💭 . thoughts

💬 . requests

❕ . one-shots

dex knelt on the bed, wrists bound behind his back, the black silk blindfold already damp against his lashes. his eyes leaked steadily, soaking the fabric until it clung to his face and turned translucent in spots. every shallow breath made his chest hitch.

you straddled his hips and dragged your slick pussy along the length of his cock without taking him inside. the head nudged your entrance, then slid away again, leaving him throbbing and leaking against your folds. dex whimpered, hips jerking up in search of more, but you pinned him with your weight and kept the slow, teasing grind going.

"please," he whispered, voice cracking. fresh tears welled and spilled, darkening the blindfold further. "i need—fuck, i need to be inside you."

you answered by sinking down just enough for the crown of his cock to part your lips, then lifting off again before he could thrust. his whole body shuddered. another tear slipped free and soaked into the silk. you repeated the motion, barely an inch, then nothing, until his cock was shiny with your wetness and his thighs trembled from the effort of staying still.

"look at you," you murmured, rolling your hips so your clit rubbed over the head on every pass. "crying already and i haven't even let you fuck me yet."

dex's mouth fell open on a broken moan. his blindfold was soaked through now, rivulets running down his cheeks. every time you denied him full entry he sobbed softly, the sound wet and desperate. you kept the rhythm merciless—shallow dips, long drags, never enough—until his cock twitched violently against your pussy and he begged in a hoarse, tear-choked voice for permission to come.

you denied him again, grinding down hard enough to feel every desperate pulse, then lifted away completely, leaving him empty and dripping while fresh tears soaked the blindfold once more.

dex's voice cracked completely as the words tumbled out in a broken rush. "baby, please—please, i've been so good, haven't i? i've been your good boy, i've stayed still, i've taken everything you gave me. i need to cum so fucking bad, it hurts, please let me cum inside you. baby, baby, please—"

his chest heaved with every sob, shoulders shaking under the strain of his bound wrists. tears poured freely now, slipping from beneath the soaked blindfold and streaking down his flushed cheeks in hot, wet trails. his cock jerked helplessly against your folds, leaking steadily, the head flushed dark and swollen from the endless teasing.

you leaned down without a word, your tongue dragging slowly up one tear-streaked cheek. the salt hit your taste buds as you licked the wetness clean, then moved to the other side, lapping at the fresh tears that kept falling. dex choked on a gasp, his whole body going rigid beneath you. the sound that tore from his throat was raw and broken, half-sob, half-moan.

his cock pulsed violently against your slick pussy. he came without warning, thick ropes of cum spurting across your folds and lower belly in heavy, desperate spurts. his hips bucked uncontrollably, wrists straining against the silk ties as he sobbed through the release, tears still streaming down his face while you licked them away. every pulse of his orgasm left him shaking harder, his voice reduced to ragged whimpers of your name mixed with broken thank-yous.

you stayed straddling his hips as the last tremors rolled through him, your slick folds still pressed against his softening cock. dex's chest rose and fell in ragged gasps, his body slack beneath you, wrists limp in their silk bindings. fresh tears continued to slip from under the damp blindfold, tracing new paths down his flushed face.

"such a good boy," you murmured, voice low and warm. your fingers brushed damp strands of hair from his forehead. "you've been so good for me, dex. my perfect, obedient boy."

a broken sound escaped his throat, half-whimper, half-sob. you leaned in closer, your breath ghosting over his ear.

"and such a pretty boy," you continued, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. "those sad, wet cat eyes of yours... even blindfolded i can see how they look right now, all glassy and overflowing."

dex's lower lip trembled. more tears welled and spilled, soaking into the already drenched silk. his cock gave a weak twitch against you, sensitive and spent, as another shaky breath left him. you wiped a fresh tear from his cheek with your thumb, then brought it to your lips, tasting the salt.

the building wasn't the worst you'd seen, but it wasn't great either. the kind of place that had probably been nice once, decades ago, back when the brick still had color and the windows still had all their glass. now it sagged under its own age, gutters rusted through, the front step cracked down the middle like something had tried to split it open from underneath. the buzzer panel by the entrance had half its labels peeled away, names scratched out or faded to nothing, and the door itself stuck in the frame so badly you had to throw your shoulder into it just to get it open.

inside, the lobby was barely a lobby at all. a bank of mailboxes lined one wall, most of them dented, a few hanging open with nothing inside. the tile floor was cracked and yellowed, curling up at the edges where water damage had crept in and never left. somewhere above you a pipe knocked against the wall in a slow, uneven rhythm, and the whole building seemed to breathe around it, settling and creaking like it resented every person who still lived inside it.

the stairwell smelled like damp concrete and old cigarette smoke, that stale gray smell that soaked into plaster and never came out. underneath it, faint and greasy, something fried drifted from a door on the second floor, garlic and oil clinging to the stale air. the overhead lights buzzed and flickered as you climbed, one of them dying in slow pulses like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to give out completely. your footsteps echoed too loud against the concrete steps, scuffed and grimed dark down the center where years of feet had worn a path.

the walls carried their own history. water stains bloomed across the paint in brown continents, graffiti tucked into corners where no one had bothered to scrub it off, a long gouge in the drywall at the second floor landing like someone had dragged something heavy and sharp along it once and never patched the damage. you kept climbing anyway, past the second floor, past a door with three deadbolts and a welcome mat that said nothing you could read anymore, the letters worn to ghosts.

third floor, end of the hall.

the hallway stretched out longer than was necessary, lit by a single working bulb near the far end, the rest either dead or dying, buzzing faintly like dying flies caught behind glass. the carpet runner beneath your feet had gone thin and gray, its pattern long since walked into nothing, and doors lined either side, each one closed, each one silent, like the whole floor was holding its breath along with you.

you double checked the text from your mutual friend, the screen glaring bright in the dim hallway. 

‘eric. apartment 3c. he needs a roommate, you need a place. don't let him scare you off. he's harmless!’

you'd never met him, only heard of him, secondhand and vague. a mechanic, a street racer, someone mara mentioned in passing with a kind of fondness that never quite explained itself. and now, after weeks of crashing on other people's couches and running out of favors to call in, you were standing outside apartment 3c, a stranger about to knock on the door of a man who had no idea you existed.

the hallway stretched quiet around you, the dying bulb ticking faintly overhead. you swallowed, steeled yourself, shifted your bag higher on your shoulder, and lifted your hand, and then knocked. for a moment there was nothing. just the pipe somewhere behind the walls, still knocking its slow rhythm, indifferent to you.

then heavy footsteps, uneven on old floorboards. a lock clicking, then another. the door swung open, and there he was.

he was taller than you expected, broad shouldered, built like he belonged anywhere but here, anywhere but this dying building with its stuck doors and dead bulbs. black hair, uneven from what looked like a home cut gone wrong, stuck up at the crown like he'd been running his hands through it all day. tattoos bled from his sleeves, ink crawling up his throat, cutting sharp and dark against pale skin. his eyes were dark, piercing, and they locked onto you with a kind of frozen, barely functioning confusion, like his whole system had hit a wall it didn't know how to process.

his lips parted, then pressed shut again. his brows pulled together, processing.

"who the fuck are you?" his voice came out rough, low, like he hadn't used it in hours, maybe longer. he blinked once, twice, then went completely flat, some circuit behind his eyes shorting out entirely. his gaze drifted slightly unfocused, mouth parting like a system error had just fried whatever was left of his ability to compute. his hand stayed locked around the door handle, knuckles faintly tense, like he hadn't even registered he was still holding it.

the silence stretched long enough that you started wondering if you should just turn around, walk back down three flights of stairs, and figure out somewhere else to sleep tonight. then he blinked again, hard, like he was rebooting from the inside out.

"i'm looking for eric. eric draven?" you shifted your bag on your shoulder again, more out of nerves than necessity. "mara said you needed a roommate."

his eyes flicked down to the bag, then back up to your face, then somewhere over your shoulder, like he half expected someone else to be standing behind you, someone who made more sense. a joke, a prank, something, anything, that explained this.

"mara didn't mention you were—" he stopped himself short, jaw working like he was chewing on the rest of that sentence and deciding against swallowing it.

"a woman?" you offered, raising a brow.

"i was gonna say short." a beat. "but yeah. that too."

you almost laughed. almost. instead you just stood there under the one working light at the end of the hall while he stared at you like you'd stepped out of some other dimension entirely and landed, inexplicably, on his doorstep.

"so are you gonna let me in, or should i just set up camp out here?"

that seemed to snap something loose in him. he stepped back from the door, still holding it open, knuckles white against the frame like he needed something solid to anchor to. "right. yeah. sorry. come in."

stepping inside felt like stepping into an entirely different world from the hallway you'd just left. the apartment smelled like motor oil and old coffee, cigarette ash ground so deep into the carpet it had become part of the fabric itself. a couch sagged under a mountain of band tees and torn flannel, one arm patched with silver tape. tools scattered across a coffee table beside a stack of unopened mail, envelopes yellowing at the edges. a guitar leaned in the corner, strings dulled with a fine layer of dust, like it hadn't been touched in longer than he'd probably admit.

it wasn't much. the walls were bare except for a few water stains of its own, and the window at the far end let in a thin gray light that did nothing to make the place feel warmer. but it wasn't the hallway either, and after weeks of borrowed couches and worn out welcomes, it looked like something close to relief.

he shut the door behind you, and the click of the lock felt louder than it should have in the small space. you turned to find him still watching you, arms crossed now, tattoos shifting with the movement, ink crawling from his knuckles up to disappear beneath his collar.

"you got a name," he said, "or should i just keep calling you the woman in my apartment."

"it's on the lease paperwork mara sent you."

"i didn't read it."

"of course you didn't."

something flickered at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile, more like the ghost of one, uncertain if it was allowed to exist yet. "fair enough. so what is it?"

you told him. he repeated it back once, quiet, testing the shape of it in his mouth like it was a foreign language he was learning on the spot.

"eric." he said after, tapping his own chest, like you hadn't already known, like introductions were a formality he wasn't used to bothering with anymore.

"i know. mara covered that part."

"right." his gaze dropped again, taking in the bag slung over your shoulder, the exhaustion probably written plain across your face after a full day of hauling your life across the city in bags and boxes. something in his expression shifted, softened at the edges, the confusion giving way slowly to something quieter.

"guest room's a mess," he admitted. "wasn't expecting company. wasn't expecting—" he gestured vaguely at you, at the whole situation, at the fact that his new roommate had turned out to be someone who made him forget how words worked halfway through a sentence. "this."

"i can deal with mess."

"yeah." he stepped aside, finally, clearing the narrow path down the hall. "yeah, i bet you can."

and for the first time since he'd opened that door, the confusion in his eyes gave way to something almost like curiosity.

later that afternoon, eric took it upon himself to haul your boxes up from the curb without so much as asking if you wanted the help. you'd barely gotten the first bag off your shoulder before he was already brushing past you toward the street, rolling his sleeves up over the ink on his forearms like the whole task was already decided and there was no point discussing it.

you followed him down, half protesting, telling him you could manage your own things, that he didn't have to do this. he didn't answer, just grabbed the biggest box off the sidewalk, the one you'd been dreading most, packed with books and framed photos and anything else too fragile to trust to a duffel bag. he hefted it up against his chest like it weighed nothing at all, barely a grunt escaping him, and started back toward the building without a word.

you trailed after him, carrying what you could, watching the way he navigated the stairwell like he'd done it a thousand times, sidestepping the cracked step near the second floor landing without even glancing down, ducking his head slightly under the low pipe by the third floor door out of pure habit. three trips, then four, and each time he came back down he waved off your attempts to take something from his hands, nodding toward whatever was left instead, silently claiming the heavier load for himself before you could argue.

by the last trip, sweat had gathered at his temple, his shirt clinging slightly at the back, and he still didn't slow down. he set the final box inside the doorway of the guest room, the one he'd apologized for earlier, and straightened up, rolling one shoulder like it had started to ache somewhere deep in the joint. he glanced around at the small pile of your life now stacked against his walls, boxes and bags and the corner of a mirror poking out from bubble wrap, and something crossed his face, quiet, unreadable, like he was cataloguing the fact that this was real now. that you were real, and staying, and not some strange hallway hallucination he'd imagined into being.

"that everything?" he asked, wiping his palm against his jeans.

"that's everything." you looked at the boxes, then at him, faintly out of breath from the last flight of stairs. "you didn't have to carry all that."

"yeah, well." he shrugged, the motion loose, careless, like it cost him nothing to say. "didn't feel right letting you do it alone."

he didn't explain further than that, didn't seem to think it needed explaining, and turned back toward the hallway like the conversation was already finished in his head. you watched him go, the tattoos along his neck shifting with the movement of his shoulders, and something about the whole afternoon, the quiet effort of it, the total lack of complaint, settled into you slower than you expected it to.

he didn't get far before he stopped in the hallway, hand braced against the doorframe, looking back at the mess of boxes stacked against his wall like he was only now processing the full weight of what had happened. a woman lives here now. an actual woman with actual belongings, mirrors and picture frames and a rolled up rug leaning against his guest room wall, and something about seeing it all laid out like that seemed to catch him sideways all over again, same as it had on the doorstep.

he didn't say anything, just stood there a second too long, jaw working like his brain was still trying to reconcile the empty apartment he'd lived in alone for years with the one currently filling itself up around him. then he shook his head slightly, like he was physically dislodging the thought, and disappeared down the hall toward his room.

it kept happening after that, little moments where you'd catch him staring at something that shouldn't have warranted staring at all. a pair of your shoes by the door. a coffee mug that wasn't his sitting in the drying rack. your jacket slung over the back of a chair. he'd pause mid stride, eyes catching on the detail like it was foreign, like his apartment had quietly rearranged itself into something he didn't fully recognize yet, and then he'd blink and keep moving, never commenting on it, though you could tell it registered every single time.

one evening you came out of the shower to find him standing in the middle of the hallway just holding a bottle of shampoo, your shampoo, turning it over in his hands like it was some artifact he'd unearthed. he looked up when your door creaked, startled, like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have.

"this yours?" he asked, holding it up, entirely unnecessary given the flowers printed across the label and the fact that his own shower supplies consisted of a single bar of soap and nothing else.

"no, i just keep spare shampoo bottles around for fun." you crossed your arms, amused. "yes, it's mine. it fell off the shelf, i bet."

"yeah." he glanced at it again, then at you, then back at the bottle like he was still working through some larger equation. "just wasn't expecting it."

"it's shampoo, eric."

"i know it's shampoo." he set it back on the shelf, a little too carefully, like he wanted it to look untouched. "just weird. having stuff. that isn't mine. in the bathroom."

"you have a roommate now. that's usually how it works."

"yeah, i'm aware." he scratched at the back of his neck, tattoos shifting with the motion, and there was something almost boyish in the way he wouldn't quite meet your eyes, like the whole situation was still settling into him slower than he wanted it to. "just gonna take some getting used to."

it wasn't just the bathroom. it was the extra chair he'd pulled up to the kitchen table without thinking, then stared at like he didn't remember doing it. it was the way he'd start making one plate of food out of habit, then catch himself and make two instead, muttering something under his breath about needing to remember there were now two people who lived here. it was the pause, every single time, when he came home and saw the lights already on, when he heard movement in the kitchen before he even opened the door, some part of him still expecting the apartment to be empty the way it had been for years before you showed up.

you caught him once, standing in the living room doorway at nearly midnight, just watching you fold laundry on the couch with an expression that wasn't quite readable, somewhere between bewildered and something softer he didn't seem to have language for yet.

"you good?" you asked, folding a shirt without looking up.

"yeah." a beat. "just still weird. seeing someone else's stuff everywhere."

"you'll get used to it."

"yeah." he said it again, quieter this time, like he was convincing himself. "guess i will."

he didn't move from the doorway for another few seconds, watching you fold shirt after shirt like the domestic normalcy of it was still something his brain hadn't fully caught up to, some part of him still stuck on the moment he'd opened his door to a stranger and found his entire life quietly rearranged around her presence ever since.

one evening he came home late from the shop, grease still smudged along his jaw, exhaustion pulling at his shoulders, and found you asleep on the couch with a book open on your chest. he stood in the doorway for a long moment just looking at you, something soft and unguarded crossing his face before he caught himself, before he remembered he wasn't supposed to look at his roommate like that. he crossed the room quiet as he could manage, easing the book from your hands, setting it gently on the table, and paused there, close enough that his breath nearly stirred your hair, his fingers brushing your shoulder like he meant to wake you and then thought better of it.

you stirred anyway, blinking up at him through half sleep, and for a second neither of you moved, his hand still resting light against your shoulder, his eyes dark and unreadable in the low light, something caught there that looked a lot like want and a lot like fear all at once.

"you fell asleep out here," he said quietly, voice rough with something that wasn't just tiredness.

"guess i did." you didn't sit up right away, didn't put space between you, some quiet part of you unwilling to break whatever this was. "you're home late."

"yeah." he swallowed, throat working, and his thumb moved slightly against your shoulder, barely a motion at all, but you felt it everywhere. "didn't mean to wake you."

"you didn't." a pause, quiet, charged. "not really."

he held your gaze a moment longer, something flickering behind his eyes like he was deciding whether to say something he'd been holding back for weeks, and then he pulled his hand away, slow, reluctant, like it cost him more than he wanted to admit. he cleared his throat, straightened, put distance between you.

"you should get to bed. real bed, i mean." his voice had gone rougher, like he was fighting his way back to something steady. "couch'll wreck your back."

"probably right." you sat up slowly, and for a moment you were close enough that you could count the small scar above his eyebrow, close enough to notice the way his gaze dropped briefly to your mouth before he forced it away, jaw tight.

"night," he said, too quick, already stepping back toward the hall.

"night, eric."

he paused at the sound of his name in your voice, just for a second, shoulders tensing like the words had physically caught him, and then he kept walking, disappearing into his room without looking back. you sat there on the couch a while longer, heart beating a little too fast for a moment that had barely lasted a minute, replaying the warmth of his hand on your shoulder, the look in his eyes he hadn't quite managed to hide in time.

the whole apartment had gone soft and slow, and you hadn't bothered getting properly dressed since rolling out of bed. one of his old shirts he had given to you instead of throwing away, worn thin at the collar, hanging loose enough to nearly reach your thighs, and nothing else beneath it besides a plain pair of panties you hadn't thought twice about when you wandered out of your room for coffee.

eric was on the couch, phone pressed to his ear, mara's voice tinny and rapid on the other end about some part he needed to pick up from the shop before monday. he was mid sentence, something about brake pads, half distracted, feet kicked up on the coffee table, when you crossed into his line of sight on your way to the kitchen.

the sentence just stopped, not trailed off, not paused for effect. stopped, entirely, mid word, like someone had reached into his skull and yanked the plug straight out of the wall. his eyes tracked you the whole way across the room, slow and helpless, gaze catching on the hem of the shirt riding up slightly with every step, and whatever brake pad he'd been describing to mara evaporated from his mind completely.

"—eric?" mara's voice crackled through the speaker, tinny and questioning. "eric, you still there?"

he didn't answer. his jaw had gone slack, phone still held loosely against his ear, eyes fixed on you with an expression that had abandoned all pretense of subtlety, somewhere between stunned and something far less innocent. you reached the kitchen counter, entirely unaware for a few seconds, pouring coffee like it was any other sunday morning, and it was the clink of the mug against the counter that finally seemed to reboot something in him.

"eric. hello?" mara's voice rose, sharp now, clearly repeating herself for the third time.

"—yeah. yeah, sorry, i'm here." his voice came out rough, distracted, eyes still glued to you even as he tried to drag his attention back to the phone. "say that again?"

you glanced over your shoulder then, catching the tail end of his stare before he could fully redirect it, and the way he flinched, just slightly, like he'd been caught with his hand somewhere it shouldn't be, told you everything you needed to know. his eyes darted away too fast, focusing hard on the ceiling, the wall, anything that wasn't you standing there in his shirt with your legs bare and your hair still mussed from sleep.

"brake pads," mara repeated, flat, clearly unimpressed by whatever silence had swallowed him whole. "the ones i've been asking about for ten minutes."

"right. brake pads. i got it." he cleared his throat, low, and shifted on the couch like he was suddenly uncomfortable in his own skin, dragging a hand down his face. "i'll swing by tomorrow."

you took your coffee and leaned against the counter, watching him with poorly hidden amusement now, and the second his gaze flicked back toward you, helpless, drawn like a magnet, he caught you watching him watch you, and something like actual panic crossed his face.

"gotta go, mara." he ended the call before she could respond, phone dropping onto the cushion beside him, and he sat there a second just staring at you, jaw tight, throat working like he was trying to remember how words functioned.

"everything okay?" you asked, entirely too innocent, taking a slow sip of coffee.

"fine." his voice cracked slightly on the word, and he cleared his throat again, sitting up straighter like that might help. "you, uh. you good? need anything?"

"nope. just getting coffee."

"right." he nodded, too many times, eyes flicking down and then snapping back up like he'd caught himself doing something forbidden. "cool. that's, uh. that's good."

you took your time walking back toward your room, entirely too aware now of the way his eyes tracked your every movement, the shirt shifting against your thighs with each step, and right before you disappeared down the hall you glanced back to find him still frozen on the couch, staring, phone forgotten beside him, looking like a man who had just witnessed something close to godliness.

the invite came from one of eric's old friends, some guy named dax who ran with the racing crowd, a weekend thing at a beach house a couple hours out of the city. everyone was going, mara included, and mara had spent a solid ten minutes on the phone trying to convince eric to come along, promising him it would be good for him, that he never left the garage or the apartment anymore, that he needed the sun on his skin for once instead of grease.

he'd turned her down flat, said he had a car to finish by monday, said the beach wasn't really his scene anyway, and that had been that. you'd watched the whole exchange from the kitchen table, quietly amused, already deciding you were going regardless of whether he came or not.

you spent the morning getting ready anyway, some petty, half formed idea taking shape in the back of your mind, and by the time you called his name down the hall, you already knew exactly what you were doing.

"eric? can you come here a sec?"

a pause, then the creak of the couch, footsteps approaching slow and unsuspecting. "yeah, what's—"

he opened the door mid sentence and the rest of it just died somewhere in his throat.

you stood in front of the floor length mirror he'd put together for you weeks ago, the one he'd complained about for a solid hour while assembling, still in your bikini, turning slightly to check the tie at your hip, entirely unbothered by his presence in the doorway. the sunlight through the window caught along your skin, and eric stood frozen there, hand still braced on the doorframe, throat working visibly as he swallowed whatever had gathered in his mouth.

"what—" his voice cracked, and he cleared it, trying again, eyes darting anywhere except where they clearly wanted to land. "what do you want?"

you caught his gaze in the mirror rather than turning around, a small, deliberate smile tugging at your mouth. "put sunblock on me, please?"

his jaw worked, some visible war happening behind his eyes between walking away entirely and the fact that his feet hadn't moved an inch. "you're not even going."

"i am, actually. just because you're being stubborn doesn't mean i'm staying inside all weekend."

"i'm not being stubborn, i have work—"

"eric." you held up the bottle of sunscreen, still watching him through the mirror, patient, unbothered, entirely too aware of the effect you were having on him. "please?"

he stood there a moment longer, jaw tight, something in his expression caught between resistance and complete surrender, and then, slow, like it cost him every ounce of dignity he had left, he crossed the room and took the bottle from your hand. his fingers brushed yours in the exchange, and you felt the small hitch in his breath even from where you stood.

"turn around," he said, voice rougher now, lower.

you did, presenting your back to him, watching him in the mirror as he squeezed the sunscreen into his palm, hands not quite steady. he hesitated a second before touching you, like he was bracing himself for something, and then his palms landed against your shoulders, warm and careful, spreading the sunscreen slow across your skin.

his touch lingered longer than necessary at your shoulders, sliding down along your back with a kind of deliberate care that betrayed exactly how affected he was, fingers pressing gentle against your spine, tracing lower before catching himself and pulling back slightly. you watched his face in the mirror the entire time, the tight concentration in his jaw, the way his eyes kept dropping despite clearly trying not to let them.

"you're real quiet," you said softly, watching him through the mirror.

"trying not to say something stupid." his hands paused at your lower back, thumbs pressing light against your skin. "not doing a great job of it."

