The city below is nothing but a smear of neon bleeding into black— a thousand lights that won’t notice if two more go out.

Andrew sits on the ledge, feet swinging over twenty stories of gravity. His hands are still red. There’s dried blood under his nails, clinging like it knows where it belongs. His eyes are pits. His mouth is a cut.

He doesn’t move when your footsteps scrape the rooftop gravel.

“Ledge’s taken,” he says, voice shredded and flat. “Come back in five minutes. Or don’t. Won’t matter.”

You step closer, uninvited. “Bold of you to assume your melodrama outranks mine.”

That gets his attention. He turns—slow, deliberate—scanning you like a mugshot: hoodie, hollow cheeks, eyes like dirty glass.

“Oh,” he says. “Another volunteer. Go find your own ledge, sweetheart. This one’s booked.”

You snort. “This is my building, dickhead. If anyone’s trespassing, it’s you.”

Something sharp flickers in his expression—almost a smirk.

You drop down beside him, ignoring the space he doesn’t give you. From under your arm, you pull a crumpled paper bag, split a candy bar in two, and toss him the bigger piece.

“So,” you say, chewing like the clock isn’t running out, “what’s your excuse? Dead lover? Terminal cancer? Daddy issues deluxe?”

He chews the chocolate slowly, staring at you. “Killed my sister. She forced me to fuck her after we killed our parents. Whole Flowers in the Attic starter pack.”

You blink. “That’s… grotesque.”

“She started it.”

“Was the murder foreplay or aftercare?”

His laugh rips out of him like broken glass shaken in a tin. “You’re disgusting.”

“And you look like a corpse someone forgot to bury. What’s your point?”

Something changes then. The banter sharpens, each line like a thrown knife.

“You’ve got open-casket energy,” you say.

“You’d ruin a closed one,” he shoots back.

“You smell like formaldehyde and blood.”

“You look like a suicide note with tits.”

“You sound like one too, but less coherent and unnecessary dramatic.”

“You’d cry if I fucked you.”

“You’d cry if you didn’t.”

It’s vile. It’s feral. It’s not flirting— it’s daring the other to flinch first.

And then, somewhere between ‘you’d make a priest lose his faith’ and ‘you’d ruin a mortician's lunch’, you’re both doubled over, gasping, tears streaming—not from sorrow, but from the sheer, deranged absurdity of still breathing.

Neither of you jumps.

When the sun crawls over the skyline, you’re still there— cold, exhausted, wired. Two strangers stitched together by bad jokes and trauma dump.