ᝰI am Deeply in Love with Fictional Worldᝰ

Daniel Shaw had owned the movie studio currently paying your invoices, which made his sudden death inconvenient more than tragic. He had been found in his suite less than an hour ago. Someone said it was a heart attack. Another person said it was suicide after someone found a bullet in his head. It was so sudden! Your coworker kept repeating, as if the situation might become less alarming if she repeated it enough. You had worked under his studio for three months and met him properly only twice. He was charming, rich, and distant. Powerful men often were, which meant he remembered nobody’s name unless they could make him money.

You were a stunt choreographer. That put you somewhere below the director, below the producers, below the lead actress’ wellness coach, and slightly above the poor intern sent to buy twelve green juices at six in the morning. Shaw dying wasn’t personal to you, but it was close enough to your paycheck to keep you at the bar instead of going upstairs to sleep.

You took a sip of your whiskey and watched the room in the mirror behind the bottles.

That was where you found him watching you.

He didn’t look away when your eyes met, and it made you smile. Most men glanced down when caught, then looked back later with some lazy excuse written across their face. This man didn’t bother. He simply held your gaze in the mirror, almost amused, like he had known you were going to notice him and had been waiting for you to decide what to do about it.

You turned slightly on your stool. “You’re staring.”

His mouth curled up, barely. “You finally noticed.”

“I’m trained,” you shrugged, trying to keep things vague. “I notice when someone is watching me.”

He simply raised his cup to his lips. “Good to know.”

“Is it?”

“It explains the bruises.”

You looked down at your knee, where the hem of your dress had ridden up enough to show the dark bloom of a rehearsal bruise above your shin. It wasn’t your worst one this week, but it wasn’t the prettiest, either. Still, the way his eyes touched it and moved on made your skin warm, because he didn’t leer. He assessed. 

You picked up your drink and carried it down the bar to him because the night was already strange, your contract might be cancelled by morning, and you had never been especially good at leaving interesting things alone.

“Since you’re apparently studying me,” you said as you sat beside him, “what else have you learned?”

He turned his glass once against the bar top, eyes moving over your face with infuriating patience. “You’re not drunk, but you’re trying to decide if you want to be. You’re not sad, but you know you should look sadder. You’ve checked the exits twice since I sat down, and you keep favouring your left side, which means either your hip hurts or your knee does.”

“My knee,” you confirmed, hating how impressed you sounded. “And I checked the exits because this room is full of dickheads. That’s just good sense.”

He managed a small, performative frown. “They’re just film executives.”

“Eh,” you shrugged, “same difference."

This time, he smiled properly. “Fair.”

You angled your body toward him, letting your shoulder rest against the bar. “Your turn.”

“My turn?”

“What have I learned about you?”

His eyes stayed on yours. “Go ahead.”

You let yourself look, because he had started it, though that pretence felt childish and paper-thin now. He had a dark jacket on and an expensive watch worn like he didn’t  care whether anyone noticed it. His posture was relaxed, but not loose. His hands were still on the bar and had no wedding ring, no visible nerves, no grief, no curiosity for anyone in the room except you.

Your sister had taught you to read people pretty well. 

“You’re too quiet to be an actor,” you said. “You’re not a producer either, because you haven’t checked your phone every six seconds and you don’t look like you’re about to ruin someone’s career over a schedule change. You could be security, but you’re not standing like you’re being paid to watch the door.”

“Maybe I’m off duty.”

“Maybe,” you allowed. “But if you were off duty, I think you’d still know exactly who in this room was carrying, who was lying, and who would scream first if the lights went out.”

The amusement in his face was evident. “And who would scream first?”

You glanced around the bar and nodded toward a red-faced producer loudly saying Shaw had been like a father to him. “Him. But only after checking whether TMZ is watching.”

The man beside you laughed under his breath. You liked the sound too much immediately, which was annoying because you didn’t even know his name yet.

You held out your hand. “I’m not calling you stranger all night.”

His hand closed around yours. “Dex.”

“Just Dex?”

“For now.”

“That’s weird.”

“Do you like weird?”

You should have denied it. Instead, your smile gave you away. “I like interesting. Weird is reviewed on a case by case basis”

Dex didn’t release your hand immediately. He brushed his thumb over your knuckles, where tape residue still clung from that afternoon’s rehearsal. When he let go, you had to remind yourself not to stare.

“So,” he said, “stunt performer of some kind.”

You narrowed your eyes as if you were surprised that the handshake had given it away. Still, it was fun to play along, right? “Were you at the dinner?”

“Briefly.”

“And did you know Shaw?”

He considered his answer this time “Briefly.”

You chuckled, and Dex watched as if he wanted to understand the mechanics of it. It was unsettling, but it didn’t make you want to leave. If anything, it made you lean closer, because he was giving you so little that every small reaction felt like a gold star. You worked with performers all day, people trained to externalise every emotion so the camera could catch it. Dex did the opposite. He made you want to get your hands on him just to see what he was like underneath.

“What do you do, Dex-for-now?” you asked.

“Private security advising.”

You tilted your head. “That is the most fake Hollywood job I’ve ever heard.”

“It pays well.”

“I bet it does.” You smiled, “Do you consult on security, or do you just stand around looking intimidating?”

His eyes dropped to your mouth again, and this time he wasn’t quick enough to hide it. “Depends on who’s paying.”

You shifted on the stool, crossing one leg over the other, and watched his eyes flick down for the briefest second before returning to your face. 

Controlled, you thought again. He was controlled enough that making him look felt like winning.

“You know,” you said, “for a security advisor, you’re not very reassuring.”

Dex leaned slightly closer, his voice dipping beneath the noise of the bar. “And yet you came over.”

“I was bored.”

“You’re not bored now.”

You hated that he was right. You hated it more because of how certain he seemed, as if your interest was another fact he had collected. The room around you blurred into a swirl of candlelight, glass, perfume, and expensive panic. Upstairs, a billionaire was dead. Down here, this stranger watched you like you were the only interesting target. 

You took another sip of your drink. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

“With some things.”

“And with others?”

Dex’s gaze held yours. “I like to be certain before I touch.”

It was absurd how quickly a fucking line got to you. Nothing in his tone was crude, and he barely even moved. But suddenly you were thinking about his hand around yours, his thumb over your knuckles, his mouth close to your ear.

You looked away first, which made him smile. 

You didn’t answer right away. Instead, you set your glass down and let the silence stretch. Dex didn’t rush to fill it. He only watched you while the whole room kept mourning a man neither of you seemed able to miss.

Finally, you said, “My job might be gone tomorrow,” you sighed as if that didn’t affect you. It probably didn’t. Your family had enough money that you could just jet to the Bahamas tomorrow and not look back, but you actually liked the project you were working on. “That should bother me more.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“It does,” you said, then shrugged. “Just not enough to make me behave.”

Dex’s eyes moved over your face, and he shifted a little. “How badly do you want not to behave?”

Fuck. 

It was so direct. It was certainly too much, maybe, from a man you had met fifteen minutes ago in a bar full of vultures dressed as mourners. But you had spent your whole life around danger. Dex was not pretending hard enough to be safe, and the reckless part of you respected that.

You leaned close enough that your knee brushed his. “That depends.”

His breath changed. 

There. You had him.

Dex stood and offered his hand.

You looked at his hand, then at his face. “You always pick girls up in weird hotels?”

“No.” He managed a dry laugh, “you’re special.”

You laughed despite yourself and placed your hand in his.

The elevator ride up was a lesson in restraint. He stood beside you without touching you again, which made every inch of space between your bodies feel like you were pulling teeth. The mirrored walls showed you too many versions of him: his profile, his hands, the line of his throat where his shirt opened. You could feel him watching your reflection instead of your body directly, which shouldn’t have been hotter, but was.

The elevator doors opened before you could say anything.

His room was high up, expensive, and nearly untouched. There was no mess or scattered clothes. No sign that anyone had lived there longer than necessary. Los Angeles glittered beyond the windows, silver streets and distant headlights, while the door clicked shut behind you.

You turned to face him. “You’re not really a security advisor, are you?”

Dex looked at you for a long moment. “Not tonight.”

You should have asked what that meant. You should have cared. Instead, you stepped closer and reached for the open collar of his shirt, letting your fingers slide beneath the edge of the fabric.

“Good,” you said. “I’m off the clock too.”

When he kissed you, the control didn’t vanish all at once. That would have been too easy. It was slow, first with his hand at your waist, firm enough to make you gasp against his mouth. Then his other hand at the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair as he angled you exactly how he wanted you. He kissed like a man who had thought about doing it before he allowed himself to move, like every second of restraint in the bar was hell on earth. 

You pushed his jacket off his shoulders. He let it fall without looking away from you. When you started on the buttons of his shirt, Dex caught your wrists, not to stop you, but to slow you down, his thumbs pressing lightly to your pulse points like he wanted to feel exactly what he was doing to you.

“You’re impatient,” he murmured, and for a second, you realized, holy shit. He really didn’t do these one night flings often. 

Still, the only thing you managed to say was: “You’re overdressed.”

His mouth found your neck, and your answer dissolved into a breathless laugh. He smiled against your skin. You felt it more than saw that private satisfaction, and then his hands moved again with a precision that made your knees feel unreliable. He never grabbed thoughtlessly. He touched with the same focus he had watched you with downstairs, learning what made you arch, what made your fingers dig into his shoulders.

By the time he walked you backward toward the bed, you were hot and irritated by how badly you wanted him. Dex seemed worse off for trying to hide it. His shirt was open, his hair no longer perfect because your hands had been in it, and his breathing had gone rough, making you smile against his mouth.

You pulled him down with you.

After that, the night turned feverish. It became his mouth on your skin, your dress pushed away, his hands gentle until you guided them, and suddenly they were not. He was careful in ways that made you ache and rough only when you dragged it out of him, and the first time you felt his composure slip, you laughed breathlessly because you could not help it.

Dex lifted his head, eyes narrowed. 

“You’re not as controlled as you look.”

“No,” he said, his mouth brushing yours. “Not like this.”

You believed him, though you had no reason to. Maybe that was the point. All you knew was that this was just a bad day with bad timing and a dead man upstairs whose absence had left the door to the evening just  open enough for a stranger to step through.

Later, when the room was dark and your body fell beside his, you lay with your cheek against his chest and traced one of the old scars near his ribs. He was quiet under your hand, but not asleep. You knew the difference. 

His fingers moved slowly along your spine, almost absent. “Dex?”

“Mm.”

“Were you really there for Shaw?”

His hand paused for less than a second before it continued.

“Briefly,” he said again.

You smiled into the dark because you knew he was giving you nothing, and for tonight, only tonight, you decided to let him.

You should have gone back to your own room. You should have asked better questions. You should have treated this as a stupid one night stand and pretended this never happened.

Instead, you closed your eyes and stayed exactly where you were.

—

Six months after that night, you moved to New York.

Officially, it was for work. A Broadway production had brought you on to choreograph the stage combat for a lavish, over-funded revival with sword fights, balcony falls, and a dramatic death scene that had to happen eight times a week without sending the lead actor to hospital. 

It was a good job. You even put it on exclamation points and sent it to your agent like you had made a responsible career decision.

It had absolutely nothing to do with Dex being based in New York.

Mostly.

Fine, maybe a little.

Your sister was there too, which made the decision feel less incriminating. Elektra had an apartment in Manhattan, three passports in names you were not supposed to know, and an art studio collecting ancient weapons, because technically, that was her job. 

You knew better than to ask where the acquisitions came from, and Elektra knew better than to ask why you had suddenly accepted a Broadway job in the same city as a man who called himself a security advisor and looked at you like he would happily ruin his life if you asked sweetly enough.

You and Dex had been officially dating for three months.

It was a good three months of late-night dinners, hotel room mornings, flowers delivered to rehearsal with no card because he knew you would know. It was three months of you pretending not to notice when the news mentioned a man connected to Shaw’s circle dying strangely overseas. Three months of Dex pretending his work calls were about security logistics and not whatever thing he did for people rich enough to afford him.

You knew what he was. Dex carried violence too naturally for it to be a hobby, and sometimes, when he came to you after work, the calm around him was too emptied out. He would shower before touching you, scrub himself raw, come out with damp hair and bare feet.

Your moral compass had raised one weak little hand in protest, but then Dex had kissed you against your kitchen counter, murmured sweetheart like a prayer, and made your entire sense of right and wrong pack a bag and leave the state.

Maybe that made you terrible. Maybe it made you Elektra’s sister after all.

Or maybe Dex was just so unfairly, stupidly, devastatingly hot that you just kept getting distracted.

And Dex knew that you knew after the first month or so, when you jokingly called him Hot John Wick.

Dex had always expected you to figure it out sooner or later. He knew you were a smart girl. He just didn’t realise you’d figure out this soon. 

Instead of being shocked though, he just raised his eyebrows and said, “John Wick is already hot.”

You chuckled and pulled him close. “Shut up and take it as a compliment that I find you even hotter.”

“Yes ma’am.”

And that was that. 

—

Earlier today, you had texted Dex and asked if he could come over and cuddle. 

Ha. 

You were already on the couch when he got in, cozy in sleep shorts and an oversized hoodie, one fuzzy sock half-off your foot, your body tired from rehearsal and your brain still muddled with stage falls, sword cues, and actors who didn’t understand that “again from the top” didn’t mean “try to improvise a stabbing.”

Dex took off his coat and looked at you like he had been waiting all day to come home to you.

“You’re late,” you said.

“‘M sorry.”

He came closer, and you let him pull you up just so you could immediately drag him down with you again. Dex caught himself over you with one hand braced beside your head, his knee sinking into the couch, his body warm and heavy enough above yours to make your whole chest loosen.

He kissed you, mouth moving over yours like he wanted to settle there. Like he needed a minute to remember what it felt like to be wanted without being useful. You went pliant underneath him almost immediately, because apparently that was what you did now. You let murderers kiss you tenderly on your couch and call it romance.

His hand slid beneath your hoodie and you hummed against his mouth.

Dex’s palm dragged up your ribs, then paused over your breast, cupping you through the thin fabric beneath like he was not even trying to pretend the cuddling was innocent anymore. His thumb moved once, and your breath caught hard enough for him to smile into the kiss.

“Dex,” you murmured.

“Mm.”

“That is not cuddling.”

“It’s close.”

His mouth dipped to your throat, and the laugh you tried to give him turned embarrassingly quiet halfway out. He knew exactly what he was doing. 

His hand slid down again over your waist, then your hip, then lower.

He pushed his body down yours, mouth tracing heat along your neck while his fingers found the waistband of your shorts. He tucked himself there, resting under the elastic, knuckles brushing warm skin.

Dex loved having his finger between your legs, knowing he can’t seem to miss the sweet spot, ever. Which meant you knew exactly how to make him suffer.

His fingers started to slip lower, and you caught his wrist.

Dex stopped.

Slowly, he lifted his head, looking offended, as if you had interrupted him mid-prayer.

“Sweetheart,” he said carefully.

You smiled. “My birthday is coming up.”

For a second, he just stared.

His wrist flexed under your fingers as you held it still. “I know.”

His thumb slipped under the edge by half an inch, expecting you to give in, but your hand only tightened, keeping him out of your shorts still.

Then his eyes lifted to yours, already suspicious. “Baby.”

You smiled. “Ah-ah.”

His gaze narrowed. “What are you doing?”

“Negotiating.”

“With my hand?”

“With your access,” you corrected

His desire didn’t disappear. It only got interrupted by confusion. “You’re blackmailing me.”

“I’m making a birthday request.”

His eyes flicked down to where you were holding his wrist. “With leverage.”

You held back a chuckle, trying your best to look innocent. “Smart girls use leverage.”

Dex opened his mouth, then closed it again.

You smiled sweetly. “That’s what I thought.”

For a second, he looked like he wanted to argue. Unfortunately for him, he also wanted control of his hand back very, very badly. “What do you want, pretty girl?” he asked.

You knew he meant presents, like actual presents. He was prepared to buy his way out of this. Hitman money in New York apparently paid well enough that Dex looked genuinely prepared for you to name something like a weekend in Paris.

You tightened your grip on his wrist. You looked up at him, very pleased with yourself. “I want you to meet my sister.”

Dex went still, much more still than when you had called him a hitman for the first time, actually, which told you a lot about his priorities.

“Your sister,” he said.

“Yes.”

“For your birthday.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what you want?”

“That’s what I want.”

He looked at you like you were a puzzle he hadn’t been hired to solve. Dex looked down at his trapped hand, then back at your face. “You’re really withholding this until I say yes.”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.”

His teeth clenched as your thumb stroked idly over the inside of his wrist. You were not even trying to be seductive with it, but Dex watched the movement like it was actively shortening his lifespan.

“Baby,” he said.

“Mm?”

“Let go of my hand.”

“Say yes.”

“You don’t play fair.”

He made a sound that was half a laugh and half suffering. “You know I adore you, right?”

“Then say yes.”

Dex lowered his head until his forehead rested against yours. His eyes closed briefly, like he was gathering strength. It was ridiculous. He could probably walk into a guarded room and come out alive without messing up his hair, but you asking him to attend one birthday dinner had him acting like you had handed him a bomb with a pink bow on it.

“You haven’t told me anything about her,” he said.

“She’s my sister.”

“That’s not information.”

“She’s important to me.”

It managed to shut him up. 

You sighed, just a little, though you still didn’t let go of his wrist. “I want her to meet you. Isn’t that enough information?”

Dex opened his eyes, and he looked almost undone by it.

You kissed him lightly. “Please.”

His breath caught.

You knew that would get him.

“Don’t,” he murmured.

“Please, Dex.”

“Sweetheart.”

“For my birthday.”

He stared at you with the exhaustion of a man who had never stood a chance. “Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll meet your sister.”

Your smile bloomed. “You’ll be nice?”

“I’ll be polite.” Dex looked pointedly at his wrist. “Can I have my hand back now?”

You hummed like you were thinking about it.

His eyes darkened. “Baby.” His mouth brushed yours.

Eventually, you released his wrist.

Dex didn’t move immediately, even though he had been desperate two seconds ago.

Dex kissed you first, like he was still thanking you for wanting him at dinner. His hand slipped lower and you gasped against his mouth, laughing breathlessly when you felt his smile.

“Now,” he hummed, “where were we?”

—

You and Dex stood outside Elektra’s apartment door with his hand at the small of your back and enough tension in his shoulders to make you bite back a smile.

For a man who had once admitted, very calmly, that he preferred entering buildings through service corridors because front doors made people too expectant, he had spent an absurd amount of time preparing for your birthday.

He had brought you flowers first, an arrangement of red ranunculus, white anemones, dark tulips, and little sprigs of jasmine tucked between them because he remembered you once saying jasmine smelled like nights in expensive hotels. 

You had stared at it for so long that Dex had asked,  “Too much?”

“No,” you said, already smiling like an idiot. “It’s beautiful.”

Only then had he relaxed.

The second gift was smaller, slim black leather notebook with your initials pressed into the bottom corner in gold, the pages thick enough for blocking notes, sketches, injury reports, and all the frantic choreography scribbles you usually left on call sheets and napkins. Inside the front cover was a thin metal bookmark shaped like a tiny sword.

You had smiled, and he looked painfully pleased with himself.

Then, because he was Dex, he had stopped in a supermarket on the way there and very pragmatically asked, “What kind of wine does your sister like?”

“Expensive.”

He only nodded.

Now he stood beside you holding a bottle that probably cost more than your weekly food shop, his jaw tight, his scarred face composed, his coat immaculate. He looked less like a boyfriend arriving for dinner and more like a man approaching a guarded border with falsified papers and a personal stake in crossing.

“You know she’s not going to fucking kill you.” You nudged him gently.  “She made dinner. That’s basically a peace offering.”

“She made dinner for you,” Dex said flatly. “I’m the complication.”

Right.

Dex didn’t care about charming people for the sake of being liked. He didn’t need Elektra’s approval because he wanted a pleasant evening or a normal story to tell later. He needed it because Elektra mattered to you, and she was the one person whose opinion could matter. Because, in Dex’s mind, your sister was not an enemy. She was a hurdle to get to you more permanently. That’s all.

You turned toward him and straightened his collar, even though it was already perfect. “Be nice.”

Then the door opened.

