#writing about sylus is free therapy

[zara-renata]

No way out, revised

I thought that MC was too mean to Sylus in his 4 star No Way Out card, and I didn't like it, so I fixed it. I mean, I rewrote how it went like a proper rabid fan. Summary: Sylus shows up injured near MC's place, MC tends to his injuries, and he takes advantage of the situation like a vampire and secures himself an open invitation into MC's home whenever he 'needs' it.

Reader POV, Second person POV, gender neutral reader CWs: blood, injury, Sylus is hurt and bleeds a lot, foul language, cursing, MC has a dangerously messy apartment and how do you live like this??, Sylus is manipulative (just a little) to get what he wants. I see a lot of people putting minors do not interact and 18+ and whatnot warnings on their fics. Anything I write isn't intended for children, but I'm not your mom, read what you want. SFW in terms of sex, except for MC's barely contained thotiness in the face of Sylus's scent and sharp teeth

ao3 link here

You can’t bring yourself to apologize to Sylus, properly. With words. After everything that happened when you first met him. First, because part of you feels like words will never be sufficient to make up for how gravely unfair it had been for you to blame him for … well. For everything. To the point of actually wanting to kill him. And another part of you thinks that if you ever do say the words out loud, and admit how terribly wrong you were about him, that the smug look on his face as a result would make you want to kill him all over again.

No, no, better not to risk it. Even when you try, the words just won’t choke their way out of your throat. So you resolve yourself to show him in other ways, with action. And though you don’t know him very well yet, you’re pretty sure that Sylus is the kind of man that appreciates action far more than pretty words (later, you will learn how wrong you are. Sylus is the decadent embodiment of “Why not both?”).

After you left the N109 zone, you didn’t expect to see him anytime soon, so you have no idea when you’ll be able to wipe the ledger clean on what you owe him, but when the opportunity presents itself, you’ll repay this debt to him, no questions asked. And then you’ll be free again. Free to return to your predictable, comparatively safe existence in Linkon City.

Of course, nothing about Sylus is predictable, so when you receive an alert on your hunter watch that a citizen is in distress near your flat, you almost can’t believe your eyes as you sprint down the sidewalk, careen around the corner of your favorite neighborhood place to get iced lattes, and skid to a stop in front of a very big, very hurt Sylus. Elbows on knees, head hanging low, and blood visibly dripping down one of his wrists from under the cuff of his beaten up black leather jacket.

“The fuck, Sylus?” You stand in front of him awkwardly, suppressing the bizarre instinct to get on your knees in front of him, to lift his face and check for the source of injury.

“Now that’s not the most professional greeting to a citizen in need from one of Linkon City’s most heroic hunters, is it?” He sounds almost normal, the deep grind of his voice steady, except for an almost imperceptible hitch when he lifts his head. From that alone, you can tell that he is in a lot of pain.

Part of you is really worried—you’ve seen how quickly he heals, how seemingly indestructible he is. To be sitting out here, exposed in the twilight, clearly vulnerable, must mean that he is pretty desperate. And another part of you is relieved: finally, you can repay your debt, show him that despite all of your previous misconceptions, you’re sorry for thinking so poorly of him, for trying to stab him in the face and then kind of shooting him through the heart. To be fair, he did pull the trigger, but you didn’t try very hard to stop him. And then once you’ve helped him and gotten him on his way, hopefully you can stop thinking about him altogether.

“Can you get up?” you finally ask, taking a step closer. He looks up into your face, and you see how pale he is.

In response, he leans forward in preparation of standing, but grunts and sits abruptly back down.

“I might need some of that famous hunter assistance,” he says, wincing. “I’m afraid a wanderer got the better of me.”

You sit down next to him on his uninjured side, feeling the heat radiate from his thigh and shoulder, and smell sour sweat under his already-familiar scent—warm skin, gun oil, and strangely, oranges.

