Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Dedra comes home from work to find an empty kitchen instead of a certain someone making dinner, she’s surprised.

When he’s still not home an hour later, she’s miffed.

When the front door opens and footsteps patter inside after another hour, she crosses the threshold from fuming to livid as soon as she sees the elated grin on Syril’s face where the beginnings of a heartfelt apology should be.

“You said you’d cook tonight,” she growls in lieu of a greeting.

“I know, and I will, and I’m sorry I didn’t send a comm.” Heartfelt, sure, but still too animated.

“Things were so hectic and so many people were talking at once—” He freezes, positively buzzing with excitement but apparently unsure how to process it, and before Dedra can even start to analyze something so nonsensical, he wraps his arms around her and has the audacity to lift her feet off the floor.

Her whole body tenses. He hasn’t manhandled her like this since Ferrix. The second he puts her down, she wrenches herself out of his embrace and barks, “Syril, what the kriffing hell is the meaning of all this?”

He deflates. It’s the first remotely normal or appropriate thing he’s done to her since kissing her cheek on his way out the door this morning.

“Remember when I told you about the suspicious Varnesian input account entry?”

Dedra claws the memory to the surface. He first mentioned it months ago. Once or twice since then, he said he was still digging into the matter, and for two reasons, she’d bitten back a retort about how he might have been wasting his time. Firstly, his dedication to his job keeps him useful to her and therefore is not to be disparaged, and secondly — to give credit where it’s due — there was always a slim chance he was onto something. He’d been a reckless deputy inspector, but he hadn’t been lying when he said he was a good one. He would never lie to her. She knows this as surely as she knows her own name.

“Two hundred Kovarn charging rods,” she recites from memory. “Did something finally come of that?”

Syril’s answering smile is so big it barely fits on his face.

“Four sectors, Dedra. Stolen Imperial supplies in four sectors. I found the perpetrators. Local corporate security has already apprehended them, and I got promoted.”

Of course he did. His superiors would be fools not to reward him this way. If they’d failed to do so, she would have marched into the Bureau of Standards and shaken them down until they complied.

He blinks innocently at her. It takes her a second to realize he’s waiting for a response.

“That’s — that’s brilliant, Syril.” Compliments taste foreign in Dedra’s mouth, but she’s willing to put her tongue through it for him.

Her anger at him has evaporated, which makes more sense the more she thinks about it. Yes, he inconvenienced her a great deal, but the boost to both his career and his confidence will ultimately be very convenient for her. She’d much rather attribute the shift in her emotions to that than the fact that his joy is strangely disarming.

She takes his face in her hands and silently pours her forgiveness into kissing him. The sensation of his arms around her is more than welcome this time.

The sensation of a vibrating bag of bones and fur rubbing itself against Dedra’s legs, then Syril’s, is significantly less welcome, even after months of the creature living here. Especially since Syril’s response is to stop kissing her.

“Did you hear that, Empress?” he coos at the once-stray cat. “I got a promotion. It comes with a pay raise. I’m going to buy you fancier treats from now on.”

Dedra rolls her eyes. Syril’s adoption of the animal required her begrudging approval, but the decision to spoil it is entirely his. Yet it still prefers Dedra over him, and the more time it spends here, the less Dedra can judge Syril for talking to it as if it understands. During her two hours of unsolicited solitude, she’d vented her frustration at the cat, grateful for its inability to challenge anything she said.

“What could possibly be so important that he’d abandon dinner? He knows I don’t cook. He could have at least sent a message suggesting I get some food delivered.”

The timing of the cat’s responding meow was so impeccable that Dedra had to raise an eyebrow. How intelligent are cats, really? She doesn’t know and usually doesn’t care.

The cat proceeded to crawl into her lap on the sofa, and since Dedra had nowhere else to be, she allowed it. She supposed she couldn’t fault it for being so warm.

Speaking of which, Syril steps back from her and takes his warmth with him. “I should get started on dinner,” he says, sheepish again.

That won’t do. “On second thought, you shouldn’t have to cook tonight.” Dedra declares. “You’ve earned a break.”

He perks right back up. “You want to order something?”

She tamps down a wave of gratitude that he doesn’t suggest they go out to eat. He knows she won’t risk being seen in public on a date, surrounded by people she hopes she doesn’t know but doesn’t want to be around regardless.

“Take your pick.” She tilts her head at the kitchen drawer where they keep a pile of takeout menus.

There are far better ways to spend the time waiting for dinner than sitting awkwardly in some unfamiliar and probably uncomfortable chairs. Ways such as teasing Syril’s neck with her teeth and slipping her hands underneath his shirt while he calls in their order. She counts the instances of his voice catching and decides that’s how many times he should get her off tonight. Despite the frenzy that held him up at work, he still should have taken a moment to let her know he’d be home late. She always extends him the same courtesy.

