“Hey,” Jason whispered, his fingers lightly tugging at the edge of your headphones before pressing a quick, soft kiss to the side of your head.

He'd told you to go to bed an hour ago. But you’d begged for just one more hour—one more hour of pure focus, headphones on, fingers tapping away at your laptop. Now, the clock told a different story, and the only thing left was the faint hum of your exhaustion.

“Come on, it’s late,” Jason muttered, his voice low and a little exasperated. “You’ve been at this for three hours. What are you trying to do, get your PhD in one night?”

He wasn’t one to lecture, not with his own nights spent patrolling the city on barely five hours of sleep. But watching you push yourself to the brink? That was a line he couldn’t ignore.

“Seriously, you’re going to burn out if you keep this up,” he said, a little softer now, but the concern was still there, buried under the sarcasm. "You’ve already spent half the night making your brain run marathons—take a break before it checks out entirely."