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Fidorance wakes to a sharp rapping on his door, deceptively unharried. It’s four in the morning and he’s only just gotten to bed, which means it could only be one person.
Which means it’s an emergency. It always is, with her. He rolls out of bed and stumbles to the front door still half asleep.
The knocking has stopped by the time he flings the front door open, but his visitor is still there. She’s wearing all black and clutching her left side and leaning against the railing leading up to his apartment. Backlit by alleyway neon, face perfectly framed by a mess of wet white hair, she looks almost—ethereal, like a goddess of war plucked straight from a movie, gloves splattered in blood and sharp grin glowing in the moonlight.
Or maybe more like a vengeful ghost, here to haunt him.
He speaks first. “I told you I’m not gonna open the door the next time you do this.”
Waron laughs, one hand around her ribs, one hand clutching the railing for support. Her teeth are stained red with blood. “You said that last time, though.”
And she’d said that last time, too.
But no matter what he says he opens the door for her time and time again, the bloodstains on his couch marking each lie anew. And in the face of all that, what’s one more lie?
Fidorance sighs and beckons her in.
She lurches forward from the railing, alarmingly unsteady on her feet. He swears and catches her when she stumbles. “Didn’t we just get off shift? How the hell did you manage to get so fucked up in less than an hour?”
Waron grunts. “Sore loser from a couple days ago thought he’d bring a gun.”
“You were shot?”
“Only a little bit,” she laughs, but she winces when he deposits her on the couch, even though he’s being excruciatingly gentle.
“What the hell, Waron?” he hisses. “You should be in a hospital.”
“Ca-an’t~” she chirps. “Plus, I hate hospitals on principle. And it was just a graze. Bullet’s not even in me; I probably just need stitches.”
“And you thought I—” He sighs, breaking himself off. Of course she did. “Never mind. Keep pressing on that. I’ll get some bandages and Zius.”
He swipes his phone off the table he’d left it on to charge and speed dials Zius on the way to the bathroom. He keeps the first aid kit under the sink because Waron’s usually well enough to make the trip to his tub, where cleanup is easier, but he supposes he can’t always be so lucky.
Zius picks up on the fourth ring, voice still creaky with sleep. “Fidorance? Did something happen?”
“Waron’s on my couch.”
A pause. Zius is sharp; he knows what it means. “I’ll be there in ten.” Then, as an afterthought: “I better not have to help with corpses.”
“I would’ve called my roommate for that, not you.”
“Ha, ha,” Zius says, like he’s joking. He’s not. “Is she bleeding? Keep her feet elevated. Make sure she doesn’t go into shock.”
“On it,” Fidorance says, and hangs up.
Back on the couch, Waron’s looking pale, but she always does. Her hands are very obviously covered in blood. He checks her pulse briefly, and also to make sure her skin’s not clammy.
“Handsy today, aren’t we~” she says, as unbothered as ever.
“Well, it’s about to get even more intimate,” he says dryly. Mostly, he’s relieved that she still has the energy to be making stupid comments. “Shirt, please.”
Waron laughs. “How bold! But I’m still a fair maiden at heart, Fidorance, and I think I would like to be at least taken to dinner fi—”
“Dinner’s for after your bullet wound gets treated. Besides, not like this is your first time.”
“And they say romance is dead,” she says breezily, though the effect is somewhat ruined by the way her breath hitches as she peels her shirt away from the wound.
Fidorance winces. There’s a lot of blood, and he really doesn’t know much more than basic first aid. He wraps the injury as best he can, then applies pressure and hopes Zius will hurry up.
“Bet he’s stuck idling at a red light out there somewhere,” Waron mutters. “Even though there’s no one else on the road. The law-abiding little dweeb.”
Fidorance jerks, startled. “How did you know—”
“That you were thinking about him?” She snorts. “Please. It’s written all over your face. You don’t have to look so worried, you know. My blood’s not getting any more lost than this.”
She’s so fucking aggravating. But at least she’s still talking. “The ‘law abiding dweeb’ is about to save your ass. Can you imagine if he’d gotten his driver’s license suspended like someone here? He’d be stuck waiting for an Uber or something. Imagine that.”
She laughs. “That’s a good image. He’d be waiting til sunrise, at this hour.”
“Exactly. And then you’d bleed out on my couch, and then I’d have to hide the body or something. Don’t you ever consider other people before you go out and get shot?”
She twists her head, movements slow and cautious, to grin at him wanly.
“It must not look that serious, if you’re giving me shit about it already,” she says. “’sides, bet your creep of a roommate would enjoy that. Did you know I found a dissected—”
“I really don’t want to know,” he says. “Also, when did you—were you snooping around his room last time?!”
Waron grins brightly, but she’s saved from answering by a polite knock on the door.
“It’s unlocked!” Fidorance calls.
Zius lets himself in, slouching his way toward the couch with both hands tucked into his hoodie pocket and a messenger bag slung around his shoulder. “Oh good, everyone’s still conscious.”
“Your lack of faith in us wounds me,” Waron says balefully.