“I’m going to put your arm over my shoulder and help you lift up, ok?” He nods quickly, and lets you lift his meaty arm over your shoulders without complaint, just another hitch in his breath as you haul him up.

“Don't tell me I'm too heavy for Linkon City's finest hunter,” he tries to tease, but leans on you even more heavily.

“I can deadlift you, Sylus. This is nothing.” Ok, maybe you’re exaggerating. But if his weight presented a problem for you, you’d be a pretty piss-poor hunter. You pause for a moment, readjusting his arm around your neck. “I’m assuming you want to avoid hospitals and paperwork,” you state, trying not to be overwhelmed by how good he smells even covered in blood and stress-sweating under his edgy leather outfit.

“That would be a correct assumption, yes,” he breathes, and you hate the way that even in this messy state his breath is warm and welcome drifting across your cheek.

“Can you use your evol to transport us to one of your safe houses?” You’ve never confirmed with him that he actually is routinely in enough danger to require a safe house, let alone multiple, but you’re not surprised when he murmurs “Too drained right now,” acknowledging their existence.

Ok. You have no other option. You aren't prepared to let him into your space, to have the memory of his overwhelming presence in the only safe place left to you since your grandmother’s house was destroyed. But if this is the price you must pay to finally be free of your debt, of him, you’ll pay it.

“Fine. My flat is a short walk from here. Let’s go.” He says nothing, but takes heavy steps with you as you slowly make your way across the clean and even sidewalk of your city block, so different from the cracked, weed ridden paths winding through the N109 zone, when one is lucky enough to have a sidewalk to walk on at all.

Sylus isn’t the only one sweating now, as you haul him into your flat’s elevator. You’re relieved that Xavier is out of town, on one of his secretive missions doing who knows what, so you there’s no chance you’ll be asked to explain the presence of this bleeding stranger leaving a mess all over the pristine elevator floor. You make a mental note to come back as quickly as possible to clean it up, after you’ve dealt with the more urgent, hulking issue draped across your shoulders.

Sylus isn’t even looking around, just leaning more and more heavily into your body. His head tipped toward yours, soft hair drifting along your cheek, nose buried in your neck. You tell yourself he's just breathing heavily because of the pain--he can't possibly be inhaling your scent. You resist the urge to sniff your own armpit to make sure you did, of course you did, put on deodorant this morning.

You hesitate for only a moment outside your door, but take a deep breath and open it, hauling him into your foyer where you try as gently as possible to lower him to the ground and catch your breath. He grunts as his ass hits the floor, and you wince. “Sorry,” you offer (why is it easy to say it for this, but not for the biggest reason looming between the two of you?).

“I’m going to knock a star off your rating when I write my review on the Hunter’s Association feedback form,” he sighs, gingerly leaning back on his hands, wincing, and then putting all his weight onto his uninjured arm, ridiculously long legs stretched in front of him. His blood drips onto your foyer floor now, and you are mesmerized by it for a moment. It really does match the color of his eyes, and you’ve never thought blood beautiful until this moment.

“I suppose I’ll have to live with the consequences,” you say, trying to shake your head to free yourself of these weird thoughts. You kneel at his feet, and try as efficiently as possible to remove the boots with the stupid chains around the heels from his giant feet. “You can bleed on my floor, but I draw the line at you keeping your shoes on. Lift.” You tap his other foot, and he lifts it minutely so you can drag it off. “I’m going to get my first aid kit. Don't go anywhere,” you can’t help but snark, knowing that he isn’t in any position to move. You make your way through your flat, trying not to look at it through a new perspective, hyper-aware that he’ll soon be taking it in, evaluating your space, making judgments, gathering intel that he’ll file away to try to exploit another day.

You resist the urge to grab discarded clothing along the way, to tidy the bathroom sink and wipe down the mirror. You’re busy as fuck, not home nearly enough to fully relax most days, and certainly do not possess the energy to clean up often. If he has a problem with it, he should have found somewhere else to bleed out. You’re sorry for the circumstances of your first meeting, but you’re not going to apologize for the way you manage to live your life. You snap the cabinet closed and head back to the foyer.

