Eli couldn't believe what he was seeing.

He watched in rapt attention as the news station helicopter followed the chase. It wasn't the average chase. Not the mad drive for freedom of a desperate criminal followed by the blaring sirens, dodging through traffic and speeding down highways. No, this pursuit was on foot, through the rooftops and all participants were masked. It occurred to Eli that it was very much the type of thing one would expect to read about in comic books, not to see in real life.

Which, to be fair, seemed to be the trend lately, as far as his life went.

There were three men running, two with duffel bags, heavy with stolen goods, their faces covered by ski masks—a cliché choice, Eli noted but then his life had been filled with those as of late. They had just burst through a rooftop access door at the top of the apartment building they'd hoped to lose their pursuer in. Behind them was another man, dressed in black and what Eli now knew was called a domino mask. The fourth man followed the other three, who seemed to be ready to jump the small gap—maybe about four feet wide—between the rooftop they were on and the one next to them, but their pursuer seemed determined not to lose them.

The thieves jumped, but Eli noticed that one of them didn't land properly. One of them was injured, stumbling and then falling as soon as he landed. The masked vigilante would have no trouble catching up to them. For a moment, Eli expected the men to leave their fallen comrade and make a run for it. It was, after all, the logical thing to do if they didn't want to be caught. What they did instead wasn't something that Eli saw coming.

The reporter speaking seemed just as surprised by the sound of the gunshot. 

There was a moment of shocked silence in which Eli watched the man who fired the gun turn and run after his comrades while Matthew—because of course it was Matthew—slipped and momentarily struggled to grip the edge of the building. He grasped at it, but the pain proved too much and he fell off the edge of the building, disappearing into the pitch black alley below. Eli's heart seemed to stop, eyes wide and breath catching in his throat as he stared at the spotlight shining on the place where  Matthew had just fallen. Whatever the reporter was saying didn't register as Eli tried to process what it was that he’d just seen.

Even as the helicopter on the scene kept searching and the now seemingly distant voice of the reporter spoke in a shocked tone, Eli didn’t really register any of it. He still sat there and watched as some emotion he didn’t have the presence of mind to identify welled up in him. 

Three hours passed with Eli sitting on the couch. 

Three hours since the gunshot and the fall during which the cops checked out the narrow alley where Matthew fell. The whole thing had been reported on, the news really milking the whole thing for all it was worth. 

They found blood on the ground and nothing more. At least, nothing more had been reported, and Eli would have known otherwise. He had been looking at every channel playing the news, flicking back and forth between them in the hopes of hearing anything good. Last he'd heard, the bad guys got away and there was no sign of Matthew—he found some solace in knowing that the man hadn't actually died in some shitty alley as of yet— but that had been nearly half an hour before Eli fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV.

Eli hadn't been sleeping all too peacefully, so when he was awoken by a loud banging sound, he jumped up to a sitting position, startled but not knowing what had awoken him. It took him a moment to recall what happened that night and why it was that he had been asleep on his couch. 

Still a bit disoriented, he got to his feet, deciding to call it a night and go to sleep when there was a banging sound from somewhere in his apartment, now clear to him in his mostly awake state. Immediately, Eli figured that it was coming from his bedroom, and so he cautiously made his way towards it, stopping momentarily to grab the baseball bat Matthew insisted Eli keep for self-defense after witnessing the redhead's attempts at defending himself with a water bottle. Eli peered around the doorway and froze, staring at what he found in disbelief.

Leaning heavily on the wall next to the window leading to the fire escape was none other than Matthew. Eli couldn't see him too well in the dark, but there was no mistaking the man. An instant later, Eli was making his way over to him and opening the window.

"No rush," Matthew said weakly as he stumbled through the opening. "I'm just bleeding to death on your doorstep."

At any other time, Eli would have responded with a snarky comment of his own, but he couldn't manage to say anything at all as he let the other man lean on him. Once Matthew was sitting on Eli's bed, back resting against the headboard, Eli took a moment to really look at him. The man was filthy, but then he had fallen into a dirty alley, so Eli wasn't all that surprised. Matthew was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling in quick succession and a hand pressed to his arm. Blood had seeped out of the wound hidden beneath the man's fingers staining his clothes an even darker shade of black.

"What the hell happened?!" Maybe that wasn't very eloquent, but at least Eli managed to say something. Even injured as he was, Matthew let out a snort at Eli's reaction.

"What, you didn't watch the news? Or maybe they didn't report on it," Matthew said, adding the last part thoughtfully as Eli made his way to his tiny bathroom. "You'd think the friendly neighborhood hero getting shot and falling off a building would get more attention."

"It was all over the news!" Eli snapped back, already looking through his bathroom cabinet for his first aid kit. It was another addition suggested by Matthew, which was funny as he'd be the first one to use it.

"Oh good, I was starting to feel offended," clearly, there was no danger of him dying if he could still make that type of comment.

Eli simply ignored whatever the other man said in favor of opening the first aid kit he'd found and then helping Matthew remove his shirt and protective layers beneath to look at his injury. He grimaced at what he saw. 

The bullet wound itself wasn't very big and the worst part about it was the bleeding, but Matthew had been able to staunch it, leaving only what had already dried up around the wound. Thankfully, the bullet had gone right through and hadn’t looked to have done much damage. The worst was the bruising that was already starting to show on Matthew's side and part of his back and would most certainly only get worse with time. No doubt it was a result of the fall that Eli still couldn't believe Matthew had survived.

"It looks worse than it is," Matthew said, catching sight of Eli's expression. "Of course, it still hurts like hell," he added with a pained grin.

"You need to see a doctor," Eli said firmly, shaking his head. "Seriously, I can't treat this, I've never dealt with anything a band-aid couldn't solve!" Apart from the last time Matthew had broken into his apartment, that was, but Eli would rather not think about that.

"Well, this is the perfect time to learn, right?" Matthew tried, but Eli just shook his head, eyes wide. Matthew sighed and tried not to flinch as the action apparently elicited some pain on his side. "Look, Eli, it's not that hard. Besides, I can't just pop in at the hospital and expect them not to ask questions," he tried to reason.

"Then make something up, tell them you were mugged," said Eli, really trying not to sound too desperate, but he could tell he was failing miserably.

"I can't," Matthew said firmly. "I don't even think I could make it there and I definitely can't show up dressed like this." And okay, fair point, but Eli would go as far as to lend him some clothes and call a cab to drop him off at the hospital if it meant Matthew would get the help he needed. He was just about to suggest that very idea when Matthew reached up and removed his mask, staring straight at Eli. He had to wonder how he’d never noticed how blue they were.

"Please Eli, I know it's not fair to just show up like this and expect you to know what to do, but you're the only one I can ask for help," he said seriously, eyes more intense than Eli would expect from someone so pale and in so much pain. "You're the only one I trust." And damn if it wasn't hard to say no to that.

With a resigned sigh, Eli pulled a chair closer to the bed and tied to ignore the pleased look on Matthew's face.