Chapter Fourteen #2
Everything tilts a little too softly around the edges, the room breathing with me in a way rooms absolutely should not be doing. My skin feels too sensitive. My thoughts feel too loud and too slippery at the same time, like my brain is trying to hold water in its hands.
“Noir,” I whisper, and I don’t even know what I’m asking for.
His expression shifts.
Barely.
Then I lean forward suddenly and bury my face against his chest while my body shakes once hard enough I hate myself for it.
Noir immediately wraps both arms around me.
Tight and protective.
His chin presses against the top of my head while one tattooed hand slides slowly up and down my spine.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs quietly.
The apartment door suddenly unlocks behind us.
Both of us spin instantly.
Dagger stumbles inside looking like violence itself.
Blood.
So much fucking blood.
His black shirt’s soaked dark down one side while his arm hangs stiffly at his side and bruises are already forming across his jaw beneath smeared streaks of dried blood.
My entire body reacts before my brain catches up.
“Dagger—”
I cross the apartment so fast I nearly slip on the hardwood.
He barely gets the door shut before I’m grabbing his face with both hands frantically checking for injuries while adrenaline slams back through my bloodstream all over again.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Thanks, little relapse, I hadn’t noticed.”
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You got fucking shot!”
Noir’s already moving toward him too, expression sharp and unreadable now beneath the apartment lights.
“Is it done?”
Dagger looks toward him once.
Tiny pause.
Then:
“Yeah. Yeah it’s done.”
Something strange passes silently between them.
Something I don’t fully understand.
Then Noir nods once before turning away completely.
“Good.”
And just like that he disappears toward the balcony.
Weird.
I barely process it though because I’m too busy dragging Dagger toward the bathroom while he tries insisting he’s fine every six fucking seconds.
“You are literally leaking blood everywhere.”
“It went right through, I’ll be fine.”
“It’s still a fucking bullet!”
His mouth twitches faintly despite himself while I shove him down onto the closed toilet seat hard enough he grunts.
The drugs still swimming through my bloodstream make everything feel oddly distant and hyperfocused at the same time.
Like the only thing my brain can fully process right now is him.
Alive.
Here and breathing.
My hands shake while I start peeling his soaked shirt upward carefully.
Dagger watches me the entire time.
Not speaking.
Just watching.
The second the shirt comes off, my stomach twists hard.
Blood streaks across his side and shoulder where the bullet tore through his arm while bruises spread dark beneath his ribs already.
“Oh my god.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not fucking comforting.”
I toss the bloody shirt into the sink before turning the shower on hot enough that steam starts crawling up the mirror almost immediately.
Dagger watches me carefully from where I shoved him down onto the closed toilet seat, one arm held stiffly at his side while blood keeps slipping down his skin in thin, dark lines.
“You okay?”
The question hits wrong.
Almost pisses me off.
Not because he asked.
Because of course he asked.
Because Dagger’s sitting here bleeding all over his own bathroom after getting shot, bruised, soaked, and half-dead, and somehow his first instinct is still to look at me like I’m the thing that needs tending to.
I turn on him, throat tightening instantly.
“Why the fuck are you asking if I’m okay?” My voice cracks around the edge, and I hate that. “You got shot.”
His eyes soften just a little.
“And I almost lost you, again.”
That shuts something inside me down for half a second.
Because he’s not wrong.
Because the second he says it, everything flashes behind my eyes again.
The rave.
The screaming.
Mina’s arm in that man’s grip.
Gunshots tearing through the parking lot.
Dagger showing up like violence with a heartbeat.
“I’m fine,” I say.
Lie.
Complete fucking lie.
We both know it too.
My hands shake as I kneel carefully in front of him, trying to focus on the wound instead of the way my chest feels like it’s caving in. I touch his face again, softer this time, thumb brushing lightly over the bruise darkening along his jaw.
His jaw flexes beneath my fingertips.
Exhaustion finally starts creeping into his expression now that the adrenaline is wearing thin. Not weakness. Never that. Just the brutal weight of surviving catching up to him all at once.
“You scared me,” I whisper.
Something shifts in his eyes immediately.
Not softer.
Worse.
Guilty.
Dagger reaches for my wrist gently, careful despite the blood on his hand, and presses his mouth to the inside of it. The kiss is small. Warm. Almost too tender for the state of us.
“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
That breaks me.
Not loudly at first.
Just a sharp little fracture straight down the middle of my chest.
