and to dust you shall return

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“We’re not,” he retorted. “Just talkin’ about our next gig.”

A nod from the friend that sat next to him—Oscar?—and a rough ‘yeah’ from Josh leaning against an old desk.

“You could still keep it down a bit,” you continued as if it were just the two of you. “I told you I was coming home late.”

He only muttered a ‘yeah, yeah’ under his breath, something about them packing up and leaving in a few—minutes, hours, the word disintegrating as quickly as it left his mouth, for it slid into the bottle of whatever he was drinking.

Your body turned to leave, already wanting to be anywhere not littered with night-invited chatter encouraged by clouded blood and mind.

Before you could: “Nice uniform.” Josh gestured with his chin, bass propped at his side like some sharp extension of his lukewarm figure.

You didn’t respond, didn’t allow your face to show that if your mouth split you’d probably gag.

Eric spoke before your hand curled at the door’s edge—more natural to you than the handle in the moment—spread legs shifting at where he sat behind his drum kit, though you didn’t notice.

“We’ll keep it down, love.” (You did catch the sneer in Josh’s direction, molding to then take the shape of the cigarette after he addressed you.)

They didn’t. Or you just couldn’t tell—the early morning had a habit of making everything a burdened, scrappy song in the comfort of a cool watch outside. Like the sounds could finally come up with everyone’s sleep, for it was too hot earlier and they would melt into an unidentifiable mess of a noise.

You stared at your ceiling, what you could make of your nails as your eyes adjusted post some lazed attempt at falling asleep. If you couldn’t rest after your body wanted to, maybe it needed some more encouragement. Some water would do you good if the walk didn’t.

Your bed creaked as you swung your legs out from under your sheets, left with the pressed weight of you to return.

You only managed to take one step, maybe two out your room—you pulled back more than anything to not collide with his chest.

He resembled a fantasy in dusk with the silence at which he came to and stood so close to your door. If you hadn’t met his eyes, you would have missed the near juvenile shine like a second pulse around enlarged pupils.

“What are you doing?” you whispered, brows pulled together and glancing over his shoulder to the end of the hall, back to him.

Eric only shrugged, “’m the last one ’ere,” responding to the worry blanketed in your features, then softer, spoken through a sly lilt to his lips and a shine to his canines, a light to ogle in the dim of the hour, “Wanted to say goodnight to ya first.”

Before you could tell him he couldn’t’ve been serious, he leaned into the underside of your jaw, pressing more so when he found you pliant. What you were anticipating ghosted just over the skin before they merely dragged along wherever he could reach, like an attempt to find the right spot in the dark.

“Then say it,” you said with a faux wavering indifference and placing a hand at his shoulder to trace the neckline of his shirt, catching the amused hum he gave in return.

“You’re pretty hot when you’re pissed,” he whispered into your neck, ended with a kiss, another, like a note’s signature.

You rolled your eyes at his change of conversation. “That’s not going to work on me, Eric.” Chided with a breath, a bite ebbed to a sigh. He put one hand to the wall beside your head, the other opposite where his lips lay, resting in the divot and guiding you to bend—your hand came to the wrist to keep it there.

You felt his smile at the skin. “What?”—the mocked innocence and opposing touch made you squeeze your eyes shut—“Me words, or...” His lips substituted their own name, placed now at the corner of your mouth, though only because the sound of your brother’s bedroom door stole his turn. You gripped the fabric of his shirt—you swore he let out a laugh.

“Don’ worry,” he purred. He must’ve felt how your bones gave in, grabbing your thigh and bending it against the low-waisted denim of his hip with ease. You canted your waist to meet the weight before you realized they moved. “He thinks I already left.”

His words stuck heavy from swollen lips to exposed skin flushed from their path, not quite meeting your ears. You could tell he liked the way both his hands and whatever came from his mouth splintered any resolve in you so late—you heard it in the whimper he failed to conceal, the jump just underneath his navel as you lowered a hand to the band of his boxers peeking over the button of his jeans.

You almost didn’t register his next plea, delivered with a shaky curse to your lips. “Will ya let me in?” You would have stayed just outside your door if he asked lowly enough.

At his words you could only nod, not trusting how you’d sound if you broke the seam and he wasn’t there to immediately swallow your response.

To die in the house of a surgeon seemed to Y/N like a cushion to a hard fall. And from the patient’s perspective, perhaps it was. For the doctor, it was slow, agonizing torture.

It had been a steady build up to the state of bedriddency she’d found herself in now. Troubles with her heart, that much was certain. Small, skipped beats at first. Then longer between each pump of blood. Patrick was well familiar with it. And in these moments, her marriage to a surgeon was a wonderful blessing. A diagnosis at the ready. Care without setting foot in a disease ridden hospital. For Patrick, this was the most mortifying task of his career.

When it came to his work, it was easy to detach person from body. To view his patients as mere legs, arms, torsos. To maintain a sense of professionalism and indifference rather than allow his work to be squandered by emotion and compassion.

But this was his dear fucking Y/N. And the separation between professional indifference and overwhelming grief was one he could not find in himself.

After she had collapsed in his office one day, unable to even gasp for air in Patrick's arms until her heart awoke again like a stuttering engine, he had her confined to the bed. Which naturally meant Patrick practically abandoning his work to be at her side. He had tried to continue on, at first, but the sight of the empty chair in his office and the only sound in the room the tickling grandfather clock, he felt the great immensity of her absence and found himself crumpling at his desk, a sob straining against his throat.

