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.