S. W.

——————

Your boyfriend hides things from you. You don’t mind it. Everyone has secrets, old aches and wounds from the past that they would rather not reopen. Dex has more than most. You would never push him to reveal them to you, never pressure him to speak about anything that causes too much pain. When he wants to talk about them — if he ever wants to — you’ll be there.

His emotional issues and the strain they’ve put on your relationship stem from a past he hasn’t been willing to describe, although you’ve gathered over your time together that it began when he was very young. When those issues arise, you talk it over with him in a gentle tone.

“Baby, I know you’re anxious, but we talked about this. I promised my friend I’d go out with her tonight.”

“Dex, honey, I just need some space. Relax—just breathe, ok? I’m not leaving, I’ll just be in the other room.”

To his credit, he tries. Tries to breathe through the anxiety. To trust that you still love him, even when his thoughts are loud and grating. To not be too much. There are good days and bad, but you try to keep him grounded through all of it, praising him for his progress and thanking him for all the work he’s done to be better for you.

“I’m so proud of you.”

“Thank you for trying. I know this isn’t easy.”

And maybe you should be worried about all of it. About how dependent he’s become on you for support and stability. How he looks to you for validation always, his eyes watching your face for any sign of disapproval. How the slightest sense that you’re pulling away can send him spiraling.

You should worry, maybe, about how much you enjoy it. Dex needs an anchor; you’re it. The only thing keeping him grounded and steady through the storms of his emotions.

What Dex needs is patience, and someone willing to listen whenever — if ever — he decides to open up.

So when he asks you to get rough with him in the bedroom, you don’t pry. Dex likes it when you push him around. When you bite and scratch just a little too hard. When you tease him for his clinginess, his neediness. It’s fun to be a little mean during sex. Playful. You don’t think anything of it.

For Dex, it isn’t quite enough. He asks you to be rougher. Meaner. He brings it up while you’re on top of him with a hand wrapped firmly around his neck. Not enough to hurt, but enough to feel the pressure. The tensing and bobbing of his throat as he swallows beneath the pads of your fingertips. The request is breathless and desperate.

“Harder. Please, harder.”

You tighten your fingers where they rest around his throat, feeling the muscle and tendons underneath his skin. The hitch of his breath as that pressure increases. Dex groans and rolls his hips, rutting up into you. His face twists in frustration.

“Harder,” he repeats.

Your grip tightens again, and now his breath really is strained. Rasping underneath the heat of your palm where it presses against his airway. His hips roll underneath you again and the movement is tense, irritated. He grits his teeth, muscles clenching at his jaw, and you’re about to slow down, to ask him what’s wrong, when his hand flies up to cover yours and squeezes.

He clamps down on his throat with his own calloused fingers, forcing you into a grip more powerful than you’re comfortable with. In the beginning it was fun. Now it’s starting to feel violent.

You try to pull your hand away but he holds firm, locking you into place with ease.

“Dex,” you say. “That’s—this is too much. Relax.”

The skin of his face is blooming red all over, brows pinched, mouth slack as his hips drive up, up into you. His grip around your hand is almost painful, fingers locked over yours, and you can feel his throat clench and spasm under your palm as he tries and fails to suck in a breath. He’s strangling himself, actually strangling, and he’s making you do it.

“Enough. That’s enough,” you say with another futile tug at your hand. This is not fun anymore. Something cold and heavy is pooling in your gut, and for the first time since you’ve been together, Dex is making you feel scared. You plant your other hand on his chest and pull hard at your arm. This needs to stop now.

Beneath you, Dex’s mouth pulls into a snarl. His other hand snaps to your arm where it’s braced against his chest and he locks you into place with it, like he can’t hear you at all, like he’s not going to let you go. Panic skitters up your spine.

“Dex, stop!”

Something inside him breaks back to the surface at the fear in your voice. His eyes snap open, face going slack with shock, and when his fingers release you snatch both of your hands away from him. He’s sucking in hungry breaths and looking at you like you’ve just struck him. For one charged moment, you think you could. Rear back and slap him for what he just put you through. You curl your fingers into fists and resist the ugly urge.

“What–what is wrong with you?” you say, and immediately regret it. You never speak to Dex like that. Never insult him or degrade him or imply that he’s broken, like he so deeply believes he is. You shift on top of him, to slide off of his member and end this session that got far, far out of hand, but Dex’s hands snap to your hips before you can leave and he sits up, chest pressing against yours and eliminating any distance you put between him.

“No!” he says, panicked. He seems to realize that he’s forcing you to do something you don’t want again, and his hands ease and slide up and down your waist in soothing, shaky strokes. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But it’s always been there. I was born wrong and I—I need you—I want you to hurt me.”

His eyes are almost manic as he stares up at you. You stare back, nerves still wrecked, as you struggle to form a response to his frantic rambling.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Dex,” you say slowly. He sniffles and you realize he’s got tears welling up in his eyes, red around the rims.

“I want you to hurt me,” he says. “I want you to hit me. I—I deserve it, right? For scaring you? You can hit me. You can hurt me for it. I deserve it. I’m sorry. I deserve it.” During his babbling, he’s pressed his face into your body, his mouth hot and wet against your skin.

In your mind, a thought is forming. A vague understanding of where this outburst has come from. The old wounds he’s been picking at, aches that he’s never spoken but that you’ve seen the lingering evidence of. Through your anger a dull ache begins to thrum in your heart, and you drop a hand to the top of Dex’s head. The action isn’t quite comforting. Your fingers are tense with your agitation, still simmering under your skin.

“You don’t deserve to be hurt,” you say slowly. “You just need to calm down.”

“I do,” he argues into your body. “I do. I deserve it. I didn’t listen, I didn’t—I wasn’t good. I deserve it.”

His hips roll again, a stilted little movement that has him hiccuping into you. Against the skin of your chest you feel a damp warmth where Dex has finally begun to cry, his tears catching between his face and your body. His shoulders shake with ragged breaths, and despite their broad width he feels small below you. As if he’s shrinking in on himself.

He ruts into you until he’s trembling, fingers clenching against your hips, voice catching mid-babble as he pulses inside of you.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—nngh.”

He spills inside of you as you watch in numb silence, your hand a weight against the back of his sweaty head. You sit, unmoving, as he sucks in breaths. Eyes on the wall. White. Empty.

When he’s slipped out of you without meeting your eyes, head bowed like a dog caught chewing the furniture, you slump against the headboard without speaking. Dex is panting where you’ve left him, a clarity returning to his eyes as he comes down from whatever manic space he’d sunk into. His fingers fidget with the sheets. From the corner of your eye, you can see him watching you, gauging your expression for how upset you are.

He crawls up the bed to lay beside you, his hand reaching for yours and stopping just short, as if he’s afraid you’ll pull away. The sound of both of you breathing is the only noise in the dim room.

In the time you’ve been together, nothing like this has happened. Dex has his issues, but he’s always been sweet to you. At times even excessively so. Eager to please. He’s never ignored you like this, and he’s never forced you into something you asked him not to. Especially not during sex. You swallow the thought down, bitter in the back of your mouth.

“You’re mad at me,” Dex says. His voice has leveled out again, tired and anxious but not frenetic. “I—I messed up, didn’t I?”

You take in a deep breath, letting it out in a slow exhale. “Yeah. You did.”

Dex shifts next to you and you feel his fingers clench in the sheet next to your hands. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“No, you’re not,” you say. “You’re upset that I’m mad at you.” You don’t know if he’s ever been sorry for anything in his life. Sorry isn’t something Dex feels. Guilt is not an emotion he’s familiar with. Anxiety, yes. Fear of being left. Fear of not being good enough. But not sorry.

