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Synopsis: Years after the war, Jack Abbot rarely talks about what happened overseas. But when a med student ask about his time in the military, the story he tells isn’t about battles or medals—it’s about you. It’s about the long nights at the edge of camp, the promises you made, the quiet moments that made the war feel far away, and the future you both believed you would have when it was all over. But war doesn’t always keep its promises.
word count: 11.4k (guys what the frick... idk what happened)
Warnings: Medical inaccuracies, Military setting, military inaccuracies, mentions of blood and injury, medical setting, kissing, sexual content, mentions of war, angst, grief, mentions of survivors guilt, bittersweet ending
“What was it like when you were in Afghanistan?” The question came from James Ogilvie, a fourth-year med student, during a brief quiet moment before shift change.
Jack Abbott barely looked up from the computer screen he was charting on.
“Don’t ask him that,” Trinity Santos said quickly, swatting Ogilvie on the shoulder.
Ogilvie frowned. “What? I was just curious.”
“It’s fine,” Jack said calmly, finally glancing up from the screen. “He can ask whatever questions he wants.”
Years ago, Jack wouldn’t have said that. His time in the military had once been a hypersensitive subject — something that could unravel him without warning. A single question could send him spiraling into memories he couldn’t escape. Memories that came with shaking hands, cold sweats, and the kind of panic that made it hard to breathe. But that had been years ago.
Years — and countless therapy sessions — later, things were different. He had healed. Or at least, as much as someone like him ever really could.
He would never forget what he saw out there.
What he heard.
What he did.
But he had learned to live with it.
His therapist used to tell him the same thing every week: “The only way through trauma is to stop running from it.”
So now, when someone asked what it had been like, Jack didn’t shut down anymore. He talked.
Ogilvie leaned against the counter, waiting expectantly.
“So… what was it like?” he asked again.
Jack leaned back slightly in his chair, exhaling through his nose as his eyes drifted away from the computer screen.
“It was…” he paused, searching for the right word. “Bittersweet.”
Suddenly Dennis Whitaker had started listening. He, Ogilvie, and Trinity frowned.
“Bittersweet?” Trinity repeated.
Jack nodded slowly.
“There were good moments,” he said. “Good people.” His mind flickered through memories like frames of an old film reel. “And there were bad moments,” he continued quietly. “Bad people.”
“I don’t want to pry,” Whitaker said carefully, “but… what do you mean?”
Jack rested his forearms on the desk, staring at nothing for a moment.
“There was a lot of bad out there,” he admitted. “A lot of things that still show up in my nightmares.” The room stayed quiet. “But,” he continued, his voice softening slightly, “there were people I met…”
His mind caught on a single memory.
A face.
Your face.
“Or… a person I met,” he corrected. “That made me forget about all the bad.”
They all straightened a little, clearly invested now.
“Well now you can’t just say that and stop there,” Ogilvie said. “Who was it?”
Jack didn’t answer right away.
Instead, his gaze drifted somewhere far beyond the hospital walls.
Back across the ocean.
Back across the years.
Back to the desert.
Back to you.
——————
It had been four months.
Four months of dust that never seemed to leave your skin no matter how many showers you took. Four months of the constant hum of generators, helicopters cutting through the sky, and radios crackling with voices that always sounded just a little too urgent. Four months of blood on your hands that never quite felt like it washed away.
Four months in Afghanistan.
And for nearly all of it, Jack had been there too.
Not that the two of you had meant to get close. At the start, he had just been another medic across the small medical tent—another pair of hands helping stitch soldiers back together before sending them back out again.
But war had a strange way of shrinking the world.
Soon enough, it was just the two of you working side by side more often than not.
“You’re pulling that stitch too tight,” Jack had muttered one afternoon, leaning over your shoulder while you worked.
You didn’t even look up. “It’s called doing it right.”
“It’s called strangling the poor guy’s skin.”
“He’ll live.”
“He’ll have a scar.”
“Adds character.”
Jack huffed out a quiet laugh behind you. “You’re ruthless.”
“And you’re dramatic.”
The soldier laying on the table groaned weakly. “Can you two flirt later?”
You and Jack had looked at each other before bursting out laughing.
It had started like that.
Little moments between the chaos.
Four months of passing each other tools before the other even asked.
“Scissors.”
Jack was already placing them in your hand.
“Gauze.”
You slid it across the table toward him without looking.
Four months of sarcastic comments over the groans of wounded soldiers.
“You know,” Jack said once while scrubbing his hands in the sink beside you, “most people take a girl out to dinner before they make her spend this much time with them.”
You glanced over, unimpressed. “Most people aren’t elbow-deep in someone’s leg wound when they meet.”
He grinned. “Romantic, though.”
“Oh extremely.”
Four months of late nights when the tent finally quieted down.
You’d sit across from each other at the metal table, both too tired to speak, sharing a stale granola bar like it was the best meal you’d ever had.
Jack would lean back in his chair.
“Remind me again why we did this?”
“To help people,” you’d say.
“Right,” he’d sigh. “That.”
But sometimes it was quieter than that.
Sometimes it was just the two of you cleaning instruments in comfortable silence.
Sometimes it was Jack nudging your shoulder when you looked like you were about to fall asleep standing up.
“Hey,” he’d murmur.
“What?”
“Try not to pass out. I don’t want to do your job too.”
“You couldn’t do my job.”
“Please,” he scoffed. “I’d be amazing.”
“You fainted during training.”
“That was once.”
“It was twice.”
Four months of meaningless flirting.
Or at least that’s what you insisted on calling it. Because putting a different name to it would mean acknowledging something neither of you had dared to say out loud.
War had a way of blurring lines.
Of making people cling to whatever light they could find in the darkness.
And somewhere along the way, Jack had become yours.
——————
The day had been relentless.
The reminiscence of blood stuck under your nails. Grains of sand in your mouth. The metallic smell of it all still clinging to the back of your throat no matter how much water you drank.
So you walked.
Walked past the hum of generators. Past the low murmur of exhausted soldiers. Past the sharp scent of diesel and sweat and too many bodies packed into too little of a space.
You didn’t stop walking until the base sounds dulled into a distant blur.
There, at the edge of camp, the land opened toward dark silhouettes of the mountains carved against a sky drenched in stars.
The scenery was endless; the land unbothered by war.
You lowered yourself onto the cool sand and lay flat on your back, staring up at the sky. The wind moved softly over your skin, a quiet whisper replacing the day’s chaos. For a moment, there were no radios crackling. No shouted coordinates. No screams.
It was just silence and the sky.
You were so focused on slowing your breathing that you didn’t hear the footsteps approaching.
“You okay?” A low voice cut gently through the quiet. You opened your eyes to find none other than Jack Abbot standing over you, his shadow haloed by starlight.
“I’m fine.”
His brows furrowed. “You don’t look fine.”
A tired huff escaped you. “Wow. Thanks.” You shut your eyes again. “Do you insult every woman you talk to, Abbot?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly.
You opened one eye, narrowing it at him.
“I just meant you look stressed.”
“I’ll be fine,” you murmured. “I just needed some silence.”
You hoped your answer would be enough to send him away.
But of course it wasn’t.
You could feel him still standing there — awkward, lingering, unsure what to do with himself.
You sighed. “Are you just going to stand there watching me, or are you going to join me?”
He blinked. “I—I can go—”
“Shut up and sit.”
You pushed yourself up just enough to grab his wrist and tug. He stumbled slightly before dropping into the sand beside you, stiff as a board.
For a second, he just sat there — knees bent, back straight, hands hovering like he didn’t know where to put them.
You laughed softly. “Lay down and relax. You look like you’re waiting for inspection.”
After a hesitant pause, he laid back beside you — slowly, like the ground might swallow him whole.
Eventually, his hands settled in his lap, his shoulders dropped by degrees, and his breathing evened out. He hadn’t felt like this in months—like there wasn’t immediate danger coming straight for him. You could feel it too, that subtle shift in the air around you.
“You do this a lot?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah.” Your eyes stayed on the sky. “It gets loud on base. In here,” You tapped your temple lightly. “The stars help.”
“Why?”
You swallowed. “My sister loved them.”
“Are you two close?” he asked.
“We were,” you said, voice thinning like fragile glass. “She passed away a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, going still beside you. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.”
The wind moved through the trees, filling the space neither of you did. Your hand curled loosely into the sand.
You cleared your throat gently, trying to ease the tension. “Do you want to know something cool?”
There was the faintest line of a smile on his face when he replied, “Tell me something cool.”
“We’re looking at the past right now. The light from those stars? It takes thousands of years to reach Earth. So technically… we’re seeing them as they were thousands of years ago.”
He was quiet for a moment, processing the information.
“So we’re time travelers,” he murmured.
A soft laugh slipped out of you. “Yeah. I guess we are.” You pointed upward. “Some of the stars we’re looking at are already dead. Their light just hasn’t stopped traveling yet.”
He studied the sky differently after that.
“I see grief the same way,” you said softly. “They’re gone… but they’re light is still here. Still reaching you.”
His breath caught — almost imperceptible.
“That’s… a good way to see it,” he said. “Not everyone can.”
You turned your head. He was staring at the sky, profile sharp in the silver light. There was something softer about him out here; less guarded.
He must have felt you looking, because he turned too.
And suddenly, you were close.
Very close.
Your shoulders were brushing, your breath mixing. His dark eyes staring directly into yours.
“Is that why you joined?” he asked quietly. “Because of her?”
“No.” You held his gaze. “After she was gone, I didn’t have anything left. Both of my parents died when I was twelve, and she’d been taking care of me ever since. When she died, I had nothing—no money, no house, barely enough to afford food.”
“Shit,” Jack whispered under his breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” you said. “The military gives me a paycheck, a bed, and three meals a day.”
“It also gives you PTSD and a lifetime subscription to insomnia.”
You exhaled slowly. “That’s better than struggling to survive.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Can’t argue with that.”
His hands shifted from his lap, falling to his sides. His fingers brushed yours, neither of you pulling away from the contact.
There was a pause — fragile and electric.
Then his hand turned, tentative, like he was testing if you’re comfortable.
You lace your fingers with his.
And for a moment, the war and the danger felt miles away. It was as though you two were the only people on Earth, wrapped in silence and each other.
The sound of heavy footsteps pounded across the sand.
“Hey! Chef wants you both back. It’s lights out!”
The spell around you had shattered.
You pulled apart too quickly, sitting up as if you hadn’t just crossed a line neither of you had acknowledged before.
But the warmth lingered in your palm.
——————
The mission wasn’t supposed to feel like that.
It had been briefed as a sweep-and-clear — low resistance expected, quick in and out. The kind of operation you could almost trick yourself into believing would end quietly.
But from the moment you stepped into the village, something felt wrong.
Too still.
No children running through the streets. No doors cracked open. No stray dogs picking through refuse.
Just heat. And silence.
The first explosion split the world open.
The blast knocked you sideways, ears ringing so violently you tasted copper. Dust swallowed the street in an instant, thick and blinding. Then came the gunfire — sharp, frantic, bouncing off stone walls and turning the narrow road into a cage.
Training took over.
You were moving before your thoughts caught up — dropping beside a private with a shredded forearm, tying off a tourniquet with hands that refused to shake.
Across the street, Jack had already gone down hard behind a crumbling wall.
“Jack!” someone shouted, strained and panicked.
You looked up just long enough to see Davis collapse. Corporal Davis had been Jack’s shadow since he’d started in the military. Same deployment. Same rotations. Same inside jokes murmured over bad coffee before dawn.
The shrapnel caught him high — too high.
Jack was at his side instantly, dragging him behind cover with a strength that looked almost feral. You reached them seconds later.
There’s a particular look people get when they know something is wrong in a way that can’t be undone. And Davis had that look. But Jack didn’t. Jack wore denial like armor, his focus rigid and unyielding.
“Entry wound here,” he said, voice clipped but steady. “Possible internal bleeding.”
You pressed down and felt warmth flood your gloves.
“Stay with me, Davis,” Jack commanded, like he could force him to obey.
Davis’s hand grabbed blindly — and found Jack’s vest.
“Don’t let me—” Davis choked, blood at the corner of his mouth. “I—I’m not ready to go.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Jack said.
But when his eyes flicked to you for half a second, you saw it.
The crack.
The realization.
You worked in brutal tandem — gauze, clamps, pressure, reassess. Gunfire roared around you like a storm you were somehow kneeling calmly inside.
At one point, your hands stalled for half a heartbeat. The bleeding wouldn’t slow.
You looked at Jack and he was already looking at you.
“Clamp,” you said sharply.
He moved instantly.
Minutes blurred as you awaited a medevac. Smoke filled the street, making it harder to work and breathe. The helicopter’s roar swallowed everything.
When they lifted Davis onto the stretcher, he was unconscious — but breathing.
Jack stood there long after the helicopter disappeared into the horizon.
He didn’t speak the entire ride back to base.
By the time you returned to base, the sky was painted in bruised oranges and deepening violet — too beautiful for the kind of day you’d had.
The troop dispersed quietly. No laughter. No retelling of the fight.
You scanned the line automatically. There was no sign of Jack. Knowing what he’d seen today, hiding was the only thing he’d know how to do
You tried the command tent first.
“Have you seen Abbot?” you asked, only to be met with the shake of heads.
You checked near the medical unit — maybe he’d lingered for news.
Nothing.
By the time you circled past the barracks, the sky had darkened to deep violet. The base lights flickered one by one.
You stopped walking.
Maybe he wanted to be alone.
Maybe you should let him.
You turned toward your bunk.
And then something in your chest pulled. A quiet instinct — a memory.
The edge of base. You didn’t think about it again — just walked.
Past the generators. Past the hum of low conversation. Past the perimeter lights.
And there he was. Sitting quietly in the sand, elbows on his knees. His head bowed slightly like the weight of it all had finally pressed down.
For a moment, you just watched him in the same place he’d once found you unraveling.
You stepped closer, boots soft in the sand.
“Hey.”
He didn’t look up as he said, “You shouldn’t be out here.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
There was a pause as he swallowed the lump in his throat.
“I’m fine.”
You moved around him and lowered yourself into the sand directly in front of him, close enough that your knees almost brushed.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
His jaw flexed. “Drop it.”
“No.”
That made him look up — irritation flashing in his eyes.
“I said I’m fine.”
“And I know you’re not.”
Silence stretched tight between you. His gaze fell back to the ground.
You softened your voice. “Jack.”
“Don’t.” His voice was rough now, thinner than before. “I don’t need—”
“You were scared.”
His shoulders stiffened. “No.”
“Yes,” you said softly. “I saw the look in your eyes.”
His breath left him in a sharp exhale. “He called for me,” Jack said quietly. “Not for a medic. Not for anyone else. Me.” His hands curled into fists between his knees. “And for a second… I thought he was dying in front of me.”
You shifted closer. “Look at me.”
He shook his head.
“Jack.”
“I can’t.” His voice cracked on the last word.
You reached forward gently and slid your fingers under his chin. He resisted — jaw tight, eyes fixed stubbornly on the sand. You applied just enough pressure to guide his face up.
“Look at me,” you repeated softly.
Slowly, reluctantly, his glassy eyes met yours.
“I hesitated,” he admitted, barely audible. “When I saw where he was hit. I knew what it meant. And I saw it — I saw myself writing to his mom. I saw telling his brother he didn’t make it.” His throat worked hard. “I’m supposed to be better than that.”
“You’re human.”
“I’m his medic.”
“And you saved him.”
“We don’t know that.”
“You gave him a fighting chance.”
His composure splintered then. His breathing faltered first. Then his face crumpled in a way that looked almost boyish — stripped of rank and responsibility.
Then the tears came silently.
You’d never seen him cry. You’ve been through worse battles, lost more people — and yet, this is the first time you’ve ever seen him break.
He turned his face slightly, ashamed.
You didn’t let him pull away. You shifted forward and wrapped your arms around him, pulling him into you.
For a second he stayed stiff.
Then he broke against you. His forehead pressed into your shoulder. His hands fisted into the fabric at your back like he was holding on to something solid in a world that kept shaking.
“It sticks,” he whispered hoarsely. “All of it sticks.”
“I know.” You held him tighter.
In the creeping darkness, you held him. You held him until the sun vanished and he had no tears left to cry and his breathing steadied. He pulled back slightly, but not far, his hands staying at your waist.
“Do you still believe that?” he asked quietly, eyes flicking upward. “About the stars?”
“Yes.”
“That even if they die… their light keeps traveling?”
“Yes.”
His gaze returned to you. “I don’t want to be the reason someone’s light goes out.”
“You’re not,” you said firmly. “You’re the reason it keeps reaching us.”
He searched your face like he was looking for permission to believe that. His hand slid slowly from your waist to your jaw, thumb brushing over your cheekbone.
“If I do this,” he whispered, “it’s not just because today was hard.”
“Jack…”
His eyes dropped to your mouth.
Your breath caught.
He leaned in slowly. Your lips were barely a breath apart—
“Abbot!”
The voice carried across the sand.
Jack froze.
You both pulled back, reality crashing in too fast.
“Yeah!” he called, voice steadier than it had any right to be.
His forehead rested against yours for a brief, fragile moment before he stood. When he helped you up, his hand lingered, reluctant to let go.
Above you, the stars burned quietly, still reaching through the endless dark.
——————
A month is a long time out here.
Long enough for bruises to fade.
Long enough for routines to settle back in.
Long enough for certain moments to be forgotten.
But there were some moments you could never forget.
Davis was proof of that.
He’d been back on base for a week now. He’d been restricted to light movement. He grumbled and complained about it — but he was alive and annoyingly optimistic about the scar that curved along his abdomen.
