Work Text:
Would you look at me now?
***
Normally, you would never allow a mascara stain to stay this long by the sink, but this one had been spared.
A quiet black crescent, two weeks old and still stamped into the porcelain, like a bruise-inducing kiss that Ronin had left.
It was, indeed, from when he had come over.
Every time you washed your hands or leaned forward to do your makeup, it caught your eye, and memories of what passed for a casual date bubbled up.
He had been standing between your legs while you sat on the edge of the bathroom counter, palms braced on either side of you. The overhead bathroom lighting was never flattering, but somehow it never did his pretty face any cruelty.
Ronin tilted his chin up at your request, eyes closed, like he trusted you not to make a mess of him.
"Put it on me," he'd said, in that usual lazy voice. "C'mon, I wanna look like I clawed straight outta the grave."
You'd laughed despite yourself, because of course he would. "Going for the rockstar-resurrection vibe?" you'd asked, rolling the little black tube between your fingers.
It was cheap drugstore stuff, something he had probably bought without thinking but had grown to like because the brush worked well enough. When you twisted it open, the bristles came free with a soft resistance, slightly bent and softened from use.
A faint, chemical-sweet scent followed, making the moment feel more intimate than it already was.
He didn't flinch when you leaned in, close enough to feel the warmth of his skin and the steady rise and fall of his breath against your wrist. You were suddenly aware of your perfume, relieved it was one he had complimented before.
Ronin's lashes cast delicate shadows on his pale skin, and for a moment he didn't resemble The Butcher. He looked more like someone waiting to be blessed, if only his God hadn't been the Devil.
You steadied your hand by his jaw, gently placing your thumb beneath his ear. He'd hummed low in his throat, sounding pleased at the way you were indulging him, doing things for him, paying attention.
"Don't poke my eye out, darlin'," he added, a grin tugging at the corner of his lips. "I'm trustin' ya here. Don't make me regret it."
The mascara went on unevenly at first, a little too heavy on one side. You cursed under your breath and he'd laughed, head tipping back, which only earned him a scold to "stay still".
Not that he really cared how it looked. Since you'd started dating, Ronin had grown warmer and more unguarded. Yeah, you didn't think that was possible at first either.
You corrected it with a few more careful strokes and leaned back. "All done."
He opened his eyes and studied himself in the mirror, wearing a thoughtful expression that almost fooled you.
Then, predictably, the smirk arrived. "Huh," he said. "Kinda hot, actually."
"No shit, Sherlock," you'd replied, attempting a half-hearted impression of him from that one time you'd video-called.
You reached to the side to cap the tube, and that was when Ronin leaned in without warning. Closing the remaining distance, his hands slid from the counter to your waist. The kiss was quick but deliberate, meant to throw you off balance.
You laughed into it, fingers fumbling as you tried to put the mascara down without looking. The tube knocked against your toothbrush with a soft clatter, and the wand slipped.
A tiny smudge appeared instantly on the tile, and you broke the kiss to do something about it. "Shit."
He followed your gaze. "Oh, just leave it." He shrugged easily. "Gonna remind you of me when I'm not around."
He leaned back in again, and the sounds of kissing and breathless banter echoed between the mirror and the bathroom walls. You had meant to wipe the stain away then, truly you had, but Ronin had always been good at rearranging your priorities.
And so it was left there to dry and settle.
***
Now it had been two weeks, and you hadn't talked.
The rational part of your brain insisted this wasn't unprecedented. Ronin had always come and gone the way a rainstorm did, following some internal pattern you were never privy to.
You disappeared too, sometimes. When writing swallowed you whole, days would slip by in a blur of sentences, too much caffeine, and half-remembered meals. Silence between you two was not automatically indifference.
So you hadn't chased him. You had given Ronin the space and time to do whatever he needed to, telling yourself he was busy plotting his next kill, or performing it, or taking care of the aftermath.
The thought never quite sat comfortably with you, but that was just the cost of loving Ronin. You were never meant to enter The Butcher's Red Room, and accepting that felt like a small price to pay for the way he looked at you when he was here.
Still, the apartment felt empty without him. It was 2 a.m. Outside, the rain poured down, rattling the living room windows faintly now and then.
Heathers was on. You'd seen it too many times to need to follow the plot, but you'd always enjoyed the progression of the narrative.
