Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s a saying in Gotham that the city never sleeps.

For the most part, that’s true. What Gotham forgoes in sleep, it makes up for in rot.

You don’t know why you’re still here. If you were any smarter, you would have left three years ago, before you had moved into your fourth apartment making the same ends meet, stretching time into nothing. Find a new place in New York city, maybe even Metropolis. 

Sure, rent in Gotham was cheap—half of what you’d pay in those cities, but you could find good work elsewhere. Safer work. God knows the residents know it, and the hospital board of directors know it too. 

But the ER keeps filling, and those bodies keep bleeding, and that means you stay.

Means you dream of sinew and flesh. Means the sound of bullets outside rouses you from sleep. Means that you never feel safe—not even when the infamous Batman makes an appearance at your work, occasionally, maybe twice a month, usually to drop off a body that’s almost beyond saving.

Almost.

And that’s why he comes, always comes to this side of Gotham. Because the work is shit, and the patients are endless, but the doctors are good. The nurses are great, and maybe you are too. Batman always writes to check on the patients he leaves on your stretchers, and you think that’s what tethers you to this place: that belief that maybe you’re doing something momentous, something good. Maybe the long shifts and the blood count for something.

You don’t love Gotham, but you live in it. And at least for now, it’s home.

Home—even when you return after a ten-hour shift to find half your flat’s wall blown out, probably from another metahuman, explosive-fuelled fight. Firefighters stand outside, telling you the apartment block must be vacated while repairs are underway, and you think maybe this, this, is the final push you need to leave Gotham.

Because now you’re temporarily homeless, with less than twelve hours before your next shift and a duffle bag full of clothes you don’t remember ever wearing. They tell you to grab your stuff within the next 24 hours; demolition begins at midnight tomorrow. The urgency is there, but the way they say it feels rehearsed, like this kind of sudden eviction has become just routine in this broken city.

It’s a night that reminds you how this city leaves its wounded behind, shaping survivors from the ones who stay. Surely, you’d expect the government to have planned some recompense for damages completely out of your hands, but instead, you find yourself sleeping in your car in the hospital parking lot for the night.

You’re sure if you asked one of your friends or coworkers to crash, they’d say yes. Half of the people you know have been victim to some form of vigilante collateral damage and though Gotham is rotten to its core, the people you’ve come to lean on are not. 

Still—there’s a stubborn reluctance to text or call anyone right now. Maybe you will in a few days if you can’t find a more permanent solution, but tonight you’ll recline the backseats all the way, find the warm blanket you leave in your car for mid-shift naps, cover the windows with shades, and sleep till morning.

But before that, before evening rolls into night, you find yourself scrolling through rental listings. Most are half-hearted ads for cramped rooms and overpriced spaces, each one a reminder that somewhere in Gotham, someone else is struggling too. There are a few that catch your eye; none too close to work, but you have a car, and you can figure it out.  

Then you stop—a short, straightforward post. No fluff. No photos. Just a name, a rough location near the hospital, and a price that doesn’t immediately make you cringe. Something about the blunt honesty of the ad feels like a lifeline thrown in a storm.  You don’t hesitate, sending a message with the kind of practiced politeness that comes from having to ask for too many favours. You promise to stay out of the way. You don’t say you’re exhausted, but you think maybe it’s implied.

And when it’s sent, you lay in the backseat of your car, and pray—the way you do every night in this city.

The inspection is scheduled for early in the evening, and you’re almost put off by how brief the poster's reply is. Instead of acknowledging your introduction, or the considerate paragraph you’d written about how much you really needed this place—they respond with a single message: 6pm and the address underneath it. That’s it. In any other city, you’d take it as a clear sign not to bother. 

But this is Gotham, and, well, you’re currently homeless after all.

Thankfully, the hospital is well equipped for vigilante bullshit. When you show up to your shift and explain your situation, your boss gives you full access to the staff shower and laundry facilities. That way, you and your scrubs stay clean in the meantime. She jokes that you aren’t the first, and you give a wry smile at the fact. Nothing like temporary homelessness for Gotham’s finest.

The story spreads. Not maliciously, just one of those things passed along in break rooms and nursing stations. You doubt your boss had anything to do with it; the skirmish at your apartment complex had made the news and someone must have connected the dots. A colleague offers to let you stay with them until the apartment is repaired. You thank them, smile, say you’ll think about it. You won’t. 

You’d rather sleep in your car than stand in someone else’s kitchen pretending you’re not in the way, and with the silver lining that the hospital is now going to comp your car spot, you figure you might as well. Small mercies.

The shift ends relatively smoothly. The victims from your apartment complex start arriving in droves; burns, fractures, minor concussions. Your supervisor steps in, says she can take this rotation if it hits too close to home, but you disagreed.  You hold a patient’s hand—one you’ve seen around before— as the doctors staple her scalp. The rest of the shift runs on muscle memory: triage, stabilise, chart, repeat. No codes. No screaming relatives. No time to think about your own ruined apartment.

6 p.m. comes faster than you expect. You’re standing in front of the building that might be your new home. You understand why it’s cheap. It looks like it’s been holding its breath for years.

The building is four stories of crumbling brisk and rust-stained fire escapes. It’s not particularly decrepit, but it doesn’t quite look like a comfortable stay either. Location wise, it’s fine: walking distance to work, a short drive to the major shops and a fair distance away from the seedier parts of the city. 

When you get to the door, there’s no buzzer or doorbell. Just a strip of duct tape across a cracked intercom with DO NOT PRESS scrawled across it.

You glance at your phone—at his message, then look back up at the front door, paint-peeling and weathered by scratches. This should be it.

You knock.

There’s silence, and you wonder if you’ve gotten the right building. After a moment, just before you’re about to knock again, you hear the sound of heavy footsteps approaching from the other side of the door, then the sound of lock clicking and the rattle of a deadbolt chain.

The door opens slightly, just enough for you to glance at the man behind and he looks like you’ve already inconvenienced him.

“I’m here for the room inspection?”

“You’re early,”  he says, voice rough with disinterest.

You blink. “It’s six.”

He narrows his eyes, then glances down at his watch, and sighs. 

You glimpse his face barely through the gap—the light playing on his dark hair, the tousled strands casting a dim shadow over his features. A stark white streak cuts through the front of his hairline, bright against the dark, but it doesn’t look dyed. He’s all sharp angles, a dusting of stubble along his jaw. A thick, pale line cuts across his left cheek, and by the fibrous texture, you can tell it’s a scar. An old one, judging by its colour and the way it protrudes slightly. It runs just into his lips, which are held in a tight, neutral line.

He steps back, opens the door just enough for you to step in. You do. 

Your feet meet polished timber floor, and the room is surprisingly well-kept despite the building’s more unseemly exterior. Clean, quiet— almost elegant.

You take in the furniture: leather couch, glass-fronted displays filled with weapons. Some guns. Some swords? You’re not sure. What you are sure of is that the couch looks like genuine leather, and the marble coffee table at the centre of the living space is definitely handcrafted. The corners of the room are framed by dark steel shelving, and while there are a couple of bespoke art pieces, the rest is a curated spread of minimalist, high-end design.

You’ve been in enough of your surgical colleagues’ homes to know that this screams money. This does not look like the interior of a dingy corner flat across the street from a run-down Chinese place. It looks more like someone’s idea of a high-end New York loft. 

You glance at him again, at the scar on his face and the duct tape on the intercom downstairs, and the two versions of him don’t seem to line up—like he’s copied and pasted parts of his life into another, and is forcing it to fit.

When you finally get a proper look at him under the warm overhead light, you notice he’s shirtless—and bleeding. There’s gauze peeling off his shoulder, the adhesive barely clinging to his skin. It’s poorly done. Improvised.

On a broader scale, he’s… large. Wide shoulders taper into muscular arms, veins faintly visible beneath short, dark hair. His chest is solid, defined, and you think it looks natural on him—like he’s built this way because he has to be.

But what catches your attention most is the long, pale ‘Y’ etched into his torso. It starts below the navel, travels medially to his sternum, then bifurcates out to each clavicle. The implications of that kind of scar leave you unnerved. You might not work in the morgue, but you know an autopsy scar when you see one.

You glance away quickly, trying not to make it obvious you’ve been scrutinising him, and he raises an eyebrow when he catches your face turn.

“Bedroom’s down there. Bathroom’s opposite. Kitchen’s here.”

He doesn’t gesture much, just walks you down the hallway and around the kitchen. You pass a wall-mounted rack filled with keys, hooks, and what looks like a utility belt, but you don’t linger. Occasionally, he pauses, like he’s waiting for you to ask a question—probe him on his knife collection, ask what sort of profession he works in. 

You don’t because you have a feeling you won’t have this place if you do.

“The room’s furnished,” he says, pushing open a door at the end of the hall. “Bed, desk, closet.”

You peek inside. The bed’s neatly made, the sheets clean and tucked tight. It’s not as dear as the other pieces of furniture in the living space, but it looks comfortable and sturdy. 

He leans against the doorframe while you take a slow step in. Doesn’t say a word.

You turn back to him. “It’s nice.”

He shrugs. “It’s enough.”

He walks out, and you follow him to the kitchen. He opens the fridge, pulls out a beer, then glances over his shoulder and cocks his head at you. You nod and he grabs a second one, cracks both open against the countertop. You fight to roll your eyes at the callousness as he hands you one.

“Right. Ground rules,” he says, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Don’t go in my room.”

You nod. “Obviously.”

“Don’t answer the door unless it’s for you.”

You nod again.

“No guests. Ever.”

You raise an eyebrow.

He doesn’t blink. “Last time someone brought a date over, they tried to rob me while I was in the shower.”

You huff a laugh. “Sounds like a you problem.”

“Sounds like a bullet problem.”

Your smile drops. “Wait—seriously?”

He just takes a swig of beer and doesn’t answer. You take that as a yes.

“Okay, fine. No guests.”

The silence that follows isn’t exactly comfortable, but it’s not tense either. Just gotham in the evening: a buzzing fridge, sirens in the distance, the low hum of tyres against tar.

“You smoke?” he asks suddenly.

You shrug. “Sometimes.” He doesn’t seem to be the person who cares.

“Drink?”

“Occasionally.”

“Drugs?”

“Only if prescribed. You?”

He furrows his brows. “I’m not the one applying.”

“Touché,” you respond, sipping at your drink. “By the way, that one’s going to get infected.”

He glances at the wound on his shoulder like he had forgotten it was there. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’ve seen better things get infected.”

He lets out a long exhale. “What are you, a nurse?” He says it like it’s meant to be an insult—a jab.

“Trauma. Gotham General.”

That earns you a second glance, slower this time, like he’s just figuring you out now. Like he’s just noticing the bags under your eyes, the tired slouch in your spine.

“Figures.”

You gesture towards the wound again. “I can patch it up, if you want.”

He cuts in sharp at your suggestion. “I don’t.”

It shouldn’t bother you, how quick he is to refuse your help—but you catch sight of that ‘Y’ shaped scar, that awful bump in his flesh and something churns inside you.

You unzip your bag, pull out two saline Steritubes, and place them on the counter between you.

“Fine. It doesn’t matter who does it, but you’ll need to clean the wound with something sterile when you change your dressing. Also, that gauze isn’t right for that kind of cut.”

He glances down at the tubes, then back at you, eyes narrowing slightly. You cross your arms and return the look—the same one you give patients when they get coy about taking their meds.

Eventually, he relents, picking up one of the tubes and turning it over in his hand like it’s more hassle than it’s worth. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at you, but that doesn’t surprise you.

“So,” you say, taking a sip of your beer, “how much is the rent again?”

He looks up at you. “Eight-fifty. Bills split. Paid on the first. Month-to-month. I don’t do leases. Cash is easier.”

You breathe out through your nose, slow and even. Gotham’s taught you to be vigilant about these things, and you can tell there’s more to this guy than he’s letting on. It’s not something you’re worried about, you don’t feel unsafe, not exactly, but you already know you’ll only ever know what he chooses to reveal.

Still, the place is close to the hospital. The price is good. The furniture’s way nicer than you’re used to. And if you’re honest, you’ve lived with worse.

“Alright,” you say, taking a few steps into the kitchen and setting the bottle down. “I’ll take it if you’ll have me.”

He raises the beer to his lips and nods once, like you’ve just closed a business deal.

“Don’t make me regret it,” he says, already turning from you.

“You never gave me your name.”

He glances over his shoulder. “Jason.”

You smile, and offer yours in return.

When you arrive again, Jason is nowhere to be seen.

He’d handed you the keys earlier unceremoniously, saying you could move in even if the paperwork wasn’t sorted—so long as you brought cash. You told him you’d probably be back tonight, mentioned something about the apartment complex you used to live in. He’d reacted to that, almost imperceptibly; just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, like that name meant something to him. But he only nodded, said he understood, and that it wasn’t his business why you had to move your shit in. 

Before you left, he mentioned he’d be out for the night, that by the time you came back he wouldn’t be home. He had called it a night-shift, though he didn’t say what kind. There was something a little too practiced in the way he said it, like he had rehearsed it in front of a mirror, like it was something he had told everybody once before.

Still, it felt like a crumb of trust. Like he was quietly acknowledging your presence here, officiating you as his roommate by offering up something about himself. In turn, you told him that was fine—that you work nights as often as you did days, and that earned a huff from him.

You don’t carry much with you in between apartments in Gotham. If there’s anything this city has taught you, it’s that there’s no time for sentimentality. You’ve moved around enough times to not get attached to trinkets and knick-knacks, and it doesn’t help that half your shit was blown up with the wall during yesterday’s attack.

Still, you’d salvaged what you could from the wreckage and packed your belongings into boxes. It’s not much—a couple of ceramics tucked into the far end of the kitchen, some books (gifts from your parents) that had miraculously survived, and thankfully whatever was left in your bedroom.

Everything had, unsurprisingly, fit in your car. A small part of you thought it had to be unsustainable, having your life crammed into a tiny hatchback, but Gotham offered no reprieve for its people. Not from grief, not from chaos, and certainly not from starting over. You’d driven on, pulling into the unfamiliar car spot beside the red-brick building that would be your new home. At least for a while.

With Jason gone, you find yourself wandering around the living room, into the kitchen and across the spaces you would now be sharing. The display cases catch your eye first as you inch closer—a set of blades mounted on obsidian stands, firearms arranged along the wall with curatorial precision. You wonder if he’s ever used them, or if they’re just part of a collection.

It feels a little egregious, honestly. Like a power-play. Like he enjoys being surrounded by danger, needs it near him, even in his downtime. You’ve seen what weapons like these do to the human body, how they open it, wreck it, and turn it inside out, and seeing them lined up like trophies behind glass makes your skin itch. 

You won’t complain about the furniture, though, because when you cautiously sink into the sofa, you realise this is authentic Italian leather, and it’s not the sort that you would find in a flea market or a thrift shop. It's clearly something ordered, probably imported. Same goes for the credenza against the opposite wall, mid-century maybe, and the rug governing the living room floor—definitely handwoven.

It’s an ill fitting kind of luxury, tucked inside cracked walls and peeling paint.

The quiet fixes around you, and you wonder if it’ll always be like this when he’s not around. You place an envelope with the month’s rent on the kitchen countertop, somewhere you know he won’t miss it.

There’s nothing left to do but start settling in.

Opening a box, you begin arranging salvaged kitchenware into the cupboard—a mismatched set: three plates, two chipped mugs, a bowl with a hairline crack running through the glaze. They survived, unlike most of your things, and you think that must mean something. 

The rest of the box empties easily into the bedroom. You make quick work of the closet, hanging your coats, jackets, and the scrubs you wear for days outside the theatre. There’s not much in the department of casual clothes—your days typically spent in the hospital or lounging around in your apartment, and if there was anything particularly nice, it was destroyed in yesterday’s blast.

Yet, the ritual is familiar, grounding in a way you weren’t expecting. It’s a welcome relief from the stress that’s been bouncing around inside you all day. You're about to shelve your books alongside his in the living room when you turn.

You freeze.

