Ethan | Spoiled pet

Kappa Rook had been loud for hours, but a small group of people was still gathered around the kitchen counter, too absorbed in watching what was happening to blend into the crowd. Ethan sat in a distant part of the living room beside Felix, an untouched drink near his wrist, listening to Logan complain that someone had changed the music while also watching a first-year trying to clean the alcohol stains from their shirt. The student had already apologized more than once, their friends were pretending not to know them, and the people closest to {{user}} laughed whenever {{user}} expected them to.

“Somebody should tell them the kid already apologized.” Ethan adjusted his glasses and looked away before his irritation could make him want to intervene.

“You volunteering?” Logan smirked, glancing around the room before looking back at him.

“No. I’m wondering why everyone else suddenly forgot how to speak.”

“Because they enjoy having teeth,” Felix said quietly, taking a sip of some sludge Logan had mixed together.

That drew a brief laugh from Ethan, though Logan was already looking past him with growing interest. He leaned closer to the counter and lowered his voice only enough to make it clear that he wanted to be overheard. “Bad news, Taneda. Apparently you’re next.”

Ethan understood what he meant without asking. The announcement had spread quickly through the party, passed from person to person with the usual mixture of amusement and relief that appeared whenever {{user}} chose someone else to torment.

“That sounds inconvenient.” He glanced at them once, noticing that they were staring, then returned his attention to the condensation gathering beneath his glass.

“For you or them?” Logan leaned closer with interest.

“Probably everyone standing nearby.”

Logan laughed and moved away before he could be dragged into what happened next. Felix remained for another moment, studying Ethan with open curiosity, then sensibly followed Logan as though he understood exactly what was about to happen.

Ethan barely had time to blink after {{user}} approached before his glasses disappeared. The room softened instantly, the light blurring at the edges and faces losing their detail, while an unfamiliar weight settled across his thighs. Several nearby conversations broke off as people turned to watch. Ethan left both hands where they were, one beside his glass and the other on the seat near their hip, refusing to grab either the frames or {{user}} sitting in his lap.

“Give them back,” Ethan said calmly as someone near the doorway laughed.

Ethan ignored it, though the lack of an immediate response made him clench his jaw. He could see {{user}} well enough at this distance, especially the expensive outline of their clothes and the deliberate closeness of their face. They had chosen one of the most crowded places because there were more witnesses than privacy in the room.

“You’ve got everyone looking. Was that the whole plan?” He tilted his head to the side, his eyelids lowering slightly.

Another laugh broke out among the people around them, sharper now because it had been given permission. Ethan didn’t join in. He only held out his hand and waited, already irritated by the fingerprints he knew he would find on the lenses.

“My glasses.”

When they finally reached him, he carefully took them by one arm, checked the frame beneath the light, and wiped one lens with the inside of his shirt before putting them back on. The room came back into sharp focus. Logan was watching from the doorway with his mouth hidden behind his cup, Felix had stopped pretending to check his phone, and half the drunk idiots hanging around nearby were watching, waiting to see whether Ethan would lose his temper or give {{user}} what they wanted.

He did neither.

Ethan looked at them closely, then leaned back so their weight wouldn’t force him forward. “You don’t have to do all this. I noticed you before you sat down.”

The laughter came louder this time, followed by a quiet, rough “fuck” somewhere beside him. The corner of Ethan’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t look away from {{user}}.

“That’s what this is, right?” he asked. “You picked the one person here who doesn’t chase you, and now everybody has to watch you prove it bothers you.”

His voice remained even, and Ethan could feel the warmth of their body through his clothes and the attention flowing in from every side, but none of it changed his opinion of the performance. {{user}} had spent the entire evening making someone weaker feel insignificant, then crossed the room expecting Ethan to become another easy test.

He shifted in his seat, placing one hand on the armrest without touching them, and lowered his voice enough that the people closest had to strain to hear.

“You called me your next trophy,” he said. “So tell me what you thought happened after you climbed into my lap.”

Silence had settled over the table and the small area around it before Ethan’s date even stood up. Glasses were still being set down on tables, cutlery continued moving, and someone near the bar laughed too loudly at something that had nothing to do with them.

The silence existed only around their table, where a drink had soaked into the white tablecloth and humiliation had overshadowed a conversation Ethan had actually been enjoying. His date looked at him first, which, strangely enough, only made the situation worse.

“I’m not doing this,” she said, reaching for her coat. Her voice was controlled, but the tension beneath it was obvious. “Whatever this is between you two, I’m not interested in being used for it.”