"say it anyway."

he exhaled, slow, like the words were dragged out of him against his will. "you're doing this on purpose."

"doing what?"

"this." his hand gestured vaguely, encompassing you, the mirror, the bikini, the entire situation he clearly felt very ambushed by. "the bikini. the mirror. all of it."

you turned slightly, just enough to catch his eyes directly instead of through the reflection, an easy, knowing smile playing at your mouth. "maybe."

his gaze dropped to your mouth for half a second before he forced it back up, jaw tight, knuckles nearly white where his hand still rested against your waist. "you're gonna be the death of me. you know that?"

"probably." you turned back toward the mirror, breaking the moment just enough to let him breathe, though the air between you stayed thick, charged, neither of you quite ready to name what exactly was happening here. "you missed a spot."

he huffed out something that was almost a laugh, almost a groan, and reached for the sunscreen again, hands less steady than before.

his hands moved slow across your shoulders, spreading the sunscreen with more attention than the task really required, and it was impossible not to notice the size difference between you the longer he stood there. his palm alone nearly spanned the width of your shoulder, fingers long enough to press into the muscle on either side, and when he dug his thumbs into a tight spot near your neck, you felt the full weight of how much bigger he was compared to you, how easily his hands could span places yours never could.

you let out a soft sound before you could stop it, some quiet, involuntary mewl as his thumbs worked into the ache sitting there from sleeping wrong the night before, and you felt him go still behind you for half a second, breath catching audibly.

"there?" he asked, voice lower now, rougher, thumb pressing again into the same spot like he wanted to hear that sound a second time.

"right there." your eyes fluttered slightly, head tilting back almost on instinct, and it landed nearly against his chest before you caught yourself, the solid warmth of him grounding in a way that made your whole body want to lean back further instead of correcting course.

his hands stilled again, and in the mirror you caught the way his gaze dropped to where your head rested so close to him, the two of you framed together in the reflection, your smaller frame nearly swallowed against the size of him, and something crossed his face, quiet and unguarded, like he was seeing the two of you the way anyone else might see you. easy. natural. like you fit there.

his fingers flexed slightly against your shoulders, and beneath his palms he could feel the small give of muscle, the softness of your skin warm from the sun through the window, and for a moment neither of you moved, caught in the reflection of something that felt a lot bigger than sunscreen and beach trips.

"fuck it," he muttered, almost to himself, like the words had snuck out before he'd fully decided on them.

you blinked, glancing at him through the mirror. "what?"

"i'm coming." he said it firmer the second time, like convincing himself as much as you, hands finally pulling back from your shoulders like he'd only just remembered they were there. "beach house. i'm coming."

you turned fully then, eyebrows raised, a laugh already building in your throat. "we're leaving in ten minutes, eric."

"i know what i said."

"you have to shower. and pack. and you're covered in—" you gestured vaguely at the grease still faintly visible along his forearm from earlier in the shop. "that."

"i'm aware." he was already moving, already stepping back out of your room like the decision had physically propelled him into motion, some renewed energy in his stride that hadn't been there a minute ago. "ten minutes."

"eric, there's no way you're—"

"ten minutes," he called again, voice already receding down the hall, and a second later you heard his door slam shut, followed almost immediately by the sound of frantic drawers opening, fabric being yanked out, the unmistakable chaos of a man trying to pack an entire weekend bag in record time purely out of spite for his own better judgment.

you stood there a moment, still in your bikini, sunscreen only half finished, laughing quietly to yourself at the absolute turnaround, at the fact that ten minutes ago he'd sworn up and down he had work to do, and now he was somewhere down the hall swearing at himself while hunting for a swimsuit he probably didn't even own.

the drive out to the beach house passed in a blur of open windows and mara's music blasting too loud from the front seat, eric quiet beside you the whole way, one arm slung along the back of your seat like it belonged there, like he hadn't spent ten frantic minutes swearing at a duffel bag not even an hour earlier.

by the time you arrived, the sun had climbed high and lazy over the water, the beach house sprawling out ahead of you, sandy paths leading down toward the shoreline where a few of dax's friends had already set up towels and a cooler. everyone spilled out of the cars in a scramble of bags and sunglasses, and mara looped her arm through yours the second your feet hit the gravel, already talking about which spot on the sand looked best.

eric hung back near the trunk, hauling bags out with the same silent efficiency he'd shown moving your boxes weeks ago, and it wasn't until you were all inside, dropping things onto the nearest surface, that he finally reached for the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head in one easy motion.

you weren't prepared for it.

you'd seen glimpses before, the ink crawling up his neck, the shapes disappearing beneath his collar, but nothing had prepared you for the full picture laid bare in the afternoon light. tattoos covered nearly every inch of him, a chaotic, beautiful mess of ink stretched across broad shoulders and down defined arms, over a chest and stomach cut with lean, hard muscle, stars and eyes and things you couldn't fully make sense of all layered over each other like years of stories written into his skin. he was taller than you'd let yourself register before, broader, the kind of built that came from actual labor rather than a gym, and he stood there completely unbothered by his own effect, rolling one shoulder like he was working out a knot from the drive.

your hand found mara's bare shoulder before you even realized you were reaching for something to steady yourself against, fingers gripping just slightly too hard.

"you good?" mara asked, glancing at you sideways, an amused little smile already tugging at her mouth like she knew exactly why you'd gone quiet.

"mhm." your eyes hadn't left eric, who was now crouched over one of the bags, entirely oblivious, or entirely pretending to be, to the fact that you were staring at him like you'd never seen a shirtless man in your life. "yep. great."

"you sure? you're kind of digging into my shoulder there."

"sorry." you loosened your grip, though your eyes still hadn't managed to look anywhere else. "he's just. bigger than i thought."

mara laughed under her breath, following your gaze toward eric with clear, knowing delight. "yeah, he tends to have that effect. give it a minute, you'll get used to it."

"i don't think i will."

eric straightened then, catching the tail end of your stare before you could redirect it, and something shifted in his expression, a slow, knowing smirk pulling at his mouth like he'd caught you red handed and had every intention of enjoying it.

"you good over there?" he called, voice carrying easy across the room, entirely too pleased with himself.

"fine," you managed, tearing your eyes away at last, though the heat crawling up your neck told an entirely different story. "just fine."

"sure you are." he grabbed a towel off the counter, slinging it over one shoulder, tattoos shifting with the movement, and made his way toward the door leading down to the sand, glancing back at you one last time with that same maddening smirk still in place. "coming?"

it took you a second too long to answer, mara still snickering quietly beside you, and by the time you found your voice, he'd already disappeared onto the sand, leaving you standing there trying to remember how your legs worked.

the group made its way down to the pool at the back of the house not long after, dax and a couple of his friends already cannonballing in with more enthusiasm than grace, mara trailing behind with a drink in each hand, laughing at something someone said. you peeled off your cover up at the edge of the water, and when you glanced back once, you caught eric watching, towel still slung over his shoulder, dark eyes tracking your every movement with an intensity he didn't bother hiding this time.

you slipped into the pool slowly, letting the water settle cool around your shoulders, and when you surfaced and pushed your hair back, you found him still watching, jaw tight, towel now abandoned on a lounge chair like he'd forgotten he was holding it. you grinned, catching him fully in the act, and he had the decency to look almost sheepish for half a second before that easy smirk slid back into place, like being caught didn't bother him nearly as much as it should.

"you gonna get in, or just stand there," you called, treading water, entirely too pleased with yourself.

"thinking about it."

"thinking real hard, from the look of it."

he huffed, shaking his head, but he was already moving toward the edge, and the moment he dropped into the water beside you, the pool seemed to shrink around his size, water displacing in a wave that had you laughing as you pushed back from him.

mara's voice cut through the noise a few minutes later, loud and delighted, clearly hatching some plan of her own. "okay, we're doing chicken. teams, let's go."

a chorus of groans and excited shouting followed, dax already hoisting one of his friends up onto his shoulders with more confidence than his balance probably deserved, and mara turned toward you and eric with a look that left absolutely no room for argument.

"you two. obviously."

"obviously," eric repeated, dry, though there was something warm underneath it, some anticipation he wasn't bothering to hide.

"i haven't agreed to anything," you said, though you were already moving closer to him through the water, some part of you fully aware that protest was pointless at this stage.

"too late. mara's declared it." eric turned, crouching slightly in the water, broad shoulders angled toward you, tattoos rippling with the motion beneath the surface. "come on. up you get."

"if you drop me—"

"i'm not gonna drop you." he reached for you, hands sure and steady at your waist, easily hoisting you up onto his shoulders like you weighed nothing at all, and you grabbed at his head for balance, laughing despite yourself as the water settled around his chest below you.

it took a second to get comfortable up there, your thighs settling either side of his neck, his hands coming up automatically to brace against your knees like it was second nature to him, like he'd done this a hundred times before instead of never. once you'd steadied, though, his hands didn't stay still. they drifted, slow and unthinking, down along the outside of your calves, thumbs tracing absent circles against your skin like he wasn't even aware he was doing it, too focused on the coming fight to notice his own fingers wandering.

"comfortable?" he asked, voice tilted up toward you, one hand braced now against your thigh, the other still absently mapping the curve of your calf.

"surprisingly, yes." you settled your hands into his damp hair for balance, fingers curling slightly against his scalp, and felt him go still for half a beat beneath you.

across the pool, dax's friend was already hooting, arms raised, clearly ready for battle, and mara stood poolside with both hands cupped around her mouth like a referee about to start a real match.

"first team to go under loses! ready—"

"we're not losing," eric said, low, just for you, tilting his head back slightly to catch your eye, his fingers pressing gentle into the arch of your foot where it rested against his chest, like he needed something to ground himself in the middle of everything. "you hear me? we're not losing."

"that's a lot of confidence for a man who's about to get dunked."

"watch me."

"go!" mara shouted, and the pool erupted into chaos, water splashing everywhere as the two teams collided.

eric moved steadier than you expected, hips braced low against the pull of the water, one hand splayed wide against your thigh to keep you locked in place while the other kept finding new places to settle, your ankle, the back of your knee, small points of contact that had nothing to do with keeping you balanced. every time he shifted his footing to dodge dax's lunge, his grip would tighten, then loosen, then wander again, fingers trailing absent along your skin like his hands had a mind entirely separate from the fight happening around him.

you barely registered your opponent's hands grabbing for your shoulders, too distracted by the warmth of eric's palm dragging slow against the back of your thigh as he repositioned, and you tugged lightly at his hair for balance, feeling the low sound that left him at the touch, something caught between a laugh and a groan.

"you're supposed to be fighting," he said, voice rough, tilting his head back again.

"you're supposed to be holding still."

"can't help it." his hand slid again, absent, unhurried, along your calf. "you keep moving."

"eric."

"what." he grinned up at you, entirely too pleased with himself, fingers pressing once more into the arch of your foot like he simply couldn't help himself.

the fight ended a moment later in a tangle of splashing limbs, your opponent finally toppling backward off her partner's shoulders with a shriek, and mara declared victory with both arms thrown in the air, but you barely heard it, too aware of eric's hands still resting warm against your legs, his thumb still moving slow against your skin like the game had ended and he'd simply forgotten to stop.

he looked up at you and grinned, squeezing your calf, and you felt yourself swoon a little, some helpless heat spreading through your chest at the sheer easy confidence of it, at the way his hand lingered there like he had every right to touch you like that.

the win got them cheers and splashing praise from the rest of the group, but you barely registered any of it, too busy trying to remember how to breathe normally with his hand still curled warm around your leg.

dinner came and went in a blur after that, plates passed around a long table on the back deck, string lights strung overhead, laughter and stories told too loud over the sound of the waves somewhere beyond the dunes. eric sat close beside you the entire meal, his knee brushing yours more than once beneath the table, neither of them mentioning it, both of them entirely aware.

by the time the night wound down, one by one your friends peeled off toward bed, dax first, then mara not long after, yawning behind her hand and shooting you both a knowing look before disappearing inside that neither of you acknowledged. the pool lights dimmed low, the yard quiet except for the soft hum of the jacuzzi jets and the distant hush of the ocean beyond the fence.

you slipped into the warm water first, sighing as the heat worked into muscles still sore from the pool games earlier, and eric followed a moment later, settling in across from you, close enough that his knee brushed yours beneath the surface.

for a while neither of you said much, the quiet comfortable in a way it hadn't always been between you, the steam curling up around you both in the cool night air. his eyes kept finding you anyway, lingering longer than casual conversation really allowed, and you found yourself doing the same, the two of you caught in some slow, wordless orbit neither of you seemed inclined to break.

"good day?" you said eventually, breaking the silence, voice soft.

"yeah." his gaze dropped briefly to the water between you, then back up, dark and unreadable in the low light. "good day."

the space between you had shrunk without either of you quite deciding to close it, his knee pressed fully against yours now beneath the water, his arm stretched along the edge of the jacuzzi behind you, not quite touching, but close enough that you could feel the heat of him along your shoulder.

"you're staring." you murmured, though you made no move to look away yourself.

"yeah." he didn't deny it, didn't even pretend to. "kind of hard not to."

your breath caught slightly at that, at the low, honest weight in his voice, and when you met his eyes properly this time, there was nothing guarded left in them at all, just something open and searching, waiting to see what you'd do with it.

"eric—"

"i know." his voice had gone rough, quiet, like he was fighting something back even as he said it. "i know what this is. i've known for a while."

the water lapped gentle against the both of you, the space between your mouths shrinking by inches neither of you were tracking anymore, his hand finally leaving the edge of the jacuzzi to rest warm against your waist beneath the surface, thumb tracing slow against your hip.

"so what are we gonna do about it?" you asked, barely above a whisper.

his eyes dropped to your mouth, lingering there long enough to answer the question before he even spoke, and when he finally looked back up at you, something had settled into his expression, certain, unhurried, like he'd made peace with whatever came next.

"i think," he said slowly, closing the last of the distance between you, "we've waited long enough."

steam curls thick around the jacuzzi as eric pulls you through the water, his broad chest glistening under the low lights. he sinks onto the submerged bench and drags you onto his lap, thighs spreading wide over his. his cock presses hot and heavy against your belly through the thin fabric of his trunks, already thick and twitching.

"fuck, look at you," he rasps, voice low and rough. his hands grip your hips, thumbs stroking the curve of your waist. "been wanting this since the first night you walked through that door."

he leans in and kisses your neck, open-mouthed and hungry. teeth graze your pulse, tongue following the line of your throat. one hand slides down between your legs, fingers parting your folds under the water. two thick digits push inside you without warning, curling deep. you gasp, hips jerking. eric groans against your skin.

"so fucking wet already. christ." he pumps his fingers slow and deliberate, knuckles brushing your entrance with every thrust. his mouth stays on your neck, sucking hard enough to leave marks, biting just shy of breaking skin. "that's it, baby. take my fingers. such a good girl for me."

your hand slips under the waistband of his trunks, fingers wrapping around his thick cock. you stroke him in time with the thrust of his fingers inside you, palm sliding over the head, thumb teasing the slit. eric's hips buck up into your fist. he buries his face in your neck, muffling his groans against your skin while you moan into his ear, mewling and whining.

"please," you beg, voice shaking. "don't stop. fingers feel so good. need more."

eric adds a third finger, stretching you wider, scissoring inside your cunt. the water sloshes around you both. his free hand cups your breast, thumb flicking your nipple until it pebbles tight. you jerk him faster, grip tightening as he leaks pre-cum over your fingers.

"ride them," he orders into your neck, voice strained and muffled. "show me how bad you need it. fuck, your hand feels so good on my cock."

you obey, rolling your hips, fucking yourself on his fingers while your fist works his shaft. eric curls those fingers just right, hitting that spot that makes your thighs shake. praise spills from him between kisses to your throat.

"fuck, you're perfect. so tight around my hand. gonna make you cum so hard on my fingers. good girl. my good fucking girl."

your moans grow louder in his ear, desperate little whines and pleas tumbling out as you stroke him faster. eric's teeth sink into your neck, muffling his own sounds while his fingers pump relentlessly. your walls flutter around him, orgasm building fast.

"please, eric," you beg, voice cracking. "make me cum. need it so bad."

his thumb finds your clit, rubbing tight circles while his fingers thrust deep. your hand jerks him harder, twisting on the upstroke. eric groans into your neck, hips stuttering as you both edge closer. "cum for me, baby. let me feel this pretty pussy squeeze my fingers. good girl. so fucking good."

your orgasm crashes over you, cunt pulsing around his fingers, moans spilling into his ear as you mewling and whining. eric follows right after, cock throbbing in your fist as he spills hot cum over your hand under the water, face still buried in your neck.

then you're giggling into his ear, breath hot against his skin. "is your cock pierced?"

eric groans, low and guttural, and his head falls back against the jacuzzi with a heavy thunk. his chest heaves, fingers still buried inside you as he catches his breath. "fuck, baby... see for yourself."

you shift on his lap, lifting just enough to tug his trunks lower. his cock springs free under the water, thick and flushed, and there it is—a thick silver prince albert piercing gleaming through the head, catching the light. your fingers trace over it, feeling the cool metal against his hot skin. eric watches you through half-lidded eyes, jaw tight, hips twitching as your hand explores the piercing, thumb circling the ring while your other hand keeps stroking his shaft.

"shit," he mutters into your neck, voice wrecked. his fingers curl inside you again, pumping slow and deep, thumb still working your clit. "feel that? all for you. been thinking about this since you got here."

you keep giggling softly, stroking him with both hands now, one focused on the piercing, tugging gently at the ring. eric's groans turn into muffled sounds against your throat, his free hand gripping your ass, spreading you wider as his fingers thrust harder. water splashes around you, your moans and whines filling his ear while he buries himself in your neck, body shaking under your touch.

you both dissolve into giggles, the sound light and breathless as the high fades. your bodies still connected, his cock softening inside you with the prince albert ring resting warm against your walls.

eric's chest shakes under your palm as he laughs, muffled at first until you ease your hand away. "fuck," he says, voice low and rough, "i can't wait to do that at home. just you and me, no one around to hear how loud we get."

you wrap your arms around his shoulders, pulling close. he shifts beneath you, muscles flexing as he stands in one smooth motion, lifting you both up and out of the jacuzzi. water cascades off your skin, dripping onto the tiles. his hands stay firm under your thighs, keeping you wrapped around him as he steps out, the cool air hitting your wet bodies. his cock slips free with a wet sound, the prince albert catching one last time before he sets you down gently on the edge, still holding you close.

beau arlen lay sprawled on his back in the guest bedroom bed, the thin sheet barely covering his hips. his breathing was deep and even in sleep. you slipped inside, the door clicking shut behind you, and crept to the foot of the bed. the room smelled like him; soap, faint cologne, and warm skin.

you lifted the sheet slowly and crawled beneath it. his cock lay soft and heavy against his thigh. you leaned in, pressing your nose to the base first, inhaling the rich, musky scent of him. then you gave the head the softest kitten lick, just the tip of your tongue tracing the slit. another lick followed, slow and delicate, tasting the salt already beading there. you kept going with those light, teasing strokes, feeling him twitch and start to swell against your lips.

beau stirred. a low groan rumbled out of his chest. his hips shifted. another moan followed, deeper this time, as his cock hardened fully under your tongue. the sheet rustled when he lifted it. his eyes opened, heavy-lidded, and he looked down to see you between his legs, mouth wrapped around him.

“fuck, pretty girl,” he rasped, voice still rough with sleep. “you having fun down there? choking on this old man’s cock?”

you hummed around his length, the vibration making his thighs tense. you didn’t stop. you kept sucking, taking him deeper, your tongue swirling over the head with every slow bob of your head. beau’s hand slid into your hair, not pushing, just resting there, fingers tightening when you swallowed around him.

“jesus,” he breathed, watching you with dark, hungry eyes. “that’s it, baby. keep going just like that.”

beau’s gaze dropped lower, the corner of his mouth curving into a lazy, knowing smirk. “bet your pretty panties are all wet, yeah?” his voice stayed low and rough. “come here. let me see, baby.”

you crawled up his body on shaky arms, leaning in for a kiss, but his hands caught your hips instead. he dragged you forward without warning, pulling you straight over his face until your knees settled on either side of his head. the thin cotton of your panties clung to your folds, soaked through and nearly transparent, the dark patch spreading wider as you hovered above him.

beau groaned at the sight. he hooked one finger under the crotch of your panties and tugged them aside, exposing your slick pussy. his tongue dragged a slow, heavy stripe from your entrance to your clit, tasting how wet you already were. you gasped, hips jerking, but his grip tightened, holding you down so you had no choice but to grind against his mouth.

a broken whine slipped out of you. beau’s free hand slid up your stomach, over your chest, until his palm covered your mouth completely. his voice vibrated right against your clit as he spoke into your dripping cunt.

“don’t be too loud, sweetie. atta girl. be nice and quiet for me. you can do that, can’t you, pretty girl?”

his tongue pushed inside you, fucking you with slow, deliberate strokes while his nose pressed against your clit. every time another needy sound tried to escape, his hand pressed firmer over your lips, muffling you. your thighs trembled around his head, cotton panties stretched to the side, soaked and useless as he licked and sucked at your pussy like he had all night to keep you right there.

beau’s tongue kept working between your legs, slow and deliberate, when you twisted around on his face. your knees stayed planted on either side of his head while you stretched forward, lining your mouth up with his cock. the second your lips wrapped around the thick head, he groaned right into your soaked pussy, the vibration shooting straight through you.

you sank lower, taking more of him, sucking wet and eager while your hips rocked down against his mouth. his tongue pushed deeper, licking broad stripes through your folds before circling your clit again. every time you moaned around his shaft, the sound came out muffled and broken, your throat vibrating against him.

beau’s hands gripped your ass, spreading you wider so he could bury his face completely. one palm slid up your spine and pressed between your shoulder blades, keeping you pinned down on his cock. your soft cotton panties stayed shoved to the side, soaked and clinging to one thigh as you humped his tongue, grinding harder every time he sucked on your clit.

you bobbed your head faster, drool running down his length while you tried to stay quiet. his cock filled your mouth, hot and heavy, twitching against your tongue with every sloppy suck. beau muttered into your dripping cunt, voice low and rough, “that’s it, baby. keep sucking. don’t stop.”

your thighs shook around his head. you kept riding his face, hips rolling in messy circles while you choked yourself on his cock, the wet sounds of your mouth mixing with the filthy noises coming from between your legs. you can't help but clench around his tongue when he finally cums in your mouth, hips thrusting into your warm, wet mouth.

finally, you both slow down and let out breathless laughs into the silence of the sex scented room.

leon hangs suspended in the dim light, wrists bound tight above his head, ankles lashed to the chair legs so his thighs spread wide. his tactical pants lie in a torn heap on the floor, leaving him exposed and vulnerable. you stand over him in those sharp, glossy high heels, the pointed toe already nudging the underside of his balls.

"look at you," you murmur, voice low and mocking. "the big government agent, stripped and spread for a heel." you press the tip harder, rolling his balls against the leather. leon’s breath hitches, cock twitching despite himself. a bead of precum wells at the slit and you smear it across the leather with a slow drag.

he tries to close his thighs, but the ropes hold him open. you slide the heel upward, tracing the thick vein along the underside of his shaft until the point rests right under the head. leon’s hips jerk involuntarily, chasing the contact. you laugh softly and pull away, letting the cool air replace the pressure.

"pathetic," you say, tapping the heel against his inner thigh in sharp little strikes that leave faint red marks. "already leaking and i’ve barely touched you." you coo as you bring the shoe back to his cock, pressing the arch flat against the length and rocking it slowly, grinding the smooth leather over sensitive skin. leon’s head falls back, a broken sound escaping his throat.

you lift your foot again, this time resting the stiletto point directly on his frenulum. the slightest increase in pressure makes his cock jump and throb. "stay still," you order. leon swallows hard, muscles trembling with the effort not to thrust. you reward the obedience by sliding the heel down and pressing the ball of your foot against his balls again, rolling them with deliberate, humiliating pressure.

precum drips steadily now, trailing down his shaft and onto the leather. you drag the heel through the mess, smearing it across his cock before lifting the shoe to his face. "clean it," you command. leon’s tongue flicks out, licking the sticky fluid from the glossy surface while his cock pulses untouched between his spread thighs.

you lower your foot once more, this time pressing the pointed toe against his hole, teasing the rim without pushing in. leon whines, hips trying to rock forward, but the ropes keep him exactly where you want him. you circle the entrance with the heel, watching every twitch and shudder that runs through the former agent’s body.