Jack had hovered at first. You noticed when he double-checked Davis’s vitals even after you’d signed off on them. You noticed how he’d stand in the doorway of the recovery tent for half a second longer than necessary before walking away.
But somewhere between the days, he gradually stopped hovering.
He relaxed. Not entirely — Jack Abbot didn’t really know how to be entirely relaxed — but enough that the tightness around his mouth softened and a quiet laugh slipped out of him, easy and unguarded in a way you hadn’t seen before.
And for a moment, watching him like that, it was impossible not to think about how close the two of you had come that night.
Neither of you had ever mentioned it. Not how close you’d been, not the way his hand had lingered at your waist, not the charged silence that followed. Instead, the moment had simply woven itself into everything that came after — into longer glances, unnecessary proximity, and the way your hands seemed to find each other without either of you really looking.
Days off didn’t really exist out here, but this was the closest thing to one. No missions, no sudden briefings — just routine maintenance and inventory.
By late afternoon, the medical tent was warm with filtered sunlight and the faint scent of antiseptic and canvas.
You were reorganizing supply shelves when you realized someone had moved the trauma dressings again.
“Why,” you called without turning, “do you keep putting these on the top shelf?”
From behind you, Jack’s voice drifted lazily. “Because that’s where they go.”
“They go where I can reach them.”
“You can reach them.”
You rose onto your toes again, stretching your arm up. “No. I can’t.”
Silence lingered for a moment before footsteps approached through the sand.
“You’re being dramatic,” he said mildly.
“No I’m not.”
“You’re standing on your toes.”
“That’s called determination.”
“That’s called being stubborn.” Jack shook his head, pushing himself upright. “Let me help you.”
His chest brushed your back as he reached up easily over your head, one arm braced beside yours against the wood. His body aligned with yours like it was the most natural thing in the world.
You turned just as Jack reached up, grabbing the box you’d been struggling with for the past minute. He set it down on the counter beside you, but he didn’t move away afterward. Instead, he stayed right where he was, and suddenly the space around you felt tiny.
You could see the faint smudge of dust along his jaw, the loose strands of hair that had escaped whatever attempt he’d made to tame it earlier. His shirt sleeve brushed lightly against your arm when he shifted his weight.
“See?” he said quietly. “Dramatic.”
Your eyebrows lifted. “I had it handled.”
“Sure you did.” His voice was low, amused in that easy way he’d slipped into around you lately.
You crossed your arms, mostly so you wouldn’t do something stupid.
“You could’ve just asked,” he added.
“And miss the opportunity for you to feel useful?”
The corner of his mouth curved. “I’ll take it anyway.” He finally stepped back, moving towards the box on the table like nothing had happened.
You exhaled slowly, deciding to busy yourself with labeling a crate you absolutely did not need to label.
Jack watched for a moment. “You’ve been reorganizing things a lot,” he said.
“Maybe it’s because you’ve been moving them around.”
“Maybe I like watching you fix them.”
You glanced up at him.
“That’s a weird thing to admit.”
He shrugged. “Just being honest.”
By nightfall, someone had started a fire near the center of camp.
It wasn’t planned. It just… happened. A pile of scrap wood. A spark. Then soldiers drifted toward the warmth like it was instinct.
You found yourself sitting beside Jack on an overturned crate, sweatpants soft against your legs, the firelight flickering gold across his face.
The air felt different tonight.
Someone told a wildly exaggerated story about basic training. Someone else butchered a song on guitar. With each story and song, laughter echoed across camp — real and unfiltered.
You were still laughing at the story when you felt it — the unmistakable sensation of being watched. When you turned your head, Jack was already looking at you, his gaze steady in the flickering firelight.
“You’re staring again,” you replied.
“I know.”
You turned to look at him properly.
He didn’t look away.
The firelight flickered across his face, catching in his eyes as the laughter around the circle swelled at the end of someone’s story. For a moment he just watched you, quiet and steady, like the rest of the camp had faded somewhere into the background.
Jack leaned closer, the movement slow and deliberate. You felt the warmth of him at your side before his head dipped slightly toward you, his voice dropping low as his breath brushed the shell of your ear.
“Want to get out of here?”
The words were barely louder than the crackle of the fire.
As he pulled back just enough to look at you again, he tilted his head toward the darker edge of camp, where the firelight faded into shadow.
You hesitated just long enough for a flicker of uncertainty to cross his face.
Then you pushed yourself to your feet, stretching your arms over your head like you’d simply grown tired of sitting.
Jack followed a second later, brushing sand from his hands as he stood.
The story at the fire kept going, another round of laughter breaking out.
And no one noticed the two of you leave.
The quiet in the tent felt different from the quiet at the fire. The laughter from the bonfire drifted across camp in bursts, softened by distance, while the lantern inside the medical area cast a warm circle of light across the tables.
Jack leaned back against one of them, arms loosely folded.
“You dragged me all the way out here just to stand around?” you asked.
A corner of his mouth lifted. “You came with me.”
“You asked.”
“Didn’t hear you complaining.”
You huffed softly under your breath, glancing away for a second before looking back at him. Jack's heavy gaze was still on you.
“You’re staring,” you said.
“Maybe,” he said, tilting his head a little and shrugging his shoulders.
You shook your head. “You’re impossible.”
“Yeah, but you like it.”
That pulled a quiet laugh out of you. Your gaze flickered down, needing a break from the intense eye contact.
When you looked back up, he’d moved a little closer — your stomach flipped at the proximity.
“What?” you asked.
“Nothing.” He shrugged slightly, but his eyes stayed on yours. The air between you shifted — subtle, but unmistakable. Jack glanced down for a second, then back up. “Are you ever going to mention it?” he asked.
Your brows pulled together. “Mention what?”
He watched you for a moment, like he was deciding if you were serious.
“The night by the mountains.”
Your heart skipped.
“Oh.” The word came out quieter than you meant it to.
You looked down briefly, tracing a small scratch in the table with your thumb before glancing back at him.
“It was a long day,” you said. “Davis almost died. We were both running on adrenaline.”
“Yeah,” Jack said.
“And sometimes things feel… bigger in moments like that.”
He didn’t answer right away. “You think that’s what it was?” he asked.
“I think it makes sense. Our actions were just something… temporary.”
He closed the distance fully now, stopping just in front of you. “It didn’t feel temporary to me,” he said quietly.
Your pulse hammered.
“It felt like something I’ve been wanting to do for weeks.”
Your breath caught. “Do what?”
“Kissing you.”
The words settled between you, heavy and deliberate.
You swallowed. “You sound very sure about that.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “I am.”
You tried to roll your eyes, but the air around you felt too charged.
“You’ve been standing too close for a month,” he continued. “You think I don’t notice?”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t mean what?” he asked softly.
You searched for logic. For distance.
Instead, you found yourself saying, “I didn’t want it to be something that just… disappears the next time things get hard.”
Jack was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “It won’t.” His hand settled lightly at your waist.
Your breath caught slightly. “And if I said it was just heightened emotion?” you asked.
His thumb brushed your side — barely.
“I’d say you need to stop pretending.”
He leaned in slowly, giving you time to step away.
You didn’t.
His lips met yours softly at first — testing, seeing if you’d pull away.
You don't. Instead, your hands make their way up his neck, tangling in his soft curls.
The kiss deepened slowly, unhurried, like you both had nowhere else to be. His mouth moved against yours with a gentle insistence, tongues sliding together in a rhythm that echoed the distant flicker of the bonfire outside.
The med tent's canvas walls muffled the laughter and crackle of flames from the base, but every whisper inside felt dangerously loud—the soft hitch of your breath, the quiet rustle of your tight black undershirt against his hoodie as he pulled you closer.
Jack's free hand cupped the back of your head, fingers threading through your hair, holding you steady as the kiss turned hungrier, yet still restrained, like he was committing every moment to memory.
You pressed your body against his, feeling the solid warmth of his chest through the thin fabric of your undershirt and his hoodie. His hand at your waist tightened just enough to draw you flush, and a low hum escaped his throat, vibrating into your mouth. Breaking the kiss for a breath, his forehead rested against yours, eyes dark and searching in the dim light filtering through the tent flap.
"I've wanted this," he whispered, voice rough but barely audible over the faint voices outside. "You. For longer than I should admit in a place like this. Every time we patch up the wounded together, I think about pulling you aside like this."
Your heart pounded, a rush of vulnerability mixing with the heat building low in your belly. "Jack... what if someone hears? The bonfire's right there," you murmured, even as your fingers tugged at the zipper of his hoodie, peeling it open to reveal the tight shirt beneath clinging to his muscled frame.
He chuckled softly, the sound warm against your skin. "Then we'll have to be extra quiet. But I can't pretend anymore. Tell me you feel it too." His hands slid under your undershirt, palms rough from field work gliding up your sides, thumbs grazing the underside of your breasts.
"I do," you breathed, nodding as you captured his lips again, this time with more urgency. Your fingers explored the hard planes of his abdomen under his shirt, tracing the faint scars from past missions. He shivered under your touch, his own hands pushing your undershirt higher, bunching it above your chest to expose your bra.
Jack's mouth trailed from your lips to your jaw, then down the column of your throat, nipping lightly at the skin there. You bit your lip to stifle a gasp, acutely aware of the soldiers' stories carrying faintly from the bonfire—oblivious to the heat unfolding just yards away. "God, you taste like everything I've been missing," he murmured against your collarbone, his teeth scraping as he tugged your bra down, freeing one breast.
"Shh," you whispered, a half-laugh escaping as you arched into him. "You're going to get us caught." Your hands fumbled with the drawstring of his sweatpants, loosening it quickly. The fabric whispered down his hips, and you palmed his hardening cock through his boxers, feeling it twitch under your touch.
He paused, glancing toward the tent entrance, then covered your hand with his, guiding you to shove the waistband lower. "Worth the risk," he said, voice husky. His cock sprang free, hard and thick against your thigh, the velvety heat making your core clench. "Touch me like you mean it."
You wrapped your fingers around his length, stroking slowly from base to tip, pre-cum slicking your palm. He bucked into your grip, a muffled groan buried in your neck. "Fuck, yes—just like that," he hissed, his hand dipping to the waistband of your tight black sweatpants, hooking his fingers in and yanking them down along with your panties in one swift motion. They pooled at your ankles, and you kicked them aside, the cool air hitting your bare skin.
Jack palmed your ass, lifting you slightly to perch on the edge of the exam table, the paper crinkling under your weight. He spread your thighs wide, kneeling between them, his breath hot against your inner thigh as he kissed a path upward. "You're so wet already," he whispered, eyes flicking up to meet yours. "For me?"
"Only for you," you replied, voice trembling with need as his fingers parted your folds, finding your soaked pussy. He circled your clit with feather-light strokes, making you grip his shoulders, nails digging in. "Jack, please—don't tease."
He slid one finger inside you, then two, curling them to hit that spot that made your vision blur. "Like this?" he asked, thrusting slowly, his thumb pressing your clit. You rocked against his hand, biting his shoulder to muffle the whimpers rising in your throat. The wet sounds of his fingers pumping were obscene in the hushed tent, but they drove you wild, your walls fluttering around him.
"So tight," he breathed, pulling back to watch your face, his gaze intense with emotion. "I need to fuck you. Right now. Tell me you want it."
"Yes—God, yes," you gasped, releasing his cock only long enough for him to line up.
In the heat of the moment, protection was forgotten, raw need taking over. He positioned the broad head at your entrance, nudging your slick folds. Slowly, he pushed in, inch by inch, stretching your pussy deliciously. You both froze at the fullness, your inner walls gripping him like a vice.
"You feel incredible," he groaned softly, starting to move with shallow thrusts, building a rhythm of controlled power. His hips snapped forward, cock dragging against your walls, hitting deep with each plunge. You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer, your heels digging into his back through his sweatpants. The table creaked faintly, and you both stilled, listening—nothing from outside but the ongoing chatter.
"Keep going," you urged in a whisper, meeting his eyes. "Don't stop."
Emboldened, he picked up pace, one hand bracing on the table, the other stroking your clit in time with his thrusts.
Sweat beaded on his brow, his curls damp and disheveled from your fingers still tangled in them. "Come for me," he murmured, voice strained. "Quietly—let me feel you squeeze my cock."
Pleasure built like a wave, your body tensing as he fucked you harder, the slap of skin on skin hushed but insistent.
You came first, orgasm crashing over you in silent intensity—your pussy clenching around his cock, milking him as waves of bliss ripped through you. You buried your face in his neck, a choked sob escaping, but no sound loud enough to betray you.
Jack followed seconds later, thrusting deep one last time, his cock pulsing as he spilled inside you, hot and thick. "Fuck—yes," he whispered hoarsely, shuddering against you, lips pressed to your temple, holding you through the aftershocks.
You clung to each other, breaths mingling in the dim tent, the world outside fading to irrelevance. As you both came down, he didn't pull away immediately, staying buried inside you, his arms wrapping around your back under your rumpled undershirt.
"That..." he whispered, voice hoarse with wonder, "was everything. Promise me this isn't the last time."
You smiled against his skin, knowing this was more than just release—it was a promise, forged in the quiet intimacy of the night, unbreakable even in the chaos of war.
"It won't be," you replied softly, sealing it with a gentle kiss.
——————
You’d been deployed long enough that time had started to lose its shape.
Days blurred together into something indistinct — missions, patrols, long nights, early mornings. The desert didn’t change much, and neither did the routine. Wake before the sun. Work until exhaustion sets in. Try to sleep through the heat or the noise or the quiet that came afterward.
Some days were heavy with loss. Others were strangely light — filled with laughter that felt almost out of place in a place like this. Over time it all mixed together until it became difficult to separate one memory from another.
Slowly, weeks turned into months. The war moved on around you, relentless and unyielding, but your mind struggled to keep track of the passing days. Everything started to feel like one long stretch of time.
Everything except Jack.
If the deployment had blurred everything else, Jack stood out in sharp, steady focus.
Every moment with him seemed to anchor itself clearly in your memory — late conversations after shifts ended, quiet walks along the perimeter when the camp finally settled down for the night, the warmth of his hand finding yours when no one else was looking.
Those moments stood apart from everything else.
You could remember them easily.
What had started as something fragile and uncertain had deepened quickly after that.
Neither of you had made a grand declaration. There had been no dramatic conversation about what the two of you were becoming. In a place like this, life rarely allowed for those kinds of moments. Instead, it had grown naturally.
Over the months that followed, the line between teasing and flirting had disappeared entirely. Conversations that once danced around the edges of something unspoken became easier, warmer.
You laughed together more than you ever had before.
You kissed whenever you could steal a moment alone.
Sometimes that meant slipping into the medical tent after the last patient had been treated, the lantern light low and the rest of the camp quiet.
Other nights it meant standing close beneath a sky full of stars, talking softly while the desert wind drifted across the sand.
Those quiet moments became something you both held onto.
Because the truth was, deployment had a way of wearing people down.
Some missions left everyone exhausted and silent for hours afterward.
Some days ended with grief that settled heavily over the entire camp.
And in those moments, Jack had become the one constant you could rely on.
After the hardest missions, when the adrenaline faded and the exhaustion finally caught up to everyone, you often found yourselves sitting together somewhere away from the noise of the others.
Sometimes you leaned against his shoulder.
Sometimes he rested his forehead against yours, both of you too tired to say much of anything.
You had become each other’s refuge in a place where comfort was often hard to find.
When the world felt too heavy, Jack was the one you leaned into.
And just as often, you found him doing the same with you.
It wasn’t something either of you talked about out loud.
You didn’t need to.
The understanding between you had grown strong enough that words rarely felt necessary.
Six months had passed since that quiet night in the medical tent.
Six months of stolen moments, whispered jokes, shared exhaustion, and quiet affection that deepened with every passing day.
Out here, where tomorrow was never guaranteed, it had become something real.
Something steady.
Something that belonged entirely to the two of you.
——————
Night settled slowly over the base. The noise never really stopped here. Engines hummed somewhere in the distance. Voices carried across the rows of tents. Metal clanged against metal as someone finished a late task.
Most nights you could tune it out.
Tonight you couldn’t.
Something restless had taken hold in your chest — an uneasy weight you couldn’t quite name. The noise felt too loud, too constant. Like the world refused to quiet long enough for you to think.
So you slipped away.
No one stopped you as you moved past the outer tents and toward the edge of camp, where the lights faded and the desert stretched wide and open beneath the sky. You followed a familiar path, reaching your spot.
You sank down cross-legged, resting your hands loosely in your lap as your gaze lifted toward the sky.
The desert at night had its own kind of silence. Not completely still — the wind whispered softly across the sand — but quiet enough that your thoughts could finally breathe.
You’d been so absorbed in your own mind that you didn’t hear the footsteps approaching. You only realized someone had come close when a familiar shoulder brushed lightly against yours as they sat down beside you.
“Thought I’d find you here,” Jack's low voice said, cutting gently through the distant noise of the base. “What are you doing out here?”
“Thinking.” Your eyes were still on the sky, tracing the faint line of a constellation.
Beside you, Jack watched your face for a moment.
“About…” he prompted softly.
You exhaled slowly. “Everything.” Only then did you glance at him. Your eyes met his briefly before drifting back toward the stars. “You know we only have one more month here.”
Jack hummed quietly in acknowledgment.
“Mhm.”
“It’s just…” You reached up, tucking a few loose strands of hair back behind your ear where they’d slipped free from your ponytail. “I keep trying to imagine what life is going to look like after this.” Your voice softened. “And the truth is… I can’t.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward — it never was with him. That was one of the first things you’d noticed about Jack — the way silence around him felt steady, like something safe to sit inside. Comfortable.
After a moment he spoke. “What’re you hoping to do when you get home?” he asked.
You shrugged slightly. “Probably get a job on a base back in Pittsburgh—”
“No.”
