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starsstuddedsky · 6 months ago

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Needles and Knives

red hood!jeno x doctor!reader

...

“Don’t you dare die,” you say, gripping the scalpel.

“Already did that,” Jeno mutters, eyes fluttering. “Didn’t agree with me.”

...

summary: Jeno’s plans never included you yet somehow you worm your way into his life. Being a vigilante isn’t easy - but neither is loving one.

genre: angst except i can’t stop them from making jokes so like fun angst. little bits of fluff here and there

warnings: gore, mentions of death, violence, cursing

wc: 16k

a/n: dc fans i am so sorry. my knowledge of these characters comes from wikipedia. medical workers i am so sorry. the medicine in this is NOT accurate. if ur neither maybe you can fully enjoy this fic. i hope you do :) this is as proofread as its going to get..... as always i appreciate any sort of feedback you can give. i hope this story leaves you as delusional about jeno as i am <3

Not for the first time, you open the door to your apartment to find a man covered in blood on your couch. At least he managed to keep it off the floors this time.

You can just see the back of his head from the doorway, black hair sticking up from where he slouches on the couch. The head seems to be intact, which is a bit of a relief—being a surgical intern means you’ve become numb to gore, but not fully immune to the nastiness of patching up a tear in his scalp.

“Still alive?” You ask as you kick off your shoes. Your feet ache from standing for the past eight hours.

Jeno huffs a humorless laugh. “More or less.” He twists to look at you, holding up a very sad looking plant. “Which is more than I can say for this poor thing.”

You drop your bag behind the couch and cross to stand in front of him, his head swiveling to follow you. He sets the dead succulents down on the side table. The tuft of white that hangs over his forehead bounces with the movement, stark against the rest of his black hair.

His shirt is already off, discarded to the side. At work, you’ve become just as numb to bodies as you have to gore. You haven’t quite managed that with Jeno despite seeing him shirtless on the regular since he seems to find himself covered in blood on your couch at least once a week. Still, you can’t really be blamed for being a little flustered when he looks like… Well, that. He’s got more abs than ribs and broad shoulders that give way to thick arms of pure muscle. But you can never truly ogle because he inevitably is covered in too much blood for you to ignore.

“I think I just popped the stitches,” he says, referring to the wound on his stomach that is once again bleeding. “No new shit. I think.”

“I don’t think that’s actually any better,” you say. “You know we usually tell patients to refrain from strenuous activity after they’ve been stitched up.” You retrieve the medical bag you definitely don’t keep stocked from the supply closet at Gotham City Hospital.

“They usually get pain meds, too,” Jeno grumbles, even though he’s never once complained about the actual pain of being stitched back together.

You kneel in front of him, focusing on what was once a deep gash. He showed up with it a couple days ago, spewing more blood than he physically should be able to produce. It’s already half healed, though the new stitches will still help.

“They usually aren’t getting blood on my couch either,” you say. “We can do this all day.”

Jeno doesn’t answer, staying quiet long enough for you to peek at him and make sure he hasn’t passed out from some injury you don’t know about. Instead you find his dark eyes, filled with an intensity that wasn’t there when you were children. You still find it hard to believe the kid that walked with you to school every day for three years has grown up into this—all hard lines and guarded expressions. Every time you look into those eyes you are reminded how little you know about him.

Here’s what you do know: Jeno and his family disappeared when you were twelve. Vanished in the middle of the school year, leaving the house next to yours half full of their belongings in the flight. And then you didn’t see him for another twelve years, long enough for you to graduate high school, and then college, and then med school. Long enough for you to get a prestigious internship in the surgical program at Gotham City Hospital, which had you moving three states over into an apartment you had to rent without even doing a walkthrough. It’s this apartment—the one that he sits in now—that brought Jeno back to you. Again, he’s become the boy next door, though you still can’t reconcile your memories of the little boy with this man, who never smiles. You barely recognized him. But he recognized you, and even though he didn’t seem all that interested in having friends, he found out you were a med student and just happened to need stitches. And then he needed help with a broken wrist. And then a black eye. And then, and then.

It didn’t take you long to figure out he’s Red Hood, one of the newer vigilantes of Gotham City. Or, more accurately, it didn’t take you long to figure out he’s a vigilante. It did take a while to figure out Red Hood, but his eyes eventually gave it away. One look told you he’s cold on the inside. One look told you he’s a killer.

(Plus you’ve seen the now-iconic leather jacket hanging in his entryway.)

But though you can’t call his eyes warm now, they aren’t cold either. He regards you with a softness you’ve never seen before, or maybe just never noticed. You duck your head and turn back to the stitches.

“If you pull these again, you’ll be sewing them up yourself,” you mutter.

“Well, how else am I supposed to see you?” Jeno asks. “You only ever make time for me when I’m bleeding.” Despite his earlier complaints, he doesn’t flinch as you begin the sutures. In fact, he doesn’t show any sign that he’s even noticed.

You roll your eyes. “That's because I took an oath. Something about saving lives, and something about ‘no matter how much I want to take a hot shower and pass out for the next twelve hours, I’m legally obligated to keep my weird neighbor alive when he shows up begging for help.’”

“Who said anything about begging?”

You pause, needle in hand. “I can leave you like this, you know. You can finish it yourself if you really want to.” And you know he can. You’ve seen the scars. So many scars, which tell the story he hasn’t told you: the oldest on his forearm, perfectly straight, the result of a real surgery; the thick ones on his back that look like they were never stitched up; the cut on his arm that looks like it tore through muscle yet was carefully stitched up; the scar on the back of his neck that looks like it should have broken his neck; and the angry red scar on his left knee that he said he stitched up himself a couple months before you moved in next door.

You open your mouth to tell him he’s really on his own now, but Jeno says, “I guess I can beg.”

You pause, then say. “That’s just terrible.” You have to look away so you continue the stitches. “You can do way better than that.”

“Oh, YN, great saver of lives,” Jeno says, “please do me the great honor of stitching me up. Again.”

You hum. “Better but still room for improvement.”

“I would die without you. I would get on my knees if I could. Please, please, do not stop stitching me up.”

You grin at him and almost get a smile back, his eyes truly warm. You take it as a win—or at least a vast improvement from how he was two months ago. You finish the stitches, sitting up straight.

“I don’t suppose you’ll sit still long enough to let these actually heal, will you?” Not that you know how long that is. You noticed a while back that most of his injuries heal far faster than they should. He shouldn’t need to come to you for minor injuries yet he does, over and over again. It doesn’t make any sense, but as long as he keeps showing up on your couch, you’ll keep taking care of him.

Jeno looks at you like he wants to say something but isn’t sure if he should. Maybe this is it. He’ll finally tell you exactly how he gets his scars. How he became the Red Hood.

Instead, he says, “Nah, probably not.”

You sit back on the couch beside him, sighing. “I watched a seven hour surgery today, and you know what I learned?”

“Hm?” He turns, cheek resting on the couch. For a moment you see the boy again, cast in gold from the afternoon sunlight. You can just picture his smile, the way his whole face melts into a gooey happiness. You blink and he’s gone.

“Surgeons are dicks,” you blurt out, forgetting what you were going to say. “They never want to believe patients, and I get it, sometimes they’re annoying and think they know best, but this girl came in three months ago complaining about pain and Dr. Park called her a junkie. She came back in today and collapsed in the waiting room because he never actually examined her.

“She was having a heart attack, and if he just listened the first time, it might have been salvageable, but the second one ripped her heart to shreds. Dr. Nakamoto said he’d never seen someone survive a heart that looked like that.”

“But she did survive?” Jeno asks.

“Yeah,” you say. “For now. She needs a heart transplant, though, so it’s a waiting game.”

He nods.

“I don’t get why Dr. Park or any of the other doctors couldn’t run a simple EKG. It’s not difficult and it would have saved her life but they took one look at her and assumed she was a junkie,” you say, “and I can’t even complain about it because Dr. Lee will just say some shit like ‘medical decisions are more difficult than you think’ because that’s easier than actually checking if his surgical team gives a shit about their patients beyond death rates.”

You sigh. “The worst part is, they aren’t even bad doctors. They know the medicine, and the procedures they can do—it’s really incredible. I don’t know, sometimes I worry you can only be good at medicine or good with patients, and it’s impossible to be both.”

“You really think that?”

“I don’t know.” You shrug. “I’m just tired.”

Jeno nods, letting silence settle between you. It’s far too comfortable to just sit with him like this, a peaceful solidarity you’ve only ever felt with him. You won’t give it meaning, won’t think about it any more than another afternoon on the couch together. That’s all this is.

“I should take a shower,” you say.

“I should get back to my place,” Jeno says. Neither of you move.

Lee Jeno doesn’t consider himself to be consumed with rage, despite what the headlines say. Yeah, the mask is intense, but he doesn’t use it to incite fear among all those who look upon his face. He just needed to keep his face hidden from Bruce (and, as much as it pains him to admit Bruce might be right about anything, he can’t deny that keeping his identity hidden is ultimately the right move).