Only to find this big motherfucker sitting on your couch, his jacket folded neatly on the seat under his hand so he doesn’t bleed onto the fabric underneath. How thoughtful, you think, seething.

You stop in the doorway and level him with a look that you hope conveys the disgust coursing through you at the moment. “Too injured to walk unassisted, huh?”

“Your support on the way here was invaluable in allowing me to catch my breath so that I could make my own way into your… uniquely charming home,” he rasps in response, completely unapologetic. His eyes leisurely drift around your living room and kitchen area, taking in the old take-out containers on the island counter, the guns and ammo scattered on the couch’s side table, the plants spilling over every other available surface. He nudges a plushie that has made its way from the armchair next to the couch to the floor with his sock-covered foot, and it squeaks, startling you out of your irritation. You move to his side on the couch and sit next to him, sweeping the magazines about distant, peaceful travel destinations that you’ll likely never see from the coffee table to the floor to make room for the first aid kit.

“I can take it from here,” he offers, watching as you pull out medical pincers, gauze, and disinfectant. “I don’t want to give you nightmares.”

You scoff softly, batting away his hand reaching for the supplies. “Despite your best efforts, you’re not scary enough to compete with the nightmares I already have,” you say, grasping his wrist and gently lowering it to rest on his knee. As you carefully roll up the sleeve of his shirt to examine the first wound, you realize just how much you have just revealed, for free, in that statement. You suppress a wince, overly conscious of his bright eyes drifting from your face to his arm and back again.

In the corner of your eye, you see his jaw clench as you reveal the bullet hole gaping in the round meat of his deltoid underneath his ruined sleeve.

“Wanderer got you, huh?” You sigh. “Since when do wanderers wield .38 caliber pistols?”

“Humans have been known to wander, from time to time,” Sylus deadpans, utterly shameless, glancing pointedly at your scattered travel magazines.

“You should have been a lawyer instead of a crime lord,” you sniff, resigning yourself to the task ahead.

You do your best to be gentle, offering him something to sink his teeth into as you dig into both the bullet hole in his shoulder and the one in the side of his left pectoral, uncomfortably close to where your own bullet ripped through him not so long ago. You know what to do, because you’ve been on the other side of this predicament with Zayne more times than you can count, and Zayne is a good, patient teacher. Sylus is panting and uncharacteristically quiet, and you hate yourself for the insane image that intrudes into your thoughts as you imagine his teeth sinking into something else, as you have to pointedly ignore the unblemished expanse of his exposed torso that heaves with each breath, the softness of pale, sweat-slicked skin under your calloused fingertips.

Finally, the last bullet drops onto the pile of extra gauze on the coffee table with a muffled thunk, and Sylus hisses as you generously pour disinfectant over the hole you just dragged it out of.

“Who is the kitten now, hiss boy?” you tease, trying to distract him from how much pain this is obviously causing him.

“Hiss … boy?” he narrows his eyes. “I’m rather certain that in contrast to the normal company you keep, there is nothing ‘boyish’ about me,” he responds smoothly, unruffled. So much for trying to get a rise out of him.

“Opinions differ,” you retort, beginning to wrap bandages tightly around his chest. You try again. “Ironic, that you’ve suffered injury from your own merchandise, don’t you think? Has it made you reconsider your line of work?”

“How are you so sure that I was shot with one of the guns I sell? This could be the result of the use of a legally registered firearm issued to one of your colleagues,” he says, watching you carefully. Your hands pause. You sit, gazing at the bandages you’ve just wrapped around his big shoulder, his broad chest, these parts of him that despite all their strength, their ability to knit themselves back together, are still just fragile flesh and blood, easily flayed open by a speeding bullet or the slash of a blade. You realize in an uncomfortable moment of self-awareness that it doesn’t matter if he was shot by one of his underworld counterparts with a grudge, or by one of your own colleagues. You just don’t want him to be hurt at all.