You blinked, turning toward him. Jack shook his head faintly.
“If you could do anything,” he said, voice quieter now, “what would you want to do?”
You considered that for a second. “Sleep in a real bed,” you said with a short breath of a laugh.
Jack tilted his head. “I’m serious.”
You sighed softly, dragging your fingers through the sand beside your knee. “My biggest dream?”
“Yeah.”
You hesitated.
Then, almost reluctantly, you said it.
“I want to go back to school.” Your voice was barely above a whisper.
You glanced at him again, the corner of your mouth lifting faintly. “I’ve always wanted to be a doctor. Ever since I was a little girl,” you continued quietly, thinking back to that version of yourself — so young and carefree, not realizing just how cruel the world could be. “I used to imagine helping people. Fixing things that were broken.” You looked down at your hands. “I always figured this”—you gestured vaguely toward the base behind you—“was the closest I’d ever get to that.”
Jack didn’t hesitate.
“You’d be an incredible doctor.” Something in his voice made your chest tighten slightly. “You should apply to med school when we get home.”
“Maybe,” you murmured. You swallowed, forcing a small smile. “Maybe not. We’ll see where the wind takes me.” You let out a shallow, echo of a laugh. You tipped your head back toward the sky again, blinking slowly so the faint sting in your eyes wouldn’t spill over.
The stars blurred for a moment before sharpening again.
A few seconds passed before Jack spoke.
“I don’t want to overstep,” he began quietly, clearing his throat. “But… there’s something I’ve been thinking about.”
You turned toward him again. “What?”
He hesitated for the first time that night. “What happens when we get back?”
Your stomach tightened slightly.
“Between us.”
You’d thought about it before. Months ago, in this very spot, you’d told Jack you didn’t want to make anything official while you were still here. You hadn’t wanted anniversaries or memories tied forever to a place filled with loss.
He’d understood.
But that hadn’t stopped the two of you from becoming something real anyway.
“I’m not sure,” you admitted softly, fidgeting with the hem of your shirt. Then you met his eyes. “What do you want to happen?”
His answer came immediately. “I want us to be real.” The certainty in his voice made your heart stumble. “I want to take you on an actual date,” he continued. “Somewhere that doesn’t smell like antiseptic and diesel.” A small smile tugged at your lips. “I want to see you in normal clothes,” he added. “Not a uniform.” You laughed quietly. “And,” he continued, completely serious, “I’d like to have sex with you in a real bed, not an exam table.”
Your laughter broke free completely. “Oh my god, shut up.”
“It’s a valid goal,” Jack said, the corner of his mouth lifting.
You shook your head, still smiling.
But when you looked at him again, your expression softened.
“I’d really like that too.” Your voice was quieter now. “All of it,” you added gently. “Not just the sex.”
Jack glanced down at you.
“You know,” he said quietly, “we’re going to figure it out.”
“Yeah?” you murmured.
“Yeah.”
His hand came up, brushing lightly against your cheek before he leaned in and kissed you. It was slow and unhurried, like neither of you had anywhere else to be.Somewhere behind you the base lights flickered against the dark horizon, distant voices carrying faintly through the night.
When he pulled back, you rested your forehead against his, closing your eyes.
For the first time all day, the restless feeling in your chest eased.
But you didn’t know then how quickly things could change.
——————
The mission had been labeled routine.
One last patrol outside the wire before you went home. A sweep through a small village that had already been cleared more than once. Command had described it as low-risk — the kind of assignment meant to fill the final days before units rotated home.
Easy.
You had learned quickly that the word easy rarely meant what people thought it meant out here.
Still, the mood in the truck that morning had been lighter than usual.
Only seven days left. Seven days and you’d be leaving Afghanistan behind — hopefully for good.
The armored vehicle rattled along the dusty road, every bump echoing through the metal frame. The desert sun had already begun its slow climb into the sky, heat pressing against the thick gear wrapped around your body.
You sat across from Jack on the bench seat, your rifle resting lazily across your lap. He tilted his head back against the wall behind him.
“One more week,” he said.
You huffed softly. “Seven days.”
“Seven days,” he repeated. “And then we’re done.”
The word done felt strange. You’d spent nearly twelve months in this place. Twelve months of chaos, blood, exhaustion, and long sleepless nights. And somehow it was almost over.
“Final lap,” you muttered.
Jack grinned. “Final hoorah.” Jack nudged your boot with his. “So,” he said casually, though you could hear the curiosity beneath it, “are you serious about med school?”
“Yeah,” you answered. “I think I am.”
His eyebrows lifted. “No kidding?”
“I'm going to start studying for the MCAT when we get home,” you said. “Apply in the fall and winter.”
Jack watched you for a moment like he was picturing it. “You’re going to make a damn good doctor.”
You snorted. “You’re biased.”
“Absolutely,” he admitted.
“You don’t even know if I’d get in.”
“You will.”
“And how do you know that?”
He shrugged slightly. “Because you’re the smartest medic out here.”
“That’s a lie.”
“No it’s not.”
“You just like me.”
A slow grin spread across his face. “Well… yeah.”
You rolled your eyes, but the warmth that crept into your chest was impossible to ignore.
Outside, the convoy slowed as it approached the outskirts of the village. Engines rumbled to a stop. The back doors opened and the soldiers began filing out into the dusty road, boots crunching against gravel.
The village looked quiet. Too quiet. A few children watched from doorways. A dog barked somewhere behind one of the mudbrick houses.
Your patrol moved through the streets in practiced formation, scanning rooftops and alleyways. Just another patrol.
Then the first gunshot split the air. The crack echoed through the village like lightning.
For half a second, everything froze.
Then chaos erupted.
“CONTACT LEFT!”
Gunfire exploded from the rooftops. Bullets snapped through the air, striking the walls around you and sending bursts of dust flying.
“Taliban fighters!” someone shouted.
They appeared everywhere at once — figures emerging from windows, rooftops, and narrow alleyways, rifles flashing in the sunlight. Your patrol returned fire immediately.
The air filled with the deafening rhythm of gunshots. Dust and smoke churned through the street as soldiers scrambled for cover.
“MEDIC!” The sharp shout cut through the chaos.
You and Jack moved at the same time. Training took over before fear had a chance to settle in.
Two soldiers were down behind a crumbling wall. One clutched his arm tightly while the other struggled to keep pressure on a bleeding gash along his thigh. You slid to your knees beside the second soldier.
“Hey, hey—look at me,” you said quickly, already pulling gauze from your kit. “You’re going to be fine.”
Across from you, Jack crouched beside the other wounded man.
“Let me see it,” he muttered, gently pulling the soldier’s arm away from his chest.
Blood soaked the sleeve of his uniform. Jack examined the wound quickly.
“Through-and-through,” he said. “You got lucky.”
Meanwhile your hands moved fast, wrapping pressure bandages around the soldier’s leg. Gunfire still cracked overhead, but it was beginning to thin out. Your patrol was pushing the enemy fighters back.
Within minutes the Taliban began retreating deeper into the village.
The chaos slowly faded. One by one, the wounded were lifted and carried toward the trucks.
You stood slowly, wiping blood from your hands onto your pants. Across the clearing, Jack finished helping lift his patient into the vehicle.
He glanced up at you. “You good?” he called.
“Yeah,” you replied, stretching your back. “All patched up here.”
Relief began spreading through the patrol. The worst was over. Enemy fighters were disappearing down the distant alleyways. Everyone started to breathe again. Then—
Two gunshots rang out.
Sharp.
Close.
For a moment you didn’t understand what had happened. Then heat exploded through your abdomen. Your breath left your lungs in a sudden gasp and you looked down.
Two dark holes had torn through the fabric of your uniform just beneath the edge of your protective vest. Blood spread rapidly across the cloth.
Your hands dropped to your stomach instinctively. They came away soaked in warm blood.
Across the clearing, Jack looked up. His eyes locked onto you. For a moment he simply stared.
Your body swayed.
Your knees buckled.
“Hey—!”
Jack was already running before you collapsed.
“No, no, no—” He dropped beside you, sliding onto his knees in the dust. His hands pressed immediately against your abdomen. Blood soaked his gloves within seconds.
“It-it hurts, Jack,” you gasped, tears streaming down your face.
“I know,” he said quickly, his voice already shaking. “I know, I’ve got you.”
His hands moved fast, ripping open the fabric around the wounds.
Two entry holes close together. His stomach dropped at the sight. He rolled you slightly, checking your back, but saw nothing — no exit wounds.
The bullets were still inside you.
Jack’s heart slammed against his ribs. “Shit.” He slammed his hand back down over the wounds, applying brutal pressure. “WE NEED A MEDEVAC RIGHT NOW!” he roared, his voice cut through the entire patrol. “DOUBLE GSW TO THE ABDOMEN — NO EXIT WOUNDS!”
Someone grabbed the radio.
Jack barely heard them. All he could see was the blood soaking through the gauze faster than he could replace it.
Your breathing had turned shallow. Your fingers curled weakly into the front of his vest.
“It hurts,” you whispered.
“I know,” he murmured, voice trembling. “Just keep looking at me.”
Your vision had started to blur. Darkness crept in from the edges.
“Hey,” he said quickly, trying to keep you focused. “Remember our plan?”
Your brow furrowed faintly. “Our… Plan?”
“When we get back to Pittsburgh,” he said. “You remember?”
You nodded weakly. “You’re taking me on a date.”
Jack swallowed hard, pressing harder against the wound. “Yeah. You need to hold on so we can go on our date.”
Your trembling hand lifted slowly, grabbing his, your warm blood coated his fingers.
“Jack…”
“No,” he said immediately, shaking his head. “Don’t start that.”
Your voice was barely a whisper. “No matter what happens to me… I love you.”
Jack’s face broke. “No,” he whispered. Then louder. “No—NO.” Tears ran freely down his face now. “You don’t get to do this,” he choked. “You are not dying today.”
You reached up weakly, your hand brushing his jaw.
“Remember the stars. If you miss me…” It took so much of your energy to speak. “Look at the stars.”
Jack leaned down, pressing his forehead against yours.
“I love you,” he whispered. “But you’re not joining the stars today.”
Then the thunder of helicopter blades roared overhead.
The MEDEVAC had arrived.
——————
The funeral took place beneath a pale gray sky.
The kind of sky that felt too quiet for a day like this.
Jack stood near the front of the small gathering, his hands folded tightly in front of him, shoulders stiff beneath the dark jacket he’d borrowed for the service. The wind stirred lightly through the rows of chairs set up in the cemetery, carrying with it the faint rustle of leaves and the soft murmur of people speaking in low voices.
Nine days.
Nine days since he had watched the doors of the operating room close. Nine days since a surgeon had walked into the waiting room with that careful, rehearsed expression Jack had seen far too many times before. Nine days since the world he thought he was coming home to disappeared.
He had been back in the United States for a week now.
A week that had felt like drifting through someone else’s life.
Jack barely remembered the flight home. Barely remembered unpacking his bags. Barely remembered the long sleepless nights staring at the ceiling of his apartment.
Everything felt hollow. Like someone had carved out the center of his chest and left only the shell behind.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
He had imagined coming home with you a hundred different ways during those long nights in Afghanistan.
You both had.
Sleeping in real beds. Eating real food. You’d be studying for the MCAT while he complained about something inconsequential. Late night drives. Movies. Maybe, someday, a tiny house somewhere quiet.
All those plans had died on a battlefield thousands of miles away.
The small group gathered around the gravesite was quiet.
A few soldiers from your unit stood together in their dress uniforms, faces solemn, eyes fixed on the ground. A handful of civilians lingered nearby—friends who had known you long before the military ever entered your life.
Jack recognized none of them. But they recognized him. Because apparently, they’d been hearing about him long before anything happened between you two.
Jack stared at your name etched into the simple stone marker at the front of the gathering.
Seeing it there made his chest tighten.
You had always felt so alive — too alive to be reduced to a few carved words.
Jack’s eyes burned, but he didn’t try to stop the tears anymore. He had stopped trying days ago.
Someone stepped beside him. A woman with auburn hair and tired eyes.
“Jack?” she asked softly.
He turned slightly. “Yes?”
“I’m Amy,” she said gently. “She and I were friends back in Pittsburgh.”
Recognition flickered faintly: you had mentioned her once.
“She talked about you constantly,” Amy continued, a sad smile touching her lips. “In letters. Emails. Phone calls when she could get them.”
Jack swallowed hard. “She did?”
“Oh yeah,” Amy said quietly. “You were kind of a big deal.”
Another tear slipped down his cheek.
Amy reached into her purse and carefully pulled something out. “I wanted you to have this.”
She placed a small necklace in his palm. Jack stared down at it. A delicate gold chain with a small star-shaped pendant hanging from the center.
“She left it with me before she deployed,” she explained. “Said she was too afraid of losing it out there.”
Jack turned the pendant gently between his fingers, the metal felt cool against his skin.
“She wore it all the time before the military,” Amy said. “Said it reminded her of home.”
Jack closed his hand around the necklace, his chest tightening as another wave of grief rolled through him.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Amy squeezed his arm gently before stepping away.
Other people approached him throughout the service. Some of which being your friends who told stories about you growing up. Others spoke quietly about the letters you had written while deployed. Several of them said the same thing: “She talked about you a lot.”
Every time Jack heard it, the words hit him like a punch to the ribs. Because he had no idea. He knew you loved him, but he hadn’t realized how deeply that love had woven itself into the rest of your life.
After the burial, the small crowd slowly began to disperse, Jack lingered a little longer. He wasn’t able to leave you yet.
The cemetery had grown quiet now. Only the wind and distant traffic filled the air, stirring the fresh mound of earth where you now rested.
A few days prior, a lawyer had found him.
Jack hadn’t even known you had written a will. Apparently you had updated it two months before the mission. He found out when the lawyer had sat across from him with a folder in his hands.
“She named you as her primary beneficiary,” he had explained.
Jack blinked in confusion. “She… what?”
“She had no immediate family,” the lawyer continued gently. “According to her, you were the closest person to her.”
Before leaving, the lawyer had handed him a sealed envelope. “She asked that you receive this.”
Jack had stared at your handwriting on the front.
And when he opened it later that night, everything inside him had broken.
Jack,
If you’re reading this, then something went wrong.
I guess that’s the strange thing about writing a letter like this — you hope with every part of yourself that the person you’re writing to will never have to read it. But the military makes you think about things like this, about the what ifs, about the things you’d regret never saying.
So here I am, trying to find the right words.
First, I’m sorry.
Because if this letter reached you, it means I didn’t make it home. And that means I left you behind. I wish I could tell you that I fought harder. That I held on longer. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. I guess we’ll never really know.
But what I do know is this: meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Out of all the chaos, the fear, and the darkness that came with being out there, you were the one thing that made it all feel worth it. You made those long nights lighter. You made the bad days survivable. You made me laugh in places where laughter felt impossible.
And those nights under the stars?
Those will always be my favorite memories.
Just sitting there beside you, listening to the generators humming behind us and the wind moving across the sand. Talking about everything and nothing at the same time. For a little while, it felt like the war disappeared and it was just us.
I hope you still go out and look at the stars sometimes. Not because I want you to be sad when you see them — the opposite, actually. I hope when you look up, you remember those moments and smile. I hope you remember how alive we both felt sitting out there.
I hope you remember that you were loved. Because you were, Jack. You still are.
And there’s something else I need you to promise me.
Just because I’m gone, don’t stop chasing your dreams. Don’t let my ending become the thing that stops your story. You deserve a full life. You deserve happiness. You deserve the future we used to talk about.
Finish what you started. Help people. Make the world a little better than it was when you found it. And someday, when you’re older and life has taken you places we never imagined, I hope you look up at the night sky and think about that stupid little spot outside the base where we used to sit.
Maybe you’ll even tell someone about it.
About the stars.
About the girl who loved you.
Because I did, Jack. I loved you more than I ever managed to say out loud.
Thank you for giving me something beautiful in the middle of a war.
And wherever you go from here… I’ll be rooting for you.
Always.
He had read the letter nearly forty times since then. And every single time, he cried.
Jack slipped the necklace carefully into his pocket now, his fingers lingering against it for a moment before he turned and began walking away from the gravesite.
The drive back to his apartment was quiet. The city moved around him like normal — people walked on sidewalks, cars passed at intersections. Life continued.
It felt wrong.
By the time he reached his apartment, the sun had begun to dip toward the horizon.
Jack stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Silence filled the small space. He moved slowly through the living room before kneeling beside the duffel bag he had brought home.
He hadn’t touched most of it yet. The zipper rasped softly as he opened it.
Inside were pieces of a life that felt like it belonged to someone else now. Uniforms. A dusty pair of boots. A folded scarf someone had traded him in a market. At the very bottom of the bag sat a small envelope.
Jack picked it up slowly. His hands trembled slightly as he opened it.
A Polaroid slid out into his palm.
It had been taken on one of your rare nights off. The two of you sat side by side on the edge of the base, mountains rising dark in the background while the sky above you stretched wide with stars.
You were smiling in the picture. Your head leaned lightly against his shoulder. Jack looked younger in it.
Happier.
He pressed the photograph against his chest. Then he pulled the necklace from his pocket, curling his fingers around it as well. The cool metal rested against his heart.
Jack sank slowly onto the floor beside the open bag. And for the first time since the funeral began that morning, the sobs came without restraint.
He clutched the photograph and the necklace tightly to his chest as tears streamed down his face.
——————
The room had gone quiet.
Jack sat back in his chair, hands loosely folded together, his eyes resting somewhere far beyond the hospital walls.
For a long moment, none of them spoke.
The noise of Whitaker sniffling caused Jack to blink and look up.
