language loose and satisfied. A portrait of calm. Of comfort.
As if nothing had happened.
As if you weren’t bleeding on the floor beside him, broken open and trembling, your pain was just background noise. A minor, forgettable detail.
“Well,” he said lightly, brushing at the legs of his pajama pants with a casual flick of his fingers, like he was dusting off crumbs. There was nothing on them. “That was... relaxing.”
The air around you felt wrong, like it had been vacuum-sealed, too still, too sterile. The copper tang of blood hung thick in your nose, sweet and sharp, clinging to the cold like a second skin. Beneath it, layered in like a cruel signature, was the faint trace of his body wash , Citrus, clean, carefully chosen. It was the scent of something expensive and controlled, now woven into the smell of your suffering. A permanent contrast and a final insult.
You heard the soft scuff of his slippers on the floor as he turned away. Slow, casual, unhurried. Like this meant nothing. Like you meant nothing. The crop tapped idly against his thigh with each step, a rhythmic pat, pat, pat, steady as a metronome. Not urgent or angry.You were nothing more than a toy he played with out of boredom.
“Don’t bleed out or anything,” he called over his shoulder, voice light, flippant. Careless. He didn’t have to look to hurt you. He didn’t have to turn around. Derek tossed the crop on the bed with a lazy flick of his wrist. Derek knew exactly what it would do to you. Like it was a joke, the cruelest kind, that you couldn’t even reach it if you tried. That it might as well have been on the moon.
The door slammed shut behind him, the sound cracking through the room like a gunshot, sharp, final, and impossible to take back. It echoed briefly, then disappeared, leaving behind a silence that felt more like a void than a pause. It wasn’t just quiet; it was a total absence of breath, of warmth, of anything living. No footsteps followed, no voice called out. Just stillness, pressing in from every direction, thick and unforgiving. The air didn’t move. Time didn’t move. Nothing did.
Notes:
yoooo this one came out way sooner than expected so yaya for that 🥳 not perfect (what is, really) but at least i wasn’t ripping my hair out over it this time lol. it's messy but it moves, and sometimes that’s enough, scream in the tags, let me know what broke you 🖤 enjoy~
Chapter 5: Carved
Chapter Text
Can people grow a pain tolerance? Yes, God, yes. It doesn’t happen all at once, like flipping a switch or crossing a line; it’s more like erosion, slow, silent, a gradual wearing down of something vital until the only thing left is the bare, hollow shape of what used to hurt, what used to matter. Weeks ago, though maybe longer, maybe shorter, time has folded in on itself and lost all meaning; you would have broken under a single lash of the whip across your back. You remember that first strike, the raw, searing heat biting into your skin, the wet, ripping sound it made like meat splitting open, and the scream that tore itself from your throat without your permission, raw and jagged and uncontrollable.
You remember how your whole body shook in agony, how you curled in on yourself, collapsing into sobs so violent you thought you might choke on your own spit, your legs finally giving out beneath you, your voice begging not even for mercy, but just for the pain to stop, for anything else to take its place.
Now, a cigarette burns into the soft flesh of your thigh and your body barely registers the intrusion, flinching; your fingers twitch ever so slightly, your eyes flicker upward sluggishly and unblinking, as though you are watching from a distance, disconnected, the sizzle and hiss of the burn more a sound than a sensation like the crackle of bacon grease or rain dripping faintly in the distance. The nerves still scream beneath your skin, yes, but you do not. You don’t even clench your jaw anymore; you watch the curling smoke rising in the air, detached, as if it were happening to someone else entirely, as if you were nothing but a pair of eyes trapped inside a hollow skull, watching your own body rot slowly from the inside out.
Time stopped making sense a while ago; days, weeks, maybe months, but you gave up counting long before that. The calendar lost all meaning, and the hours folded into each other like shadows, indistinguishable and relentless. You don’t even remember how it started anymore, only that you woke up here, in this place that feels like nowhere. Then you kept waking up, again and again, each morning a quiet torment, and that was the worst part at first: the endless cycle of consciousness pulling you back into the same cage, the same quiet suffocation.
Now hunger and pain are the only clocks you understand, the sharp gnawing hollow in your belly that claws and twists, the dry stick of your tongue pressed raw against the roof of your mouth, the cruel heat of a hand curled too tight around your neck, the dull ache that settles deep in your joints from lying too still for too long; these are the markers of time’s passage now wounds instead of minutes, bruises instead of hours. You think that if you ever got out, if you ever escaped this place and this silence, you would never know how to live with softness again, that kindness would make you flinch, that comfort would feel like a lie you cannot trust, and you would dig your nails into your skin just to feel something familiar because this is what you know now, this is the language you have been forced to learn, the new native tongue of your existence: pain, silence, obedience.
The room contracts around these six anchors, each one a silent sentence carved into the walls of your captivity, unyielding and absolute. It’s not about survival anymore, or hope, or any thread of escape; you’ve long since abandoned those lies. What remains are these fixed points, these cold, clinical landmarks marking the erosion of your world and self.
First: the eight empty wine bottles, arranged like grim sentinels beneath the dead white tree by the exit. Their glass surfaces catch the fluorescent light with a faint, mocking gleam, polished as tombstones, each one a day lost, a surrender signed and sealed. They watch you in their silence, waiting always eight, never seven, never ten, an obsessive constancy that mocks the chaos you live in.
Second: the baby blue curtain, soft and deceptively tender in this sterile cage. That shade of blue is fragile, innocent, a cruel reminder of skies you’ll never see again, of childhood and lies wrapped in soft fabric. You sometimes fixate on it until nausea blooms in your gut, or sometimes you refuse to meet its gaze at all, terrified that it knows the softness you’re desperately trying to bury.
Third: the chrome, everywhere, cold and surgical, slicing through the room like a blade barely concealed. The walls, the sink, and the handles all gleam with an unforgiving edge. Reflections fragment your image into grotesque distortion: eyes too wide, mouth slack, hands trembling. You are prey mirrored infinitely in steel.
Fourth: the ashtray, thick, square, heavy glass, always spotless, always pristine. No ash, no smell of smoke. You wonder if it’s a symbol of control or just another token of Derek’s relentless obsession. Either thought twists your stomach tighter.
Fifth: the two black-and-white photographs hanging above his bed—simple frames, no captions, no stories for you to grasp. They hold secrets sacred or cursed, locked behind a language you’ll never know. Sometimes Derek’s gaze lingers on them with an intensity that unsettles you, as if they are the altar of something forbidden. They are his world, not yours.
Sixth, and above all else, the shifting, unyielding weather of Derek’s mood. It governs the room, the hours, your body, like gravity itself. The set of his jaw, the glint in his eye, the way his shirt is buttoned, whether his face is clean-shaven or shadowed—all dictate the temperature of your prison. When he’s angry, the air is sharp and brittle, your ribs fragile and your stomach knotted tight. When he’s pleased—rare, dangerous—you are hunted still, but by a slow, patient predator, waiting, measuring, deciding.
This is the architecture of your captivity. These are the fixed stars by which your fractured self navigates, tethered to the cold, merciless orbit of his control.
Everything else is just filler furniture gathering dust, the low hum of background noise, the endless churn of your thoughts circling like vultures. What matters now, what always matters, is Derek. You’ve learned to hear it in the way his footsteps fall, a code sharper than words, more instinctive than reason. It’s stupid, maybe animalistic, but it has kept you alive this long because survival here is about reading the smallest signals, the subtle shifts in his presence before he even speaks.
If he steps slamming heel-first, sharp, deliberate, the kind of step that seems to punish the floor itself for some imagined offense, then he’s angry. No, worse than angry. He’s pacing it out, measuring his rage like a dam about to break, because if he doesn’t, something else will shatter: the lamp, your wrist, maybe the fragile silence you cling to.
Heel-toe. Slam. Slam. Slam. That relentless rhythm means brace yourself. It means don’t meet his eyes. Don’t breathe too loudly. Don’t sit too still, but don’t move too fast either. It means map the room with your body, find the softest walls, the safest corners in case he throws you again. It means maybe he got bad news. Maybe someone laughed at him behind his back. Maybe he dreamed of his father again, and the ghosts clawed at his mind.
It doesn’t matter why. It never matters why.
There’s another rhythm, too light, but only in comparison. When he’s smug, when he hums a tune no one else can hear, when he’s decided you’re his favorite thing today, his footsteps take on a different cadence. A roll, lazy and confident, like a predator marking territory, calm but certain.
Still heel-first, but not slamming just claiming space as though it belongs to him, as though it’s something you already gave him, though you hate that one even more, because that’s the walk he uses when he’s going to touch you like he’s being kind, when his hand comes brushing cold and deliberate against your cheek, a smile so soft it drowns you in silence. That’s when he gets talkative, philosophical, intimate, the cruel pretense that the worst thing he ever did to you was like.
But the angry walk,heel, toe, slam, slam, slam, comes without words, just breath and weight and violence folded into each step. You feel it before you see it, deep inside, like your ribs clench without permission, your spine recoiling in instinct, wanting to escape the room long before your brain can make sense of it.
So now, when the footsteps start down the hall, echoing sharp through the cold chrome bones of this place, you don’t think. You listen. You listen for the heel.”
________
The floorboards beneath the perfectly polished pine always respond first. Not with a creak, but with a kind of shudder, subtle, uneasy, like they know what’s coming. Like the house itself is bracing. The vibrations travel through the soles of your feet before you hear him, before the door handle turns, before your breath shallows out and your shoulders rise.
And always, that same stupid question follows like a ghost you can’t shake:
Did his cleaner use Pine-Sol?
You don’t know. You’ll never ask.
But you swear the scent lingers stronger on the worst nights, sharp and chemical, that piney bite cutting the air like teeth. It curls at the edge of your nose, mixes with the scent of iron and leather, and too many nights spent awake. It's your final warning. The scent of artificial cleanliness over something deeply, fundamentally wrong.
And when the door slams, do not close it. Slams. When the bottles on the shelf don’t just rattle but jump, clink-clink, a stuttering alarm, you know exactly what kind of night it’s going to be.
You’ve catalogued every sound he makes, like an archivist of fear.
Derek was always fast on his feet. Always deceptively graceful, like someone born with a silver spoon and a switchblade. But you’ve learned his variations. You’ve learned the difference in his steps like other people learn piano notes, like monks learn scripture.
When he’s in a good mood, there’s a bounce to his gait a certain looseness in his hips, a rhythmic roll in the way his weight shifts. It’s confident, smug. Not the fury of heel-toe slams, but something far worse. The kind of strut a predator uses when it’s full, not starving. When it’s already eaten, already hunted, and now it’s just bored.
And when he was in that mood, the pain came quicker.
Sharper. Cleaner.
No speeches. No drawn-out tension. No looming shadow stretched across the floor before the hit landed. He didn’t toy with it. He didn’t need to. He was already full of something arrogance, satisfaction, some private success he’d never share with you. Something that made him hum under his breath, whistle like he had time to kill, like you were the one lucky enough to be part of the evening.
It was still sadistic, of course. But it came with precision. Like he had other places to be. Other appetites to chase. You’d learned that mood didn’t mean mercy. It meant efficiency.
The door burst open with a flourish. The knob hit the wall with a practiced thud, the kind that left dents over time, little hollow bruises in the wall from all the nights he made an entrance like this. You didn’t look up. You didn’t have to. The echo told you everything. Sharp. Crisp. Like a starting pistol.
A whistle followed long, meandering, obnoxiously casual. The kind of sound you’d make calling for a dog in the rain. It slithered into the room before he did, curling into your ears like smoke, impossible to ignore.
And then his voice.
“Hey, mutt I’m home!” he said and it rang out like a punchline.
That tone, you hated it more than his shouting. It was the kind of voice people used at birthday parties. Cheerful, performative, smug. It meant he was in a good mood, and Derek in a good mood was always worse than angry. Anger had a beginning, middle, and end. But this? This was a game. A long one, where the rules changed depending on how bored he got.
You didn’t move. One knee tucked up. One hand curled tight around the base of your wrist where the scar still throbbed, more phantom than fresh.
You knew better than to speak first.
He liked the silence. Liked the way it made you look obedient. Small. Manageable. Like a dog that had finally stopped barking.
His footsteps followed the voice, calm, self-assured, with that bouncing rhythm that made your skin crawl. No rage in the way his shoes hit the floor. No slamming heel-toe thunder. Just smooth, confident strides, like he was walking through his kingdom and you were the furniture.
There were so many things he noticed.
He crossed the threshold with a quiet laugh under his breath, private, the kind of people make when something amuses them and they don’t want to explain it. You heard the thud of his jacket hitting the chair.
When you finally risked a glance up, he was standing just a few feet away, the expression on his face unreadable in the dim light. But in his hands was a box plain, taped shut, maybe no bigger than a shoebox, but instantly, sickeningly familiar in its potential.
Your stomach dropped.
Boxes were never good. Boxes meant new tools. New rules. New games he’d invented just for you.
He crouched low, knees cracking slightly as he lowered himself, the motion too slow to be casual, too controlled to be careless. He wanted you to see it. Wanted to savor the way your muscles tightened, the way your breath hitched, the way your shoulders curled a little more inward as if that would protect anything.
Then, with a grin like a shark tasting blood, he dropped the box in front of you.
The thud was solid.
“Brought you something,” Derek said, voice almost singsong. He tilted his head slightly, watching you with the same idle interest someone might give a cracked mirror.
“Well,” he added with a breath of a laugh, “it’s more for me, but... You know that by now.”
Your shoulders pulled taut in a posture meant to humiliate as much as contain elbows high, wrists cuffed to the cold metal bar above your head. It wasn’t just restraint. It was a display. Exposure. The position forced your back into a curve, your ribs straining with every breath. Derek liked how it made you look. Small. Stretched. Weak in the places he could reach without effort.
“Although…” he muttered, tapping his chin with exaggerated thoughtfulness. “It’s going to be a little hard with your arms up like that.”
You didn’t respond. You didn’t flinch.
But your stomach clenched as he reached into the inside pocket of his coat.
He was never quick about it. He moved with the kind of deliberate slowness that made everything worse, like he wanted you to watch every step and fill in the rest with your imagination. You knew that coat. The silk lining. The perfectly tailored seams. The weapons it could hold.
What came out wasn’t a knife this time. Not tape. Not a syringe. Just a key.Small. Silver. Shiny under the sterile light. It caught the gleam like a trick of the eye, almost beautiful, if you didn’t know better.
But you knew.
That key was worse than most things he carried. It meant he didn’t want the cuffs between you anymore.
He stepped in closer, slow and confident, the toes of his shoes brushing your bare feet. One hand braced against the wall beside your head, boxing you in without even touching you. The wood paneling creaked under the shift of his weight. You could smell the cologne again; it wasn’t cheap. It was the kind meant to linger, to brand skin and memory, to sneak up on you only after it was too late to get away.
He was so close now you could feel the heat from his chest, the careful tension in his jaw.
And in that brief, breathless second, something primal surfaced If you had any guts left, you thought, you could bite him. Right there. Sink your teeth into the tender flesh of his throat or the soft underside of his jaw. If you went deep enough, fast enough, maybe you could take something with you before he ended it.
But you didn’t.
You couldn’t.
You knew better.
Derek didn’t like surprises and he never let pain go unpaid.
Your fingers tightened around nothing as the key slid into the lock at your wrist.
Click.
And then your arm dropped.
Not gently, your shoulder burned from the sudden release, the blood rushing down like it had somewhere better to be. He waited a beat before unlocking the other, letting it fall just the same.
You didn’t rub the soreness out. You didn’t flex. He didn’t like it when you moved too fast after a gesture that was supposed to feel like a gift.
He stepped back a half pace, tilting his head. Admiring. Waiting.
Like you were a machine he’d just unboxed, waiting to see if it still worked.
Then gravity took you. It wasn’t a fall, it was a collapse. The second shackle gave way with a soft, traitorous click, and your body crumpled like wet paper, the weight of yourself catching up all at once.
Your body slammed the floorboards with a sickening crack, pain ricocheting through bone. One shoulder hit a half-second later, hard enough to jar your vision white. You didn’t scream. Your breath punched out in a low, broken wheeze instead, tight and useless.
For a second, you couldn’t move.
Not from fear, though that was still there, crawling under your ribs like something alive, but because your body simply refused. Numb arms hung heavy, strung with fire. A thousand red-hot needles bit into your nerves as blood rushed back in too fast. It felt like your limbs were being reborn through pain.
Your hands spasmed uncontrollably, fingers flexing inwards like claws. You buried them under your ribs, trying to anchor yourself, but there was nothing to hold onto except the tremble.
Derek hadn’t said a word; he just watched, still smiling.
You could feel it—his gaze, heavy as hands, peeling you open. Like a collector examining the wear on a prized objec,t studying the damage.
You curled forward, chest heaving, pulse a drumbeat behind your ears.
The floorboards felt colder now. Slick with the sweat that had rolled down your back. You could smell yourself stale skin, copper, old detergent baked into worn fabric. And beneath it all, that piney sting in the air, always strongest when the pain was fresh.
You risked a glance upward.
The box sat between you and him. Small, square, unassuming. Just cardboard. No markings. No tape. Nothing but a folded crease down the center and a little tear at the edge where he’d carried it by the flaps.
Your stomach twisted.
“Well,” he added, tapping the lid with one finger, “it’s more for me, but I already said that.”
And there it was that sick little twist of honesty he loved to throw in. It made him generous. Like this was something to share.
You didn’t reply. You didn’t dare.
