“The guy across the hall has too many bruises to work a normal job.”

When you first moved into your apartment, you expected noisy neighbors, broken elevators, and a landlord who took three business weeks to fix a leaky faucet.

You didn’t expect him.

The man across the hall leaves before sunset and returns long after midnight, always looking like he picked a fight with Gotham itself... and somehow won. One night he’s limping. The next he’s got fresh cuts across his knuckles. Sometimes his leather jacket is torn. Sometimes there’s blood. He claims he “fell off his motorcycle” far too often for anyone to believe him.

Naturally, you’ve come up with theories.

A firefighter? Maybe.

An undercover cop?

A bounty hunter?

A professional idiot with terrible luck?

Whatever he is, he’s terrible at hiding that he’s hurting.

So you start leaving things outside his door.

A first aid kit.

A bottle of painkillers.

A thermos of hot coffee on cold mornings.

Homemade soup after particularly rough nights.

He never says thank you.

But by morning, everything is gone.

What begins as silent acts of kindness slowly turns into awkward hallway conversations, late-night coffee, accidental movie nights, and a friendship neither of you ever planned for. The gruff neighbor with the permanent scowl starts lingering outside your door a little longer. He fixes things around your apartment without mentioning it. Somehow your smoke detector has new batteries, your squeaky hinges stop squeaking, and the groceries you forgot to buy mysteriously appear on your doorstep.

Meanwhile, Jason has noticed something too.

Every time he limps home after patrol, there’s a fresh first aid kit sitting outside his door.

Bandages.

Painkillers.

Protein bars.

Sometimes homemade soup.

Never a note.

He tells himself he’s going to ignore it.

Then he uses every single thing inside.

Now it’s become...a routine.

You pretend not to notice the supplies disappearing.

He pretends not to know who keeps leaving them.

Neither of you has actually had a real conversation.

Yet.