​What had he done to deserve this?

​Before the academy, before the nightmare of Raccoon City—hell, even after the world fell apart a dozen times over—what had he done to earn a grace like you? In a world choked by the rot of Umbrella and the shadows of corrupt men, Leon Kennedy had somehow stumbled into your life. He didn't think he deserved you. In his own mind, he was still just a rookie cop who’d had to grow up in a single, blood-soaked night. And you? You were a legend, a pillar of S.T.A.R.S. who had survived the Arklay Mountains only to spend your fifties tethered to Chris Redfield’s relentless, exhausting crusade to fix a broken world.

​Leon never expected a forever. It was never supposed to be more than a lingering, sideways glance in a dimly lit bar while Chris talked shop. It wasn't supposed to end in a quiet ceremony, or the secret thrill he felt every time someone called you Mr. Kennedy just to see the smirk play on your aging, handsome face.

​And yet, as the infection tore through his nervous system, his mind didn't go to the mission. It went to you. Your voice was the only thing cutting through the white noise of the virus; your smile was the only image that wouldn't dissolve into the blur. You were his anchor. Even as his muscles seized and his mind screamed for the mercy of unconsciousness, the thought of coming home to you kept his heart beating.

​But the reality was a cold, hard floor. His body was a cage of fire and ice, twitching violently as the antidote warred with the parasite.

​“Can't believe you're heading out again,” you murmured in the golden light of the memory. The bedsheets were tangled around your legs, and the scent of cedar and old coffee hung in the air. “I finally get a week off, and they decide they can't breathe without you.”

​Leon huffed a dry laugh, his lips pressing firmly against your weathered knuckles as he lay draped across you. “Gonna miss me, old man?” he whispered against your skin. He knew the answer, but he needed the vibration of your voice to steady him.

​You leaned back against the headboard, running a hand through his messy brown hair. Leon let out a long, shaky breath, melting into the heat of your chest. “Of course,” you said softly, your thumb tracing the line of his jaw. “I always do. Just….come back in one piece this time. I'm too old to be a widower, Leon.”

​Leon closed his eyes, tilting his head up until his lips met yours in a promise he intended to keep.

​Then, the world shattered.

​His back arched off the freezing ground, a choked gasp tearing from his throat as he shouted your name into the empty air. His eyes snapped open, stinging and bloodshot. There was no warm bed. No hand in his hair. The taste of you was replaced by the copper tang of blood and a sterile chemical stench.

​His left hand flew to his chest, searching for the silver band he’d worn for years. His finger felt unnervingly light. The ring was gone—likely stripped away during the chaos or lost in the dirt. The silence of the room was deafening, a requiem for a man who had everything to lose and was currently losing it all.

Leon’s lungs burned, each breath a jagged shard of glass as the last of the infection was purged from his veins. The silence that followed the chaos was deafening—the monster was dead, Victor Gideon was a memory, and Grace was finally safe.

​None of that mattered.

​His vision was a blurred mess of gray and red, but his hand was already moving, clawing at the dirt and the debris. His fingers felt wrong. They felt lighter, colder, stripped of the one thing that grounded him to his humanity.

​"No….no, no, no," he rasped, his voice a broken shell of its former self. He dragged his body across the floor, his knees scraping against the jagged concrete. "Not this. Not now."

​His mind was a whirlwind of panic. He had survived Raccoon City, the Plagas, and the fall of governments, but the thought of losing that simple silver band felt like the final, killing blow. It was the only piece of you he had brought into this hellhole. It was the promise of a quiet house, the scent of cedar, and your hand in his hair when the nightmares got too loud.

​"I’m coming back," he hissed through gritted teeth, his fingers digging into a pile of ash and spent shell casings. "I promised. I told you….I told you I'd come back."

​He was rambling now, a feverish mumble that only he could hear. To any observer, he looked like a broken man searching for a scrap of refuse, but to Leon, he was searching for his soul. He didn't care that his gear was shredded or that his ribs felt like they were held together by the thinnest of threads.

​"Can't lose it. Please, just….not this."

​He pushed aside a heavy piece of fallen rebar, his breath hitching. There, half-buried in the soot and the dark, damp earth of the crater, was a glint of silver. It was dull, coated in a layer of grime, but it caught the flickering emergency light of the facility.

​Leon’s hand shook so violently he almost knocked it further into the debris. He lunged for it, his fingers closing around the cold metal with a desperation that bordered on holy. He didn't just pick it up; he cradled it against his palm, bringing it to his lips as a sob he’d been holding back since the mission started finally threatened to break through.

​He wiped the dirt off with a trembling thumb, the familiar weight of it centers him. He didn't think about the global implications of all of this. He didn't think about the debriefing or the scars this night would leave. He only thought about the way you looked in the morning light, and how he wasn't going to let that be a memory.

​With a grunt of agony, he forced himself to his feet. His legs felt like lead, but he slid the ring back onto his finger. It was a perfect fit—a constant, solid reminder of the man waiting for him. He adjusted it, twisting it once, twice, until it sat exactly where it belonged.

​"See you soon," he whispered, his eyes hardening as he looked toward the exit. "I'm coming home.”

The silence of the house was its own kind of weight. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of a cold night; it was the hollow, ringing silence of an empty nest that was never meant to be this still.

You sat at your mahogany desk, the green shaded lamp casting a warm, localized glow over a sea of chaos. Your home office had become a secondary branch of the BSAA in all but name. Scattered across the blotter were thick manila folders and grainy satellite captures—reports Chris had unofficially slid your way. He valued your eyes, the eyes of a S.T.A.R.S. veteran who had seen the world break before the rest of the public even knew it was cracked. But tonight, the analysis of bio-organic weapon dispersal patterns in Eastern Europe felt like trying to read a dead language.

Your mind was miles away, buried in the dark soil of whatever godforsaken corner of the globe Leon was currently haunting.

You knew better than most what he was capable of. You’d seen him survive things that would have leveled a small army, but that didn't stop the creeping dread. You knew how Raccoon City had carved him out, leaving a hollow space that he’d spent years trying to fill with duty. Your greatest fear wasn't that Leon wouldn't be able to handle the job—it was that one day, the job would simply decide it was finished with him, and you’d be the last to know. You’d be sitting right here, analyzing a report for Chris, while your world ended in a silent, classified file on someone else's desk.

Letting out a heavy, jagged sigh, you scrubbed a hand down your face. Your palms felt rough, the skin dry from years of handling firearms and paperwork. Your fingers brushed against the grit of stubble on your jaw—a silvered, unruly growth you hadn't bothered to trim since Leon left.

"Get it together," you muttered to the empty room. Your voice sounded gravelly, older than you felt like admitting.

With a grunt of effort, you pushed back from the desk, the wheels of the chair groaning against the hardwood. You began the ritual of tidying up, stacking the BSAA reports into a neat, categorized pile. It was a habit from the old days—leave your station ready for the next shift. You clicked the desk lamp off, plunging the room into a shadowy twilight, save for the pale moonlight filtering through the blinds.

As you moved through the hallway, the muscle memory of your life together took over. For a fleeting, heart-stuttering second, you expected to see a shadow move in the kitchen, or to feel a pair of strong arms wrap around your waist from behind. You could almost smell him—gunpowder, expensive cologne, and the faint, metallic scent of rain. But when you turned the corner, there was only the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer.

He wasn't there.

You shook your head, a self-deprecating smirk tugging at the corner of your mouth. You were too old for ghost stories, especially the ones you told yourself.

Stripping off your flannel shirt and undershirt as you walked, you let them fall onto the armchair in the bedroom, followed by your belt and trousers. You stepped into the en suite bathroom, the tile cold beneath your feet. The fluorescent light hummed to life, bright and unforgiving.

You leaned against the marble counter, staring at the man in the mirror.

You looked at the silver ring on your left hand first. It was scratched, the metal dulled by decades of life, but it was the most solid thing in the room. Then, you looked up. The light caught the deep salt-and-pepper of your hair, more salt than pepper these days. The wrinkles at the corners of your eyes were deep—laugh lines earned from rare, genuine smiles, and worry lines earned from every time Leon walked out the front door. Your face was a map of a long, hard-fought life. You weren't the young S.T.A.R.S. operative anymore; you were a man in his fifties who just wanted his husband home.

You shook your head again, dismissing the melancholy before it could take root. Turning away from your reflection, you reached into the walk-in shower and twisted the handle. The pipes groaned, a familiar shudder running through the wall, before the spray began to hiss against the stone floor. Steam started to rise, blurring the edges of the room, and for a moment, you just stood there, watching the water swirl down the drain.

The quiet click of the front door’s latch was a sound Leon had rehearsed in his mind a thousand times over the last forty-eight hours. He didn't turn on the lights. He didn't need to. The house breathed with a familiar, lived-in warmth that made the sterile, metallic tang of the lab feel like a bad dream he’d finally woken up from.

He moved like a ghost through the foyer, his movements heavy with a bone-deep exhaustion that no amount of caffeine could touch. His tactical boots, caked in the dried mud and grime of a nightmare, were set by the door with a dull thud. He didn't bother unlacing them properly; he just kicked them off, his socks padding softly against the hardwood. His jacket followed, hitting the floor with the muffled thud.

He knew exactly where you were. The low, rhythmic hum of the pipes vibrating through the floorboards told him everything. It was your ritual—the late-night shower to wash away the phantom weight of BSAA casualty reports and the stress of waiting for a phone call that might never come.

Leon moved into the bedroom, his silhouette a jagged shadow against the moonlight. He stripped with a mechanical efficiency, his hands trembling slightly as he unbuckled his holster. His pants and boxers pooled on the faded rug in front of the bed—the one you’d bought together because it reminded you of a proper home—and he left them there.

He stepped into the bathroom, the air thick and heavy with steam that smelled of your sandalwood soap. The humidity clung to his skin, pulling the chill of the outside world from his pores.

Before he reached for the shower door, he caught his reflection in the mirror.

The fog had started to claim the glass, but he saw enough. He looked at the man staring back—a man who had survived, but looked like he’d been dragged through the gears of it. There was a jagged cut along his cheekbone, held together by dried, copper-colored blood. Bruises the color of spoiled plums were blooming across his ribs and shoulders. But it was his face that held his gaze. He saw the gray stubble dusting his jaw, thicker now, and the stark, silver strands peeking through the weary brown of his hair. He was aging. They were both aging, the years stolen by a world that never stopped needing them to bleed for it.

Then, his eyes dropped to his hand. The silver ring sat firmly on his finger, gleaming even through the grime. He twisted it once, a grounding habit, before his gaze drifted past his own reflection.

Through the frosted, foggy glass of the sliding shower door, he saw you.

You were a blurred, familiar silhouette in the spray, your head bowed under the rush of the water. Even through the steam, he could see the strength in your shoulders—the build of a man who had carried a familiar weight and survived. You were standing there, unaware that the ghost you’d been mourning had finally come home.

Leon didn't say a word. He didn't want to break the silence yet. He just stood there for a long moment, his chest heaving with a sudden, sharp intake of air, fixated on the sight of you. To him, you weren't just a man in a shower; you were the end of the road. You were the reason he’d clawed his way out of the dirt.

Slowly, his hand reached out, his fingers pressing against the warm, wet glass, leaving a clear streak in the fog as he prepared to let you know he was back.

The sliding door creaked on its track, a low, metallic groan that cut through the steady drumming of the water. You didn't even have time to turn your head before the sudden draft of cool bathroom air hit your wet skin, quickly replaced by the heat of a body stepping into the stall behind you.

The steam swirled, momentarily clearing as Leon stepped into the spray.

The first thing you felt wasn't his touch, but his weight—the sheer, solid presence of him suddenly occupying the small space. Then came his hands. They were cold at first, a stark contrast to the scalding water, as he pressed his palms flat against your shoulder blades. You felt a shudder ripple through him the moment his skin made contact with yours. It was the touch of a man who had spent days wondering if he’d ever feel another human being again.

He didn't say a word. He just leaned forward, his forehead dropping heavily against the space between your shoulder blades. His breath hitched, a jagged, wet sound that was swallowed by the splash of the shower.

"Leon?" you breathed, your voice cracking. You started to turn, but his grip tightened, his fingers digging into your shoulders, not out of aggression, but out of a desperate need to keep you right there.

"Just….a second," he rasped. His voice was a wreck—gritty, raw, and exhausted. "Just let me stay like this for a second."

You stood still, the water cascading over both of you. You could feel the grime of the world washing off him and onto you. The water at your feet turned a murky, tea-colored brown as the dust, soot, and dried blood from the facility began to melt away. He smelled like ozone, wet earth, and the metallic tang of an oncoming storm, but beneath all of that was the scent you knew by heart—the faint, lingering musk of his skin.

Slowly, he began to move. His hands slid down your arms, his fingers interlaced with yours, and that was when you felt it—the cold, hard press of his silver ring against the back of your hand. You let out a breath you felt like you’d been holding since the day he left.

Leon finally pulled back just enough to let you turn around. When you faced him, the sight nearly broke your heart. The water was slicking his hair back, revealing every new line of exhaustion on his face. The cut on his cheek was weeping a faint pink under the spray, and his eyes were bloodshot, framed by dark circles that looked like bruises.

He looked at you with an intensity that was almost painful. His gaze traced the graying hair at your temples and the laugh lines around your mouth, his eyes softening with a reverence that bordered on worship. To him, you weren't an aging veteran; you were the only beautiful thing left in a world of monsters.

"You're late," you whispered, your hands coming up to cup his face. Your thumbs brushed over the gray stubble on his jaw, feeling the prickle of life beneath your touch.

Leon let out a broken, huffed laugh, his eyes closing as he leaned into your palms. "It.was….complicated."

"I thought...." You stopped, the words catching in your throat. You didn't need to finish.

"I know," he murmured. He stepped closer, closing the final inch of space between you until your chests were pressed together, the water trapped between you. He wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you in so tight it was hard to breathe, burying his face in the crook of your neck. "I promised I'd see you soon. I wasn't going to break that. Not for anyone."

He was shaking now—the post-adrenaline crash finally hitting him in the safety of your arms. You held him, your fingers threading through his wet hair, shielding him from the rest of the world.

Leon didn't move. He stayed anchored against you, his weight heavy and honest, his damp forehead resting against your collarbone. You could feel the tremors running through his muscles—the slow, rhythmic aftershocks of a body that had been pushed past its breaking point and was only now realizing it was safe to collapse.

​Gently, you reached for the bottle of soap, the familiar scent of cedar and sandalwood rising with the steam. You didn't ask him where it hurt; you already knew. You could see the map of his pain written in the dark blooms of purple along his ribs and the jagged, angry red of the laceration on his cheek.

​You poured the soap into your palms, lashing it into a thick, white foam before you began.

​The silence between you wasn't empty; it was thick with everything that didn't need to be said. You started with his shoulders, your large, calloused hands moving in slow, grounding circles. You felt the knots of tension under his skin—hard as stone—and as you worked, you felt them slowly begin to give way. The water at your feet was still tinted a murky gray, the filth of the facility swirling down the drain, leaving Leon’s pale, scarred skin behind.

​As you moved your hands down his back, Leon let out a long, shuddering breath. It wasn't a sigh; it was a surrender. He leaned into your touch, his eyes closed tight, his hands coming up to grip your forearms as if to make sure you were still solid, still there.

​You were meticulous. You cleaned the soot from the nape of his neck and the dried blood from the shell of his ear. When you reached the deep bruise over his ribs, your touch lightened, becoming a ghost of a caress. You saw him flinch, his breath catching in a hiss of pain, and you paused, leaning down to press a lingering, salt-tinged kiss to the top of his wet head.

​I’ve got you, the gesture said. You’re home.

​Leon finally pulled back just enough to look at you. His blue eyes were glassy, reflecting the overhead light, rimmed with a weariness that went bone-deep. He looked small in that moment—not the government’s top agent, not the survivor of a dozen bio-hazards, but simply a man who was tired of fighting.

​He reached out, his trembling fingers taking the soap from you. He didn't wash himself; instead, he began to wash you. His movements were slow, almost reverent, as he ran his hands over your chest and arms. It was his way of checking you, of confirming that while he was gone, the world hadn't touched you. His thumb traced the silver band on your finger, lingering there for a second longer than necessary, his ring clinking softly against yours—a small, metallic heartbeat in the spray.

​The water was starting to run clear now. The grime was gone, but the exhaustion remained, etched into every line of his face.

​You took the showerhead from the wall, turning the spray down and rinsing the last of the suds from his skin. The water smoothed his hair back, revealing the silver at his temples that seemed more pronounced tonight than it had a month ago.

​Leon leaned his head back, letting the water hit his face, his throat working as he swallowed back the emotions he wasn't ready to voice. When he finally opened his eyes, he looked at you—truly looked at you—with a raw, unfiltered devotion. He reached out, his wet palm cupping your jaw, his thumb brushing over your graying stubble.

​Still, neither of you spoke. The hurt was there, hovering in the bruises and the haunted look in his eyes, but the comfort was stronger. It was in the heat of the water, the familiar weight of his wedding band, and the fact that, for the first time in days, his heart rate was finally beginning to match yours.