Instead, you stared at the box. His hand still rested lightly on top. At the silver ring flashing faintly under the overhead lights. It should’ve looked ridiculous, how careful he was being with something so plain.
But nothing Derek touched stayed plain for long.
Already, your skin was crawling. Every cell screamed to move, to run, to throw yourself back on the chain and beg to be hoisted up again. Anything but open that box. Anything but what came next.
You're sprawled like roadkill across the cold wooden floor, every joint twisted wrong, every breath a curse. The ache in your chest is sharp, wrong, like something inside you shifted and hasn’t settled back. Your skin is clammy, bruises blooming in places you haven’t registered yet. You try to pull your limbs under you, but they don’t respond. You’re too wrecked to move, too conscious to pass out. The shame burns hotter than pain.
And Derek knows it.
“Looking comfy down there, mutt,” he sneers.
The toe of his shoe touches your temple, then pushes, firm, unhurried pressure until your cheek is flattened against the grain. The treads bite into your skin, grinding into your cheekbone like a warning. He shifts his weight. You hear the creak of leather as he settles his stance, the casual cruelty in his body language. He's testing your skull like someone might test a grape for ripeness, how much give? How much fight?
You can’t flinch. You can’t breathe right. Your mouth opens, but nothing comes.
“What, no response? Are you brain-dead?”
The boot twists just slightly, dragging raw rubber across your face. You make a noise—a cracked, broken groan. Not a word. Barely human.
But it’s enough for him.
“Ah, good, you’re still here. I’m not close to being done with you.”
He peels his shoe away with a soft scuff that echoes in the oppressive silence of the room. With deliberate indifference, he nudges a small box at your side with his foot. The box wobbles, teetering on the edge of collapse before plunging to the floor. Inside, a roll of duct tape and a straight-edge razor spill out in a chaotic scatter. The blade, catching even the dim light, flashes like an omen—and for a suspended moment, your breath hitches into a stutter.
“I was stuck in a boring meeting for like… five hours today. They kept droning on and on,” Derek says, his tone as casual as if recounting the trivialities of the weather. “So it gave me a lot more time to think about what I wanted to do to you.”
Each word drips with an unsettling nonchalance, the mundane details twisted into a prelude of unspeakable intent. The razor’s cold, metallic gleam cuts through the stagnant air, amplifying the dread that coils in your gut. In that horrifying instant, time seems to stretch out, marking a silent countdown to the unspeakable.
He tilts his head, watching your reaction like someone assessing a cracked toy. His eyes flick lazily over your trembling form, reading every twitch, every flinch. There’s a vacancy behind his gaze, something flat and cold that makes your stomach twist.
“And I’ve had enough of people talking today, so…”
His hand moves unhurriedly toward the floor. The roll of duct tape sticks slightly to the wood as he lifts it, then peels off a strip with a slow, cruel rip. The sound is jagged teeth against bone.
You try to jerk back, reflexively, uselessly but his hand is already in your hair, gripping tight. Pain lances through your scalp as he yanks your head forward, your neck bending wrong, the strain sharp and sickening.
The tape slaps across your mouth, sealing skin to skin with brutal finality. Your scream collapses before it’s born, swallowed by adhesive and terror. The taste of dust and glue floods your tongue as your breath stutters, muffled and panicked.
Above you, Derek just smiles calmly, pleased. Like the world is finally quiet again.
In a flash of panic, your hands rise to tear the tape from your mouth, nails scrabbling uselessly, but he’s faster. His palm lashes out, cracking across your knuckles with a sharp smack that stings deep into the bone.
“Don’t be stupid. No touching,” he hisses, voice low and venomous, the warmth of his breath brushing your ear like a threat.
Before you can react, another strip of tape snakes around your wrists. He binds them with a practiced pull, too tight, too fast your skin pinches beneath the adhesive, blood rushing to your hands as they throb in their restraint. The pressure is suffocating. You’re trembling now, knees buckling beneath you, the cold floor digging into your bones as you sag forward.
“Now the real fun can start.”
He picks up the straight-edge razor from the box with a motion so fluid it’s barely visible. He doesn’t even look at it, just flips it open with a flick of his wrist, the metal clicking into place with a hollow snap.
He presses a hand to your back, shoving you down to the floor. You feel him sit on your lower back, a sick kind of intimacy in the weight of his body. You’re pinned, breathing hard through your nose, heartbeat crashing like waves in your ears.
“Alright, now be a good girl and stay still,” he purrs. “It’ll go by quicker.”
Derek shoves you onto your stomach with a grunt of effort, and your face scrapes against the rough floorboards. Splinters bite your cheek. Before you can suck in a breath, the weight of him settles across your lower back, solid, deliberate, crushing. Your ribs protest beneath you, your lungs straining to expand. Each inhale comes thin and ragged, a desperate thread of air.
“All right, now be a good girl and stay still,” he says, mockingly tender. The sweetness in his voice is worse than cruelty. It drips like syrup, thick with false comfort. “It’ll go by quicker.”
You want to scream. You want to buck him off, claw his face, sink your teeth into anything you can reach. But your body won’t obey. Your limbs are jelly, nerves frayed down to useless cords. You’re frozen not by the tape, not by the weight, but by sheer, suffocating dread.
Then you feel it.
The razor cold and unfeeling touches down between your shoulder blades. It doesn’t cut. It rests. A single sliver of steel trailing across your skin like an afterthought, tracing invisible lines with surgical precision. Teasing.
He’s toying with you.
You feel it all the same. Every inch of imagined horror. Your mind fills in the blanks with screaming red. Phantom pain races down your spine, nerves lighting up like they’ve already been split open. You twitch but softly, uselessly and his grip tightens just slightly, a warning.
He hasn't even broken the skin. And still, your chest tightens, heart slamming against your ribs like it’s trying to crawl out. The real pain hasn’t begun. But the fear? The fear devours you.
Just the sound of his breathing. Heavy. Close. Measured. The kind of quiet that prickles under your skin and breeds monsters in the dark. You can’t see him. Can’t turn your head. You only feel: the oppressive heat of his body pressing down, the faint scuff of movement behind you, the unbearable drag of his palm coasting slowly across your upper back.
He’s not rushing. He’s savoring.
“You’ve got some soft skin,” he murmurs, almost admiringly. His fingers trace idle shapes over your shoulder blade, gentle as a lover, obscene in their care. “Still, you’re going to look a lot better when you’re all marked up.”
Your body locks. Muscles coil with dread, a futile attempt at resistance. Every cell in your body screams run but it's pointless.
“Stop moving!” he snaps.
His voice cuts the air like a blade, sharp and explosive, breaking the sick quiet like glass underfoot. You flinch as much from the sound as the fury behind it. Spit flies—he’s close. Too close. You feel the heat of it on the back of your neck.
“Come on, I even put in a new blade to make this go quicker, you ungrateful little—”
The rest tangles into a growl, lost in the scrape of steel as he adjusts his grip. You hear the slight click as he turns the razor in his fingers, more intimate than any kiss. The silence afterward is worse. You know what's coming. Your brain knows. Your skin knows. And it begins to tremble, anticipating the first bite of the blade with sickening clarity.
And still, he hasn't cut you.
Not yet.
But in that splintering second, it’s almost worse. Because you can feel the edge hovering just above your skin—cold, eager, clean. And your imagination races ahead, painting vivid portraits in gore: the lines he'll carve, the blood he’ll draw, the way it will bead, run, pool. You can already hear the wet sounds in your head. You can already taste the iron on your tongue.
Not a slash, not a flourish just a slow, deliberate drag across your skin. You feel the edge part flesh with an icy burn that ignites into fire a moment later. Your body jerks, but he’s already pressed his weight harder into your spine, anchoring you like a pinned insect.
He makes two more lines, the steel kissing raw nerves, carving across your back to connect them, forming a D.
Tears spill sideways down your face, soaking the tape at your mouth. You scream, but it’s a strangled, wet sound that dies in your throat. You know what he’s doing now. There’s no mistaking it. No denying the ritual of it. This is branding. This is ownership. This is him writing himself into your flesh.
Four more slashes tear an E into you. The cuts come faster, deeper, and each one rips a hole in your sanity. He’s marking your spine now. Dead center between your shoulders. You can feel the metal digging against bone as five more gashes form an R, each one dragging your breath out in ragged, whimpering gasps.
He’s panting now. You feel it in the rhythm of his body. In the slick pressure of his hands holding you still.
Your blood runs freely down your sides, warm and thick, soaking the band of what's left of your clothes. A pool forms nesdies your your ribs, sticky where your skin meets the floor. Your vision pulses. Maybe—maybe—maybe-you’ll get lucky. Maybe you’ll bleed out. Maybe you won’t have to live in a body that’s been turned into a canvas.
Then he laughs low and breathless, like it’s a private joke between you and him, and carves another E. Each line a scream beneath your skin.
Finally, he slices the K. A hard, final stroke. Violent. Ugly. Deep.
You suck in air through your nose in ragged bursts, chest heaving. It’s over. It has to be over.
But then you feel another stroke. Short. Fast. A fresh fire slicing over bruised flesh.
An S.
Twenty-two. That’s the number of cuts he’s made. You count them with every beat of your heart, every scream that can’t escape your sealed mouth.
He leans back off of you with a long, satisfied sigh, like he’s just finished a chore like your body was a canvas, and now that it’s done bleeding, he can finally stretch.
You hear the razor click shut. That small, casual sound echoes louder than a gunshot.
Then: silence.
Just that suffocating, vibrating quiet, the kind that hums behind your eyes when your heartbeat is the only thing left. It thunders in your skull, drowning out everything but the burning pulse of pain along your spine, the hot trickle of blood, the wet grip of it clinging to your skin.
Derek stands. You hear the shift of weight, the soft scuff of expensive shoes on blood-slick floorboards. He walks away from you, slow, unhurried. You can feel his eyes on your back like a spotlight even when he's not touching you.
But you don’t look up. You won’t.
Your breath rattles through your nose in shaky gusts, each one a struggle not to sob. Your body trembles under the strain of pain and humiliation, but you hold still like an animal playing dead. Because if you move, if you twitch, if you give him anything, he might come back.
The pain burns, but the pain is known.
It’s the uncertainty that truly terrifies you. The silence that stretches. The fact that he hasn’t left. He’s still there. Somewhere behind you. Watching. Waiting. Maybe smiling.
The sound was soft, almost gentle. Wood on wood. Then the crinkle of a plastic bag. You didn’t lift your head—you didn’t dare—but you could hear it clearly. The careful removal of something round. The dull, weighted thump of it placed on the table.
An apple.
A moment later, the click of a blade snapping open cut through the room like a gunshot. Not rushed. Not threatening. Just… routine.
"You know," Derek said, his tone unsettlingly casual, "when I was a kid, my mom used to slice these up just right. Thin, even. Perfect little wedges. None of that lazy, hacked-up shit."
You heard the blade kiss the skin of the apple—shhhk—a slow, deliberate drag. The peel came off in one long, curling ribbon. He let it drop to the table with a soft sigh.
“She had this weird kind of grace, I guess,” he murmured. “The way she handled things. Fruit. Knives. People.”
The words hung in the air like smoke, detached and somewhat dreamy. The kind of memory you don’t know you’re still carrying until you say it out loud.
There was a stillness in him now. A strange, fractured hush as he continued to carve.
“She had this theory: ‘People show you who they really are by how they cut fruit.’” A dry chuckle followed, but it sounded more like breath catching in his throat than amusement. “Isn’t that just the most boring kind of wisdom?”
Another slow shhhk. Another ribbon of red skin slid off the apple and spiraled to the table.
He didn’t speak again for a moment.
When he did, his voice had softened, flattened into something almost vulnerable.
“I think she used to hum,” he said. “When she did it. Some old waltz… something I never knew the words to.”
He turned slightly, just enough for you to catch the glint of the blade in his fingers as he carved another slice from the apple. The edge of it flashed—silver, clean, precise—before vanishing again into the fruit’s soft flesh.
“But me?” he said, popping the wedge into his mouth. His jaw moved slowly, deliberately. The crunch echoed like a breaking bone, sharp and final. “I think it’s not how they cut it. It’s what they do with it after.”
Another slice. Another crunch. The rhythm was steady, almost meditative—a metronome of dread ticking down your spine.
He didn’t offer you any. Of course, he didn’t.
“Want a piece, mutt?” He glanced over at you with a crooked smile, the kind people wear when they know exactly how little they mean what they’re saying. “Nah. You wouldn’t even taste it right now.”
He licked juice from his thumb slowly, unbothered, and let the silence settle again, thick as wet wool. The sweet scent of the apple mixed horribly with the copper tang of your blood.
“God, I needed this,” he muttered, picking up another slice. “You’re better than therapy and cheaper.”
Then, almost as an afterthought, he wrinkled his nose slightly, glancing at the half-eaten apple with mild disdain.
“I’d kill for a donut, though. Glazed. Not this farmer’s market crap.” He took another bite anyway, chewing with theatrical detachment. “But hey, you make do.”
And you knew, somehow, he wasn’t talking about the apple anymore.
The sound comes first, a sticky, tearing rip that seems to echo off the walls. Then the pain hits.
The duct tape is torn from your mouth in one merciless motion, taking a layer of skin with it. Your head jerks with the force, and a strangled whimper escapes your throat.
Derek laughs.
“Oh, shut up,” he says, his grin broad and glinting. His voice drips with that trademark condescension, the kind that always finds a way to get under your skin. “At least I got rid of that awful mustache you were growing.”
Your face burns not from the sting, not from the bleeding skin, but from the shame. That shame is colder than the floor beneath you, heavier than his hands. It floods your chest, settles behind your ribs, and makes you feel small. Smaller than ever.
You’re trembling, and it’s not because of the pain. It’s not even fear, not exactly.
It’s the humiliation.
That somehow, this feels worse than any cut. This idea that you can’t even own yourself anymore. Not your breath. Not your words. Not your skin.
He kneels beside you like he's settling in for a picnic.
Crunch.
The sound is sharp, wet, and close. He’s bitten straight into the apple, tearing through the skin with the same mouth he used to sneer at you. Juice runs down his fingers. You hear him suck it off with an idle slurp.
“You know,” he says around a mouthful, chewing slowly, deliberately, “I used to think I needed to be angry to do this.”
Another bite. Another loud, casual crunch. It echoes too loudly in the quiet, too alive for a room that feels this dead.
He glances down at you as he chews, smiling faintly, almost boyish if not for the look in his eyes.
“But turns out…” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, his gaze never leaving yours. “…it’s actually more fun when I’m calm.”
The juice glistens on his lips. He licks it off like it’s nothing, like none of this is anything.
Your stomach turns.
The smell of the fruit. The sound of his chewing. The way he eats with such slow, domestic ease, as if this is just a break in his day, and not a punishment for you.
“God dammit… You got blood on my pants!” he snaps, voice sharp with disdain. “Look at what you did.”
You can’t see him from where you lie, but you hear the slick drag of fabric against leather. He wipes something, likely the blood, with brisk, irritated movements. The wet sound turns your stomach. A soft huff as he swipes his hair back from his forehead, then the measured rhythm of his pacing behind you, short, controlled steps, each one betraying the strain of self-restraint.
“You’re lucky I’m in a good mood, mutt.” The word hits with practiced cruelty.
You tremble, the impotent fury building in your chest. It simmers beneath your skin, all heat and nowhere to go. Your fists curl behind your back, taped and trembling, your body screaming for some way to fight, to reclaim something.
He crouches beside you again.
You feel him more than see him close, watching. You can almost hear him smiling, savoring your silence like a fine wine. Then, out of nowhere, there's a wet ptchk and something hits your face.
A chunk of half-chewed apple lands just below your eye, slick with spit and juice, clinging wetly to your cheek before sliding off onto the floor.
“Missed your mouth,” Derek says dryly, like he’s teasing a child. “Careful, mutt. That look on your face? It’s almost like you still think you’re a person.”
That tone he uses when he knows you can’t fight back. When he doesn’t need to raise his voice to undo you and inside, something recoils something old and human that’s trying not to disappear entirely.
He draws away again, slow and casual, rising to his full height. You feel the absence of his heat like a sudden draft. His gaze lingers on you as he runs his palms over his shirt, smoothing down the fabric, fingers flicking at invisible lint with meticulous disdain. It’s the same dispassionate attention he gives to straightening a tie before a dinner party. Like you’re no more offensive than a wrinkle he’s been forced to tolerate.
“You’ve been looking pretty disgusting lately,” he mutters, lips curled into a half-smirk. His eyes trail over you, your sweat-stained collar, the crusted blood on your sleeves, the grime under your nails as if your degradation were a personal insult to his standards.
But it’s not quite disgust in his expression. It’s worse. It’s an amusement. There’s pleasure in it. Like your decay is an inside joke he’s been laughing at alone.
And somehow, that is what shatters you.
Something inside your chest splinters, sharp and seething. The kind of fury that comes not from defiance, but from despair. From being pushed too far, held too long in a place where your voice wasn’t welcome. And now that it is—barely—it bursts out, ugly and raw.
“Like I can do anything about that!” you bark. Your voice rips free, cracking under its own weight. “I can’t even shower! I’ve had the same clothes on this whole time!”
It’s the first real defense you’ve dared to voice in… days? Weeks? You can’t even remember. Time is a smear, a bruise-colored blur of sameness and silence. The words leave your mouth sharp and bitter, like broken glass spat out too fast.
As soon as they’re free, you regret them.
Instantly.