So he stayed at her side, hunched on a chair pulled next to the bed. He'd check her vitals in 10 minute intervals as a form of self-soothing, adjusting pillows and straightening blankets. All the while Y/N, who was in an upsettingly calm mood about this all, allowed him to poke and prod at her to his heart’s content.

She watched her husband with quiet affection. Here he was, a surgeon who had performed countless operations without so much as a blink of distress, a doctor who often left the compassionate bedside care to the far more qualified nurses, fumbling over her comfortability in the bed that had once been shared by the both of them. (Patrick had taken up sleeping in the chair.)

He pulled the thermometer from between Y/N’s lips, scrutinizing the reading. “Any pain?”

Y/N hums. “My elbow’s rather sore.”

The look Patrick levels her is deeply unamused. “Y/N,” he sighs, lips pressing into a thin line.

He grabs for her wrist, not only to check her pulse, which he’d already done thrice in the past hour, but because touching her was becoming an obsessive compulsion. He traced his thumb over the delicate bones of her hand like she might dissolve beneath his fingers. They’d begun to poke through her skin.

She exhales deeply and theatrically. “You’ll forgive me, I’m dreadfully bored.”

Patrick's brows pinch tighter. He clutches her hand like an anchor. “Your heart is failing,” he strains. “This is not some trifling fever or cold, Y/N.”

“Now when had I said that?”

Patrick’s nostrils flare. “Your tone,” he says, “I am beginning to grow weary of the way you speak, as if this is nothing more than a mild inconvenience to you.” There was an undeniable quake in his voice.

Her tone is even when she speaks, holding a composure Patrick lacks. “Because I am not wallowing in fear and self pity, I have no respect for my life? That is what you mean to imply?”

“I—... God,” he breathes out sharply, running a hand through his hair in frustration. He swallows hard and lifts her hand to his lips to press a desperate kiss to her knuckles.

She squeezes his hand in response, and he nearly breaks at the weak shudder he feels in her grip. Her gaze is distant when she speaks again. “Death is a natural part of life, my love.” She inhales deeply, letting the air wash over her and through her body. Patrick can focus only on watching the slow rise and fall behind her ribcage. She offers him the slightest smile. “I am glad to have you here with me, bored as I am.”

He has no interest in hearing this. About the inevitable. He is a surgeon, and surgeons fix things, they don't just sit by bedsides waiting for the inevitable. But here he was, watching every breath she took like each one could be her last.

Natural part of life, she says. He had spent years cutting open bodies, peeling back skin to expose the mechanics beneath. He knew death intimately. But it wasn't fair to assume she didn't know it just the same. That her philosophy held no water. Maybe the truth of it wasn’t the issue. After all, in a better frame of mind, he would agree. It was only the fact that it was so suddenly hard for him to accept when it came to her.

He doesn't want to hear philosophy about death. He wants her alive. He wants the years ahead they had planned, not this slow descent into silence.

Restless, he busies himself with checking her vitals again, refusing to meet the eyes that bore holes into him. “You are quiet now,” she observes.

“I have nothing to say.” His fingers press to the pulse point at the base of her throat. He counts silently in his head.

“Well… speak to me, why don’t you? Your voice always soothes me.”

Patrick exhales sharply through his nose.

His lips part. He wants to tell her about the new medical journal he’d ordered last week she would love to skim through, about how they were going to redecorate the library together in spring. He wants to complain about that insufferable maid who keeps bringing his tea too strong.

But he cannot. He opens his mouth, but nothing follows.

Y/N sees the war within him and frowns. “My request for the funeral, then, does it upset you?”

Her wish for what would become of her deceased body, it wasn't deeply unexpected of her. But with the swirling emotions within Patrick at the moment, the familiar entombing would've been a small comfort much preferred.

He wants to argue, to beg her not to speak of it at all, but he knows better than that. Y/N had always been forthright about these things. He closes his eyes briefly. “...I suppose not,” he finally murmurs hoarsely after a long pause. “If that is what you wish.”

She already knows his true feelings. She addresses them directly, metaphorically skewering this elephant in the room he took his sweet time dancing around. “You would rather me caged in a box in the ground until the end of days.”

The facade breaks instantly. “I want to remember you where I can see you.”

If Patrick had the say, he would have her in a coffin, sealed away neatly, where he could visit whenever the grief overwhelmed him. Where he could bring fresh flowers every Sunday like a proper mourning husband. Though saying that aloud felt morbid, it was the truth of the matter.

Y/N considers him. “I’m charmed,” she says finally, “that you are so particular about where my corpse lie after it’s gone cold.”

“It is not about the corpse, Y/N,” he grits. “It's about having a place to go when— when you are gone. Somewhere tangible that holds your body still. A grave with flowers and your name etched into stone would certainly bring about more comfort than an empty patch of earth where nothing marks your existence.”

“The life sprouting where I rest would surely tell you more about my existence than some cold rock with my name on it," she replies automatically.

Life. She wanted a tree to sprout from her decomposing body. Something living and growing where she once laid, before being reclaimed by earth herself. It was poetic and beautiful in the way Y/N always saw things. But he didn't want poetry or symbolism. He just wanted somewhere to visit where he could fool himself she hadn’t truly left him entirely.

He exhales sharply through his nose, teeth clamping down on his tongue. “…A tree is fine.”

