#aaaaaaaaaaaaah

There was blood on the floor.

Fresh, warm, trailing in soft, inconsistent drops across the linoleum of the kitchen—if it could still be called a kitchen. You hadn’t moved yet. Just stared at the splatter of red against the pale floor. It was quiet. The kind of quiet that wrapped around you like winter. Not cold, just still.

Dex was sitting in the armchair across the room. Or slumped, rather.

His back hit the fabric like he couldn’t hold himself up anymore. One leg kicked out, the other bent weirdly beneath him. Jacket discarded somewhere in the hallway. Shirt torn halfway down his chest, soaked in blood that wasn’t all his—but enough of it was. His knuckles were scraped raw. Lips split. Left cheek bruised purple.

He was breathing through his mouth, jaw slack with exhaustion, but not a single noise passed between you.

You didn’t say anything.

You never did, right away.

Instead, you stepped forward. Quiet steps. Bare feet. The hardwood creaked under your weight.

Dex didn’t lift his head. Not until you were kneeling in front of him, between his legs, your hands already reaching for the hem of his ruined shirt. The cotton was stiff with dried blood. Your fingers moved slowly. Carefully.

Still, he flinched.

Your hands stilled.

Dex finally looked at you.

He looked wrecked. Not just physically—though, God, he was. His skin was torn open in places. His chest bore a fresh gash beneath his collarbone. His shoulder was dislocated, again. But his eyes…

They looked like he hadn’t come back yet.

Like maybe some part of him was still in that alleyway, surrounded by men who never saw the morning. Like maybe some part of him thought you wouldn’t be here this time.

He opened his mouth.

But you shook your head.

Don’t.

You didn’t need him to explain it. Didn’t need to know the names or the reasons or the excuses. You already knew the truth:

He was a killer.

And you were always going to love him anyway.

Your hands returned to his shirt. Tore it the rest of the way. He didn’t stop you. Just sat there, breathing shallow, body trembling from cold and blood loss and whatever haunted look still lingered behind his eyes.

You grabbed the first aid kit from the crate beside the chair—he kept it stocked now, without you asking. You’d stitched him up enough times to make it routine.

Tonight? You didn’t ask where it hurt. You didn’t need to.

Your fingers moved with the precision of someone who’d done this a hundred times. Saline. Alcohol. Gauze. Thread.

He winced when the antiseptic hit the open skin, but didn’t pull away. Not even when your fingers brushed bone. Not even when you had to dig a splinter of something from his ribs.

Still no words.

He was the first to break the silence.

“I shouldn’t—” His voice cracked. Then broke entirely. “I shouldn’t come home like this.”

You kept working. Threaded the needle. Bit the inside of your cheek so you wouldn’t flinch at the word home.

Then you looked at him.

Still kneeling. Still steady. And finally, finally—you spoke.

“You came back.”

His eyes flicked up to yours.

You shrugged. “That’s all that matters.”

Dex blinked. His jaw clenched hard, like he wanted to argue. Like he needed to. But your fingers brushed over his knee—barely there—and he stilled again. Your touch shut him up more effectively than anything else could.

“I didn’t fix you,” you added quietly, reaching for the thread. “I won’t. You’re not broken.”

Dex let out a breath. It sounded like the start of a sob, but he caught it. Swallowed it. His eyes burned red now, wet around the edges.

“I—I’m not good.”

You met his gaze. “I know.”

“I killed them.”

“I know.”

“I wanted to.”

You nodded once. Calm. Certain.

“I know,” you whispered. “I still wait for you.”

Dex’s throat bobbed. Like the weight of your words lodged there—too big to swallow, too painful to spit out.

You pressed the needle to his skin.

He didn’t flinch.

He let you stitch him up in silence. Let your fingers work over his wounds without protest. Your knuckles were stained with blood before you finished, but your hands never trembled.

When you tied off the last stitch, you sat back on your heels. Looked up at him.

His eyes hadn’t left you once.

And when you finally reached up—cupped the side of his face, thumb brushing the blood from his cheekbone—he leaned into it like a man starved. Like he still didn’t understand how someone like you could.

You didn’t kiss him.

Not yet.

You just kept your hand there. Kept your eyes steady. Kept your weight in front of him like an anchor.