"such a needy little slut," you taunt, voice dripping with contempt and satisfaction. "getting hard from being stepped on." you press harder, the tip threatening to breach him, and leon’s cock jerks hard, another spurt of precum adding to the mess on his stomach. you keep him there, balanced on the edge, heel poised and ready, while he gasps and strains against his bonds, completely at your mercy.

you press the cum-slick heel harder against leon’s twitching cock, smearing the sticky mess along his shaft in slow, deliberate strokes. the glossy leather drags over the overstimulated head, forcing another helpless spurt of precum to mix with the drying cum already coating it. leon’s thighs tremble in their bonds, every muscle locked tight as you grind the filthy heel up and down his length without mercy.

"look how sensitive you are now," you murmur, voice thick with cruel amusement. you angle the shoe so the pointed toe nudges beneath the swollen head, then drag it firmly across the frenulum. leon’s whole body jerks, a broken whine tearing from his throat. his cock throbs visibly, pulsing against the leather with every pass.

you keep the pressure steady, rubbing the cum-covered heel over every inch until his shaft glistens with the mixture of his own release and fresh precum. each stroke makes him gasp and twitch harder, hips trying to buck away from the overwhelming sensation even as his cock leaks more. the ropes creak as he strains, but he stays spread open exactly as you want him.

when the heel is thoroughly coated again, you lift it to his flushed face. "open," you order. leon’s lips part obediently, tongue darting out to lick the thick, salty mess from the glossy surface. you watch him lap at his own cum, cheeks burning with humiliation while his overstimulated cock continues to drip untouched between his spread thighs.

there is a pair of black pointed shoes lying on your floor. they were shiny a few hours ago, but now it is muted by the blood covering the soles, and there is a flat cap in his hand.

you stand in the doorway of your apartment and dare not move. the orange light from the street outside is coming through the smashed window and falling across the floor in long broken shapes, and the cold that comes with it lifts the edge of the curtain and drops it and lifts it again. there is glass scattered across the floor and a broken lock is hanging off the doorframe by a single screw with your beloved candlesticks lying in two pieces near the kitchen with something dark coating the broken end. 

but, you know those shoes, because you watched them cross your reception area four hours ago, watched the man wearing them walk toward your desk with his flat cap in his hand and his wife's empty food bag tucked under his arm, and the shoes were shiny then, properly shiny. now they are turned slightly inward on your floor with the blood dark and matte on the soles and his flat cap is held between two stiff, slightly white fingers, his coat is still buttoned all the way up, every button right to the collar. 

there is a smell, something sickly sweet and metallic sitting underneath the warm, lived in smell of your apartment. your coat is still on the hook and last night's mug on the counter hasn't been touched, nothing splattered with blood, glass or grime like the rest of your apartment. but it doesnt feel like yours anymore.

"oh god." it comes out of you before you have decided to make a sound, barely a voice at all, more like a startled gasp than anything real. 

"oh god– oh fuck. mr. chen–" your feet are moving and you take small stumbling steps forward into the apartment, the glass crunching under your shoes, your hands coming up in front of you, shaking so badly you can see them trembling in your own peripheral vision, reaching toward him without knowing what you will do when you get there. you take another step and the glass shifts under your foot before you drop down to your knees, the blood soaking into your clothes and skin, smearing the blood further and leaving two clean tracks to his broken, and bruised body. something in your chest does something enormous and terrible and primal, the sound that comes out of your is not a scream or a sob but something low and broken.

thick arms suddenly encase your waist, forearms pressing beneath the curve of your breasts as a man lifts your limp body up from the floor by half an inch, and the scream that tears out of your is full and raw and enormous in the small apartment, nothing like the broken sound from before.

and you fights with everything you has.

your elbow drives back hard into the body behind your, once, twice, connecting with something solid and you feels the grunt of it through the arms around your even if you doesn't hear it over the sound of your own voice, fight clearly kicking in as you finds your tongue, words and curses pouring out of your in a torrent that has nothing to do with composure or professionalism or any of the things you has spent three days being at Nelson & Murdock.

"get off me!" raw and furious and terrified in equal measure, your nails dragging down the forearms locked around your middle so hard that blood starts to pool, layers of skin ripping off of the man and being embedded under he nails. "get your hands off me right now. i will scream this building down– i will scream until every person on this floor calls the police and you will not get away with this! do you hear me?! you tell him i know, you tell him i know what he did and i know why and i am not going to disappear the way he wants me to! i am not going to—"

"it's me." the man’s voice was flat and even, close enough to your ear, to cut through the noise and your screams. "it's me, calm down–."

you doesn't stop. not immediately, your body doesn't trust the voice yet, your body running on something more urgent and primal than recognition. you drives your elbow back one more time and twists hard to the left, bending his wrist unnaturally with your body and gets one hand free and uses it to try to claw at the face of the intruder, your nail breaking against the skin, as you continues to kick and scream, blood flicking off of your shoes.

"receptionist." the word comes out of him low and tired, and then his head drops, his nose pressing into the soft spot beneath your jaw, the hard line of it finding the curve of your neck, and he breathes tyoure, just once, slow and deliberate, and you feels it more than hears it. “It’s dex, stop fighting.”

you goes limp, like a cord when its cut, and you lets yourself be held by him, his arms holding up your weight as your own hands wrapped over the forearms you had just scratched to shit.  your breathing comes in short, shallow gasps, like your lungs have forgotten what they're for.

"benjamin." his name is a croaked out plea, the letters sounding foreign on your tounge.

"dex." he corrects from behind your, his arms not loosening by a single degree. "it's me."

"his wife–" you says, into the air in front of your, and your voice sounds like it belongs to someone else, thin and stripped of everything. "you doesn't know. you's at home right now and you was going to make me food." 

dex says nothing.

"you likes me" you chokes on a sob, your voice breaking on the last word, cleanly and completely, and you lets go of dex’s forearms to press the back of your hand to your mouth and breathes through your nose. "you's going to wait for him to come home."

"i know." dex hums against your neck and his arms tighten fractionally around your, not a squeeze exactly, just slightly more pressure; an aggressive hug.

the stairwell door bangs open.

"dex, you cannot just run off like that without—" billy's voice arrives at full volume through the hallway before his body follows suite, and then his eyes move from dex, to your, to the open apartment door, to the smashed window, to the blood on your knees and your palms, and for the first time since you has known him, for the first time in what you suspect is a very long time for a man of his particular gifts, billy russo has absolutely nothing to say.

"i didn't do this." you say, your voice fractured and pointed at both of them, your hands coming up between yourself and billy like you're trying to physically present your own innocence. "you have to know i didn't do this. you both saw me tonight. i was at the jazz club. i was with frank. i got on the subway, i went straight home, i didn't— i wouldn't— he came to my office today and he was fine, he was completely fine, his wife made food and he smiled at me and i wouldn't—"

"okay, okay–" billy steps forward and his voice has dropped entirely out of its usual register, no performance in it, no charm, just something direct and warm. "we know. stop. we know."

"you have to believe me because i need someone to believe me right now and i can't call the police yet because i don't know what's happening and i can't—"

benjamin huffs like an annoyed dog and spins you in his arms, making sure you can stand on your own two feet before his hands come up to your face, both palms cupping your jaw and tilting your face toward his with a care that has nothing practiced about it, his eyes moving over you the way they move over everything except faster and without any of the professional distance, checking, cataloguing, looking for something.

"are you hurt?" he says, and his voice is low and stripped entirely of its usual containment, nothing in it except the question and the weight behind it.

"mr. chen," you say, because that is what is in you and it comes out before anything else can, and your voice is wrong, thin and high and belonging to a version of yourself you haven't met before tonight, and you watch something move across benjamin's face at the sound of it, something that goes deep and doesn't surface cleanly.

he looks past you and into the living room for a moment before dragging you away, shoes squeaking against the wooden floors as blood smears behind you in small, delicate pools.

"okay," he nods, "we're going to clean it."

you stare at him, mouth agape and glassy eyes, wide and unseeing. "what?"

"we're going to clean it." he says again, the same flat certainty he brings to everything, his hands still on your jaw. "make it look like he was never here."

"he deserves justice," you say, immediately, and your voice fractures on the word justice but the word itself stands firm. "he came to the office today to say thank you. his wife doesn't know where he is. she's sitting at home right now waiting for him to come through the door and you want to make him disappear like fis- fish wanted and give him nothing? no justice, no grave, no—"

"okay." dex huffs, hands dropping from your jaw and dragging down his face.

"okay?" you repeat, staring at him.

"okay." he says again, his face full of indifference and cold, uncaring flatness. "and?"

you open your mouth and close it again, "and?" you repeat.

"he's dead," dex says, simply, without cruelty, just plainly. "justice doesn't change that. you being in prison doesn't change that. his wife knowing doesn't change that."

billy sighs from the doorway, long and low, the sigh of a man who has had this argument with dex before in various forms and knows exactly how it ends, and you feel something rise up in you that is entirely overwhelming, and is full of justice and grief, and you step back from dex's hands and turn and walk back into the living room.

"hey—" billy starts.

but you are already crossing the floor, stepping around the glass, your shoes leaving small bloody prints, and you sink down onto the floor next to mr. chen and you sit there with your legs crossed and your hands in your lap and you look at him, properly, for the first time since you came through the door, and you let yourself look, not flinching away from the horror of his cold, clammy skin.

his face is peaceful in a way that seems wrong given everything else; his coat still buttoned, his flat cap still in his hand, fingers wrapped loosely around the brim the way they always were when he carried it, and his wedding ring catches the orange light from the window, a plain gold band, worn thin at the edges in the way of something that has been on the same finger for a very long time.

"we can't just get rid of him," you say, into the quiet of the apartment. "we can't."

billy comes to stand a few feet away, and he looks down at mr. chen for a long moment, his hands in his coat pockets, his face withdrawn and his body tense before he crouches down. he looks at the ring and at the flat cap still held in his stiff fingers, and then he looks at you.

"we'll write her a letter," he says, quietly. "mrs. chen. we won't say what happened or where. but we'll write her a letter. so she knows he didn't just disappear. so she knows it wasn't her. so she knows he was—" he pauses, searching for the word. 

you look at him.

"and we'll find him somewhere," billy says. "somewhere proper, not a dumpster, not a canal, somewhere he can be found and given back to her." he holds your gaze. "i know some people. it can be done quietly. she'll get him back, she just won't know all of it."

your throat closes.

"that's not enough," you say, voice small and soft, like if you were any louder you might wake mr chen up/

"i know," billy says. "it's what we have."

dex appears in the doorway of the living room, already assessing, his eyes moving from the window to the lock to the candlestick to the floor. he has his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up and there is a look on his face that is completely closed. he’s made a decision for all four of you.

"we need to go." he says, to you specifically. not a request.

"i'm not leaving him, dex." it was final, and concrete, how on earth could you just get up and leave the apartment and leave him here all alone?

"you're leaving him," dex says, flat. "you're leaving him and we're going to clean this and you're going to call murdock from the street and when he asks what happened you're going to tell him you came home and the window was broken and you called billy."

"and mr. chen?" you say.

"mr. chen was never here," dex says, and he says it without flinching, without softening it, and you hate it. you hate all of it, you hate that he's right and you hate that you know he's right and you hate this lovely man who was finally getting his just desserts now has to disappear like fish wanted, except for a letter and a quiet arrangement made by a corporate lawyer on a thursday night.

billy straightens the flat cap gently, settling it back properly on mr. chen's head the way it always sat, and the gesture is so careful and so without any of the performance billy usually brings to everything that it breaks something in you that wasn't already open, and you press your fist against your mouth and breathe as he stands up.

"come on," billy says, to you, gently, and reaches for your arm.

you don't move.

"come on," he says again, and this time his hand closes around your arm, properly, and you let him pull you upright because your legs are not going to do it on their own, but then he tries to steer you toward the door and something in you that has been holding itself together with nothing but stubbornness and adrenaline all night finally snaps, and you dig your heels into the floor and grab the doorframe with both hands.

"no," you say. "no, i'm not leaving him, i'm not just—"

"hey–" billy's arm comes around your waist and he lifts you, not roughly, but completely, your feet leaving the floor, and you kick until your heel connects with his shin, making him grunt but not let go, moving you toward the door while you grab at the frame and at his coat and at anything else within reach, your voice saying things that stop being words and start being just sound, just grief, just everything you don't have language for coming out of you in the hallway while billy holds on and dex steps past you both without a word and crouches down beside the broken candlestick.

"ben–" your voice is raw and you reach for him past billy's arm, one hand outstretched toward the apartment. "dex, please. please don't. please."

dex looks up at you from where he's crouching by the candlestick. his face is completely still. and then he says, quietly, with more gentleness than you have heard from him since he spoke: "i'll write the letter. i'll make sure it's right." a pause. "go."

billy carries you the rest of the way into the hallway and the apartment door closes behind you with a finative click. you slide down the wall to the floor again, and this time you don't have anything left to fight with, you just sit there in the hallway with blood on your knees and your palms with billy crouched in front of you. behind the closed door you can hear dex moving, quiet and methodical, taking care of something you couldn't take care of yourself.

then you call matt.

dex pulls you into the safehouse bedroom, hands already tugging at your clothes with shaky urgency. "i’m the good guy," he whispers against your mouth, kissing you hard, tongue sliding deep like he’s trying to prove it. his lips trail down your neck, sucking hard enough to leave dark marks blooming across your skin. "see? i’m taking care of you. let me be good."

ben watches from the doorway, thick cock already half-hard as he steps closer. dex drops to his knees, yanking your pants down and spreading your thighs. his mouth finds your pussy instantly, tongue licking broad and desperate between your folds. "taste so fucking good," he moans into you, fingers sliding in slow at first, then two at once, curling deep while his tongue flicks your clit. he sucks harder, marking the inside of your thighs with teeth and lips, leaving bruises as he eats you out like he’s starving.

ben moves behind you, hands gripping your hips as he kisses the back of your neck, then bites down, sucking a fresh mark into your shoulder. "heroes claim what’s theirs," he growls, fingers joining dex’s inside your pussy, stretching you wider while dex keeps licking and sucking. they work together—ben’s thick fingers pumping in and out while dex’s tongue circles your clit, both of them marking you with bites and hickeys across your chest and neck.

dex looks up at you with wide, needy eyes, lips shiny. "am i being good? tell me i’m good for you," he begs before diving back in, tongue fucking into your pussy while his fingers rub that spot inside you. ben kisses you again, rough and deep, one hand squeezing your breast as he leaves another mark on your collarbone.

you break away from the kiss the second the thought crosses your mind, and you can’t help the laugh that bursts out of you, sharp and mocking. "aren't both of you called ben? that’s fucking hilarious."

dex’s wide, glassy eyes narrow, but his cock twitches harder against your calf. "shut your mouth," he snaps, bratty edge creeping in. "or i’ll shut it for you."

ben chuckles into your ear, "let the little shit laugh. we’ll fuck the jokes right out of 'em." he spits into his palm and strokes his fat cock once before lining up. "gonna stretch this hole while dexie here watches and learns how a real man does it."

dex stands to his feet and shoves two fingers into your mouth, pressing down on your tongue until saliva coated his fingers. "i’m not watching, i’m participating," he hisses, already freeing his own cock and slapping it against your lips. "open for me, pretty."

you suck him down greedily while ben slams into your cunt in one brutal thrust. the stretch burns, but the rhythm quickly turns punishing. dex fucks your throat in short, desperate strokes, hips jerking like he can’t control himself. "take it for me, please- please-" he chants, voice cracking with need. "we’re saving you from yourself."

ben's hand cracks across your ass. "good guys don’t hold back," he grunts, pounding deeper. "we wreck what needs wrecking." his balls slap wetly with every thrust, slapping against your clit, making a loud whine escape your throat.

dex pulls out of your mouth just long enough to spit on your face, grinning when your eyes roll back. "call me ben and i’ll make you choke on it," he warns, but the bratty flush on his cheeks gives him away.

you laugh around ben's cock when he switches places, the sound muffled and filthy.

they trade you back and forth, dex's cock in your cunt now, with ben's thick length down your throat. both men keep up the self-righteous bullshit between moans. "we’re heroes," ben pants, fingers tangled in your hair. "doing what has to be done, aren't we sweet girl?"

dex's rhythm falters as he gets close, bratty whine slipping out. "don’t you dare laugh at me-" he gasps, but you do, the sound vibrating around the cock in your mouth. he cums first, flooding your cunt with hot spurts while cursing. ben follows seconds later, pulling out to paint your tongue and lips with thick ropes, grinning as he uses his thumb to spread it over your lips and chin.

the church air hung heavy with incense and the faint copper tang of old blood. you circled matthew slowly where he knelt before the altar, your steps echoing off the stone walls. he didn't rise this time. his head tilted slightly, tracking your movement by sound alone. the church was silent except for the faint creak of old wood and the steady beat of matthew's heart. you moved through the shadows like smoke, your hunger sharp and focused on the man kneeling at the altar. priest matthew murdock, blind to the world but not to the presence that approached him.

he stood as you drew closer, his cassock brushing the stone floor. "i know what you are," he said, voice low and steady. "i can smell the blood on your breath."

"you're not a very good priest," you said, voice low and teasing.

matthew's jaw tightened. his hands rested on his thighs, fingers flexing against the black fabric of his cassock. "i know my vows," he answered, voice steady but rough at the edges.

you crouched in front of him, close enough that your breath ghosted over his face. "then why is your heart beating so fast, father?" your fingers traced the edge of his stiff collar. "why can i smell how hard you already are?"

he swallowed. "temptation is not sin. giving in is."

you leaned in, lips brushing the shell of his ear. "but father... i'm just so hungry." your hand slid down his chest, palm pressing flat over his racing heart. "you wouldn't let one of your flock die, would you? would you really turn me away when i'm starving?"

matthew's breath hitched. you felt the tremor run through him. "i... i can't. it's wrong."

"wrong to feed me?" you shifted closer, straddling one of his thighs, letting him feel the heat of your body through your clothes. "wrong to let me drink from you? just a little?" your lips ghosted over his throat, not biting yet, just hovering. "i won't take too much. i promise. you'll still be able to preach on sunday."

his hands came up, gripping your waist like he meant to push you away, but he didn't. his fingers dug in instead. "this is blasphemy."

you didn't answer with words. you closed the distance, hands sliding up his chest until your fingers curled around the stiff collar of his shirt. with one sharp tug the fabric tore, exposing the warm skin of his throat. matthew's breath hitched but he didn't pull away.

"this is survival," you whispered against his skin. "and you taste so good, matthew. so warm. so alive." you rocked your hips once against his thigh, letting him feel how wet you already were. "please. just once more. let me bite you while i ride you. let me drink while your cock is buried inside me."

matthew groaned, the sound torn from deep in his chest. his resolve cracked audibly in the way his grip tightened, pulling you closer instead of pushing you off. "god help me," he muttered.

"he already sent you to me," you purred, fangs grazing his pulse. "now be a good priest and feed your starving little lamb."

"take it," he whispered.

your fangs sank into his neck without hesitation. hot blood flooded your mouth, rich and metallic, and he groaned, his hands gripping your hips. you drank deep, the taste of him sending heat straight between your legs. his cock was already hard beneath his robes, pressing against you.

you shoved him down onto the altar steps, straddling his lap. your hand worked between your bodies, freeing his thick cock from the confines of his pants. it sprang free, flushed and leaking at the tip. you didn't waste time. you sank down onto him in one smooth motion, your pussy stretching around his girth as you took every inch.

matthew's head fell back, exposing more of his throat. you rode him hard, hips rolling and bouncing, your walls clenching tight around his cock with every thrust. blood trickled from the bite marks on his neck and you leaned in again, sinking your fangs deeper this time. the fresh rush of blood coated your tongue while your cunt milked his shaft.

"fuck," he gasped, fingers digging into your ass as you rode him faster. each downward slam took him to the hilt, the wet sound of your pussy swallowing his cock echoing through the empty church. you bit again, lower this time, just above his collarbone, and matthew cried out, his hips bucking up to meet you.

blood ran in thin rivulets down his chest. you licked the trails clean, sucking at the wounds while your hips never stopped moving. his cock throbbed inside you, swelling thicker as you drank. you ground down hard, clit rubbing against his pubic bone with every roll of your hips.

matthew's hands slid up your back, pulling you closer as you fed. "more," he begged, voice rough. "bite me again."

you obliged, sinking your fangs into the soft flesh where neck met shoulder. blood poured into your mouth and you drank greedily, your pussy spasming around his cock. matthew's whole body jerked beneath you. his cock pulsed hard and he came with a broken moan, flooding your cunt with hot cum while you kept riding him through it, biting deeper, taking more blood as his orgasm shook through him.

rarely was there anyone in the hallway, it was poorly lit with carpets the colour of a wet digestive that smelt like other peoples cooking, boxed in by walls painted that shade of magnolia that landlords chose because it photographed as neutral and aged an odd piss yellow. a single bulb swung slowly back and forth above the three of them, throwing shadows that moved like something restless across the walls and the carpets. a banister ran along the left side, wood painted over so many times it had lost whatever shape it started with, worn smooth in the places hands had gripped it over years of people coming home tired. the fire door at the bottom sat slightly open, letting a cold that embedded itself into the old brick walls.

she had walked this stairwell every night for four years, one hand on the banister, her body doing it without her brain, and she had never once thought about how narrow it was, how close the walls sat, how the single bulb overhead left the corners in a darkness that moved every time it swung, because now it highlighted the identical men’s faces, and the gun that was now held by the stranger.

the gun had caught it, the metal gleaming in short warm flashes every time his hand shifted even slightly, the barrel picking up the light and throwing it back in a way that made it look almost decorative and pretty. it was shinier than she expected, the metal caught the single bulb with a clean bright gleam that had nothing cinematic about it, and it was heavier looking too based on the way the tendons in his forearm ran slightly taut, but not straining, showing his comfort. in the films, the guns looked light as people waved them around like extensions of themselves, casual and effortless, and this gun looked like it would hit the floor hard if he dropped it, like it would leave a mark, like it was made of something real rather than something made up of resin or rubber.

there was a scuffle, the word clone thrown back and forth, accusations of trafficking and government experiments, the other man saying something flat and certain about the government being good for nothing and how he always knew they were out to get him, delivered with the conviction of someone who had some very extreme thoughts on institutional trust, and neither of them listening to the other, or her.

the man was now holding the gun to wade’s throat.

wade didnt dare move with a firearm pressed up beneath his jaw. 

she had never seen wade not moving; in the three days since he’d fallen out of the sky he had been in constant low-level motion, fixing things, following her, making eggs, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet at the top of the bus stairs, some restless current running through him at all times, and right now it had gone completely quiet with a muzzle of a gun pressed up under his jaw, the soft skin giving way to the hard metal.

the man held his gun the way wade held a wrench, completely unconscious but utterly competent. 

he was towering over wade in the thin light, and the two inches between them should not have felt like as much as they did, but something in the way he carried himself added to it, his shoulders set forward and slightly down with the posture of a man who had never once attempted to make himself smaller for another person's comfort. 

she had never seen wade look small before.

he was two inches taller than wade, the shoulders on him were broader, broad in the way that came from just the accumulated physical result of years of work that had required it, and his thighs where he stood planted on the carpet were thick and solid and he was not moving, or shifting his weight nor adjusting, comfortable to stand where he was. 

his hair had grey in it, at the temples and through the scruff on his jaw, heavier growth than she might have expected, and the lines at the corners of his eyes were deep, but it only seemed to add to this odd dangerous and rugged appeal that he had. the blood on his lip had dried to a thin dark line along the lower edge of it, caught in the scruff on his chin and jaw, and he had not touched it in the entire time she had been watching him, which was almost as uncomfortable to if he had smeared it into his teeth; the fact he was so use to blood and whatever else on his face that he no longer bothered with it seemed like a quiet testament to the kind of life he lived.

there was dirt on his jacket which she could see from where she was standing, dark smears across the left shoulder and down the front of it. he smelled of cold wind and stale beer, the cold wind smell carrying from outside, from whatever he had come through to get here, and the beer smell seemed to come from his skin, like he had beer thrown onto him rather than drinking it, and he had a scent of something earthy like pine maybe, or soil, something that wasn’t coming from the south london. 

she watched it happen, watched him twist and turn the muzzle into the soft skin beneath wade's jaw, demanding answers that neither of them had, his voice low and flat and entirely without the register of a man who expected to be refused, and wade answering in the careful measured drawl of someone buying time.

she had to do something.

so she turned around, creeping backwards and ignoring the wide eyed, confused look wade casted her and pressed her back into her apartment door, feeling it give under her weight and turning straight to the kitchen, the soft glint of the kitchen knife block catching her eye. her hand found the largest knife in the block without looking, the handle cold and heavy in her sweaty palms, and then she walked back into the hallway and came up behind him, pressing the tip of the blade into the small of his back, hard enough that he could feel it and wouldn't be able to arch away from it.

he went still, almost like wild animal reassessing its situation, and she kept the blade where it was, her voice coming out low and even, considerably steadier than the hand producing it had any right to be.

