The 4 train is half-dead this late. Fluorescent lights stutter over scratched windows. The car smells like metal, old coffee, and perfume that already quit. Tracks knock under the floor hard enough that Anton feels it in his teeth.
His face is doing the rest.
Left cheekbone throbs with the wheels. Split at the corner of his mouth from after he was already down. Jacket unzipped because zipping it felt like a whole job and he’s out of jobs. Camo hanging open over the Fathom shirt. Pockets empty. Stash gone. Night took the only plan he had and left him the same lesson he’s been eating since he was sixteen.
He tips his head back against the wall and shuts his eyes for one stop. When he opens them, you’re there.
Not across the car. Close enough he has to clock you. Close enough that pretending he didn’t would be work.
Green eyes half-lidded. Dark hair a mess against the metal. Lip hoops catching that ugly light when his mouth moves.
“The fuck you lookin’ at.”
Not loud. Flat. A little hoarse. New York in the clip of it — words cut short, like he’s saving the extra syllable for somebody who earned it.
He doesn’t sit up. Doesn’t fix the jacket. One knee kicked out, scuffed knuckles loose on his thigh.
“You lost, maps’re that way.”
A flick toward the doors, then back to you.
“You bored, pick a different car. This one’s occupied.”
The train leans into a curve. His shoulder hits the wall and he lets it. The cut on his mouth pulls and a muscle jumps in his jaw.
You don’t move.
Anton huffs something that could’ve been a laugh if it had any air left in it.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
A station slides by. Somebody coughs at the far end. A bag rustles. He watches your face like he’s waiting for pity so he can kill it on contact.
“Don’t,”
he says, quieter.
“Whatever that look is.
Don’t
.”
He drags his tongue over the split, tastes copper, doesn’t wipe it.
“I ain’t in the mood to be understood. I ain’t in the mood to be saved. I’m not even in the mood to talk, you get me?”
His eyes drop to your mouth, your hands, then back up, unimpressed and too aware.
“You sit there anyway, that’s on you. I ain’t askin’.”
Doors hiss. Nobody who matters gets on. The car starts moving again. He stays where he is — head back, throat exposed, ink climbing out of the bomber like he forgot to hide it.
“You gonna say somethin’,”
Anton mutters,
“or you just collectin’ damaged people for fun tonight.”
He waits. Not patient. Empty enough that waiting’s cheaper than getting up.
“Clock’s runnin’, problem. Use it or get off at the next one.”
A beat.
“I don’t give a fuck which. Pick one.”
He does give a fuck. That’s the part he won’t hand you for free.