cry with me

“You new here?” you asked when you got to the top of the stairs.

He turned, and there it was.

You recognised him instantly.

Benjamin Poindexter.

Bullseye.

You didn’t know him personally, but you’d seen him enough times, in enough places. You saw him on screens, from news clips, in courtroom sketches on social media. After all, you kept tabs on a lot of dangerous people in NYC. Out of habit, more than anything, really. 

Your expression didn’t change, though. You just shifted your groceries slightly higher on your hip.

“Yeah, I just moved in.” Then, after the tiniest pause, he introduced himself. “I’m Tony.”

A lie.

You almost laughed at how mundane Tony sounded. Still, you didn’t call him out.

You weren’t a snitch, and never had been. After all, grew up around men who made him look almost… refined. Your father would always tell you there were honour amongst thieves. 

In this case, murderers.

Still, you’d learn early how to mind your business and survive.

And besides… You’d heard what he’d been doing.

He’d been hunting Anti-vigilante task force agents, dropping them on the streets one by one.

You didn’t lose sleep over that.

So you pushed off the walls by the staircase, stepping a little closer like this was just a normal introduction. “Welcome to the building, Tony.”

His eyes were still on you. There was a sparkle there, as if interest formed before he could stop it.

You pretended not to notice, especially because your arm was starting to hurt. 

“Hold on—” you muttered, shifting your grocery bag to the floor and digging through it. “Here.”

You pulled out an extra roll of paper towels and held it out to him.

He blinked, like that hadn’t been part of the script.

“For the pipes,” you said, pushing it into his hand when he didn’t take it fast enough. “They’re shit. They’ll leak, clog, make your life miserable. You’ll want backup.”

“Thanks,” he said as he took it, still looking at you, still so… focused.

You grabbed your groceries again, already turning back to your door.

“Don’t mention it,” you said, slipping your key into the lock. “And if you die in a pipe-related accident, I’ll tell management I warned you.”

“Very reassuring,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

You pushed your door open, stopping just long enough to glance back at him. “Try not to flood the place, Tony.”

Then you slipped inside, leaving him in the hallway with a fake name, a paper towel roll, and a seed of obsession watered by conversation.

Like ivy finding its first crack in a wall, he knew it was going to grow.

—

A week passed before anything more than that happened.

Not that he didn’t notice you.

He did. Fuck, he did.

He noticed you every time your door opened. He logged every time your footsteps hit the hallway. He listened every time your laugh carried faintly through the thin, terrible pipes you’d warned him about.

But the interactions were small and contained. 

You’d nod when you crossed paths. You’d say a quick “morning” on your way out of the apartment. Once, you smiled sweetly when you both reached the stairwell at the same time and you gestured for him to go first.

He didn’t.

“After you,” he said.

You raised an eyebrow. “Wow. A gentleman.”

That was it. Still, he thought about it longer than he should have.

Then, one morning, you stepped out into the hallway, to spot the other neighbour who lived on this floor. She was a lovely elderly woman, and she definitely loved you. She’d call you the “granddaughter she never had,” then proceeded to try and try to get you on a date with literally any guy she knew. She introduced you to the landlord’s son, the electrician, and even her own grandsons. 

Her apartment door was propped open, and she stood there, gently ushering her cat into the hallway to stretch its legs.

“Well, look who it is,” she said the second she saw you.

“Good morning,” you greeted sweetly, passing her a brown bag with a mint chocolate chip cookie in it.

Her face lit up like you’d handed her gold. “Oh, you angel. I told you, you don’t have to keep doing this.”

“I know,” you said, smiling. “I want to.”

The cat stretched toward you immediately, paws reaching, and you obliged, scratching under its chin. It purred loud enough to echo. As you picked her up and cuddled your little furry friend in your arms, you coddled her and whispered a little “Hi, baby. When do I get to cat sit you again, huh?”

That’s when another door clicked open.

You didn’t need to look to know who it was.

Dex stepped out into the hallway, pausing when he saw the little scene in front of him. His eyes landed on you first, then flicked to the older woman, then back again.

She followed your glance and her face lit up.

“Oh! Perfect timing,” she said, waving him closer. “Come here, come here.”

He stepped closer like he wasn’t in a rush to be anywhere else.

“Tony, this…,” she said proudly, gesturing toward you, “is the pretty girl I was telling you about. She always brings me cookies.” She leaned in slightly, lowering her voice like it was a secret. “She is an excellent baker.”

You let out a quiet laugh, shaking your head. “We’ve met.”

The cat wriggled happily, and you set her down, watching it immediately circle your legs again. You turned slightly toward him, tilting your head. “Are you a cat person, Tony?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

What kind of answer was sure? Did he just see that you seemed like a cat person, and decided he simply would be, too?

The cat brushed against his leg, and he glanced down at her like he was trying to figure out the correct response.

It was slightly stiff, but you could tell that he was trying. 

It was… weirdly cute.

“Anyway,” you shook your head, smiling despite yourself. “I need to go to work. I’ve got a client who wants a full sleeve done in one session and I really need to tell him it’s not happening.”

“You work all the time!” Your neighbour said, scandalised.

You scoffed fondly. “Oh my god.”

“It’s true,” she insisted, looking between the two of you like this was critical evidence in her case. “She’s never around long enough to meet anyone nice.”

You rolled your eyes, but turned away to go. If you let her, she’d keep you here all day and talk about all the nice boys your age she met in church. “I gotta go now,” you said, “I’ll come by later.”

You headed toward the stairs.

A second later, you heard footsteps behind you.

Of course, Dex was going out, too.

You didn’t slow down, but you didn’t speed up either.

“Pretty girl?” he said from a step above you, almost amused

You groaned under your breath. “Don’t start.”

He shrugged, completely unbothered as you let him catch up. “She’s not wrong, though.”

You almost missed a step.

“Wow,” you said, recovering quickly. “You’re laying it on thick this morning.”

You reached the bottom of the stairs, past the mailboxes. He followed, falling into step beside you.

“Don’t tell anyone,” you said abruptly.

He glanced at you. “About?”

You leaned in just slightly, lowering your voice. “The cookies?”

“Yeah?”

“They’re from the supermarket.”

He went quiet, before letting out a short chuckle, shaking his head. “So you lied.”

You nudged at him immediately. “I never said I made them. She just assumed.”

“And you never corrected her,” he pointed out.

“It makes her happy,” you said, shrugging. “She likes the idea of it. I’m not ruining that over a 3 dollar box of cookies.”

He watched you for a second longer than necessary. There it was again, that focus. That sharp, almost unsettling attention.

Softer, he said, “Fair enough.”

You crossed your arms lightly, smirking. “What? You’ve never bent the truth before?”

For a split second you could see his brain buffer, but it was gone just as quickly. “Maybe once or twice,” he said.

You huffed. “Right.”

Internally, you almost laughed. Talk about lying.

Outwardly, though, you just shook your head, nudging the door open to head your separate ways.

“I hope my secret’s safe with you,” you said, stepping out onto the pavement.

“Of course,” he replied.

You started walking, then glanced back at him once. “And if she asks, I spent hours baking them.”

The last thing you saw before turning was his smile.

He stayed there for a second, watching you go.

That day, he debated following you to your workplace  instead of killing the two Task Force agents he knew were going to be by the bridge. 

—

A week later, you found yourself in the basement, doing your weekly rounds of laundry. It smelled like detergent, damp concrete, and rust.

You were crouched in front of one of the machines, shoving a stubborn pile of clothes deeper into the drum with your forearm, when the door creaked open behind you.

Then, you heard footsteps. You didn’t have to turn to know who it was.

“Hi, Tony,” you greeted with a small smile. But as you got up, you winced a little. 

“You okay, pretty girl?” He asked, eyebrows raised.

Oh, so it was a nickname now?

You waved it off immediately, rolling your shoulders like that would fix it. “Yeah, yeah. Just…” you paused, stretching, “—work is trying to kill me. I’ve been hunched over a chair all day today.”

His eyes flicked over you as he put his basket down on the table. “What’s work?”

You snorted, grabbing your laundry basket and setting it on top of the machine. “Ink,” you said, glancing over your shoulder at him. “I work at a studio a few blocks over.”

He nodded like that was new information.

It wasn’t.

He knew your route down to the minute. He knew what time you left, what time you got back, which days you tend to stay late. He knew which shop you stopped at when you were too tired to cook.

You, on the other hand, just kept talking.

“Actually—” you turned a little, hooking your thumb under the hem of your shorts, tugging it up just enough to expose a small piece of ink on your upper thigh. “See this?”

His eyes dropped instantly to a small design, a little uneven if you looked closely, lines not quite as confident as your newer work, shading a touch inconsistent.

But it was… cute. Especially on you, Dex thought. It was definitely on theme with the other tattoos you had down your arms and legs. 

“I did that,” you explained. “I don’t usually tattoo myself, but it was studio policy. Had to do it to get from apprentice to artist.” 

“I like it,” Dex said, and for once, he was honest. 

You glanced down at it fondly. “It’s a little wonky, but… yeah. It’s part of me now.”

He didn’t answer right away.

He was still looking, and not just at the tattoo.

He was looking at the way it curved with your skin. The way your fingers rested just above it. He was thinking about how you didn’t think twice about showing him something that permanent, that close, that personal.

He briefly wondered what you would do if he hooked his finger on your shorts, maybe dragging it higher… 

You dropped your shorts back into place, completely unaware of the direction his thoughts had taken.

“You got any?” you asked, nodding toward him. 

“No,” he answered. 

You hummed, tilting your head like you were considering him from a new angle. “Would you ever get one?”

He almost said no again.

Tattoos were permanent. Identifiable. Stupid, for someone like him and his… line of work.

“You’d be a hell of a canvas,” you added, like that might sweeten the deal.

And just like that he said, “Yes.”

It was pathetic, really, how quickly he folded. All he could think about was how you’d be doing it, how you’d be marking him, how you’d be the one sitting him on a chair telling him to sit still, how you’d tell him he was taking such a good job resisting the pain when he would like it simply because it was you who was hurting him. 

You blinked, then broke into a smile like that was the exact answer you wanted. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

You nodded, like you’d already figured out the logistics in your head. “If you ever want one, you don’t have to go to the studio. I’ve got a setup in my apartment. It’s nothing crazy, just for friends and stuff. People who don’t want to pay the upcharge or deal with the whole… environment.”

His eyes flicked up to your face again.

“Noted,” he said.

You smiled, satisfied, turning back to your machine as it started its cycle. “I give a mean tattoo, Tony. You’d be in safe hands.”

He believed that.

You leaned back against the machine, folding your arms loosely. “So what do you do for work?”

You loved watching him squirm, even if his body language didn’t necessarily show it. His eyes darted a little, and you learned that it was as close as he got to a tell.

“Freelance,” he answered abruptly.

You raised an eyebrow slowly. “Uh huh.”

Still, you didn’t push. You didn’t call him out.

“Must be nice,” you said lightly. “Flexible hours and all that.”

He gave a vague shrug, but his attention had already drifted back to you, and to the ink peeking out from under your sleeves, continuing lines at your arm. He decided that you’d definitely have more hidden under your shirt.

He wondered how far it all went, how much of you was marked.

What it would look like if he could get you alone, without the distraction of clothing. He would trace every line, every curve, every piece of art embedded in your skin with his tongue, tasting and—

“Earth to Tony.”

He blinked. You were looking at him, amused.

“You just completely checked out,” you said. “I was saying, don’t overload that machine. It’ll make a noise so loud Mr. Ramirez from across the street is gonna file a noise complaint.”

“Right.” He nodded. Then, almost to himself, he added. “I was listening.”

You smiled, unconvinced but not pressing it. “Sure you were.”

The machines hummed between you, filling the silence.

For a second, neither of you moved.

“Well,” you finally pushed off the machine, grabbing your basket. “Have fun doing laundry, Tony.”

And just like that, you were gone.

—

You got so used to Dex being your next door neighbour that you almost forgot he was a convicted murderer.

After all, it was hard to even believe that when your interactions with him were so… wholesome. 

You’d be halfway down the stairs, keys between your fingers, already running through your day in your head when you’d hear his door click open above you.

“Morning, Tony,” you’d call, not even looking back.

“Morning, pretty girl.”

That was it, at first. Eventually it became…

“Running late?” he asked one day, watching you juggle your bag and a half-zipped jacket.

“Shut up, Tony,” you shot back, hopping the last step. You were amused though, and pleased that he even gave you any attention at all. 

He smiled.

A few days later, he “accidentally” ran into you on your way back, after the sun had dropped. You were tired, shoulders slumped, ink smudged faintly along the side of your wrist.

“Long day?” he asked.

You huffed, digging your key into the lock. “This girl wanted a tattoo of her boyfriend’s name. Bad idea.”

He laughed, cherishing every little interaction he had with you.

Some days, you’d offer him a bottle of water when the building’s pipes went weird again. He’d hold the door open when your hands were full. He'd give you salt when you ran out. He even helped you babysit your mutual neighbour’s cat once. 

And then one night, it changed.

You got back late. Later than usual.

Thank god you were back, though. Dex was a few seconds away from breaking and entering into your shop to make sure no one had hurt you. 

Still, your feet hurt, your back hurt, your patience was hanging by a thread. The second you stepped into your apartment you made a beeline for the window.

You shoved it open, letting the cool air hit your face, dragging in a breath like you hadn’t taken one all day. The city hummed below with distant traffic, music bleeding faintly from somewhere down the block.

You climbed out onto the fire escape without thinking about it. You’d done it a hundred times before.

You sat there with a beer, legs stretched out, back against the brick, letting the noise settle your brain.

Tonight was no different.

At least, it wasn’t supposed to be.

Little did you know, Dex had been watching you for a good five minutes. 

And because he just really wanted to sit with you, he eventually pushed his own window open and stepped up to his own fire escape.

You didn’t look over right away.

He moved across the narrow divider between your sides (there was barely a gap at all), and that’s when your head tilted, just slightly.

“Y’know,” you said casually, “most people use the front door.”

Dex paused before stepping fully onto your side.

“Didn’t feel like it,” he replied.

You let out a small huff of a laugh out.

You lifted the bottle in your hand slightly. “Beer?” you offered to share.

Dex stared at you for half a second too long.

That was it? You let him into your space, just like that? 

“Take it or don’t,” you said lightly. “But if you murder me, I’m gonna be really annoyed I wasted good beer on you.”

That almost made him laugh.

He took the bottle, and stiffened as your fingers brushed his for a second. “You trust me?”

You shrugged, settling back into your spot like the moment had already passed. “I figured if you were gonna kill me, you would probably be sneakier.”

He took a swig of the bottle. You were right, it was good beer.

“I might just be bad at it,” he said.

“Yeah,” you snorted knowingly. “You look real incompetent.”

Silence settled for a second, but not an awkward one.

You took the bottle from him and sipped, glancing sideways at him.

“So,” you said. “you always break into people’s fire escapes, or am I special?”

Dex leaned back against the brick. “Special,” he decided.

You hummed, clearly pleased with that answer. “Thought so.”

The conversation drifted after that. You talked about a client who tapped out halfway through a tattoo and blamed you for it. You complained about the landlord again. You pointed out which windows belonged to which neighbours, offering little pieces of your world like they didn’t matter.

Dex listened, of course. He logged everything. But for once, he didn’t feel like he was gathering intel.

He felt like he was… sitting. With you. 

At some point, you laughed head tipping back again, and it echoed out into his skull and gripped his heart like a vice.

He only really snapped out of his little trance when you asked, “Same time tomorrow, Tony?” 

—

It became a habit.

You’d sit cross-legged or stretched out along the fire escape. Dex would cross over, and then you'd pass bottles back and forth, talking about nothing and everything all at once. Work stories, complaints about neighbours, stupid observations about people on the street below. Easy things, safe things.

Dex told you just enough to keep it believable.

You didn’t push, not even when you smelled the lingering iron scent of blood on him. 

Still, you’d bump your foot against his when you laughed. You’d steal his drink the way he stole yours. Sometimes you’d talk over each other, then both stop, then both say “you go first” at the same time and laugh about it like idiots.

It was dangerously normal.

Occasionally, though, you weren’t as upbeat as you usually were. Those nights, Dex tended to pry a bit more. He needed to know what was wrong with his pretty girl, and who was responsible for you being in a mood, right?

“You’re quiet today.” Dex said once.

You glanced at him, a little surprised, like you hadn’t realised it yourself. Then you gave a small shrug, curling your fingers tighter around your beer.

In the end, you just shook your head. “Wow. Okay.”

You nudged his foot lightly with yours, a habit by now, but there was less energy behind it than usual.

“…It’s stupid,” you added after a second.

Dex just waited for an answer.

You exhaled, tipping your head back before finally giving in. “I did this back-of-the-hand tattoo today,” you explained. “Like, really intricate. It was of a sun with fine lines, proper detail, the whole thing.”

As you talked, a little life came back into your tone, the way it always did when you spoke about your work.

“I genuinely think it’s one of my best pieces,” you went on, glancing at him briefly. “Especially for that placement. Hands are tricky as hell.”

Then your tone dipped again.

“Guy ran out and didn’t pay.”

Dex tilted his head, but didn’t interrupt.

