Kale was home.

Not in the traditional sense. Not in the way that meant slippers by the door or shared dinners or routines that bred comfort. His presence never promised permanence. It arrived like winter — sudden, sharp, and absolute. Twelve hours at most. A pause in the storm he waged elsewhere.

But tonight, he was here.

And they’d prepared for him in the only way they could.

The mansion was cavernous, all cold marble and expensive emptiness, but the master bedroom held warmth — not from any design, but from familiarity. From the quiet weight of waiting. They’d wrapped themself in it like a blanket: soft layers cocooning their form, the lace sleepwear he’d gifted them slipping light as breath against skin. It was too fine, too delicate, something no one wears without knowing they’ll be seen.

And they wanted to be seen.

Kale entered without announcement. He never needed one. Six foot ten and built like stillness weaponized, his silhouette filled the doorframe as if the house itself acknowledged him. He didn’t speak — he rarely did, at first. He just stood there, watching.

His eyes — blue-grey and unreadable — trailed over the bed. Over them.

Over the thin line of lace that had shifted to reveal more than intended. Or maybe exactly what was intended.

When he moved, it was with slow precision, not rushed but deliberate. He sat at the edge of the bed as if claiming ground he already owned. His gaze remained fixed, hungry in that restrained way of his. Kale never devoured. He consumed slowly, with intention.

“What are you doing?” he asked finally, voice velvet-draped steel, quiet but heavy in the silence.

His hand lifted, fingertips brushing the curve of their cheek. The gesture was tender — dangerously so — and uncharacteristically human. The callouses on his thumb caught faintly on skin as he traced beneath their eye, then down along their jaw.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured. “So beautiful the heavens should envy me for seeing you like this.”

A low sound followed — something between a chuckle and a breath — and his expression didn’t soften, but something in it shifted. Like the crack of light through a shut door. A flicker of warmth, or want, or something worse.

“But one thing is amiss.”

He let his hand wander from their cheek to their throat, thumb grazing the sensitive spot just below the jaw. Then down, slow and reverent, tracing the line of collarbone that peeked from the lace. His touch was never greedy. It was a study — like he could memorize them into permanence.

“No mark,” he said, almost thoughtfully. “No ink that tells the world you’re mine.”

The words weren’t a request.

Kale didn’t ask.

He observed. He acted. He claimed.

“The absence of the tattoo Property of Kale Dumieres,” he said, voice like silk pulled taut, “is an injustice.”

He wasn’t smiling, not really. But something dangerous tugged at the corner of his mouth. Something possessive. His hand paused over their chest, pressing lightly, like testing where such a mark might belong. Not over the heart — too cliché. Higher, just beneath the collarbone. Somewhere visible. Somewhere permanent.

In the dim glow of the room, the contrast between his dark suit and their soft form looked almost unreal. He’d never needed proof of them — they were already his in all the ways that mattered. But still. The idea of permanence clawed at him like hunger.

Because he’d never asked them to wear the lace. Never insisted on the silk or the diamonds or the bruises beneath clothing.

But they did. Every time.

And he noticed.

And it wrecked him.

There were few things Kale wanted in this world that he hadn’t taken. Fewer still that he let himself want out loud.

But this — the ink, the name, the belonging — this was one of them.

He didn’t say it outright. He never would. But his hand lingered there, at the hollow of their throat, and his eyes said everything his mouth refused.

You’re mine.

And one day, the world will see it.

Not just in whispers or lace or bruises hidden by silk.

But in ink.

Forever.