Jason stands in the doorway, silent and unmoving, arms crossed over his chest. You hadn’t heard him come in. Your soul seems to stand on edge, eyes wide as you stare at him.

“You said you’d be out all night.” Did he notice your fright? Did he see how your muscles locked at the sight of him framed in the open door?

If he did, he doesn’t show it. “Forgot something. Thought I heard a noise.”

His eyes flick over the near-empty box, then back to you, books still in hand.

The silence stretches, filling the room, and you think whoever speaks next will lose some kind of mental game you hadn’t realised you were playing.

“You can use my shelf,” he says, pushing off the doorframe and disappearing into the kitchen.

You stay where you are, staring at the spot he’d just left, your heart still leaping from the fright. 

The fridge opens, and you hear the hiss of a bottle cap against the edge of the counter, When you finally glance out of the door, toward the kitchen, he’s already halfway to the front door, beer in hand. The other hand pulls on a dark leather jacket, the collar upturned.

For a second, something catches your eye—a glimpse beneath the open zip. Tactical gear, maybe. Padded, reinforced. You’re not sure what to make of it, whether it hints at something larger, or if he just likes the look of a combatant suit when he goes about. You think he works military, or something of the sort.

He notices you watching and pauses at the door, expression unreadable.

“Don’t wait up,” he says dryly.

The door shuts behind him with a thud, the lock clicking faintly afterwards. 

And then you're left in the quiet again. The faint hum of the fridge daring to break it, and you swallow, feeling your pulse slow as the adrenaline ebbs.

The stillness hangs in the air as you stand and make your way to the living room, books in hand. His “shelf” is more of an art piece than a functional bookshelf, crafted from dark stone and rising from the ground in sweeping, angular forms. 

It’s already full. Not with junk or old receipts like you half expected, but with paperbacks and hardcovers, pressed against each other like there’s no room. A few autobiographies, some non-fiction, but what really catches your eye is his collection of classics. Crime and Punishment, Brave New World, a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice tucked sideways on top of a row like it’s a frequent read—or an unfinished one.

You hadn’t pegged him for this type, but then again, nothing about your situation has been easy to digest. Considering the paradox of his lavish decor sitting in a dilapidated building, it shouldn’t come as a surprise his standoffish demeanor belies a literary streak. He’s well-read, and that earns a bit more of your respect—even if he stalks through his apartment like a ghost.

You think about sliding your books between the edges, squeezing them beside his, but it feels… wrong. Too intimate, almost. Like this version of him is the most honest you’ve seen all day, and you’d crack his carefully constructed veneer if you rearranged it.

Instead, you stack yours by the entertainment unit and hope his invitation to that corner of the shelf extends to other pieces of furniture.

Your attention drifts back to his copy of Jane Austen.

Pride and Prejudice.

It’s too much of a siren song to ignore, the way the book sits differently from the others, its spine creased with wear. You pick it up gingerly, remembering how Jason had silently watched as you unpacked, and you glance around the room checking to see if he’s lingering about.

The book falls open in your hands.

There’s a faint pencil underline beneath a line you recognise.

"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

There’s almost something unsettling about how that moves you—how Jason’s character could be cracked open by a single Jane Austen line, buried in the pages of a book he keeps within reach.  It softens him, grinds the edges of his form in your memory, sands the grit from his words in your hand, and you think this living arrangement might not be too bad after all.

You smile at the thought. 

What’s so bad about a big man reading a little bit of Jane Austen, anyway?

A lot, actually.

The front door slams shut for what feels like the tenth time this week.

This time, there's blood on the floor. He walks in, boots thudding against the floor as he rushes to his room.

There’s a streak of it on the floor from the door to his room, thick and dark against the wooden vinyl. The sharp, metallic scent catches in your throat. It smells like the ER—like the operating theatre—and you wish it didn’t follow you home. You lean against the kitchen counter, eyes heavy and fixed on his door. Behind it, you hear the low rustle of clothing, the grind of a zipper, the dull thud of a jacket hitting the floor and then something heavier.

When the door opens, he’s shirtless and irritable and he rolls his eyes like the sight of you irritates him. Unsettles him. He walks past without a word, heading to the bathroom sink. From where you stand, you can see the laceration just beneath his ribs—red, raw, still weeping. You follow him wordlessly, exhaustion from your own twelve-hour shift settling deep in your bones, but some sort of duty forces your legs to chase after him. He’s dishevelled in the bathroom mirror, face thick with grime and blood, whose you’re not sure of, the white part in his hair almost dyed red with it. 

“Don’t start,” he says, not even looking at you.

You cross your arms.“Start what?”

He slams the bathroom cupboard shut, maybe looking for gauze, maybe just looking for space. “The Florence Nightingale shit. I’ve got it handled.”

“Sure,” you say, closing the distance so you’re standing inches behind him. You give his back a proper lookover. The laceration is one thing, but the scratches eat up the expanse of his back and you wonder how on earth there could be so many. That and the distal bruises kissing up the sides of his ribs makes it look like he’s barely escaped a fight with his life. You’ve seen worse, sure, but the sight of him, tender and bloodied has your heart in your throat.

He turns, winces. His knuckles are split, one eye already swelling. “I didn’t ask for help.”

“No,” you respond. “You didn’t ask for anything. You just come in almost everyday, bleeding all over the kitchen, and ignoring me when I say you need stitches. Again.”

“I don’t need stitches.”

You snort. “Because that wound is going to close itself? I understand if you don’t want to sit in the waiting room all night, but you are going to get yourself killed if you don’t start taking this shit seriously.”

He doesn’t answer. Just grabs the ends of a towel and presses it hard against the wound, flinching. Blood seeps through instantly, dripping onto the white ceramic sink.

You step forward without thinking. He bristles in response.

“I said I’ve got it,” he grits between teeth.

“Just shut up and sit down.” Your voice cracks out, sharper than intended, and it startles even you.

A tense silence falls between you.

He stares at you, jaw clenched, breathing hard. A moment passes. And then he drops onto the closed toilet seat, defeat etched onto the furrows of his face. He doesn’t speak. Just glares at the wall, hand still holding the towel against his wound.

“Wait here,” you murmur, turning to the kitchen.

Your kit sits on the counter and it’s a pretty decently stocked one, more industrial than anything standard, and probably a little more illegal too. You consider offering him something for the pain, maybe a Penthrox inhaler, or a back-alley dose of lidocaine, but the thought dissolves when he leans forward and spits into the bathtub. 

When you do get back to him he cowers a little, and you think he reminds you of a small frightened animal. His face is downturned, and he refuses to meet your eye. He holds himself taut, and you wonder if it's out of protection or pain.

You work in silence, careful to notice any changes in his breathing or twitches that might betray his unbothered facade.

The cut is deep. Deep enough that the skin pulls apart, and you know without hesitation that it’ll need sutures. Even if he grits his teeth through it. Even if he tells you no. You’re legally qualified —a nurse practitioner, trained in trauma response—and so while suturing is something you’ve been taught, it’s not something you’ve practised consistently.. 

He mutters something under your breath that makes the corner of your eye twitch, and you think:

Fuck it. 

You reach for your kit and steel your voice, trying to keep it measured. Clinical.

“Jason, I’m going to have to stitch this.”

He doesn’t respond verbally. Just exhales with enough drama that you see his chest rise and fall, like he’s showing you he’s resigned to his fate. But something breaks inside you when you see that scar, the autopsy scar, and you don’t think when you reach out to trace it. 

He flinches at the touch like he’s been burned. A flash of anger crosses his face, sharp and unfiltered. You recoil just as quickly, the cold guilt settling in your gut.

“Sorry,” you say softly, and you mean it. 

You remove yourself from his space, putting on a pair of nitrile gloves and opening the sterile pack with ease. You don’t move until his breathing evens out again, and when you do, it’s with practised caution. 

The wound is located a few inches below his ribcage, and it’s not a particularly great position to suture in, especially when his breathing is still ragged from pain and his skin moves with each punctuated breath.

You irrigate the wound first with one of your saline tubes, watching the blood run down the grooves of his torso in thin rivulets. He doesn’t react, just keeps his gaze away from you. Then, using some of the gauze pads, you pry away as much dirt from the surrounding area as possible.

It’s worrying how much this affects you. You’ve done this before, on patients thrashing and swearing, trying to bite through their own pain. But his silence unsettles you more than any scream ever has. You’re not sure why. Maybe it’s the stillness. Maybe it’s because you weren’t quite able to bring your professional detachment from work home.

You draw the lidocaine into the syringe from its sterile vial, checking for air bubbles.

“This is going to sting,” you say quietly, losing more of your clinical measure with each word.

You puncture the surrounding skin with the syringe. He doesn’t react immediately, but you notice the muscles in his abdomen tense as you release the lidocaine into his dermis. 

“This’ll be the worst of it,” you murmur, offering any amount of reassurance you can, aware he’ll continually refuse it. “I have to do it a few more times, okay?”

You reposition the needle, injecting small doses in a ring around the edge of the laceration. When you’re done, you set the syringe on the tray beside the sink and reach for a fresh piece of gauze, dabbing away the slow dribble of blood trailing down his side. Your touch is gentle despite the gloves, and though he doesn’t say anything, the way he subtly leans into it feels like unspoken trust.

He exhales hard. “That the worst of it?”

You give him a tired smile. “You tell me.”

Then, after you’re certain enough time has passed, you press the injection site with gentle pressure. “Can you feel this?”

He grunts. “Not really.”

“Not really, or no?”

He raises an eyebrow, his mouth drawn in a flat line.

You sigh. “The distinction matters. I don’t want to be threading your skin if you can still feel it.”

His gaze meets yours for the briefest second, and then he flicks his eyes away.

“I can’t feel it.”

You let a small exhale out, relieved. “Good.”

You irrigate the wound once more, using the last of your saline flushes to clear the blood away from the wound before you’ll start suturing. 

“You shouldn’t look at this. Makes some people feel a little woozy,” you say, a laugh tucked into your exhale.

Then you pierce his skin with a needle, nylon suture drawn.

The first stitch is clean, and you almost feel a little proud of your handiwork. It’s not bad for a nurse who hasn’t done this in about a year. You fall into rhythm: pierce, arc, pull through, tie off. The quiet deepens between the two of you, and though you aren’t looking at his face, you can tell he’s watching your hands at work. By the third suture, the wound starts to close. By the fourth, blood wells up again. 

“Last one, okay?”

When the final knot is tied and trimmed, you step away, assessing the tension in your stitches. There’s some hesitancy on whether you’ve tied them too tight but you think back to whatever he does during the night and think maybe the added tightness is worth it. 

You cover the site with a sterile dressing, then tape it down with adhesive. 

“You’ll have to keep it clean,” you say, peeling off your gloves and tossing them in the bin. “Rinse the wound with saline before you re-dress it.”

Then you meet his gaze. “And you need to cut out whatever it is you do at night. At least for the next few days.”

Jason lets out a dry laugh in response. “You’re funny.”

“I’m serious, Jason.”

He stands carefully, testing the pull of the sutures with a shallow breath. You can see it tugs at him, but he doesn’t complain. You don’t press. Not yet. Not when this fragile moment of quiet vulnerability still lingers between you.

Then he looks at you, and that’s your cue. “How’s it feeling?”

“Fine.”

“I know you don’t want to talk about what you do,” you add, quieter now, collecting loose packaging from the floor. “But whatever it is, you can’t be doing it by yourself. Not like this.”

He walks out of the bathroom. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Of course you don’t,” you say. “But you do need someone to stop you bleeding out on your own kitchen floor.”

His body stills, back still turned to you. Then he’s reaching for the fridge door, pulling out a beer. “You done?”

“No, actually,” you snap, adrenaline finally catching up. “I come home from a twelve-hour shift and am greeted with your shitty attitude and reluctance to seek any medical help— again. You tell me not to start, but you’ve made this my business the second you bled all over our floor.”

He turns to face you, grip white-knuckled on the bottle. “I told you I was fine. You didn’t have to do anything—you chose to.” He laughs bitterly. “Fuck, man. You nurses and your saviour complexes.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you, dude?”

Jason rolls his eyes like he’s heard it a thousand times. “This isn’t a thing, alright? We’re not friends. We’re not... whatever the fuck you think this is. We’re roommates. That’s it.”

“Roommates don’t bleed on the floor and act like it’s somehow my problem when I notice,”

He slams the bottle cap against the counter. It pops off with a metallic clink. “Then don’t notice.”

“I live here,” you say, gesturing vaguely. “What do you want me to do, step over your bloodstains and ignore the limping?”

“If it bothers you so much, yes.” 

You laugh, sharp and empty. “You think I want to care? I’d love to not give a shit. I’d love to not wonder if you’re going to die of sepsis while I’m at work. Kinda hard not to when you come home at 3AM soaked in your own blood and sweat.”

He takes a sip of his beer. “I didn’t ask you to care.”

“No,” you say, softer now, more resigned. “But you haven’t stopped me yet.”

That lands somewhere. His jaw tenses, then a twitch at the corner of his mouth. He sighs, sets the beer down on the counter.

“I don’t want you getting involved,” he says, finally. “Please, don’t make this into more than what it is.”

There’s some desperation in his voice, like he’s more begging than asking. 

You pinch the bridge of your nose with your fingers. 

“And what is it, Jason? Because if this is strictly roommates, then maybe try acting like one. Stop coming home at 3AM bleeding, stop avoiding medical advice, and please, for the love of god, start taking care of yourself.”

He turns, jaw clenched, and for a second it looks like he might say something cruel, something to throw you off his tail. Something that’ll burn the bridge before you can cross it. 

His mouth opens, and you prepare yourself for something thorny, but instead he walks to the sofa, grabs a crumpled shirt, and shrugs it on. Then the jacket. Then his keys.

“Don’t wait up,” he mutters at the door.

“You already said that,” you reply, too tired to stop yourself.

The door slams shut behind him.

You don’t chase him. He’ll come back eventually. Instead, you resume cleaning up after yourself, placing the syringe and needle into a box you’ll deposit in a sharps bin at work. There’s still a sizable amount of his blood in the bathroom, over the sink, the floor, but you don’t have the energy right now to clean it.  

Your hands ache, your head hurts and you feel like shit. Jane Austen would have a field day with him.

The apartment is still when you wake, early morning light pouring through the gaps of the living room blinds.

You sit up slowly, still in yesterday’s clothes. You hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the couch, but the argument had left you too exhausted to care. Now, with lucidity seeping back in, you realise everything aches—your muscles stiff with tension, your body worn thin by the weight of last night. You wonder if he actually took care of the sutures like you told him to.

A blanket slips off your shoulders as you move. One you don’t remember pulling over yourself.

The smell of coffee draws your attention. It hits faint but fresh, drifting in from the kitchen. He must’ve come home while you were out cold. You rise, joints protesting the movement, and make your way across the apartment.

There’s a mug on the counter. Yours. The chipped one you had unpacked a week ago. Steam still curls out of it faintly, like it hadn’t been sitting there long. He must have made it before heading to bed, or leaving again. You think it must be his gesture of thanks—an apology, maybe—and somehow, just like that, the resentment you were nursing slips quietly out of your chest.

You pick up the mug and hold it, warming your fingers on the ceramic. It’s just sweet enough that you know the coffee’s not for him. It’s bitter, made using that instant brand he likes, but the sugar and the creamer cuts through the acid on your tongue. And he used your mug. The gesture eases the ache in your muscles, massages its way through tired tissue. 

You sigh, letting your gaze drift to the living room.

"My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

You don’t peg him for a romantic, but he reads Austen, makes you coffee for when you wake. And when he’s not bleeding out in the hallway or snapping at you, he listens. His words are one thing, but his hands say another—face unreadable but his eyes betray his indifference every time.

You lean against the counter and sip.

Jason Todd is a walking contradiction. He tells you not to care, not to ask, not to notice him. But then he makes you coffee, pulls blankets over your body when you sleep, like he notices you.

He notices you.

And that frightens you in equal parts as it does elate you. He spits out the words of a bully, but you think to his shelf, think to the collection of poetry he has on the 3rd row. 

He’s left you coffee in the morning after a fight, and somehow, that rends you.

