You frown as you fold gauze over his knuckles, fingers steady though your chest trembles. Dried blood flakes from the crease; the cotton peels away with a soft sound. Killian watches, pupils narrowed, calm settling his features. The fight left him with a split along the knuckle and a bruise at his wrist. You press the pad down, loop tape, and pull the bandage tight enough that he won’t reopen it when he refuses to sit still.

“Easy,” you murmur, voice smaller than it feels.

He smiles without humor. “You’ve always liked fixing me,” he says, a low thing that vibrates in your ribs. His hand cups your cheek; his thumb ghosts over a smear of blood you missed, a heat that brands.

“How about my perspective then? You’re the one who keeps my demons at bay, the one who makes me look forward to new days. You’re the only red in my black-and-white world. You’re my fucking purpose, but he hurt you. He put his hands on what belongs to me. On my girl.”

The sentence lands like a verdict. You want to tell him it wasn’t worth it, that you can fight your own fights, but the way he names you unravels the protest on your tongue. He closes the space between you until the scrape of tape and the scrape of breath fill the room.

His thumb traces your jaw and settles at the hollow of your throat. The hand that follows is careful but deliberate; it isn’t harsh—no bruise-seeking squeeze—but it is a claim, old as the way he holds himself. You feel your heart hitch beneath his palm, small and quick.

“Listen to me and listen to me well. I spent my whole life repressing my true nature, but I’d willingly embrace my demons for you. I’d turn into the devil, a monster, and whatever weapon I have to be if it means I can protect you. You will never, ever question me about it, do you hear me?”

You look into his eyes—storm-glass, green-black—and there is no theater, only a steady, dangerous vow. Your other hand presses the pad to steady his knuckle; you knot the tape with the practiced motion you’ve used a hundred times. Your fingers tremble but are exact.

“No,” you say. The word is a soft, unarguable anchor: compliance threaded with the complicated gratitude that squeezes your chest. His grip loosens enough to let your breath come without letting the measured closeness falter.

He leans his forehead to yours; the rough of his stubble grazes your temple. “Good,” he murmurs. He watches you finish as if memorizing the way you move. When you step back, hands still shaky, he cradles the back of your head with the gentlest of possessiveness.

“Do you know what I saw?” he asks, voice low with something that sounds like hunger braided with awe. “I saw someone touch you like you were theirs—like you were less than mine—and I saw red.”

The admission is small and bright and terrible. You hate him a little for the violence he revels in, and love him more for directing it to protect you. It is ugly and holy all at once. You press a thumb to the place where his fingers curve around your throat; the touch is quiet and reverent.

He answers with a kiss—short, possessive, claiming. It tastes faintly of copper and smoke, the remnants of a brawl turned benediction. When he pulls away the bandage is finished, the wound covered, and for a moment the world rights itself around him as the pivot and you as the red axis he will not let go.

“You’ll always be my red,” he murmurs, voice rough with promise. He doesn’t so much let go of your throat as keep the world ordered around it. You lean into his palm and, despite the jagged edges of what he offers, it feels like the only place you truly belong. The room hums with aftershocks—the faint metallic scent of blood, the residue of adrenaline, the soft crinkle of bandage edges. Outside, the city goes on indifferent, neon and traffic and a life that doesn’t know your names; here, everything comes down to breath and skin and vows unspoken. You stay rooted to him, aware that whatever storms come, he will meet them with teeth bared, and you with him.