You move your hands again, snipping the end of the bandage you’ve just finished wrapping around his chest and using butterfly pins to secure it with a decisive snap. “There. Now you can begin to heal properly.”

You say this with a finality that you hope he can hear. It is done. You’ve cared for him to the best of your ability, at a time he needed it, and you hope that with each careful touch you offered, he heard the message loud and clear that you were sorry for what had previously happened between you, that you now owe each other nothing. Life can return to normal. It won’t matter anymore that you don’t want him to be in pain, that you want to protect his body from harm. You won’t be seeing him again.

“Still too drained to heal myself,” he murmurs, leaning back on your couch and closing his eyes as if he owns the place.

“Sylus—” you start, because he can’t stay here. You can’t handle him here, the silken fall of his ivory hair in stark contrast to the deep maroon of your couch, his legs manspreading, taking up more than his fair share of the cushions, his breath, scent, presence threatening to overwhelm your sense of space and boundaries. He doesn’t belong here, in this modest little flat, amongst yesterday’s take-out cartons and the light from the street lamps outside filtering in through your unwashed windows to illuminate the regal line of his nose. It’s like having a jaguar in a petting zoo, and you need him to leave. Now.

“If you’re so impatient to be rid of me, then resonate with me. That will expedite things significantly,” he interrupts your growing panic, not bothering to open his eyes.

“Do you not remember last time? We were chained together, and we still don’t know what broke the connection.”

“Mmm, is that what happened?” he murmurs drowsily.

“Oh, having trouble recalling? You kindly offered to cut off my hand to speed up the process—does that jog your memory?” you snap, frustration building again at the memory.

“How are we sure that the link happened because we resonated? Maybe it was just a coincidence.”

“What?” You can’t believe your ears. It’s so obvious that the successful resonance caused the uncomfortable link that chained you together for an unbearable amount of time.

“Correlation is not causation,” he enunciates slowly, as if you’re hard of hearing. Which ok, you have permanent tinnitus due to the almost constant gunfire involved in your occupation, but still! “The only way to confirm your theory is to resonate with me again.”

“You are not going to goad me into resonating with you again, Sylus.” You take a deep breath, breathe it out again. A smirk drifts across his face, which incidentally has regained some of the color that was missing when you first found him. You’ve paid your debt. He needs to go. You move to stand, but his voice stops you.

“Did you know? I had to increase my credit limit because of your little shopping spree at the auction,” he says wistfully.

“What?” You turn to look at him again. His eyes, glittering like rubies, are open now, amusement written all over him.

“Does the Hunter’s Association offer a hearing package in their health insurance policy? You might want to get your hearing tested, Sweetie.”

“What do you mean you had to increase your credit limit because of me?” you demand, ignoring his jab and annoying nickname. “I don’t believe that for a second!”

“My, my, have we learned to be less gullible after the little handcuff and smoke pistol incident?” he drawls, clearly steadily feeling better. “I should give Kieran and Luke a raise for what they did; it was a fun little interlude for me, and they taught you the very valuable lesson of recognizing bullshit when you hear it. They’ve given me one less thing to worry about.”

All you can do is stare at him, frustrated with how tongue tied this man often leaves you. Finally, you manage: “There is too much to unpack there so I’m not even going to touch it. Are you trying to tell me that I owe you something?”

“Well,” he draws out the word, producing a coin from… somewhere? Up his sleeve? Like the true cartoon villain he is, he begins flipping it with the hand of his uninjured side. “Naturally I don’t have a credit limit, because everyone knows that I’m good for my debts. But you did put a … dent in my bank balance with your little spending escapade at the auction, and I think the scale between us is a little unevenly tipped, don’t you? I mean, an honorable, fiscally responsible Linkon citizen such as yourself should be able to recognize when they’ve run up a fortune on someone else’s tab, and would feel compelled to make things square. Right?”

