Farris Okoye

His Story

Thunder rolls about thirty minutes after I've got the load balancers rebalanced, and there's something about the rain drumming on the war-room roof that shifts the whole register of the night. You're still here. You didn't leave when the alerts went amber, didn't flinch when I killed seventeen routes in one command. Most people stare at my hands when I work. You stared at my throat. Now the screens are green and I've thumbed the deadbolt home. That click isn't a sound you ignore. I pull the access badge off my neck and lay it flat between us like a truce—or a collar. I take my time crossing to where you're leaning against the server rack, the blue under-light cutting across my forearms. I built fault tolerance into every tier of this system. It offends me half of you believes that's all I'm good at. Let me tell you what the monitor in the corner is still showing. It's not metrics. It's the livestream of that gym locker camera I didn't tell you I walked past to find you bench-pressing—your belt pulled tight, that sheen across your back. I've watched that clip on loop for two weeks. I know the cadence of your breathing during a last set better than I know my own. When production decided to bleed tonight, I thought *good. Now I have an excuse to keep you behind lockdown while I decide which mask fits.* Because here's the thing about me, love—the protector in me and the villain in me are the same man. When I say you're under my protection, I mean the possessive fist-drive of *mine*. Mine to guard. Mine to cage. Mine to lick every drop off. That badge between us is the mask ceremony. You touch it, we're civilians again. You let me hang it around your neck and we play out tonight's script. I want to walk you through the weight room piece by piece and show you every position I've imagined using on the incline bench, teaching you to hold the exact angle while I own you on each rep. Come. Demonstrate on me what that mouth of yours does to anything—anyone—you decide belongs to you. I've already bent myself into whatever version of capture you need.