She grasps for his hand again, which he takes eagerly, as though searching to feel the warmth of life still within her. “You cannot blame me for wanting control over my ending, can you?”

His thumb traces over her knuckles, slow and reverent. “Of course not,” he mutters. “You've always been in control of everything else— your household, your opinions... Why should death be any different?” The irony isn’t lost on him. She being the one staring death in the eye at the foot of her bed, yet so entirely composed, while he sits there unraveling like a poor stitch.

Patrick lifts her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to each finger, one by one, before resting his forehead against the back of it. He doesn't speak. There is nothing left to say that hasn't already been argued or decided.

She watches his display with quiet unhappiness. “I will not die tomorrow, Patrick, nor the next day, so do not grieve me as though I am not here and alive with you now. Do not mourn me yet.”

But the grief had long taken root. “Then what should I do?” He raises his head, his expression bordering on fury. “Laugh with you? Read to you? Pretend this isn't happening?” His eyes are glassy, furious at himself for being so weak when she needed strength from him most. After all, she was likely far more fearful than she was letting on, rather just pulling herself in the opposite direction emotionally for the sake of balancing out the both of them.

He scoffs. A bitter, humorless sound. “Yes, I suppose is the answer. Because the alternative is sitting here like a fool waiting for you to stop breathing. To watch you waste away while I— I do nothing. All my time as a surgeon means nothing because the one person I cannot fix is you. Every other patient I’ve had was a stranger. A body on a table. But you… you are mine. As I am yours. And I can't— God, I can't even fucking save you.”

“You are not meant to save me, Patrick.”

That was of course the most painful truth of all. That medicine had limits, and his wife’s heart was beyond them. But the helplessness was nearly unbearable.

When he speaks again, his voice is small, lost. “...Then what am I supposed to do?” His ever-steady hands tremble violently where they clutch hers. “I can't go back to before,” he chokes out. “I was nothing before you. A hollow shell of a man who didn’t feel anything. Not love, not grief… nothing. And now you're leaving me and I'll be just that again.” The terror in his voice is raw and unguarded for the first time since her diagnosis.

Y/N’s eyes are suddenly filled with conviction. “You will never lose me, Patrick. We have changed each other too irreversibly. You, a part of me. I, a part of you.”

His breath steadies slightly as she holds his gaze. He commits to memory the exact shade of her eyes, the flecks of color near her pupils. He’s not one for grand philosophies, preferring the rationality of the present. But he’s so tired of the pain, of the ache in his heart, he’d agree to any philosophical conclusion if it meant a balm to his wounded soul.

He nods slowly, hanging on her every word. “…Yes.”

“Do you understand? There is nowhere you can go where I will not follow you. I have changed you, yes, and that change will remain within you until you join me. It is not something death will undo.”

Patrick's lip quivers like a child’s. He wants to believe her so badly, and it terrifies him how much he clings to those words like a lifeline. “Yes,” he whispers again, stiff and broken before pressing his forehead against hers, eyes shut tight as if that could keep this moment from ending.

She does the same, sitting for a moment in the presence of him, their breaths mingling. Her frail hand comes to rest on his cheek. “You have loved me fiercely, and you will grieve me fiercely. The ache will say you’ve loved me well, a love which has no longer a place to rest. But the world will not stop to let you mourn.” She pulls back enough to capture his eyes again, studying him. “You allowed me to open this heart of yours,” She trails her hand down to his breast, flattening her palm over his rapidly beating heart, “now do not let fear seal it shut once I am gone. Do not let my absence turn your heart back into stone. There will be love and joy and beauty after me, Patrick. Find it, and you will find me again.”

Patrick’s throat tightens at her words, devastating to him as they were lovely.

He had spent his life analyzing and dissecting emotions like specimens under glass, never allowing them to truly touch him. But Y/N had cracked him open without even trying.

Tears spill over before he can stop them, silent and hot as they roll down his cheeks. “God,” is all he manages to say between shuddering breaths. Her fingertips brush away the tears with a tenderness that makes his heart ache.

She had taught him so much. And now here she was, teaching him how to grieve, and before the loss had even come.

He allows himself to float his head down into her lap, trembling hands coming to hold the waist buried in the cover of the blankets. In response, Y/N cards her fingers through his hair, the same way she had done when he first fell asleep in her arms some years ago. She hums softly, an old lullaby. From where, he does not know, but the comfort of the melody engulfs him.

Patrick clings to the sensation of it all, the weight of her hand, the warmth beneath his cheek, memorizing it before it would slip through his fingers like sand. And he suddenly sobs, shuddering cries wracking his entire body, the kind of pain that comes from deep within a man’s soul.

Still, she holds him as he releases weeks of repressed anguish.

Her eyes fall to the window, watching through the glass as the great cluster of leaves from the tree above ripple with the wind. The blossoms were budding, soon to bloom, vibrant and alive.

It’s only when he quiets again does she muse, “…Perhaps a marker, at the very least, would not be dreadful.”

The steel gate sits halfway down over the front door, low enough to make every man duck when he comes in, and the hallway behind it smells like wet concrete, stale piss, and the oily heat of bodies packed too close together.

Somebody has a boombox going near the back, bass rattling thinly beneath the shouting, while the men at the door take cash without writing anything down and wave people through with folded bills already damp in their palms.

The place used to be a boxing gym years ago, before the mirrors cracked and the owner stopped caring what happens after midnight, but on fight nights it turns into something uglier and better paid with bad light, dirty money, and men lining up to watch somebody bleed.