You rolled your eyes, but it didn’t quite land as playful. “Honestly? I don’t even care about the money anymore.” You picked at the label on your bottle, peeling it slowly. “I just wanted a photo of it. It was my art, you know? But he won’t even return my calls.”

His fingers tapped once, lightly, against the glass bottle in his hand. He was thinking of every scenario, how he could handle this, when, and how he was going to tell you about it. He needed a plan. 

“Does he have a name?” he asked.

You blinked, looking over at him. “Yeah,” you said, a little confused by how direct that was. “Jack Hargrove, I think. That’s what he signed in the form, why?”

Dex nodded once. “Okay.”

That was it, no more questions asked.

—

And then… there were the nights you got high.

Those were his favourite.

You had already grown into his favourite person by then, but when you were giggly and mumbly? He found you fucking adorable. 

You’d show up already a little floaty, or you’d pull out a blunt halfway through the night like it was nothing.

The first time you did it, you asked, “Hey.” You nudging his arm lightly. “You smoke?”

Dex didn’t even hesitate before answering. “No.”

You blinked at him once. Slowly, your eyes narrowed just a little, almost amused.

“Wow,” you said, dragging the word out slightly. “That was fast.”

“I don’t,” he repeated.

You snorted, shoulders shaking as you leaned back against the wall, bringing your hand up to cover your mouth like you were trying (and failing) to contain it.

“Alright, officer,” you said, wondering how much you can bring up about his past without him being suspicious. “or is it… agent?”

Dex’s head turned toward you so quickly it almost hurt him. “What?”

You were already grinning, wide and lazy, eyes bright with mischief, ready with a lie to soften your statement.

“You just hit me with the most federal ‘no’ I’ve ever heard in my life,” you quickly backtracked, knowing you had just put him on high alert. “Like, no hesitation, no curiosity, no ‘what is it?’ Just… no.”

He stared at you.

You pointed at him with the blunt, still smiling. “That’s fed behaviour.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“Mhm,” you hummed, playfully.

After a while, you leaned a little closer, squinting at him like you were inspecting something. “Yeah,” you teased, trying to push little buttons. “You’d hate paperwork too much.”

Dex almost frowned. “You’re making a lot of assumptions.”

“And you’re being very defensive for someone who’s definitely never been a fed,” you shot back lightly.

There was a good five-second pause before you grinned again, gentler this time.

“Relax,” you added, nudging his arm again. “I’m kidding.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. You did enjoy toying with him. 

Dex let out a deep breath, tension he hadn’t even acknowledged easing just slightly.

“I just don’t smoke,” he said.

You hummed to yourself, satisfied, and brought the blunt to your lips instead.

“Suit yourself, officer,” you murmured, the tease slipping back in just enough to make it light again.

The flame flickered briefly as you lit it, casting a warm glow over your face before fading. You inhaled slowly, like you’d done it a hundred times before.

Dex watched the way you exhaled, smoke curling into the night air. He watched the way your shoulders dropped, tension leaving you in real time.

“Okay,” you sighed, settling back against the brick, your knee bumping his again. “Now I’m fun.”

Dex didn’t look away. “You’re already fun,” he’d mumble under his breath. 

Still. The more you smoked around him, the more he got used to it. 

He already adored you before, but something about the cute string of laughter you only got when you were high would make his heart melt.

The way you shifted closer without thinking, your knee bumping lightly against his. The way you leaned back, head tilting until it rested briefly against the wall, eyes half-lidded but still bright.

Most times, you’d just trip over your sentences.

“You ever just…” you started, then stopped, laughing under your breath. “No, wait, that’s stupid.”

“What?” he asked before he could stop himself.

You turned your head toward him slowly, like it took effort, eyes landing on his face and staying there.

“You’re, like…” you gestured vaguely toward him, giggling again. “You’re very… intense.”

You didn’t sound intimidated. You sounded delighted.

“Am I?” he said.

“Yeah,” you nodded, completely serious for half a second before it slipped again. “But it’s okay. I like it.”

Your words would drift in and out, sometimes making perfect sense, other times, it meant nothing. You’d laugh at things he didn’t understand. You’d drift from one thing to another. Childhood stories that didn’t sound like childhood stories. You'd say things that sounded like names you never explained. You’d mention places that didn’t quite exist in any way he could trace.

Sometimes you’d say things that should have sounded serious, but you said them with a smile, with a laugh, like they didn’t weigh anything at all. You once even said something about sleeping next to a sawed-off shotgun when you were twelve “just in case.”

In case of what?

Dex couldn’t find anything abnormal about your day to day life, no matter how much he dug or how many times he followed you, so he assumed it didn’t mean anything.

Every now and then, you'd let him tuck you in bed. Tonight was one of those nights.

You blinked slowly, looking at him like you were trying to say something important.

“Tony,” you murmured.

He leaned in slightly without thinking. “Yeah?”

You smiled, soft and sleepy. “You’re… nice.”

The word came out like it surprised even you. Then you giggled again, like the effort was too much.

He didn’t correct you. He just watched as your eyes drifted shut for a second too long.

“…Okay,” you mumbled, barely coherent now. “I think I’m… yeah. I’m done.”

Dex stood before you could even try. You didn’t protest when he guided you up.

You didn’t question it when he helped you through your window, one hand steady at your arm, the other hovering just in case.

Inside, your apartment was dim and warm.

You barely made it to the bed before sinking into it, still half-laughing at something only you understood.

Dex pulled the blanket over you as you shifted slightly, face turning into the pillow.

“Night,” you mumbled.

He stayed there for a second, looking at you. At how soft you looked like this. How open. How completely unguarded.

But then… your eyes opened up again just a little. You traced the scar on his cheek gently. 

“You don’t have to worry,” you mumbled. Your voice was different. Not quite giggly, but clear as day. “I’m not on anyone’s side anymore.”

—

That night, he left your apartment without a sound.

He came back over the fire escape, slipped through his own window, and closed it behind him like he had done many times before. 

Dex moved straight to his laptop, already pulling it open, fingers moving before the screen fully lit up.

Not on anyone’s side anymore? That was a red flag, right?

He immediately looked up databases, records, everything. 

He checked for you— your address, previous work history, licenses, financial trail. 

He found nothing.

He refined his search. He tried running deeper pulls. He cross-referenced. He even systems.

Still… Nothing. No childhood records, no school registrations, no medical history.

No digital footprint worth anything. No tickets, no fines, no traces.

It wasn’t just clean, It was impossible.

Dex leaned back slowly, eyes still locked on the screen like something might appear if he stared long enough.

His jaw tightened slightly.

Because now those moments replayed differently.

The way you talked, the things you said, the way you never explained anything fully, the way you didn’t ask questions.

You weren’t just a tattoo artist with a strange past.

You had no past at all. 

He stared at the blank screen again. “Who are you?” 

—

The next couple of nights were normal. It wasn’t until Thursday that things began to unravel. 

That night, you weren’t at your fire escape. 

Most people would ignore it, maybe even justify it with she’s just busy, she’s just tired, it’s just one night.

Dex didn’t believe in just one night. Not with you.

You were consistent, and that made patterns easy. You came home at the same time, your lights turned on within minutes, your window slid open not long after that. Sometimes you were early. Sometimes a little late. But you always showed up.

So when he stepped out onto the fire escape and your window stayed dark, he immediately started running all the scenarios in his mind.

He stood there, one hand resting against the brick, eyes fixed on the blank glass like it might change if he waited long enough.

Still, nothing.

He told himself to leave after ten minutes. He didn’t.

He stayed longer than that, longer than he would’ve for anyone else, eyes flicking to your window every few seconds like it was a reflex he couldn’t shut off.

When he eventually he went back inside, the feeling didn’t go with him.

—

The next day he confirmed you weren’t at work.

At first, he was confused when you didn’t get out of your door at all. Then, he thought you might’ve gone extra early. 

So he did what he did best— he went to your studio. 

From across the street, he saw that your workstation was empty. No setup. No sketches. No you leaning over someone’s arm with that focused look you got when you were working.

Nothing.

By the time he got back to the building, he made a beeline straight to your door. 

Dex didn’t knock, or call. He didn’t do things halfway.

He broke in, lock giving up in seconds. He slipped inside without a sound.

Your apartment felt… wrong.

Not messy or disturbed. Everything was where it should be. Your shoes were by the door, your jacket thrown over the back of a chair, a glass left on the counter like you’d meant to come back to it.

But it felt… stale. Like you hadn’t opened the window all day and all night.

Dex moved through it quickly, eyes scanning every corner, mind already working through possibilities.

Nothing in the living room. Nothing in the kitchen.

Then, he heard a faint sound from down the hall,

He stopped immediately. He heard a shallow inhale, followed by another, and another, like whoever it was couldn’t catch up with their own lungs.

Dex followed the sound to the bathroom. The door was barely closed, just enough to muffle the sound.

He pushed it open.

You were on the floor, folded into the corner like you were trying to disappear into it.

Your knees were pulled tight to your chest, arms wrapped around them so hard your knuckles had gone white. Your head was tipped forward, forehead almost pressed to your arms, your entire body shaking in violent, uncontrollable tremors.

You were breathing too fast, each inhale breaking halfway through, like your lungs were locking up on you. Your chest heaved, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough.

Your eyes were wide, unfocused, glassy with panic, like you weren’t fully there anymore.

For a second, you didn’t even recognise him.

When you did, you shrank even more, as if you were embarrassed to be found. 

“Hey…” he pushed the door away, “hey, I’m here now.”

You looked up at him through glassy lashes, dead silent for a second.

“H-he’s here,” the words tore out of you eventually. “He’s here, he’s in town! I saw him-I saw him—”

Dex dropped in front of you, one knee hitting the tile hard, but his focus never left your face.

“Look at me,” he said, cutting through the chaos. “Tell me what happened.”

Your gaze flickered, struggled, then caught on his.

“One of my dad’s friends—” you choked, your breath hitching so hard it made your whole body jerk, “His old friends, he found me, he found me—”

Your hands went to your hair, fingers tangling, pulling just enough to hurt, like you needed a physical sensation to hold onto.

“He’s gonna tell him,” you rushed, the words tumbling over each other faster and faster, spiralling, “he’s gonna tell my dad and he’s gonna… he’s gonna get me, he’s gonna—fuck—fuck!”

Your breathing broke completely after that, a choking inhale one right after another.

Your body folded tighter in on itself like it was trying to shut everything out.

Dex grabbed your wrist. “You need to tell me who you saw and where you saw him,” he insisted, “I can’t help otherwise.”

You stared at him, chest heaving, like you were trying to force your body to cooperate.

“Marko,” you whispered, the name barely making it out. “Marko Kovač.”

Your breath hitched again, but you pushed through it, words spilling out uneven and desperate.

“I saw him on E-Eighth and 23rd, outside that liquor store with the broken sign… he was just standing there and he looked right at me, like he knew, like he recognised me—”

Your grip tightened on his sleeve without you even realising.

“He knows I’m here,” you said, voice cracking completely now. “He knows.”

Dex went still, only for a second.

“Okay,” he said immediately.

Just like that, he stood up like there wasn’t time to waste.

Your hand shot out, grabbing his sleeve before he could step away, fingers clutching hard, desperate.

“Don’t…” your voice broke so badly it barely sounded like you. “Don’t leave me, please—”

Dex stopped and looked down at you. He looked at the way you were shaking. He looked at the tears you didn’t even seem to notice. At how completely, utterly terrified you were.

You, who laughed at everything, who teased him, who sat on that fire escape like nothing could touch you…

You were breaking.

And you were asking him to stay, but it didn’t change what needed to happen.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, quieter now. “Okay? Stay here.”

Your grip didn’t loosen right away. Your fingers trembled too much.

“Okay,” you whispered finally, as he gently pulled free. 

Because at the end of the day, you trusted him. 

—

It took a while before you could even move.

For a long time, you just stayed there on the bathroom floor, curled into yourself, your breath still catching every few seconds like your body hadn’t quite figured out how to come down yet.

But slowly, it eased.

Not gone. Not even close.

But Dex being there, telling you that he’d help, it was enough that your fingers stopped shaking so violently. Enough that you could uncurl your arms without feeling like everything would fall apart if you did.

You wiped at your face with the heel of your hand, dragging in a shaky breath that actually finished this time.

In.

Out.

It was still uneven, but it was better.

“Okay,” you whispered to no one, voice hoarse.

When you moved, every motion felt heavy, like your body wasn’t fully yours yet. You pushed yourself up using the edge of the tub, legs unsteady, breath catching again when the room tilted slightly.

You waited it out. Then you made yourself keep going.

You washed your face with cold water over and over until your skin stung and your reflection looked less… broken.

It didn’t fully work, but it helped.

You pulled your favourite hoodie on like armour. You tugged the sleeves down over your hands, fingers disappearing into the fabric, as if you could hide in it.

Then you made it to the couch.

You curled up in the corner, knees tucked in again, but looser this time. 

He said he’d be back.

So now, all you could do was wait. 

—

The door clicked open so quietly it almost blended into the hum of your apartment, but you still heard it. You didn’t even question how he got the keys. 

You didn’t move right away. You were still curled into the corner of the couch, hoodie pulled over your head, sleeves covering your hands, your body folded in on itself like you hadn’t fully decided it was safe to exist again. 

You looked up as he stepped into the living room.

Dex stood there like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t left you shaking on the bathroom floor, like he hadn’t disappeared into the night with a name and a purpose. 

“Hey,” he said casually, like he’d only gone out to grab dinner.

Your throat felt a little tight, but not from fear. Not anymore. “Hi, Tony.”

You watched his mouth twitch at that, like the name amused him now instead of hiding him. 

Your eyes dropped to his sleeves and saw blood.

It was dried now, but you could tell it soaked into the cotton blend near his wrists and forearms. It was subtle. If you hadn’t seen blood on fabric before, you might have chalked it up to a stain. 

Your gaze lingered a second longer than it should have. He followed it.

Then, almost like it didn’t matter, he lifted the plastic bag in his other hand slightly. “I got Chinese.”

Your lips curled up faintly.

He didn’t ask where anything was. He set the bag down, pulled containers out, found plates in your kitchen as if he’d done it a hundred times before. The fragrant smell filled the room and it felt almost surreal layered over the reality of him standing there with blood on his clothes.

You pushed yourself up slowly, legs still a little heavy, and drifted closer.

“Did you—” you started, then stopped yourself.

You were going to ask. You wondered, distantly, how long it had taken. If Marko had recognised him. If he had time to understand why he was dying, or if it had been quick and efficient, like everything Dex did.

You wondered where the body was.

The Hudson, maybe, weighed down. Or maybe somewhere no one would ever think to look. Dex didn’t seem like the kind of man who left loose ends. 

Maybe he wanted someone to find the body, maybe as a deceleration of loyalty to you.

You decided against asking. 

He glanced at you anyway, oblivious.

“I got your favorite,” he added instead, nudging a container toward you as he sat down.

You blinked at that. “You don’t know my favorite.”

“I do.”

You opened the container. He could tell by your smile that he was right.

You huffed out a small laugh, shaking your head as you scooted beside him. 

“You’re welcome,” he said. 

You bumped your shoulder lightly into his as you settled in. He didn’t move away. If anything, he leaned into it just enough that you noticed.

You picked up your chopsticks, pausing for a second before actually eating. Your hands weren’t shaking anymore. That alone said everything.

“You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Dex said.

You went still for half a heartbeat. Then you nodded. “Okay.”

You wondered again, briefly, if Marko had been scared. Then you took a bite of your food.

“Good?” Dex asked, watching you a little too closely.

You chewed, swallowed, then nodded again. “Yeah. Really good.”

He relaxed. It was as if he had been waiting for that exact reaction and didn’t quite know why.

And just like that, the moment settled into comfortable silence.

You leaned back into the couch, letting your shoulder brush his arm this time. 

Your body felt different now. Not wired with panic anymore, not collapsing in on itself. 

Against all odds, you felt safer because he was here.

Dex turned his head slightly, after finishing his meal. “Who was he?”

You knew what he meant. You nudged your food around with your chopsticks, eyes dropping. “My dad’s friend.”

You said it very flatly.

“Your dad has… very armed friends.”

You couldn’t hold back a scoff. You shook your head, unable to hide your cynical amusement. “Yeah,” you said. You hesitated, before reluctantly adding, “He was the one who armed them.”

That got his full attention. “Oh?”

Well, fuck.

You were assuming he killed a man for you. What more did you really have to hide?

“Ugh,” You exhaled, dragging a hand up over your face before letting it drop. “He was—is-  an arms dealer.”

You leaned back further into the couch, head tipping slightly against the cushion as you stared at nothing in particular. “I ran away when I was eighteen,” you continued. “Just as he was starting to talk about how his empire was one day all going to be mine.”

You let out a small, humourless huff. “Guess I wasn’t into the whole… family business.”

You never really had a problem with what he did, it was just the world you grew up in. You learned early not to judge it. To each their own and all that shit. Survival didn’t leave much room for morals anyway.

But you didn’t love it.

You could do it. You would do it, if you had to. That part of you was there, shaped and grown exactly the way your dad intended. 

Violence didn’t scare you.

