When Jakub awoke to the muffled sound of a small boom, he assumed dreams of a certain long-haired idiot had chased him out of sleep. Then he smelled the blood.

Jakub bolted upright. As his eyes adjusted to the darkened room he had the fleeting impression that it was much larger than he remembered, his ears ringing with distant memories of trucks rumbling across cobblestones. But it wasn’t gunsmoke stinging his nostrils, just the familiar scent of youthful magic, and he sighed.

“The hell is he exploding this time of night?” Jakub muttered, and he started to lie down again, only to realize that the odor of blood hadn’t faded with the rest of his sleepy reminiscences. When he strained his ears he could hear someone making use of the showers in the floor bathroom, and after finding his pants, he investigated.

The stench was even stronger when he opened the door. Jakub readied himself as he crept inside, no idea what he would find. A metal wash basin in the corner was smoking, piles of black ash inside that he could smell were Cheshire’s handwork. “Cheshire?”

“No,” said Cheshire from one of the stalls. “I mean, I’m fine? Who’s there?”

Jakub frowned, wanting to be irritated, but something seemed very wrong. He moved to the stalls and found Cheshire showering, momentarily distracted by the sight of his broad, naked back beneath the water. Then he looked down and realized just how much red was heading down the drain.

“What happened?” he asked, apprehension prickling under his skin.

“Huh? What do you mean?” There was something manic in Cheshire’s tone, but more troubling, he was covering his face with both hands, not making any attempt to actually wash himself. He had yet to look back, either.

Jakub went cold with dread. “Cheshire, what happened to Grace?”

“What?” That finally got Cheshire to turn, and he looked to Jakub in alarm. The spark of fright in his eyes was enough to give Jakub goose bumps, even though he was quick to blink it away. “Oh, Grace went home. I walked her home.”

“Then what the hell is going on?”

Cheshire turned his face back to the spray, scrubbing vigorously at his cheeks, jaw, and scalp. “Nothing happened—I’m taking a shower.”

Jakub squirmed with frustration approaching real fear—something was very wrong. He knew Cheshire, his voice and his mannerisms, and everything about him was screaming a very different message than his lies were trying to convey. “You’re washing blood out of your hair,” Jakub snapped. “And it sure looks like you burned your favorite suit in the wash bucket. Tell me what happened, right now.”

Cheshire flinched, and though for a moment it looked as if he were going to try and keep up the hopeless act, abruptly his shoulders sagged. “I...I got in a fight,” he admitted quietly.

He sounded more honest at least, but Jakub was still wary. He’d never seen Cheshire shy away from a fight, either. He started to ask if he was all right, but a quick glance over his body showed no obvious injuries, and he didn’t want to give Cheshire a reason to insist he was fine again. “Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” Cheshire lied badly. “I didn’t see their faces that well, it...happened fast, I managed to….”

Jakub waited, not patiently but attentively, for Cheshire to give up the rest of the story, but it soon became apparent that he was wasting his time. Disappointment turned him sour. “You told me you trusted me,” he said. “You don’t have to lie.”

Cheshire cringed into his shoulders, but he didn’t look back, and he didn’t answer. He looked small and almost pathetic, and all Jakub could do was sigh. He reached around Cheshire to shut off the water.

“You’re going to get sick,” he muttered as he left the stall to look for a suitable towel. “Showering in cold water in the middle of the night….”

It wasn’t until Cheshire had his towel and was drying off that he found his voice again. “It wasn’t much of a fight,” he said, rubbing furiously at his hair as if he still expected there to be some blood in it. “He just...bled a lot more than I expected. I’m not used to that...that kind of fighting, you know? Usually I just….”

“Yeah,” said Jakub, even though he still didn’t believe a word out of Cheshire’s mouth. “You should get some sleep. Maybe you’ll tell me what really happened in the morning.”

Cheshire winced again, but all the guilting didn’t seem to be working, so Jakub turned to leave. “Wait,” Cheshire called him back, and he smiled, thin and sheepish. “Can you lead me to my room? I lost my glasses.”