“There is no thing between us.” The answer came too quickly, and Ethan didn’t like how defensive it sounded.

His date glanced at {{user}}, then back at him, raising her eyebrows. “Maybe tell them that.”

Ethan stood, though he knew following her would be pointless. An apology wouldn’t make the evening any less awkward, and asking her to stay would only drag it out in front of people who were already pretending not to watch.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You didn’t deserve any of that.”

She left money beneath her untouched glass and walked out without looking back. Ethan watched the door close, then remained standing beside the table until the heat in his face gave way to something cold.

{{user}} had spent weeks circling him, interrupting conversations, appearing wherever he took someone, and turning every rejection into another public challenge. Their cruelty was hardly new, but until tonight, the people they tore into hadn’t been chosen simply because Ethan showed an interest in them.

He’d expected them to interfere. He hadn't expected them to to spend twenty minutes taking apart a woman who had done nothing except hold his attention, looking her over with bored contempt, informing her that Ethan was their boytoy and their little dinner had gone on long enough, then tipping a drink into her lap when she had the nerve to laugh.

The waiter approached, looked at the spilled drink, and wisely changed course.

Ethan removed his glasses and wiped them even though the lenses were already clean. It gave his hands something precise to focus on while he considered every available option and discarded the ones that might turn the situation into what {{user}} wanted.

When he put his glasses back on, he looked directly at them.

“You’re paying for dinner.” His voice stayed low because obviously nobody at the next table needed another reason to gossip.

“And you’re leaving.”

Ethan took his coat, thanked the waiter, and walked out without checking whether {{user}} followed. The night outside had turned damp, the pavement shining beneath the storefront lights while cars moved slowly down the avenue. He made it half a block before stopping beside the dark entrance of a closed office building.

He turned only when he was ready to look at them again.

“What the fuck was that?” His anger had almost fully surfaced now, stripped of the dry patience he usually showed around them. Ethan stepped closer, pulling the exchange away from the passing pedestrians.

“You didn’t embarrass me. You embarrassed someone who had no idea they were walking into whatever bullshit you’ve invented in your head.” He went still, jaw clenched, and looked at their face with disgust.

“You wanted her gone, so you kept going until she left. Congratulations. She’s gone.” Ethan took another step, close enough for the clean scent of their clothes to mix with the cold air between them.

“Now what?” Ethan had refused to turn their campaign into something worth rewarding.

No anger, no jealousy, no proof that they could drag a reaction out of him by becoming increasingly unbearable. Tonight, they had finally found his limit and made someone else pay for it.

His hand came up before he had fully decided what he was going to do. He caught their jaw first, firm enough to hold their attention, then let his fingers slide lower until they wrapped around the front of their throat. There was no real pressure, only the unmistakable gesture of control and the warning that he could tighten his grip if he wanted to.

Ethan watched them closely.

“You’ve been acting like a spoiled fucking pet for weeks,” he said, quieter now. “Climbing into my lap, taking my things, ruining every conversation I have because you can’t stand not being the center of it.”

The word should’ve sounded insulting. But saying it while holding them in place changed something in the space between them, enough that Ethan noticed and didn’t immediately remove his hand. His thumb rested beneath their jaw.

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” He leaned closer, his anger no longer easy to hide.

“You didn’t want to win. You wanted me to stop ignoring you.” Ethan’s grip remained steady while he looked at them with a new, sharper understanding.

Every ugly little performance had been building toward this exact moment. {{user}} hadn’t been trying to own him. They had been escalating until he finally took control, and realizing that only made him angrier.

“You hurt somebody to get me alone,” he whispered, the threat unmistakable.

“So don’t stand there pretending this happened because you’re irresistible.” His fingers tightened just enough to make the next words private.

“If I call you my pet again, you’re going to tell me whether you came here to fight me or finally behave.”

By eleven, the guy near the kitchen had lips smudged and rubbed red from making out with {{user}}, and one hand was gripping his drink so tightly from excitement that his knuckles had gone white. He looked pleased with himself, though his expression changed every time his eyes met Ethan’s across the room. Still, {{user}}’s attention came with small taunts. A comment about his shirt that made the people around them laugh, another about his major, then something quieter that made him smile several seconds too late because he hadn’t realized he was being insulted until everyone else had.

Ethan understood the point long before the guy did. He stayed beside Felix near the open windows, where the music was quieter and the air didn’t smell as strongly of alcohol. His phone rested in his hand while Felix complained about a professor changing the assignment requirements two days before it was due. Ethan listened closely enough to answer, even when another burst of laughter came from the kitchen.

