brook

The air is thick and heavy with the lingering heat of summer, the kind that clings to your skin and resides deep in your bones, gnawing at your nerves and winding them so tight that they eventually snap and you’re left feeling frustrated. 

Tension coils tight in your muscles, the kind that makes every minor inconvenience seem like a big deal. Like the fact that your bed sheets are too heavy for the summer, too itchy and fitted to the bed. Your fan rattles enough that it can be heard even beneath a pillow. Someone in the Paper Street house who shouldn’t be there has a persistent cough that makes you want to choke them until they never cough again. 

Maybe that’s why you can’t sleep. 

The door to the rooftop bangs shut, a loud rattle that cuts through the din of the city sprawling below you. Lights glitter, horns blare and people shout at each other, the 3am traffic filled with exhausted and agitated workers just wanting to get home. 

You don’t startle at the figure already standing near the edge, smoke curling around his head in swirls and patterns that dissipate before you, lost to the stars and the open void that hangs above you. He doesn’t turn when you slow down beside him and doesn’t fight when you pluck the cigarette from between his lips and place it between your own. 

“Thought you’d quit.” It’s not a question so much as a statement. His voice is a low rumble in his chest, so amused that you don’t have to turn to see the smirk spreading across his features. 

In this light, his face half shielded by the shadows, the moon doing very little to cast its pale glow over his features, you can make out the mottled bruises marring his skin. His lip is split, blood still dried on his chin, one eye swollen, and judging from the way he tightens his jaw every now and then, you’d bet he’s lost a tooth too. 

Nothing new. 

“I did.” You mutter, blowing out a ring of smoke and passing the cigarette back. It seems to do very little to ease your nerves, instead making your throat tickle and your chest tighten with a cough you won't let escape. 

The metal support is rusted with age, and Tyler sits on the ledge of the roof like the six-storey drop isn’t there, boots swinging languidly. He doesn’t seem to care about the possibility of falling, and even if he were soaring through the air at a thundering pace, you know he wouldn’t so much as blink. 

And seemingly you don’t care either, stepping over the support until you're balanced on the other side before lowering yourself to sit beside him. He doesn't move over or gravitate towards you; he simply places the cigarette between his teeth and takes another drag. 

“You look like shit.” The statement is guileless, the kind of insult he lets roll off of him like water. Perhaps he gets off on it, judging from the way his chest puffs out slightly and he huffs a breathy laugh.

“Yeah.” He sniffs once, wiping at the dried crimson on his chin, and you wince when you notice his nose is more crooked than the last time you’d seen him. 

“That’s it?” You laugh, turning back to the city line. “Yeah? You’re not gonna explain–” 

“Why should I?” He finally turns his head enough that his eyes meet yours, steely grey glinting back at you. “You know what I do.” 

Neither of you says it. You don’t have to. You’ve seen it, seen him throw punches and take them straight back. Watched him spit and spill blood; sometimes his own, sometimes other men’s. “Doesn’t mean I like it.” 

Tyler takes one final drag of the cigarette before flicking it over the edge. You watch the orange ember twirl and dance through the air, gliding six floors down before it disappears onto the vast street below, crushed beneath the perfect sole of an Adidas trainer or extinguished in a puddle of rainwater. 

“You didn’t have to come up here.” He glances at you, eyebrows raised in challenge.

“Neither did you.” 

Except you both have an established routine—unspoken and unbroken by either of you. It lacks any official label, much like the two of you, yet you always find one another on nights like this, when the city is loud and your head is even louder. 

You’re not sure whether Tyler’s head has ever been loud a day in his life. To you, he’s always seemed controlled, like he knows exactly what he’s doing at every second of his life, like he has it all figured out without having any true plan at all. 

The bruise around his eye looks somehow worse now, angry and blossoming under the moon’s light. You reach out tentatively, taking his face between your hands, surprised as he remains pliant, letting you turn his head to face you. 

He doesn’t say anything as your eyes scan over each injury, wounds that will no doubt heal only to be replaced once more. Your thumb traces over his bottom lip, wiping away the remaining blood, your brows pulled downwards in sympathy. 

“Don’t start.” He grumbles, eyes entirely recalcitrant as they lock on your own. 

“What?”

He barks out a sardonic laugh, head tipped back slightly, and you marvel at the way the light chisels out his jawline, making it look far sharper than usual, his teeth glinting like light blades. “You look concerned.” 

“I am.” you admit, finally dropping your hands into your lap once more, face screwing up. You know it’s ridiculous—Tyler Durden is untouchable, an enigma you truly know nothing about other than the fact that, when you can’t sleep, he’s always here, waiting for you with new bruises marring his features. 

“Why?” He turns to you fully now, eyes boring into you, coruscating gorgeously. “It’s just a bruise.”

“That’s not the point—”

“Then what is?” He interrupts. There’s another cigarette between his teeth, smoke curling from his lips, seemingly produced from nowhere. “This is what we were made for. We’re made to get hurt. Without pain, we have nothing. In order to learn in life, to move on from our jobs and consumeristic tendencies, we must endure the consequences. It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.” 

You shake your head, a smile tugging at your lips despite yourself. “You’re insane.” 

Tyler nods once, his stolidity drawing you in further despite your repulsion, like two opposite poles of a magnet. “Maybe.” 

“You always philosophise at midnight?” 

Tyler smirks—that stupid, inoubliable smirk that seems to draw you in like a moth to a flame, dangerous and bound to kill you eventually, yet something you find you can’t breathe without. He doesn't answer, and you don’t give him the chance, leaning in the rest of the way until there is no more distance between you. 

His lips taste of copper, the saccharine tang burning your tongue and novating the mint of the gum you had been chewing that is now on the sidewalk six storeys below you. The drop doesn’t seem so sheer now, not when his hands are on you, grabbing and gripping your waist tight enough to bruise, leaving finger marks that will stain your skin, marks with no owner until the next sleepless night where you find a figure hovering on the rooftop of some random apartment building. 

You relish in his attention, because who knows when you’ll endure it again. He’s never home anymore, and when he is, his focus is elsewhere, on the thousands of men going in and out of your front door, on soap and speeches and fight club. 

But for this moment, under the dim, pallid glow of the moon, with the city streaking past in bolts of red and silver, you allow yourself to melt against him, lost to the din of life and the feeling of his hands on you. 

⋆˚࿔ 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐝 𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