Fidorance squints at her. “Us?”
Zius ignores both of them, already unpacking his bag and pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves. “Let me see the injury. What happened?”
“Well, it’s a bit of a long story, but I suppose if we must… it all started on Tuesday, August 7th, 199—”
Zius makes an ugly noise. Fidorance isn’t sure if it’s a snort or a sigh. “Never mind, forget I asked. Fidorance?”
“She was shot.”
He’s much better at containing his surprise than Fidorance is. Zius doesn’t even falter as he continues unwinding Waron’s bandages. “You realize you should be in a hospital, right.”
“I already told her that.”
“I’m too pretty to be hospitalized~”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Fidorance scowls.
“Typical,” is all Zius says. “Well, it does seem like it was just a graze. Get me some water, Fidorance. I’ll flush the wound and suture it.”
As Fidorance heads to the kitchen to get the water, he catches Zius muttering, at a lower volume: “You were lucky this time, Waron. You won’t be this lucky forever.”
They’re out of clean cups, and he suspects Zius is going to need more than a cup of water anyway, so he fills the biggest bowl they have and brings it back. Waron and Zius are talking quietly on the couch; from the pinched look on Waron’s face, she’s probably being chewed out.
He passes Zius the water. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Waron says sourly.
“Yeah, I’m sure ‘nothing’ is what landed your ass on my couch at four in the morning,” Fidorance says. “What’re you guys actually talking about?”
“Just wondering what she does, after she finishes her shift at the bar.” Zius starts cleaning the wound, and Waron tenses up, a hissed breath quietly escaping her. “Last I checked, bouncing is not typically a job that is life-threatening on the regular.”
“You’re the sort of tight-ass who probably doesn’t even jaywalk,” Waron says. She’s lost the playful tone, and without it, she suddenly sounds so, so tired. “Do you really want to know? Or is this some ploy to report me to someone.”
“Hm,” Zius says. “So you trust me enough to call me instead of a hospital, but not enough to talk about how we ended up here. That’s fine. I’m just worried for you, Waron.”
“You don’t even know me,” she snaps. Then she takes a deep breath, and visibly forces herself to relax. “It’s just my idea of a good time, is all~ I don’t expect you to understand.”
Fidorance squints at her. He kind of always assumed she’d been doing it, whatever ‘it’ was, for the money, but… “You’re not involved in something dangerous, are you?”
“’Course not!” Waron responds brightly.
He’s not sure if she’s telling the truth or not. She’s hard to read even when she’s not being evasive.
“…if you say so,” he says. He’d consider them friends, most days, but. It can be hard to tell sometimes.
“Alright, I’m done,” Zius says. He’s finished sewing Waron up in record time, and already wrapped her in a fresh set of bandages. “Try to take it easy. You already know to avoid getting those wet, and I’m sure Fidorance can get you a change of clothes for tonight.”
Fidorance already has; he tosses them at Waron, and then squawks indignantly when she immediately begins pulling off her shirt.
“So much for ‘fair maiden,’” he mutters under his breath, and she has the audacity to laugh.
When she’s done, she leaves her dirty clothes in a crumpled pile on the floor. Zius packs his medical bag back up carefully, and Fidorance hovers around them awkwardly until Zius finally breaks the silence.
“So,” he says. “I guess circling back to what we were talking about earlier: I’m under the impression that this is not financially motivated, because I’m sure there’s a hundred more legal ways you could be earning enough to get by. But, on the off-chance that it is. Waron. My roommate’s all but moved in with her girlfriend, and will probably not be renewing the lease in a couple months. Would you like to move in with me?”
He says it so naturally that it doesn’t even register in Fidorance’s head at first.
Then—
“Wait,” he says. “What.”
“Living with a paramedic would have its uses, wouldn’t it,” Waron muses. “Are you sure this isn’t some trick to snoop around about my dark, mysterious past?”
Zius rolls his eyes. “Who would I even report you to?”
“I don’t know. My bosses, maybe! They’re very upstanding citizens.”
“No they’re not,” Fidorance snorts. “I’m pretty sure at least two of the owners are committing some kind of tax fraud, and there’s no way Kandentia hasn’t killed a few people before.”
Waron laughs. “If they weren’t caught, it basically didn’t happen!”
Right. Obviously.
Wait—no, that’s not the important thing here.
“Zius,” he says, with calm he does not feel. “Can we talk for a moment?”
Zius looks bemused. “Sure?”
“In my room.”
“Ah. Sure.” He gets up, leaving his bag on the ground, and follows Fidorance out of the room.
The second the door between them and the living room is shut, Fidorance rounds on him, lowering his voice as he hisses, “Zius, are you out of your mind?”
Zius blinks, golden eyes bright and unreadable. “No?”
“You barely even know her.” They’ve hung out maybe a grand total of three times, if you don’t count late night emergencies. And Fidorance doesn’t.
“I guess,” Zius says. “But I’ve known you since high school, and I trust you. You trust her. It’s fine, isn’t it?”