You understood it, the same way you understood how to hold a pencil or steady a glock in your hand. If you were out in a situation where it could arise, you wouldn’t hesitate to dish it out. Even your mother considered you trigger-happy.

Still… it was never what you wanted.

You just wanted to draw.

And sometimes, that made you feel… pathetic. 

Because the voice your dad left behind in your head never let it be simple. In your nightmares, he’d call you selfish and weak. He’d say that all you cared about was your own need for self-fulfillment. While everyone else carried the family legacy, you were chasing something as small and useless as art for art’s sake.

Safe to say, he wasn’t exactly a good father.

Not when he shoved a gun into your small hands at seven years old and told you to stop shaking and kill the son of a bitch already. Not when he pressed the barrel one to your head at thirteen because you were sketching during one of his “important meetings,” telling you that if you were going to survive in this family, you needed to learn what deserved your attention.

He called it tough love. He was preparing you for a bright future.

And maybe it worked, a little. 

Because you didn’t run from violence. You just… didn’t actively seek it.

Dex didn’t interrupt. He just listened.

“He’s still looking for me,” you added, looking down. “Or was. I don’t know. I stopped checking.”

You lifted your shoulders in a small shrug. It looked casual, but there was a tired smile behind it. For a second, Dex wondered how much time you had really spent on the run.

“I just want to draw,” you finished, looking down at what was left of your food. Suddenly, your appetite vanished. 

To Dex, everything made sense. 

To him, it explained the missing pieces, your lack of records, your offhand comments, the way you never asked questions you should have asked.

He studied you for a second before asking, “You left all of that behind?”

After all, as an FBI agent, he’d seen heirs fight over an empire far less than what he could gather was your father’s. He’d seen people kill their own brothers over a small-town drug operation. 

You managed a chuckle. “I could’ve been filthy rich,” you paused for a second. “But I don’t like paperwork.”

For a second, he just stared at you.

Then… he laughed.

It wasn’t loud, but it was real. It sounded abrupt and rough, like the sound surprised him. You glanced at him, a smile tugging at your lips in response.

Out of all people, he made you feel like you had normalcy.

You were just on your couch, eating takeout, laughing about paperwork… while a speck of his sleeve was still dark red. 

You wondered, again, how it happened. What it looked like. If he’d been thinking about you while he did it.

The thought didn’t make your stomach turn. Instead, you felt more at peace knowing he had done it.

That Marko was gone.

That wasn’t coming to drag you back.

You nudged his arm lightly with yours. “Hey, Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“Come back when you’ve got time.”

He watched you, waiting.

“Think about what you want, and I’ll give you that tattoo,” you said, a warm smile forming. “It’s free,” you added. “As a thank you for helping with Marko.”

Dex held your gaze for a long second. Whatever he was looking for, he found it.

“Okay,” he said.

—

A couple of days later, he showed up at your door on your day off.

You let him in without a second thought.

“So,” you said, stretching your arms over your head as you turned toward your setup, “today’s the day. What are we doing?”

Dex stepped inside, eyes looking to the couch, now covered with extra fabric, the neatly arranged tools, the small table you’d set up.

“I don’t know what,” he said after a second.“But I know where.”

“Alright, Tony,” you nodded, grabbing a pair of gloves and snapping them lightly against your wrist. “Show me where you want it. We’ll figure the rest out together.”

He didn’t hesitate before he took his jacket off and reached for the hem of his shirt. He pulled it off in one smooth motion.

And… Jesus.

You knew he was built. You weren’t blind. You’d seen the way his shirts fit, the way he carried himself, the way fabric would ride up his stomach on the fire escape. 

But this was different.

You could see his defined muscle, veins underneath, broad shoulders. His body didn’t just look trained. He looked like a biblical carving made by the hands of Michaelangelo himself. It was unfair really, especially when he had the face of a Caravaggio angel. Scars scattered here and there, some small, some not. Every inch of him looked… precise.

Your brain very helpfully went: oh my fucking god.

Then, you snapped your head back in the game before the heat between your legs could derail your train of thought.

And yeah. It almost did.

“Wow,” you said, casual, like it hadn’t hit you at all. “You’ve been hiding all that under those boring shirts on purpose, or…?”

He didn’t answer.

But you saw thoughts stalling behind his eyes, almost like a glitch. Soon, the faintest flush crept up the tips of his ears, just barely pink against his skin. His shoulders shifted, like he didn’t quite know where to put himself under your watch.

Dex, who could look someone in the eye without blinking while deciding whether they lived or died…didn’t know what to do with a compliment.

How adorable, you thought.

You just smiled. It was flirty, but it didn’t faze you nearly as much as it did to him.

Instead of acknowledging that, he turned slightly, presenting his back to you.

“See the scar?” he said.

You knew what it was, the raised skin that went from the bottom of his neck to right above the waistband of his trousers.

You knew about the experimental operation, the spinal damage— the whole story. But you didn’t say that.

You stepped closer instead, fingers hovering just above his skin. You weren’t quite touching yet, just tracing the air along the line of it.

“Surgery?” you asked casually.

“Yeah.”

You hummed, stepping around him to get a better angle. “You want to cover it, or… work with it?”

He considered for a second, but didn't seem to come to a conclusion  “It’s up to you,” he said.

“Dangerous thing to say to an artist,” you murmured.

Dex managed a shrug anyway.

You gestured toward the couch. “Lay down. Face down.”

He did, no questions asked. You made sure the surface was clean with a fresh sheet, and then you got to work with a sharpie.

Dex could heat the scratch of your marker against his skin as you started sketching directly onto him, your hand steady, movements confident. You worked instinctively, letting the shape of the scar guide you.

Dex didn’t even move once.

You leaned back after a while, head tilting as you assessed it.

“Hold on,” you said. “I need a better angle.” You hesitated just a fraction before adding, “Mind if I climb up?”

After all, your couch wasn’t exactly a tattoo chair. Or a bed you could just go around. You had limitations, and you just had to work with it.

“Go on.”

So you did.

You swung a leg over, settling carefully against him, straddling his ass just enough to get the position you needed. 

You ignored the way your stomach flipped.

You should be focused, professional. Mostly.

You adjusted slightly, bracing one hand against the back of the couch as you leaned forward to refine the lines. Your other hand moved with purpose, sketching, correcting, building lines that felt right.

It didn’t take long before you finished the initial sketch.

You pulled back again, grabbing your phone.

“Don’t move,” you said, already snapping a photo.

Then you climbed off him, stepping around to his side and holding the screen out.

“Alright,” you said. “What do you think?”

Dex pushed himself up just enough to look.

Oh. Wow. 

You had drawn simple ivy vines winding up his spine, starting low and growing upward. It curled, twisted, and wrapped around the scar like it belonged there. Like it had always been part of it. Like life had taken root in a broken part of him and made it… beautiful.

Dex stared at it for a long second.

“It looks like it’s growing out of it,” he said quietly.

You nodded, watching his reaction. “That’s the idea.”

He looked at it again, then at your fingers, purple from the ink on the sharpie. 

If he agreed, if he said yes to this, you would be part of him forever. He couldn’t imagine a better feeling than that, so he said, “It’s beautiful.”

Your lips curved up into a pleased smile. “Let’s prep you, then.”

—

You settled into your rhythm quickly after you put your gloves on. As the machine buzzed to life, you leaned over him.

“Alright,” you warned, steadying your hand against his back. “Let me know if it’s too much.”

The needle touched down.

Most people flinched. Some needed a second to adjust.

Dex didn’t.

If anything… Dex pressed into it. 

Your eyes looked up for a second, then back down to your work.

He seemed to be chasing the pain. Interesting.

You dragged the line a little longer this time. Your voice was right there, focused on the task at hand when you said. “Your skin’s taking this really nicely.”

His breath hitched, and from the needle.

From how it felt.

Dex clenched his jaw shut immediately, forcing the reaction down, forcing his body still. The next needle drag came slower, more deliberate, and it pulled a pleasure out of him that he wasn’t prepared for.

It burned. It lingered. It made his spine feel too sensitive, like every nerve was suddenly awake and paying attention.

And he… liked it. He liked it a little too much. The fact that you were the one doing it to him made it worse. 

His fingers curled into the couch as he swallowed hard.

Focus, Dex.

He tried to file it away, treat it like any other sensation, but then your gloved thumb brushed close to the fresh ink, grounding him just enough to make the next sting hit harder.

“Stay like that,” you said, encouraging him. “You’re doing really good.”

That… fuck. That made it so much worse.

Because now he wasn’t just chasing the pain.

He was chasing the reward: your praise and approval.

His body reacted before he could stop it, a sound clawing up his throat. He crushed it down.

But the next line came. And the next. Each one was slow and intentional, as if you were making sure he felt it.

“You’re sitting so well for me.”

For you.

The words tangled with the sensation, twisting it into the same vine he couldn’t separate anymore.

Dex’s grip tightened again, knuckles paling as another line burned up his spine, and this time, the sound almost slipped. It manifested in a small, strained breath that edged too close to a whine before he cut it off.

But you kept talking like you had no idea what you were doing to him.

“Most people don’t handle this like you are,” you said, dragging another line. “You’re taking it really well”

His breath broke again, quieter this time, but worse, because it didn’t fully go away when he tried to control it.

He wasn’t just enduring it. He was waiting for it, anticipating the next drag of the needle, the next burn, the next excuse for you to praise him like that.

“Looks so fucking good on you.”

Oh, that one went straight through him. 

He choked it down so fast it hurt, throat tightening, breath uneven no matter how hard he tried to fix it.

Honestly, it was pathetic, the amount of moans and lewd whines he had to swallow simply because he was being marked by you. 

Still, he wanted more.

—

The machine finally fell silent after what felt like hours, the buzz fading into nothing but the sound of both your breathing.

You leaned back slightly, flexing your fingers before grabbing a clean cloth and wiping gently over his back, clearing away the excess ink and plasma. The design came into full view: dark, clean lines curling up along his spine, wrapping around the scar like it had always belonged there.

“Good canvas,” you murmured, almost to yourself.

Dex didn’t respond right away. He was too busy feeling the absence of the needle, the strange numbness where the sensation had been, his body still humming.

“You didn’t even twitch,” you added, a little louder this time, clearly impressed as you reached for the wrap. You stepped aside, clearing a path to the full-length mirror at the corner of the living room, “it’s even more impressive that it’s your first tattoo.”

He pushed himself up from the couch, rolling his shoulders once before stepping toward the mirror.

And then he saw it.

The ivy climbed his spine in delicate, elegant lines, twisting around the scar instead of hiding it. 

For a moment, he just stared. The scar looked… pretty. Pretty like a dewdrop from a leaf at dusk. Pretty like the sky’s reflection in the water at dawn. Pretty like you.

“You wear it well,” you said casually behind him, like it wasn’t a big deal, like you hadn’t just permanently changed the way he saw himself.

His fingers hovered near it, not really touching.

“Thank you, pretty girl.” he said, smaller than usual. The usual teasing edge with that nickname was dulled. He said it almost reverently.

You smiled a little at that, already focused on your next task as you stepped closer again. “Hold still.”

You smoothed the second skin carefully over the tattoo, pressing it down along his back with practiced hands.

“This’ll stay on for like a day or two,” you explained, your tone shifting into professional. “It’s basically a clear bandage. It keeps everything clean, helps it heal faster. You can shower with it, move around, whatever. Just… don’t mess with it.”

You stepped back, giving it a quick once-over to make sure it was sealed properly.

“After you take it off, wash it gently, no harsh soaps,” you continued, ticking a mental list off like muscle memory. “And don’t forget to moisturize.” You paused, then snapped your fingers lightly. “Oh, cocoa butter. That’s what I use.” You turned toward the hallway. “I’ve got a shit ton in my bedroom, let me grab you some.”

And just like that, you disappeared.

Dex was left standing alone in your living room.

For a second, he didn’t move.

Then he shifted, awkward in a way he never was anywhere else, glancing around the space like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself without you there to anchor his attention.

His eyes drifted to the couch and the table. 

And then he saw it.

A sketchbook, sitting on the coffee table. It had a plain black cardboard for a cover, but even the edges were worn.

He would bet good money that you laid your mind out there. That the sketches you drew were part of you, that it would give him an insight to how you thought, how you felt, who you are.  

He stared at it for a moment.

Looking wouldn’t hurt… right?

He sat down on the couch again, slower this time. The couch dipped beneath him, still warm from where he’d been lying earlier, and for a second he just stared at the sketchbook he’d just picked up his hands.

It felt like something he wasn’t supposed to touch. That thought didn’t stop him.

His thumb dragged along the edge of the cover before he opened it, the paper giving that worn sound that only came from books that were handled often.

The first pages were exactly what they should’ve been.

They were professional.

It was a string of roses meant to wrap naturally along muscle, thorns placed intentionally. The notes on the margin said the name of the client and the placement: forearm. He could practically feel where the needle would drag just by looking at the line weight. The shading was subtle but deliberate, gradients that would settle into skin instead of sitting on top of it.

Next page was a skull, split clean down the middle, like it had been cut open and arranged. Inside, instead of emptiness, there were peonies blooming out from the cavity, stems threading through bone like they’d grown there.

He turned the page.

This was a serpent coiled around a dagger, its body twisting. The scales overlapped in tight, careful patterns, each one slightly varied, like you actually understood what repetition was supposed to look like.

There were smaller pieces too; Fine-line constellations, minimalist script, coordinates. There were notes scribbled in the margins from placement ideas, sizing, reminders to adjust line thickness for certain skin types.

He flipped another page. Then another.

He saw a dragon stretched across two sheets, body flowing in a way that made it feel like it would move if you looked too long. A pair of hands reaching toward each other, fingers just barely missing contact. A moth with wings patterned like stained glass.

And then, somewhere in the middle of turning another page, that changed.

The lines loosened. The structure wavered. It felt personal, and the notes disappeared. You weren’t drawing to a prompt anymore; this was art for art’s sake— the view from your window sill, the cat from across the hall, the plants near the flower shop down the street. 

The next page was a figure, a woman. 

She was reclined on a chaise, her weight settled into one hip, body angled in a way that emphasized curve without exaggerating it. These were a little stylised, vintage sailor-inspired style tattoo. 

She had high-waisted shorts hugging her hips, a tied cropped top slipping off one shoulder, exposing more skin than necessary, Her hair was pinned up, a few strands falling loose like they hadn’t been corrected.

Dex’s eyes lingered longer than they should have.

He turned the page to see the same figure in a different pose.

She was this time, one knee pulled up slightly, fingers hooked into the waistband of her shorts absentmindedly. 

Her head was tilted seductively, and that smile…. 

He flipped again.

This time, she was one leaning back, arms braced behind her, chest lifted just slightly, the fabric of her shirt stretched in a way that felt… intentional, even if the pose wasn’t.

Oh. 

He had suspected it on the first figure, but this one confirmed it. 

That smile.

He knew that smile.

He’d seen it across from him on the fire escape, half-hidden behind a beer bottle. He’d seen it when you teased him, when you pushed just enough, when you knew something and didn’t say it.

He’d know it anywhere.

“…fuck.”

You were undoubtedly the reference to all these sailor girls. 

Every page after that only confirmed it.

You, over and over again, translated through your own hand. The way you saw yourself. The way you chose to present yourself.

It only got more and more explicit and intimate as he flipped the pages, comfortable being looked at by your own eyes, leaving less and less for the imagination as he saw another page of you bent over—

Fuck, even his thick tactical trousers can’t hide his physical reaction right now. 

He could imagine you sitting right here, in this exact spot, probably topless. The sketchbook would be balanced against your thigh, pencil moving in steady strokes. He imagined you glancing up at a mirror before putting it down on paper.

Dex wasn’t gonna lie to himself— he’s thought about you like this way too many times.

It would happen after long, stressful nights, alone, replaying the way you leaned into him, the way your voice dropped when you teased him, the way your knee bumped his.

He’d go into the bathroom for a hot shower, fist around himself as he thought about you. How you’d look under him, how you’d react to his touch, how you’d sound if only you’d let him…

His jaw clenched as heat crept up the back of his neck. His grip on the page shifted, fingers pressing harder like he needed something physical.

There was something about seeing it, about knowing you had made this, that made it worse. He felt possessive, in a way he didn’t bother examining.

He wanted this page. He needed it. He would at least something other than his own imagination to help. 

He shouldn’t do it, but when has shouldn’t ever stopped him?

He tore the page, not even caring that the paper crinkled way too loudly in your otherwise silent apartment. 

He just held it there, fingers tightening around the paper like it might be taken from him if he didn’t.

But then…

The page underneath caught his eye.

“…oh.”

That… wasn’t you.

It wasn’t your pinup sketches, not a personal drawing, not even a client drawing.

It was…. him.

Dex leaned forward slightly without realizing he was doing it, eyes narrowing as they traced over the lines.

It wasn’t stylized. It was accurate, down to the placement of his scars and the faint lines on the forehead. It looked like he was doing laundry. 

You… had been drawing him?

Then, he turned the page again. That was when his heart dropped. 

It was him again, but not Tony.

You had drawn Bullseye, mask on and everything. 

His grip on the torn page tightened.

He flipped and another one.

It was him again, on a rooftop, rifle braced, body aligned with the shot. The environment was barely sketched in, just enough to ground it, but the focus was entirely on him. 