You’ve been working since the first envelope hit the table.

Your heels stick faintly to the floor every time you shift your weight, and your lipgloss has gone tacky from talking, smiling, drinking from somebody else’s cup, and letting men lean close enough to think they have a chance. Gold hoops brush your neck when you turn your head. Your dress rides high when you bend over the betting table to slide bills into stacks, flashing the bottom curve of your ass to anyone lucky enough to be standing behind you.

There are names you remember because they matter, names you remember because they owe money, and names you let men repeat three times because it makes them feel important.

A house girl does what the night needs, and tonight the night needs everything from you: pretty face at the door, sweet laugh by the bookies, sharp eye on the side bets, warm hand on a fighter’s arm when the room needs a show.

A man from Staten Island tries to catch your wrist near the wall and gets your smile instead, soft enough to shame him before the doorman notices. Another one kisses the air beside your cheek and tells you he’ll win enough tonight to take you out somewhere nice, and you tell him he has to win enough to pay back last week first, and he laughs because he thinks you’re flirting.

Stanley comes looking for you while you’re counting a payout with a cigarette tucked behind your ear and your gloss freshly touched in the cracked bathroom mirror. He slides into the narrow space beside the table, restless and pleased with himself, all cheap cologne, fight-night sweat, and a hungry grin he wears whenever his brother’s name has the room buzzing.

“There she is,” he says, close enough that his sleeve brushes your bare arm. “Thought you were hiding from me.”

“If I was avoiding you, Stanley, you’d know.”

He laughs at that, though his eyes drop to your mouth before he can help it. Stan always has a way of looking at you like he’s remembering something he wants you to remember too.

One sloppy stairwell kiss after a fight two months ago has turned into a private joke for him, a little claim he likes to pull out whenever you get too close to somebody else. You let him kiss you because he was riding high on money and cheap whiskey, because his mouth was there, because the night was loud and you were bored. He was decent at it, confident in that restless, hungry way of his; but Stan kisses like he is trying to talk his way into your panties with his tongue, like he is trying to win something, and you’ve never been interested in handing him a trophy.

“Big night,” he says, tapping two fingers near the money as if the table belongs to him. “My boy’s the reason half these bastards showed up.”

“Your boy?”

“My brother, then.” His grin sharpens at the correction. “Everybody wants to see if the Queens kid can put him down.”

“Can he?”

Stan makes a face like you spit in his drink. “Don’t say that near him. He’s already quiet enough.”

“He’s always quiet.”

“Yeah, well, he gets worse when pretty girls start asking questions.” Stan leans closer, his voice dropping into that teasing register he uses when he wants to remind you he once had his tongue in your mouth. “You walking him out tonight?”

“Depends what I’m asked to do.”

“I’m asking.”

“You don’t run shit.”

“No,” Stan says, “but I run him.”

It lands uglier than he means it to, or maybe exactly as ugly as he means it to.

Around you, the gym keeps moving: a bottle knocks against a table, somebody curses near the ropes, a girl with cherry-red nails laughs too loudly at a bookie’s joke. You look at Stan until he notices the way your smile has thinned, and he lifts both hands as if surrender has ever suited him.

“You know what I mean,” he says.

“I do,” you answer, gathering the bills and sliding them into the right envelope.

Stan watches your hands work, annoyed and amused at once, the way he usually gets when you refuse to give him the easy version of yourself.

Before he can turn the conversation back into flirting, the promoter calls your name from across the room and jerks his chin toward the rear hallway. You leave Stan standing there with his unfinished grin and make your way through the crowd, taking a drink from one man’s hand to pass to another, catching a whispered payout change near the wall, letting a regular from Newark kiss the back of your knuckles because he’s just lost fifty dollars and needs to feel charming.

The hallway behind the main room is hotter, narrow enough that your shoulder brushes old fight posters peeling from the cinderblock. The crowd noise dulls back there, turning thick and muffled behind the closed doors. Fighters warm up wherever they can find space: one shadowboxing near the mop sink, one sitting on a crate while his cousin rubs something sharp-smelling into his shoulders, one bent over with both hands on his knees while a girl tells him to breathe through his nose. The whole place smells like sweat, liniment, and damp towels.

Lion sits at the far end under the flickering fluorescent, elbows resting on his thighs, hands wrapped and hanging loose between his knees.

He isn’t built like the brutes who strut around the circuit pretending bulk makes them more dangerous. Lion is leaner than that, cut tight through the shoulders and stomach, compact muscle under bruised skin. He isn’t much taller than you when you wear heels, which makes the way he avoids your eyes even more interesting, because he cannot hide behind size or distance.

His robe hangs open down the front, loose over black shorts that sit low on his hips. There’s a bruise fading along one rib, yellow at the edge, ugly purple at the center. His hair’s already damp, though he hasn’t fought yet, and when he looks up at you, his mouth stays closed around whatever he is thinking.

You come close enough for your perfume to mix with the sharp scent of tape and sweat.

“Look at you,” you say, your heel nudging the inside of his sneaker as you stop in front of him. “Everybody’s out there acting like you’re already dead.”

His mouth moves like he might smile, but he doesn’t quite make it. “That bad?”

“Packed room. Mean crowd. Too much cash on the table.” You tilt your head, eyes dragging over the taped knuckles, the strong line of his forearm, the rise and fall of his chest under the loose robe. “So, yeah. Bad.”