Dennis Whitaker had both hands half covering his mouth, his eyes bloodshot as tears uncontrollably streamed down his face. Across the counter, Trinity Santos had her arms crossed tightly over her chest, but a few tears had slipped down her cheeks anyway. Even Ogilvie was staring down at the floor, jaw tight, blinking a little too much.
“Oh my god,” Trinity said quietly. “That’s… that’s so sad.”
Jack huffed softly through his nose. “Yeah,” he said.
Whitaker dragged the backs of his hands across his eyes, sniffling again. “She wanted to go to med school,” he murmured, half to himself. “She wanted to be a doctor.”
Jack nodded once. “Yeah.”
Whitaker stared down at the floor for a moment, his brain clearly still turning through the story Jack had just told.
Then his brow slowly furrowed. A realization began creeping across his face.
He looked back up at Jack. “Wait.”
Jack raised an eyebrow slightly.
Whitaker pointed weakly at him.
“You…” he said slowly, voice cracking a little, “you went to med school.”
Jack didn’t say anything. Whitaker’s eyes widened.
“Oh my god,” he whispered. He sucked in a shaky breath that turned into a hiccup. “You did that for her.”
Jack looked down at his hands again.
After a moment, he nodded.
“Yeah,” he said quietly.
Whitaker completely lost the battle against his tears at that point. He pressed his hands against his eyes again, shoulders shaking slightly.
“That somehow makes it worse,” he choked.
Ogilvie shook his head slowly beside him. “You’re unbelievable,” he muttered, though his voice was softer than usual.
Trinity wiped her eyes with a tissue. “That’s… really beautiful, Jack,” she said quietly.
Jack gave a small shrug. “She was supposed to be the doctor,” he said. “That was her dream, but she didn’t get the chance.” His eyes drifted toward the window beside them. “Figured I’d do it for her.”
No one had anything to say to that.
For years he hadn’t talked about this story. Not really. Pieces of it had slipped out here and there, but never the whole thing.
His therapist had encouraged him to share it more.
“You’re not reliving it,” she had said. “You’re honoring it. Honoring her.”
Jack wasn’t sure if that was entirely true, but telling it didn’t hurt the way it used to. Now it just left a quiet ache behind.
He pushed himself up from the chair. “I’m gonna grab some air,” he said.
Whitaker nodded quickly, still wiping his eyes.
Jack stepped out into the hallway and walked toward the stairwell at the end.
A few minutes later he pushed open the heavy door to the hospital roof, cool night air greeting him immediately.
The city stretched out below in scattered lights and distant traffic, but Jack barely noticed any of it.
His gaze lifted automatically toward the sky.
It was clear tonight.
Hundreds of stars scattered across the darkness.
His therapist had once pointed something out to him: “You seem to find comfort in the dark,” she had said.
At first he didn't understand what she meant.
But later he realized she was right.
Because the darkness reminded him of the quiet nights in Afghanistan. The nights when the generators hummed softly behind them and the war seemed to pause for a little while. The nights when you both sat at the edge of the base staring up at the sky. That was when you talked the most. When the world felt far away.
When it was just the two of you beneath the stars.
Jack slipped a hand beneath the collar of his shirt and pulled the necklace free. The small star pendant caught the faint glow of the rooftop light.
He curled his fingers around it and lifted his gaze back toward the sky.
“You know,” he said quietly into the night, “Whitaker cried.” A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You’d like him.”
He rubbed his thumb across the small star pendant before looking up at the stars again.
“I can still see your light.”
Jack stood there for a long time after that, staring up at the sky.
And somehow, in the quiet darkness, he didn’t feel quite so alone.
a/n: Sorry this was meant to be posted like a week ago, but I got carried away with writing, and I was also super busy with class. I also like didn't proofread this... Anyway, Hope you enjoy :)
Synopsis: A new night nurse starts in the pitt and Jack takes an instant interest in her, not in a good way.
Warnings: mean jack, age gap, reader is mid to late 20s, sunshine reader, shy reader, anxious reader, eventual smut, smut, 18+, MDNI, angst, fighting, slow burn, co-workers to enemies, enemies to lovers, blood, gore, medical inaccuracies, pittfest, panic attacks, mentions of suicide, PTSD, grief, widower jack, mentions of past military trauma, violence against medical staff, reader is described to be shorter than Jack, reader has hair past shoulders.
🦋 - fluff
🌧️ - angst
🔥 - smut
Can be read as individual, standalone blurbs, but will be written with a timeline in mind.
Summary : Benjamin Poindexter was hired to eliminate you, a former Red Room Widow. Unfortunately, he keeps putting it off because he likes going on dates with you a little too much.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x Black Widow! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : freak 4 freak (?), Violence, Explicit Content (Dex is a munch and kinda has an oral fixation), Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Manipulation, lowkey gunplay, crying during sex, The Red Room is mentioned to use food as a form of control, alcohol consumption. (Let me know if I miss anything.) set between DDBA s1&s2 (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 17.7k
Requested by : anon
Notes : This was written before I watched the season finale, and also inspired by a song of the same title by Gang of Youths. Enjoy!
Dex was trying to be good.
It sounded ridiculous, even in his own head. It was as if he had borrowed this part of his conscience from someone else’s life, someone who hadn’t been made into a weapon, manipulated and exploited over and over again. But still, he tried.
Being good, as it turned out, wasn’t something you could just decide. There was no moment where goodness just clicked into place, there was no sudden clarity where he understood how to live without the violence that had always defined him. He didn’t have the tools for that, so he simplified it.
He only knew how to aim, how to follow through, how to kill. So he told himself that if he pointed all of that in the right direction, it would count. It had to count.
Bad people existed. That much was obvious. And if bad people were gone, then… that had to count for something, right?
The Anti-Vigilante Task Force were easy enough to categorize as bad. They hunted vigilantes, tried to shut down the kind of people Dex had convinced himself were doing something close to good. And vigilantes were good. They had to be.
So if he removed the ones hunting them, if he cut those threads before they tightened around someone else’s throat, then that meant he was helping. It meant he was balancing something, somewhere, even if no one was there to see it. Even if no one thanked him. Even if the city didn’t change at all.
That was how he justified it. The only problem was that no one paid him for being good.
His rent didn’t care about intention. His bills didn’t pause because he was trying. The notice on his counter sat there, the very proof that the world moved even as he was laying down the foundations of whatever moral framework he was trying to build. Dex had been ignoring it for days, like it might disappear if he didn’t acknowledge it.
He was staring at it when his phone buzzed.
The sound was unsettling, mostly because Dex knew that people only messaged him for one of two reasons nowadays: to threaten him (best possible outcome, he could handle it) or to give him a job. When he looked at the notification, he knew it was going to be the latter.
The text came from an unknown sender. It was encrypted, of course. Dex picked it up slowly, thumb hovering for just a second. He frowned. He really shouldn’t. This was the part of his life he was supposed to be moving away from. He opened it anyway.
The file loaded quickly. As he suspected, it was an anonymous contract labeled high priority, with a bounty of… oh.
2.5 million dollars.
Dex leaned back slightly, exhaling through his nose as that figure settled into place. It was much more than rent or bills. This kind of money would give him… breathing room. It would fund his good deeds for years. It would help his progress, right?
His eyes moved down to the target profile: a Former Red Room Widow.
Objective: extract intel regarding active Red Room operatives.
Secondary objective: termination upon completion.
Dex’s knuckles shifted slightly as he kept reading, attention narrowing the deeper he went. This wasn't a surface-level hit, like the usual contracts pushed into his number. He usually got the odd job of eliminating a business man’s biggest competitor (he never took those anymore) or a mother giving most of her life savings to him to kill her abusive husband (he did those ones more often than not), but this wasn’t it. Whoever had put this together knew what they were doing. They layered intel, cross-referenced sightings, stitched fragments of reports into something coherent enough to act on.
And then there was the ledger. Not labeled that way, but Dex knew what he was looking at.
Target Activity Log (Condensed):
Kiev — 12 confirmed targets, political dissidents turned assets. Execution, no witnesses.
Istanbul — Arms broker extraction turned termination. 7 additional casualties during exfiltration.
Lagos — Undercover infiltration of rival weapons trafficking ring. Operation successful. Entire network eliminated. Collateral: high.
Madripoor — Unverified mission overlap with Yelena Belova. Outcome classified.
Buenos Aires — Diplomatic attaché poisoning. Death delayed 48 hours to avoid suspicion.
Moscow — Internal Red Room purge survivor. Multiple handlers eliminated.
Dex’s thumb paused against the screen as he read through it again. The pattern was obvious to him in a way it wouldn’t be to anyone else. This wasn’t chaos. This wasn’t someone losing control. On the contrary, this was someone who was terrifyingly in control.
This target was a dangerous killer, and Dex didn't arrive at the conclusion lightly.
He liked patterns, needed them. They made the world more predictable to the point where he could sort through without it splintering into noise. And this file was full of patterns.
He scrolled back up, then down again, slower this time, eyes catching on the details most people would skip over: the timings, the methods.
The target made clean exits where possible and didn’t care much about collateral. Every action fed into the next like it had been mapped out long before the target ever stepped into the room.
Dex’s jaw tightened slightly as he read through the Kiev entry again. Twelve victims. It was not a firefight. It was twelve decisions. Twelve moments where the target could have stopped and didn’t. Istanbul, seven more added during exfiltration. They were not part of the objective, but handled anyway.
He understood that, and that meant he also understood what it took to do it.
You didn’t rack up a body count like that by accident. You didn’t walk away from operations like Madripoor, with entire networks wiped out and “high collateral” written off like a footnote, unless something in you had already accepted the outcome before it happened.
Dex leaned back slightly, phone still in his hand, thumb hovering but unmoving now.
People liked to pretend there was a line. A moment where someone chose to be good or bad and stuck to it. But that wasn’t how it worked. It was smaller than that. It was in the repetition. And this file read like repetition, over and over. It might happen in different cities and to different victims, but it always had the same result.
Dex couldn’t find signs of deviation or hesitation. There was no indication that the target ever stopped to question it.
His eyes flicked back to the ledger, this time reading the latest additions, entries that hadn’t had time to settle into history yet.
Recent Activity:
Prague — Corporate intermediary tied to OXE shell accounts. Interrogation lasted 18 minutes. Target terminated. Two security casualties. No witnesses.
DODC Supermax Prison — Perimeter sweep. Three armed contacts neutralized before engagement escalated. Surveillance equipment disabled. Exit undetected.
New York — Intelligence courier intercepted en route to New Avengers safehouse. Package recovered. Courier terminated. Civilian exposure: none.
Right.
The target was still active.
“Yeah,” Dex muttered, more to himself than anything else.
That was what tipped it for him.
Because even now, even with everything he’d done, Dex felt the resistance. The part of him that tried, however poorly, to redirect what he was into a force for good. The file didn’t show that.
It showed someone who had been made into a weapon and never really tried to put it down. That meant the target wasn’t in the same place he was. This target wasn’t trying to balance the scales like he was.
And that made this person not a good person in a way he could act on.
His eyes looked to the image of the target, like he was trying to reconcile the almost fragile and delicate-looking features with everything he’d just read. It didn’t match. It never did. Faces rarely carried the weight of what they’d done. But the file didn’t lie. The patterns didn’t lie.
Dex exhaled slowly, and decided this person was bad.
Not because of one mission. Not because of one mistake. But because of all of it stacked together.
And at this point, in order to preserve what precious progress he had made, he’d rather kill a killer for rent than his landlord. That would be inconvenient.
His thumb moved, tapping the file open fully, letting the image expand across the screen.
And for the first time, Dex really looked at you.
—
Dex expected you to be harder to find.
Most people with a body count like yours didn’t settle. They didn’t usually stay anywhere long enough to be known, didn’t leave behind anything that could be traced twice in the same way. He expected burner phones, rotating safehouses, and multiple fake ids that dissolved the second they were used.
But you hadn’t done that.
You were… easy. He found your address almost immediately. He found your number, your card details, and your passport quite quickly.
It took him a couple of hours to accept that it wasn’t an error in the data. Financial records were always messy, layered under shells and proxies, but not impossible. He followed the money the same way he followed anything else— patiently, methodically, letting the inconsistencies stand out instead of forcing them to make sense too quickly. One payment turned into a trail, then into repetition.
But still, he found nothing out of the ordinary. You were just a regular person living in New York, paying rent on time. Unlike him this month.
He stared at the screen longer than he needed today. The more he followed it, the clearer it became that this wasn’t temporary, wasn’t a waypoint or a cover that would disappear in a week. You weren’t passing through. You weren’t hiding. You were living here.
The rest of the records only reinforced it. He found your utility bills, with groceries spaced out in a way that suggested routine. He found nothing excessive, nothing careless. It was almost jarring, how normal it looked on paper, for someone with a history soaked in blood.
Next, Dex visited your building and expected that to be where the illusion broke, maybe an indication that this was all a front.
There wasn’t anything.
It was just a building. Unremarkable, forgettable in the way most of the city was. There were no visible security upgrades, no controlled access beyond the standard high rise. There was nothing that suggested someone with your file should be walking in and out of it every day.
He watched long enough to be sure. You came and went at predictable times, no visible countersurveillance, no adjustments to your movements that suggested you thought you were being watched. You carried your own groceries up the steps. You held the door open for someone once, an older man who thanked you without hesitation, like you were just another tenant, just another face he recognized in passing.
Dex didn’t like that it didn’t fit the rest of you. So he kept digging, because if there was going to be a crack, it would be in the routine and… you had one.
It took him three days to map it out in full, not because it was complicated, but because it wasn’t. You woke early. You jogged through Central Park along the same route almost every morning at the same pace, like it was muscle memory. You didn’t scan constantly, didn’t treat every passerby like a potential threat. You just ran.
After that, you hadcoffee at the same place every time, the same order.
Dex watched all of it from a distance, writing it down in his little notebook. He told himself it was for this job, that he needed to remember things accurately if he was going to finish the job.
By the fourth day, he knew watching wasn’t enough. It never had been. Patterns only got you so far before they started turning into assumptions, and assumptions got people wrong.
The problem was, he didn’t have a plan for that. He wasn’t a spy. He didn’t build relationships, didn’t ease his way into proximity.
But standing across the street, watching you disappear into the crown like you’d done every morning that week, he understood one thing clearly enough: He didn’t know how he was going to do this. He just knew he had to get closer.
—
The next day, he “accidentally” ran into you on that jogging trail in Central Park.
He already knew the exact time your foot would hit the gravel. All he had to do was figure which way you were going: was it the route you’d take when you wanted to clear your head, or the one you’d take when you wanted a challenge?
He waited outside your apartment today and…. You were taking the hard route.
He followed, and his plan of taking you until you got to the cafè, where he would sit next to you, would’ve been perfect until… Dex timed it wrong.
He knew he did the second he adjusted his pace to match yours and felt the rhythm slip. He was too fast for a clean pass, too close for it to look incidental.
This wasn’t what he was good at. There was no distance. Only proximity and the vague, uncomfortable awareness that if you were anything like the file said you were, you’d clock him immediately.
You didn’t. You just kept running.
He tried to correct it, cutting slightly across your path like he meant to pass you, like he belonged in your space. The movement was off by half a second, just enough to turn clumsy. His shoulder clipped yours, momentum carrying him forward a step too far. You caught before you could trip and looked at him like, what the hell, man?
“—shit, sorry,” Dex said quickly, breathing unevenly. He turned back, forcing himself to meet your eyes. “I didn’t… are you okay?”
Up close, everything went a little sideways.
He’d seen your photo. But a still image didn’t account for the way you actually were when you looked at him. You were focused, yes, but there was no immediate suspicion or recalculation behind your eyes. He could tell you were doing a quick assessment and—
“You’re fine,” you huffed, brushing it off like it really had been nothing.
Dex blinked once, recalibrating, trying to drag himself back to the whole point of this endeavour: Intel.
Simple, right?
Except now you were standing there, waiting just long enough that it demanded a response.
Right. Say something. Anything.
“Uh… there’s a coffee place just up ahead,” he heard himself say, the words coming out before he could fully filter them. “I can make it up to you. Buy you one or something.”
There was a lull of silence where even he registered what he’d just done.
That wasn’t part of any plan. That was stupid.
Dex forced himself not to react to it outwardly, even as his chest tightened in irritation. This wasn’t how he should’ve handled a target like you. He shouldn’t’ve improvised like this. What was he thinking, basically asking you out like some idiot who didn’t know what he was doing?
But you were still just looking at him.
And up close, all he could think about was how… disarming you were.
That was the word his brain landed on, unhelpfully. You made him lower their guard without realizing he was doing it.
Dex swallowed, keeping his expression neutral, like this was intentional, like this was just another step in a plan he actually had control over.
This is for intel, he told himself, firmly. Just intel via proximity. That’s all this is.
You tilted your head slightly, considering him in a way that made him feel, for a split second, like he was the one being assessed.
“Coffee?” you repeated.
“Yeah,” he said, a little more steady now. “Least I can do.”
“For what?” you managed an amused chuckle, and Dex could’ve sworn that hearing you make that noise lit up the world around him. “bumping into me? Is this a line?”
“I just…” he stammered, and bit the inside of his cheek. “I’ve seen you around.”
I’ve seen you around??? He mentally slapped himself. What kind of fucking stupid explanation is that? What does that have to do with anything?
Surprisingly, though, all you did was tilt your head and said, “Okay.”
Oh?
Dex forced himself to nod once, like he’d expected it, like this hadn’t just gone completely off-script.
“Okay,” he echoed, turning slightly to fall into step beside you as you started moving again.
He kept his focus forward, matching your pace, already running through what he needed to ask, what he could realistically get without pushing too hard, how to steer the conversation where he needed it to go.
And still, somewhere in the back of his mind, something felt off. Dex ignored it, because this was a job. You were a target.
