Luca's phone felt like a brick in his hand, heavy with the weight of Jace's unanswered call. He'd stared at it until the screen went black, his cowardice a bitter taste in his mouth. Damian's warning was a cage around his every thought. "Or maybe... I'll let Jace see just how deep your little obsession goes."
He'd spent the day in a fog of restless energy, pacing his apartment, jumping at every sound. He'd tried to distract himself, but his mind was a broken record: Jace is with him. Right now. What is he doing to him?
Driven by a need to see, to know Jace was at least physically okay, Luca found himself walking the familiar route to Jace's favorite spot a worn-out diner a few blocks from his old apartment. It was a place of worn vinyl booths and cheap coffee, a relic of the life Jace had before Damian. Luca slid into their usual booth, the one in the back corner, and ordered two coffees out of habit.
He was stirring a sugar packet into the second mug when he saw him.
It wasn't Jace,It was a imagination of him.
Jace was walking down the street, but his posture was all wrong. The usual confident, slightly arrogant swagger was gone, replaced by a stiff, contained walk. And he wasn't alone. A few paces behind him, a man in a dark suit followed not aggressively, but with a persistent, unmistakable presence, a guard.
But it was the man walking beside Jace that made Luca's blood run cold.
Damian.
They were a horrifying portrait. Damian, in his impeccably tailored coat, looked utterly at ease, a king surveying his domain. Jace, dressed in clothes that were too expensive, too Damien, looked like a prisoner on a escorted walk. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders tense, his gaze fixed straight ahead, refusing to look at the man beside him.
Luca's breath hitched. He wanted to run out there, to shove Damian away, to grab Jace and run. But he was frozen, pinned to the vinyl seat by his own guilt and fear.
They passed the diner without a glance. Luca watched, his heart hammering against his ribs, as Damian leaned in and said something close to Jace's ear. Jace didn't react, didn't flinch, didn't turn his head. He just kept walking, a beautiful marionette with its strings pulled taut.
It was that lack of reaction that hurt the most. The fire in Jace was banked, smothered. The fight was being drained out of him, right there on a public street, and Luca was forced to watch from the sidelines.
The trio turned a corner and disappeared from view.
The second cup of coffee sat across from Luca, steaming and untouched. The symbolism was a punch to the gut. The empty space where Jace should be was a void, and Luca had been the one to create it.
He left cash on the table and stumbled out of the diner, the cold air doing nothing to clear the fog of self-loathing. He walked aimlessly, Damian's words echoing in his head. "You gave me the key."
His phone buzzed. His heart leaped, a foolish, desperate hope that it was Jace.
It was a text from an unknown number.
Unknown: Stay away from him. You saw what you needed to see. This is your only warning.
Luca's blood went cold. He hadn't just been watching. He'd been watched. Damian had known he was there. The entire performance the walk, the guard, the whispered words had been for his benefit. A cruel, calculated show to demonstrate his absolute control, and Luca's utter powerlessness.
He leaned against a brick wall, the rough surface scraping his palms. He was trapped in a nightmare of his own making. He loved Jace too much to stay away, but any move he made would only make things worse for him. Damian would use his love as a weapon against the very person he wanted to protect.
He looked up at the darkening sky, the first stars pricking through the city's haze. Somewhere under that same sky, Jace was locked in a gilded cage, and Luca was the one who had handed Damian the key.
The choice Damian had given him wasn't a choice at all. It was a sentence.
He could stay away and let Jace be broken alone, or he could intervene and give Damian the excuse to break him faster.
For the first time, a third, more dangerous thought whispered in the back of his mind. A thought that was less about saving Jace from the outside, and more about breaking Damian from within.
But for now, he was just a ghost, haunting the edges of a life he had destroyed, waiting for a chance he wasn't sure would ever come.
The silence in the penthouse was a different beast than the one in the office. This silence was intimate, heavy with unspoken rules and the memory of the night before. Damian had dismissed the guard at the door, and now it was just the two of them, the city lights twinkling far below like a galaxy of indifferent stars.
Damian moved to the kitchen, a space of gleaming steel and dark stone, and began preparing dinner with the same focused efficiency he applied to business. He didn't ask for help. He simply expected Jace to observe, to understand his place in this new domestic ritual.
"Set the table," Damian said, his back turned as he seasoned two steaks.
The command was casual, but it felt like a test. A small, mundane task designed to reinforce his control. Jace stood his ground, his arms crossed. "I'm not your maid."