It’s like throwing yourself off a ledge before checking how far down the drop is. Your stomach hollows. You tense, bracing for it for the sting of a backhand, the jarring crack of his knuckles across your cheek, the toe of his boot slamming into your ribs, folding you like paper. You flinch preemptively, shoulders curling inward.
But it doesn’t come.
Instead, Derek lets out a sound that almost startles you more: laughter. Loud, incredulous. Real. Not the fake little chuckles he uses to mock you—this one is unfiltered, whole-bodied. He throws his head back and laughs like you’ve just told him the funniest thing he’s heard in weeks.
It makes your skin crawl.
“Oh please,” he scoffs between peals, wiping a fake tear from the corner of his eye. “Don’t give me that attitude. I’m the one who has to smell you.”
The words are cruel, but they’re said with such casual glee that they hit even harder. He grins widely, unbothered, standing over you like a man admiring a pet trick he didn’t expect to work.
You feel yourself folding in again, not from the blow that didn’t land, but from the shame that did. Because deep down, you know he’s right. You do reek. You’ve lost track of how long you’ve been stuck in the same clothes, skin marinated in sweat and blood and fear. There’s no dignity left in you, just a shell of someone you used to be.
The room feels colder now.
Not physically. The air hasn’t shifted, the temperature hasn’t dropped, but something in it has changed. Like the house itself is holding its breath, waiting to see what he’ll do next.
“Ahh… well,” Derek drawls, stretching his arms above his head with the lazy satisfaction of someone who’s just finished a good workout, “this has been fun, but I need to change my pants that you so rudely ruined.”
There’s mock offense in his voice, a spoiled child's whine tucked behind every syllable. His shoes pivot sharply on the wood floor, and he whistles to himself something upbeat and horribly out of place as he saunters off into the other room. No door slams behind him. He doesn’t need to close anything, after all, you’re not going anywhere.
And just like that, you’re alone again.
Lying there in the dim light, curled in on yourself like an animal. The side of your face is mashed into the splintered floorboards, the wood unforgiving against your cheekbone, wrists bound in sticky tape gone slippery with sweat. The chains connecting you to the wall are deceptively thin, just enough to remind you that every inch you move is still owned by him.
The blood cooling on your back has started to dry, forming tacky rivers that itch and burn with every twitch. But you don’t move. The ache, deep, pulsing, bone-dee,p is nothing compared to the deeper dread still squatting in your chest.
Chapter Text
Your back still pulsed where he had carved into it. Each letter etched into your skin seemed to hum with its own quiet ache, like a brand left to fester. You had spent the day sprawled on the rug, pressing your wounds into the shag, as though the softness might draw out or slow the bleeding. Perhaps it had helped, but only a little. The sharp sting had dulled into a deeper, heavier throb, one that spread like rot beneath the skin and flared viciously any time you shifted even an inch. You learned quickly not to move at all.
Derek hadn’t bothered to wake you that morning. There had been no sudden flash of movement, no cruel voice pressed close to your ear, no jolt of pain delivered through a boot to your ribs. Only the sound of his shoes on the floorboards and the quiet click of the door latch as he left. No goodbye, no warning, no parting threat. Nothing. It should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. The silence that followed felt like the eye of a hurricane, unnaturally still, the kind of silence that pressed hard against your ears and promised, without words, that it would return with double the force.
So you waited.
Hours bled together until they no longer felt like hours at all. You must have slept at some point, though it was impossible to tell when, because time had gone slack in this place. Everything bent into a fever dream stretched too thin. To anchor yourself, you began counting the empty bottles near the fake white Christmas tree in the corner. Eight bottles of wine. Or maybe seven. Then eight again. You blinked hard, trying to set the number right, but the sight never changed. Eight. Always eight.
Your body had gone heavy with stillness. You reeked of sweat, blood, and stale air, your clothes clinging to you like secondhand shame. Even your thoughts seemed trapped in circles, looping endlessly, spiraling until you could hardly tell if you were awake or dreaming.
And then the door opened.
The world snapped into focus all at once. Your breath caught sharp in your throat, splintering there, and for a moment, you couldn’t move at all. The sound that followed the sound that filled the room was worse than footsteps, worse than a voice. Derek was whistling.
It was a light, carefree tune, something bright and aimless. You didn’t recognize it an old pop song, perhaps, or some radio jingle from years ago but that hardly mattered. The cheerfulness of it was wrong in the air, wrong against the weight of the silence that had preceded it. The sound belonged to someone folding laundry, flipping pancakes, living a life untouched by cruelty. Normal things. Human things.
But coming from Derek, it was not normal. It was not human. It was a warning.
Because Derek only whistled once the decision had been made. When there was no more debate left inside him. When he was in the mood to savor himself.
“Ahh, just the mutt I wanted to see,” Derek announced, his voice pitched too cheerful, too rehearsed, the brightness of it ringing false from the first syllable. His footsteps slowed as they drew closer, each one deliberate, dragging against the floorboards as though he wanted you to hear every inch of his approach. There was a rhythm to the way he moved, a measured savoring, as if even the sound of his steps was meant to needle at your nerves.
You didn’t need to look to know he was hiding something behind his back. It was in the way his shoulders squared, in the faint, purposeful hold of his breath. The gesture was theatrical, meant to be seen, meant to make you wonder. He wanted you to notice. Wanted the fear to sink into you before you even knew what you were afraid of.
Your body betrayed you immediately, shrinking back before you could stop yourself, your spine curling inward in a feeble instinct to vanish into itself.
“Not again,” you whispered, the words barely audible, carrying no strength, only the dull and worn edge of dread.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Derek said, and though he grinned, his eyes remained flat. “It’s nothing like the other day.” He paused, letting the words breathe just long enough to draw out the sting before dipping his tone, smugness leaking through like poison. “I mean, come on. I left my mark on you. What more could I want?”
With a little flourish, he brought his hand forward.
A Taser.
Small, black, neat in the palm of his hand. It was already alive, humming with a faint insectile buzz that made your stomach knot. Blue arcs of electricity danced between the metal prongs, restless and hungry, alive in a way that felt sentient. The sound of it was worse than the sight, the crackle sharp as broken teeth, eager and merciless.
Derek tilted his head, studying you with the detached curiosity of someone watching fish swim circles in a tank. His expression carried only the faintest note of amusement. “Just thought we’d try something new,” he said lightly, as though you were in on the joke, as though this were a game you’d chosen to play.
Your eyes locked on the thing in his hand, on the quiet blue flicker of current sparking between the prongs. Then, instinctively, they darted to the chains binding your wrists. You didn’t need to test them; you already knew they would hold, but panic overrode logic. Your body moved before your mind caught up, thrashing backward in a desperate attempt to flee.
“No…no,” you croaked, the sound raw, catching in your throat as you scrambled against the restraints. The chain snapped taut after only an inch, the bite of cold metal digging into your skin, anchoring you like an animal caught in a trap.
Derek pressed the button.
The zap tore through the air like a swarm of wasps cracking open in unison. The ceiling flashed briefly with blue light, as though the whole room had been wired to his touch.
“Aw, come on, mutt,” Derek said with a theatrical sigh, dragging the chain just enough to reel you back toward him like a caught fish. His tone was wounded mockery, dripping false disappointment. “Trying to run from me now? After all we’ve been through?”
“That’ll kill me!” The words ripped out of you before you could stop them, frantic and uncontained. Your own voice startled you more than the weapon in his hand. It was the first time in ages you had shouted, really shouted. and the fear in it was unmistakable, raw as torn flesh.
Derek paused.
He blinked once, slow and measured, like a man trying to decide if what he’d heard was real. For a fleeting second, he looked almost surprised, as if your sudden spark of desperation had thrown him off rhythm. But then the hesitation slipped away, replaced by something darker. His mouth curled, deliberate, stretching into a smile that never reached his eyes. Behind his teeth sat something mean, something patient, waiting.
“Oh, I doubt it,” he murmured, his voice low, coaxing, maddeningly calm. He rolled his thumb over the button again, and the Taser answered with another hiss of current, sharp and bright, the sound filling the air like broken glass. “And if it does…” He gave a little shrug, almost fond, as if the thought didn’t trouble him at all. “Well. Guess you weren’t built to last after all.”
“THE CHAINS! THE CHAINS!” you screamed, the words bursting out raw and jagged, tearing your throat into shrapnel. The sound hardly resembled speech anymore. It didn’t sound human. It didn’t even sound alive. Maybe that was the point. Maybe if he killed you now, it would end. Maybe you would finally be allowed to rot in peace. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
Derek froze again, the Taser still humming in his hand, the glow of its current lingering in the edges of your vision. His thumb twitched above the button like he was disappointed it wasn’t already buried in your flesh. He tilted his head, slow and deliberate, feigning confusion. “Yeah? What about them?”
The room swam in and out of focus. Panic was chewing through your ribs, shattering the rhythm of your breath until it came in frantic, staggering gasps. You tried to form the words, but they caught and broke in your throat.
“They’re… they’re metal,” you croaked.
He stared at you for a beat too long. Then click. The Taser snapped off, the blue arcs vanishing in an instant.
Derek exhaled sharply through his nose, a sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. His expression folded into irritation, bored and petulant, as if the revelation had ruined his fun. “No duh,” he sneered, spitting the words like they tasted bitter. “What, did you think they were made of string cheese?”
But you couldn’t answer. Not really. Because the chains weren’t just around you anymore. They were in you. The metal had already found its way under your skin, cold and permanent, an infection you could never tear out.
Where the cuffs bit into your skin, the links had chewed raw rings into your wrists, peeling the flesh away in damp, stringy curls. The meat beneath glistened an angry purple-red, swollen veins bulging like worms ready to burst. Every small movement sent lightning bolts of pain up your arms, bright, searing, merciless, and Derek liked it. You could see it in the way he leaned in, nose flaring, eyes gleaming sharp and invasive, like a scalpel about to make its first incision.
“The Taser—it’s electric—”
Derek scoffed before you could finish, flicking the device up as though it were nothing more than a toy microphone. “No shit, Einstein. What’s next, you gonna tell me fire’s hot?”
He rolled it in his hand, thumbing the side until a faint buzz answered him, the arcs flashing hungrily between the prongs. His grin stretched crooked across his face too wide, all gums and spit, ugly in a way that made your stomach pitch. “God, you’re so dramatic. Cryin’ like I strapped a car battery to your nipples or something.”
Your arms twitched helplessly in their restraints, the cuffs grinding into skin already split to ribbons, the exposed rawness weeping slowly and syrup-thick. Your fingers were beginning to go numb.
“Metal conducts electricity,” you whispered, the words small and broken. You said them softly, as though volume might change their weight, as though maybe if you fed him the logic carefully, slowly, something in his brain might finally connect.
There was a pause. Just a beat. One stupid, perfect beat.
You watched his face shift in real time, smirk faltering, brows pulling in, eyes narrowing as though he were running the numbers in his head and still coming up with the wrong answer. Then, abruptly, his mouth dropped open.
“Wait… OHHHHHH!”
The shout burst out of him, loud and triumphant. He threw his head back in laughter, staggering a step away as if the revelation itself had knocked him off balance. “HA! Oh man, I coulda fried you! Shit, that woulda have been awesome! You’d light up like a goddamn bug zapper!”
He doubled over, shoulders shaking, laughter rasping raw in his throat. “BZZZT!!! dead mutt! Goddamn!” He swiped at his face.
When he spun back around, his expression was alight, flushed from the high of his own amusement. His eyes glittered like cracked glass, jagged and catching. “Good thing I got the brains in this operation, huh?”
He grinned again, huge, clueless, and brimming with the kind of affection that was dangerous precisely because it felt so close to fondness. “Damn, mutt. I’m not even close to done with you.”
He leaned in until his breath brushed your ear. The end of the Taser tapped against the chain, a quick spark leaping into the metal. It bit up your spine, sharp enough to make your teeth clench.
“Next time,” he whispered, voice pitched soft and venomous, “just keep your mouth shut and let me accidentally kill you. Might be fun.”
He lingered there a moment longer, studying your face as though waiting for smoke to curl out of your ears. Then he pulled back, slipping the Taser into the inside pocket of his coat with an easy, practiced motion, the same way another man might store a favorite pen. To him, it wasn’t a weapon. It was a toy.
And then, quietly, almost as an afterthought, his hand emerged again, this time holding a small silver key.
You saw it. You froze.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Derek muttered, his voice low, lazy, but much too close. His breath brushed against your cheek, sour-sweet with whatever sugary garbage he’d been drinking. He crouched beside you, knees cracking as he lowered himself, sighing as if he were the one who had been made to work, as if all this cruelty had worn him down.
The chains rattled as he set to work on the locks. Each click rang sharp, echoing in your skull like a nail driven into wood. With every shackle that dropped, a different part of your body twitched awake. First, your ankles are stiff, bruised, and the skin is crusted with blood. Then your wrists.
The cuffs landed in your lap like dead snakes.
You hadn’t realized their weight until they were gone. The absence of them pressed against you like a phantom limb. Your arms sagged at once, limp as wet cloth. Blood spilled freely now, rivulets tracing down your palms where it had once been pinned in place. Air rushed over the sores and lit them like fire, sending a sting deep into your elbows.
For the briefest moment, you were free.
A silence spread wide, reverent, almost holy. For one impossible second, you felt weightless, as if your body had been lifted from the floor of a grave.
And then the silence broke.
Click.
The Taser was back.
He drew it out like a magician producing the final card of a trick meant only for cruelty. His grin was uneven this time still delighted, still cruel, but sweat clung to his hair, sticking strands against his forehead, and his pupils were blown wide. He looked wired, reckless. That edge made him sloppier. It made him meaner.
“Okay.” He clapped the Taser once against his palm, casual as anything. “Stand up.”
The illusion shattered. The moment of weightlessness collapsed. Your legs turned to rubber, your stomach roiled. This wasn’t freedom. This was just the next act of the show.
Your gaze dropped to your leg, that leg. The wound that had never healed right, the knee he had shattered in the desert. You remembered the bat, the laughter, the way he had swung as though it were some party trick. The pain had settled deep in the joint, coiled like something alive, something permanent. You hadn’t stood since, since when? Since the screaming had stopped? Since the sun had vanished, replaced by this endless night? Days, weeks, it didn’t matter. Your body had forgotten.
But you tried.
Your hands pressed against the filthy floor, trembling, nails split and blackened, wrists weeping where the shackles had chewed through the skin. You pushed. Your legs twitched beneath you, confused, unsteady, knees creaking like rusted hinges forced into motion.
Something in your thigh popped.
You nearly dropped. You wanted to drop.
But you didn’t.
Not yet.
You wobble halfway upright, weight sagging hard against the wall like a corpse trying to remember how to live. Every inch you rise sends bolts of fire racing up your spine. Your broken knee doesn’t bend so much as scream in protest. Sweat and dried blood glue your clothes to your skin, welding fabric to flesh until even breathing feels like tearing.
You feel like a baby animal, unfinished. Soft where you used to be sharp. Weak where you used to fight.
Derek grins, eyes gleaming with feral delight. “Whoops.”
Then zap.
White-hot pain detonates in your side, instant and unforgiving. There’s no time to flinch, no space to brace. The current tears through your ribs like a storm of shattered glass, nerves shrieking all at once in a blinding, electric scream. Your muscles lock, your spine bows, and your legs fold without ceremony. You hit the ground hard knees, elbows, and shoulder. Flesh slaps concrete.
A strangled howl claws free from your throat, only to break midway a gasp, a choking spasm, too raw and torn to be a scream. Air sticks thick in your lungs. Your chest stutters, jerking against the aftershock.
It isn’t just pain. It’s a violation. The kind that lingers, echoing through the marrow.
Derek watches your body twitch, his arms loose at his sides, as though he hasn’t just ripped a scream out of your nerves. “Daaamn,” he breathes, laughter simmering low. “Still got some juice in you.”
He crouches beside you, posture lazy, like he’s admiring a trophy that’s fallen off its pedestal. “Guess standing was a little too ambitious, huh?”
His palm cups your cheek, mock-gentle, sticky with sweat and blood, you don’t know if it’s still yours.
“Let’s try that again,” he says brightly. “Up.”
Through the blur, you look at him. Eyes watering, chest spasming around knives of air, you see only his smile bright, boyish, delighted. He beams like a kid at a magic show, as if you’ve just pulled a rabbit from your own mangled insides.
“You went down like a rag doll!” Derek laughs, clapping once. The sound snaps through the room like a gunshot. “Come on, doll. You can get back up, can’t you?”
It sounds like encouragement. Like playground cheer. But the floor is slick under your palms, your lungs are wheezing, and you’re roadkill he’s urging to crawl.
You don’t answer. You can’t.
But somehow, you move. Limbs quaking, mouth gaping around broken gasps, you drag yourself upright again. It isn’t a strength. It isn’t grace. It’s survival’s final twitch—the stubborn reflex of an animal not yet finished dying.
Your legs barely hold. Your spine folds in on itself. Every muscle jerks wrong, buzzing, stuttering, too tight and too loose at once. Your hands flutter at your sides like dead leaves remembering wind.
“Good girl,” Derek croons, thick with mock-affection. “Try not to fall this time.”
Then zap.
The next bolt bites into your shoulder, sharp and merciless. Your whole body jolts like it’s been flung against the wall. Copper floods your tongue. Your knees buckle, slamming down again, but this time he catches your arm.
Not to save you.
Just to watch.
“Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa!” Derek laughs, steadying you like a drunk he wants to keep standing. “Didn’t I just say not to fall?”
He shoves you upright again, jerking your body like a broken marionette. Like he believes if he yanks the strings hard enough, you’ll stop breaking.
Then he lets go.
For a single heartbeat, your knees lock, an illusion of strength before they fold completely. You drop like meat slung from a hook. Something cracks when you hit your shoulder, maybe your jaw. The sound is swallowed by the concrete. You don’t have time to find out. Your limbs seize again, the current still singing through your nerves. Every twitch is a betrayal, every spasm a reminder that your body is no longer yours.
You jerk like you’re being shocked all over again. Which, of course, you are.
And Derek just stares.
Not laughing. Not smiling.
Watching.
His eyes gleam in the dim light, bright, sharp, and hollow. There’s a stillness in him now, worse than any grin. His mouth hangs slightly open, breath shallow, as though he’s slipped into some private trance. As though your suffering is a mirror he can crawl inside.
“You’re fucking fascinating,” he murmurs, almost absently. His voice is low, clinical, the cadence of a man cataloguing symptoms. “How many times can a thing break before it stops twitching?”
He crouches beside you, deliberate, slow, quiet, not out of gentleness, but ritual. He lifts your foot with one hand. You hear the Taser crackle before you feel it.
Then it bites.
The prongs kiss the soft arch of your bare foot and detonate.
The scream never makes it out. Your lungs cinch in on themselves, ribs contracting like a vice clamping shut. Breath dies in your chest before it can form. The pain isn’t pain anymore—it’s invasion, something burrowing under your skin. It’s needles and acid and knives, but deeper. A foreign body trying to live in you, to make a home inside your nerves.
When it stops, you collapse into what’s left of yourself, mouth gaping open, sucking for air that won’t come.
Derek rises, his chest moving in shallow, uneven pulls. The Taser dangled from his fingers like a toy forgotten mid-play, its faint electrical whine filling the silence.
He doesn’t speak. He just looks. His gaze drags over you, your scorched foot, your spasming limbs, the streaked wet on your face. He examines you as though parsing data, and what he finds bores him.
His lip curls.
No triumph. No gloating. Only disappointment.
“Weak,” he whispers, the word leaving his mouth like smoke.
He says it again, louder this time. “Pathetic. Vulnerable.” Each word lands like a curse, spat out as if they offend him merely by existing. His nostrils flare, a twitch jerks at his brow, and he steps forward, crouching beside you once more. The Taser hums in his grip, casting a faint blue glow across the blood smeared on the floor.
“You know what you look like?” His voice drops, almost conversational, though the underlying hate is coiled and ready. “Like roadkill. That shit you see flattened on the highway and think, fuck, was that ever alive?” A hollow chuckle escapes him, low and quick, dying before it can even settle.
You try to shift, but your limbs betray you. Muscles still fire at random, twitching uselessly from the voltage. Your foot, your foot feels as if it’s boiling under the skin. You don’t dare look.
He leans in, and you feel the heat of his breath on your cheek. “Did that sting?” he murmurs again, softer now, almost tender, though every edge of it is wrong. “You should see yourself right now. Christ.” Then, suddenly, he stands upright, looming over you once more. The Taser remains in his hand like an extension of his will. His head tilts down, studying you, weighing whether to keep you alive or put you out of your misery.
“You make me sick,” he mutters, more to himself than to you. “You’re just this… thing. Flopping around on the floor like you think pain makes you important.” He turns away for a moment, running his hand through his hair not to fix it, but to punish it, digging his fingers into his scalp as though he could root out the rage blooming there.
When he faces you again, his expression has hardened into stone. Cold. Flat. All amusement gone. “You know what really fucks with my head?” His voice sharpens. “I don’t know what’s worse.”
He walks a slow circle around you, the floor echoing under his boots. Each step deliberate, measured, the rhythm of a predator playing with its prey. “I mean, it’s so fucking easy to knock you down. You fall apart like paper every time I touch you.” He pauses, letting the words hang. “But somehow… You keep getting back up. And that’s the part I hate. That twitch in you. Like a bug that won’t die no matter how many times you crush it.”
He stops behind you, just out of sight. You hear his breathing, steady and controlled, the Taser clicking softly in his hand. His gaze isn’t on you, not really. It drifts past your broken body, beyond the room, past the walls, into some vast, empty place only he can see, a dead place. Something in his eyes has gone quiet, gone cold.
His lip curls with disgust, as though even the memory of you is enough to make him recoil. “Always crying,” he mutters, more to himself than you. “Always crawling around like a little bitch. You don’t even try anymore. Just lie there. Rotting.”
His fingers flex around the Taser, the low whine rising again, followed by the sharp crackle of electricity that cuts the air like a frozen lightning strike. He doesn’t touch you yet. He simply holds it close, letting the sound hang between you like a blade made of air.
The room reeks of scorched skin and copper. The floor beneath you is sticky. You try not to breathe too loudly. You don’t respond. You can’t.
Your throat felt stripped raw, your voice buried under layers of pain, fear, and silence. Even if you had wanted to answer, the words were gone, swallowed whole, lost in the haze of adrenaline and shock. That didn’t seem to bother him.
He crouched low, slow, with the practiced grace of a predator closing in on something already maimed. His knees creaked faintly as he settled in front of you, the Taser still sparking idly in his hand. And then his eyes met yours. They were wrong. Too wide. Too bright. His pupils had blown wide like he’d taken something. But you knew he hadn’t. This was just him. All adrenaline and mania, all cold fascination. He tilted his head, studying you like you were a piece of raw meat that hadn’t finished twitching yet.
“Look at you,” he murmured, almost gently. “Can’t even scream anymore, can you? Not after that last one.” He smiled a slow, deliberate thing, all upper teeth. “You’re gonna die with your mouth open, mutt. But not yet.”
Then he reached forward, and for one terrible second, you thought he was going to touch your face. But no. Instead, he dragged the tip of the Taser along your shin not firing it, not yet just letting the cold, metal edge smear through the blood streaking down your leg. Like he was stirring paint. His grin widened when your leg flinched, a useless, instinctive twitch your body tried to perform without permission.
“You feel that?” he asked, as if testing the edge of a knife. “That’s good. Means we’ve still got time.”
“You think you’re the only one who’s had to crawl?” His voice came sharp, sudden, but there was a subtle wobble in it, barely there, a tremor smothered under anger. He paused, swallowed, cleared his throat, as if trying to cough out the truth before it escaped him. “You think you’re special because you’re scared? Because you break easily?”
He stepped closer, looming over you, his silhouette warping in the harsh overhead light. You flinched when he raised the Taser again. Even without contact, you could feel its ghost, your nerves already twitching, muscles coiling like chewed wire. But he didn’t fire. He just stood there. Frozen.
His hand hovered over the switch, but his eyes weren’t on you anymore. They were somewhere else, far behind you, behind time. His jaw clenched hard, tendons sharp beneath his skin. You could see him grinding his teeth. Something was rising in him. Something old. His breath hitched once, soft and involuntary, like a gasp drowned in spit, like pain swallowed too fast.
Then, with a breathless scoff, the mask slid back on. That too-white grin pulled across his face like it had been stapled there. “Whatever,” he muttered. “Not like you can think straight anyway. You’re just a mutt.” His voice carried no heat, just static, words spat into a vacuum. He shoved the Taser back into his coat pocket, the metal hissing against fabric as it disappeared. His hands trembled, just a little. Then he straightened, stepping back like he’d never faltered at all.
“Get up,” he snapped, loud this time, barking the words like a drill sergeant. “We’re not done yet.”
Somehow, against every instinct screaming at you to collapse, you find the strength. It isn’t clean. Your limbs twitch, your balance is gone, nerves fraying like sparking wires. Still, you force yourself up, legs shaking beneath you as if made of wet paper.
“Good girl,” Derek hums, syrupy mock-affection thick in his voice. He flips the Taser idly in one hand, the metal glinting under the harsh light. “Try not to fall this time.”
The charge hisses to life again, the crackle splitting the silence like a live wire in a puddle. Then he jabs it deep into your side.
Your whole torso locks in protest. Your knees snap straight before giving out entirely. You topple like a cut marionette, hip slamming into the floor, shoulder scraping across the concrete. Muscles jerk and rebel under your skin, as if something alive is squirming inside, clawing to escape. You can’t even scream properly just a mangled whimper, ripped from your throat like a dry heave.
Derek grins, that wide, toothy, crocodile grin. “You are so entertaining,” he says, as if you’re his favorite show.
Then he crouches down beside you, moving with the eerie calm of a predator who has no fear of being hurt. You can feel his breath against your neck, orange and blood and something sterile, chemical, sharp. He lifts your foot with one hand like it’s a dead thing, limp and twitching, then presses the Taser to the sole. Pain rips up your leg like lightning set on fire.
Your mouth opens, jaw trembling, but the scream won’t come. Your vocal cords have locked up, seared silent by the voltage. All that escapes is a breathless, broken hiss. You’re shaking too hard to cry properly, you just have tears spilling from your eyes like your body is trying to leak out all the pain it can’t voice.
“Ohhh,” Derek coos, grinning ear to ear, his eyes wide and glassy with joy. “Did that sting?”
Then, zap. He jams the Taser into your outer thigh. Your leg kicks involuntarily, and his mood snaps. “Hey!” he snarls, flinching as your heel clips his knee. “Watch it.” His irritation boils over quickly. No pause. No warning. He jabs the Taser into your ribs like a butcher’s knife.
The next pulse sends you flinging sideways, crashing shoulder-first into the wall. Your skull rebounds with a dull, wet thunk, and your vision flashes white at the edges. A choking sob shudders out of you before you can stop it, half cry, half convulsion as your body folds in on itself, gasping and hiccupping in pain.
Derek doesn’t move right away. He’s watching the tears now. Not the way a lover might, not with sympathy or remorse, but the way a scientist watches a test subject unravel under pressure. His breath’s a little faster now, shallow and sharp through his nose. Not from effort. From arousal.
“You know,” he says, almost gently, as he flips the Taser off with a final click, “for someone who’s been through all this...yeah, bringing you home was the right call.” He stares down at you for just a moment too long. Not with concern, Derek doesn’t do concern, but like he’s watching something rot that used to move. Something that maybe reminds him of himself in a way he doesn’t like.
Then, almost absently, he rakes his fingers through his hair, shoving it back hard enough to sting his scalp. His lips move without intention, like the words are leaking out of him before he can stop them. “Better than being the one left behind.” It’s soft, more to the air than to you. And there’s something hollow tucked inside the syllables. Not pain, Derek doesn’t bleed like that, but a void. A gnawing absence.
But it’s gone just as fast. He blinks. The smirk returns, crisp and cruel like it never left, snapping into place like a well-worn mask. The silence resets. The room contracts again into a stage, and you’re the only prop that matters.
“Now get up,” he says, voice clipped. Cold. “We’re not finished.” He doesn’t wait for you to try. He just sets the Taser flat against your stomach and presses the button.
The charge detonates under your skin. It’s not just pain. It’s obliteration. Your core seizes violently, muscles contracting into a singular cramp of agony that wrings every inch of air from your lungs. Your back arches off the floor. Limbs jerk and spasm like meat strung up on wires, dancing to some sick rhythm.
You can feel the carpet clawing at your spine, raw flesh catching on synthetic fibers. Your eyes roll back, and the world goes white at the edges like your body is trying to escape itself, to slip loose from the pain. You wish your heart would stop. You wish your brain would shut off. You wish, even more than that, that he’d just finish it. But it doesn’t stop. You’re still here. Still inside the pain.
And then, Knock. Knock.
The Taser clicks off with a mechanical finality. The electric crackle dies in the air like a storm cut short mid-scream. Derek freezes. Still crouched beside you, his entire body goes taut, coiled with sudden, electric stillness. The amusement drains from his face like blood from a corpse, gone in an instant. The room shifts. It’s like someone’s cut the strings to the performance.
He turns his head slowly toward the door. Your breath is the only thing still moving, ragged, wet, dragging through your throat like broken glass. The floor creaks somewhere beyond the room, distant and benign, but every sound feels amplified now. Every shadow louder.
Derek rises to his feet like a puppet lifted by invisible cords, each movement smooth but deliberate. His eyes stay locked on the door, not wary. Not anxious. Just pissed. Irritation curls his lip. Deep, festering. The kind of irritation that simmers into violence if left unchecked. He looks like a man whose favorite toy has been interrupted mid-play. The Taser swings gently from his fingers, its hum silenced for now, but the heat of it still lingers in your gut.
He doesn’t even glance at you anymore. You’ve become background noise again. Furniture. A stain. “Stay down,” he mutters, the words tossed over his shoulder without weight. Not a command. Not a threat. Just an afterthought.
Notes:
Yayyy, it’s finally here—sooner rather than later! 🎉 Thankfully, my last 36 mental breakdowns have mostly subsided after finally dealing with some stressful personal stuff.If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment—I literally live off your feedback. Every word you leave fuels my chaotic little brain and keeps these stories coming.
Chapter Text
There is a knock at the door, sharp and loud, three heavy strikes in quick succession that are far too forceful to be polite and far too impatient to be ignored. The sound cuts through the room like a blade and in its wake everything shifts. Derek’s entire demeanor changes in an instant. The amusement drains out of him completely, vanishing so thoroughly it is as if it had never been there at all. His head snaps toward the sound, his body going utterly still in that unnatural, animal way he has, the sudden rigidity of a predator scenting something it had not expected to find on its territory.
For a moment he does not speak. The Taser is still clutched in his hand, the cheap plastic grip groaning faintly beneath the pressure of his fingers as he tightens around it. Your body remains curled on the floor, twitching weakly, your breathing jagged and uneven. You can feel your pulse hammering in your skull, the wet scrape of each inhale dragging painfully through your throat, but Derek does not spare you a glance. It is as though you have already been reduced to background noise, furniture that groans but does not matter.
When he does speak, his voice is deceptively smooth, slipping into civility with the ease of a man shrugging into a well-tailored suit. “Who is it?” he calls, sounding for all the world like someone who had not been snarling and jeering moments before. The shift is seamless, and in its very ease lies its terror.
A reply comes through the door, low and firm, carrying a tone sharpened by irritation and threaded with the weight of authority. “It’s me. Open up.” The knocking resumes immediately after, louder this time, the doorframe rattling with the sheer force behind each strike. You can hear the edge in that voice, hear the familiarity woven into it. Whoever this man is, he knows Derek, and he speaks to him without hesitation, without reverence, as though obedience is not optional but expected.
Derek exhales sharply through his nose, the sound full of contempt. Slowly, deliberately, he drags a hand down his face, fingers spread wide, as though attempting to wipe away the moment and everything inside it. His patience is visibly thinning, the twitch at the corner of his eye betraying a current of violence already starting to coil beneath the surface. His jaw clenches so tightly the tendons stand out like cords beneath his skin, but when he speaks again his tone is clipped, controlled, almost pleasant in its falseness.
“Matt,” he says, spitting the name out like it leaves a sour taste in his mouth, “I am preoccupied with something important right now.”
“I said open the goddamn door.”
The reply is immediate, biting, and the words land with the weight of someone who has grown tired of repeating himself. The doorknob rattles violently, metal scraping against the lock with an insistence that makes the wood groan. Panic courses through you at the sound, your body freezing instinctively where it lies. Your limbs are heavy, useless, your eyes flicking back and forth from Derek to the door, uncertain which direction holds the greater threat.
The name sits heavy in the air. Matt. Derek’s brother. The sound of it carries an inevitability, as if his presence alone had been long dreaded. You can feel it in Derek’s stance, in the tautness of his frame, in the way his expression hardens with a kind of contempt reserved only for blood. Matt is not afraid of Derek, nor is he impressed by him. He is not cowed, not amused, not even wary.
Derek doesn’t answer immediately. The silence drags just long enough to make your stomach knot. His frame is coiled tight, the Taser hanging forgotten at his side, shoulders squared toward the door. He doesn’t look nervous he looks furious. Furious that someone would dare interrupt him, that someone would challenge the illusion of total control he has been building.
For a second, his eyes cut back to you. They pass over your body without focus, without flicker. Not pity. Not curiosity. Just an assessment, a mental bookmark pressed into flesh. A project paused mid-completion.
“Don’t move,” he says at last. The words fall flat and cold, spoken without force because they don’t need it. He expects obedience the way one expects gravity to keep pulling down.
Then he tucks the Taser into his coat with the absent precision of slipping away a pen and turns toward the door. His stride is deliberate, his spine stiff, every step measured and controlled. No rush. No panic. Just calculation, each movement the embodiment of a man who refuses to be hurried by anyone.
You are left behind on the floor, trembling, ears ringing, heart pounding as the sound from the other side of the door presses closer, louder, unavoidable. The air feels charged, brittle with tension.
“Fucking hold up!” Derek barks suddenly, the sharpness in his voice cracking through the silence. He storms across the room, irritation pouring off him in waves. The Taser clatters against the wall where he’s kicked it aside, plastic skittering across wood. You don’t flinch. You can’t. Your gaze is locked instead on the bottles.
Still eight. Lined neatly along the shelf, unmoved. Each one heavy with your blood, glowing faintly in the dim light like red glass lanterns. They seem to mock you
The door creaked open, stretching the silence into something taut and unbearable. Derek’s voice finally cut through, frayed at the edges but trying, poorly, to hold its composure. “What the hell do you want?”
“I want my tie,” came the reply. A man’s voice. Measured, familiar, carrying a quiet contempt that settled over the room like smoke. “I know you took it.”