​You reached over and turned the handle, the sudden silence of the bathroom feeling heavy and holy. The only sound left was the drip-drip-drip of water hitting the tile and the ragged, synchronized breathing of two men who had cheated death one more time.

You stepped out first, grabbing the largest, plushiest towel from the rack and holding it open. Leon stepped into it without a word, his body shivering as the cool air hit his wet skin. You wrapped him up, pulling the fabric tight around his shoulders and rubbing his arms to bring the heat back. He leaned his head against your shoulder, his eyes half-closed, letting you guide him like he was a man walking in his sleep.

The walk to the bedroom was slow. The only light came from the moon spilling across the hardwood, illuminating the trail of discarded gear Leon had left in his wake—a reminder of the man he had to be out there, contrasted against the man he was allowed to be here.

You sat him down on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. He looked small, wrapped in that white towel, his damp hair sticking up in golden-gray tufts. You stood between his knees, taking a smaller towel to his head, gently drying the strands with a tenderness that made his breath hitch.

"Stay," he whispered, his voice finally finding its vibration. His hands, still clean and smelling of your soap, reached out to circle your waist, pulling you closer until his face was pressed against your stomach.

"I'm not going anywhere, Leon," you murmured, your fingers raking through his hair. "I’m right here."

After a few minutes of quiet, you helped him into a pair of soft cotton lounge pants—the ones he always complained were too loose but wore every time he came home. You climbed into the other side of the bed, the linens cool and crisp, a stark contrast to the grime he’d been caked in.

The moment Leon slid under the covers, he didn't just lie down; he sought you out like a compass needle finding north. He draped himself over you, his heavy head landing on your chest, his arm hooking firmly over your waist as if to anchor you to the mattress. You felt the cold metal of his wedding band press against your skin, a solid promise.

You pulled the heavy duvet up over both of you, tucking it around his shoulders. The house was silent, save for the distant hum of the refrigerator and the rhythmic, slowing thrum of Leon’s heart against your ribs.

"It's quiet," Leon mumbled into your skin, his voice thick with the onset of sleep. "I forgot it could be this quiet."

"That’s because you’re home," you replied softly. You reached down, taking his hand in yours and interlacing your fingers. The two silver rings clicked together, a tiny, domestic sound that felt more significant than any explosion he’d survived.

Leon let out a long, contented sigh, his entire body finally going slack. The tension that had lived in his shoulders since he’d left Raccoon City decades ago seemed to melt into the mattress. He nuzzled closer, his nose brushing against the gray hair on your chest, his breathing deepening into the slow, steady pull of a man who finally felt safe enough to dream.

You lay there in the dark, watching the shadows of the trees dance on the ceiling. You felt the weight of your years—the laugh lines, the gray hair, the old injuries that ached in the rain—but as you looked down at your husband, finally at peace in your arms, you realized you wouldn't trade a single wrinkle. They were the marks of a life lived together, a map of how far you’d both come to reach this bedroom, this bed, this moment.

"I love you, Leon," you whispered, so low you weren't sure he heard it.

It wasn't about the white-hot flare of pain with every ragged, shallow breath. It wasn't about the lingering heat of the infection, or the ghosts of Grace and Gideon. In the silence of the car, those names felt like static. It wasn't about the mission or the world ending—again.

​It was about you.

​It was only ever about getting back up, one agonizing movement at a time, and finding the strength to go home. He just wanted to walk through that stupid blue door and see your face—to see the way your brow furrowed in that specific, doctor-like concentration when you were worried.

​Leon didn't care about the inevitable lecture. He knew you’d treat him like a child for being so reckless; he could already hear your voice, seasoned with the weariness of a man who had seen too much of the same biology Leon fought in the field. You had scolded him like that when you first found out about the infection—your hands shaking despite your years of medical training.

​God, he wanted you to yell at him now. He wanted to hear you say his name and call him stupid, all while your steady, gentle hands—calloused from years of work but always soft when they touched him—bandaged his cuts and soothed the blooming bruises. He could almost feel it: the way you’d tuck a loose, sweat-matted lock of hair behind his ear while he shivered against the cold tile of the bathroom, leaning into your warmth because you were the only person who could make him feel human again.

​His vision blurred as he finally pulled into the gravel driveway. The headlights cut through the dark, illuminating the peeling paint of the blue door and the soft, amber glow spilling from your bedroom window. You were still up. Waiting.

​His hands trembled as he cut the engine, the silence of the car suddenly heavy. Every joint ached, and his lungs felt like they were filled with glass, but the sight of that light—your light—was the only thing keeping the darkness at the edge of his mind from swallowing him whole. He was home. He was back with his husband. Now, he just had to find the strength to open the car door.

The door handle felt like ice against his palm, a stark reminder that he was still vibrating with a low-grade fever. It took three tries to get his cramped fingers to turn the key. When the door finally gave way, the familiar scent of the house—old books, cedarwood, and the faint, clean smell of the soap you always used—hit him like a physical blow.

​He didn't turn on the lights. He didn't want to see the trail of road salt and dried blood he was likely leaving on the rug. With a grunt of effort, he shrugged out of his jacket, the fabric stiff with grime. His fingers fumbled with the buckles of his holster, the heavy leather hitting the recliner with a muffled thud that felt far too loud in the quiet living room. He was lighter now, but he felt more fragile, his body held together only by the desperate need to reach the hallway.

​As he neared the bedroom, a sliver of warm light cut across the floorboards. Then, he heard it—your voice.

​It was low, hushed in the way people speak late at night, but it carried that jagged edge of anxiety you usually kept hidden.

​"I know, Sherry. I know he’s careful," you were saying, your voice cracking slightly. "But it’s been three days since the last check-in. Just... if you hear anything, call me. I don't care what time it is."

​Leon froze. Hearing you talk to Sherry—the girl who was as much your daughter as she was his ward—made the guilt in his chest flare brighter than the pain in his side. He leaned against the doorframe, his shadow stretching long and distorted across the carpet. He looked like a ghost haunting his own home.

​"Baby," he rasped. It wasn't even a whisper; it was a broken sound, caught in the back of a dry, scorched throat.

​In the room, the shifting of bedsheets stopped instantly. You looked up, the phone still pressed to your ear, your jaw going slack as your eyes tracked the battered silhouette in the doorway. For a heartbeat, the doctor in you was paralyzed by the husband in you.

​"Sherry," you whispered, your voice breathless and urgent, never taking your eyes off him. "I have to go. He’s here. He’s home."

​You didn't wait for a reply before ending the call, the phone slipping from your hand onto the duvet as you started to move toward him.

The distance across the bedroom felt like miles until you finally reached him, your arms sliding upward to drape carefully around his neck. You didn't pull him in tight—not yet—your instincts warning you of the hidden agonies beneath his gear

​You just stared at him, your breath hitching. Slowly, your hands moved from his shoulders to cup his face, your thumbs brushing over his cheekbones with a reverence that made his eyes flutter shut. You tilted his head gently from side to side, searching his skin with a look of genuine bewilderment. The terrifying, ink-black lines that had once threatened to claim him—the mark of the infection that had haunted your nightmares—were gone. His skin was pale, mapped with fresh, angry cuts and the deep purple of blooming bruises, but it was him. It was just Leon.

​Leon’s breath hitched, a jagged sound that vibrated through his chest. He reached up, his gloved hand trembling as he caught your wrist. He didn't pull you away; instead, he guided your palm down, pressing it flat against the center of his chest.

​Underneath the grime, his heart was thundering, a frantic, rhythmic proof of life. He looked down at you, his blue eyes glassy and bloodshot, searching your face as if he were still trying to convince himself he wasn't hallucinating this quiet, warm bedroom.

​"I'm here," he rasped, his voice barely a thread of sound. "I'm really here."

​You reached out, your index finger tentatively tracing a shallow, jagged cut along his cheekbone. The moment your skin made contact, Leon flinched, a sharp hiss of air escaping through his teeth as he instinctively pulled back.

​He braced himself then, his shoulders tensing. He expected the lecture. He expected you to demand to know why he’d been so careless, or to see that flash of professional frustration you got when a patient—or a husband—ignored their own safety.

​But the scolding never came.

​Instead, you leaned in, your touch feather-light. You began to pepper soft, lingering kisses against his bruised cheeks, your lips trailing over the unbroken skin near his temple. When you finally pressed a kiss to his mouth, it wasn't a greeting; it was a promise. It tasted of salt and exhaustion, but it was the first time Leon felt his lungs truly expand since he’d left the city.

​"Let’s get you cleaned up," you whispered against his lips, the words soft enough to be a prayer.

​Leon didn't argue. He couldn't. He simply nodded, his forehead dropping to rest against yours for a fleeting second before he allowed himself to be led. He followed you into the bathroom, his steps heavy and slow, trusting you to handle the weight of his broken body now that he didn't have to carry it alone anymore.

Leon sat heavily on the closed toilet seat, his broad shoulders slumped forward. His hair was still dark and heavy with water, dripping rhythmically onto the towel wrapped around his waist. The bathroom was small, the air thick with the lingering steam of the quick, careful wash you’d just given him.

​Under the unforgiving glare of the overhead lights, Leon simply watched you. He watched the way you moved, rummaging through the cabinet under the sink with a focused intensity. He noticed the silver-gray strands at your temples that hadn't been there a few years ago, and the way you squinted, tilting your head to read the small print on a bottle of saline. When you finally found what you were looking for and turned back to him, the soft crinkles at the corners of your eyes deepened—a map of every worry he’d ever caused you.

​You pulled a small wooden stool between his knees, sitting close enough that your thighs brushed against his. Leon didn't move; he just let out a long, shuddering breath, his eyes never leaving yours.

​With a touch as light as a whisper, you reached up to brush a damp strand of dark dirty blonde hair behind his ear, tucking it away so you could see the damage. Your hands were steady, though your expression remained tight with a quiet, simmering concern. You didn't say much. You didn't need to. The silence was filled only by the click of the first-aid kit and the soft hiss of the antiseptic spray.

​As you began to dab at the jagged cuts along his collarbone and chest, Leon’s body betrayed him. He tensed, his muscles roping under his skin, a sharp intake of air whistling through his teeth when the sting hit a particularly deep gouge.

​"Sorry," you murmured, your voice low and gravelly with sleep and suppressed emotion. "I know, Leon. I'm sorry."

​He shook his head slowly, his hand coming up to rest tentatively on your knee. "It's okay. I'm okay."

​You worked in a rhythmic, practiced peace, cleaning the debris from his skin and smoothing antibiotic ointment over the bruises that were already turning an ugly, mottled green. Every time he flinched, you stopped, waiting for him to settle before continuing.

​Leon watched your hands—those hands that had held him through nightmares and long nights of fever. He looked down at your face, feeling a sudden, overwhelming surge of affection that hurt worse than the wounds.

​"Hey," he whispered, his voice cracking. He tilted his head down, catching your gaze as you reached for a fresh box of bandages. "Could you….kiss them? Like you used to?"

​The request was so vulnerable, so stripped of his usual bravado, that it broke the tension in your chest. A small, genuine smile tugged at the corner of your mouth.

​"Always," you breathed.

​You peeled back a bandage and pressed it firmly but gently over the cut on his cheek. Then, lingering for a second, you leaned in and pressed a soft, warm kiss directly over the adhesive. Leon’s eyes closed, his entire body finally going limp under your touch.

​You moved to his shoulder, Repeating the ritual. Peel, press, kiss. Then down to his abdomen, where the worst of the bruising lay. With every kiss you pressed against the bandages littering his torso, you felt his breathing even out, the jagged edges of his exhaustion finally beginning to smooth.

Leaving the bathroom felt like walking through a fog. Leon’s legs were heavy, his coordination frayed by the sheer weight of the day’s adrenaline finally leaving his system. You guided him back to the edge of the bed, where you had laid out a pair of soft, worn-in sweatpants—the kind he only wore when he was truly home.

​"I’ve got it," he muttered, though his fingers were fumbling uselessly with the waistband. His brow furrowed in that stubborn, Leon-like scowl. "I’m not useless….I can do it."

​"I know you're not," you replied softly, not letting the protest deter you. You gently brushed his hands aside, kneeling between his knees to help him step into the fabric. "But tonight, you don't have to be 'useful.' You just have to be here."

​He let out a long, defeated sigh, his large hands coming to rest on your shoulders for balance. He watched as you dressed him with practiced, unhurried care, smoothing the fabric over the fresh bandages on his thighs. He looked so much smaller like this—stripped of the gear, the weapons, and the duty. When you reached up to pull a soft t-shirt over his head, he leaned his forehead against your chest for a second, his breath hitching.

​"Thank you," he whispered into the cotton of your shirt, the fight finally draining out of his limbs.

​pulling back the heavy duvet to invite him into the space you’d kept warm for him all night. Leon crawled in with a groan of relief, his body sinking into the mattress as if he were finally being allowed to merge with the earth.

​Once he was settled, you climbed in beside him, propping yourself up on one arm. You opened your arms, an unspoken invitation, and he didn't hesitate. He shifted closer, tucking his head into the crook of your neck, his face pressed against the pulse point of your throat. His arm draped over your waist, heavy and grounding, his fingers curling into the fabric of your pajama top.

​The room was silent, save for the rhythmic tick of the clock and the sound of his breathing, which was finally slowing down, losing its ragged, panicked edge.

​"I love you, Leon," you whispered into the crown of his damp hair, your hand tracing slow, soothing circles across his back. "More than anything. Just stay here. Don't go anywhere for a long, long time."

​Leon shifted, pressing his face deeper into your skin. "I love you," he rasped, the words sounding thick with the onset of a deep, bone-deep sleep. "Every time….I was just….coming back to you. Always you."

The rain that night didn't wash away the blood; it just diluted it, turning the Alsace mud into a slick, crimson soup. Every breath you took tasted like copper and woodsmoke, a brutal reminder that despite whatever gifts God had seen fit to curse you with, you were still terrifyingly breakable.

If you had just kept your mouth shut. If you had just accepted that you were caught in the gears of a war you never asked to fight. If you had just died with what little dignity a conscript was allowed, it wouldn't be so bad. But the instinct to survive is a filthy, primal thing. It strips away pride until there is nothing left but the screaming in your chest.

Through the ringing in your ears, you heard the heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots.

He loomed over you like a monument of olive drab and tarnished gold, the eagle emblem on his chest darkened by grease and German blood. Ben. Soldier Boy. America’s golden boy looked down at you with an expression that wasn't even hateful—it was bored. To him, you weren't a person; you were just another piece of foreign debris he had to clear off the board.

Panic, hot and sharp, overtook every fiber of your being. You scrambled backward in the dirt, your hands slipping in the mire.

“Bitte, ich tue alles!” The words spilled past your swollen lips, frantic and broken. “Ich werde euch im Krieg helfen! Bitte…"

Soldier Boy stopped. He tilted his head, his fingers casually hooking into his tactical belt, right near the heavy grip of his combat knife. He let out a short, scoffing laugh—a low, raspy sound that made your stomach drop.

"Help us?" he said, his voice dripping with that smooth, old-school Brooklyn arrogance. He took a slow step forward, the mud groaning under his weight. "What makes you think we want help from some kraut rat who can't even stand up straight? You're out of your depth, sweetheart. The whole damn fatherland is."

How could you prove your worth? How could you make a man like this see you as something other than target practice? Your mind raced, grasping for the only leverage you had left—the secret the German high command had tried to weaponize.

“Ich bin ein Supe!” you gasped out, desperate to bridge the language barrier before he lost interest. “I am… like you! Born with it. They wanted me for a spy. I can disappear—I can make shields. Please! Ich schwöre, ich werde alles tun!”

That stopped him cold.

The casual indifference vanished from his face, replaced by a sharp, calculating stillness. Soldier Boy crouched down, the heavy leather of his boots inches from your face. The stench of stale tobacco, cheap whiskey, and gunpowder wafted off him, suffocatingly thick. He reached out, his gloved fingers clamping around your jaw with enough pressure to make the bone groan. He forced your face up, staring into your eyes with a terrifying intensity.

"A supe, huh?" he murmured, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly register. He twisted your chin slightly, inspecting you like a piece of livestock. "Funny. Usually, German science projects have a bit more fight in 'em. You're telling me you were born this way? No serum?"

You could only nod, a pathetic, jerky motion that sent fresh agony through your face.

Soldier Boy let out another laugh, but this one was darker, devoid of any humor. "Well, ain't that something. A naturally grown freak. And here I thought Vought had the monopoly on the special stuff."

He didn't look impressed; he looked annoyed that the world was more complicated than his propaganda reels suggested. His grip tightened for one agonizing second before he shoved your face away, letting you drop back into the dirt. He stood up, wiping his gloved hand on his trousers as if you had left a stain.

"Get up," he barked, turning his back on you as he signaled to the shadows behind him. "Move it, before I decide your little magic trick isn't worth the rations. We're taking him back to the command tent. Let’s see if this bird sings as good as he begs.”

None of it really mattered. You had simply traded one prison for another.

At first, the American command tents weren't much different from the German labs—just different men in different uniforms staring at you like a weapon they hadn't learned how to aim yet. But then, Ben took a liking to you.