Elektra stood there in silk trousers and bare feet, beautiful in the effortless way she had always been beautiful. Her eyes moved from you to Dex, then to the flowers in your arm and the wine in his hand.

“Well,” she said, “at least he brings tribute.”

You managed to chuckle. “Elektra.”

Dex offered the bottle and said, very flatly, “Thank you for having me.”

Elektra took it, glanced at the label, and lifted one eyebrow.

You could practically see Dex winning one microscopic point in a war he had invented entirely inside his own head.

“Come in,” Elektra said.

Dex’s hand found your back again as you stepped inside.

He was here. He was trying. 

From somewhere deeper in the apartment, a familiar voice called, “Are they here?”

Dex stopped, and not enough for Elektra to notice, maybe. 

Then Matt Murdock appeared at the edge of the dining room, one hand against the wall, his red glasses reflecting apartment light.

Dex’s voice changed.

“Oh.” he said, “Murdock.”

Matt seemed to recognize the voice immediately because his head tilted in recognition.

Wait.

Wait. 

What?

“You two know each other?” Your voice cut through the apartment before anyone else could decide what kind of lie to tell.

Elektra, of course, looked delighted. “Oh,” she raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

You turned on her. “Don’t start.”

Matt’s mouth twitched, but the almost-smile disappeared quickly.

Dex’s hand hovered over your back, not quite touching you now, which irritated you more than it should have. 

You looked at Matt again, your confusion finally catching up with the rest of the room. “I didn’t even know you were coming.”

Matt’s mouth softened when he turned toward you. “Happy birthday.”

You blinked at him. “I didn’t even know you and Ellie were back together.”

Beside you, Elektra took a thoughtful sip of her wine like this was all very normal and not at all insane.

“We are,” she said.

You stared at her.

Matt’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Apparently.”

Despite everything, despite Dex standing beside you like a wire pulled too tight, you felt a laugh threaten the back of your throat, because this was them. This had always been them.

You had known Matt since high school, back when Elektra was in college for art history. Your sister brought him home during holidays with the same indifference she used for all things she secretly cared about. You remembered him at your family table, too stubborn and too principled for his own good, arguing with Elektra about morality while she stole food off his plate. You remembered being younger and thinking their breakups sounded serious until Matt appeared again two months later with flowers.

So no, Matt being here was not strange. Matt being here with Elektra again wasn’t even that strange.

Matt recognizing your boyfriend was the problem.

You looked between them. “How do you know each other?”

Dex went quiet.

“Our paths crossed professionally,” Matt said.

You stared. “How vague.”

“That’s all you need to know,” Dex said. 

Elektra’s smile widened behind her glass.

Matt looked worried, but it wasn’t really dramatic. Matt never looked dramatically anything unless Elektra was bleeding or lying to his face. But you knew him. You knew the slight tension in his mouth, the way he seemed to listen to more than what people were saying.

“You look worried,” you said.

Matt paused. “I’m not worried.”

“Matthew.”

Dex’s eyes twitched at the familiarity in your voice.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

You glanced back at him and found him standing there with perfect manners, trying very hard not to strangle a blind man from across the table for no apparent reason.

Elektra noticed too, and naturally, this pleased her.

“Well,” she said, stepping aside to let everyone further into the apartment. “This is already a much better birthday dinner than I expected.”

“It is my birthday dinner,” you said. “Not an interrogation.”

“That depends entirely on your boyfriend.”

Dex looked at Elektra then.

For the first time since the door opened, his attention moved to your sister, realising the human hurdle had a knife in its hand.

You sighed and clutched your flowers a little tighter.

Matt stepped closer. “It really is good to see you.”

Your irritation waned, because he sounded sincere, so you hugged him.

Matt hugged you back, one hand warm between your shoulders, gentle in the way he had always been somewhat of a big brother to you. “Happy birthday, kid.” he said again, quieter this time.

“Thank you,” you muttered. “Even though all of you are being weird.”

“We’ve barely started,” Elektra said.

“That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

When you pulled away from Matt, Dex was still watching him.

You looked at the three of them and pointed toward the dining room. “Everyone sit down,” you said. “And someone is going to explain what professionally means before dessert.”

—

Dinner began with Elektra leading you to the table, Matt followed by memory, and Dex stayed close enough behind you you could feel him breathing on your neck. The food was already laid out, far more elaborate than she had admitted over the phone, with candles burning between the plates and your cake waiting beneath a glass cover on the counter.

You sat beside Dex. Matt took the chair opposite him, and Elektra sat beside Matt with the calm of someone who had accidentally arranged the most interesting seating plan possible.

For the first few minutes, the conversation stayed on you. Your birthday, your Broadway production, the lead actor who kept trying to make the sword fights faster, the balcony rig that had failed inspection twice. Matt asked intelligent questions and Elektra asked whether anyone deserved to be pushed from the balcony for real. Dex was deathly silent, and you assumed it was for fear of saying the wrong thing and losing Elektra’s favour, which in turn meant losing your favour, too.

Then, Matt mentioned teaching now, and your eyes went as wide as dinner plates. 

“Holy shit,” you managed. “Professor Murdock?”

Matt had laughed under his breath. “That surprised you?”

“A little. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

Then you had turned to Dex, trying to make it casual, trying to move the night away from whatever ugly thing was coiling beneath the table. See? this is fine, you tried to say with your eyes 

Well. It was until Matt decided to say, “And Poindexter, you’re still in security?”

Dex’s eyes had flicked to Matt for half a second.

“Yeah,” he said, with his hand warm on your knee, “She knows my work.”

Matt had gone still.

Dex hadn’t smiled, but you felt the satisfaction in him anyway. 

You could feel him think, Matt cannot use that against me.

Except Matt kept going.

Matt didn’t sound like he wanted to humiliate him. He sounded worried, and maybe that was what made Dex more anxious. Accusation, he could meet. Concern made him look like an animal.

And because you had no idea what the fuck to do, you blurted out the one thing you probably shouldn’t have. 

“Um,” you choked out. “Would you like to tell us how you met?”

Oh fuck. 

Mistake, you could tell from the way Dex was looking at you now. Big mistake.

“It was years ago,” Matt said finally. “During my work on a civil suit. Nelson, Murdock, and Page represented several former employees of a private security firm.”

Dex’s thumb stopped moving on your knee.

Matt continued. “We found evidence of illegal surveillance, witness intimidation, and coercion.”

Elektra leaned back slightly, actively thinking of Dex’s bad influence on you now. 

Dex’s face didn’t change.

“He worked for them?” Elektra asked.

Matt’s head angled toward Dex. “Ask him.”

Dex’s teeth shifted once.

You felt the violent urge in him before you saw it. His body didn’t lunge and his hand didn't move. But you could tell he was thinking of hurling a fork in Matt’s direction. 

You put your hand over his and squeezed hard.

Dex’s eyes snapped to you.

You didn’t say anything. You only dug your fingers into the back of his hand, right where the skin was thin over bone. It was a warning, a plea not to escalate things. Your nails pressed in harder when his eyes moved back toward Matt.

Dex. You warned with your eyes. 

His nostrils flared.

Please don’t.

Matt kept speaking, unaware or too aware. “His name came up in access logs and reports.”

Dex’s hand flexed under yours.

You pressed harder, until your nails broke skin. A tiny crescent of blood welled beneath your thumb, bright against him.

Dex looked down, and that’s what did it. All the focus in him fractured around the sight of your hand gripping his hard enough to hurt him, your fingers trembling. This was your silent refusal to let him become the thing Matt was describing right in front of you.

Though the haze in his mind didn’t disappear, he turned his face away from Matt. It came back to you and the fact that you were frightened enough of what he might do to stop him with pain.

Dex swallowed. Under the table, he turned his hand over and caught your fingers carefully, like he was afraid you might pull away.

Matt was still talking, though.  “One witness was hospitalised the night before deposition. Another vanished for three days and came back with a different story.”

Elektra looked at Dex. You looked at Matt. Dex looked at nobody but you.

“And nothing stuck,” Dex said.

His voice was too controlled.

Matt paused. “No.”

Dex’s fingers tightened around yours once, not enough to hurt, enough to ask whether you were still there.

You were.

You hated that you were.

Dex’s eyes finally lifted to Matt again, and there it was: you knew he wanted to fucking hurt him, and not because Matt was lying. Because Matt was telling the truth in front of you. Because Matt had dragged a past version of him into your sister’s dining room and set it between the candles.

Your grip tightened again.

Dex breathed in slowly, then he looked at you.

You shook your head once. Please.

The fight went out of his shoulders by force, not surrender. He leaned back a fraction, still holding your hand under the table, your bloodied little nail marks hidden between his fingers like a secret.

Elektra set her wine down. “Dex,” she said. Her voice was smooth. “Can I speak with you?”

You looked at her immediately. “Ellie.”

“Privately.”

Dex didn’t answer right away.

His thumb moved over your fingers once. There was blood on his skin because of you, and somehow that made his touch gentler.

“It’s fine,” he said.

It was absolutely not fine. He stood anyway.

Before he followed Elektra, he bent close enough that his mouth brushed your temple. It was not quite a kiss and more like proof of control. 

Then he left with your sister as the balcony doors shut behind them.

For a second, you only stared at the glass, watching Elektra turn on him with folded arms while Dex stood very still in front of her, hands visible, every inch of him pretending he had not almost lost himself at your birthday dinner.

Matt was still across from you when you turned back to him slowly.

He looked… worried.

You wiped your thumb against your napkin, and tried to breathe like your heart was not still stuck somewhere in your throat.

“Ummmm,” you said, because if you started with Dex, you might cry. If you started with the lawsuit, you might scream.

Matt turned his face toward you.

“So,” you said, voice smaller than you wanted it to be. “Are you sticking around this time?”

Matt didn’t answer right away.

That was very Matt of him.

He sat across from you at Elektra’s dining table with one hand curled near his wine glass, head angled faintly toward the balcony doors. Outside, your sister had Dex backed into a conversation you could not hear properly through the glass. Elektra’s arms were folded. Dex’s hands were visible at his sides.

That alone told you he was trying very, very hard.

You watched them for another second, then looked back at Matt.

“So,” you said, because there was no clean way to ask it. “Are you sticking around this time?”

 Matt swirled a bit of his wine. Awkward.

“I… think so,” he said.

You stared at him. “You think so?”

The smile he gave you was small. “I’m trying.”

“Mmm. Very convincing.”

He huffed, almost a laugh, and it tugged at an old memory in your chest.

Because before he was Professor Murdock, he was Elektra’s on-again-off-again disaster boyfriend, and that made him your on-again-off-again big brother. He had been the person who helped you with homework at the kitchen table because Elektra said she was too busy and then corrected every other answer from across the room anyway. He had been the person who let you complain about school and teachers and boys without making you feel stupid for being young. He had been the one who said, very seriously, that no, you probably could not sue your PE teacher for being annoying, but he admired your commitment to the argument.

And then he would leave.

“She was awful last time you guys broke up,” you said.

Matt lowered his head.

You picked at the edge of your napkin. “Not in the fun way. She was actually awful.”

“What do you want me to say?” He sighed.

The candles on the table flickered between you. Elektra had made too much food, of course. Your flowers sat in a vase near the counter, lush and ridiculous and beautiful, and you could still feel the small dent of Dex’s hand where he had held yours under the table.

“She missed you,” you said. “She pretended she didn’t, obviously, but she did.”

His mouth fell.

“And I missed you,” you added, staring very hard at the napkin. “Who else do I get to complain about her to? Mom and Dad don’t give a shit anymore.”

Matt’s laugh was tiny and helpless. “I missed you too.”

That almost made you forgive him.

You looked back at him. “Then stay. Or don’t. But don’t drift in and out like we’re all supposed to just reset every time you and Ellie get bored again.”

He nodded once, accepting the hit. For a second, it felt like being sixteen again. Like he was still family, sitting at your family table.

Then his head shifted slightly.

Toward the balcony. Towards Dex.

And you felt the whole conversation distort.

Matt didn’t pounce. He was much worse than that. He eased into it, like he was only following the evidence where it naturally led.

“You know why I’m worried about your boyfriend,” he said.

You sat back and sighed. “There it is.”

“I’m not trying to start a fight.”

“No,” you shook your head. “You’re building a case.”

He didn’t deny it.

“I know you care about me,” you said. “I do. But please don’t do that... That lawyer thing with your wording. You're making me feel like I’m supposed to realise I’ve accidentally admitted something.”

“I’m not cross-examining you.”

“You are.”

“I’m asking questions.” Matt exhaled.

You hated how much you still wanted his approval, because he was one of those people who had seen you grow up and therefore they had earned the right to worry.

He leaned forward a little.

“How did he tell you about… what he does?”

You looked at him and took a sip of wine to buy yourself time. “I’m not thick.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“No,” you said. “But he didn’t have to tell me shit for me to realise his job was more than sit around looking pretty with a gun.”

Matt’s jaw clenched slightly.

Outside, Elektra said something to Dex that made his shoulders go tense.

“He gave you a version,” Matt said.

You laughed once, without much humour. “Everyone gives a version.”

“Some versions are omissions.”

“God, you are so irritating.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” you cocked your head. “You think irritating is fine when you’re right.”

Matt tried again.

“There are patterns,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Patterns.”

“Yes.”

“With Dex.”

“With men like him.”

You looked sharply at him. “Men like him.”

Matt’s mouth tightened. “Men who know exactly how much truth to give you.”

Your throat tightened despite yourself.

He heard it, because damn that freakish hearing of his was apparently still going.

His voice flattened a bit. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“Always very generous.”

“I mean it. I think you’re smart. I think you know more than most people would.”

You looked down at your hands.

There was still the faintest mark beneath one nail where you had dug into Dex’s skin hard enough to pull him back. You could still feel the moment he snapped back into himself. The way his fury turned, not gone, just redirected because you had asked without words.

Matt said your name, like he used to when you were younger and trying not to cry.

“I think you’re too close to the facts,” he said. You almost smiled because only Matt Murdock would say something like that at a birthday dinner.

You set the fork down. “You mean I’m biased.”

“I mean you’re involved.”

“I’m allowed to be involved in my own life.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Matt went silent.

You looked at him now, studying his posture “Because it sounds like you think if you arrange the argument properly, I’ll reach your conclusion.”

“I think you’re making a dangerous choice.”

“There we go.”

His face soured. “He is dangerous.”

“So is Ellie.”

“She’s different now.”

“And?” You leaned forward. “And?”

Matt didn’t answer fast enough.

You lowered your voice. “We both know what she’s done. We both know what half of that collection cost before she started using invoices and whatever else she claims is legitimate now.”

“She got out.”

“Good for her.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I,” you groaned. “But she still deserves love, doesn’t she?”

Matt looked pained, and you hated hurting him. 

“You love her with a whole archive of exceptions,” you said. “But I’m supposed to treat Dex like one bad document is the entire record?”

“It’s not just one bad document—“

“It’s close enough.”

“No,” Matt said, and there was that courtroom firmness in him now. “I’m saying you probably know what the record looks like. You're just ignoring the parts you don’t want to read.”

You swallowed.

“I know what it costs,” he said. “To love someone and start making room for things you would have condemned.”

You looked toward the balcony.

Dex had turned his head slightly, like he could feel you looking. 

Matt kept going, though kinder now. “You start with mitigation. Then you start giving out exceptions. I’m just asking you to consider—”

“No.” Your voice cracked a little. “No, you’re asking me to accept your ruling.”

Matt stopped.

Ruling.

Huh. You really have changed over the two years he was gone.

You breathed in shakily. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about him. Maybe you’re not. Maybe there are things I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll regret this so badly I’ll hear your voice in my fucking head for the rest of my life.”

Matt’s shoulders lowered. 

“But my mistakes are mine to make,” you said.

Oh. 

You saw the tiny break in his knuckles. The big-brother part of him, the one who never really had anyone but himself, the part that still remembered you as a teenager at the kitchen table with bruised knees and far too much attitude for your own good, wanting to protect you from yourself because he had loved a more bloody Elektra the way you loved Dex. 

“I don’t want to watch you get hurt,” was all he managed to say, 

You looked down. “You might have to.”

He looked down.

You reached across the table first and found his hand, because touch had always been a sensory experience he reacted to. 

“I’m not blind,” you said, then immediately groaned. “Sorry.”

Matt’s mouth twitched. “It’s fine.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“I know he’s not safe.”

Matt’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles.

“But he listens to me,” you said. “And maybe that’s not enough for you. But it matters to me.”

Matt didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either.

For once, it felt like mercy.

Outside, you heard a scrape against the balcony table.

Matt’s head tilted. “What’s happening?”

You looked past him through the glass.

Elektra and Dex were no longer standing in their neat little interrogation positions. They looked like they were seated across from each other at the tiny balcony table, elbows planted, hands clasped, Dex’s shoulders covering half the scene. 

You blinked.

Then, despite the ache in your chest, you laughed. “I think they’re arm wrestling.”

Matt closed his eyes.

The look on his face was so exhausting that it only made you laugh harder.

—

The rest of dinner went by quickly after Elektra and Dex came back in from the balcony with no visible injuries, which you counted as a birthday miracle. 

Elektra looked smug and Dex looked composed, but there was a tightness around his lips that made you narrow your eyes. When you glanced between them and asked who won the arm wrestle, Elektra only smiled into her wine. Dex said nothing. Which, unfortunately for him, was an answer.

After that, everyone behaved, mostly. Matt stopped trying to lawyer you out of your own relationship. Dex stopped looking like he wanted to fling Matt through one of Elektra’s very expensive windows. Elektra told a horrible story about you at seventeen trying to jump from the garage roof into the pool and missing by an amount she called “humiliating but educational.” Matt laughed, Dex looked absolutely fascinated, like your teenage stupidity was precious. He asked one follow-up question, and you kicked him under the table.

By the time you left, she kissed both your cheeks, held your face for one second longer than usual, and said happy birthday one more time and told you to call her tomorrow.

Matt hugged you too, while Dex and Matt shook hands, proving to God and each other that they could survive physical contact without committing a felony.

Then Dex took you home.

You were sleepy in the car, full from dinner, cake, and emotional warfare. 

At your apartment, you kicked off your shoes by the door and padded into the kitchen for water. Dex followed, taking off his coat, watching you with that careful quiet he got when he was not sure whether he was allowed to touch you yet.

You leaned against the counter and looked at him over the rim of your glass.

“So,” you said. “Who really won?”

Dex’s expression went flat. “No.”

You smiled. “No?”

Dex flexed his hand once, as if remembering. “She’s irritating.”

You laughed. “Mmm.”

“But you love her,” he said.

Your laugh faded.

Dex leaned back against the counter opposite you, arms crossed. “And she loves you. And she’s capable of protecting you.” He said, as if it was the only metric that mattered. “So I guess I’ll try.”

You stared at him. “That is the nicest thing you’ve ever said about anyone.”

Dex rolled his eyes, but there was no bite in it. He looked tired now. Not physically, more like tired from pretending to be a decent person. 

You walked across the kitchen and took his hand.

The little marks from your nails looked worse up close. There were tiny, red, broken crescents on the back of his hand. 

“I’m sorry,” you said, trailing small kisses on them

Dex looked down at your lips touching the wounds. He shrugged as if you did what you had to do to get the result you wanted, and Dex had always been pragmatic like that. 

That night, Dex fell asleep with his arm locked around your waist.

He slept heavy, going slack against your back, his breath warm at the nape of your neck, his hand spread beneath your sleep shirt like he had reached for bare skin even in his sleep. 

Your phone pinged just after two.

Then again. Then again.

You reached for it carefully, lifting Dex’s arm just enough to drag the screen close without waking him.

It was a text…. From Elektra.

I’m glad he’s on your side.

Then the next text.

That’s still not the same thing as him being safe.

Another message came through before you could answer her.

Make an informed decision. That’s all I’m asking.

Then, she sent a link.

You stared at it for a long time in the dark.

Dex shifted behind you, his arm tightening automatically around your middle, his face pressing closer to your shoulder, still asleep. 

You opened it… and there it was. The lawsuit Dex was allegedly involved in.

The text was dense and written in bloodless language detailing private security and consultants. It detailed alleged intimidation and coercion, resulting in witnesses withdrawing statements and misplaced evidence. 

Dex’s name was there.