And this was just the easiest way to get what he needed. Nothing more.
—
The café was small, tucked between a bookstore and a laundromat.
On the way there, you exchanged your names— he said he was “Tony,” and you, surprisingly, had given him your real name. You were easy to talk to, and you talked about the weather, the park, the surprisingly little snow last winter.
When you got to the café, Dex was relieved to see that it wasn’t too crowded, just a couple of people on laptops, a murmur of conversation, the hiss of the espresso machine every so often. Fewer variables, Fewer eyes.
You ordered first: iced latte, like you’d done it a hundred times. He followed with an Americano, mostly because he panicked and it sounded normal enough.
Now he sat across from you, fingers loosely wrapped around the glass cup, watching the condensation bead along the outside of your glass as you stirred your drink with your straw. You looked… relaxed.
You took a sip, then glanced at him over the rim, and there was mischief in your expression. A second later, you let out a giggle, tapping the straw lightly against the lid.
“So,” you said, dragging the word out just a little. “Why does Bullseye want to take me out to coffee?”
Dex choked.
It wasn’t subtle. The coffee went down the wrong way, and he had to turn his head slightly, coughing into his fist. For a split second, he thought he might actually spit it out all over you, which—thank fuck—the café being mostly empty made slightly less of a disaster.
His eyes snapped back to you.
“…You knew?” he asked.
You blinked at him like that was the stupidest question you’d heard all day, then shrugged, taking another sip like this was a casual conversation. “Of course,” you said. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know me.”
There was no accusation in it. You said it as if it was a fact.
Dex just stared at you. His brain tried to catch up, running through possibilities, angles, trying to figure out where this had gone wrong. Had you clocked him earlier? On the run? Before that? Had he missed an obvious tell?
You didn’t look alarmed. You didn’t look like you were about to bolt or reach for a weapon. If anything, you looked… curious.
“Oh,” he said, because that was all that came out at first.
Great. Perfect. Real smooth.
He forced himself to take another sip of his coffee, buying a second to gather his thoughts, to shove everything back into place where it belonged.
She’s a target. This is a job.
“Yeah,” he added, steadier now, nodding once like this hadn’t just blindsided him. “I mean—yeah. I just…” His teeth tightened for half a second before he settled on the first thing that felt even remotely usable. “I’m a fan of your work.”
You didn’t react immediately. You watched him over your drink, eyes narrowing slightly.
Dex held your eyes, forcing himself not to overcorrect, to let it breathe. Let it land.
“Right,” you said finally. You didn’t sound entirely convinced, but you let it go.
The silence stretched, but not too uncomfortably. It was just charged. You knew there was no chance of going back to a civilian conversation as you leaned back slightly, exhaling.
“Alright. No, we’re not doing this version,” you decided, more to yourself than him. Then you straightened again, meeting his eyes properly. “Can we start over?”
Dex blinked, thrown just enough to answer honestly. “I… yeah.”
You nodded once, resetting playfully.
“Hi. You already know my name, so I’m skipping that part,” you said, gesturing vaguely with your cup. “I’m a former Red Room Widow. I live in New York now.”
You said it like a random woman introducing themself as an accountant.
Dex opened his mouth, then closed it to filter through the responses. “Hi,” he tried again, because apparently that was all he had today.
You waited.
“Hi,” he repeated, then dragged a hand down his face, exhaling through his nose. “I’m Dex. Not—” he made a vague, frustrated gesture, “not Tony, I don’t…”
Your lips twitched. “I got that.”
“Right. Yeah.” He nodded once, a bit too quickly. Then, as if he was forcing the words out his throat. “I’m… a good guy.”
The second it left his mouth, he knew how weird it sounded. You blinked at him. Then, to his surprise, you chuckled, and it was not unkind.
“Hi, Dex Not Tony,” you said, teasing him. “That’s a strong introduction.”
His mouth pressed into a thin line, but his shoulder reluctantly eased a fraction. “It’s… yeah,” he muttered. “Workshopping it.”
That earned him a small huff of laughter, and just like that, the tension changed. It was not gone completely, but it loosened enough to breathe around.
“Mm,” you hummed, tapping your straw against the rim of the glass. “Maybe workshop faster.”
That earned you the smallest exhale that might’ve been a laugh.
“So,” you went on, glancing at his drink. “Americano?”
He looked down at it like he’d forgotten it existed. “Mmm.”
“Do you actually like that,” you took a sip of your own drink, “or did you panic-order?”
Dex hesitated, but decided against lying. “Panic-order.”
You grinned. “Thought so.”
“Yours?” he asked, nodding toward your cup.
“Iced latte. Always.”
He nodded once, filing it away without thinking. “Predictable,” he said.
“Consistent,” you corrected.
“Same thing.”
“Not even a little.” Your smile tugged a little wider, and for a second, it made your whole face look gentle in a way that didn’t match anything he’d read.
The conversation after that was not awkward, even as it came in uneven starts. You both drifted out half-finished sentences, small corrections, circling around what you weren’t saying more than what you were. But eventually, it found a rhythm.
You talked about nothing, mostly. The weather again, somehow. The park. The café. You made an offhand comment about the coffee being great here but the pastries were better two blocks over, and Dex filed that away without meaning to. He asked a question that sounded almost normal, and you answered it like it was.
For some reason, he could not bring himself to ask about intel. Still, neither of you got up as time stretched right before your eyes.
“Okay,” you said after a moment, glancing at your drink, then back at him. “For the record, this is the weirdest coffee I’ve had in a while.”
“Same,” he said.
“And I’ve had coffee in worse places.”
“Same.”
You narrowed your eyes slightly, amused. “You’re just copying me now.”
There was that pause again. This time, neither of you rushed to fill it.
You checked your phone briefly, then sighed, like you didn’t actually want to say what came next. “I should probably…” you started, gesturing vaguely toward the door. “…go.”
Dex nodded immediately. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”
You stood, grabbing your jacket, then hesitated just slightly. You looked at him, like you were weighing your options, then reached into your pocket and pulled out your phone. “Give me your number.”
Dex tilted his head. “…What?”
You held it out, unfazed. “In case you decide to bump into me again,” you said. “Might as well schedule it next time.”
He stared at you for a second, like he was trying to find an explanation, a reason not to…
Then he took the phone.
“Right,” he nodded. “Yeah.”
He put it in and handed it back. After all, he had convinced himself that it was just so he could get the intel he was supposed to do today.
“See you around, Dex Not Tony.”
“Yeah,” he said, quieter now. “See you.”
You turned, heading for the door. The bell chimed again as you left.
Dex stayed where he was for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the space you’d just occupied, the echo of your laugh still sitting somewhere in the back of his mind.
Something about that had gone very, very wrong. Or very right
—
That night, Dex had trouble sleeping.
The apartment was too quiet, the city noise bleeding faintly through the windows, the weight of the day sitting wrong in his chest. He laid there for a while, staring at the ceiling, replaying the conversation in fragments: your voice, your eyes, the way none of it lined up with the file. Eventually, he gave up trying to sleep at all.
He sat up, reached for the notebook on his nightstand, and flipped it open. The logs he had on you were already there: Times, routes, and observations.
He stared at it for a moment, pen hovering. Then he added a new line, pressing just slightly harder than necessary:
Likes iced lattes
—
Two days later, Dex’s phone buzzed.
He didn’t get messages he wanted to open. He didn’t need another contract— he got his hands full as is. So for a second, he just stared at it from across the room, letting it vibrate once. Unknown number.
His jaw tightened before he picked it up and unlocked it.
There was a photo of a newspaper, slightly crumpled, held down by what looked like your hand. The headline was clear enough:
THREE ANTI-VIGANTE TASK FORCE AGENTS FOUND DEAD IN ALLEY
Below it, you had texted:
is this you?
Dex stared at the screen, figuring out exactly who it was. He read it again, trying to wrap his mind around this. His thumb hovered over the keyboard.
You knew. Or you suspected. Or you were testing him. All three were problems.
Dex exhaled slowly through his nose and typed.
Dex: no. Why would you think that?
He was lying, but then again, he was the one who’s supposed to do the interrogation here. It would be stupid to give anything away.
He hit send before he could overthink it. Three dots appeared almost immediately.
You: just thought I’d ask
Dex frowned. That was it? No pushback? No follow-up? Did you not think he was interesting enough?
Dex: You just ask people that? “hey did you kill three people”?
There was a pause this time. Dex found himself watching the screen, shoulders slightly tense without realizing it.
You: not usually, but you don’t usually “accidentally” run into me either so
Dex’s grip on the phone tightened just a fraction.
Right. You weren’t letting that go.
Dex: I said I’ve seen you around.
He only had to wait a few seconds
You: sure
He could hear the tone in it. That same almost-amused voice from the café. Not hostile, but curious. Dex leaned back against the wall, phone still in his hand, mind already thinking about what you knew, what you were pretending not to know.
You sent another message before he could respond.
You: also for the record, if it was you, I know you’d say no anyway
Dex managed a smile.
Dex: Probably.
You texted back just as quickly
You: so I’m choosing to believe you 🙂
You: congrats
He huffed, a dry laugh catching in his throat. This was… strange.
You weren’t pushing. You weren’t backing off either. You were just… there, talking to him like this was normal.
Dex stared at the screen for a moment longer, then typed again.
Dex: Why’d you actually text me?
The typing bubble came and went once. Then, it stayed.
You: because I wanted to
You: ???
You: do I need a better reason than that
Dex frowned slightly. That answer didn’t fit neatly anywhere that his brain could categorize,
Dex: People usually have reasons.
This time your reply took longer. Long enough that Dex caught himself rereading the earlier messages, analyzing tone, punctuation, timing, looking for something he might’ve missed.
You: okay, fine
You: I was bored
You: and you’re interesting
You: better?
Dex froze.
Interesting. Was that what you thought of him?
Dex: You don’t seem like you get bored.
He could almost picture you rolling your eyes
You: wow. you are a fan
He stared at the screen for a second, then forced himself to snap back into place.
You were a target, he had to remind himself. Nothing more. He needed intel to pay rent, and he could only get that after he eliminated you, so…
Dex: if you’re bored, we could go on another date
He hit send and immediately had what did you just do moment. This wasn’t part of the job. This wasn’t… date wasn’t the word he should’ve used.
The typing bubble popped up, disappeared, and came back within three seconds.
You: is that what that was the first time? a date??
Dex blinked.
“…No,” he muttered under his breath, already typing.
No. It was—
He stopped. What was it?
Dex: maybe?
That was all he could send. Oh, he was never playing spy after this job was done. Not ever again.
You: right
You: with a guy who “sees me around”
You: very normal
Dex pressed his lips together.
Dex: Do you want to go or not?
During the wait, Dex felt something unfamiliar settle in his stomach. It was something he could only describe as butterflies.
You: yeah sure
His grip on the phone loosened slightly.
You: same place? or are you gonna “accidentally” run into me again?
Dex huffed.
Dex: how about the pastry place you were talking about?
Oh so now he was paying attention to your recommendations?
You: okay. Friday?
The only thing he had on his calendar was killing task force, and that could wait, so…
Dex: Friday works.
He tapped on his phone screen, anxiously waiting for confirmation.
You: cool
You: try not to kill anyone before then. It ruins the vibe
Dex stared at that one for a second.
Dex: No promises.
There was no reply after that.
That night, in his notebook, he wrote another thing about you:
Initiates contact.
—
The second date felt different before it even started.
You were standing at the counter of the bakery when he saw you, pointing at something in the display case, smiling at the cashier like this was the easiest thing in the world. “Hey, Dex.”
You ended up at a small table by the window, a couple of plates between you. A flaky and golden croissant, a banana-flavoured donut-like dessert dusted in powdered sugar (his choice), a molten-in-the-middle pain au chocolate, and one with custard that looked like it might fall apart if you breathed too hard near it.
Adorably, he knew you had picked too many things. Dex didn’t comment on it, but he noticed then, how you pointed without overthinking, how you changed your mind halfway through, how you added one more at the last second “just in case.”
It felt indulgent in a small, contained way. Like this was the only thing you let yourself have.
The plate between you looked excessive now, but you nudged it toward him anyway.
“Try that one,” you said, already reaching for another.
Dex picked it up without arguing. It was… good, but he didn’t say that out loud.
You watched his face anyway, like you were waiting for the reaction.
“It’s fine,” he said.
You snorted. “Liar.”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t pretend it’s just fine,” you rolled your eyes, though you had said it with your mouth full, so it sounded more like downt pwetend it's jusft fwine.
“I’m not pretending.”
“You are.”
He hesitated, then let you win this one. “It is good,” he admitted begrudgingly.
“There it is.”
The conversation slipped into place easily after that. It was not smooth, but it didn’t catch as often. You didn’t circle each other as much. You just… talked.
You even went on for a good fifteen minutes about watching a squirrel in the park yesterday. You said something about how it would grab something, run halfway up the tree, stop, look around like it forgot what it was doing, then go back down and start over. You went on saying, it did this, like, five times, I think it lost the nut at some point but just committed to the bit.
Dex was surprised a former Red Room operative would even concern herself with things as trivial as a little rodent. He was even more surprised that he let you go on and on about it. It was as if he liked listening to you, no matter what you said.
You reached for the sweeter pastry next, taking a bite, and Dex’s eyes automatically tracking the movement. A small smear of custard caught at the corner of your lip.
You didn’t notice. You kept talking, mid-sentence about the squirrel again, something about it being “committed to chaos, like hoarding random park objects were its hobby,” and—
Dex raised his hand before he could stop it. “Hold on,” he said, almost a whisper.
You paused. “what…”
His thumb brushied lightly at the corner of your mouth, wiping the custard away, before licking the liquid off on his own tongue. The contact was brief and altogether too gentle for a man like him. For a second, neither of you moved.
His hand dropped back to the table. “You had…” he gestured vaguely. “Custard.”
“Oh.” You blinked once, then let out a small, surprised laugh. “Thanks.”
“Yeah.” Dex looked down at his hands. That felt… Unfamiliar.
He didn’t know when the last time he’d done something like that was. He didn’t know when the last time he’d wanted to.
There was this strange warmth sitting in his chest now, almost weightless. He didn’t even have a name for it.
And while he wasn’t sure he liked that, he definitely didn’t hate it.
You were the one to break the silence, coughing awkwardly like you couldn’t stand another second of silence.
“Ummm speaking of hobbies?” you echoed, wiping your mouth just in case. “You… don’t strike me as a hobbies person.”
“I had some,” he said, easing back into the chair. Thank fuck you could carry the conversation for the both of them, because his brain had just fully stalled.
“Past tense is concerning.” You leaned forward just a little. “What, like, knitting?”
“No.”
“Scrapbooking?”
“No.”
“Be honest,” you taunted, “I can see it.”
He almost smiled, and looked down when he said it. “Baseball.”
You paused, then nodded, like that made perfect sense.
“Yeah, I can see that,” you said, then added casually, “I used to do ballet.”
Dex blinked. He looked at you differently now. like he was trying to fit that into everything else he knew. “Oh,” he managed to say.
Oh, this was it. This was what he came for. This was the thread he needed. This was the confirmation that you had been trained in HQ, right? If you had survived it, then there were doors inside you that led back to places he couldn’t access any other way.
These were not guesses, not patterns he had to infer from distance, but direct proximity to the Red Room itself, to its methods, its remnants, its current reach. He just needed to keep you talking, keep you close, long enough to pull it apart piece by piece. So he asked, “What does that mean?”
You froze, as if a flash of memories ran through the back of your eyes. Then shook your head once. “Mm—nope.”
“What?”
“Not here,” you said lightly, but there was an immovable conviction underneath it now. “I’m not getting into that here.”
Dex watched you as held his hazel eyes. Then, just as quickly, you leaned forward, resting your chin lightly against your hand, expression shifting back from dark to a lighter tone. “Come by my place on Saturday,” you said, like it had just occurred to you. “We’ll call it our third date.”
Dex blinked. “What?”
You shrugged, completely unfazed. “If you’re really curious,” you added, a small tilt to your head. “There’s… fewer people.”
He stared at you, his eyes empty and calculating at the saw time, fingers anxiously tapping the underside of the table. This was… this was not in the plan. This was not one of his controlled outcomes. This was not…
“Okay,” he said anyway. The answer seemed to have left his mouth before he fully processed it.
“Okay,” you echoed.
And somewhere between the pastries, coffee, and conversation, he realized, a little too late…
This doesn’t feel like a job.
—
Dex had expected a decoy. A secondary location, maybe a shell apartment. He was expecting something stripped down and impersonal, designed to be burned the second it was compromised.
Not this. Not the exact place he had already mapped out in his notebook.
So yeah, you had given him your real address.
For just a second, he wondered if this was the play. If you knew how much he knew. If this was some test he hadn’t caught onto yet.
The building was exactly what he expected. It was a high-end high rise. The doorman glanced at him once, then nodded like he’d already been cleared.
“You’re expected,” he said simply.
Dex didn’t respond, already moving past him. The elevator took him straight up.
By the time he reached your door, he had an uneasy feeling in his chest. Was this… a trap?
He knocked, and the door opened almost immediately.
“Hi,” you said.
Dex opened his mouth to respond, but you interrupted his train of thoughts by pressing a quick kiss to his cheek, right at the scar.
Dex froze. By the time you pulled back, his brain still hadn’t caught up.
You smiled like nothing had happened, stepping aside to let him in. “Come in.”
He couldn’t find words to say, because apparently, his brain was on pause now.
Still, Dex stayed half a step behind you as you pushed the door open, his eyes already scanning past your shoulder and realised…
The place was… expensive.