It wasn't a kind sort of affection. It was the possessive, careless favor a man shows to a stray dog he’s successfully broken. He liked the way you looked, sure—the contrast of your sharp, European features against the rough canvas of his quarters—but mostly, he liked that "no" wasn't in your vocabulary. You became his shadow, his human shield, and his dirty little secret. When the artillery got too loud or the pressure of being America’s golden boy pressed too hard on his shoulders, he’d drag you into his private quarters. He’d take whatever he wanted from you, leaving you bruised and breathless, and in return, he kept Vought’s white-coats from dissecting you.

"He's a useful little freak," Ben had told the suits, his hand heavy and warning on the back of your neck. "Keeps his mouth shut, does what he's told, and his shields keep the shrapnel off my suit. We’re keeping him."

So you stayed. You let him mold you, use you, and call you his "pretty little kraut." It was entirely one-sided, a twisted transactional nightmare, but you endured it because beneath the degradation was a semblance of safety. As long as you belonged to Soldier Boy, the rest of the world couldn’t touch you.

But safety in Vought’s world is an illusion. When Ben vanished in Nicaragua in '84, your protection went with him. No longer deemed useful, Vought treated you like surplus military hazardous waste. They pumped you full of experimental stabilizing agents—burning cocktails that made your veins feel like dry ice—and put you under. A relic of a war everyone wanted to forget.

Decades later, you woke up to a world that had moved on without you.

Navigating the 21st century was a slow, agonizing rebirth. You forced yourself to shed every remnant of the old country. You practiced in front of mirrors for months until you could perfectly mimic a flawless, generic American drawl. You hid your invisibility and your shields so deep you almost forgot how to use them. You reinvented yourself entirely.

Yet, some habits never die. You still needed an anchor. You still needed someone to tell you where to stand so you wouldn't drown, and that was how you fell into the orbit of Billy Butcher.

A sharp, violent buzzing cut through the dark, heavy silence of your bedroom. You let out a low groan, shifting against the mattress as your hand blindly scrambled across the nightstand. Your fingers wrapped around the sleek metal of the smartphone—a piece of technology that still felt entirely alien to you sometimes.

Swiping the screen blindly, you pressed it to your ear and rolled onto your side. "Yeah? What d'you want?" you murmured, your voice thick with sleep.

"Oi, pretty boy. Get your arse out of bed, I need a favor," a raspy, gravelly voice barked through the speaker.

The familiar, abrasive cadence of Billy Butcher instantly cleared the fog from your brain. You sat up, the bedsheets pooling around your bare waist as you rubbed a hand over your face. "Butcher. It’s three in the morning. Why the hell are you calling me?"

"Because you're the only reliable bastard I've got on the payroll, that's why," Butcher chuckled, a dark, dry sound. "And lose the attitude, yeah? Sounds a bit too much like hard work. Look, I need you at the safehouse. Now."

You sighed, a weary, defeated sound. It was happening again. The same pattern, the same trap. You had traded Ben for Billy, always falling into bed or into line with men who smelled like gunpowder and bad intentions because you simply didn't know how to exist without a master. You couldn't say no. To Butcher, you were a ghost with a useful set of skills and a clean record, and you let him keep using you because it was better than being completely alone in a century you didn't belong to.

"What's this about, Billy? I told you, I'm trying to keep my head down," you said, though you were already swinging your legs out of bed, your feet hitting the cold hardwood floor.

"Let's just say an old mate of yours dropped by. A real blast from the past," Butcher said, his voice dripping with a terrifying, smug satisfaction. "Bit of a family reunion, you might say. Peep your texts, sunshine. Don't keep us waiting."

The line went dead with a sharp click.

A heavy dread settled into the pit of your stomach, turning your blood to ash. Your phone vibrated in your palm, a text notification lighting up the dark room. With trembling fingers, you tapped the screen and opened the attached photo.

It was a blurry, dimly lit surveillance shot inside a dilapidated building. Standing in the center of the frame, looking older, rougher, but unmistakably him, was Ben.

Soldier Boy was alive.

The drive to the safehouse was a blur of streetlights and cold sweat. Your hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly your knuckles turned white, the ghost of an old war humming in your veins. You hadn't used your real voice or your real name in decades. You had buried the boy from the Alsace mud deep beneath layers of American slang and a quiet, unassuming life.

But as you pulled the car up to the curb outside the derelict brownstone, the past caught up to you in a single heartbeat.

Billy Butcher was standing under the amber glow of a flickering streetlamp, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He looked as rugged and unbothered as ever, his heavy black trench coat shifting slightly in the night breeze. You killed the engine, but you didn't get out right away. You just stared through the windshield, letting the silence of the car envelop you for a few agonizing seconds. Your heart was a rabbit in a snare.

Finally, you forced your door open and stepped out into the damp night air.

Butcher watched you approach, his lips curling into that sharp, knowing smirk he always gave you. It was the look of a man who knew exactly which strings to pull to make you dance. Neither of you spoke for a moment, the tension thick enough to choke on.

Butcher took one last drag of his cigarette, dropped the butt, and crushed it beneath his boot. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy brass ring of keys.

"Need you to play babysitter, mate," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. He tossed the keys. They cut through the air, and your hand flew up automatically, catching them with a dull metal clack.

Before you could even form a question, Butcher walked right past you, giving you a rough pat on the shoulder that felt more like a warning than a gesture of comfort. He headed straight for his own car, leaving you alone on the pavement. You rolled your eyes, a heavy, tired sigh escaping you as you turned toward the heavy wooden door of the safehouse. You unlock it, the hinges groaning in protest as you push it open and step into the dim, musty hallway.

"Back so soon?"

The voice drifted out from the kitchen, low and raspy, carrying the distinct, heavy drawl of mid-century Brooklyn. A voice you had heard in your nightmares for forty years.

Your entire body went rigid. You froze in the doorway, your fingers gripping the brass keys so fiercely the metal bit deep into your palm, drawing pain that barely registered against the shock.

"Was zum Teufel…?" you whispered. The words slipped out before you could stop them, raw and unpolished, your carefully practiced American accent instantly shattering.

A figure stepped out of the shadows of the kitchen, holding a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey. Ben. He looked different—his hair was longer, his face weathered by whatever hell Vought had buried him in—but the posture was exactly the same. The same arrogant, casual stance of a man who owned every room he walked into.

But when Ben’s eyes landed on you, he stopped dead in his tracks. The smug, careless look vanished from his face, replaced by a sudden, jarring stillness. He stared at you, his chest rising and falling as his gaze swept over your face, recognizing the sharp European features he used to hold in his grip.

"You're alive?" Ben breathed.

The words didn't come out as a taunt, or a boast, or even a threat. His voice dropped into a quiet, gravelly register that sounded entirely wrong coming from him. It sounded like... relief. Like he was genuinely, deeply grateful that you were standing there.

The unexpected softness of his tone hit you like a physical blow, sparking a sudden, bitter fire in your chest. You let your shoulders drop, abandoning the American disguise completely. When you spoke, your voice was thick with the harsh, rolling consonants of your native tongue, cold and sharp as winter ice.

"Maybe," you whispered, staring back at him with wide, unblinking eyes. "Or maybe... maybe I am finally dead, Ben. And you are only looking at your past mistakes.”

Ben didn’t move. He just stood there, the whiskey bottle heavy in his hand, looking at you like he’d just unearthed a ghost from the trenches. That arrogant, untouchable shield he always wore around his shoulders cracked, just for a second, letting something raw and horribly human blink out at you.

"Don't talk like that," he said, his voice dropping into that gravelly, low register. He took a slow step forward, the floorboards groaning under his weight, just like the mud used to. "You ain't a mistake. And you sure as hell ain't dead."

"No?" You let out a short, humorless laugh, the sound sharp and grating in the quiet house. You didn't back away this time. Decades on ice and a new century had given you a different kind of spine, even if the fear still pulsed like a phantom limb. "You think because I breathe, I am alive? Vought took me after you disappeared, Ben. They put me in a box. Cold. Dark. For forty years, I was nothing but ice because I had no master left to tell them I was useful."

Ben flinched. It was a minuscule movement—just a tightening of his jaw, a slight twitch in his broad shoulders—but you caught it. The great Soldier Boy, bothered by a ghost.

"I didn't know," he muttered, shaking his head. He took another step, closing the distance until you could smell the familiar, suffocating mix of stale tobacco and cheap liquor pouring off him. He looked down at you, his eyes scanning your face, searching for the boy who used to tremble under his touch. "They told me everyone was gone. I thought... I thought you died in Nicaragua with the rest of 'em."

"And if you knew? What then?" Your German accent bit into the English words, heavy and unforgiving. "Would you save me? Or would you just keep me in your tent like a pretty dog? A shield to stop the bullets?"

Ben’s face darkened, the familiar, volatile heat flashing in his eyes. He set the whiskey bottle down on a nearby table with a loud, deliberate thud. He stepped right into your space, towering over you, testing the old boundaries. He reached up, his large, calloused hand hovering near your face for a fraction of a second before his fingers clamped around the back of your neck.

It wasn't the brutal grip of a captor, but it wasn't gentle either. It was possessive. Demanding.

"I kept you alive," Ben growled, his thumb pressing firmly into the skin just beneath your ear, forcing you to look up into his bloodshot eyes. "Don't you forget that. Those corporate suits wanted to slice you open the day we brought you in, and I told 'em no. I gave you a roof, I gave you food, and I kept you safe. You belonged to me."

"Ja," you whispered, your breath hitching despite yourself, your heart hammering against your ribs in that old, terrifying rhythm. The familiarity of his weight, his scent, his absolute certainty that he owned you, was an intoxicating, terrifying poison. "I belonged to you. Because 'no' was a word that would get me killed."

Ben’s gaze dropped to your lips, then traveled back up to your eyes. The anger in him seemed to simmer down into something heavy, thick, and complicated.

"Well, you're here now," he murmured, his grip softening just a fraction, his thumb tracing a slow, familiar line along your jaw. "And so am I. The rest of 'em... Payback, Vought... they're gonna burn for what they did to us. But you? You're still my pretty boy. Ain't ya?"

The trap was closing again. You could feel it. The keys Butcher had given you were still biting into your palm, a reminder that you were supposed to be the handler here, the babysitter. But looking at Ben, feeling the heat radiating off him in this strange, terrifying new world, you realized some things never changed. You were still the boy in the mud, and he was still the only monster big enough to keep the other monsters away.

"You have not changed at all, Ben," you breathed, your voice a fragile, rolling whisper against his chest.

"Why change perfection?" Ben tilted his head, a faint, dangerous ghost of his old smirk returning to his lips. "Now... tell me what kind of trouble we're making with that asshole.”

The Pitt had a specific atmosphere—a thick, pressurized weight that settled over your shoulders the second you swiped your ID badge and didn't lift until you stepped back out into the cool morning air. Or maybe that was just the night shift talking. You’d been working these ungodly hours since your residency twenty-some years ago, and lately, the fluorescent hum of the ER felt more like home than your own quiet apartment ever did.

​The hospital was a greedy thing; it took every scrap of your life you were willing to give. But standing there in the trenches, it didn't feel entirely like a loss. You tolerated the chaos for the crew—and because Dana, with her iron will and sharp tongue, hadn't let you jump ship for a quieter gig in another state yet.

​Then, of course, there was Jack Abbot.

​You tried to be professional—you were a nurse, for Christ’s sake—but you couldn't help but track him when he moved through a trauma bay. He filled out his scrubs in a way that should have been a distraction to medical science, muscles straining against the fabric of his sleeves as he worked. But it wasn't just the physical side of him. It was the way Jack looked at you in a crowded room of over-eager interns and frazzled residents. He’d lock eyes with you like you were the only person who actually knew what was going on, like he wanted you specifically at his side, no matter how messy the case got.

​Sometimes you’d catch him staring back, his gaze lingering a second too long on your face. You’d just offer a tired, knowing smile and keep moving. You’d known plenty of men in your forty-something years, but none of them carried themselves like Jack. None of them were ex-military with a "hobby" for SWAT calls and a cocky grin that made your heart do things it was far too old to be doing.

​You let out a long, ragged sigh, draining the last of the sludge you called coffee. You walked into the employee breakroom, the soles of your shoes squeaking against the linoleum, and tossed the empty cup into the trash with a practiced flick of the wrist. You were so deep in your own head that you didn't even notice Dana leaning against the wall by the lockers.

​“You look like hell,” she huffed, her voice cutting through the silence of the room. “Rough night?”

​Dana was blunt, a trait you valued more than you probably should. You turned, rubbing the back of your neck where a dull ache was beginning to settle. “Still shrugging off yesterday’s shift, honestly.”

​The previous night had been a gauntlet. A domestic dispute had spilled over into the waiting room while you were triage-side. To some, it was a crisis; to you, it was just another Tuesday, though a bloody nose and a shattered glass partition tended to leave a lingering adrenaline spike.

​“It happens. You’ve been at this long enough to know the Pitt likes to bite back,” she said, stepping forward to pat your arm. Her expression softened into something resembling a smile. “But you’ve got thick skin. Better than most of the kids we’ve got running around here.”

​You’d been on the receiving end of healthcare violence more than a few times—a stray punch from a detoxing patient, a shove from a panicked relative—but the toll was cumulative. It stayed in your bones. “Thanks, Dana. I’m fine. Just need about twelve hours of sleep and a new set of knees.”

​“Don’t we all?” Dana shot you a weary, knowing smile—the kind shared only by people who have spent more time under fluorescent lights than in the sun. She gave your shoulder a final squeeze before heading out, her footsteps echoing down the hall.

​The silence she left behind was heavy. You moved toward your locker, the metal door groaning on its hinges as you swung it open. You went through the ritual: phone silenced and stashed, car keys dropped into the plastic bin, and the nicer-looking name badge—the one without the coffee stain—clipped firmly to your scrub top. You draped your stethoscope around your neck, the cool binaurals a familiar weight against your collarbone.

​The thud of the breakroom door swinging open made you pause. You didn't need to look to know who it was; you knew the cadence of his step.

​As you swung your locker shut, the gray metal clicking into place, Jack was already there. He was moving toward his own locker just a few feet down, his presence immediately making the cramped room feel smaller. He looked like he’d just come from a workout or a very fast drive—charged with that restless energy that seemed to vibrate off him.

​"Afternoon," you said, your voice low and slightly raspy from the lack of sleep.

​Jack slowed his pace, his head turning toward you. A slow, tired heat crept into his eyes. "Afternoon," he replied, his voice mirroring your volume, turning the simple greeting into something that felt far more private than it was.

​He reached for his locker, but he didn't open it yet. Instead, he turned his body fully toward you. "Think I can count on you tonight?"

​There it was. That cocky, lopsided grin that had no business being that charming at the start of a twelve-hour shift.

​You shifted your weight, leaning your shoulder against the cool metal of your locker and crossing your arms over your chest. You let a slow, huffed breath escape your nose, a small smirk playing on your lips. "You can count on me every night, Jack. You know that."

​"I know," he said, his voice dropping an octave as he took a half-step closer, encroaching on your personal space just enough to let you catch the scent of cedar and sterile soap. "Just making sure. I like knowing exactly whose hands are catching what I’m throwing."

​The air in the breakroom suddenly felt a lot warmer. You searched his face, looking for the line between professional camaraderie and something else. Was he flirting? You’d had these back-and-forths for months—little sparks thrown across a trauma table or shared over a chart—but if he was pushing the boundary today, you weren't about to pull back.

​"Careful, Abbot," you murmured, adjusting the stethoscope around your neck. "People might start to think you’ve got a favorite."

​"Let 'em think," he countered, his grin widening just a fraction.

​You shook your head, a genuine chuckle bubbling up. As you moved to head toward the floor, you reached out, your hand landing briefly—deliberately—on his bicep. The muscle was as solid as you’d imagined through the fabric of his shirt, warm and firm under your palm. You gave it a lingering, playful pat.

​"See you out there then.”

​You didn't look back, but you could feel his gaze on your spine all the way to the door.

​Six hours in, and the walls of the Pitt were starting to pulse with the rhythm of the fluorescent lights. You’d downed three cups of the breakroom sludge—acidic, lukewarm, and vibrating in your veins—but it wasn't providing the clarity it used to. Instead, it just made your hands feel heavy and your eyelids feel like they were lined with sand.

​You were leaned over the high counter of the nurses' station, squinting at a discharge summary for a patient who’d just left, when a warm, familiar weight landed on your shoulder. The heat of the palm seeped through your scrub top instantly.

​You didn't even have to look up to know the grip. "You're going to need more than caffeine to get through the next six, old man," Jack’s voice rumbled near your ear.

​You looked up, catching him standing there with a yellow trauma chart held aloft like a trophy. "I'm only a few years on you, Abbot. Don't get cocky," you countered, though your voice lacked its usual bite.

​He didn't pull his hand away immediately, his thumb giving a brief, subconscious brush against your trap muscle. "Think I can borrow you? I’ve got a walk-in in Bed 4. Triage says they’re struggling with the history." He cocked an eyebrow, a challenge in his eyes. "You still speak Spanish, or did you forget it all over your lunch break?"

​"I remember enough to get you out of trouble," you replied, handing the chart you were holding back to the charge nurse with a tired nod.

​"Good. Follow me."