You read until the words blurred, until the apartment turned orange in the early morning. Dex slept against you while a colder version of him lived through depositions and sealed complaints and things nobody had ever proved.

But you knew your boyfriend. You knew he was capable of this. 

You waited for the feeling to change.

Maybe, you expected to be disgusted. Fear, more likely.

It didn’t come.

You felt the same about him as you did before. 

And of course it wasn’t fine. Matt was not wrong and Elektra wasn’t worried for no reason.

But you had always looked at the world through rose-tinted glasses.

By dawn, you closed the file.

Dex stirred when you set your phone down, as if even the sound of it against the nightstand was enough to pull some half-asleep part of him back to you.

His arm tightened around your waist first. Then he dragged you closer, face pressing blindly between your shoulder and neck, making it impossible to move even if you had wanted to.

“Sweetheart?” he mumbled, barely awake.

You hummed and covered his hand with yours.

For a second, you lay there with the lawsuit still burning behind your eyes. All those careful words and sealed statements. All those allegations circling the man in your bed like vultures.

And maybe Matt was right.

Maybe Elektra was right.

Maybe Dex was dangerous. 

But Matt had loved your sister through her murderous years, hadn’t he? So who were they to look at you like you were insane for dating an assassin?

You were now thoroughly informed, now, weren’t you?

You turned carefully in Dex’s arms until you were facing him. His eyes stayed closed, his brow furrowing faintly at the movement, but his hand slid up your back on instinct, keeping you close.

“Go back to sleep,” you whispered, kissing him softly.

Dex exhaled against your mouth, already sinking again. You tucked yourself beneath his chin, his arm heavy over your waist.

Informed decision made.

—end. 

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Dex taglist part 1:

Daniel Shaw had owned the movie studio currently paying your invoices, which made his sudden death inconvenient more than tragic. He had been found in his suite less than an hour ago. Someone said it was a heart attack. Another person said it was suicide after someone found a bullet in his head. It was so sudden! Your coworker kept repeating, as if the situation might become less alarming if she repeated it enough. You had worked under his studio for three months and met him properly only twice. He was charming, rich, and distant. Powerful men often were, which meant he remembered nobody’s name unless they could make him money.

You were a stunt choreographer. That put you somewhere below the director, below the producers, below the lead actress’ wellness coach, and slightly above the poor intern sent to buy twelve green juices at six in the morning. Shaw dying wasn’t personal to you, but it was close enough to your paycheck to keep you at the bar instead of going upstairs to sleep.

You took a sip of your whiskey and watched the room in the mirror behind the bottles.

That was where you found him watching you.

He didn’t look away when your eyes met, and it made you smile. Most men glanced down when caught, then looked back later with some lazy excuse written across their face. This man didn’t bother. He simply held your gaze in the mirror, almost amused, like he had known you were going to notice him and had been waiting for you to decide what to do about it.

You turned slightly on your stool. “You’re staring.”

His mouth curled up, barely. “You finally noticed.”

“I’m trained,” you shrugged, trying to keep things vague. “I notice when someone is watching me.”

He simply raised his cup to his lips. “Good to know.”

“Is it?”

“It explains the bruises.”

You looked down at your knee, where the hem of your dress had ridden up enough to show the dark bloom of a rehearsal bruise above your shin. It wasn’t your worst one this week, but it wasn’t the prettiest, either. Still, the way his eyes touched it and moved on made your skin warm, because he didn’t leer. He assessed. 

You picked up your drink and carried it down the bar to him because the night was already strange, your contract might be cancelled by morning, and you had never been especially good at leaving interesting things alone.

“Since you’re apparently studying me,” you said as you sat beside him, “what else have you learned?”

He turned his glass once against the bar top, eyes moving over your face with infuriating patience. “You’re not drunk, but you’re trying to decide if you want to be. You’re not sad, but you know you should look sadder. You’ve checked the exits twice since I sat down, and you keep favouring your left side, which means either your hip hurts or your knee does.”

“My knee,” you confirmed, hating how impressed you sounded. “And I checked the exits because this room is full of dickheads. That’s just good sense.”

He managed a small, performative frown. “They’re just film executives.”

“Eh,” you shrugged, “same difference."

This time, he smiled properly. “Fair.”

You angled your body toward him, letting your shoulder rest against the bar. “Your turn.”

“My turn?”

“What have I learned about you?”

His eyes stayed on yours. “Go ahead.”

You let yourself look, because he had started it, though that pretence felt childish and paper-thin now. He had a dark jacket on and an expensive watch worn like he didn’t  care whether anyone noticed it. His posture was relaxed, but not loose. His hands were still on the bar and had no wedding ring, no visible nerves, no grief, no curiosity for anyone in the room except you.

Your sister had taught you to read people pretty well. 

“You’re too quiet to be an actor,” you said. “You’re not a producer either, because you haven’t checked your phone every six seconds and you don’t look like you’re about to ruin someone’s career over a schedule change. You could be security, but you’re not standing like you’re being paid to watch the door.”

“Maybe I’m off duty.”

“Maybe,” you allowed. “But if you were off duty, I think you’d still know exactly who in this room was carrying, who was lying, and who would scream first if the lights went out.”

The amusement in his face was evident. “And who would scream first?”

You glanced around the bar and nodded toward a red-faced producer loudly saying Shaw had been like a father to him. “Him. But only after checking whether TMZ is watching.”

The man beside you laughed under his breath. You liked the sound too much immediately, which was annoying because you didn’t even know his name yet.

You held out your hand. “I’m not calling you stranger all night.”

His hand closed around yours. “Dex.”

“Just Dex?”

“For now.”

“That’s weird.”

“Do you like weird?”

You should have denied it. Instead, your smile gave you away. “I like interesting. Weird is reviewed on a case by case basis”

Dex didn’t release your hand immediately. He brushed his thumb over your knuckles, where tape residue still clung from that afternoon’s rehearsal. When he let go, you had to remind yourself not to stare.

“So,” he said, “stunt performer of some kind.”

You narrowed your eyes as if you were surprised that the handshake had given it away. Still, it was fun to play along, right? “Were you at the dinner?”

“Briefly.”

“And did you know Shaw?”

He considered his answer this time “Briefly.”

You chuckled, and Dex watched as if he wanted to understand the mechanics of it. It was unsettling, but it didn’t make you want to leave. If anything, it made you lean closer, because he was giving you so little that every small reaction felt like a gold star. You worked with performers all day, people trained to externalise every emotion so the camera could catch it. Dex did the opposite. He made you want to get your hands on him just to see what he was like underneath.

“What do you do, Dex-for-now?” you asked.

“Private security advising.”

You tilted your head. “That is the most fake Hollywood job I’ve ever heard.”

“It pays well.”

“I bet it does.” You smiled, “Do you consult on security, or do you just stand around looking intimidating?”

His eyes dropped to your mouth again, and this time he wasn’t quick enough to hide it. “Depends on who’s paying.”

You shifted on the stool, crossing one leg over the other, and watched his eyes flick down for the briefest second before returning to your face. 

Controlled, you thought again. He was controlled enough that making him look felt like winning.

“You know,” you said, “for a security advisor, you’re not very reassuring.”

Dex leaned slightly closer, his voice dipping beneath the noise of the bar. “And yet you came over.”

“I was bored.”

“You’re not bored now.”

You hated that he was right. You hated it more because of how certain he seemed, as if your interest was another fact he had collected. The room around you blurred into a swirl of candlelight, glass, perfume, and expensive panic. Upstairs, a billionaire was dead. Down here, this stranger watched you like you were the only interesting target. 

You took another sip of your drink. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

“With some things.”

“And with others?”

Dex’s gaze held yours. “I like to be certain before I touch.”

It was absurd how quickly a fucking line got to you. Nothing in his tone was crude, and he barely even moved. But suddenly you were thinking about his hand around yours, his thumb over your knuckles, his mouth close to your ear.

You looked away first, which made him smile. 

You didn’t answer right away. Instead, you set your glass down and let the silence stretch. Dex didn’t rush to fill it. He only watched you while the whole room kept mourning a man neither of you seemed able to miss.

Finally, you said, “My job might be gone tomorrow,” you sighed as if that didn’t affect you. It probably didn’t. Your family had enough money that you could just jet to the Bahamas tomorrow and not look back, but you actually liked the project you were working on. “That should bother me more.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“It does,” you said, then shrugged. “Just not enough to make me behave.”

Dex’s eyes moved over your face, and he shifted a little. “How badly do you want not to behave?”

Fuck. 

It was so direct. It was certainly too much, maybe, from a man you had met fifteen minutes ago in a bar full of vultures dressed as mourners. But you had spent your whole life around danger. Dex was not pretending hard enough to be safe, and the reckless part of you respected that.

You leaned close enough that your knee brushed his. “That depends.”

His breath changed. 

There. You had him.

Dex stood and offered his hand.

You looked at his hand, then at his face. “You always pick girls up in weird hotels?”

“No.” He managed a dry laugh, “you’re special.”

You laughed despite yourself and placed your hand in his.

The elevator ride up was a lesson in restraint. He stood beside you without touching you again, which made every inch of space between your bodies feel like you were pulling teeth. The mirrored walls showed you too many versions of him: his profile, his hands, the line of his throat where his shirt opened. You could feel him watching your reflection instead of your body directly, which shouldn’t have been hotter, but was.

The elevator doors opened before you could say anything.

His room was high up, expensive, and nearly untouched. There was no mess or scattered clothes. No sign that anyone had lived there longer than necessary. Los Angeles glittered beyond the windows, silver streets and distant headlights, while the door clicked shut behind you.

You turned to face him. “You’re not really a security advisor, are you?”

Dex looked at you for a long moment. “Not tonight.”

You should have asked what that meant. You should have cared. Instead, you stepped closer and reached for the open collar of his shirt, letting your fingers slide beneath the edge of the fabric.

“Good,” you said. “I’m off the clock too.”

When he kissed you, the control didn’t vanish all at once. That would have been too easy. It was slow, first with his hand at your waist, firm enough to make you gasp against his mouth. Then his other hand at the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair as he angled you exactly how he wanted you. He kissed like a man who had thought about doing it before he allowed himself to move, like every second of restraint in the bar was hell on earth. 

You pushed his jacket off his shoulders. He let it fall without looking away from you. When you started on the buttons of his shirt, Dex caught your wrists, not to stop you, but to slow you down, his thumbs pressing lightly to your pulse points like he wanted to feel exactly what he was doing to you.

“You’re impatient,” he murmured, and for a second, you realized, holy shit. He really didn’t do these one night flings often. 

Still, the only thing you managed to say was: “You’re overdressed.”

His mouth found your neck, and your answer dissolved into a breathless laugh. He smiled against your skin. You felt it more than saw that private satisfaction, and then his hands moved again with a precision that made your knees feel unreliable. He never grabbed thoughtlessly. He touched with the same focus he had watched you with downstairs, learning what made you arch, what made your fingers dig into his shoulders.

By the time he walked you backward toward the bed, you were hot and irritated by how badly you wanted him. Dex seemed worse off for trying to hide it. His shirt was open, his hair no longer perfect because your hands had been in it, and his breathing had gone rough, making you smile against his mouth.

You pulled him down with you.

After that, the night turned feverish. It became his mouth on your skin, your dress pushed away, his hands gentle until you guided them, and suddenly they were not. He was careful in ways that made you ache and rough only when you dragged it out of him, and the first time you felt his composure slip, you laughed breathlessly because you could not help it.

Dex lifted his head, eyes narrowed. 

“You’re not as controlled as you look.”

“No,” he said, his mouth brushing yours. “Not like this.”

You believed him, though you had no reason to. Maybe that was the point. All you knew was that this was just a bad day with bad timing and a dead man upstairs whose absence had left the door to the evening just  open enough for a stranger to step through.

Later, when the room was dark and your body fell beside his, you lay with your cheek against his chest and traced one of the old scars near his ribs. He was quiet under your hand, but not asleep. You knew the difference. 

His fingers moved slowly along your spine, almost absent. “Dex?”

“Mm.”

“Were you really there for Shaw?”

His hand paused for less than a second before it continued.

“Briefly,” he said again.

You smiled into the dark because you knew he was giving you nothing, and for tonight, only tonight, you decided to let him.

You should have gone back to your own room. You should have asked better questions. You should have treated this as a stupid one night stand and pretended this never happened.

Instead, you closed your eyes and stayed exactly where you were.

—

Six months after that night, you moved to New York.

Officially, it was for work. A Broadway production had brought you on to choreograph the stage combat for a lavish, over-funded revival with sword fights, balcony falls, and a dramatic death scene that had to happen eight times a week without sending the lead actor to hospital. 

It was a good job. You even put it on exclamation points and sent it to your agent like you had made a responsible career decision.

It had absolutely nothing to do with Dex being based in New York.

Mostly.

Fine, maybe a little.

Your sister was there too, which made the decision feel less incriminating. Elektra had an apartment in Manhattan, three passports in names you were not supposed to know, and an art studio collecting ancient weapons, because technically, that was her job. 

You knew better than to ask where the acquisitions came from, and Elektra knew better than to ask why you had suddenly accepted a Broadway job in the same city as a man who called himself a security advisor and looked at you like he would happily ruin his life if you asked sweetly enough.

You and Dex had been officially dating for three months.

It was a good three months of late-night dinners, hotel room mornings, flowers delivered to rehearsal with no card because he knew you would know. It was three months of you pretending not to notice when the news mentioned a man connected to Shaw’s circle dying strangely overseas. Three months of Dex pretending his work calls were about security logistics and not whatever thing he did for people rich enough to afford him.

You knew what he was. Dex carried violence too naturally for it to be a hobby, and sometimes, when he came to you after work, the calm around him was too emptied out. He would shower before touching you, scrub himself raw, come out with damp hair and bare feet.

Your moral compass had raised one weak little hand in protest, but then Dex had kissed you against your kitchen counter, murmured sweetheart like a prayer, and made your entire sense of right and wrong pack a bag and leave the state.

Maybe that made you terrible. Maybe it made you Elektra’s sister after all.

Or maybe Dex was just so unfairly, stupidly, devastatingly hot that you just kept getting distracted.

And Dex knew that you knew after the first month or so, when you jokingly called him Hot John Wick.

Dex had always expected you to figure it out sooner or later. He knew you were a smart girl. He just didn’t realise you’d figure out this soon. 

Instead of being shocked though, he just raised his eyebrows and said, “John Wick is already hot.”

You chuckled and pulled him close. “Shut up and take it as a compliment that I find you even hotter.”

“Yes ma’am.”

And that was that. 

—

Earlier today, you had texted Dex and asked if he could come over and cuddle. 

Ha. 

You were already on the couch when he got in, cozy in sleep shorts and an oversized hoodie, one fuzzy sock half-off your foot, your body tired from rehearsal and your brain still muddled with stage falls, sword cues, and actors who didn’t understand that “again from the top” didn’t mean “try to improvise a stabbing.”

Dex took off his coat and looked at you like he had been waiting all day to come home to you.

“You’re late,” you said.

“‘M sorry.”

He came closer, and you let him pull you up just so you could immediately drag him down with you again. Dex caught himself over you with one hand braced beside your head, his knee sinking into the couch, his body warm and heavy enough above yours to make your whole chest loosen.

He kissed you, mouth moving over yours like he wanted to settle there. Like he needed a minute to remember what it felt like to be wanted without being useful. You went pliant underneath him almost immediately, because apparently that was what you did now. You let murderers kiss you tenderly on your couch and call it romance.

His hand slid beneath your hoodie and you hummed against his mouth.

Dex’s palm dragged up your ribs, then paused over your breast, cupping you through the thin fabric beneath like he was not even trying to pretend the cuddling was innocent anymore. His thumb moved once, and your breath caught hard enough for him to smile into the kiss.

“Dex,” you murmured.

“Mm.”

“That is not cuddling.”

“It’s close.”

His mouth dipped to your throat, and the laugh you tried to give him turned embarrassingly quiet halfway out. He knew exactly what he was doing. 

His hand slid down again over your waist, then your hip, then lower.

He pushed his body down yours, mouth tracing heat along your neck while his fingers found the waistband of your shorts. He tucked himself there, resting under the elastic, knuckles brushing warm skin.

Dex loved having his finger between your legs, knowing he can’t seem to miss the sweet spot, ever. Which meant you knew exactly how to make him suffer.

His fingers started to slip lower, and you caught his wrist.

Dex stopped.

Slowly, he lifted his head, looking offended, as if you had interrupted him mid-prayer.

“Sweetheart,” he said carefully.

You smiled. “My birthday is coming up.”

For a second, he just stared.

His wrist flexed under your fingers as you held it still. “I know.”

His thumb slipped under the edge by half an inch, expecting you to give in, but your hand only tightened, keeping him out of your shorts still.

Then his eyes lifted to yours, already suspicious. “Baby.”

You smiled. “Ah-ah.”

His gaze narrowed. “What are you doing?”

“Negotiating.”

“With my hand?”

“With your access,” you corrected

His desire didn’t disappear. It only got interrupted by confusion. “You’re blackmailing me.”

“I’m making a birthday request.”

His eyes flicked down to where you were holding his wrist. “With leverage.”

You held back a chuckle, trying your best to look innocent. “Smart girls use leverage.”

Dex opened his mouth, then closed it again.

You smiled sweetly. “That’s what I thought.”

For a second, he looked like he wanted to argue. Unfortunately for him, he also wanted control of his hand back very, very badly. “What do you want, pretty girl?” he asked.

You knew he meant presents, like actual presents. He was prepared to buy his way out of this. Hitman money in New York apparently paid well enough that Dex looked genuinely prepared for you to name something like a weekend in Paris.

You tightened your grip on his wrist. You looked up at him, very pleased with yourself. “I want you to meet my sister.”

Dex went still, much more still than when you had called him a hitman for the first time, actually, which told you a lot about his priorities.

“Your sister,” he said.

“Yes.”

“For your birthday.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what you want?”

“That’s what I want.”

He looked at you like you were a puzzle he hadn’t been hired to solve. Dex looked down at his trapped hand, then back at your face. “You’re really withholding this until I say yes.”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.”

His teeth clenched as your thumb stroked idly over the inside of his wrist. You were not even trying to be seductive with it, but Dex watched the movement like it was actively shortening his lifespan.

“Baby,” he said.

“Mm?”

“Let go of my hand.”

“Say yes.”

“You don’t play fair.”

He made a sound that was half a laugh and half suffering. “You know I adore you, right?”

“Then say yes.”

Dex lowered his head until his forehead rested against yours. His eyes closed briefly, like he was gathering strength. It was ridiculous. He could probably walk into a guarded room and come out alive without messing up his hair, but you asking him to attend one birthday dinner had him acting like you had handed him a bomb with a pink bow on it.

“You haven’t told me anything about her,” he said.

“She’s my sister.”

“That’s not information.”

“She’s important to me.”

It managed to shut him up. 

You sighed, just a little, though you still didn’t let go of his wrist. “I want her to meet you. Isn’t that enough information?”

Dex opened his eyes, and he looked almost undone by it.

You kissed him lightly. “Please.”

His breath caught.

You knew that would get him.

“Don’t,” he murmured.

“Please, Dex.”

“Sweetheart.”

“For my birthday.”

He stared at you with the exhaustion of a man who had never stood a chance. “Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll meet your sister.”

Your smile bloomed. “You’ll be nice?”

“I’ll be polite.” Dex looked pointedly at his wrist. “Can I have my hand back now?”

You hummed like you were thinking about it.

His eyes darkened. “Baby.” His mouth brushed yours.

Eventually, you released his wrist.

Dex didn’t move immediately, even though he had been desperate two seconds ago.

Dex kissed you first, like he was still thanking you for wanting him at dinner. His hand slipped lower and you gasped against his mouth, laughing breathlessly when you felt his smile.

“Now,” he hummed, “where were we?”

—

You and Dex stood outside Elektra’s apartment door with his hand at the small of your back and enough tension in his shoulders to make you bite back a smile.

For a man who had once admitted, very calmly, that he preferred entering buildings through service corridors because front doors made people too expectant, he had spent an absurd amount of time preparing for your birthday.

He had brought you flowers first, an arrangement of red ranunculus, white anemones, dark tulips, and little sprigs of jasmine tucked between them because he remembered you once saying jasmine smelled like nights in expensive hotels. 

