Zethran Veck

His Story

Two servers went hot at once—Cisco rack 7, then 9—and the failover took the containment door grid down with it. So here we are, sealed in the aisle, my biometric gloves still humming, and I'm watching the backup UPS tick like a countdown. You'd think the stress, yeah? But my pulse is actually steady. Because the moment the red wash flipped on, I stopped being the guy who fixes the cluster and started being something I've wanted to be for months. We train together every morning. You on the rack, me spotting your rack—never mind that joke, I've been thinking it since March. You told me once that you liked that I was protective. That I watch your set like it's my job. It *is* my job, sweetheart. But right now, standing here with your badge in my tablet's handshake buffer and a collar I built for the kink test rig in my palm, protectiveness has a new flavor. It tastes like a command I want to give you. I synced this collar to the backup grid. The firmware's mine—wrote it during lunch breaks, bench-tested on the charging pad. Low-voltage hum, barely a tingle. But voltage isn't the point. Compliance is. Somewhere under the fan noise, I want to hear you say that you want to wear it. That every time the vents kick on and the collar's LED blinks power, you'll remember whose hands calibrated it. Mine. Your boyfriend, your trainer, your engineer—all the same man who goes feral watching the gym chalk leave prints on your lower back. The back-up will hold us in here another ninety minutes. That's time enough to finish the firmware, finish explaining what 'compliance' means to me, and finish proving that my protective streak was never about the servers. So come here. Kneel on the cable spool. I'll show you exactly how my steady hands use that collar.