7. Meditations on Furniture Design #2
The question landed somewhere between his ribs and detonated.
Innocent. Curious and completely unaware of what it did to Riot when he asked things like that—simple questions delivered with absolute sincerity, no calculation, no agenda, just genuine desire to understand.
His cock throbbed. Again. Because apparently he had developed a very specific and very inconvenient fetish for earnest confusion.
Because you’re untouchable. Because you’re too good for me. Because if I call you by your name too much, I might forget you’re not mine.
“Because you look like one,” he said instead, keeping his voice light through sheer force of will. “All that golden hair and those big eyes. Like something out of a fairy tale.”
Cass’s nose wrinkled. “Fairy tales aren’t real.”
“Neither are princesses, technically. But here you are.”
“I don’t think that makes sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense, princess. It’s a nickname.”
Cass considered this with the same serious expression he gave everything, then nodded slowly. “Okay. I like it. No one’s ever given me a nickname like that before. Not even Honey.”
Of course they haven’t. They were too busy telling you everything was wrong with you.
“Well, now you have one,” Riot said. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
Cass’s small smile made something warm and dangerous unfurl in Riot’s chest. He left before he could say anything else stupid.
The Neutral Zone’s morning market was the usual chaos of desperate commerce and barely controlled violence. Perfect camouflage for someone whose control was hanging by increasingly thin threads.
Stay calm. Get supplies. Get back to your—no…
Not back to his Omega. Back to Cass. Who wasn’t his. Who was a tactical responsibility.
The lie was getting harder to maintain when his entire body was screaming at him to turn around, go back, and make sure Cass was safe.
He was examining prepackaged food, trying to find something that contained actual nutrients rather than flavored sawdust, when Mei’s voice spoke behind him.
“Looking a little tense, Riot.”
He turned slowly. She was flanked by the same bulky operative from before, plus a new addition: a wiry Beta with scars that suggested knife fights as a hobby. All three maintaining careful distance. Smart.
“Mei.” He continued examining nutritional labels. “Collecting strays?”
“Keeping an eye on our investments.” Her smile was sharp. “How’s your little missionary friend feeling? He looked a bit warm yesterday.”
Ice flooded his veins. Then rage, so fast and overwhelming that his vision flickered gold at the edges.
“Want to repeat that?” His voice came out quiet and controlled, the kind of controlled that made all three operatives take a step back.
“Now, now.” Mei raised her hands. “No need for unpleasantness. We’re all professionals here.”
“Professional suggests you know what you’re doing,” Riot replied. “Following a pre-heat Omega while making threats against a modded Berserker suggests you’re suicidal or stupid. Maybe both.”
The wiry Beta’s hand moved toward something concealed. His shoulder angle indicated a right-handed draw, probably a knife based on the bulge profile; it would take half a second to close the distance and disarm him if necessary.
“I wouldn’t,” he suggested.
The hand stopped.
“Here’s how this works,” Riot continued. “You stay away from him. You don’t watch him, you don’t follow him, you don’t breathe in his direction. If I see any of you within a block of that hotel, I’ll assume you need immediate correction.”
“And if we don’t feel like following your silly rules?”
Riot’s smile was all teeth. “Then you’ll find out why the Syndicate used to pay me so well.”
He was walking away when he heard Mei’s voice, pitched low, “...territorial about someone who isn’t even yours. Interesting.”
The comment followed him through the rest of his supply run like a splinter under his skin. His hands were shaking as he gathered fever reducers, fresh fruit, and bottled water. Every minute away from Cass felt like a small betrayal of instincts that he didn’t want to examine too closely.
Not mine. Just a tactical responsibility.
He almost believed it.
By the time Riot made it back to the hotel, his anxiety had reached genuinely uncomfortable levels. He knocked in the agreed pattern and waited for furniture to move. When the door opened, Cass looked worse than an hour ago.
Also, his hair was down.
Riot’s brain short-circuited.
The braids must have come loose while he was gone, or maybe Cass had taken them out because they were uncomfortable.