You had stared at it for so long that Dex had asked,  “Too much?”

“No,” you said, already smiling like an idiot. “It’s beautiful.”

Only then had he relaxed.

The second gift was smaller, slim black leather notebook with your initials pressed into the bottom corner in gold, the pages thick enough for blocking notes, sketches, injury reports, and all the frantic choreography scribbles you usually left on call sheets and napkins. Inside the front cover was a thin metal bookmark shaped like a tiny sword.

You had smiled, and he looked painfully pleased with himself.

Then, because he was Dex, he had stopped in a supermarket on the way there and very pragmatically asked, “What kind of wine does your sister like?”

“Expensive.”

He only nodded.

Now he stood beside you holding a bottle that probably cost more than your weekly food shop, his jaw tight, his scarred face composed, his coat immaculate. He looked less like a boyfriend arriving for dinner and more like a man approaching a guarded border with falsified papers and a personal stake in crossing.

“You know she’s not going to fucking kill you.” You nudged him gently.  “She made dinner. That’s basically a peace offering.”

“She made dinner for you,” Dex said flatly. “I’m the complication.”

Right.

Dex didn’t care about charming people for the sake of being liked. He didn’t need Elektra’s approval because he wanted a pleasant evening or a normal story to tell later. He needed it because Elektra mattered to you, and she was the one person whose opinion could matter. Because, in Dex’s mind, your sister was not an enemy. She was a hurdle to get to you more permanently. That’s all.

You turned toward him and straightened his collar, even though it was already perfect. “Be nice.”

Then the door opened.

Elektra stood there in silk trousers and bare feet, beautiful in the effortless way she had always been beautiful. Her eyes moved from you to Dex, then to the flowers in your arm and the wine in his hand.

“Well,” she said, “at least he brings tribute.”

You managed to chuckle. “Elektra.”

Dex offered the bottle and said, very flatly, “Thank you for having me.”

Elektra took it, glanced at the label, and lifted one eyebrow.

You could practically see Dex winning one microscopic point in a war he had invented entirely inside his own head.

“Come in,” Elektra said.

Dex’s hand found your back again as you stepped inside.

He was here. He was trying. 

From somewhere deeper in the apartment, a familiar voice called, “Are they here?”

Dex stopped, and not enough for Elektra to notice, maybe. 

Then Matt Murdock appeared at the edge of the dining room, one hand against the wall, his red glasses reflecting apartment light.

Dex’s voice changed.

“Oh.” he said, “Murdock.”

Matt seemed to recognize the voice immediately because his head tilted in recognition.

Wait.

Wait. 

What?

“You two know each other?” Your voice cut through the apartment before anyone else could decide what kind of lie to tell.

Elektra, of course, looked delighted. “Oh,” she raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

You turned on her. “Don’t start.”

Matt’s mouth twitched, but the almost-smile disappeared quickly.

Dex’s hand hovered over your back, not quite touching you now, which irritated you more than it should have. 

You looked at Matt again, your confusion finally catching up with the rest of the room. “I didn’t even know you were coming.”

Matt’s mouth softened when he turned toward you. “Happy birthday.”

You blinked at him. “I didn’t even know you and Ellie were back together.”

Beside you, Elektra took a thoughtful sip of her wine like this was all very normal and not at all insane.

“We are,” she said.

You stared at her.

Matt’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Apparently.”

Despite everything, despite Dex standing beside you like a wire pulled too tight, you felt a laugh threaten the back of your throat, because this was them. This had always been them.

You had known Matt since high school, back when Elektra was in college for art history. Your sister brought him home during holidays with the same indifference she used for all things she secretly cared about. You remembered him at your family table, too stubborn and too principled for his own good, arguing with Elektra about morality while she stole food off his plate. You remembered being younger and thinking their breakups sounded serious until Matt appeared again two months later with flowers.

So no, Matt being here was not strange. Matt being here with Elektra again wasn’t even that strange.

Matt recognizing your boyfriend was the problem.

You looked between them. “How do you know each other?”

Dex went quiet.

“Our paths crossed professionally,” Matt said.

You stared. “How vague.”

“That’s all you need to know,” Dex said. 

Elektra’s smile widened behind her glass.

Matt looked worried, but it wasn’t really dramatic. Matt never looked dramatically anything unless Elektra was bleeding or lying to his face. But you knew him. You knew the slight tension in his mouth, the way he seemed to listen to more than what people were saying.

“You look worried,” you said.

Matt paused. “I’m not worried.”

“Matthew.”

Dex’s eyes twitched at the familiarity in your voice.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

You glanced back at him and found him standing there with perfect manners, trying very hard not to strangle a blind man from across the table for no apparent reason.

Elektra noticed too, and naturally, this pleased her.

“Well,” she said, stepping aside to let everyone further into the apartment. “This is already a much better birthday dinner than I expected.”

“It is my birthday dinner,” you said. “Not an interrogation.”

“That depends entirely on your boyfriend.”

Dex looked at Elektra then.

For the first time since the door opened, his attention moved to your sister, realising the human hurdle had a knife in its hand.

You sighed and clutched your flowers a little tighter.

Matt stepped closer. “It really is good to see you.”

Your irritation waned, because he sounded sincere, so you hugged him.

Matt hugged you back, one hand warm between your shoulders, gentle in the way he had always been somewhat of a big brother to you. “Happy birthday, kid.” he said again, quieter this time.

“Thank you,” you muttered. “Even though all of you are being weird.”

“We’ve barely started,” Elektra said.

“That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

When you pulled away from Matt, Dex was still watching him.

You looked at the three of them and pointed toward the dining room. “Everyone sit down,” you said. “And someone is going to explain what professionally means before dessert.”

—

Dinner began with Elektra leading you to the table, Matt followed by memory, and Dex stayed close enough behind you you could feel him breathing on your neck. The food was already laid out, far more elaborate than she had admitted over the phone, with candles burning between the plates and your cake waiting beneath a glass cover on the counter.

You sat beside Dex. Matt took the chair opposite him, and Elektra sat beside Matt with the calm of someone who had accidentally arranged the most interesting seating plan possible.

For the first few minutes, the conversation stayed on you. Your birthday, your Broadway production, the lead actor who kept trying to make the sword fights faster, the balcony rig that had failed inspection twice. Matt asked intelligent questions and Elektra asked whether anyone deserved to be pushed from the balcony for real. Dex was deathly silent, and you assumed it was for fear of saying the wrong thing and losing Elektra’s favour, which in turn meant losing your favour, too.

Then, Matt mentioned teaching now, and your eyes went as wide as dinner plates. 

“Holy shit,” you managed. “Professor Murdock?”

Matt had laughed under his breath. “That surprised you?”

“A little. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

Then you had turned to Dex, trying to make it casual, trying to move the night away from whatever ugly thing was coiling beneath the table. See? this is fine, you tried to say with your eyes 

Well. It was until Matt decided to say, “And Poindexter, you’re still in security?”

Dex’s eyes had flicked to Matt for half a second.

“Yeah,” he said, with his hand warm on your knee, “She knows my work.”

Matt had gone still.

Dex hadn’t smiled, but you felt the satisfaction in him anyway. 

You could feel him think, Matt cannot use that against me.

Except Matt kept going.

Matt didn’t sound like he wanted to humiliate him. He sounded worried, and maybe that was what made Dex more anxious. Accusation, he could meet. Concern made him look like an animal.

And because you had no idea what the fuck to do, you blurted out the one thing you probably shouldn’t have. 

“Um,” you choked out. “Would you like to tell us how you met?”

Oh fuck. 

Mistake, you could tell from the way Dex was looking at you now. Big mistake.

“It was years ago,” Matt said finally. “During my work on a civil suit. Nelson, Murdock, and Page represented several former employees of a private security firm.”

Dex’s thumb stopped moving on your knee.

Matt continued. “We found evidence of illegal surveillance, witness intimidation, and coercion.”

Elektra leaned back slightly, actively thinking of Dex’s bad influence on you now. 

Dex’s face didn’t change.

“He worked for them?” Elektra asked.

Matt’s head angled toward Dex. “Ask him.”

Dex’s teeth shifted once.

You felt the violent urge in him before you saw it. His body didn’t lunge and his hand didn't move. But you could tell he was thinking of hurling a fork in Matt’s direction. 

You put your hand over his and squeezed hard.

Dex’s eyes snapped to you.

You didn’t say anything. You only dug your fingers into the back of his hand, right where the skin was thin over bone. It was a warning, a plea not to escalate things. Your nails pressed in harder when his eyes moved back toward Matt.

Dex. You warned with your eyes. 

His nostrils flared.

Please don’t.

Matt kept speaking, unaware or too aware. “His name came up in access logs and reports.”

Dex’s hand flexed under yours.

You pressed harder, until your nails broke skin. A tiny crescent of blood welled beneath your thumb, bright against him.

Dex looked down, and that’s what did it. All the focus in him fractured around the sight of your hand gripping his hard enough to hurt him, your fingers trembling. This was your silent refusal to let him become the thing Matt was describing right in front of you.

Though the haze in his mind didn’t disappear, he turned his face away from Matt. It came back to you and the fact that you were frightened enough of what he might do to stop him with pain.

Dex swallowed. Under the table, he turned his hand over and caught your fingers carefully, like he was afraid you might pull away.

Matt was still talking, though.  “One witness was hospitalised the night before deposition. Another vanished for three days and came back with a different story.”

Elektra looked at Dex. You looked at Matt. Dex looked at nobody but you.

“And nothing stuck,” Dex said.

His voice was too controlled.

Matt paused. “No.”

Dex’s fingers tightened around yours once, not enough to hurt, enough to ask whether you were still there.

You were.

You hated that you were.

Dex’s eyes finally lifted to Matt again, and there it was: you knew he wanted to fucking hurt him, and not because Matt was lying. Because Matt was telling the truth in front of you. Because Matt had dragged a past version of him into your sister’s dining room and set it between the candles.

Your grip tightened again.

Dex breathed in slowly, then he looked at you.

You shook your head once. Please.

The fight went out of his shoulders by force, not surrender. He leaned back a fraction, still holding your hand under the table, your bloodied little nail marks hidden between his fingers like a secret.

Elektra set her wine down. “Dex,” she said. Her voice was smooth. “Can I speak with you?”

You looked at her immediately. “Ellie.”

“Privately.”

Dex didn’t answer right away.

His thumb moved over your fingers once. There was blood on his skin because of you, and somehow that made his touch gentler.

“It’s fine,” he said.

It was absolutely not fine. He stood anyway.

Before he followed Elektra, he bent close enough that his mouth brushed your temple. It was not quite a kiss and more like proof of control. 

Then he left with your sister as the balcony doors shut behind them.

For a second, you only stared at the glass, watching Elektra turn on him with folded arms while Dex stood very still in front of her, hands visible, every inch of him pretending he had not almost lost himself at your birthday dinner.

Matt was still across from you when you turned back to him slowly.

He looked… worried.

You wiped your thumb against your napkin, and tried to breathe like your heart was not still stuck somewhere in your throat.

“Ummmm,” you said, because if you started with Dex, you might cry. If you started with the lawsuit, you might scream.

Matt turned his face toward you.

“So,” you said, voice smaller than you wanted it to be. “Are you sticking around this time?”

Matt didn’t answer right away.

That was very Matt of him.

He sat across from you at Elektra’s dining table with one hand curled near his wine glass, head angled faintly toward the balcony doors. Outside, your sister had Dex backed into a conversation you could not hear properly through the glass. Elektra’s arms were folded. Dex’s hands were visible at his sides.

That alone told you he was trying very, very hard.

You watched them for another second, then looked back at Matt.

“So,” you said, because there was no clean way to ask it. “Are you sticking around this time?”

 Matt swirled a bit of his wine. Awkward.

“I… think so,” he said.

You stared at him. “You think so?”

The smile he gave you was small. “I’m trying.”

“Mmm. Very convincing.”

He huffed, almost a laugh, and it tugged at an old memory in your chest.

Because before he was Professor Murdock, he was Elektra’s on-again-off-again disaster boyfriend, and that made him your on-again-off-again big brother. He had been the person who helped you with homework at the kitchen table because Elektra said she was too busy and then corrected every other answer from across the room anyway. He had been the person who let you complain about school and teachers and boys without making you feel stupid for being young. He had been the one who said, very seriously, that no, you probably could not sue your PE teacher for being annoying, but he admired your commitment to the argument.

And then he would leave.

“She was awful last time you guys broke up,” you said.

Matt lowered his head.

You picked at the edge of your napkin. “Not in the fun way. She was actually awful.”

“What do you want me to say?” He sighed.

The candles on the table flickered between you. Elektra had made too much food, of course. Your flowers sat in a vase near the counter, lush and ridiculous and beautiful, and you could still feel the small dent of Dex’s hand where he had held yours under the table.

“She missed you,” you said. “She pretended she didn’t, obviously, but she did.”

His mouth fell.

“And I missed you,” you added, staring very hard at the napkin. “Who else do I get to complain about her to? Mom and Dad don’t give a shit anymore.”

Matt’s laugh was tiny and helpless. “I missed you too.”

That almost made you forgive him.

You looked back at him. “Then stay. Or don’t. But don’t drift in and out like we’re all supposed to just reset every time you and Ellie get bored again.”

He nodded once, accepting the hit. For a second, it felt like being sixteen again. Like he was still family, sitting at your family table.

Then his head shifted slightly.

Toward the balcony. Towards Dex.

And you felt the whole conversation distort.

Matt didn’t pounce. He was much worse than that. He eased into it, like he was only following the evidence where it naturally led.

“You know why I’m worried about your boyfriend,” he said.

You sat back and sighed. “There it is.”

“I’m not trying to start a fight.”

“No,” you shook your head. “You’re building a case.”

He didn’t deny it.

“I know you care about me,” you said. “I do. But please don’t do that... That lawyer thing with your wording. You're making me feel like I’m supposed to realise I’ve accidentally admitted something.”

“I’m not cross-examining you.”

“You are.”

“I’m asking questions.” Matt exhaled.

You hated how much you still wanted his approval, because he was one of those people who had seen you grow up and therefore they had earned the right to worry.

He leaned forward a little.

“How did he tell you about… what he does?”

You looked at him and took a sip of wine to buy yourself time. “I’m not thick.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“No,” you said. “But he didn’t have to tell me shit for me to realise his job was more than sit around looking pretty with a gun.”

Matt’s jaw clenched slightly.

Outside, Elektra said something to Dex that made his shoulders go tense.

“He gave you a version,” Matt said.

You laughed once, without much humour. “Everyone gives a version.”

“Some versions are omissions.”

“God, you are so irritating.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” you cocked your head. “You think irritating is fine when you’re right.”

Matt tried again.

“There are patterns,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Patterns.”

“Yes.”

“With Dex.”

“With men like him.”

You looked sharply at him. “Men like him.”

Matt’s mouth tightened. “Men who know exactly how much truth to give you.”

Your throat tightened despite yourself.

He heard it, because damn that freakish hearing of his was apparently still going.

His voice flattened a bit. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“Always very generous.”

“I mean it. I think you’re smart. I think you know more than most people would.”

You looked down at your hands.

There was still the faintest mark beneath one nail where you had dug into Dex’s skin hard enough to pull him back. You could still feel the moment he snapped back into himself. The way his fury turned, not gone, just redirected because you had asked without words.

Matt said your name, like he used to when you were younger and trying not to cry.

“I think you’re too close to the facts,” he said. You almost smiled because only Matt Murdock would say something like that at a birthday dinner.

You set the fork down. “You mean I’m biased.”

“I mean you’re involved.”

“I’m allowed to be involved in my own life.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Matt went silent.

You looked at him now, studying his posture “Because it sounds like you think if you arrange the argument properly, I’ll reach your conclusion.”

“I think you’re making a dangerous choice.”

“There we go.”

His face soured. “He is dangerous.”

“So is Ellie.”

“She’s different now.”

“And?” You leaned forward. “And?”

Matt didn’t answer fast enough.

You lowered your voice. “We both know what she’s done. We both know what half of that collection cost before she started using invoices and whatever else she claims is legitimate now.”

“She got out.”

“Good for her.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I,” you groaned. “But she still deserves love, doesn’t she?”

Matt looked pained, and you hated hurting him. 

“You love her with a whole archive of exceptions,” you said. “But I’m supposed to treat Dex like one bad document is the entire record?”

“It’s not just one bad document—“

“It’s close enough.”

“No,” Matt said, and there was that courtroom firmness in him now. “I’m saying you probably know what the record looks like. You're just ignoring the parts you don’t want to read.”

You swallowed.

“I know what it costs,” he said. “To love someone and start making room for things you would have condemned.”

You looked toward the balcony.

Dex had turned his head slightly, like he could feel you looking. 

Matt kept going, though kinder now. “You start with mitigation. Then you start giving out exceptions. I’m just asking you to consider—”

“No.” Your voice cracked a little. “No, you’re asking me to accept your ruling.”

Matt stopped.

Ruling.

Huh. You really have changed over the two years he was gone.

You breathed in shakily. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about him. Maybe you’re not. Maybe there are things I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll regret this so badly I’ll hear your voice in my fucking head for the rest of my life.”

Matt’s shoulders lowered. 

“But my mistakes are mine to make,” you said.

Oh. 

You saw the tiny break in his knuckles. The big-brother part of him, the one who never really had anyone but himself, the part that still remembered you as a teenager at the kitchen table with bruised knees and far too much attitude for your own good, wanting to protect you from yourself because he had loved a more bloody Elektra the way you loved Dex. 

“I don’t want to watch you get hurt,” was all he managed to say, 

You looked down. “You might have to.”

He looked down.

You reached across the table first and found his hand, because touch had always been a sensory experience he reacted to. 

“I’m not blind,” you said, then immediately groaned. “Sorry.”

Matt’s mouth twitched. “It’s fine.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“I know he’s not safe.”

Matt’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles.

“But he listens to me,” you said. “And maybe that’s not enough for you. But it matters to me.”

Matt didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either.

For once, it felt like mercy.

Outside, you heard a scrape against the balcony table.

Matt’s head tilted. “What’s happening?”

You looked past him through the glass.

Elektra and Dex were no longer standing in their neat little interrogation positions. They looked like they were seated across from each other at the tiny balcony table, elbows planted, hands clasped, Dex’s shoulders covering half the scene. 

You blinked.

Then, despite the ache in your chest, you laughed. “I think they’re arm wrestling.”

Matt closed his eyes.

The look on his face was so exhausting that it only made you laugh harder.

—

The rest of dinner went by quickly after Elektra and Dex came back in from the balcony with no visible injuries, which you counted as a birthday miracle. 

Elektra looked smug and Dex looked composed, but there was a tightness around his lips that made you narrow your eyes. When you glanced between them and asked who won the arm wrestle, Elektra only smiled into her wine. Dex said nothing. Which, unfortunately for him, was an answer.

After that, everyone behaved, mostly. Matt stopped trying to lawyer you out of your own relationship. Dex stopped looking like he wanted to fling Matt through one of Elektra’s very expensive windows. Elektra told a horrible story about you at seventeen trying to jump from the garage roof into the pool and missing by an amount she called “humiliating but educational.” Matt laughed, Dex looked absolutely fascinated, like your teenage stupidity was precious. He asked one follow-up question, and you kicked him under the table.

By the time you left, she kissed both your cheeks, held your face for one second longer than usual, and said happy birthday one more time and told you to call her tomorrow.

Matt hugged you too, while Dex and Matt shook hands, proving to God and each other that they could survive physical contact without committing a felony.

Then Dex took you home.

You were sleepy in the car, full from dinner, cake, and emotional warfare. 

At your apartment, you kicked off your shoes by the door and padded into the kitchen for water. Dex followed, taking off his coat, watching you with that careful quiet he got when he was not sure whether he was allowed to touch you yet.

You leaned against the counter and looked at him over the rim of your glass.

“So,” you said. “Who really won?”

Dex’s expression went flat. “No.”

You smiled. “No?”

Dex flexed his hand once, as if remembering. “She’s irritating.”

You laughed. “Mmm.”

“But you love her,” he said.

Your laugh faded.

Dex leaned back against the counter opposite you, arms crossed. “And she loves you. And she’s capable of protecting you.” He said, as if it was the only metric that mattered. “So I guess I’ll try.”