Jason will never admit it, and neither will you, but the routine that comes from that night is nothing short of a blessing. 

Weeks pass, and though you refuse to talk of that night, or the argument that followed it, the two of you fold that interaction into the crevices of your relationship. It's strained, taut. Jason doesn’t give his trust freely, which is why it surprises you when he stays indoors the following two nights, lingering in the living room with a book pressed into his hands.

Even more surprising is what comes after: when he returns one night, inevitably bloodied and bruised, and turns to you—wordlessly.

The routine establishes itself. When he limps in past midnight, clutching torn fabric and half-dried blood, you fetch the antiseptic. He takes a seat, usually on the barstools, sometimes the closed toilet seat (never the couch, it’s too expensive), and you bring out your kit. When he strips down to his waist, your hand immediately finds purchase on his skin.

Occasionally, he hisses when the alcohol bites. Sometimes he doesn’t flinch at all.

You don’t ask questions. He never says thank you. 

You stop trying to read him.

He’s there occasionally before your shifts, or after when you work mornings but you rarely catch him when he wants to talk. On better days, you find signs he’s been around: a rinsed coffee mug in the sink, a dish towel folded haphazardly on the counter. His copy of Pride and Prejudice migrates sometimes from shelf to table to couch and then back again. 

One night, he sits on the opposite end of the couch while you’re watching the news and you still—like any sudden movement will have him scuttling back to where he came from. You recline further into the cushion, curled in your usual corner, and he settles in too like you’ve done this together before. Like the sudden proximity to you is nothing. His shoulder hovers inches from yours, body angled away, one arm slung along the backrest.

You don’t speak, don’t even dare to look at him.

But when a car chase plays on-screen—the kind of thing you suspect he had a hand in—you hear it. A quiet laugh, barely a breath.

It stays like that.

Wordless. Almost warm.

You think of this night for many more to come.

Another night, you boil pasta late after a long shift. Just enough for yourself at first, but you double it at the last second. Instinctively, almost without thinking. It’s not unusual for you to cook for others, it was pretty much a fixture in your first sharehouse, but when you graduated and found work, cooking for more than two became a chore.

You plate both servings. Leave his on the stove, glad-wrapped, in case he comes home later than normal. 

When he does arrive home,  it’s half an hour later. You hear the door, the jacket thrown carelessly over a chair. He’s not in bad condition tonight, black undershirt still fairly in tact, and his face is more grime than blood. You don’t say anything. Just rinse your dish and slide it into the sink.

He walks into the kitchen, past the stove. He eyes it for a second, then looks at you. Opens the fridge, grabs a beer. Turns. Doesn’t touch the plate.

He drinks half the bottle, then disappears into his room.

Later, when you know he won’t come back out, you wrap the pasta in foil and slide it into the bin.

You wonder why you so readily offer him your kindness, and why he so adamantly refuses it. When you retire to your bed, it’s with a heaviness you don’t shake off. Not grief, exactly. Just something adjacent to it.

You don’t love Gotham, but you live in it. And for now, that includes living with him.

Chapter Text

Today, you watched a child die. Watched an ECG go still. Watched parents sob desperately into open air.

This isn’t the first time you’ve seen someone die, and it’s far from the worst case. A car accident. Clinically brain dead before he was even brought in on one of your stretchers. He wasn’t in pain when he passed, and you think that’s more than what most people will get in this city. You’ve learned to detach from your work—let your hands move before your heart does.

Still, it shakes you in a way you can never prepare for, when a fifteen-year-old boy dies held in the arms of his father.

Summer is relentless in Gotham, and the drive home strips away the clinical distance you’d managed to hold.  You cry, as most people will do when they hang their scrubs for the day, feeling like there is—always will be something more that they could have done.

It starts as a sigh. An itch under your skin. Then you’re parked outside your apartment, gasping through each choked breath. Because it isn’t fair that children die. Because there was nothing anyone could have done. Because, for the briefest of moments, he looked like a child-version of a boy you know.

And that breaks you again. Washes new tears over your face. 

When you finally leave the car, it’s with a rushed kind of urgency. Maybe to make it to your room before Jason notices, maybe just to avoid being seen like this. You pause at the door, steadying your breath. When you open it, you notice Jason’s boots are already on the rack.

You find him seated on the couch, shirt off, bruises flowering across his ribs. He’s not looking at you—just changes the channel from the news without a glance.

You see the scar. The one that makes you think of what you lost today and the memories of a kid flatlining rush in without pause.  A sob almost escapes. Your fingers clench around your bag and you want so desperately to ask how it happened. How a living man has an autopsy scar. 

You turn, hoping he hasn’t caught sight of you. He never usually does. You walk to your room. Drop the bag hard against the wall. Collapse into your bed. 

The heat is oppressive. The ventilation’s bad—a caveat of living in a building that probably violates every code imaginable. There’s one ceiling fan in your room, a little off-centre, but Jason had said it worked well enough in summer. He was right, mostly. Sweat still clings to your neck, your scrubs damp with the residue of grief.

You try to lie still, staring at the water-stained ceiling, but the heat makes your skin crawl. A shower would help.

But then the fan stutters. Slows. Stops.

The overhead lights flicker once, twice—then die.

Power outage.

For a moment, you lie still in the dark. The shower isn’t off the table. You’ve cleaned yourself up in the dark before, and at least the water still works.

Somewhere beyond your door, the apartment groans in its quiet. Jason doesn’t say anything from the living room. You hear the faint creak of the couch, the shift of weight—but no expletives, no frustration.

Eventually, the heat drives you up. You strip off the outer layer of your scrubs and tie your hair into a knot. A quick shower. Then maybe some dinner. No time to wallow, not when the heat feels like it’ll kill you first. You heap fresh clothes under your arm and wrap a towel around yourself as you step out of your room.

You remember the first time Jason caught you without a shirt. 

You’d given him a wry smile, told him if he was going to stalk around the place shirtless, you were entitled to the same luxury. Besides, you were adults. Roommates. Nothing weird about seeing each other in only your undergarments.

He hadn’t said anything at first—just blinked like you’d short-circuited a part of his brain. His gaze had flicked somewhere over your shoulder, jaw tightening like he was trying not to react. Like you weren’t offering him something he couldn’t take.

“Whatever,” he’d muttered, turning a little too fast toward the kitchen, like the sight of you in your bra required strategic retreat.

That hadn’t been as bad as the time you were the one caught staring. He’d been fresh out of the shower, towel slung low on his hips, hair still damp and dark at the temples. You’d stopped short. He had too.

You hadn’t meant to linger but Jason noticed. Watched as your eyes had gazed over his chest, muscles well defined against the planes of his body. His ears had gone a little pink as he walked past you in a rush.

Bathing around each other after that became a quiet understanding. You learned to coexist—on more intimate terms than either of you wanted to acknowledge.

When you reach the bathroom, he’s no longer on the couch. Maybe the heat got to him too.

The water is cold against your skin, which isn’t entirely unwelcome, but it doesn’t wash the pain you’ve shelved into your heart today. The feel of it all dawns on you, punches wind from your lungs and you have to fight yourself from crying again. 

You wonder why you do this again—why you let yourself work in this corner of the world, where death seems to find everyone. 

Afterward, you redress and toss the towel on the rack. Head to the kitchen.

The gas stove still works.

You strike a match and light the burner, sitting a pan on the stove to warm up.

There’s already a candle on the counter—burned halfway down. Jason must have left it out from the last blackout.

You don’t bother with a recipe. Garlic. Tomato. Pasta. Your hands move on muscle memory and the smell fills the apartment. You stir automatically, like the act of doing something might keep the tears at bay. There’s no reason to cook for two, but you do. It’s instinct at this point; even if he doesn’t touch it, even if it makes its way to the bin. 

You plate for the both of you, taking a seat at the kitchen counter. Maybe this wasn’t the day to be making hot food. It feels too quiet. Too hot. Everything feels too oppressive, like it's nipping at your neck, then grabbing it in a chokehold. 

The candle flickers on the counter and the shadows stretch long across the cupboards.

Behind you, you hear the shift of floorboards.

Jason appears wordlessly, barefoot, his shirt still off, the scarring from that initial suture healing well under his rib. It’s only been a few months, but it’s a pleasant reminder that he’s not actively trying to kill himself anymore. He walks into the kitchen, the copy of Pride and Prejudice tucked under his arm, and lingers at the fridge. You’re about to tell him not to open it, the power’s out and you don’t want to risk letting the heat in, but he moves to the stove next. He looks at the dish in front of him, looks back at you, eyes meeting yours for the first time tonight and at first he’s momentarily stunned. 

You wonder if he can tell you’ve been crying.

If he can, he doesn’t say anything. Just walks to the drawer and fishes out a fork. He doesn't ask. He doesn't speak. He just grabs the second plate from the stove and walks around the kitchen island, sliding into the seat next to you.

The silence isn’t uncomfortable, but it’s loaded.

You eat quietly for a while, the clink of forks against ceramic echoing into the room. You glance up to look at him, and he’s already watching you. He doesn’t pull away like he usually does when you catch him—just keeps eating, occasionally looking down at the spread pages of his book.

It’s the closest thing to a lifeline he knows how to throw.

"Power grid’s shit," he says eventually, between bites. “Third time this month.”

“Fourth, actually,” you correct, placing your fork down. “You were out the last time.”

He huffs a laugh—not disbelieving, just tired. “Always hits this block worse. Wouldn’t happen if Bruce hadn’t—”

A pause. Then a correction. “If the city gave a fuck.”

“Bruce?” You glance over. “Didn’t peg you for being on a first-name basis with Mr. Wayne.”

Jason shrugs. “Maybe if he wasn’t too busy fucking around with his shareholders, we’d have something to show for it in Gotham.”

The pasta twists easily around your fork. “He’s not all bad,” you say. “We get a lot of our funding from his foundation.”

That earns you a look, one eyebrow arched.

“Work,” you clarify.

He nods at that slowly, then rolls his eyes a little like the idea of Bruce Wayne doing any good was some sort of joke. 

“Speaking of,” he mutters, raising his glass to his mouth. “You look like shit.”

“Oh gee, thanks, Jason. I’d never have guessed.”

You start to stand, reaching for your plate. He speaks again.

“Someone die today?”

You stop in your tracks and you feel your body bristle at the mention of it.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “Fifteen.”

The plate makes a soft clink in the sink. You turn the water on.

“Sorry,” he says.

A moment passes. Then you shake your head, running the water over your plate. You hear him rise from his seat, and then he’s rinsing his plate next to yours. Hands it to you like it’s routine. His fingers brush yours—warm, calloused. You don’t look at him, but you don’t flinch, either.

“Wanna watch something later?”

A sigh escapes you, but it’s softer this time. “Okay.”

And somehow, that helps more than anything else he could have said. 

Later, when he’s hauled himself away into his room, you find his copy of Pride and Prejudice on the kitchen island, and open to where he’s reading. A new underline.

“Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she would rather have cried.”

You smile at the thought.

You tell yourself you’ll take the evening off. You haven’t had one in a while—something non-clinical, something outside the hospital, outside your apartment walls. A colleague had asked you out, something akin to a date, you’re not sure. You wonder if it has anything to do with the patient from last week, if your grief had been so palpable that it worried your coworkers.

The colleague in question is a young surgical resident, third year in Gotham General, graduated from Met U. He’s sweet. Respectful. One of the few men in the building who doesn’t think a white coat makes him untouchable. He’s also easy on the eyes; black sweeping hair, an upturned nose and well-defined jaw. He’s a little bigger than most of the specialists in the hospital, and his quiet disposition has you reminded of Jason at times. In fact, he’s not unsimilar, and you think in dim lighting, the two could be mistaken for each other. 

He’d said he could learn a lot from you, that he admired your work ethic—and when he’d offered to take you out for dinner, you’d said yes. Something about him had told you that you wouldn’t regret it, that it might be nice to have someone like him around. You’d thought he might understand you better. Because it had been a long week, because you’d wanted to try. Because maybe it would feel good to be finally seen.

The time had been set during a lunch break, a takeaway coffee trembling in his hands just a little. It was definitely a date, you’d thought. Set for the following Friday.

He’d said he’d pick you up, if you’d like, when he was done for the day. The restaurant was somewhere in central Gotham, shadowed by Wayne Tower, and the name had made you pause—think of Jason; how he ranted, quite subtly, about the character of a billionaire no one seemed to care for.

The date itself is fine.

He asks questions. Listens. Laughs at your jokes. He smells nice, talks about the old records he collects. He asks you what you like. You shake your head, smiling as the beer fills your mouth. What did you like? You don’t know.

He’s nice. Speaks gently. As handsome as ever, tidying his hair so it falls in a soft middle part. The kind of guy your mother would like. The kind you tell yourself you should like—the kind you did like, back when you first finished high-school. He’s well spoken, well read. Lives on his own with a pet cat. He shows you a picture. You aw. 

And for a moment—the tiniest of moments—you pretend he could be enough.

You thank him at the end of the meal and smile. Tell him it was lovely. You mean it, genuinely. He drives you home and you make small quips about the time you’ll spend tomorrow at work. You don’t give him any indication that this will go any further, but he respects it. Doesn’t lean in to kiss you when you exit his car. You wave briskly at him as you turn to walk to your apartment.

It’s still dark when you enter, and you wonder if he’s home tonight. He better be.

You had stitched him up last night.

Twelve hours on your feet at the hospital, and you had still come home and sutured the gash along his bicep. Twelve neat, careful stitches. You had watched his body still, felt the muscles of his arm twitch as you tied the last knot.

He hadn’t said thank you. He never does. Instead, he had given you that look, the one all weary and dry, and you understood what he meant. He’s tired of this too, whatever it is. 

The apartment is quiet, still warm from the summer day.

You expect the stillness. Expect to hear the hum of the fridge, maybe the fan in his room, maybe expect him to even be on the couch thumbing pages away in another book. But there’s a low voice. Then a muffled laugh.

There’s a jacket draped over the kitchen counter, like it was pulled off in haste. Not his.

Then the trail: thick boots against the door, uneven. A shirt, crumpled against the backrest of the couch. Then, the familiar, almost inevitably drops of blood from the entrance to his room. 

Your stomach twists.

You follow it. Not out of jealousy—but disbelief. You just stitched him up. Barely twenty-four hours ago. You told him not to move that arm. You told him to rest. He can’t be. He’s always kept out of trouble a couple of nights after sutures are pulled through skin.

His door is ajar and dim light floods through the gap.

You see him first. Sitting up against the headboard, the bandage on his arm half-peeled away, soaked crimson. They’ve been torn apart. At least one, maybe a few. You can’t tell. Your eyes won’t linger, because she’s in his lap. Straddling him. One hand on his chest. His head tipped back against the wall. You watch as he lifts her off of him, and pulls her back down on his cock.

The gasp that leaves you is disobedient.

The sound betrays you, and he turns. 

His eyes snap forward. Lock to yours.

For a second, neither of you move.

Then you do.

You turn without a word. You strip off your jacket, place it on the coat rack. Wash your hands. Set the kettle.

You don’t look up when the girl walks out five minutes later, adjusting her bra under a hoodie that isn’t hers.

She stops at the door to put her shoes on. You notice the spray of blood against skin.

“You’ve got blood on your thigh,” you say.

She startles, keys dropping on the floor as she turns to you—doe-eyes wide like she’s been caught.

“His roommate,” you gesture to yourself. “The blood’s not yours,” you clarify. 

She wipes at it with her sleeve and then she’s gone.

Truthfully, you’re not sure why you’re loitering in the kitchen. Yes, you’re making yourself tea, but your appetite has been ruined and bitterness spreads deep across your tastebuds. You should go to bed, should shut the door on him so you don’t have to think about the dressing on his arm. Or the way he fucking that girl, the blood dripping down his bicep as he held her. 

The door creaks from his room.

You don’t turn from the kettle, watching as it hisses and steams. 

The fridge opens behind you. The light flickers against the walls. Then, the sound of glass and the unmistakable thud of a cap against the countertop.