He tosses the magazine on his desk. He’s got to stop reading the tabloids. They’re rotting his brain. But somehow they’re the only reliable source on the current crop of Joker’s little worshippers. Jeno still can’t believe it took him six months to realize the ads were calling for new recruits to the cult.

He feels the pit of anger, deep in his stomach, writhing at the thought of that man. Revenge would be too kind. Jeno will take him down, no matter what.

Maybe he’s a little consumed with rage.

But he can’t ignore the recent distractions. He’s spent the past week sitting behind the computer doing whatever investigative work he can, any excuse to avoid pulling the stitches again. You really didn’t seem like you were joking about making him do it next time, and it was a bitch to stitch up his knee on his own. The angle alone would make his ribs pretty much impossible.

Jeno sighs, tapping on his keyboard to bring the computer to life. Three monitors light up, the far left screen featuring the feeds of all the security cameras that show the apartment building that he very legally tapped into. The far right screen shows three different news feeds, local to Gotham, national news, and an international broadcast, volume off, subtitles on. The middle screen remains blank, ready for him to pull up whatever information he needs.

Hunt Joker. Get revenge.

It was simple when he first got his memories back. Those were his only goals. But then he had to train, become a better fighter, establish some sort of half-life in the city–which meant figuring out how to pay rent, which meant figuring out which billionaires he could reasonably steal from without them noticing. He admits it’s foolish to have Wayne Enterprises on the top of the list, but the bastard owes him.

Six months passed by before he finally set this place and a couple other safe houses up. And then another six passed, and Jeno is still no closer to revenge. He is supposed to be better than before, but all he’s done is steal some lunch money from people too rich to notice and take down a couple men who liked to pick on the weak. He hates that he did more in tights than he’s done becoming Red Hood.

He let his life become too simple. Day after day of hunting criminals and keeping them from hurting anyone ever again. It was freeing, no debriefings with idiots that would tell him that he should have acted differently—should have acted with more mercy. He makes his own decisions and no one is there to judge him. It’s proof he never needed anyone, even if hunting Joker is taking a little longer than it would if he had Wayne Enterprise resources.

And then you showed up.

He leans back in the chair, the joint squeaking. Jeno still doesn’t know what to make of you popping back into his life. He hasn’t been the kid you knew for so long he almost forgot about him. That kid died the day his parents yanked him out of school and moved to Gotham city. His parents worked back breaking shifts in one of the factories, while Jeno lasted a month in school before he realized he could stop going and no one would care. He learned how to survive Gotham quickly, and pretty soon he thrived. He barely even noticed when his parents died.

You bring back memories of suburbs and eating ice cream before it could melt onto his hand. He remembers this one time you were walking back home after school and you tripped and skinned your knee. There was so much blood, Jeno freaked out and thought he’d have to carry you (which he definitely couldn’t do back then), but you just stood up and gritted your teeth and walked all the way back. It didn’t surprise him at all to find out you’re a doctor now, not when you were always so hardcore.

It came in handy pretty quick, too, though he’ll at least admit to himself that his powers probably won’t let him die. It just turned into a routine for him, a nice way to end his day (though his work “day” generally ends at dawn).

But nice is for a boy that doesn’t exist, not for the justice he seeks. He can’t keep pretending to be someone he isn’t, and someone as smart as you can’t keep pretending to believe his lies. He focuses on the security feed, watching a dark sedan roll past.

He can keep avoiding you. It would be easy to clear out of here, especially when you spend most of your time at the hospital anyways. He could do it now—you’re in the middle of one of those endless shifts where you sleep in the hospital. You complain so much about being exhausted that he doubts you’d notice that he left, at least for a month. You’re not friends with him, Jeno doesn’t have friends. You just took an oath to save lives, and he forced you to save him. You wouldn’t even miss him.

But even as he contemplates it, he knows he can’t do it to you again. Even if all you are is the person that patches him up every other night, you deserve some explanation. A goodbye.

Rain begins to fall, slow at first, then a steady patter, the gentle wind strong enough to send the rain against the window.

He hears the truck engine rattling down the street before it finally comes into view on the top left camera. Strange, the bottom right camera covers the opposite side of the street but shows nothing. He keeps an eye on the truck, which rattles by, frowning at the bottom right screen.

Not just an empty street. Though the sky is dark in the background, the pavement and sidewalk are still dry. Jeno curses, getting to his feet and grabbing his belt. He loads the pistols, clipping on the extra ammo to his belt alongside the gadgets while keeping an eye on the other cameras, trying to see if he missed anything else. Two more screens play on a loop, the transition more obvious with the rain. He pulls on the mask, grateful he made it waterproof. His jacket is last, riddled with holes he never had the time to sew back together. He keeps his knife in his right hand, checking the cameras a final time—all showing empty loops—before ducking out the window onto the fire escape.

The jacket is thick enough to keep the rain from actually soaking him, but the cold seeps through. It brings an ache to his bones, an empty feeling like his body doesn’t quite belong to him. He presses a hand to his heart, the pressure bringing a new ache that reminds his body his heart still beats.

He jumps the rest of the way down from the fire escape, landing in a puddle of water that splashes beneath his boots, sending water up to his knees. He needs eyes on the situation. Ideally he’d go to the roof, but there’s too much daylight to be out in the open like that, turning him into a sitting duck. He opts for the alleyways instead, looping around the back of the building to where he can see the street without being seen. Whatever is going on, he needs to drive the action away from his place.

He scans the road, settling on the dark sedan parked in front of the corner store. It wasn’t on the security camera feed when he left, and as he watches, two tall men with dark hoods pulled over their heads slip out of the back seat. They approach the apartment building with the confidence of residents, though Jeno can tell from here they don’t. He memorized his neighbors a long time ago, but even if he hadn’t, Jeno has seen enough gangs to know bruisers when he sees them.

But who do they belong to? Who knows where Jeno lives? The people he’s been skimming from? He hasn’t been stealing enough to warrant this kind of a response. No, his life as Jeno couldn’t have attracted these men.

So it’s Red Hood? Anyone that knows about Red Hood should know better than to send two goons that could be taken out this easily. Jeno switches the knife to his left hand and pulls out a pistol, turning off the safety and cocking the hammer.

Before he can squeeze the trigger, he senses something, the rain behind him falling on something other than pavement. He drops to the ground and rolls until his back is against the wall and a dumpster protects his front. A bullet buries itself into the pavement where he had been standing a moment ago.

He moves again, vaulting over the dumpster, catching the man holding a pistol at the end of the alley by surprise. Still in the air, Jeno squeezes the trigger, hitting the man in the stomach. He lands on his feet and crosses the alley in two quick strides to kick the man as he falls. His hood falls off as he lands on his back, revealing an assuming face. Like the other men, Jeno has never seen him before.

Jeno kicks the gun out of his hand and snatches it from the pavement, slipping it into one of the extra holsters on his belt. He glances between the front of the building and the back. The two goons out front had to have heard the noise, which means he doesn’t have much time before they make it to the alley. But he’s got no idea what might be around the other corner.

He crosses back to the dumpster, keeping an eye on the man behind him as he waits. The man at the other end groans but doesn’t call out for his buddies. Rain overflows from the gutters, falling in spurts rather than droplets. Thirty seconds pass and Jeno only hears the rain. Are they waiting for him? Circling around to trap him between them?

He adjusts his grip on the knife in his left hand, holding it so that the blade is nearest to his pinky finger, his thumb wrapped around the bottom of the base. He keeps the blade facing out, stepping to the front of the apartment building. Instinct guides him to the left, giving him enough time to block the bat with his right arm, sending a shock up his shoulder.

He steps closer, letting the man—one of the goons from before—pull the bat back for another swing. Jeno swings the knife up, catching the man’s jacket but missing blood. He drops the knife and twists, turning so that the man is behind him and ducking to catch the arm still swinging the bat and flip the man over using his momentum and the bigger man’s weight. He hits the pavement hard, sending water splashing all over Jeno.

The second man catches up from the other end of the alley, firing wild shots that don’t come close to hitting him but force Jeno to step back. Jeno pulls a throwing star from his belt, sending it cutting through the air to knock the gun out of the man’s hand. With his right hand, he takes a shot at the man struggling to get off the ground, catching him in the back. He falls again and this time he doesn’t move.

The second man charges out of the alley, the throwing star gone from his hand, though it still drips blood. He has a crowbar in his other hand, like these guys want to be stereotypical goons. He moves about as well as the other man, all power and zero agility. Jeno dodges him easily, letting him take a couple swings before he shoots him in the head. The man drops a couple steps away from his buddy.

Jeno glances around but the dark sedan has left. No one else ventures out to investigate—probably because Jeno still holds a gun. He retrieves his knife and the throwing star, going back to the first man that he shot who still groans at the end of the alley. Blood mixes with the iridescent swirls of run off, red overtaking the blended greens and purples.

He kneels on his chest. Rain falls on the back of his mask“Who sent you?”

The man gurgles a laugh. “What’s it to you?”

Jeno pushes his knee a little harder. “I asked you a question.”