Matt didn’t wait for an invitation. He stepped inside with the kind of authority that refused to ask permission, brushing past Derek with enough force to make their shoulders collide. He was larger, broad and solid in a way that made the air itself seem heavier around him, and he moved with the certainty of someone who owned every inch of space he occupied. Derek reeled slightly, lips curling into a sneer, but Matt filled the room not with noise or chaos, but with sheer, intimidating presence.
His gaze swept over the space with precision, taking in the half-askew furniture, the lingering scent of alcohol and bleach, and the faint, metallic tang that hung in the air. He didn’t pause, didn’t break stride, but continued toward the far end of the room, where an open drawer hinted at Derek’s usual careless rummaging, as though it were a trail left deliberately for someone like Matt to follow.
“It’s our father’s,” Matt said, quieter now, though no less firm. “And it’s the only one that fits the regulation dress code. I’m not going to get reprimanded again because you can’t keep your hands off my stuff.”
Derek slammed the door shut with more force than necessary, the reverberation rattling through the walls. He stayed planted there, hand pressed against the frame, jaw flexing, eyes glinting with frustration. “Oh, spare me the drama,” he muttered, venom curling through his words. “You love being the center of attention. Walking around in that stiff little costume like it means something. You think you’re better than the rest of us because you get to play soldier.”
Matt turned slowly, as though deciding whether Derek was worth the effort. Even in motion, his bulk and presence dominated the space, shoulders wide, stance planted firm. The tightness around his mouth deepened, his gaze sharpened into something precise, personal, and impossible to ignore. “It’s a job. Not a fantasy,” he said, voice cutting across the room like a steel blade. He squared himself fully toward Derek now, the weight of his size pressing subtly, unshakably, into the air between them. “Unlike you, I didn’t run off to play warlord in Dad’s shadow.”
Derek doesn’t answer at first. His smile builds slowly, venom pooling behind the corners of his mouth, sharp and deliberate. When he finally speaks, the words hiss out low and poisonous, sliding between them like a blade. “You think wearing one of Dad’s ties makes you righteous?” he spits, the edge in his voice cutting past Matt and into some old, unspoken memory neither of them will name. “You think dressing up in his clothes makes you anything but his fucking mirror?”
There’s no humor in Derek’s tone now. No smirk that softens the cruelty. Just pure, long-nursed contempt, drawn from years of festering beneath the surface, and it hangs in the air like smoke. Matt’s jaw tightens, a subtle twitch of muscle betraying the impact of the words. He doesn’t rise to it, not openly. He simply holds Derek’s gaze for a long, measured moment before speaking flatly, “Where is it?”
“Get the fuck out,” Derek snaps, louder than the room can hold, words ripping from his throat like jagged metal. The force behind them cracks the facade he wears like armor, and for a fleeting second, he appears more unhinged than he has all evening.
But Matt is unbothered. Of course he is. He turns the corner with that effortless, irritating swagger, the kind only a sibling could get away with, walking as if the room itself belongs to him, claiming space like it’s owed. Derek follows close behind, coiled and seething, his fury simmering just beneath the surface, radiating in the way he moves tight, controlled, lethal. Somehow, he looks even more dangerous now than he did the day you stabbed him.
“I didn’t take your damn tie. Now get out!” Derek’s voice cracks across the room, shrill with frustration, but Matt barely acknowledges it. His attention is already on the closet, on the neatly arranged rows of expensive jackets and suits Derek hoards like trophies. Without asking, he begins shifting hangers aside, his movements brisk and unapologetic, as if daring Derek to intervene.
“Relax,” Matt says, clipped and deliberate. “I’m not just here about the tie.” He parts a line of jackets with precision, fingers tracing the edges like he owns the history of this room. There’s no urgency in his movements he’s testing, probing, reminding Derek exactly who he is. Then he looks up, calm but impossible to ignore. “Dad says he wants to see you.”
That stops Derek cold. The shift in the room is immediate and visceral. The air tightens. His rage doesn’t vanish it implodes, folding inward like a blade turned on itself. His jaw clenches, but his face goes blank, too blank, a mask of controlled frost settling over him with practiced precision. He takes a slow step forward, voice dropping to a growl that vibrates through the space. “Get out of my closet,” he says again. This time there’s no shout, only a warning coiled in every syllable, sharp and deliberate.
Matt doesn’t flinch. He keeps searching, combing through the closet with the same steady determination he applies to everything. It isn’t just about the tie anymore—it never was. His hand glides over wool coats, suit jackets, linen blends, and blood-dark silks, each piece perfectly aligned, immaculate. Derek’s world is curated, orderly, as though every stitch, every fold, is an extension of him. Matt had always been the one to sweep up after it, and he does it now without pause, without hesitation.
“Dad says he’s been trying to call you,” Matt says, flat but deliberate, each word a hammer striking against Derek’s composure. “Wants to know why his golden boy suddenly went dark.”
That lands. Derek doesn’t answer at once. He stands a few paces from the closet, stiff, shoulders squared as if bracing for impact. A flicker passes over his face—too fast to name, too strange to look at directly. Then he rubs the bridge of his nose, slow and deliberate, like the words have triggered a migraine that’s been building for days. “I haven’t been checking my phone,” he mutters, low and hoarse. “I’ve been busy.”
Matt let out a short, humorless breath through his nose. “Busy,” he echoed. “Right.” He pushed past the final row of hangers and finally found what he had come for—a dark tie, still creased from its last careful fold, the fabric smooth, heavy, unmistakably expensive. He held it up, inspecting it with a sharp eye, thumb grazing the stitching along the edge. A tie from their father’s collection, one Matt had worn to the last family event, when Bram Goffard had seated them at opposite ends of the long dining table, like two chess pieces he was trying to keep from colliding.
“You knew this was mine,” Matt said, voice low but pulsing with quiet resentment. “The only one that fits the dress code. Of course you took it.”
Derek didn’t answer. His silence was telling defiant, petulant. The kind of silence that begged someone to keep pressing.
“You know,” Matt continued, turning to face him fully now, “ I chase down his debts. I keep his name clean while you what? You run off and play god in the basement? Lock people up to feel powerful for once in your life?” His words weren’t raised; they didn’t have to be. Each one landed with the weight of years spent in the background, measured and deliberate, honed like a blade.
Derek’s mouth curled slowly, cruelly, but it wasn’t a smile. It was armor, a shield he had worn for too long. “And you think putting on one of his ties makes you a martyr?”
“No,” Matt said quietly. “But at least I earn mine.”
They stood like that for a beat, the closet between them, the room heavy with the ghosts of all the ways their father had pitted them against each other. Derek, polished and poisonous, a reflection of legacy and expectation, and Matt, blunt and brutal, forced to enforce it. Between them, a single tie stolen, returned, and soaked in far more than memory—hung as the silent pivot of their unspoken war.
“That one’s mine,” Derek snapped, the words cutting sharp and fast before he even registered them. He stepped forward, shoulders squared, neck tight, posture taut like a man standing on a fault line he refused to admit was cracking.
Matt didn’t flinch. He held Derek’s gaze with something quieter, older, heavier than irritation or defiance. Tired. Not the tired of a long day, but the bone-deep kind that comes from years of navigating a world shaped by someone else’s cruelty. Derek had never allowed himself that kind of exhaustion not truly and the sight of it in Matt only stoked his fury. It was a quiet dominance, earned through survival, not display.
“Whatever,” Matt said at last, folding the tie neatly and sliding it into the inner pocket of his coat as if the whole argument was beneath him. “Just talk to him. You’re already in enough shit.”
Derek scoffed, a dry sound that carried more heat than amusement. “I’ll deal with him when I’m ready,” he muttered, a promise and a threat all at once, leaving the air between them thick with unspoken grudges and the weight of history.
Matt turned toward the door, hand resting on the knob, but paused mid-motion. His voice dropped, steady and firm, each word weighed with warning. “No. You’ll deal with him now. You know how he gets.” He didn’t need to say their father’s name,the shadow of it hung between them, heavy and inescapable. Derek’s mouth twitched, jaw grinding, a muscle memory of old pain and long-ignored resentment flaring under Matt’s quiet authority.
Matt hesitated again, voice softening, but the weight behind it remained. “And if you’re too far gone to care anymore, then at least pretend. For your own sake.” He glanced toward the center of the room. His gaze fell on you, still trembling where you lay, your body flickering with the lingering aftershocks of pain, ribs rising and falling as if trying to remember how to breathe. For a brief, fleeting second, Matt didn’t move. His eyes lingered, and something in his expression cracked not pity exactly, but a quiet recognition of what had been endured, of what he couldn’t name aloud.
“Well, he sent me to get you,” Matt muttered, still standing in the middle of the room like he owned it. His eyes never left you, not even once flicking toward Derek. The words were laced with irony, frustration, and a twinge of resignation. “Imagine how I feel. Reduced to being your page boy.”
the floor like something discarded. It wasn’t callousness, it was detachment, the kind that ran through their family, taught young and perfected with age. “Who the hell is that?” The question landed like a dropped knife, sharp and unavoidable.
Derek moved fast, sliding between Matt and your crumpled body with a motion too sharp to be casual. “None of your business,” he snapped, his voice tight and strained, too quick to sound natural. He positioned himself deliberately, blocking Matt’s view, not in protection, but in control. It was the posture of someone caught in the middle of something they could never justify not because they felt guilt, but because they understood the rules and had broken them anyway.
Matt didn’t flinch. His arms remained crossed, his expression unreadable except for the faintest narrowing of his eyes, a silent judgment that weighed heavier than any shout. “Derek… do you have another girl overdosing in your room?”
“No!” Derek barked, the word snapping out of him like a misfired gunshot, too loud, too fast. “She’s fine. It’s not what it looks like.”
The room went still. Matt’s silence was heavier than any shout could have been. He didn’t step forward, didn’t flinch back. He tilted his head slightly, letting his gaze drift deliberately over Derek’s frame, then downward toward the streaks of blood, the twitching fingers, the bruises. He raised an eyebrow. “Is that blood?” His tone was flat, clinical. No inflection, no accusation, just a detached cataloguing of evidence.
Derek’s nostrils flared. His body became a wall, hands clenched at his sides until the tremor of restraint ran through them. There was no charm left, no smirk, no practiced swagger. Only raw panic buried beneath sputtering anger. Matt had seen too much. Matt knew him. And the worst part: he hadn’t even looked scared.
“I said get out,” Derek snapped, his voice pitched sharp and cracking as he shoved Matt hard in the shoulder.
Matt staggered back half a step—not from the push itself, but from the audacity of it. His brows knitted, jaw tightening; the sting was in the insult, the sheer impudence of being touched. Slowly, deliberately, he pushed Derek back. No theatrics. No forceful anger. Just enough to redraw the line. “Don’t touch me,” he said flatly, voice low, edged in steel. Nothing more than a statement: I am not afraid of you.
Derek’s breath caught, his body pulled taut like a cable straining under pressure. For a moment, it looked as though he might throw another punch, or scream, or shatter into pieces right there on the floor. His eyes burned—not with the manic glee he wore with others, but with something far more unstable, more personal. Fury that didn’t spring from the moment, but from years of silent competition and unmet expectations.
“Just go away!” he exploded, the words rupturing from his chest like they’d been festering too long. The sound filled the room, bouncing off walls, reverberating over you.
Matt took it in stride. He exhaled slowly through his nose, visibly unimpressed, though a thin edge of irritation curled beneath his calm. He looked at Derek like one might look at a dog barking behind a fence loud, pitiful, beneath him.
“Dad wants to see you now,” he said, his voice dry. “And believe me, I’d love to walk back into that office and say, ‘Sorry, Derek said he had more important things to do than speak with you, Father.’” The sarcasm curled off his tongue like smoke, slow and cutting, and the smirk that followed did the damage Derek’s fists couldn’t.
“Oh no,” he added, almost to himself. “That’ll be very fun to say.”
Derek didn’t respond right away. His silence stretched long enough to feel uncomfortable, almost deafening in the wake of Matt’s final jab. He stood frozen, shoulders drawn high, fists flexing at his sides as if he didn’t trust them to stay still. There was a tremor in him now—not the kind born of weakness, but the kind forged from too much restraint, an animal struggling to keep from chewing through its own leg. His entire body was wound tight, the tendons in his neck standing out like wire, and every subtle shift of weight betrayed something he refused to acknowledge.
The stab wound low in his abdomen still throbbed, and every movement pulled against the damaged muscle beneath his skin. He didn’t touch it, didn’t flinch outright, but the pain had etched itself into the way he carried himself. A slight stoop shadowed his stance, subtle yet unmistakable, and he drew shallow breaths through his nose, jaw clenched like anger alone could outlast the ache.
Matt said nothing. There was no gloating, no mockery; the point had already landed. Instead, he turned his attention toward you. His eyes swept over the wreckage of the room, pausing finally on your body sprawled across the floor. The convulsions had slowed, but you still trembled, the aftermath of the taser coiled deep in your muscles. His gaze lingered not with concern, but with a detached calculation, as if measuring whether this scene was worth remembering.
If there was disgust in his expression, it was brief and well-contained. Disappointment, perhaps, in how little he was surprised. But none of it reached the surface long enough to become real.
Derek finally spoke, his voice hoarse with something darker than fatigue. “Fine. I’ll go.” The words felt stripped of control, scraped raw from his throat. “Now get out.”
He didn’t wait to see if Matt obeyed. The movement of walking pulled his coat tight over his stomach, and the edge of it caught awkwardly against the bandages underneath. Still, he forced himself into motion, one hand barely brushing the wall as he passed not for balance, but for the illusion of confidence. Even in pain, he had to pretend nothing hurt.
The door opened with a groan, hinges creaking under the weight of frustration and something unsaid. When it shut behind him, the latch clicked louder than it should have, a sharp, final sound that echoed like punctuation—brutal, resentful, and unnecessary. It sounded like failure. Like Derek hadn’t meant to slam it but didn’t care enough not to.
“You didn’t need to slam it,” Matt’s voice floated back from the hallway, muffled by the closed door. His tone wasn’t angry just dry, tired, laced with that worn-out amusement that somehow always made everything worse. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t bother with a parting insult. He didn’t have to. He knew he’d already won the round.
And then he was gone.
There was no lingering threat, no backward glance or theatrical exit. Just the quiet withdrawal of presence, as if Matt had already moved on and left Derek to simmer in the wreckage behind him.
Silence pressed in hard. Not the gentle kind that brings relief, but the kind that lands like a weight on your chest thick, expectant, too complete. The kind that feels like it’s waiting for the next hit.
You stayed where you were, curled into yourself on the floor. Your limbs twitched with phantom aftershocks, the last remnants of the taser still tangled in your nerves. Breathing took effort. Each inhale scraped against something bruised inside you, and your ribs ached as if they no longer trusted your body to protect them. The carpet burned where it had rubbed your back raw, and everything else your arms, your thighs, your gut, felt foreign, like you’d been poured into someone else’s skin and told to wear it like your own.
For a long while, you didn’t move. Couldn’t, really. Your body still spasmed in strange, involuntary shudders, nerves misfiring beneath your skin, like the electricity had rewired the way you lived inside your own flesh. Every breath came thin and ragged, caught between the ache in your ribs and the weight pressing down on your chest. Your muscles had gone slack, but your mind, our mind was beginning to stir again, slowly, reluctantly.
Derek had a brother.
That fact alone hit you harder than the taser had. It didn’t make sense. Derek, who seemed carved out of cruelty and isolation, who lived like he had no origin beyond the rot he thrived in he had a sibling. Flesh and blood. Someone who shared his name and maybe even shared pieces of his past. It was absurd in the way something deeply human always felt absurd when you tried to apply it to a monster. You had spent so long thinking of Derek as some twisted anomaly, something outside the natural order of things. But Matt had walked in like he belonged, like Derek wasn’t the center of the storm but just another man tangled in the family mess.
And yet, Matt hadn’t stopped him.
He had seen you. His eyes had passed over your body, still convulsing on the floor, the blood, the chains, the unmistakable signs of what was happening here. And he had looked away. You weren’t sure what was worse that he hadn’t cared, or that he had.
You shifted slightly, pain flaring low in your spine as your arm brushed something cold. It took a second for you to recognize it the chain its not not locked. You blinked at it, disoriented, watching the way it just sat there, unmoving, loose.
The key. He’d used it.
The memory slotted in slowly, like a dream you weren’t sure you’d had. Before the knock, before everything spiraled Derek had been unlocking your cuffs. Maybe he’d meant to move you. Maybe he’d planned something worse. But then Matt had shown up, and everything had shifted.
And in that shift, he had forgotten to finish.
Derek Goffard, who never left a door unlocked or a weakness exposed. Derek, who noticed the way you breathed when you were lying. Derek, who kept lists in his head of every rule you’d broken and every look you’d given him that lingered too long. He never forgot.
But now, he had.
The realization settled in with an eerie stillness. Not relief. Not hope. But something close to possibility.
He was distracted. Angry. Off-balance. Still favoring his abdomen, where the stab wound hadn’t fully healed his movements were tighter now, more guarded, like even he couldn’t quite hide the way the pain lingered. You’d watched him wince when he thought no one saw, caught the slight hitch in his breathing when he raised his voice. He was more fragile than he wanted to admit.
Your heart stuttered, caught between two conflicting instincts—fear and curiosity. Something had changed. You weren’t sure if it was Matt who’d shaken Derek’s focus, or the mention of the man they both seemed to orbit like dying planets around a black star.