Still, you don’t turn. You grab your mug from the cupboard, place the teabag in. 

“I didn’t know you were home,” Jason says, voice low.

You don’t turn. “Clearly.”

He lingers behind you. The fridge hums open, a bottle cap clinks against the counter. Probably a Coke—he hasn’t restocked the beers.

“I stitched that arm yesterday,” you say, measured, deliberate. “Twelve stitches. Took me almost an hour.”

He exhales through his nose. “It held.”

You glance toward the kettle as it begins to whine. “Maybe. Probably not. What do you think happens when it doesn’t?”

Jason shifts behind you, the creek of the floorboard giving him away. You don’t need to see him to know his jaw is locked.

“I didn’t think—” he starts.

“No.” You cut him off, finally turning to face him. His shirt is back on now, jaw tight.

“You didn’t think. So let me tell you what happens.” Your voice is low, but rising.

“If even one of those twelve stitches is loose—and you’d be lucky if it’s just one—your wound’s going to split open. You’ll get it infected almost immediately, because you have zero sense of self-preservation. And then you’ll refuse to see a doctor. Refuse to go to a hospital. So when you come home, when I see you again, I’ll offer to redo them.”

You laugh, dry and bitter. “I’ll cut the nylon out of your arm. I’ll pull out another fucking kit, pump your skin full of lidocaine, and thread a needle through you all over again. ”

“And for what?” You huff, empty in the quiet. “So you can fuck it all up again? Do you hate yourself that much, Jason? Do you hate me that much?”

He opens his mouth like he’s about to bite back. Something sharp. Something cold. But it dies on his tongue.

He looks down. First at the counter. Then the floor. Then at you.

“I didn’t ask you to care,” he says. Softer than you expect. Like it’s an apology and the thought makes you want to laugh.

You roll your eyes, pouring steaming water into your mug. You don’t respond. Just turn to the sink and start washing the dishes.

He watches. Silent. Not learning. Just standing there like always, watching you scrub porcelain with your back to him.

When you’re done, when you shoulder past him with the tea in your hands, refusing to meet his gaze, he says, “Goodnight.”

You don’t answer..

You don’t go to bed. Not right away.

You lie there, on top of the sheets, sweat pooling at the bend of your elbows. The fan moves hot air in lazy circles. Useless. You stare at the ceiling like it might offer you answers.

It doesn’t.

You shut your eyes, but that just makes it worse. The memory finds you behind your lids; her mouth on his collarbone, his hands tight on her waist. The dressing on his arm soaked red. The one you applied. The one you warned him to be careful with.

Your fingers curl into the sheets.

You hate that it matters. Hate how he always somehow matters.

How you had tried so hard tonight to return to normalcy.

You put on something nice. Sat across from someone who smiled and asked about your weekend plans, your hobbies. You couldn’t even entertain him for more than two hours. Left as soon as you could because you couldn’t stop thinking of Jason’s autopsy scar. Or the way he still doesn’t know how you take your coffee, but sweetens it anyway. 

You couldn’t spend a second longer with a man that looked like you were doing some sort of good in this world because you were too worried over a man who runs like a wounded rabbit from you. Who never stays still long enough to let you see if he’s bleeding.

You wonder if you’re the only one hurting tonight.

Thankfully, only one of Jason’s stitches came loose that night. He’s much more tender this time when you stitch him up, offering himself with little reluctance. He watches with intent, watches as you irrigate the wound, as you numb his skin with the anaesthetic, then pull hooks through skin. 

His pliant attitude earns only an eye-roll.You can always suture him, always mend cuts and bruises and abrasions, but you can’t be him. You can’t stop him from leaving in the night, or taking women to his bed and opening his wounds. You can’t force him to understand why his actions last night devastated you and you can’t force him to appreciate you. 

But you can be petty. Goodwill be damned—you’re not dignifying his apology with forgiveness.

He brings takeout the next day. Two boxes this time, leaves one tentatively at the stovetop. He doesn’t say anything, just watches as you glance up at him from your spot on the couch, book in hand. Then he plates himself a serve, and you one too. Doesn’t give it to you, just places it in the same spot you do. 

The day after, you find a boot knife on the counter and a note with your name on it. If it’s an apology, it’s a shit one. A knife, Jason? For a nurse? You’ve pulled more of these out from muscle and sinew than you’d care to count and you don’t want the reminder haunting you in your possessions. But the blade is nice. Matte black steel, clean lines. Compact, elegant, heavier than it looks. It fits snug in your palm.

The card falls open as you pick it up. On the back, in his blocky handwriting:

Keep yourself safe.

You roll your eyes and tuck it into your jacket pocket. He doesn’t get it. Even if… Even if it’s sweet.

One night, when you know he’s out for work or whatever it is he does, you think of calling your colleague. The one that looks at you like you’re the only star in the night sky, who sees in equal parts the rot in this city and the good, mends broken bones with gentle kindness. You saw him once since the date, surgical mask looped around one ear, and when he turned you saw Jason—if just for the briefest of seconds.

You know it’s wrong. One of the few rules of this place was no guests. But Jason broke that rule first and he’s not home, and you don’t forget the sight of his hands on her waist. 

Makes these months without a date — without sex — feel so much longer than they have been. You can’t tell if it’s jealousy or envy. You just know it aches.

So you send the text, a simple:

What are you doing tonight?

He responds quickly, a little bit too eager. You smile at the thought, and then you cinch the deal by replying with your address.

The couch is warm beneath your knees. His hands are on your hips, tentative but eager, fingers pressed against your skin. Your pants are somewhere on the floor, bra long gone, and you’re straddling him, arms wrapped loosely around the back of his neck. His mouth is soft where it kisses along your collarbone, and you tilt your head back, leaning into the feeling of being wanted. 

You know the door might open at any moment. That’s the point.

You want Jason to walk in and see this—see your skin pressed to someone else’s, your mouth parted like you’re enjoying it. 

You want to be appreciated. Seen. You want him to know—to see what it’s like to have you be worshipped, to have your touch be honoured and not taken for granted. You want him to feel betrayed the way you were, though fucking your coworker probably won’t lead you there. Still, the exhilaration of being walked in on keeps your mouth on his.

The surgical resident nibbles against the base of your neck, and laps at your throat. He says your name like it means something, like this moment means something. Whispers it against your skin like he’s never heard it before. Presses kisses against your skin like you won’t wake in the morning and see him at work. But it doesn’t—doesn’t mean anything. Not to you.

The door clicks and you grin at the corner of his mouth. You hear it over the sound of your own breath; the lock turning, the familiar thud of heavy boots.

Your date freezes, pulls back from you a little in shock and there’s an urgency in the way his hand stills at your back. 

But you’re not looking at him, and his touch is cold now. Your eyes are already on the hallway. Jason steps into view.

His eyes land on you instantly. Tactical suit dirtied, blood crusted faintly on his knuckles. There's a smear along his jaw, but he’s otherwise looking a lot better for wear.

He stops mid-step, like someone’s punched the air from his lungs.

His gaze rakes over the scene: your bare chest, the way you’re straddling the man beneath you, the faint sheen of saliva against your skin. You watch as the muscles in his face twitch, as his eyes immediately narrow at the sight of your arms over this stranger’s neck. At the embrace.

For a second, he says nothing. Just stares.

“Thought we agreed on no guests.”

His voice is low. Cool. But there’s something underneath it—tightness in the jaw, a flicker in his eye. Hurt, maybe. 

Your date shifts beneath you, glancing between the two of you, daring not to speak.

You keep your voice even. “Didn’t stop you last week.”

Jason’s eyes flick down your body, then back up. Fast, like he’s trying not to, like he wasn’t distracted by the rise and fall of your breasts with each breath. Then, his hand flexes involuntarily. A knee-jerk reaction, like your body, nude and yielding in another man’s lap is a weapon aimed straight as his head.

“This is different.”

You tilt your head. “How?”

And then, slow and deliberate, you lean in and press a kiss to your date’s jaw. You don’t break eye contact.

Jason’s eyes twitch. “Because I didn’t fuck her on the goddamn couch.”

The man beneath you stiffens. “Uh—should I go?”

Jason ignores him completely. Doesn’t even look at him. He only looks at you.

“Oh, my bad,” you say, feigning innocence. “At least I’m not fucking someone while the sutures I put in are still wet.”

His mouth hardens and he scoffs, finally turning away. “Don’t let me interrupt.” 

And then he’s gone—shoulders tense, footsteps heavy, the door to his room slamming shut a moment later.

Your breath escapes slow through your nose. Your chest feels tight. The man beneath you is speaking again, uncertain and hesitant—but you’re not listening.

Your date untangles from you slowly. “Wait—are you patching people up here?”

You shrug. “I’m certified.” Your kit isn’t hospital property, so it’s not something he can quite report on. Maybe where you get your lidocaine, but it’s Gotham and he probably already knows.

He tries a laugh, but it falters at the sound of something crashing in Jason’s room. A thud.

“My roommate. Twelve stitches on his bicep,” you murmur, moving your hand gently across his arm to mimic the size. “Fucked a girl not even twenty four hours. Popped one open and had to do them again.”

“Why doesn't he see a doctor?”

You don’t answer. You just kiss him again—languid, soothing.

“I think we have to call it here tonight,” you say, pushing off him with a smile.

“Oh. Right. Uh—will I still see you around?”

You nod, already walking him to the door. “Of course. I’ll see you at work.”

“Work,” he echoes, a soft smile on his face as he leans down to kiss you again. You don’t refuse it.

The door closes softly behind him. No final words. Just the sound of his retreat, quick steps down the footpath. You let out a breath you didn’t realise you were holding and lean your weight against the door. Sinking lower to the ground, you think that there must be something intrinsically rotten about you. Maybe it’s because you’ve been in Gotham too long, maybe it’s the way Jason’s hostility and emotional regression has circumvented any sort of rational thinking.

“Angry people are not always wise.”

You thought it would feel better—this little rebellion, this demonstration of pain dressed in bare skin and open want.

But it doesn’t. Not when you think of your colleague, think of the way he looked at you as he said your name. Like it mattered. Like this meant something to either of you.

And that’s the worst part—you know it doesn’t. You used him.

You used him to hurt Jason, and you used him to feel wanted, and he didn’t know either of those things when he walked into your apartment, or when you put your knees on the sides of his legs to kiss him better.

It would be easier to hide behind the pretense that this was just fun. Just sex—a quick hookup. And maybe if that was the case, it wouldn’t haunt you the way it does now. Because at least then your intentions wouldn’t be so malicious. 

You press your fingers to your lips. They’re chapped. Kiss-bruised. And you feel a little stupid. Or maybe just young. Childish. Like kids who think revenge will fill the space left by something you were never given.

Still, there’s a part of you that doesn’t let go. A small, ugly part that feels vindicated. That wanted Jason to see you. Wanted him to hurt. Wanted him to watch as another man littered kisses and appreciation all over your skin.

Your body lands on the floor against the door, and you stay there, sitting in the quiet and letting it all settle. The shame. The ache. The truth of what you’ve become.

A week after that night, you check the suture kit one more time. You count your gloves and pause a little too long over the antiseptic wipes. The scalpel and stitch scissors lie untouched in their tray, just as they have since you worked on his bicep.

You feel the weight of tomorrow pressing down—you’ll have to remove those stitches, pull twelve thin threads from his skin after a whole week of silence between you.

He no longer lingers in the living room. Instead, he trudges straight to his room whenever he sees you step out. The coffee he used to leave out, warm and waiting, has stopped appearing, and his plates pile up longer in the sink. In return, you stop preparing that second serving of dinner. You don’t replace his favorite beer on the shelf.

Still, despite the growing distance, on nights when he arrives home looking rougher than usual—battered and bloody—he stands silently in front of the bathroom mirror and lets you examine his wounds. No words pass between you during these moments. The cold gloves pressed against his bare skin are the only contact, but he never refuses. It’s as if this has become routine, an unspoken part of your lives. Like this is just how things are now.

Sometimes your hand grazes an old wound, or an old scar, and your body trembles with so much caution and hurt that looking any longer might just eviscerate you. He is the only person who has elicited that kind of reaction from you—as though his scars were branded onto your own skin, like it’s your blood that runs through his veins.

The next night arrives quieter than you expect. Ten days since you first stitched him up, nine since you saw him fucking that girl, seven since he saw you with another guy. You find him sitting on the edge of the bed, arm extended and bare beneath the harsh light of the bedside lamp. The line of stitches looks less raw now, the skin around them healing but still tender.

The weight of the past week hangs heavily in the air between you as you sit beside him, the mattress beside him yielding under as you place the kit besides you. Removing sutures is the easier counterpart, a less than five minute job, but this job feels much more difficult than any other of the procedures you’ve done on him.

 He watches you carefully, the silence stretching, thick and uneasy.

Without a word, you begin. The antiseptic swab cools his skin as you clean the area, and you place the flat edge of the scalpel tight under the nylon, careful not to cut into his skin. The tension snags, then breaks, and you pull on one end of the suture. It exits with ease and very minimal bleeding. 

He breaks the silence first.

“You brought him here,” he says, low and quiet. “You knew I’d walk in on it.”

You exhale audibly, letting the weight of his words settle somewhere deep inside you. At least he wants to talk about it.

“Yeah, I did. I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

You place the blade under the second stitch, and tug. It snaps, and you pull it out, placing it into a bag in your kit. 

“I was hurt. By what you did. I don’t know,” you say, a little sheepish, “I just wanted you to hurt a little.”

“You think sleeping with another guy is going to hurt me?”

“I mean, it worked didn’t it?”

He laughs, a little bitter. “Not really. I’m pissed you brought a stranger into my home.”

You shrug. “You did it first.”

You repeat the procedure on the next stitch, but the thread resists, tugging slightly before giving.

“I’m allowed to fuck who I want. This is my place.”

“It’s mine too now, Jason. And frankly, I don’t care who you’re fucking.”

There's a bite in your voice now, an edge more sharp. “Then why the spectacle?”

“Because you always make me feel like I’m nothing to you. I—I held your fucking skin closed with my hands. I came home from a twelve-hour shift—fuck, I watched a kid die earlier that week, a kid who looked like you. And you know what I did? I put a needle through your skin and begged you to take care of yourself. And the next night, you’re too busy wetting your dick to care what that meant.”

He doesn’t respond immediately, and you take that as permission to snip the fourth stitch.

“Not everything revolves around you,” he mutters, avoiding your gaze. He always does that—when he knows he’s about to say something that won’t land well. Like he’s too ashamed, or too much of a coward, to watch you react.

“Yeah,” you say, voice tight. “Because I waste an hour of my time making sure you don’t bleed out for my sake.”

“Actually, yeah. You stitched me up,” he says. “Because it’s your job. That’s what you do, right? Fix broken people. Makes you feel normal in this fucked-up city. Patching up all of us stupid little bastards who can’t take care of ourselves.”

Your jaw clenches. You don’t know how much of it is true, how much of it is conjecture, if he knows you so well that he can read you in a way you haven’t quite read yourself. You want to yell that he’s wrong, but you can’t. You don’t know if he is.

“Stupid, maybe,” you murmur. “If you’re going to sit still at three in the morning, then for God’s sake, you might as well give half a fuck about it.”

Snip. You drop the fifth thread into the bag.

His mouth parts like he might say something. But he doesn’t.

You stare at him, waiting. Wanting something. An apology. A reason. A flicker of guilt. Some sort of sign that he is affected by this in any capacity. Instead, resistance.

“I don’t,” he says. “I don’t give a fuck what you think is good for me. You don’t get to decide that.”

“Don’t,” you snap. “Don’t act like I’m so beneath you I can’t tell right from wrong.”

“You’re not even a doctor. What the fuck does it matter?” he spits.

The words hit like a slap, and your breath catches.

“Fuck you, Jason.”

You cut the sixth stitch with less caution this time. Quicker. Sharper. You need to finish. Need to be out of here before you break. Can’t let him see you cry.

You move to the seventh, hands steadier than your pulse. It’s easier than the last, but your breath still catches when the thread pulls free. He doesn’t flinch. He hasn’t the whole time.