I shake my head, eyes burning before I can stop them.
“No.” My voice comes out thin. “No, don’t do that.”
His brows pull together.
“Blair—”
“I should’ve listened.” The words spill out before I can shove them back down. “I should’ve just fucking stayed here like you told me to.”
My breath catches.
Then again.
And suddenly I’m not tending to him anymore. I’m just kneeling there between his knees with steam filling the bathroom and blood on my hands, finally feeling the full weight of how stupid tonight was.
How close it came.
How easily he could’ve been dead because I wanted five minutes of freedom.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and then the tears come harder. “I’m so fucking sorry. I was mad, and bored, and I needed to numb everything. I just wanted it all to be quiet, but then everything went bad so fast, and Mina got grabbed, and you got shot, and I—”
My voice breaks completely.
Dagger leans forward immediately, his good hand sliding to the back of my neck, pulling me into him even though he’s the one bleeding.
“Hey.”
I shake my head against him.
“No, I fucked up.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs, rough and quiet. “You did.”
The honesty hurts.
But his hand stays on me.
His mouth presses into my damp hair.
“And you’re still here,” he says. “So am I.”
That only makes me cry harder.
Dagger doesn’t tell me to stop.
He doesn’t try to make it pretty or manageable or less embarrassing. He just holds me there with one hand at the back of my neck, his mouth pressed into my damp hair while steam thickens around us and blood keeps drying on both of our skin.
Eventually, my breathing starts to even out.
Not fixed.
Not okay.
Just quieter.
Dagger pulls back first, his thumb brushing beneath one of my eyes with a gentleness that feels almost obscene after everything we just survived.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
His fingers find the hem of my tiny ruined top. He moves slowly, giving me every chance to stop him, every chance to step back, but I don’t. I just lift my arms when he guides them upward, letting him peel the damp fabric from my body with careful hands.
The outfit sticks to me in places from sweat and rain and whatever the hell else the rave left on my skin.
Dagger doesn’t rush.
He doesn’t make some cocky comment.
He just gets me out of it piece by piece, jaw tight, eyes dark and focused like he needs the proof that I’m whole.
That I’m here. That there’s no bullet hole hidden beneath mesh and chains.
By the time he unhooks the skirt from my hips and lets it fall to the tile, my skin is covered in goosebumps despite the heat crawling through the bathroom.
His fingers pause at my waist.
“You’re shaking.”
“So are you.”
His mouth twitches faintly, but it doesn’t turn into a smile.
Nothing about this feels funny anymore.
I step closer and reach for the button of his jeans. My hands are still unsteady, clumsy from drugs and fear and the sheer fucking absurdity of trying to undress a man who got shot because I couldn’t stay where I was supposed to.
Dagger watches me struggle for half a second before covering my fingers with his.
“Easy.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
That almost breaks me again.
Together, we get his jeans open. I help him shove the soaked denim down carefully, trying not to jostle his injured arm, trying not to look too long at all the blood streaked across his skin because every time I do, guilt claws up my throat again.
He steps out of them slowly, one hand braced against the sink.
For a second, we just stand there in the steam.
Bare.
Bruised.
Alive.
The shower runs beside us, hot water beating steadily against the tile, waiting.
I take his good hand and pull him carefully beneath the spray with me.
The water immediately turns pink around our feet.
The sight makes my stomach twist again.
Dagger notices.
“Blair.”
“I know.”
But I don’t know.
Not really.
Because tonight doesn’t feel real anymore.
The rave.
The violence.
Shay drowning in that fucking bathroom.
The pills.
The gunshots.
Everything feels smeared together inside my head like wet paint.
I grab soap with shaky hands and start cleaning blood carefully from his chest and shoulder while steam curls thick around us.
Dagger stays still the entire time.
Letting me touch him.
Take care of him.
I avoid eye contact and keep cleaning blood from his ribs instead.
The bathroom slowly fills with quiet.
Not awkward quiet.
Heavy quiet.
The kind that settles after surviving something horrible together.
Dagger’s fingers eventually slide beneath my chin gently forcing me to look up at him.
“You still with me?”
I nod, and one corner of his mouth twitches faintly.
Then he kisses me.
Soft and slow.
Nothing desperate about it.
Just relief.
My hands slide instinctively up his chest while warm water pours over both of us, washing blood from his skin in thin pink trails that disappear down the drain.
The kiss deepens slightly.
Then again.
Still soft.
Still careful.