“Fuck you,” the man says. He tries to spit but the mix of blood and saliva ends up splattering on his own face. The man suddenly turns, moving with more strength than Jeno expected. At the same time that Jeno points his gun at the man’s head, the man pulls a gun from inside his coat, pressing it straight into Jeno’s stomach. Neither of them hesitate to pull the trigger.

Caution tape is up in the alley next to your apartment, but the rain seems to have washed away any sign of the crimes committed. It pounds into your head relentlessly, soaking you through your coat.

Though you’ve been living here less than a year, Gotham’s reputation has held true. Working in the hospital has given you even more experience with the diversity of types of people the city attracts—good, bad, and everything in between. You even worked on a guy who apparently turned out to be a Batman villain a few months ago.

Between working at the hospital and living in the city in general, you’ve gotten used to dissociating crime scenes with the sense that you’re actually in danger. Besides, you live next door to a vigilante. Who are you to say this is even a crime scene?

You don’t think anything of it until you open your apartment door and catch the unfortunately familiar scent of blood. Wind and rain crash through the open window, pulling your stumbling feet forward to find the source of the blood.

Jeno didn’t make it to the couch this time. He lies just inside the windowsill, barely sitting up with his back against the wall. One hand clutches his stomach, red blood spilling over the black shirt. His head hangs low, hair soaked by that rain that still falls on him through the open window. The red mask sits in his other hand.

For a scary moment, he doesn’t move.

You drop your bag, rushing to him. You can’t stop your voice from shaking. “Jeno?”

He groans when you shake his arm. “Ow.”

You curse as you slam the window shut and lay him out on his side, keeping his hand over the wound until you can get a better gauge on what it is. “What the hell did you do to yourself?”

He doesn’t answer, only groaning as you try to reach your medical bag while keeping pressure on the wound. You finally get it to the ground, pulling out the scissors and slicing through the shirt so that you can see the wound—a gaping hole framed by bullet fragments where his stomach should be.

“Fuck.” He needs a hospital, a surgeon that’s done more than assist on an appendectomy, but you can’t bring yourself to dial 911. It would bring too many questions on Jeno, who has clearly avoided hospitals for a reason. And he came to you. He trusts you, even if you don’t trust yourself. You have to save him, if only because you’re the only option.

You set out the equipment, spraying them with alcohol to sterilize them and get ready to cut.

“Don’t you dare die,” you say, gripping the scalpel.

“Already did that,” Jeno mutters, eyes fluttering. “Didn’t agree with me.”

You gape at him but he seems to have slipped back into unconsciousness. You force yourself to look back at the bullet hole. You can only yell at him if he’s alive, so you push away the thoughts and get to work, replacing any insecurity with arrogant belief that you know what you’re doing.

Death is nothing like falling asleep. For one thing, it fucking hurts. Jeno supposes the method might have played a factor. He used to think getting shot point blank might be better than being beaten for hours and then blown up (he now has the experience to decidedly answer that question: marginally better). But death itself. It hurts.

And resurrection? All the pain of death with none of the peaceful end. Jeno remembers crawling out of the ground, forcing his muscles to work even though his body still suffered from the wounds that killed him.

But it was the pain that forced him to keep moving, the pain that still fuels him now, a never ending ache deep inside that no time will heal.

Joker may have held the bat, but Batman didn’t stop him. He never stopped him. Jeno remembers the look on his face, the shadowed glimpse of it that he could see. He remembers dying, hearing the Joker cackle, and Batman calling out to him—calling him Robin.

He remembers the pain. Pain he can live with. Pain makes him who he is. He can’t let go of the pain, not when it is all that he is.

But the pain ebbs away when you’re around. And for the life of him he can’t convince himself that it’s a bad thing.

You manage to get Jeno into your bed after you finish patching him up—which was six grueling hours of pulling bullet fragments from the hole and praying he didn’t bleed out. No one should have been able to survive the amount of blood that seeped out of him but by some miracle (though maybe it’s a curse), his heart keeps pumping.

He woke up just long enough to let you sling an arm under his shoulders and half carry him into the bed. You spent the entire time praying he wouldn’t pull apart the stitches and bleed out for real, but it seems like luck was finally on your side.

You should get up. You should clean up the blood, or at least wash it from your hands. You can only find the energy to drag your armchair next to the bed and sit beside him. His chest rises and falls with even breaths.

Still alive, for now.

He mumbles again, voice too low to make out any words. His eyes flutter but remain closed. Does a man like him dream?

“What happened to you?” Your voice cracks. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t show any sign that he can hear you. “You disappear for weeks at a time. You rarely show up when you aren’t bleeding. But you never talk about it, and you don’t smile anymore. I don’t think I know you anymore. I don’t know if I ever did.”

You managed to hold back your tears, push all the emotions away to keep him alive but they come flooding back now. Tears spill over as you watch him breathe.

“Your heart keeps beating but are you really alive?” You ask.

He doesn’t answer.

You moved to Gotham in August. The heat was so bad that crime rates were down–making it miserable to carry box after box up two flights of stairs since the building didn't have an elevator. You’d only been here twice before, both times on school trips, never on your own.

But your friends all live back in your college town, and your parents were busy dealing with a lawsuit against your neighbor for the mailbox war, so you were stuck moving on your own—which wasn’t all that terrible since the apartment came half furnished. Still, you had to figure out a way to get a mattress up the stairs, along with a car full of clothes and all the rest of your belongings. Between the heat and the prospect of stairs, you weren’t exactly stoked about living in the city.

Two trips had you wheezing for air, leaning outside your door to catch your breath. The door to the apartment next to yours swung open. You hoped someone wasn’t already complaining about the noise you were making. Instead a tall, broad shouldered man stepped out, wearing a simple black t-shirt and cargo pants.

He turned around, revealing cold eyes and a face that looked like it spent most of its time frowning. But behind it all something familiar called to you, buried deep behind the bitter front. You remembered a boy who cried because he stubbed his toes, a boy who would fight you to make a wish on every dandelion that lined the sidewalk on the walk home.

He froze, a tiny frown in his brow. “YN?”

“Jeno?”

You set down the tote, stepping around it to get a better look at him. Your eyes jumped between his, trying to decipher the hardness behind them. Though it had been over ten years, you still thought of the sweet boy who lived next door often, always wondering what happened to him.

It seemed that the years had not been kind to him. Though he grew taller and filled out considerably, he had an emptiness behind his eyes, the kind that comes from too much hurt. He looked like it had been years since he last smiled. He barely seemed to react to you, guarding every expression as if you could be some sort of threat.

“You’re taller,” you finally said.

“It has been a while,” he said.

“I think ten years qualifies as more than a while,” you said.

He just nodded. “You’ve moved here?”

“Just today,” you said, gesturing to the boxes.

“You’re on your own?”

You shrugged. “My parents are bringing a load later in the week, so it’s really not that much stuff.” You paused but Jeno didn’t run away, so you figured it was safe to ask, “How long have you been living here?”

“In Gotham since I left.” He pauses, eyes flicking between yours. For a moment you think he’ll tell you everything. Then he says, “Here specifically, only about six months.”

You should have asked. Maybe it would have made things simpler, maybe you wouldn’t be dancing between fantasy and reality, balancing a tedious act of ignorance.

Instead you asked him if he’d help you move your mattress and what the pizza delivery situation was like.

Jeno wakes up sometime in the middle of the night. You snap awake from your dozing as he shifts.

“Sit still,” you say. “I don’t think I can put you back together if you fall apart this time.”

Jeno blinks. Even in the darkness you can see eyes are still glazed over in confusion.

“You were shot,” you explain. “Point blank from the looks of it.”

“Ah,” he says. His soft voice carries in the quiet hours of the night. “That’s what hurts.”

“Never make me do that again.” Your voice shakes despite your best attempts to steady it. The tears from earlier try to weasel their way back out of your eyes. “You should have died.”

He reaches out, except he really must be feeling weak because his hand barely makes it to the edge of the bed before it hangs limp.

“‘M sorry,” he mumbles. “Didn’t want to get shot.”

You blink back the tears as anger courses its way through you. “I don’t think anybody gets shot on purpose,” you snap.

He tries to snort but it ends up sounding like a short exhale through his nose. “Fair enough.”

“I’m not a good enough doctor for all of this,” you say. “This isn’t a hospital. I don’t have sterile equipment, or a blood bank, or an extra set of hands, I mean, if anything worse happens, you could be in real danger and there’s nothing I could do about it, and I can’t—” You pause, taking a deep breath. “I don’t like when I have to admit I can’t do something, but with you, it feels like that’s all I can do.”

“You saved my life,” he says. “It doesn’t really feel like you couldn’t do it.”

“It was a pretty fucking close call,” you say. “Gunshot wounds aren’t particularly easy, and you had to go and get shot in the stomach.”

He shifts, hand running over his torso beneath the blanket. “I didn't pop the stitches, though,” he says. “I gotta get some points for that.”

You glare at him, though he probably can’t see it in the darkness. “Don’t make fun of me. I’m trying to be serious.”

“So am I,” he says, “it was not easy. I sat still for two full days. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve done that?”

Ask. Get a real answer from him. Stop shying away from who he really is. You have to talk about it.