​As you walked, he handed you the new chart. It was sparse—just a name, Elena Rodriguez, and a few scribbled notes about abdominal pain. No allergies, no past medical history; the language barrier had hit a wall at the front desk.

​When you pushed back the curtain to Bed 4, the atmosphere shifted. An older woman was curled on the thin mattress, her face pale and waxy, clutching her midsection. Beside her stood a girl in her late teens, her knuckles white as she gripped the bedrail.

​"Hola," you said, your voice softening into your 'nurse' persona—calm, steady, and commanding. "Soy uno de los enfermeros, y él es el Doctor Abbot. Estamos aquí para ayudarles."

​The relief on the granddaughter's face was instantaneous. As you began a rapid-fire series of questions to the girl—asking about the onset of pain, fever, and the last time her grandmother had eaten—you translated for Jack in real-time.

​You and Jack moved around the small space like it was second nature. As he donned gloves and moved to the head of the bed, you stepped in at the hip, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around the woman’s arm and clipping a pulse oximeter to her finger. You didn't even have to look at him to know where he was reaching; you moved the gown aside just as his hand descended.

​"Tell her I'm going to check her abdomen," Jack said, his eyes focused. "I need to check for guarding or rebound tenderness."

​"El doctor va a examinarle el estómago," you murmured to the woman, leaning in close. "Trate de relajarse."

​Jack began his palpation, starting in the lower left quadrant to stay away from the pain. You were focused on the monitor, watching her heart rate climb as she tensed. You should have been looking at her face. You should have noticed the way her jaw tightened and her swallow became jagged.

​Jack moved his hand to the right lower quadrant, pressing down firmly over McBurney’s point to check for appendicitis. The second he applied pressure, the woman’s eyes went wide.

​"¡Ay, Dios—!"

​She didn't finish the sentence. A violent, projectile wave of dark, bile-stained vomit erupted from her, catching you squarely across the chest, your name badge, and the stethoscope you’d so carefully cleaned earlier.

​The room went dead silent, save for the beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor.

​You stood perfectly still, your arms still slightly raised from where you’d been adjusting the cuff. A slow, warm drip slid down the front of your scrubs. The woman began to sob out apologies, clutching her stomach even tighter.

​"Está bien, está bien...no se preocupe," you said automatically, your voice remarkably flat as you reached for a stack of gauze to wipe your face.

​Jack, his hands still hovered over her stomach, just stared at you. His mouth was slightly agape, his cocky persona completely evaporated. He looked at your ruined scrubs, then up at your eyes, an expression of pure, horrified sympathy—and a tiny, repressed twitch of a smile—crossing his face.

​"Well," Jack cleared his throat, finally finding his voice. "On the bright side...I think we can rule out a simple stomach ache.”

The shift had transitioned from laid back to a complete disaster. After the projectile vomit incident, the universe seemed to have opened a personal vendetta against your dignity. Between the firework enthusiast who’d turned his hand into a jigsaw puzzle and the elderly man who’d mistaken your leg for a bathroom stall, you were operating on pure, dehydrated spite. You’d even taken a cinematic spill in the lobby, sliding through a puddle by the water cooler like a clumsy kid on a slip-and-slide, only to pull yourself up with a plastered-on professional smile to help a patient back to their room.

​By the time you hit the locker room for the fifth change of clothes in four hours, you weren't even a person anymore—just a vessel for cheap coffee and adrenaline.

​You were pulling a fresh navy scrub top over your white long-sleeve, the fabric still smelling like industrial laundry detergent, when a resident skidded into your field of vision. He looked like he was about to burst into tears or an aneurysm.

​"Everything okay?" you asked, your voice sounding like it had been dragged through gravel.

​"No," he choked out, already sprinting back toward the hallway.

​You didn't even hesitate. You followed, the muscle memory of twenty years kicking in. But when you rounded the corner into Room 12, you stopped dead.

​Standing on the center of the bed was a woman who couldn't have been more than five-foot-two, looking like a tiny, naked gladiator. She’d ripped her IV out—blood was blooming in a small trail down her arm— and she was wielding the metal IV pole like a trident in one hand and a heavy steel bedpan like a shield in the other.

​"Honestly? That’s actually impressive," you whispered.

​"I’d give her an eight for form, but a two for the wardrobe choice," a low, familiar voice rumbled behind you. You didn't have to look to know Jack was standing right at your shoulder, his presence a grounded heat against the chaos.

​Security was already being paged, but you knew how that ended—takedowns, bruised ribs, and more paperwork than you had the soul left to finish. You looked at the girl; she was terrified, her eyes darting around the room like a trapped animal. Physical force was just going to make her swing that pole harder.

​"Wait," you murmured to Jack and the resident. "Let me try."

​You took a slow, deliberate breath, centering yourself. You stepped into the room with your hands held up, palms open, the universal sign for I’m unarmed and I’m tired.

​"Hey, sweetheart," you said, your voice dropping into that low, melodic 'nurse-hush' that had calmed a thousand panicked patients. "Why don't we put the pole down? It looks heavy, and I’d hate for you to pull a muscle."

​She didn't drop it. Instead, she hissed and swung the pole in a wide, whistling arc. You ducked instinctively, then straightened back up, unfazed. You glanced back at Jack and the resident with a look of pure, exhausted disbelief. She was barely a hundred-and-thirty pounds soaking wet, yet she was holding that metal pole like she was Ares on the battlefield.

​You reached the foot of the bed, moving into her personal space. The girl’s eyes narrowed, and with a grunt of effort, she launched the bedpan at your head.

​Your reflexes, honed by two decades of dodging flying medical equipment and erratic toddlers, kicked in. You brought your hand up just enough to deflect the trajectory. The heavy metal dish whistled past your ear, narrowly missing your shoulder before clattering loudly onto the linoleum behind you.

​Out in the hallway, a small gallery of residents and nurses had gathered, watching the standoff through the glass.

​"Ten dollars says he handles it before security even clears the double doors," Dana muttered, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe next to Jack.

​Jack didn't take his eyes off you. He watched the way you didn't flinch, the way your shoulders stayed relaxed even as the girl raised the IV pole for another strike. A ghost of a smile touched his lips—a mix of professional respect and something a lot more personal.

​"Make it twenty," Jack replied, his voice a low vibration. "I’ve learned never to bet against him when he’s had this bad of a day. He’s got nothing left to lose.”

You didn't blame the girl. In the Pitt, patients didn't act out of malice; they acted out of psychosis, withdrawal, or sheer, blind terror. To her, you weren't a nurse trying to help; you were a giant in navy blue scrubs coming to hurt her.

​"Sweetheart, just give me the pole," you said again, your voice a low, rhythmic anchor.

​She didn't listen. She lunged, using the IV pole like a bayonet to keep you at bay. You parried it with your forearm, the cold metal bruising your skin, but you didn't retreat. You knew the dance. You moved laterally, trying to find an opening, but your boots felt like lead and the caffeine jitters were making your timing a fraction of a second off.

​You realized then that there was no easy way to do this. You were going to have to take a hit to save her from herself.

​You lunged.

​The world turned into a blurred montage of motion. You didn't register the metal pole swinging in a tight, desperate arc. You didn't register the sickening crack as the weighted base of the pole collided directly with the bridge of your nose.

​What you registered was the girl. You wrapped your arms around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides as gently as possible while she shrieked, a wild, primal sound. You had her—until she threw her weight backward, her skull slamming into your already shattered face with the force of a hammer.

​The world blossomed into white light. Your knees hit the linoleum, then your back hit the wall.

​Suddenly, the room was full of blue and green scrubs. Dana was there, her face a mask of grim determination as she helped the residents guide the girl back onto the mattress. Soft restraints were clicked into place; a sedative was prepped. The chaos was being contained, but you were stuck in the static.

​You blinked rapidly, trying to clear the red haze from your vision. Warmth was blooming over your lips, copper-tasting and thick. You tried to stand, but a pair of hands—firm, steady, and unmistakably Jack’s—clamped onto your shoulders, pushing you back down against the wall.

​"Don't you dare try to stand up by yourself, " Jack growled. It wasn't his cocky voice. It was his authoritative voice.

​He didn't wait for an answer. He hooked his arms under yours and hoisted you up, half-carrying you out of the room. He navigated the sea of staring interns, depositing you into a swivel chair at the nurses' station.

​"Ice. Now," Jack snapped, gesturing vaguely at the air. Dana was already moving, tearing open a chemical cold pack before he’d even finished the sentence.

​Jack didn't step back. He stepped in, his knees brushing against yours as he boxed you into the chair. He snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves, the sound like a gunshot in the sudden quiet of the station.

​"Look at me," he commanded.

​You tilted your head back, your breath hitching. His hands were incredibly gentle as they moved over your face, ghosting over your cheekbones before landing on the bridge of your nose.

​"Follow my light," he muttered, clicking on a penlight. He checked your pupils for a concussion, his brow furrowed in a way that made the lines around his eyes deepen. Then, he began the physical exam. He slid his fingers down the sides of your nose, feeling for crepitus—that crunching sensation of bone fragments moving—and checking for any septal hematoma.

​You hissed, your eyes watering involuntarily as his thumb applied the slightest pressure to the bridge.

​"Using this as an excuse to get your hands on me, Dr. Abbot?" you croaked, a wet, bloody chuckle bubbling in your throat. "Very professional. I should report you to HR."

​Jack didn't laugh, but the corner of his mouth twitched, a tiny crack in his armor of professional concern. "Believe me, I can think of much better ways to get my hands on you that don't involve me covered in your blood."

​He took the ice pack from Dana, wrapping it in a paper towel before pressing it firmly but carefully against your face. "Any pain?"

​You rolled your eyes, which only made your head throb harder. "Yes, Doctor. It’s a tragedy. I fear I might be at death's door. Tell my landlord he can keep the deposit, but not my cat."

​Jack finally let out a short, breathy laugh, his eyes locking onto yours. The worry was still there, dark and heavy, but the spark was back. He leaned in a fraction closer, his voice dropping so low that even Dana, standing three feet away, couldn't hear him.

​"You’re a goddamn idiot," he whispered, his thumb lingering on your jawline just a second too long to be strictly clinical. "But you’re the best nurse in this building. Now sit still for a moment.”

The sterile quiet of the exam room was a stark contrast to the rattling chaos of the hallway. Jack didn't let go of your arm until you were perched on the edge of the exam table, the paper crinkling under your weight. He flicked the Occupied slider on the door and turned on the overhead procedure light, the sudden brightness making your head throb in time with your heartbeat.

​He began gathering supplies—lidocaine with epinephrine, a nasal speculum, and a tray of sterile gauze—his movements clipped and efficient. The silence between you was thick, charged with the kind of tension that usually preceded a storm or a confession. The adrenaline was finally bottoming out, leaving you with a raw, pulsing ache that felt like a railroad spike was being driven into your skull.

​You needed a distraction. Anything to stop you from focusing on the copper taste in your mouth and the way your vision was tunneling.

​"Still thinking about it?" you rasped, the words sounding thick because of the swelling.

​Jack paused, a sterile syringe halfway to a vial. He didn't look up. "Thinking about what?"

​"Those 'other ways' to get your hands on me," you said, leaning back slightly, though the movement made you wince. "The ones that don't involve a crime scene on my face."

​Jack’s jaw set. He finally looked at you, his eyes dark and unreadable under the harsh LED light. He didn't smile this time. "I shouldn't have said that," he muttered, his voice dropping into a rougher territory. "It wasn't professional. Not there. Not with you bleeding out in the middle of a triage station."

​He stepped toward you, the smell of his cologne—faintly masked by the sharp scent of isopropyl alcohol—filling your senses. He tilted your chin up with a gloved hand, his touch surprisingly warm despite the latex.

​"Mmm," you hummed, closing your eyes for a second to steady yourself. "I didn't say I minded, Jack. I just said you probably shouldn't broadcast it to a room full of nosy nurses. They talk enough as it is."

​"Let them talk," he breathed, but he was already moving into doctor-mode.

​He soaked a long strip of gauze in a vasoconstrictor to shrink the membranes and stop the bleeding. "This is going to be unpleasant," he warned, his voice softening. "I need to pack the nose to see if there’s a septal hematoma. If there's a blood clot pressing on the cartilage, I have to drain it tonight, or you’ll lose the bridge."

​He moved with a surgical precision that was almost hypnotic. He inserted the speculum, widening the nostril just enough to peer inside. You gripped the edges of the exam table, your knuckles turning white as he worked.

​"Stay with me," he murmured, noticing your shallow breathing. "Talk to me. Tell me about that Spanish elective you took. Anything."

​"Took it….because the professor was pretty," you managed to choke out, a strained attempt at a joke. "Turned out...I was better at the verbs than I was at the flirting."

​Jack let out a low, genuine huff of a laugh. He swapped the speculum for a small needle, preparing to numb the area. "Hard to believe. You seem to have the flirting part down to a science now."

​He paused, the needle hovering just inches from your face. His eyes searched yours, the professional mask slipping just enough to show the man underneath—the one who had been watching you across trauma bays for months, the one who was currently vibrating with a protective streak he couldn't quite hide.

​"If this nose is broken," Jack said, his voice dropping to a low, intimate rumble, "I’m the one who gets to set it. And once I’m done being your doctor for the night..." He trailed off, his thumb grazing your cheekbone one last time before the procedure began. "I think I’d like to try being that distraction you’re looking for. Somewhere without an audience.”

Jack had the elevator tool ready—a thin, flat metal instrument designed to lift the nasal bone back into its rightful place.

​"I’ve numbed you as much as I can," Jack said, his voice dropping into a low, steady frequency. "But you know how this goes. The lidocaine won’t touch the pressure. It’s going to be one sharp movement, a hell of a lot of crunching, and then it's over."

​You gripped the edges of the exam table, your knuckles turning a ghostly white. You’d seen this done a hundred times to screaming patients, but being on the receiving end was a different beast entirely. Your breath was coming in short, jagged hitches.

​"Look at me," Jack commanded. It wasn't a request.

​You forced your eyes open, locking onto his. He wasn't looking at you like a case file anymore. He was looking at you with a fierce, quiet intensity that seemed to pin you in place. He stepped between your knees, closing the distance until his chest was inches from your own, creating a private world within the four walls of the exam room.

​"Hand," he muttered, reaching out.

​You let go of the table and placed your hand in his. His grip was immense—warm, calloused, and grounding. He squeezed, a silent promise that he wasn't going to let you drift.

​"On three," Jack whispered. "One...two..."

​He didn't wait for three. He moved on two-and-a-half, a seasoned doctor’s trick to keep the patient from tensing at the last second.

​The sound was sickening—a wet, crystalline snap-crunch that vibrated through your facial bones and echoed in your inner ear. You let out a choked, guttural sound, your body instinctively trying to recoil, but Jack was a rock. He held your head steady with one hand while his other hand crushed yours, absorbing the shock of your pain.

​For a second, the world went gray at the edges. Your eyes flooded with involuntary tears, blurring Jack’s face into a smudge of blue scrubs and dark hair.

​"Easy, easy," Jack murmured, his voice right against your ear now. He’d dropped the tool and moved both hands to your face, his thumbs stroking your cheekbones with a tenderness that felt almost illegal in a hospital. "Breathe for me. It’s back in place. You’re okay. Stay with me."

​You slumped forward, your forehead coming to rest against his shoulder. You were shaking—a delayed reaction to the trauma and the exhaustion—and you didn't even care that you were getting blood on his clean shirt. You just needed the contact.

​Jack didn't pull away. He draped his arms around you, holding you in a loose, protective embrace that shielded you from the rest of the world. He pressed his face into the side of your head, his breath warm against your hair.

​"That's it," he whispered, his hand sliding up to cup the back of your neck, his thumb tracing the base of your skull. "Just breathe. I've got you."

​The silence that followed wasn't the awkward silence of two coworkers; it was the heavy, loaded silence of two people who had finally stopped pretending they didn't care. You could hear the steady thrum of his heart against your ear, a rhythm that was far more effective than any sedative Dana could have brought.

​After a long minute, you pulled back just an inch, looking up at him through watery, bloodshot eyes. "You cheated," you croaked, a weak, lopsided smile touching your swollen lips. "You went on two."

​Jack wiped a stray tear from your cheek with his thumb, his gaze dropping to your mouth before snapping back to your eyes. "I’m a doctor. I’m allowed to lie if it’s for your own good."

The salt air of Oceanside usually felt like home, but tonight it felt heavy, sticking to your skin like a layer of grease. You’d spent twenty years acclimating to the way Janine "Smurf" Cody operated. You were a fixture in the house, a shadow in the background of their heists, and more specifically, the only person who could look Andrew in the eye without flinching.

​You knew him—not just the him the world saw, but the Andrew who had been your shadow since you were both kids stealing bikes. You knew the twitch in his jaw when he was off his meds, the eerie, statue-like stillness when he was on them, and the way the family used him as a scapegoat for every job gone south. He was a man built of jagged edges and "wrong ways," but you’d long since stopped trying to smooth him out. You just lived among the ruins.

​The vibration of your phone on the nightstand cracked the silence at 1:14 AM.

​Smurf: Come over. I need you.

