Largesse

Father's office carried a presence of its own. Perhaps it was why his mother rarely visited its quiet quarters, and the door seldom stood ajar. (Only when one was invited did it unhinge its jaws…) At the far back wall, rows upon rows of shelving housed books that, undoubtedly, were thoroughly dog eared and read through. At the center of the world, were the patriarch's seat. Leathery and aged like fine wine and, as it were… occupied.
His palms sat weakly clasped within his lap. A shake overtaking them, a reaction that never had quite left him as he'd grown. Though his fear, his dread, over his fathers prolonged presence long since had simmered out of his system; his nerves still behaved as though it hadn't. It was muscle memory, at this point, or perhaps it was simply something entirely psychological…
No matter the reason; he shakes, shakes, shakes…
Thinly draped curtains trailed crisscrossed patterns of light over his skin and across from him, it shrouded his father's features into something less than a collection of shadowy contours.

Between them, upon the fine, Oakwood bureau… It had been laid. As though an offering, a present, one that Cyrus hadn't registered as such until he was outright told it was so.
-Once his father decided he had tortured his child with silence long enough, that was.

"Don't feign hesitancy with me, son." Noboru's worn hand had gestured towards the offering as though it was Eve's cursed apple. "… It doesn't suit you."

The gift had been taken shortly thereafter, quietly and tentatively – and its weight had sat heavy within Cyrus's palms until he realized that that was to be the extent of their exchange for that evening. He had risen from his seat and, with a bow and expressed, expected pleasantries ('Good evening to you, father… and, I thank you for your generosity'), he had left his father's den and was barely able to stop himself from curiously fingering at the soft, silky fabric once he set foot outside.

As though it had been a sensation foreign to his senses. The very first time he had felt something like it.

He had hid it behind his back as he passed his mother at the staircase landing; sidestepped her, and slid into his bedroom with a simple and curt 'goodnight'.
She had not said it back.

Alone in his boy room, he had lingered, before the gift was left wrapped and unchanged upon his desk until the very last of his studies were through. And, even beyond their demand he wallowed in the anticipation of what, exactly, it was that he had been given. Another hour, he patiently waited – seated upon his knees by the long side of his bed until they positively ached.
Praying.
One of praise, then a moment of contemplation. A confession shared, a psalm, a request – as well as, regrettably, a plea.

The silence that he received eventually drove him to his feet.

(How rotten.)

With forced down emotions and a sense of insignificance, Cyrus finally sought the proof that he – if not by God, then his kin – had been seen. Had at least been considered, in one way or another. After retrieving his reward, he took a seat upon his bed and the weight of his growing frame suffocated the feathers of angel wings (what a silly way to describe such things…) as the mystery of the evening unraveled itself before him.

One edge at a time.

On his eighteenth birthday, Cyrus had been given a watch by his father.

"A stupid watch?"

Despite the warmth of the bed that they shared, her fingers felt cold where they danced over his wrist. She took hold of his arm and twisted it and Cyrus, quietly, took note of the fact that she was rougher than normal in her puppeteering of his movement. Peevish, almost.
Her nose scrunched up against the lump in his throat. "Hold on, let me see… Yeah." She spat. "Some dad you've got, giving you secondhand garbage like this."

The fact that she sounded angry caused him pause… if only for the fact that it wasn't directed at him.
-The watch itself, wrapped around his wrist by the use of a dense, ornate leather that still carried the remnants of a musky scent, had a slightly curved, mineral class covering that was framed by a ring of stainless steel. A beige dial laid hidden within, one that featured both a Tele- and Tachymeter scale alongside the equally pale hands of the main watch itself. For all intents and purposes, it was… Just a watch. A simple, if not gently used, wristwatch.

One that he quite enjoyed the look of, and felt a sense of pride over having gotten.

He had paraded it to her for that exact reason.
Now, amidst her mockery… he felt nausea building out of regret.

His fingers sprawled against her exposed, jutted hipbone.