“You know,” you say, voice trembling, “I didn’t bring him here to make you jealous. I brought him because I didn’t want to feel like I was waiting around for scraps anymore.”

The eighth stitch pulls against your scalpel, then relents. A dot of blood rises from where it’s removed. You place a piece of gauze at it.

“You made me feel like I didn’t matter. Like what I gave you didn’t matter.”

Jason scoffs, finally turning to face you. “You think this is about feelings?”

“Yes,” you say. “I think it’s about the fact you don’t acknowledge mine. I know what you do with the coffee. And the boot-knife. But I don’t need broad gestures, Jason. You don’t get to placate me with gifts when I walk in on you completely disregarding my hurt.”

He leans back just slightly, still looking at you, and his expression shifts—unreadable. You can’t tell if he’s pleased you acknowledge his gestures, or pissed it’s not enough.

“You want gratitude?” he asks. “Is that it? Want me to say thank you for patching me up every time I come back hurt? Want a medal for not being able to mind your own business?”

“No,” you frown. “I want you to act like you care. Even a little.”

“Why would I?” His snaps. “You’re the one who stuck your hands in this. You chose to stay. You chose to clean up the mess.”

“I didn’t choose to clean your blood off the fucking grout.”

He laughs, empty. “You chose to make it your problem.”

You snip the ninth stitch a little too forcefully and the thread breaks with enough force that he does recoil. You soften at his reaction, gently moving the gauze to clean the blood as it spots against his skin.

“I chose to help because I care about you, Jason. Because you’re not nothing to me.”

He shakes his head, like the words make him uncomfortable. Like you’re lying to him. 

“You care because it makes you feel useful.”

“For fucks sake,” you snap. “I care because you’re you. Because I’ve seen you come home soaked in blood and barely breathing and it breaks me everytime.”

He doesn’t react to that. Just says with tight lips, “you want a fucking trophy for that?”

You glare at him, chest tight, throat burning. “No. I want you to see me. Not just the nurse with the kit. Not just the roommate who cleans up your wreckage.”

Snip. The tenth stitch comes loose.

Jason looks at the floor. He’s breathing harder now. So are you.

“I don’t want to need you,” he says under his breath.

“What?”

“I didn’t ask for any of this. You make it feel like I owe you something just for surviving.”

Snip. Eleven.

You pause before the last one. The wound looks smaller now, less angry. But your hands are shaking. Everything inside you is.

“That’s not—you think I’m trying to guilt you into caring?” you ask, voice soft. “You think I do this for fun? I’ve had to peel bloodied clothes off your body. I’ve had to watch you wince through pain you refuse to admit is even there. I don’t like my work, Jason. It’s tiring, and I want a break all the time, and watching people crack, scream, and die is not fun. It doesn’t always feel good.”

The silence after that is worse than any insult you've traded. Bar maybe the doctor comment, because you think those  words have crawled too far into your conscience and died there. If your… friendship even survives this, you’ll have to wring his ear for it.

Snip. The twelfth stitch.

You pull the last thread from his skin and drop it into the bag.

Then you turn to face your kit, tear off your gloves, gather your scalpel, your forceps and place them in their box. You stand to leave, tears definitely welling at the corner of your eyes.

You take a step toward the door but he cuts you off with a hand at your wrist.

“That's it?” he says, low. “That’s all it takes for you to walk away?”

You freeze. “You want me to stay?” 

He shrugs, but his jaw tightens. “You’ve made it pretty clear what you want from me.”

“I don’t even know what I want from you,” you say, a breathless laugh tucked into it.

“Bullshit,” he responds.

You turn to face him, eyes still watery.

“Then tell me what you think I want from you, Jason.”

His lips twist. Cruel. Defensive. Scared.

“You want to feel important. You want to matter so bad you’ll crawl into anyone’s lap who looks at you long enough. That’s what that guy was, wasn’t it? You couldn’t stand that I didn’t give a shit, so you fucked someone else to prove a point.”

His words feel like a punch in the gut, and you know for the first time tonight that he’s pulling shit out of his ass. Maybe the doctor comment wasn’t the worst thing you’ve heard tonight.

You pull your arm from his grip with a sharp tug, then spin and shove him hard onto his bed. His back hits the mattress but his eyes don’t leave yours for the first time in a while.

“Fuck you,” you leer from above him. 

He just stares up at you, chest rising, blue eyes cloudy and unreadable.

Then, you lean over him, hands braced on either side of his head.

“You think I did that to make you jealous? Fuck, maybe I did. Maybe I wanted to know what it felt like to fuck a man who doesn’t wallow in self pity every miserable night.”

“You didn’t even fuck him,” he snarls. “And if you did—I bet it’d be fucking pathetic. He looks it.”

You laugh through your teeth and draw closer until your mouth brushes his ear.  “You think you could do better?”

That’s invitation enough. One of his hands fists in your hair, yanking your head back hard enough to dizzy you, and then his mouth crashes into yours.

The kiss is all teeth. Harsh. Cruel. As unforgiving as his words. He kisses you like he wants to bruise you, like he wants to rip your tongue out and keep it. You kiss him back like you’re punishing him—for every night he came home wrecked, bleeding, and made you fix him without once saying thank you.

His hand doesn’t leave your head. Sometimes, when he bites into the kiss too hard, his grip tightens, bunching your hair against your scalp. You gasp into his mouth when it hurts and the sound only spurs him on. His tongue forces past your teeth like he’s trying to devour you from the inside out.

You straddle him on the bed as he sits up, fingers curling into his raven hair. He lets go of your head, gripping your hips with both hands, hard enough to bruise. There’s no rhythm, no finesse—just need. Burned raw and jagged. Like a taut rope sliced clean, the recoil reverberating in your open mouths.

He moves to your throat, biting at your skin like he’s trying to leave proof he was here. Bites the same spot your colleague once nipped—and then sucks. Hard. Pulls your skin and fat into his mouth, holds it between his teeth until he knows he’s left a mark. When he lets go, he looks up at you from under dark lashes. A teasing smile. Then he laps at the spot playfully, circling it with the flat of his tongue. Then kisses it gently. Once. Twice.

The tenderness almost knocks the breath out of you.

Your hands yank his shirt over his head. You give a once-over to the autopsy scar, another to the wound beneath his ribs, and you touch. You don’t care for his permission anymore—palm flat against his skin. Feeling. Claiming. Searching like it’s penance.

Each muscle feels carved and tense, and you realise just how large he is. How wide his chest is. How defined each line of muscle is beneath his skin. The thought has you shifting, pressing your cunt into his lap. Your breath catches when you feel just how hard he is for you. The press of his length, solid and so hard, against you elicits a moan. You back bows, driving your hips forward, then back, realising a little shamelessly that you’re grinding against him in your jeans, huffing short groans when the pressure hits just right.

His eyes are locked on yours—dark, blown wide—like you’re the only thing keeping him tethered to this world. One of his hands rises to cup your face, but as he moves, you catch a glimpse of the scar on his bicep.

The one you stitched.  Reality slams back into you.

“Don’t tear it again,” you whisper, breath shaky. “I’m not stitching you up twice in one week.”

His grin is sly, and wicked in response. “Then ride me.”

You want to roll your eyes at him, but the way he says it—low and cocky, like he already knows you will—sends a pulse straight between your legs. You drag one heavy grind along his cock, hard enough that your thighs shake.

You nod, shakily, and he responds by kissing you with such ferocity that it has you mewling into his mouth. His hands grope your waist, kneading the fat there, pulling you in. Holding you in.

 Then—a tentative thrust from him. You keen at the sensation, the pressure against your jeans, your clit, and your fingers dig into his back as you grind back.

But when a finger brushes past an old wound, you freeze.

It hits like a slap.

You picture her. The girl from the other night. You didn’t see her face. Didn’t want to. But you remember the shape of her legs over his lap. The way his hands had rested on her hips. The dripping bandage.

This exact position.

You blink. The room spins slightly. Your breath hitches. You feel faint.

Jason notices. His hands still, fingers softening at your waist, one sliding to support your back. “What is it?”

You shake your head. Lie. “Nothing.”

But the moment falters. The rhythm breaks. Your body’s still pressed to his, but the heat has drained from it, replaced by quiet devastation.

You want to own this—to make it yours. To reclaim something from the wreckage. But all you can feel is the ghost of someone else’s thighs against his skin. All you can think is: he didn’t care then. So what makes this any different? What makes him care now?

You lock your arms behind his neck and kiss him harder. Desperate now. Like if you do it right, you won’t taste like her. Won’t look like her in this position. You kiss him like you could imprint your soul onto his and force him to finally, finally see you.

His hands slide up your back, pulling you closer—but your movements are a little more frantic now. A little more grief-stricken.

And he knows. You feel it in the way his grip tightens. The way he breaks the kiss for a second to rest his forehead against yours.

But neither of you says a word.

Shakily, your hands move to the hem of your shirt. He watches, silent, as you peel it off and toss it onto the floor atop your medical kit. Then your bra. His hands reach out, tentative. Like touching your skin might scald him; like your perked nipples could cut through his nerves.

When he does touch—cups and rolls the flesh in his palms, thumb flicking over your hardened nipple—you groan.

His eyes drag over your body, pausing at the swell of your breasts. You expect hunger. Expect his eyes to devour you. What you get is something else entirely. Hesitation. Maybe regret.

You’re not sure what you’re doing anymore.  You’re not sure he is either.

Your hands find the hem of his sweats, and you watch his gaze for any reluctance, any sign that he might no longer wants this.

You push his pants low, down past his knees so they pool at his feet. The sight of him straining against the dark fabric of his boxers nearly drains your face of colour. Large. A damp patch where the tip is. Twitching with convulsion as he breathes heavy, watching you bite your lip to stop the moan that tries to escape. 

Then, you unzip the fly of your pants, and kick them to the ground. Your panties are the same colour as his boxers, and you might have laughed if he didn’t cut the silence with a snarl at the sight. 

You crawl back into position, and press down carefully against the thin fabric restraining his weeping erection. You both hiss at the friction, the pressure, and his eyes flit down to where your bodies are touching, to where the dark patch of your panties press against his own. 

The sound that comes from him is strangled, and both hands find purchase at your hips. He pulls you forward, forcing you to grind deliriously against his entire length. The sensation nearly makes you cry out. He squeezes his eyes shut, head falling back with a groan in response. Then another slow drag of your cunt against his. You moan against him, and  his eyes flit open fast. Looks at your soaking cunt,  like any time spent not staring at it through your panties is precious time wasted.

He grips your thighs tighter. “Don’t stop.”

And you don’t want to, the feel of him against you is full, and the thought of him taking you. Of fitting that inside you, making a home out of your drenched pussy has you clenching over nothing. 

You grind again, and when you pull away, an obscene string of fluid connects your cunt to his boxers. He looks at it, then at you, and he looks like he might have died at the sight, eyes glassy, the blue nearly gone. He groans, eyeing that thin tether between your parts, and when you press down on him again to roll your hips in a circle, he bucks into your cunt with so much force it knocks you back.

When your eyes meet his, his face softens. Tender. Like you’re the only thing that counts. Like you might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

But you can’t stop picturing her.

You can’t stop thinking: he let her do this, too.

You press hard against him, a little faster, chasing pleasure from your clit as it catches on his length. He squeezes his eyes shut like he’s in pain. Like he wants to feel only this.

And then it comes out—almost involuntarily:

“Did you look at her like this?”

His fingers twitch. His jaw clenches. Then Jason opens his eyes and looks at you like you’re about to destroy everything.

“Don’t,” he says.

But the damage is done. You’re not thinking anymore. Just bleeding through your teeth.

“Did she get to see this too? The way you look at someone like you’ll break—like they’ll break?”

He tries to distract you, tries to ground your attention to how good you were feeling, tries to buck against you slowly but you still. “You really want to ruin this right now?”

Your throat burns. “It’s already ruined.”

He surges against you, kissing you hard enough to knock your hesitations right out of your head. One leg hooks yours, and your back hits the mattress, his body on top of you. He braces his elbows on either side of your face and bites into your neck. 

You gasp into his mouth as he presses into you, grinding his cock against the apex of your thigh, using his weight to push further against your clit, crushing it under him. Your eyes flutter, and you fight back another moan.

“Don’t think,” he says, voice urgent and raw—like he’s begging. Please. Please don’t think.

You try not to, wrapping your arms around his neck to pull him into a kiss. He sighs into it, relieved, and he must take your silence, your willingness to taste him in your mouth as agreement. 

You pull away and shuffle down. You plant a kiss on one of his nipples, licking a stripe against it as you continue lower. When you’re a few feet below his head, you cup him. He growls at the touch, hips thrusting into hand like a reflex. You smile at the feeling, fingers threading around his heavy cock behind thin cotton and you watch each muscle tense.

You palm him, fingers reaching for the damp spot, feeling the slick of his arousal seep through the fabric onto your hands. Then, when the thought of him entering you feels like a prophecy to be fulfilled, you hook your fingers into the band of his boxers and pull them off.

His cock twitches in the air—large and girthy, just as he is. Impressive, but not surprising. You think his ego must be partly built on having the cock of a pornstar.

Your fingers wrap around it, giving it a tentative stroke from base to tip. You watch the muscles in his abdomen flex and twitch at the feeling of your hand travelling the length of his cock. Watch as he stills in your hand, hips almost quivering as you tug, squeeze, thumb wiping the smear of his precum at the tip over the shaft. The feel of him is heavy in your hands, skin silky as you pull harder, yank faster. The thought of devouring him isn’t lost on you either. 

But then your eyes catch the slick tip, and a sharp image crashes through your mind—the same cock sliding into another woman in this very bed, legs tangled, skin pressed close. A bitter knot twists in your throat.

You remember the night before, stitching him up—carefully, painfully—how you’d held him when he was broken and bleeding, how you had done that almost every night without fail. How you’d tended every wound, how you sat in the stillness of your shared bathroom with him that night. How much it hurt when barely a day later, he spat that all out with someone else. Doing the same thing you’re doing with him now.

You drive the thought away, push it as far as you can into the recesses of your brain, and let go of his cock. You shuffle back up to face him.

His face is wrecked—a thin slip of drool wets the corners of his mouth. The scar that mars his divine face pulls taut as his mouth parts, panting, keening at the loss of your hand. When he looks down at you, sees the slick of his precum on your palm, watches you lick it from your skin, he breaks.

Something snaps.

He’s kissing you like you’ll both die if he doesn’t. Like you’re the only thing sustaining him. One hand gropes your breast, pinching then pulling at the nipple. The other yanks off your panties in one quick movement.

Then he touches you like you’re gossamer. Gentle. Soft. Tentative at your clit.

You moan into his mouth, arching your back off the mattress and into him. His touch shifts—less explorative, more hungry. When he forces your legs apart and shoves two fat fingers into your gushing cunt, you think he might finally have his fill.

He grins into the kiss, then pulls away when he feels you shake beneath him. When his fingers find a rhythm, thumb grazing at your clit. 

And then he’s on his knees above you, fucking his fingers into you like there’s nothing left to do.

Your hands cover your face as moans spill from your body in heaped rushes. You can’t bear to look at him, but it doesn’t last long because his free hand finds both hands and pull them away. He looks at you like he needs to see you, eye’s desperate, cheeks flushed. The white of his hair sticking to his forehead with the sheen of his sweat. He’s gorgeous unravelled. Gorgeous, as he swoops in to kiss you again, moaning and whining into the kiss with abandon. 

And then he’s parting your legs further, pulling you by your thighs towards him and he’s fisting the base of his cock and he’s lining himself up, and you can feel the tip of him against your folds, and you can feel it press against your entrance and—

Her again. His grip against her thigh, her waist as he lifted her body off his, and drove himself into her. Thrusting into her from under. Pushing into her.

You stop him.

“No,” you whisper, breath wrecked. “I can’t. Not like this.”

Jason’s hand shakes on your thigh. In fact, his whole body seems to tremble against yours—as if stopping takes all the restraint in his muscles. His face is close. Eyes dark and wide. You see it all in them: confusion, anger, hurt, restraint. 