Jakub took his elbow, guiding him out of the washroom and back down the hall. “How did you even make it back without them?” he asked as he forced the moldy lock to let them inside. “You’re nearly blind on your own.”

Cheshire shrugged. It was infuriating.

“Well, you’re here,” Jakub said as he deposited Cheshire on his bed. “Your spare glasses are right on the table.” If he stayed any longer he was sure his temper would get the better of him, so he turned again to go. “Goodnight, Bloom.”

Cheshire latched onto his wrist. His skin was damp and cold, spreading a chill all the way up Jakub’s arm. Jakub hated him for it, until he realized with another flash of concern that Cheshire’s hand was shaking. Their eyes met, and at last Jakub fully registered just how rattled Cheshire truly was—he wasn’t just nerved up, he was afraid. He’d never looked like that before and any anger Jakub had felt for him melted swiftly away.

“Are you, uh...going to sleep?” Cheshire asked, his smile askew and eyes pleading. “Sorry, I’m just….” He gulped. “I’m worried they might come for me.”

A pulse of protective instinct welled in Jakub’s chest, sharp enough to leave him momentarily breathless. He even looked to the door, expecting a slew of riverside hooligans to be awaiting his wrath; anyone who could reduce the unrelentingly cheerful Cheshire Bloom to such a state deserved and would probably require full force. Only once Jakub was certain of no immediate danger did he sit down next to Cheshire on the mattress.

“Who?” he asked, all but desperate to know. “Who might come after you?”

Cheshire only lowered his head, refusing to answer. Jakub didn’t have it in him to be harsh. It had been a long time since he’d felt so determined and yet so helpless at the same time, and he wanted so terribly just to reach out—just to touch him, if that would do any good. To comfort him in some way where his other efforts had failed. He didn’t know how.

“Go to sleep, Chesh,” said Jakub, urging him to lie down. “I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

Cheshire’s expression crumpled with guilty relief. “You’ll stay?”

“Yeah. I’ll stay.” Jakub drew a blanket over him and then looked for another, still honestly concerned by Cheshire’s shivering. “Anyone coming after you will have to go through me.”

Cheshire sighed deeply, and watching the tension finally drain from his face made Jakub’s heart pound. “Thanks, Jake,” he said as he burrowed into the covers. “I’m sorry.”

Jakub didn’t know what to say, so he only tucked Cheshire in tighter and then sat back down on the bed. Though tempted to curl up alongside him, he was even more eager to keep his word. Even if Cheshire’s paranoia was unwarranted, it wasn’t as if he was going to get any sleep with so many mysteries piled on his shoulders.

Jakub pressed his thumb gingerly to the inside of Cheshire’s palm and found the sigil unnaturally warm against his skin. “What happened to you, Chesh?” he wondered aloud, and he watched Cheshire’s restless slumber through the rest of the night.

***

Cheshire wasn’t quite the same for a while after that. Jakub seemed to be the only one who noticed.

They still spent their evenings at the Bottom Feeder, drinking and smoking. Grace sang her jazz and afterward would curl up under Cheshire’s arm, showered with his eager attentions. Hannah chased them often out of back rooms when they tried to sneak away. Eventually rumors spread that some of the Irish boys had up and vanished, and Jakub had his suspicions, but no one came to Kozlow looking for them, or for Cheshire. Life went on as normal.

But Jakub noticed that Cheshire’s grandstanding had ground to a near halt. He took every loading job Kozlow offered and shied away from the safecracking he had become known for. He didn’t offer to light cigarettes anymore.

Jakub mentioned it to Barney, who only snorted and said, “Maybe he finally burned himself bad enough.” Though Barney didn’t usually have insight worth a penny, Jakub couldn’t shake the feeling that he was right.

And even after Cheshire gradually eased back into his normal shtick and routine, Jakub kept a close eye, conscious of a danger he couldn’t begin to identify, but hopeful he would eventually get Cheshire to tell him the truth.