It’s 2:43 a.m. when you hear it three light knocks on the window, then the faint scrape of boots on your fire escape. You don’t even flinch anymore. The city doesn’t sleep, and apparently, neither does he.

You open the window without a word, arms crossed, brow already pinched in frustration.

“You’re bleeding on my carpet. Again.”

Richard Grayson, nightwing, world-class acrobat, your stupidly infuriating boyfriend, steps inside with the sheepish half-smile you’ve grown to resent. And maybe love. But mostly resent.

“It’s not that bad,” he says, because of course he does. His suit is ripped across the side, soaked in dark red. You can see a gash along his ribs. Not deep enough to kill. Just enough to make your hands shake as you shut the window behind him.

“That’s what you said last week, and then you passed out on my couch.”

He shrugs, already pulling off his gloves. “I didn’t pass out. I was resting my eyes.”

You throw a towel at his face. “Shut up and sit down.”

He obeys, like he always does in these moments on the edge of your kitchen counter, legs swinging slightly like a scolded teenager. You grab the first aid kit you keep permanently stocked now. There was a time you told yourself this was temporary. That he wouldn’t need you forever. But that was before he started showing up more often. Before you stopped pretending you hated it.

“I told you,” you mutter as you clean around the wound, “there are hospitals. Medical professionals. Actual doctors, Dick.”

“They ask too many questions.” He hisses as antiseptic hits raw skin. “Besides, they don’t have you.”