“That can’t ever happen again,” you say.

“It won’t,” Dex answers quickly. “It won’t. I swear. I won’t scare you again. I won’t make you do anything you don’t like.”

“If you want to try something new in bed, something . . . intense,” you begin. “You have to ask me first. We have to talk about it.”

“I will,” he says. “I promise.”

A silence stretches between the two of you. Even in the dark you feel Dex’s eyes on you, watching and assessing. Always studying for your mood. Outside, in the streets below the window, a siren wails and rushes past, the sound dull and muffled. Dex extends a finger towards your hands, linking his pinky tentatively with yours.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asks.

You sigh. A moment passes, and you consider letting the silence hang, leaving him to stew in his anxiety. But you’ve never been very good at denying him. You curl your pinky around his and he sighs at the contact, relief softening his features as he drags your hand to his mouth, greedy for your touch. He presses the back of your hand to his lips, breath hot against your fingers.

You suppose you should shower. Brush your teeth and go to bed. Probably have another conversation about this in the morning, just to make sure Dex understands that it can’t ever, ever happen again. Before you can rise you feel his mouth move against you.

“If we do talk about it,” he starts, voice small. “If I tell you what I want first, you’ll do it?”

You sigh and grit your teeth. Squeeze his hand and stand from the bed.

“We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

———

Days later you stand in the hall bathroom in a t-shirt and underwear, staring yourself down in the pristine mirror. Not a speck mars its perfect finish — Dex and his compulsive cleanliness keeps the apartment as spotless as a showroom. You try to help where you can, sweeping, wiping down counters, scrubbing dishes. Dex inevitably follows behind you and repeats the work you’ve just done. It isn’t just about the cleanliness. It’s about the ritual. The routine of sterilizing the space himself.

Dex loves his routines. Loves order. Loves rules. You’d given him a lot of those after he told you what he wanted from you. A very long conversation and a few tears from him followed.

“Why do you want this, Dex?” you had asked him. He stared at you with an emotion you couldnt quiet place behind his eyes, heavy and intense.

“Because I trust you,” he said. “Because—because I trust you not to hurt me.”

Hurt as in mentally. Emotionally. The kind that would leave lasting scars on his already damaged psyche. The physical pain, he very much wanted.

And somewhere underneath his voice, quiet but sure, you thought you heard the words unspoken.

Because I trust you not to hurt me like they did.

Dex didn’t want a safeword. Didn’t want to hear you explain the stoplight system — green for continue, yellow for slow down, red for stop immediately. You made him learn it anyway and repeat it back to you, to his chagrin.

You know that behind the bedroom door Dex is laying right where you left him, bare-bodied and handcuffed to the headboard. You had cinched the cuffs around his wrists with a gentleness few others would offer to a killer. But this was your Dex. You can’t help but be soft with him. At least, until it’s time to begin.

In the mirror, your lips are still flushed lightly from when you had kissed him slow and deep, before leaving him with a soft “I love you” and a reminder to use his safe words. He huffed into your mouth. You stood and shut the door behind you.

That was ten minutes ago. It’s time for you to go back in.

Dex wouldn’t tell you where this request had come from. Wouldn’t explain his reason for wanting you to do everything he had asked of you. But you could infer. Dex wanted you to help him, in his own damaged way. Wanted you to soothe an ache he had lived with long before meeting you. And helping Dex was what you did; what you would always do. As you made your way back into the hallway and outside of the bedroom door, a part of you hesitated to do what came next, to play your role in this performance, but another part was thrumming with anticipation.

Dex wanted you to make him feel worse, and then better. No one in the world knew how to make Dex feel better than you.

You push open the door. At the other end of the room, Dex lies on the bed, naked except for his sock-covered feet and looking at you with the weariness of a caged animal. You take a long moment to rake your eyes over him, the strong muscles of his body, the red marks on his wrists where he’s pulled at the cuffs while you were gone, his cock lying soft against his leg. You move across the room in languid strides, coming around to stare down at him from the side of the bed. His chest rises and falls in barely-controlled breaths, the tension in his body betraying that he’s already worked himself up into fear.

“Don’t look so scared,” you say, your voice a perfect mask of indifference. “We both know you’ll enjoy this.”

The line of Dex’s mouth presses flat. He doesn’t respond. You bend and tug open a drawer in the nightstand by the bed, rummaging in it for one special item. Your hand closes around it and you take a moment to feel its weight, the smooth silicone of the shaft, the soft leather of the harness. When you stand and dangle the strap from your hand, displaying it like a threat to the man in front of you, his nostrils flare at the sight of it — and his cock twitches. The corner of your mouth tugs up.

“See?” you simper. “If you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t have pissed me off.” You step into the harness smoothly, cinching the straps around your thighs and hips. The weight of the dildo is familiar, and you trace a finger from the tip to the base, watching it bob between your hips. Dex’s eyes are fixed on it, pupils blown wide.

“You know what happens when you disobey,” you say conversationally. “So I don’t want to hear you bitching and crying when you take it.”

You swing a leg onto the bed, climbing between his thighs and he flinches like he’s going to resist. You swat him on the ass — hard.

“Uh-uh,” you chide him, voice low. “I can make this a lot worse for you, sweetheart.” You snatch his ankle in one hand and heft the leg up into the air, swinging underneath it and positioning yourself between his hips. His body is tense and flushed before you, sweat already beginning to dot his chest and neck. You lower the leg to rest on your shoulder, tracing a finger down the outer length of his muscled thigh. He shivers and tries to pull away, but you pin him against your shoulder and graze his calf with your teeth. Tasting the salt on his skin, already dotted with nervous perspiration.

“Look at you,” you sigh against his skin. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty. I guess it’s the only thing you’re good for anymore.”

From where it’s pressed into his calf, you let a hand trace down the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, drifting nearly to the crease where it meets his pelvis and sending more shivers across the muscle while you continue sucking and nipping at him. Between his hips his cock kicks again, and you laugh, dragging your fingertip to skirt around the edge of his member.

“See?” you say. “You’re already acting like a slut for it.”

A rustling from the handcuffs has you looking up just in time to see Dex spit at you, the glob of saliva landing on the front of your shirt. For a moment, you’re frozen, eyes stuck on the dark spot in the fabric. When you lift your gaze to meet his, he’s staring back at you with whatever defiance he can muster. It’s less than you know he’s capable of, in different circumstances. When he isn’t naked and restrained.

“Fuck you,” he says, but his voice lacks the fight you would expect. Instead he sounds . . . resigned. Like he already knows what’s coming, and that he can’t stop it.

Your mouth breaks into a grin that doesn’t reach your eyes. You laugh once, clipped. “Oh no, sweetheart. I’m not the one who’s about the get fucked.”

You pitch forward and slap him. The impact lands with a crack that bounces off the walls and sends shocks through your palm. Dex gasps and you freeze, a pang of worry shooting through you that almost has you breaking the performance. You want to cup his stinging cheek in your hand, to press your mouth to his face and say you’re sorry, you’re sorry, everything’s ok — and then you see his dick beneath you, stiffening into an angry erection.

He likes it. He wanted this. He asked you for this.

You take a breath and settle.

“You must really want me to make it hurt,” you say. You shove his legs up to his chest and line up the tip of your strap with his hole. “And you know what, baby? I’ll give it to you exactly how you want it.”