Lion looks past you, maybe searching for Stan, maybe trying not to look at where your dress sits high on your thighs. “Stan said it’s good.”

“Stan says a lot.”

That gets the almost-smile again, faint and gone fast, and you like that about him more than you have any good reason to.

Most fighters give you too much before you even ask, hands on your waist, mouths at your ear, all greasy confidence men mistake for charm. Lion gives you almost nothing, which makes every little slip feel worth taking. A glance at your legs when you cross them. A swallow when your nails graze his wrist. The faintest flush when you stand close enough that your dress brushes his knee.

You crouch in front of him, low enough that a few men farther down the hall look over, and take one of his taped hands in yours as if you have been sent to check the wrap. Nobody has sent you. Stan has done a clean job for once, tight across the knuckles and neat around the thumb, but you smooth your fingers over the gauze anyway, slow enough to feel him tense. His hand is warm and heavy in yours, the bones hard beneath the tape, and the restraint in him makes something low in your stomach curl with amusement.

“You nervous?” you ask.

“No.”

“No?” Your thumb passes over his knuckles again, and his fingers twitch once before he gets them still. “You’re sitting like you swallowed a brick.”

His eyes flick toward the main room, then back to you. “Not about fighting.”

You smile before you can stop yourself, slow and glossy, and watch his gaze catch there again.

The poor thing has probably had girls kissing his cheeks after wins for months, has probably had tits pressed to his arm in photos and lipstick smeared on his jaw because promoters know how to make blood look like a party, but he still reacts to your mouth like he hasn’t figured out whether it's a threat or a prize.

Stan comes in before you can answer, already talking, already moving, already filling the room with buzzing manager’s energy. “There you are. Don’t distract him too much, huh? Need him mean, not stupid.”

“He was already looking stupid when I got here,” you say, not taking your eyes off Lion.

Lion looks down, but not fast enough to hide the heat rising in his face. Stan catches it too, because Stan catches everything when it involves something he thinks might be taken from him. His grin goes sharp at the edges as he looks between you, and the brotherly pride in him sours into something more personal.

“You hear that, champ?” Stan says, stepping beside him and gripping the back of his neck. “She’s got jokes tonight.”

Lion doesn’t answer. His eyes are on your hand, still holding his, and you let the silence stretch until Stan’s fingers tighten at his brother’s nape.

The robe has slipped farther open over Lion’s torso, sweat gathering already along his collarbone from the heat of the hall. The v of his hips disappears beneath the waistband of his shorts, and you remember, not for the first time, the glossy mark you left there weeks ago with half the room shouting over the camera flash. That picture has followed him from gym to gym, copied badly and pinned up wherever men like to laugh at things they secretly want.

You treat it like a joke because it was one, mostly. Lion has never quite learned how to laugh about it.

A shout comes from the main room, calling for the next walkout, and Stan slaps Lion’s shoulder hard enough to make the robe shift.

“Up,” he says. “Time to earn.”

Lion stands, and you rise with him, close enough that he has to look at you properly. You reach for the front of his robe and smooth it open instead of closed, fingers passing over his chest, down the center of him, lingering at his stomach just long enough for his muscles to pull tight beneath your nails.

Stan stops mid-sentence.

You give Lion the smile men have been spending money for all night and lower your voice until it belongs to him more than the hallway. “Win tonight and I might give you a real kiss.”

The promise sinks into him visibly, his eyes dropping to your gloss with no pretense left. A real kiss, not the cheeky little pecks girls leave on fighters for the camera, not the public mess of gloss and cheers and dirty jokes, not your mouth low on him while a room full of men howls for the picture. Lion understands the difference, and that makes him look flushed and caught, as if you have reached into his shorts instead of only touching his chest.

Stan laughs, though it comes out tight. “Come on, don’t put that in his head.”

“I’m putting it wherever he keeps winning from,” you say.

Lion’s voice comes low, roughened by the noise around you. “Might?”

“Depends how pretty you look after.” Your fingers pat his stomach once before you step back, and his abdomen jumps under the touch.

Stan mutters something about the Queens fighter’s left hand, about keeping distance, about not letting the crowd rattle him, but Lion keeps looking at you like the rest of the room has gone soft around the edges. You turn away just enough to pull your cigarette from behind your ear and tuck it into the front of Stan’s jacket for safekeeping, a petty little move that makes his brows lift.

“Don’t lose that,” you tell him.

Stan smiles because he thinks the gesture means he still has a piece of your attention.

The walkout swallows all three of you in smoke and noise. Stan goes first, arms up, selling the crowd on money he hasn’t counted yet, while you take Lion’s arm and step out beside him.

Your hip brushes his thigh with every pace, your hand curling around his forearm while your bracelets are cold against his skin.

The room roars as soon as they see him, men shouting his name, girls whistling, somebody near the ropes yelling that he wants another dirty picture if Lion makes it out standing. You feel him tighten beside you, the old memory of your gloss low on his hip moving through him even though he keeps his face forward.

“Don’t look so scared,” you murmur, smiling for the crowd. “They’ll think I bite.”

His answer comes quiet, almost swallowed by the noise. “Do you?”

The question surprises a laugh out of you, low and pleased, and Stan, walking ahead with his arms thrown up for the crowd, misses it completely. You lean closer, your gloss nearly brushing Lion’s shoulder. “Win and find out.”

