You hear the window before you see him.

A low thud. A faint rattle of glass. Then his boots hit the floor with that heavy, inevitable finality — like he never had any intention of staying away in the first place.

You don’t look up. You’re sitting on the edge of your bed, head in your hands, trying to breathe past the sour bite of too much cheap whiskey and too many thoughts you can’t drown.

He doesn’t say anything. You feel him behind you, the heat of him, the weight of his presence pressing into your back even from across the room.

A zipper slides. The creak of his jacket. The low scrape of metal — his helmet hitting the dresser. All those small sounds that mean Jason’s here.

When he finally speaks, his voice is low, ragged. “You gonna keep ignoring me all night?”

You don’t answer. Your nails dig into your palms, little half-moon crescents, grounding you in the now.

He scoffs, a bitter sound that scrapes down your spine. “Right. Fuckin’ typical.”

A pause. You can hear his breathing, uneven, harsh — like he ran here, like he couldn’t wait even though he’ll pretend otherwise.

“This is what we are, isn’t it?” he says. “You don’t look at me. I don’t ask questions. We fuck. You cry after I leave. Rinse and repeat.”

It’s not a question, but it hangs in the air like a dare.

You should tell him to leave. You should scream at him, claw at him, tell him he ruins you every time he crawls through that window.

But you don’t.

Instead, you stand, turning to face him. He looks wrecked — hair mussed, bruise blooming across his jaw from tonight’s patrol, knuckles raw and split. His eyes catch yours and they’re burning, furious and terrified at the same time.

Your hands reach for his face before your mind can stop you, fingers ghosting over the bruise. He flinches, but doesn’t pull away.

“You’re hurt,” you whisper.

He barks a short laugh. “Ain’t we both?”

The words slice something open in your chest. Before you can think, you crash into him, lips smashing against his, teeth clashing. His hands snap to your hips, fingers digging deep enough to bruise, pulling you closer like he wants to fuse your bones together.

It’s messy. Violent. Desperate. You taste copper on his tongue, whiskey on yours. He lifts you, tossing you onto the bed like you weigh nothing, climbing over you with a growl caught low in his throat.

“Say it,” he hisses against your lips between kisses that burn more than they soothe. “Say you hate me. Say you want me gone.”

But you can’t.

Because you don’t hate him. You hate what he does to you. You hate how he makes you feel alive and ruined in the same breath. You hate that he’ll leave before sunrise, leaving your sheets cold and your heart colder.

Your fingers twist in his hair, tugging him closer. Your voice breaks when it finally comes out. “Don’t go.”

He freezes. Just for a second. And you feel it — the truth in the space between heartbeats, the softness he guards like a loaded gun.

Then he kisses you again, rougher this time, swallowing every word you don’t say.

He’ll leave later. You both know that. He always does.