You push inside of him in one fluid thrust. A strangled sound punches out of Dex from his gut and his entire body pulls tight, arching and curling against the bed. You would be struck with worry again, if you hadn’t stretched him out with a finger and lube just minutes before. Not enough to fully prepare him, but enough to blunt the pain. You place your hands on his thighs and press them into his chest as he takes deep, ragged breaths, eyes scrunched shut and face screwed up.

“There’s my pretty whore,” you coo. “Always desperate to get fucked. Is this why you’re always being so fuckin’ difficult? You just want my attention? Want my cock inside of you?”

Dex takes a sharp breath. “I—I’m not a whore,” he says weakly.

“No?” you reply. “But you take it so ___well.” You punctuate the sentence with a slam of your hips, punching into him with force. “You like being used. You like getting fucked. You’d let me take you whenever I want, wouldn’t you?”

The pace you set has Dex groaning, choked and raspy. He shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “No, no, I don’t. I don’t.”

You hit him again, a sharp slap against his already red cheek.

“What did I say about crying?” you say, voice low. “If you can’t stay quiet maybe you should roll over and whine into the pillow. Ass up.”

You pull out of him at once and Dex jerks as the head slides out of him with a wet pop. With clumsy movements he scrambles to turn over, the chain of the cuffs twisting, burying his face in the pillow and presenting himself exactly as you ordered, hips up and waiting. You smooth a hand over the curve of his ass. The muscle trembles under your palm.

“See? You do know how to listen.” When you line up the dildo with his hole again, you take a moment to linger, tracing the tip around his opening as he tenses up underneath you. He clenches around nothing, his body practically vibrating with nerves. From here, you have a perfect view of the jagged scar that follows the length of his spine. Another permanent reminder of the abuse his body has taken.

When you press inside him again he groans low into the pillow, the sound muffled into the soft fabric. You curl your fingers into his hair and wrench his head back, and he rewards you with another pitiful noise. You just told him to be quiet, but fuck it. You want to hear him when he moans.

You set a brutal pace again, hips snapping against his ass as he cries.

“You love it,” you say with effort, you breath becoming heavy with exertion. “You were practically begging me to fuck you.”

“I wasn’t,” he cries. “I don’t! I don’t like it.”

“No?” you ask, releasing his hair and letting his forehead drop to the bed beneath him. “You know what happens. If you don’t want it,” you say, punctuating your next words with unforgiving punches of your hips. “Then why do you always—piss me—off?”

Dex wails into the bed. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to,” he cries. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t want it!”

Dex cries into the bed with earnest. That ache in your heart starts up again, thrumming beneath the surface.

“I never—never wanted it. I didn’t want it then, and I didn’t want it when — when they put me in — they told me I wouldn’t be there, they said I would be in solitary.”

Your pace stutters. Something hot is building behind your eyes, and Dex’s shoulders are wracking with sobs as he babbles into the sheets.

“Dex,” you say, your voice a touch too soft to be in character. “What’s your color?”

“Green,” he gasps. “Green. I’m green.”

You continue pounding into him, sweat beading on your skin as Dex sobs underneath you. A thought creeps into your mind then. Would Dex even tell you if he needed you to slow down? If he needed you to stop? Or is he so far gone that he would let you do anything to him? At some point this could have moved from catharsis into self-flagellation, and Dex would grit his teeth and bare it because he believes he deserves it. Because he’s only ever known love through pain.

You make a decision. It’s time to tone things down. This needs to end soon.

Your hips slow into a softer grind and Dex pants into the sheets, now wet with snot and tears.

“Look at you. My pretty boy, taking my strap so well.” Dex shivers under your hands.

“You don’t like this? You don’t want it?” you coo at him.

“No,” he rambles. “No, no, no, no—“

“Shh, I know. I hear you,” you say. “Roll over for me.”

His legs shake as he turns over for you again, wincing as he rolls without losing the strap inside of him. When he slumps against the bed you settle his legs around your hips, rubbing your hands up and down the shaking muscles of his thighs.

His face is red and wet with tears, snot smeared under his nose, mouth trembling. He is absolutely wrecked. Pathetic and broken beneath you.

“Oh, baby,” you say, swiping away the snot on his face with your hand. “My poor baby. You look just pathetic.”

Dex sniffles, fresh tears sliding down his cheeks. His limbs are limp, the fight drained out of his body and mind.

“Not pathetic,” he argues weakly.

You cup his wet cheek in your palm. “Hmm,” you say, as if you’re thinking. “You don’t like it when I fuck you? You don’t like this?” You drag the tip of your strap over that spot you know makes him melt, and a moan tears from his lips. Dex jolts underneath you, his cock bouncing with the movement. His erection looks painful, red and leaking at the tip. He hasn’t been touched since you began, and you know him well enough to understand that he needs to come, soon.

You swat at his ass again, just hard enough to get his attention. “Answer me when I ask you a question, baby.”

“No,” he moans. “No, I don’t want it. I don’t —ohhh,” his voice breaks off into a keen as you stroke that spot again, rocking into him with steady movements.

“Right,” you say, leaning over him. “You don’t like it. What else does my baby not like?”

The muscles of his abdomen tense up, and you know that heat is pooling in his belly, the beginning of the slow build-up of his orgasm.

He huffs, a frustrated little breath as he tries to gather himself enough to speak. “I don’t — I don’t like it when you fuck me. Don’t like it when you touch me. When you call me — call me baby. When you, when you . . .” his eyes drift down to your mouth. “When you kiss me.”

“Oh, baby. You want a kiss?” you fold over him, taking his face in your hand and catching his mouth in a tear-damp kiss. He moans into you, panting against your mouth. Your lips work against his steady and firm, and you feel the hard length of him twitch where he’s pinned beneath your belly.

As if remembering that he doesn’t like this, not at all, he tries to turn away from you, snapping his mouth shut. You follow him, fingers grasping his chin and mouth hovering over his.

“Where you going? You don’t want anymore? You want something else?”

Your hand skims down his chest to the sensitive skin of his belly, where his cock lies hard and waiting. He jumps when you wrap your fingers around it, not stroking, but holding its weight in the warmth of your palm. Your hips are still grinding in little back-and-forth motions over that sensitive spot, and the twist of his face tells you that he’s fighting a losing battle. Tipping closer and closer over that edge.

“Is it time to come, honey? Hm? Are you ready?” His exhaustion is wearing him thin, the emotional drain of the role play breaking him down into someone small and weak below you. This is your baby. Your baby, protesting with half-hearted nonono’s as you slide your hand up his shaft and his legs begin to shake around your hips. You know what he needs. You always know what Dex needs.

Your hand moves in steady strokes, pumping him firmly as your strap works over his prostate in rhythm. His body pulls tight with the rising pressure of his climax, legs curling up into his chest, toes flexing in his socks. His lips part around an agonized “ah, ah, ah.” The strong shape of him splayed out in front of you, desperate and needy and perfect.

“There you go,” you say. “Give it to me. Let me see that pretty face.”

His orgasm spreads through him slow and thick like honey. Every inch of him reacts as it thrums under his skin, from his feet that flex and curl, thighs shaking, to the taut flex of his belly and the anxious scrunch of his brows. His cock kicks as he spurts onto the soft skin of his belly, the plane of his chest. Dex comes like it hurts, like every part of him is buzzing with a heat that overwhelms. No one else knows how to break him down like this. No one else gets to see Bullseye, big and vicious and terrifying, open up the softest and most vulnerable parts of himself.

His voice pitches up into a pained keen. “Ughnn, ughn!” Cheeks blotchy and wet. Lips pink and bitten.

“There it is,” you breathe. “There’s that pretty face.”