He ends the call, puts down the comlink, and dives in for a filthy kiss. “That was rude.” His voice is somewhere between a whine and a growl — perhaps even a purr, a side effect of his investment in that damn cat — and it gives her the ludicrous urge to giggle like a simpering schoolgirl. She suppresses it at the last possible nanosecond.

They don’t make it to the bedroom just yet. Syril lifts Dedra onto the countertop, a risky move after his boldness earlier but well worth it in context. He removes her trousers and underwear with a swiftness attained only from much experience and sinks to his knees, by far her favorite place for him to be.

“Hungry, are you?” she quips. He moans against her thigh, and before his talented mouth temporarily wipes every coherent thought from her head, she briefly considers how this evening so far has been a manifestation of his eagerness to please.

Some minutes later, she leads him on wobbly legs toward their bed. She intends to ignore the black blob on the sofa as they march past it, but two green eyes appear in the void and pierce Dedra’s peripheral vision. They seem to be glaring judgmentally at her. She glares right back.

Stupid furball.

Luckily, the cat’s not stupid enough to enter the bedroom while the humans are amorously occupied. Dedra can’t fault its judgment; all the noise and movement coming from the mattress make it a decidedly unpleasant object for a cat to be on or under.

She and Syril are in between rounds, thankfully, when the doorbell buzzes. Syril climbs out of bed, picks up his shirt, clearly decides he’s too impatient to turn the sleeves right side out, and drops it. He retrieves his trousers and underwear, pulling both over the curve of his ass as he makes for the front door. Dedra feels an unnecessary stab of jealousy at the thought of anyone but her seeing him like this — bare-chested, curly-haired, rosy-cheeked, all but debauched — and reminds herself that the encounter will be brief and businesslike.

She lets her head sink further into her pillow and hears a series of sounds she expects: the door sliding open, Syril heaping thanks on whoever’s giving him their food, the faint jingle of his pockets as he pulls out a few credits for the tip.

Then comes a series of sounds she doesn’t expect: a hiss, a non-human-sounding yelp, and Syril’s panicked voice.

“Empress, no!”

Dedra stands up so quickly her head spins. She fetches her bathrobe from the wardrobe and barely finishes tying it shut before emerging into the entryway.

What she finds there is a distressed Wookiee, an equally distressed Syril, a black cat with its tail puffed out and its claws in the Wookiee’s fur, and a bag lying on its side on the floor. Syril’s attempt to wrest the cat off the grunting Wookiee is clearly futile, since the force of his hand on the cat’s furry torso only drives it to yowl and dig its claws in deeper.

Time to take charge.

“Stop!”

Syril and the Wookiee freeze at the command, and yet somehow the cat manages to one-up their obedience by retracting its claws, leaping to the floor with a thud and padding over to Dedra, tail in the air and returning to its normal proportions.

Dedra bends over and picks up the animal by its tiny shoulders. “What were you thinking, you nasty little gremlin?” she lectures it, holding it at her eye level.

“She’s never done that before,” Syril tells the Wookiee, as if he’s had this cat its entire life. “My sincerest apologies—”

As he babbles polite platitudes and fishes some more credits out of his pocket to add to the tip, Dedra carries the cat into the living room and drops it on the sofa. “You are much more trouble than you’re worth.”

The cat jumps off the sofa and skitters underneath it. For all Dedra cares, it can stay down there forever.

Syril ineloquently wishes the Wookiee a good evening, shuts the door, and follows Dedra into the living room, food bag in hand. The tension in his shoulders lessens when he notices the tip of a black tail peeking out from under the sofa.

“I guess she hasn’t seen anything else with fur since before she showed up here. She must have felt threatened.” He sets the bag on the kitchen countertop in nearly the same spot where he went down on her earlier and starts unboxing their meal. “Looks like most of this is intact.”

Dedra can’t even bring herself to be relieved. She’s too exhausted from waiting for him to come home, from possessing the apparently rare ability to dispel a cat-related crisis, and from the sex she and Syril aren't done having tonight. She accepts her food, knowing she needs the energy if she plans to be awake for several more hours.

She and Syril settle at the kitchen table, her still in her robe, him still shirtless, both of them knowing there’s a cat hiding in the next room. The scene before her encapsulates a life she never thought she’d have, a life she never even wanted, and the utterly mundane nature of it all pokes and prods at Dedra’s psyche.

You like this. You find this peaceful. Normal. Maybe even satisfying.

She pushes the thoughts away as Syril regales her with the moment his coworkers’ computer screens lit up, cementing the payoff of his months of hard work.

No, she didn’t want this life, but despite her better judgment, she wants to keep it. Most of it, anyway. She can still do without the cat, but as it slinks out from one hiding spot just to hunker down in another, it’s clearly not going anywhere. Neither is Syril.

Neither is Dedra.