Sixteen

Depressed just didn't seem to cut for an explanation as Riki sat drifting into his thoughts, unable to determine how he felt, how his heart seemed to be sinking every day into a darkness he couldn't fathom. The Furniture were worried, and so was Iason who could do no more but watch his Pet sulk and brood, as he himself had sulked and brooded the first time he woke up from Jupiter's induced sleep.

But then it was understandable. For now, the Blondie gave Riki his peace, kissing the latter goodbye every morning, bidding him a good day even as he realized there was a grand possibility that he might find him there on that same spot when he comes back later on. For now, his work awaited, and the long hours between them would be as trickling poison from which he might suffer, counting the minutes before he would be allowed to enfold his Pet again.

"Take care of him," he ordered Katron who only nodded...

Depressed.

Riki didn't even know the reasons why he was in this state, even after finding out from Katze the terms that accompanied his so-called 'Exclusivity' and reaping the rewards of it immediately thereafter.

He was to have fortune now: a Palace for a home and grandeur all around, a residence on the highest point of Tanagura; he was even shown the contents of the Exclusive's account and the staggering amount contained therein, not even in the Aurora currency other pets used, being the only one allowed of them.

He was to have fame and power: he was the Exclusive, and the only existing consort to Neu-Jupiter, envied by all, powerful enough that his will can cause the world to crumble at his heels if he wanted, loved and romanced, in the arms of the most powerful being there is on the planet.

He was to have...freedom: he was to be allowed to go anywhere, Katze had informed, a level choked with all types of Aircars and other vehicles for when his riles and whimsy got the best of him and he craved the outside, save that he needed to obey some rules and a few other regulations when he did have to, taking that Furniture Katron along with him.

But then where would he go? He has asked himself the same question during their conversation. To Ceres perhaps? But then why? Has he not proven that he no longer belonged there ever since becoming the rebellious pet of Iason Mink? And certainly, in his current form, he did not belong anywhere else but beside the Man.

Ah, that was it!

Riki found out that he had been repaired by Jupiter before the god died out, returning not only his lost youth, thanks to the years of the Blondie's cruel and devoted training, and the physique once rendered incomplete by his jealous-stricken and former life-partner Guy, but changing him completely to be like...one of them.

The Pet knew he was now more similar to his lover than he had ever been, and it made his heart sink into a mire of sorrows. What has happened to the part of him that was...human? The more he thought about it, the more he suffered within…

' What had // you // turned me into? What!? '

Worse, as he sat there, thinking, he could not seem to find any answer. Not even in the Will that was left to him by the dead god. Too bad Jupiter no longer existed for the questions that remained.

--

Iason's degree of thought might be points higher than anyone, now coupled with the nearly-complete dominion over the System, he was probably the most intelligent android there was before this change. Yet in affairs concerning the heart, he had no prior experience, had in fact loved only once and had no idea how to nurture the relationship he was now entrusted.

How was it supposed to go? How must he respond? And how does he show Riki how much this all meant to him without leashing him as he had done once?

He figured as much that love did not always supposedly involve rampant desires and tumbling into bed for that matter, although technically, it was the most difficult thing to avoid as Riki was now the most desirable of all beings for him on the face of Amoi.

But he must at least learn how to handle the other, not as a Pet, but as his mated pair for life. As the half he were wed to by Jupiter himself. Perhaps then he can help Riki get to terms with the new role that's been prepared for him.

Katze watched the Blondie ponder, before he broke the silence with a simple statement Iason perhaps did not expect to hear, "It's all your fault, I hope you are aware of it."

The Master turned to him with a scowl, a common resident of his features as of late, but grasping what his ex-Furniture meant and quietly turning away.

"How would that be?" he asked the redhead, rummaging blankly through the reports brought him, stopping when he found that thin sheet of a monitor he'd earlier connected to the Palace surveillance.

A terrible day to do work in the Markets: he just could not concentrate! And he knew fairly well how the lack of it could cause slight malfunctions in the System easy. Iason sighed.

He wanted to see Riki, but he stopped himself from turning the trailing bots to where his Pet was at the moment, deciding to pursue the conversation he had started with the other occupant of the room, turning back to Katze who was still meeting his eyes in a rather certain manner.

"You started all this. You took him from his home, from his life, and now…"

"Now what Katze?" the Blondie challenged playing on airs, lacing his fingers together and resting them on the table before him, the perfect picture of a Master and Tyrant.

"Now he's become...like what you are. And it hurts him that he can never go back.

"He is not even sure what he is any more."

--

The Palace was relatively quiet, and the triplets were busy with their little chores, maintaining the vast expanse of the House with this well-practiced efficiency that was beginning to show the more they got into their tasks. Riki stood looking at Katron for the longest time now, from where he was leaning stock-still, like a statue, on one of the higher balconies, before deciding to retrieve something from the room just behind him.

The Pet rang for his personal Furniture, the boy surprised that his Master had called for him but relieved nonetheless because the other had wanted something from him.

"Yes Master?"