With one last little twitch, his cock spends the rest of his cum onto his tummy. His body stays locked up, muscles tensed and rigid, panting through his teeth as the last remnants of his climax fizzle out. You spread your palms over his thighs and rub soothing strokes up and down them, encouraging him to relax, “shh”ing him as he whimpers.

His body wracks with fine tremors, exhausted and spent. Taking mind of your own body, you realize how tired you are as well. Aching, sweaty.

That ache in your heart persists as you remember Dex’s ramblings. His mindless begging and pleas. The implications behind all of them. Dex has hurt people; you know this. But he never, ever deserved anything like that.

His voice cracks as he calls your name, quietly bringing your attention back to the present. Looking up at him you see his hands tugging at the cuffs.

“Ok, ok baby,” you say, and slide out of him. He winces as the head pulls free and you hurry to loosen the straps around your hips, tossing the strap away and crawling over him to remove the cuffs. Finally freed, he slumps into the bed and pulls his arms to his chest where you take his wrists gently in your hands, rubbing at his stiff muscles, taking care not to irritate the angry red marks where the metal bit into his skin.

He reaches for you and you collapse into him instantly. Pull him into your arms, cradle his head against your chest. He curls into you without hesitation.

“It’s ok. It’s ok, honey,” you say as his shoulders begin to shake. Fresh tears spill down his face and into the soft fabric of your shirt, the cotton muffling his weepy breaths. His crying brings heat to your own eyes, and you blink the tears back before they can fall.

“I don’t want it, I don’t want it,” he rambles into your chest.

“I know. I know, baby.” You stroke his back with a warm hand. “You’re safe.”

“I didn’t want it. I didn’t mean — didn’t mean to — to mess up again.”

“Dex,” you say. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything to deserve it. You didn’t mess up.”

His hands fist into your shirt as his sobs go dry. Like his tears have been spent. Like his voice has gone hoarse from all of his protesting. You hold him through it, let him listen to your heartbeat and the steady rate of your breathing.

“Just breathe, baby,” you say. “Breathe with me.”

His chest stutters as he tries to match your breathing, deep and slow and controlled. It’s an exercise you’ve done many times before, when he’s lost in a spiral he can’t end on his own. The media calls him cold and the internet calls him heartless, an unfeeling psychopath with a glaring hole where his heart should be. But you know the truth. Dex feels everything in overwhelming intensity, and never learned how to bring himself back from the highs and lows of his moods.

“There you go,” you say as his breathing begins to slow. “It’ll pass. The feeling will pass.”

Minutes pass with his head tucked into your shoulder and your hands rubbing soothing circles across his back. When he at last pulls away to look at you, his eyes are still red and weary but the panic has faded. His mind is back, the clarity in his eyes returned. You comb your fingers through his sweat-damp hair, brushing sticky strands away from his forehead.

“You want to talk about it?” you ask.

He looks away. “No.”

You won’t press him to speak. You never do.

“Ok,” you answer, and press a kiss to his brow. His skin is hot and flushed beneath your lips. Tacky with drying sweat and tears.

The room falls into silence for a moment before he speaks again, and there’s a scraped-raw quality to his voice that tugs at the strings of your heart.

“Thank you,” he begins. “For doing that for me.”

“Did it help?” you ask. “I mean, do you feel any better?”

He takes a moment to consider, brows furrowing slightly. “I think so. It feels like . . . like picking at a scab.”

Picking at a scab, or clawing into an old wound? you want to say. Instead, you say, “I want you to tell me if it’s worse. If I did anything you didn’t like.”

“You didn’t,” he says quickly. “I wanted it. I trust you.”

A part of you is anxious, fearful of the possibility that you hurt him in any way that would linger. That he would ask you to do it again.

“I don’t ever want you to use me to hurt yourself. Ok?” you say quietly.

His eyes dart away again, fixing on a spot somewhere on your shoulder. “Ok.”

The response doesn’t assure you, but the slump of his shoulders and the weight of him cuddled up against you quiets any argument building under your tongue. That conversation can happen later. Right now, there’s a stickiness coating your skin where sweat is drying down, the fabric of your shirt and the sheets underneath you clinging uncomfortably to your body. What you need is a bath and a long drink of water, for you and for the man lying limp beside you. You start to rise but he stops you with a hand around your wrist and a noise of protest scraping from the back of his throat.

“Stay,” he says.

“We’re tired. And dirty,” you say gently. “Let me run a bath for us.”

“Later,” he says. “Just stay with me. Please?”

And because you’re still no good at denying him, you simply smile and say, “ok.”

When you let him tug you back down to the bed with a hand pressed into your hair, he stares up at you with tired eyes. “Kiss?” he asks.

You press a soft kiss against his lips, warm and lingering. And then again. And again. When you both fall back into the blankets, he curls into the heat of your body again. The room is quiet, the air cool against your sticky skin. You curl your fingers through Dex’s hair again and he turns into your palm with a pleased hum.

“I love you,” he says, muffled into your shirt.

“I love you,” you answer, your lips pressed to his hair.

He falls asleep to the beat of your heart, steady and constant beside him. You lie awake for minutes after. Counting his breaths, soothing him when he jerks and twitches in his sleep. When he wakes later in the night, you’ll slip out of bed as he paws at you again, return with a warm cloth and wipe away the sweat and spend on his body. He’ll tug you back into bed and you’ll cover him with a blanket before he returns to his refuge in the crook of your neck.

To Dex, the physical topography of another human being had always been a calculus of vulnerability. His mind was a machine, capable of mapping the dimensions of an enclosed space within milliseconds and identifying the precise trajectory required to sever an artery. He understood the mechanics of the anatomy; he knew exactly how much pressure it took to snap a collarbone or drop a grown man to his knees. But touch and affection? Affection was a foreign, deeply distressing dialect. It was a sensory input that rendered his internal programming entirely mute. He knew every ligament in the body, where to assault to cause torment but God forbid he uses his hands for softness.

There was a profound, quiet irony in a man of his age and lethal competence being so utterly paralyzed by the simple proximity of soft skin. Hell, he almost pitied himself for it. For decades, the concept of a romantic relationship hadn’t been relegated in his mind. It had been buried beneath layers of institutional survival, psychological trauma, and the crushing weight of an existence spent entirely on the defensive. Dex was not a lover and he had never been, affection and care was unnatural to him.

He could still recall the sharp, sterile scent of the office belonging to his first therapist, the singular human anchor he had at the fragile age of sixteen. He had cared for her, though his developing mind lacked the emotional framework to define what care actually meant. To Dex, care was synonymous with structure. It was the methodical way she re-aligned his straying thoughts, the unnatural patience she extended far beyond the boundaries of her hourly compensation. That was the closest Dex ever got to care. And when death claimed her, his internal architecture had shattered into something feral and defensive. Standing beside her hospital bed, looking down at her failing form, he had chosen to weaponize his grief, hissing that he hated her. He didn’t hate her for who she was, but for the betrayal of leaving him entirely alone in a world without parameters. After that care became just another word without meaning to him.

Then came Julie.

Julie had been an exercise in aesthetic symmetry. She was safe, correct, and perfectly aligned with the script he desperately tried to perform. Dex had cared for her in the same detached, appreciative manner you might have for a beautiful painting in a museum. Admired from a calculated, safe distance, entirely devoid of genuine visceral heat or want. He never wanted Julie, despite how it might have looked, Dex wanted to be her. How easily life came to her was just so fascinating to a man like him. He remembered the exact moment she had offered him a farewell hug at the Suicide Hotline Center, just before he transitioned into the stark world of the Bureau.

