Cyan looked at me. He was actually looking now, not through me. "A doctor making a bet," he said slowly, as if he were translating a language he didn’t speak fluently.

"I simply cannot stand watching you be a nuisance," I snapped. "It’s ruining my evening."

The flicker in his eyes grew. Something brief. The dullness moved back just enough to let him stand. He did so slowly, the movement of someone who had been frozen for too long. His legs barely cooperated.

"Not like that," I said, stopping him. I gestured at his entire appearance. "We can’t have you walking out covered in... that."

I found the same nurse and gave her instructions. I located a pair of spare scrubs. I directed Cyan to the staff bathroom and watched the door close behind him

I stood outside. I didn’t leave. I told myself this was about liability. Hospital protocol. I didn’t want a blood-stained man walking through the lobby; it would look bad for the facility. It wasn’t about anything else.

The silence from Inside stretched longer than a shower should take. I checked my watch. Then I checked it again.

I knocked. A sharp rap of the knuckle. "Devereaux."

No answer. I knocked harder. "Devereaux."

I pushed the door open.

Cyan was standing at the sink, his hands gripping the porcelain. The shower was running, and the water spiraling down the drain was red. Dark, vivid red. The blood was washing off in sheets, making the sheer volume of it real in a way the dried stains hadn’t.

He was staring at the water. His head was down, and his breathing was wrong. It was the specific, rhythmic sound of a body deciding to process every ounce of trauma it had been holding back all at once. Hyperventilation.

I stepped into the room and closed the door. "Look at me," I said. I used my clinical voice... the one that knows how to command a room.

He didn’t look.

I moved to him. "Look at me." I put my hand on his shoulder and turned him away from the sink, away from the red water.

I delivered the instructions. Flat. Specific. "In." I counted. "Out." I counted. "Again."

I repeated it until the gasping became breathing. Until he was back in the room with me. He focused, then unfocused, then finally settled on my face.

I reached over and turned the shower off. The silence that followed was better. "Get changed," I said. Then I walked out and closed the door.

When he emerged, he was in the clean scrubs. His hair was damp, and the blood was gone, but the person underneath was still wrong. He was dissociating, his movements slow and mechanical.

I looked at his hands and saw the cut on his palm. "Sit," I told him.

He sat. Arguing required more energy than he had.

I found a first aid kit and some suture materials. I sat across from him and took his hand. The cut was deep enough to need stitches. I didn’t ask how it happened. Asking would require an answer I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.

I addressed the cut on his palm. Then I noticed the blood on his thigh. Another injury he’d ignored. I worked in silence.

My thoughts were running laps while my hands worked. Why am I concerned about this person? This is not my patient. This is not my problem. This is the person who punched me in broad daylight outside an office building.

He was currently the most disappointing version of himself I had encountered. That was the word: disappointing. I had wanted to see the one who didn’t hesitate. Not this. Not this shattered thing.

And yet, I kept stitching.

What is he to Cassian? I wondered. What is he that it does this to him? The answer was obvious, but I didn’t want it to be the answer. I examined the thought anyway, because that is what I do with things I don’t like. I dissect them.

I finished the bandaging and set the tools aside. "Is there anyone I can contact?" I asked. It was the practical, clinical next step. "Someone to pick you up?"

Nothing.

"Devereaux," I said, sharper this time. "Answer me."

"I don’t want to go home," he said. His first words in a while. Quiet. Specific. "I can’t go home."

I looked at him. If he didn’t want to go home, where was he planning to go when I told him to leave? To a park bench? To the dock?

The exhaustion of the entire evening finally landed on me. The two surgeries, the midnight hour, the blood, the bet. All of it.

What am I doing? Why am I still here?

"Fine," I said, before the thought could finish. "You’re coming with me."

We left the building. We crossed the parking structure in silence. Cyan sat in the backseat of my car, slumped against the window, his eyes open but seeing nothing in particular.

I drove through the city at midnight. The streets were quiet... that specific, artificial pause before the morning rush.

What am I doing? I asked myself again. It wasn’t rhetorical. I was genuinely asking, but the answer wasn’t available. The answer would require examining things I wasn’t ready to look at.

We reached my apartment building. We rode the elevator up in a silence that was beyond awkward. It was very odd. Extremely odd. Two people who had nothing to say to each other, standing in a small metal box at one in the morning.

I unlocked the door and opened it. Cyan walked in and looked at the apartment. He looked at it the way he looked at things before tonight with that analytical sweep, but it was diminished. Dimmed.

"Make yourself comfortable," I said, the words feeling heavy and strange.

I excused myself and went into the bedroom. I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself.

I was still in my hospital clothes. I was still wearing my "work face" in a space that was supposed to be separate from work. I had a person I barely knew... a person who had assaulted me... sitting in my living room.

The word imposter came to mind.

The "real" Nick Bennett would never do this.

The real Nick does not bring home strangers. He does not make bets. He does not hover outside bathrooms. He does not stitch wounds that are not his responsibility. He does not care about the look in someone’s eyes when the light goes out of them. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

The real Nick Bennett looked back at me from the mirror, doing all of those things.

Apparently, I didn’t know myself as well as I thought.