“Doing what?”
“Finding new ways to hurt yourself.” His fingers brushed the edges of the wound, testing for foreign material. “Every month, you're in here with something. Falls. Training accidents. Slipping in gardens that somehow fight back.”
“I'm clumsy.”
“You're a liar.” But his voice was gentle. Sad. “And I'm tired of patching you up without understanding why you need patching.”
He grabbed supplies from the cabinet. Antiseptic. Suture kit. Local anesthetic. Laid them out with practiced efficiency.
“This needs stitches,” he said. “I'll numb it first, but you'll feel the pressure.”
“I know the drill.”
He injected the anesthetic in small doses around the wound. I watched his face instead of his hands. The concentration there. The care. Like every stitch mattered. Like I mattered.
When had someone last looked at me like that?
“You keep bleeding to prove you're alive,” he murmured, threading the needle. “But there are better ways, you know.”
“Like what?”
“Like actually living.”
The first stitch pulled tight. I felt the pressure, the tug of thread through skin. Watched his fingers work with surgical precision.
“I am living.”
“You're surviving. There's a difference.” Another stitch. “Surviving is just not dying. Living is finding reasons not to want to.”
The next stitch tugged a line of heat across my skin. Amir’s eyes tracked every wince, every shallow breath. He worked quietly, letting the silence settle—no lecture, just the unspoken weight of concern.
The suture thread pulled again, neat and clean. His hands were steady, fingers long and sure, never fumbling, never rushed. “Almost done,” he murmured, voice a velvet anchor. “I want to check for any deeper damage. That means you need to strip down, Sebastian.”
The request wasn’t unusual—at least not in theory. In practice, my skin prickled at the thought. “Just to my shorts?”
Amber eyes flicked up, unreadable. “Yes. You took that bullet to the calf and there’s bruising up your thigh. Let’s be thorough, not proud.”
My fingers fumbled at the buttons, each movement making the cut on my shoulder tug and burn. Shirt and trousers pooled around my ankles, leaving me in dark briefs. Cool air licked at bruised skin, the chill prickling over the worst of the aches.
Amir’s hands were gentle, precise as ever. His palm slid down my thigh, finding the edge of the long graze. The pressure was feather-light, just enough to test for swelling, hidden trauma. Still, every brush sent a shiver racing up my spine.
I clenched my jaw, willing my body not to react. The heat of his skin contrasted the clinical intent—steady, grounding, but so close. His fingers pressed at the inside of my thigh, slow, careful, almost reverent as he checked for damage. Blood pulsed beneath my skin, too aware of every point of contact.
A traitorous twitch made me curse myself. The ache in my ribs warred with a stubborn throb between my legs. I tried to focus on the pain—on anything but the way his touch, even accidental, made me want to lean into the comfort, the safety, the warmth.
He paused, glancing up with a quiet concern. “Pain here?”
My voice scraped out lower than I intended. “Not…not there.”
A knowing half-smile touched his lips before his expression sobered. He continued his exam, slow and thorough, hands mapping every bruise and abrasion, giving me time to breathe, to settle. Still, the pressure of his palm, the intentness of his gaze, made my skin burn in ways pain couldn’t explain.
A heartbeat dragged out, silence heavy except for the sound of his breath, and my own—shaky, uneven. Amir’s hands lingered a moment longer, then retreated, cool professionalism sliding back over his face like a mask.
“You’ll live,” he said quietly, reaching for the bandages. “But you need real rest. No more midnight heroics. Promise me.”
“I promise.” I lied.
The urge to deflect with humor died on my tongue. Instead, I nodded, keeping my gaze fixed on the pattern of marble tile between my feet, trying to will my pulse back to normal.