You can’t believe this. Here you were, from the very beginning, doing your best to wipe the ledger clean, repay your debt, treat this motherfucker with kindness, thinking about how you wanted to protect him from pain and injury, and this stingy asshole is pointing out that you, while following his directions, spent more of his money than you manage to make in…. multiple years, in one night, and he expects to be repaid. He’s right, though. Unlike him, you are honorable. Unlike him, you are fair, and believe in justice, and your spiteful doubling of what he said you should offer on that first protocore… and subsequent purchase of the entire inventory… maybe was… childish.

You look up at your ceiling, hands hanging at your sides. You try to remember not to let this man get under your skin like he has done from the very moment he melodramatically swooped down from an absurdly ringing bell tower and re-materialized in a whoosh of ridiculous crow feathers, sauntering towards you as if you should know who the fuck he is and simper accordingly.

Still staring at the ceiling, you hear yourself ask, “What would make us square, Sylus?”

You’re met with silence, long enough that you give in and glance down into his satisfied face.

“Because I’m a generous man, I’ll give you a choice: resonate with me now, or…”

“Or?” You take the bait.

“Let me use your place as a safe house if something like this happens again. I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t have one in this area, and I have a feeling I’ll be passing through more often now.”

“What? Why?”

“Which one will it be?” He smoothly ignores your questions, not even bothering to inquire about the state of your hearing. “Tick tock, I know you’re eager to be rid of me right now.”

Dimly, you’re aware, somewhere in the back of your mind, that Sylus can’t force you to make this choice at all. You don’t actually have to go along with him, be pulled into his slip stream as he moves who knows how many steps ahead of you towards a goal you can’t see. You know that this so-called lingering debt is a pretext, and that he doesn’t actually  want to balance the scales. He wants something else. You just can’t figure out what the fuck that something else is.

The more you interact with him, the more you have to begrudgingly admit that the little cat he sees when he looks at you might not be as far from the truth as you’d insist if ever asked. Your curiosity, your hyper-awareness of his every movement, every twitch of his lips and fingers and the labyrinthine twists of his sharp, sharp mind have you mesmerized like a cat in front of a drifting feather.

You can’t help it. You know that you can’t handle resonating with him right now. You recall all too vividly the feeling of his power coursing through your body, the hunger, the starvation, finally sated, and the subsequent addiction that had already begun to form from the first moment your respective evols locked into their feedback loop, enabling each other, intertwining until one was indistinguishable from the other. You could lose yourself in this man and never find your way back to yourself if you’re not careful.

So. The safest option here, in this bargain that Sylus is offering you in exchange for the debt you apparently (doubtfully) still owe: “You can use my place when you need it.”

You don’t think he realizes it, but you can see the way his shoulders relax, his big body melting deeper into your couch. His face is serious; for some reason, he’s resisting his impulse to insult you by letting the satisfied grin spread over his face. He just breathes deeply, once, and watches you through half-lidded eyes.

“Deal,” he huffs after the silence drags almost unbearably long, heavily hauling himself to his feet. “I’ll get out of your hair for now.” He slowly, carefully picks his way through articles of clothing on the floor to reach the foyer again.

“I’ll make a spare key for you when I get the chance,” you mutter, already regretting your decision. All you had to do was resonate with him one more time, thereby wildly reducing the chances of ever running into him again. Maybe you should have gone with that option, the idea of him showing up at your place unannounced fills you with too much dread (anticipation), and you open your mouth to let him know you’ve changed your mind—

“No need,” Sylus finally smiles, his sharp canines glinting under the automatic hall light. “I’ll be seeing you, Kitten,” he promises, and promptly vanishes in a cloud of stupid, fucking feathers. Feathers that you have to later pick out of the bloody mess he left in your foyer, on your hands and knees.