Not in a loud, gaudy way. You had no gold fixtures or ridiculous statement pieces. It was intentional. It had floor-to-ceiling windows stretching across the far wall with a view that swallowed half the city. It had two bedrooms, if he researched it right.
“How…” he started, then cut himself off. What he meant to say was, how can you afford this? But decided against it.
You didn’t seem to notice. “Make yourself comfortable,” you said, already shrugging off your jacket and tossing it onto a chair like it wasn’t worth more than half the furniture in his apartment. “I just need the bathroom. I’ll be quick.”
And just like that, you disappeared.
Dex stood there for a second longer than necessary, processing everything.
You lived here. And not as a cover, not temporarily. There were no signs of rotation, no packed bags, no readiness to leave at a moment’s notice.
“That’s stupid,” he muttered under his breath. Or reckless. Or you were just arrogant to a fault. Maybe you just didn’t think anyone could touch you.
Dex stood still for a second, listening to the water running. He heard the slightly delayed pipes and realised you weren’t rushing. Good.
His eyes tracked the room the way they always did, scanning for inconsistencies. He didn’t try to look for what was there, but what didn’t belong. Because people like you didn’t leave things out.
Which meant if anything existed, it would be hidden. His gaze slowed down and shifted… There. A section of the wall paneling near the shelving was barely misaligned. It was not enough for anyone else to clock, but Dex didn’t miss patterns like that.
He stepped closer, fingers brushing lightly over the seam. There must be a pressure point. Eventually the panel gave just enough of a click to confirm it. Dex didn’t hesitate before easing it open.
Inside was a compact hidden compartment.
The first thing he saw was a keycard, worn at the edges. The insignia was barely visible, but he didn’t need it to be clear. He knew what it was the second he saw it: Hydra.
“Of course,” he muttered under his breath.
Red Room had a historical overlap with Hydra. Old, but not irrelevant.
It surely was a small enough thing that you wouldn’t miss it, right?
He pocketed it and moved on to the only other thing hidden in the panel: Documents. It wasn’t exactly a full archive, but it was enough.
He flipped through them, scanning fast. Inside were names of Red Room operatives. The dead ones were labeled. He assumed the ones who didn’t have a red Xs on their files were still active.
You had annotated them too, with locations, partial intel, and movement patterns.
This was the kind of access people killed for.
His thumb moved, grabbing his phone. He flipped through quickly, taking a picture of each page, each note, each annotation. He made sure, of course, that it was legible.
This was high-level access, closer than anything he’d gotten from a distance. This… This was the job.
Then he heard the sound of water shutting off.
Shit. Dex froze. Then, he moved. He closed the folder immediately, sliding it back in.
Everything went back exactly as it was, the panel sealed until the seam disappeared into the wall again like it had never existed. By the time you stepped back into the room, he was already on the couch.
“Sorry,” you said, drying your hands casually, completely unbothered. “That took longer than I thought.”
Dex looked up at you. There was a split second, where something in his expression didn’t line up. The. it was gone.
“You’re fine,” he said evenly.
You nodded, like that settled it, and stepped closer. You dropped down onto the couch beside him, close enough that your shoulder brushed his, as if this was normal. As if he wasn’t here to dismantle you piece by piece. He didn’t even realise that you had a bottle of wine and two glasses on your hand.
You leaned back slightly, turning your head toward him, “…So,” you said, more direct. “What do you want to know?”
—
It can’t be this easy right? Dex thought.
Turns out, it was.
Which was weird, because people like you didn’t just… hand things over. So either this was the cleanest setup he’d ever walked into, or you really didn’t think he was a threat. Neither option sat right with him.
His fingers flexed slightly against his knee as he watched you pour two glasses of red. You handed one to him, and Dex took it quickly. “Thanks,” he said, smaller than usual.
He didn’t even usually drink anymore. He turned the stem slightly between his fingers, watching the liquid catch the light. For a brief second, his mind did what it always did: it ran through possibilities.
It might be a sedative. It could be poison. He could handle most of that, maybe. And if he couldn’t… Well.
He huffed quietly to himself. What the hell.
Dex took a sip. It burned a little on the way down. Not unusual, just normal wine.
The first sign that it wasn’t poison was that you were drinking it, too. The second sign was that you didn’t react; you didn’t watch him like you were waiting for something to happen. You just leaned back into the couch and tucked your leg under yourself.
It was cute, Dex thought. You looked like a bird, nesting. He liked it.
Then, he took a deep breath and started asking questions. At first, it was light, like where did you grow up? Where were you trained?
You answered, and you sounded detached for the first couple of sentences. It was as if you were testing the limits and throwing pieces out to see what stuck.
But when the alcohol kicked in and your cheeks turned rosy pink, you spoke more candidly. About the Red Room. About being taken. About being trained.
Even Dex, who was starting to feel more bubbly, didn’t interrupt.
At first, he listened like he always did. He filtered, sorted, and pulled out what mattered. But somewhere along the way, that changed. Because you started giving less intel and more… context.
“You don’t really realize it when you’re in it,” you said, staring into your glass like the answer might be somewhere at the bottom. “It just feels normal. Like this is what life is supposed to be. You don’t question it because there’s nothing else to compare it to.”
Dex’s grip tightened slightly, and you kept going.
“They don’t just train you. They… build you. Strip everything out first. Then put back only what they need.” You gave him a small laugh.“Honestly? It’s basically a cult. You have no idea what it’s like to be manipulated like that.”
Dex looked down, and exhaled slowly through his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
You glanced at him then, and your eyes shifted. You were not shocked at all, but you recognised it as well as you would recognise kin. “Oh,” you looked down. “Right.”
Dex poured himself another glass without thinking. You kept talking, but slower now. It was less like you were explaining, more like you were… unloading. Like you didn’t have anywhere else to put it.
That’s when it clicked: This must not be a trap or a strategy, he concluded, because the reason you were telling him all of this on a third date was… because, like him, you had no one else.
You might have neighbors, maybe even actual friends. But surely, you had no one else who could possibly understand you the way he did, because who else could you possibly know in this line of work?
That was why you decided that he was the safest place to put it.
Dex stared at the rim of his glass for a second too long. That was stupid of you. And dangerous. And—
“…And you?” you said suddenly, nudging his knee lightly with yours. “C’mon.”
He blinked, pulled back into the moment.
“If we’re trauma dumping,” you added, a crooked smile pulling at your mouth, “we might as well commit. This is probably our only chance to say it out like.” You took another sip, then shrugged. “Doesn’t exactly look like either of us go to therapy.”
Dex huffed. “Yeah,” he muttered. His brain caught up half a second later.
He shouldn’t, though, right? He shouldn’t tell you anything about him that could possibly be compromising but… The booze was getting to him.
And, besides, what harm could trauma dumping to you be? The job ends one way: with you dead after he got all the intel. So did it really matter what you knew about him?
Dex leaned back slightly, exhaling a little.
And then, before he could stop himself, the extra bit of liquid courage bypassed his brain, and he told you everything.
The words came out flat at first. But the more he drank, the less he cared about what he gave away and what he did not.
You didn’t interrupt him. You just listened. And that, more than anything, kept him talking.
At some point, the wine started to blur the edges for you, too. Your shoulders leaned closer. Your knee stayed pressed against his. Your laughter came easier as he cynically explained being in prison, and because you felt bad when you did, you gasped and covered your mouth.
Dex didn’t seem to mind. He even smiled, the corner of his mouth warping the pronounced scar on his cheek. At one point, you tilted your head slightly, watching him with an understanding that hadn’t been there before.
“God,” you said, almost to yourself. “We’re so fucked up.”
Then, unexpectedly, you giggled. Dex, for once, cannot help but chuckle himself.
“Yeah.” He took another sip, “You more than me,” he added, almost immediately.
Your head snapped toward him immediately. “Excuse me?”
A faint smirk pulled at his mouth. “Y’know,” he said, “Child soldier and all.”
You stared at him for a second, before letting out a disbelieving laugh. “Really?” you shot back, leaning closer, eyes narrowing in mock offense. “I’m more fucked up?”
He lifted a shoulder slightly in a shrug.
You pointed at him with your glass. “Your boss broke your spine and you lived.”
Dex managed to roll his eyes.
“You got thrown off a roof and you lived,” you continued, leaning in further now, your voice picking up energy. “Sounds like you’re pretty far from normal.”
Dex huffed again. “Didn’t say I was normal.”
“Mm,” you hummed, satisfied. You sipped again.
The space between you closed without either of you noticing when it happened. Your knee pressed against his. Your shoulder brushed his arm. Neither of you moved away.
The wine kept going. Half a glass. Then another.Words came easier after that, less filtered, less controlled.
You interrupted each other more. You laughed more. You even talked over the ends of sentences like it didn’t matter who finished them. At some point, you were both smiling for no reason.
Dex didn’t realize when the room started to feel warmer. He didn’t realize when your voice started to blur slightly at the edges. He didn’t even realize when he stopped thinking about the job entirely. He just knew, at this point, that you were close. Really close.
And you looked… Pretty.
That was a stupid word. It was too simple. It didn’t cover the gnawing claws that were starting to take over his heart.
But it was the only word his brain gave him. You were smiling at something (he didn’t even remember what) and it made you look… harmless.
Dex felt a warmth shift in his chest. As unfamiliar as it was, he didn’t pull away from it. For a second, you looked at him, too.
Dex swallowed the last of the wine, mostly because it was the only distraction that could possibly take up all the space you had started to occupy in his mind.
The room had dimmed at the edges in that deceptive way alcohol always did. The lights seemed warmer.
Dex didn’t usually get to this point. He knew that with uncomfortable clarity. He also knew he should stop.
You were sitting too close, closer than before, closer than necessary, your shoulder pressed lightly into his as if neither of you had noticed the distance shrinking over time.
Your voice had gone gentler, words starting to come in slower waves instead of quick exchanges. There was less explanation, more confession disguised as conversation. And he was doing the same, even if he wouldn’t have admitted it out loud.
Parts of him he usually kept locked down were just… loosening, one by one, without permission.
You laughed at something he said, he didn’t even remember what it was, and the sound stuck in his head longer than it should have.
“You’re smiling,” you observed suddenly, tilting your head slightly like it was a fossil discovery.
“I’m not,” he said automatically.
You hummed, unconvinced. “You are.”
He should’ve corrected you. Instead, his eyes drifted without meaning to, down to your mouth when you spoke again. The way your words drooped at the edges when you were tired, or tipsy, or both. For the love of god, he could not get over you the way you kept licking your lip absentmindedly, like you weren’t even aware of it.
It made something in his brain go pop.
You noticed. “…What?” you asked, pouting adorably.
Dex didn’t answer right away. Because, really, there was no tactical reason for him to be looking at you like this. There was no intel angle. No extraction logic. No job framework he could hide behind.
It was just you. And him. And the space between you that didn’t feel like space anymore.
He leaned in before he could reassemble himself. He hadn’t planned on doing it. It wasn’t even a decision he consciously made, really.
It was, for lack of better word, gravity. As if he was a meteor falling into your orbit.
For a while, you didn’t move away.
Your breath caught in your throat, but you stayed there, watching him come closer instead of stopping it. Your eyes flicked down once, like you were considering it too.
Dex stopped just short of you. He wanted, no needed— to know you wanted it, too.
Still, he was close enough that he could feel your breath now. Close enough that if either of you moved even a fraction—
That would be it. The line would be crossed.
You lifted your hand slowly, but you were not pushing him away. You weren’t pulling him closer, either. Your palm was hovering for a moment against his chest like you were testing whether this was real.
Dex didn’t move. Neither did you.
You exhaled. It was a small, almost reluctant sound. “…Dex,” you murmured, and his name sounded different like that. His eyes flicked to yours again.
Too close. This was way too close.
Your eyes dropped again to his mouth again, and stayed there. For a second, he could clearly see that fraction of hesitation where neither of you could pretend anymore that you weren’t thinking the same thing.
Dex leaned in that final inch… but you didn’t meet him halfway. Gently, your hand pressed into his chest.
“Mm,” you murmured softly, almost like you were trying to convince yourself this was wrong. Then you pushed him back.
“No,” you said, breath hitching slightly, but your smile was still there, playful, light. “It’s only our third date.”
Dex blinked, still a little too close, like he hadn’t fully processed the words.
You laughed under your breath, giving him a small shove to create space.
“Besides,” you added, eyes flicking down to his mouth for just a second before meeting his again, “I want you to kiss me when you’re sober.”
Oh.
He leaned back this time, letting out a deep breath. There was only one way he could describe how he felt, and that was disappointment.
Oh, well. What else can he do?
“Yeah,” he managed to say. “Okay.”
Still, he didn’t move far, and neither did you.
And of course, his thoughts, intrusive as they always are, decided to ruin the only tender moment he had in years.
You have enough. Kill her.
Honestly, he had more than enough intel on the Red Room. Even the old Hydra keycard was a welcome addition to his anonymous employer’s request. It would most definitely make up for anything else they could have possibly wanted.
What are you waiting for? Kill her.
It was definitely more than what that had bargained for. So yeah, he could do it now.
He had clocked many sharp objects he could throw at you— from your vase to a cheese knife you left out on the island kitchen. He didn’t even need a gun.
Kill her.
And no, you wouldn’t even see it coming. His fingers flexed slightly against his leg.
Kill her.
But then he made the mistake of looking at you. And from there on out, all he could think was…
I want another date.
No. He shouldn’t want that, right?
Kill her.
He didn’t want that either.
But… he needed the money, and you had a body count higher than the Empire State Building. Killing you would make sense right? It would help balance the scales, right?
Right?
Would it still make sense, even after you laid your heart and soul to him? Would it still make sense, even after he realised you were brought up as an enslaved child soldier?
Kill her.
No, he told himself, Not yet.
I want just one more date.
And to Dex, that was reason enough not to kill you. Yet.
—
Dex didn’t go to rest when he got home.
The second the door shut behind him, he frowned, burying his head in his hands before pulling himself together. He had called forth the part of him that knew what to do, what this was, what it had to be.
He pulled the notebook out before he’d even taken his jacket off.
He sat down, pen moving across paper. It started the way it always did: Structured and efficient. Intel, in detail.
He wrote of the interior of your apartment; top floor, two-bedroom, open sightlines, minimal obstruction points. Entry points limited. Windows large but not easily accessible from exterior. Security: building-controlled, doorman compliant, prior clearance confirmed.
He flipped the page. He wrote about the hidden compartment: wall panel, right side of shelving unit. Pressure point activation. Contents: Hydra-era keycard, confirmed overlap with Red Room operations. Documents: active survivor list, partial intel, movement logs. Photographic evidence captured.
Another page. This was where he started writing about your routine vulnerabilities, your Behavioral patterns. Trust threshold: high. Counter-surveillance: minimal to non-existent. Open, disarming, prone to disclosure under informal conditions.
His handwriting stayed tight.
2.5 million dollars would only come after you were dead. That would fund his makeshift crusade for years to come. It was important work he was doing, balancing the scales.
Dex paused, just for a second. Then he kept going.
Timeline: Saturday meeting. Entry granted without resistance. Physical proximity established quickly. Target displays—
His pen slowed to a stop. It hovered there, a warmth blooming in his chest. Dex frowned slightly, staring at the page like it had changed on him.
Then, almost absentmindedly, he wrote… she kissed me on the cheek, right on the scar.
The pen froze again.
That wasn’t— He exhaled, teeth clenching. —this wasn’t important.
But still, he crossed nothing out. He just moved on.
Target displays lowered threat perception in close proximity. Conversational drift toward—
His handwriting had changed. Not messy, just less rigid.
… her past. She smells like vanilla. not perfume. Most likely clean laundry and sugar from baking.
Dex blinked. He looked at the lines then at the rest of the page.
What the fuck.
He flipped to the next page like that would fix it.
Red wine is her favourite.
His grip on the pen tightened slightly.
He should stop. This wasn’t relevant. None of the last couple sentences was relevant. Dex leaned back slightly in his chair, staring at the notebook in his lap.
He had everything he needed. He didn’t need to write anything else.
Dex scoffed quietly under his breath. Had he gone soft?
Then, without really deciding to, he added one more line underneath it…
She laughed when she said “we’re so fucked up.”
He stared at it for a second longer than necessary. Then he snapped the notebook shut.
—
The restaurant for the fourth date was nicer than most places he even bothered to go to nowadays. But if this was going to be your last meal, he might as well make it memorable.
It had soft blue lights, a low hum of voices, the whoosh of knives behind the counter. Dex noticed all of it the second he stepped in, cataloguing angles and exits, the reflective panel behind the chef that gave him a partial view of the room without turning his head.
You need to kill her today.
He exhaled slowly through his nose and followed the host to the table.
When you sat down across from him, smiling like you hadn’t just walked straight into the middle of your own funeral, the room blurred at the edges for Dex.
“Hi,” you said with a smile
Kiss her.
He blinked once, forcing his brain back into place. “Hi.”
You tilted your head slightly, studying him like you always did, like you were trying to solve a puzzle with a missing piece. “You look like you’ve been here for a while.”
“I haven’t.”
“You definitely have.”
“Maybe five minutes.” That was a lie. He had been there for more than ten, cataloging what he could possibly use to finish the job.
You smiled, pleased. “Knew it.”
She’s faking it. She actually likes me. Kill her.
Dex picked up the menu just to give his hands something to do. “You’re late.”
“I’m two minutes late,” you corrected, leaning forward slightly to peek at what he was looking at instead of opening your own. “And I brought personality, so it cancels out.”
He huffed, hiding a smile. “That’s not how that works.”
“It is.” You insisted, tapping the menu. “Also, you picked sushi? I didn’t think you were a sushi person.”
“I’m not.” He immediately said.