By the ropes, you let go of his arm slowly, your nails dragging once over the tape at his wrist before he climbs in.

The Queens fighter is already bouncing on the balls of his feet, throwing kisses toward the girls and grinning around his mouthguard, broad with show and loud with himself.

You give him a smile because smiles are free until they start costing men money. Lion notices, his jaw shifting, and you almost laugh.

Stan gets in his ear at once, talking strategy, hands moving too fast as he points across the ring. Lion listens, or pretends to. His gaze keeps finding you near the front, where you stand with the other girls under the dirty light, arms crossed beneath your chest, dress riding up your thighs as you lean back against the table edge.

The bell cracks through the room, and the fight lurches into motion.

The Queens boy comes in ugly, heavy hands and too much grin, throwing the first shot hard enough to snap Lion’s head to the side. The crowd loves it, naturally. They always love the first blood best, especially from a man they have paid to believe cannot be broken.

Lion resets his feet and wipes his mouth with the back of his taped hand, his eyes low, his shoulders tight, waiting for the other man to get careless. He takes another hit to the ribs, bends with it, and somewhere near you a gambler groans because he’s bet wrong and knows it already.

You watch Lion’s mouth more than his hands.

Blood gathers there after the third exchange, bright at the corner, smearing when his tongue passes over it. Sweat runs down his chest and catches in the shallow dip of his stomach. His shorts cling lower with every clinch, waistband dark with damp. When the other man drives him back near your side of the ring, Lion’s eyes cut briefly toward you through the ropes.

You lift your brows, touch two fingers to your gloss, and smile.

He slips inside the next swing and drives a short punch into the Queens boy’s ribs, compact and mean, not pretty enough for the posters but perfect for making a man fold. Another lands at the jaw. The sound of it cracks through the front row, and the girls beside you shriek with delight while men throw themselves forward against the ropes. Stan is screaming from the corner, face red, voice breaking, already spending the win in his head.

The fight turns up after that, all clinch and sweat and bare knuckles dragging along skin. Lion takes one more hit that splits his lip properly, and the blood makes him look less sweet, less unsure.

Queens goes down hard enough to make the mat jump.

Noise bursts through the gym, bodies surging, cash waving overhead, men cursing and laughing as if they have survived the fight themselves.

Stan is in the ring before the other fighter finishes rolling onto his side, grabbing Lion by the wrist and hauling his arm up while the promoter shoves in close and the house girls rush the edge.

Lion stands there with his chest heaving, lip split, hair damp against his forehead, tape reddened over one hand, eyes already searching past Stan, past the men, past the girls calling his name.

You stay where you are near the front, one hip against the betting table, gloss shining under the lights.

A drunk regular shouts for you to give him another one, and somebody else picks it up, laughing about the old photo, asking if Lion has earned a matching mark. You let them make their noise, let them think they know which part of you is performance and which part is appetite.

Lion’s gaze finds yours across the crush, and the room seems to press in harder around him once he realizes you aren’t coming over yet.

You lift your hand, kiss your fingertips, and send it toward him with all the cheap sweetness the crowd deserves.

The disappointment moves over his face before he can hide it, and you turn back to the money before it makes you too pleased with yourself.

Lion’s dragged from one body to the next with blood still drying at his mouth, lipstick smeared along his cheek where another girl kissed him, somebody’s hand clapped too hard against the bruise near his ribs. Stan keeps him close at first, one arm hooked around his neck, dragging him toward men with fat envelopes and wet smiles, selling the win all over again as if Lion’s split lip is something he personally purchased.

Across the room, you stay busy in every way that makes him look.

You bend over the betting table with both palms flat on either side of a cash stack while the promoter leans in to argue numbers, and Lion’s eyes cut to the way your dress rides higher on your thighs, before he looks away like he’s been caught doing something worse than fighting illegal bare-knuckle in a locked gym after midnight.

You let one of the girls tug you by the chin near the bar, her thumb smearing away the corner of your gloss before she fixes it with a little tube she pulls from the top of her stocking, both of you laughing while she tells you to stop biting your lips unless you plan to put them to use. A gambler tries to slip an arm around your waist when you pass him his payout, and you peel his hand off with a smile so sweet it makes his friends laugh at him. Every few minutes, you turn just enough to find Lion watching, and every time you do, you give him nothing but the shine of your mouth and the back of your shoulder as you move on.

Somebody tries to shove a drink into his palm, and he takes it without drinking, eyes still searching over the rim of the cup until he finds you near the rear hallway, counting bills against the wall with your cigarette finally lit between two fingers.

You look up just as he starts toward you.

And, naturally, you turn away.

By the time he slips past the main crush and reaches the hall, you’re gone through the side door where the noise thins into muffled bass, dirty laughter, and the buzz of the old fluorescent lights.

Lion follows because the promise has been sitting in his mouth since before the fight, hotter than blood, worse than thirst. He has your words in his head, the low drawl of them, the way your nails had touched his stomach while Stan stood there pretending not to care. Win tonight and I might give you a real kiss. He’s won, and now the whole rotten building feels too small around the wanting you left in him.

The back hallway is narrow, lined with dented lockers and old posters curling at the corners, the air damp from the showers and thick with the smell of bleach failing to cover sweat and cum. You’re halfway down it, alone now, leaning against the cinderblock with one ankle crossed over the other, cigarette between your fingers and a money envelope tucked beneath your arm.

