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Chapter 15: The Morning After the Night Before

The dining room was a vault of quiet opulence, the kind of silence that was layered over with the hum of perfect climate control and the distant, muted chime of a grandfather clock in the hall. Without Hizashi’s vibrant presence, the space felt like a meticulously staged photograph—beautiful, but static.

Shouta sat at the head of the long oak table, a tablet propped beside his plate displaying a cascading waterfall of financial data. He ate with precise, efficient movements, his attention divided between the reports and the two teenagers further down the table.

Katsuki was attacking a plate of sashimi like it had personally offended him. His broad shoulders were tense, his green eyes glaring at his phone screen. He shoved a piece of otoro into his mouth, chewing aggressively. “Fucking idiot,” he muttered to the device.

“The pool boy or the boyfriend?” Hitoshi asked without looking up. He was sketching idly in the margin of a notebook, his other hand pushing sushi around his plate. His hair, still damp from his bath, dripped a tiny dark spot onto the linen tablecloth.

“Both,” Katsuki snapped. He put his phone down with a sharp click. “The boyfriend showed up. They had a whole whispered, tragic little scene by the chlorinator. It was pathetic. Ruined the ambiance.”

Hitoshi hummed. “So no swimming lesson?”

“The mood was dead. I left. Their drama was middle-class and boring.” Katsuki’s voice was a low growl of disappointment. He flexed a hand, watching the muscle cord in his forearm. “Wasted my afternoon. The pool was lagoon-sized. Now I’ll have to find a new one.”

“Daddy’s buying me a black bathtub,” Hitoshi offered, as if trading currency.

“Good for you. I want a new gym. The one at the club is getting stale. Too many… strivers.”

Shouta took a sip of mineral water, his eyes flicking between his sons. “Submit the specifications to my assistant. She’ll arrange a purchase. Find a suitable property.”

Katsuki’s surly expression eased a fraction. He gave a tight nod. “Thanks, Daddy.”

It was then Shouta’s gaze drifted past them, to the corner of the room where a low, polished ceramic bowl sat on a silk mat. Izuku was there, but he wasn’t eating. He was sitting on his haunches, his fluffy white tail a still plume against the dark hardwood. His head was bowed, his blue eyes staring blankly at the contents of the bowl—a meticulously prepared mix of high-grade kibble, fresh vegetables, and lean shredded chicken, prepared by the chef per Hizashi’s exacting nutritional guidelines.

Izuku hadn’t touched it. He let out a soft, almost inaudible huff, his breath disturbing the top layer of food.

Shouta set his chopsticks down. The click of wood on china was decisive in the quiet room. “Izuku.”

The hybrid’s white ears twitched, but he didn’t turn.

“Puppy. Look at me.”

Slowly, Izuku turned his head. His face, usually alight with a simple, eager joy, was drawn into a delicate sulk. His lower lip jutted out.

“What’s wrong?” Shouta asked, his voice low but carrying. “You’ll see Rex again next week. You video-called him this morning.”

Izuku’s nose wrinkled. He looked back at his bowl, then deliberately lifted a paw and gave it a weak, dismissive shove. The bowl scraped an inch across the mat. “Want steak,” he said, his voice a petulant mumble.

Shouta paused. He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “What’s that?”

“Steak,” Izuku repeated, louder. He finally looked fully at Shouta, his blue eyes gleaming with a practiced, bratty tears. “Rex get steak for dinner. Andrew give him. Big piece. Red inside. Smell good.” He said it as if reporting a profound injustice.

Across the table, Katsuki snorted, a sharp bark of laughter. “Are you fucking serious? You’re throwing a tantrum over protein selection?”

“It’s not the protein,” Hitoshi said, still sketching. He didn’t look up. “It’s the symbolism. Rex’s human feeds him steak. Therefore, Rex is valued more highly. Izuku’s feeling undervalued. It’s classic hybrid pack hierarchy shit.”

“Don’t swear at the table, Katsuki,” Shouta said automatically, but his attention was fixed on Izuku. He understood Hitoshi’s assessment was correct. It wasn’t about hunger. It was about a perceived slight, about the granular details of affection and status that comprised Izuku’s entire emotional world.

“I had Kaito prepare your meal specifically,” Shouta stated, referring to the live-in chef. “It’s balanced for your coat and energy levels.”

“Want steak,” Izuku insisted, his tail giving a single, stubborn thump. “Like Rex.”