When he didn't answer her contempt, didn't retort her claims, Cynthia devilishly shifted where she laid against his side. Until her chest settled flush upon his own, and her hips inelegantly straddled his. He grew acutely aware of the subtle sounds of her surrogate grandparents that came from downstairs, and the fact that they had left her bedroom door wide open.

Her eyes danced with something unknown.

"… Why do you say that?" he eventually asked, and if Cynthia could be stated as mature for her age then he, in comparison, sounded far too young. There was this tremor to his voice which bordered on pubescent fragility, despite the fact that he now, legally, could be considered an adult.
Shark's row of teeth greeted him moments after, followed by a peck upon his mouth that he did not return.
Her lips prettily pouted. Even through their sneer.

"Why?" She wickedly mimicked. "Why don't you tell me how it's not?"

This, he knew, was a trap. A snare marked out in the open that you were hounded into stepping within, should you not comply on your own.
… How did one prove that something subjective wasn't so?

His brows furrowed, and his snow pale lashes settled against his cheeks.

"It's… a watch. It tells time."

"Forever lasts longer than you can count with that flimsy thing." She interrupted.

He chose to ignore it. "... And, my father gave it to me. He usually doesn't do such things."

"Oh, I'm well aware of your family's wicked ways, Cyrus." Her voice cooed against his cheek and he pinched his eyes closed tighter. One of her elbows propped upon his chest, denting the bone around his heart while her fingers, one my one, marched over his sternum. "You dance around each other like you're strangers within your own home, and you play house when guests arrive to pretend that there's something that's normal about you."

… Father's office carried a presence of its own. Perhaps it was why his mother rarely visited its quiet quarters, and the door seldom stood ajar… As Cyrus had been about to close his bedroom door behind him, he had caught sight of his mother in the gap of its frame. He had heard fairytales of mothers who cried that their children had been taken by fairies and replaced with someone else - and he had always thought it to have been insanity that had driven their deluded claims. Yet, the softness to his mother's features as she lingered by the separator between herself and her husband had felt… Foreign. Her usual demeanor… Simply gone.
As though she had become an entirely different soul.

She had thought herself to have been alone.

After minutes, the soft patter of her feet was to be the only indication that she ever had been there at all.

Cyrus knew, even though he didn't speak it aloud, that the way his family functioned bordered into that of the unusual. After all, at six he had realized what adults meant when they said that even the smallest of pots had ears. At seven, he had learnt that his mother still could smile – just never at him. At eight he had learned that no matter how much you love someone, they won't adore you back and at nine, ten and eleven, he had carried a knot within his stomach that had made him sick to the point of suffocation; for the knowledge that those who sinned, those who were wrong, would rot in hell never left his mind.

And his parents would certainly not be spared such a fate.

However… Just because he knew, just because he could tell there was something erroneous did not mean that others should.
The fact that Cynthia could see it, too, caused a simmer without a name to storm within his breast.

"Am I wrong?"

Liquor dribbled from her tongue as she shifted and spoke through a smile. Wicked, she was, and he hated her when she decided to behave in this way. When she stopped playing pretty and just let herself do as she pleased - without a care to save face or if the things that she said hurt.

Her tone was flippant. "Just because your father decided you were human enough to tell time doesn't mean that he suddenly thinks of you as anything special."

Her features were distorted as he finally dared to peek at her through shards of silver. Cast in daylight and honey glow, with her shoulders sun kissed and bare - she stood as the perfect contrast to the image he had held of his father just yesterday. Soft and supple, girlish and gleaming with jester mirth - Cynthia was the light contrasting the darkness.

Yet they both carried the same, rotten stench.
And he felt sick.

Her hips shifted to where they met his, and a wanting pulse surged. "You know," she began, through poison and mist. He held his breath. "If it was desired that you wanted to be, then you should've left your fucked up daddy's house and let out your frustration in me-"

His hands planted themselves firmly upon her exposed collarbones and in one motion, Cyrus pushed her backwards until she was the one locked beneath him. Awkwardly their limbs shifted around one another, eventually settling so that her legs pushed backwards towards her flimsy, dark tank top and apart while his hands, wrapped around her wrists, locked her arms above her head.

