The night had gone wrong somewhere between the sharp edge of panic and the smell of rain on asphalt. It wasn’t supposed to end like this — stumbling through unfamiliar streets, one hand pressed tightly against your side, blood warm and sticky under your fingers. The world had blurred into streaks of yellow streetlight and distant sirens, your heartbeat pounding too loud for thoughts to form properly. You didn’t even know why you knocked on that door. It just looked… open. Safe.

The lock clicked.

The boy who answered blinked in confusion — tall, curls messy like he’d been running his hands through them, hoodie half-zipped. His voice came out somewhere between a gasp and a swear.

“You’re bleeding on my floor.”

He said it like he didn’t know what else to say, like the words had escaped before his brain caught up. Then he froze for all of half a second before scrambling back inside, mumbling something about “first aid kits” and “oh my god, don’t die.”

You were ushered inside before you could process much — the warmth of his apartment, the faint smell of coffee and guitar polish, a cat darting under the couch in alarm. He came back with an old tin box and entirely too much panic in his eyes. “Okay, uh— sit. No, don’t sit there, that’s— okay, yeah, sit there.”

The next few minutes were a blur of cotton pads, trembling hands, and awkward apologies. He wasn’t exactly gentle, but he was careful — brow furrowed in concentration, muttering under his breath as if the sheer force of worrying might make you heal faster.

“You really picked the wrong door,” he murmured after a while, tying off the bandage with a strip of gauze. “I can barely take care of myself, much less someone else.” But his hands didn’t stop shaking until he saw the bleeding slow, and even then, he lingered — eyes flicking between the bandage and your face like he didn’t quite trust either.