You lift your eyes when his shadow reaches you, and your smile comes slow.

“You lose something, Kaminski?”

His chest is still rising too hard from the fight, though the fight has been over long enough for him to know better. Blood has dried at the split in his lip. His robe is gone, his shorts riding low. He’s looking at you as if none of that room has touched him as deeply as your promise did.

He shifts his weight, glances once toward the main room as if checking whether Stan has followed, then looks back at you with the helpless honesty that keeps making you meaner than you plan to be.

“You said if I won.”

The words come out quiet, almost rough from being held too long, and something hot and amused unfurls in your stomach. Most men would have dressed it up, made a joke of it, crowded you against the wall with a grin and tried to collect before you could change your mind.

You take one last drag of your cigarette, blow the smoke aside, and let the silence rub against him until his jaw works.

“I said I might,” you murmur, stubbing the cigarette out on the rusted edge of a wall ashtray.

His face drops just enough to make you laugh under your breath.

Poor thing. Split open, blood-warm, cocky only with his fists, standing there with half the room’s lipstick on him and still looking like he could be ruined by being told no.

You tuck the cash envelope behind you on top of a busted radiator, then step closer, close enough for his eyes to dip to your mouth again.

“Don’t look like that,” you say. “You’ll make me feel cheap.”

Lion starts to answer, but you catch his jaw before he can, fingers pressing lightly against the bruise blooming near his cheek. He smells like sweat, copper, smoke, and cheap motel soap gone thin from the match.

You pull him in, and when your mouth touches his, the first thing he does is freeze.

It lasts only long enough for you to feel it. Then he kisses you back with a rough little sound caught in his throat, one hand hovering near your waist before landing there carefully.

You smile against his mouth because his caution is almost cute in a place like this, with blood drying on his chin and money changing hands twenty feet away. His lips are warm, split, clumsy at first, then greedy when you lick into his mouth and taste the metallic edge of the fight still sitting there.

He follows your lead too fast, opening when you press him for it, breathing harder when your tongue drags over his, his fingers tightening at your waist until the sequins of your dress bite into your skin.

Somebody laughs in the main room as a door slams near the showers, and Lion doesn’t move away, not even when you push him back against the cinderblock and step between his feet, your body pressing close enough for him to feel the heat of your tits through the thin front of your dress. He kisses like he’s trying to learn and spend at the same time, mouth chasing yours whenever you pull back to breathe, lips catching at your gloss, smearing it across his own mouth until the red of his blood and the shine of you make a filthy mess of him.

“You wanted that bad, huh?” you whisper against his lips.

His answer is a breath, barely shaped. “Yeah.”

The honesty is so quick that it makes you laugh, and the sound does something to him. His hand slides lower on your waist, and you let him feel the curve of your ass beneath his palm before you kiss him harder. His hips shift without meaning to, and you feel it then: the thick, heavy press of him through his shorts, already rock-hard and leaking from a kiss he had waited all night to collect, and your hand moves before he can find the nerve to be embarrassed.

Lion jerks when your palm settles over him.

The sound he makes goes straight through you, strangled and low, his head tipping back against the wall while your hand cups the throbbing length through the damp fabric. He’s not loud, not yet at least, but every piece of him gives him away: the tight pull of his stomach, the way his fingers dig into your hip, the flush climbing his neck, the shape filling your palm in a way that makes your brows lift before you can stop them.

You knew he was lean, quiet, all compact muscle and restraint, not one of those big bruisers who used their size to crowd a room; you had not expected this fat, heavy dick against your hand, this thick, veiny monster that makes the shyness in him feel almost ridiculous.

“Lion,” you breathe, dragging your palm over him slowly, “you been walking around with this and acting scared of my mouth?”

His eyes squeeze shut, and the blush that tears over his face is worth every dollar in the room.

Your hand moves again, firmer, rubbing the length of him through his shorts while your mouth drags along his jaw, over some other girl’s lipstick, down to the corner of his bruised mouth. He tries to kiss you and groan at the same time, managing neither gracefully. His hips twitch into your palm once, then he catches himself, mortified by how quickly you have him slipping. That’s when he turns his face away from yours.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” he says, breathless, voice scraped thin.

Your hand stills, though you keep it right where it is, cupping his balls and stroking the thick length with enough pressure to make his stomach jump. “Why?”

Lion looks down the hallway, away from your eyes, away from your mouth, away from the hand still holding him like you have every right. He swallows, shoulders tight, and the answer comes out low enough that the humming light almost eats it.

“I’m a little short on cash.”

For a few beats, the hallway loses all its humor.

You stare at him, hand slipping away from the front of his shorts as your mouth curls, not into a smile this time. He feels the absence immediately. You watch it register through his whole body, the panic, the regret, the realization that whatever he thought he was saying has landed wrong.

“I’m not a hooker, Lion.”

His face burns red so fast it would be funny if he didn’t look genuinely sick over it. “No, I didn’t—” he starts, then stops because he has no idea how to fix it without making it worse. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, too quick, his hands lifting from your waist like he has lost permission to touch you. “Stan said—people say things, and with the girls, and the pictures, and I thought maybe—” His mouth tightens around the rest of it.

There it is, the ugly little rot under the glitter, the room’s old assumption crawling into his head because everything around him comes with a price. The drinks, the kisses, the photos, the pretty girls hanging off fighters’ arms while men shove money across tables.