​You didn’t text back. You didn't ask "what" or "why." That wasn't the protocol. You rolled out of bed, pulling on a pair of gray sweatpants and a worn hoodie, skipping the shirt. The drive to the Cody house was a blur of empty streets and yellow-blinking traffic lights.

​When you let yourself in, the house was too quiet. The pool lights outside cast shimmering, watery blue shadows across the living room walls. You didn't hesitate; you walked straight into the den.

​Andrew was there. He was sitting in the armchair, back ramrod straight, feet planted flat on the floor. He wasn't watching the TV—he was staring through it, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance that didn't exist.

​A soft weight pressed against your back. Smurf. She didn't say a word at first, just slid her hand across your bare skin, her fingers cool and possessive. She rested her chin on your shoulder, the scent of her expensive floral perfume cutting through the smell of stale air.

​“Hope I didn't wake you, honey,” she hummed, her voice a low, melodic purr. “I just want him to be safe. He’s...agitated.”

​Safe. The word felt like a joke. Was anyone ever safe under this roof? Especially him. You looked at the back of Andrew’s head, at the tension in his shoulders that looked like it might snap the bone.

​“I’ve got him, Smurf,” you whispered, your voice raspy from sleep. “Go to bed.”

​You felt her lips brush your cheek—a maternal gesture that always felt a little too intimate, a little too loaded. “You’re a good boy,” she murmured before retreating into the shadows of the hallway.

​You stood there for a long moment, the silence stretching between you and the man in the chair. You hadn't even known he was out of prison. No one had called. No one had warned you. And Andrew...Andrew would never have reached out. He didn't know how to ask for things.

​You rounded the corner and stood directly in his line of sight. He didn't blink. Up close, he looked frayed. His hair was buzzed short, his skin sallow under the dim light.

​“Pope,” you said, your voice steady but soft.

​His eyes tracked up slowly, focusing on you. It wasn't a normal look; it was that intense, hyper-analytical stare he used when he was trying to decide if someone was a threat or a ghost. He didn't smile. He didn't say hello. He just looked at you like you were the only solid thing in a room full of smoke.

​“You’re late,” he finally rasped. His voice sounded like it had been dragged over gravel.

​“I didn’t know you were home,” you replied, holding his gaze. You reached out, not touching him yet—you knew better than to surprise him—but leaving your hand open in the space between you. “Come on. Let’s go. You need to sleep, and I’m not dragging you down the hall.”

​A flicker of something—recognition, maybe, or just old habit—crossed his face. You never used "please" with the others, but with him, it was implied in the way you stayed.

​Andrew stood up, his movements stiff and deliberate. He didn't say where he’d been or why he was sitting in the dark. He just followed you, his shadow falling over yours, as silent and loyal as a stray dog.

The cool night air hit you as you pushed through the heavy front door, but the tension didn't dissipate; it just shifted. You stopped by your car, the keys jingling softly in your hand. Behind you, the gravel crunched under Andrew’s boots before he came to a dead halt. He stood a few feet away, silhouetted against the glow of the pool lights, looking like a ghost haunting his own life.

​He didn't move. He just watched you with that unblinking, predatory focus.

​“Is she pawning me off on you?” he asked. His voice was thin, stripped of any inflection, but there was a jagged edge of resentment underneath—resentment for Smurf, or maybe for his own need to be looked after.

​You didn't flinch. You just stepped closer, the space between you shrinking until you could feel the radiated heat from his body. You leaned back against the hood of the car, the cold metal biting through your sweatpants.

​“No,” you said softly. A smile tugged at your mouth—the rare, genuine kind that was reserved strictly for him, never for Smurf or the boys. “I missed you, Andrew. Truth is, I’d rather have you with me than be alone tonight.”

​You didn’t wait for him to process the honesty. You knew he didn't always know what to do with someone being real with him. You just climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. A moment later, the passenger door opened, and the car dipped under his weight.

​The drive back to your apartment was a study in silence. It wasn't the awkward silence of strangers, but the heavy, comfortable weight of two people who had run out of things to say ten years ago. You kept one hand on the wheel and the other on the center console, inches from his. Out of the corner of your eye, you watched the streetlights rhythmically strobe across his face. He was staring out the side window, his reflection ghostly in the glass, his fingers twitching rhythmically against his thigh—a nervous tic you recognized from a thousand nights just like this one.

​In this car, the world felt smaller. Safer. You thought about the nights before he went away—the nights where silence turned into something physical. The way you’d explored every inch of his body, the way he would cling to you like a drowning man in the dark, desperate for a touch that didn't come with strings attached.

​You pulled into your spot at the apartment complex and cut the lights. The engine ticked as it cooled, the only sound in the cramped cabin. You didn't get out. You just sat there in the dark, letting the quiet settle around you for a long few minutes, giving him time to ground himself in this new reality.

​When you finally moved, he followed. He trailed behind you up the stairs like a shadow, his presence heavy and constant. Inside, the apartment was dim, smelling of woodsmoke and your laundry detergent.

​You didn't put on a show; you just moved with the practiced ease of being home. You reached for the hem of your hoodie and pulled it over your head, tossing it onto the armchair. The sweatpants followed, then your briefs, leaving you standing there in the pale moonlight filtering through the blinds.

​Andrew was standing by the door, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He was looking at you—really looking—his eyes tracing the lines of your back and the familiar curve of your shoulders.

​“You still sleep naked?” he asked. It wasn't a judgment; it was an observation, his voice sounding low and rough in the small room.

​You turned slightly, a small, knowing smile playing on your lips as you headed toward the bed. “You used to like it,” you responded quietly.

​The air in the room seemed to thicken. You saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, his gaze lingering on you with a hunger he’d spent a lifetime trying to starve out.

You lay in the dark, the mattress feeling vast and cold, staring at the rectangle of light the hallway cast across your bedroom floor. You knew he wouldn't leave—he had nowhere else to go that wasn't under Janine’s thumb—but that didn't mean he would come to bed.

​Every time you two crossed this line as adults, the shadow of Smurf lingered in the corner of the room. You wondered if he was still paralyzed by the guilt she’d spent decades sewing into his skin. Was he scared to be this close to someone who actually saw him? Or was he just waiting for her permission, even when she wasn't there?

​You let out a long, weary sigh and reached over, clicking the bedside lamp off. The room plunged into a hazy, blue-toned darkness. You rolled onto your side, turning your back to the door, trying to let sleep take you.

​But sleep was impossible with him pacing.

​For hours, you tracked his movements by the floorboards' groans. He was a shark in a small tank. You heard the kitchen window slide open—the sharp click of the lock, the rush of the night air, then the heavy thud as he closed it again, checking it twice, maybe three times. You heard him sink into the couch, the springs complaining under his weight, only for him to stand up thirty seconds later. Then came the pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, his footsteps stopping just short of your door before retreating.

​Finally, the floor creaked right at the threshold. He was there, hovering like a specter.

​You pushed yourself up, the sheets pooling at your waist as you leaned back against the headboard. The moonlight caught the sharp line of your shoulders, but you didn't look at him directly. You didn't want to spook him.

​“Come to bed, Andrew,” you whispered. Your voice was soft, an invitation rather than a command.

​He didn't move. He stood in the center of the doorway, his silhouette rigid, his hands slightly curled as if he were waiting for an attack. Even in the dark, you could feel the intensity of his stare—that wide-eyed, unblinking look that made other men run.

​“I can’t sleep,” he rasped. It wasn't just a statement; it sounded like a confession of a crime.

​“I know,” you said.

​“I’m fine right here,” he added quickly, his head giving a small, jerky nod. “I’m good. I’ll stay out there.”

​You looked at him then, really looked at him. He looked like he was vibrating with a nervous energy he couldn't discharge. You didn't argue. You knew that pushing Andrew only made him retreat further into his own head.

​“Fine,” you murmured. You laid back down, pulling the duvet up and scooting to the very edge of the mattress, leaving a wide, empty expanse of bed behind you. You turned your back to him, showing him you weren't a threat—that you weren't going to watch him or judge him.

​The silence stretched for another five minutes. You listened to his ragged breathing, the sound of a man who had forgotten how to just be.

​Then, finally, the floor groaned.

​He didn't make a sound as he approached. The bed dipped—slowly, cautiously—under his weight. He didn't get under the covers at first; he just sat on the edge of the mattress, his back to yours. You could feel the heat radiating off him in waves. Slowly, he moved, laying down on top of the blankets, still fully dressed, his body as stiff as a board.

​He was close enough that you could hear the frantic rhythm of his heart slowing down, syncing with yours. He didn't touch you, but the fact that he was there, in the dark, within arm's reach, was something.

You didn’t move, didn't even adjust the pillow, knowing that any sudden gesture might send him bolting back to the living room.

​Behind you, the rustle of fabric began. It was slow, hesitant. You heard the heavy thud of his boots hitting the carpet, followed by the soft metallic clink of his belt buckle. He was stripping away the armor he wore for the rest of the world, piece by piece. Finally, the bed shifted again. This time, he didn't stay on top of the blankets. He slid beneath them, the sudden warmth of his body cutting through the chill of the sheets.

​He stayed on his side of the mattress for a long time, as still as a statue. Then, slowly, you felt it—the lightest, most tentative ghost of a touch. His fingertips brushed against the skin of your shoulder, barely a whisper of contact, as if he were checking to see if you’d burn him or push him away. He was asking permission in the only way he knew how.

​You didn't say a word. You simply turned over, the movement fluid and welcoming. In the pale shadows, his eyes were wide, darting across your face, looking for any sign of rejection. When he found none, the tension seemed to drain out of him all at once.

​He moved in, curling his large frame into your side. He tucked his head into the crook of your neck, his forehead resting against your chest. He was heavy, solid, and shaking just a little. You reached up, your fingers tracing the jagged line of his jaw before moving to the nape of his neck. You followed the shape of his ear, your thumb disappearing into the short, coarse hair at the back of his head.

​For a long time, the only sound was the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the distant roll of the Pacific.

​“You’re the only one,” he whispered. The words were so low you almost missed them, muffled against your skin. “Everyone else...they look at me and they’re looking for the monster. They’re waiting for me to break something. But you aren’t scared.”

​It wasn't a boast; it was a realization that clearly terrified him. To be known was, to Andrew, the most dangerous thing in the world.

​You shifted just enough to press a firm, lingering kiss to the top of his head. The scent of him—soap, cigarettes, and the lingering metallic tang of the Cody house—filled your senses.

​“There’s nothing to be scared of, Andrew,” you murmured into his hair. “Not here.”

​He let out a breath—a long, shuddering exhale that sounded like a man finally dropping a weight he’d been carrying for years. His hand, previously hovering near your waist, finally settled, gripping your side with a desperate, grounding force. In the safety of the dark, away from Smurf’s watchful eyes and the brothers' expectations, he finally let himself drift.

The distant, rhythmic thud of leather hitting a heavy bag echoed in the cavernous space, vibrating inside Frank’s skull. It was a sound that used to anchor him. The violence of a fist connecting with meat, the hollow slap of a body hitting the canvas, the metallic rattle of the chain-link cage—it was the only music he’d ever cared for. Now, it just felt like a countdown to a memory he couldn't outrun.

It had been eighteen months since that night, and the guilt still tasted like copper in the back of his throat.

Logic told him it shouldn't bother him. Frank wasn't the one who’d heard his own vertebrae snap under the weight of a botched takedown. He wasn't the one who’d spent three months staring at a hospital ceiling with his jaw wired shut while a surgeon explained that his career had ended before his prime. But logic didn't account for the fact that it was you in that cage. It didn't account for the way his heart had flatlined when the referee—distracted and slow on the draw—let the extra four seconds of a dirty ground-and-pound go on far too long.

The worst part wasn't the injury itself. It was the aftermath. It was the fact that Frank’s career kept climbing, the wins piling up like a mountain, while you were relegated to a cramped apartment, watching his highlights on a flickering TV screen.

Frank shook his head, a sharp, jagged movement to clear the ghosts. He rubbed a calloused hand over his face, the stubble rasping against his palm, and stepped deeper into the dim light of the neighborhood gym.

You were standing by the weight benches, back turned to the door. Even from across the room, the sight of you hit him like a liver shot. Your posture was different now—stiffer, more guarded. The surgical scar ran like a jagged lightning bolt down the center of your spine, a permanent map of the night the lights went out.

“Took you long enough,” you said, your voice a little raspier than it used to be. You moved slowly, a careful hinge at the hips as you reached for a water bottle in your gear bag. “Starting to think you finally realized I’m a bad influence and stood me up.”

Frank didn’t say a word until he was right behind you. He didn't want to startle you, but he needed the contact like he needed air. He stepped into your space, his large, scarred hands settling gently—almost tentatively—around your waist. He pulled you back against his chest, feeling the heat of you through his shirt.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he grunted, the words low and gravelly against the skin of your neck. He pressed a slow, lingering kiss to the hollow there, his eyes closing as he just let himself breathe you in. “Not in this lifetime.”

You reached down, covering his rough, taped knuckles with your own hand. A small, private smile tugged at your lips as you felt the familiar heat of him. Frank didn’t just let go; he shifted, his nose grazing the ridge of your shoulder blade before he pressed a deliberate, lingering kiss directly over the raised tissue of your scar. It was a ritual now—an apology he never stopped offering, and a mark of ownership he refused to relinquish.

The sharp, salty tang of sweat clung to your skin, a dead giveaway.

“Been here a while?” Frank asked, finally pulling back. He didn't wait for an answer, already moving to drop his duffel with a heavy thud next to yours. He caught the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head in one fluid motion, muscles rippling under skin mapped with his own history of violence. He looked you over, his dark eyes narrowing as he took in the dampness of your hair. “You said you’d wait for me. You’re gonna overwork that back before we even start.”

“I got restless, Frank,” you countered, turning to face him. You leaned back against the weight rack, crossing your arms. “Sitting around the apartment is worse for it than the gym is. You know that.”

Frank let out a low grunt, one that was halfway between a disagreement and an acknowledgment. He stepped closer, the smirk finally tugging at the corner of his mouth—that rare, lopsided Frank Castle look that he only ever saved for you.

“Is that right?” He stepped into your space, his presence looming and solid. “Maybe you just need a better reason to stay home. You sure you don’t want to pack it in? Go back, soak in a hot bath?” He paused, his voice dropping an octave, gravelly and suggestive. “I’m sure I could find a way to help you relax.”

You rolled your eyes, though the heat in your chest had nothing to do with the gym’s lack of AC. “Real subtle, Castle.”

He chuckled, a low vibration in his chest. By now, the gym had emptied out. The rhythmic snap-snap-snap of some amateur kid working a heavy bag in the corner was the only other sound, but even that was fading as the owner started dimming the overhead lights. This was the routine: the world ended at the gym doors, leaving just the two of you in the shadows of the mats, just like it had been when you were both rising stars.

You shrugged, your gaze drifting over the familiar lines of his face—the broken nose, the scars, the fierce protection in his eyes. “Maybe once we’re done here,” you said, your voice softening as you reached out to snag the waistband of his gym shorts, pulling him just an inch closer. “But I’m hoping you’ll join me. I don't think I can reach the spots that actually ache.”

Frank’s expression shifted, the playfulness dying down into something much more raw. He reached up, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw with a tenderness that would have shocked anyone who’d ever seen him in a ring.

“Yeah,” he rasped, his forehead dropping to rest against yours. “I’ll join you. But first, let's see what you’ve got left in the tank. Don't go easy on me just 'cause I'm the one still on the payroll.”

Frank paced a small circle on the mat, his movements methodical and heavy. He was staying outside your reach—way outside—dancing a perimeter that felt more like a chore than a warm-up.

Usually, sparring with Frank was like being trapped in a cage with a hurricane. He was a pressure fighter; he liked to get inside, use his weight, and make you feel every ounce of his strength. But tonight, he was a ghost.

You lunged, throwing a jab-cross combo that was meant to test his guard. Instead of parrying and digging a hook into your ribs like he used to, Frank just stepped back. He slipped the second punch with a foot of clearance to spare, his hands held high and tight, his eyes tracking your every twitch with a frantic sort of focus.

“Come on, Frank,” you grunted, resetting your stance. “I’ve seen heavy bags with more aggression than you’re showing right now.”

“Just finding my rhythm, baby,” Frank rasped, his breath hitching as he circled left. “Testing the air. Seeing how you’re moving.”

You didn't buy it. You feinted a low kick—just a twitch of the hip—and Frank practically leapt backward, his brow furrowed in a sharp line of concern. He wasn't looking for an opening; he was looking for a way to make sure you didn't break.

“Bullshit,” you snapped, dropping your hands to your sides. The sudden stillness made him stop in his tracks. “You’ve been ‘testing the air’ for ten minutes. You’re dodging hits you’d normally counter in your sleep. You’re keeping enough distance for a third person to stand between us.”

Frank adjusted his stance, his shoulders bunching. “I told you. I’m warming up. Don't want to catch you with something stupid before you’re loose.”

“You’re being soft, Castle,” you said, the words sharp and intentional. You stepped into the pocket, forcing him to either engage or retreat again. “You’re scared. You think if you put a hand on me, I’m gonna shatter like glass.”

Frank’s jaw tightened, the muscle jumping in his cheek. That hit home. He hated being called scared, but he hated the idea of hurting you more. “I’m being careful. There’s a difference.”