Shouta watched him for another long moment. He saw the genuine upset in the line of his fluffy shoulders. He calculated: the dramatics if this escalated, the potential for Izuku to refuse food entirely and become listless, the certain disappointed look from Hizashi when he returned to a moping hybrid. The equation was simple.

He reached for the discreet intercom panel set into the table’s edge. He pressed a button.

A smooth, male voice answered instantly. “Yes, sir?”

“Kaito. A New York strip. Medium-rare. No seasoning. Bring it to the dining room.”

“At once, sir.”

Shouta released the button. He looked at Izuku. “Satisfied?”

The transformation was instantaneous. The sulk vanished, replaced by a radiant, gap-toothed smile. Izuku’s tail began to wag, a frantic, happy swish against the floor. “Thank you, Daddy!” he yipped, his earlier misery forgotten as if it had never existed.

“Jesus Christ,” Katsuki muttered, shaking his head. He stabbed another piece of fish. “Spoiled rotten.”

“We’re all spoiled rotten,” Hitoshi pointed out mildly, finally looking up from his drawing. It was a detailed sketch of Izuku in a sulk. “That’s the point.”

The chef, Kaito, emerged from the servant’s corridor a few minutes later. He was a man of severe grace, his hands steady as he carried a small silver tray. On it sat a single steak, perfectly cooked, resting in a pool of its own juices. He placed it carefully on the silk mat next to Izuku’s neglected bowl. “Your steak, young master.”

Izuku didn’t wait. He ducked his head and began to eat, delicate but eager bites, a soft, happy whine vibrating in his throat.

Shouta watched, a faint, proprietary satisfaction in his gaze. Problem solved. Order restored. He returned to his own meal and his data.

But the dynamic had shifted. Katsuki watched Izuku devour the steak, his own expensive sashimi suddenly seeming less appealing. The easy rhythm of their dinner was punctured by the unspoken tension Katsuki had carried home.

“What?” Hitoshi said, not asking, just prompting.

Katsuki scowled. “Nothing.”

“It’s the pool boy.”

“It’s not the fucking pool boy,” Katsuki snapped, but it was a weak protest. He pushed his plate away, the china screeching. He ran a hand through his spiky blonde hair. “It’s just… tedious. Everyone’s so serious all of a sudden. Izuku’s getting mated. You’re getting… commemoratively fucked by garage bands. Everyone’s doing something.”

Hitoshi put his pencil down. “And you’re not?”

“I’m bored.” Katsuki said the word like it was a confession of failure. “The parties are the same. The girls are the same. They all say the same things. They see the car, the clothes, the name, and they just… open their legs. There’s no challenge. It’s like ordering from a menu where you’ve tasted everything.”

Shouta listened, his expression unreadable. He took another sip of water. “You require a more complex acquisition.”

“I require something that isn’t a foregone conclusion,” Katsuki grumbled, slouching in his chair. For a moment, the aggressive, cocksure teenager was gone, replaced by a restless, almost vulnerable young man trapped in a gilded cage of his own making.

“Then set the parameters higher,” Shouta said simply. “Eliminate the obvious candidates. Seek someone who doesn’t need your money, who might even dismiss you. The challenge is in the persuasion, not the purchase.”

Katsuki blinked, considering. The idea seemed to settle him. A target. A game. “Someone from the old families, maybe. The ones who think they’re better than us because their money is older and smells like dust.”

“Precisely.” A faint, cold smile touched Shouta’s lips. “The Laurents’ daughter is back from boarding school in Switzerland. She’s been taught to disdain new money. I’m told she’s quite sharp.”

Katsuki’s green eyes, so like Hizashi’s, lit with a new, calculating fire. The boredom evaporated. “Celeste Laurent. She threw a drink in Haiden Amherst’s face at the spring regatta for touching her arm.”

“A promising start,” Shouta acknowledged.

Hitoshi resumed his sketching, a small smile on his own face. He knew his brother. The hunt was everything. The actual capture was often secondary, and once achieved, the boredom would return. But it would cycle. That was Katsuki’s pattern.

Izuku finished his steak, licking the silver tray with thorough, meticulous swipes of his pink tongue. He then nudged his full food bowl again, looking up at Shouta with hopeful, sparkling eyes.

“No,” Shouta said, without looking. “You made your choice. You don’t get both.”

Izuku’s ears drooped for a second, but he was too full and too pleased to truly sulk again. He padded away from his dining area and trotted over to the table. He sat by Shouta’s chair, laying his head heavily on Shouta’s thigh, a clear request for affection.