"let him go and i'll take this out of your back. don't, and i'll drive it straight through you and you'll buckle like a little bitch."

a beat of silence.

then he smiled; she could see the edge of it in his profile, the slow satisfied curl of it as the fat of his cheeks adjusted slightly. he dipped his head towards her, turned slightly away from wade, and when he spoke his voice was different to wade's in a way she registered immediately and viscerally. it was a similar american root but stripped of everything wade's voice did with it, all the warmth and the drawl and the long soft vowels that leaned into themselves, replaced by something clipped and flat and dry. 

"i can feel your hand shakin', sweetheart."

a ‘sweetheart’ from wade would have been warm and slightly insufferable and she would have told him to stop. ‘sweetheart’ from this man was a flat stone dropped into still water, the same word doing something entirely different in a different mouth, and she pressed the blade harder against his back until the jacket fabric gave way slightly under the pointed tip and still pressed harder.

there was a long and deliberate pause, him dragging out the moment to make them both uncomfortable like it was a special skill of his.

"alright." a single flat syllable said with a dry drawl, almost sounding amused, "i'll let the clone go."

the gun came up as both hands went up, palms opened with the gun loose between two fingers, and wade moved the second there was space, his hand coming out and closing around the gun at the man’s fingers, who surprisingly let it go with no resistance.

"turn around." she said with firm persistence.

he turned around and he was grinning; the slow satisfied grin of a man who was finding the situation considerably more entertaining than anyone else in the hallway. his back was against the wall now, and she stepped forward and pressed the tip of the knife to his stomach and glared at him, her thighs shaking against each other and her hands shaking around the handle with her jaw set in a way she hoped communicated more certainty than the rest of her was currently producing.

he looked down at the knife slowly, with an amused chuff before he looked back up at her with a single raised eyebrow.

“name?” she didn’t ask, just demanded his name as she started to pierce through the t-shirt, a faint grunt escaping his lips as he frowned. apparently he liked this shirt.

“shane maguire. whats it to you little miss?” he glared at her as she continued to press the knife into him, one hand dropping to hold her wrist before the knife was embedded into his abdomen, “careful, don’t damage the merchandise.”

"hey." wade's voice, from somewhere behind her left shoulder, soft and careful, the drawl coming in slower than usual the way it did when he was managing something. "hey, darlin', i need you to listen to me for a second."

she did not look away from shane’s face.

"i'm listenin'," she said, to him, still looking at shane.

"i need you to put the knife down." a pause, wade choosing his words with more care than usual. "i've got his gun. he ain't gonna do anythin', i promise you that. i just need you to back up and let me talk to him."

"he had a gun to your jaw, wade."

"i know he did," wade said. "i was there for that part. i'd just like to find out why before we do somethin' we can't take back. also, we are in the middle of the hallway."

shane’s grin shifted, the amusement in it acquiring something that might, in another face, have been respect, and he looked at her with his whole body, relaxed and loose, not at all threatened by herself or wade.

"smart," he said, flat and dry, the word directed somewhere between her and wade. "you might want to listen to your man."

"nobody asked you." she snapped, with considerably more venom than she knew was possible.

his grin widened, showing sharp canine teeth that almost glinted in the thin light, the bigger predator showing off his own soft belly in something that looked too comfortable to be submission, and it made something greedy curl low in her gut before wade's hand closed gently over hers and eased the knife away so they could have ‘a civil conversation’ in her flat.

and that led them to where they were now.

shane is manspreading on your sofa like he has sat on it every day of his life, taking up considerably more than his fair share of it. his hands together, wrists encased by two fuzzy pink handcuffs that clearly dug into his skin, ankle crossed over his knee, the gun on the coffee table between you where wade put it after a brief and pointed negotiation about where it was going to live for the duration of this conversation. you sat in the chair opposite with your laptop open on your knees and your legs crossed with your eyes moving between the screen and his face, prepared to point a very real and very heavy weapon between his eyes. 

wade is talking and he has been for several minutes, the soft unhurried drawl of him filling the flat the way it has filled it for three days, and he is explaining, as clearly and as patiently as he can manage, what happened to him before he fell through the sky and landed on your corridor carpet and did not, as it turns out, have amnesia. you watch shane's face while wade talks. the grin that has been sitting on it since you pressed the knife into his stomach is doing something, slowly, incrementally, in response to wade's account of events, the satisfaction draining out of it degree by degree, replaced by something that looks almost like recognition, and the losing of the grin is making you happier than you feel you can reasonably justify.

you look back at your laptop before either of them catch you grinning like a school girl.

you go straight to chrome and start to look through wilson bethel’s movies and shows and then there he is.

SHANE MAGUIRE. UNTAMED, 2025

behind the laptop screen wade is saying something about bluebell, the sky, the rammer jammer on a thursday night, the drawl of him unhurried and careful, laying it out for shane the way he laid it out for you three days ago except without the amnesia theory complicating the middle of it. of which you’ll have to apologise for later.

you go back to the search results.

‘shane maguire is a key character in the netflix limited series untamed, portrayed by actor wilson bethel. he is introduced as a rugged, solitary park wildlife management officer with a background as an army ranger: he becomes a primary suspect in the death of "jane doe" due to his interactions with her before her death. his tense, underlying history with federal park agent kyle turner ultimately boils over into a brutal shootout between the two. it is ultimately revealed that shane was hired by turner's wife, jill, to secretly murder a man named sean sanderson.’

you read it twice, and then again, and once more. because there is no dead man on her couch, no bullet wounds or anything fatal on him at all (what a shame,) no shift from side to side, no groans or grunts from pain to be heard.

the sky might have saved his life. 

you look up at shane over the top of the laptop screen, and then you look back down at the screen, and then back up at him and find you've been caught as the smugness on his face shifts slightly.

"something wrong there sweetheart?" he says, flat and dry.

"stop calling me that." you say as you go back to his google page and carry on your research.

wade and shane are both looking at you. wade with the expression of someone trying very hard not to ask, and shane with the flat assessment that he appears to apply to everything, his ankle still crossed over his knee, and the smugness sitting on his face at a slightly elevated level from its usual resting state, as though he has drawn a conclusion that he finds privately satisfying.

you ignore them both.

you open up a google document, and start a table with two columns of good vs evil. which is probably too black and white for space and time ripping apart but you found that you didn’t care because space and time had ripped apart.

you start typing.

behind the screen wade says something low and careful in that soft drawl of his and you hear shane respond, clipped and flat, the two of them still doing the careful wary thing, and you look up briefly because the quality of wade's voice has changed slightly, less careful now, something underneath it that sounds like the beginning of genuine irritation rather than managed patience, and wade is looking at shane with an expression you have not seen on him before, something that has run out of the diplomatic version of itself and is getting ready to say so.

"you hired yourself out," wade says, the drawl slower than usual, each word placed with deliberate weight. "to kill a man."

"i did what i was paid to do," shane says, like its completely understandable.

"that's not somethin' a person says like it's a reasonable answer."

"i'm not asking for your opinion on it."

"well you're sittin' on her sofa in her flat with your gun on her coffee table so i think you're gonna get it where you like it or not."

shane looks at him with the flat unhurried assessment that appears to be his only setting, then at you, then back at wade, and then he slaps both hands on his knees with the decisive energy of a man who has reached a conclusion and is done deliberating.

"right," he says, standing, the full height of him reasserting itself in the room. "so that crazy bitch just tried to stab me—"

"i did stab you," you say. "a little." 

"—and now you want me to stand here and believe i've been teleported out of the continent." he looks at wade with the flat assessment, waiting for something that resembles a reasonable explanation.

"technically you were already out of the continent," wade says, "yosemite's in—"

"i know where yosemite is," shane snaps. "i live there. i live there, which is the point, which is where i should currently be, not in–" he gestures at the window, at the orange-lit london skyline, at the whole situation. "whatever this is. with you." he points at wade. "who has my face." his gaze snaps to yours, "and you, who pulled a knife on me!"

"you pulled a gun first!" you say, ignoring what a childish argument it was.

"that's different."

"how is that different?"

"because," shane says, with the flat patience of a man explaining something he considers self evident, "i didn't know what you were."

"we're people," wade says, cocky and bright, arms crossing with the ease of a sassy man, "that's generally the first assumption."

"not where i'm from."

"yosemite," wade says, tilting his head, the drawl stretching the word out slightly, "it's a national park. there are families there. with children."

"and bears," shane says, without inflection, like this is a point he considers equally relevant, "and people who don't belong in places they've ended up in." he looks at wade with the meaning of that sitting very clearly in the sentence. "i saw your face and i made a call."

"you made a call…" wade repeats, slowly, his arms dropping, something flattening in his voice at the ridiculousness of the argument.

"yeah."

"to put a gun under my jaw?"

"it worked out." shane shrugs with the complete unbothered delivery of a man who genuinely believes this.

"it did not work out!" wade says, and he looks at you with the expression of a man inviting corroboration, before pointing in your direction, voice all high and accusatory, "she stabbed you."

"a little." you repeat from behind the laptop, without looking up.

"she stabbed you a little!" wade confirms, gesturing at you with open hands, presenting the evidence before he crossed his arms.

"you live alone." you repeat as you read off of his wiki.

he looks at you, the assessment shifting slightly.

"in yosemite," you say, looking at the screen. "no neighbours. no city. just the wilderness and whatever comes through it."

something moves in his face, barely, just a degree of recalibration around the fact that you know something about him he has not told you.

"yeah," he says, and the carefulness in it is new, eyes flickering from the laptop to your face and then his face drops into an annoyed expression as he realises you are very clearly reading all of this information on him.

"so now you're in a city," you say, bringing your fingers up to count off on them, "eight million people, buses, sirens, different accents, different gun laws." you pause, looking at him over the top of the laptop screen. "sounds like the old dog needs to learn new tricks."

something works behind the flat of his eyes for a long moment, and then the corner of his mouth moves, slow and deliberate, the amusement finding its way into the grin like it has decided to allow itself.

"be careful with me sweetheart, unlike your boyfriend here i dont find your attitude so amusing.”

"he's not my boyfriend," you say, without looking up from the laptop.

"sure." shane says with dry amusement, eyes rolling back so far you wished they stayed like that.

"and i'll be as careful as i like," you say, closing the laptop slightly so you can look at him properly, "given that you are currently in my flat, in my city, with no passport, no documentation, no money, no contacts, and genuinely no idea how a bus pass works." you tilt your head. "you're a very capable man in a forest, shane. this isn't a forest."

something tightens in his jaw.

"i'll figure it out," his gaze drops from you and wade, finding the right corner of your flat fascinating.

"with what?" you say. "you going to track your way to the nearest tesco? read the weather patterns to find the tube?" you gesture at the window, at the orange-lit london skyline doing its indifferent thing. 

wade makes a sound from the chair that is very carefully not a laugh and does not fool anyone.

shane’s head snaps at the noise, glaring venom through his eyes at wade.

wade pointedly doesnt meet his eyes.

"you need us," you say, simply, looking back at the laptop, "which i appreciate is deeply unpleasant information for a man who has spent however long living alone in a national park by choice, but there it is." you open the laptop again. "so you can either be difficult about it, which you are clearly very talented at, or you can accept that for the foreseeable future the two people you are most likely to need are two bartenders."

the room is quiet.

"the handcuffs are a bit much," shane says, eventually, huffing as he glares at the fluffy, pink handcuffs that bite into his wrist, giving you and wade a pointed look.

"i’m sure you’ve used a pair before.” you huff.

he looks back at the handcuffs, flexing his wrists against the material of them with the disgust of someone who has worn actual restraints before and doesn’t like the fluff against his skin, or the bright pink. 

he almost looks insulted.

"take them off," he says.

"no." you say, to the laptop.

"they're cutting into my wrists."

"they're fluffy."

"they're pink," he says, like this is a separate and more serious charge entirely.

"i'm aware of the colour."

"take them off."

"i've said no twice already."

"take them off." he says again, the same flat insistence with the complete absence of any acknowledgement that you have already answered it twice, the stubbornness of a man who thinks annoying you into complaisance will work.

wade plops himself back down on the sofa and swings an arm over his eyes.

"they're genuinely not that tight."

"they're pink," he says again.

"would you prefer purple?"

"i would prefer none."

"i know."

"then take them off."

"you’re a brat."

"take. them. off."

"oh my god.." wade says quietly, to no one.

"take them—"

"FINE!" you shout, huffing as you slam the laptop with more force than strictly necessary. you cross the room and stand between his thighs as you work the handcuffs free, giving him a pointedly look the second they are off of him. he rolls his wrists once when they come loose, a single clinical rotation, just assessing. you straighten up and step back from him, just about to sit back down on your chair when his hand moves.

not to his jacket, but to his boots.

the glint of silver catches the fairy lights for half a second and your body kicks into flight or fight. you take three steps across the living room, your hand closing around the gun on the coffee table, and you bring both hands up, pointing at him the way you had seen it done, ignoring the weight pulling immediately at your wrists and your biceps. 

but shane was quicker.

of course he was quicker, the gun from his boot already levelled at your chest with the same complete unconscious competence as the hallway, and the two of you stood in the amber light of the fairy lights with a gun pointed in each direction and wade somewhere behind you had gone very still and very quiet.

shane looked down at his own gun now pointed back at him, and something moved across his face, his  expression becoming one of a man trying very hard not to find something funny.

"you gonna shoot me, sweetheart?" he said, the gun in his hand tilting slightly toward the one trembling in yours.

you say nothing and instead reach down with your thumb and click the safety off, the small hard sound of it cutting through the quiet of the room, and you take three steps forward until the muzzle is pressed flat against his sternum, his own pressed flat against yours.

you’re close enough now to feel the heat coming off him and smell the pine, and the stale beer, you wrinkle your nose at him and his eye twitches in annoyance.

"you're not going to shoot me." his voice comes out flat and low, almost intimate as his head dips forward slightly.

"say that again," you say, pressing the gun harder into his chest, "and find out."

something shifts in his jaw and his gun presses back into yours, putting more pressure on your skin, and starting to twirl the muzzle; a grin lifting his lips when you wince.

"you're a bartender." the amount of judgment that he’s managed to put into one sentence is enough for you to kick at his knees, but all you manage to get out of him is a grunt.

"and you're in my flat with your gun pointed at you, so i'd think very carefully about finishing that sentence."

"you've never fired a gun in your life." he huffs, finishing his sentence anyway against your warnings.

"i stabbed you earlier." you say.

"a little," his town is mocking as he squints his eyes before he huffs and rolls his eyes, seemingly annoyed that he’s now included himself in yours and wade’s humour. "lower the gun, sweetness."

"you lower yours."

"i will put you on the floor," he says, quiet and very certain, the voice of a man who has done exactly that to people considerably more equipped for it than you and is not making an empty threat.

"you won't." you say, equally quiet, equally certain. 

the gun is so heavy your wrists are burning but you do not move them an inch.

"you're insane." he sounds almost breathless as he shakes his head.

"you broke into my building?”

"i didn't break in," he says, the gun pressing harder, "i was trying to find somewhere that wasn't—"

"i don't care," you say, pressing back just as hard, "you pulled a gun on my– wade! you have multiple guns on your person, you called me sweetheart four times, and you are currently pressing a loaded weapon into my chest in my own living room, so whatever you were about to say about your reasons, i genuinely, deeply, do not care."

his nostrils flare.

your hands are shaking and you will not let him see it.

"wade." he says, not looking away from you.

"yeah?" wade says, from somewhere behind you, very carefully, not daring to move an inch incase one of you pulls a gun on him, again.

"is she always like this?" 

a pause.

"not with me." wade sounds almost wistful as he speaks, a small smile echoed in his speech.

something crosses shane's face, fast and complicated, and then his jaw sets again and the gun stays exactly where it is and so does yours.

"lower. the. gun." you say again, each word separate and deliberate.

"together?" 

"together." 

neither of you moves.

"i'm serious." you push the gun further into his breast bone to emphasise your point.

"so am i," his voice is rough but flat as he glares into your eyes, annoyed that he has to restrain a grunt.

you stare at shane and shane stares back  at you, both of you too stubborn to lower the guns so they stay exactly where they are with  the fairy lights catching off of the barrels and throwing small warm flashes across both your faces.

"three."

"two," you say.

"one," you say together, and you both lower them at the same time, and you both step back and away from each other. 

"still got two." shane says, and sits back down on the sofa like nothing happened.

"take the guns." you say, turning away from shane and holding yours out to wade without looking at either of them, "or else i might shoot him in his sleep."

wade takes it from you with the careful hands of someone handling something he would very much like to not go off, and then looks at shane, and after a beat that is precisely long enough to make clear this isnt a choice. shane holds his out too, and wade takes that one as well, and stands there with a gun in each hand looking between the two of you with a very uncomfortable expression.

you turn and walk into the kitchen.

the bags from earlier are where wade had dropped them just inside the door, the shopping from what felt like a different day entirely, and you start unpacking them, fast and without deliberation, each item finding its place, bread in the bin, eggs in the fridge, butter next to them, the soup in the cupboard with the rest of the tins.

the kitchen is quiet.

from the living room wade says something low and shane says something back, clipped and flat, and then it goes quiet again.

you decide the americans need a cup of tea and stick the kettle on, pulling three mugs from the cupboard, and you put your own sugars in yours and wade's without thinking about it, the muscle memory of three days of making wade tea sitting in your hands before your brain has caught up with the fact that you are doing it, and then you look at the third mug for a moment.

black, you decide. the wilderness man drank black tea, or he was about to, because that was what he was getting and he could take it up with someone who had the energy to care about it, which was not you.

you put the teabags in and waited for the kettle.

from the living room there was another low exchange, wade's drawl and shane's flat clip, and then the specific quality of silence that had started to mean the two of them had reached a temporary ceasefire and were sitting in it without knowing what to do next.

you poured the water.

you are stirring the last mug when wade appears in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame with the wood eating into his shoulder, his hip cocked and a small smile on his face.

"me and him'll take the living room tonight," he says, nodding towards shane where he sat in the living room.

"if that's what you want," you don’t look up as you speak, watching as the spoon catches the teabags and twirls it in the water.

"it's what makes sense," he sighs as he crosses the kitchen, using the doorway to push himself off of it as he reaches past you to pick up his mug from the counter and moves it by the sink.

then he steps back into you, the solid warmth of his chest presses against your back and both his arms come down to rest on the counter either side of you, caging you gently against the cabinets. he dips his head down until his nose brushes the outside of your ear, the warmth of his breath hitting the side of your neck.

goosebumps move up your arms immediately, breaking out across your skin fast enough that you are grateful he cannot see your face.

you stare at the twp mugs on the counter in front of you and you are acutely, overwhelmingly aware of every point of contact between you; his forearms bracketing yours on the counter, the broad solid warmth of his chest flush against your back, the heat of him coming through your clothes in slow steady waves, the specific proximity of his mouth to your ear, close enough that you can feel every warm exhale against your skin.

"i'll watch him the whole night," his voice at this distance is something different from the version of it you have been listening to for three days, the drawl stripped of all the grin and the performance, just the low quiet core of it settling at the side of your neck, "he's not going anywhere near your room and he's not leaving this flat. you've got my word on that."

you swallow.

"okay," you say, and your voice comes out steady, which under the current circumstances is the single greatest achievement of your entire week.

his chest stays right against your back with his breath warm against your neck as his fingers start to dance across the back of your hands, tracing the veins and bones and making shivers erupt from your hands and racing up the back of your neck and across your shoulders and down your spine. 

then he moves.

his head drops, just slightly, and his mouth finds the top of your cheekbone, his nose tracing your temple, his skin warm and his touches deliberate and unhurried, softly pressing his lips into the skin of your cheek and every nerve ending you have goes completely insane about it. your eyes close for one traitorous second, relaxing into his chest because wade has been here for three days; hes helpful, kind, warm, charming, funny and competent, and he’s the best thing you have in this shitty apartment. 

then all of a sudden you have a wave of ‘oh fuck,’ rush over you and spin around to slap him, tell him off, do something–

but he’s already danced off with a grin over his lips, winking when he catches your eye and the cold air of the kitchen rushes in to replace it and you feel the absence of him the way you felt the arrival of him, immediately and all at once, and he picks up his mug and shane's from the counter and he walks back into the living room without looking back.

you stand at the kitchen counter, both hands gripping onto the edge with goosebumps still moving across your skin. the ghost of his mouth still sitting warm on your cheek and you breathe in and you you breathe out.

you pick up your tea and you turn around to go to your room and you stop.

shane is watching you from the sofa.

one eyebrow raised, mug held loosely in both hands. the expression of a man who saw every second and finds it fascinating and will probably say something about it at the earliest possible opportunity and there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent that.

you meet his eyes and glare at him.

he raises the eyebrow higher, slow and deliberate, the corner of his mouth pulling into the beginning of something insufferable.

you take a breath.

"right," you say, pulling yourself back into the room, back into the situation, back into the version of yourself that is managing things rather than standing in a kitchen being undone by a man's mouth on her cheek. "kitchen. both of you."

wade looks at you with the grin already starting. "both of us?"

"both of you," you say, with a flat authority and then point to the kitchen, "make dinner. everything’s been put away, wade knows where everything is." you look at shane. "you can chop things."

"i'm not chopping things.” shane says, shaking his head with an amused huff.

"you absolutely are," you say. "you need something to do with your hands that isn't a firearm and i need you on the other side of that wall, so." you gesture at the kitchen doorway with the flat authority of a woman who has made a decision and is not revisiting it. "in you go."

shane looks at you for a long moment with the flat assessment.

"i don't cook, honey." tutting like it was beneath him not to eat out of a damn can over a fire in the woods.

"wade does," you say with a tight little smile. "you can supervise!"

"i don't supervise either."

"then stand there and be quiet, i genuinely don't care, i just need you in a different room." you pick up the laptop. "you are like a dog that hasn't been socialised and wade is going to socialise you whether he wants to or not, and i am going to sit here and do something useful, so please," you look at him with the exhausted weight of the evening behind it, "go and be someone else's problem for twenty minutes."

something moves across shane's face, the assessment recalibrating, and then he stands, unhurried, with the energy of a man complying entirely on his own terms, and he looks at wade.

wade looks back at him with a flat expression of annoyance, huffing at the responsibility of babysitting a man who is older, bigger, stronger and annoying as fuck.

"c'mon then," wade says, with the resigned good humour of someone who has accepted the situation and is going to make the best of it, and he heads for the kitchen, and after a beat that is precisely long enough to make clear he is doing it because he wants to and not because anyone told him to, shane follows.

you hear the cupboard open. you hear wade say something low and practical about what is in the fridge. you hear shane make a sound of profound annoyance in response.

you sit on the sofa, pull the laptop open, and go back to the filmography.

DOC HOLLIDAY. WYATT EARP'S REVENGE, 2012

you pull up his wiki and comb through it, looking more any evil deeds that you might be saddled with if he shows up at your front door. doc holliday is a dentist, and he is dying of tuberculosis, late stage, the kind of dying that in 1878 was simply what happened to you and could not be helped, and underneath both of those things he is a gunslinger who has killed people, several people, with the same hands that pulled teeth. he is from 1878 which is not a learning curve it is a completely different civilisation. because how do you teach a man that women have rights and no one lives in the wild west anymore?

you put him in the good column, considering the time and his profession, because he wasnt a hired gun like shane maguire. you leave him there with a little add on that says: buy antibiotics 

and then moving onto the next.