“Not in this gym there isn’t,” you countered. You moved in again, faster this time, snapping a leg kick that actually connected with his thigh. It wasn't hard, but it was enough to sting. “I’m not a patient in a ward anymore, Frank. I’m your partner. I’m a fighter. So stop treating me like a ghost and actually spar with me.”

Frank went still, his dark eyes searching yours. He was breathing hard, not from the exertion, but from the internal war he was losing. He looked at your spine, then back to your eyes, his hands trembling just a fraction.

“I can’t,” he admitted, his voice dropping into that raw, guttural growl. “I see you move a certain way, hear a certain sound...and I’m back in that arena. I’m watching you go down again.”

“Then watch me stay up,” you challenged, stepping into his space until your chest was inches from his. You took his hand—the one wrapped in tape and scarred from a dozen wars—and pressed it against your side. “I’m right here. I’m solid. You want to help me? Then help me remember what it feels like to be in a real fight. Don't let that guy in the arena take this away from us, too.”

Frank stared at his hand against your ribs, his fingers curling slightly. He let out a long, shaky exhale, the tension slowly bleeding out of his frame and being replaced by a focused, familiar heat.

“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?” he muttered, though the smirk was finally beginning to return.

“So you’ve told me,” you grinned, snapping your guard back up. “Now, quit being a coward and hit me.”

Frank grunted, a low, dangerous sound. He shifted his weight, his center of gravity dropping as he finally stepped into the pocket. “Alright. But don’t come crying to me when you’re sore tomorrow.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” you laughed, just as Frank exploded forward, finally fighting like the man you knew.

The sparring was a dance of calculated restraint. You could feel the dormant power in his shoulders every time he checked a kick or parried a strike; he was moving at sixty percent, his strikes landing with a controlled thud rather than a bone-deep crack. Even so, he was working you. He kept the pace high, forcing you to pivot, to breathe through the burn in your lungs, and to trust your body again.

But every time you threw a heavy hook that left your ribs exposed, Frank would pause for a fraction of a second—just long enough for you to recover.

"Still pulling punches, Castle," you huffed, ducking under a slow-rolling cross.

"Keeping you honest," he grunted back.

He waited for you to overextend on a lead leg kick, and then he struck. With a burst of speed that reminded you exactly who he was, Frank stepped inside your guard, wrapped his arms around your waist, and used his momentum to drive you backward. The chain-link fence of the practice cage caught you, the metal groaning under the combined weight of your bodies.

He didn't take you to the mat. Instead, he spun you around with practiced ease, pinning your chest against the cold, galvanized steel.

Frank pressed himself flush against your back, his heavy weight anchoring you there. He reached around, his large hands engulfing yours and pinning them against the mesh of the cage above your head. You were trapped between the fence and the sheer heat of him. You felt his chest heaving against your spine, his breath hot and ragged against the sensitive skin of your ear.

He didn't pull away. Instead, he leaned in, his nose brushing against the side of your neck, inhaling the scent of salt and exertion.

"You know," he started, his voice dropping into a low, vibrating rumble that you felt deep in your bones. "I forgot how good you look from this angle. Pinned up against the wire...maybe I should’ve kept you in the clinch more often."

He let out a short, dark chuckle, his lips grazing your skin. He was teasing you, trying to lighten the heavy air that had hung over the gym all evening, but there was a raw edge of hunger in his voice that he couldn't quite mask.

You felt the familiar spark of defiance—the one that had made you a contender in the first place. You didn't struggle; you waited. You felt the slight looseness in his grip, the way he’d relaxed just enough because he thought he had you.

In one fluid motion, you dropped your weight, twisting your wrists inside his hold. You used the cage for leverage, shoving off the wire and spinning into his space before he could reset his feet. Frank stumbled back a step, surprised, and you didn't give him an inch. You hooked his lead leg and shoved, using his own momentum to send him back against the fence.

You slammed your forearm against his chest, pinning him where you had just been. You leaned in close, your face inches from his, a triumphant hum vibrating in your throat.

"I don't know, Frank," you whispered, your eyes locking onto his dark, blown-out pupils. You felt the rough texture of the cage behind him and the frantic beat of his heart under your arm. "I think I like this view a whole lot better."

Frank stared at you for a beat, stunned into silence. Then, a slow, genuine grin spread across his face—the kind of grin that showed teeth.

"Yeah?" he rasped, his hands coming up to rest on your hips, no longer hesitant. "You’re gettin' cocky again. I like that.”

He didn't stay pinned for long. Frank moved with that deceptive, predatory speed he was famous for, slipping your forearm and diving for a double-leg takedown. He was careful—always careful—guiding your descent so your back hit the thick foam of the center mat with a dull thump rather than a bone-jarring crash. He followed you down, settling into a heavy side-control before transitioning into a full mount.

He didn't strike. He just stayed there, his weight a solid, grounding presence on top of you. His large hands pinned your wrists beside your head, but his grip was loose, almost a caress. He was looking down at you, his dark eyes searching your face with an intensity that felt like it was peeling back your skin. The sweat dripped from the tip of his nose onto your cheek, but neither of you moved to wipe it away.

For a long minute, the silence was absolute. Frank’s chest rose and fell against yours, his expression clouded with a question he’d clearly been chewing on all day.

"Doctor say anything new?" he finally rasped, his voice barely a whisper in the empty gym. "About...you know. Returning. Getting back in the rotation anytime soon?"

The question felt like a physical weight, heavier than Frank’s body. He knew the answer was a sore spot. He’d seen the way you flinched whenever an MMA blog posted a "Where Are They Now?" retrospective, or when commentators spoke about your career in the past tense, like you were a ghost haunting your own highlight reels. He knew the walls of that shitty apartment felt like they were closing in on you every time he left for a fight.

You shifted beneath him, the movement stiff, your eyes drifting toward the darkened ceiling. You let out a long, jagged sigh that seemed to drain the last of the adrenaline from your limbs.

"It’s hit or miss, Frank," you admitted, shaking your head slowly against the mat. "One day the specialist says the nerve ending is looking 'promising,' and the next he’s talking about 'long-term mobility management.' It’s a coin toss if I’ll ever be cleared for a sanctioned walk-out again."

Frank’s jaw tightened, his thumbs tracing small circles over your wrists. You could see the guilt rising in him again—the "why you and not me" that stayed shadowed in his gaze.

You reached up, breaking one hand free to cup the back of his neck, pulling him down just a fraction so he had to look at you. "Hey. Look at me."

His eyes locked onto yours, raw and pained.

"Even if the answer is never," you said, your voice firm despite the ache in your chest, "I’m not going anywhere. I’ll still be in your corner. I’ll still be the one screaming the loudest when you're under the lights. I’m cheering you on until the wheels fall off, Castle. You’re stuck with me."

Frank closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against yours. He took a shaky breath, the tension in his shoulders finally snapping as he let himself just be there with you, grounded by the promise.

The adrenaline of the spar had cooled, leaving behind a dull, familiar ache in your lower back and the heavy, grounding presence of Frank by your side. The gym was silent now, the lights dimmed to a low, amber glow that caught the sharp angles of Frank’s face as he watched you move.

He stood by the bench, his own bag already zipped, but he wasn’t in a hurry. He was just...observing. His gaze followed the line of your shoulders as you reached for your discarded t-shirt. You felt his eyes track the movement of the fabric as it slid over your skin, momentarily concealing the jagged line of the scar he’d kissed only an hour before.

Frank had a way of looking at you that made you feel like the only solid thing in a world made of smoke. It wasn't just desire; it was a quiet, fierce brand of devotion that he didn't have words for.

You reached down, gathering your hand wraps and your bottle, stuffing them into your duffel bag with a tired precision. When you finally zipped the bag shut and looked up, he was still there, leaning against a weight rack with his arms crossed, his dark eyes unblinking.

You couldn't help the small smile that tugged at your mouth. "You gonna keep staring, Castle, or are we actually leaving?"

Frank didn't move, though a shadow of that lopsided smirk touched his lips. "Just taking it in," he rasped, his voice sounding deeper in the stillness of the gym. "Making sure you're still in one piece."

You straightened up, slinging the heavy strap of your bag over your shoulder. The weight made you wince—just a flicker of a shadow across your face—and Frank was off the rack in a second, his hand reaching out as if to catch you, before he forced himself to go still.

"Hey," you said softly, reassuring him. You stepped into his space, tilting your head. "That bath...is it still on the table? Or were you just talking big to get me off the mats?"

Frank’s expression softened, the intensity in his eyes shifting into something warmer, more intimate. He reached out, his thumb brushing a smudge of gym grime from your cheekbone. "Always on the table. Hot water, some of those salts the doc recommended. I’ll even handle the heavy lifting."

You laughed, the sound echoing lightly against the high ceiling. "I think I can manage to sit in a tub by myself, Frank."

"Didn't say you had to do it by yourself," he countered, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.

You hummed, the sound vibrating in your throat as you reached up. You grabbed the lapels of his jacket, pulling him down toward you. Frank met you halfway, his large hands coming up to cradle your face with a tenderness that always felt like a secret he was sharing only with you.

You leaned up on your toes, pressing a lingering, salt-tinged kiss to his lips. It wasn't a quick goodbye; it was a promise. He tasted like grit and determination, and when he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours for a long, quiet breath.

"Come on," he muttered, finally taking the bag from your shoulder despite your mock protest. "Let’s get you home.”

Obsession wasn't a slow burn; it was a quiet, structural collapse. It was a hairline fracture in safety—invisible until it spidered inward, bringing down the entire framework from the pressure alone. To most people, it was a sickness, a catastrophic loss of control that bypassed logic and shattered every moral boundary.

To Benjamin Poindexter, it was simply second nature. It was the quiet amidst the deafening static in his head, just enough of a lull for him to finally catch a breath.

A breath that held a thousand possibilities, a thousand scenarios, a thousand potential fixes. But no matter where his mind wandered, everything always led back to one person, sitting right there in the vulnerable sanctuary of your own home.

You were never truly alone, even when you locked the deadbolt and drew the heavy blinds against the New York night. To Dex, walls were merely suggestions, and privacy was a comforting delusion you told yourself to sleep better. He knew the precise rhythm of your footsteps on the hardwood floor—the heavier strike of your right heel, the subtle drag of a tired ankle after a sixteen-hour workday. He had cataloged every single square inch of your apartment long before he ever dared to step foot inside it while you were out. He knew the brand of detergent you used, the exact expiration date of the milk in your fridge, and the hidden spare key you kept tucked behind the loose brick in the hallway, a key he had duplicated in brass ages ago.

Dex had mapped your entire existence with the terrifying meticulousness of a sniper calculating wind resistance and Coriolis effect. He had memorized the exact cadence of your voice—the steady, authoritative register you used during cross-examinations, contrasted against the softer, unguarded timbre you reserved for late nights hunched over case files with Matt and Foggy. He knew the precise placement of every scar, every freckle, every mole, and the slight, charming overlap of that one crooked tooth that only showed when you let your guard down and truly smiled in the quiet of your kitchen.

He had memorized your eyes: the exact shade of them under harsh fluorescent courtroom lights versus the muted, golden amber glow of your bedside lamp. He knew the way you favored your left side after a grueling day, the way your jaw clenched—a tight, white-hot muscle spasm—when you stared at a difficult brief late into the night. He knew the difference between your professional public mask and the easy, unfiltered way you laughed when Foggy cracked a tired joke over takeout on your worn velvet couch.

And, God help him, he knew how Matt touched you.

From his vantage point pressed flat against the ceiling crawlspace or half-concealed in the deep shadows of the fire escape outside your bedroom window, eyes locked onto the subtle tension in your spine, Dex’s mind raced with intrusive, burning clarity. He thought of the ways he could finally feel your skin under his fingertips. Not with the tender, sickeningly sweet reverence that he’d watched Matt use—gliding hands beneath the sheets in the dark with a gentle certainty that Dex’s own calloused, trigger-happy hands could never hope to mimic, no matter how hard he tried. Matt touched you like you were fragile glass. Dex wanted to know what you felt like from the inside.

Dex knew the mechanics of your mind better than you knew them yourself. He knew the bitter, suffocating taste of defeat that was currently souring your tongue as you sat alone in the dark living room, replaying every misstep of a lost case, agonizing over the jury's verdict. He knew the exact moment you would reach for your phone, knew the way your thumb hovered over Matt's contact before dropping it back onto the cushion, too exhausted to reach out, too proud to lean on someone else.

Intimate was the only word for it, even if it was entirely one-sided, blooming exclusively in the dark, clinical architecture of his mind. He wanted you. Not with love—Dex couldn't love. Love required warmth, selflessness, a delicate give-and-take that his wiring simply didn't support. He didn't have love to give the way he knew you did, the way you poured your whole heart into advocating for people who couldn't save themselves.

He couldn't love you, but he *wanted* you. He wanted to consume you, to absorb your habits and mirror your mannerisms until he had successfully morphed himself into your very being, just to get a taste of the stability you represented.

Down in the dark, just inches away from where you sat weeping softly into your hands, completely unaware of the breathing silhouette lingering just outside your windowpane, Dex smiled. You kept his mind quiet. The static faded when you were near. And in Benjamin Poindexter’s world, quiet was the closest thing to heaven he would ever know—and he was willing to burn the whole world down to keep it.

The digital clock on your nightstand glowed with an aggressive, hostile red: 1:14 AM.

You hadn’t slept. Dex knew you hadn’t. He didn't need to hear your breathing to know it; he could feel the residual hum of your insomnia vibrating through the floorboards of the unit directly above you—or perhaps closer, just beyond the thin drywall of the hallway. He sat motionless in the deep, ink-black corner of your living room, completely swallowed by the shadows, his posture ramrod straight, hands folded neatly over his knees.

He watched you shift beneath the tangled sheets on your bed. The movement was sluggish, heavy with the bone-deep exhaustion of a man stretched past his breaking point.

Dex didn't blink. His eyes, clear and unnervingly dilated, tracked every microscopic twitch of your muscles as you finally threw off the covers. You sat on the edge of the mattress, shoulders slumped, head bowed so low your chin nearly touched your chest. You stayed like that for a long, agonizing minute—frozen, dead to the world, running the catastrophic trial over and over in your skull like a broken film reel.

Then, you stood.

Dex tracked the unsteady sway of your torso, the way your bare feet padded silently against the hardwood. He watched as you crossed the dark bedroom and drifted into the bathroom. The pale, sickly luminescence of the fluorescent strip above the sink flickered on, casting a harsh, ghostly pallor over your skin. Through the cracked door, Dex didn't miss a single detail. He watched you turn on the cold tap, cupping your hands and splashing water over your face, watching the droplets cling to your eyelashes and trace the sharp line of your jaw.

You stared into your own reflection, your eyes bloodshot and hollow. Dex leaned forward an infinitesimal fraction, his gaze tracing the exact contours of your face through the gap in the doorway, memorizing the haunted, defeated slump of your shoulders.

You turned off the light and moved back into the bedroom to get dressed.

Every rustle of fabric was a symphony to him. He watched you pull on a heavy, charcoal-grey wool coat over a rumpled button-down, the wool swallowing the lines of your torso. You slipped your feet into leather boots, not bothering to lace them up properly—just tucking the tongues in, desperate for a barrier between yourself and the cold pavement outside.

Then came the ritualistic, pathetic hesitation.

You walked over to the nightstand where your phone lay face-up, glowing softly with unread notifications. Dex already knew what they were: texts from Foggy asking if you were holding up, a missed call from Matt asking to come over.

You stared at the screen. Your thumb hovered over the glass, trembling slightly. Dex watched the internal war wage behind your eyes—the desperate, crushing urge to reach out for a lifeline, to let someone pull you back from the edge. But pride, or perhaps the sheer humiliation of failure, won out. With a sharp, jerky motion, you snatched the phone off the wood and shoved it deep into your coat pocket, silencing the light forever.

Your hand lashed out blindly onto the entryway table, fingers closing around your keys. The brass jingled softly, a sharp, metallic note in the suffocating quiet of the apartment.

Dex stood up from his chair. He moved with a terrifying, liquid grace, making zero sound as he stepped out of the shadows and tracked you toward the front door.

You didn't need to check the calendar or deliberate on your destination. Dex knew where you were going before the thought had even fully formed in the chaotic, alcohol-craving synapses of your own brain. You were going to drink. You were going to walk down to that dim, nameless dive bar three blocks away where nobody knew your name, where the neon beer signs bled red and amber through the grease-stained windows.

You were going to drink to forget a failure that felt too large to swallow. You were going to drink until the static in your own head matched the white noise of the jukebox, until the edges of the courtroom blurred, until you didn't even know how you managed to navigate the cold concrete labyrinth back to your own front door.

And Dex would be there for every drop of it.

He would watch you nurse glass after glass of cheap bourbon, tracking the way the amber liquid stained your lips, mapping the exact moment your eyes would glaze over and your coordination began to fray at the edges. He would trail three steps behind you in the freezing New York fog on the staggering walk home, a phantom in the dark keeping you safe from the rest of the world only because he refused to let anyone else ruin what was exclusively his.