His hand lifted—slow, unsure, like he wasn’t sure it still belonged to him. The knuckles were split wide open, raw from something he didn’t name. But they curled around your wrist anyway, gentle despite the tremble in his grip.

He didn’t pull your hand away.

He just held it.

You could feel the twitch in his fingers, like he was trying to remember what softness felt like. Like the skin-on-skin was grounding him, keeping him tethered to something that wasn’t a knife or a nightmare or the image of another body slumping to the pavement.

Your thumb moved in a slow circle over the swell of his cheekbone, still mottled with the bruise. He wasn’t looking at you anymore—not directly. His gaze kept dropping to your mouth, then back to your throat, then back to your eyes like it hurt to linger too long.

Like he thought he’d ruin you just by looking.

“I didn’t mean to…” His voice cracked again, quieter now, as if shame had gripped the back of his tongue. “It wasn’t supposed to go that way.”

You didn’t ask what that meant. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

You leaned in slightly, forehead brushing against his. “I know.”

It was the only answer you had.

The only one he needed.

A pause stretched long and thin between you, made only of breath and blood and the ticking of the broken wall clock that never quite struck the right hour anymore.

And then Dex moved—just enough to rest his forehead fully against yours. His breathing was ragged, hitching in that sharp, uneven way that meant he was either about to pass out… or cry.

Maybe both.

“I can’t come home like this forever,” he whispered.

Your nose brushed his. “Then come home however you can.”

His mouth opened, but the words didn’t follow. Just silence, stretching out again, pulled taut like wire. You stayed there, your hand on his face, the space between your bodies pulsing with something warm and heavy and old.

He pulled your hand from his cheek—but only to hold it between both of his. His palms were rough, shaking, one finger still smeared with dried blood that had yet to flake off. He stared at your hand like it was something sacred. Like it was a memory he wasn’t allowed to keep.

You swallowed.

“I’m not asking you to be good,” you said, voice barely above a breath. “I’m asking you to stay.”

His lips parted. No sound came out.

“I’m asking you,” you said again, slower this time, “to choose me when it gets ugly. Especially when it gets ugly.”

Dex’s eyes shut. His head dropped slightly, and your hands rose with it, still enclosed in his grip. The tremble in him worsened—until you realized it wasn’t just tremble.

It was something even more raw.

He cried.

No sobs. No gasps. Just the quiet, broken kind of crying that slipped out in salt and breath and the way his fingers gripped yours like they were the only things keeping him from dissolving entirely.

You didn’t say anything.

You leaned forward and pressed your forehead to his again.

And finally—finally—you kissed him.

It wasn’t the kind of kiss that asked for forgiveness.

It didn’t ask for anything.

It gave.

It offered.

And Dex—Dex took it like a man dying of thirst. Like it scared him. Like he didn’t know how to hold something without breaking it, but he tried anyway.

He kissed you like someone who didn’t think he deserved to be touched.

And you let him.

You let him—until his bloodied hands fell away from yours and found your waist instead. Until your knees came up beside his thighs and you were half in his lap and his breath caught like it hurt to feel your weight again.

Your fingers curled into his hair.

His hands curled into your shirt.

And for one small, breakable moment, he didn’t look like a man drowning in guilt or rage or regret.

He looked like a man here.

With you.

And when you finally broke the kiss, his breath still warm against your mouth, you spoke again.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

His eyes opened—red-rimmed and ruined and full of something that almost looked like hope.

And this time, he kissed you.

No apologies.

No pretense.

Just a promise made of salt and blood and the pieces of him that he hadn’t trusted to anyone else.

And when you pulled away, your hands on his face, you didn’t look away from him once.

“I’m here when you wake up,” you said quietly. “Every time.”

Dex’s jaw clenched. His eyes fluttered shut. His forehead pressed back into yours like he was memorizing the shape of it.

And then, he whispered.

“Then I’ll come home every time I can.”

Even if he limped through the door.

Even if his hands were bloodied.

Even if he didn’t know how to forgive himself.

He’d still come back.

And you’d still be there.

Not because he deserved it.

Not because you were trying to save him.

But because this was real. This was what you built together. Stitch by stitch. Scar by scar.

And some things didn’t need fixing.

They just needed staying.

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