His hands are red.
It is the middle of the night when the familiar rap of knuckles on her window pane comes tapping, and her subconscious has come to expect it, to the point her body does not even hesitate in waking. April does not take the time to yawn. She feels no need. Instead, she wraps her worn and old comforter around her shoulders, and walks on the padded carpet to her window. The husky silhouette sitting crouched before it on the edges of a fire escape sends no alarm. She presses a hand against the glass and it opens with ease. She no longer bothers to lock her window. He is the only of their brothers that still knocks.
His eyes twitch upward when he hears the wind rush into her room, but his body stays hunched together. His skin reflects the city lights in a pale green, though his shadow is absolute in its darkness. She smiles, and her heart is filled with warmth as she holds a hand out. There is a moment of hesitation as he stares at her, and the starkness of his edges seems to blur into something a bit gentler. He unfurls his body and touches her hand as she guides him forward into her room, feeling his skin, listening as he breathes, as his steps are somehow even more cautious than her own. And she cannot hear them. His three fingers begin to curl around hers, and his grip it is a bit too nervous, and a bit to wary, as though in some part of his mind he is not even sure if she is there. She gives him a brief squeeze, and looks to him. His grip loosens, his eyes staying narrow.
She sets him on her bed and he does not protest nor fight against her, but his hold on her hand lingers. His other hand flinches, gripping her arm when she tries to pull away. She stands, unmoving, as his gaze fixates on the floor and does not look to her. She does not stop looking at him. Beyond the sirens of New York and the honking of its patrons, the room is silent, in a way that sends something cold to burrow under her skin. She does not realize she had been holding her breath until his grip loosens, and finally, releases.
She ignores the trail of red left on her skin.
April runs a hand around the scalp of his head in a single, circular motion, and recalls how vastly different his skin feels in comparison to his brothers, how much warmer he feels than the rest of them. She plants a chaste kiss to his temple and takes a seat beside him, wrapping her comforter that is three sizes too large for her, around him as well. He does not move. His hands lay on his lap, fingers clenching and unclenching slowly as he watches. His breathing is even, to the point she recognizes he is timing each inhale and exhale. His eyes are far too focused to be focused on anything at all. She sees the damp, dark liquid mixing in with the pale green of his hands, turning dry against the sides of his thighs and shoulders.
She feels nothing more than recognition.
"Foot Clan?" She whispers, running and hand behind his neck and massaging as she listens,
"Purple Dragon, actually," He speaks, somehow even quieter than her, tone cracking against a dry throat. He swallows, clenching his hands into a fist, "Just a few of them. I killed a kid."
She feels the muscles under his body stiffen and swell as he leans forward. She continues to massage, humming in understanding, as her hand trails to the purple clothe tied around his head and slips it off, running a thumb against the skin where it was tied. His whole body seemed to shift under the weight of her touch.
"They brought guns. One of them. Was waving it around, yelling at this girl. I… she… had blonde hair, I think. Wasn't carrying anything. There wasn't any reason to corner her. I went down to help, and then the guy with the gun, he shot her. Or maybe he shot her before I went to help her. She's dead, either way. I don't even think he meant to kill her, but, he did. He was barely even a kid. Looked a little older than 13, maybe. He's dead now. Cracked his skull on the concrete. Didn't mean too. He's dead, though. I checked. His other buddies didn't." He broke a sigh, leaning forward, holding his face in his hands as his voice grew softer, "They ran off the instant the gun went off. Or the instant he fell. But they were gone when the sirens started coming, and then, so was I. They didn't even try to fight me. Didn't even try."
She closes her eyes as he chokes the last word, rubbing small circles into the crook of his neck, listening to the bedsprings creak as he leans into her chest, curling up as she wraps her arms around him, pressing kisses to his scalp as he shakes in her arms, tears pooling over and dripping hot and heavy down his cheeks as his even breathing breaks into struggled hiccups. There is red streaking down his face and all across his body, but most of all it, the color pools and mixes with his hands. She clenches her eyes and grinds her teeth as she imagines his body, hunched over the limp corpse of a murderer, cradling their head like a mother who had loved them might of, pressing his shaking fingers up and down their neck, desperately check for a pulse, ignoring the irrationally warm liquid staining his belt and his chest and his body and hands. She listens to his broken sobs as her mind invasions his face when he realizes there is no pulse to be found, and his panicked breathing calms to silence. She imagines his recognition and defeat and it is almost as painful as though she had been the one to be killed. She knows he does not even bother to see if the woman is still alive, because the stench of blood is suffocating him, and burning his hands.
They are already so stained.
And she holds him tighter when she thinks of all the nights, when he is so lost home does not even feel like home, so he sneaks to her house and raps on her window with bloody knuckles and a purple bandanna, and she never has to say hello because it's not like she's ever said goodbye either. And sometimes he speaks, but most nights he just sits and she sits next to him for a long, long time, holding him, stripping him of his names and of his sins for just that night. He never tells her no when she slips the only color other than red away from him, and never says anything when she lays him down and curls up against him, and whispers a lullaby against his hands until they both fall asleep. And always, always, he is gone when she wakes.
As his muffled sobs shake throughout to room, as she runs a hand across his cheek and down his neck, as she wraps her arms around his body and buries her face into his shoulder and kisses it for a long, long time, she doesn't even bother to think of what to say. Only when he tells her through his tears that he can't do it anymore, does she feel her heart swell and burst with affection, and when she whispers that he doesn't have to, she means it. Every time he tells her he can't she always means it. And she always slips her hands down his arms to link around his fingers whenever she says it, and she always smiles when she does, except for now, where all she can manage is to frown and press her face against his head, leaving small kisses in between broken sobs until he quiets, and his body tenses, then releases, falling a bit limper in April's lap.
He does not fight against April's touch as she lays him down on her bed and spreads the blanket across his body. She crawls underneath and against him, and touches his hand to encourage it to wrap around her. She presses her back against the hard shell of his chest, and feels as he nuzzles his head into her hair, letting out a long sigh. She slips her arms over his and holds the hands that are linked around her waist, loosely pulling her against him. She cradles each finger, crusted with red, and kisses each knuckle, whispering each syllable of his name. He curls his fingers around hers, and she feels nothing but love swell in her chest as he murmurs something about family. She thinks of how she will awake with stains on her clothes, and how he will have stains on his heart. She looks at the hands that are holding her own and feels something heavy inside of her churn as she finally sees it.
His hands are red.