“Well, get used to it,” you say. “You’re staying in this bed. I don’t care if I have to tie you down.”

Jeno actually smiles. It’s been far too long since you’ve seen that smile, softening the hard lines and curling his face into something sweet. “I could be into that,” he jokes.

And maybe it’s because there are blood stains on your shirt that will never come out and you haven’t slept in about thirty hours and you came far too close to losing the only person you really care about, but you laugh. “Just shut up and get some rest.”

“You should rest too,” Jeno says. “You look terrible.”

“Yeah, well it’s your fault,” you say.

He pauses then says, “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Well, don’t apologize.” You sniffle. “It’s harder to be mad at you.”

He smiles again, and you can’t even pretend to be mad at him anymore. It’s too hard on your heart, which has been through far too much for any more lies. You smile back at him.

After a day, Jeno can walk around on his own. You called out sick from work, despite his insistence that he’d be fine on his own. He had to bribe you to convince you to sleep on the couch, since you would barely let him go to the bathroom, let alone move back to his own room. He won’t complain too much, though. He forgot how nice it is to wake up to someone.

He sways on his feet, holding a hand up to stop you from helping him. He forces even breaths, determined to make it to the couch without any help.

“You don’t have to do this,” you repeat for the thousandth time.

“I told you I’m fine,” he grunts. Two more steps and he’s there. He takes a deep breath, ignoring the way his entire lower half screams at him. One more step.

He collapses onto the couch more than anything, but he makes it. He lets himself slouch a little, head resting against the back of the couch. How many times has he sat here like this? So many hours spent waiting for you, watching the sun inch across the room. But most of the time it’s been like this—you at the opposite end, always a cushion separating him from you.

The fake wooden floor is stained deep red, pooled around where he laid while you worked on him. He wonders what would have happened if you weren’t there. When he first came back he thought he was invincible, and his healing has saved him from a lot–but he’s never truly put it to the test. Could he have survived without you?

His mask still sits where he pulled it off underneath the windowsill. He peeks at you from the corner of his eyes, your head turned towards it. Say something.

You stare at the mask, clearing your throat. “I hope you didn’t pay too much for that shitty costume,” you say. “You don’t even have armor.”

“YN,” Jeno says but you refuse to look at him.

“Seriously, walking around dressed like a vigilante is going to get you killed.”

“YN. You know it’s not a costume.”

“What, you made it yourself? That’s even worse, I mean, it’s one thing to dress up like these guys but trying to be one of them, that’s just plain stupid. I can’t believe—”

Jeno shifts to the center cushion and wraps his fingers gently around your wrist, forcing you to look at him. “I am one of them.”

He lets go of your wrist and watches you process the words, trying to figure out any other meaning. Your eyes dart between his, panicked and desperate. For whatever reason, you don’t want to admit it, and it’s been fine. But Jeno is tired of feeling like he’s lying to you.

“I know,” you finally say, sighing and looking away again. He hates that it feels like he’s let you down. But he won’t apologize for who he is.

“Why didn’t you ever ask about what happened after I left?” He asks.

You’re quiet for a long moment. “I think I was afraid. It didn’t take long to realize what you were—or at least that you were wrapped up in something twisted—and then it was obvious whatever happened to you here wasn’t good, and I wasn’t sure if I should know that.”

Jeno nods, gaze traveling to the window. He can see some scattered rooftops, mostly shorter residential buildings of the area. Farther in the distance, skyscrapers stick out. He’s spent more years in this city than not, grown to love it like family. But unlike family, the city doesn’t love him back. It’s not capable of it. No matter how much of his blood lines the streets, Jeno will only ever be one of millions that call the city home.

Yes, what happened to him here wasn’t good. But it wasn’t all bad, and it’s not over yet. He won’t give up on the city just because of the past.

And there’s you now. He has these moments where his heart beats so hard it feels like his chest will burst in the good way. He no longer ceases to exist when he isn’t fighting. Jeno worms his way back into reality, not separate from Red Hood, but no longer overshadowed by him.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think these past couple weeks,” Jeno says. “Time to figure out what I want. For the longest time, it was revenge. It didn’t matter how I got it, how many people had to die. I would avenge myself no matter what.

“And then you came into my life, and I would catch myself wondering what would have happened if I could have stayed back then, how different my life would be. I even wondered what would happen if I took off the mask, permanently.

“But this is all I know how to be, and, I think even when I get my revenge, I won’t be able to leave this life behind.” He pauses, tilting his head away from the window and waiting until you meet his eyes. “I don’t want to die again. I don't want to live this miserable half life where all I think about is getting back at the people who wronged me. I want to live, and when I’m with you, I feel alive.”

You stare at him, eyes adorably wide. Maybe he's been a little too good at keeping his feelings hidden. It’s alright. He can wait for you to work it all out. It’s not like he’s got anywhere to be.

“I like being with you,” he says. “I like who I am when I’m around you, and I like you. I mean, you’re stubborn and you always have to have the last word.” He smiles at your bewildered eyes. “But you care so much, not just about me, or your patients, but about everyone, and everything.

“Like your little houseplants that keep dying no matter what you do. I mean, it’s hilarious that you can save my life but you can’t keep a succulent alive. Or the way you talk about the street cats, and even the rats. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had sympathy for the cockroaches.” He finally manages to cut the rambling off. For a long moment you’re too quiet, and he begins to feel the inklings of fear worming its way up his stomach.

“I don’t know about that,” you finally say, voice soft. “I think they might be radioactive here.”

He waits but you don’t say anything else. He knows he shouldn’t ask, that he already has his answer. Still, he can’t help it. “That’s all you have to say?”

Your eyes slide to the floor. “I… I don’t know.”

“You feel something,” he says, reaching a tentative hand out to rest on top of yours. You freeze beneath him, eyes darting between his hand and his eyes like you can’t decide which you’re scared of more.

“Tell me I’m not crazy,” he pleads. “Tell me you feel at least a fraction of the way I do.”

You squeeze your eyes shut, taking a deep breath. “I do care about you,” you begin slowly, “I care about you too much. You have this life, and I know you need it, and I want you to have everything that you want, I just don’t think I can be a part of it when it inevitably destroys you.”

He squeezes your hand. “It won’t destroy me,” he says, “I won’t let it.”

“You died.” Your voice shakes. “I don’t think I could handle that.”

“I won’t let that happen again!” Jeno says. “Things are different now, I’m not the same person I was when I died.”

He won’t die again. He’s sure of it, not just because he’s learned from his mistakes but because he has something else to live for now. He has more than the family that pushed him to be more than he could, he has his own life, goals outside of revenge. But grounding it all is you, the first person he thinks of, always. He won’t die when it would hurt you this much.

“Even if you could promise that, it’s not enough.” You look away from him. “I don’t want to die either, and it seems like that’s inevitable around people like you. The loved ones always die first.”

He opens his mouth to say he would never let that happen but the words die in his throat. He can’t guarantee that, and one look at you proves even if he could it wouldn’t matter. It’s not enough.

“I think I love you,” he whispers.

You smile sadly. “I think I love you too. I wish it was that simple.”

He sighs, resting his head against the couch cushion. “I don’t suppose supreme embarrassment is a good enough reason to let me go back to my own apartment, is it?”

He watches you purse your lips out of the corner of his eye. He pretends not to see the tears threatening to spill over.

“I have to go back to work,” you say, voice steady. “I suppose sleeping in your own bed won’t be a problem.” You turn stern. “As long as you swear you’ll actually rest.”

Jeno winces. “I don’t think I can do anything else.”

“And yet you will,” you say. Jeno knows it’s worthless to argue, especially when he really can’t promise he won’t do anything. He goes where he’s needed.

But until then, he’s perfectly happy to wallow in the embarrassment of getting shot and shot down.

(please enjoy a brief interlude until i figure out how to fix thing shitshow)

The city always smells cleaner after a good storm. You enjoy walking to work, though the piercing wail of sirens makes it harder to appreciate the way the city almost smells like spring. Green has returned, sprouts of grass and early flowers blooming. You can walk and breathe and pretend like your heart isn’t dragging along behind you.

Jeno haunts you. You dared to check on him before leaving and found he has reverted back to the one word answers and solemn expressions, a shadow of a person. He barely even looks at you, and you can’t even blame him. You’ve done more than break his heart; you can bear the consequences of doing so.

Because it doesn’t really matter. He will keep getting hurt and you will keep patching him up. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Even if you can’t stop dreaming about him.

An ambulance wails past, turning into the hospital. You try your best to push the Jeno thoughts away, preparing yourself for the inevitably grueling day. You push open the doors, the security guards now familiar. You smile at them, the movement of the muscles feeling foreign, and take the elevators to the fourth floor, heading to the locker room for the surgical interns.

You’ve barely changed into your scrubs when Jaemin appears.

“Wow,” he says, biting into an apple. “You look terrible.”

You glare at him. “You look worse. How long have you been here?”

He shrugs. “I got a whole six hours of sleep in an on-call room, so I’m actually doing great. You, on the other hand, look like you spent the two days fighting guys who wear pinstripe suits and call their henchmen goons.” He eyes you for a moment. “And you lost.”