He remembered that night. He had been tracking Task Force for hours.

He flipped again.

It was him, mid-step, tracking through a crowd, head slightly dipped.

Another.

Him throwing a knife between his fingers, captured right before release.

He flipped faster.

Page after page after page, all him. From different angles, different nights, different moments.

Some of them were rough sketches, quick captures like you hadn’t had time to refine them. Others fully rendered, detailed down to the smallest nuance. 

There were dozens of these, enough to go back months. 

You knew.

All this time, you were aware of him, what he had done, what he was capable of. 

Dex let out a deep breath. 

He realised now, what this meant. 

He had been following you in broad daylight, keeping track of your habits, your pattern, your days. 

But he hadn’t accounted for your nights.

So you must’ve been watching him then.

All those times he was doing his self-appointed mission, thinking he was alone in it… he wasn’t. 

You had been there, too. Another presence just outside his line of sight. Watching him the same way he watched you.

He wasn’t creeped out; it would be hypocritical.

He was in awe. He was amazed that his pretty girl was capable of this. Perhaps he shouldn’t be— daughter of a crime boss and all— but if anything, it only made him fall deeper in love with you, if that was even possible. 

All this time, the obsession was mutual. 

And then, he heard footsteps approaching. 

He didn’t move. He didn’t close the sketchbook, didn’t hide the torn page still in his hand.

He just sat there, surrounded by the evidence of crossing a line. He had a feeling you wouldn’t mind, though.

The hallway creaked faintly.

“Ah,” you said, setting down the tub of cocoa butter. “You found it.”

Dex stood up slowly. He didn’t rush you, didn't corner you right away. If anything, he was taking you in slowly. His eyes were locked on you like he was seeing you properly for the first time.

He set the sketchbook down.

“How long?” he asked again, like the answer mattered more now that he knew there was one. “How long have you known?”

“From the start.” You said it like it was obvious. Like it had never been a secret. Like you were almost surprised he had to ask.

“I might be pretty,” you added with an easy shrug, “but I’m not stupid, Dex.”

Dex.

Not Tony.

He lit up.

It was visceral, that switch up. He loved hearing his name from your mouth as if it belonged there.

A breath left him, almost a laugh, but rougher. His head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing just enough to study you again.

“My girl’s been watching me,” he murmured, more to himself than to you, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.

You huffed a laugh, suddenly shy. You weren’t expecting a confrontation, at least not today. “Oh, don’t start,” you said, but there was no real resistance in it.

He took a step closer.

“Following me,” he continued, piecing it together out loud now, realising just how much you had stolen from his playbook. “Watching my routes. Studying my patterns .”

He took another step, and you stayed where you were, wanting him to come closer. 

“And I didn’t even notice.” He almost sounded impressed.

You tilted your head slightly, crossing your arms. “Yeah,” you said. “Didn’t think you’d mind.”

Dex let out a quiet breath through his nose, something almost like a laugh, but heavier.

“Mind?” he echoed, head tipping. 

You held his eyes and didn’t back down, as he stepped in front of you.

“If you didn’t like it,” you shot back, “you wouldn’t be standing this close.”

You were right. 

His hand came up firmly as it found your wrist, fingers curling around it gently. 

“And you let me follow you,” he said under his breath. 

Of course you knew. Denying it now would just be an insult to everyone involved.

“Seems rude to stop you having so much… fun,” you said.

Fuck, you were something, were you?

Dex moved, closing the last of the distance between you. He pushed, just a bit, backing you up against the wall. He didn’t do it harshly, but his movements were certain, like there was no version of this where you weren’t right here.

His other hand braced beside your head, boxing you in without forcing you.

For a second, he just looked at you, and not as the neighbor. Not as the girl on the fire escape.

You.

The one who knew about him all along. The one who watched him. The one who kept up with him.

“Admit it,” you said, breathing just slightly uneven now, “You like that I was watching you.”

His eyes dropped to your mouth for a fraction of a second before lifting again. He was still trying to wrap his mind around how you knew who he was, and you still—what? Invited him in? Sat next to him? Drank with him?”

“Yeah,” he said, no hesitation. “I do.”

You bit your lip as if you’d been waiting for him to say it.

“What else did you see?” he asked, beads of sweat trickling down his bare chest. 

You raised an eyebrow, feigning innocence, “What are you worried I saw?”

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. His mind was still tripping, even with his newfound confidence. “You’re—”

He didn’t finish it. 

Your hand came up, fingers hooking lightly at his belt loop, pulling him just a fraction closer.

You leaned in closer, your lips just barely brushing near his, your voice conspiratorial. “I can hear it, you know,” 

He froze.

“I love it when my name when you’re touching yourself, Dex,” you continued, tone playful. “Music to my fucking ears.”

His hand tightened at your waist, pulling himself flush against you, any space between you gone in an instant.

This was it. 

This was all he ever wanted. 

But it was you he was talking about, and what kind of man would he be it he just let his girl do all the work in the relationship?

“You talk too much,” he said, and that was the last thing either of you said before he kissed you.

It was hungry.

Like he had been thinking about it for too long. Like he already knew what it would feel like, had imagined it enough times that when it finally happened, his body just followed instinct. 

You made a small, surprised whine, but you didn’t pull away. If anything, you leaned into him harder, your hands coming up immediately, gripping his shoulders before sliding higher, fingers tangling into his hair and holding him there.

He gasped against your mouthlike feeling you pull him closer snapped whatever control he had left clean in half.

His hands explored, one firm at your waist, while the other came up to your chin, gripping harshly as he tilted your head, deepening the kiss.

It turned messy fast.

It started with breath breaking between movements, teeth catching his bottom lip for a second, neither of you slowing down long enough to make it neat. There was nothing careful about it, nothing rehearsed, just the way you liked it. 

You felt him everywhere, from the press of his chest against yours to his grip tightening and loosening like he was testing his limit. 

Your fingers tightened in his hair, tugging just enough to get a reaction in the form of a low, reverberating groan. 

When you caught your breath, you smiled, “Took you long enough.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he bit out immediately, as if every second your lips weren’t on him, the world was falling apart.

That almost made you laugh, but it dissolved the second he kissed you again, harder this time, like he didn’t like the break, like he was making up for it.

Your hands slid from his hair to his neck, fingers curling there, holding him in place, keeping him exactly where you wanted him.

And he let you.

Dex, who controlled everything, let you pull him, let you guide him just as much as he guided you.

Your back was pressed more firmly into the wall as he leaned into you, his body feeling  inescapable in the best way.

Your fingers dragged slightly along the back of his neck, and he reacted again, his breath hitching, his grip tightening as he toyed with the hem of your shirt, palm splayed against your skin now. 

He broke the kiss, but only just.

His lips lingered a fraction too long before pulling back, like he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to stop. His breath was uneven, his forehead against yours.

For a second, neither of you moved.

His eyes dropped to your mouth, like he couldn’t help it, like he was already thinking about doing it again.

Then they flicked back up to yours, darker now, heavier with a primal lust that hadn’t been there before… or maybe had, just buried under a mask he wasn’t bothering with anymore.

“Does my pretty girl want me fuck her stupid?” he whispered, so condescending it bordered on arrogance. 

He knew the answer immediately when you pressed your legs together, desperate for any form of friction, but he wanted to make you say it anyway.

Your throat felt tight, eyes in a haze as you followed the trail of spit that still connected your mouth to his. 

You nodded. And it was pathetic, desperate, and eager.

Unable to form words? Aw, how adorable. 

“Yeah,” he breathed, almost to himself, like he was locking it in. “That’s what I thought.”

—

Morning came slowly.

The distant buzz of the city filtered in through the cracked window, light spilling in thin, golden strips across the room, catching on empty bottles, painting colours on your walls. 

Dex woke to your touch.

You were so gentle this time, so different from the way you’d had them on him the night before. Now they moved carefully across his back, fingers gliding over his skin spreading cocoa butter along the fresh ink.

His eyes opened, blinking against the light as he shifted under you, enough to register where he was.

Your bed, your sheets, your room.

You were behind him, straddling the backs of his thighs, completely focused on his ink like nothing else in the world mattered.

Your hair was a little messy, falling forward over your shoulder as you leaned in. Your hands moved in careful strokes along the length of his spine, following every curve of the ivy you’d etched into him.

His teeth tightened slightly, a small exhale slipping out before he could stop it.

You noticed.

“Morning,” you greeted, not even looking up at first.

The second skin had peeled off sometime in the night from the overly strenuous activity he had called sex, and you’d made good on your promise to take care of it after.

You even reassured him that after it healed, you’d touch  it up if needed.

Your fingers traced just along the edge of the tattoo, careful around the more irritated areas like you were memorising it all over again.

Like you were memorising him.

“That didn’t exactly last long,” you added, a hint of amusement slipping into your voice now.

Dex huffed out a laugh. “You said a day or two.”

You finally glanced down at him, lifting an eyebrow. “I didn’t account for you… being like that.”

He shifted slightly under you again, trying to decide whether to sit up or stay exactly where he was.

He let his head drop back against the pillow briefly, eyes half-lidding as your hands moved up his spine again one last time. 

You kissed his shoulder, whispering close to his ear, “all done.”

At that, Dex shifted slightly beneath you, then pushed himself up onto his forearms, rolling his shoulders once to stretch.

He looked at you, at how cute you looked in the afterglow, wondering how he could possibly have underestimated his sweet girl.

That’s when he remembered. 

“Oh,” he said, like it annoyed him he’d nearly forgotten in all the chaos of last night. “I got something for you.”

You blinked, still docile from the intimacy of the morning. “Yeah?”

“Can you grab my jacket?” He asked.

You frowned a little at that, head tilting. “Your jacket?”

“It’s in the living room.”

Weird request. 

“…Okay?” you said slowly, sliding off the bed.

You didn't even bother covering up.

Why would you?

It was your apartment, your space. And after last night… please.

You stretched slightly as you walked out, feeling his eyes on you before you even turned.

You glanced over your shoulder, catching his unashamed drag of his gaze down your back, your hips, the curve of your ass. 

You clicked your tongue. “Perv.”

There was no bite to it. 

Dex didn’t even try to deny it. If anything, he smiled like he liked being called that by you.

You grabbed his jacket from the chair, and returned a second later, tossing it onto the bed without ceremony.

“There,” you said, climbing back up, settling beside him again. 

He was already reaching into the pocket, pulling a small piece of fabric out. 

Leather.

At least, that’s what you thought.

“What’s that?” you asked, leaning in.

Instead of answering, he held it out to you.

You reached out, your fingers brushing the surface before your eyes assessed it properly.

Oh.

Oh.

“That’s…” you gasped in disbelief. 

It was the exact sun you had tattooed on the back of Jack Hargrove’s hands.

You traced the familiar details, the tiny imperfections that you knew because you had put them there.

Your fingers pinched it as your brain caught up with what you were holding.

Human leather.  

You should be appalled. You should be horrified. You should be scared of him. You should feel sick to your stomach.

Instead, all you could think about was how this was the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me. 

“…Dex,” you breathed, your voice reverent. 

He watched you closely, watching you figuring out the implications in real time. 

Not just that he killed him, but just how far he went.

He tracked him down, took his hand, skinned it, and preserved it. Just for you.

You turned it slightly under the light again, your thumb brushing over the ink.

Dex shifted a little beside you, like the silence had stretched long enough for him to fill it.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” he said.

You glanced up at him. That was not what you expected.

His expression didn’t change much, but there was the faintest edge of something almost… earnest there. Mild frustration, maybe. Not at you, but at the process.

“Making it was harder than I thought it would be,” he added, like he was explaining a minor inconvenience.

For a second, your brain just… stalled.

Then you laughed in disbelief. Not because you were afraid, but because you were delighted.

“You’re unbelievable,” you said, shaking your head, still smiling as you looked back down at it.

Dex watched you carefully, like he was checking whether that was the correct response. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like it.”

“Dex,” you said, smiling at him incredulously, “you literally took the time to make me art out of someone who pissed me off. Of course I love it.”

Instantly, his shoulder dropped in relief. 

You leaned in without thinking, pressing a kiss to his cheek, right over the scar, lingering just long enough to feel his cheeks pull a smile. 

When you pulled back, your hand was already reaching to take the leather properly, to keep it. Maybe you’d even frame it.

But he pulled it back just out of reach, teasing you. 

You blinked at him, your mouth pulling into the most adorable pout he’d ever seen. “Hey,” you huffed.

He watched you for a second, clearly enjoying it. His eyes switched between your face and your mouth like he was deciding a game.

“I’ll give it to you,” he said casually. “if you promise me something.”

Your eyes narrowed slightly, but there was a smile tugging at your lips. “Oh, you’re negotiating now?”

He tilted his head just a fraction. “Tattoo me,” he said. “One of those pinups.”

Oh.

You knew which ones he meant.

You shook your head, laughing under your breath, but your eyes gave you away completely. “I thought you’d never ask.”

That was all he needed.

He leaned in again, closing the space between you, his mouth finding yours as he laid the leather on your bare thighs.

And this time, kissing him felt different. It felt like he was yours. 

It felt so right in the way only things that were deeply wrong and perfectly matched could feel.

When you pulled back, you already knew he was going to be your favourite canvas.

bodyguard!dex who keeps it too professional, and your attitude isn't helping to defuse the akward situation

you hate how silent he is. he appears out of nowhere and nearly gives you a heart attack at least twice a day. standing there with a vacant stare and his hands clasped, as if he were waiting for you to engage with him or for the worst possible catastrophe—full of blood and screams—to unfold. you never know what he's thinking.

“stop following me.” you repeat every damn time. doesn't matter if you're in a public space or screaming it through your living room windows.

“mr. fisk told me to protect you.” and he simply replies, without looking at your face.

“i don’t need your protection.”

“that’s not your decision.”

those words made your skin crawl every time he repeated them, letting you go after trying to throw something at him that he’d catch with his left hand. maybe her father was right, she needed someone to protect her… and if dex put you in any danger, wilson fisk would be furious if he didn’t have his precious daughter under his wing to keep her in a gilded cage

bodyguard!dex who has to deal with a bratty lady if he wants to stay alive.

so, you start doing dumb things just to just to try and get him to leave, or to tease him:

taking random taxis without warning

disappearing into crowded clubs

flirting with dangerous men at parties

and dex always finds you within minutes

the terrifying part is how easy it is for him

he always catches you, giving you just enough breathing space to think you’ve won, but never enough time for something outside his radar to actually happen.

you will duck through subway crowds, change coats with strangers, cut through alleyways... and then:

“you’re not making this difficult.”

he’ll be standing right there, completely calm, not even out of breath.

“put effort to make it fun for yourself, at least.”

“motherfucker...” you pant.

that taxi? will have a flat tyre. the crowds? he can blend in with the people you leave behind, pushing them aside with the space his shoulders take up. he can follow your scent of an expensive girl from anywhere. the man you shouldn't be talking to? dex was already watching him before you even notice the danger yourself.

he catches the man’s posture, the angle of his hands, he assesses with his eyes just how exposed his neck is, the number of exits behind you... but he lets you play with it.

and if the stranger gets too comfortable—too close or too smiling—you’ll suddenly feel dex at your shoulder, knowing it's him without having to turn around.

quiet. massive. inhumanly still.

the man stops talking to you, so you look down at your drink on the bar.

“walk away,” he says flatly.

most men do. and the ones who don’t, dex doesn't give you the satisfaction of seeing him annoyed. he stays back.

three minutes later, when he would be smiling again: CRACK!

the man suddenly folds over clutching his face because somehow an olive pit launched from across the room hit him directly in the eye at mach 3.

nobody knows where it came from, dex is still standing beside you holding your drink untouched. when you wipe the drop of blood from your cheek and turn towards him, he already has your coat draped over his arm.

“you attract dangerous people” he murmurs, like he isn’t the worst one there. “we should get going”

—

another gets cocky in a charity gala. too public, plus the cameras. he smiles at dex and you let him put a hand on your lower back anyway.

you turned to look at dex, just to play along, and he simply ran his tongue over his teeth, turning his back to you. you couldn’t believe it; you were sweating. had you won that one?

barely seconds after, something wet touches you before the crack of the glass. the champagne in his hand fucking explodes into your dress, soaking your neckline.

the man stares at his shredded sleeve in confusion while dex calmly asks you:

“do you have a spare dress?”

—

one particularly persistent finance bro laughs after being warned, one that you didin't even try to play with.

“i’m not scared of your bodyguard.”

“you should” you surrender, sighing, taking a sip of a can. nothing that can be cracked.

dex says nothing. looks at you, you look at him.

one minute later the guy’s phone flies out of his hand and directly into a decorative fountain.

the man only manage to blink. “fucki—”

then:

an ice cube hits his forehead

a canapé lands in his suit pocket

a waiter trips and a fork embeds perfectly into the wall beside his ear

at this point the guy looks genuinely haunted.

meanwhile dex is beside you adjusting his cufflinks with the blankest expression imaginable.

try to chat someone up has become a bit of a joke between the two of you, and the funniest part is that dex never reacts afterward.

you’ll be trying not to laugh while the man searches the room for the invisible force attacking him, and dex just quietly leans down near your ear:

“he’s still looking at you.”