By the time you finally collapsed back through your front door later tonight—limp, spinning, and utterly defenseless—you wouldn't remember the cold, you wouldn't remember the walk, and you wouldn't remember the heavy, calloused weight of his hands pressing you gently against the hallway wall in the dark, guiding you home when you couldn't do it yourself.

You would only remember the burn of the alcohol on your tongue, and the lingering, phantom warmth of hands that weren't Matt's, keeping you anchored to a reality you were desperately trying to drown.

Fog clung to the pavement outside like a wet shroud, parting just enough to let you slip into the suffocating warmth of the dive bar.

It was a dim, miserable excuse for a bar—the kind of place where the air always smelled faintly of stale floor cleaner, cheap draft beer, and the quiet despair of regulars who had nowhere else to be at nearly two in the morning. The neon sign above the door hummed a low, flat buzzing , casting a sickly hue over the sticky mahogany bar top.

You took a stool near the far end, your shoulders curled inward, trying to shrink away from the sparse crowd.

Exactly one hundred and twenty seconds later, the bell above the door jingled with a sharp, crisp chime.

Benjamin Poindexter stepped inside, shaking the damp chill from his shoulders with a subtle, controlled movement. He didn't look around, didn't draw attention to himself, but his eyes had already locked onto the back of your coat. He moved with quiet, predatory efficiency, sliding onto a booth or a stool three seats down and two steps back—far enough to maintain the illusion of a stranger, but close enough to catch the softest exhale of your breath.

He didn't order a drink. He didn't need one. You were his poison, and watching you was the only intoxicating agent he required.

Behind the sticky wood of the counter, the bartender—a woman with heavily bleached hair and a low-cut denim top—brightened instantly at the sight of you. She didn't walk; she sauntered over, leaning heavily against the bar top right in front of you, thrusting her chest forward with deliberate, calculated casualness so her cleavage was on blatant, unavoidable display under the amber lights.

A cold, razor-thin spike of pure, unadulterated venom pierced straight through Dex's chest.

His jaw locked so hard a muscle twitched violently in his cheek. He hated her. He hated the way she invaded your space, the cheap synthetic scent of her perfume, the presumptuous curve of her smile as if she had any right to bask in your presence. She was a distraction, a biological interruption threatening the fragile, obsessive sanctuary Dex had built around you. She was a variable he hadn't accounted for, and his fingers instinctively twitched inside his coat pocket, craving the cold steel weight of something lethal to clear the path.

And yet, a darker, more sickening realization curdled underneath his rage.

Dex knew you. He knew the inner machinery of your heart better than you cared to admit. For all his dark fantasies, for all his quiet surveillance and the possessive terror clawing at his throat, Dex knew the harsh, humiliating truth: you would choose a man. Not him. Never him. If you ever looked for comfort, if you ever sought out a body to warm your bed or hands to pull you out of your misery, you would reach for someone normal. Someone soft. A man with a warm smile and a clear conscience—a Matt, or someone cut from that same sickeningly righteous cloth. You would never choose the fractured, screaming void that lived inside Benjamin Poindexter.

The thought made his stomach twist into jagged knots, fueling the fire of his obsession until it burned hot and white behind his eyes.

He forced his breathing to steady, his gaze narrowing back onto you as you finally raised your head.

You looked up at the bartender, offering a tight, exhausted, polite nod—the kind of tired professional courtesy you couldn't switch off even when your world was crashing down. The bartender rolled her eyes playfully, letting out a breathy laugh before turning to grab the bottle, her body brushing unnecessarily close to yours.

"Bourbon. Neat," you said, your voice raspy, worn down to the marrow.

Dex watched every microscopic detail. He watched the bartender pour the amber liquor, the heavy liquid splashing against the sides of a scarred rocks glass. He watched you pick it up with fingers that barely missed a tremor.

And as you tilted your head back to swallow the burn, Dex watched your throat move. He tracked the exact bob of your Adam's apple as the harsh liquor slid down, your eyes squeezing shut against the bite.

In the dark sanctuary of his mind, the distance between you vanished. Dex didn't imagine the glass against your lips; he imagined his own teeth—sharp, white, and eager—pressing precisely against the thin, sensitive skin of your neck right where your pulse hammered against your collarbone. He imagined biting down just hard enough to draw a single bead of blood, tasting your panic, marking you so thoroughly that no bartender, no Matt, no jury in the world could ever wash him off your skin.

The second glass didn't even touch the sides.

Dex watched the amber liquid vanish down your throat with the same mechanical efficiency as the first, your hand slamming the heavy glass back down against the sticky wood of the counter with a sharp, hollow clink. The bartender barely had time to wipe the ring of moisture away before you were holding up two fingers, a silent, desperate demand for a refill.

You were chasing a ghost, trying to outrun the verdict, the silence, the crushing weight of a courtroom that had just chewed you up and spat you out.

With a sluggish, heavy motion, you dug your hand into the pocket of your coat and dragged your phone out into the dim, neon-lit air. The screen flared to life, casting a pale, cold glow over the exhausted planes of your face. Dex didn't need to lean in to know what was there. He knew the red notification dots by heart. More missed calls. More fragmented, worried texts from Foggy. More quiet, earnest pleas from Matt asking if he could come over, asking where you were, offering a safe harbor you stubbornly refused to step foot in.

You stared at the glowing blue light for three agonizing seconds. Your thumb hovered, trembling slightly over the screen—a microscopic window of hesitation where you almost let them in, almost let someone pull you back from the ledge.

Then, your jaw tightened. With a dead, indifferent swipe, you shoved the phone back into your pocket, letting the screen fade to black as you chose to fade right along with it.

The third glass arrived, sweating and golden under the grease-filmed lights. You tossed that one back, too.

Dex watched the transformation take hold with clinical, predatory fascination. He saw the exact moment the alcohol bypassed your defenses, loosening the rigid, unyielding posture you wore like armor. Your shoulders finally drooped. Your eyelids grew heavy, the sharp focus in your eyes dissolving into a hazy, unfocused fog. The world was shrinking down to the size of a rocks glass, and you were drifting right out into the deep end.

That was his cue.

Dex slid off his stool with absolute, frictionless silence. He didn't rush. He walked with the measured, terrifying grace of a predator closing the final few yards on a tethered animal. The floorboards didn't even creak beneath his boots.

He took the empty stool directly beside yours.

The space between you shrank to zero. You could smell him before you registered him—not the cheap beer and stale smoke of the tavern, but something clean, cold, and entirely clinical, like fresh iron and wool.

Dex raised two fingers toward the bleached-blonde bartender, who abandoned her other end of the counter the second she caught his eye.

"Another one," Dex said, his voice a low, gravelly hum that cut effortlessly through the low-fi drone of the jukebox. He slid a crisp bill across the mahogany, keeping his eyes locked entirely on the side of your face. "And keep it neat."

The glass appeared before you could even register that the seat next to you had been occupied.

You blinked hard, trying to clear the static and the liquor from your vision, and slowly turned your head. Your neck felt stiff, heavy, as you dragged your gaze upward to look at the man who had just bought your poison.

He was looking right back at you.

Up close, Benjamin Poindexter was entirely wrong. His suit was too neat for a dive bar at half past two in the morning; his posture was too straight, too rigid. But it was his smile that made the hairs on the back of your arms stand up in sudden, violent protest. It was a sharp, razor-thin curve of the lips—too bright, too rehearsed, and utterly devoid of warmth. It was a grin that belonged on a corpse or a predator pressing its face against the glass of a cage.

Your alcohol-fried brain short-circuited. Every instinct you possessed screamed that something was deeply, fundamentally wrong with the man sitting beside you, but your synapses were firing too slowly through the fog of bourbon to connect the dots. You couldn't process the danger; you could only stare, caught like a fly in amber.

Dex tilted his head, the terrifying smile never reaching his dead, pale eyes.

"Rough day, counselor?" he asked.

The words rolled off his tongue with a smooth, terrifying precision—the cadence of a man who had stood in an empty apartment, staring at a blank wall, and practiced this exact conversation a million times in his head before it ever happened.

He didn't need to do this. He didn't need to sit here, playing at being a stranger in a bar. He had a duplicate key sitting in the dark of his pocket. He could have just as easily followed you home in the freezing fog, slipped beneath the sheets of your bed while you slept, and buried his face in your hair, disappearing into the shadows before you ever woke up to scream.

He could have taken you silently, easily, without a single word ever passing between you.

But sitting here—breathing the same stale air, watching the confusion slowly melt into dull compliance across your face, playing the part of the stranger who just happened to notice your misery—was so much better. It was an exquisite, agonizingly slow foreplay.

He wanted you to look at him. He wanted you to choose him, even if you didn't know you were doing it. And as your hand instinctively reached out to wrap around the fresh glass he had just bought you, Dex smiled wider, resting his own hand dangerously close to yours on the counter, waiting for the night to finally begin.

You let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-hiccup—a dry, defeated sound that rattled in your chest. The alcohol had finally numbed the sharpest edges of your anxiety, leaving behind a heavy warmth that made everything feel slightly out of focus.

"You have no idea," you muttered, your voice thick and dragging as you reached out and wrapped your fingers around the fresh glass of bourbon.

Dex didn't move away. He stayed right where he was, his shoulder pressed just fractionally against yours, radiating a strange, clinical heat that cut right through the heavy wool of your coat. He watched your fingers—the slight tremor in your knuckles, the way your grip tightened around the rim of the glass—with an intensity that felt entirely too heavy for a casual bar encounter.

"Try me," Dex said softly.

His tone wasn't pushing. It was patient, almost sickeningly gentle, the kind of voice a therapist or a priest might use to coax confessions out of a dying man. It invited you in, wrapping around your alcohol-fogged brain like a warm, velvet noose.

You stared down into the amber liquid, swirling the remaining ice cube against the glass. You were too tired to be suspicious, too hollowed out by the verdict and the crushing weight of the courtroom to care that this man in the tailored suit looked at you the way a hunter looked at a deer caught in the headlights. You just wanted someone to listen. You wanted someone who wasn't Matt, who wasn't Foggy, someone who didn't look at you with that suffocating, righteous pity.

"Lost a case," you mumbled, taking another slow, burning sip. "Everything... all the evidence. It was all right there. Open and shut. But the defense... they just twisted it. Talked circles around the jury. And I just sat there and watched it happen."

"It's frustrating when the system fails," Dex replied, his voice a low, soothing hum. "When the people who are supposed to protect the structure let the cracks widen until everything caves in."

You blinked, turning your head slightly to look at him again. The phrasing was strange—too architectural, too clinical—but it drifted past your defenses, sinking easily into the warm haze of your mind.

"Yeah," you whispered, a bitter smile touching the corners of your lips. "Yeah, exactly. It feels like... like you're building something, and someone just comes along and kicks the legs right out from under the table."

Dex’s gaze dropped to your mouth, tracking the slight upward curve of your smile, cataloging the crooked tooth you were completely unaware was currently on display. A dark, quiet shiver rippled down his spine. He loved this version of you—stripped of your courtroom armor, raw, vulnerable, and leaning entirely on the edge of a breakdown.

"People are careless," Dex murmured, his voice dropping an octave, slipping past the ambient noise of the bar until it felt like it was echoing only inside your head. "They don't appreciate foundations. They don't know how to hold things together. But you... you care too much. That's your weakness."

He shifted his weight, his arm brushing a little closer down to your wrist. The skin-to-fabric contact sent a strange, electric jolt through your system, though your tired brain couldn't quite decide whether to pull away or lean into it.

"You shouldn't be alone tonight," Dex said, the words slipping out like a quiet decree, absolute and unshakable.

You let out a dry, humorless breath, shaking your head. "Where else am I gonna go? My phone's blowing up. Everyone wants to fix it. Everyone wants to tell me it's going to be okay."

"They want to fix you," Dex corrected softly, his eyes narrowing with a dark, possessive intensity as he stared at the side of your neck, imagining the exact weight of his hands sliding up to cup your jaw. "They don't want the mess. They just want the lawyer back. The hero."

He leaned in just a fraction closer, his breath ghosting over your ear, smelling faintly of mint and iron.

"I don't need you to be a hero," Dex whispered, his voice smooth as glass and sharp as a razor. "Let them call. Let them worry. You're done for the night."

The alcohol surged through your veins, a warm, heavy tide that washed away the last remaining shreds of your resistance. You didn't ask him his name. You didn't ask why he was here, or why his words felt less like a suggestion and more like an anchor dragging you under. You just nodded, your eyelids growing heavier by the second.

"Yeah," you breathed out, your head dipping toward your chest. "Just... tired."

Dex smiled—a wide, razor-thin expression of pure, unadulterated triumph in the dark. He reached out, his long, calloused fingers wrapping gently around your elbow to steady you as your center of gravity suddenly gave way.

"I know," Dex whispered, his thumb pressing firmly into your pulse point as he guided you off the stool and led you out into the freezing New York night. "I've got you."

The bitter New York wind hit you like a physical blow the second you stepped out of the tavern doors, the sudden drop in temperature sending a sharp shiver through your heavy coat. The alcohol in your bloodstream was a roaring furnace, fighting a losing battle against the freezing fog that clung to the wet asphalt of the alleyway.

Your legs felt like lead, heavy and uncooperative as you stumbled half a step off the curb.

Before you could pitch forward onto the ice, a hand caught you.

It wasn't a tentative, polite grab. It was a firm, unyielding grip wrapped securely around your elbow, anchoring you with terrifying precision. The touch was burning hot against the fabric of your coat, the fingers long and hard as iron.

"Careful," Dex murmured, his voice cutting through the wail of distant sirens and the low rumble of traffic. He didn't let go. Instead, his hand slid upward, his palm pressing flat against the small of your back, guiding your momentum forward with a smooth, effortless authority.

You leaned into it, entirely too exhausted and intoxicated to question why a complete stranger felt so agonizingly familiar, why his touch felt less like an intrusion and more like the only stable thing left in a world that had tilted entirely off its axis.

"Thanks," you mumbled, your words slurring together as your boots scraped against the concrete.

"Don't mention it," Dex replied softly.

He fell into step right beside you, matching your stumbling, uneven rhythm stride for stride. He didn't walk too fast, didn't pull you too hard; he paced himself to your ruin, keeping you upright when every instinct in your body wanted to collapse into a heap on the sidewalk.

The walk back to your apartment building was a blur of neon lights bleeding through the fog and the heavy, rhythmic crunch of gravel beneath your boots. Every few blocks, your phone buzzed aggressively in your coat pocket—a vibrating pulse of frantic worry from Matt, or another unanswered text from Foggy. You didn't even twitch. You didn't care. The phantom notifications felt like they were coming from another dimension, belonging to a version of you that had died somewhere back in that courtroom.

Dex felt the vibrations against his side as your hip brushed his. A quiet, venomous satisfaction curled in his chest. Let it buzz, he thought. Let them tear the city apart looking for you.

They were miles away, sitting in some brightly lit office or standing on a quiet street corner, looking for a ghost. But Dex was right here. Dex had you.

By the time the familiar, wrought-iron gate of your building loomed out of the fog, your head was spinning so violently that you could barely make out the brass numbers on the door. You fumbled blindly in your pocket for your keys, your fingers clumsy and unresponsive against the metal ring, dropping them with a sharp, metallic clatter onto the frozen concrete steps.

You let out a soft, frustrated sigh, your forehead dropping heavily against the cold wooden frame of the front door.

"I've got them," Dex said.

His voice was a low hum right beside your ear. You felt the shift of his weight as he crouched down—moving with a swift, silent grace that defied how drunk you felt—and scooped the keys up from the concrete. He rose back up, his chest brushing against your back, trapping you softly between his frame and the heavy oak door.

The proximity was suffocating, intimate in a way that made the fine hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up, even through the haze of bourbon.

Dex slid the key into the lock with a single, practiced twist. The mechanism clicked open with a quiet, oily slide. He pushed the door open, but he didn't step back. Instead, his hand drifted from your back, his long fingers wrapping gently around the nape of your neck, his thumb resting right over your pulse point where it hammered frantically against your skin.

He didn't force you inside. He just tilted your head back just an inch, his breath warm against your ear in the dark foyer.

"You're safe now," Dex whispered, the words dripping with a dark, terrifying devotion that you were far too drunk to parse. "I told you. I've got you."

You let out a long, shuddering exhale, your eyes fluttering shut as you leaned back into the solid, unyielding wall of his chest. You didn't know his name. You didn't know that he had memorized the exact weight of your breath, that he had spent weeks watching you from the shadows, that he was the fracture in your safety waiting to bring the whole house down.

You just knew it was warm, and you weren't alone anymore.

With a gentle, guiding pressure, Dex pushed the door open the rest of the way, ushering you into the dark, quiet sanctuary of your own home—not knowing that once the door clicked shut behind them, he would never, ever let you leave.

The heavy oak door clicked shut behind you with a soft, hollow thud, sealing away the cold New York fog and the rest of the world. In the pitch-black silence of the hallway, the air smelled like you—crisp laundry, faint printer ink, and the subtle, underlying musk of fatigue.

Dex inhaled it deep, his chest expanding as he took you in.