You liked, too, how Ronin always scoffed at JD, calling him a "squeaky twink" with delusions of grandeur, even though he could quote whole scenes with irritating precision.
Curled into the corner of the couch with a tub of apple crumble ice cream balanced on your thigh, you could almost hear him now, stretched out warm beside you, offering sarcastic commentary no one had asked for. Your phone lay face-down on the coffee table, deliberately put on silent. You told yourself you weren't waiting for it to light up.
Well, you told yourself a lot of things.
The notification sound came from your laptop instead. You frowned, set the ice cream aside, and dragged yourself over to grab it.
The blue glow of the screen reflected your face back at you. The Slaughterhouse server was already open where you'd left it earlier that evening.
Someone had posted on killer_shit. Was it Misaki? They had mentioned their latest murder would go public soon.
You clicked into the channel with that assumption, but no. It was from someone you wanted to hear from the most, and also probably the least.
The image from the news link loaded slowly, as if giving you time to prepare. The body was mosaicked, but not enough to obscure the shape of it, the way it had been laid out and opened with familiar care. Precision had always been Ronin's signature.
A cheap-looking blonde wig was tossed over the victim's face, its synthetic strands reflecting the streetlight, eerily vibrant against the dark red pooling beneath it. It was such an absurd set-up that messages began stacking immediately.
<hitmeuppp> [02:12]
LMAO the WIG 😭
bro went arts & crafts again
<Angelic> [02:12]
Seems like @goreboy really had creative liberty with this one!
<K9> [02:13]
……
What is the meaning of this?
You stared at the screen, your heartbeat loud in your ears. The room suddenly felt too quiet, like it was caving in around you. The midnight rain softened to a hiss, and the TV dialogue drifted into the background.
When Ronin killed, there was usually a reason. This, though, was showy. Performative. You hated how quickly your writer's mind began filling in the gaps, fully aware that Ronin would never waste a gesture.
No one else might know how to read it, might chalk it up to theatrics or boredom, but you knew.
This was a message meant for you.
You waited for a follow-up. A line of explanation, or a flippant joke, maybe even a tag, because he usually would. Just to see what you had to say.
Six minutes passed. Nothing appeared except a single laugh-crying emoji under Angel's message.
You didn't let yourself think anymore. You just moved. Clicking into his private channel felt automatic, like muscle memory from before you'd started dating.
'Ronin,' you typed. 'I know you're online.'
Did you do it because of what happened that night?
I SWEAR. Nothing happened.
His typing indicator appeared. Vanished. Appeared again. The response came quicker than you expected.
<goreboy> [02:26]
since When do i Need A reason?
doncha gimme that "You're Better than this" Crap
You swallowed, frustration coiling hot and tight somewhere behind your ribs. You typed:
There was nothing to tell you about.
The pause was visibly longer this time. Your thoughts began to spiral. You pictured him exactly as he was when he went silent: jaw tight, tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek, eyes dark with irritation, etc. Pulling his most annoyed face.
Somehow that made the confrontation feel less daunting.
<goreboy> [02:29]
were u Wearin' my mascara
to see That dude
last Friday night
JD launched into one of his love philosophy monologues again on screen. Ronin's question sat there in fragments, accusatory and stupid and intimate all at once, and that made your throat tighten.
Of course it was about that night. You really should have guessed earlier. You should have known he wouldn't let it go untalked-of.
You closed your laptop and slid it across the couch. Your phone was already in your palm by the time you registered the movement, your thumb pressing his name in Contacts.
The call rang once, then twice.
Ronin picked up.
"…Hey." You hated how small that sounded in the space of your apartment.
You could hear him exhale slowly on the other end of the line, but he stayed silent.
Ten seconds, fifteen. You waited patiently before finally blurting out, "Oh Ronin, why did you pick up if you weren't going to say anything?"
Your voice was calm in a way you didn't entirely feel. A pause stretched between you. You imagined him tilting his head, weighing whether to turn this into a joke.
"Should I really be the one explainin' myself?" he retorted.
You shut your eyes, a tired breath leaving you. "I really don't want to fight over the phone."
The intercom buzzed then, sharp and intrusive in the middle of the night. You nearly jumped before your brain caught up. There was a faint sound on the line, fabric shifting, maybe him straightening up.
"Good," he sounded almost amused, "then open up, darlin'. I'm downstairs."
