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The glaring red light of your alarm clock read 3 A.M. It was the slow creak of your bedroom door that had awakened you from your restless dreams, the same door you refused to let Leon grease. You needed that creak to tell you he was home safe.
“Leon?” you sleepily called out to the darkness. It could’ve just been a part of your dream. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Hey, sweetheart,” the darkness then softly replied back.
He’d only been gone a couple of days. ‘Only’ – but it felt like weeks. It sounded like he’d been put through it again, his voice weak and cracking like the mere act of talking was too exhausting to continue doing.
Your heart slammed into your ribcage hard enough to bruise as you clicked the light on, the brightness making you wince.
And then your gaze fell on him, standing at the foot of your bed. On the bruises on his wrists. On the dried blood smeared across his shoulder and chest. On the deep, dark circles underneath his eyes.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, tossing his shirt in the direction of the hamper with a poorly disguised grimace. “I’m just gonna go take a shower. Go back to sleep.”
You slipped out of bed, approaching him slowly like you were handling a skittish, wounded animal that was going to bolt at the first sign of danger. It got worse the closer you got. There was not a single spot of healthy-looking skin left around his wrists, purple, almost black bruises spreading out towards his hands and forearms. The dried blood hid what looked like a cut at first glance and a stab wound on the second, sewn shut with black thread.
“Oh god, Leon,” was all you could get out, rendered speechless by the state of him. Your eyes drifted downward toward his right hand, cradled inside the other. Blood stuck to his fingers as you unfurled them to reveal another injury on his palm. It just wouldn’t end. Everywhere you looked was another bruise or cut or wound.
But the red you saw across his heart was different. It looked like sunburn, the skin angry and swollen.
It wasn’t like his usual injuries.
“’m fine,” he lied with a smile too weak to tug both corners of his lips up. “Looks worse than it is.”
Whatever hell he’d been stuck in these last few days, he’d spent the tail end of it hurrying home. To you. His bastion of sanity in his insane world.
You hated yourself now for joking about his surprisingly poetic turn of phrase. “Got a word of the day calendar from a colleague?”
It was all you could do not to break down crying at the time. He always came home from one of his ‘business trips’ looking like several years had been shaved off his life.
Today he looked like he already had one foot in the grave.
You let go of his hand, coaxing him toward the bathroom with a gentle tug on his bicep. “Come on.”
Your heart was too busy aching out of your chest for you to still have the fortitude to be surprised at how easily he went along with it. Maybe he realized there was no point in arguing with you over this at three in the morning. Or maybe he secretly needed this too.
You helped him discard the rest of his clothes, the dried mud flaking off onto the bathroom floor.
“Sorry, seems I brought a mud bath home,” he joked – poorly. “I’ll clean that tomorrow.”
“Jesus Christ, Leon, you really think I care about some mud right now?”
Fuck. You didn’t mean to snap like that.
“It’s fine,” you assured him with a sigh. “Sorry, I’m just…”
Worried. Scared. Why won’t you talk to me?
“Yeah.” The smile he gave you was a little less frail this time around. “I know.”
You turned the water on and stripped down, tossing your clothes in a heap beside his. Snatching the clean washcloth that had been waiting for his return from his side of the sink, you followed him inside the steam. For the brief moment his back was turned to you, your gaze raked up and down in swift assessment. Scratches and bruises. Nothing too serious, thank god.
You held the washcloth under the running water and dragged it, gently, across the stab wound on his shoulder. It didn’t look infected. That was something. The sutures, though…
“Leon—” You traced the black thread with your fingertip, eyebrows knitting together. “—did you do this yourself?”
“You can tell, huh? Shoddy craftsmanship on my end, I guess.”
“Seems pretty good to me,” you mumbled, unsure if he could even hear you over the sound of water cascading on tile.
What the hell were they making him do for him to need the know-how to stitch his own wounds? This wasn’t the first time you asked yourself a question such as this and it wouldn’t be the last, but you hated how there was no possible answer you or even he could give that would make any of it okay. Coming home looking like this wasn’t normal. Knowing – needing to stitch oneself up wasn’t normal.
“Would you believe me if I told you this ended well?”
“’Well?’” you repeated, tearing your gaze away from his stitches. He was broken, battered and bruised, looked like he hadn’t slept in over a week, like he had seen hell with his own two eyes and escaped the grasp of its licking flames… and yet, somehow, you didn’t believe he was telling a white lie so he could stay strong for you. For once.
“Relatively,” he amended, a glimmer of sadness in his eyes. “Better than usual.”
“How?”
You knew the answer before the words, “Can’t tell you,” even left his mouth. The addition of, “Sorry, sweetheart,” didn’t make you feel better in the slightest.
But hearing him say, “You’re better off not knowing, trust me,” just straight-up pissed you off.
“You come home looking like you were violently mobbed and you still think I’ll worry less if I know nothing? You can’t throw a single fucking crumb of information my way? Not one?”