“That’s pretty much how I feel,” you say. “Though I still think you act like the criminals in this city are cartoon villains.”

“The aquarium was attacked by a crocodile-man last week and the guy that stopped him cosplays as a bat,” Jaemin says. “I don’t know how you take any of this seriously.”

It helps when you have a melodramatic version of the bat guy bleeding out on your couch every other week, you think.

“I don’t know, being afraid for my life helps,” you say.

“Oh the crocodile guy just wanted to free his people,” Jaemin waves his hand. “He wasn’t going to hurt anyone.”

“His name is Killer Croc.”

“Semantics,” Jaemin says. “But seriously, you’re okay? Nothing happened?”

You shrug. “I just haven’t gotten enough sleep, I’ll be fine. Why are you acting so weird?”

“You haven’t heard?” Jaemin asks. “Dr. Moon and Dr. Jung were both attacked three days ago. Dr. Jung is in the ICU and Dr. Moon is still missing.”

“What happened?”

“Police don’t really know yet,” Jaemin says, “but it’s connected. These big guys in suits with these weird black hoods were seen around both of their places before the attacks. They found Jaehyun in his apartment, beaten pretty bad, he’s been in a coma ever since.”

“Wow,” you say. You’ve worked with both of them quite a bit. You spent a week learning about skin grafts with Dr. Moon, a star plastic surgeon. Jaehyun gave you an extra shower curtain when you mentioned you tore yours when a cockroach crawled up your shower brain while you were in it. They’re both good, nice people, not the type to get involved in trouble—definitely not trouble like this.

“Is Jaehyun going to be okay?”

Jaemin purses his lips and shrugs. “Still not sure. He had some pretty serious injuries, most of which were patched up but apparently he had some bad head trauma. They called in the Lee Taemin from Central.”

“You didn’t shit your pants meeting your hero?”

“YN,” Jaemin says sharply, “a good friend of mine was in the hospital, and the best neurosurgeon in the country, the guy I will one day convince to be my mentor, was called in to save his life. Of course I was shitting my pants.”

“Did you get to meet him?”

“I thought it would be weird to introduce myself to him, but I did happen to visit Jaehyun while he stopped by, and happened to mention I wanted to pursue neuro when he asked.”

“And?”

“And he said it was a smart decision. Or said only the smartest thrive. He’s very confusing.”

“So basically you’re obsessed?”

“Yep.”

You lean against the metal lockers, letting the cold press against the back of your neck. You think about Jaehyun, hooked up to machines with a whole team of doctors, including a star doctor, all working to keep him alive. How long will it be before that’s Jeno, except no machines, no team, just you? How long before you won’t be enough?

Jeno has discovered all there is to know about his ceiling. There’s eleven cracks, tiny fissures in the paint that’s at least ten years old. The color is off white, not cream, though in the corner above the door, they did a touch up with a paint that has slightly more blue. He can tell what time it is from the angle of the light coming through the window.

He’s beginning to run out of things to learn.

He misses you, so much. He wonders what your ceiling looks like, if it’s got its own little galaxy of cracks. He misses sitting on your couch, knowing that he’d see you soon.

He can’t remember the last time he got out of bed, and he can’t even blame it on the gunshot wound. He's not fully recovered, but he doesn’t need to lay in bed all day. He should be up and moving, keeping himself in shape, or at least hunting down the guys who attacked him. All he managed to do was set up an alert with the license plate of the car he saw, feeding it through all the security cameras he could get access to.

But otherwise he lays in bed and stares at the ceiling.

Getting this dejected over a rejection makes him feel like a teenager—not that he ever went through this during his teenage years. He can put on the mask and be Red Hood, but Jeno? He doesn’t know how to be Jeno alone, he doesn’t want to learn. He had his parents when he was younger, then Bruce, and Dick, and the family that began to grow among them. Despite all he used to whine, he’s never truly been alone.

Will he be alone now? Will Jeno even exist without the people around him to keep him going? Or will he truly become Red Hood, letting the man behind the mask cease to exist.

He knows what Bruce would say. The mask can’t exist without the man. But Bruce is the reason he put a mask on in the first place. He can philosophize all day long, it’s his fault Jeno ever died. He doesn’t have to listen to the man’s words.

Jeno rests his hand over the wound. He hardly feels the ridge where the stitches are. He wonders how the wound will scar.

It doesn’t make any sense but even though his body heals unnaturally fast, the scars remain. It’s like his body remembers dying and wants to remind him—even though he came back once and he’s stronger than ever before—he’s still human.

And there’s nothing more human than a broken heart. He should be grateful it’s only metaphorical.

Jeno sighs. The worst part is he knows how dramatic he’s being. But it’s only been 28 hours. He can allow himself a little bit of time for the dramatics. Bruce takes like a month off when a civilian dies under his watch.

He pulls his blanket closer, wondering if it’s too far to put on some music—something loud, maybe.

Instead he hears a ding, a notification from his computer. He sits up a little too fast, feeling a tug on his stitches, though they don’t fall apart.

He can’t spare too much thought to them, not when his screen lights up with feed from a security camera, zoomed in to show the license plate of a dark sedan, the numbers he remembers. It rolls past, camera shifting down the block as Jeno drops into his chair, typing rapidly until the screen zooms out. The larger screen reveals the sedan is one of many, traveling in a line together.

He sets up the second monitor to plot their movements across the city, a bright red line tracing the few turns they take.

The windows of each car are tinted, concealing those within. But, with his previous encounter, it’s safe to assume there’s plenty of hired muscle in the six cars. It could be anywhere between fifteen and thirty men, headed this way.

He watches them draw closer, tapping his finger on the desk. They caught him by surprise last time. On a good day, he wouldn’t sweat odds this bad, but it’s not a good day. He can still feel his insides healing.

It’ll be a tough fight, but he’s planned for this. He’ll rig the place, take down as many as he can and get to one of the other safe houses.

The Jeno that lived here will disappear. And it will be for the best.

He changes into his suit, moving as fast as he can without hurting himself. He stuffs as many weapons as he can into his pockets, his belt weighing extra heavy around his waist.

Then he gets to work on the bomb. A smaller explosive, more of a popper than a true bomb, but enough to take out his computer and all of the evidence he’s left behind here.

He wonders if the police will come. Will they question you? Surely someone has noticed he spends a lot of time with you. You’d never give him up, but would you defend him? Would you go on television, tell the world Red Hood is just a man? You’d look good on television.

You wouldn’t though. You wouldn’t say a word, not to the cops, not to anyone.

He’s really going to miss you.

He checks the map. Still five blocks away. Except… The cameras first picked up the sedans in the upper east part of the city, by the Sprang River. They mostly traveled west from there, they’re still north of him.

They stop at a light, just two blocks away. He watches, waiting for them to turn.

The sedans roll straight ahead, passing the apartment. He frowns, staring at the screen but the cars keep going, one block, two, and then they pull to a stop.

Jeno curses, grabbing the keys to his bike. It was never about him.

The sun peeks through the windows of the hospital, the only sign time passes. The setting sun casts the parking lot in gold, making even the ugliest cars shine. You pause to peek outside, for once not in a rush. You have to scrub in with Dr. Qian in twenty minutes, but until then, you have a rare moment of freedom.

Because you’re standing at the window, you see the exact moment the cars pull up. They form a line, like a row of beetles, stopping in front of the entrance, blocking the parked cars. As soon as they roll to a stop, the doors fly open, men streaming out all wearing black hoods. They line up in front of the car closest to the entrance, whose doors had remained closed since stopping. The driver exits first, another hooded man, though considerably smaller than the rest. He opens the door to the backseat, head bowed low.

The man in the backseat takes his time. Pale hands peek out of the carefully fitted suit, the only open skin you can see. He steps out from the car and the line of men bend into sharp bows. He closes the door and you finally get a full look at him: from the suit to his shoes, he wears all black, but most striking is the black mask that covers his face. It melts into his suit, keeping every inch of his skin hidden save for his hands.

He must say something, because the men straighten and vanish from your view, streaming into the hospital.

Is it too late to alert security? There has to be twenty men, and with how Jaehyun looks, you doubt they’ll be able to hold them off. 911, then? It’ll take the cops forever to respond, and it’s too late. They’re already here.

You could call him. He’d come.

Despite all your instincts screaming at you to hide, you turn around. The lobby is packed with the final rush of visitors, and 9-to-5 staff getting ready to leave for the day. It’ll be safer to pack in with them than be caught on your own, and maybe you can warn security before mass panic breaks out. You rush down the hall to the large open space in the front of the hospital.

Maybe it’s the adrenaline, but everything feels too normal. A father holds his child’s hand as they walk to the bathroom. A nurse whispers furiously into her phone. An elderly couple hold hands, clipboards to the side of them. You scan the small crowd, looking for a security guard.

Instead you find a brute of a man, black hood tipping back as he raises a gun above his head and fires it a couple times.

“Everybody quiet!” He growls. “On the ground!”

You drop into a squat, hands automatically coming above your head as screams echo. Someone yanks on your coat, knocking you off balance. Your heart nearly stops but it’s just Jaemin pulling you to sit beside him with a wall at your back instead of the open hallway.