You stared at him. “That is the nicest thing you’ve ever said about anyone.”

Dex rolled his eyes, but there was no bite in it. He looked tired now. Not physically, more like tired from pretending to be a decent person. 

You walked across the kitchen and took his hand.

The little marks from your nails looked worse up close. There were tiny, red, broken crescents on the back of his hand. 

“I’m sorry,” you said, trailing small kisses on them

Dex looked down at your lips touching the wounds. He shrugged as if you did what you had to do to get the result you wanted, and Dex had always been pragmatic like that. 

That night, Dex fell asleep with his arm locked around your waist.

He slept heavy, going slack against your back, his breath warm at the nape of your neck, his hand spread beneath your sleep shirt like he had reached for bare skin even in his sleep. 

Your phone pinged just after two.

Then again. Then again.

You reached for it carefully, lifting Dex’s arm just enough to drag the screen close without waking him.

It was a text…. From Elektra.

I’m glad he’s on your side.

Then the next text.

That’s still not the same thing as him being safe.

Another message came through before you could answer her.

Make an informed decision. That’s all I’m asking.

Then, she sent a link.

You stared at it for a long time in the dark.

Dex shifted behind you, his arm tightening automatically around your middle, his face pressing closer to your shoulder, still asleep. 

You opened it… and there it was. The lawsuit Dex was allegedly involved in.

The text was dense and written in bloodless language detailing private security and consultants. It detailed alleged intimidation and coercion, resulting in witnesses withdrawing statements and misplaced evidence. 

Dex’s name was there.

You read until the words blurred, until the apartment turned orange in the early morning. Dex slept against you while a colder version of him lived through depositions and sealed complaints and things nobody had ever proved.

But you knew your boyfriend. You knew he was capable of this. 

You waited for the feeling to change.

Maybe, you expected to be disgusted. Fear, more likely.

It didn’t come.

You felt the same about him as you did before. 

And of course it wasn’t fine. Matt was not wrong and Elektra wasn’t worried for no reason.

But you had always looked at the world through rose-tinted glasses.

By dawn, you closed the file.

Dex stirred when you set your phone down, as if even the sound of it against the nightstand was enough to pull some half-asleep part of him back to you.

His arm tightened around your waist first. Then he dragged you closer, face pressing blindly between your shoulder and neck, making it impossible to move even if you had wanted to.

“Sweetheart?” he mumbled, barely awake.

You hummed and covered his hand with yours.

For a second, you lay there with the lawsuit still burning behind your eyes. All those careful words and sealed statements. All those allegations circling the man in your bed like vultures.

And maybe Matt was right.

Maybe Elektra was right.

Maybe Dex was dangerous. 

But Matt had loved your sister through her murderous years, hadn’t he? So who were they to look at you like you were insane for dating an assassin?

You were now thoroughly informed, now, weren’t you?

You turned carefully in Dex’s arms until you were facing him. His eyes stayed closed, his brow furrowing faintly at the movement, but his hand slid up your back on instinct, keeping you close.

“Go back to sleep,” you whispered, kissing him softly.

Dex exhaled against your mouth, already sinking again. You tucked yourself beneath his chin, his arm heavy over your waist.

Informed decision made.

—end. 

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Dex taglist part 1:

Daniel Shaw had owned the movie studio currently paying your invoices, which made his sudden death inconvenient more than tragic. He had been found in his suite less than an hour ago. Someone said it was a heart attack. Another person said it was suicide after someone found a bullet in his head. It was so sudden! Your coworker kept repeating, as if the situation might become less alarming if she repeated it enough. You had worked under his studio for three months and met him properly only twice. He was charming, rich, and distant. Powerful men often were, which meant he remembered nobody’s name unless they could make him money.

You were a stunt choreographer. That put you somewhere below the director, below the producers, below the lead actress’ wellness coach, and slightly above the poor intern sent to buy twelve green juices at six in the morning. Shaw dying wasn’t personal to you, but it was close enough to your paycheck to keep you at the bar instead of going upstairs to sleep.

You took a sip of your whiskey and watched the room in the mirror behind the bottles.

That was where you found him watching you.

He didn’t look away when your eyes met, and it made you smile. Most men glanced down when caught, then looked back later with some lazy excuse written across their face. This man didn’t bother. He simply held your gaze in the mirror, almost amused, like he had known you were going to notice him and had been waiting for you to decide what to do about it.

You turned slightly on your stool. “You’re staring.”

His mouth curled up, barely. “You finally noticed.”

“I’m trained,” you shrugged, trying to keep things vague. “I notice when someone is watching me.”

He simply raised his cup to his lips. “Good to know.”

“Is it?”

“It explains the bruises.”

You looked down at your knee, where the hem of your dress had ridden up enough to show the dark bloom of a rehearsal bruise above your shin. It wasn’t your worst one this week, but it wasn’t the prettiest, either. Still, the way his eyes touched it and moved on made your skin warm, because he didn’t leer. He assessed. 

You picked up your drink and carried it down the bar to him because the night was already strange, your contract might be cancelled by morning, and you had never been especially good at leaving interesting things alone.

“Since you’re apparently studying me,” you said as you sat beside him, “what else have you learned?”

He turned his glass once against the bar top, eyes moving over your face with infuriating patience. “You’re not drunk, but you’re trying to decide if you want to be. You’re not sad, but you know you should look sadder. You’ve checked the exits twice since I sat down, and you keep favouring your left side, which means either your hip hurts or your knee does.”

“My knee,” you confirmed, hating how impressed you sounded. “And I checked the exits because this room is full of dickheads. That’s just good sense.”

He managed a small, performative frown. “They’re just film executives.”

“Eh,” you shrugged, “same difference."

This time, he smiled properly. “Fair.”

You angled your body toward him, letting your shoulder rest against the bar. “Your turn.”

“My turn?”

“What have I learned about you?”

His eyes stayed on yours. “Go ahead.”

You let yourself look, because he had started it, though that pretence felt childish and paper-thin now. He had a dark jacket on and an expensive watch worn like he didn’t  care whether anyone noticed it. His posture was relaxed, but not loose. His hands were still on the bar and had no wedding ring, no visible nerves, no grief, no curiosity for anyone in the room except you.

Your sister had taught you to read people pretty well. 

“You’re too quiet to be an actor,” you said. “You’re not a producer either, because you haven’t checked your phone every six seconds and you don’t look like you’re about to ruin someone’s career over a schedule change. You could be security, but you’re not standing like you’re being paid to watch the door.”

“Maybe I’m off duty.”

“Maybe,” you allowed. “But if you were off duty, I think you’d still know exactly who in this room was carrying, who was lying, and who would scream first if the lights went out.”

The amusement in his face was evident. “And who would scream first?”

You glanced around the bar and nodded toward a red-faced producer loudly saying Shaw had been like a father to him. “Him. But only after checking whether TMZ is watching.”

The man beside you laughed under his breath. You liked the sound too much immediately, which was annoying because you didn’t even know his name yet.

You held out your hand. “I’m not calling you stranger all night.”

His hand closed around yours. “Dex.”

“Just Dex?”

“For now.”

“That’s weird.”

“Do you like weird?”

You should have denied it. Instead, your smile gave you away. “I like interesting. Weird is reviewed on a case by case basis”

Dex didn’t release your hand immediately. He brushed his thumb over your knuckles, where tape residue still clung from that afternoon’s rehearsal. When he let go, you had to remind yourself not to stare.

“So,” he said, “stunt performer of some kind.”

You narrowed your eyes as if you were surprised that the handshake had given it away. Still, it was fun to play along, right? “Were you at the dinner?”

“Briefly.”

“And did you know Shaw?”

He considered his answer this time “Briefly.”

You chuckled, and Dex watched as if he wanted to understand the mechanics of it. It was unsettling, but it didn’t make you want to leave. If anything, it made you lean closer, because he was giving you so little that every small reaction felt like a gold star. You worked with performers all day, people trained to externalise every emotion so the camera could catch it. Dex did the opposite. He made you want to get your hands on him just to see what he was like underneath.

“What do you do, Dex-for-now?” you asked.

“Private security advising.”

You tilted your head. “That is the most fake Hollywood job I’ve ever heard.”

“It pays well.”

“I bet it does.” You smiled, “Do you consult on security, or do you just stand around looking intimidating?”

His eyes dropped to your mouth again, and this time he wasn’t quick enough to hide it. “Depends on who’s paying.”

You shifted on the stool, crossing one leg over the other, and watched his eyes flick down for the briefest second before returning to your face. 

Controlled, you thought again. He was controlled enough that making him look felt like winning.

“You know,” you said, “for a security advisor, you’re not very reassuring.”

Dex leaned slightly closer, his voice dipping beneath the noise of the bar. “And yet you came over.”

“I was bored.”

“You’re not bored now.”

You hated that he was right. You hated it more because of how certain he seemed, as if your interest was another fact he had collected. The room around you blurred into a swirl of candlelight, glass, perfume, and expensive panic. Upstairs, a billionaire was dead. Down here, this stranger watched you like you were the only interesting target. 

You took another sip of your drink. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

“With some things.”

“And with others?”

Dex’s gaze held yours. “I like to be certain before I touch.”

It was absurd how quickly a fucking line got to you. Nothing in his tone was crude, and he barely even moved. But suddenly you were thinking about his hand around yours, his thumb over your knuckles, his mouth close to your ear.

You looked away first, which made him smile. 

You didn’t answer right away. Instead, you set your glass down and let the silence stretch. Dex didn’t rush to fill it. He only watched you while the whole room kept mourning a man neither of you seemed able to miss.

Finally, you said, “My job might be gone tomorrow,” you sighed as if that didn’t affect you. It probably didn’t. Your family had enough money that you could just jet to the Bahamas tomorrow and not look back, but you actually liked the project you were working on. “That should bother me more.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“It does,” you said, then shrugged. “Just not enough to make me behave.”

Dex’s eyes moved over your face, and he shifted a little. “How badly do you want not to behave?”

Fuck. 

It was so direct. It was certainly too much, maybe, from a man you had met fifteen minutes ago in a bar full of vultures dressed as mourners. But you had spent your whole life around danger. Dex was not pretending hard enough to be safe, and the reckless part of you respected that.

You leaned close enough that your knee brushed his. “That depends.”

His breath changed. 

There. You had him.

Dex stood and offered his hand.

You looked at his hand, then at his face. “You always pick girls up in weird hotels?”

“No.” He managed a dry laugh, “you’re special.”

You laughed despite yourself and placed your hand in his.

The elevator ride up was a lesson in restraint. He stood beside you without touching you again, which made every inch of space between your bodies feel like you were pulling teeth. The mirrored walls showed you too many versions of him: his profile, his hands, the line of his throat where his shirt opened. You could feel him watching your reflection instead of your body directly, which shouldn’t have been hotter, but was.

The elevator doors opened before you could say anything.

His room was high up, expensive, and nearly untouched. There was no mess or scattered clothes. No sign that anyone had lived there longer than necessary. Los Angeles glittered beyond the windows, silver streets and distant headlights, while the door clicked shut behind you.

You turned to face him. “You’re not really a security advisor, are you?”

Dex looked at you for a long moment. “Not tonight.”

You should have asked what that meant. You should have cared. Instead, you stepped closer and reached for the open collar of his shirt, letting your fingers slide beneath the edge of the fabric.

“Good,” you said. “I’m off the clock too.”

When he kissed you, the control didn’t vanish all at once. That would have been too easy. It was slow, first with his hand at your waist, firm enough to make you gasp against his mouth. Then his other hand at the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair as he angled you exactly how he wanted you. He kissed like a man who had thought about doing it before he allowed himself to move, like every second of restraint in the bar was hell on earth. 

You pushed his jacket off his shoulders. He let it fall without looking away from you. When you started on the buttons of his shirt, Dex caught your wrists, not to stop you, but to slow you down, his thumbs pressing lightly to your pulse points like he wanted to feel exactly what he was doing to you.

“You’re impatient,” he murmured, and for a second, you realized, holy shit. He really didn’t do these one night flings often. 

Still, the only thing you managed to say was: “You’re overdressed.”

His mouth found your neck, and your answer dissolved into a breathless laugh. He smiled against your skin. You felt it more than saw that private satisfaction, and then his hands moved again with a precision that made your knees feel unreliable. He never grabbed thoughtlessly. He touched with the same focus he had watched you with downstairs, learning what made you arch, what made your fingers dig into his shoulders.

By the time he walked you backward toward the bed, you were hot and irritated by how badly you wanted him. Dex seemed worse off for trying to hide it. His shirt was open, his hair no longer perfect because your hands had been in it, and his breathing had gone rough, making you smile against his mouth.

You pulled him down with you.

After that, the night turned feverish. It became his mouth on your skin, your dress pushed away, his hands gentle until you guided them, and suddenly they were not. He was careful in ways that made you ache and rough only when you dragged it out of him, and the first time you felt his composure slip, you laughed breathlessly because you could not help it.

Dex lifted his head, eyes narrowed. 

“You’re not as controlled as you look.”

“No,” he said, his mouth brushing yours. “Not like this.”

You believed him, though you had no reason to. Maybe that was the point. All you knew was that this was just a bad day with bad timing and a dead man upstairs whose absence had left the door to the evening just  open enough for a stranger to step through.

Later, when the room was dark and your body fell beside his, you lay with your cheek against his chest and traced one of the old scars near his ribs. He was quiet under your hand, but not asleep. You knew the difference. 

His fingers moved slowly along your spine, almost absent. “Dex?”

“Mm.”

“Were you really there for Shaw?”

His hand paused for less than a second before it continued.

“Briefly,” he said again.

You smiled into the dark because you knew he was giving you nothing, and for tonight, only tonight, you decided to let him.

You should have gone back to your own room. You should have asked better questions. You should have treated this as a stupid one night stand and pretended this never happened.

Instead, you closed your eyes and stayed exactly where you were.

—

Six months after that night, you moved to New York.

Officially, it was for work. A Broadway production had brought you on to choreograph the stage combat for a lavish, over-funded revival with sword fights, balcony falls, and a dramatic death scene that had to happen eight times a week without sending the lead actor to hospital. 

It was a good job. You even put it on exclamation points and sent it to your agent like you had made a responsible career decision.

It had absolutely nothing to do with Dex being based in New York.

Mostly.

Fine, maybe a little.

Your sister was there too, which made the decision feel less incriminating. Elektra had an apartment in Manhattan, three passports in names you were not supposed to know, and an art studio collecting ancient weapons, because technically, that was her job. 

You knew better than to ask where the acquisitions came from, and Elektra knew better than to ask why you had suddenly accepted a Broadway job in the same city as a man who called himself a security advisor and looked at you like he would happily ruin his life if you asked sweetly enough.

You and Dex had been officially dating for three months.

It was a good three months of late-night dinners, hotel room mornings, flowers delivered to rehearsal with no card because he knew you would know. It was three months of you pretending not to notice when the news mentioned a man connected to Shaw’s circle dying strangely overseas. Three months of Dex pretending his work calls were about security logistics and not whatever thing he did for people rich enough to afford him.

You knew what he was. Dex carried violence too naturally for it to be a hobby, and sometimes, when he came to you after work, the calm around him was too emptied out. He would shower before touching you, scrub himself raw, come out with damp hair and bare feet.

Your moral compass had raised one weak little hand in protest, but then Dex had kissed you against your kitchen counter, murmured sweetheart like a prayer, and made your entire sense of right and wrong pack a bag and leave the state.

Maybe that made you terrible. Maybe it made you Elektra’s sister after all.

Or maybe Dex was just so unfairly, stupidly, devastatingly hot that you just kept getting distracted.

And Dex knew that you knew after the first month or so, when you jokingly called him Hot John Wick.

Dex had always expected you to figure it out sooner or later. He knew you were a smart girl. He just didn’t realise you’d figure out this soon. 

Instead of being shocked though, he just raised his eyebrows and said, “John Wick is already hot.”

You chuckled and pulled him close. “Shut up and take it as a compliment that I find you even hotter.”

“Yes ma’am.”

And that was that. 

—

Earlier today, you had texted Dex and asked if he could come over and cuddle. 

Ha. 

You were already on the couch when he got in, cozy in sleep shorts and an oversized hoodie, one fuzzy sock half-off your foot, your body tired from rehearsal and your brain still muddled with stage falls, sword cues, and actors who didn’t understand that “again from the top” didn’t mean “try to improvise a stabbing.”

Dex took off his coat and looked at you like he had been waiting all day to come home to you.

“You’re late,” you said.

“‘M sorry.”

He came closer, and you let him pull you up just so you could immediately drag him down with you again. Dex caught himself over you with one hand braced beside your head, his knee sinking into the couch, his body warm and heavy enough above yours to make your whole chest loosen.

He kissed you, mouth moving over yours like he wanted to settle there. Like he needed a minute to remember what it felt like to be wanted without being useful. You went pliant underneath him almost immediately, because apparently that was what you did now. You let murderers kiss you tenderly on your couch and call it romance.

His hand slid beneath your hoodie and you hummed against his mouth.

Dex’s palm dragged up your ribs, then paused over your breast, cupping you through the thin fabric beneath like he was not even trying to pretend the cuddling was innocent anymore. His thumb moved once, and your breath caught hard enough for him to smile into the kiss.

“Dex,” you murmured.

“Mm.”

“That is not cuddling.”

“It’s close.”

His mouth dipped to your throat, and the laugh you tried to give him turned embarrassingly quiet halfway out. He knew exactly what he was doing. 

His hand slid down again over your waist, then your hip, then lower.

He pushed his body down yours, mouth tracing heat along your neck while his fingers found the waistband of your shorts. He tucked himself there, resting under the elastic, knuckles brushing warm skin.

Dex loved having his finger between your legs, knowing he can’t seem to miss the sweet spot, ever. Which meant you knew exactly how to make him suffer.

His fingers started to slip lower, and you caught his wrist.

Dex stopped.

Slowly, he lifted his head, looking offended, as if you had interrupted him mid-prayer.

“Sweetheart,” he said carefully.

You smiled. “My birthday is coming up.”

For a second, he just stared.

His wrist flexed under your fingers as you held it still. “I know.”

His thumb slipped under the edge by half an inch, expecting you to give in, but your hand only tightened, keeping him out of your shorts still.

Then his eyes lifted to yours, already suspicious. “Baby.”

You smiled. “Ah-ah.”

His gaze narrowed. “What are you doing?”

“Negotiating.”

“With my hand?”

“With your access,” you corrected

His desire didn’t disappear. It only got interrupted by confusion. “You’re blackmailing me.”

“I’m making a birthday request.”

His eyes flicked down to where you were holding his wrist. “With leverage.”

You held back a chuckle, trying your best to look innocent. “Smart girls use leverage.”

Dex opened his mouth, then closed it again.

You smiled sweetly. “That’s what I thought.”

For a second, he looked like he wanted to argue. Unfortunately for him, he also wanted control of his hand back very, very badly. “What do you want, pretty girl?” he asked.

You knew he meant presents, like actual presents. He was prepared to buy his way out of this. Hitman money in New York apparently paid well enough that Dex looked genuinely prepared for you to name something like a weekend in Paris.

You tightened your grip on his wrist. You looked up at him, very pleased with yourself. “I want you to meet my sister.”

Dex went still, much more still than when you had called him a hitman for the first time, actually, which told you a lot about his priorities.

“Your sister,” he said.

“Yes.”

“For your birthday.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what you want?”

“That’s what I want.”

He looked at you like you were a puzzle he hadn’t been hired to solve. Dex looked down at his trapped hand, then back at your face. “You’re really withholding this until I say yes.”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.”

His teeth clenched as your thumb stroked idly over the inside of his wrist. You were not even trying to be seductive with it, but Dex watched the movement like it was actively shortening his lifespan.

“Baby,” he said.

“Mm?”

“Let go of my hand.”

“Say yes.”

“You don’t play fair.”

He made a sound that was half a laugh and half suffering. “You know I adore you, right?”

“Then say yes.”

Dex lowered his head until his forehead rested against yours. His eyes closed briefly, like he was gathering strength. It was ridiculous. He could probably walk into a guarded room and come out alive without messing up his hair, but you asking him to attend one birthday dinner had him acting like you had handed him a bomb with a pink bow on it.

“You haven’t told me anything about her,” he said.

