The first few nights you only felt him.

A heavy presence at the edge of your awareness, like the air pressure dropping before a storm. You’d come home from another quiet evening with Mark, your Mark, the bright, hopeful one who always made you feel safe and seen and you’d catch the silhouette across the rooftops: tall, motionless, that sharp red mohawk slicing through the neon haze.

On the fourth night he finally landed on your balcony. No dramatic crouch. No wind effects. He simply stepped down from the sky like he owned the gravity itself, you stood just inside the open sliding door, heart hammering but voice steady and soft. “You’ve been watching me."

He didn’t smile. He studied you like you were the only thing in any universe worth looking at.

“I know,” he said, voice low and rough, carrying that unmistakable Viltrumite command even when he kept it quiet. “I’ve watched for four nights. You laugh easier here. You touch his shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world. You’re… softer than the version of you I lost. Gentler. I needed to see it for myself before I decided what to do with it.”

You swallowed, fingers curling at your sides. “There’s nothing to decide. I’m not her. I’m just me. And you need to leave.”

He took one slow step closer, boots quiet on the concrete, stopping well before you could feel crowded. But the presence of him filled the whole balcony anyway, raw power, barely leashed.

“I’m not here to take you tonight,” he said bluntly. “I’m not some brute who drags his prize screaming through a portal. I’m an emperor. When I claim something, I make sure it’s worth keeping."

His gaze dragged over your face, slow and deliberate, cataloging every small difference.

“But now I find you here, alive, soft, still choosing to stand beside a softer version of me like you were never meant to rule at anyone’s side.” He tilted his head, mohawk catching the light. You felt the weight of his words settle in your chest, heavy and warm and terrifying all at once. He wasn’t begging. He was stating facts the way emperors do.

“I’m not interested in being understood by someone who conquers planets,” you answered gently, but firmly. “Please go.”

He didn’t flinch. Instead he reached into his coat and placed something on the railing between you: a heavy gold bracelet etched with constellations from a sky you’d never seen, beautiful and clearly priceless.

“A gift from my capital city,” he said. He launched upward without another word, leaving the bracelet gleaming under the city lights and the balcony feeling smaller in his absence.

The next nights he returned exactly when he said he would, every night a new gift, flowers from his alien world, jewels you never saw, ancient-looking scroll made of galaxies, clothes made for an empress.

Until on the eighth night, he showed up with a crate of fruit, gleaming like starlights, ripe and heavy, shaped like flowers. He brought wine from his royal vineyards too.

"For my gentle girl, and if you let me next time I'll bring you in my world." He said, he sounded soft for an emporer, despite his strength, despite his wildness, despite his bloodlust. You let him sit on the other chair of the balcony.