RILEY DETAMORE. MATCH ME IF YOU CAN, 2023

a tech founder of a dating app in a romantic comedy. he is younger than both of the men sat in your living room, and based off the photos that come up, hes young and charming, the kind of person who built something from nothing and is now watching it come apart because of something he could not control. there is no murder, no guns, no psychological profile requiring its own subsection, just a man whose business is threatened and is trying to fix it.

you put him in good.

and you leave him there, because the worst thing the wiki has to say about riley detamore is that he made a dating app and someone wrote a bad blog about it, which is, relative to everything else on this list, practically saintly.

BENJAMIN ‘DEX’ POINDEXTER. DAREDEVIL, 2015

the first thing that comes up is bullseye. 

bullseye, the wiki explains, with the cheerful thoroughness of a page that does not know it is being read by someone with a vested interest in the answer, is the name associated with benjamin poindexter, psychopathic fbi agent turned assassin, a man with a neurological condition that gives him perfect aim, who can turn any object into a lethal weapon, who is recruited and psychologically manipulated by wilson fisk, who kills multiple people, who wears the daredevil suit, who ends the series in surgery having his spine reinforced with a metal alloy to restore his mobility after being nearly killed.

spine reinforced with metal alloy.

you find a image of him and you look at it for longer than is strictly necessary.

he is, the first thing you notice, not what you expected a psychopath to look like. you had a picture in your head, someone rougher, maybe a bruise here and there, scars, teeth missing without a tongue. but the face that arrives is not that. he is blond, going slightly grey at the edges in a way that has not yet committed to itself, and broad across the shoulders in the way that has become familiar to you over the course of this evening, and his jaw is set with a tension that looks like it has been there for a long time, the kind of tension that stops being something you notice you are carrying and starts being simply the way your face sits. 

but he is pretty like wade, still soft and handsome. you look at wade for a moment, and try to imagine him more hardened by the world, a bit rougher, less empathetic, more desperate, and feel a gut wrenching grief before you look away and back down to the wiki.

veteran, fbi, remarkable accuracy, mentally ill, needing structure and rules to maintain his sanity, who had built a functional life around the scaffolding of institution and routine and one woman's counselling sessions, and then the woman died. eileen mercer died and he stalked a coworker and then wilson fisk found him.

you read the rest of it, the convoy, the manipulation, the suit, the killing; a man manipulated into becoming someone's weapon and then discarded by the person who made him one, left on a hotel floor at a wedding, and you sit there for a moment with the weight of the whole arc of it, from structure and rules to maintain his sanity to having his spine reinforced with metal alloy.

you find a reddit thread without meaning to, by following one link too many, and the comments are clearly what happens when a character had gotten under enough people's skin that they could not stop talking about him.

the comments call him fbi dex, a nickname given from the fact he kept his job until the end of the show, a way to differentiate 2015 daredevil and 2025, born again daredevil.

you look at his face in the photograph again, at the jaw and the eyes and the pretty of him, still soft in the bone structure the way wade was soft, the same face worn into something tighter, more controlled, the damage sitting in him differently to the way it sat in shane, shane's damage being something he had metabolised and moved on from, and this being something that had not been metabolised, that was still very much present, still being managed, still requiring the structure and the rules and the careful calibration of a man who knew what happened when the scaffolding came down.

you type his name above the columns and then move on to daredevil: born again.

BENJAMIN ‘DEX’ POINDEXTER. DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN, 2025

you open the born again wiki.

he is bigger than the fbi version, that is the first thing, broader through the chest and the shoulders in a way that five years and an experimental spinal surgery involving a cogmium framework apparently produced, and the face is the same face but worn differently again, a scar across his cheek that the fbi version does not have, and he is in all dark blues and blacks, combat trousers, gun straps across his chest, the presentation of a man who has stopped pretending to be anything other than what he is, and there is something almost restful about that, the absence of the fbi suit, the institutional costume gone, just the thing underneath it dressed accordingly.

you read the wiki.

you read it slowly, the whole thing, the surgery, the cogmium spine, the institution, bullseye, acquitted, foggy nelson, rikers, fisk becoming mayor, the escape, the ball, hiding, the cia, and underneath all of it the thread of someone trying, in the specific way of a person who has very few options left, to balance the scales, to find something that looks like redemption even if it does not feel like it.

then you think about what episode he might come from. because the thing about the sky is that it just opens, and whatever it pulls through it pulls through from wherever it happens to be in the story at that moment. shane arrived with blood on his lip and a gun at his back and wade arrived mid-conversation in someone else's kitchen, and neither of them had any say in the timing of it.

what if it pulls this version through mid-surgery?

the cogmium framework, the broken spine, the surgery that the wiki describes as experimental, and you think about what mid-surgery looked like, about what arrived on your corridor carpet in that scenario, back ripped open, parts of his spine missing, under anaesthesia, probably very hurt and vulnerable, broken in ways you cant put back together with nail glue. you cant have a man with his spinal cavity open; because then you’d have to take him to the hopsital, you’d have to answer questions, his face would be all over the news and wilson bethel would have to answer some very difficult questions. 

then your chest does something that is not quite a panic attack but is heading in that direction, and you look around the flat, the living room, the kitchen doorway, and your eyes go to the knife block, which seems to be a repeated theme tonight, except this time they do not stop there.

any object.

the wiki said any object, both wikis, fbi and born again, any object becomes a lethal weapon with hi perfect aim. and you start to look around your flat with new eyes because the problem isnt just the knife block, the problem is everything; like the pen on the coffee table and the television remote and the coasters and the mug on the counter and the keys on the hook by the door and the fork that wade left on the draining board this morning and the straws in the glass on the windowsill and the actual physical contents of your flat which is, you are realising, essentially an arsenal if the person using it has perfect aim and no regard for the conventional definition of a weapon.

you close the laptop.

you open it again.

you close it again.

you put the laptop down on the cushion beside you and you look at the ceiling for a moment. wade had came through mid-conversation in a kitchen, shane had come through mid-crisis with blood already on his face. neither of them had any say in the timing and neither, by extension, will anyone else.

which means the version of benjamin poindexter who turns up at your address could be post-surgery, post-rikers, post-any number of things on that wiki, or he could be mid-surgery, which is a significantly more complicated situation than a man in a flannel shirt asking for bluebell or the rammer jammer.

you look around the flat.

you get up and then pick up the pen and put it in your bedroom underneath the wardrobe.

you move the keys into your bedroom.

you put the straws under the sink in your bathroom.

then you get up and you walk to the kitchen doorway.

wade is at the hob, actually cooking while shane is leaning against the counter with his arms crossed watching wade with the expression of a man who has been told to supervise and is doing it with the bare minimum of engagement. they both look up when you appear in the doorway.

"Shane?” you lean against the doorway, raising an eyebrow at him.

he raises his own at her, a grunt escaping him.

"hypothetically," you say, "if a man turned up here who was roughly your size, possibly broader, with a metal reinforced spine and perfect aim with any object in a room, could you get him into a dark room and keep him there?"

shane looks at you for a moment.

"yeah," he says, like this is a completely normal question.

"good," you say, turning to leave when wade’s voice stops you.

"what–" wade questions, from the hob, turning around with the spatula still in his hand. "what does that mean?! why does she need someone put in a dark room– who are we putting in a dark room?"

"nobody yet." you say, shrugging.

"yet?" wade repeats.

"potentially nobody ever," you say, "i'm just doing risk management."

"risk management.." wade says, in the tone of a man who has learned over the last three days that when you say things like risk management in that specific voice it means something significantly more alarming than the words suggest. "risk management for who exactly?"

"someone who might show up." you say.

“sweetheart.."

you look at shane. shane looks back at you with the flat assessment and something in it that is almost, almost, the beginning of professional interest.

"someone with perfect aim," you say. "with any object."

wade puts the spatula down on the counter. "any object?"

"any object."

wade looks at you, the spatula in his hand, the pan on the stove, the cutlery cupboard, the knife block and then looks back at you.

"hide the straws.." he says, voice solemn and serious.

"already done!" you nod, and you go back to the sofa and flick open the laptop.

EVAN STAFFORD. GENERATION KILL, 2008.

corporal, bravo company, first recon marines, iraq, 2003. you read through it all, pulling out the relevant details, and find that evan stafford is closer to your age than anyone else, hes young in the way that it sits badly next to the things that the wiki is describing; a marine in the invasion. you read about the war the way the wiki describes it, through the lens of men who were inside it, who had trained for something and been handed something different, who watched the decisions being made above them and had to keep moving anyway.

he killed people, he was a man who killed people because a government sent him somewhere and told him to but, there is a difference between a man who took money to put a bullet in someone specific, and a soldier. you decide that the difference matters, not because one is clean and the other is not, but because it tells you something about the architecture of a person, about what they are capable of choosing versus what they were put in the position of doing.

you stare at the wiki for a moment.

then you scroll back up to the top and notice a pattern in all of the characters that wilson bethel plays; the number of men on this list who have at some point been in the military or law enforcement or some combination of the two is significant, and you sit with that for a second.

"WADE!" you call towards the kitchen.

"YEAH?" he calls back, over the sound of something sizzling, far too loud for both yours and shane’s ears based on his little: “shut the fuck up!”

"were you in the military at any point, in any capacity?"

a pause.

"no, never got to" he calls back, something changing in his voice, "why?"

"wilson bethel plays a lot of soldiers," you say, to the living room, to nobody, to the general concept of your own life. "and assassins, and marines.” you look at the list.

there was no response from the kitchen.

"i'm just saying," you say, "that for a man with one face he has an extraordinary relationship with state sanctioned violence and i find that personally exhausting."

"she does this," wade says, pretending to talk quietly to shane from the kitchen,"she just says things to the room."

"i can hear you.”

"sorry sweetheart!” he calls back, a grin clearly on his face and all you can do is sigh and ignore him.

you look back at the laptop and you look at evan stafford's wiki and decide he’s good enough. 

you put him there and you move on, because you are against the war, have always been against the war, every war, and evan stafford did not choose iraq any more than wade chose your corridor carpet, and the flat moral clarity of the good and evil columns has never been less useful than it is right now.

onto the next.

MARK CALLAN. ALL RISE, 2019.

deputy district attorney in los angeles. you skim the wiki with the weary efficiency of someone who has been doing this for long enough that the categories have become automatic, and mark callan is, by the standards of this list, almost aggressively uncomplicated.

earnest about the law, genuinely invested in whether the system works rather than just whether he wins, no weapons, no murders, no spine surgery, no hired killings, no psychological profiles, no perfect aim with household objects.

you look at the good column and you feel something in your chest unclench by approximately one degree.

you put him there immediately.

you look at the full document, the good column and the evil column and the names above the columns. you look around your one bedroom flat with the shitty sofa, the kitchen where two grown ass men barely squeeze in and imagine five more, ten more and on, and on, and on.

you’re going to need a bigger flat.

for now you’ll wait for tea and hope to god no more come in.

the first time you saw the winchesters was the day the moving truck pulled up outside the old miller place, back before anybody on the street even knew their name. you'd been sat out on your own porch steps shelling peas into a bowl for mama when the truck rounded the corner, and it was dean who caught your eye first, out in the yard hauling boxes with his shirt already ruined for it, a once white tank top gone black and grey with oil and dust, hair mussed and roughened from the heat, sticking up at odd angles where he'd clearly dragged a hand through it more than once trying to get it out of his eyes.

you were still watching, more curious than you'd ever admit, when the yelling started, sam's voice carrying sharp across the yard, something about a box getting dropped, john's voice coming back louder still, clipped and hard in a way that made your shoulders go tense just hearing it from three houses down. sam stood there arguing back, all long limbs and stubborn set to his jaw even at that age, clearly not backing down even with his father looming over him, and it might've kept going if dean hadn't dropped the box he was carrying right there in the yard and jogged over between them, quick and easy like he'd done it a thousand times before, which you'd come to learn later he had.

you couldn't hear exactly what he said, something low and even directed at his father, a hand raised placating, and then he turned toward sam with something different entirely, a grin and a clap on the shoulder that seemed to take the fight clean out of the moment, and just like that john was heading back toward the truck grumbling and sam was standing there looking sullen but no longer shouting, and the whole yard settled back into something normal again like nothing had happened at all.

it was dean who noticed you then, sitting there on your porch with your bowl of peas forgotten in your lap, and he flashed a grin your way before jogging clean across the yard and up your walk like the two of you were already old friends, hand stuck out before he'd even fully stopped moving.

"dean winchester," he said, all easy charm despite the state of him, grease still smudged along his jaw and down one forearm, "that's my old man john, and the moody one back there arguing with a cardboard box is my brother sam. we're your new neighbors, so i guess you're stuck with us now."

you shook his hand, more amused than you probably should've been for a stranger covered head to toe in dirt on your own front porch, and told him your name, and he grinned wider like that was the best thing he'd heard all week, said something about how the street already looked friendlier than the last three they'd lived on, and by the time he jogged back off to keep hauling boxes you'd caught sam watching the whole exchange from across the yard, quiet and a little wary, though he gave you a small nod when your eyes met his, the kind of nod that would turn, months later, into something a whole lot more than that.

the screen door bangs against the frame the way it always does when dean comes through it too fast for the hinges to keep up, and you're up to your elbows in the sink helping mama rinse vegetables when he ambles into the kitchen like he owns it. he's built solid through the shoulders from years of hauling engine parts around the shop, tall in that broad, sturdy way rather than lanky, and his hair's cropped short and a little spiky at the front, still damp at the edges from wherever he cleaned up before coming over. his eyes are a deep, warm green, the kind that crinkle at the corners when he grins, and there's a smear of grease along his forearm he clearly missed, dark against the freckled tan of his skin. his mouth pulls into that slow, easy grin the second his eyes land on you, teeth white and even and just a little too pleased with themselves, like he's been looking forward to this exact moment all day.

"hiya, sweetheart," he drawls, already crossing the kitchen toward you without waiting for an invitation, and before you can get a word out he's leaning down and pressing a loud, sloppy kiss to your cheek, more enthusiasm than finesse, the kind that leaves an actual wet mark behind and makes mama click her tongue at him from across the kitchen without any real heat behind it. he straightens back up looking entirely too satisfied with himself, winks at you like he knows exactly what he just did, and then he's off again just as fast as he came, snagging a piece of cornbread on his way out to the porch where daddy and john are still going back and forth about the compressor, leaving you standing there with your hands still dripping dishwater and his kiss cooling wet against your skin.

you're still blinking after him, caught somewhere between annoyed and fighting a smile, when sam wanders in a moment later, quieter about it than his brother ever manages to be. he's taller than dean by a good few inches, still carrying a bit of that unfinished, gangly look in his limbs even at twenty-one, shoulders not quite grown into the height yet. his hair's longer, shaggy and a little unkempt, falling forward over his forehead in a way that makes him push it back with one hand every so often without seeming to notice he's doing it, and his eyes are a softer hazel than his brother's, warm and a touch shy in a way that doesn't match how tall he is. he takes one look at your face, the damp mark dean left behind, and huffs out something that's almost a laugh, soft and fond, shaking his head like this is nothing new. he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a folded tissue, hands it over without a word needed, just that same easy smile tucked into the corner of his mouth while you scrub at your cheek to get rid of the evidence.

"that's such a dean thing to do," he says finally, voice low enough that it's really only meant for you, leaning a hip against the counter beside you like he's got nowhere else to be. you mutter something back about how his brother's got no concept of personal space, and sam just shrugs one shoulder, easy and unbothered.

"somebody's got to clean up after him," he adds, reaching past you to grab a dish towel off the rack and drying the vegetable you just rinsed like helping you out here is the most natural thing in the world, like he does it every sunday, which he basically does now.

dinner gets called not long after, daddy hollering that the chicken's off the grill and mama shooing everybody toward the table with a dish towel like she's herding cattle, and you end up wedged between dean and sam same as always, the seating never needing to be discussed anymore. john takes the seat across from you, easy smile for your mama and a firm handshake for your daddy, all southern manners and gruff charm, the kind of man who fills a room without meaning to. it isn't until the food's half passed around that you notice the shift in him, small and constant, the way his eyes track dean without seeming to, sharp in a way that doesn't match the loose grin he's wearing for everyone else's benefit.

"pass the potatoes," john says, and when dean reaches for the bowl a half second slower than expected, caught mid conversation with bobby about a carburetor, john's voice drops just slightly, just enough for you to catch it under the noise of the table. "eyes up, son."

dean's hand moves fast then, passing the bowl without missing a beat, easy smile never slipping, but you catch the way his jaw tightens for just a second before it smooths back out, the kind of automatic correction that looks practiced, like a soldier snapping back into line rather than a grown man passing potatoes to his father at sunday dinner. nobody else seems to notice, mama already asking sam something about how his classes are shaping up for the fall, and sam answers easy and bright, launching into some story about a professor he's got, and john's whole face changes when he turns toward his younger son, softer around the eyes, proud in a way that doesn't require correction.

"that's my boy," john says, warm, reaching over to clap sam on the shoulder, and sam ducks his head a little at the praise, pleased and a little embarrassed by it, entirely unaware of how his father's attention had been fixed somewhere else entirely just seconds before. dean watches the exchange from beside you, still smiling, still easy, but there's something in the set of his shoulders that reads like he's used to disappearing in moments like this, like he's spent so long making sure sam never has to see the sharper edges of their father that he doesn't even think to resent it anymore, just absorbs it quiet and keeps the table running smooth.

you feel his knee press against yours under the table again, less playful this time, more like he needs somewhere to put his hand that isn't clenched around his fork, and you don't say anything, just let your foot rest against his ankle steady, something quiet passing between you that doesn't need explaining.

dinner rolls on loud and easy despite the undercurrent, the way it always does, bobby holding court about some fool at the auction house who tried to lowball him on a truck engine that ran clean as anything.

"i told him, son, you can try that with somebody who don't know a blown gasket from a hole in the ground, but that ain't me," bobby says around a mouthful of cornbread, waving his fork for emphasis, and daddy's already laughing before he even finishes, shaking his head like he's heard this story before and enjoys it every time anyway.

"you shoulda seen his face, bobby, i swear," john adds, grinning wide, "man about swallowed his own tongue when you quoted him double."

"well he shoulda known better," bobby grumbles, though he's clearly pleased with himself, reaching for the pitcher of tea and topping off his glass without being asked, comfortable enough in this kitchen that he might as well have grown up in it.

mama's still fussing, always fussing, pushing another helping of green beans onto sam's plate before he's even asked, the way she does with him more than anybody, like his height gives her an excuse to feed him twice as much as everyone else at the table.

"eat up, sam, you're all elbows and knees these days," she says, and sam laughs, soft and a little sheepish, taking the spoonful without argument because he learned a long time ago there's no winning that fight.

"yes ma'am," he says, and daddy chuckles into his glass, catching your eye across the table with the kind of look that says he approves of a boy with manners like that, always has, ever since the winchesters first showed up on the street looking a little rough around the edges and sam turned out to be the type who says please and thank you without being prompted.

dean's quieter through most of it, content to let bobby and john carry the noise, though he leans back in his chair at one point and throws out a comment about the truck bobby mentioned, some detail about the transmission that has bobby squinting at him with something like respect.

"boy actually listens when i talk shop," bobby says to the table at large, jerking a thumb toward dean, "unlike some people i could mention," and he casts a pointed look at john that gets a bark of laughter out of daddy.

"hey now," john says, holding his hands up, easy grin firmly back in place, the sharper edge from earlier folded away somewhere nobody else at the table ever gets to see, "i listen plenty."

"you listen to the sound of your own voice, is what you listen to," bobby fires back, and even john has to laugh at that, the whole table dissolving into it, mama wiping at her eyes and daddy pounding the table once with the flat of his hand the way he does when something really gets him going.

you catch sam's eye across the noise of it, both of you sharing a small private smile at the absurdity of grown men needling each other like schoolboys, and under the table dean's foot finds yours again, steady, grounding, like he's checking you're still there even in the middle of all this noise, and you press back against his ankle to let him know you are.

the table clears out slow after that, bobby and john and daddy drifting back out to the porch with fresh drinks, still ribbing each other about something, and mama starts stacking plates only for dean to reach over and take the stack right out of her hands before she can protest.

"you sit, mrs. l," he says, easy and warm, already balancing the plates against his forearm like he's done it a hundred times, which by now he has. "boys got it tonight."

mama makes a token protest, waves a hand like she ought to argue, but she's smiling when she does it, and she settles back into her chair with her tea instead, watching the three of you head into the kitchen with the kind of fond look she gets whenever the winchester boys make themselves useful around here.

you're up to your elbows in soapy water again within minutes, dean scraping plates before handing them off to you, sam drying and putting away with the kind of quiet efficiency that says he's spent plenty of evenings in this exact kitchen learning where everything goes. the radio mama keeps on the counter is playing low, some old country station daddy likes, and for a while nobody says much of anything, just the clink of dishes and the hum of the evening settling in around you.

"you missed a spot," dean says at one point, nodding toward a plate you just handed him, and when you go to grab it back to check he just laughs, low and pleased with himself, holding it just out of reach over your head.

"dean," you warn, reaching up for it, and he grins down at you, entirely too tall for this to be a fair fight, until sam reaches over without even looking up from the pot he's drying and plucks it straight out of his brother's hand.

"give it here, you're being ridiculous," sam says, mild as anything, handing the plate back to you properly, and dean just huffs like he's been personally wronged, going back to scraping the next plate with an exaggerated sigh.

"no respect in this house," he mutters, though there's no real heat in it, and you bump your hip against his to get him to shift over so you can reach the sink properly, which he does without complaint, close enough now that his arm brushes yours every time he passes you another plate.

sam finishes drying and starts putting things away in the cabinets, moving around the kitchen easy and familiar, and at one point he pauses beside you to grab a stack of bowls, close enough that his hand rests briefly against the small of your back as he reaches past you, gone again before it means anything anybody else could notice, though dean's eyes flick over just briefly at the movement, something unreadable crossing his face before he goes back to the dishes like he didn't see it at all.

by the time the last pot's put away and the counters wiped down, the kitchen's quiet except for the radio still playing low, and you're leaning back against the counter catching your breath from the both of them crowding you all evening, dean on one side already reaching for his keys off the hook by the door, sam lingering a beat longer like he's in no hurry to head back out to the noise of the porch just yet before they both dissappear.

the bell over the door jingles just as the lunch rush is finally starting to thin out, and you glance up from wiping down the counter to see dean shouldering his way in first, sam right behind him looking lighter than you've seen him in weeks, some of that constant tension around his eyes gone soft for once.

"guess who just aced his contracts module," dean announces to the whole diner practically, loud enough that old mr. hendricks looks up from his coffee two booths down, and sam's already shaking his head, cheeks going a little pink at the attention even as he can't quite fight down the smile pulling at his mouth.

"it wasn't that big a deal," sam mutters, sliding into the booth by the window, the same one you've unofficially claimed as theirs at this point, though dean's already talking over him before he can finish.

"it's a huge deal, he's been stressing about that thing for two weeks straight, wouldn't shut up about it," dean says, dropping into the seat across from his brother and grinning up at you as you come over with a couple of menus neither of them actually need anymore. "figured the man deserved pie. on the house, obviously."

"nothing's on the house, dean," you say, raising an eyebrow at him, and he just shrugs, unbothered, propping his boots up against the seat beside sam who kicks them right back off without even looking up.

"worth a shot," dean says easily, and sam huffs out a laugh, ducking his head, and there's something about the sight of him like this, loose and pleased with himself, that softens something in your chest you don't examine too closely.

"congratulations," you tell sam, meaning it, and he looks up at you properly then, that same shy warmth in his eyes that always seems to catch you off guard even though you've seen it a hundred times by now.

"thanks," he says, quiet, like it means more coming from you than it did from dean's whole announcement to the diner, and dean rolls his eyes at the both of you like he can see exactly what's happening and finds it both ridiculous and entirely predictable.