But Riki was still a silent figure, surprisingly flawless when he sat as this, a picturesque mannequin on a huge velvet-backed seat near an equally large open window. The Furniture figured the Pet had been looking out at the Ocean, or had he been allowing his thoughts to drift again like the flowing waves? He had been cooped up in this room for a while now.

"Master?"

"On the table," Riki spoke, casting his eyes down, looking at the fingers he had rested on his lap.

He turned his palms up, seemingly searching them for something that could lift his wounded spirits, the expression on his face becoming even more morose as he stared at them.

Katron frowned, but doing as he was directed, turning to look at the only table in the room, the other furnishings being a drawer, the bed and some simple decorative implements. The chandelier lights were off, giving the room a certain hiding darkness. This wasn't even the Pet's official bedroom. He just strayed here somehow.

Something gleamed on the ornate table, the Furniture immediately realizing what it was.

"Master..."

"Can you…" this was perhaps the only other time since their first meeting that the Pet had again turned to look at him. Such dazzling obsidian eyes, now tainted with an unnamed sadness, an evident confusion.

"Can you cut my hair?" Riki asked, more a request than an actual question.

--

He had been held back a few hours over some matters the Council wanted to discuss, and was certainly thinking now that he would prefer taking his Pet to work with him, a change in the atmosphere perhaps better for the other, as it would certainly be better for him, unable to keep himself from thinking of the other…

"Where's Riki?" the Blondie immediately asked when the Furniture came to greet him, taking his cape and coat, Katrice taking care of the car their Master had left on the private Aeroport, pressing the buttons on a handheld terminal so that the vehicle lowered with him to the level storage beneath.

"He's in the inner gardens, Master Iason," Katron had answered, further informing that, today, the Pet had not left the house, had not even gone downstairs when he had urged him to the salon that by now had filled with other patrons from the lower levels of Eos Tower Two.

Back in the days it had been Riki's favourite place to vent, often scuffling with the other pets or the guards, his ruffian behaviour a common annoyance and a breath of fresh air to all that boredom whether they admit to it or not. Although of course no one would dare quarrel with him now that he was the Exclusive.

This behaviour was similar to those days when he'd returned: a Pet over twenty then who refused to be the butt of conversation and just stayed where he was left. But no longer. Jupiter had returned him to a former age...but a day older than when he first debuted as his Master's Pet, or even younger...he could not gauge so easily.

"I'll go see to him," said the Blondie, instantly leaving to stray where the Furniture had pointed him to.

And he did find Riki there, though he was surprised to see him sporting a rather different look. Short hair. He hasn't seen this in a while. It made his Pet appear like how he had appeared to him four years before, a foolish challenger to Iason's picky interests to pay a debt the Blondie had not really collected. It likewise made the Master recall the conversation he has had with Katze earlier. Seemed like the redhead was correct.

The Pet had his eyes closed, hands resting against the railing of the hanging balcony, head thrown up as if seeking the consolation of the heavens and its myriad of stars. The wind was blowing in from an open section of the glass dome, cold, the Ocean not that far away from where their Palace stood. Ceres on the other scale of the spectrum but he had not wanted to discover it.

His lost humanity was something Riki not only missed but lamented. Perhaps he has been finding this change in them a little too much, thrust suddenly from being what he was to being this…whatever it was that he is now.

"That longer length suited you rather well," Iason moved in to embrace his Exclusive from behind, hands ghosting around the Pet's waist and pulling him closer, smelling the flowers on his hair. "...but this still looks lovely."

Riki did not move. He allowed himself to be trapped in those strong arms, for the Blondie to nuzzle his neck and kiss, lips moving to further caress the skin he'd found there, making the Pet shiver.

"You look rather pale Pet," Iason noticed, gently urging him around.

Riki this time moved further into his Master's embrace, arms reaching to wrap around the Blondie unexpectedly. He took in the Man's familiar scent, "I'm just…overwhelmed," he answered.

' You must learn to be human, ' Iason remembered Katze saying. ' Only then would you understand... '

How would he know that? The only comfort he could give the other was this...

"You shouldn't be," said the Master. "I love you. Smile for me?"

He did not. Riki stared at him for a while instead, an undeniable sadness surfacing through his eyes, the expression on his face a perfect mirror of something close to regret.

"Fuck me," the Pet instead responded, which surprised the Master very much.

"Asking this of me so suddenly?" a gloved hand reached to touch that cheek, easing what remained of the unruly tresses as they fell down his eyes.

The Pet leaned in, moving to offer himself to the Blondie, as bold as the first time he had offered his body to the elite, and right on their initial meeting. Possibly the one that started it all.

"I've been lonely today," his body was so enticing, coupled with equally inviting obsidian eyes, a heat rising to clearly punctuate the mood. "I need you…"

Iason suddenly just wanted to take him on that offer, wanting to strip this Endymion before him until all that remained was the Dark Pet Ring. To be able to enjoy every part of Riki's anatomy until he was completely satisfied.

"Let me be your cure then," he said, before crushing their lips together in a kiss starved by the day's affairs.