Shouta’s hand, large and elegant, descended to stroke between Izuku’s fluffy ears without his eyes leaving his tablet. The touch was automatic, ingrained. Izuku sighed, his whole body relaxing.

“When’s Papa coming home?” Hitoshi asked, closing his notebook.

“Tomorrow evening. His conference ends at four. The jet will be ready.” Shouta’s thumb rubbed a slow circle at the base of Izuku’s ear. “He’s already texted fourteen times about fabrics for the winter ceremony. I’ve instructed the design team to be on standby.”

“It’s going to be a monstrosity,” Katsuki said, but he sounded fond now, his bad mood dissipated by the new prospect of Celeste Laurent. “He’ll have Izuku in white fur and Rex in a fucking tuxedo made of chains.”

“Likely,” Shouta agreed.

The evening deepened. Katsuki, re-energized, pulled out his phone and began researching Celeste Laurent with focused intensity. Hitoshi retrieved his headphones, letting the aggressive strains of a new black metal album bleed faintly into the room. Izuku, content and heavy with steak, began to doze against Shouta’s leg, his tail giving the occasional sleepy twitch.

Shouta finished his review of the Singapore holdings. He powered down the tablet. The silence returned, but it was a different silence now—not static, but alive with the quiet hum of his family’s separate pursuits, all orbiting the gravity of his presence.

He looked at Izuku, asleep now, a living, breathing, expensive emblem of his domestic empire. He looked at Katsuki, plotting a social conquest with the same focus he applied to weightlifting. He looked at Hitoshi, lost in a soundscape of curated rage, his body adorned with the stories of his experiences.

A week ago, Hitoshi had been sore from a different kind of conquest. Now, he was planning a bathtub. Izuku had been pining for Rex, and was now dreaming of him, stomach full of equivalent tribute. Katsuki had been sulking over a pool boy’s boyfriend, and was now charting a campaign for a more difficult prize.

It was all motion. It was all management. It was the endless, satisfying work of tending to their wants, of ensuring the ecosystem of their happiness remained in perfect, extravagant balance.

His phone buzzed, a specific tone. Hizashi. He opened the message. A photo of a swatch of fabric, a heavy ivory velvet, next to a spool of delicate silver chain. The text: For the lead. Too much?

Shouta typed back, his fingers swift. It’s perfect. He’ll look like a sacrificed angel. They’ll weep.

The reply was immediate. Three heart emojis. Then: Miss you. How’s my menagerie?

Shouta took a picture. He framed it carefully: Izuku’s fluffy head on his leg, Katsuki’s scowling, phone-lit profile, Hitoshi with his eyes closed, chin propped on his hand. He sent it.

Fed. Entertained. plotting. Yours.

He didn’t need to say he missed him too. It was in the fact he’d sent the picture. It was in the steak ordered without hesitation to smooth a hybrid’s whim. It was in the promise of a new gym, a new bathtub, a new challenge for a restless son. Everything was an act of translation, converting his vast, quiet capability into the specific, noisy currency of their love.

Hizashi would understand. He always did.

Later, when the house was silent and the boys had dispersed—Katsuki to his home gym to work off his agitation, Hitoshi to his room to listen to music and text, Izuku coaxed to his plush bed in the corner of Shouta’s study—Shouta stood by the floor-to-ceiling window in his office. The city glittered below, a chessboard of lights he owned large portions of.

He thought of five strangers in a backstage room. Of a seahorse tattoo on a pool boy’s ass. Of a steak eaten off a silver tray. Of a velvet-and-chain leash.

It was all the same, really. The assertion of want, and the immediate, overwhelming answer to it. That was his function. That was his art.

He picked up the phone again, hitting a speed dial.

His assistant answered on the first ring. “Sir?”

“The Laurent file. Pull everything. School records, social affiliations, known romantic interests, purchase histories. Send it to Katsuki’s secure server by morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the bathtub designer? Have they responded?”

“They’ve sent three preliminary concepts for Master Hitoshi’s review. One is matte black obsidian, as requested.”

“Good. Proceed.”

He ended the call. The silence was total. Perfect.

From the corner, Izuku snuffled in his sleep, his tail whapping softly against the cushioned bed. Shouta didn’t turn, but a sense of completion settled over him. The chapter of the day was closed. All conflicts resolved, all desires noted and set in motion to be fulfilled.

Tomorrow, Hizashi would return and the volume of the world would turn back up. There would be more fabric swatches, more crude jokes, more orchestrated chaos. But for now, in the silent, gleaming heart of the mansion, everything was exactly as it should be. Under control.