“Thank you,” you whisper. You slide into a seated position, back against the wall. Jaemin crouches next to you, keeping one hand on the wheelchair of the patient he must have been with before all of this. You peek at him and recognize him as Yoon Jeonghan, the guy that got hit by a truck while biking. He looks like he’s trying to decide if he’s included in the “on the ground” order.

The goons pick on a couple people, shoving them to the ground.

“Hands above your heads!” One of them orders, pointing his gun at random. You raise your hands again, Jaemin following more reluctantly.

Ten minutes pass as goons escort people from all over the hospital, the lobby quickly becoming packed. Half the patients are in wheelchairs, clinging to IV drips while the doctors and nurses glare at the men. Finally, it seems they have collected everybody, and a quiet tension falls over the room.

Then the man in the black mask strolls in.

“What’s the saying?” He asks, muffled voice carrying in the open space. “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” He clasps his hands behind his back, strolling along, peeking at the cowering hostages.

“He doesn’t have a pinstripe suit,” Jaemin whispers.

“I don’t even think he’ll call the henchmen goons,” you whisper back.

Jaemin shakes his head. He’d probably tsk if he didn’t think it would get you both killed.

“I bet they’ll still beat us up,” you whisper.

“If you don’t shut up, they definitely will,” Jeonghan mutters.

Jaemin rolls his eyes and makes a face at you. You bite back a smile. You’ve tempted fate enough.

“The name you all will know me by is Black Mask,” he announces.

This time you can’t help the smile, turning away from Jaemin to prevent yourself from laughing out loud. Even Jeonghan mutters, “Very creative.”

“I have a list, you see,” Black Mask continues, “people that owe me. They know what they’ve done. I promise if your name is not on that list and you don’t make a fuss, no harm will come to you. I’m a reasonable man.”

Reasonable men don’t play dress up and shoot up hospitals, but you figure he’s due for a dramatic speech. At least he’s explaining why he’s here.

Black Mask pauses in front of one of the nurses—Shotaro, a good nurse who you’ve worked with several times. He grabs him by the shoulder, sending him sprawling to the floor.

“This one,” Black Mask announces, waving at his goons to pick Shotaro up. They half drag him away as Black Mask continues to make his way through the crowd.

“This is more efficient, you know,” he says. “I’ve tried other methods, but there were some complications. So, I thought to myself, if you’re all in one place, why not just go to the source?” He points at another nurse, Sehun, but Dr. Bae steps in front of him. Black Mask pauses, tilting his head to peer at her before gesturing to the goons to drag them both away. Dr. Bae puts up a fight, trying to twist out of their grip, but one of the men tosses her over his shoulder and carries her out. Sehun follows, stumbling behind.

Dr. Moon, Jaehyun, Shotaro, Sehun, and Dr. Bae, though it seems like she wasn’t originally a target. All good, hard workers, not the type to make mistakes, definitely not collectively. You watch as Black Mask creeps closer and closer.

You’ve worked with all of them. Only a few months ago, a case of a man with terrible burns on his face. Your blood runs cold as Black Mask stops in front of you. You stand up, a heartbeat before he points.

“You,” Black Mask says, venom seeping into his voice. “You owe me.”

“I remember you,” you say, keeping your voice soft.

“You remember what you did to me,” he says.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” you say, “and neither did anyone else in this hospital.”

He raises a hand and smacks you, and before you can react, two of his men grab your arms, dragging you away whether your feet move or not. You try to think of something witty or smart, but all you can think is how much you don’t want to die.

They take you to the stairs, carrying you up two flights of stairs before depositing you in an empty patient room. One of the men stays with you, guarding the door, while the other vanishes.

You glare at the man, face stinging. Jeno would tell you not to provoke a psychopath.

But Jeno’s not here. You shouldn’t want him to be, because even if he could be here, he would only get himself hurt, and you won’t be responsible for causing him any more pain.

He said he loved you, even after all he’s been through. He wasn’t afraid.

You don’t want Jeno here, not to save the day. But it’d be nice to apologize to him. And if there was only one person you could say goodbye to before you died, you’d want it to be Jeno.

Maybe you do want Jeno to save the day. Just so you can apologize. Just so you can tell him you were wrong. Just so you can finally admit the truth.

Jeno’s bike screeches to a stop a block away from the hospital. He parks it in an alley, covering it with a tarp and trusting that the locks will prevent anyone from stealing it. He hopes he’s swiped it from the impound lot enough times for the police to leave it alone too.

He climbs to the roof of the nearest building, moving painfully slow, between the pull of the stitches and the exhaustion of healing such a large wound. But from here he can see the line of black cars in front of the hospital, the setting sun reflecting on the metal, making it difficult to see. He switches to infrared, the mask buzzing a couple times before picking up on the mass of bodies in the main lobby. Majority of the building is far too empty for a place of medicine.

From his memory of studying the schematics on an off day, he remembers the west facing wing houses the operating rooms, which explains why the infrared picks up a couple small masses. But with the rest of the hospital empty, the four rooms on the third floor stand out. Each holds two bodies, one significantly larger than the other.

That’s where he’ll start.

A better fighter would get a better gauge of the situation. Maybe spend more time determining which are civilians and which are hostiles, or figure out exactly where they’re holding people. But Jeno has always worked best flying by the seat of his pants. He still doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but these must be the hostages important enough to separate from the main group.

It would be safest if you were on the first floor, just one of many in the crowd, but the selfish part of Jeno wants you to be where he can see you. Where he can save you.

He can’t waste any more time. He shoots the grappling gun, pulling on it to build momentum even faster and angle himself directly at the window. It shatters beneath his feet, and he tucks into a tight ball, rolling once before springing onto his feet. He ducks as the big man swings a crowbar at him, wincing at the sharp pain near his stomach. He takes a quick strike with his knife, slashing up across the stomach first, then across the throat, finally driving the knife into the man’s heart. He crumples to the ground and doesn’t move.

Jeno pulls the blade out, wiping the blood from the knife on his pants and sheathing it. He turns around to find a figure in a white lab coat, cowering in the corner of the room, hands over their head, glass shards scattered around them.

He crouches down in front of you, brushing the glass off your shoulder. You peek up at him, eyes softening as you recognize him even though you’ve never seen him in the mask before. There’s a small cut on your cheek. His thumb moves on its own, swiping at the blood and doing nothing but spread more on your face.

“Are you okay?” Jeno asks. The modulator of the mask twists his voice into an unrecognizable beast. It’s perfect for protecting his identity and intimidating low lives, not so great for comforting the scared victims. Maybe he should tweak that part of the suit, make it adjustable. But you don’t flinch, standing up and shaking the rest of the glass off.

“I’m fine,” you say. “How did you get here so fast?”

“These are the same guys that shot me,” Jeno says. “I had a tracker out on the car, which led me here.”

“Sionis,” you say. Jeno frowns. He knows that name.

“Roman Sionis, that’s the guy doing all of this,” you explain. “He was a patient three months ago, really bad damage to his face. He’s targeting the team responsible for his care, doctors, nurses, everyone he blames for what happened to his face.”

“Which includes you,” Jeno says.

You nod, eyes tight. “Which means they weren’t after you when you got shot.”

“Hey,” Jeno says. “I’m fine. You patched me up, and I’ve got the super healing, so if either of us was going to get shot, I’d rather it be me. It’s not your fault.”

“I know,” you say, though you don’t sound like you believe it. “Should you really be jumping through windows, though?”

He shrugs. “Didn’t pull the stitches. I swear.”

You purse your lips but let it go. He wishes you would just say what you’re thinking but you look away from him, glancing at the door.

“They took three more of us up here, and they probably know you’re here by now.”

Jeno nods. Resolve the situation, then talk.

“I’m going to clear out the rooms one at a time,” he says, “then work my way downstairs.” He unholsters a gun, handing it to you. You raise an eyebrow.

“I’ve never used one of these.” You reluctantly take the gun out of his hands.

“Point and squeeze the trigger,” he says. “It’s semi-automatic, you don’t have to do anything to reload. If they’re close enough you won’t even have to aim.” He forms your hands around the gun, teasing your fingers into the right position and turning off the safety. He lets his hands linger, waiting for your eyes to meet his, though he remembers a moment later that the mask conceals them.

“Get the rest of the hostages and stay together,” he says. “I’ll be right back.” He forces himself to let go of your hands but doesn’t step away yet.

He should say something else. Maybe apologize for what he said. Take it back. But he meant every word of it, even if you did too. He’s said all he can, and if that’s still not enough then at least you’re still alive.

“Go save the day,” you finally say. “Then… I’ll see you after.”

He nods, turning away and striding to the door, stepping over the body. “Wait for me to clear the rest of them, then get the hostages out of here.”

He pulls the door closed behind him, trusting that you will be fine on your own. He doesn’t have time to worry, ducking to dodge the knife that flies toward him. He doesn’t let the man get a second chance, sprinting as fast as he can and burying his knife in the man’s heart. He’s turning a second later, using the man’s body as a shield against the second man in the hall, who doesn’t hesitate to fire a couple shots. Jeno throws the first man’s body on him, his knife following quickly after, burying itself in the man’s forehead.