The physical contact had been an absolute shock to his nervous system. And he remembers it even now years later. First came the ice, a sudden, freezing sensation that trickled down his spine the precise millisecond her palms pressed against his biceps, his body mistaking the gesture for an ambush. His muscles had coiled instantly like overwound springs, his vertebrae stiffening in a violent protest against the proximity. But then, right before he could pull away, the ice had thawed into an invasive, confusing warmth. Before his mind could categorize or fixate on the sensation, she had already retreated, leaving him standing in the corridor, thoroughly deregulated by a three-second interaction.

That brief, fleeting embrace had been the absolute zenith of his experience with physical intimacy. Dex didn't do hugs, or anything else for that matter… His subsequent, half-hearted attempts at dating in his early twenties had been a disastrous blur, locked away like radioactive material in the darker corridors of his subconscious. The entire experience had felt extremely uncomfortable, unfulfilling, and complicated in ways that insulted his intelligence.

The sheer volume of unwritten variables was maddening. He had to speak enough to demonstrate engagement, but not so much to appear self-absorbed. Connection required vulnerability, but a fraction too much was classified as forward or desperate. He couldn't request another date too quickly or too frequently without crossing into the territory of predatory. Touch was a minefield; it was deemed acceptable only if initiated by the woman, yet society dictated that a man should assert dominance and assume leadership. Hold her hand, the script said, but don't apply too much pressure to suggest control. Open the door for her, but don't infantilize her or imply incompetence.

By his third official date, Dex had quietly withdrawn from the field entirely. The sheer unpredictability of the social ritual was entirely too volatile for his psychology to parse. He vividly recalled sitting across a woman in a dimly lit restaurant, completely incapable of processing a single syllable falling from her lips because his entire focus had been hijacked by a fork. Her elbow had accidentally nudged the cutlery, leaving it misaligned by less than half an inch from the knife. The asymmetry had screamed in his mind like a siren, drowning out her voice, preventing him from formulating the carefully curated, charming responses necessary to foster romantic banter. He had stared at the silver, suffocated by the lack of order, and realized he was entirely unfit for the performance.

So, he surrendered the idea. He locked his focus onto the FBI, dedicating his life to a rigid, bureaucratic institution that allowed him to believe he was doing good for society while keeping his demons safely behind bars. Years had dissolved into the background of that singular pursuit, and the concept of dating became an obsolete idea of a past life.

Even more now that his world had been violently upended; he had broken out of the prisons meant to contain him, shed the skin of a government puppet, and stripped away the illusions of the system. He was older now, his features hardened by violence, but he was entirely free from the invisible snares that had once dictated his value. Standing in his late thirties, Dex felt a strange sense of selfhood that had completely eluded him in his twenties.

His daily routine remained his mandatory sanctuary, waking up exactly the same hour, executing a flawless military tuck on his bedsheets, consuming a balanced breakfast before physical regimen, and then work. But the internal shift was tectonic. He no longer walked through the streets of New York like a fraudulent actor trying to mimic human behavior and integrate himself into civilization. He knew the truth now: there was no grand order to life. There was only the winding, bloody path he had been carved out to walk. He no longer craved the external validation of a badge or a supervisor’s praise to consider himself a whole entity. He was fucking Bullseye.

And the concept of a "North Star", the desperate need for a perfect, external moral anchor to keep him sane, had been forcibly buried deep within a vault next to his most violent, unpacked trauma. Though sometimes, in the quiet hours of the night, a phantom tension would ripple through his chest, an instinctual tug toward the comfort of connection, but he would quickly dismiss it as mere human biology. He didn't need a North Star. His life was already perfectly illuminated by his own design. Or so he continuously told himself.

Until he walked into your boutique.

The shop was situated a short distance down the asphalt stretch of Hell’s Kitchen, a stark, hyper-feminine building in an otherwise gritty neighborhood. The interior was an absolute assault of pastel pinks, a visual sensory overload that normally would have triggered his defense mechanisms, but the hand-painted sign outside promised custom tailoring services. And Dex needed his belongings fixed the moment he noticed imperfections.

He carried two specific items across the threshold that afternoon. His utilitarian jacket that had suffered a tear against a rusty fire escape during the previous night's "hero work," and a pair of heavy tactical gloves that needed the seams to be adjusted for a better grip.

You'd been seated behind the polished wooden counter, a needle held between your hand, your hair slightly disheveled as you worked. When you looked up and saw the tall, broad-shouldered man standing in your doorway, your face had broken into a smile so massive, so genuinely warm, that Dex had felt an involuntary, almost evolutionary impulse to mimic the expression. He stood perfectly rigid as your small, incredibly nimble hands took the damaged fabric from his grip, your fingers tracing the torn nylon of the jacket with a professional, practiced ease.

When you looked up and informed him that the repairs would only take sixty minutes, his sharp brows had risen in mild intrigue at your efficiency.

"I work fast," you had offered, your voice bright and entirely unbothered by his silent, imposing intensity.

Dex returned to the shop precisely the sixty-minute mark, not a second early, not a second late. You were already waiting for him at the counter, the jacket neatly pressed and the jagged tear now entirely imperceptible, executed with a level of craftsmanship that deeply satisfied his need for perfection. Then he slid his large hands into the resized tactical gloves, flexing his fingers to test the tension of the thread.

Whether you had recognized the subtle Bullseye emblem stamped into the leather, you made no verbal indication. Instead, you merely bit your lower lip, your gaze tracking the movement of his hands before you boldly, without an ounce of hesitation, reached out and gripped his gloved hand. Your fingers guide his, pointing down to the specific cross-stitch where you had loosened the seams to accommodate his knuckles.

The ice returned instantly. It danced down the length of his spine, a freezing jolt that made his chest tighten. But as your warm skin remained pressed against the heavy material of his glove, the sensation mutated into something remarkably pleasant. Dex let out an involuntary exhale from your touch as your index finger trailed a slow, deliberate line down the length of his hand. Was this flirting? No, this was her job….

"If you need it bigger I can make that possible," you offered softly, your eyes lifting to lock onto his with a quiet, grounded confidence. And Dex paused, taking in the intimacy of your closeness. Okay…. Yeah, this was flirting. He deduced at its baseline before he found himself engaging.

Dex couldn't understand the sequence of events that followed, birthed from that moment alone. His memory, usually so linear and mathematical, became a blur of transitions. And normally the haze would eat away at him till he lost his mind, if it weren't for the fact that the stages that followed were extremely enjoyable. All he knew was that the rigid wall of his isolation had suddenly breached, and he was taking you on a first date. Then a second. A third. A fourth. The unwritten variables that had paralyzed him in his youth seemed to dissolve in your presence; you didn't demand a script, and your effortless need to keep talking filled the awkward silences he usually created. Dex was thankful for it. He was thankful for all of you.

By the time the fifth date happened, you were both standing inside the threshold of your private home. And Dex was fucking ecstatic. The realizations hit him in waves during his nightly routines: life was simply greater, sharper, and infinitely better with your existence woven into it. Within the calculated grid of his mind, he had rapidly come to view you as an essential, non-negotiable component of his daily structure. A connection he needed desperately to maintain that he was fully prepared to execute any measure necessary to ensure you stayed. You were kind, sweet, and giving in a way that defied his understanding of human nature. How were you so willing to offer the world everything you had without demanding anything in return?

Because he couldn't comprehend it, he studied you. He watched you with a hyper-attentive, microscopic focus that would have terrified a normal civilian, tracking the micro-expressions of your face, the cadence of your breaths, and the specific pitch of your laughter. And you let him. To you, that intense, unblinking gaze didn't feel like surveillance; it made you feel entirely seen and warm.