You blinked. “Then why…”
“Seemed efficient.” What he meant was; it’s a nice meal. You deserve a nice meal for the last day of your life. It’s efficient for him, who had an array of ceramic and silverware to kill you with.
You stared at him for a second, then broke into a grin. “You picked it based on efficiency.”
“Yes.”
“That is the least romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
Kiss her. Tell her she’s pretty.
He didn’t do either.
“You’re still here,” he pointed out instead.
“Yeah,” you said easily, settling back in your seat. “Because I actually like you.”
Liar. Kill her.
Somewhere between you stealing sushi off his plate and laughing at how aggressively he held chopsticks, you asked, almost casually, “You know anything about the ports here?” Dex paused slightly at that, eyes flicking up to yours over his glass.
The question should’ve put him more on edge than it did, but you just looked curious, relaxed, like this was normal conversation. “Not much,” he admitted after a second. “Fisk uses them to move things through there sometimes.”
You hummed thoughtfully, listening closely, and Dex found himself talking a little more than he probably should’ve just because you kept looking at him like that.
After a while, though, he managed to change the topic. Work was getting a little old. He found himself wanting to talk about you. “You always order too much.”
You lit up like he’d just handed you a piece of chocolate. “Oh, we’re judging now?”
“I’m observing.”
“Rude,” you said, already scanning the menu. “Also, it’s not too much, it’s strategic.”
“Strategic how?” He tilted his head, genuinely curious.
You shrugged, but there was a stillness underneath it. “You ever go hungry enough that your brain just… rewires? Like you don’t trust ‘enough’ anymore?”
Dex had never felt that way before. He wondered if you were indulgent because you had gone through missions with little food. Would you have gotten days without it, a week maybe? Your Buenos Aires mission was six days, your Lagos mission was seven days. Was it those missions?
How did you even survive?
She’s a widow. She’s a weapon. She’s a person.
“…Yeah,” he said anyway.
Your eyes flicked up to his, and recognition passed between you. “Yeah,” you echoed. Then you nudged the menu toward him. “So I’ll over-order. It’s fine. We deserve it.”
We’re so fucked up. Kill her. Kiss her.
He nodded once. “Okay.”
You spent the next ten minutes ordering together, leaning over the table, arguing quietly over rolls like it mattered.
“Okay, this one,” you said, pointing. “We’re getting this.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“It has too much…. whatever that is.”
“That is eel,” you squinted.
“Exactly,” he shrugged.
“It’s just eel,” you pointed out. “You’ve eaten weirder things.”
He paused. “That’s not the point.”
You grinned. “I have enough of an appetite for the both of us.”
Kill her. Kiss her.
“…Fine,” he said, pushing his intrusive thoughts away.
You beamed.
By the time the food arrived, the conversation had settled. You didn’t hold back when you ate, and you never did. You leaned forward, talking between bites, pointed things out like it mattered that he experienced them properly.
“Try this,” you said, holding your chopsticks out toward him without thinking.
Dex looked at it, then at you. You didn’t even realize what he was going to do to you.
Kiss her. Kill her.
He leaned forward and took the bite. Your eyes stayed on his face, waiting.
“It’s good,” he admitted.
“I know,” you said immediately, all too pleased with yourself.
He shook his head slightly.
She’s dangerous. She could kill you. Kill her first.
You wiped a bit of sauce off your thumb absentmindedly and kept talking. “We used to have this thing—training-wise—where they’d reward you with food if you hit certain targets.”
Dex’s attention shifted immediately.
There it is. Focus.
“Targets?” he repeated.
You winced slightly. “Okay, that sounded worse out loud.”
He didn’t respond.
You laughed, a little self-aware. “I mean—it was worse. But at the time it felt like a game, you know? Like ‘hit this, get that.’ Pavlov, but with putting bullets between your classmates' eyes.”
You popped another piece into your mouth like you hadn’t just said that.
She’s a monster. She’s a victim. She’s both. Kill her.
“Do you ever miss that?” he asked before he could stop himself.
You tilted your head, chuckling at the absurdity of the question. “The food or the brainwashing?”
“Either.”
You smiled faintly. “Sometimes I miss knowing exactly what I was supposed to be.”
That…. He understood.
Kill her. Ask her about OXE. Ask her about the DODC. Kiss her.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me too.”
You didn’t make a big deal out of it. Instead, you just nudged his foot under the table. “Hey,” you said, lighter now. “At least now we get sushi instead of, like… boiled cabbage or whatever.”
His lips formed the ghost of a smile. “I didn’t get cabbage.”
“Oh, sorry,” you deadpanned. “Did your government program have better catering?”
“No.”
You grinned. “Then you get it.”
He did. He really, really did.
You started talking about stupid things again—bad takeout, a guy you saw trying to fight a pigeon, the way you animated everything just enough to make it feel real.
Dex found himself watching your mouth when you talked.
Kiss her. Kill her. She’s faking it. She actually likes me.
He picked up his chopsticks again, turning them slightly between his fingers. These would be a good weapon to finish you off. He had calculated the angle, trajectory, and distance. He could do it from across the table. It would be clean, straight through the throat.
You wouldn’t even—
You laughed suddenly, bright and unguarded, and it snapped the thought clean in half.
“Earth to Dex?”
He blinked, refocusing on the world around him.
You were looking at him like you’d caught his mind somewhere far away.
“What?” he said.
“You spaced out,” you said, narrowing your eyes slightly. “That was intense. Should I be concerned?”
Kill her. Kiss her. Tell her she’s pretty.
“No,” he said, coughing a little
You leaned forward slightly, studying him. “You do that a lot. Go somewhere else.”
He held your stare, feeling like an utter fucking coward. “I’m here,” he said. It came out quieter than he meant it to.
Your eyes softened. After that, you kept talking, and he kept listening, but the thoughts didn’t stop.
Kill her. She’s dangerous. She’s a Black Widow. She’s killed for corrupt governments. She’s taken down entire networks. She could kill you. Kill her. Kiss her.
He watched the way your fingers curled around your glass, the way you leaned closer when you got excited about a topic, the way your voice softened when you cared.
He imagined reaching across the table, but this time not to put a piece of cutlery through your windpipe.
Instead, he imagined reaching out with his hand, touching your wrist. He imagined pulling you closer, kissing you.
—
When the bill landed between you, Dex felt his chest pulled tight, like a thread being yanked too hard.
His hand moved first, grabbing it before you could even look properly. “I’ve got it,” he said, but it came out quieter than he meant, like the words had to push past thorns lodged in his throat. You started to protest, but he cut in, “I want to.”
That part slipped out, honest in a way he didn’t like. His fingers fumbled just slightly as he pulled his card out, a barely-there tremor that shouldn’t exist in a man like him, and he focused hard on the motion—insert, wait, sign—because that was simple, and that was something he understood.
Kill her.
He could do it after this. He would. After all, that was the plan. But when he glanced up, you were watching him. and it threw everything off balance in a way that made his chest feel too full.
His thoughts only sped up after that.
Kill her. She needs to go. She’s a monster. She’s a widow. She’s a fucking Black Widow. She could kill you. Kill her. She’s faking it. She’s dangerous.
He signed the receipt, but his grip was wrong. It was too tight, the paper crinkling under his thumb. When he set the pen down, his eyes betrayed him. They dropped to your mouth without permission.
It wasn't strategic. It wasn’t calculated. It was instinct, human and stupid all the same.
He imagined leaning forward instead of walking away, closing the distance instead of planning your doom, your lips against his instead of blood on his hands.
Focus.
His breath caught, and he looked away like that would fix it, like he could force himself back into the job he was supposed to do.
He needed to do it. Now. Outside.
He slipped a metal chopstick into his pocket.
But the idea of ending it before he knew what your lips taste like made him recoil.
Kiss her. Tell her she’s pretty. Kiss her. Kill her. She’s a bad person. She’s dangerous. She’s so fucking pretty. She actually likes you. Kiss her. Kill her. Focus.
He stood too quickly, the chair scraping harshly against the floor, and reached for his jacket like movement might help ground him. It didn’t. You stood too, close enough that your arm brushed his.
He could still do it but his eyes betrayed him again, flicking to your lips like he was starving for something he didn’t deserve.
The realization hit all at once: he didn’t want to kill you before he kissed you.
He needed that first. Just once.
“I’ll walk you home,” he said, and the words came out before he could stop them. You looked up at him, surprised. When you said “Okay,” it didn’t make anything easier. It just gave him more time to ruin himself, one step at a time, chasing something he shouldn’t want before he did what he came here to do.
Kiss her. Then kill her.
—
The street outside your building felt eerily quiet, like the world had thinned down to just the two of you and the glow of the lobby lights behind glass. The doorman had the day off, you mentioned. There were no footsteps. No interruptions.
Good. No witnesses.
Dex barely registered the thought this time. It flickered and passed, swallowed immediately by the thundering anxiety brewing in his mind.
Kill her.
“Hey,” you said. It was absurd, really, how shy you sounded.
He gulped. “Hey.”
His heart melted when a smile tugged at your mouth.
“I think,” you started, stepping just a little closer, your voice lowering like it was meant only for him, “you earned it.”
Dex didn’t get to ask what that meant, because you stepped in, closing that last inch of space like it meant nothing, and your lips met his…and everything in him just gave way.
His hand dropped from his pocket instantly, the weapon forgotten as his fingers caught your waist instead, pulling you closer like he was afraid you’d disappear. The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was only warm for half a second before it deepened, before he leaned into it with a careful urgency that didn’t belong to him.
Kiss her like you mean it.
When you pulled back slightly, just to breathe, just to smile that pleased smile that made your whole face light up, he followed. He actually chased your lips, closing the distance again before you could get far, like he couldn’t stand the idea of it ending already. His hand slid higher, thumb brushing your jaw, tilting your face just enough to kiss you again. It was slower this time but no less hungry, like he was trying to memorize it.
You tasted… fuck! Sweet.
His brain latched onto it immediately, irrational and completely useless: Strawberries and cream. Probably lip gloss, but it didn’t matter to Dex.
Kiss her like you fucking mean it.
He smiled into it. It felt wrong on him, but he couldn’t stop it, not when you leaned into him like that, not when your fingers curled into his jacket like you wanted him just as much.
Kill her.
The thought slammed back in hard enough to almost make him flinch. His hand paused at your side. He knew the metal chopstick was still in his pocket.
Do it now.
He could, theoretically. You were right there. You were more than close enough. More importantly, you were trusting enough.
One movement, and you would be dead. He would cradle your lifeless body in your arms and the last thing you would ever do was… kiss him.
“I’ll see you soon?” you asked hazily when you finally pulled back, your voice carrying the echo of the kiss.
Dex froze.
You were smiling at him. You were not suspicious or guarded. You were just… hopeful. And all he could think about was the way you’d kissed him. The way you’d let him.
Kill her.
His fingers curled in his pocket, brushing the metal again. He imagined it: a quick thrust, handled efficiently…
No. Not like that. I can’t kill her like that.
It was too slow, too messy. You’d bleed. You’d feel it. You’d die a slow, painful death…
She didn’t deserve that.
That was it. That was his excuse this time.
You deserved to die a quick, painless death. Maybe a shot in the back of the head when you weren’t looking. Just… bang!
His chest ached at the thought. He was still leaning toward you, like part of him hadn’t caught up yet, like he might kiss you again if you gave him half a second more.
“I—yeah,” he said, voice, rougher around the edges. “You will.”
You smiled like that was enough. Like he hadn’t just made a decision that should’ve gone the other way.
Dex stood there for a second longer than necessary, like he was trying to memorize you again. He thought about your mouth, your eyes. the way you were still a little flushed… Then he stepped back, because if he didn’t—
Kiss her.
He almost did.
Instead, he let you go. And when he got home, all he wrote in the notebook was:
She tastes like strawberries and cream.
—
The park on a Sunday felt too bright for what Dex had come to do.
Sunlight filtered through the trees in shifting patterns, the grass warm and uneven beneath the blanket he had brought.
It was your idea, “a picnic!” said so casually over the phone, like it was something people like you did, like it didn’t involve him sitting across from you with a gun tucked under his shirt, pressed against his side like a second heartbeat.
He’d decided before he even got there, that today, he was going to kill you.
It ends today. Kill her.
Then you showed up. And the world tilted for him.
You were wearing a sundress that moved with you when you walked. It wasn’t tactical, it wasn’t anything like the person he’d read about in that file. You looked… beautiful.
Kill her.
He swallowed it down. “You look…” he started, then stopped, like the word wouldn’t come out right.
You tilted your head, smiling. “What?”
His eyes dragged over you again before he could stop himself. “Nice,” he settled on.
It was insufficient. He knew it.
You laughed anyway, pleased, like you hadn’t just undone him.
Kill her. She’s dangerous. She’s a weapon.
He swallowed, hard, forcing himself to look away, to move, to do something before he stood there staring like an idiot. He dropped down onto the blanket he’d set up, hands already busy unpacking what he’d brought.
You noticed immediately. “You brought strawberries and cream?” You asked in disbelief.
Dex shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal, like he hadn’t thought about it too much. “You like sweet things.”
You went quiet for a second. “I…” you started, “I do.”
He didn’t look at you. If he did, he’d…
Kiss her. Kill her. Focus.
You sat across from him, smoothing your dress under your legs, and that was so normal it made his chest ache.
For a while it was just conversation, the kind that didn’t feel like work. You started with small things, normal things. Then, maybe out of morbid curiosity, you asked him about Fisk, almost casually, like it was something you were only half-remembering. Dex hesitated before answering, more out of instinct than suspicion.
Red Hook came up next, and that made him pause longer, because it wasn’t the kind of thing people usually asked about in passing. Still, he gave you what he had, watching you the whole time for a reaction that never really came. You just nodded along like it made sense to be talking about it like this, and that made him talk more than he should have.
But how could he focus on any of that when his mind…
Shoot her in the head.
“I’ve never done this before,” you said after a moment, glancing around. “A picnic, I mean.”
That caught Dex off guard. “What?”
You huffed a small laugh, a little embarrassed. “Yeah. Not like this, anyway.” You picked at the edge of the blanket. “We used to pretend, though. In the Red Room.”
You said it so lightly. Like it wasn’t something that should gut him. “In the basement of the facility I was raised in,” you went on. “Some of the girls would lay out scraps of cloth, call it grass.” You smiled, but it was fragile. “We’d share whatever we could steal from the kitchen and pretend it was… nice.”
Dex stared at you.
Kill her. She’s a Black Widow. She’s killed people. She’s—
“You deserved better,” he said.
You looked up at him, surprised. Then you smiled. “Yeah,” you said, after a second of consideration. “I think so too.”
Make it quick, coward.
He grabbed a strawberry just to have something to do with his hands, dipped it into the cream, and held it out toward you. It was an imitation of what you had done with sushi the other night.
You chuckled, then leaned forward, taking it gently, your lips brushing his fingers just slightly.
Kiss her.
He watched you bite into it, watched the way your mouth curved, the way your eyes closed like you were enjoying it. Cream caught at the edge of your lips, but you didn’t notice. And that was it.
Kiss her. Indulge.
He leaned in because he couldn’t help it. He did it slowly, like he was giving you time to stop him.
You didn’t.
Your lips met his, and it was not rushed, not desperate like before. His hand came up to your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek as he tilted your face slightly, deepening it just enough to feel you respond, just enough to feel you lean into him.
You don’t deserve her. Kill her. Get it over with.
His chest tightened painfully as he pulled back, breathing uneven, forehead almost brushing yours.
You smiled at him, a little dazed, and he knew. He couldn’t do it here. Not like this.
He leaned back fully, dragging a hand through his hair, trying to put himself back together. “I don’t…” he started, then stopped.
You tilted your head. “What?”
He looked at you again, and felt his heart break in real time. “I don’t want to stay here,” he said.
You were now confused and a little unsure. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” he said immediately, more panicked than he meant to. “No. It’s not that.”
Kill her. Do it right.
He let out a deep breath. “Come back to mine,” he said.
Fucking coward. What are you waiting for? She’s a terrible person. She’s killed more people than you.
Your brows lifted slightly. “Your place?”
He nodded once.
If he did it there, it would be quiet. He would still make it quick and painless. And afterwards… he could mourn you in peace. He could hold your body as he cried into your neck. And maybe, some part of you would stay with him forever.
“Yeah,” he said, voice smaller now. “I just… want more time with you.”
That part wasn’t a lie.
You studied him for a second, then you smiled the same trusting smile. “Okay,” you said.
And just like that, you followed him home.
—
The walk should have been simple. It was a straight line, a familiar route, nothing Dex hadn’t done a hundred times before without thinking.
But inside his head, his thoughts were deafening.
Kill her.
It wasn’t a thought anymore. It was a command, pressing in from all sides until it felt like it might split him open from the inside.
Kill her. She’s dangerous. She’s lying. She’s done this before. You know what she is.
His jaw tightened, teeth grinding together as he kept walking, forcing his steps to stay even. You were beside him, close enough that your shoulder brushed his every few strides, like you hadn’t noticed the tension winding tighter and tighter in him.
Kill her. Do it before she does it first.
The words didn’t fade after they came anymore. They repeated, layered and stacked on top of each other until they stopped sounding like language and started sounding like pressure.
Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.
But then, another voice cut through.
Kiss her.
It didn’t argue. It pulled.
Kiss her again. Don’t let this end. She chose you. She’s still here.
His breath hitched slightly, chest tightening as the two sides collided, over and over, faster now, louder now, until there was no space between them.
Kill her. Kiss her. KILL HER. KISS HER.
It built and built, escalating into unbearable noise. They clawed and scraped and demanded all at once. His fingers twitched at his side, curling slightly like they were reaching for an answer, like his body was trying to decide for him.
One pull of the trigger. That’s all it would take, that’s—
Then, he felt your hand slip into his.
