Damian doesn’t blink. Doesn’t twitch. He just lifts his mug, takes a slow sip, sets it down—and smirks.
“Plump’s better,” he says, voice flat as stone. “Fills my hands when I bend you over.”
I choke.
Coffee shoots the wrong way down my throat, burns like acid as I gag, coughing so violently I nearly flip the plate right off the table. My face goes scarlet, eyes watering, lungs wheezing while Damian just…keeps eating.
Unbothered.
“Jesus—fuck—” I croak, pounding my chest, wheezing through another cough. “You can’t—you can’t just—”
“Yes,” he says, calm, final, already buttering his toast. “I can.”
My brain short-circuits. My grin sputters back across my face, wild and wrecked, because oh my god hechirped me back.Not even teased—obliterated.
I drop my head into my hands, curls falling into my eyes, half-laughing, half-dying, and groan, “I hate you so much, Captain.”
“Eat,” he says again. Like that’s the end of it.
I shove a forkful of eggs into my mouth just to buy myself ten seconds to recover. He’s still eating like he didn’t just casually ruin my entire existence before nine a.m., and that—that—makes me burn hotter.
No way.
No way I’m letting him win this round.
I swallow, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and grin wide across the table. “Guess that’s why you’re feeding me toast, huh? Gotta keep your rookie stuffed so he can take it better?”
His eyes flick up. Just a flick. One cold, one void.
My pulse stutters, but I keep going. “Bet you measured the macros too, right? Protein for power, carbs for stamina, all so you can fold me like a lawn chair for cardio?”
The smirk that cuts across his scarred mouth is lethal.
I’m grinning, leaning over the table. “What’s next, Cap? Gonna start packing me post-practice snacks? Write ‘good boy’ on the Tupperware?”
His jaw ticks.
But I swear—swear—there’s a glint in his eyes that says I just poked the wolf on purpose.
And I love it.
I’m leaning across the table now, grinning wide, waiting for him to snap. To bark. To drag me back by the scruff of my neck and shut me up the way he always does.
But he doesn’t.
Damian chews his last bite of toast, wipes his thumb across the scar at his lip, and finally lifts his eyes to mine. Calm. Steady. Too steady.
“Keep chirping, pup,” he says. “All it means is you’ll still be on your knees when the rest of the team’s already in the showers.”
The words cut clean. No growl, no snarl, no smirk—just fact.
My grin collapses into a wrecked half-smile, my face burning so much it’s embarrassing. My fork clatters against the plate.
I should taunt back. I should. That’s the game. That’s what I do.
But the second those words land—knees, showers, me left behind—I can’t find a single one. My whole body shivers, pulse roaring in my throat, and all I manage is a strangled little laugh that sounds way too close to a whimper.
The scrape of plates, the hiss of water in the sink, the soft clink of cutlery—normal kitchen sounds. Normal morning. I’m half-slouched in the chair, still twitching with leftover adrenaline, telling myself breakfast is over and maybe,maybe,I survived.