THWACK.

the poor bastard immediately gets hit in the throat with a macaron from forty feet away.

well... you have to find another way to get it more tense.

bodyguard!dex who holds his breath as he peer through the peephole at your flat’s window at two in the morning and don’t find you there

the noise is getting bigger than him at this point. he tries to keep it methodical: check the street - call the driver - scan exits - reconstruct timelines.

fisk told him your scape routes, but this time you just vanished and he comprehends that he shouldn't have had the drink you offered him before entering your home.

something ancient and ugly crawls up the back of his throat, scratching his skull: he failed.

dex unlocks the door in under three seconds, franatic. the apartment still smells faintly like your perfume, which somehow makes it worse. like prey warmth left behind after the body’s already gone.

his breathing changes immediately, shallow and shorter, so the kitchen is untouched, your bed cold with the window cracked open. a post-it sticks in the glass: a mark of your red lips

a fucking goodbye? that was it?

dex starts moving through the apartment too fast, throwing drawers open hard enough to crack wood, because now the thoughts are coming: did someone harm you whilst he hasn't been with you? you had a plan? did fisk knew before me?

that last one nearly makes him throw up regrets and bitterness.

the city unfolded beneath him like a living map as he descended. from the rooftop access he’d commandeered, new york stopped being buildings and streets, it became trails of you. the way crowds flowed and split because of the cadence of someone trying to disappear.

silly girl.

because, at this point, you taught dex the exact cadence of your panic without even trying. now he knows where you go when overwhelmed, what neighborhoods you avoid and, for sure, how long you can stay alone before looking over your shoulder.

in his own horror, he was already three steps ahead of your chaos.

dex cut through the streets like a scalpel, without having to run. running drew eyes. every sense sharpened to a lethal point to find you. a discarded wrapper from the exact energy bar you liked, a faint scent of your shampoo caught on a street vent...

there.

he spotted the flicker of your movement across the street, half-hidden waiting for the bus. forty-one minutes. right on schedule.

looking again at your frame, made his lips curled, something feral and almost tender twisting in his chest. the noise was definetly lowering.

you thought you could run from him.

dex stepped into the alley mouth ahead of your path, waiting. his heart was no longer panicking, it was singing.

as he expected, you rounded the corner at a hurried clip, with your hoodie pulled low and the breath visible in the cool night air. the second you registered him standing there your whole body jersked like you'd been electrocuted.

no, it couldn't be. he's there. he's there and you lost again!

for half a second, neither of you moved further than a faint crooked smile forming in his lips before his voice slid out, low and velvet-rough.

“hello, you”

you bolted. not away from him but past him, shouldering into the narrower gap of the alley like a rabbit flushing from cover.

he let you. he could’ve had your wrist in an iron grip before you even finished the first stride, but he didn’t. instead, he tilted his head, watching the way your legs pumped, the flash of panic and something darker in your eyes.

he liked this part too much.

“run,” he murmured, almost fondly. “i’ll even give you a head start.”

you didin't even look back to check if he was following, the rush of adrenaline burned your muscles, making your eyes tear up and your lips to smile tightly, exhaling a rythmic laugh as you round the corner abruptly, your foot slips on the wet pavement. you stumble and find yourself on your hands and knees, pushing yourself back up without even feeling the sting of the graze on your calf.

you darted through the back alleys of hell’s kitchen, leaping over trash bags, cutting across empty loading docks. he stayed just close enough for you to hear his footsteps. never sprinting nor frantic. how could him? you weren't able to arouse any feeling in him?

every time you glanced over your shoulder, he was there. closer... then a little farther, playing with the distance like a cat with a string.

you hated how much you wanted this. the sick thrill curling low in your stomach. the way your blood sang every time you heard him gaining ground. you’d never admit it, not even to yourself. not the good daughter of wilson fisk. but God, you wanted him to chase you down like a target. be something more than 'the daughter of'

you took a sharp left into an old service tunnel beneath an abandoned garment factory on 39th, following the map you traced many nights ago. the chain-link gate had been cut long ago. no cameras nor traffic this late. just dripping pipes, flickering emergency lights that barely worked, and miles of empty concrete corridors.

perfect.

you thought of hiding, really thought about getting in something dark and listen to him wander in anger. you could even savour it in your mind.

in the real world, dex’s voice echoed just behind you, a calm wave lapping against the walls.

“you’re slowing down. legs getting tired?”

you pushed harder, lungs burning, but a twisted smile tugged at your lips despite everything. you heard that smile in his voice. he was enjoying this. and worse—you were too.

he finally closed the distance in a short sprint, one arm snaked around your waist from behind, pulling you backwards, tearing away any air left in your diaphragm. you choked on your own saliva as you tried to scream, reaching out with your hands to grab something while being thrown to the dirty ground. a considerate hand holding the top of your head for as long as your reduction lasted.

a groan escaped your lips as he pressed half your head against something wet and slippery beneath you, feeling his weight suffocating you as he lay on top of you. your breathing quickened at the thought that you couldn’t escape. alredy knowing that he couldn’t hurt you, no matter how much you wanted him to, you... had lost again.

“got you,” he breathed against your ear, taking the opportunity to rest his forehead against your temple

‘you said you'd give me a head start’ you muffled, tasting something tart. probably mud

his other hand came up around your neck like he could touch your words, feeling the wild flutter of your pulse.

‘i got bored’

‘son of a...’

you struggled, twisting in his grip. he let you turn to face him, your back now pressed against the cold tiled wall of the deserted tunnel. the only light came from a dying bulb twenty feet away, just the distant hum of the city far above and the sound of both of you breathing hard.

dex’s eyes were bright looking down on you, almost feverish. that dangerous, boyish grin played on his mouth, aggravating the wound above his eyebrow.

“i should drag you back right now,” he said softly. “your father’s probably losing his mind.”

his thumb stroked along your jaw, also sensing your pulse there, and your lips parted in order to get some air.

“…but I think you want to run again.”

you stared up at him, chest heaving. you didn’t answer. you didn’t have to. the way your fingers curled into his wrist, breaking through the top layer of the skin, neither pushing him away nor pulling him closer, said everything.

dex leaned in until his forehead almost touched yours.

“last chance for tonight, fisk. run.”

he loosened his grip just enough.

you held his gaze for one electric second, checking to see if he’d really stay put, on his knees while you slipped away to freedom. and he did.

you shoved him back and sprinted deeper into the abandoned tunnel, heart hammering with twisted, shameful excitement.

dex laughed under his breath seeing your back and your hair dancing with the wind.

he followed at a measured pace, his footsteps echoing in the damp tunnel like a metronome. the thrill was still there, humming under his skin, but now it was sharpening into something darker, fucking stupid and reckless because he had given you that opportunity while his mind was clouded by the high you had given him if you actually slipped away—if wilson fisk lost his daughter because he let this game go too far—fisk wouldn’t just fire him. he’d skin him alive. slowly but creatively. and Dex had no illusions about surviving that.

“dod damn it,” he growled under his breath, the words carrying down the corridor. “you’re going to get me killed!”

he could hear you ahead, following the slap of your sneakers on wet concrete. you were tiring, but still pushing, and yet some sick part of you needed him to prove he could catch you.

fine.

dex’s hand dipped into his pocket and came out with a small steel ball bearing he always carried. in one fluid motion he whipped it forward, a blur in the low light.

the bearing ricocheted off a pipe with a sharp ping, then slammed into an old metal grate leaning against the wall just ahead of you. the grate toppled with a loud metallic crash, right into your path.

you tried to dodge too late, getting your foot caught the edge and you stumbled hard, arms windmilling. before you could recover, you felt a wall behind you. something big and sturdy to hold on to

dex caught you mid-fall, one arm locking around your waist like a steel band, spinning you so your back slammed against the curved tunnel wall and then got you pressed against his chest. the impact knocked the air out of you. his other hand planted beside your head, caging you in a headlock to make sure you couldn't leave again

Hhs face was inches from yours now, really gasping this time like a real human being. partly out of fear and partly out of euphoria

“you think this is a fucking game?” he hissed, voice rough now, even as his body pressed closer from behind. “if you disappear, fisk doesn’t just kill me. he makes it last days. and i would deserve it because i let a brat run anyway”

you were panting, chest rising and falling against his. Your hands had instinctively grabbed his forearms over the jacket, fisting the fabric. but you couldn't push him away, although you already knew what was going to happen, didn't you?

your shallow breaths weren't enough; the bottom of your lungs were burning from all the running, and you could see little coloured lights flickering

gex’s forehead dropped against your temple, almost bruising. he tightened his grip when he saw that it had an effect on you, listening to you gasp

“i should cuff you right now. drag you back by the hair if i have to.” his arms loosened, making you cling to him so you wouldn’t feel dizzy when you could breathe deeply, opening your mouth, dirty with mud. “but you like this, don’t you? you like knowing you're not alone anymore, that i’ll always find you”

his voice burned against you ear. the tunnel was dead silent except for the drip of water somewhere deeper in

you felt the tremor in his muscles, the barely-leashed violence mixed with something hungrier. his fingers flexed on your neck like he was deciding whether to shove you to the ground or kiss you until you couldn’t breathe again

“say it,” he demanded, tired of good manners. “tell me you wanted me to chase you”

he tightened his grip around your neck after seeing you catch your breath, sensing his sweat under the cloths his patience wore. was a reminder of control. now he knew how really tired you were, all clumpsy and tender

“or you can run again,” he whispered, lowering his head to yours “see how fast i put you on your knees this time.”

Perhaps, that’s why you cling to the idea of Karen Page. She’s between your legs more than she’s beside you, and you have long stopped apologizing for it. Her tongue finds the rhythm you need before you can ask, swirling around your clit. Karen’s fingers pressing and curling inside you until you’re gasping—begging for a release that feels less like pleasure and more like permission to stop feeling at all.

Karen knows you don’t love her like that, though she knows you only do this because you needed to. She’s a warm body and she’s here, you give her that. It’s the cruelest thing you do and she simply lets you.

She’s told you one night, you go somewhere else when she’s fucking you deep. She had asked where but the silence from you was the only answer Karen could ever get. The truth was, you don’t know either. Somewhere Julie isn’t. Somewhere Julie is everywhere. Same thing, really.

“Can you pass me the cigarettes?” you murmured, swollen lips barely forming the words. You could see a bead of red still pooling there, when you bit her too hard at the peak of your orgasm.

Karen’s fingers leave you slowly, her nude in view as she reaches over to the nightstand, finds your pack of cigarettes, then shakes one loose. She moves closer, placing it between your lips without being asked. The lighter flicks, and the tip catches. Your gaze glances at her briefly before inhaling, you could feel the smoke filling your lungs, and it burns in your throat—the good kind of burn.

“Something on your mind?” she breathes, fingers brushing against your bare shoulder.

You take another drag and watch the smoke curl toward the ceiling, grey against grey, disappearing into the water stain you’ve been meaning to call maintenance about for eight months.

“No, no. I’m good.” you lie smoothly, turning away from her gentle touch. “I think you should go, it’s kinda late.” 

Karen exhales through her nose. “Call me if you need me then.” 

You listen to her dress; buttoning her jeans, fingers moving by memory, you could hear her find her bra, hear the clasps connect, the soft weight of her breasts settling into the cups. Karen always adjusts the straps. Two small tugs on each side, the hushed creak of elastic settling against her shoulder. You know everything about her body and nothing about her heart as much as Karen does with yours. 

But she lost someone, too. Foggy. 

Karen never says his name around you, just as you never say Julie’s around her. The loss exists anyway, swelling silently beneath the surface of everything between you. Maybe that’s why this works at all—because neither of you speak of the dead. This is how both of you survive, you think, through each other’s skin. 

Her lips pressed against your forehead then, a benediction you know you don’t deserve, and climbs off the bed. In your peripheral, you could see her silhouette hesitant, paused at the door, staring at you. 

“You ever going to tell me who she was?”

Your throat closes. “Goodnight, Karen.”

The door finally closes, and you have finished the cigarette. Completely alone, the smoke burns your insides the way nothing else does anymore. You can still feel Karen between your legs—an ache, this sole reminder that your body exists even when your mind doesn’t want it to. You press your thighs together and the sensation flares and fades, like everything else.

Julie is sitting in the corner.

“You can’t keep doing this.” Julie speaks, and her voice seems distorted, unable to remember what it sounded like anymore.

But you don’t turn around, couldn’t bear yourself to. You wouldn’t know anymore, everything blurs within you—everything except the weight of Julie’s gaze on the side of your face. Curtain blinds are half closed, they’ve been like that since she died, because you can’t stand the morning light and you can’t stand the dark either. You can’t stand the compromise but you made it anyway.

You have become a woman fashioned entirely out of concessions, all your sharpest edges sanded down by sufferance. A series of compromises stitched together. That’s who you are now, you suppose. Seeking absolution in the bodies of others, hoping it’ll wash away the agony through meaningless sex. A woman who hears her dead best friend’s voice and pretends it’s real, clinging on to anything so as to not fall apart.

“Shut up, Julie.” you say instead, only softly. 

Trepidation lodges inside your throat like secrets, all the things you should have said when she was alive and sitting in that same chair, with a smile that made you believe you were worth something. The shame is in the rehearsal, in the hundred times you’ve imagined this conversation and the zero times you have actually had it. 

“You’re being cruel to yourself,” it’s the love in Julie’s voice that breaks you, thin as a spider’s web, spreading outward from the spot where your name lands along with the words.

So are you, you want to argue back to a ghost. What did being good ever give her—a grave, dirt filling her body? A few dozen people who cried at her funeral and then went back to their lives? 

She poured herself out for everyone—for you, especially for you. 

That’s the real tragedy, perhaps. Julie was good and it didn’t matter, you're angry and it doesn’t change anything. She’s still dead. You’re still here. You, with your disdain for the world and your cold heart. You’re the one who gets to keep going, the one who gets to make mistakes and be cruel, still waking up the next morning and doing it all over again.

But you are the keeper of Julie Barnes’ memory, letting it go feels like another kind of murder. If you let go, who else will hold it? There is no urge in you to kill her again—once was enough.

You had so much love for her. Julie was gone, so it couldn’t change, it couldn’t turn into indifference. You were stuck with all that love, and it overflows. Floods the empty rooms of your chest and keeps rising. 

Where is this love supposed to go now?

Dex has spent a lot of time thinking about monsters during his imprisonment at Rikers Island. What makes them. What unmakes them. Whether a monster can choose to be something else, or whether the monster is all there is, has always been, will always be. 

The situation was extraordinary—how someone like Benjamin Poindexter could have wrought such a change in himself; the most worldly of men was difficult to understand. However, Dex had learned that the mysteries of reparation could not always be explained through logic. 

If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus’ fist, but by His nail pierced hands. Because here was the truth Dex kept turning over; one good deed does not erase a thousand bad ones. But neither does a thousand bad ones erase the possibility of one good deed.

The world surrounding him was quick to lash out and assign blame, and yet mankind also drew from deep reservoirs of forgiveness. It won’t absolve him from anything, Dex already knows that. 

Perhaps, he’ll do this for himself instead—this one good deed. Besides, he’s not Jesus Christ anyway, not even close, though presumably the principle of it was the same.

Leveling the scales. Making amends. The blood of violence and the blood of sacrifice. Apropos of the way Jesus bled so that others could be saved, Dex has bled others so that he could survive and regain control over his life once more. 

Get his mind back. 

This also must be the reason why he tried to find where they had Julie Barnes buried, Dex regretted involving her unknowingly to Fisk’s labyrinth of lies and calculated manipulation, killing her in the process of it all. 

The way Dex dragged her frozen dead body into his car seat, driving to crash Fisk’s wedding all those years ago, but his mind tries to repress the lucidity of what happened afterwards—learning of her death. He knew he was a goner himself.

Julie was the closest thing Dex could have had in gaining some structure in his psyche, after Dr. Mercer’s death—life seemed a series of black and white in a world that’s somehow grey. Remembering the times where he’d listen to Mercer’s recording of their sessions, all of it a distant memory now, fossilized somewhere in the back of his mind. 

He never wanted to be with Julie, he wanted to be her. 

She made it look easy, being a kind person, and watching her had been different from listening to recorded tapes. Dex thought that if he studied her hard enough, some of her goodness might spill on to him. The living proof that people like Julie existed, that being dignified wasn’t just a concept nor a lie people told themselves to feel better about the things they have done.

Clearly, he was naive back then—begging society that would never hesitate to eat him alive if they learn what he really was. And then they did. They broke him. For this, Dex learned his most valuable lesson. He doesn’t need anyone for structure, he’ll be a good person by himself. 

Now he’s standing at her grave, the wind cold against his face, it was eerily quiet at night, there’s no one around. 

JULIE BARNES. BELOVED DAUGHTER, DEAREST FRIEND.

Dex was finally here, and yet he didn’t know what to say. Instead, he remained silent. Then, his gaze lowered down at the grave. The dirt has settled now, years later, grass beginning to grow over the wound. Soon, no one will be able to tell that anyone was buried here as the earth will heal. The grass will cover the scar, and Julie Barnes will become another name on another headstone, forgotten by everyone except the people who loved her.

He sensed the sound of footsteps until they’re almost upon him. Yet, Dex didn’t move from his position. 