It had happened so fast, so quietly. Derek, who had spent the last hour playing god with your pain, had gone utterly still the second Matt mentioned their father. Not in rage. Not in annoyance. But in that tense, brittle silence that came from something deeper than anger. It was like watching a fault line form across a glacier—quiet, slow, devastating. You’d seen his rage a hundred times, but this stillness felt different. Older. Colder.
He hadn’t looked at Matt. Hadn’t said a word. He just stood there, back rigid, jaw tight, eyes somewhere else entirely. He’d looked less like a man in control and more like a boy standing at the edge of something he couldn’t win against. Like the hallway outside had turned into a tunnel straight back into a childhood soaked in dread.
That had to be it.
It wasn’t the brother who’d thrown him off—it was the father. The one man Derek couldn’t manipulate or intimidate into submission. The one presence that could reduce him with a word. If Matt had brought the message, then Derek had heard it loud and clear: the game was over. The real monster had summoned him.
And maybe that fear had splintered something. Maybe it had knocked him off-balance just long enough to forget the chains. Just long enough to leave the lock unlatched.
But then again… maybe it wasn’t fear.
Maybe it wasn’t a mistake.
The thought crept in slowly, like a shadow lengthening across the floor. What if he hadn’t forgotten at all? What if he had left it open on purpose? A trap. A test. A cruel little experiment to see what you’d do when you thought you had an opening, maybe he offered you just enough slack to make you run, just so he could chase you down again and punish you for trying.
Your breath caught. You couldn’t be sure which was worse: the idea that he was falling apart or that he was two steps ahead, even now.
Either way, the chains lay away from your wrists and you were alone.
The thought settled in like rot slow, invasive, impossible to shake. Derek didn’t forget things. He didn’t leave mistakes lying around. He was meticulous in his cruelty, measured in every gesture. If the chains were loose, it wasn’t because he was distracted. It was because he wanted them to be. Because he was watching. Waiting. Somewhere, behind a wall or through a hidden camera lens, maybe even with one ear pressed against the door, he was waiting to see what you would do with the illusion of freedom.
Your stomach churned, bile creeping up like acid. The safest thing would be to stay put. Curl back into the corner, pull your knees to your chest, and pretend obedience. That’s what he expected, wasn’t it? For you to be broken. Trained. A dog too frightened to move without permission. You’d lived like that before. You could do it again. Survival meant stillness.
But it also meant knowing when to act.
And somewhere beneath the fog of fear and the lingering static in your limbs, something in you sparked. It wasn’t defiance, not exactly. It was older than that. Uglier. The raw instinct that had kept you alive through every dark turn of your life. It flared now small and hot and hungry.
You pressed a palm to the floor and pushed yourself upright. Pain flared through your arms, electric aftershocks still shivering down your muscles. Everything felt slow, like your body was moving through water, but you kept going. Bit by bit. Knee, foot, balance. You gritted your teeth and willed your legs to carry you. They protested, but obeyed.
The curtain ahead shifted with the draft, that soft baby blue fabric fluttering like it didn’t belong in a house like this like something ripped from a nursery and left to rot in a place of violence. Beyond it, the hallway waited, narrow and dim, walls yawning open like a throat ready to swallow you whole.
You moved toward it anyway, past the curtain, past the point of no return. Ahead, a bathroom door hung open just enough to see the tile floor glinting inside.
Freedom wasn’t waiting on the other side of that door. You knew that. This wasn’t a jailbreak, it was a reprieve. A hallway. A breath. Not freedom, but space just enough to stop suffocating. Privacy, maybe. A door to shut. A mirror to look into. A sink to lean against and pretend, for a few seconds, that you were still something human.
The fabric of your tank top had gone clammy, clinging to your skin in patches, sliding off one shoulder where it had stretched and soaked through. You didn’t fix it. The effort felt pointless, too heavy for the moment. There were no eyes here, or at least none you could see. No one to impress, no one to hide from. Not yet.
Each step forward demanded more than the last. Your legs weren’t steady, your body still caught in the echo of pain. But the gamble seemed worth it if only to feel something that wasn’t the floor of that room or the bite of metal. You didn’t know whether you were walking toward a sliver of safety or straight into another of Derek’s traps, but forward was the only direction that existed anymore.
When you crossed the threshold into the bathroom, the contrast almost stopped you cold. It didn’t look like part of the same house. It certainly didn’t look like it belonged anywhere near a room with chains bolted to the floor. This was no dungeon it was something closer to a hotel suite, the kind you’d only ever glimpsed in movies or magazine ads in waiting rooms. The air even smelled expensive, like some blend of sandalwood and ozone.
Black marble countertops gleamed beneath recessed lighting, their dark veins threaded with gold that shimmered when you moved. The mirror above them stretched wall to wall, wide and clean enough to see every pore, every bruise, every bloodstain mapped across your face. For a second, your reflection didn’t even look real. The version of you in the glass was wrecked eyes sunken, skin raw, hair clinging in wet ropes to your temples. You barely recognized yourself, and worse you weren’t sure you wanted to, you didn't even process yourself.
Beneath the mirror, the counter was obsessively arranged. Row after row of grooming products sat in perfect alignment, each label turned forward like a soldier at inspection. Nothing was out of place. No speck of dust, no smudged fingerprint on the sink’s brushed metal tap. Aftershave. Serums. Cologne. Razors. Even the toothbrush looked untouched.
It was all curated. Controlled. Sterile in the way only Derek could make things where any disruption might as well be an offense against God. Even his reflection behind you would probably scream “don’t touch” if it could.
You stared at the rows of bottles on the counter. Serums. Moisturizers. Little dropper vials that looked like they belonged to a lab tech, not a monster. The kind of things you imagined cost more than your entire year’s rent back when you still had an address.
You didn’t touch any of them. You didn’t dare. It felt wrong, like breathing on glass too clean. You didn’t need to be told you didn’t belong here.
But what twisted your gut wasn't the gold-trimmed faucet or the high-thread-count towel folded like origami on the rack. It was the fact that Derek did.
This room shouldn’t have suited him, and yet it did. In a way that made your skin itch beneath your clothes.
The marble countertops gleamed under soft recessed lighting, gold veins catching in the glow like veins beneath skin. Every bottle of grooming product aftershave, cologne, beard oil? was arranged with surgical precision. Nothing out of place. No clutter. No chaos. It was the kind of space built for a man who wanted to be seen, admired, envied. And Derek was all of those things now. Impeccably dressed. Polished to a high shine. Even his toothbrush matched the chrome trim on the sink.
But that wasn’t the man you remembered.
The real Derek the one who dragged your un-conscious body to the desert his jacket half-rotted off his shirtless back had nothing of this shine. He was grime and spit and sun-blistered rage. His hair had been caked with sand, his, his hands always dirty from something blood, dirt, sometimes both. When he looked at you back then, there had been no performance. No mask. Just raw need and whatever dark, rotting instinct he’d mistaken for purpose.
This place didn’t soften him. It disguised him and only just.
The rage was still there, still burning beneath his skin. You’d seen it only moments ago when Matt pushed him, not physically, but emotionally where it hurt worse. Derek hadn’t come apart. He’d gone still, too still. He wasn’t flustered, wasn’t embarrassed. He’d looked the way animals do when they sense blood in the water but haven’t decided if they’re going to strike. And that stillness scared you more than any outburst ever could.
This wasn’t a home. It was a glass case. An exhibit. A carefully lit lie.
It had refined him, maybe. Taught him how to move differently, how to hide the teeth until they were needed. But he hadn’t grown less dangerous. If anything, the civility just made him worse. Because now he had velvet gloves for his claws and a soundproof room to scream in.
He was still the same creature you’d met under a burning sky. But now, instead of roaming the sand and dragging you by the ankle through the dust, he wore linen and learned how to smile at cameras.
And you whatever you were back then weren’t his companion or his captive in the way most people would think. And here, in this curated place full of cleaYour gaze drifted across the room, past the vanity’s gleaming countertop to where the floor dropped into an oversized sunken tub too grand to be called a bathtub, not quite public enough to be a jacuzzi. It looked like it belonged in a spa brochure, surrounded by stainless steel handrails that curved with sterile elegance, the kind you'd expect to see in a high-end wellness clinic, not in the home of someone who left bruises like fingerprints. Staged around it were baskets of folded towels rolled into perfect white spirals, and votive candles that had never been lit, untouched props waiting for some imaginary guest.
You paused when you saw the second door cracked slightly open across the room. Curiosity, weak but persistent, tugged at you as you limped over. Maybe it was another closet full of pressed suits. Maybe a shrine. With Derek, it could have been anything.
But no it was just a toilet. White porcelain, pristine. Normal.
You let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh, except there was no humor in it. Just that sharp exhale of disbelief when the absurd finally breaks and reveals something mundane beneath.
You shut the door again quietly.
No gold-plated toilet. No chandelier hanging above it. Somehow, that felt more surreal than if there had been.
So he does have limits, you thought, but the thought didn’t settle as comfort. If anything, it made it worse. Because it meant the choices he made the brutality, the indulgence, the violations weren’t from ignorance or excess.
You turned toward the mirror and froze.
It was like hitting a wall. Not physical, but something deeper sudden, jarring. Your heart lurched up into your throat, and the space between your breaths stretched, thin and brittle. The reflection staring back didn’t move at first, like it belonged to someone else. A stranger, it finally clicked that this was you.
You didn’t recognize her.
Your hair clung in snarled, roped strands against your neck and face, dried stiff in patches where blood and sweat had crusted together. Salt left its trails in pale streaks down your temples. Your cheekbone was swollen and rising into a blotchy bruise, red deepening to violet with the threat of black. One eye looked heavier than the other sunken, glassy with something that hadn’t cleared since the taser. The curve of your mouth was cracked, lips pale and splitting at the corners. You looked like something dug out of the wreckage, like you’d been buried in the desert and clawed your way back just to collapse again here.
You leaned in closer, not even knowing why. Maybe to prove to yourself that you were still real. Maybe to find the part of you that hadn’t vanished under all the pain.
But it wasn’t there.
Not in the cheekbones or the eyes or the trembling in your jaw. Not in the slouch of your shoulders, or the bruises blooming like rot down your collarbone. Whoever you used to be had been carved out and left behind in pieces on desert stones, on silk sheets, in the spaces between Derek’s hands and your throat.
Your hand pressed against your mouth as the first sob slipped out, sharp and helpless. You hadn’t meant to make a sound it just tore its way free before you could stop it. Your knees buckled under the weight of it all, and you caught yourself on the marble counter, gripping its edge with trembling fingers as if anchoring yourself could somehow keep you from unraveling completely.
The tears came faster than you expected, hot and relentless, smudging your vision until your reflection disappeared in the blur. You tried to breathe slowly, tried to keep quiet, but your shoulders shook harder with every breath you drew. It wasn’t just pain that dragged the sobs out of you. It was recognition. The proof was right there in the mirror, etched into the pale hollows of your cheeks, the cracked skin of your lips, the bruises that no longer looked new. Your eyes looked vacant. Not empty like calm, but hollow in a way that spoke of something taken something broken apart piece by piece.
You barely recognized yourself.
Your hair was plastered to your skin, sticky with dried sweat and old blood. It clung like seaweed to a shipwreck, tangled and unsalvageable. The welt on your cheekbone throbbed in time with your heartbeat, a fresh mark in a gallery of bruises. Your collarbone jutted out more than it used to, and your arms looked thinner, like your body had been slowly cannibalizing itself trying to survive. You weren’t a person in the mirror you were aftermath.
The realization hit with cruel force. Derek had done this. Slowly, deliberately, with the precision of someone who liked to take his time. He’d turned you into this shivering thing hunched over a pristine countertop, someone who cried only when she thought no one could hear. You had fought him, even now you still did in some stubborn, breathless way but it hadn’t been enough. He’d gotten in. Twisted the wires. Hollowed you out and filled the empty places with fear and silence.
And now here you were, spilling that silence out into a room that didn’t belong to you. A room that smelled like him. Sandalwood and expensive soap and something sterile beneath it all. Everything was lined up perfectly the oils, the razors, the little combs and jars. Every item in its place. It felt obscene to break down in the middle of it, to fold in on yourself while the world around you stayed so clean, so polished, so untouched by the mess he made.
But your body didn’t care. It kept shaking, kept heaving as though grief had to be bled out like poison. You pressed both hands to the counter now, knuckles white, head bowed low, trying to remember how to breathe through it. The sobs grew quieter not because they passed, but because you had nothing left to give them. You were spent. Emptied. Rung out like a rag left drying in the sun.
When you finally looked up again, your reflection was still there, waiting. It didn’t look stronger. It didn’t look like a fighter. But it looked back.
You curled in slightly, trying to pull away from the mirror, away from your own reflection, like folding smaller might make this version of you vanish. But crying wasn’t going to undo anything. It hadn’t before. It wouldn’t now. You forced yourself to breathe through the tremor building in your chest slow, shallow inhales through your nose, exhales through your mouth. Fan your face. Ground yourself. Don’t think too hard.
Don’t look again.
But you moved anyway.
You turned with effort, muscles sluggish and stiff from shock, and reached over your shoulder. Your hand trembled as you felt along the sore skin at your back, your fingers brushing over ridges that hadn’t been there before. You angled yourself toward the mirror again, squinting at the awkward reflection.
The breath caught in your throat and didn’t come back.
It wasn’t a scar yet. The cuts were still healing—shallow but deliberate, the edges raw and angry. Swollen in some places. Scabbed in others. But the shape of it was clear even through the blood-dark grooves.
DEREKS.
The letters had been carved into you with precision. Not scratched, not accidental. Intentional. Claimed, not in metaphor but in skin. The possessive S at the end felt like a final twist of the knife just in case there was any doubt.
You stared, and the world seemed to still around you. Not in awe, not in fear. Just a numbing quiet that dropped down like a curtain and muffled everything else.
He did this. Not the heat or the desert or the hunger or even the endless parade of humiliations he found so amusing. This. He took your body and turned it into a message. A warning. A trophy. And he didn’t even care enough to hide it.
You couldn’t tell if you were going to vomit or laugh or collapse. Your stomach twisted violently, bile stinging at the back of your throat, but no sound came. No scream. No sob. Just a pressure behind your eyes that didn’t move.
already eroding. But you refuse to face it again. You focus on the tiled wall instead, blank and cold and unfeeling. Its smooth surface doesn’t look back at you. It doesn’t ask questions. It just exists, steady and still, and for now, that’s enough.
Your hand rises on instinct, shaky fingers pressing hard against your lips like a dam. Like pressure could stop the collapse. It doesn’t. The ache is still rising in your throat, but you clamp down anyway, because if you start crying again, you’re not sure you’ll stop. Your gaze slips downward, past the edge of the vanity, to the bathroom floor. Your feet are planted there, but they feel detached distant. They could be someone else’s. You barely recognize the body you’re standing in.
And then, slipping in like a shadow under the door, comes the thought.
What’s even the point anymore?
It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t snarl. It doesn’t need to. It brushes against your ribs like a whisper, gentle and familiar, tempting you with its softness. With the relief it promises. It makes you dizzy with how easy it would be to believe it.
You shake your head. Hard. Like the thought could be dislodged if you just moved fast enough.
No.
You won’t let that in. Not again. You’re still breathing. That has to count for something. You’ve made it this far, dragging your half-shattered self through hell without giving in. You’ve survived things that should’ve ended you. Things Derek wanted to end you.
And most importantly, you’re still you. Maybe not all at once, maybe not the same, but you’re here. And he doesn’t get to take that. He can scar you. He can break your body, humiliate you, carve his name into your skin like some twisted artist trying to sign his work. But he doesn’t get to have everything.
You open your eyes and force yourself to move, stumbling away from the mirror like it might lunge at you if you look too long. The floor tilts slightly under your feet as you cross to the sink, muscles trembling with the effort. You catch yourself on the marble edge, gripping it hard enough that your knuckles go pale, and reach with your free hand to twist the faucet. The cold tap resists for a second, then gives way with a sharp creak, sending a rush of water pouring out, clean and fast.
It’s frigid. Your fingers jerk at the first touch, but you keep your hand there, letting the water run over your skin until the sting becomes bearable. You lean forward and cup a handful, splashing it onto your face. It hits like a slap, sharp, shocking but that’s what you want. You do it again, more desperate this time. Then again. Cold water streams down your cheeks, soaks your collar, trickles into the curve of your spine. Each splash makes you flinch, but it also dulls the weight in your chest just a little. It gives you something else to focus on besides the raw edge of your own mind.
Dirt and blood begin to wash away, streaking the porcelain in muted reds and browns. Sweat, tears, grime remnants of a fight you never agreed to join circle the drain in grim little spirals. You scrub at your jaw with the heel of your palm, then your forehead, your neck, as if you could somehow erase what’s been done to you just by rubbing hard enough.
But it isn’t about getting clean. Not really.
It’s about control. Reclaiming something—anything—from the wreckage he left behind.
By the time you stop, your arms ache and your skin burns, chilled and abraded from the water and the rough touch. You press both hands flat against the counter, breathing hard. The mirror is still behind you, reflecting everything you don’t want to see. But you don’t look. Not again. Not yet.
Instead, you stay hunched there, dripping and shaking, listening to the rush of the faucet and the uneven rasp of your own breath. It takes several long seconds before the tension in your throat loosens enough to speak.
“God,” you whisper, the word slipping out like a cracked sigh. “I needed that.”