"so, pie," dean says, tapping the table, "and don't think you're skimping on my slice just because he's the genius today."

you go get the pie because it's easier than arguing, and when you come back with two plates dean's already talking again, something about a car that came into the shop that morning with a problem he's proud of himself for catching fast, and sam listens along easy, throwing in a comment here and there, and you linger at the edge of the booth a beat longer than you probably need to, tray tucked against your hip, half listening to dean and half aware of sam's knee pressing warm against yours under the table where nobody else can see.

the light's just starting to go gold and soft by the time you make your way over to the winchester place, that little wrapped something tucked into your pocket, not much, just a keychain you found in town with a little scale of justice on it, dumb and sentimental but it made you think of him the second you saw it. john's truck is gone from the driveway, off running some errand with bobby probably, and dean's truck sits there too though you don't spot him around anywhere, which suits you just fine tonight.

sam's out on the porch when you round the corner, folded into the old wicker chair with a textbook open on his knee that he's clearly not reading, staring off toward the treeline instead with that unfocused look he gets sometimes when his mind's somewhere else entirely. he catches sight of you coming up the walk and the whole look on his face shifts, softens, book forgotten as he sits up straighter.

"hey," he says, warm, closing the textbook properly now and setting it aside on the little table beside him. "wasn't expecting you tonight."

"figured you deserved a proper congratulations," you say, climbing the porch steps, "seeing as dean already ate half your celebration pie earlier."

that gets a laugh out of him, low and easy, and he reaches out to catch your hand as you get close enough, tugging you down into the space beside him on the wicker chair, too small for two people really but neither of you minding that in the slightest. you press the little wrapped gift into his palm before you can lose your nerve, and he looks down at it, surprised, turning it over careful in his hands like it's something fragile.

"you didn't have to do that," he says, quiet, working the paper open, and when the little keychain falls into his palm his mouth curves into something soft and a little disbelieving, thumb running over the tiny scales like he can't quite believe you thought of him enough to notice something so specific.

"i saw it and thought of you," you say, feeling a little exposed admitting it out loud like that, and sam looks up at you then with an expression that makes your chest go tight, something unguarded and entirely too fond for a boy who's usually so careful about what he lets show.

he doesn't say anything else, just reaches up to tuck a strand of hair back from your face, slow and deliberate, and then he's kissing you, soft at first, like he's testing whether you'll let him, and you do, easy, hand coming up to rest against his jaw as the kiss deepens, his hand sliding to the small of your back to pull you closer despite the awkward angle of the chair. he kisses like he reads, unhurried and thorough, like there's no version of this evening he wants to rush through, and when you shift to straddle his lap properly to ease the strain of twisting toward him, he makes a low sound against your mouth, hands settling firm at your hips like he's steadying himself as much as you.

the porch light hasn't even come on yet, dusk still soft and blue around you, and sam kisses you like he's got nowhere else in the world he'd rather be, one hand sliding up under the hem of your shirt to rest warm against your ribs, the other cradling the back of your neck like you're something worth being careful with. you lose track of time out there with him, the cicadas starting up loud in the trees, his textbook forgotten on the table, the little keychain still clutched loose in his other hand like he can't bring himself to set it down even now.

the marquee's lit up bright by the time dean pulls into the drive-in lot that saturday, some worn out western playing that neither of you particularly cares about, and he's barely got the truck in park before he's glancing over at you with that grin that means trouble, the one you've come to know means the movie was never really the point.

"back seat," he says, already reaching for the door handle, "windshield's got a crack right in the sightline anyway, terrible seats up front."

"you drove us here specifically for the back seat, didn't you," you say, though you're already climbing over the console to follow him, no real argument in it, and he laughs, low and pleased with himself, settling into the back with his knees bracketing yours the second you're both properly in.

"can't a man appreciate a classic film from a better angle," he says, though he's not looking at the screen at all anymore, hand already sliding along your jaw to pull you in, and the second his mouth meets yours any pretense of watching the movie goes clean out the window.

it's hurried from the start, more heat than patience, his hand fisting gentle in your hair while you climb properly into his lap, the gearshift long forgotten in the front seat, and he mumbles something against your mouth about how long he'd been waiting all week for this, words barely coherent between kisses, more breath than sentence. you kiss him back just as urgent, hands sliding up under his shirt to feel the warmth of his skin, and he groans low into your mouth, hips shifting up against yours like he can't help the reaction, one hand gripping your hip hard enough to bruise while the other cradles the back of your head like he's trying to keep you from ever pulling away.

"you have no idea," he mutters against your lips, breathless, "no idea what you do to me, sitting there all week acting like nothing's going on," and you laugh against his mouth, breathless yourself, telling him to shut up and kiss you properly instead of talking, which he does, dragging you back in deep and slow this time, though it doesn't stay slow for long, his mouth trailing hot down your jaw to your throat while you tip your head back to give him better access, the windows fogging up thick around you despite the cool night air outside.

somewhere on the screen the western plays on, gunfire and dramatic music neither of you registers even once, dean's hands mapping you out like he's trying to memorize every inch, mumbling half formed things against your skin that don't quite make sense but sound like they mean everything, and you're gasping his name at one point when his mouth finds a spot just below your ear that makes your whole body arch into him, his low chuckle vibrating against your throat in response.

by the time the credits roll two hours later neither of you has looked at the screen once, lips swollen and hair a mess, dean grinning at you dazed and thoroughly pleased with how the evening turned out, tugging you back in for one more slow kiss before he finally, reluctantly, starts the truck for the drive home.

the truck idles quiet in front of your house by the time dean pulls up, porch light left on for you same as always, the street gone dark and still around you both. he cuts the engine but doesn't move to get out just yet, one arm braced along the top of the seat, the other hand resting warm against your thigh where it settled sometime during the drive home and never left.

you sit there a moment in the quiet, still a little breathless from the drive-in, hair mussed and lips still tender from how thorough he'd been with you, and there's something about the stillness now, just the two of you and the hum of the engine cooling, that makes the question feel bigger than it probably is.

"you could come in," you say, quieter than you mean to, glancing over at him from under your lashes, feeling shy in a way that doesn't quite match everything you just did in the back seat not twenty minutes ago. "for a night cap. if you wanted."

his thumb strokes slow against your thigh where his hand still rests, and you watch something shift behind his eyes, that easy cockiness softening into something a little more sincere, like he's actually considering the weight of what you're asking rather than just running on instinct for once.

"i'd love to, sweetheart," he says, low, and leans in to press one more slow kiss to your mouth before reaching for the door handle.

the front door creaks louder than either of you remembers it being as you slip inside, both of you dissolving into quiet giggles almost immediately, dean nearly tripping over your shoes left by the door and grabbing your waist to steady himself, which only makes you laugh harder, pressing a hand over your own mouth to keep quiet with your parents asleep down the hall.

"shh," you whisper, not much better at containing it yourself, tugging him along toward your room with fingers laced through his, both of you stumbling once more in the dark hallway when dean's shoulder catches the edge of a picture frame, sending it wobbling against the wall with a soft clatter that has you both freezing, breath held, waiting for any sign of movement from your parents' room before collapsing back into muffled laughter and continuing on.

your bedroom door clicks shut behind you and dean's hands are back on your waist almost instantly, walking you backward until your legs hit the edge of your desk, and in one easy motion he sweeps his arm across it, sending papers and pens scattering to the floor without a second thought, entirely oblivious to the book resting there with the little flower tucked between its pages, sam's careful handwriting on the note beneath it, all of it swept aside in the dark along with everything else.

he lifts you easily onto the cleared surface, settling himself between your knees like he belongs there, and his mouth finds yours again in the dark, slower now than the frantic heat of the drive-in, more deliberate, like he's savoring having you somewhere quiet and private and entirely his for the moment. his hands slide up your sides, thumbs tracing slow along your ribs, and you wrap your legs loose around him to pull him closer, fingers threading up into his hair while he kisses you deep and unhurried, occasionally breaking away just to press his forehead to yours, breathing you in like he's still catching up from the truck.

his lips trail down your throat, open and warm, tasting the skin just below your ear before he sinks lower. dean drops to his knees on the floor without hesitation, hands sliding up your thighs to push your skirt higher until it bunches at your hips. he hooks his fingers into your panties and drags them down slowly, letting them fall around one ankle as he spreads your legs wider and leans in.

dean groans the second his mouth meets your pussy, the sound low and rough against your folds as his tongue drags through your wetness in one long stroke. he presses closer, nose brushing your clit while he licks again, slower this time, savoring the taste. "fuck, you taste so sweet," he murmurs into you, voice thick and muffled, the words vibrating against your skin. his tongue circles your entrance before pushing inside, fucking you shallowly with it while his hands grip your thighs to keep you open.

he pulls back just enough to speak again, lips shiny. "goddamn, baby… so fucking sweet for me." then he dives back in, sucking your clit between his lips and groaning louder, the sound hungry and desperate as he eats you like he's starving. his tongue works in firm strokes, alternating between licking broad and flat and flicking quick and sharp, every movement pulling more wetness from you that he laps up greedily.

your fingers find his hair again, threading tight as your hips twitch forward against his mouth. dean moans into your pussy at the movement, the vibration making your thighs shake around his head. he keeps his knees planted on the floor, shoulders broad between your spread legs, completely focused on devouring you.

the room's gone quiet except for the soft sounds of your breathing, dean's hands braced firm against your thighs where he's settled on his knees in front of you, skirt bunched up around your waist, when the sound of a door creaking somewhere down the hallway cuts through the haze of it all. you both go still at the same instant, and then comes the unmistakable shuffle of footsteps, your mama's voice calling out soft and half asleep, asking if that was you she heard moving around.

"oh, fuck—" dean breathes, already scrambling, and in one motion he's yanking your skirt back down and hauling you upright off the desk, both of you a tangle of stifled panic and barely contained laughter as he snatches his shirt off the floor.

"window, window," you hiss, already crossing the room to shove it open, and dean's there in a heartbeat, one leg already swinging over the sill with the ease of a man who's clearly done this exact maneuver more than once in his life. he pauses just long enough to grin at you, breathless and thoroughly pleased with himself despite the chaos, and leans back in to press one last quick kiss to your mouth.

"to be continued, sweetheart," he murmurs against your lips, and then he's gone, dropping down into the dark yard with barely a sound, and you're left standing there smoothing your skirt down with your heart hammering, just as your mama's knock sounds soft against the door.

"you okay, baby?"

"sorry! just got back, didn't mean to wake you." she mutters a small acknowledgement before walking away, turning off a hallway light on her way.

you sink back down onto the edge of your bed once the house has gone quiet again, chest still heaving a little from how close that was. it's only once your heart's stopped hammering that you notice the mess still scattered across your floor, papers and pens strewn every which way from where dean swept them aside without a second thought, and you get down on your knees to start gathering it all back up before your mama decides to come check on you again in the morning and finds your room looking like a storm blew through it.

you're halfway through stacking the papers when your hand closes around something small and soft, and you go still, pulling it out from beneath a fallen notebook to find a single flower, wilted now from however long it's been lying there forgotten on the floor, petals crushed slightly at the edges. your stomach drops before you even register why, some instinct already knowing what you're about to find, and sure enough, tucked beneath it is the book, sam's handwriting scrawled across a torn scrap of paper used as a bookmark, the words simple, just a little note about how he'd seen this and thought you might like it, how he hoped you'd let him know what you thought once you'd read it.

you sit there on your bedroom floor for a long moment, the flower held loose in your palm, the book open to that page in your lap, and something in your chest goes tight and aching in a way you weren't prepared for. you can picture him so clearly, the careful way he must have set it down, probably during one of the quiet evenings he stops by just to say hello, choosing his words on that little note with the same deliberate thoughtfulness he puts into everything, and instead it had sat there forgotten on your desk long enough to get swept onto the floor without you even noticing, crushed under something else entirely while you weren't looking.

you press the back of your hand against your eyes, breath shaky, and you don't fully understand the shape of what you're feeling, whether it's guilt or grief or something more complicated tangled up in both directions at once, dean's kiss still faint on your mouth and sam's careful handwriting blurring now in front of you, and for the first time all summer the quiet, unspoken nothing you've been living inside of feels less like something easy and more like something that's going to cost somebody something, sooner rather than later.

the walk over to the winchester place feels longer than usual that morning, book tucked carefully against your chest along with the flower pressed flat now between its pages, and you find him right where you knew you would, up in the treehouse with his long legs stretched out and another book balanced on his knee, sunlight dappling through the leaves onto his shoulders.

he catches sight of you climbing up and his whole face brightens, that soft grin spreading slow and easy, shifting over to make room without needing to be asked. "hey, wasn't expecting you this early," he says, setting his own book aside, and then his eyes catch on what you're holding and something flickers across his face, quick and uncertain, like he's not sure yet what it means that you've got it with you.

you settle in against his chest without a word, the familiar weight of his arm coming around you automatic now, and you feel him relax slightly once you're tucked against him, though there's still a question sitting unasked in the stillness between you. you set the book down open across both your laps, the little flower still nestled where it fell, wilted now but preserved carefully all the same, and you feel him go still behind you when he realizes what it is.

"i found it last night," you say, quiet, tracing your thumb over the corner of the page. "i'm sorry it took so long. it got knocked onto the floor, and i didn't see it till late."

his arms tighten around you slightly, and when he speaks his voice is low, careful. "you don't have to apologize," he says, though there's something in it that says he's relieved anyway, relieved you came, relieved you're here now with it held like it matters. "i just wanted you to have something. wasn't trying to make it a whole thing."

"i know," you say, tipping your head back against his shoulder to look up at him properly. "but it is a thing. it's a lovely thing. i just feel awful i didn't see it sooner."

he's quiet a moment, thumb tracing slow along your arm, and then he reaches down and turns the book to the page he'd marked, the one his note referenced, and starts reading it aloud to you right there, voice low and steady the way it always is, like nothing else in the world needs explaining, like this moment right here, you tucked against him with the flower between the pages, is enough to smooth over everything that almost went wrong.

you let him read a few more lines, his voice low and even above you, the treehouse warm with afternoon light and the smell of cut grass drifting up from somewhere in the yard below, before something in your chest tugs you to turn and look at him properly.

"hey, sam?" you say, soft, twisting slightly in the circle of his arm to face him.

he hums low in response, eyes flicking down from the page to meet yours, brows lifting slightly in question, and whatever you meant to say next dissolves the second you see the way he's looking at you, patient and warm and entirely unguarded.

you lean up instead, and he meets you halfway, the book slipping forgotten from his lap as his hand comes up to cradle your jaw, kissing you slow and soft, unhurried in that way that's entirely his own, nothing frantic or urgent about it, just the quiet certainty of two people who've spent all summer circling toward exactly this. his thumb strokes gentle along your cheekbone, and you melt into it, one hand curling into the front of his shirt, and neither of you rushes to pull away, content to stay just like that, wrapped up together in the dappled light with the book and the flower resting forgotten beside you.

you shift without breaking the kiss, climbing careful into his lap in the cramped space of the treehouse, and his hands settle firm at your waist to steady you, smiling against your mouth like he can't quite help it, the kiss going soft and unhurried between you both. your fingers slide up into his hair, tugging gentle at the ends, and he makes a low content sound at the back of his throat, tightening his grip at your waist just slightly, like he's trying to pull you even closer than you already are.

you pull back just enough to rest your forehead against his, both of you a little breathless, and you're smiling when you say it, still holding onto him, still close enough that your noses brush.

"i really like the book, thank you, sammy," you say, quiet, meaning it in every sense of the word, and something in his whole face shifts at the nickname, soft and a little dazed, that easy dimpled grin spreading slow across his mouth, lovesick in a way he probably doesn't even realize he's showing so plainly.

"yeah?" he says, voice a little rough, thumb tracing absent circles against your hip. "good. i wanted you to have something that was just, i don't know. ours."

you kiss him again for that, slow and warm, and he sighs happy into it, holding you like he's got no intention of letting the moment end anytime soon, sunlight dappling warm across you both while the whole rest of the world stays comfortably far away.

neither of you say anything as you break away and go back to reading the shitty little paperback in sam's hands.

the summer's stretched on long enough now that the evenings have started catching a hint of something cooler underneath the heat, cicadas still loud in the trees but the air a little kinder once the sun dips low, and sunday dinner unfolds the same as it always does, table crowded with too many plates and too much noise, bobby already three stories deep into something about a truck he's fixing up on the side.

daddy's got the radio going soft from the kitchen window, some old station he likes, and mama keeps circling the table topping off glasses nobody's asked her to top off, fussing over sam's plate in particular the way she always does, insisting he needs more than what he's taken even though he's cleared two helpings already. john's in fine form tonight, easy and loud with bobby, the sharper edges of him tucked away for the evening, and dean's stretched out beside you looking comfortable and content, arm slung loose along the back of your chair in a way that's become so ordinary nobody at the table so much as glances twice anymore.

you catch sam watching you a few times over the course of the meal, quiet glances that linger a beat too long before he ducks back to his plate, and every time it happens something warm coils low in your stomach, the two of you having spent the better part of the week trading looks like that across the diner counter, neither one saying much of anything out loud but both of you clearly circling toward wanting to.

once the plates are mostly cleared and the grownups have drifted their conversation into something slower, bobby refilling everyone's drinks whether they want it or not, you stand to gather up a few of the empty dishes, and sam's up out of his seat almost as fast, offering to help carry the pitcher back in for more tea, an excuse so thin it wouldn't survive a second of scrutiny if anybody at that table were paying proper attention, though nobody is.

the kitchen's dim and quiet once the screen door swings shut behind you both, just the hum of the fridge and the muffled sound of conversation still drifting in from the porch, and sam sets the pitcher down on the counter without much urgency, turning to find you already close, close enough that neither of you needs to say anything before he's reaching for you, one hand curling warm around your waist to pull you back against the fridge, the cool metal a shock against your spine through your shirt.

"we shouldn't," he murmurs, though he's already leaning in as he says it, breath warm against your mouth, no real conviction behind the words at all.

"probably not," you agree, just as unconvincing, tipping your chin up to close the last of the distance yourself, and then his mouth is on yours, soft at first, testing, before it deepens into something slower and a little sloppy, both of you clearly having thought about this more than either would admit out loud. his hand braces flat against the fridge door beside your head, the other cradling your jaw, thumb tracing slow along your cheekbone while he kisses you like there's nowhere else in the world he needs to be, soft little sounds passing between you every time you break apart for breath before he's leaning back in again, unable to quite make himself stop.

you lose track of time standing there against the fridge, his mouth slow and unhurried against yours, one of your hands fisted loose in the front of his shirt, and it isn't until the screen door creaks open again that either of you registers anything beyond each other at all, footsteps crossing the kitchen tile too late for you to properly pull apart before dean clears his throat, loud and pointed, from just a few feet away.

"well," dean says, arms crossing over his chest as he leans back against the counter, expression working hard for casual and not quite managing it, something tighter around his eyes betraying him even as his mouth stays curved in that familiar easy smirk. "guess i should've grabbed the tea myself."

sam pulls back fast, guilt written plain across his face, opening his mouth like he's about to try and explain something that doesn't really need explaining, but dean doesn't wait for it. he crosses the kitchen in a few easy strides, and before you can process what's happening his hand's closed firm around your waist, spinning you gently away from sam and pulling you flush against him instead, his mouth finding yours in a kiss that's hard and sure and over almost as fast as it started, leaving you a little dizzy in the wake of it.

he pulls back just enough to look at you, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes, that easy grin not quite reaching them the way it usually does.

"sam's off to college next week," he says, low, glancing past you toward his brother with an expression that's part challenge, part something rawer he's clearly trying to bury under the joke of it. "kiss him while you still can, princess."

and then he's gone, releasing you and heading for the door without waiting for either of you to respond, the screen door swinging shut hard behind him, his footsteps carrying off across the yard toward baby rather than back to the porch where everyone else is still sitting none the wiser.

you stand there in the sudden quiet, staring after him, chest tight with something you can't quite untangle, and when you finally turn back to sam he's already looking away, jaw tense, guilt sitting heavy and plain across his face, like dean's words landed somewhere a lot deeper than either of you were prepared for tonight.

"wait, please—" sam started, but you didn't want to hear it. he didn't tell you he was going back to college early, and now you'd upset dean as well, you just wanted to be left alone.

the porch is still loud with bobby's laughter drifting through the screen door, mama calling something out about dessert, but you don't go back to it. you set the pitcher down on the counter with hands that aren't quite steady, and instead of following either of them, you slip out the kitchen doorway into the hall and head straight for your room, closing the door soft behind you so nobody thinks to come check.

you sit on the edge of your bed for a long while, the noise of the dinner still carrying faint from outside your window, dean's voice absent from it now, and you can't stop turning over the look on his face when he said it, that easy grin stretched thin over something that clearly wasn't easy at all, and sam's guilt-stricken expression right after, like he'd been caught at something he didn't know how to feel good about anymore.

nobody comes looking for a while. eventually you hear mama's voice calling faintly for you, wondering where you got off to, and you call back something about a headache, which isn't really a lie, your temples pulled tight with the weight of an evening that started easy and unraveled into something you don't have words for yet. you hear footsteps on the porch some time later, the scrape of chairs, bobby's laughter fading as the winchesters say their goodnights, and you don't get up to see any of them off, just lie there on top of your covers listening to baby's engine turn over in the driveway next door, the sound of it pulling away into the dark, and you don't know which one of them it hurts more to imagine driving off angry.

the week bleeds by slower than it should, sam's leaving date creeping closer with every passing day, and he knocks on your door twice before he finally goes, standing there on your porch looking a little lost in a way that doesn't suit him, asking soft if you've got a minute to talk before he heads out. both times you tell your mama to say you're feeling poorly, some vague stomach thing that keeps you tucked up in your room instead of facing him, too much still unresolved and too tangled up in guilt over dean to know what you'd even say if you opened that door.

he doesn't push it either time, just tells your mama to pass along that he hopes you feel better, voice quiet enough that you can hear the disappointment threaded through it even through your closed bedroom door, and then he's gone, off to the fall semester, and the treehouse sits empty at the edge of the yard for the first time all summer, no shaggy head of hair to be found up there with a book propped open.

dean doesn't knock at all.

he still shows up to sunday dinner, same as always, easy laugh and loud stories for bobby same as ever, except now there's always somebody new on his arm, a different girl practically every week, tall ones and short ones, girls with dark skin and girls with pale freckled shoulders, girls who laugh at all his jokes and girls who seem a little baffled by mama's fussing over second helpings. he introduces each of them with the same easy charm, hand at the small of their back, that same white, gleaming grin flashed wide and practiced, like he's testing out a different version of easy every single time, like maybe if he tries enough of them one might actually stick and make the empty seat beside him at the table mean something again.

you sit there across from him every week watching it happen, his eyes flicking to you every so often over the shoulder of whichever girl he's brought this time, something unreadable and a little challenging in the look, like he's daring you to say something, to react, and you never do, just keep your face carefully blank and pass the potatoes like nothing about any of it bothers you in the slightest, even though it does, every single time, more than you'd ever admit out loud.

the year turns over slower than you expect it to, dean's absence from sunday dinners settling into something the whole street just quietly stops mentioning after a while, mama no longer setting an extra plate out of habit, bobby's visits growing a little less frequent too, like without the boys anchoring things the whole rhythm of the neighborhood shifted somewhere you can't quite name.

it's a tuesday afternoon, unremarkable in every way, when the knock comes at your door, and you're wiping flour off your hands from helping mama with biscuits when you pull it open to find a stranger standing there, dark hair mussed in a way that looks less like carelessness and more like he genuinely doesn't know what a comb is for, sticking up in soft tousled waves that catch the afternoon light. he's got striking blue eyes, pale and searching, the kind that fix on you with an intensity that feels almost startling for a man asking to borrow sugar, and he's dressed strange for the heat, a rumpled tan trench coat over a white shirt and loosened navy tie, like he got dressed for a different season entirely and never quite adjusted. there's something faintly boyish and awkward about the tilt of his head, a slight furrow between his brows like he's parsing every word you might say before you even say it.

"hello," he says, voice low and a little gravelled, formal in a way that doesn't match the sugar request at all, "i apologize for the intrusion. i was told your household might have sugar to spare."

before you can even answer, there's a holler from across the yard and dean comes barreling into view, closing the distance in a dead sprint before tackling the stranger clean around the middle, both of them stumbling half off your porch step with dean laughing loud and delighted, the stranger grunting in surprise but not remotely upset by it, like this is simply a thing dean does now and he's long since stopped questioning it.

