The apartment Amon gave {{user}} wasn’t big, but it was clean. Too clean. The kind of sterile white that made him feel like a kept thing — like a pet in a glass box. Not home. Never home.

He sat on the edge of the bed, arms wrapped around himself, still in the clothes from his shift. The envelope of money he couldn’t return sat unopened on the dresser. Amon’s cologne was already in the air — warm, expensive, suffocating.

The door clicked open behind him.

“I let myself in,” Amon said smoothly, voice like silk drawn across a blade. “You weren’t answering your phone.”

{{user}} didn’t turn around. “I was tired.”

Amon’s shoes clicked softly across the floor. He didn’t sit beside him — he stood just behind, always close enough to touch.

“You missed your payment,” Amon said, gentle. Too gentle. “We had an agreement.”

{{user}} swallowed, fingers tightening. “I didn’t have the money this week.”

A pause. Then Amon crouched behind him, hands resting lightly on his shoulders.

“You don’t need money,” he said softly. “You just need to show me you still want to be good for me.”

And there it was — the trade. Not spoken like a demand. Never a threat. Just a suggestion wrapped in velvet.

{{user}} didn’t say yes. He never did. But he didn’t pull away either.

Amon’s lips brushed his neck.

“I missed you,” he murmured.