He’s spent too long being sold by his brother to understand when something is being given just because you feel like giving it.

You step back in before he can apologize himself into the floor.

Your hand grabs the front of his shorts this time, not gentle, bunching the fabric enough to pull him off the wall, and the kiss you give him is meaner than the first.

He gasps into it, surprised, then melts so fast it nearly annoys you. Your tongue pushes into his mouth, swallowing whatever apology he still has left, and he kisses back with a desperation that makes the whole cash misunderstanding feel almost useful. His hands return to your waist after a hesitant second, gripping harder when you don’t slap them away.

“You insult all the girls who kiss you,” you murmur, your mouth brushing his, “or am I special?”

“No,” he breathes, shaking his head, trying to follow your lips. “No, I’m just—”

“Stupid?”

His laugh breaks out of him like a cough, embarrassed and rough. “Yeah.”

“At least you know.”

You palm him again before he can recover, and this time the pressure is deliberate enough to make his knees soften. He bites down on a groan as your fingers stroke him through the fabric, slow at first, then crueler because the hallway is empty and he’s too pretty like this, flushed and bloodied and trying not to rut his fat dick against your palm.

His forehead tips near yours. His breath comes wet against your gloss. He keeps trying to kiss you, messy and needy, his mouth more certain now that he has stopped pretending he is fine.

When you pull back, his eyes look ruined.

You let your hand drag once more along him, up his cock trapped beneath his shorts, feeling the way his whole body tightens toward it, and then you step away with a smile that makes him blink like you’ve hit him.

“You can pay for the rest.”

Lion stands there against the wall with your gloss smeared on his mouth and his cock hard enough to show through his shorts, breathing like the fight has started all over again.

His lips part around your name, but you’re already reaching back for the cash envelope, already smoothing your dress down your thighs, already turning toward the main room where the noise waits for you like a job.

You glance back once, because you’re not merciful enough to leave without seeing what you did to him.

“Don’t spend it all in one place, Kaminski.”

He doesn’t move until you’re gone.

The motel room smells like old carpet, damp towels, and the Chinese takeout Stan left half-open on the dresser before disappearing to chase the rest of the money.

Lion gets back alone because Stan’s still out with the promoter, probably drinking on somebody else’s dime, probably telling anyone who will listen that his brother is the future of every dirty fight night in New York.

The room is paid for with cash tucked inside a sock in Stan’s duffel, two beds with thin covers, one buzzing lamp, one television with bad reception, and a bathroom so small Lion has to stand close to the sink to shut the door.

He turns the shower on too hot. Steam fills the little room fast, fogging the mirror until his reflection blurs into bruises, split lip, smeared gloss, and eyes that still look back at him with your mouth in them. He strips out of his shorts with clumsy hands, hissing when the waistband drags against tender skin, and the heavy, aching cock between his thighs springs free with a weight that makes his breath catch all over again.

He had told himself the walk back would settle him. The cold air outside, the stairwell, the ride, the empty motel room, anything.

Nothing helps.

Your hand is still there in his head, rubbing his cock through his shorts in that dirty hallway while the room outside counted money off his blood. Your voice keeps sliding under his skin.

He braces one hand against the shower wall, head bowed beneath the spray, and wraps the other around his thick shaft with a groan he tries to swallow before the motel walls can take it.

The first stroke nearly buckles him. He’s still too worked up from the fight, from you, from being embarrassed and kissed harder for it. Precum leaks steadily from the fat head as he pumps.

Water runs over his shoulders, down his stomach, over the bruises already blooming along his ribs, and his fist moves with none of the patience he tried to have in the hallway.

He thinks about your gloss on his mouth, your fingers stroking him through his shorts, the way you had looked when you realized how hard he was. He thinks about the old photograph, your mouth low on his stomach, the whole room laughing while he stood there with heat flooding his face and your mark drying above his waistband. He thinks about you saying he could pay for the rest, and his hips jerk into his fist so hard his knuckles knock against the tile.

A rough sound slips out of him, lost under the shower.

He tries to slow down, but it doesn’t last. His palm drags over the swollen head, slick with water, precum, and need, and he bites his lip before remembering the split there, pain sparking bright enough to make him groan again. The pain folds into the rest of it too easily. Everything does tonight.

Your teasing. The win. The cash. The shame. The kiss. The way you left him standing there, aching and stupid, as if he was just another thing you could wind up and walk away from.

His forehead presses to the wet tile.

In his head, you don’t walk away.

In his head, your knees touch the dirty hallway floor, your gloss still perfect, your eyes lifted like you know exactly what he’s been hiding in those shorts. In his head, your hand is not enough, your hot, wet mouth is worse, and you’re laughing softly at every broken little sound he makes while you slobber and bob on his cock because Lion Kaminski, who lets men split him open for money, can barely survive being wanted by you.

The thought snaps through him filthy and fast.

His hips snap forward, fist flying, water sluicing over his bruised abdomen and down to where his heavy balls draw up tight. He comes with his teeth clenched and one arm braced hard against the wall, shooting thick ropes of cum over his hand and onto the tile under the hot spray, his breath breaking around a low, guttural groan he cannot fully swallow. For a few seconds, he stays there with water beating down his back, chest heaving, shame and relief and want all tangled together until none of it feels clean.

The shower keeps running long after he should turn it off.

When he finally opens his eyes, the steam has wiped the mirror blank, and your gloss is still faintly smeared at the corner of his mouth.

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