Either way, all that golden hair was spilling over his shoulders in waves, catching the light like something out of a painting.
Botticelli’s Venus with fever-bright eyes and flushed cheeks, standing in a dingy hotel room, looking at Riot like he’d hung the moon.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“You came back,” Cass breathed.
“Of course I came back.” Riot pushed past him into the room, mostly because he needed to stop staring. The door. Check the door. Check the windows. Check anything that wasn’t Cass. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I might be dying.” Cass said it matter-of-factly, closing the door and replacing the barricade exactly the way Riot taught him. “Is that normal?”
“Unfortunately, yeah.” Riot unpacked supplies, keeping his back to Cass because looking at him was dangerous. “Your body is trying to cycle after years of suppression. It’s going to be intense.”
Cass accepted the fever reducers without question. “You look upset. Did something happen? Are you angry I let my hair down?”
Riot choked on nothing. “What?”
“Brother Matthias says loose hair is spiritually undisciplined.” Cass touched a golden strand self-consciously. “But the braids were hurting my head and everything feels bad today and I thought maybe since you’re not Elysian you wouldn’t mind, but if it bothers you I can put them back—”
“Princess.” Riot turned, steeling himself against the visual impact. It didn’t help. Cass looked like a fever dream. “Your hair is fine.”
“Are you sure? Because you’re making a face.”
“What face?”
“The face where your whole body goes stiff and you breathe differently.” Cass tilted his head, studying him with that guileless curiosity that kept tearing down Riot’s defenses. “You make it a lot when you look at me. I thought maybe it meant I was doing something wrong.”
You exist. That’s what you’re doing wrong.
“The face doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong,” Riot managed. “It means I’m trying to be careful.”
“Careful about what?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. Not when the truth was careful about not pinning you to that bed and finding out how many fingers it takes for you to mewl.
“You should eat,” he said instead.
Cass settled onto the edge of the bed, wincing at the movement. “I’ll try. My stomach feels strange, though.”
“That’s the—” Riot stopped. Don’t scare him. “That’s normal. You still need to eat.”
Cass nibbled obediently at a protein bar, and the silence stretched between them. Riot tried not to watch him.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Were you always like this?”
Riot blinked. “Like what?”
“You know.” Cass gestured vaguely at all of him. “Like this. Big and scary and... you.”
“No,” Riot said with a sigh. “I wasn’t always like this.”
“What were you like before?”
Riot considered the question. No one had asked him that in years. Maybe ever.
“Different,” he said finally.
Cass’s eyes went wide. “You mean you were short?”
The laugh escaped before Riot could stop it—genuine, surprised, still a bit rusty from disuse. “No, princess. I was always tall.”
“Then what’s different?”
Riot met his eyes, and something shifted in his chest. This strange, Elysian creature, was looking at him like the answer actually mattered.
“The scary stuff,” he said. “I wasn’t born with that. It was... put there. By people who wanted to use me as a weapon.”
“That’s really sad,” Cass said, fiddling with the wrapper on his food. “Does it hurt? Being scary?”
The question hit somewhere vulnerable. Somewhere Riot had armored over years ago and forgotten existed.
“Sometimes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know. But I’m still sorry it happened to you.” Cass pulled his legs up onto the bed and hugged his knees, his hair falling around him like a curtain. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re scary. I mean, I know you are scary. But you’re also nice. Those things can both be true, can’t they?”
Riot didn’t trust his voice, so he just nodded.
Cass suddenly tensed and pressed his forehead to his knees, his arms tightening around his legs with a small whimper that went straight to Riot’s cock.
“I’m sorry,” Cass said when he lifted his head, a pained smile splayed across his beet red face. “I know I’m gross. All sweaty and probably smelling bad—”
“You don’t smell bad.”
“But I must look terrible—”
“You don’t.”
Cass looked up at him, something uncertain in his expression. “You keep saying that, but you also keep making the face. So either I’m doing something wrong or...” He trailed off, brow furrowing. “Or what? What’s the other option?”
The other option is that you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and it’s taking every ounce of control I have not to find out what you’re hiding under those robes.