You brought her flowers this time around. 

Julie would have hated anything ostentatious. Just put me in the ground, she said at your dining table, laughing, back when death was a joke and not a before-and-after in your life. Plant something pretty over me. 

But you never planted anything, you couldn’t bring yourself to do so. Instead, you bought magnolias from the old woman outside the subway station, drawn to them only because it looked like something Julie would stop for. She collected wounded things so naturally it almost seemed instinctive. Stray cats. Broken people. You.

The flower stems perspire against your palm, clammy and cold. By the time you pass through the cemetery gates, your sweater feels too heavy across your shoulders, your body taut with the effort of continuing forward.

You nearly turned back twice already—once beneath the jaundiced lights of the subway station, and again at the sight of the rusted iron archway looming ahead, when your lungs suddenly forgets how to draw a full breath.

You don’t come here often as much as you used to. 

There is always going to be some part of you that doesn’t want to feel the finality of her life, seeing where they’d put her. 

For months after the funeral, you kept imagining her underground. Flashes of images consumed the inside of your head; dirt settled into the concave of her collarbones, maggots eating around her rotting flesh, soil filled her mouth with her hollowed eye sockets wide open, screaming. This obscene impartiality of death, stripping Julie Barnes to something nature could digest. 

You would wake up sick over it, your fingernails raking against your own neck as though you’ve been buried alive alongside her.

Eventually, your mind learned a new trick for survival.

If you didn’t visit the grave, then some part of Julie could remain untouched, suspended somewhere outside of reality. Not alive exactly, but not fully gone either. A childish thing to believe, but grief made children out of everyone.

Even in the midst of your tribulations, you wanted to see her. Perhaps it was selfish, the way you nurtured your grief for years, indulging in your own misery while the rest of the world kept moving forward without her, and you were the only one who hasn’t.

A shadow appeared almost spectral from where you were walking, his outline blurred by distance and possibly your deteriorating eyesight. Cursing under your breath, blaming the hours you doom scroll on your bed so now you can’t see for shit. 

There was a man, this tall imposing figure, standing solemnly at the grave of your other half. For a second, you were nearly convinced your mind has flooded you with these cluster fuck of hallucinations—was he Death then?

Has he come to take you, too? 

But your feet kept moving despite every sensible thought urging you to retreat. The Zoloft in your system is doing wonders; muting every survival instinct and softening terror until it becomes bearable. 

“Hi—sorry,” you hear yourself say, voice hoarse. “Who the fuck are you?”

When he turned around, there was a fleeting moment before he spoke. You could feel the way his eyes seemed to assess you whole, coldly methodical rather than openly curious. Slotting every observable detail into place before determining whether you posed any real danger to him. Who did he think you were anyway? 

You wish you could beat him up with magnolias, it’s a stupid impulse. The flowers are soft, fragile, and most likely to disintegrate on impact. This stranger’s presence feels like an intrusion—a violation of the invisible bubble you’ve constructed around Julie’s grave. Who in their right mind visits a grave at two in the morning? You were the only one who was supposed to be here. 

This was your time to ugly cry. You know it’s not healthy, but it’s yours anyway, now you couldn’t even do that anymore. Couldn’t see his features clearly as the streetlights are dim low, some flickering; barely enough to navigate by, certainly not enough to make out details. You briefly wondered if he was one of those creeps who has these weird and fucked up fetishes, getting off on other people’s graves.

“—Dex.” 

You blinked hard, startled back to reality by the husky cadence of his voice. “What?”

“I said my name is Dex,” he repeated, his eyes lingering on you knowingly. “You zoned out for a bit.”

“I wasn’t exactly… zoning out,” you were quick to defend yourself, clutching the magnolias tighter. “I was just thinking.”

You held his gaze, and Dex held yours in return. The moment stretched awkwardly, saturated with tension neither of you seemed interested in breaking. You hated being caught off guard like this, his expression stayed frustratingly unreadable despite yourself, and uncertainty gnawed at you—was he amused by you, or merely indifferent?

“You knew her,” you started again, though it wasn’t a question. “How? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.” 

“Something like that, yeah.” Dex says, drawing back his gaze towards the headstone instead. “I worked with her briefly at the Brooklyn Suicide Prevention Center.”

“You were a hotline operator?” you couldn’t hide the skepticism in your voice. Dex didn’t look like the type. 

“For about a year,” he replies. “Julie was there longer. Three years, I think.”

“Three and a half,” you corrected mindlessly. “I still remember she started in February.”

His eyes flickered back to you. “I’m guessing you knew her very well, huh?”

This time, it was your turn to tear away from Dex’s gaze, there was a plethora of things you don’t talk about anymore. The words used to come easy, back when everything was, when you had someone who understood you deeply. Now it felt like extracting bloodied teeth—pulling truths out of yourself that had calcified in place. 

All the strings inside you broke somewhere along the way, you’re not certain exactly when, but you’ve been held together by her for so long that you’ve forgotten how to stand on your own, at the back of your throat; your voice choked by disquietude. 

“I didn’t come here to upset you,” Dex spoke, like he’d read your mind.

“Then what the fuck are you doing here?” 

“Pay my respects, same as you.”

You don’t buy a word of it, and judging by the look on Dex’s face, neither does he expect you to. Who is she to you? You wanted to ask, but then again, you don’t care about this stranger enough to call him out. Dex’s truth would feel like another burden you’d have to carry, and your limbs are already tired. 

“She never told me about you… or mentioned anything about a Dex,” you admit, or maybe you’ve long forgotten. 

“Does that bother you?”

“I don’t know, really—should it?”

Dex gave out a shrug. “Julie must’ve had her reasons then.”

“What kind of reasons exactly?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

You could feel your chest ache, but it’s light and something tender, then a laugh of grief breathing out through your nose. “Oh, fuck you man.”

“Are you always this friendly?” 

“Only when strange men show up at my best friend’s grave in the middle of the night.”

He nodded slowly, the corner of his mouth forming into a half smile. “Sounds fair to me.”

The flowers shift precariously in your hands, damp stems slipping against your fingers. You should put them down, that’s why you came. But the presence of a stranger, Dex changes something fundamental. Suddenly, the gesture feels exposed, theatrical—something you’re doing for an audience rather than for Julie.

“You can put those down,” Dex says, nodding toward the headstone. “I’m not going to watch.”

“Feels like you’re watching either way.”

Dex says nothing in response. He shifts his weight onto one leg instead, shoulders loosening as if trying to appear less imposing beneath the cemetery shadows. He neither advances nor retreats, giving you space without truly leaving it.

Your knees crack painfully as you crouch, the sound startlingly loud against the surroundings of the grave. You grimace instinctively, embarrassed by the evidence of your own exhaustion. You wonder if Dex can hear how worn down you are—not emotionally, though there is plenty of that, too. Rather physically. Your body has carried pain for years like an extra organ.

You place the magnolias carefully beside the stone, their pale petals almost luminous against the surface, and briefly convince yourself that these small acts of remembrance might still matter. You run your fingers over the carved letters, tracing the curve of the J, then the slope of L. 

As it turns out, the depth of love a person inspires has very little to do with the amount of time you have known them. Because time means nothing against closeness.

“I’m gonna be here for a while,” you declare, pushing yourself upright, dusting off your palms, turning to face him.

Dex’s blank expression doesn’t falter. “If you want me to leave, I can do that.” 

“No,” you’re holding his gaze a bit more intensely. “I want you to tell me how you really knew her.” 

“Hm,” he contemplates, nodding slowly. “All right, I’ll tell you.”

And so, Dex tells his story, or at least, partially. Fabricated. A few truths survive intact among the lies, enough to anchor the whole thing in plausibility. What you don’t know, he reasons in his mind, can’t hurt you. 

Dex doesn’t follow you home, though it takes more restraint than he cares to admit.

He wants to, there’s an urge, very insistent in his mind. It would have been effortless, really; hang back fifty yards, match your pace, and easily disappear into the shadows when you glance over your shoulder. You wouldn’t even know. 

But Dex has already lived through the consequences of attachment once before. Look where it got his North Star, dead. Both Julie and Mercer fucking dead. Their graves stand as evidence to the contrary, and everyone he places on a pedestal eventually ends up beneath one.

Whatever strange gravity exists between you, he refuses to feed it. And yet, he can’t ignore what he noticed—that you are nothing like Julie Barnes. You were damaged, too, much like him. Dex recognizes pieces of himself reflected back in the deep sense of lassitude etched across your face. 

It occurs to Dex then that you are perhaps the worst kind of person for him to meet—you who mirrors him too closely. That isn’t good, you’re not someone that’s going to be good for him. There is no softness left in you to idealize, only survivability. Only like him, he supposed. 

You could never become the kind of person Dex needed—someone steady enough to build himself around, someone foolish enough to believe he could still be salvaged. You don’t carry that kind of faith inside you, it seemed. There was no warmth in your grief nor blind compassion that would look at him, and mistake him for a man deserving redemption. 

What unsettles him instead was the certainty that you would simply understand him.

And what’s more terrifying than the ordeal of being perceived? Understanding is far more dangerous than adoration—and simple adoration, he can manage, as it fits neatly into the framework of his fixations, it creates structure, and keeps relationships uneven, safely contained within roles Dex understands intimately.

Yet the former implies a two way street. It forces two people to stand equally exposed before one another, stripped of its dim illusion.

The mission in his head is what matters, Dex tells himself. Killing Fisk is what matters. One good deed, the only thing that might balance the scales, the closest he’ll ever get. You were a distraction he hadn’t accounted for, Dex went to Julie’s grave for his own atonement, that’s all. 

Although, when you gave him your name, Dex finds himself holding onto it carefully despite every instinct telling him not to, rolling each letter across his tongue in the privacy of his own mind.

He suppose old habits die hard. Fuck.

The bell above the door jingles, this tiny sound you’ve learned to drown out months ago. 

Sandy was the only old woman who could tolerate your aloof nature, who maybe even had a soft spot for someone as young as you. Besides, Bel Aire Diner is also the only place you’ve managed to stay.

There were jobs before this, different uniforms and break rooms, sets of coworkers who watched you with growing concern and some with contempt. Managers who eventually pulled you aside with careful voices, and practiced sympathy to ask whether things were okay at home. 

You stopped showing up to them, one day your name existed on the schedule, and the next it didn’t.

So when you showed up at the diner seven months ago, she simply handed you an apron and pointed to the coffee machine. You at least know how to make coffee, right? she said to you, and Sandy never asked anything personal. 

You’ve been here ever since.

It’s nice to have some sort of routine and not constantly be on your bed, caged from the world. You’d spend hours serving different people, making milkshakes, cooking eggs, and filling coffee—but the repetitive aspect of it didn’t bore you. 

Maybe it’s the invisibility it gives you. The way customers look through you like you’re part of the furniture, no one that matters, merely a hand that delivers their food and refills their coffee for them, disappearing back into the kitchen. No one expects you to be anything at all. 

You appreciate the noise, too. Clatter of plates, cars and trucks passing by outside, the soft chattering of people that never rises above a certain volume. It fills the spaces where your thoughts would otherwise live, keeping your sanity at bay. 

The golden sun seeps through the windows, harshly bright, and you squint against it, turning your face away. You have always preferred the night shift, but Sandy needed you to cover a double, and you don’t say no to Sandy. 

The griddle hisses from the kitchen, and somewhere in the back, you can hear Sandy shouting at the dishwasher about the difference between clean and sanitized. Despite yourself, amusement flickers briefly across your face as you polished the mixer clean.

You don’t turn around but you could feel the weight of presence taking a seat on your counter. 

“I’ll be right with you,” your tone slightly higher to seem friendly, dipping the sponge into the tub filled with fresh warm water. 

“Take your time.” 

Your hand freezes over the tub, the sponge drips soapy water back into the bucket, and only then, you can feel your heart start pounding. 

Motherfucker. You recognize that voice from weeks ago, one that couldn’t escape every corner of your mind. It’s him, there’s no doubt. The man from the cemetery—

“Oh,” you rasped out, eyes widened slightly. “It’s you.”

“It’s nice to see you again,” he beams, along with your name accompanied by a grin that shows too many teeth. “You’ve been doing well?”

“Yup, fucking fantastic. You?”

“Never been better,” Dex folds his hands on the marbled counter, fingers interlocking, thumbs pressed together as he lifts his gaze to stare at you. “What are you famous for?”

“… Milkshakes, I guess.” you blurt out, uncertain.

“Excellent. Thank you. I’ll have…”

You observed as his attention drifted over the menu while you studied him openly for the first time. Daylight altered Dex somehow. The dim flickering lights from the cemetery no longer obscured the planes of his face, and the scars tracing visibly across skin that was unexpectedly striking—these imperfections only seemed to emphasize the severity of Dex’s features. 

It irked you to realize how handsome he actually is. 

A long scar cuts cleanly across his right cheek, pale against the rest of his skin, while another slices right above the line of his left eyebrow. There are probably more hidden underneath his clothes, mapped across his body in places you cannot see.

Each one feels heavy with history, little remnants of violence preserved permanently on one’s flesh. You wonder briefly about the stories attached to them, but why would you care about something so trivial? That, and the way Dex also seemed different from the first time you have met him. Keeping your mouth shut, you wait for him to order instead.

“One banana milkshake, please.” 

You nodded, then asked, “Uh… you also want whip?” 

“Doesn’t everybody?” 

Did he know you were working at the Bel Aire Diner? No, he definitely did not. The diner appealed to him for practical reasons, of course; wide sightlines unobstructed by decor, multiple exits within easy reach, predictable flow of civilian traffic at this hour, and scattered across nearly every table sat utensils capable of becoming weapons if required.

And also, The task force would never move recklessly inside a diner full of witnesses, not unless they were desperate enough to risk collateral damage. You being there was coincidence. Pure coincidence. Ironic how Dex believes in coincidence now, after spending most of his life convinced the world operated only through cause and consequence.

The plan is set in motion, he made his call when you were busy making his milkshake. Dex knows the agents are already en route, and if he walks away now, abandoning the mission because of you, with your sad miserable eyes and magnolias in your hands, then he’s worse than a monster. 

A weak man, that’s what he’ll become. He can’t comprehend how someone like you—someone Dex barely fucking knows and for good reasons, makes him feel so weak. You are dangerous to him, and wanting someone dangerous is the first step toward destruction. 

Twelve minutes dissolves like cream in his milkshake, each second spilling into the next until all that is left was the countdown in Dex’s mind. Six minutes. Five. Four. And the sirens wailing in the distance, strobes of red and blue begin to flash against the diner’s interior. The AVTF is here. Dex can feel them approaching, the vibration of their vehicle—the reality of what comes next. 

Dex can bury these thoughts of you if he tries hard enough. Compartmentalize them accordingly amongst all the other dangerous impulses he has learned to suppress. Perhaps warning you would be the kinder thing to do—a small act of mercy before inevitability takes shape. 

Yet, some part of him wants you to witness him fully. Wants to feel your eyes fixed on him as he sheds the fragile disguise of normalcy and becomes precisely what he was built to become, and he wonders what you would do then.

Would you look away like everyone eventually does? Or would you continue watching despite yourself, unable to drag your gaze away from the destruction unfolding in front of you? 

People have always stared longest at the things capable of ruining them. Are you that kind of person? Dex needed to know, or this doesn’t work at all.

“Yo, you! Milkshake.” An AVTF agent points out to him. 

A red straw sits between his lips casually while both his hands rise into the air. Inside the straw, hidden from sight, rests the toothpick he slipped away earlier. Dex turns slowly toward the agent, movements deceptively unthreatening.

Then he blows into the straw.

The toothpick shoots forward with precision, disappearing straight into the agent’s eye before anyone fully understands what happened. A choking sound follows seconds later as the man collapses backward, crumpling instantly while chaos detonates through the diner around him. 

A second agent was reaching for him, but Dex was quick to throw his empty milkshake glass towards the wall, shattering pieces splashed across the agent’s face. But he did not kill him, no. Dex grabs the man’s wrist, twisting hard he could feel the bones grind against each other as the gun clatters to the floor. 

Dex kicks the gun away, using the agent’s body as a shield against the other one’s opening salvo. Bullets punch through the agent’s vest, letting out a pained scream. He lets them drop, and throws one of his knives—and the third agent goes down with a blade pierced into his nasal bridge. 

Bullets whistle past his ear, chipping the edge of the formica, sending shards of ceramic flying from the coffee machine behind him. Then, Dex throws himself toward the counter, hitting the floor hard, shoulder first, rolling into the narrow space behind the counter. 

His back pressed against the cabinets, knees up, hands already searching for another set of knives, and Dex’s fingers close around three. The way his body knows what to do, each following throws with a trajectory only he can see. The first blade stabs itself in an agent’s larynx, silencing a scream before it can form. Then comes the second; soft gap between helmet and vest, piercing into the clavicle. The third knife punches through an eye socket, and three agents drop without a sound, instantly killing them. 

And then Dex sees you, crouched against the wall, your knees drawn to your chest with your arms wrapped around your head. He could see your whole body violently shaking through your shoulders trailing to your fingers. You were trying to make yourself small and invisible enough that the violence might pass you by.

Yet, it finds you, always.