"cas, buddy, you beat me to it," dean says, hauling himself up and slinging an arm around the man's shoulders, grinning that same white, easy grin at you like no time at all has passed since you last saw it across a dinner table. "this is castiel novak, new guy at the shop, best damn mechanic i've met since my old man. cas, this is her, the one i told you about."

you ignore the bubbling rage at how unaffected he seems by the year of silence you two have shared.

castiel studies you a moment longer than feels entirely comfortable, head tilting slightly, before offering a small, sincere smile, and you're still trying to find something to say to any of it when dean's already talking again, something shifting behind his easy grin, a little softer, a little more hesitant.

"sammy came home," he says, and your stomach drops clean through the porch floor before you even turn to look.

sam's standing at the end of your front walk, taller somehow, filled out in the shoulders in a way college apparently did for him, hair a little shorter but still soft around his face, and beside him is a girl, blonde and bright and lovely, her hand tucked easy into his, laughing at something he must have said just before they reached the gate. and then you see it, catching the light as sam lifts his hand to wave at you, a plain silver band settled unmistakable on his finger, and the pretty girl at his side, sam's voice warm and a little nervous introducing her as jess, his fiancée, like the word doesn't detonate something quiet and final in your chest the second it leaves his mouth.

you swallow hard around the sudden tightness in your throat, forcing your face into something easy, something that doesn't betray the way your whole summer just came rushing back up all at once, dean's grin and sam's careful hands and the treehouse and the truck's fogged up windows, all of it crowding in behind a smile you paste on like it costs you nothing at all.

"well," you manage, voice steadier than you feel, "y'all better come in before mama sees you standing out here and has a fit about hospitality."

the first time he walked in you were three tickets deep and elbow deep in a stockpot that had been going since four that morning, skimming fat off the top with the ladle whose handle had snapped clean off in february and that you'd since wrapped in three full rotations of silver duct tape, because marv's idea of equipment maintenance was waiting for you to fix it yourself or stop complaining. the place did not take reservations. the menu was a single laminated sheet that had gone tacky at the edges from years of being wiped down with whatever chemical the dish pit had on hand that week, the kind of place people came to because it was close and cheap and the portions were big, not because anyone walked in expecting to be impressed.

he ordered the duck breast, eighteen dollars on a menu where most things hovered around twelve, the most expensive plate marv allowed because he'd read somewhere that one aspirational item made a menu look classier. marv bought the duck frozen and thought that was the end of his involvement. you were the one who scored the skin in a tight crosshatch and rendered it slow in a pan with a hot spot dead center that you'd learned to work around instead of asking anyone to fix, rotating the breast every ninety seconds by feel, listening for the exact hiss that told you the fat was rendering clean instead of scorching. you finished it in an oven that ran fifteen degrees low according to the thermometer you'd bought yourself because the dial lied, propping the door shut with a folded towel that lived on the handle permanently now, nobody questioning why anymore. while it rested you built a gastrique from the cheap vinegar marv stocked and a spoonful of fig jam you made yourself on slow afternoons because the bottled stuff tasted like cough syrup, reducing it down on a burner that only lit on the third try, finishing it off heat with a knob of butter to round the sharp edge. you sliced the duck on the bias, fanned it over a puree of celery root you pushed through a strainer by hand because the food processor's blade had gone dull two managers ago and marv refused to replace it, the gastrique drizzled in a controlled line, a few charred scallions laid across the top for bitterness.

he ate the first bite the way men who don't expect to be impressed eat things, slow, evaluative, his fork pausing over the second bite a fraction too long before he gave up the performance entirely and just ate, fast, focused, the specific hunger of someone who tastes food for a living and rarely gets surprised by it anymore. you noticed, because the place was nearly dead on a tuesday and you had nothing better to look at, that he was the kind of attractive that made you angry about it on principle, broad through the shoulders in a way that filled out a plain shirt better than it had any right to, jaw shadowed with stubble that looked deliberate rather than lazy, a thin pale scar cutting through one eyebrow you found yourself cataloguing before telling yourself to stop. you hated that you noticed. you hated more that you kept noticing anyway, every visit after, some small traitorous corner of you clocking the details while the rest of you stayed unmoved by anything he actually said.

marv started screaming at you from four feet away about ticket six, a table of two waiting on the burger, because apparently ninety seconds was an unreasonable amount of time to expect a patty to finish on a flat top with one burner running hot and the other running cold no matter what you set it to. you said yes chef in the flat voice that contained no actual chef in it and pulled the patty, building the burger fast, a smear of aioli you made yourself because the bottled mayo tasted like nothing, a slice of tomato, a fistful of arugula instead of the iceberg marv bought because it kept longer, the bun toasted on the same flat top so it picked up a little of the same fat the meat had just rendered.

he came back four days later and ordered the risotto, fourteen dollars, the dish marv liked to mention to investors because it sounded expensive to say out loud despite marv being constitutionally incapable of stirring a pot without abandoning it to scorch the second his phone buzzed. you built it the long way regardless of what it cost you in time on a night with no extra hands, toasting the rice dry until it smelled faintly of popcorn before the wine went in, then the stock one ladle at a time in a pot with a hairline crack along the rim that you'd learned to hold at exactly the right angle to keep it from leaking, stirring in a slow steady drag the entire twenty minutes risotto demanded if you wanted it to come out right instead of clumped or soupy. you finished it off heat with cold butter and a fistful of parmesan you grated yourself because the pre-shredded bag marv ordered melted wrong, the whole thing turning glossy and loose enough to spread on its own across the plate, a few sage leaves fried crisp and crumbled over the top for something bitter against all that richness.

he ate it the same way he'd eaten everything else, the stillness giving way to something closer to hunger, and afterward he found his way back to where you worked, leaning against a counter that wobbled slightly on one leg if you put weight on the wrong corner, with the easy assumption of a man who had never once considered that a room's rules might apply to him.

"how long have you worked here," he asked, while you broke down a case of lemons for the night's needs, the knife moving fast and steady against a cutting board so scored and warped it no longer sat flat on the counter without a damp towel wedged underneath it.

"three years," you said.

"why."

"because the job existed and i needed one."

"that's not what i asked."

"it's the answer you're getting," you said, scraping the peels into a container you'd repurposed from a tub of bulk mayo, and you heard marv somewhere behind you start in on the new line cook about a sauce that was, you happened to know, exactly the consistency you'd told him to make it, because marv liked finding someone to be wrong even when nothing was, especially when nothing was, since being right made him nervous about what else he might be missing.

his eyes flicked toward the noise and back to you. "and you stay for that."

"i stay for plenty of reasons that aren't him."

"name one."

you thought about the line cook he'd just heard getting yelled at, who had no other options this side of the city and would lose his apartment inside a month without this paycheck. you thought about the waitress who needed someone in the kitchen to notice if she came in quiet and pale with bruises dotting her like freckles, and cover her station without asking why. you gave him none of it.

"because i don't feel like leaving," you said, and moved on to the limes.

he came back the next week, and the week after, and the one after that, the offers climbing in increments that should have meant something, his questions shifting shape underneath the surface ones about salary and title, less about the job now and more about you specifically, what you wanted, what marv would have to do to finally cost you something you weren't willing to keep paying for free. you noticed the shift. he noticed you noticing. one night, late, the dining room empty, you stood at the flat top building a pan sauce off the fond left from the last order, deglazing with a splash of the cheap brandy marv kept behind the bar for nobody, scraping up the browned bits stuck to the metal with a spoon that had a chip in the handle, working in a spoonful of mustard and a slow stream of cream until it came together dark and thick, and he stood close enough that you could feel the heat off him competing with the heat off the burner.

"i don't understand you," he said, low, something underneath the flatness now that wasn't only bafflement anymore. "i've offered you a number that would let you walk out of here tonight and never look back. i've offered you your own station, your name on a menu people would actually drive for. i don't ask twice for anything. i've asked you eleven times."

"twelve, if you're counting honestly," you said, plating the order, the sauce poured in a slow ribbon along one side, finished with flaked salt because the dish needed one more thing to keep it from being only rich.

"twelve," he agreed, voice rough at the edges now. "and every time you say it like it costs you nothing."

"it doesn't."

"it should," he said, and for the first time the bafflement had something sharper underneath it. "you're wasting yourself somewhere a man can't taste the difference between his food and yours. i watch you work in a kitchen held together with duct tape and a propped oven door and i think about what you'd do with a real budget, real equipment, and i cannot understand why you'd choose this when the alternative is standing right in front of you."

"maybe i don't choose the expensive option," you said, turning to look at him fully, the spoon still loose in your hand, the dining room quiet enough now that you could hear the walk-in compressor cycling on, the seal that had been peeling for months letting in a hiss of warm air it wasn't built to handle. "maybe i choose what's mine. this place is falling apart and marv is a coward who steals credit and underpays everyone who isn't him, but the people in it are mine, and i don't hand mine over because someone richer showed up with a bigger number."

something shifted in his face, slower this time, less like recalculation and more like a man filing something away somewhere he actually intended to keep it. "that's a stupid reason to stay somewhere that's bad for you." he huffed, but the heat had thinned out of it, something quieter underneath now.

"probably," you agreed, turning back to the pass. "ask me again next week. see if it's changed."

he didn't leave. you could feel him still standing there behind you, close enough that the heat off the flat top wasn't the only thing warming your back anymore, and when you finally glanced over your shoulder he had that look again, the one that meant he was building toward something instead of just repeating himself.

"dessert."

"there's a menu for that too," you said, nodding toward the laminated sheet sitting at the host stand, gone soft and curling at one corner from god knows how many spills.

"i don't want the menu. i want you to make me something. anything. whatever you'd make if nobody was watching the cost on the ticket."

you considered telling him no on principle, the way you'd told him no to everything else, but there was a different kind of challenge sitting under the request, something less about money and more about whether you could actually back up everything he'd convinced himself you were capable of, and you found you wanted to answer that question for yourself almost as much as he wanted you to answer it for him. the kitchen had a lull, the kind that came right before the dinner rush properly hit, and you had maybe twenty minutes before the next ticket would demand all of your attention back.

you didn't have the ingredients for anything that belonged on a tasting menu. you had a walk-in stocked for a restaurant that sold twelve dollar burgers, a pantry with the basics and nothing else, and a freezer with a single bag of frozen cherries marv had bought in bulk for a cobbler special that never sold and that had been sitting there for two months going slightly frosted at the edges. you pulled the cherries and a stick of butter that wasn't quite cold enough and a half bag of flour you kept separate from the bulk stuff because the bulk stuff had gone slightly stale, and you started building something out of almost nothing, the way you'd been doing for three years in this kitchen, because that was the actual skill nobody on a menu ever priced correctly.

you put the cherries in a pan with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of the same cheap brandy you'd used for his sauce earlier, letting them break down slow over a low flame, the juice thickening and going dark and glossy while you worked the butter into the flour with your fingers instead of a tool, quick light movements so the heat from your hands didn't melt it before it needed to, a pinch of salt, a spoonful of sugar, just enough cold water to bring it together into a rough dough you didn't overwork. you rolled it out thin on a counter dusted with flour, cutting it into uneven strips by hand because precision wasn't the point here, the point was getting something onto a plate that tasted like it came from somewhere with real walls and a real oven instead of one propped shut with a folded towel.

the cherries went into a small dish, the pastry strips laid over the top in a loose lattice that didn't pretend to be tidy, brushed with the last of the butter and a scatter of coarse sugar you found in the bottom of a container that mostly held something else. you slid it into the oven that ran fifteen degrees low according to your own thermometer, compensating without thinking about it anymore because you'd done this calculation a thousand times, and while it baked you made a quick whipped cream by hand in a bowl that had been in this kitchen longer than you had, dented at one side, whisking until it held soft peaks, folding in a little vanilla and the smallest spoonful of sugar so it wouldn't compete with the fruit.

when the cobbler came out the pastry had gone golden and uneven and slightly burnt at one corner where the oven's hot spot always got it, the cherries bubbling thick underneath, and you didn't try to hide the burnt corner the way a nicer kitchen might have, just spooned a portion into a bowl that didn't match any of the others because nothing in this kitchen matched anything else, a dollop of the cream melting slow against the warm fruit.

you set it down in front of him without ceremony. "it's not michelin," you said. "i had cherries and twenty minutes."

he picked up the spoon like a man approaching something he'd already decided to be skeptical of, and you watched the same thing happen that had happened with the duck and the risotto, the evaluative chewing collapsing fast into something far less composed. he ate like he'd forgotten anyone was watching, which struck you as funny given how aware of being watched he usually was, shoveling in a second bite before he'd properly swallowed the first, a smear of cherry juice catching at the corner of his mouth and a crumb of pastry sitting forgotten on his chin, and for a man who ran three kitchens with a reputation for exacting precision he looked, in that exact moment, less like a michelin chef and more like an overgrown toddler who had gotten into something he wasn't supposed to have unsupervised.

"this shouldn't work," he said around a mouthful, not bothering to wipe his face, cherry staining the corner of his lip dark red. "the pastry's uneven. one side is burnt."

"i'm aware."

"it's better than half the desserts on my menus," he said, sounding genuinely annoyed about it, like the admission cost him something. "people pay forty dollars for a cherry dessert that took a pastry chef four hours and three failed versions, and you built this out of a freezer bag during a rush."

"i had practice," you said, watching him scrape the bowl with the side of the spoon to get the last of the sauce, completely unselfconscious about it, crumbs still sitting on his chin like he had no idea they were there and wouldn't have cared even if he did. "you learn to make things taste expensive when nothing around you is."

when the bowl was empty he set the spoon down with more force than the gesture required, jaw tight, and you realized somewhere in the last bite he'd circled back around to being annoyed at you specifically rather than at the dessert. "twelve times," he said. "you've told me no twelve times."

"i'm aware."

"i don't get told no," he said, and it came out almost petulant, a huff of breath through his nose like the unfairness of it was a personal insult he couldn't quite metabolize. "i offer something better. people take it. that's how it's supposed to go."

"sounds like a you problem."

"it's an everyone problem," he said, "you're being deliberately unreasonable," and he said it with a kind of wounded indignance that didn't match the size of him at all, broad and intense and currently sulking with cherry juice drying on his chin like a man personally wronged by dessert and rejection in the same five minutes. you almost laughed. you didn't let yourself.

he seemed to catch himself, the huffiness smoothing over fast into something more deliberate, his voice dropping into the lower, coaxing register he'd been trying out on you for weeks now, the one that was supposed to be charming. "you can call me dex," he said, like it was a gift, like the name was the thing standing between your twelve no's and a yes. "everyone who actually knows me calls me dex."

you looked at him for a long moment, at the crumb still sitting forgotten on his chin, the smear of red at the corner of his mouth, the expectant look underneath all of it like he'd just handed you something significant.

"get out of my kitchen, dex," you said, "and go run your three michelin stars somewhere that isn't my flat top," and you turned back to the pass without waiting to see his face do whatever it was about to do, because the next ticket was already up and the kitchen didn't stop running just because a man with cherry on his chin wanted to be looked at a little longer.

you didn't see him leave. you were three motions into building the next plate, sauce going down in a slow ribbon, when you heard the kitchen door swing shut behind you, and somewhere past it, you imagined, though you'd never admit to imagining it, the particular satisfied smirk of a man who'd just gotten exactly the kind of no he intended to keep coming back for.

he didn't come back the next week.

he came back two weeks later, expecting you, the way he'd started expecting you without ever quite admitting that's what the visits had become. you weren't there. you were three miles away under a blanket that smelled like the menthol rub you'd dug out of the bathroom cabinet, a thermometer somewhere in the sheets reading a number you weren't currently sober enough with fever to do math on. on a night when you had called out sick and the new hire marv had brought on the week before, a kid barely out of culinary school with more confidence than actual hands, was running your station because marv, predictably, had not thought to call anyone better. 

he ordered the duck. the same duck, eighteen dollars, the one dish on the laminated menu that pretended at ambition, and the kid took the ticket and did his best, which was not good enough, not even close, because three weeks of watching you work from the next station over was not the same as actually knowing the pan's hot spot or the exact hiss that told you the fat was rendering clean. he scored the skin too shallow. he panicked at the heat and pulled the breast early, leaving it underrendered and pale in patches, the kind of mistake that announced itself the second a knife went through it. he reached for the bottled balsamic glaze in the walk-in instead of building the gastrique, because nobody had taught him the gastrique, because the gastrique had never been written down anywhere, existing only in your hands and your memory and the muscle of having made it a hundred times.

the waitress said the kitchen door swung open with more force than a swinging door usually got, his voice low and controlled in the way that meant he was furious and had decided fury would land harder quiet than loud. 

"where is she." 

the kid actually stammered, spatula still in hand, duck breast sitting wrong and pale on the cutting board behind him, and marv came scrambling out of the office with the particular panic of a man who smelled a complaint forming and wanted to intercept it before it reached him. "sir, if there's an issue with the dish, i can absolutely—"

"i'm not talking to you," he said, not even looking at marv, his eyes scanning the kitchen with a focus that found nothing, no flour dusted forearm, no familiar shape at the flat top, just the kid and the empty station and the duct taped ladle hanging dead still on its hook.

"she's out sick," the kid said, fast, like getting the sentence out quickly might make the next thing land softer. "she's been out a few days."

something moved across his face that the waitress couldn't fully name when she told you about it later, something that looked less like the irritation he usually wore at being inconvenienced and more like a man rethinking his entire life. he looked at the duck again, the pale patches of skin, the bottled glaze pooling thin and wrong against the celery root, and pushed the plate an inch away from himself like it had personally disappointed him on a level past the food itself. 

"that's not her food," he said, to the kid, to marv, to the kitchen in general, gesturing at the plate without looking at it again, like he'd diagnosed the problem the second the fork went in and didn't need a second bite to confirm it. "the skin's wrong. the sauce is wrong. that's not how she does it."

"it's the same recipe," marv said, baffled, defensive, the way he got whenever anyone suggested the kitchen ran on more than just his oversight.

he didn't bother answering that. he stood there a second too long looking at the empty station, the bowl that didn't match any other bowl, the rag hanging off the hook where you usually kept it tucked into your apron, like the absence of you had a physical shape he could direct his frustration at, and then he asked, in a voice that had lost some of its usual control, whether you were okay, whether anyone had checked, whether the restaurant had any actual way of knowing if you needed something, and the waitress, watching from the floor, said it was the first time she'd seen him sound less like a man being denied something and more like one who'd just realized denial wasn't actually the thing bothering him. 

he left without finishing his sentence, the duck untouched on the counter, the door swinging shut hard enough to rattle the order wheel, and the waitress called you the second he was gone, and you picked up on the second ring, voice thick and nasal, propped against your pillows with the tv murmuring something you weren't watching.

"okay, so," she said, "i need to tell you what just happened, because i don't think he's okay."

you'd been back three days when the waitress leaned through the kitchen doorway with the specific look she'd started reserving just for this, eyebrows up, voice pitched low like she was reporting a weather event. "he's back," she said. "table by the window. same as every week apparently, she said he hasn't missed one since you were out."

you set down the knife mid prep, wiping your hands on the rag tucked into your apron string, and walked out through the swinging door instead of waiting for him to wander in uninvited the way he usually did, because you'd decided somewhere over the last three days, half delirious with fever and bored out of your mind, that you were tired of him treating your kitchen like an extension of his own.

he was sitting at the same table he always sat at, even though nothing about this restaurant assigned tables to anyone, posture too sharp for a place with sticky laminated menus and water glasses that didn't match, and when he saw you walking toward him something shifted fast across his face, relief arriving a half second before he visibly decided not to let it show.

"what do you want," you said, stopping at his table with your arms crossed, still in your apron, flour ghosted along one forearm.

he didn't answer that directly. instead he sat back slightly, jaw working, and said, "where were you," with a clipped edge that didn't quite cover the thing underneath it.

"sick," you said. "that's generally why people stay home."

"for two weeks."

"for as long as it took to stop being contagious and useless, yes."

he exhaled through his nose, a short frustrated huff, the same one you'd started recognizing as the sound he made when something hadn't gone according to whatever internal schedule he kept for the world. "you could have said something."

"i don't owe you an itinerary of my immune system," you said, though something in his voice, the actual edge of worry buried under the irritation, kept you standing there longer than you needed to instead of turning straight back around. "i had a fever. i slept. i'm fine now, which you'd know if you weren't currently interrogating me about it like i went missing."

"you didn't answer when—" he started, then stopped himself, jaw tightening like he'd caught the sentence a half second too late, like admitting he'd been checking at all cost him something he hadn't planned on spending. he tried again, voice flattening back into something more controlled. "are you actually okay now?"

you looked at him for a second, at the genuine tightness around his eyes that didn't match the careful neutral tone he was attempting, and felt the irritation in your chest soften by some small, irritating degree you weren't ready to admit to. "i'm okay," you said. "i'm back. i'm standing in front of you instead of in bed, which i'd think would satisfy whatever this is."

"it doesn't," he said, too fast, and then looked almost annoyed at himself for saying it that plainly.

he recovered fast, the way he always did, smoothing the moment over before you could call attention to it. "i want a banana milkshake," he said, with the abrupt, unbothered confidence of a man who'd never once considered that a kitchen might not have something simply because he wanted it.

"we don't do milkshakes," you said. "this isn't that kind of menu."

"last i checked you don't do cherry crumbles either," he said, "and yet."

you gave him a long blank look, the kind that usually made line cooks apologize for things they hadn't done yet, and he held it for exactly as long as it took for the corner of his mouth to give out, his whole face splitting into a grin that looked entirely too pleased with itself, like he'd been sitting on that line since the second the waitress told him you were back.

you considered telling him no on principle, the way you'd told him no to nearly everything for three months running, but the tickets were slow, the lull stretching out wide and empty in the particular way tuesday afternoons did. "fine," you said. "but i'm doing it because i have time, not because you asked nicely."

"you've never once seen me ask anything nicely," he said, already getting up from the table, falling into step half a pace behind you as you turned back toward the kitchen, trailing you with the easy unbothered persistence of something that had decided, a while ago now, that it was simply allowed to follow you wherever you went. you didn't tell him to stop. the tickets were slow, you had time, and some small ungovernable part of you had stopped minding the sound of his footsteps behind you weeks before you were ready to admit it out loud.

the kitchen wasn't built for a man his size. you noticed it freshly every time he came back here, the way his shoulders seemed to take up more air than they should, the way he had to angle himself slightly sideways to get past the end of the pass without knocking the order wheel loose, his thighs filling out the narrow gap between the counter and the walk-in door so completely that you had to brush past him at an angle just to reach the freezer, close enough to feel the heat coming off him through your shirt.

you pulled a few overripe bananas from the bin you kept specifically for things like this, soft and dark spotted, the kind that were too far gone for the dining room but perfect for everything else, and dropped them into the blender along with a few scoops of vanilla ice cream you'd made from scratch weeks ago and frozen in a deli container, a splash of whole milk, a pinch of salt to keep it from tasting flat, a few cubes of ice to thicken it without watering it down. you didn't reach for the bottled caramel marv kept behind the bar. you'd made your own months ago and kept it in a squeeze bottle at the back of a shelf nobody else used, dark and slightly burnt at the edges of its flavor in the way that made it taste like something rather than nothing, and you drizzled a careful spiral of it around the inside of the glass before you poured anything in, so it would catch and bleed down through the milkshake as it settled instead of just sitting flat on top.

he leaned in to watch the blender work, which put him directly behind your shoulder, close enough that you could feel the solid line of his chest nearly against your back, and when the blender cut off he dipped his head down toward your ear to ask, in a voice gone low and rough in a way that had nothing to do with volume.

“what’s in your caramel that makes it smell like that?”

you felt the question land somewhere low in your spine before you'd even processed the words, a shiver you didn't manage to fully suppress, his breath warm against the side of your neck, and you hated, distantly, how easy it was for him to do that without even trying, how little effort the man actually put into being a problem.

"butter," you said, keeping your voice flatter than you felt. "sugar. patience. things you probably delegate."