“But—I, you…” Fidorance flounders for a moment, before finally settling on, “I’m just worried this will… encourage her.”
Zius stares off somewhere to his left for a long time.
At last, he says, “She’ll do it anyway. You know it as well as I do. And if she’s not going to go to the hospital, then at the very least…”
He trails off, squeezes his eyes shut.
“…I don’t know either,” he says, finally. “I don’t think it’s that different from what you’re already doing, anyway, and I’m just tired of knowing my friends could die at any moment. And at least this is something… I can do something about this, you know?”
Fidorance stares.
So this is about Fadiyan, he wants to say, except that he knows Zius will say no it isn’t—
Except that it is, at the end of the day; it always is. It’s about all the ways he couldn’t save her, all the things he couldn’t control, all the things he couldn’t do when he was being eaten alive by his own mind. All the things he still can’t do for her, even now.
Fidorance gets it, in a way. He would do anything for his friends, too. He can’t really fault Zius for doing the same.
…still, Zius is supposed to be the responsible one among the three of them. Christ. How did Fidorance end up as the only sane person in this apartment.
“Please just give it more than, like, five minutes of thought,” he says finally.
“I have,” Zius says, blinking owlishly.
“You look like you’ve slept five hours in the past five days,” Fidorance says. “I don’t know if I trust whatever decisions you think you’ve been making.”
Zius shoots him half of a crooked grin. “And since when were you the brains between the two of us? But no, really, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. The invite’s open to you too, you know. Figured it might be easier than…” He gestures a hand vaguely around Fidorance’s apartment. “This.”
“…right,” Fidorance says. “I’ll think about it. Not right now though.”
He glances at the glowing clock by his bed. Nearly six in the morning now. “God. Your shift’s in, what, an hour?”
“Yeah, I should probably get goin—”
“Did you need something from your apartment?”
“…no?”
He rolls his eyes. “Then don’t be stupid. Just take a nap here or something. I’ll wake you.” The couch is occupied, so he shoos Zius towards his bed. “Go on.”
Zius sits on the edge hesitantly. “But…”
Fidorance crosses his arms. “But?”
Zius opens his mouth, then closes it, clearly having no real objections to make.
“That’s what I thought,” Fidorance says, and then he strongarms Zius into lying down and rolls him into one very disgruntled burrito.
“I will remember this,” Zius says ominously, beanie askew, but in the next minute he’s asleep, so Fidorance has his doubts.
Fidorance pulls his hat off and leaves it on the nightstand, then closes the door behind him quietly and heads back into the living room to check on Waron. She’s still awake, scrolling idly through her phone. She puts it down when she notices his approach.
“Hey,” she says. “Sorted him out?”
“Yeah. He’s napping until his shift starts. Are you hungry?”
Waron looks amused. “I was kidding about dinner.”
“I know,” he says. “But it’s late. I can make you something, if you want.”
“Oh yeah? Another pack of instant mac and cheese?”
“Okay, look, you came at a bad time last time, I actually have groceries usu—”
Waron laughs. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I’m good, but thanks for offering.”
He considers her for a moment, then sits down by her legs on the edge of the couch. “So…”
“So.”
“Are you going to take him up on his offer?”
Waron shrugs. “Maybe. I dunno. It might not be that safe for him, so…”
“So you are involved in something dangerous.”
She flashes a toothy grin at him. “Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it~?”
Just as suddenly, the smile drops. “But… between you and me, I think it might be nice, if I can manage it. I’ll think about it. What about you?”
“Hm?” Fidorance says.
“He asked you to move in too, didn’t he?”
…he swears they must have some secret hand signals they communicate with, or something. “What the fuck. Did you hear us?”
“Nah,” Waron says. “Didn’t have to. I could guess. We both know you don’t like your roommate. There’s no reason he’d offer a near-stranger somewhere to stay and not one of his closest friends.”
He forgets, sometimes, how sharp Waron is, with the way she acts. “Not sure either, yet. We’ll see.”
“Yeah?”
He flicks her forehead. “Yeah. Now rest, jesus. You need it.”
Waron sticks her tongue out at him. “You do too.”
“After Zius leaves, I will.”
“You prudes,” she says. “What is this, the Victorian era? Just climb into bed with him, I promise premarital sleeping together won’t get either of you preg—”
The rest of her sentence is lost to muffled laughter as Fidorance tries to suffocate her with one of his pillows.
Waron being Waron, even after that she can’t resist making a few more stupid quips. It’s not until the second time Fidorance tries to smother her that she grabs the pillow from him in one smooth motion, and finally goes to bed.
He watches her breathing even out, then the gentle rise and fall of her chest in her peaceful slumber. Then a minute passes and he realizes that’s probably weird, so he hastily starts scrolling through random news feeds on his phone instead.
The sun has started creeping across their floorboards before it occurs to him that he never wiped up the mess of bloody handprints she got all over the couch earlier. There’s definitely going to be new bloodstains after this, damn it.
But Waron’s asleep by his side and Zius is asleep in his bed right now, and honestly? He wouldn’t trade that for anything.