Chapter Text
The apartment felt wrong tonight.
Not unusually bad. Just wrong in the specific way things sometimes became at three in the morning, when every sound turned sharp enough to scrape against your nerves. The refrigerator hummed too loud. Pipes rattled somewhere behind the walls. A couple downstairs argued in muffled bursts that dissolved before words became understandable. But those werent any of the things that were really bothering you.
It was your own skin.
Your binder compressed against your ribs like a hand that wouldn’t let go– a cruel reminder.
You stood in front of the bathroom mirror too long before finally switching the light off.
That helped sometimes. Tonight, it did not. You were grown, been on testosterone for years, but it can’t fix everything. It is hard to keep friends in a small, rural town. They snoop. They find out. They leave, sometimes with insults, sometimes with threats of violence.
Its crazy, same friends you sit, play video games with, go out with, will drop you like a bad habit over a learned physical aspect about you. But that is life, youre learning to live with it.
You try to be grateful. You know there are worse things that could happen.
You grabbed your hoodie from the floor and left before your thoughts could settle into anything useful. Or dangerous.
The stairwell smelled damp. Someone had spilled beer near the fifth floor days ago and the sour smell still lingered beneath dust and cigarette smoke. Your boots echoed hollowly as you climbed.
Fourteen flights.
You always took the stairs at night.
The elevator made you feel trapped inside your own body. Intrusive thoughts said with your luck, itll be the one time the elevator stalls.
By the time you reached the rooftop access door, your lungs and back burned faintly beneath the binder. You leaned briefly against the wall, eyes shut, waiting for your heartbeat to settle.
Outside, wind shoved hard against the metal door the second you cracked it open.
Cold air flooded in.
Good.
The town stretched around you in smeared neon and wet concrete. Rain earlier that evening had left everything slick and reflective, the rooftop shining faintly beneath cloudy moonlight.
At 3am this space was liminal. And it was yours.
You stepped out automatically toward your usual corner near the ledge.
Then stopped.
There were dark spots scattered across the concrete ahead.
The black sheen caught moonlight wetly– turning red.
Blood.
Your stomach dropped immediately.
For half a second your brain supplied the worst possibilities all at once.
Dog.
Cat.
Something hit by a car that crawled up here somehow.
“Oh, come on,” you muttered under your breath.
The thought hit instantly after:
what the hell were you even supposed to do if there was an injured animal up here?
Call somebody? At three in the morning?
Try to help it yourself?
Your chest tightened unpleasantly. Not fear exactly. More the exhausted dread of suddenly being responsible for something suffering when you barely felt capable of handling yourself tonight.
What if you had to put it out of its misery? Could you?
Or would you leave it to suffer?
Another wet sound dragged across the rooftop.
You froze.
It came from farther ahead, somewhere near the ledge.
Low.
Heavy.
Not small enough to belong to a cat.
The shape in the darkness shifted.
Too large to be a dog.
Too–
Human.
Your pulse kicked hard.
A broad silhouette crouched near the far side of the roof, one hand braced against the concrete. For one disorienting second you couldn’t make sense of what you were seeing. Just dark clothes soaked darker in places. The outline of shoulders rising and falling unevenly.
Then metal flashed.
Three silver lines slid from between the man’s knuckles with a sound that scraped straight down your spine.
Not knives.
Not possible.
The man jerked suddenly, like pain had seized through him, and one claw punched into the rooftop concrete hard enough to crack it.
You took an involuntary step backward.
The sound echoed.
Instantly, the man’s head snapped toward you.
The movement was fast enough to feel wrong. Uncanny.
Moonlight caught briefly against sharp eyes beneath dark hair plastered damp against his forehead. Blood streaked one side of his jaw. His posture changed the second he noticed you— coiling tight, defensive, dangerous.
You understood very quickly that if he wanted to cross the rooftop before you reached the door, he probably could.
Neither of you moved.
Wind rattled chain-link fencing somewhere overhead.
His stare didn’t soften.
“Roof’s closed,” he said.
His voice came rough, low, edged with warning.
You swallowed.
“Didn’t know it had business hours.”
A beat of silence.
“You should leave,” he said again.
This time quieter.
You almost listened.
You glanced at the blood again before you could stop yourself.
A lot of it.
The man noticed.
His shoulders squared slightly, like he was preparing for you to panic.
You almost did.
You glanced toward your usual corner near the ledge.
Then back at him. Fuck.
“You’re bleeding on my spot.” The words slipped out before you could stop them.
For a second he just stared.
Then something strange flickered across his face.
Not amusement exactly.
Confusion.
“You got poor survival instincts?”
“Probably.”
You shoved your hands into your hoodie pocket and moved carefully toward the opposite side of the roof, leaving plenty of distance between you. Every nerve in your body stayed alert as you lowered yourself onto the cold concrete near the ledge.
The man watched the entire time.
Tense.
Ready.
Like he expected you to pull a gun or call the cops or bolt screaming for the door.
You did none of those things. Why would you?
The silence stretched.
The town whispered below you. Crickets, night birds.
The man lowered his gaze first. One hand pressed harder against his side.
Blood seeped steadily between his fingers.
You should leave.