***
By the time you reached the door, your racing pulse had settled into something more manageable. You unlocked it and pulled it open. A few seconds later, unhurried footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Ronin stood there like he hadn't just been a ghost for two weeks. Leather jacket slung loose over a black shirt, hair still damp from the rain, water darkening his collar.
He took you in with one unbroken glance, from your socked feet on the carpet to the frozen blue-grey glow of Heathers flickering against the wall behind you.
"Relax," he said with a smirk. It didn't quite reach his eyes. "It wasn't that guy."
You stepped aside. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing the apartment back into your supposed safe space. Up close, he carried the scent of the cold air and something faintly metallic.
You would never admit it, but the familiarity was comforting.
"Whether it was the same guy or not wasn't why I was……" you started, then stopped when he reached past you to grab the ice cream carton from the counter.
"Still eatin' straight from the tub?" He tilted it slightly as if to inspect how much you'd had after he last visited. "Classy."
You exhaled through your nose. "I didn't think the encounter mattered. Because it didn't."
"You smiled at him," Ronin put emphasis on the verb, his voice flat. "He bought you a drink. You shook your head. Said somethin' else and then you laughed again."
He recited those scenes more clearly than you could even remember, as if he'd been sitting two stools away instead of watching from wherever he disappeared to. You knew he kept his eyes on you. But still, hearing it laid out like evidence was another story.
"Ronin –"
"Hands in his pockets like he was born for the magazines," he continued, irritation bleeding through now. "Some prince straight outta fuckin' Disney, thinkin' he's entitled to your attention just cause he asked nicely."
You stepped closer, placed your hands on his shoulders so he had no choice but to look at you.
"Next time you're jealous," you said more firmly, "you can just tell me."
He scoffed and turned away, his gaze snagging on the rain streaking down the windows. For a second, stripped of his posture and his smugness, Ronin looked younger and caught off-guard, so you wrapped your arms around his neck for a long-awaited hug.
"Jealous, heh," he muttered by your side. "Don't flatter yourself."
You froze, for a moment maybe you could've strangled him there. Pulling back, you crossed your arms, more to give your hands something to do than out of being defensive.
"Then what was it?" you half-glared.
He hesitated.
"You didn't tell me," he said at last. "And I hate not knowing."
"Knowing what?" you asked genuinely. "That a stranger talked to me for five minutes? That I didn't text because I thought you were busy with something that clearly didn't want to be interrupted?"
"That you were somewhere I wasn't," he snapped, then caught himself. His jaw set, the muscle there jumping once before he spoke again.
"Lookin' so…glad to be around perfectly normal people." As though he never got to you at all.
You read into him more carefully, really looked at him this time, and your mind eased into clarity.
"So you wanted me to miss you," you stated the facts plainly and quietly. "And I did. Miserably. I couldn't sleep. I started a novel and couldn't get past chapter three. I kept thinking I heard you in the hallway like a lunatic."
Happy now? hovered at the edge of your tongue. It was tempting, but you bit it back.
A subtle hint of his expression changed. The easy unapologetic confidence faltered into something harder to read – satisfaction, perhaps. Guilt, maybe. He didn't like being seen this cleanly and you knew it.
"You make me sound calculated," he protested.
"You were," you replied. "And I don't even hate you for it. I just want us to be more straightforward with each other."
He leaned back against the counter, head tipping up.
"Would you do that for me? And I promise, I will tell you if anyone tries to approach me again."
"Fuck," Ronin sighed. "I didn't even mean for it to go that far."
You watched his shoulders slump a little. "And I'm sorry too," so you took initiative before he could deflect. "For not checking in when you were clearly unhappy."
His eyes dropped back to you. "How long until you stop letting me do this?" Getting jealous over the small things, he meant.
You shrugged, a tired but tolerating motion. "You always come back eventually."
A short laugh escaped him. "Ya make me sound like a bad habit."
"You are."
Ronin curved up one side of his lips. "Yeah," he might as well have been saying it to himself, "and you love me for it."
This time you stepped into his space, he simply folded around you. The rain outside grew louder, as if the night itself had decided not to let either of you off easy.
You held him tighter and whispered, "Indeed I do."
He pressed a feather-light kiss on your hair, now changing topics, something about needing a hot bath.
Despite everything. Despite the blood, the silences, the feelings lost in miscommunication, and the mess you kept finding your way back into.
You let him stay, every time.