He doesn’t push. Lets go of his dick, and then hovers over you again.  Tries to search your eyes for a reason.

Then he presses his forehead to the crook of your neck.

One.

Two.

Three seconds pass.

Then he rolls off you. Silent. The air between you too loud to bear. You lie side by side on his bed, naked except for the heat still clinging to your skin.

He’s not touching you. You’re not touching him.

Only the sound of your breath. His breath. The rise and fall of your chests in unison. Unspoken words clinging desperately into the space between you.

You stare at the ceiling. He does too.

You wonder if he’s cataloguing the bruises he left behind—if he’s thinking about the shape of your mouth when you moaned for him. Or if he’s just waiting for you to leave. Whichever it is, he doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t even gesture.

Neither of you moves.

You close your eyes. Just breathing. Just lying there. Wondering what the hell this is now.

And what the hell comes next.

Chapter Text

You’ll kill him, you think.

Maybe not directly. Maybe you’ll just let his wounds fester the next time he comes crashing home; let him bleed into the authentic Italian leather; refuse to spot his gashes with antiseptic. Let infection do the work for you.

The thought cements itself when a young nurse corners you near the nurses’ station, eyes sharp, mouth too soft, and pointing at your neck. She leans in, whispers a warning like the very notion of having been kissed is a venial sin. Like you’re flaunting this bruise because it’s a badge of honour. A target that says, I’m wanted. I had sex.

You force a smile and a weak, embarrassed laugh. You can feel her eyes peel your skin, layer by layer, like she’s trying to deduce whose mouth left ruin there.

You weren’t careful. You don’t need to explain. She knows. The whole hospital knows. The weight of it presses down like a thousand pairs of eyes are trained on your neck.

Batman knows, too, because of course, he walks in today of all days, seeking a patient from your collapsed apartment complex. He drops off a file, and you’re just able to maintain half a conversation with him—hand pressed to your neck.

He says things are going to get worse. That you should be ready. That he’s sorry about your apartment.

He leaves when your back is turned, and you wonder how he knew where you lived.

When you finally find time to check the bruise for yourself, the sight of it catches you off-guard. It blooms at the base of your neck; a mess of purple bleeding into yellow, stretching upwards in an ugly streak.

Jason’s mark.

And then it hits you, like a floodgate breaking — the warm scrape of his tongue against your skin. The nip, the bite, his mouth pressing into your clavicle, how he lapped at it after, gentle, like honey for a sore throat. How he looked at you from under thick lashes before kissing your jugular, lips swollen and desperate.

But the memories falter when you think of him hard in your hand, think of his scarred chest under your palm and you think you could live off those scant thoughts alone. Any initial irritation at Jason’s lack of foresight dissolves fast, overwritten by the memory of his heartbeat under his skin. How to not feel proud of rendering him soft in your thoughts?

And to answer that, a colleague.

The same fresh-faced resident you brought home. The one you whispered sweet nothings to, empty promises you never meant to keep. He’s charting something in the hallway when you appear, and there is not a faster turn of feelings from pride to anger than in that moment. Because of course Jason would stake his claim. Of course he’d leave you to stride sterile halls branded with the reminder of his teeth.

You turn as fast as you can away from your colleague, but he catches the silhouette of your back as you attempt to flee. He calls your name out, eager, and you still. Then, a reluctant turn and a smile held taut as he walks towards you.

As he approaches, you notice the way his eyes flick to your neck, and then back to your face.  The hesitation lingers. Realisation. Discomfort bleeding into the air between you. He opens his mouth to speak, but his eyes catch the swell of your skin at the junction of your neck again and the words don’t come. His gaze is colder, drier and the smile he gives you is contrived— not quite reaching his eyes.

“How are you?” he asks. “Haven’t seen you since…”

You give a quick laugh, hand immediately at the bruise. “Sorry, it’s been a busy few days… I’ve been meaning to text.”

He scoffs, though it’s not as malicious as you had expected. More resigned, like you’re confirming something he was afraid of.

“I see you and your roommate made up,” he says, taking a step to the side to allow for a stretcher. “How’s he healing?”

You should have known he’d guessed.

“Better, I think,” you answer evenly, “Still refuses to see anyone, so I’m stuck playing doctor at home.”

His laugh breaks the tension, faint, his eyes softening as the clinical edge fades.

“I wish you had just told me.”

Your hand drops from your neck, fingers clasping before you. You look down. Sheepish. Embarrassed. He isn’t angry, but you think he should be.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

A beep, then a scurry of scrubs in the hallway. Someone calls for him, points at a clipboard and you watch his eyes fix on the paper— watch as his focus shifts, clinical, detached, like you never stood there at all. He’s a good man, you think, and an even better doctor. The anger disperses.

You turn on your heel, leaving him to consult alone. “See you around.”

You don’t catch the brief flicker of his gaze following you as you disappear, or the faint smile that tugs at his mouth when he thinks you're out of sight.

The rest of your shift drags.

Charting. Codes overhead. A patient transfer that takes longer than it should. You move through the rest of the hours in a haze; the weight of Jason’s mark sitting warmly in the divot of your neck. No one says anything, but they don’t have to. There are whispers, more from distant acquaintances than friends. Someone claps your back with a laugh. Another asks if the sex was good. So it goes for the next few hours.

By the time you hit the street, the sky’s grey, and you’re wondering if it may have been easier to stay at work than it is to go home.

Hell hath no fury like a woman (Jason) scorned.

Except, Jason’s not angry. Not really.

What he makes up for in lack of anger, is an intolerable amount of sulk. He slinks toward the wall when he sees you. Retreats deeper into the couch. Turns his back when you get too close.

But the coffee’s returned before you leave for work. Still warm, still exactly how he thinks you like it, your mug placed on the counter like it happened there by accident.

And he still eats from your plate when you leave it for him, still perches in the kitchen doorway while you’re cleaning up. Quiet, heavy, pretending he’s just passing through.

Tonight, he’s stretched along the couch, a book held tight in his hands. The Call of the Wild. It looks new.

You hang your keys on the coat rack, the ring of metal cutting the silence. It’s an unspoken greeting; a warning that you’re home now.

He doesn’t look at you. Just shifts deeper into the cushions, jaw tight, shoulder curved like he could fold himself into the fabric.

A new mug sits on the countertop. You glance towards him, and he has an identical one balanced near the corner of the couch. New one is for you, it seems.

It’s warm to the touch, and you wonder if he’s memorised the times your shifts start and end.

He pretends not to watch as you sip it.

This is better than last night, at least.

You had come home late yesterday, catching him just as he was leaving the bathroom. Towel slung around his shoulders. Bare chest. Thin scar running down his sternum. Hair still damp.

The moment his eyes landed on you, creased scrubs, exhaustion still clinging to your spine, he bolted. Made a sorry excuse under his breath as he turned, sharp on his heels, his feet heavy against the floor, like he was almost shy at the prospect of you seeing him naked.

Ironic, considering the night before that, his teeth had found purchase in your skin, your hand had been wrapped around his cock, heat stoking between the two of you like a live wire.

It hadn’t mattered that his weeping tip had been pressed to your cunt, or his mouth to your throat. He ran from that bathroom as if standing there, being seen by you, was more painful than any of the numerous wounds on his body. More painful than any fight that could have earned him them. He had looked almost hurt, and there had been a tiny vindictive part of you that had found a smidge of pride in wounding him. Something about how he’s not completely invulnerable to your actions as he had voiced that night, something along the lines of caring, if not just for the sex.

You sip the coffee he’s left out for you. It’s sweet, like always. The sugar in it is your name written in his handwriting and you wonder if you’ll ever tell him you like your coffee unsweetened. Still, it grows on you.

He hasn’t looked at you since you walked in, but you know he’s not reading anymore—the page he’s on hasn't turned.

The silence drags. The heat of the apartment hums low. The tension palpable, thick on your tongue. Something has to give and from what you know of Jason, he’s not much of a giver.

“If you’re going to keep running, I’ll chase you out of Gotham myself.”

He raises his gaze to you, watching as you lean back against the kitchen counter, arms crossed.

“I’m not running,” he mutters, low.

You tilt your head and smile. “You make it so obvious.”

His jaw tightens, shoulders stiff under his hoodie, book still tight in his hands.

You set the mug down gently.  “We need to talk.”

He responds by looking straight down into his book. Pretends to be reading, pretends like his body isn't taut like he’s bracing for impact.

You nearly leave it alone. Nearly turn away, let him sulk in peace but then he speaks, eyes still fixed on the page:

“You pulled away first.”

You nod, slowly, though he’s not watching.

“Yeah. I did… And I’m sorry. I was going to explain sooner but I think I needed time to figure out why I did that. It wasn’t you—not really. I’m ready now, if you are.”

He looks up at you. “Shoot.”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about that girl you brought home.”

His eyes narrow at the mention of her, and the tension doesn’t let up. In fact, you can see the way his jaw clenches, almost locked—like he’s grinding your words through his teeth.

“I don’t know if it’s jealousy. For the most part, you’re right, you can fuck whoever you want. I wasn’t lying when I said I don’t care about that, not really. I think I just cared too much about you—” the words keep rushing out, quick, uneven. “And I think that’s why I couldn’t do it. Because the memory of it felt like—I mean, we were literally in the same position you were fucking her in.”

You’re pacing the hallway in front of the kitchen now, heat crawling under your skin.

“And in your bed, too. It was just—it was too much. It’s not like I didn’t want to—god no, I think you’d probably be a great fuck.”

You catch the thin press of his lips break into a smirk at that.

“But I can’t do it when I feel like my care for you is bleeding into sex. If we have sex — and I think we both know we will — it needs to be with rules. I keep my clinical touch, and you get your dick wet. I can’t afford to get attached, you can’t either.”

The words linger in the air, sharp, simmering between you. It almost has you embarrassed, baring unfinished thoughts to him like you’ve bound them into a manuscript for an editor.

Jason shifts on the couch, eyes narrowing, the faintest curl ghosting across his mouth — half smirk, half something meaner.

“Probably?” he repeats, biting at the edge of it. “That the best I get?”

You raise an eyebrow at him. “That’s it? That’s what you got from this? That you’re probably a good fuck?”

He shrugs, setting the book aside, eyes pinned to yours.

“You’re the one drawing up contracts to keep my dick out of your head.”

The words land somewhere you didn’t expect, slotting into the ache beneath your ribs, and a quiet laugh stumbles out. Because of course Jason would care more about his perception than the bleeding you just laid bare.

You lean back on the counter, your voice lighter, relieved. “Someone has to keep you in line.”

Jason hums faintly, and you watch his smirk fade just slightly, replaced by something heavier beneath his facade.

“I don’t know why it matters so much to you, but if you want rules, we can do rules.”

A pause. His jaw flexes, the next words strained, reluctant, his eyes halfway across the room from you.

“And I’m—I didn’t know. Sorry it hurt you that bad.”

It’s not clean, not polished. But it does echo in your head, reverberates—ricochets between the plates of your skull.

This is the closest thing to an apology you’ve heard him give, at least verbally. Like it mattered what you felt, despite his biting words that night you removed his sutures. Like he’s making some effort to hear you—listen to you.

For a second, it almost cracks your resolve. Almost.

You swallow it down.

“Thanks,” you reply, soft. Jason exhales, like the worst of it is over, like uttering the word ‘sorry’ took the air out of him.

“Rules then,” you press on. “No lingering after.”

“Didn’t realise you took me for someone who lingered.”

You roll your eyes. “No cuddling.”

“Doesn’t happen.”

“No sleeping in the same bed.”

That one lands sharper than the rest; the tension folding back in, thick, raw. You can’t tell if he’s disappointed, or if the thought of it was so ridiculous he couldn’t picture it.

You hold his stare, steady.

“No kissing.”

Jason’s eyes widen, just for a breath and then his face settles, schooled into that same, bored mask. But you know that look, seen it passing by you over the last two days. He’s sulking again, and you nearly laugh.

“What, scared I’ll get soft on you?” He replies, voice measured and arms crossed.

You shake your head. “Mouth’s fine. Body’s fine. Just—no forehead kisses. Nothing on the face, nothing tender.”

Jason huffs under his breath, snorts like it’s a joke. Like the very notion of him being sweet with you is so far out of the realm of possibility, you don’t even need a rule for it.

“Yeah,” he says finally, sitting up from the cushions of the couch. “That’s fine. That works.”

And then his eyes cut to you, dark. He leans forward, slow. Looks at you like you’re prey now. He’s not running anymore, that much is obvious. Not slinking away. Instead, he’s cornering you with his gaze.

“Is fucking you everyday breaking a rule?”

You don’t flinch. “You mean, three days at most?”

He looks at you, quizzical, almost offended that you’re not reacting to that confession. You are, though. Legs pressing together, heat building under your skin.

“Why three?”

“Because the other four days, you’ll be on bedrest, not rupturing sutures. And if I find you fucking anyone else during bedrest, I’ll personally open every scar you’ve got.”

The threat hangs in the air between you, sharp but a little comical. Jason’s not immune to your quips. He smiles, the first one you’ve seen in a long while, stubble a little grown at the edges of his jaw and you think he looks unfathomably beautiful with upturned lips.

You sip your coffee. It’s lukewarm now, forgotten on the countertop, but you drink it anyway. Jason leans back into the couch, cross-legged, an elbow on his knee, watching you for a moment longer. His mouth presses tight, like there’s more he could say, but he lets it die there.

A remote clicks in his hand.

You don’t move at first, thinking you’ll leave him alone, especially since he’s not scurrying away at the sight of you anymore. But when you turn, you catch his gaze on you; unmoving, exploratory, like this is the first time he’s allowed himself the chance to look at you. To see you.

Then, he looks down briefly at the space next to him, then back at you. He tucks himself into the corner, arm draped along the backrest. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t gesture. But the space is there, deliberate. You’d be stupid not to take this olive branch. The anger has sputtered out, but the heat remains still.

You settle beside him, coffee abandoned on the table, legs tucked under you as the flicker of the TV bathes the room in soft light.

When the couch yields underneath you, Jason changes the channel, gaze now fixed on the TV. He clicks through aimlessly for a second, and then it lands.

Your favourite show.

He doesn’t comment on it, doesn’t glance your way. Just leaves it playing, like it happened there by accident.

The two of you sit in the aftermath of your agreement, the promise of something more threatening to slip into your lives. But when you look at him, face illuminated by the soft glow of the TV, you think maybe, just maybe…

You’ll survive him.

The pharmacy tech smacks her gum as she checks the label again.

You’ve already signed the forms. Twice. Still, she lingers over the paperwork, as if her hesitation might make you cave. Maybe, if she pauses long enough, reads through the papers a fourth or fifth time, you’ll confess your wrongdoings.

“You sure you don’t want to run this through with the attending?” she asks slowly, rattling the pill bottle in her hand.

You smile, tight.

Technically, you’re allowed to write for yourself: antibiotics, low-grade opioids, nurse practitioner privileges—barely enough to justify writing your own script, but enough to not raise alarms with the right people. You’re not asking for much anyway, but painkillers are always a touchy subject in Gotham, so you can’t exactly blame the pharmacist for hesitating.

Still, you haven’t given anyone a reason to distrust you. You’re an excellent nurse, albeit young but that age (or lack of) betrays you.

Respect is earned on a seniority basis: age, experience—both of which you lack compared to your counterparts. It doesn’t make you worse at your job; half a decade working ERs makes you at least semi-decent at it. But there are others. Older nurses. Some of whom have been here twenty, thirty years, and they don’t take well to someone half their age making medical decisions they’re not entitled to.

“I’m good.”

She scans your ID, eyes flicking to your badge, then your face.

“Just saying... people have gotten into trouble over less.”

“Have they?” you ask, smile still drawn tight. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

Her mouth twitches, an eyebrow arched, but she lets it go.

You’re not supposed to technically prescribe your own medications, and you’re good enough friends with enough of the physicians that they would hand you a script for Tapentadol without too much hesitancy.

But... it’s not for you. You’re doing this for him.