“She’s my sister.”

“That’s not information.”

“She’s important to me.”

It managed to shut him up. 

You sighed, just a little, though you still didn’t let go of his wrist. “I want her to meet you. Isn’t that enough information?”

Dex opened his eyes, and he looked almost undone by it.

You kissed him lightly. “Please.”

His breath caught.

You knew that would get him.

“Don’t,” he murmured.

“Please, Dex.”

“Sweetheart.”

“For my birthday.”

He stared at you with the exhaustion of a man who had never stood a chance. “Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll meet your sister.”

Your smile bloomed. “You’ll be nice?”

“I’ll be polite.” Dex looked pointedly at his wrist. “Can I have my hand back now?”

You hummed like you were thinking about it.

His eyes darkened. “Baby.” His mouth brushed yours.

Eventually, you released his wrist.

Dex didn’t move immediately, even though he had been desperate two seconds ago.

Dex kissed you first, like he was still thanking you for wanting him at dinner. His hand slipped lower and you gasped against his mouth, laughing breathlessly when you felt his smile.

“Now,” he hummed, “where were we?”

—

You and Dex stood outside Elektra’s apartment door with his hand at the small of your back and enough tension in his shoulders to make you bite back a smile.

For a man who had once admitted, very calmly, that he preferred entering buildings through service corridors because front doors made people too expectant, he had spent an absurd amount of time preparing for your birthday.

He had brought you flowers first, an arrangement of red ranunculus, white anemones, dark tulips, and little sprigs of jasmine tucked between them because he remembered you once saying jasmine smelled like nights in expensive hotels. 

You had stared at it for so long that Dex had asked,  “Too much?”

“No,” you said, already smiling like an idiot. “It’s beautiful.”

Only then had he relaxed.

The second gift was smaller, slim black leather notebook with your initials pressed into the bottom corner in gold, the pages thick enough for blocking notes, sketches, injury reports, and all the frantic choreography scribbles you usually left on call sheets and napkins. Inside the front cover was a thin metal bookmark shaped like a tiny sword.

You had smiled, and he looked painfully pleased with himself.

Then, because he was Dex, he had stopped in a supermarket on the way there and very pragmatically asked, “What kind of wine does your sister like?”

“Expensive.”

He only nodded.

Now he stood beside you holding a bottle that probably cost more than your weekly food shop, his jaw tight, his scarred face composed, his coat immaculate. He looked less like a boyfriend arriving for dinner and more like a man approaching a guarded border with falsified papers and a personal stake in crossing.

“You know she’s not going to fucking kill you.” You nudged him gently.  “She made dinner. That’s basically a peace offering.”

“She made dinner for you,” Dex said flatly. “I’m the complication.”

Right.

Dex didn’t care about charming people for the sake of being liked. He didn’t need Elektra’s approval because he wanted a pleasant evening or a normal story to tell later. He needed it because Elektra mattered to you, and she was the one person whose opinion could matter. Because, in Dex’s mind, your sister was not an enemy. She was a hurdle to get to you more permanently. That’s all.

You turned toward him and straightened his collar, even though it was already perfect. “Be nice.”

Then the door opened.

Elektra stood there in silk trousers and bare feet, beautiful in the effortless way she had always been beautiful. Her eyes moved from you to Dex, then to the flowers in your arm and the wine in his hand.

“Well,” she said, “at least he brings tribute.”

You managed to chuckle. “Elektra.”

Dex offered the bottle and said, very flatly, “Thank you for having me.”

Elektra took it, glanced at the label, and lifted one eyebrow.

You could practically see Dex winning one microscopic point in a war he had invented entirely inside his own head.

“Come in,” Elektra said.

Dex’s hand found your back again as you stepped inside.

He was here. He was trying. 

From somewhere deeper in the apartment, a familiar voice called, “Are they here?”

Dex stopped, and not enough for Elektra to notice, maybe. 

Then Matt Murdock appeared at the edge of the dining room, one hand against the wall, his red glasses reflecting apartment light.

Dex’s voice changed.

“Oh.” he said, “Murdock.”

Matt seemed to recognize the voice immediately because his head tilted in recognition.

Wait.

Wait. 

What?

“You two know each other?” Your voice cut through the apartment before anyone else could decide what kind of lie to tell.

Elektra, of course, looked delighted. “Oh,” she raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

You turned on her. “Don’t start.”

Matt’s mouth twitched, but the almost-smile disappeared quickly.

Dex’s hand hovered over your back, not quite touching you now, which irritated you more than it should have. 

You looked at Matt again, your confusion finally catching up with the rest of the room. “I didn’t even know you were coming.”

Matt’s mouth softened when he turned toward you. “Happy birthday.”

You blinked at him. “I didn’t even know you and Ellie were back together.”

Beside you, Elektra took a thoughtful sip of her wine like this was all very normal and not at all insane.

“We are,” she said.

You stared at her.

Matt’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Apparently.”

Despite everything, despite Dex standing beside you like a wire pulled too tight, you felt a laugh threaten the back of your throat, because this was them. This had always been them.

You had known Matt since high school, back when Elektra was in college for art history. Your sister brought him home during holidays with the same indifference she used for all things she secretly cared about. You remembered him at your family table, too stubborn and too principled for his own good, arguing with Elektra about morality while she stole food off his plate. You remembered being younger and thinking their breakups sounded serious until Matt appeared again two months later with flowers.

So no, Matt being here was not strange. Matt being here with Elektra again wasn’t even that strange.

Matt recognizing your boyfriend was the problem.

You looked between them. “How do you know each other?”

Dex went quiet.

“Our paths crossed professionally,” Matt said.

You stared. “How vague.”

“That’s all you need to know,” Dex said. 

Elektra’s smile widened behind her glass.

Matt looked worried, but it wasn’t really dramatic. Matt never looked dramatically anything unless Elektra was bleeding or lying to his face. But you knew him. You knew the slight tension in his mouth, the way he seemed to listen to more than what people were saying.

“You look worried,” you said.

Matt paused. “I’m not worried.”

“Matthew.”

Dex’s eyes twitched at the familiarity in your voice.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

You glanced back at him and found him standing there with perfect manners, trying very hard not to strangle a blind man from across the table for no apparent reason.

Elektra noticed too, and naturally, this pleased her.

“Well,” she said, stepping aside to let everyone further into the apartment. “This is already a much better birthday dinner than I expected.”

“It is my birthday dinner,” you said. “Not an interrogation.”

“That depends entirely on your boyfriend.”

Dex looked at Elektra then.

For the first time since the door opened, his attention moved to your sister, realising the human hurdle had a knife in its hand.

You sighed and clutched your flowers a little tighter.

Matt stepped closer. “It really is good to see you.”

Your irritation waned, because he sounded sincere, so you hugged him.

Matt hugged you back, one hand warm between your shoulders, gentle in the way he had always been somewhat of a big brother to you. “Happy birthday, kid.” he said again, quieter this time.

“Thank you,” you muttered. “Even though all of you are being weird.”

“We’ve barely started,” Elektra said.

“That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

When you pulled away from Matt, Dex was still watching him.

You looked at the three of them and pointed toward the dining room. “Everyone sit down,” you said. “And someone is going to explain what professionally means before dessert.”

—

Dinner began with Elektra leading you to the table, Matt followed by memory, and Dex stayed close enough behind you you could feel him breathing on your neck. The food was already laid out, far more elaborate than she had admitted over the phone, with candles burning between the plates and your cake waiting beneath a glass cover on the counter.

You sat beside Dex. Matt took the chair opposite him, and Elektra sat beside Matt with the calm of someone who had accidentally arranged the most interesting seating plan possible.

For the first few minutes, the conversation stayed on you. Your birthday, your Broadway production, the lead actor who kept trying to make the sword fights faster, the balcony rig that had failed inspection twice. Matt asked intelligent questions and Elektra asked whether anyone deserved to be pushed from the balcony for real. Dex was deathly silent, and you assumed it was for fear of saying the wrong thing and losing Elektra’s favour, which in turn meant losing your favour, too.

Then, Matt mentioned teaching now, and your eyes went as wide as dinner plates. 

“Holy shit,” you managed. “Professor Murdock?”

Matt had laughed under his breath. “That surprised you?”

“A little. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

Then you had turned to Dex, trying to make it casual, trying to move the night away from whatever ugly thing was coiling beneath the table. See? this is fine, you tried to say with your eyes 

Well. It was until Matt decided to say, “And Poindexter, you’re still in security?”

Dex’s eyes had flicked to Matt for half a second.

“Yeah,” he said, with his hand warm on your knee, “She knows my work.”

Matt had gone still.

Dex hadn’t smiled, but you felt the satisfaction in him anyway. 

You could feel him think, Matt cannot use that against me.

Except Matt kept going.

Matt didn’t sound like he wanted to humiliate him. He sounded worried, and maybe that was what made Dex more anxious. Accusation, he could meet. Concern made him look like an animal.

And because you had no idea what the fuck to do, you blurted out the one thing you probably shouldn’t have. 

“Um,” you choked out. “Would you like to tell us how you met?”

Oh fuck. 

Mistake, you could tell from the way Dex was looking at you now. Big mistake.

“It was years ago,” Matt said finally. “During my work on a civil suit. Nelson, Murdock, and Page represented several former employees of a private security firm.”

Dex’s thumb stopped moving on your knee.

Matt continued. “We found evidence of illegal surveillance, witness intimidation, and coercion.”

Elektra leaned back slightly, actively thinking of Dex’s bad influence on you now. 

Dex’s face didn’t change.

“He worked for them?” Elektra asked.

Matt’s head angled toward Dex. “Ask him.”

Dex’s teeth shifted once.

You felt the violent urge in him before you saw it. His body didn’t lunge and his hand didn't move. But you could tell he was thinking of hurling a fork in Matt’s direction. 

You put your hand over his and squeezed hard.

Dex’s eyes snapped to you.

You didn’t say anything. You only dug your fingers into the back of his hand, right where the skin was thin over bone. It was a warning, a plea not to escalate things. Your nails pressed in harder when his eyes moved back toward Matt.

Dex. You warned with your eyes. 

His nostrils flared.

Please don’t.

Matt kept speaking, unaware or too aware. “His name came up in access logs and reports.”

Dex’s hand flexed under yours.

You pressed harder, until your nails broke skin. A tiny crescent of blood welled beneath your thumb, bright against him.

Dex looked down, and that’s what did it. All the focus in him fractured around the sight of your hand gripping his hard enough to hurt him, your fingers trembling. This was your silent refusal to let him become the thing Matt was describing right in front of you.

Though the haze in his mind didn’t disappear, he turned his face away from Matt. It came back to you and the fact that you were frightened enough of what he might do to stop him with pain.

Dex swallowed. Under the table, he turned his hand over and caught your fingers carefully, like he was afraid you might pull away.

Matt was still talking, though.  “One witness was hospitalised the night before deposition. Another vanished for three days and came back with a different story.”

Elektra looked at Dex. You looked at Matt. Dex looked at nobody but you.

“And nothing stuck,” Dex said.

His voice was too controlled.

Matt paused. “No.”

Dex’s fingers tightened around yours once, not enough to hurt, enough to ask whether you were still there.

You were.

You hated that you were.

Dex’s eyes finally lifted to Matt again, and there it was: you knew he wanted to fucking hurt him, and not because Matt was lying. Because Matt was telling the truth in front of you. Because Matt had dragged a past version of him into your sister’s dining room and set it between the candles.

Your grip tightened again.

Dex breathed in slowly, then he looked at you.

You shook your head once. Please.

The fight went out of his shoulders by force, not surrender. He leaned back a fraction, still holding your hand under the table, your bloodied little nail marks hidden between his fingers like a secret.

Elektra set her wine down. “Dex,” she said. Her voice was smooth. “Can I speak with you?”

You looked at her immediately. “Ellie.”

“Privately.”

Dex didn’t answer right away.

His thumb moved over your fingers once. There was blood on his skin because of you, and somehow that made his touch gentler.

“It’s fine,” he said.

It was absolutely not fine. He stood anyway.

Before he followed Elektra, he bent close enough that his mouth brushed your temple. It was not quite a kiss and more like proof of control. 

Then he left with your sister as the balcony doors shut behind them.

For a second, you only stared at the glass, watching Elektra turn on him with folded arms while Dex stood very still in front of her, hands visible, every inch of him pretending he had not almost lost himself at your birthday dinner.

Matt was still across from you when you turned back to him slowly.

He looked… worried.

You wiped your thumb against your napkin, and tried to breathe like your heart was not still stuck somewhere in your throat.

“Ummmm,” you said, because if you started with Dex, you might cry. If you started with the lawsuit, you might scream.

Matt turned his face toward you.

“So,” you said, voice smaller than you wanted it to be. “Are you sticking around this time?”

Matt didn’t answer right away.

That was very Matt of him.

He sat across from you at Elektra’s dining table with one hand curled near his wine glass, head angled faintly toward the balcony doors. Outside, your sister had Dex backed into a conversation you could not hear properly through the glass. Elektra’s arms were folded. Dex’s hands were visible at his sides.

That alone told you he was trying very, very hard.

You watched them for another second, then looked back at Matt.

“So,” you said, because there was no clean way to ask it. “Are you sticking around this time?”

 Matt swirled a bit of his wine. Awkward.

“I… think so,” he said.

You stared at him. “You think so?”

The smile he gave you was small. “I’m trying.”

“Mmm. Very convincing.”

He huffed, almost a laugh, and it tugged at an old memory in your chest.

Because before he was Professor Murdock, he was Elektra’s on-again-off-again disaster boyfriend, and that made him your on-again-off-again big brother. He had been the person who helped you with homework at the kitchen table because Elektra said she was too busy and then corrected every other answer from across the room anyway. He had been the person who let you complain about school and teachers and boys without making you feel stupid for being young. He had been the one who said, very seriously, that no, you probably could not sue your PE teacher for being annoying, but he admired your commitment to the argument.

And then he would leave.

“She was awful last time you guys broke up,” you said.

Matt lowered his head.

You picked at the edge of your napkin. “Not in the fun way. She was actually awful.”

“What do you want me to say?” He sighed.

The candles on the table flickered between you. Elektra had made too much food, of course. Your flowers sat in a vase near the counter, lush and ridiculous and beautiful, and you could still feel the small dent of Dex’s hand where he had held yours under the table.

“She missed you,” you said. “She pretended she didn’t, obviously, but she did.”

His mouth fell.

“And I missed you,” you added, staring very hard at the napkin. “Who else do I get to complain about her to? Mom and Dad don’t give a shit anymore.”

Matt’s laugh was tiny and helpless. “I missed you too.”

That almost made you forgive him.

You looked back at him. “Then stay. Or don’t. But don’t drift in and out like we’re all supposed to just reset every time you and Ellie get bored again.”

He nodded once, accepting the hit. For a second, it felt like being sixteen again. Like he was still family, sitting at your family table.

Then his head shifted slightly.

Toward the balcony. Towards Dex.

And you felt the whole conversation distort.

Matt didn’t pounce. He was much worse than that. He eased into it, like he was only following the evidence where it naturally led.

“You know why I’m worried about your boyfriend,” he said.

You sat back and sighed. “There it is.”

“I’m not trying to start a fight.”

“No,” you shook your head. “You’re building a case.”

He didn’t deny it.

“I know you care about me,” you said. “I do. But please don’t do that... That lawyer thing with your wording. You're making me feel like I’m supposed to realise I’ve accidentally admitted something.”

“I’m not cross-examining you.”

“You are.”

“I’m asking questions.” Matt exhaled.

You hated how much you still wanted his approval, because he was one of those people who had seen you grow up and therefore they had earned the right to worry.

He leaned forward a little.

“How did he tell you about… what he does?”

You looked at him and took a sip of wine to buy yourself time. “I’m not thick.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“No,” you said. “But he didn’t have to tell me shit for me to realise his job was more than sit around looking pretty with a gun.”

Matt’s jaw clenched slightly.

Outside, Elektra said something to Dex that made his shoulders go tense.

“He gave you a version,” Matt said.

You laughed once, without much humour. “Everyone gives a version.”

“Some versions are omissions.”

“God, you are so irritating.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” you cocked your head. “You think irritating is fine when you’re right.”

Matt tried again.

“There are patterns,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Patterns.”

“Yes.”

“With Dex.”

“With men like him.”

You looked sharply at him. “Men like him.”

Matt’s mouth tightened. “Men who know exactly how much truth to give you.”

Your throat tightened despite yourself.

He heard it, because damn that freakish hearing of his was apparently still going.

His voice flattened a bit. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“Always very generous.”

“I mean it. I think you’re smart. I think you know more than most people would.”

You looked down at your hands.

There was still the faintest mark beneath one nail where you had dug into Dex’s skin hard enough to pull him back. You could still feel the moment he snapped back into himself. The way his fury turned, not gone, just redirected because you had asked without words.

Matt said your name, like he used to when you were younger and trying not to cry.

“I think you’re too close to the facts,” he said. You almost smiled because only Matt Murdock would say something like that at a birthday dinner.

You set the fork down. “You mean I’m biased.”

“I mean you’re involved.”

“I’m allowed to be involved in my own life.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Matt went silent.

You looked at him now, studying his posture “Because it sounds like you think if you arrange the argument properly, I’ll reach your conclusion.”

“I think you’re making a dangerous choice.”

“There we go.”

His face soured. “He is dangerous.”

“So is Ellie.”

“She’s different now.”

“And?” You leaned forward. “And?”

Matt didn’t answer fast enough.

You lowered your voice. “We both know what she’s done. We both know what half of that collection cost before she started using invoices and whatever else she claims is legitimate now.”

“She got out.”

“Good for her.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I,” you groaned. “But she still deserves love, doesn’t she?”

Matt looked pained, and you hated hurting him. 

“You love her with a whole archive of exceptions,” you said. “But I’m supposed to treat Dex like one bad document is the entire record?”

“It’s not just one bad document—“

“It’s close enough.”

“No,” Matt said, and there was that courtroom firmness in him now. “I’m saying you probably know what the record looks like. You're just ignoring the parts you don’t want to read.”

You swallowed.

“I know what it costs,” he said. “To love someone and start making room for things you would have condemned.”

You looked toward the balcony.

Dex had turned his head slightly, like he could feel you looking. 

Matt kept going, though kinder now. “You start with mitigation. Then you start giving out exceptions. I’m just asking you to consider—”

“No.” Your voice cracked a little. “No, you’re asking me to accept your ruling.”

Matt stopped.

Ruling.

Huh. You really have changed over the two years he was gone.

You breathed in shakily. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about him. Maybe you’re not. Maybe there are things I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll regret this so badly I’ll hear your voice in my fucking head for the rest of my life.”

Matt’s shoulders lowered. 

“But my mistakes are mine to make,” you said.

Oh. 

You saw the tiny break in his knuckles. The big-brother part of him, the one who never really had anyone but himself, the part that still remembered you as a teenager at the kitchen table with bruised knees and far too much attitude for your own good, wanting to protect you from yourself because he had loved a more bloody Elektra the way you loved Dex. 

“I don’t want to watch you get hurt,” was all he managed to say, 

You looked down. “You might have to.”

He looked down.

You reached across the table first and found his hand, because touch had always been a sensory experience he reacted to. 

“I’m not blind,” you said, then immediately groaned. “Sorry.”

Matt’s mouth twitched. “It’s fine.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“I know he’s not safe.”

Matt’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles.

“But he listens to me,” you said. “And maybe that’s not enough for you. But it matters to me.”

Matt didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either.

For once, it felt like mercy.

Outside, you heard a scrape against the balcony table.

Matt’s head tilted. “What’s happening?”

You looked past him through the glass.

Elektra and Dex were no longer standing in their neat little interrogation positions. They looked like they were seated across from each other at the tiny balcony table, elbows planted, hands clasped, Dex’s shoulders covering half the scene. 

You blinked.

Then, despite the ache in your chest, you laughed. “I think they’re arm wrestling.”

Matt closed his eyes.

The look on his face was so exhausting that it only made you laugh harder.

—

The rest of dinner went by quickly after Elektra and Dex came back in from the balcony with no visible injuries, which you counted as a birthday miracle. 

Elektra looked smug and Dex looked composed, but there was a tightness around his lips that made you narrow your eyes. When you glanced between them and asked who won the arm wrestle, Elektra only smiled into her wine. Dex said nothing. Which, unfortunately for him, was an answer.

