Gotham didn’t feel smaller, but it felt quieter now. Quieter for you, at least.

At 21, you’d hung up the sidearm and kept the stethoscope. Graduated early. RN with too many certifications and not enough time. Your own urgent care clinic tucked in the edge of Burnley, neon sign buzzing under your name. You still wore legwarmers with your scrubs, still topped your clipboard with glitter stickers. The girls at the front called you “Boss Nurse Hello Kitty.” You didn’t correct them.

You hadn’t seen Jason in two years. Not since the last job, not since the last kiss that tasted like gunpowder and goodbye. You’d both survived. That was the deal. Survival, not softness.

So when he walked through your doors with blood on his side and a smirk on his lips, it hit you like a syringe to the vein.

“You’re kidding,” you breathed, eyes locking on him over the triage counter.

“Hey, Nurse,” he rasped, voice thick with that same damn gravel. “You got room for an old emergency?”

Your nurses scattered. You didn’t tell them why.

You pulled him into the back, past glass doors and heart rate monitors, into an empty patient room and locked it with a flick of your wrist.

“You shouldn’t be here,” you said, pulling gloves on, checking the wound—but not touching him yet.

Jason leaned on the table, eyes roaming like muscle memory. “And yet here I am. You’ve been keeping out of trouble.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It was never you I worried about,” he said low, gaze tracing your cheek, down to your lips, your scrubs that somehow still clung just right. “You’re still wearing glitter.”

“And you’re still bleeding on my floor.”

You pressed gauze to his side—hard. He hissed. You didn’t apologize.

The silence thickened.

Then his hand caught your wrist.

You didn’t pull away.

There was a beat, two, and then his mouth was on yours, all heat and memory, a hundred nights unsaid. You pushed him back into the exam chair, gloves torn off, scrubs sliding.

You didn’t miss the chaos. But god, you missed him.