Dex had learned you. He played every single card in his hand with absolute precision to ensure he kept your favor, but you made the act remarkably easy. He found himself wanting to give the world to you, a new directive that lingered constantly. While on missions, he's doing this to make the city better for you. He had to come home safe because you'd be so devastated if anything happened to him. You needed him in your life so he had to make sure no wounds took over his body. These thoughts progressed over time, though they were already brewing the minute he stepped out of your boutique. Dex brought you a perfectly curated bouquet of flowers on your very first date, quickly logging the fact that you flourished when things were done for you. From that moment on, his chivalry became non-negotiable. He opened doors before your hand could even approach the handle; he pulled out chairs to the exact angle required for your comfort; he even leaned across the console of his vehicle to buckle your seatbelt for you, his large frame momentarily shielding you from the world. A thought that appears constantly in his mind at night.

And now, those correctly executed actions had granted him entry into your sanctuary.

Walking through the door of your brownstone, his analytical eyes immediately deduced that you and your work were a singular entity. The space was less a traditional home and more an active studio. A heavy, vintage treadle sewing machine sat prominently in the center of the room, positioned directly in front of the television, while two antique, velvet-upholstered couches framed it on either side. Dex made a silent, permanent mental note of that specific layout: the tool of your labor received absolute priority over comfort.

As he looked around Dex noticed your affinity for older things immediately, your eyes lingering on aged, well-maintained pieces of history. A part of him wondered if that was why you liked him so much and despite himself, the thought amused him. His gaze drifted to the expansive dining room, noting how every single high-backed chair had been pushed flush against the perimeter of the walls, completely away from the central table to maximize workspace. A deep, quiet part of his psychology deeply admired the dedication. He understood the obsession with craft, the way you spoke about fabrics and patterns with radiant love. He was identical to you in that regard, though he remained hyper-vigilant about never revealing the bloodier details of his own craft to you.

Dex paced silently behind you, his broad shoulders squared as his eyes continuously darted around the rooms, absorbing the atmosphere of your home while you led him toward the kitchen by the hand. His frame was tense, his muscles vibrating with a low-grade current of electricity. He still wasn't accustomed to the physical touching. He liked it, he liked it with a terrifying intensity that scared him, but his brain lacked the programming required to properly receive it.

And bless your heart, you were so unbelievably touchy.

You were a creature of constant physical contact. There was always a soft arm looping around his rigid bicep, a gentle palm resting against his. A constant, natural inclination to latch onto his massive frame and cling to him as if he were the only solid object in a moving world. He reciprocated in the only ways he knew how, squeezing your hand back with a carefully measured amount of pressure, standing perfectly still to accept your weight. But Dex still hadn't learned how to articulate or manifest his own physical desires. He didn't know how to be the one to close the distance. He didn't know how to reach out his large, scarred hands, wrap them around your waist, and pull you against his chest without an explicit invitation. The script hadn't given him those lines yet.

So instead, he simply allowed himself to be a passive monument of muscle and bone, letting you pull him toward the kitchen island for wine and cheese after your date. The night got more enjoyable, but then again, every moment was enjoyable with you. But this is even more so. You trusted him enough to let him into your space, liked him so much that you paid attention whenever his glass was empty.

"I have a secret," you admitted suddenly, your face flushing a deep, radiant pink after you drained the remainder of your second glass.

Dex raised a single, sharp brow, holding his own glass perfectly steady as he waited for the disclosure. He ignored the sudden, rhythmic thumping of his own blood pumping violently in his ears. He couldn't quite determine if the sudden spike in his heart rate was the result of the alcohol or a sudden surge of anxiety. Given his high tolerance, it was likely the latter.

"I hate wine," you hiccuped, a small, breathless sound. You didn't feel that inebriated but Dex had a skill for making you feel drunk.

Dex’s cold blue eyes widened slightly in genuine surprise. Without a word, his large hand reached out and gently but firmly took the crystal glass directly from your fingers, a low, rumbling chuckle vibrating in his chest as the absurdity of the situation caused a bright laugh to break from your lips.

"Why didn't you say anything," he asked, his gravelly voice dropping an octave as he placed the glass down on the exact center of a stone coaster.

"Because it was a nice gift and also because I wanted to be with you longer," you reasoned smoothly.

You stepped away from the counter, your short frame moving into his immediate personal space. Slipping effortlessly between his extended legs as he sat perched on the high barstool, your body completely filling the void between his knees. Before he could process the proximity, your arms looped entirely around his broad shoulders, your hands resting against the nape of his neck.

Dex sat up just a fraction straighter, his entire spine locking into a protective line. A hesitant, unpracticed hand rose from his side, his large palm resting against the fabric of your dress to support your lower back, his fingers trembling slightly against your skin.

"I like having you around..." you admitted softly, your voice heavily laced with an intoxicated, sleepy haze as you looked up at him.

"I like being around," Dex nodded, his gaze boring into yours with an unblinking, absolute intensity.

It was the most fundamental truth his mouth had ever uttered. He liked being around you so much that the mere concept of physical separation had become an agonizing friction in his daily life. There were moments during his long, solitary hours on a rooftop or following a lethal assignment where the craving to see you grew so violent, so overwhelming, that he had seriously contemplated abandoning his operation just to stand outside your window. But the rational, highly defensive side of his mind, the piece of him that vividly remembered the trembling panic in Julie's face, always managed to reassert control. He wouldn't risk breaking what you two had.

"Will you be around forever?" you asked, your voice dropping into a soft, vulnerable register that sounded almost like a plea.

Dex felt a sudden, blinding flash behind his eyes, a sensation so sharp and radiant it felt as though stars had detonated within his skull. A terrifying wave of duty and existential purpose crashed through his mind, rewriting his internal directives in an instant. This was his calling. This was his permanent assignment.

"I'll be here forever," he nodded, his voice carrying the heavy, unyielding finality of a death warrant.

He barely had a single microsecond to process the violent rush of devotion flooding his veins before you leaned in, and your soft lips met his.

Dex froze.

He froze in a way he had never experienced in the heat of lethal gunfire. He hesitated with a sudden, paralyzing vulnerability that his mind was completely unequipped to handle. Bullseye did not hesitate; Bullseye was a creature of pure, instantaneous reaction. But Dex, Dex was entirely lost here in the quiet of your kitchen, his lips pressed flat against yours, his breath catching in the back of his throat as the delicate warmth of your mouth completely shattered his being.

His mind scrambled for data, for a past memory or a set of instructions to tell him what to do with his hands, how to move with you, how to breathe. The sheer sensation of your mouth against his was too vast, too unaligned with any grid he had ever mapped. He wanted to deepen the pressure, wanted to sink his fingers into your hips and drag you so close that the space between you ceased to exist, but the terrifying lack of instructions kept his body entirely locked in stone. He was a starving man paralyzed by the sudden appearance of a feast, terrified that a single incorrect movement would cause the illusion to vanish.

It was only a brief, agonizing second of contact. It was over far too quickly for his liking before you were gently pulling back, your eyelashes fluttering against your cheeks.

"You never got much love huh?" you hummed out, your voice dipping into a sad, incredibly tender melody.

Your small hands didn't retreat; instead, they began to preen over his tense shoulders, your fingers sliding upward until your nails began to slowly, methodically comb through the short hairs at the base of his scalp.

An involuntary, deeply guttural groan tore itself from the very bottom of Dex’s throat, the sound surprising even himself. His eyes rolled back, his lids fluttering shut as a wave of intense pleasure rippled through his nervous system. He liked that. He liked that with a feral, addictive desperation. Whatever you were doing with your hands, it was dismantling the static in his brain.