After that, everyone behaved, mostly. Matt stopped trying to lawyer you out of your own relationship. Dex stopped looking like he wanted to fling Matt through one of Elektra’s very expensive windows. Elektra told a horrible story about you at seventeen trying to jump from the garage roof into the pool and missing by an amount she called “humiliating but educational.” Matt laughed, Dex looked absolutely fascinated, like your teenage stupidity was precious. He asked one follow-up question, and you kicked him under the table.

By the time you left, she kissed both your cheeks, held your face for one second longer than usual, and said happy birthday one more time and told you to call her tomorrow.

Matt hugged you too, while Dex and Matt shook hands, proving to God and each other that they could survive physical contact without committing a felony.

Then Dex took you home.

You were sleepy in the car, full from dinner, cake, and emotional warfare. 

At your apartment, you kicked off your shoes by the door and padded into the kitchen for water. Dex followed, taking off his coat, watching you with that careful quiet he got when he was not sure whether he was allowed to touch you yet.

You leaned against the counter and looked at him over the rim of your glass.

“So,” you said. “Who really won?”

Dex’s expression went flat. “No.”

You smiled. “No?”

Dex flexed his hand once, as if remembering. “She’s irritating.”

You laughed. “Mmm.”

“But you love her,” he said.

Your laugh faded.

Dex leaned back against the counter opposite you, arms crossed. “And she loves you. And she’s capable of protecting you.” He said, as if it was the only metric that mattered. “So I guess I’ll try.”

You stared at him. “That is the nicest thing you’ve ever said about anyone.”

Dex rolled his eyes, but there was no bite in it. He looked tired now. Not physically, more like tired from pretending to be a decent person. 

You walked across the kitchen and took his hand.

The little marks from your nails looked worse up close. There were tiny, red, broken crescents on the back of his hand. 

“I’m sorry,” you said, trailing small kisses on them

Dex looked down at your lips touching the wounds. He shrugged as if you did what you had to do to get the result you wanted, and Dex had always been pragmatic like that. 

That night, Dex fell asleep with his arm locked around your waist.

He slept heavy, going slack against your back, his breath warm at the nape of your neck, his hand spread beneath your sleep shirt like he had reached for bare skin even in his sleep. 

Your phone pinged just after two.

Then again. Then again.

You reached for it carefully, lifting Dex’s arm just enough to drag the screen close without waking him.

It was a text…. From Elektra.

I’m glad he’s on your side.

Then the next text.

That’s still not the same thing as him being safe.

Another message came through before you could answer her.

Make an informed decision. That’s all I’m asking.

Then, she sent a link.

You stared at it for a long time in the dark.

Dex shifted behind you, his arm tightening automatically around your middle, his face pressing closer to your shoulder, still asleep. 

You opened it… and there it was. The lawsuit Dex was allegedly involved in.

The text was dense and written in bloodless language detailing private security and consultants. It detailed alleged intimidation and coercion, resulting in witnesses withdrawing statements and misplaced evidence. 

Dex’s name was there.

You read until the words blurred, until the apartment turned orange in the early morning. Dex slept against you while a colder version of him lived through depositions and sealed complaints and things nobody had ever proved.

But you knew your boyfriend. You knew he was capable of this. 

You waited for the feeling to change.

Maybe, you expected to be disgusted. Fear, more likely.

It didn’t come.

You felt the same about him as you did before. 

And of course it wasn’t fine. Matt was not wrong and Elektra wasn’t worried for no reason.

But you had always looked at the world through rose-tinted glasses.

By dawn, you closed the file.

Dex stirred when you set your phone down, as if even the sound of it against the nightstand was enough to pull some half-asleep part of him back to you.

His arm tightened around your waist first. Then he dragged you closer, face pressing blindly between your shoulder and neck, making it impossible to move even if you had wanted to.

“Sweetheart?” he mumbled, barely awake.

You hummed and covered his hand with yours.

For a second, you lay there with the lawsuit still burning behind your eyes. All those careful words and sealed statements. All those allegations circling the man in your bed like vultures.

And maybe Matt was right.

Maybe Elektra was right.

Maybe Dex was dangerous. 

But Matt had loved your sister through her murderous years, hadn’t he? So who were they to look at you like you were insane for dating an assassin?

You were now thoroughly informed, now, weren’t you?

You turned carefully in Dex’s arms until you were facing him. His eyes stayed closed, his brow furrowing faintly at the movement, but his hand slid up your back on instinct, keeping you close.

“Go back to sleep,” you whispered, kissing him softly.

Dex exhaled against your mouth, already sinking again. You tucked yourself beneath his chin, his arm heavy over your waist.

Informed decision made.

—end. 

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Dex taglist part 1:

You catch his wrist before the blade clears his sleeve and twist. Dex pivots into it, because he was always slippery like that. You drive your knee into his side, hook your ankle behind his, and put him on the ground.

The knife skitters under a decorative table and Dex hits the carpet on his back.

You step over him and plant your heel in the middle of his chest.“Stay down.”

Dex looks up at you, pupils blown, mouth parted.

He should be calculating his next move, except Dex has always liked being overpowered by you.

He swallows. Your client makes a pathetic noise behind you.

You can see exactly how much Dex is enjoying himself.

For the next two hours, the gala becomes the most expensive foreplay you have ever been forced to participate in. Dex tries the balcony so you shove your client under some cover. Dex switches to the service corridor, and you’re already there. He tries to use a champagne flute off a waiter’s tray as a projectile, and you push your client behind a marble pillar.

Every time he gets close, you put your body between him and the target.

At midnight, your contract ends.

Your client checks his watch smugly, like surviving the evening means he won. You escort him to his car, already done, already thinking about getting out of the dress.

Dex kills him in his own home. Technically not interfering with your job. 

You find him in your hotel room twenty minutes later because he wants to be found. He is sitting on the edge of your desk, still in that black suit, bruising blooming at his throat where you grabbed him.

The bastard looks pleased with himself.

You sigh and take off your earrings. “Did you kill my client?”

Dex tilts his head. “Technically, he stopped being your client at midnight.”

You tilt your head. “You think that makes it better?”

“I think it makes it funny,” he says. 

You slap him, and then he looks back at you with a red mark on his cheek.

You grab his shirt and shove him further into the desk.

He lets you be rough with him like it’s a privilege. After all, your anger is still attention and attention from you is the only thing he has ever really wanted 

“You ruined my job,” you hiss.

His hands find your waist. “I’ll pay whatever they dock you.”

“You can’t.” It almost makes you laugh thinking he can afford you. It doesn’t matter anyway. The contract was done, you still get paid.

“No,” Dex says, and there he is, honest in the worst possible way. “But I can make it up to you.”

Dex flips this around and drops to his knees. He’s on the floor in front of you, hands sliding under your dress, mouth pressing against the inside of your thigh.

Your hand goes into his hair to shove him away, but it’s a weak attempt. Before you know it, you’re gripping him to drag him closer to your arousal. 

“I missed this.” His teeth scrape carefully over your thigh enough to remind you exactly what his mouth can do. “Missed when you were mad at me.”

You pull his hair hard enough to make his eyes lift. “Shut up and do your fucking job.”

For once, he does and puts his mouth where you need it.

After your first orgasm, he looks up with his mouth wet.

“You forgive me yet?” he asks.

You shove him back by the forehead.

He laughs, then stands because he knows you too well. He knows the limit of your patience, he knows that you’re two seconds from climbing him like a tree.

He turns you around and bends you over the desk, and for whatever reason, you let him. Papers scatter and  the lamp wobbles. Dex is behind you, one hand dragging your dress over your hips while the other works his belt open.

He fills you in one steady stroke.

“Sweetheart,” he breathes as he thrusts, pressing in close behind you. “Come on. ‘M sorry.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the idea.”

You should hate that it makes you laugh.

Dex kisses the back of your shoulder, your spine, anywhere he can reach while he takes you apart like he used to in the New York FBI office, in the blindspot between the filing cabinets and the copy machine. He keeps saying please like it means something. Please forgive me. Please don’t throw me out yet. Please, sweetheart, I missed you, I missed you so much, you have no idea.

By morning, the desk has moved halfway across the room and your dress is ruined.

Dex is sitting on the edge of the bed, buttoning his shirt carefully as if he didn’t spend half the night on his knees and the other half making a mess of you.

You pick your gun up from the nightstand and point it at his chest.

Dex looks at the barrel. He knows you won’t pull the trigger. Worse, he knows you know he knows.

You cock your head toward the door. “You can fuck off now.”

For a second, he just stares at you, eyes sparkling with a hint of fondness.

Then the cocky bastard leans down and kisses you.

You should bite his fucking nose off. You kiss him back instead because you’re not entirely sure, anymore, if the gut feeling in your stomach is still hatred. It feels too familiar, like wanting him to come back so you can throw him out again.

When Dex pulls away, he smiles against your mouth. “See you soon, sweetheart.”

You should spit in his face, but Dex would like that too much.

A month later, you are at a different gala with a different dickhead, watching champagne bubbles rise, when you see Dex across the ballroom, already smiling at you. 

You roll your eyes because, unfortunately, you know exactly how this night is going to end.

Rinse and repeat.

—

You catch his wrist before the blade clears his sleeve and twist. Dex pivots into it, because he was always slippery like that. You drive your knee into his side, hook your ankle behind his, and put him on the ground.

The knife skitters under a decorative table and Dex hits the carpet on his back.

You step over him and plant your heel in the middle of his chest.“Stay down.”

Dex looks up at you, pupils blown, mouth parted.

He should be calculating his next move, except Dex has always liked being overpowered by you.

He swallows. Your client makes a pathetic noise behind you.

You can see exactly how much Dex is enjoying himself.

For the next two hours, the gala becomes the most expensive foreplay you have ever been forced to participate in. Dex tries the balcony so you shove your client under some cover. Dex switches to the service corridor, and you’re already there. He tries to use a champagne flute off a waiter’s tray as a projectile, and you push your client behind a marble pillar.

Every time he gets close, you put your body between him and the target.

At midnight, your contract ends.

Your client checks his watch smugly, like surviving the evening means he won. You escort him to his car, already done, already thinking about getting out of the dress.

Dex kills him in his own home. Technically not interfering with your job. 

You find him in your hotel room twenty minutes later because he wants to be found. He is sitting on the edge of your desk, still in that black suit, bruising blooming at his throat where you grabbed him.

The bastard looks pleased with himself.

You sigh and take off your earrings. “Did you kill my client?”

Dex tilts his head. “Technically, he stopped being your client at midnight.”

You tilt your head. “You think that makes it better?”

“I think it makes it funny,” he says. 

You slap him, and then he looks back at you with a red mark on his cheek.

You grab his shirt and shove him further into the desk.

He lets you be rough with him like it’s a privilege. After all, your anger is still attention and attention from you is the only thing he has ever really wanted 

“You ruined my job,” you hiss.

His hands find your waist. “I’ll pay whatever they dock you.”

“You can’t.” It almost makes you laugh thinking he can afford you. It doesn’t matter anyway. The contract was done, you still get paid.

“No,” Dex says, and there he is, honest in the worst possible way. “But I can make it up to you.”

Dex flips this around and drops to his knees. He’s on the floor in front of you, hands sliding under your dress, mouth pressing against the inside of your thigh.

Your hand goes into his hair to shove him away, but it’s a weak attempt. Before you know it, you’re gripping him to drag him closer to your arousal. 

“I missed this.” His teeth scrape carefully over your thigh enough to remind you exactly what his mouth can do. “Missed when you were mad at me.”

You pull his hair hard enough to make his eyes lift. “Shut up and do your fucking job.”

For once, he does and puts his mouth where you need it.

After your first orgasm, he looks up with his mouth wet.

“You forgive me yet?” he asks.

You shove him back by the forehead.

He laughs, then stands because he knows you too well. He knows the limit of your patience, he knows that you’re two seconds from climbing him like a tree.

He turns you around and bends you over the desk, and for whatever reason, you let him. Papers scatter and  the lamp wobbles. Dex is behind you, one hand dragging your dress over your hips while the other works his belt open.

He fills you in one steady stroke.

“Sweetheart,” he breathes as he thrusts, pressing in close behind you. “Come on. ‘M sorry.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the idea.”

You should hate that it makes you laugh.

Dex kisses the back of your shoulder, your spine, anywhere he can reach while he takes you apart like he used to in the New York FBI office, in the blindspot between the filing cabinets and the copy machine. He keeps saying please like it means something. Please forgive me. Please don’t throw me out yet. Please, sweetheart, I missed you, I missed you so much, you have no idea.

By morning, the desk has moved halfway across the room and your dress is ruined.

Dex is sitting on the edge of the bed, buttoning his shirt carefully as if he didn’t spend half the night on his knees and the other half making a mess of you.

You pick your gun up from the nightstand and point it at his chest.

Dex looks at the barrel. He knows you won’t pull the trigger. Worse, he knows you know he knows.

You cock your head toward the door. “You can fuck off now.”

For a second, he just stares at you, eyes sparkling with a hint of fondness.

Then the cocky bastard leans down and kisses you.

You should bite his fucking nose off. You kiss him back instead because you’re not entirely sure, anymore, if the gut feeling in your stomach is still hatred. It feels too familiar, like wanting him to come back so you can throw him out again.

When Dex pulls away, he smiles against your mouth. “See you soon, sweetheart.”

You should spit in his face, but Dex would like that too much.

A month later, you are at a different gala with a different dickhead, watching champagne bubbles rise, when you see Dex across the ballroom, already smiling at you. 

You roll your eyes because, unfortunately, you know exactly how this night is going to end.

Rinse and repeat.

—

Buck checked his phone again for the 10th time in half as many minutes. He had been waiting for the past hour for Daniel to deliver BB Urich to him with no response to Buck's texts of ETA?, You here? or even his final text of simply ???.

He sat on the sofa in the dimly lit room. To be honest, he didn't really care for this part of the job. It was messy and brutal and occasionally involved people who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, it had to be done.

The door opened. Finally.

Daniel walked up to Buck. "Hey."

Buck looked behind him, disappointed yet honestly unsurprised when he didn't see Miss Urich. "Where is she?"

Daniel shrugged. "She's not coming."

Buck stood and took his jacket off before tossing it onto the couch, then slowly walked up to Daniel. "Where is she, Daniel?"he repeated.

Daniel pretended to think for a moment. "I think she had a birthday party."

Buck sighed, then scoffed and shook his head. This wasn't the way he had planned for things to go — he'd hoped that he would just be able to intimidate Miss Urich into compliance (although he hadn't ruled out eliminating her if she refused), but unfortunately it seemed like he would have to beat her location out of Daniel first.

He sighed again as he took his leather gloves out of his pocket. "Now sooner or later," he said as he put them on, "we both know… you're gonna tell me."

Daniel glanced down at Buck's gloved hands, then back up at his face. "Fuck you, Buck."

Buck took a deep breath. He didn't want to harm Daniel, but clearly the younger man needed to be taught a lesson in loyalty.

He headbutted Daniel, then turned him and threw him down before grabbing him in a chokehold.

He held on as Daniel struggled. "Fuck," Daniel gasped, then bent down to try to loosen Buck's grip.

Buck kneed Daniel in the back and threw him down on the sofa, then began to punch him.

"No, no!" Daniel cried out.

Buck punched Daniel a few more times, then grabbed him and threw him onto the floor. "Where, Daniel?" he yelled, then added in a slightly softer tone, "I don't enjoy this." Tell me and I can let you go.

Daniel groaned. "I don't know where she is."

Fuck. Buck really didn't want to have to resort to more extreme measures, but Daniel wasn't giving him much of a choice.

He took his gloves off and tossed them away, then pulled his gun out of its holster and pointed it at Daniel.

Daniel groaned. "Oh, fuck!"

He whimpered then groaned again. "This isn't Helmand, Buck."

Buck cocked his gun and pointed it point-blank at Daniel's head with both hands. "Last chance." Come on, Daniel, just tell me where she is.

Daniel whimpered and groaned once again. "What is followin' his orders gonna do for you? How long until you're on the floor with a gun pointed at your head?"

He coughed. "Or what if it was Y/N's loyalty getting questioned, huh? You gonna beat the shit outta her too, point a gun at her?"

Buck shook his head and took a step closer. "Don't. Don't you dare bring her into this."

Daniel ignored him and continued. "Does she know about about your past? What about the body we buried the other night? You honestly think she'd stick with you if she knew what you've done, how many innocent people you've hurt or killed?"

Buck hesitated briefly. He had told you about being in the military and how he had met your father, but he had never shared specifics about Regiment 22 or Helmand, or about his time as a mercenary.

He mentally shook his head. Daniel was clearly trying to distract him.

Besides, if Daniel had been able to dig up information about Buck's past in the military, who knew what else he could find? Buck couldn't run the risk of him blowing the whistle on the Mayor and taking down his entire enterprise — and by proxy, you.

Buck fired, Daniel's head jerking as the bullet hit its mark.

Buck reholstered his gun, panting with both adrenaline and exertion, then picked up his suit jacket and stepped over Daniel's motionless body to walk back towards the entrance.

He slipped his jacket on and looked back at Daniel, a deep sense of sadness washing over him in addition to the familiar surge of adrenaline after completing an assignment. He had genuinely liked the younger man and had been hoping that Daniel could work his way up the ladder and succeed him as head of security once Mayor Fisk was ready to hand the keys to his empire over to you (with Buck presumably by your side to advise and support you however you needed).

He sighed deeply once again, then headed outside to prepare for cleanup.

Once the scene was cleaned up and Daniel's body disposed of, Buck drove home.

He parked in your private parking spot and sat in the car, unable to shake what Daniel had said about you from his mind.

He had never even considered the possibility of one day maybe having to choose between his love and fidelity towards you and his loyalty to the Mayor. He had never directly refused orders before, but in that case…

He shook his head. A highly unlikely scenario was the least of his worries.

You finding out details about his past, however…

Buck had killed people, innocent people — children, even — all in the name of Her Majesty as part of Regiment 22. And he hadn't stopped there — after his time in the Special Air Force ended, he had been recruited by a former squad mate to potentially join an American private military company before deciding to go freelance instead, which was how he had met James Wesley, and through Wes, Wilson Fisk… and eventually you.

He let out a breath, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. He had always used sex as not only a method of burning off adrenaline after a successful job, but as a way to distract himself from the memory of his targets pleading for their lives (if they even had time before Buck eliminated them).

There was no way Buck would ever seek relief with anyone but you — you were the only woman he ever wanted to be with for the rest of his life — but he didn't deserve to be allowed to touch you. Not when he was a weapon, only good for causing harm to others.

And he would never harm you.

Buck glanced at his watch, grimacing when he noticed the time. With any luck, you'd be asleep and he could try getting himself off in the shower before going to sleep in the guest room. If you noticed his absence in your bed, he'd just tell you that he hadn't wanted to disturb you at the late hour.

Either way, he couldn't stay in the car all night.

He only huffed.

“Dex, put me down.”

His hand flexed against your thigh. “Pretty girl,” he murmured, voice feverish, like he was talking to himself more than you. “Can’t stay out of trouble for five minutes, can you?”

Your stomach dropped.

“I’m gonna keep you down here for a little while, okay?” he said, already reaching for the door. “Just while I clean up the mess. Then I’ll come back and make it nice. You’ll be safe.”

You went cold.

“Benjamin,”

He paused, because you using that name meant you were pissed pissed. 

Then the lock clicked under his hand. He had made this safe room for you, when you were manic and erratic and borderline uncontrollable. It worked, but you hated it, even if it did save your life more times than once. 

After all, free use was one thing. You had both agreed to that. Dex could have your body whenever he wanted, and you could have his, but your freedom was still yours, right?

“It’s for your own good,” he said.

Poor, stupid Dex.

He really should have remembered who he was in love with.

When he reached the bottom step and shifted his weight to unlock the inner door, you grabbed the heavy flashlight from the shelf beside you and swung it as hard as you could into the back of his head. Not enough to kill him, of course! You loved him. Just enough to knock him out. 

When he woke up, he was upside down.

His ankles were tied to the ceiling, body tied to the support beam in the center of the basement. His shirt was halfway dragged open by gravity, blood still smeared over his skin, rope shoved between his teeth like a gag and tied tight enough to keep all his bad ideas trapped behind it.