Like always, his pains melt away when he’s fighting. He barely feels the tug of the stitches, or the exhaustion he felt earlier. This body was made to kill, and that’s what he’ll do.

He ducks into the room next to yours, knocking the guard to the floor and stabbing him. The hostage, a woman wearing a white lab coat, stands.

“Wait here,” he says. “I’ll clear the rest of this hall. Don’t go outside unless you want to get shot.”

She nods slowly.

Jeno clears the other two rooms similarly, quick and far too easy. He hesitates at the stairwell. He should clear the rest of the civilians if he wants to resolve things quickly, but it feels wrong to leave these hostages to you—you were a hostage yourself only a few minutes ago. But it’s irrational. He knows you’re capable of protecting yourself, and smart enough not to get yourself killed. He has to trust you and do his job. You were the one that told him to save the day.

He doesn’t bother with the stairs, jumping in the open space between the flights and using his grappling hook to control his fall. If he wasn’t hurt, he’d just drop the three stories, but it’s only a little slower this way. He retracts the hook with a button and sticks it back into his belt, pulling out his knives.

He makes it halfway down the hall before he sees the first figure, raising his knife on instinct. He drops it a moment later, picking out the scrubs from here. The nurse sprints past him, barely glancing at him. More and more people follow, until a stream of people flood the hall. They part around him, allowing Jeno to make it to the lobby as it clears. Only a few people remain, mostly patients that struggle to move on their own and the people that stayed behind to protect them.

Where is Sionis? Where are all of his men? Even in the flood of people, they would have stood out. Did they hear the commotion upstairs and run? One of the men fired his gun a couple times, maybe they went to investigate.

No, they wouldn’t have let the hostages go if that were the case. He curses himself for not trusting his instincts, turning around to get back to the stairs, but the hallway is still blocked by all the people clamoring to leave.

It takes painfully long to get to a stairwell, but he finally makes it. That’s when he hears the gunshot—different from the pops before, no this is a sound he recognizes. This is his gun.

You wait until the hallway is quiet, peeking out the window for good measure. Nothing moves, the bodies on the floor limp. Blood pools around the three, puddles bright against the white tiles. You wait for another heart beat, holding your breath but the only movement comes from the blood, trickling down the hall.

The door creaks open beneath your fingers. It feels like your footsteps echo as you hurry to the closest door. You make it to the first door, hand on the doorknob when you hear it—footsteps echoing from the stairwell, the opposite side of where Jeno left. They thunder up the stairs, at least ten men.

You open the door a crack, whispering a sharp, “Stay hidden!”

You don’t give whoever is behind the door a chance to argue, closing the door and sprinting to the stairwell as fast as you can. You hear a shout just as you cross into the stairwell, sprinting forward. You take one step toward the descending flight but see dark heads bobbing in the space between the stairs. You curse, turning and heading up.

Shit, shit, shit. You can only go up. The men from the other end of the hall burst into the stairwell, your heart sending another shot of adrenaline through your body and pushing you to take steps three at a time. Even as you feel your body working harder than ever before, you know it won’t last. You have to find somewhere to hide.

You burst onto the fifth floor, cringing as the door slams against the wall. No chance they missed that.

You run as far as you dare, ducking into a storage closet and curling into a ball in the farthest corner, hiding behind a wall of bedpans. You shove a hand over your mouth, trying to cover your heaving breaths. Bile rises in your throat as the sprinting catches up to you but you swallow hard, closing your eyes and praying.

Jeno’s gun rests in your other hand. The cold metal helps calm you down, your breathing evening out as you hear a door bang open. A moment later then there’s another bang. You hear footsteps in the hall, then another. They must be checking room by room.

You’re about halfway down the hall, maybe five rooms in. You don’t have much time.

You raise the gun, letting go of your mouth to hold it with both hands. Your finger drops to the trigger. Point and squeeze, Jeno said. You can do that. You aim it at the door, bracing your arm on your knees to keep them from shaking.

You flinch at the next bang, feeling the wall shake. They’re in the room right next to you. They trash the room, sending vibrations through the floor, until it suddenly stops.

You’ll have to move fast, you can’t give them any chance.

Light cascades around as the door is thrown open. You squeeze the trigger, keeping the gun aimed at the large mass in front of you. There’s a loud bang and the gun slams your shoulder back but the man stumbles backward. You squeeze the trigger again and this time he goes down.

A second man dodges the falling body, taking a step inside but you squeeze the trigger again and again and again and he falls too.

Shit, how many shots was that? You clench your teeth but they seemed to have learned the lesson for the moment—nobody follows.

“Alright, that’s enough fun.” You recognize Sionis’ voice from behind the mask this time. “Come out on your own or get dragged out. Your choice.”

“I’d really rather stay here,” you say, voice shaking. You force yourself to your feet.

“Fun way it is,” Black Mask says. This time two men push their way through, one blocking the other. You shoot and it hits the front man in the shoulder but he doesn’t go down. You squeeze the trigger again but nothing happens.

You throw the gun at him, hoping to catch him in the head but he just knocks it away. You start pulling things from the shelves, throwing as hard as you can. It does nothing to stop them, grabbing you by the arms and heaving you off your feet. You twist and kick and try to bite but they don’t seem to notice. They hold you up in front of Black Mask in the middle of the hallway.

“You are a feisty one,” he muses, watching you thrash.

“Let me go,” you say. You try to growl but it comes out more like pathetic begging.

“I’d like you to calm down a bit,” he says.

You open your mouth to tell him to fuck off but apparently that was some sort of signal because one of the men raises a fist and brings it down hard on the top of your head.

It sends jitters down your spine as your teeth clang together. You blink tears away, your head lolling forward a little. The floor blurs beneath you—no it’s your eyes, struggling to focus.

“Now, on with business,” Black Mask says, clasping gloved hands together. “I—”

You nearly fall to the floor as one of the men holding you—the one you shot in the shoulder—falls to the ground. You tilt backward as the second man goes down but a tight hand around your arm yanks you backward.

Black Mask pulls you into a patient room, the bed pushed against the wall next to the bathroom. He pulls you away from the door until your back is against the window. He keeps his hand tight around your arm, pressing something hard and cold against the side of your head. Your brain still reels from the hit but you don’t have to think hard to figure out it’s a gun.

There are a few shouts from the hallway but it falls quiet quickly. Only one pair of boots echo in the hall, solemn footsteps that pause by the door. Then Jeno appears in the doorway.

Blood splatters cover the shirt, concealing the bat motif. It seeps into his leather jacket, though Jeno himself seems to be unscathed. He holds a gun in one hand and his knife in the other.

“That’s close enough,” Black Mask says when he tries to step inside.

Jeno’s mask covers his eyes, but if it didn’t, you’re pretty sure he’d be glaring. “Let the innocent go. Settle this like an adult.”

“Innocent?” Black Mask cackles. “Sure, I’ll let the innocent go. I already did that.” He grips your arm tighter, pressing the gun harder into the side of your head. “But this one isn’t innocent.”

He taps on the mask. “I don’t wear this for fun, I’m sure you know. But I’m not like you. I don’t hide to protect myself or my loved ones—I don’t even have loved ones, and you know why? Because this idiot and the idiots at this hospital don’t know how to do a simple facial repair!”

“They were third degree burns, you’re lucky to have a face,” you say.

“Shut up!” Black Mask screams, shoving you. Jeno takes a step forward but freezes when Black Mask turns back to him.

“One more step and you’ll be cleaning some brains off your mask!” He takes a breath, lowering his voice. “I’ll be the first to tell you, that’s no easy task.”

“Let the hostage go.” Jeno sounds cold through the modulator.

“And you’ll let me go?” Black Mask huffs a short laugh. “I don’t think so. Your reputation precedes you.”

“Then you know what will happen if you pull that trigger.”

“Leave now and I’ll leave this one alive,” Black Mask says.

“What, half mad after you spend a few hours with your tools?” Jeno says. “Your reputation precedes you, too.”

Black Mask sighs. “Then it seems I have no choice.” The gun presses hard against your head.

“I’ll be seeing you around,” Black Mask says. You squeeze your eyes shut, waiting for the shot but the pressure on the side of your head vanishes.

There’s a loud bang, and for a moment you’re sure you’ve died, but then you feel a hard shove on your chest. Your legs hit the wall but it’s not enough to stop you from tumbling out the window, nothing but air beneath you.

You barely raise your arms out before something tackles into you, an arm wrapping around your waist. You wrap your arms and legs around whatever they find, clinging like a baby monkey to Jeno’s side.

He raises the other arm, shooting the grappling hook and pulling hard. You snap in the air, swinging up higher than you had fallen until you’ve crested the roof.

“I got you,” Jeno says, arm wrapped so tightly around you you’re crushed against his side.

He takes all the weight as you fall onto the roof, bracing the landing with his legs, somehow remaining upright.