And for the first time in a long time, his brain was… quiet.
It wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t forceful. It was almost tentative at first, how your fingers trace his thumb lightly before settling into his palm like you’d done it a thousand times before. Like you hadn’t even considered that you shouldn’t.
Dex stopped breathing. His step faltered, just slightly, like his body didn’t quite know how to move without the noise driving it forward.
The commands that had been screaming seconds ago, the overlapping voices, the relentless pressure…they just ceased. As if you had reached inside his head and flipped a switch.
Dex stood there for half a second too long. His mind, which had been a constant storm of instruction and contradiction, felt… clear.
His fingers closed around yours slowly, almost cautiously, like he was afraid the moment would shatter.
You didn’t pull away. You didn’t even hesitate. You just… walked with him.
And the quiet stayed. Step after step, it stayed.
By the time you reached his building, a fact had already settled into place inside his chest. He didn’t have to argue with himself about it. There was no internal debate, no weighing of outcomes or consequences.
He just knew he wasn’t going to kill you anymore.
Not tonight. Not later. Not at all.
Good person be damned. Bad person be damned. Rent be fucking damned. Whatever fragile system he’d built to justify what he did, none of it held any weight here, not anymore.
He wasn’t looking for redemption, and he wasn’t chasing some shallow kind of bliss that killing you might give him. That had never really been the point, no matter how many times he told himself it was. He just wanted you.
And it was a primal, wild want.
He wanted your mouth on his again. He just wanted you to kiss him deeply and show him everything he’d missed, everything he’d never been given.
Dex slowed as he reached his door, keys already in his hand, but he didn’t unlock it right away. Instead, his eyes dropped briefly to where your fingers were still threaded with his. Then he looked at you. And there was nothing in his head telling him what to do anymore.
His thumb brushed lightly over your knuckles, a small, almost absent motion, before he finally unlocked the door. “Come in.”
—
His apartment was nothing like yours. In was just one open space, a bed pushed too close to the wall, a kitchen that barely separated itself from the rest of the room. No personality, no indulgence other than you.
You didn’t say anything, though. No teasing comment, no subtle comparison, just that same acceptance you always gave him, like this was enough. Like he was enough.
Dex barely gave you time to take it in. The second the door shut behind you, he lost any semblance of restraint.
His hand caught your waist and pulled you into him, his mouth crashing against yours with a kind of hunger that didn’t belong to a man who was ever in control. The kiss was messy, as if he was trying to take something he didn’t know how to ask for.
You gasped against him, your hands coming up to his chest, then his shoulders, leveling him and undoing him all at once.
He walked you backward without breaking contact. One step, then another, until the back of your knees hit the bed and you fell onto it with. He followed instantly, like space between you was unbearable.
His hands were everywhere, your neck, your sides, your thigh, like he needed to confirm you were real, that you were still here, that you hadn’t disappeared the second he let himself want you this much. And then you felt him shudder just a bit, shoulder shaking.
You pulled back just enough to look at him, your breath uneven, your hands coming up to his face, thumbs brushing his cheekbones.
“Dex?” you whispered, concern threading through everything. “What’s wrong? ”
“Nothing,” he insisted, almost defensive. “Nothing.”
But his eyes were glassy. He swallowed hard, like he was trying to force it down, trying to push it away before you could see it. After all, he didn’t know how to explain it.
How would he even begin to explain that you made his head quiet? That just being near you feels like something he’s never had before? That he doesn’t know what this is, but it’s too much and not enough at the same time?
“I’m fine,” he added, but it didn’t sound convincing. Not even to himself.
You said his name again, gentler this time.
And that was it. That was the last thing holding him together.
“I wanna taste you,” he said honestly, almost reverently.
You were caught slightly off guard. A small, breathy laugh escaped you. “You’ve kissed me before.”
But he shook his head, his big hands already frantically bunching the fabric of your sundress with an urgency that didn’t feel casual anymore. It felt like a need. Like an instinct he couldn’t hold back even if he tried. One hand gripped on your ass as the other hooked on the waistband of your panties, tugging it down desperately.
“No,” he said, voice deeper now. “I want to taste you.”
Oh.
Your breath hitched, but you didn’t stop him. You didn’t pull away. You let him move closer, let him guide you, let him fall on his knees like he was praying to a goddess in the altar of an ancient temple. You let him take that space between your legs as he wondered how much sweeter you could get.
Here, he could at least pretend that he hadn’t been thinking about killing you not that long ago.
Dex sank lower, slower now, like he was trying to learn you, not take from you. His hands steadied himself against your thighs, his forehead dipping for just a second like he needed to breathe you in. He felt… wrecked.
His breath hitched softly as he leaned closer, the space between your heat and him shrinking until there was almost nothing left and then—
click.
It was quiet, but unmistakably the sound of safety coming off.
Every instinct he had lit up at once, snapping back into place so violently it almost hurt. His body froze, breath catching.
He lifted his head slowly. And there you were, with a gun pointed at his head.
It was small, and easy to hide, the red room insignia etched to the side. You probably pulled from that little purse you always carried like it was just an accessory.
Of course.
Dex didn’t reach for anything. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even try to put space between you. He just… looked at you.
And instead of anger, his chest folded in on itself. What he felt was closer to heartbreak than it was rage. Because for one stupid, moment he had naively believed you felt safe with him.
“…Oh,” he said softly.
The gun wasn’t the most horrifying part. It was the fact that even now, even with the metallic click of the safety still ringing in his ears, even with death staring him directly in the face, Dex could not stop looking at you.
You were sprawled beneath him on his bed, dress dragged up your thighs by his own hands, your breathing still uneven from the way he had kissed you seconds earlier. Your lips were swollen and puffy. Your chest rose and fell too quickly. One of your sandal straps hung loose around your ankle where he’d nearly pulled you apart getting you onto the mattress. And somehow… he still wanted you so badly it physically hurt.
How could he be this fucking stupid?
He should’ve known. Especially with questions about Red Hook. The ports. Fisk. That was why you kept asking.
Every little question over food and coffee and pastries. Every casual mention between laughter. Every moment he thought you were trying to know him better—
No. You were working. Just like him.
Your employer wanted information, and you had been sent to pull it out of him piece by piece while he sat there completely fucking mesmerized by you.
And now you had what they needed. Or maybe they realised he didn’t know enough to be valuable. That was worse, because it meant that he was just another loose end.
His stomach twisted hard enough to hurt. Not because you’d played him, because some pathetic, starving part of him had genuinely believed this had stopped being a job somewhere along the way. That maybe the way you kissed him outside your building had been real. That maybe when you held his hand and silenced every screaming voice in his head, it had meant something to you too.
Humiliating. Absolutely humiliating.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered.
It you had looked cold, detached, amused, even cruel, this would have been easier. He would have known where to put it. Would have known how to hate you properly. But you looked devastated.
Your hand trembled slightly around the weapon pointed at him, and your eyes kept betraying you, flicking down to his mouth before snapping back up again. You looked like you hated this.
“I…” You swallowed. “You’re not useful to OXE anymore.”
He had known something felt off. He just hadn’t cared enough to stop. He just wanted you more than he wanted to survive.
Dex let out a shaky breath that almost sounded like laughter. “Fuck,” he murmured softly, and you twitched, feeling his breath on your naked core.
You flinched immediately. “No. Don’t do that.”
His eyes flicked back to yours.
“Don’t act like this was just me manipulating you,” you said, and your voice cracked slightly now. “I know there was a contract on me. I know you got sent it. I know about the gun under your shirt. Don’t you dare pretend like you weren’t planning to kill me too.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Because what could he even say? You were right.
The notebook was sitting in his apartment right now, pages and pages documenting your routines, your apartment, your vulnerabilities.
He had memorized the ways to kill you before he ever memorized the sound of your laugh.
And all this time, you had let him follow you, let him think he was in control in that “accidental run in” in Central Park, when you were planning to eliminate him, too.
And somehow, the two of you still ended up tangled together on his bed, half-dressed and breathing hard from kissing each other like starving people.
Dex’s gaze dropped involuntarily to your thighs, to the skin exposed beneath the ruined hem of your dress. To the way your body was still open for him despite the gun in your hand.
Fuck.
His fingers tightened unconsciously where they still gripped the fabric pooled around your hips.
You looked vulnerable.
And the absolute worst fucking part was that he still wanted to bury himself between your legs so badly he could barely think straight. Even now. Even knowing this was the end.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“You know what’s pathetic?” he asked quietly.
Your brows pulled together slightly.
Dex looked up at you from between your thighs, eyes dark and wet and unbearably earnest. “I still want to taste you.”
Your breath caught audibly.
“There’s a gun pointed at my head,” he whispered in disbelief. “and all I can think about is that I never got to know what you taste like.”
“Dex…” you breathed shakily.
But he shook his head immediately. “No, listen,” he said quickly. “I know what this is. I know what happens next.”
You looked away for half a second. That almost destroyed him, because he realized then that you didn’t actually want to kill him either. And that made him want you even more.
God, I’m so sick.
“I know you’re gonna kill me because it’s the job,” he continued. “Fine. I get it.” His eyes dropped again helplessly to the way your thighs trembled around him, then back up. “But Christ…” His voice cracked. “Just let me have this first.”
Dex looked humiliated and ruined all the same. And still completely sincere.
“I could die happy,” he admitted. “Just… let me taste you first, sweetheart.”
Your hand trembled. Not enough to miss, but just enough that Dex noticed.
The barrel of the gun was pressed against the center of his forehead now, cool metal against flushed skin, and still he didn’t move away from you.
“Do it, then,” you whispered.
You swallowed hard, trying to steady yourself, trying to force your hand not to shake while he knelt there between your thighs looking at you like this was the closest thing to worship he had ever known. Amazed that even like this, you were soaked for him.
“Fucking do it,” you said again, almost pleading now. “Before I…”
Before you what? Changed your mind? Cried? Dropped the gun?
Dex could see every possibility running through your brain all at once.
His hands slid down your thighs reverently. “You’re shaking,” he murmured quietly.
“So are you.”
That almost made him smile.
The apartment felt impossibly small around the two of you. The warm yellow light above the kitchen sink made you look divine, coupled by the sound of your uneven breathing. The mattress dipped beneath your weight every time you shifted. Dex tilted his head slightly against the gun like he was accepting his fate. Accepting you.
That should have terrified him. Instead, all he could think about was how beautiful you looked above him— dress ruined, eyes glossy with tears you clearly didn’t want him seeing.
He had wanted you from the beginning, even if he hadn’t admitted it. But this was something else entirely. This hurt.
Dex tilted his head just enough to press a slow kiss against the inside of your thigh, and the sound you made nearly destroyed him.
His eyes flicked up immediately, watching your reaction with awe. He couldn’t believe he was allowed to touch you like this. Like he couldn’t believe you were reacting to him this way.
Dex kissed higher, and your hand flew to his hair immediately, fingers tangling there hard enough to pull a rough sound from his throat in return. He moaned against you.
The vibration of it shot through you so suddenly your back arched off the mattress, breath breaking apart, embarrassingly needy.
Dex's eyes kept fluttering shut every time you touched his hair, every time your thighs trembled around him, every time another helpless sound escaped you. He looked less like a man in control and more like a vampire feeding on his first prey. It was overwhelming.
Every time you twitched or gasped or tried to pull away from how intense it felt, he noticed immediately. He adjusted immediately, making you feel good mattered more than breathing. Like your pleasure mattered more to him than the gun pressed to his skull.
And fuck, did his tongue feel so fucking good. You could barely think straight. The room blurred at the edges, your thoughts dissolving one by one. Every nerve in your body felt lit raw, burning hotter and hotter every time he moaned pathetically against you again like he couldn’t help himself.
Dex sounded addicted to you already. He was too consumed by you and the sounds you were making now. They were small broken noises you clearly hated letting out but couldn’t stop anymore. Too consumed by the way your body kept reacting stronger and stronger beneath him despite your obvious attempts to stay composed.
Your hands tightened helplessly in his hair as another wave hit you, harder this time, your thighs trembling violently around his shoulders. “Dex—” you gasped brokenly.
He looked up instantly at the sound of his name. His eyes were blown wide. His lips swollen from kissing your skin. Hair ruined beneath your fingers.
Then he sank back down, a man eating his last meal. He needed it to be a feast.
Too much. It was too much.
Your body tightened all at once, every nerve pulling taut as pleasure crashed through you so hard it hurt. A sob tore from your throat before you could stop it, your entire body shaking as you finally came apart beneath him. Dex held onto you through all of it.
Your fingers slipped from his hair eventually, weak now, trembling as you tried desperately to catch your breath. Tears blurred your vision completely by the time the waves finally started easing enough for you to think again.
Dex pulled back immediately the second he realized you were crying harder.
“Hey,” he whispered instantly, breathing unevenly as he came back up toward you. His hands slid shakily to your waist, then higher, like he didn’t know where to touch to make sure you were okay. “Hey— look at me.”
You were still trembling beneath him, chest heaving as you struggled to come down from the drug-like high of the orgasm he gave you, the barrel of your gun on his temple now.
His thumb brushed shakily beneath your eye, catching tears against the pad of his finger. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, like the idea genuinely horrified him.
“Fuck—no,” you sputtered immediately, breath still wrecked as you stared at him through blurred vision. “Dex, fuck! How could you even say that?”
The concern on his face was so raw it physically ached to look at.
You were still shaking, your body trembling, your thighs dripping with spit and arousal like neither of you knew how to stop this anymore.
You could trace every conversation backward now, see all the moments you carefully guided him toward the information you needed while he sat across from you like some fucking idiot who came to the conclusion you actually liked him. Except…
You had fallen utterly in love with him.
Somewhere between the pastries and the wine and him writing down your coffee order in that stupid little notebook of his, the job had become real. Somewhere between him kissing you and him looking at you like your body wasn’t shameful or weaponized or ruined… you had stopped wanting this to end.
And now here he was. Kneeling between your thighs with your gun to his head and your taste still on his mouth, looking at you like he’d die grateful if you asked him to.
It was as if, somewhere deep down, Benjamin Poindexter truly believed that if loving you ended in death, then maybe that was simply the closest thing he would ever get to being loved at all. That thought almost made you vomit from grief.
Your breathing broke unevenly as you stared down at him.
He still had one hand on your thigh, so fucking gentle.
“I don’t understand you,” you admitted shakily.
A sad smile ghosted across his mouth at that. He was exhausted. “I don’t either.”
You let out this awful sound halfway between a laugh and a sob as tears spilled harder down your face. “Fuck, Dex,” you choked out, “you were supposed to be a job.”
“So were you.”
You swallowed hard enough it hurt. “I should kill you,” you whispered suddenly. The sentence sounded wrong coming out now, like it was collapsing under its own weight before it even reached his ears.
Dex lowered his forehead slightly more firmly against the barrel of the gun, offering himself to you. He readjusted it, making sure that if you shot him now, it would be painless, like he was going to do to you.
“Do it,” he whispered. “It’s what you were sent to do.” He sounded like he genuinely believed his life was worth less than your mission.
Your vision blurred hard. “I can’t,” you whispered.
He exhaled through his nose. “Yes, you can.”
“No!” You shouted out, panicked. “Don’t fucking… don’t even try to make this easier!”
When your finger jerked against the trigger, Dex still wouldn’t move. Fuck, he really trusted you to end it quick, did he? Even with doom pressed cold against his skin.
Your eyes squeezed shut hard enough to ache. You tried to force yourself back into training, back into discipline, back into the little girl who would get extra pieces of scrap food if she finished her mission well enough.
But all you could feel was him. His mouth on your skin. The way he’d looked at you while you fell apart beneath him. The way he kept loving you despite knowing exactly what you were. “I’m gonna…” you whispered shakily, but you couldn’t finish the sentence.
You didn’t want to kill him. And that was the first truly selfish thing you had ever wanted.
You pulled the trigger anyway, and the gun went off.
The sound exploded through the apartment violently enough to shake the walls, but the bullet slammed into the floor behind him instead. You had missed a point blank shot intentionally.
Your hand dropped. You stared at the damage of the splintering wood, breathing hard, horror rushing through your body all at once like ice water. “Oh my god,” you choked.
Dex thought he was dead.
For one longs excruciating second. He truly thought you had killed him. When he realised he wasn’t, he said your name immediately, climbing up the bed toward you “Hey, look at me.”
You genuinely couldn’t. Your entire body started shaking harder now, all the adrenaline and terror and grief finally catching up at once. “I can’t fucking do this,” you sobbed. “I can’t… I can’t—”
Dex cradled your face in both hands immediately.
“I’m a monster,” you whispered brokenly. “Dex, I’m a fucking monster.”
Dex said nothing. He only leaned forward slowly and kissed the tears from your cheeks one by one, like guilt itself had become holy.
And suddenly you understood something terrible about him: He does not love cautiously, nor rationally.
Every ounce of affection he gave came directly from the part of him that had been hurt the most. His soul had been beaten bloody and kept reaching anyway. The heart is a muscle, and his had torn itself apart trying to hold both of you afloat.
“You don’t get to say that like you’re different from me,” he whimpered against your skin.
Your breath hitched and that was when he kissed you like he was trying to pour every shattered piece of himself into your mouth before the world took it away again.
When his mouth parted against yours, you could still taste yourself on him. That made it more devastating. This ruined, trembling man was still carrying evidence of your pleasure on his tongue while he kissed you like you were worth saving.
Dex made a small sound against your mouth when you started crying harder, and suddenly his hands were everywhere, trying to hold you together physically because he didn’t know how else to do it.
His forehead dropped against yours when he pulled away. “We’re both monsters,” he whispered.
But it didn’t sound cruel. It sounded heartbreakingly close to love.
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