Damian didn't turn around. "No. You're my guest. And guests have manners. The plates are in the cupboard to your left."
The calm, reasonable tone was infuriating. It stripped Jace's defiance of its power, making him feel like a petulant child. Gritting his teeth, he yanked open the cupboard and grabbed two heavy ceramic plates, setting them on the dining table with a loud clatter that was meant to convey his rage.
Damian didn't react.
They ate in the same tense silence as breakfast. Jace forced the food down, each bite a battle. He could feel Damian's eyes on him, studying him, noting the tension in his shoulders, the white-knuckled grip on his fork.
When the meal was over, Damian leaned back in his chair. "You're still fighting it," he observed, as if commenting on the weather.
"There's nothing to fight," Jace bit out, staring at the remnants of his meal. "You have my body. That's all you get."
"Is it?" Damian's voice was a low murmur. "Your body is the least interesting part of this arrangement, Jace. It's your will I'm interested in. That stubborn, foolish pride. I want to see it bend."
"Go to hell."
"I'm already there," Damian replied, a strange, almost wistful shadow crossing his features before it was gone. "And I've decided I don't want to be alone."
He stood and walked to the lavish living room, settling onto the large sofa. He picked up a remote and turned on the massive television, not to watch, but to fill the silence with meaningless noise. He picked up a book from the side table, a thick volume on economic theory, and began to read.
It was the most mundane, domestic scene imaginable. And it was utterly terrifying.
This was the "pressure" he had spoken of. Not violence, not threats though those were always implied but this. This suffocating normalcy. This forced coexistence. He was being absorbed, his edges sanded down by the relentless grind of Damian's routine.
Hours ticked by. Jace remained at the table, a statue of resentment. But the inertia was maddening. His anger had nowhere to go. It was burning him up from the inside with no outlet.
Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. He stood up, the chair screeching against the floor. "I'm going to bed."
Damian didn't look up from his book. "It's 9:30."
"I'm tired."
"From what? Sitting?" Damian turned a page, the sound unnaturally loud. "Sit down."
The command was flat, absolute. It was the final straw. The dam of Jace's control, strained all day, finally shattered.
"NO!" The word exploded from him, raw and furious. He grabbed his plate from the table and hurled it against the wall. It shattered into a hundred pieces, a burst of ceramic shrapnel and sound. "I'M NOT YOUR DOG! YOU CAN'T JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO EVERY SECOND OF THE DAY!"
He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving, adrenaline coursing through him. This was it. The fight. The one he'd been waiting for.
Damian slowly, deliberately, placed a bookmark in his novel and set it down. He rose from the sofa and walked over to the wreckage of the plate. He looked at it, then at Jace, his expression unreadable.
"Is that all?" he asked, his voice dangerously soft.
Jace stared, bewildered. "What?"
"Your grand rebellion. A broken plate." Damian took a step closer. "Do you feel better? Did that change anything?"
The condescension was a physical blow. Jace felt the fight drain out of him, replaced by a crushing wave of futility. He was throwing a tantrum in a cage, and his jailer was merely amused by the noise.
He sank back into the chair, his head in his hands. He was so tired. So, so tired.
He felt, rather than saw, Damian kneel in front of him. Cool fingers gently took his wrists, pulling his hands away from his face. The touch wasn't harsh, but it was firm. Unavoidable.
"Look at me, Jace."
Defeated, Jace lifted his gaze. Damian's eyes were close, his intense focus a physical weight.
"The fighting is exhausting, isn't it?" Damian murmured, his thumb stroking a slow, hypnotic pattern over Jace's pounding pulse. "All that fire, burning you up, and for what? The plate is still broken. You are still here. With me."
Jace wanted to pull away, to spit in his face, but he had no energy left. The gentle, possessive stroke on his wrist was a sinister comfort, a promise of rest if he would just... stop.
"This," Damian whispered, his voice barely audible over the drone of the television. "This is the beginning of surrender. Not when you scream, but when you fall silent. Not when you break a plate, but when you realize it was never about the plate at all."
He stood, pulling Jace to his feet with him. He didn't drag him, but guided him, a hand on the small of his back, toward the bedroom.
"Come," Damian said, and this time, it wasn't a command. It was an invitation into the quiet. An offer to stop fighting.
And the most terrifying part, the part that would haunt Jace long after the bedroom door closed behind them, was that a small, broken part of him wanted to accept it.