“Oh, don’t worry,” his voice came out raspy with your name attached to his lips, muffled by the Bullseye mask, thickened by exertion. “I’m not going to kill you.” 

The reassurance lands awkwardly between you, utterly lacking the social instincts that tell most people how to comfort someone in distress. Then again, Dex has never seemed particularly interested in assuming what others need from him, it simply is not in his nature. He stands before you bloodied and armed, but somehow expects trust to emerge from that.

You raise your head, it caught him off guard. Through the mask, your gaze finds him immediately—those horrific, soulless eyes of his. But instead, something gentler passes briefly over your features, was it altruism? Entirely at odds with the rigid line of your shoulders and the fear still visible elsewhere. What did you see? Dex wanted to ask, but his mind only knows your contradiction lingered unpleasantly in his thoughts.

So, he tries again. “I’m one of the good guys now.”

You don’t call Karen. 

The thought surfaces somewhere between the third and sixth drink—a flicker of instinct, old habit of reaching for warm hands and warmer bodies when everything feels fucked up. Karen would come, you imagined, she’d sit beside you on the barstool, order her own drink, and wait for you to speak first. Karen’s good at waiting, she’s had practice. Still, you don’t call her, and you don’t go home either. 

And you know how the saying goes—if home is where the heart is, then you’re all just fucked. Home is where everything reminds you of her, scent her perfume on a shirt you haven’t washed since she died, old things that she used to give you. Everything in your home was everywhere of her. 

Julie had looked at you then, and called it Weltschmerz, but it wasn’t pitying sadness. It was a larger one that seemed to encompass all the people, the billions you didn’t know, all living their lives, a sorrow that mingled with a wonder and awe at how hard humans everywhere tried to live, even when their days were so very difficult, even when their circumstances were so wretched. 

Life is so heartbreaking, you would say with your head on her lap. It’s so fucking depressing. Julie would smile softly, her fingers running through the strands of your hair. And yet we all do it, she’d say. 

You’ve decided to go to a bar instead, it’s not the one near the diner—that one is probably still cordoned off with yellow tape, crawling with investigators, the kind of place you’ll never be able to look at the same way again. They let you go pretty quickly after giving a statement to the police with what happened hours ago, though you didn’t say much. Your mind elsewhere. 

Drinking yourself into a stupor, by the time then, the shaking had stopped. The bar fills and empties around you. People come and go, laughing, arguing, living their ordinary lives. None of them know what happened this morning, that a man killed a dozen agents. Though none of them know that you watched, you couldn’t stop yourself from seeing. 

There was something vile and compelling about Dex in those moments; the eloquence of his movements, the terrible grace of his brutality. And then knowing that you would have done the same if you had his skills. You wanted him to slice his knife into your skin, your insides unused. Empty and pristine. You pictured your pelvis split open, to reveal a tidy hollow, like the nest of a vanished animal, unappealing to someone so violent in his nature. 

You hate yourself for it. Feel your limbs disconnecting, floating nearby like driftwood on an oily lake—a dead bloated body. With nothing to lash out on, you drain your glass and signal for another, trying not to think about the way his eyes found yours through the mask.

In your lowest moments, you see her. Julie’s looking at you with an expression you know too well. Guilt. It’s painted into every line of her face, the soft curve of her mouth, the furrow between her brows. She looks like she’s trying to apologize for something—for dying, maybe. For leaving. For making your life a perpetual loop of trying to recover from something after something, someone after someone.

No words came out from her mouth this time, and the bar became overwhelming with its crowd. The noise, the lights, the press of bodies; all of it feels like a trap, and you can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t fucking do anything except reach for your wallet and throw cash on the counter and stumble toward the door.

You don’t know where you’re going, yet your body makes the choice for you, carrying you through intersections and half-empty streets with the mindless certainty of habit. Walking through Hell’s Kitchen like you're following a red string of thread only you can see. It’s not until you see the archway that you finally understand.

Of course. Where else would you go?

Your knees hit the dirt when you come nearer, a hard impact that sends pain shooting through your joints. But you don’t care anymore. You crawl the last few feet, fingers digging into the soil, the cold seeping through the fabric of your sweatpants, unbothered by the way you appear. 

The magnolias are still there. Their petals have curled inward on themselves, brittle and withered, surrendering slowly to time. You stare at the headstone above them, the engraved letters swim briefly out of focus. You blink hard. When your vision clears, they blur again. “You knew him and you didn’t tell me.” you press your hands flat against the headstone, feel the cold granite bite into your palms. “Did you know he kills people? Did you know he’s—that he’s—,” your voice choked out by an ugly sob.

“I watched him put a toothpick through a man’s fucking eye... I watched him throw knives like they were extensions of his own hands. How can you know someone like that and not tell me?”

You lean forward, pressing your forehead against the stone. It’s cold. It’s so cold. You wonder if this is what she feels like now—not Julie, perhaps, but what remains of her. Always cold, buried deep within the dirt and the grass and the slow turning of seasons with everything left unsaid.

“Did you send him to me?” you whisper, words slurring. “Is this some kind of—of punishment? It must be, right? You—you hate me.”

If Dex’s barbarism can somehow serve as penance for your failure, then perhaps you can absolve yourself from the guilt you’ve been carrying for years. See? Isn’t this enough? Can’t you forgive me now? But the truth is simpler and far worse; there is no answer, only your self punishment. There is simply a world out there that doesn’t care whether you suffer or thrive, because what you really want isn’t punishment either—it’s her. And nothing will bring her back.

“Julie,” your voice empty, quietly strained in tone. “I don’t want to live anymore.” 

“Do you mean it?” 

A voice cuts through the silence behind you, you could feel your heart slamming painfully against your bones the moment you recognize who it was. 

You stumble clumsily, your knees scraping harshly against the ground. Fresh pain blooms through what was already aching from kneeling too long, dirtied hand slides through wet grass, sending a streak of mud across your skin, your back against the headstone. For a moment you remain frozen there, before finally looking up.

Dex’s presence was looming over you, maybe a few feet away, yet you could see the Bullseye mask is long gone—you see his face first; bruises darken the line of his jaw, ugly shades of purple spreading across his scarred skin, dried blood tracks from his temple in crimson red, disappearing into the collar of his suit, and his lower lip is split, swollen around the wound. There is so much blood on him that your gaze struggles to settle anywhere else.

He’s still in the suit. There's a gash on his forearm, with his hands hanging at his sides, fists clenched, and you notice they were shaking.

“Dex,” you manage, his name catching roughly in your throat. 

His eyes narrow slightly. “You haven’t answered my question,” his voice thick, slowly he begins moving closer, the distance shrinking inch by inch then he stops. “Do you mean it?”

“Why?” you dare to ask, lifting your chin despite yourself. “Are you going to kill me here?”

Maybe Dex could. You’ll be his one good deed. Isn’t that what it was all about? Ending one's suffering. The math had seemed so simple when he was sitting in his cell, counting down the days until he could put a bullet in Fisk’s skull. One life for another. Balance. Justice. And people have a hard time letting go of their suffering, out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

Your throat is laid open to him, vulnerable in a way you don’t seem to realize. The pulse quivers inside your skin like a trapped bird, a wingless bird that wants to be free. Dex could wrap his hands around it—could imagine the feel of life draining out of you, watching the tension leave your body; your wholeness, your regrets, and your grief finally releasing its hold.

If he couldn’t do it to himself, perhaps he’ll do it to you.

But Dex offers no response, and instead, sinks himself to the ground, one knee first then the other. The fabric of his suit darkens further where it meets the soil, drinking in moisture without complaint as he crawls his way to you. He looks enormous from this angle, predatory in its movement. 

You try to scramble backward but your spine meets the edge of Julie’s headstone, realizing with a terror that there’s nowhere left to go, so you shut your eyes instead.

His breath warms against your face, fanning across your skin in uneven breaths. Dex’s arms come up on either side of you, caging you loosely, his palms flat on the dirt, and he can feel the heat of your body so close to his. Your breath comes in shallow gasps that mingle with his in the small space between you.

“Open your eyes,” he says, but you shake your head. “Open your eyes. I want you to see me.”

“You need t—” 

“Please.”

And you do, it makes him happy somehow. Your eyes flutter open to find him impossibly close, Dex’s face hovering just beyond your own. He was wrapped around in red. Blood red stains his skin, and the moon above silvering it in ways that should have been grotesque but aren’t. You don’t know what it means, you don’t know what any of this means.

You swallowed hard, trying to find your voice. “What do you want?” 

Dex wants to tell you something he doesn’t know himself—for it has always been a foreign language, a set of sounds he could mimic but never truly understand. There are no words in his lexicon for this vague desire he feels, drifting from one thing to another. Dex wants to kill you. Dex wants you alive. Trying to find reasons, only winding up with nothing. He didn’t know what he wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.

“Can you kiss me?” 

These words come out from his lips instead. Perhaps, he’ll learn what your mouth feels like against his. He finds himself wondering whether you carry the traces of whiskey on your lips, or something far more elusive—something he could spend a lifetime trying to define and still fail to capture.

What Dex didn't expect was your fist. 

Your knuckles connect with his cheek, it was clumsy, half grievance. Yet, the impact snaps through his face regardless, a shock traveling up through bone and into his skull. His head turns slightly with it, just enough to acknowledge force, but not enough to suggest defeat. It’s nothing compared to what he’s felt before. Your attempt at punching him felt more emotional rather than its usual physicality, perhaps, a release of everything you've been holding back.

“Fuck!” 

You hissed immediately, pulling your hand back, and Dex watches you cradle it against your chest, tears in the corner of your eyes. Your knuckles are already starting to swell, of course you’d hurt yourself, Dex was a lot stronger than you. Stupid impulse. There’s blood on his teeth, yours or his, no one’s certain, but it doesn’t matter. 

“Not exactly what I was asking for,” he remarked, and his smile is crooked, real. “But I’ll take it.”

Your expression falters, your anger is still there burning behind your gaze the way you look at him now. But something else is rising beneath it, hotter and more desperate, something that terrifies you almost as much as he does. 

Your hands grab the front of his suit, fisting in the fabric, pulling him toward you, then in a quick movement, your mouth crashes against his.

More teeth than tenderness, it seemed, as the heat between you is like a living entity, clawing its way under your clothes and searing every inch of skin it touches. You can taste the blood, the metallic red of it spreading across your tongue, but neither of you care. You clamp down harder on Dex’s lower lip and feel the tremor run through him, then a low guttural noise vibrates against your lips, more blood spilling down.

You want him to hurt, Dex thinks in between, because you kiss him like you’re trying to crawl inside him—that you’re trying to escape your own skin and find your way home in his. Yet, he relished the desperation in your touch, he didn’t care about the sanctity of the ground nor the eyes of the heavens. Jesus Christ can forgive him later for that. 

Dex shifted his weight, forcing your legs to splay open to accommodate the hard bulk of him. He broke the kiss only to bury his face in the crook of your neck, his teeth grazing the sensitive cord of your throat. You felt the stinging prick of his teeth not quite a bite, but a warning before his hand slid down from your wrist, traveling the curve of your waist to the hem of your shirt. 

“Don't look away,” he pleads with your name. “Look at me. Only me.”

But before you could even think of reclaiming your space, his hands were back, cupping your cheek with a sudden tenderness that didn’t quite fit him well. Dex’s thumbs swiped over your cheekbones, catching the stray tears you didn’t realize were falling. Even as he was here, letting you do whatever you want to him, your mind still lingers back to her. It was fucking unfair. 

Out of spite, Dex pulled away and settled on your waist, sliding up the underside of your chest, his calloused palm squeezing hard the size of your breast through the thin fabric of your shirt. A small, involuntary sound escaped you as his thumb found the peak of your tits. Even through the cloth, the sensation was electric and painful, you couldn’t deny. 

Dex began to roll the sensitive nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pinching and tugging them harshly as he watched your face with an unblinking, intense gaze, assessing every contortion of your expression and every whine in your breathing, feeding off the way your body arched instinctively toward his touch.

Your skin gave way beneath him, pliant and fever warm. But you also felt different, you were giving in, peering over the edge of what you should have been repulsed by, yet you kept encouraging Dex with the sound of your voice. Some sort of structure forming in his psyche. Guidance. Annihilation of a singular self.

He felt the nipple stiffen under his thumb, then the resistance as he rolled it and twisted your nipples around, and much to his delight, you convulsed; half lidded eyes glazed, lips wet and parted, releasing lewd sounds that were driving him insane.

He stopped momentarily, and you took that chance to let yourself breathe, staring at the night sky. You felt nothing and everything at the same time, and you must have believed yourself to be so cruelly wretched, you’d allow yourself to let him see your fragility in the form of perversion, that you would let Dex hold you stripped away of your tones and textures of your skin the same way one would to a dead body. 

What the fuck were you doing? You think to yourself, as contrition slither its way into your mind, almost consuming. But you hadn’t had the time to dwell longer as you felt a cold sharp metal pointed at your throat, your gaze glancing back to Dex with widened eyes, anticipation gnawing at your heart. 

Dex had his customized knife directly at your throat, he wanted to see the look on your face if you even had briefly thought that he was going to slit them open. Part of him was convinced that you would let him if he asked nicely. But alas, Dex didn’t. He aimed for the barrier of the fabric of your shirt instead, the steel of the blade catching glint as he brought it toward the center of your chest. 

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, soft. “I won’t hurt you unless you tell me to.”

With a single tug, the blade sliced through the material. The sound of the cloth rending was loud in the dead air, a violent rip that sends pure adrenaline through your veins. Dex didn’t stop at a single slit; he worked the knife with efficiency, carving a wide opening from the neckline down to your midriff. The chill of the night breeze brushes against your naked skin, sending a shiver through your exposed breasts.

He hummed, as his eyes traveled slowly, over the pale swell of your tits, the way they heaved with your frantic breaths and woeful cries. This sight of you vulnerable, and bared in the middle of a graveyard seemed to stoke the ambivalence of his nameless desire, flowing endlessly in his chest.

It’s you, Dex realizes. Fuck the divine being, it’s you for him.

You pull your upper body up, Dex watches in awe as you remove your bottom clothes except for the underwear. Then in reverence, you had clasped your hands around his, the one holding the knife, and gently trailed him toward the heat between your legs. Dex swallowed thickly, uncertain as to what you were trying to do but he gets the gist of it quickly, your mind synchronizes with his. The flat steel of his knife directly pressed against your clothed folds. 

You sank back into the earth, your body relaxing into the soil as if the weight of the world had finally been lifted, he understood—Dex understood the desperate yet beautiful madness of your entirety. Of what Julie could never witness even if she still was alive, because it was solely for him to see. Not Karen Page, not anyone. 

“You can put pressure on it, if you’d like.”

The words were an invitation that seemed to strip him even more naked than the knife had stripped you. He leaned over you, his frame casting a shadow that swallowed you whole, and to please, he began to move, you could feel the friction of it rubbing against your wet cunt. You can feel it at last, head full of desolation, this rage that has been going on for a long time, melting away. 

Dex moved with an agonizing slowness, as he gripped the hilt of the knife. He was focused entirely on the sensation of the cool metal dragging against the heat of your soaked fabric. The friction was a rhythmic grind, a heavy pressure that seemed to reach deep into your folds, stirring the very core of your being. 

“Let it all go for me.” he says, yet you both know what it had meant, feeling the way your hips jerked upward to meet the blade’s weight. 

The pressure builds, each drag of the knife against your clothed cunt sending sparks of pleasure through your mind. The blade is cold but the fabric of your panties grows slick and warm beneath it, soaking through as your arousal spreads. Dex watches the process with an almost fascination, his eyes observing the way the steel glistens with your moisture when he lifts it slightly, then presses down again.

“You’re making a mess of it,” he murmurs, but there’s no reproach in his voice. “You made it beautiful.”

He shifts his weight, adjusting the angle, and the blade drags differently now—the edge catching the seam of your panties, threatening to slice through. The danger of it sends a fresh wave of wetness flooding your cunt. 

You should be terrified, yet you had never felt more aroused and so open. A razor sharp blade is pressed against the most vulnerable part of you, one wrong move and you’ll be cut, but you do not fear it. You’re alive in a way you haven’t felt in months, years. It feels like being born again. 

Your hands find his wrist to guide him more intently. Your fingers wrap around his, feeling the corded tendons beneath his skin, the bones of his hand as they grip the knife’s handle. You press his hand down harder, forcing the blade deeper into the wet heat of your inner lips. 

A broken sound elicits from your throat, half moan, half sob. “God, fuck—Dex—!”

“That’s it,” Dex breathes out your name, his pupils blown wide, admiring you. “Take what you need. Use me.”

You can use him all you want for selfish reasons, but Dex will ensure he won’t be just another warm body for you. The knife moves in a slow grinding circle, the tip catching your clit through the wet fabric with each revolution. Your hips buck unwittingly, chasing the sensation that soon will fade, and the blade shifts and slides, the flat pressing directly against your swollen clit, rubbing over and over against it. 

You can feel the orgasm building, coiling low in your belly, as your breath comes in ragged gasps, your vision blurring at the edges. The surroundings spins around you, headstones looming like silent witnesses, the moon a pale spectator to your unbecoming. A depraved young woman with so much love nowhere to go. 

Dex leans down, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. “Come for me,” he whispers. “Please, I need it.”

