Override

Ravi Menon hired a full-home security upgrade for his converted loft and never expected the installer to become the one thing the cameras couldn't keep out. Wei Chen is stocky, quiet, and precise—the kind of man who measures sightlines and doesn't waste words. Three weeks of site surveys and late calibrations leave Ravi watching the thick forearms and the almost-smile more than the feed angles. On the night the system is set to arm, the corridor camera is damped, the monitoring center is still offline, and the only thing left between them is the decision to stop pretending the job is only about sensors.What starts against the kitchen island ends against the floor-to-ceiling windows with the city watching. Wei doesn't do gentle first times. He opens Ravi with the same focused efficiency he brings to every panel and every cable, then takes him deep and thorough while the live feeds record everything in high definition. The risk is real: one exterior flag and the monitoring center could pull a silhouette of two men locked together in the glass. Ravi doesn't care. He wants the archive. He wants the claim. He wants the thick stretch and the heat left inside him and the knowledge that the man who installed the system is still there when the arming sequence finishes.Thursdays become the override window. Wei stops bringing the tool bag. The work-order fiction wears thin. They fuck in the entryway where the night porter could hear, on the bed that knocks the brick, under the rain head in the shower, and against the same windows while the fire-escape camera sits quiet below them. Breeding talk and the steady insistence on leaving every load inside turn the private folder on Ravi's tablet into a growing record of how completely he has been claimed. When the monitoring center asks whether continuous interior recording is still necessary, Wei marks it permanent.