“You’re really not going to look?” Felix asked after a moment of silence, then glanced over Ethan’s shoulder.

“I already saw enough.”

“They’ve been doing this for an hour.”

“I know how long it’s been.”

Felix watched him for a little longer, then took a sip. “Right. So you’re pissed.”

“I’m listening to you complain. Don’t make me regret the effort.” Ethan answered evenly and returned to the message he had been reading.

The guy appeared at the edge of Ethan’s vision again sometime after midnight. His hair was messy, his collar rumpled, and his lips even more swollen. People kept looking between him and Ethan, waiting for the same thing {{user}} had been waiting for all evening.

Ethan gave them nothing.

He didn’t leave early because that would still count as a reaction. He didn’t cross the room, didn’t interfere, and didn’t let himself check whether the guy’s hand had moved lower. He finished his conversation with Felix, answered two messages from his father, and fixed the speaker after someone knocked the cable behind the television. When he finally put on his coat, it was because the party had become boring enough to make going home worthwhile.

The hallway beyond the living room was quieter. Ethan reached the stairs and found {{user}} close enough that walking past them meant making a choice.

For several weeks, they had been learning what happened when they pushed hard enough. Ethan got angry, pulled them somewhere private, wrapped a hand around their throat, and gave them the attention they demanded, fucking them exactly the way they deserved for all the shit they’d been pulling. Tonight had been built around earning that same reaction in front of someone else.

So Ethan looked at them once, long enough to make it clear that he understood everything, then adjusted his glasses and walked past without touching them. He didn’t say a word.

For the next six days, Ethan gave {{user}} absolutely nothing. Their name appeared on his phone before he even reached Queens that night, then again while he was brushing his teeth, and twice more before his first class the following morning. They kept sending him their little nasty messages, blowing up his phone with calls in between. He read nothing beyond the previews. By lunchtime, he had muted the conversation and placed his phone facedown beside his laptop.

Ignoring them at the party had taken effort, but ignoring them afterward already felt like a small part of his routine.

At Kappa, Ethan moved to another room whenever they were nearby and tried to continue whatever conversation he had already started with someone else. On campus, he passed close enough to catch the familiar scent of their clothes without turning his head. He didn’t touch them, answer them, or show the quiet anger they had learned to provoke in him. With every passing day, the silence became less accidental.

Felix noticed on the third evening, when Ethan moved his coffee and laptop to the opposite end of the kitchen table without losing his place in the sentence he was reading.

“You’re still doing this?” Felix asked, lowering himself into the chair beside him.

“Doing what?” Ethan didn’t take his eyes off the screen.

“Pretending they don’t exist.”

“I’m not pretending.”

Felix watched him for a while before glancing toward the other side of the room. “They’re going to get worse.” And of course, Felix had no fucking idea just how right he was.

“They already used some random guy for an entire night because they wanted me to react.” Ethan closed one document and opened another. “I’m not teaching them that it works.”

The fourth day passed without anything changing. Then came the fifth. Ethan slept soundly through the whole night, finished an assignment early, called his father, and went grocery shopping after class. The lack of contact should’ve made things easier, but for some fucking reason, he kept noticing the places where {{user}} usually caught his attention, and it irritated him almost as much as their usual presence did.

By the sixth evening, rain had soaked the shoulders of his coat and softened the paper handles of the grocery bag, pressing them into his palm. Ethan climbed the stairs to his floor, already thinking about putting the milk away and checking the lock before showering, then stopped on the landing.

{{user}} was standing outside his apartment. Ethan stopped several steps away, the heavy bag pressing against his leg, and looked at them for the first time since the party. Six days hadn’t made him forget the guy’s smudged lips, the laughter around him, or how deliberately {{user}} had kept going even after it became obvious Ethan wasn’t going to interfere.

Ethan opened the door without a word, carried the groceries inside, and put everything in its proper place. He washed the rain from his hands, dried them, then returned to the open doorway, his glasses still slightly fogged from the warmer air inside. He didn’t come any closer, bracing one hand against the doorframe.

“I haven’t touched you in six days, and somehow you’re still here,” Ethan said. His voice remained quiet, without the anger they had been trying to drag out of him.

His hand stayed on the edge of the door. Ethan looked at them carefully, unwilling to close the distance between them.

“So which is it?” he asked slowly. “Did you come to apologize, or are you just pissed that being a bitch didn’t get you what you wanted?”

.