"No," he admitted, his voice a broken, raspy whisper in the quiet room, his head naturally sinking into the guiding pressure of your palms as you continued to adore him.

Your lips moved forward again, finding the hard, unyielding line of his cheekbone. You pressed a soft, lingering kiss directly over the jagged scar near his cheek, the exact spot you always claimed when you were saying goodbye, and Dex felt his entire body shudder under the impact. Then, your kisses migrated downward, tracing the sharp angle of his jaw before your mouth found the sensitive, hot skin of his neck.

Dex’s hands lost their hesitation, his fingers curling tightly into the fabric of your dress as he decided, with absolute certainty, that he liked this even more.

"Don't worry. I'll fix it," you murmured against his skin, your breath hot and reassuring even in your heavily tipsy state.

“Pretty girl like you gonna fix a man like me,” Dex mused out, exhaling in amusement as he welcomed your kisses by granting you more of his neck. You hummed in delight and he noted that was the correct response.

“I'd do everything for you, Dex,” you admitted into his neck and that seemed to do it. Every rigid order he told himself to act like a gentleman broke as he pulled you into his chest, turning his face as if begging for you to grant him another kiss.

And you do.

This time he reciprocated the contact eagerly, fuck it, thoughts can be damned, Dex let his body lead now. His kisses were harsh and demanding, desperate in its undercurrent but you enjoyed it. You tasted faintly like wine and something minty and he finds himself deepening the kiss. His large calloused hand found the thin straps of your bias-cut dress, hastily pushing it down the slope of your shoulder before he froze. He was being too forward, too much, too–

Before he could spiral, you whined into his mouth at the lack of movement. A harmonious plea that he's never had the privilege of hearing before. And Dex's eyes fluttered, that sound went straight to his straining cock evoking a groan against your skin. Emboldened hands pushing the dress down only to pull back momentarily, breaking the kiss despite not wanting to. He'd rather shoot himself than stop kissing you, but he needed to know that what he was doing was okay. And by the blissful state of your eyes, you were more than okay with this, with him. And so he allowed his gaze to wander, darting down to the exposed skin of your soft breast.

His gaze locked onto your hardened nipple before his hand slowly moved, not giving himself time to overthink. His thumb grazed the sensitive peak in experimentation, irises watching as your chest stuttered, his gaze darting up to meet yours in calculation on how to proceed. You were waiting for him, letting him take the lead and explore, and God did he want to map out every shape of you. He wanted to know what made you arch and squirm, what made you sing his name in praise. But Dex was a man rendered stupid in the unfamiliar vastness of your body, so hands stayed motionless as they had done nothing but take and punish all his life. He'd do it slow, he decided, after all, his hands were not meant for this. For worship and caress.

But his mouth would be.

Not breaking eye contact with you, his lips found home on your skin, latching onto your nipple. Humming as you arched your back, your pliant body gravitating into him. You liked that, he learned, so he did it harder. Teeth grazing the sensitive peak before sucking it into his mouth hard.

His free hand wanders to your other breast, thumb circling the clothed nipple there while he devotes himself to the first with his tongue. It’s messy, uncoordinated, Dex isn’t a gentle lover, he learned as the need progresses. His brave hand slips under your dress, pushing fabric up further to expose more of your body as his kisses migrated down your sternum.

“D-Dex.”

The breathy sound made him freeze and he recoiled immediately as if burned. He waits for the storm only for you to eagerly pat him on his shoulder, signaling you wanted him up.

“Room, please…. I-i don't want it here…” you say almost shy and he obeys immediately, standing up and holding you dear.

“Yeah? Sweet girl,” the term endearment escaping his lips catches him by surprise just as much as him kissing your forehead does. But he doesn't dwell on it long as he grabs hold of your hand and leads you upstairs where he already knows where your room is.

The silence of the space was only intensified once you both entered your bedroom. Dex pauses, taking a moment to appreciate the image of you standing there, waiting with earnest eyes and swollen lips. You looked so vulnerable, your dress wrinkled and breathing heavy as you let him assess. He welcomes your softness and realizes that he owes it to you to be vulnerable as well.

With a firm, certain, grip, he turns your body around, your stomach flutters in expectation as lust filled eyes land on the made bed. Only the inevitable force never came, you weren't shoved face down into the mattress in pure heat, instead Dex is moving your hair aside to fall on one shoulder. And that impacted your core more than any barge ever could. So you remained standing there, ignoring the heat in your stomach as the brooding man you'd come to know gently unzipped the back of your dress. Pushing the fabric down your hips, a hum escapes the claimant as he turns you back around with even kinder hands and you melted.

Sure in your intentions, you begin to unbutton his shirt and he watches you in the moment. Sometimes you often wonder what goes on in Dex's mind, but here you're certain that whatever thoughts that hammered in his head were anything but pure. When the fabric of his shirt meets your dress on the floor, a barely suppressed smile threatens to take over your face and his features silently requested for context, amused in your glow.

“You're so big,” appreciation dripped from your words, reinforced by your hands steady on his chest. Pride and something smug consumes Dex’s internal framework as he reaches for your bare waist, pulling you into him. Fuck. He liked how that felt, loved the feeling of you two skin to skin.

“That why you're always so touchy,” he huffed. It was a poor attempt to regulate himself from these overwhelming emotions. Still riding the dopamine high from your appraisal.

“Yes,” you nodded shamelessly.

At that a raw exhale breaks free from his mouth, falling in ardor before he's guiding you down to the bed. Dex’s gaze is locked on yours, at your body barely covered in cotton underwear as he prowls towards you on the duvet. Your presence was the single grounding planet in the uncharted stars of his nebula, an innate need to keep his focus on you and solely you to avoid getting lost in the orbit of his thoughts. Waiting patiently as exploratory hands trailed over your body, thumbs brushed over your nipples just once, before migrating down to your torso, eventually finding home on your hips.

Lips parted but nothing fell from them as words failed him. Instead his gaze darted up to meet yours as his fingers deliberately tugged your underwear, not fully, not even an inch down, just enough to get your attention and silently ask for permission.

Your body moved on its own, hastily squirming under his broad stature and pushing the thin fabric down your legs. The man over you had been the only thing plaguing the recesses of your brain for the past few weeks, consuming you with such unbidden thoughts. Anything would be done for him at this point. You barely got to kick the drenched cotton off before Dex's palm landed flat on one thigh, pushing it down hard against the bed and spreading you open for him. With a fluttering stomach so intense, your body fell back as you took in his state. Half dressed and tightly coiled, muscles pulling in restrain as he remained pinning your thigh down. His attention was locked onto you, or more so, your dripping cunt and an involuntary need to shut your legs was met with even more resistance from him.

He didn't appreciate you trying to hide from him, evident in his warning gaze. Without a word, his palm trailed up, the desire and craving to touch you won out in him. And suddenly hands that had only known violence was caressing you so softly and attentively, figuring out the definition of what it meant to be a lover.

God you were so wet and warm and soft and all the good things in the world…

Dex noticed your breathing growing more labored beneath him and instinctively he leaned back to watch you more, away from the disadvantage of being tucked into your neck. Your pupils were blown out, starry eyed as your brows creased and a pout settled on your lips. His fingers moved on their own as he watched, a new desire to pull more of those darling expressions from you forming. And as he sunk two cruel digits into your slopping wet heat, satisfaction invaded his senses as he took in your reaction. Your mouth parts in ecstasy, a sound Dex immediately knew he loved fell from your lips as your body arched up into him. And then that begging pout graced your features again, looking down at where his fingers fucked you.