The sound barely registers, but hearing your own voice no matter how quiet grounds you in a way nothing else has. You're still here. Still capable of stringing words together. Still yourself, somewhere beneath the wreckage.
Your gaze drifts across the neat line of products beside the sink, sleek bottles and frosted glass jars, each one arranged with an obsessive kind of precision. Serums. Oils. Moisturizers. Toners. Aftershave in cut-crystal containers. Even the labels are perfectly aligned, facing forward like they’re posing for a catalog. It’s the kind of display you’d expect in a high-end boutique, not in the private bathroom of a man who once dragged you, bleeding and near-unconscious, through the sand.
You hover a hand over one of the smaller bottles. Pause. Then pick it up.
What’s one more offense?
He’ll be furious, sure. But that’s a given. You’re not going to win any favor by behaving, not now not ever. Derek’s wrath isn’t something you can dodge. It’s something he carries with him like a scent, ready to pour over you whether you ask for it or not. So why not touch the things he told you not to? Why not leave fingerprints on his pristine world?
You pull the stopper out with a soft pop and lift it to your nose. The scent hits you immediately light and clean, like citrus and honey warmed under a summer sun. It shouldn’t belong to him. It smells human. You press a small drop to your fingers, then rub it gently across your cheeks, your temples, your forehead. The texture is smooth, comforting in a way you weren’t expecting. The smell wraps around you like the ghost of a life you don’t recognize anymore.
It’s stupid. It’s absurd. But it makes you feel something. A tiny scrap of control. A moment of comfort he didn’t hand to you himself.
Your eyes shift, following the marble curve of the room until they settle on the shower.
The glass door stands slightly ajar, fogged faintly with residue from some earlier use. Inside, it gleams polished tile, a rainfall showerhead, bottles in recessed shelves, no clutter, no mess. A place that looks clean, almost holy in contrast to the filth stitched into your skin. But there’s something about it that doesn’t sit right. It doesn’t just look inviting it looks staged. Like bait. Like a trap dressed in steam and steel.
The shower was built into the floor like a luxury pit, seamless and pristine, the glass door so clean it barely looked real. The tiles gleamed a bone-white polish, sterile and cold, lit softly from within the walls. It looked more like an art installation than anything made for actual use. There were no visible knobs or handles just a sleek panel of brushed steel with glowing digital buttons, each one pulsing faintly as though waiting for a command. The silence of the room made even those little lights feel watchful.
You stepped closer, your bare feet brushing against the cool marble, the ache in your legs slowing you to a careful pace. The absurdity of it gnawed at you this was a bathroom, wasn’t it? Just a place to get clean. But it didn’t feel like one. It felt like something else. A set piece, maybe. Something curated. Controlled. Even the air felt too still, like it was afraid to disturb the arrangement.
You stood in front of the panel and stared at it for a moment, your fingers hovering just above the buttons. You weren’t sure which part of you hesitated more the one that feared triggering some unknown mechanism, or the one that just hated touching anything of his. The whole space reeked of him. That cold, perfect neatness. The artificial calm of money and control. But you pressed the button anyway.
A low hiss answered, and then suddenly water exploded from jets you hadn’t even seen. It hit you from every direction at once warm, forceful, too much. You gasped, flinching back with a sharp jolt, your hands raised instinctively like you could shield yourself from the assault. For a breathless second you thought he’d rigged it to hurt.
But it didn’t.
It was just water. Just warm, steady water.
It coursed over your skin like pressure and silk, too hot at first, then melting into something tolerable, even comforting. You stayed still beneath the spray, your breath coming fast, your mind racing to catch up with your body’s reaction. And then, unexpectedly, a laugh cracked out of your throat thin and unsteady, almost more a cough than anything else, but it was there.
The laugh died quickly, but it left something behind. A shift. A moment of quiet that felt like the surface of a pond after a thrown stone. The absurdity of it pressed on your chest. This ridiculous, expensive shower with its glowing buttons and invisible jets, built for someone who wanted the illusion of peace without ever touching anything real. And now here you were, filthy and hollowed out, being rinsed clean by it. As if that could do anything. As if the water could peel away what he’d carved into you.
You pressed another button on the panel, and a low rumble answered from above. A second later, a torrent of water crashed down over your head with sudden, punishing force. It felt like a monsoon, a waterfall barreling straight down your spine. The impact stole your breath, and for a moment, it almost drowned you. But you didn’t move. Didn’t flinch.
For the first time in what felt like days, the noise in your head fell quiet.
Heat poured over you, soaked deep into your muscles, and something in your body finally gave. Your shoulders dropped. Your spine loosened. The sting of tension that had welded itself to your joints started to bleed out, just a little, as the water needled into every tight spot. You leaned into it. Let it hammer against your back, your skull, your chest.
God. It was heaven wasn’t the right word. Not exactly. But it felt like being reclaimed by something ancient. Something bigger than you. Something clean.
When the pressure became too much, you stepped out from under the downpour, dragging your hands over your face, blinking water from your lashes. The glass walls had fogged slightly, softening the sharp edges of the room, but everything was still too pristine, too untouched to be real. Your gaze drifted to the lineup of sleek bottles mounted neatly on a recessed shelf. A dozen of them. Maybe more. All matching. Each one a different shade of muted gray or amber, all with matte labels in minimalist font—like the world’s most pretentious apothecary.
Of course they were arranged. Color-coded, probably alphabetized. You didn’t bother checking.
Your hand reached for one of the slimmer bottles, frosted glass with the word “Shampoo” stamped neatly across the front. No brand. No frills. Just design. Your thumb rubbed across the label absently as you twisted off the cap. You poured a thick stream into your palm and closed your fingers around it like it might slip away.
Then you started to scrub.
Hard.
Your fingernails dug into your scalp with a desperate kind of focus. Foam frothed thick around your roots, cascading over your hands and wrists in slippery white sheets. You kept scrubbing longer than necessary raking through every tangle, every patch of grit that clung to your skin. Grains of sand broke free under your nails, mixed in with sweat, blood, and filth. You pressed harder, like you were trying to unearth something buried beneath the surface.
Maybe you were.
Maybe it wasn’t just dirt you were trying to get rid of. Maybe it was his touch. His voice. That crawling feeling that lived under your skin now, humming just beneath the surface. You lathered again. And again. You didn’t stop until your scalp tingled, raw and clean and stripped bare.
Three full rounds. That’s how long it takes before your hair stops making that brittle, crunching sound under your hands. The lather finally runs smooth, not tangled with dirt or salt or blood. Only then do you reach for the matching conditioner, another bottle from Derek’s obsessively curated collection. It’s heavier than the shampoo—silky and cool between your palms as you smooth it through the damp strands.
You pause when your fingers snag on a knot, and for a few seconds, all you can do is work it loose, gently tugging until it slips free. The repetition has a rhythm to it. Almost calming. But the illusion shatters as your gaze drifts to the bottle again—matte glass, polished cap, no label but his fingerprints are all over it in spirit. These are his things. His space. His rules.
And you're breaking all of them.
Still, your hands don’t stop.
The next bottle you grab is a scrub thick, grainy, with a scent like eucalyptus and something sharper beneath it. You scoop a generous handful and start at your shoulders, working it in slow, deliberate circles. Every pass pulls at something dead skin, scabs, dirt buried so deep it might as well be part of you. It stings. Especially around the rawer places. But you keep going, jaw clenched, breath steady, until the foam runs pale pink, and the smell of old blood fades into clean tile and steam.
Your body looks alien under the cascade of water, streaked with red and fresh pink. Bruises bloom in strange colors. Cuts throb under new skin. But there’s something else, too. Something you haven’t seen in days.
A person. Not just wreckage.
You rinse yourself one last time and then fumble with the panel, pressing buttons at random. Cold air blasts your shoulder. A blue light flickers. The water surges hotter before it finally shuts off altogether, cutting the pressure in a sudden gasp of silence.
The room goes quiet.
You stepped out of the shower, body heavy and boneless with heat, and reached for one of the folded towels from the wicker basket near the tub. It unfolded like a blanket plush, oversized, and soft enough to almost make you forget where you were. Almost. You pressed it to your face, inhaling. It smelled like lavender, sunlit cotton, and expensive detergent, the kind you’d never buy for yourself. The warmth clung to your skin like a second layer, and for a moment, you let yourself pretend. Pretend you were somewhere safe. Somewhere real.
You began to dry off. Not slowly, not gently. You dragged the towel across your skin in long, purposeful strokes, like you were trying to rub the last few days off entirely. You scrubbed at your arms until they flushed pink, dragged the fabric across your chest, your legs, your face. You weren’t pampering yourself you were purging. Wiping away the desert, the blood, the stink of fear that seemed baked into your pores. Each pass over your body felt more like an exorcism than a routine.
By the time you were done, your skin was clean, but raw. You felt lighter. Not quite healed, but emptied. Emptied enough to finally breathe.
You dropped the towel onto the marble floor, ready to turn away
“Enjoying my stuff?”
The voice came from behind you, casual and quiet, but it landed like a blow. Your entire body went rigid.
Your breath hitched in your throat as your gaze crawled up to the reflection in the glass. You turned slowly, almost reluctantly, dread rising like bile as you faced the doorway.
Derek stood there, half-leaning on the doorframe, his arm braced against it like he was holding up the entire house. He wasn’t dressed the same way he’d been earlier. The shirt was different new, pristine, another expensive button-down with the top few undone to reveal the edge of his collarbone. His sleeves were pushed up, exposing the strong curve of his forearms, veins visible beneath the skin. He looked like he was trying to appear casual, like this was nothing out of the ordinary, but the weight in his expression told another story.
His eyes moved slowly across your body, not quickly or with overt lust, but with a kind of tired, possessive calculation. Like he was checking inventory. There was a slackness to his face, an exhaustion that dulled the usual sharpness of his features. His mouth was set in a line, not quite a scowl, but not a smile either. He looked strained. Like something had gone wrong, or like someone had dared speak to him in a tone he didn’t like and now he was carrying that wound with him.
And still, beneath that fatigue, there was hunger. Quiet and persistent. A tension in the way his hand flexed once at his side, a glimmer in his eye that reminded you of what he was in the desert. Not a man. A creature. One that never quite stopped hunting.
“I asked you a question,” he said again, this time slower. The tiredness didn’t touch his voice. It came out low and smooth, like a stone dragged across wet glass. “Are you enjoying yourself? Using my shower, my towels, my soap. Walking around like you live here.”
He straightened just slightly, his hand falling from the doorframe to his side. The click of his shoes on marble echoed as he took one slow step into the room. The sound shouldn’t have been loud, but in the hush of post-shower steam, it sounded like a hammer blow. You hadn’t moved. Not yet. But the warning was there—in his eyes, in the stiffness of his shoulders, in the way he looked at you like a mess he hadn’t given permission to exist.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, mutt?”
The word landed hard. Mutt. His favorite. Always said with that mixture of contempt and twisted endearment, like it amused him to pretend you belonged to him even when he was angry. Or maybe especially when he was angry.
The threat didn’t come from volume. He didn’t shout. He didn’t need to. His tone was razor-sharp, each syllable tight and precise, as if he was carving the sentence out of stone.
Still, you didn’t speak.
Your gaze stayed low, fixed to the geometric pattern of the floor tiles like they might open up and swallow you if you looked hard enough. You shifted slightly, turning your body just enough to angle away from him. The towel clung to you, damp and heavy, your fingers clenched into it like it was the only shield you had left.
The instinct to back down trembled just under the surface, clawing at your spine. Years of being told how to survive make yourself small, don’t challenge him, keep quiet. Fold, flinch, submit.
But this time, you stayed upright.
You didn’t meet his eyes. You didn’t breathe out his name like a prayer or an apology. You didn’t cry. You didn’t cower. You simply stood there freshly washed, skin still raw from scrubbing, hair dripping in long rivulets down your back. Steam rolled off your shoulders like smoke from burning fields, curling through the cold bathroom air and vanishing into nothing.
He could lash out. He could close the distance in a second, put hands on you, remind you how little your defiance actually mattered. He’d done worse. He’d do worse again.
But you were clean now.
Scrubbed of desert rot and dried blood and whatever filth he thought had made its home in your body. The feeling wouldn’t last. You knew that. He’d ruin it the moment he got bored of glaring from the doorway. But right now, in this single breath of silence, something inside you had clicked into place.
He could beat you bloody.But he didn’t get this moment.He didn’t get to own the part of you that still recognized yourself in the mirror even if you had to fight to find her again.You didn’t speak. You didn’t move.You just breathed and that alone felt like a victory.
Notes:
Okay, before anyone says anything yes, this chapter came out way quicker than usual. That’s because I got hit with a hyperfixation and couldn’t stop editing the story again, wooo. This chapter actually needs to be split into two parts, but here’s what I’ve got for now enjoy, woo!Also, please leave a comment it fuels me. Let me know what you think :3
Chapter Text
Derek stepped inside, the heavy door closing behind him with a muted, almost apologetic click. The sound seemed to settle into the room like a held breath, and for a moment, the world outside ceased to exist. The air felt denser here, thick with the kind of silence that wasn’t empty but expectant, waiting for him to falter, to speak out of turn. A subtle tension thrummed beneath the quiet, a presence that made his skin prickle.
The scent hit him immediately: leather, dust, and something faintly metallic, like old pennies left in a drawer too long. Formaldehyde? Maybe. Bram had a way of curating his spaces so that every sense was occupied, trained, restrained. The aroma clung to him as if the room itself wanted to mark him, test him.
Bram didn’t look up. He sat behind the massive mahogany desk, rigid as though carved from the same wood. The green banker’s lamp cast a soft halo of light across his work, illuminating the sweep of grey at his temple and the precise line of his jaw, the kind of jaw that gave the impression he could cut through anything, paper, wood, or a man’s excuses, without hesitation. Every movement Bram made was economical, considered; a disciplined clockwork of function and authority. Even the faint scratch of his pen across paper seemed orchestrated, deliberate, measured.
Derek’s eyes, however, betrayed him. They drifted to the walls, to the shelves and glass cases that lined the study like silent sentinels. Mounted with mathematical precision, the specimens inside caught and refracted the soft lamplight: butterflies with wings of sapphire and emerald, beetles glittering with impossibly metallic hues, cicadas frozen mid-song, dragonflies poised as if ready to take flight at any moment. Beneath each glass, a small label, Bram’s meticulous handwriting curling neatly in black ink, cataloged every detail. Dates, species, location, data stripped down to essence, and life reduced to objectivity.
They were all dead. Beautifully, meticulously dead, and they stared at him.
It was unnerving. There was a sense of being watched not by Bram, though he might as well have been, but by the corpses themselves, pinned in perfect order, preserved in silence. Every iridescent wing and brittle exoskeleton seemed to judge him, to measure his worth against their frozen perfection. Derek could almost hear the whisper of wings brushing air, and the memory of their lives vibrating faintly in his mind.
He swallowed and stepped further in, his shoes muted against the thick rug. Bram’s eyes remained on his papers, but the air seemed to pulse with expectation, a wordless demand: justify your presence. Derek’s fingers twitched, brushing the edge of the doorframe, feeling the rough grain of the wood as if to remind himself that this was real, that Bram was real, that he was still standing and not yet a part of the collection on the walls.
Derek’s gaze traveled slowly, compulsively, from one case to another. Some insects shimmered as though alive, metallic blues and greens reflecting the lamp’s glow. Others were faded, bleached by time and light, brittle to the touch. They reminded him, uncomfortably, of fragility and permanence at once, how life could be captured and cataloged, held forever in a single, frozen moment. Bram’s hand moved across the desk, flipping a page, and Derek realized he had been holding his breath.
The room exhaled with him, or maybe he exhaled with the room. And still, Bram didn’t look up. The quiet authority radiating from him made Derek feel simultaneously safe and small, like a guest in a cathedral of obsession.
Finally, Derek forced himself to take a step closer to the desk, careful to keep his hands visible. Each movement felt loaded, heavy with expectation, as if the slightest misstep would be recorded alongside the specimens on the walls, another item in Bram’s meticulous ledger of observation.
And yet, amid the cold, clinical precision of the study, Derek found himself noticing something else: the care, the reverence, even in death. It wasn’t just control or collection it was devotion. Bram’s devotion to understanding, to capturing beauty without taint, without the unpredictability of life.
He cleared his throat. “You’re still working on the—”
Bram’s pen stilled for a fraction of a second, and for that split heartbeat, Derek felt as though the room itself was holding its breath with him. Then, slowly, methodically, Bram lowered his pen, lifted his gaze just enough to glance at him, and the quiet authority returned, heavier than ever.
Derek realized, with an almost involuntary shiver, that the room and Bram would not allow him the comfort of distraction. Here, everything mattered. Every movement, every breath, every glance. And he had already made himself visible.
Bram finally turned the page with a dry flick. The pen in his hand tapped once against the desk. Not impatiently. Not out of irritation. It was deliberately measured. Testing the air, as though the sound alone could gauge Derek’s current state.
“I assume you’ve gotten it out of your system,” Bram said, voice flat, devoid of greeting, devoid of glance. “Or do you need another tantrum before you remember who you are?”
Heat crawled up the back of Derek’s neck. He bristled, fists clenching at his sides. “It’s handled,” he said, voice tight, restrained, a thin veneer of control over the tension that rattled beneath his ribs.