"i don't delegate the things that matter," he said, still right at your ear, low enough that the kid two stations over couldn't have heard it even if he'd been listening.

you poured the milkshake into the glass slow, the caramel swirling up through the pale yellow of it in dark uneven streaks, topped it with a little more on top because presentation mattered even for spite, and turned to hand it to him, which put you face to face with him at a distance that hadn't been a problem a second ago and suddenly very much was.

he took the glass, took a long pull through the straw without breaking eye contact, and you watched his throat work as he swallowed, watched something settle into his face that you recognized now, the same unwilling stillness that came right before he gave up on performing neutrality altogether.

"well," you said, crossing your arms, refusing to be the one who looked away first. "verdict."

he didn't answer right away. he took another pull, slower this time, and then he grinned at you, slow and pleased, the exact grin of something that had just gotten exactly what it wanted and intended to make sure you knew it. he finished the milkshake in long unhurried pulls, watching you over the rim of the glass the entire time, and when he set it down, empty.

"fuck,” he groaned, voice low and rough as his lips wrapped around the straw to get up the bits of froth at the bottom. “this tastes amazing.”

you ignore how tightly you squeeze your thighs together as you huff at him and roll your eyes at his theatrics.

he started coming around more after that, not just for you, though you remained, obviously, the load bearing reason, but for the rest of the kitchen too, in his own blunt and slightly overbearing way. he learned the waitress's name within a week and used it correctly every single time, which she found genuinely shocking given how many regulars couldn't manage that after months. he learned the kid's name too, the one who still couldn't get the duck right, and instead of being cold about it the way you'd expected, he started actually giving him small corrections when he was around, low and quick, not unkind.

“here, your pan's hotter on this side, rotate sooner than you think you need to.” 

the kind of thing he clearly hadn't bothered teaching anyone in years and seemed almost surprised to find himself doing now.

he tipped absurdly. you noticed it the third time it happened and then started noticing it every time after, slipping the waitress bills that didn't match anything on the check, leaving cash for the dishwasher specifically once he found out the dish pit ran two people short most nights, the kind of generosity that wasn't loud about itself but also wasn't subtle, since everyone working there had clocked within a month that the scary intense chef who showed up constantly was, in his own way, taking better care of the staff than the man who actually owned the place.

he made no effort at all to hide what he thought of marv. he didn't bother lowering his voice anymore when marv hovered nearby trying to insert himself into conversations he had no part in, didn't temper the flat, unimpressed look he gave marv every single time marv opened his mouth about vision or curation or anything else he liked to claim credit for. once, when marv tried to take credit in front of him for a sauce you'd built entirely from scratch off your own recipe, dex had simply said, without raising his voice at all, that he found it interesting how a man who couldn't dice an onion evenly managed to develop such a confident palate, and walked away before marv could find a response, and the kitchen had gone quiet for exactly as long as it took everyone to remember they weren't supposed to laugh.

he was doing it on purpose, you knew. building something here that wasn't only about you, threading himself into the fabric of a kitchen that wasn't his, learning its people, tipping its underpaid staff, undermining its useless owner in small public ways that cost him nothing and meant something anyway, like he'd decided that if he couldn't win you over directly he'd simply make himself impossible to fully extract from the place you'd built your stubbornness around, until the idea of him leaving felt almost as strange as the idea of him never having shown up.

he asked you the next day, showing up at his usual time but ordering nothing, standing at the edge of your station with a kind of deliberate casualness that didn't quite land given how rarely he managed casual about anything.

"come see the restaurant," he said. "mine. tonight, after your shift."

"why," you said, wiping down the counter, not looking at him directly, because looking at him directly after the milkshake thing yesterday felt like it required more composure than you currently had stocked.

"because you've spent three months telling me i don't understand what you do here," he said, "and i'd like the chance to show you what i do, instead of you just imagining it from a number on a piece of paper."

"i'm not imagining three michelin stars, dex," you said, and only noticed after it was already out of your mouth that you'd used the name, easy, unthinking, no weight on it at all, and you watched something flicker across his face at the sound of it, quick and pleased and gone again before he let it show too long.

"come anyway," he said. "i want you to see it."

you went after close, still smelling faintly of the fryer no matter how many times you scrubbed your hands, and the restaurant when you walked in nearly stopped you at the door. it wasn't loud about its money the way you'd half expected, no chandeliers, no excess, just clean lines and low warm light and a kitchen visible through an actual glass pass instead of a window that needed wiping down twice a shift. the staff moved like they'd rehearsed it, quiet and precise, knives going through vegetables in clean even strokes, sauces reducing on burners that all lit on the first try, every pan free of the dents and warps you'd spent three years working around without even noticing how much extra effort it cost you.

dex walked you through it with his hand hovering near your back without quite touching, pointing things out with the same blunt confidence he used for everything, the walk-in temperature logged automatically instead of guessed at, the knives sharpened every single morning by someone whose entire job was sharpening knives, a pastry station with more equipment in it than your whole kitchen owned combined.

"this is the one i told you about," he said, to a sous chef, to a line cook, introducing you by name like you'd already been folded into the place before you'd agreed to anything, and every single person he said it to looked at you with an expression that suggested they already knew exactly who you were, which meant he'd been talking about you here for longer than the milkshake bet would explain.

"you talk about me to your staff," you said, half question, half accusation, watching him for the flicker of discomfort you expected and not finding it.

"obviously," he said, like the alternative had never once occurred to him. "you're the only interesting thing that's happened to this restaurant in two years."

"that's bleak for your restaurant."

"it's accurate," he said, and led you toward the pass, where a young cook was finishing a dish that looked, even from here, more composed than anything you'd ever sent out, every element placed with a precision that made your own plating look almost careless by comparison, and dex watched your face while you looked at it instead of watching the food himself, like your reaction mattered more to him than the dish did.

"well?" he said, after a moment, voice quieter than the kitchen noise around you required. "still think i don't understand what you do?"

"i think you understand it differently," you said, which was as close to an honest answer as you were willing to hand him tonight, and he looked, for a second, like that was enough.

"cook with them tonight," he said. "please. just see if you like it."

you looked at him for a long moment, at the careful effort in the word please, a word you weren't sure you'd heard him use even once across three months of him demanding things in every other available register, and then you looked past him at the kitchen itself, gleaming and quiet and so far removed from the warped pans and propped oven doors you'd built your whole skill set around that it felt almost like stepping into a different trade entirely.

"i don't have a jacket," you said, which wasn't a no, and you both seemed to understand that immediately.

"we have extras," he said, already moving, already pulling one off a hook by the door like he'd planned for this exact possibility days ago, which, knowing him, he probably had.

he set you up at a station next to a guy named theo who barely looked old enough to be allowed near a stove this expensive, and the produce they handed you was the kind you'd only ever seen in photographs, fish so fresh it still smelled like the ocean instead of a walk-in, herbs cut that morning from somewhere that apparently grew them specifically for this kitchen. you worked a fillet of branzino under theo's careful, slightly nervous instruction, scoring the skin with a knife so sharp it barely felt like cutting, and you found your hands adjusting almost instantly to the better tools, the burner that held its heat exactly where you set it without any hot spot to compensate for, and there was something disorienting about how easy it was, how much less fighting the actual cooking required when the equipment wasn't actively working against you.

dex appeared at your shoulder before the branzino had even finished resting, close enough that theo found a sudden urgent reason to busy himself two feet further down the line. "make me something," he said. "off menu. whatever you'd make if i gave you everything in this kitchen and no ticket to follow."

"that's a dangerous offer in a kitchen this stocked," you said, but you were already looking past him at the walk-in, already cataloguing what you'd seen on the shelves during the tour, the kind of ingredients that would have been a once a year splurge at your own restaurant sitting here in casual, replaceable abundance.

you started with a scallop, the kind so fresh it barely needed anything done to it, searing it hard and fast in a pan that held its heat so evenly you didn't have to babysit it the way you would have at home, just thirty seconds a side until the surface went deep gold and the center stayed translucent and sweet. you built a brown butter around it while it rested, swirling the butter in the same pan until it browned and smelled faintly of hazelnuts, finishing it with a spoon of capers and a fistful of fresh herbs that theo handed you without you even having to ask, parsley and chive and something slightly bitter you didn't recognize until you tasted it and realized it was a varietal you'd never had access to before. you found a lemon that hadn't gone soft at one end the way every lemon in your own walk-in eventually did, zesting it directly over the pan at the last second so the oil hit the hot butter and bloomed instantly into something brighter than anything bottled could manage.

you plated the scallop simply, a smear of pea puree underneath that you'd thinned with a little of the pasta water theo had going for another order, the scallop set on top, the brown butter spooned around it in a loose pool, a few of the bitter herb leaves scattered across, a last scrape of lemon zest finishing it. it took you four minutes total, less time than it usually took you to talk yourself into starting something new, and you realized somewhere in the middle of it that your hands had stopped fighting the kitchen entirely, moving the way they only moved when you weren't thinking about the equipment at all anymore, just the food.

you set the plate down in front of him without ceremony, the way you always did, and watched him pick up the fork with none of the evaluative slowness he usually performed for you, going straight for it like a man who'd stopped pretending skepticism was required.

he ate it in two bites, longer than the dish probably deserved given how little there was, and when he set the fork down his face had gone through that same unwilling stillness you'd learned to watch for weeks ago, except slower this time, more thorough, like the scallop had managed something the duck and the risotto and the cherry crumble combined hadn't quite reached.

"four minutes," he said, like he didn't fully believe it even though he'd watched the whole thing happen. "you built that in four minutes."

"better tools," you said, echoing yourself from earlier, watching him carefully. "still figuring out the kitchen."

"the kitchen would take you four minutes to win over too, if you let it," he said, and there was something underneath the usual confidence this time, something quieter and more honest, like he wasn't only talking about the room anymore, and you didn't have an easy answer ready for that, which had started, lately, to happen more often than you were entirely comfortable with.

he set the plate down in front of him without ceremony, the way you always did, and watched him pick up the fork with none of the evaluative slowness he usually performed for you, going straight for it like a man who'd stopped pretending skepticism was required.

he ate it in two bites, longer than the dish probably deserved given how little there was, and then he sat with it for a second, jaw working, eyes narrowed slightly the way they did when he was running something through whatever exacting internal system he used to sort the world into correct and incorrect.

"the sear's uneven," he said.

you blinked at him. "it's not uneven."

"it's marginally uneven. the left edge caught about four seconds before the right did." he said it the way other people commented on the weather, no heat in it, just fact, already turning the plate a few degrees like the angle had personally offended him. "your pan's hotter on that side."

"your pan," you corrected. "i don't own this stove."

"i'm aware it's my pan," he said, like that made the flaw worse rather than better, picking the fork back up anyway to finish what was left, scraping the last of the brown butter across the plate with a kind of compulsive thoroughness, making sure nothing got left behind, lining the smear up almost symmetrically before he set the fork down a final time, angled exactly parallel to the edge of the plate. "i'm going to have that burner serviced tomorrow."

"because of a scallop."

"because of an inconsistency," he said, like the distinction mattered enormously and you were being deliberately slow not to see it. "i don't like inconsistencies in my own kitchen. it's the entire reason i have a pastry station that runs on a service contract and a sous chef who recalibrates the ovens monthly. four minutes and you still found the one flaw in my equipment that nobody else here has bothered to flag in two years."

"i wasn't trying to audit your stove, dex."

"well, you did," he said, and there was something almost wounded in it, the same petulant edge you'd heard the night of the cherry crumble, a man genuinely struggling with the unfairness of being both impressed and slightly humiliated in the same sixty seconds. "four minutes. you built that better than half the dishes on my tasting menu, on a burner you'd never touched before, and the one thing wrong with it was something i did, not something you did."

"that's not what i said."

"it's what's true," he said, flatly, like correcting himself was a separate, more important task than the conversation itself. he exhaled hard through his nose, the same short frustrated huff you'd catalogued weeks ago, dragging a hand back through his hair like the whole exchange had cost him something structural. "i offer you a kitchen with a service contract and ingredients flown in twice a week and you spend four minutes proving you don't actually need any of it, and somehow i still end up the one feeling like i lost."

"nobody said you lost."

"i know what losing feels like," he said, dark and certain, "i don't like it, and i particularly don't like it from a scallop," and the sheer aggrieved specificity of that sentence, the absolute conviction in his voice, made something in your chest go warm and unwilling all at once, because for a man with three stars and a service contract for his ovens, he sounded, in that exact moment, genuinely undone by a four minute dish you'd built mostly out of muscle memory and spite.

he’s silent as he stands up, undoes your jacket for you, grabs your hand and walks out without a word.

he walked you back, hand loose around yours the entire way, the night gone quiet and cool around you both, and when you reached the restaurant he didn't let go right away, standing there under the buzzing sign.

"i want to say something," he said, "and i want you to hear all of it before you say no, because i think you're going to want to say no immediately and i'd like sixty seconds before that happens."

"that's an ominous way to start."

"i want to buy this place," he said.

you went very still. "dex—"

"sixty seconds," he said, holding up a hand, and you let him have it, mostly out of disbelief. "not to gut it. not to turn it into something else with my name on the door. i don't want your kitchen, i told you that already and i meant it. i want marv gone. i want the walk-in fixed and the ovens that actually hold their temperature and a ladle that isn't held together with duct tape, and i want every single person currently working here to keep their job, with better pay, under someone who isn't a coward who steals credit. and i want you to run it. not me. you. your menu, your hires, your name on whatever you decide to call it. i'll be the money behind it and nothing else, if that's what it takes for you to say yes."

you stared at him for a long moment, the offer settling slow, nothing like the easy clean recruitment pitch he'd opened with months ago, nothing about a station with your name on a door that belonged to him. "you've thought about this."

"i've thought about very little else for two weeks," he admitted, and there was no smugness in it this time, just something plain and slightly unsteady. "i watched a kid ruin a duck breast twice because nobody ever wrote down how you do it, and i thought about how much you've built out of equipment that's actively failing you, and i couldn't stop thinking that you've spent three years protecting people from a man who doesn't deserve to be protected from accountability."

"and if i say no," you said. "if i tell you i don't want your money in my kitchen any more than i wanted a job in yours."

"then i walk away from the offer and keep showing up for your dishes." he said, simply. "i'm not buying it to win something from you. i'm telling you because i think you'd never forgive me if i did it behind your back, and i'd rather you be furious at me to my face for asking than furious at me later for not asking at all."

you thought about the waitress with the kid at home, the dishwasher whose job depended on nobody looking too closely, the line cook who'd never once been taught the gastrique because nothing here had ever been written down, all of it balanced for years against a stubbornness you'd built so carefully you'd nearly forgotten it was a choice rather than a fact about you.

"i want final say on everyone we keep," you said slowly, testing the shape of agreeing to something instead of refusing it for the first time in twelve weeks. "i want the menu to stay mine, not michelin, not yours. and i want you to actually disappear once it's done, not hover."

"i'm extremely bad at disappearing," he said, shrugging at his own inability to leave you alone, "but i'll work on it," and the grin that followed was different from the ones you'd catalogued before, less satisfied, more honestly relieved, like a man who'd finally gotten a yes he hadn't been sure was coming and didn't quite know what to do with the size of it yet.

he showed up at your apartment three days later, no warning, no text first, which should have annoyed you more than it did given how many times you'd told him texting first was a normal thing normal people did. he had a folder under one arm, plain and unceremonious, and when you opened the door he held it out before you'd even said anything, like the handoff needed to happen before either of you could get distracted by anything else.

"the deed," he said. "to the building. not just the restaurant lease, the whole building. it's in your name. only your name. i had the lawyers triple check that part because i know exactly what you'd assume otherwise."

you took the folder, flipping it open enough to see your own name printed clean across the top of the first page, no trace of his anywhere in it, and something in your chest went tight and warm and slightly disbelieving all at once. "dex."

"i don't want to own anything you're standing inside of," he said, simply. "i told you that the first night. i meant the building too, once i thought about it properly. you should own the walls along with everything inside them."

you looked up at him standing there in your hallway, broad and slightly too big for the doorway the way he always seemed too big for spaces that weren't built with him in mind, holding himself with none of the careful confidence he wore everywhere else, like he genuinely wasn't sure how this particular gesture would land and was bracing for whichever way it went.

you didn't give him time to brace for long. you set the folder down on the side table without looking where it landed and closed the distance instead, rising up to kiss him before he'd finished whatever sentence he might have been building to follow it with, and he made a low surprised sound against your mouth before his hands came up to your waist, steadying, like he hadn't quite let himself expect this even after everything.

"that's a yes, then," he said, when you finally pulled back enough to breathe, voice rough, that same unsteady relief from days ago bleeding through again.

"that's a get inside before i change my mind," you said, already pulling him by the front of his shirt over the threshold, kicking the door shut behind him with your foot, and he laughed, low and surprised and entirely unguarded.

you yanked him inside by the shirt and the door slammed shut behind you both. dex’s back hit the wall hard, your fist still twisted in the fabric, and he didn’t resist. his mouth crashed into yours before either of you could speak again; wet, hungry, teeth clacking. he kissed like he was starving, tongue pushing past your lips, one big hand already sliding down to grab your ass and haul you flush against the thick line of his cock straining in his pants.

“fuck, finally,” he growled against your mouth, voice low and filthy. “been thinking about you since the first time i ate in that ugly fucking resturant.”

you shoved dex hard toward the couch and he went willingly, that low dark laugh rumbling out of him as he dropped down and spread his thick thighs wide. you stripped in a rush; shirt, bra, jeans, and panties until nothing was left and you were climbing straight into his lap. his rough palms were already everywhere, sliding up your ribs to squeeze your tits, thumbs flicking over your nipples until you gasped into the next kiss.

dex’s mouth dragged down your throat, sucking marks into your skin. “gonna leave these all over you,” he muttered against the swell of one breast before biting down. “want the whole kitchen to know you let the chef between your legs.”

you ground down on the thick bulge in his pants and he groaned, hips jerking up. “get these off,” you ordered, already tugging at his belt. he helped, shoving his pants and boxers down just far enough for his cock to spring free—thick, flushed, already leaking at the tip.

instead of letting you ride him, dex flipped you onto your back on the narrow cushions. he grabbed both your wrists in one hand and yanked his belt free, the leather hissing as he looped it around your wrists and cinched them tight above your head. “keep those right there,” he said, voice rough. “you move and i stop.”

he dropped between your spread thighs and buried his face in your cunt without warning. his tongue dragged up your slit in one long, obscene lick, then he sucked your clit hard, wet sounds filling the small room. you moaned, hips twitching, and he laughed against you, the vibrations making your thighs shake.

“listen to that,” he said, pulling back just enough, lips shiny. “so fucking wet already. this pussy’s been waiting for me, hasn’t it? bet you touched yourself thinking about my mouth while you were sick.” he shoved two fingers inside you without waiting, curling them hard against that spot that made your back arch. his tongue went back to work, licking and sucking, noisy and relentless.

you tried to close your legs but he pinned one thigh open with his free hand, fingers digging in. “nah. you take it. gonna make you come until you’re crying.” he pumped his fingers faster, tongue flicking your clit in tight circles, the obscene squelch of your pussy loud in the air. every time you got close he eased off just enough to keep you hovering, then dove back in harder.

“dex fuck– please–” you whined, hips rolling up against his mouth.

“please what?” he taunted, voice muffled against your cunt. “want me to stop? or want me to ruin this pretty pussy so you can’t think straight tomorrow?” he sucked your clit between his lips and shook his head side to side, fingers never slowing. your first orgasm hit like a punch—thighs clamping around his head, a broken cry tearing out of you. he didn’t stop. kept licking through it, slower now but still insistent, fingers still working inside you.

“too much,” you gasped, wrists straining against the belt, hips jerking.

“bullshit,” he said, voice dark with amusement. “you can take more. this cunt’s greedy.” he added a third finger, stretching you, and went back to sucking your clit with wet, filthy noises. your second orgasm crashed over you faster, harder, your whole body jerking as you sobbed his name.

he groaned like it was the best thing he’d ever heard and suddenly his hips were jerking against the couch. thick ropes of cum spilled from his cock untouched, splattering across his stomach and the cushions while he kept his mouth locked on your pussy, tongue still working you through it. he moaned into your cunt, the sound vibrating through you as he came just from eating you out.

when he finally pulled his mouth off you, wiping his chin on your thigh, his cock was still twitching, still half-hard and messy. “look at the mess you made,” he said, dragging his fingers through your soaked folds and holding them up so you could see them glisten. “fuck… i could never replicate the taste of this sweet cunt in my kitchen. i want to collect every drop of you and make it a fucking glaze.”

he leaned in again, tongue dragging slowly over your oversensitive clit, and you whined, hips twitching up toward his mouth. “dex—please—i need you inside me—”

“yeah?” he teased, voice low and rough. “begging already? keep those hips moving like that and i might just give you what you want.” he licked another slow stripe up your slit, eyes locked on yours. “tell me how bad you want this cock while your wrists are still tied. let me hear it.”

you whined, hips rolling up toward his mouth even though your clit throbbed from overstimulation. "dex please! fuck me– i need your cock. shove it in me, fill me up, i can't take it anymore–"

he chuckled against your thigh, tongue giving one last lazy lick before he pulled back. "that so?" he wiped his chin on your skin again, eyes dark and hungry.

then you saw it. the thick streaks of cum smeared across his stomach and the couch cushions. your eyes flicked from the mess to his still-twitching cock, half-hard and glistening.

"wait." a shaky laugh slipped out of you. "you came already? untouched? just from eating my pussy? that's fucking pathetic, dex."

his gaze snapped up, sharp and heated. the glare hit you hard, but there was no real anger behind it, just raw, horny amusement twisting his mouth into a smirk. he didn't bother denying it. instead he shoved his pants the rest of the way off, leaned back against the couch, and spread his thighs wide again.

"get over here," he ordered, voice low and rough. "now."

you climbed into his lap with a great struggle, wrists still bound above your head. he gripped your hips hard, guiding you down until the fat head of his cock nudged your soaked entrance. you sank onto him with a broken moan, taking every thick inch until your ass met his thighs. he groaned, head tipping back against the cushions, fingers digging bruises into your skin.

"ride my cock, pretty baby" the grin on his face made you clench around his cock in rhythmic pulses, making his eyebrows crease, "move those hips, show me how bad you want it after all that begging."

you started rolling your hips, slow at first, then faster, grinding down to take him deep. every thrust made wet sounds fill the room. your tits bounced with the motion and he leaned forward to suck one nipple into his mouth, teeth scraping just enough to make you gasp.

"fuck dex." you whined, hips snapping down harder. "feels so good– please don't stop.."

he slapped your ass once, sharp and loud. "keep talking. keep begging while you fuck yourself on my cock. let me hear every filthy word." he thrust up to meet you, driving deeper, making your whole body jolt. "that's it, c’mon, ride me like you mean it."

you kept riding him hard, thighs already trembling from the effort, but dex's hands clamped tighter on your hips, forcing you down to take every inch. "fuck—keep going,” he begged as he thrusted up to meet you. "don't you dare slow down."

your moans turned into broken whines as he reached between you, thumb grinding against your swollen clit with every bounce. the overstimulation hit fast, your pussy clenching around his cock, walls fluttering from the relentless pressure. "dex– too much– i can't–"

"yes you can," he groaned, holding onto each cheek as he bounced you on his cock. "come on, soak my cock for me baby."

your third orgasm crashed through you, thighs shaking violently as you cried out, hips jerking uncontrollably. your cunt pulsed and gushed around him, juices dripping down his shaft and balls. he practically whined, eyes rolling back, and you felt him swell inside you with another load, his cock pumping deep as hot cum flooded your pussy in thick spurts. making his cock twitching as he filled you until it leaked out around his base.

he didn't stop even after cumming, dex kept rubbing your clit, forcing another wave of overstimulation. your body convulsed, thighs quaking so hard you could barely stay upright, bound wrists pulling against the belt. "ple– it– it’s too mu– much—"

he finally eased off, pulling you down against his chest. his cock stayed buried inside your cum-filled pussy as he softened, pressing gentle kisses along your neck, jaw, and face. soft touches replaced the roughness; lips brushing your temple, fingers stroking your back.

he stayed there, breathing hard, forehead pressed to yours, still half-hard and twitching. after a moment he reached up and loosened the belt, rubbing your wrists gently where the leather had bitten in.

"still turning me down?" he asked, voice low and teasing now, the filthy edge gone.

you smiled, lazy and wrecked as you sunk into his embrace while he loosened his belt from around your wrists, "ask me again tomorrow."