So perhaps intimacy was everything people made it out to be, and so much more when it's with you. Dex was beginning to understand it now, the insatiable need to constantly be touching your person. Fuck, he doesn’t think he could ever go back to the way he was before. So fucking hesitant, unsure with anxiety that dibilitated him. He refused to be so rigid again, not when the sounds of your desire and need were music to his ears. He loved this, loved it in a way that was beginning to align with his new idea of normal. He could get used to this, to touching you, to fucking you.

Whining in protest as his fingers pulled away, your hands gripped at his chest in agony. Complains at the tip of your tongue before halting completely as you hear him begin to take his jeans off. Humming in delight as he strips. And fucking hell…. You were well aware of Dex’s large frame, it was one of the first things you noticed about him, second to the attractive scar on his cheek. But seeing him like this was something different entirely and you couldn't help yourself as you preened over his naked form again. Palms gliding the expansive plains of his back, brushing down his abs and strong chest as you sucked on his neck. Though judging by the expression on Dex's face, he didn't mind you playing. He let you have your fun until eventually pulling your lips off of him with a gentle hand at the back of your neck. A protest happened beneath him as you tried to chase after his body before stopping, noticing his hand on his member. And that shut you up real good.

Dex gently guides his hardened cock onto your dripping core. Rubbing his swollen head up and down your drenched skin before slowly sinking into you. A gasp falls from your lips followed by a desperate cry of want. His breath comes in rough bursts through his nose, focused entirely on you beneath him. How you take it, how you sound, how tight you feel with every drag out and push back in. The plains of his anatomy strained with tension as he exhaled in contentment. Dex thought he had come to know comfort, in the way you'd lean onto him during walks, how you raked your nails through his hair earlier. But this exceeded that in every capacity, comfort was a juvenile word to express how this felt like home. He's barely halfway through and already has to stop and compose himself. He let out a hiss, halting all movements as you clenched around him.

The sudden, full stretch makes you mewl out a sharp, startled sound And Dex freezes instantly, his entire body locking up. Has he hurt you? Was something wrong? He’s buried to the hilt now. It’s a lot. Too much all at once. A wave of something almost like guilt hits him, he hadn’t meant to scare you, but the sensation is… God.

"Shhh," he soothes automatically, instinctively brushing your cheek with his thumb despite how wrecked he feels right now.

You leaned into his touch, seeking for more and he's relieved. Needy palms finding a place on his biceps as you squirmed, looking down at where you both meet. Dex follows your gaze, watching his hardened cock buried deep in you. Yeah… that’s a lot.

"Tell me what you need," he murmurs, thumb brushing away another stray tear. "We can stop. Or go stupid slow.”

You let out a laugh that bled dangerously too close to a moan and Dex makes the decision of the latter for you. The first thrust is deliberate, deep and controlled, testing your reaction. The second follows, then a third, each one creating a filthy rhythm that fills the quiet room. He slowly fucks into you in a sedate, gentle manner. But gentleness is short-lived. His movements quickly grow faster till he was fucking you in a steady eager pace. Skin slaps against skin, joining the song of moans that you sing. The bed creaks under the weight, every movement is amplified in the hushed space. Rapture floods through you as any other thoughts that weren't Dex quickly subsides, giving way for your focal. Everything felt right in the world as he molded your body to his.

It was almost too much, his body caging yours in as his hips moved relentlessly. You knew you wouldn't last much longer if he kept going like this. But Dex was a man of intention, he took you like it was the only thing worth doing in his life.

The press of your hand against his pelvis, pushing, cunt trying to get him closer yet you were pulling away at the same time, sends conflicting signals straight to his dick. Your thighs around him squirmed, a telltale sign you're overwhelmed. Dex groans but doesn’t let up; if anything, he presses down harder on you with his hips, pinning yours in place.

"Take it," he rasps no room for argument. His skilled thumb lands on your clit, relentless despite the overstimulation threatening both of your bodies. The sound that left you was obscene and filthy as your head lulls back and Dex is quick to grab hold of your thigh and pull you closer towards him.

The new angle hits perfectly, your entire body jerks, a broken moan escaping as you tense around Dex’s hips. He learned you almost immediately from the very first second his fingers were inside you, he found where to target instantly. And now he abused that information.

He feels it, the way you clenched around him, and his own control wavers. But he holds on, focused solely on your pleasure, chasing every twitch and whimper with relentless precision. His lips find yours again in a messy, open-mouthed kiss as he pounded into you with controlled hits. A sound so similar to bullets in the air echoed at the impact, the wet sound, obscene, unfiltered, hitting him like a lightning bolt. Every thrust is accompanied by that slick, squelching noise: your arousal mixing with his movements. Dex learns that he loved that sound, it satisfied a part of his brain in a notion he couldn't understand but he knew that it fueled him even more. Dex's hips stutter for half a second at the realization of just how drenched you are for him.

A groan rumbles from his chest as he picks up speed, fucking you till you saw stars. A melody of moans and gasps filled the room with a symphony of skin heard with it. The walls welcome the sound with open arms as the atmosphere feels too hot and too heavy. You try to grab at the bed sheets despite Dex's tight grip on one of your wrists, you need something to ground you as you neared. Too much. It was all too much. Seamlessly, he laced his fingers with yours, still holding you down onto the bed but his grip softened.

You reciprocate the touch, tightly squeezing his hand as you feel the pressure capsize and your thighs shake in hot waves. You cry his name out, your back arching off the bed from the pleasure. His cock still sliding in and out of your dripping cunt, desperate to join you in your release, ignoring the coil of his muscles. He loves the way you say his name, so breathy and blinded by ecstasy. Dex breathes into your neck, the sensations becoming too much before a loud groan breaks his focus and he spills ropes of his cum into you. Immediately you primp under him, satiated and spoiled but your accord for touch remains ever present as you gently brush your nails up and down his back. And that sends him collapsing down onto you. Not that you seemed to mind as he heard a loud gleeful laugh beneath his large frame.

Dex exhales, long and slow, moving to stare at you. He’s not used to aftercare. Not with anyone. But here he is gently moving off you and tucking a throw blanket around your shoulders like you're something fragile. A calloused finger brushes a stray hair from your forehead, an absurdly tender gesture for someone who just fucked you into oblivion but you welcomed it.

He learned an entirely new vocabulary that night, and the education continued to expand exponentially in the weeks that followed.

He discovered, through application and obsessive cataloging, that he liked touch. He liked it an immeasurable, terrifying amount. He grew to absolutely love the specific jolt that occurred when you wake him up in the morning by lazily raking your nails across the broad, scarred expanse of his bare back. He loved the domestic weight of you playing with his hair while he sat on the living room floor, or the frantic, heavy way you would cling onto him when the city noise rattled the brownstone windows.

Methodically, his analytical mind began to solve the puzzle of how to return the same favor. He'd mapped your body with the same precision he applied to his targets, but with an entirely different objective.

He learned how to execute a kiss without needing an explicit verbal invitation, his large hands learning the exact amount of pressure required to tilt your chin upward to meet his mouth. He figured out how to use the immense, terrifying strength in his palms to gently massage the deep knots out of your shoulders after you spent a twelve-hour day hunched over the antique sewing machine. He studied the micro-movements of your muscles, tracking the specific shivers that rippled through your frame when his thumbs traced your collarbones, logging every sigh and hitch in your breath as data.

He figured out, with a profound, quiet sense of internal victory, that you loved every single form of physical touch imaginable, so long as it came entirely from him.

And he decided then, he loved intimacy.