Every reasonable instinct said leave now.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
The cold bit through your hoodie, sharp enough to sting your lungs each time you breathed. You tucked your hands into your sleeves and stared out across the skyline instead of directly at him.
Eventually another rough sound came from across the rooftop.
You looked over despite yourself.
The man had pulled his hand away from his side.
The tear in his shirt exposed a deep wound beneath.
And right in front of you, the edges of it shifted.
Closing.
Your stomach turned.
The skin knit together slowly beneath blood.
No.
No, that was—
Your body reacted before your brain did, pulse hammering.
The man looked up instantly.
There it was again— that expectation.
Braced for fear.
For rejection.
For you to finally understand whatever he clearly assumed people always did.
Your throat felt dry.
“What the hell are you?” slipped out before you could stop it.
The second the words landed, something in his face shut down.
Not anger.
Worse.
Resignation.
You regretted it immediately- that was some shit thats been said to you before. And now you are saying it to someone else. Different context, but still feel like a hypocrite.
The rooftop suddenly felt much colder.
You sat back down hard and scrubbed a hand over your face.
“Sorry,” you muttered. “That came out weird.”
A low scoff left him. “Usually comes out worse.”
You looked at the wound again.
It had nearly closed completely now.
“That still looks painful.”
His eyes flicked toward you briefly.
Then away.
“Been through worse.”
The silence after that wasn’t comfortable, exactly, but it stopped feeling like the kind that might end with your body thrown off a roof.
The man leaned back against the ledge with visible exhaustion and pulled a cigar from inside his jacket. His hands looked rough up close. Scarred. Bruised knuckles split open and healing crookedly before your eyes.
The lighter sparked once. Twice.
Smoke curled into the cold air.
“You always wander into situations you should avoid?” he asked.
“You always threaten strangers on rooftops?”
“Wasn’t a threat.”
That actually unsettled you more.
You studied him carefully now.
Broad shoulders beneath worn flannel. Heavy boots. Face lined with old scars barely visible in dim light. Everything about him felt rough-edged in a way that didn’t belong to the town around you.
Not wild.
Not exactly.
More like untethered.
“You live around here?” you asked.
“No.”
“Then why this building?”
He took a slow drag from the cigar before answering.
“Quiet.”
You glanced around at the roads below you.
“Interesting definition of quiet.”
“It’s higher up.”
Something about that answer lodged strangely beneath your ribs.
You understood it immediately. But something told you the jump wouldn’t benefit him as it would you.
The rooftop door rattled softly in the wind behind you.
Your chest ached faintly beneath the binder. You shifted against the pressure instinctively, with a grunt. 48 hours in the damned thing was starting to catch up.
Across the rooftop, the man’s gaze flicked toward the movement.
“You’re hurt.”
You laughed once under your breath. “You are actively leaking blood.”
“That ain’t an answer.”
“It’s not your business.”
His attention lingered for one brief second longer before pulling away without argument.
That surprised you.
Most people either got awkward or overly careful once they noticed something off about you physically. Questions wrapped in concern. Concern wrapped in judgment dressed up as curiosity.
This man just accepted the boundary immediately.
The wind picked up harder.
You shivered before you could stop it.
Without warning, something landed beside you.
A flannel jacket.
You stared at it.
Then at him.
He was already looking back out over the town.
“Take it or don’t,” he said.
“You need it more than I do.”
“I’ll live.”
There was something dry enough in the response that you snorted quietly before catching yourself.
After a second, you pulled the jacket around your shoulders.
Still warm.
The smell clinging to it hit immediately— smoke, rain, iron-rich blood, something woodsy underneath.
Human.
Real.
Across from you, the man watched the town like he was waiting for something to crawl out of it.
“You always come up here?” you asked eventually.
“Usually.”
“Why?”
A long pause.
Then:
“People ask too many questions.”
You looked down at the blood drying black against the concrete between you.
“Fair.”
Silence settled again.
Not friendly.
Not hostile either.
Just suspended.
The kind of quiet where every small movement became noticeable. The scrape of his boot against concrete. Wind catching loose strands of hair across your face. The slow rise and fall of his breathing evening out now that the wounds had mostly healed.
You became suddenly aware of how tired you were.
Not sleepy.
Just worn thin. A sort of exhaustion that sleep could not touch.
Your head tipped back briefly against the ledge behind you.
Above, clouds dragged slowly across the sky.
“You got a name?” you asked without opening your eyes.
No answer came for long enough that you thought maybe he’d ignored you.
Then:
“No.”
Your eyes opened.
“What?”
“You don’t need it.”
You stared at him.
The corner of his mouth twitched faintly around the cigar.
Asshole.
For some reason that made him feel less frightening.
The cold eventually seeped through your jeans and into your bones. Exhaustion dragged heavier against your limbs by the minute.
You closed your eyes again just for a second.
Just to rest them.
The wind softened.
Somewhere nearby, the man shifted slightly against concrete.
Then nothing.
—─── ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆ ───
When you woke, pale blue dawn had started bleeding slowly into the sky.
Your neck hurt.
The rooftop was empty.
No sign anyone had been there at all.
Except for the jacket.
And the deep claw marks gouged into the concrete near the ledge.