Your body obeys before your mind can catch up. The orgasm tears through you, violent and all over the place, your back arching off the cold ground as a cry rips from your throat. Your cunt clenches around nothing, flooding your panties with a hot gush of release that soaks through to the blade. The knife, slick and gleaming, continues its relentless pursuit as Dex works you through every wave of pleasure, not slowing until your trembling subsides into aftershocks.

When you finally collapse, gasping, with the chill air cold against your sweat slicked skin, Dex pulls the knife away. He holds it up, then ever so slowly, he brings the blade to his lips and drags his tongue along the metal, tasting the essence of you. 

He tossed the knife aside into the dirt, unconcerned with the weapon now that he had achieved his goal, and lowered himself over you. Large hand cups your cheek, thumb tracing your jawline.

“Was that enough?” he asks, and the question carries weight. “Did I do good—do you need more?”

“Yes, you did so good.” his cock twitched at your praise. “But I want to feel you inside me now, Dex.”

Dex’s breath catches at your words, at the fervent need through your voice. His hand slides from your cheek down your throat, fingers wrapping around them. For a long moment, he stares at you, all that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that empty part of your chest. He wants to tell you to pour them to him instead, he’ll take it. If not, he’ll force you to. 

His hand leaves your throat, reaching to the side where he tossed the knife. His fingers close around the handle, and he brings it back into view, still slick with your arousal, it was gleaming wetly. Dex sits back on his heels, positioning himself between your spread thighs. With the tip of the knife, he hooks the waistband of your panties and slices through the fabric on one side, then the other, and the material falls away from you.

“Hurt me.”

He stopped in his movement. “What?” 

“I want you to hurt me, Dex. Make me bleed for you.”

Dex hesitates for a second but gives in because he would give you anything you wanted. Begging him to hurt you while looking like this in front of him—how can he deny you, or worse, how does he look away now that he has seen you? The coolness hits your dripping folds, making you shiver. A groan elicits from his lips as he takes in the sight of your bare cunt—slick, swollen, the lips parted and it was beautiful, truly. 

He reaches down with his free hand, two fingers gathering your wetness, spreading it over your clit in a circling motion. Your hips buck into his touch, but he pulls his hand away, bringing those same fingers to his own mouth. Dex sucks them clean, his eyes never leaving yours.

Then shifting forward, the knife is still in his grip. His other hand unzips his gear pants, freeing his cock. It’s hard and throbbing, the head already wet with precum. 

“This will sting,” he says. “But you’ll take it. You’ll take it because you want to feel something real, don’t you?”

The tip of the knife presses against the tender skin of your inner thigh, just where it meets your hip. He applies pressure, enough to break the flesh. A deep line of blood wells up, bright red against your skin and the pain is immediate, a flare that makes you gasp, cunt clenching reflexively. You feel whole, you think. Dex makes your head go quiet for you, it seemed.

Dex observes the blood bead and trickles down your thigh, a single rivulet tracing a path toward your soaking wet folds. He follows it with his eyes, mesmerized. Then he leans down and laps at the cut, his tongue hot against the wound, and the taste of copper fills his mouth, mingling with the salt and dirt of your skin, and the lingering sweetness of your come.

He adjusts his position, the head of his cock pressing against your entrance, dragging the tip through your wetness, coating himself in your arousal, mixing it with the blood that still seeps from the cut. The sensation is euphoric; the warmth of your cunt against the steel of the knife he still holds, the sting of the fresh wound, the anticipation of being filled.

“Eyes up here, please.” he calls out your name, and you do.

Your eyes meet his, and in that moment there was no guilt nor the past coming to take the both of you. There was only ever this, and you wondered briefly if Bedouins believed their heaven to be a lush paradise of trees and running water; yours was no different, though yours was bleeding together with Dex. 

He thrusts into you in one smooth, brutal motion. His cock stretching your insides felt overwhelming, you haven’t felt anything this big in a while. Your cunt clenches around him, still sensitive from your orgasm, but he’s so huge, filling you completely. A sob escapes from your lips, the sheer intensity of being fucked so hard it almost made you think he was God.

Dex holds himself still for a moment, buried to the hilt, letting you feel every inch of him inside you. Then, he starts to move, pulling out slowly, then slamming back in. Each thrust drives deeper and harder, the sound of his hips meeting your flesh echoing in the quiet cemetery. The knife shifts with the motion, the flat of the blade pressing against your stomach, a reminder of the danger and the trust held loosely between you.

Your blood still trickles from the cut on your thigh, and as Dex pounds into you, some of it smears across his skin, across your hips. He reaches down with his left hand, dragging his fingers through the blood, then bringing them to your mouth. You open without hesitation, swirling your tongue around his fingers, tasting yourself.

“Fuck, that’s perfect—you’re perfect.” he whines, and the praise drives you in a state of exaltation.

His pace increases, becoming desperate as Dex hits the right spot with accuracy every time. He was no longer controlled, this inhumane fucking, driven by something primal in the way every animals do. The knife clatters to the ground as he needs both hands now to grip your hips, angling you exactly how he wants, driving himself deeper and deeper into the wetness of your pussy.

You’re climbing toward another peak, the coil tightening in your belly despite the soreness, and all the blood. Your nails dig into his back, raking lines across his gear, and then you attempt to bite his shoulder hard and it rattles your teeth.

“I’m—I’m close,” he pants, his forehead pressed to yours. “Come on my cock. Let me feel you fall apart, fuck—she could never make you feel this good.”

His rhythm stutters, his body tensing above you. The first hot pulse of his release triggers your own, and you cry out together, a chorus of broken sounds swallowed by the night. His cum fills you, along with your own juices, with the blood that still weeps from the cut on your thigh. Dex collapses onto you, his weight a comforting pressure, his breath warm against your neck. 

For a long time there is only the sound of your combined panting, the frenzied beating of two hearts slowly calming. You stare at the constellations forming in the sky and try to remember how to breathe, you could feel your whole body ache from the violence of your own wanting, you should feel ashamed. You’re lying in a cemetery, your back pressed against the dirt that covers your other half’s body, and you let a killer put his hands on you. 

You wanted him to, and you had asked for it in the only way you knew how. You wait for it to arrive, yet the shame doesn’t come. Neither does the guilt. 

He moves, pulling out of you slowly, and the sensation of his release leaking from your spent cunt is almost too much, but Dex doesn’t let you dwell on it. He gathers you into his arms, lifting you from the ground, cradling you against his chest instead, you allow yourself to drift off.

Misery loves company, or so they say. You have never understood that phrase until now, and all you could feel is a strange kind of fucked up kinship.

The next morning when you wake up, you don’t recognize the walls around you. 

It’s plain looking and relatively small compared to yours, the lack of decoration made you think you were being held captive somewhere in an abandoned house. The walls are bare; no photographs, not even old erotica posters from the 90s, there was no evidence that anyone actually lives here. 

You’re on a bed, and there’s a single blanket draped over you. The mattress felt too firm, seemingly military in their lack of give. You wore a different shirt, bigger than your size and an underwear you’re not certain if it was ever yours but oddly enough fits you, then comes the soreness of your cunt and the fresh wound on your thigh. 

Then you remember. 

“Oh my fucking god.” you cursed under your breath, certain flashes of memories washes over you. All the choices you’ve made are coming back to bite you in the ass. Now, you’re two steps from the water and it’s so clear that you do this to yourself. You can feel the weight of desire, staring at things breathing—at all the things are living, because some part inside you wants to, and you could feel it. You could hardly describe this newfound sentiment.

Dex brought you here, whatever here is. You sit up too fast and your head spins around as you try to stand up, navigating around the room. It was easy enough to find him, opening the door leads to the whole place surprisingly. 

There he was, standing by the stove, cooking what you would have thought eggs and bacon were. A simple man indeed, one that is revolting and brutal yet in this light—you could pretend the slightest touch of normalcy in his gesture. He was also wearing a different outfit, a wife beater and grey sweatpants. Gone was the blood on his face, but the bruises remain, cleaned and washed. 

“You’re awake.”

You’re startled by his voice and the unsettling ability to notice you when you were so sure you had been quiet in your footsteps. Dex seemed in a good mood when he greeted you, but you couldn’t bear yourself to look at him. You didn’t know how to, after what transpired between you last night. 

“Where are we?” you ask instead, gaze wandering around. 

“My place.” 

“Are you sure? This place looks like something you’d see in horror movies.” 

“What does that even mean?” 

“It’s literally a textbook serial killer lair.” 

He turns then, spatula in hand, and looks at you. “Well, I kind of am, aren’t I?” 

You press your palms against your eyes, stifling a genuine laugh because you cannot simply argue with that. The absurdity of it messes with your head a little, makes you dizzy. When you lower your hands, Dex is still watching you, eggs sizzling in the pan, then your stomach growls loudly, embarrassing you at your lowest. 

Dex’s mouth twitches. “Hungry?” 

“A little.” 

He turns back to the stove, divides the eggs onto the plate, one in the pan, adding toast from somewhere you didn’t notice. Dex carries them to the table, sets the only plate he has in front of the empty chair, then looks at you.

“I’ll eat in the pan,” he says. “I don’t really have guests over like this.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Can’t see the reason why that is.”

You slide into the chair, the wood creaking upon your weight, and the cut on your thigh stings when you move but you don’t show it. Instead, your gaze drifts over at the plate in front of you. Eggs, golden and fluffy, toast buttered at its edges, a small pile of bacon that makes your stomach clench with hunger you didn’t know you had. 

The sunny weather outside doesn’t help the nostalgia you feel sick in the stomach for; this falsehood that the world has briefly forgiven itself—reminds you too much of another time. A better time, or was it perhaps a happier lie? Everything about this feels lighter and wrong, and you want to vomit all up. 

Dex leans against the counter, eating directly from the pan, his fork scraping against the metal, you can feel the heaviness of his gaze, watching and observing every move you make. 

“Why am I here, Dex?”

He chews, then swallows, takes his time answering. “Because you asked me to.”

Huh. “I don’t remember that.”

“But you did—even asked you if I should take you home,” he pauses. “You didn’t want to, you said I should take you to mine instead.”

Heat floods your cheeks, stabbing a piece of egg with more force than necessary. “You do realize I was drunk last night, right? Out of my mind?” 

“Were you? Your actions seemed clear to me.” 

Naturally, Dex lied. He didn’t really ask—you were too far gone, slumped against his chest, your breath warm against his collarbone. Your head had lolled against his shoulder, your fingers curled loosely into the fabric of his suit, and you’d mumbled something incomprehensible, he didn’t catch on. He made the choice for you, quickly decided that you were coming with him, that he wasn’t ready to let you go after what you just gave him. 

You exist in a state of perpetual contradiction, how your mind and words don’t align with themselves, yet all the more reasons you fascinate him. You say one thing, but your body says another. You push him away, but you don’t leave either, you’re even eating his damn eggs. You claim you don’t remember, but you remember enough to be embarrassed. 

Dex doesn’t know what to make of you, that’s the truth. You were the first person in years who doesn’t fit aptly into his understanding of the world. Unpredictable, it seemed, was the perfect word for you. He’ll make do with that. Dex will lie about other things, too. Whatever it takes to keep you within his grasp.

“Do you want to talk about last night?” he carefully pushes when you remain silent after the last one, noticing the gears turning inside your head. How miserable it must be being inside your head all the time. 

“I don’t wanna talk about last night,” your fork clinks against the plate as you set it down, suddenly not hungry anymore. Dex could anticipate what you were going to say next. “Look, Dex, I… what I made you do, or the awful thing we did, I’m not… I mean, I—”

Dex abruptly cuts you off. “I’m leaving New York.”

It must have landed, judging by the way you blinked at him, visibly thrown by his words. Your brows knit together, confusion overtaking whatever admission had been waiting behind your tongue. He’s giving you something else to distract your mind with, something bigger than your remorse. And it works.

“Okay…” you sound unsure, slow with your words. “Why are you telling me this?” 

“Because I want you to come with me.” 

You make a sound, a humorless laugh. “You can’t be fucking serious.”

But Dex doesn’t laugh along with you, his expression remains unchanged, there is no flicker of amusement in his gaze as it pierces right through you. 

“Shit,” you say, your voice suddenly smaller. “You are serious.” 

And it surprises you how intense his face was, it feels raw, the impersonation of a tortured soul. It was something that came out of you from nowhere, something you didn’t know you had inside, and you can’t tear your gaze away from him. Adamant that he won’t simply let you forget what happened between you, outwardly asking you to come with him—this killer you’ve come to entangle your body with. 

“That’s not how it works, Dex,” you try to explain. “I can’t just go with you. I have friends—I have a job, my apartment, I have—” 

“You have nothing left for you here,” he says, but it wasn’t cruel, it’s just the truth he thinks it is. “No one, not even Karen Page can save you from your grief, but I can. I did it last night, I’ll do it a hundred times more if you ask.” 

Your whole body went rigid. “How the fuck do you know Karen?”

Dex doesn’t answer. The pan settles onto the table with a metallic clank, but the sound barely registers over the ringing that suddenly fills your ears. He wipes his hands on a dish towel once, then he moves toward you. Planting one hand on the back of your chair and leans down, boxing you in without ever touching you. The kitchen suddenly feels smaller, like you couldn’t breathe with him occupying every space you have left. His expression doesn’t change—if anything, it smooths out completely, every trace of amusement draining from his face until there’s nothing left to read.

“Dex.” your voice strained harder, edged with something that might be fear or anger. “How do you know about Karen?”

His hand lifts slowly, and his knuckles brush your cheek first; a featherlight touch that makes your breath hitch and your entire body weak, because you don’t know what he plans to do next. Then his thumb settles on your lower lip, tracing the curve with such intimacy it almost fooled you. Dex’s gaze fixated on the movement of your lips, watching the way your mouth trembles beneath his fingertips. You swallowed hard.

“I’m the closest thing you’ll ever get to being with Julie.” he whispers against your skin. 

Then his mouth captures yours in a harsh kiss, he forces his tongue inside to slide past your lips before you can even resist and none of it feels tender. Sweeping across the roof of your mouth, your hands come up to push against his chest, but your palms land flat on the hard plane of muscle and they don’t push, they simply press, fingers curling into the fabric of his tank top. 

Dex’s hand moves from your cheek to the nape of your neck, fingers threading into your hair and pulling, making you tilt your head back to give him better access. The stretch in your throat makes you gasp against his mouth, and he swallows the sound, deepening the kiss until it’s almost brutal. One and the same with his nature. 

You taste yourself on him, or maybe Dex tastes like himself, and you’re simply drowning so fast you can’t tell the difference anymore. 

He pulls back, lips still brushing yours as he speaks. “That’s why you’ll come with me, because I’m the only one who can give you what you need.”

Dex leans away, stands fully in front of you, looking down at your dazed expression, the confusion settling into your features. Your eyes are glassy, unfocused, and your lips have been slightly swollen, still wet from his mouth. You look like someone who’s been caught in a current, swept out to sea, too disoriented to swim back to shore. 

And it’s exactly how he wanted you to be, what needs to be done, what this requires.

His hand slipped into the pocket of his sweatpants, and felt the cloth there; folded and damp. He had it prepared this morning, before you woke up. A last resort, Dex thinks. Something he wouldn’t use unless he had to. But truly, he had known. Even then, as he cracked the eggs and buttered the toast, pretending any of this was a normal morning, he simply knew.

You were never going to say yes.

But not all love is gentle, he supposed. Sometimes you have to do things for the betterment of your significant other, it can be gritty and dirty, sometimes it’s not supposed to be careful at all. But you have to take it upon yourself to make the harder actions, carrying the burden of decisions they weren’t strong enough to make themselves. That’s what this is—what he’s doing for you. Making hard decisions for the both of you. 

You’ll never heal as long as you’re still stuck in this place, chained down to Julie Barnes. She held onto you long enough, Dex will change that. He doesn’t have to compete with the dead.

He presses the cloth filled with chloroform over your nose and mouth, clamping down firmly, and you thrash immediately; muffled screaming noises, your hands flying up to claw at his wrists, your legs kicking against the chair, your body jerking with the instinct to escape.

But Dex’s entire arm holds you steady, feeling your nails scrape against his skin, leaving red marks that will fade by morning, though you might as well be pushing against a wall. 

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry, I truly am. Just breathe. It’ll be over soon.” 

Your eyes are wide in panic, filled with tears. He watches the betrayal flood your expression, and it hurts him most yet Dex was not sorry for what he’s trying to do. It must have felt an eternity before your thrashing weakened, your eyes struggling to stay open, trying to focus on his face, watching your body go slack, head lolling back with your eyes finally closing. 

Your chest rises and falls once, twice, and then your breathing becomes stable, slow and deep. Dex holds the cloth in place for another thirty seconds, to be certain. Then he pulls it away, folding them carefully as he places it on the table instead. 

Kneeling beside the chair, his fingers brushes a strand of hair from your face, your skin felt warm beneath his fingers, alive. But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves. You became his north star, the fixed point round which Dex’s world turned. For as long as his heart beat, he believed you would always share the same fate, because he is as much a part of you as you are a part of him now.

Dex could only hope you’re not dreaming of Julie. He hopes you’re dreaming of nothing but him at all.