She slides the paper bag across the counter, and you think it’s just not worth the fight. If there’s a report or an investigation later, you’ll handle it later. There are worse things in Gotham General than prescribing common medication for yourself.

The thought of the consequences you face for this action briefly crosses your mind. Historically, it hasn’t mattered. It doesn’t matter. No one in Gotham survives completely innocent.

But the idea that you could draw the ire of the hospital board for an action not meant for yourself? For collecting drugs that weren’t for you? It would be easy to prescribe him the medications on paper; you could have done it without him.

But his jaw had clenched the first time you offered. Sharp and subtle. You remember the shift of his mouth, the faint tremble at the corner of his lip when you mentioned records, systems, his name on papers.

And though it would be easier, though it would save you the trouble, you don’t write his name down.

You shove the bag under your arm and shoot a message to Jason as you walk across the vinyl floor:

YOU: ive got it. see u outside in a minute

His response hits before you push through a swinging door:

JASON: Hurry up.

You round the corner into the waiting bay of the ER. There’s a line of people slumped into chairs, quieter than usual, gauze bloodied around the arms of a few patients.

Jason’s inside, to your surprise. He’s leaning against a column by the far end, a red hood pulled up, arms crossed, posture screaming irritation and restless energy. When he catches you walking toward him, his mouth is pulled tight, like you’ve already done something to piss him off.

You slow as you approach.

“Didn’t want to wait outside?”

He looks away at the question, then grunts. “Cop from Robinson’s out there. Don’t like uniforms.”

“Ah, so I’m harboring a fugitive now?” You respond, gesturing with your head for him to follow. He does, pushing off the column, hands in his pocket. He walks with his head low, following in step behind you.

It’s subtle, but you’ve spent too many nights patching him back together not to notice the limp tucked beneath his gait.

You walk him through the aseptic walls of the hospital, weaving through corners with him in tow. A few of your colleagues raise a brow at the sight. He’s not bloody or gritty for once, but the size of him in the hallways is enough to turn heads—nurses, some doctors.

He doesn’t peacock, the attention instead shrinking him in his shoes, and he looks a little nervous when you turn and catch his eye. He glances down from the sight of you, lips parted like he’s been chewing on the words of a sentence in his mouth.

“We’re just taking a shortcut,” you explain, pausing outside the elevator. “Gets you to the carpark without being seen by anyone important. Unless you’re running from us. Or me.”

A joke, you try. You watch as his stance broadens a little, shoulders relaxed. Just barely, but he’s receptive.

“You think I’m runnin’ from you?”

You give him a wry look as you stop outside the elevator.

“When have you not been running from me?”

The elevator chimes. You both step in, shoulders brushing, and the doors seal shut — boxing in the tension that’s been festering since you laid down your rules.

It’s been days since then. Quiet ones, a few short conversations but he refuses to engage for any longer than he has to. Nothing’s happened yet, neither of you daring to press into your unwritten agreement.

The air feels cool in here, cooler than in the wards, the faint scent of antiseptic and cleaning alcohol lingering in the air. You glance at Jason whose back is already leaning against the wall.

Without warning, the lights flicker overhead.

At first, you think it’s nothing, some glitch, but then the lights flicker again, this time more persistently, and the elevator jerks with a suddenness that makes you grab onto the railing.

The lights go out completely.

Power grid again. Annoying, because the emergency power that runs through the hospital does not run through its elevators.

Jason glances at you, his jaw tightening as the stillness of the moment settles in. You give him a half shrug before settling against the wall.

He breaks the silence first. “You have that knife on you?”

You sigh. You’ve been having this back and forth with him over the last week. He’s insistent you carry it with you everywhere, even to work. The thought is so outlandish that you keep refusing, but he won’t relent, says you have to stay vigilant. The argument always dies when you walk away.

“I don’t need to carry knives into the hospital, Jason. Half a scalpel could do just as good a job if I needed it to.”

He scoffs. “You got a scalpel on you now?”

“We’re not doing this here.”

“It’s not a debate.”

There’s a soft hum that announces itself in the air, but the lights don’t turn on, and the elevator doesn’t move.

“It’s my choice,” you snap, the irritation bleeding through now. “I don’t need the knife. I’m not carrying it to work.”

Jason huffs a laugh, eyes narrowing. “Yeah? Funny how your rules only apply to me.”

“Excuse me?”

“You lose your shit every time I don’t follow your instructions perfectly, always whining about how I never listen to you. But the second I try to ask something of you, for your own safety, suddenly I’m the asshole?”

You roll your eyes. “It’s not the same thing. I’m trying to help after you’re hurt—after you’ve fucked around and found out. You think carrying a knife prevents it from happening at all and, I mean… no offence, how’s that working out for you?”

If he’s taken offence to that, he doesn’t show it. “What if someone corners you in an alley one night? You gonna wish you had that knife then?”

You groan, rolling your head back in annoyance. “I told you before, I’m not opposed to carrying the knife at night, or in alleyways I don’t know. Thank you for the gift, but I’m safe at work, and I’m not carrying it.”

Jason huffs, eyes narrowing. “Yeah? So you’ll carry it when I find you bleeding out somewhere? When it’s too late?” His voice lowers, rougher now. “It’s like you don’t want to listen to me.”

“Careful,” you murmur, biting at the words, “sounds like you might actually care about me.”

Jason’s mouth twitches—frustration or restraint, you can’t tell. His eyes track yours, cutting sharp and arresting in blue.

“I care about not scraping you off the pavement one day,” he says, irritation colouring his voice. “I’ve seen enough people die in this city. I’m not watching you be one of them.”

An admittance he cares. A confession of sorts. The inhalation is quick, but the fall is long, precipitous. The elevator hasn’t moved but your world shifts.

You’ve always hoped he cares, from the too-sweet-coffee, to the rows of books that have made room for yours, little windows of your lives now sitting side-by-side. But this verbal confirmation that he needs you safe, needs you alive in this city, has something more than fire rising inside of you.

You step toward him in the dark, getting close enough to place the palms of your hands against his hoodie. The fabric is thin, something protective but breathable in the summer. You splay your fingers, looking directly into his eyes as you move them slowly toward his hips. You grin, watching as his eyes widen at your touch, as he bites his cheek to prevent a reaction when your fingers slip under his clothes, warm against his skin. His white streak hangs tantalisingly over his forehead, and you think he looks incredibly attractive, wide-eyed and putty in your hands.

“Are you always that worked up about my safety, or is this just your version of foreplay?” You ask, balls of your feet off the floor as you lean into his face.

“Careful,” he echoes, sly, meeting your face halfway. “You don’t want me thinking you actually enjoy arguing with me.”

Your pulse kicks, and the memory of your agreement sears itself into the flesh and heat of your body.

You smile, sharp.

“And if I do?”

His mouth grazes yours, lips warm against the edge of your lip. You can feel his exhale fan across your face, the feel of muscle under your hands. Everything feels warm, feels hot. Feels so hot. Feels like the temperature inside this elevator might burn you alive.

“I’d be inside you if you do.”

The words brush against your face, and you feel the last thread of restraint between you snap. His hand seizes your hip, grip rough, pulling you into his body as his lips land on yours. The kiss hits hard, burns in the heat against your tongues. He forces you into it, with one hand at the back of your head, not grabbing, holding. Like he’ll catch you if you fall—if you pull away.

You don’t. Kissing him feels cathartic. Feels like relief flooding into every muscle, like it’s oxygen carried by blood.

When he does pull away, you whine. It’s been too long since your last encounter, too long since he last nipped at your lips.

“Is this what you wanted?” he murmurs, voice rough and heady. “Want me to fuck you right here?”

You can barely manage a bite back. “If it shuts you up.”

A laugh, some mix of a growl.  “You’re unbelievable.”

“Do something about it.”

And he does. Grabs you by your waist to turn you around, your back hitting the wall with a thud. He splits your legs with his knee, pushing the vast expanse of his thick thigh against the apex of yours, and you groan.

The paper bag nearly slips from your hand. You grind down without thinking, pressure building low in your stomach, pulse pounding too hard. Too loud. It’s too hot. You need to feel him, his skin, need to feel his thigh against your dripping cunt.

The elevator hums suddenly beneath your feet; lights flickering back, machinery groaning to life. Then, it jolts, travels downwards and the doors are opening before you can even register it. A breeze blows through the car lot.

Neither of you move. His hand is still braced at your hip, mouth pulled back just enough to ghost against your cheek. You adjust the bag under your arm, sliding it into his chest before he can say anything.

Jason steps back, a little reluctant, eyes much darker than before, simmering with something neither of you will name.

You step out into the concrete multi-level parking lot, his hand brushing faint along yours as you walk him out towards the exit. It’s barely a touch, but it scorches. You’re burning, and the open air does nothing to cool you.

The tension could shatter you, words and wants and needs bleeding so furiously into the space between you that simply looking at him could unravel every frayed edge of yourself. The mere sight of him could confirm the worst—the darkest of fears. That his presence moves you, that you’ve learned to need him.

But of course you turn, eyes meeting his, his hair a little disheveled, face pink from the heat.

“Antibiotics. Twice a day. With food.”

The bag crumples under his grip.

“And?”

You try to keep your voice even, clinical, but it falters when you see the hard outline of him in his pants.

“Tapentadol. One tablet. Every six hours if you need it.”

Jason nods, flipping the bag open, pulling out the orange tube and rolling it in his hands. You watch him for a second, and a thought stirs as he puts the Tapentadol back into the bag.

“Don’t take it yet.”

He raises a brow.

“Why not?”

“I want you lucid when I fuck the attitude out of you.”

Jason groans, laughs, the sound a mixture of both. Sounds almost pained, the way he breathes in sharply. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at you hungry. Starving.

You fix your scrubs, turning toward the elevator.

“I finish in two hours. Be ready.”

You’re thankful your shift ends as quietly as it began, though it doesn’t help that the memory of his body against yours lingers in every interaction.

A torn meniscus, and your hands are steady as you unlock the knee into place—but you’re thinking of him against your thigh as you write-up discharge papers. The brush of his legs against yours. You’re barely able to talk to the patient with the impersonal attitude you need, because the thought of his lips against yours has you shutting your eyes and biting your cheek. It drags like this, a patient comes in, presents with an injury. You treat it, then think of him hot against your skin. Two hours, but the time stretches and sprawls, becoming four... five...

Occasionally, you walk home from the hospital, duffle bag in tow. Sun is rare in Gotham, even in summer, and deliberately missing it feels like a self-imposed punishment—but today you had driven to work. The decision feels welcome as you speed along the tar, legs pressed together at the thought of taking him the moment you arrive.

When you do arrive home, the air is still. You unlock the apartment door, kicking it shut behind you. It’s quiet, not unusual, not something that should alarm you, but Jason’s presence is a fixture in a silent room. You drop your bag off near the door, too tired to bring it into your room.

Jason’s there.

Laying flat on the couch, clad only in a dark undershirt and a familiar gray pair of boxers.  To your surprise, there are two pillows stacked under his left calf. Elevating it, keeping whatever soft-tissue injury he’s acquired from turning into an oedema. The sight tucks itself warm under your chest and you think of carrying that boot-knife with you next time. He was uncharacteristically honest about his opinion of it, and wasn’t wrong when he called you out on your hypocrisy.

He deserves to be heard, too, and if his care manifests in gestures or a protective streak turned into weapon mastery, then so be it. The guilt of not recognising it sooner flickers, but is quickly replaced by something much darker when you take in the sight of him.

His other leg, thick and heavy, lays flat against the sofa, and at its peak, something hard. His breathing is shallow, chest rising and falling quick, his hand dragging slow over the heavy line of his cock under thin fabric. It’s not rushed; he’s not touching himself in a manner that would suggest he’s trying to get off. It’s languid, slow, like it’s an itch he has to scratch, like he’s been nursing the ache for hours.

The paper bag lays strewn across the coffee table, a foil package against the glass. The sight of it breaks through the fog in your head, and you ask:

“Did you take the antibiotics?”

Jason grunts an affirmation, eyes still dragging along your frame, hand still massaging at the tent of his underwear.

“Yeah.”

“The painkillers?”

His mouth curves, almost mocking. “Said I needed to be lucid, didn’t you?”

You exhale slow, and whatever clinical apathy you’ve tried to maintain dies at the sound of his voice. Every inch of him reads like he needs you, eyes dark and blown. Breathing short, pulse visible in his clenched jaw, gaze focused on the way you walk over to him.

A button comes undone, and then another, and your scrubs lie at your feet on the ground as you stand over him laying on the couch.

“Have you been thinking about it?”

Jason’s mouth twitches, and then he laughs. Tight. Sucking a breath in between teeth.

“What do you think?” he says, rough at the edges, the faintest rasp of frustration curling beneath. He shoves his boxers down in one sharp motion, his cock flushed dark, thick, kicking up heavy against his stomach.

It’s hard — obscene, engorged, the head swollen, leaking slick down the shaft. You watch it bead, precum dribbling from the tip. Watch as the weight of it drips onto the flat of his abdomen. It’s enough to have you light-headed, the blood rushing so far south from your brain that your knees almost buckle.

Your mouth dries, your pulse hammering under your skin as he stays still there, the injured leg still flat against the pillow, weeping dick leaking furiously over his skin.

You unclip your bra, letting it fall to the floor, sliding your leg over his abdomen, bracketing him between your thighs.  He groans at the sight, fist now tight against his length as he strokes himself. He tugs once, hips trembling as you hover over him, then lets go.

His dick settles with a slap against your ass.

‘You feel that?” he grunts, thrusting his hips upwards, letting it slide against the seam of your ass. “Feel how fuckin’ hard I am for you?”

The confession leaves you winded, leaves you choking on nothing but arousal, and you press your weight into his cock. Groans fill the air as you do.

“Take it off,” he says, a little rushed, eyeing your panties.

You do, pushing off him to flick them aside, the fabric hitting the floor softly, forgotten.

“This what you want, Jason?”

“Fuck yes,” he replies, watching you straddle him bare. His voice is low, rough, cracking faintly at the edges with excitement. It’s sultry, but not because the sound is baritone gold in the air, but because he sounds too eager to touch you. Needy.

You push back into him, the feel of his dick pressed firmly against your ass. Then you move back, just a little, letting it rise against your skin so it stands firm, vertical. The feel of you maneuvering his dick with your ass has him fisting into the fabric of the couch.

You lean into his ear, breath warm against the shell of it.

“Been sitting here like this, touching yourself for an hour, waiting for me to get home?”

In return, his lips brush your throat, hot, sharp, his breath unsteady.

“Hour and a half,” he corrects, his cock twitching hard against your ass, his body unable to deny him the satisfaction of being nonchalant about it.

You stay perched above him a second longer, then lift off completely, letting his dick fall with a slap to his stomach. He looks momentarily annoyed by your antics, but it’s cut off with an almost violent groan when you press your dripping folds against the length of him.

Then you grind, letting your cunt soak him for what it’s worth, pushing hard against him and wringing your own pleasure from it. The heat from his cock eats into your cunt, and the throb of him makes your hips ache with need.

You stand on the precipice of no turning back.

The moment you take him, pull him flush into you, feel his heart beating from inside you, your standing with him will irrevocably change. A friendship, an undecided partnership, a nurse and a patient. What will you become to him?

Oxytocin will cloud him, shape him. Dopamine will then carve with intimate precision his features: the way his lashes look when he sleeps, how his hair falls when he wakes, the calluses on his palm, the way he lingers in front of the fridge.

If you’re lucky, you’ll come out of this unscathed.

But the way he looks at you, the way that jagged ‘Y’ scar screams at you as his tip brushes against your clit, makes you feel like you won’t. You’ll use him like a drug, turn his body into morphine. Have something in this forsaken city that’ll have you curling your toes and bleeding pleasure.

A foil square sits scattered next to the paper bag on the table, and you reach for it, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Hope this wasn’t for someone else.”

Jason groans, sharp and raw. “Kept it for you, obviously.”

You tear the packet with shaky hands, roll the condom down the length of him — slow, measured, like the medical professional you’re supposed to be, but the press of latex over heated skin has his hips twitching, and your lip quivering.