“I shouldn’t even be here,” he told you in that matter-of-fact, detached sort of way that cut you more deeply than his anger would have. “Your life is at risk by being with me – hell, it might be at risk just by knowing me. D’you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about walking away from this?”
“Running away,” you said, hating yourself for how cold you managed to sound when you burned for him. “Call it like it is.”
Brushing his wet bangs back, he slumped against the glass partition with an exhausted huff of a laugh. “Sure, babe. Whatever you want to call it.”
“If I cause you so much extra stress, maybe you should leave.” The intended anger you’d tried to infuse your voice with withered on the third word. You couldn’t be mad at him for fearing for your life. “You have too much on your mind to deal with something you can change.”
You took his hand and dabbed the cut with the washcloth, staining the fabric red. Getting it cleaned was the priority, not looking into his eyes so you could witness yet another part of his soul dying. Just the cut. All that mattered was the cut.
Leon’s injured hand closed around yours. “I should,” he said softly, “I really should. Shouldn’t rely on you to heal my wounds.” A weary sigh escaped him, one that made you squeeze your eyes shut because you knew you were on the brink of looking at him, influencing him and whatever choice he’d decided upon. “Some days, I feel like the only reason I manage to come home at all is because it’d kill you if I didn’t.”
A lump formed in your throat. Hope always was hard to swallow down.
“I can’t quit my job. Doubt I’d know what to do with myself if I did.” He pulled you closer, molding you to him – or perhaps molding himself to you. “It’s all I know,” he admitted quietly, nuzzling his face into your hair. “All I’m good for.”
“God—” As much as you tried to hide your sniffling, your voice cracking gave you away within an instant. “—they really did a fucking number on you.”
His chest rumbled with a laugh, but he didn’t deny it. In turn, you held him a little tighter. Couldn’t risk squeezing him too hard with all those injuries.
You pulled your legs up onto the couch, blowing at the steam wafting off your hot chocolate. It wasn’t chocolate you smelled when you inhaled it though, the scent of whiskey burning the inside of your nostrils. You glanced at Leon over the edge of your mug, observed him as he stared into his too-full glass of brandy.
He turned the glass around in his hand before lifting it to his lips. “Bottoms up.” For one long moment he gazed into the distance, raised his glass like he was toasting to something, then knocked his drink back all at once. “Fuck,” he sighed, head falling back against the couch as he sank deeper into it. “Wish I could sleep for a week.”
“You have my blessing. Easier to keep the place clean when you’re out of the way.”
Your attempt to lighten the mood successfully got you a chuckle. “Can’t argue with that when there’s mud on the bathroom floor—” His head whipped up toward the ceiling, hand grasping at air to the right of his thigh.
Thump. Thump thump.
Oh. Just the neighbors rearranging furniture at four in the morning. Again.
Fuckers.
Sighing into your hot chocolate, you looked at Leon, who continued to stare at the ceiling with his body wound tighter than a coil about to snap.
“Leon?”
It took until the noise subsided for the tension in his shoulders to slowly ease up. “I fucking hate living in the city sometimes,” he said, leaning forward to put his empty glass on the coffee table. He stayed put, elbows on his knees as he rested his forehead against the backs of his fingers. His entire body went rigid again the second he heard another thump.
“Oh my god, I’m going to kill those assholes!” You left the couch to grab the broom from the closet, readying it as a weapon while you clambered onto the couch. “Shut the fuck—”
Leon grabbed the broom before you could shove it through the ceiling and up your neighbors’ asses. “You’ll make it worse,” he said, coaxing you back down to the floor with his white-knuckled grip you couldn’t fight against even if you tried. “I’ll talk to them tomorrow.”
“You can’t reason with the kind of people who think dragging their couch to a different corner of the room is a normal thing to do in the middle of the goddamn night.”
Shoving that broom up their asses would be far more satisfying and effective.
Realizing you weren’t going to get your weapon back, you finally let go with a huff. “Swear to god I’m getting too old for apartment living.”
Laying the broom across his lap, he finally managed a proper grin for the first time that night. “Ready to retire to the country, huh?”
“I’m ready to move to the middle of nowhere at this point.”
“Well, the middle of nowhere can get pretty cheap. Might even be able to afford someplace nice on my shitty salary.”
“Peace and quiet,” you said softly. Somewhere he wouldn’t have to jump out of his skin every time the neighbors decided to reinvent the term ‘scum of the earth.’ Somewhere green, with clean air and only a fraction of the people. “That sounds nice.”
Leon took your hand in his, brushing his thumb across your skin. Of course he was drawing hearts. Adorable cheeseball. “What do you say? You wanna buy a house with me?”
“That’s a big step,” you said as he moved the broom aside to pull you onto his lap. “You sure you’re ready to be stuck coming home to me? This is your last chance to leg it.”
“I should…” Fingers threading through your hair, he brought your face down to his, baby blues flitting across your lips before he gently pressed them against his own. “…but I promise I won’t.”