You can only cling to him, waiting for your brain to sort out what happened. You aren’t dead. Black Mask threw you out the window. Jeno caught you. You repeat the words over and over in your head until they almost make sense.

“We’re back on solid ground,” Jeno says.

“Mhm.” You don’t let go, keeping your arms tight around his neck.

“You’re safe now,” he says.

“I know.”

He pauses. “You can let go.”

“Not ready yet.”

“Okay.”

For a long moment all you can hear is the pounding of your heart. It lessens and you start to hear tires screeching on pavement down below, people shouting, sirens wailing in the distance.

“Black Mask is getting away,” you say.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jeno says. “I’ll get him when I get him.” His hand ghosts over your back. “All that matters is you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” you say. “Physically fine, at least. Just trying to sort out my head.”

He hums, second arm wrapping around you in a true hug. You let yourself linger in the moment, breathing in the sharp scent of blood on his jacket. It smears against your scrubs as you press closer to him, turning them slimy against your skin. The jacket hides the warmth of his body, a hard layer separating you from him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

You lean back, letting go of his neck to rest your hands against the side of his mask. Whatever it’s made out of is hard, a thin metal that curves around his features yet doesn’t bend beneath your fingers. It doesn’t look anything like Jeno, the pale eyes concealing the most human part of him. He reaches up, pulling the mask off.

Sweat makes his hair stick to his forehead, which is creased with concern. His eyes flit between yours, dark and full of everything. For too long when you first ran into him, he would look at you with cold emptiness. Though you can’t read everything behind them now, he doesn’t bury all his feelings. He lets them shine through.

“It’s not your fault,” you begin, letting your hands fall to his shoulders. “Too much has happened, and that guy hit my head, and I thought I was going to die, so it’s hard to tell what I want to say. What I’ve been meaning to say.” You take a deep breath, looking at his forehead instead of his eyes, at the white streak of hair that clings to his forehead. “But if I don’t say it now, I think I’ll chicken out and never say it.

“I’m kind of a coward,” you say. “I don’t want to get hurt—I mean, like, don’t let anybody anywhere near my heart to keep it safe, and it works. I’ll find an excuse, any excuse to push them away.

“I did it to you. Yeah, I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to think about you dying because it always sends me into a spiral, but those were all excuses. It doesn’t matter that you wear that mask. That doesn’t change anything, and I won’t hide behind it anymore.

“I love you,” you say, “so much. So much that it’s making me brave. I don't want to be a coward anymore. I want to love you. I’m sorry it took me so long, but I love you, I really, really do.”

Jeno doesn’t say anything for a long moment, looking back and forth between your eyes. He doesn’t frown or smile, his face a mask itself.

“Oh,” he says.

“Apparently near death experiences lead to radical reflections and revaluations of life values.”

And then he smiles, a real smile that curls his eyes and sends your stomach hurtling in somersaults. He presses his forehead against yours, your hands still resting on his shoulders.

“Don’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault,” you say. You brush his cheek with your thumb. “Save your applogies for real fuck ups.”

He snorts. “Think there’s going to be a lot of those?”

“Somehow I think I’m going to get stood up a lot,” you say. “It’s okay, though. That’s just what happens when you date a superhero.”

“I don’t know about that,” he says. “I’m no superhero.”

You kiss his nose. “Whatever you want to call it. But you’re a good man, Lee Jeno, through and through.”

Jeno brushes his lips against yours, barely a kiss. He moves hesitantly, like he’s scared you’ll crumble in his hands.

Well, you’re not going to die, he made sure of that. You are here and alive, and so is he. You grip the neckline of his jacket, pulling him into a crushing kiss. You press your lips harder against his and his arms tighten around you, finally kissing you back.

It’s terrifying, how much you trust him. Like jumping off a cliff and knowing he’ll catch you—which basically he just did—you have to let go of the fear. Even when his arms are wrapped around you and you can feel him with every atom, it isn’t easy—a part of you will always want to run away, protect yourself. But you’re done running. Jeno put a gun in your hand and told you to fight. You can do that for him—for yourself.

You will hold onto him and you will love him and he will do the same for you. It’s all you can do.

Bonus:

Jeno doesn’t know how you slept on this armchair. The back is stiff against his back and he can’t hang his legs off the side without the arms cutting into the back of his knees. He can tuck his head against the wing but it leaves his neck at an awkward angle.

It’s for the best, though, since he needs to stay awake anyway. He shifts the chair until it’s against the side of the bed and sets his legs back on the edge of the bed, crossing one over the other and resting his elbows on the armrest. You raise your eyebrows at his feet but don’t tell him to move. He’ll give it a good twenty minutes before he tries to sit on the bed. He wonders if you’ll kick him out if he just asks outright if he can curl up next to you. Better to ease into it.

You look radiant, wearing a big t-shirt curled under the blankets. Your lips curl into a little smile every time you catch him looking at you (which is pretty much always).

“I’m going to invest in a big ass taser,” you say, still listing out your plan to keep yourself safe. “And some heavy duty pepper spray.”

“I can teach you how to shoot a gun,” Jeno offers.

You make a face, nose scrunching.

“No?”

You shake your head slowly. “No thank you. My arms hurt.”

“How about some hand-to-hand?” He asks.

“Are you going to be able to keep your hands to yourself?”

“What are you talking about?”

You look pointedly at his hand, which has found yours, fingers tapping on your knuckles. Huh, he didn’t realize he was doing that. He raises both hands, holding them up like a criminal waiting to be arrested.

“My bad,” he says, setting them in his lap. Your bottom lip juts out for a second but you’re too proud to ask him to hold it again. He bites back a smile at the little war behind your eyes.

“How’s your head?” He asks.

“Concussed,” you say flatly.

“You want to sleep?” He asks.

“Not yet,” you say. You finally concede, reaching out a hand for him. He puts his feet down, slipping out of the chair to sit on the edge of the bed, clasping his hand over yours. Your shoulder rests against his hip. You blink up at him.

“What?” He asks. “Is this okay?”

You nod slowly, studying him with piercing eyes. He gets the feeling you see right through him, so he turns his gaze to your intertwined fingers.

“What did you think of me when you first saw me? When you moved here, I mean,” he asks.

You pause for a long moment. “Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you were unemployed for at least two months.”

Jeno snorts.

“I mean pretty much every time I knocked you were wearing sweats and half the time you looked like you had just woken up!”

Jeno scratches the back of his head with his free hand. “I don’t wear sweats that often.”

You pause for a moment and he doesn’t dare peek at your face. “When you asked me to sew up your scalp, I figured it was either vigilante or something worse, and then I saw Red Hood on the news and I just knew.”

He looks at you, head tilted down to see the top of your head. “Really?”

“It looks like you,” you say. You pause before adding, “Plus you’ve got that leather jacket hanging in your entryway. What’s up with that, by the way?”

“What?”

“Your ‘suit.’ A leather jacket and cargo pants?”

“They’re functional,” he says.

“Your name is Red Hood and you don’t even have a hood. It’s a mask.”

“Well a hood doesn’t exactly protect you,” he says, “and it strikes fear into my enemies.”

You snort. “Does the black t-shirt help with that?”

“Yeah, I can’t defend that one,” he says. “It’s cheap and easy.”

“No wonder you died,” you say.

“I take personal offense at that,” Jeno says.

You yawn. “Okay buddy.” You scoot over a little. “Just lay down already.”

Jeno grins, shifting to pull the covers up and slide his legs down them. He stretches out, rolling as close as he dares to you. His arm hovers over you until you shake your head and pull it over your waist, shifting until he all but lays on top of you. Your shoulder presses against his chest, his head resting on the same pillow only a breath away from you.

“If you wanted to cuddle you could have just asked,” you say.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

You turn your head to meet his eyes, nose brushing against his. He could melt into your eyes, so warm and full of a happiness he hardly recognizes. He hopes he looks a fraction as happy as you do—and he hopes you know it’s only a fraction of how he feels.

He didn’t think he’d ever feel happy again. Even if he finally got his revenge on Joker and Batman, it would be bittersweet at best, the end goal of a bitter fight that started when he dragged himself out of that grave.

But he is happy. It’s the warmth that courses through every fiber of his body, the way his heart pounds every time he looks at you, the hope he feels when he thinks of the “after.”

“You know it’s been years since the last time I smiled?” He says.

“Yeah, I could tell.” Your eyes soften impossibly more. You rest your hand against his cheek again, fingers soft and careful as they trace the lines of his smile. They work their way to his lips, ghosting over the soft skin.

“I think that part is over,” Jeno says. “Hating the world.” He presses a kiss on your thumb. “I’d like to be happier now.

“Red Hood is a part of who I am, and it always will be. But Jeno is too, and I won’t let go of that.” He tightens his arm. “I’d like to hold onto you, too, though.”

You grin. “I’d like that too.” You press a short kiss to his lips. “But my head hurts and right now I’d really just like to go to bed.”

Jeno nods, shifting away only to turn off the lamp on your bedside table. He curls back around you, tucking his head against your neck and pulling you as close to him as he can. He is Jeno, he is Red Hood, and he isn’t alone anymore.

thank you for reading!! likes, reblogs, and comments are always appreciated

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