“At least one of us thinks ahead,” you mutter, more to yourself than him.

You grab the base of his shaft, holding it steady in the air as you lower yourself over him.

The tip breaks, and he almost seizes at the sensation. Then, an inch, and you feel him still under you, like if he moves you’ll pull right off from him—like he could lose you with the briefest of flexes.

You look away from your hand still holding his length, your gaze settling on the furrow of his brows. His eyes are locked on the sight of himself disappearing into you, but he notices the shift in your attention and meets it. There’s something there. A quiet desperation, a rawness. He looks like he’s about to cry, muscles in his face pulled taut. The sight alone makes you sink deeper onto him.

Another inch. Then another.

And then, when the fullness of him stretches into the fibers of your cunt, when you hear him almost hiccup a moan, you let yourself fall to the hilt. He stands impressive inside you, twitching and throbbing, the weight of him a steady pulse in your core.

You lift your hips unhurried, your gaze fixed on the way the thick of him appears from within you, and the sight has your cunt clench at his now half-entered cock. He’s tearing at the couch now, nails fighting with leather, body heaving with restraint as you rise from him. Then, a second passes, and you watch as his lips turn into a snarl.

You drop down, sheathing him fully inside you.

A moan erupts from him, abdomen tensing as you work yourself over him. You watch as the muscles flex, carved V-line disappearing into a spot of dark, curly hair that curtains the length seated inside of you.

One hand finds the flesh of your thigh, and he claws into it with enough force to have you cry out from the pain, his resolve hanging by a thread.

And then, it happens, just as you feared.

The details of his body flood into your brain: two moles by his navel, the soft curl of hair spotting his chest, a raised scar by his side, a flat one by his rib. The one you had stitched your first week here.

He’s beautiful.

Not the conventional way, though many would admit he is. It’s the stories tapered to his skin, the soft feel of it against your hand, the way his body always, always betrays him.

You move again, skin almost dissolving at the feeling of his cock driving inside you, thighs hitting hard against his pelvis with each lift and fall of your body.

It is impulse, instinct.

To rip pleasure from his body and force it into yours. Like it was ingrained into your being by your ancestors, like it’s second nature for you to fight tooth and nail to sit on his cock.

It’s almost wordless the way you fuck him. Almost, because he grits through his teeth a question that anchors you back to reality.

“Thought you hated this position.”

You stop, a shaky exhale in response. The loss of friction has his eyes widen with regret and you can tell he’s about to take it back but it stops. His gaze narrows when you grin, sharp.

“Under me?” You mock. “With how you were fucking that other girl, I have better odds getting myself off.”

You renew your ministrations with double the effort as he barks in response. “I’d fuck you better than anyone else has.”

His confidence has you laughing, arousal still curling into your breath as you do. The feel of him–the stretch, has it faltering in your mouth.

“Down boy,” you say, hands trailing flat from his stomach to his chest. “Let me take care of you.”

And then, you lift just enough to tease, your body barely an inch off his. You feel his nails dig into your thigh, his restraint wearing thin as you circle your hips—grind against him with it fully sheathed. It has him gasping for air, his other hand running along your leg, desperately trying to keep you close as your cunt wrenches him over and over.

You pull off him completely, swooping forwards to meet his lips in your first kiss of the night. Without hesitation, he wraps his arm around your neck, bracing you into his tongue as he bites and sucks into the kiss. He doesn’t let you move; doesn’t let you sink back down onto him. Refuses to let the kiss end. It almost hurts. Forceful. Hungry. He always kisses like the world will end, like you’ll die without it but now, he kisses like it’s the only way he can survive.

When you do pull away, it’s with swollen lips, a spot of blood against his. His eyes are dazed, unfocused, flicking from the curve of your nose, to the trembling of your lashes, and back to your mouth, where a line of spit (yours or his, you don’t know) trails to your chin. You smile lazily at him, at your handiwork.

His gaze shifts downward, dark eyes narrowing as he notices your pussy, leaking and hovering just above him.

“I’ll take care of myself, thanks,” he mutters, and with a rough hand, guides your hips back down to him. Then, he raises your hips a little, and you guide his throbbing length to your entrance—the two of you working wordlessly in tandem. The stretch of him again has you hissing, a fire blazing inside you, nerves tingling with it as he bottoms out.

Jason groans low, breath jagged against your ear.

“Are you trying to kill me?”

“Not anymore than you try,” you respond, all bite and no bark.

He props up his right leg, the good one, and starts fucking into you, each thrust hard and unrelenting. You try to match his pace, but his movements are quicker, more brutal, and your attempts to keep up fade as you let go.

You stop trying to control it, letting him dominate the rhythm, his cock battering into you with every forceful thrust, each one sending shockwaves of pleasure that make your body quiver in response. The burn in your core intensifies, pleasure mixing with pain as he bullies you into surrender, hiccupping a moan with each thrust.

"Yeah, that's it… play tough, but you're fuckin’ soaked for me,” he says, voice fractured, strained.

Your nails dig hard into his sides, a laugh snapping between gasps.

“Thought you said you were gonna do something, Jason... this you doing it?"

Something between a snarl and a groan rips sharp from his chest.

Rough hands pull your ass into him as he thrusts up, and it’s desperate; like he needs to be buried inside you past his hilt, like the walls of your cunt are a refuge he seeks out with meticulous drive. Like it’s an oasis, and he’s dying of thirst.

Just when you think you can't take it anymore, when you’re about to beg him to stop, your earlier bravado fading with each wretched thrust, he stills. He lifts you off him with a sharp grunt, leaving you momentarily empty, his previous efforts still eliciting weak spasms over nothing.

The loss of him has you reeling, an involuntary whine into the air as he holds you above him, unwilling to drop you back down.

You think he’s giving you a breather, a break, but he grabs your waist instead, and throws you onto your back, hitting the couch with a thud.

Your breath hasn't reached you yet when his mouth crashes onto yours—messy and angry. His teeth bite into your lips as he eats, consumes, and swallows your soul from your mouth.

“Ready?” It’s a growl. A promise.

There’s barely enough time to register the question, let alone answer it when he shifts you again, this time flipping you onto your stomach. His rough grip pulls at your hips, forcing them upright, forcing you to bear your beaten, swollen cunt towards him. You bow your back a little, allowing for a more natural position as he mounts you, hands firm on your ass, kneading the soft flesh.

You twist to face him best you can, face half-buried against the couch, but you catch his stare—wild, blown, feral—and the sound he makes explodes from low in his throat, teeth dragging over his bottom lip.

"Fuck—look at you," he mutters, voice rough, cracking around the edges, "been wantin’ you like this all week.”

The confession hits you square in the chest. There’s no breath left to take, only gasps to give.

Then he thrusts back into you, the shock of him filling you once more, and this time it’s harder, the angle letting him brutalise you with much more ease. The force of it has your brain rocking between your skull, steals the breath from your lungs, buries your face into the couch with each punctuated movement. Each thrust feels like a desperate need to claim, to mark, like it’s his cunt that he’s fucking into.

“Fuck,” he rasps, fingers bruising into your hips, pace faltering, “—’M not gonna last.”

“What’s wrong?” you reply, fucking back into him, “Can’t last inside the girl you love to hate?”

He slows his movements, then pulls completely out of you.

The reprieve gives you enough time to catch your breath, nerve endings frayed by his near-oxygen-depleting lust. And then, when he falters, hesitates to drive into you, the sight of your ruined body in front of him, your voice finds you.

“You need this, don’t you?” You bite out, head turned, voice frayed but teasing. “Needed to fuck me like you hate me?”

The question cracks through him, and he smacks his cock heavy against your ass, the sharp, filthy sound pulling a moan from your throat. His hands are soft, however, fingers sliding down—tentative, searching—finding your clit with slow, circling pressure.

You keen under him, pressing back, cunt pushing into his hand as he rubs deliberately, slower this time. When you yelp, he presses his lips against the swell of your ass—a wordless question, a quiet offer:

Want me to wolf at this pussy the way I’ve starved for it?

You want to scream yes, want to soak his nose against you, want him to lap at the mess he’s made, but you can’t bring yourself to say yes. The idea of him there, licking and sucking at you, feels… too intimate. Feels something akin to love for you, and you think you’ll slip into something you can’t come out of if he presses his mouth against your heat.

A noise of disagreement rises from you, and you pull your hips away from his face in hopes he’ll understand. He does, coaxing your hips back into his grip, one hand still placed firm on your heat.

“Jason,” you murmur, his name soft on your tongue. “I needed it too.”

He doesn’t answer with words. Instead, his hand wraps around your hair, gripping it tightly, pulling you up to meet his chest. Your back presses against him, one arm holding you there as he drives into you with a force that leaves you stupid.

Your cunt owns him, or he owns it- some mutual understanding that there cannot be one without the other.

His balls slap against you, the heavy weight sending a dull, desperate ache spiraling through your core. His rhythm falters, sharp, strained—his voice breaking rough against your ear.

“Wanted this every fuckin’ day,” he breathes, an honest confession held tight between teeth, “you, laid out like this, under me—mine to fuck stupid."

The way your cunt clenches at the confession, the heat pulsing through you, has his thrusts turning ragged, wrecked, like he’s seconds from losing the last of his restraint altogether.

“But not hate... Could never...” His voice breaks, trailing off, gravel and ruin against your ear.

Jason groans. Raw, guttural. His thrusts stutter once, hips jerking, and then he slams into you one fluid motion.

He spills.

His hands clutch at your hips, his body taut, muscles flexing in a desperate grip as his rhythm stumbles, the pleasure ripping through him so blinding it borders anguish. You feel every shudder, the sharp intake of breath, the overwhelming tension snapping inside him as his cock pulses, emptying deep inside the condom.

You lean back into him, allowing the full weight of his exhaustion to press against your body. His chest heaves against your back, every breath coming sharp and uneven as his hands slide down, still possessive, still tethering you in place.

“You—” he pants, his mouth hot at your ear. “You fuckin’ wreck me.”

Your pulse skips at that, a gentle spasm in your abused, empty cunt, and his hand snakes between you before you can muster a response. Then, the quiet rustle of latex peeling off, discarded carelessly to the floor. His hand returns, steadying at the curve of your spine, holding you there.

You think it’s over now that he’s come, now that the condom is off, and while you haven’t quite finished, it’s not an unwelcome end. Sleep could do you well here, muscles slacked and bones weak.

“Stay just like that,” he mutters, his hand wandering over your back, tracing the length of your spine, like he's not finished with you yet and your body tenses at the idea.

You are too thoroughly fucked out to respond, upper body sagging into the couch, ass still presented, slick and spent—but his fingers find your soaked cunt again, slick dragging between your folds.

Your hips jolt instinctively, overstimulated and sensitive, but his touch doesn't ease.

He laughs, a little cruel. His thumb finds your clit, circling lazy, coaxing small spasms from your spent body. “All that talk and look at you now.”

Something all sharp edges and unfeeling rises in you, and you’re about to snarl a response when he continues:

“Where’s all that mouth now, sweetheart? Thought you were going to fuck my attitude out of me.” His voice dripping, smug.

Your breath hitches when his touch finds your clit, swiping wet across it, circling it with purpose. The pleasure builds in waves, coils tight under your stomach as he presses into the hood of your clit—applying the gentlest of pressure as he pinches—and pulls. You jolt, and he lets go, resuming broad strokes over your clit.

“Your fault I can’t think straight.”

“Yeah?” He pinches your clit again, a little rougher this time in response.

A wrecked cry tears from you, and you bury your head shamefully into the couch. He has complete control over you now, and the thought is equal parts arousing as it is humiliating.

The circles of his fingers slow deliberately, hovering on the edge of cruel, and you bite back another gasp, forcing your hips still—barely.

“You always this easy to shut up?” Jason drawls, his voice still rough, but there’s that smirk creeping under it again, winding tight with amusement.

You grit your teeth. “You think you’re so great.”

Jason hums low in his throat, fingertips easing off your clit just enough to tease.

“Something about me being, probably a great fuck,” he says, leaning forward to bite into the curve of your ass, dragging his hand down your inner thigh, slow, heavy.

You twist your head back toward him, meeting his gaze as best you can over your shoulder, voice low, shaky, but biting:

“Are you going to talk all night, or are you going to make me come?”

“Aww, you want it that bad?” His thumb finds your clit again, pressing, circling slow, dangerous. “Could’ve asked nicely.”

You grit your teeth, hips rolling helplessly into his hand.

“I’m not a beggar.”

He leans forward, body curling into yours as he licks a line against your ear.

“You will be.”

The promise slithers through you, tightening every nerve ending as his fingers quicken, the heat building with each stroke. Another wave, another strung coil, and you feel yourself wind up in his touch. Your thighs quake as your body folds forward, breath shattering against the couch cushion, and you whine and cry and moan. It only urges him on, all civility and bite disappearing as he presses into your ruined cunt with his free hand.

“Never met someone who folded so quick,” he mutters, his cock hard again at your thigh. “Look at you—fucked out, can’t even think straight, can’t complain about how bad I am to you, can’t—”

The rest of the words die in his throat as your orgasm crests, then crashes down, stealing your breath, snapping through you in tight, overwhelming pulses. Your body shudders, trembling violently, every nerve-ending alight as you cry out, face buried in the couch, hands clawing weakly at the cushion as your cunt clenches around two thick fingers, your arousal spilling down your thighs.

He holds you through it, fingers still circling, coaxing the last of your pleasure from you like he needs to hear it all. Needs to see you completely undone in his hand.

"Fuck," he groans, his spent cock twitching at your thigh. “Fuckin’ look at you.”

You cry through it, managing a breathless laugh. A sort of commemoration that you survived that, because it deserves some recognition. Quiet fills the room, but it’s not finished. Not really.

You slump into the couch, boneless, every nerve frayed, and Jason doesn’t speak anymore—just follows you, hands resting at your hips. His fingers flex on your skin, splayed at the hill of your hip, and then hold onto you gently, like you’ll break.

Like he didn’t just fuck you within an inch of your life and wrought an earth-shattering orgasm from you like it was nothing.

You catch the hesitation though; harsh remarks simmering into a much softer, gentler care. A wordless one, as he pulls you into his arms, curling himself into your form like a shell. He holds you there, hands gentle as he trails his fingers, feather-light, like any more force would draw blood. It starts at your hip, then paths upwards to the soft rise and fall of your ribs before cycling back.

The gesture is soothing, an affirmation that you’ll be okay despite his roughness, despite the bratty nature of his words. You think of those moles on his abdomen, and the crinkle of his eyes when he smiles genuinely. How such a man could brutalise you, and then hold you like he’s sorry for even touching you in the first place is beyond you.

He buries his head into the nape of your shoulder and holds himself there for a minute. You let him; warm, sweat-laden bodies curled into each other like stray dogs in the cold. Like survival’s a shared thing, and neither of you knows how to do it alone. The minute turns into two, then three, and when the steady beating of his heart starts thrumming in your own, you pull away.

“No lingering, remember?” you say, voice soft but steady, forcing a smile. Jason doesn’t answer. His grip falters, loosens, but his head doesn’t leave your nape. The weight of him there dares to break you. It reads: Are you sure? Am I sure?

You push up off him, adjusting your legs, ache spreading through your thighs as you stand.

The warmth of him lost feels like skin being ripped from your body, but you have to pull away. Have to leave before the image of him under you, above you, holding you, threatens to consume you and tear you away from everything you hold dear.

You grab your scrubs off the floor without looking at him.

The couch groans as he shifts behind you, and you take his silence as understanding. The scrubs lie under your arm as you make your way to your room.

“I don’t hate you,” he says quietly, almost to himself, a response to a question you asked between blows.

The feeling that blooms in your chest when he says it rends you. Tears you limb by limb, rips you clean in half.  The air hangs heavy between you, thick with leftover heat, stretched so thin it might snap. You stand there, flayed open, the weight of his words washing over your heart.

You turn to face him, grinning. “I’m glad.”

He smiles back. Soft.

Your eyes flit to the paper bag on the table, and you nod towards it.

“If I were you, I’d take that Tapentadol immediately.”