Bram hummed low in his throat, a sound more observation than response, skeptical without actually caring. “Handled,” he repeated, drawing the word out like he was testing its texture, rolling it over in his mind as one might examine a curious insect. “Is that what we’re calling it? You drag some feral little liability back to the estate, leave half the carpets painted in blood, and vanish for three days like a boy sulking over a broken toy and you want to call it handled?”
Derek’s jaw tightened. He didn’t flinch at Bram’s words, but the tension in his hands and the taut line of his neck betrayed him.
Bram’s eyes lifted then, pale and sharp, expression unreadable, almost clinical in its detachment. “I’d like to think I raised something with a spine, Derek.”
Derek’s response was careful, precise, and measured to mirror the control Bram demanded. “She’s not a threat,” he said. “I’m in control.”
Bram snapped his gaze back down to the desk, tapping his pen again, sharp and quick this time, as if punctuating the lie Derek could feel hovering in the air. “Dogs listen,” he said coldly. “Insects squirm. And she,” he gestured vaguely, the word heavy with condescension, “looks like the kind that leaves a mess behind when you squash it.”
Bram leaned back in the chair, the leather sighing beneath him, a faint groan of age and weight. Behind him, the butterfly case caught the lamplight. The delicate wings shimmered like stained glass, frozen mid-flight, their colors vibrant yet unreachable, untouched by the room’s tension.
Then Bram looked up. His gaze cut through the dim green glow like a knife sharp, unblinking, unyielding. Derek felt it on his skin, prying at his composure. “Or are you letting your temper do all the work for you?” Bram asked, quiet, deliberate, the threat wrapped in analysis rather than emotion.
Derek’s chest tightened. His control, his carefully maintained façade, felt brittle under that stare. He forced his eyes to meet Bram’s, though he knew the older man could see every twitch, every microsecond of doubt. The room held its breath with him. Even the pinned insects seemed to shimmer in the lamplight, their stillness a mirror to the tension coiling in Derek’s stomach.
“I’m not,” Derek said finally, the words sharper than intended, his own temper prickling at the edges.
Bram hummed again, not approving, not disapproving. “We’ll see,” he said, voice low, almost amused in a way that made Derek’s skin crawl. Then, with a final, controlled motion, he returned to his papers, pen scratching across the page as though nothing had occurred. But the weight of his gaze lingered, pressing down long after the eyes had turned away.
Derek exhaled silently, though the tension didn’t leave him. The study remained the same cold, precise, filled with glass and death, with the ghosts of movement pinned forever in place. Yet beneath it all, Bram’s presence was heavier than any collection, more exacting than any specimen. Derek knew he had to stay sharp, or the room and Bram would remind him exactly how small he really was.
Derek didn’t answer. His jaw clenched, teeth pressing into one another until the taste of metal lingered. He shifted his weight, glancing back at the wall, and froze. A row of glossy black beetles stared back at him, their thoraxes split, legs curled into brittle knots. The glass reflected the lamplight, but it was as if the insects were alive, watching him, measuring him.
“You brought an insect into my house,” Bram said, fingers steepled beneath his chin. His tone was calm, flat, but the weight behind the words made them sharper than any shout. “And you haven’t even pinned it yet.”
Derek’s stomach coiled. The way Bram said insect, not girl, not woman, not even prisoner just a thing. Skittering. Small. Disposable. The word echoed in his chest like a cold, metallic clang.
“I’m not letting it get loose,” Derek muttered, forcing control into his voice. “I’ve got it handled.”
Bram hummed lightly, almost casually, though the underlying threat was unmistakable. “For your sake, I hope that’s true,” he said mildly, eyes still on the wall. “Because if it cuts you again, I’ll assume you’ve forgotten how to contain your specimens.”
He rose, tall and impossibly straight, cuffs aligned perfectly, sleeves crisp. Without another word, he walked past Derek toward the display cases. The soft thud of his shoes on the rug sounded like measured punctuation. He stopped beside a massive iridescent moth, mounted in a black frame, the colors shifting subtly in the lamp’s glow.
Bram tapped the glass with one knuckle. “This one thrashed so hard it broke its own wings,” he said. His voice was calm, almost clinical. “Took me half an hour to fix them before I could preserve it properly.”
“I said I’ve got it handled,” Derek repeated, voice tight, too fast. Too urgent. He could feel it slipping anyway his nerves, barely masked beneath the veneer of control. Bram could feel it too, he knew it.
His father’s brows lifted, the slightest fraction, enough to cut Derek open without touching him.
“That wasn’t confidence,” Bram said, voice cool, disdainful, precise. “That was panic, Derek.”
He said his name like a verdict, heavy with disappointment.
Derek’s spine stiffened, his mouth flattening into a thin, hard line. He didn’t retort. He didn’t move. The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, threatening to splinter like brittle glass under pressure.
Then, almost imperceptibly, Bram shifted, sliding back into his chair as though the confrontation had been a passing inconvenience. His pen uncapped with a soft click. The rustle of paper resumed, filling the room like the pulse of his calm control.
“If it disobeys,” Bram said without looking up, his tone casual, chilling in its precision, “cut something vital next time.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “You’re dismissed.”
Derek turned toward the door, muscles wound tight, every step measured to hold in the tension. The door opened with a soft groan. He paused at the threshold, just for a second, feeling the weight of Bram’s gaze settle on him like a physical presence.
A shiver ran down his spine. He left the room carefully, knowing he had survived this encounter but also knowing he was measured, noted, and evaluated. Every movement, every word, every heartbeat had been recorded. And Bram would remember.
Behind him, the insects watched, their dead, shimmering eyes fixed in eternal vigilance. A whole room full of creatures that hadn’t thrashed fast enough, frozen mid-flight, mid-struggle, their wings spread like silent accusations.
The words Bram had tossed over his shoulder clung to Derek like smoke, curling around his chest and settling in his stomach: If it disobeys, cut something vital next time.
So casual. So easy. As if that was the natural solution. As if it wasn’t already the plan etched into the edges of his mind before Bram had even said it.
Derek lingered at the threshold for a moment longer, eyes tracing the tidy part in Bram’s hair, the flawless stacks of documents arranged with a precision that seemed almost cruel. The only hint of life in the room came from the occasional twitch of Bram’s pen, the soft scrape against paper. Even the insects preserved mid-flutter remained obedient, pinned into eternal compliance.
Finally, Derek stepped out and closed the door quietly behind him.
The hallway was cold and dim, paneled in polished wood that caught the faint reflection of his tight-lipped, hollow-eyed expression. He paused there for a heartbeat, letting his shoulders drop once the latch clicked into place. A quiet exhale escaped him, like he’d been holding his breath for years, measured out in seconds of fear and restraint.
He hated that room. Hated how it always made him feel like he was seventeen again, bloodied and shivering, bruised in every sense that mattered, and Bram’s voice slicing through the haze: If you’re going to cry, do it in private.
Now, years later, he didn’t cry. He hit. He controlled. He told himself that was the reason you were here, that it was a functional, necessary thing, not a sign of weakness.
But as he moved through the house toward the “guest room,” his steps slowed. His hands fidgeted, curling and uncurling at his sides. That conversation with Bram had left something festering beneath his skin. Not just shame. Not just the sting of being exposed. Something deeper, sharper.
It was the creeping, undeniable truth: Bram was right.
Derek was panicking and losing his grip.
It was supposed to be simple. Bring you back. Place the fury somewhere safe. A proxy, a pressure valve. You had stabbed him, literally, in the act of chaos, and it should have been enough. You were supposed to be a punching bag. Something to control when everything else threatened to slip sideways.
But the room behind him, Bram’s voice, the meticulous stillness of the insects it left a mark. The weight of failure, the proof that maybe he wasn’t as steady as he told himself. And somewhere beneath it all, a spark of something he couldn’t name: the gnawing, uncomfortable awareness that control was never as simple as he believed.
For a moment, Derek froze, back rigid, shoulders taut beneath the fine threads of his shirt. The tension wasn’t anger not entirely. It was something sharper, brittle, like the thin snap of glass ready to shatter under the slightest pressure. Something was wrong, though he couldn’t name it. He could only feel it, coiling along his spine, prickling beneath his skin.
He drew in a slow breath. Another. The third hit him like a punch to the gut.
The chain.
He hadn’t chained you.
The realization slammed into him, and Derek moved before he could think, before his mind could catch up to the terror blooming in his chest. His stride became a storm, each step punctuating the corridor with sharp, uneven echoes. The polished marble reflected the harsh rhythm of his shoes, a staccato drumbeat of panic and fury.
He reached the private elevator tucked neatly behind the wall panel, and the door closed innocuously. But he didn’t hesitate. His palm slammed against the control panel, again and again, hammering the button marked “B1” like brute force could make the lift obey faster. The button glowed red beneath his fingers, unwavering, indifferent.
Too slow. Always too slow.
It felt deliberate. Mocking. The gears grind inside as if testing him, daring him to lose control. His breath came in ragged bursts, shallow and urgent, and the world outside the elevator the long, polished corridor, the soft hum of the estate seemed to vanish, leaving only the raw pulse of fear and the metallic taste of adrenaline on his tongue.
His reflection in the mirrored panel across from him was a stranger’s wild-eyed, the edges of his composure fraying. Sweat had already formed at his temples, though the house was cool, air-conditioned, and pristine. He could feel his pulse hammering behind his eyes, in his neck, in the line of fresh stitches pulling taut across his side, a sharp, insistent reminder of your knife. Of his failure at what he hadn’t anticipated.
As soon as the doors groaned open, he stepped inside and slammed his palm against the “Close” button, then again, this time on the basement level. The interior lights hummed overhead, steady and unyielding, casting stark lines across the polished metal walls as the elevator descended. Every inch downward tightened the pressure in his chest, coiling like a spring ready to snap. His hand gripped the railing with a white-knuckled intensity, each heartbeat thudding in time with the slow, mechanical grind of the lift.
When the doors finally opened, Derek didn’t walk. He lunged, momentum carrying him down the hallway like a man trying to catch something that had already begun to vanish from his grasp. Every step was a risk; the polished floor offered no forgiveness, but he barely cared.
He ran, a reckless, unthinking sprint he couldn’t afford just on the edge of disaster. His muscles protested, every fiber screaming against the strain. The stitches along his side pulled painfully, hot and raw beneath the fabric of his shirt, but he didn’t slow. Couldn’t slow down. Every second counted, every heartbeat a warning that hesitation would be fatal.
The hallway blurred. Doors and polished panels streaked past his vision. The faint echoes of his own pounding shoes reverberated against the walls, a chaotic drumbeat of urgency. His mind was singularly focused, all thought stripped down to one primal, undeniable truth: he had failed once. He would not fail again.
Derek reached the guest room door with his heartbeat hammering in his ears, each pulse louder than the slap of his footsteps on the tile, louder than his ragged breath rasping through clenched teeth. His hand was slick with sweat as it wrapped around the handle, and he shoved the door open with his shoulder, knife already drawn from his pocket.
Every movement was a reflex, fueled by the memory of pain, by the ghost of your bloodied hands, by the flash of the blade that had opened him up beneath a merciless sun. His body moved before thought, coiled and dangerous, the knife slicing in a deliberate arc meant to catch a throat or shoulder before any scream could form.
But it hit nothing.
Just air.
The stillness slammed into him like a wall. Derek’s arm overextended, the knife swinging uselessly through empty space, muscles trembling from the momentum he couldn’t rein in. He staggered forward, chest rising hard and fast, pupils dilated with pure, animal fear. Every nerve screamed that something had gone wrong, that the world he thought he controlled had slipped from his grasp.
And then he smelled it.
Not blood. Not sweat. Not fear.
Something else. Clean. Bright. Citrus and steam, faint but unmistakable. Something familiar.
Derek froze mid-step, the knife still trembling in his hand, the sharp edge catching the light. His chest heaved, trying to reconcile the scent with the absence of danger, the absence of the chaos he’d expected. It shouldn’t have been here. It shouldn’t have smelled like safety or like home. And yet it did, curling into his senses, unraveling the taut coil of panic just enough to make him question everything he’d rushed toward.
For a moment, he couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe. He could only stand there, the room quiet except for the hum of the overhead lights, the knife weightless in his hand, and the scent impossibly familiar drawing him forward in a way that made the panic knotting his chest twist into something else entirely
Derek stepped forward, slowly this time, as though each movement had to be negotiated with the air itself. The knife stayed in his hand, but its edge pointed down, useless, a forgotten threat. His skin prickled with sweat, though the room wasn’t warm enough to warrant it. There was a strange dampness curling through the space, steam drifting from the attached bathroom in steady, ghostlike coils, as if the room itself inhaled and exhaled independently of him.
And then the thought struck him, you’re still in there. Not far. Not gone. Just out of sight. Naked. Vulnerable. Untouchable. The image hovered behind his eyes, and he felt it as a weight pressing against the ribs of his chest, a hollow tension that no amount of focus could dismiss.
The knife didn’t fall. But the pressure in his fingers eased, slowly, like a spring uncoiling underwater. The tension had been taut, ready to snap, but now it slackened just enough to make him notice the echo where your body should’ve been. That space wasn’t empty. It left a residue inside him, a nervous, subtle ache, a pressure he hadn’t prepared for.
There was no lunge. No scream. No reckless repetition of the stunt you’d pulled in the desert, the one that had carved itself into his memory with sharp edges. You wouldn’t dare. Not now. Not after everything that had already happened.
He remembered it all too clearly. The first time. The knife. The way it had cut through skin and expectation alike was hot, deep, unforgiving. The blood. The way his body had locked around pain
You wouldn’t attack him again, not after having tasted both the consequences and the futility. You were inside his walls now. You’d touched his soap. Used his water. Breathed his air. Every small act was a thread, quietly tying you to this space, to him and even if you didn’t understand the gravity of it, Derek did.
Everything pointed to one immutable truth. Your presence here wasn’t a rebellion. It wasn’t a chance. You belonged.
And belonging, in this house, meant only one thing.
You belonged to him.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth, sharp, the kind of intake that reminded him he was still master of the moment. The knife slid into the back waistband of his pants with a soft click, not gone, not hidden, but holstered in that precise way that said, I could use it if I wanted to. Maybe it was a statement to himself more than anyone else. A reminder that he was always armed, always prepared.
Then he moved forward, each step deliberate, the air thick with the heavy curl of steam clinging to him like a second skin. The heat dulled the raw edge of his anger just enough to transform it into something colder, sharper, more exact. His senses were heightened, tuned. He smelled it before he saw you the faint sweetness of his body wash lingering on your skin, the lingering scent of conditioner, the sharp perfume of expensive products meant to last, meant to claim. The room was saturated now, corrupted with their presence, his scent mingling with yours in a way that made his chest tighten and pulse with an unfamiliar, almost feral satisfaction.
You had bathed in him.
And when he finally stepped into the bathroom doorway, the scene hit him like a controlled strike. You were there, towel wrapped tight around your body, clinging in a way that left little to imagination. Water dripped in subtle trails down your neck and collarbone, glistening along the curve of your skin. Your hair was slicked and dark, plastered to your head, droplets catching the light like tiny, deliberate jewels. The flush of heat, yours or the water, he couldn’t tell painted your cheeks, neck, and chest, a living map of vulnerability that belonged entirely to him.
The impact of it landed square in his chest a quiet, brutal thud of possessive rage that didn’t need to announce itself with noise. He didn’t shout. Didn’t snarl. The control was in the restraint, in the stillness before his words cut through the steam.
His voice came low, measured, heavy with something colder than disgust, a quiet entitlement that pressed against you like gravity.
“Enjoying my stuff?”
Every syllable dragged the moment out, slow and deliberate. The weight of the question wasn’t in curiosity it was accusation, ownership, a reminder that this space, these things, even this moment, were his. You had crossed a boundary, and yet you had done so in a way that left him more aware of his claim than enraged at the breach.
You stood there, towel clutched too tightly around yourself, the steam curling in lazy coils from your damp skin, ghostlike in the pale bathroom light. You didn’t look at him not directly but Derek could see the flick of your eyes toward him, the way your shoulders tensed when you realized he was watching.
Like a mutt caught chewing the couch cushions when the owner comes home early.
The thought made something warm and oily bloom in his chest, a slow, insidious satisfaction that pulsed beneath the surface, twisting around the cold precision of his control.
He began his inspection, methodical, deliberate, as if the room demanded it. His gaze started low bare feet damp on the marble, toes curling slightly, vulnerable. Up the curve of your calves, the way droplets clung stubbornly to your skin, glinting in the light. Over your thighs, where the towel struggled to contain you, the knot you’d twisted in the fabric betraying your uncertainty, your fear, your self-consciousness.
He let his eyes linger there, longer than necessary, under the pretense of scrutiny. Beneath it, though, was something sharper, unmistakably possessive. Your neck was flushed, a rosy heat creeping up to the nape, probably from the steam, probably from him. Probably from both.
Good girl.
Even cleaned up, scrubbed raw and polished, you couldn’t hide what you were. The towel didn’t give you modesty, it made you small. Like a dog caught on the forbidden couch, frozen in a guilty freeze, too slow to escape before the door swung open. You’d been using his soap. His shower. Drying yourself with his towels as though you belonged here, as though you’d already crossed the invisible line.
He traced the curve of your body with his eyes, every glance measured, calculated, weighing, claiming. His head tilted ever so slightly, a faint, almost imperceptible smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
Notes:
Dundun, we meet Derek's dad a bit sooner than we did in the first draft heheh, shorter chapter but it was fun to write for derek life outside of the room, next chapter is longer and big one so its gonna take a little longer to edit, thank again for reading and please leave a comment :3