He didn't turn on the lights. He didn't need to. He had mapped the exact architecture of this apartment weeks ago, tracing the floor plan in his head until he knew every obstacle, every creak in the floorboards, every shadow where he could dissolve if the need ever arose. But tonight, he didn't need to hide. You had brought him past the threshold yourself, handing over the keys to your own confinement.

"Come on," Dex murmured, his voice a low, gravelly vibration against the shell of your ear.

His hand remained clamped around the nape of your neck, his thumb applying just enough pressure to guide your stumbling feet down the short corridor toward your bedroom. Every step you took was heavy, uncoordinated, your boots dragging against the floor. You were floating somewhere entirely separate from reality, adrift on a toxic sea of cheap bourbon and absolute exhaustion.

When you reached the edge of the mattress, your knees buckled.

With a smooth, calculated motion, Dex caught your weight before you could hit the floor. He didn't handle you with the gentle, aching reverence that Matt used—that soft, cautious worship Dex had spied on from fire escapes and rooftops. Dex’s grip was firm, dominant, his fingers sinking into the thick wool of your coat as he effortlessly steered you forward and pushed you down onto the bed.

You fell back against the mattress with a soft, yielding bounce, the cushions swallowing your weight.

You didn't protest. You didn't even flinch. Your eyelids fluttered open, heavy and lacquered with alcohol, staring up through the dim shadows at the towering silhouette standing over you. Through half-lidded, glazed eyes, you looked at him—or rather, looked *through* him, seeing only a blurred shape that offered warmth, silence, and an end to the spinning room.

Dex stood frozen at the foot of the bed, staring down at you.

In the dark, unshielded privacy of your bedroom, his mind raced with a violent, obsessive hunger. His eyes devoured every inch of you, stripping away the layers of fabric in his imagination with clinical, predatory precision. He pictured the exact expanse of your chest, the pale sweep of your ribs, the precise scattering of moles across your skin that he had cataloged from afar during stolen glimpses through cracked blinds and distant rooftops.

Matt's position.

Dex tried to force the fantasy into alignment. He tried to project himself into the memories he had pieced together of Matt crawling into this exact bed, sliding beneath these exact sheets with that infuriating, blind tenderness. He tried to imagine his own calloused, trigger-hardened hands tracing the line of your jaw with the same soft, sickeningly sweet devotion.

Even in the theater of his own mind, he couldn't get it right.

A dark, acidic frustration twisted in Dex's gut. He wasn't Matt. He didn't know how to be gentle. His hands were built for recoil, for leverage, for snapping tension and crushing resistance. He couldn't touch you like a saint because he was nothing of the sort. He was fractured, hollowed out, vibrating with a static that only quieted when he was exerting absolute control.

If he touched you with reverence, it would feel like a lie. So he wouldn't. He would touch you as you were: bare, vulnerable, and entirely at his mercy.

Slowly, deliberately, Dex stepped forward until his knees pressed against the edge of the mattress.

You didn't move as his fingers reached out. You let out a soft, incoherent sigh, your head rolling slightly to the side as his knuckles grazed your jawline. The skin was burning hot from the alcohol.

Dex didn't hesitate. He began to undress you, piece by piece, with the methodical efficiency of a surgeon dismantling a specimen.

He unbuttoned your heavy wool coat, sliding the thick fabric off your shoulders and tossing it aside into the dark. His fingers moved to the buttons of your shirt, working them open one by one with steady, unhurried precision. Every inch of fabric he peeled back revealed another piece of the map he had memorized in his head, turning a distant, agonizing fantasy into a terrifying reality.

For weeks, he had only seen you from a distance—clad in sharp suits across a courtroom aisle, wrapped in heavy coats on rainy sidewalks, hidden behind glass and architectural barriers. But now, as the shirt parted and your chest rose and fell in a shallow, drunken rhythm, Dex was staring at the exact body he had worshiped in secret.

His breathing hitched, shallow and hot in the dark room.

When your skin was finally bare beneath his gaze, Dex lowered his hands, letting his fingertips trace the exact path of a scar on your shoulder—a minor injury from a childhood accident he had dug up records to verify. He pressed down just hard enough to leave a white-hot impression against your skin, marking you without a sound.

You stirred beneath his touch, letting out a low, confused murmur, your hand twitching weakly against the sheets.

"Shh," Dex whispered, leaning down until his lips hovered inches from your ear, his voice dropping into a dark, hypnotic hum. "I've got you. Go back to sleep."

He stripped away the rest of the barriers, peeling back your clothes until you lay completely exposed to the cold air of the room and the burning, unblinking glare of his eyes. He didn't climb into bed to hold you the way Matt would have. Instead, Dex sat heavily on the edge of the mattress, his fingers resting heavily on your hip, anchoring you down.

He looked around your bedroom in the dark, taking in the framed degrees on the wall, the laundry basket in the corner, the quiet sanctuary you had built for yourself—a sanctuary he had now successfully breached. The static in his head completely vanished, replaced by a deafening, absolute silence.

Why?

It was a single word, a persistent, rhythmic hum at the back of Scott’s mind that hadn’t ceased since the day he first saw you. It was a question that evolved alongside you, shifting from simple curiosity to a gnawing, heavy concern that settled deep in his chest.

Why were you so damn intent on playing the martyr? Why did you insist on standing in the path of the storm if it meant a younger mutant walked away unscathed? You carried the weight of the team like it was a penance, as if you were constantly trying to pay back a debt for a power you never asked for and couldn't always control. You didn't just push your limits; you shattered them, treating your own body like a disposable conduit.

And you never had an answer. Every time he pressed, every time he stood there with his arms crossed, demanding a reason for your recklessness, you would just offer that small, exhausted smile. Your eyes would be heavy, rimmed with the strain of holding back the very thing that made you powerful, and the conversation would end there.

He knew, though. He saw it all.

He watched how you protected the students during Danger Room drills, the way your skin would begin to subtly pulse with a frantic, rhythmic red. It was a volatile, hungry light that almost rivaled the intensity of his own optic blasts. Scott understood the mechanics of it—the way you siphoned energy from the ambient air, from the flickering lights of the hallway, or even from the latent bio-electric fields of the people around you—but he also saw the terrifying price of that intake.

He saw you when there was nowhere left to vent it. When there was no circuit to overload, no object to charge, and no teammate to spare from the surge. In those moments, when you were a literal ticking time bomb, the red glow radiating from beneath your skin became blinding. It was agonizing to watch you struggle to contain that internal pressure, to see you choose to let that energy turn inward, burning you from the inside out, rather than letting it loose and risking someone else.

Maybe it was the leader in him that found you compelling. Maybe he respected that, on a fundamental level, you were built from the same self-sacrificial iron as he was. Or maybe, just maybe, it was simply that he liked you.

The sharp clack of boots on the metal catwalk snapped him back to the present. The gait was too measured for Logan’s heavy tread and too deliberate for Jean’s light, graceful stride. He didn't have to look to know it was you.

"Thinking of joining the simulation?" Scott asked, his voice steady even as his pulse quickened. He kept his posture guarded, arms crossed firmly over his chest, his gaze remaining fixed on the activity in the Danger Room below.

You moved into his peripheral vision, leaning against the railing beside him. You didn't mirror his rigid stance; you looked as though you were trying to hold yourself together by sheer force of will. "Maybe," you said, your voice raspy. You gave a slight, nonchalant shrug. "I’m still a little over-capacitated from the morning session. I think I’ll just watch."

Even through the ruby-quartz lenses of his visor, even with the world perpetually bathed in his own crimson hue, he could see the strain on your features. You looked completely spent, the faint, flickering red glow beneath your skin telling him exactly how much energy you were currently struggling to dampen.

"Good," Scott said, his tone softening despite his best efforts to keep it clipped. "I wouldn't want you getting hurt."

You let out a huff of laughter, a dry, tired sound, and nudged your shoulder against his arm. "Is that concern I hear, Summers? That’s almost sweet." You sent him a lopsided, teasing grin. "Just remember, I’m your backup if this goes sideways, not a helpless student."

Scott turned his head, looking at you fully now. The urge to tell you the truth—to tell you that his "concern" was actually a constant, low-level terror that you were going to spontaneously combust while saving someone—was almost overwhelming. He wanted to tell you that he hated the way you treated your safety as an afterthought.

Instead, he looked back down at the training floor, his jaw tightening. The confession died in his throat, replaced by the familiar, frustrating weight of his responsibilities.

"Right," he said, his voice coming out a little stiffer than he intended. He turned back to you, his expression unreadable behind the visor. "Just... please. Take it easy today."

The Danger Room floor was a hive of controlled chaos, illuminated by the shifting, holographic landscape of a dense, simulated forest. Below, a small group of younger students was working on basic coordination—shifting their forms, testing their durability, and learning to sync their movements. It was meant to be a low-level exercise, the kind of repetitive, rhythmic training that built muscle memory, but from the catwalk, it looked like a frantic dance of potential.

Scott’s eyes were fixed on the display, but his focus was fractured. He was supposedly monitoring the squad’s tactical cohesion, yet his gaze kept snagging on the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of your chest. The faint red glow beneath your skin seemed to ebb and flow with the intensity of the fight below, a silent, bioluminescent echo of the exertion happening on the floor.

He felt the weight of a dozen questions pressing against his teeth, held back only by the rigid discipline he wore like armor. He wanted to reach out, to touch the pulse point on your wrist to see if it was as hot as he suspected, but his hands remained locked behind his back. Every time he opened his mouth, the words felt too heavy, too vulnerable.

He let out a sharp, frustrated breath, his head giving a slight, involuntary shake as he tried to refocus.

"I'm not trying to prove anything," you murmured, your voice cutting through the hum of the cooling fans. You didn't look at him; you kept your eyes trained on a girl with metallic, gold-hued skin as she deflected a simulated projectile.

Scott blinked, his posture slacking just an inch. "I didn't say you were," he said, his voice dropping into that low, level tone he used when he was actually trying to communicate, not just command. "I just don't understand why you keep putting yourself at the bottom of the list."

You shrugged, a stiff movement that showed just how much tension you were holding. "Maybe that is the problem," you started, your voice thoughtful. "I tell myself I’m thinking of them, but maybe I’m thinking of myself first. I’m thinking of the collateral damage. If I lose my grip, if I can't vent this… this excess… I’m the one who ends up hurting them."

You finally turned your head, locking your gaze with his visor. "It’s not just recklessness, Scott. It’s insurance. I’d rather burn up than let a single one of them get caught in my blast radius. They deserve a chance to live in a world that doesn’t want them, and I’m the only one who can ensure I don't become the thing that ends that chance."

Scott opened his mouth to argue, his pulse spikey and erratic, but before the rebuttal could leave his lips, a shrill, excited shout echoed from below.

"Hey, Summers! Can we kick it up a notch? This is getting boring!"

Scott winced, his professional demeanor snapping back into place. Before he could respond, a second voice—one of the younger boys, clearly emboldened by the adrenaline—shouted up, "And maybe stop flirting with him? Seriously, get a room! It’s gross!" The kid made a loud, exaggerated gagging noise that reverberated through the massive chamber.

The tension in the air shattered. You let out a genuine, startled laugh—a bright, unguarded sound that seemed to catch Scott completely off guard. He looked at you, stunned for a fraction of a second, his brain clearly struggling to process the sound of your laughter.

A deep, embarrassed flush crept up his neck, turning the tips of his ears a bright crimson that nearly matched the light of his visor.

"Ignore them," he muttered, his voice tight. He turned toward the control console with unnecessary force, tapping sequences into the interface with sharp, clipped movements. He elevated the simulation level, shifting the peaceful forest into a jagged, obstacle-heavy gauntlet. "They need to learn to focus, not critique the coaching staff."

He cleared his throat, the sound harsh in the quiet of the observation deck. When he turned back to you, he was still wearing that slight, bashful flush, and his usual composure was frayed at the edges.

"I wasn't..." he stammered, his fingers twitching toward his visor before he forced them back down. "That wasn't... I wasn't flirting. It's just... I'm a professional."

He looked at you, then quickly looked away, his jaw tight. "They're just kids. They don't know when to keep their mouths shut.”

The air in the control room felt suddenly thin, charged with a different kind of static than the one humming beneath your skin. You watched his hands—typically steady, precise, and lethal—stumble over the holographic keys as he adjusted the difficulty of the simulation. It was rare to see Scott Summers flustered; it was endearing, and for a fleeting moment, it made the persistent ache in your bones feel a little less heavy.

You offered him a smile—slow, soft, and entirely devoid of the exhaustion that usually pulled at the corners of your mouth. It was a genuine attempt to put him at ease, even if the shadow of that weariness still clung to your eyes.

"I’d hate to see what real flirting looks like, if that’s your baseline," you teased, your voice low and rhythmic. You shifted your weight, turning fully toward him, ignoring the way your muscles protested the movement. "Though, for the record, I think you’re doing a terrible job of pretending to be nonchalant.”

Scott cleared his throat, a sharp, ragged sound, and aggressively tapped a sequence into the console to increase the obstacle density on the floor below. He refused to meet your eyes, his posture rigid as a steel beam. "Let’s change the subject," he muttered, his voice tight. "Thank you. For… for opening up. A little."

He didn't mention that he knew how rare this was. He didn't have to; you both knew you guarded your inner workings like a vault, perhaps only ever having truly cracked that door open for Erik or Charles. The silence stretched between you, thick with the weight of the question he’d been carrying for months.

You studied the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his jaw worked under the mask of his composure. You could see the internal struggle—the leader who needed to maintain control versus the man who was genuinely, viscerally terrified for you.

"You're still doing it, Scott," you said softly, your teasing tone dropping away. You took a half-step closer, the heat radiating from you making the air around him shimmer just slightly. "You're looking at me like I’m a structural failure waiting to happen."

He froze, his fingers hovering over the display. He didn't look at you yet, but his voice was quiet, stripped of the professional veneer. "Maybe because you act like one. You treat your life like a temporary lease, and I’m expected to just… watch you burn through it."

You watched him finally turn. The ruby-quartz of his visor caught the flickering light of the monitors, turning his gaze into two dark, burning holes. "Why does it bother you that much?" you asked, searching his face. "Is it just the liability? Or is it because you actually care what happens to the power source?"

He let out a sharp, incredulous huff, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "Don't do that," he said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register. "Don't try to intellectualize this. You know exactly why, and the fact that you have to ask is either a testament to how little you value yourself or how much you’re trying to deflect."

He stepped toward you, the distance closing until you could feel the cold, sharp presence of his focus. "It bothers me because I see you, every single day, trying to be the sacrificial lamb for people who don't even understand what it costs you to stand there. You think you're protecting them by taking it all inside? You're just killing yourself in increments."

He reached out, his hand hovering near your arm as if he meant to touch you, but he pulled back at the last second, his fingers curling against his palm. "I'm not a bystander, and I'm not just your teammate. When you hold all that in, when you start glowing like a dying star… I’m the one who has to decide whether to pull you out of the fight or let you finish it. And I am tired of having to make that choice, because I never want to see you hit that limit."

His breath hitched, a rare moment of vulnerability slipping through his armor. "So, no. It isn't just about the mission. It’s about the fact that you think you're alone in this, but I'm standing right here, and I'm not going to let you just disappear into a flash of red light because you think you're 'insurance'.”

The sharp, rhythmic blare of the alarm cut through the heavy, charged air of the observation deck like a guillotine. Below, the holographic forest vanished in a swirl of static, leaving the students standing in the empty, sterile expanse of the training floor. Their voices drifted up, raw with exhaustion but bubbling over with youthful, unfiltered energy.

"That’s a wrap, team! Good work!" one of the older students shouted, followed by a chorus of cheers.

Then came the inevitable. A chorus of whistles and jeers rose from the floor, and you heard one of the younger ones—the same kid who had gagged earlier—cupping his hands to project his voice. "Just kiss him already, Summers! We're bored of watching you stare!"

The sheer audacity of it hit the room with the force of a physical blow.

You bit your lip, your shoulders shaking as you tried to suppress the laugh bubbling in your chest. You looked over at Scott. He was frozen, his back ramrod straight, his face a masterpiece of controlled mortification. The tips of his ears were burning a vivid, angry red that seemed to pulse in time with the fading lights of the console.

He didn't move, he didn't snap back at them—he just looked as though he were contemplating whether or not to trigger the fire suppression system just to clear the room.

"They really have no filter, do they?" you murmured, your voice thick with amusement. You reached past his rigid form, your hand brushing his shoulder as you tapped the sequence to kill the simulation and cycle the door locks. "Honestly, I think they’re just trying to see how much of a rise they can get out of you."

You turned to leave, but paused, glancing back over your shoulder. The playfulness died away, leaving you with that weary, honest look. "We'll talk about this later," you said softly. "And I want to know why they’re so convinced there’s something for them to ship, because I suspect you might be telegraphing more than you think."

Scott let out a long, ragged exhale, the sound of a man trying to regain his footing on a sheer cliff. He stayed fixed to the spot, his hands still hovering near the console as if he were afraid if he moved, he’d shatter. The image of him—the unflappable, iron-willed leader—being reduced to a flustered mess by a bunch of teenagers was almost worth the physical agony you were currently enduring.

"Right," he finally managed, his voice strained and dropping to a low, clipped tone. He didn't look at you, focusing instead on the heavy steel doors as they began to hiss open. "We'll talk later."