His chest heaved with deep breaths and his flesh flustered with frustration.

With Anger.

"Shut up." He hissed through clenched teeth, barely loud enough to be heard. The fact that her eyes widened gave away the fact that he had. "... Shut up, shut up shut up shut up-"

They both bounced as he pushed more of his weight down upon her with every word that was uttered. Thorns blossomed within his throat and the resentment he carried within him over her presence within his life peeked into the back of his throat. If she dared look within him, it would be there - covered by tar and spoilt.
-Cyrus had flaunted his gift from his father to her. Not because he wished for her jealousy, not because he wished for her praise.

But because he wanted her to know that she wasn't the only one in this world who saw him.

Her wrists reddened where his dull nails dug into her flesh - and though it most likely was painful, though it surely harmed her; she behaved as though it didn't. "Where did you suddenly get air from, Cy-cy?" Her shrill voice made it sound as though laughter soon would follow. "Are you feeling like a tough, big man now that your daddy has given you some acknowledgement?"
Her cherry painted lips pursed and seconds later, she spat into his face. It hit him clean in his left eye, mingling into his socket and covering the while of his iris and, as Cyrus recoiled and let go of her wrists for just a moment to rid himself of the slaver, he instead found himself pushed back against the bed.

It was to be the conclusion to a cat and mouse game that he never, ever, had been able to win.
She didn't play by any rules of fairness.

Her hands bunched into the collar of his shirt and a button broke due to its force. If he had compared her to the sun before, then now - as her hair laid in disarray and curtained her features from the rays of daylight; she looked like someone entirely new.
Perhaps she always had looked so deranged, and he just hadn't noticed.

"You think you're something special, now that you've got what any other family would consider to be the bare minimum?" She shook him, rattled him like a broken toy. "How dare you tell me to shut up?"

Retorts strained his closed throat and the words that he had been about to share - how he had every right to shut her up, that she was just a stupid child and that he would do it again no matter what she said - died within him as she did something… Unthinkable. Feverishly and without care, she sought to devour him whole in a kiss that tasted less of love, and more like infatuation.

"Say it again." She eventually breathed - flustered and warm and with her shoulders shaking from unsung delight. "Tell me to shut up, call me a dirty-"

A rapt knuckle upon wood rattled the two youths back into reality, and fear stricken eyes shot towards the open bedroom door. There, clad in robes and a disgruntled expression, stood Cynthia's surrogate grandfather. A man past his prime, and from an entirely different time.

He spoke through gravel as he addressed the young man, and the young man only.

"It is time for you to leave."

They were left alone shortly thereafter, aggrieved mumblings lingering thickly within the air and Cynthia - as though unmounting a horse - slung her leg out and over him to instead fall onto her side next to her lover.
Just as they had been, when this all first began.

Cyrus, however, would not allow it. He shook her off of him and moved to sit upright on the side of the bed, rubbing at his socket for the sensation of her spit still irritated his eye. Mechanical movements pulled his hair away from his brow and back against his skull, only just then realizing the disarray it had fallen into from their war for power. Perhaps it wasn't just she whom had looked different…

His shirt sat looser, and he would have to replace it.

"... I hate you."

He confessed in a whisper, and clear ringing laughter came after. Girlish, sweet and kind.

Pretty.

"You don't make me feel hated." She said, and then turned so that it now was her back that faced him. If she had allowed for him to, then he would've learned that her knuckles had been white from how tightly she held on to those pale, gingham covers of her bed. "I believe you as little as I believe that that watch of yours is worth anything other than dirt."

Before they parted ways for yet another time, before he walked from her room and out into the hall - he heard a soft, quiet whisper of her own.

"I love you."

… He had not said it back.