You knelt beside him, a pretty skirt pooled around your thighs.

Dex stared at you, testing the ropes.

His eyes were wild.

He was scared, and not of the ropes. Dex could chew through pain and spit out the bones. No, he was scared because you had that sad look on your face. Apparently, he had fucked up badly enough that you had stopped fighting and started doing whatever the hell this was.

“You hurt my feelings,” you said.

The sound he made around the gag was wet and pathetic. Spit had already slicked the rope, leaking from the corner of his mouth, sliding wrong over his cheek because he was hanging upside down. He tried to say your name. You could hear it outside of the noise: Sorry. Baby. Please. 

All those half-hearted apologies were useless behind the rope.

“I gotta punish you for wanting to lock me up in the basement again.” You frowned, reaching past his face and tapped the metal column he was tied to once to taunt him.

Dex swallowed around the gag, eyes locked on yours, then flexed his bound fingers.

Then, you looked up from where you were kneeling.

You could see that he was very clearly hard.

Of course he was fucking horrified and guilty and scared half to death, and still hard enough to strain obscenely against his pants. His length was trapped thick under the fabric, too obvious to ignore, the head pressing a dark wet spot where he had already started leaking.

You laughed under your breath. “Oh, Dex.”

His eyes squeezed shut.

You reached your hand up while still kneeling, sliding your palm over him anyway.

Dex groaned through the gag.

His hips jerked, hungry and humiliating. The ropes held him in place, but not enough to hide what he wanted. 

Your hand rubbed higher over the shape through his trousers, palm dragging up until you felt him throb under the cloth. He made a strangled sound as drool gathered at his lip and dripped onto the concrete.

Messy, just as you liked him.

Dex was always so clean, so fucking orderly. Seeing him fall apart just tickles that sweet spot in your brain. 

You shifted a bit, and your skirt swayed.

Dex looked straight up from  under the hem, and he went so still it was almost funny.

The angle was filthy. His face was right there, upside down beside your thighs, and he could see exactly what you had been pretending he couldn’t: your panties were soaked clinging wet to you because apparently nearly dying, getting carried like a hostage, knocking out your boyfriend, tying him up, and scolding him over his hard on turned you on. 

You noticed of course. “Fucking perv,” you breathed.

His length jumped under your palm as you widened your knees a little enough to be cruel.

Dex made a sound so needy it should have embarrassed him. Instead, he looked up your skirt with his mouth forced open around the rope, spit on his forehead, eyes lustful and glassy, twitching in your hand like the sight itself was going to finish him by itself.

You squeezed him through the fabric, and he arched as much as the ropes allowed, hips trying to fuck up into your fist through his pants. You finally stood up and leaned closer, your mouth hovering over the strain. 

You kissed his clothed bulge, and he had a better view up your skirt now.

A gutted groan tore through the gag as your lips pressed a flutter of kisses over the wet spot at the head. Your palm held his thighs while your mouth dragged over the length, kissing little pecks here and there. He shivered. Big bad Dex, hanging upside down in his own basement, gagged and drooling while you made out with his arousal through his pants.

Your lips pressed harder over the head of him, and his hips kicked uselessly into your mouth. His eyes were glued under your skirt, like being denied made him fixate harder on the wet little mess between your legs.

You pulled back with a slick sound.

Dex whined.

“You don’t get to feel any more than that,” you said, sweet as rot. “You tried to lock me up.”

His eyes went devastated, but he twitched anyway. “Yeah,” you murmured, rubbing him again. “I know, baby. It’s awful when someone else decides what you’re allowed to have, isn’t it?”

His eyes darkened as fear sank deeper. Shame, too, perhaps, because he finally realised he had hurt you and would have gutted himself open if you asked sweetly enough.

You kissed him through his trousers again, because you weren’t merciful. You had never promised to be.

This time it was filthier. Your tongue dragged up the hard line of him while your fingers pressed into his hip, holding him still as you left a trail of damp in your wake. You mouthed at the clothed head, until his thighs strained against the ropes, until every breath came out muffled, until he looked split between begging and apologising and coming in his pants like a fucking loser.

Then you stopped.

Dex jerked forward, chasing your mouth.

The ropes didn't allow for much movement. 

You laughed softly. “There. Lesson one.”

You stood over him, smoothing your skirt down.

His eyes were still glued down there, shameless.

You bent down and kissed his forehead, then the scar on his cheek.

“I’ll untie you later,” you whispered, sickening and loving all the same. “After you’ve learned not to lock me in the fucking basement.”

Dex made a broken sound.

You kissed the corner of his gagged mouth, tasting spit and rope, before you turned toward the stairs.

Behind you, Dex was silent, and not because he had learned his lesson.

Because the creep you called your boyfriend was still too busy watching the slick gathering under your skirt every step of the way.

—

Note: phew, this was done in under 30 minutes and I just needed to get it outta my system 🫠🫠🫠inspired by this Batman #147 variant cover by Jorge Jimenez! (Not saying reader is Punchline and Dex is Joker, this is just a pose reference for the story!)

So you found instant coffee in the back of the cupboard and made it too strong because you were already running late. You burned your tongue, while the clasp on your necklace got caught in your hair. Your tights had a ladder in them, a thin line running up the back of your calf that no one else would probably notice but that you could feel all day like a crack in glass.

You changed twice and hated both outfits.

The third one was acceptable until you got outside and realized the waistband sat weird when you walked. It pinched at one side and shifted at the other. You kept trying to fix it discreetly beneath your coat while waiting for the train, which only made it twist more.

Then the train was delayed.

You kinda wished it would’ve been canceled; it would at least have given you something to be angry about. It was delayed by six minutes, then nine, then twelve, with the announcement changing every time you looked up. The platform filled around you as a lady stood close enough behind you that her bag pressed against your back every time they moved. A man near the stairs was watching videos without headphones, and two women beside you were having an argument in furious whispers.

Your phone buzzed in your hand.

Dex. Coffee machine dead?

You stared at the message for too long.

Normally, you would have answered with something dry and funny immediately. Instead, you typed three different replies and deleted all of them because every version sounded irritated, and you were irritated, but not with him.

You sent a heart.

He replied with three.

That nearly made you cry again.

Work was not terrible enough to justify how terrible it felt.

Nobody screamed at you and nothing caught fire. You didn’t get fired or humiliated, but it was just a constant fucking drag.

An intern, a fresh graduate called Grace, stopped you before you had taken off your coat because they needed help with something they had known about since yesterday. Your computer decided to update while going to the double-booked meeting room, so everyone stood in the corridor pretending not to be annoyed while Brad from HR insisted he had reserved it first. When you finally got inside, the projector would not connect.

Then your manager, Amy said, “This should only take five minutes,” and it took forty-three.

At some point, your coworker Jack, put a hand on your shoulder from behind to get your attention.

You nearly snapped. They apologized. You apologized for reacting. Then you spent the next ten minutes thinking about whether your apology had sounded strange.

That was when you had to go to the bathroom and cry.

You sat in the last stall with the lid down, both feet planted on the floor, trying to breathe quietly so that no one would hear you. You hated crying at work and the bathroom lighting and the thin toilet paper scraping under your eyes. You hated that there was no single problem you could point to and say, there, that’s why I can’t do this today!

Your phone buzzed again.

Dex had sent you a message about going out because task force was spotted in droves on the other side of the city, and that he was going out to get them. 

Then cried harder because you missed him, even though he lived with you and you had technically seen him that morning. 

You washed your face, went back to your desk, and tried to finish the day.

At four, Dex texted that he would probably be home late.

You stared at that one until the words blurred.

It was reasonable and normal, by your standards. He worked strange hours and disappeared with even stranger explanations. You were used to eating without him. You were used to waking up with him suddenly in bed beside you, one hand finding your waist beneath the blanket.

But you had spent the whole day thinking about going home to him.

You didn’t even want to talk to him. You wanted to walk through the door and see him standing in the kitchen. You wanted him to take your bag without asking and tell you to change into a soft cotton shirt so as not to trigger your sensory issues. You wanted to sit between his knees on the sofa while he rubbed slow circles into your thighs.

Instead, you sent. Okay. Be safe.

He reacted with a heart.

You put your phone facedown and finished the last hour.

The train home was worse than the train in.

You had to stand while a wet umbrella kept brushing your ankle, even though you didn’t realise it had been raining. A man across the carriage kept coughing into his fist and then touching the pole. Every time the train stopped, more people got on and nobody got off.

By the time you reached your building, your shoulders ached from holding them up around your ears. You dropped your keys in the hallway, and the sound of them hitting the floor was so annoying that you just stood there staring at them for several seconds before bending down.

The apartment was dark when you opened the door.

You turned on the lamp instead of the main light and you took off your coat and immediately felt colder. You put it back on. Took it off again because the lining felt horrible against your skin. You stood in the living room holding it, suddenly unable to decide what to do with it even though there was a hook three feet away.

You dropped it on the floor.

Then you felt guilty because Dex liked things clean and in their place.

Fuck. 

You sat down beside it and cried with one shoe still on and one shoe off, louder than you cried in the office bathroom. You cried because the apartment smelled faintly like Dex, but he wasn’t there. You cried because you had spent the whole day being reasonable, and now there was nobody in front of you to be reasonable for.

Afterward, you felt stupid and sticky-faced, which just made the sensations worse.

You picked up the coat and put your shoes away. You sent Dex a message asking when he would be home, then deleted it before sending because you didn’t want him distracted while he was out doing very dangerous Bullseye things.

You showered instead, and the water was too hot at first, but you didn’t fix it quickly enough, so your skin felt like it was boiling across your chest and shoulders. You washed your hair. Then the wet texture clung to your back and made you angry, so you wrapped them in one of Dex’s old shirts instead of a towel because it was softer.

You put on your sleep shorts and the gray shirt of his you always stole.

It smelled like the detergent you both used now, not specifically like him, which made you strangely sad.

You tried to eat.

There were pasta leftovers in the fridge. Dex had labelled the container DO NOT EAT in black marker, then added unless you are my girlfriend beneath it in smaller writing because you had told him one you liked one of those cheesy jokes, and Dex being Dex, listened and manufactured it into his life even though he got no real enjoyment out of it. You heated it up, took three bites, and put them back because the tomato sauce was chunky, and it felt weird on your tongue even though technically, there was nothing wrong with it. .

So you made tea and forgot the bag until it went bitter.

You turned on the television, then muted it because the voice of the newscaster irritated you. The silence irritated you too, so you turned it back on quietly with subtitles.

At some point, you checked the locks twice.

You knew Dex would not use the door when he came back. He would use the fire escape.

On most nights, the thought made you smile. Tonight, you wanted him to use his key like a normal person.

You wanted to hear it turn in the lock like a warning. You wanted him to call your name from the entrance so you had time to prepare for being touched.

But whatever. He probably didn't even bring his keys.

You climbed into bed with the lamp on.

Usually, you liked Dex coming home with that focus still in his eyes. You even loved the way he sometimes stood at the foot of the bed and looked at you as if he had followed you there. You liked the games he played to rile you up, because Dex knew exactly how to frighten you without making you unsafe. You liked restraints because he checked every knot, every buckle, every inch of space between your skin and whatever held you down.

You liked being helpless when it was Dex.

Usually.

But tonight, you just wanted him.

You wanted to press your face into his chest and let him complain that your wet hair was soaking his shirt. You wanted him to ask what happened, accept “nothing” as the answer, and hold you still.

The fire escape groaned outside the window.

Then the living room window slid open, and Dex climbed in with blood on his sleeve, still.

You were in that half-sleep state where your body had gone heavy but your mind was still floating somewhere above it, listening to the hum of the television you had left on in the living room and the old pipe knocking faintly in the wall. You were even still aware of your breathing, too shallow to be restful.

You knew what Dex was like after a long night. You knew the way adrenaline ran in his body like a live wire, making him hungry and a little fucking insane. Usually, you were more than happy to let him spend the rest of it on you.

That was the arrangement, after all.

The free use thing had happened over weeks of conversations, some serious, some filthy, some with you sitting cross-legged on the bed while Dex sat on the floor taking it all in like he was memorising a mission brief. What was okay, what was not. It was discussed and re-discussed, picked apart in daylight until even Dex’s paranoid brain had nothing left to gnaw on.

You had said it first half as a joke, grinning over your mug while Dex sat opposite you at the kitchen table looking like you had just handed him a loaded gun.

“What, you don’t like the idea?” you had teased.

His eyes had gone dark in a way that made your thighs press together beneath the table. “I like it too much.”

That had been the problem, Dex had always liked you too much, wanted you too much, so you made rules.

You told him what he could do if you were half-asleep, and what he could do if you were pretending to be asleep, which was different, because sometimes you liked lying there smug while Dex tried to kiss you patiently. You knew what he could do if he came home needy. 

Most days, you loved Dex coming into the bedroom while you were still sleepy, his hands sliding under your shirt like he owned every inch of skin he found there. You loved the first drag of his mouth against your shoulder and the rough sound he made when you pressed back into him without opening your eyes. You loved pretending to be annoyed while he kissed down your spine and told you that he knew you were awake because your thighs were already sticky for him.

You loved being wanted like that, loved Dex murmuring filthy nonsense against your skin about how pretty you were, how good you were for him even when you were barely awake. You loved the way he could make free use feel less like being used and more like being worshipped.

Sometimes he was sweet about it, climbing into the bed clean and careful, gathering you back against his chest, and kissing you awake inch by inch like he had all the time in the world. He would slide one hand over your stomach and whisper your name until you made that cute complaining sound he loved, and then he would laugh like you were the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Sometimes he was not sweet, still shaking with adrenaline and put a hand over your mouth before you could say something naughty, only to kiss your temple immediately. Sometimes he pinned your wrists because you liked to fight him for show, and he liked pretending not to know you were letting him win. Sometimes he found you half-asleep and still managed to fuck you awake so thoroughly that by the time you could think again, your face was hot, your hair was a mess, and Dex was in your ear telling you how good you were for letting him have you.

You liked that.

But tonight, your body had already been handled by the entire fucking day. Your nerves had been touched and touched and touched until touch did not feel like touch anymore. It felt more like threat.

You knew that, but then Dex came home and your first thought was still I want him.

You then heard the movement of him walking around the apartment, and not like a direct line to the bathroom, or the kitchen. Not even to check the lock, which he always did even when he had just broken into his own home like a lunatic.

Instead, he was coming to you.

The bedroom door was half-open, and you kept your eyes closed.

You told yourself it was because you were too tired to move, but part of you liked the game. Part of you wanted to be found like this, buried in the middle of the bed in his shirt and your sleep shorts, pretending you hadn’t been waiting all night, helping you forget the day, forget the job, forget everything except getting his hands on the one thing in the world that belonged to him.

He stopped in the doorway, and before you knew it, the mattress dipped.

Dex was always careful at first, even when he was feral. He put a hand beside your hip, not touching yet. His breathing was slow, but not steady. You could hear the way he held himself back for the sake of a rule he wanted to break only because you had once told him breaking it in the right way turned you into putty.

His fingers touched your ankle beneath the blanket, almost testing.

Your body gave a tiny shiver.

Dex went still, before his hand slid higher, possessive enough to make heat flicker through the exhaustion. His palm travelled up the back of your calf, over the bend of your knee, over your thigh. You heard him exhale, and the sound was so hungry it made your stomach flip despite everything.

“Pretty girl,” he whispered.

Your face warmed.

Stupid body. Stupid, fucking traitorous body.

He leaned over you, and his mouth brushed the back of your shoulder where his shirt had slipped wide at the collar. He started with one kiss, quickly followed by another. It became open-mouthed and filthy, like he was trying to be gentle and got overwhelmed. His hand found your waist beneath the shirt, fingers spreading against your skin.

For one second, it worked.

Your violent, devoted, half-mad Dex came home through windows and touched you like you were the only object of desire in the universe, who could make you feel filthy and adored at the same time, who could make being half-asleep feel like the dirtiest kind of safety.

His mouth moved to your neck, hand tightened at your waist.

“Missed you,” he breathed, rough against your skin. “Been thinking about you all night.”

Your thighs pressed together beneath the blanket before you could stop them.

Dex noticed and made a small sound against your throat, almost broken with relief, and shifted closer until his body was against your back. His hand slid over your hip, tugging you back into him.

For one second, you really wanted it.

Your body remembered him before it remembered itself. It remembered all the other nights he had come home ruined and desperate and crawled into bed like your body was the only place he knew where to put the violence. It remembered waking up already breathless to his greedy hands, his mouth saying filthy, adoring things against your skin until you went undone beneath him.

For one second, you wanted to be that girl again.

Dex’s hand tightened on your hip, and your breath broke in a way that sounded enough like pleasure to confuse both of you. He pressed his face into your neck and inhaled like he was trying to crawl inside your veins.

“Color?” he asked, it was rough, but still good of him.

You meant to say yellow.

The word was right there, sitting behind your tongue. Yellow meant slow down, meant you wanted him, but you needed him kinder. It would mean this was good, but also too much. But Dex’s mouth was on your throat, and his hand was warm under your shirt, and you had missed him so badly all day that admitting you needed less felt like losing him for a stupid reason.

So you said, “Green.”

Dex exhaled against your skin. “Yeah?” he murmured.

You nodded, eyes still closed.

You should have said yellow again then. You should have corrected yourself because there was still a good amount of space to do it, while his hand was only at your waist and his mouth was only at your neck, but your mind was gone and your body had betrayed you with that little shiver, and Dex had never been the best at reading the small things. He was more a flashing lights kinda guy.

Feelings had to be handed to him with both hands. It had had to be said plainly, right in front of his face, with no riddles and no hoping he would guess. Dex, through no fault of his own other than his upbringing, didn’t always know the difference between you trembling because you were turned on and you trembling because your nerves were fraying apart unless you told him.

He caught your hip and flipped you onto your back in one rough movement, fast enough that the mattress jolted under you and your breath left in a startled little sound. Dex was above you immediately, one knee between your thighs, one hand braced beside your head, his eyes blown wide with whatever the night had left in him. There was blood at the edge of his collar, and a smear of it near his wrist. His hair was damp from the rain, falling over his forehead in a way that made him look more unhinged at the same time.

“Missed you,” he said, voice wrecked.

Your stomach flipped.

Fuck, he was beautiful like this. Even terrifying,  he was beautiful, and you had built so much of your wanting around those two things. Dex looked down at you like he wanted to ruin you and worship whatever was left. 

His hand slid to your chin, possessive.

Your thighs pressed together on instincts held apart by his leg between them.

“Mmm ,” he whispered. “My pretty girl.”

Heat curled in you, slick and stupid, even as your skin prickled at the edges. Your bad day had not killed the part of you that loved being grabbed by him, turned by him, handled by him. You loved Dex rough because Dex rough still meant Dex focused, Dex obsessed, Dex so fucking hungry for you that the rest of the world could plunge itself into a void and he wouldn’t give two shits.

His mouth was on yours before you could think. The kiss was hard enough to make your head press back into the pillow. His hand stayed at your chin, holding you there while he took your mouth in a way that made your body go loose for him out of habit. You kissed him back, finger catching the front of his shirt, and when you pulled, Dex made a groan against your lips Then his hand went to the hem of your shirt.

His shirt, technically. He dragged it up your body impatiently, and the cool air hit your skin. You lifted your arms for him before you remembered you were tired. 

“Fuck,” he breathed.

Your face went hot.

He threw the shirt behind him.

Usually, you would have laughed and he would have said something deadpan and filthy enough to shut you up. Tonight, the loss of the shirt made you feel exposed too quickly, like your body had not agreed to be perceived that much even if your mind wanted to. 

But then Dex kissed down your throat, and you forgot for a second.

His hands were everywhere, greedy at your waist, your ribs, your thighs, reminding himself you were real, coaxing himself out of whatever horror he had done.

You arched under him, and that was honest too.

Your back lifted as your hands found his shoulders. He caught both your wrists in one hand and pressed them above your head, pinning them there against the pillow.

His eyes lifted to yours, fever-bright. “Yeah?”

You swallowed, and this time, no color came out.

Dex took it for yes because it did feel like a yes to you. Usually, you liked being held down. Tonight, you were too tired to know the difference.

Dex reached for the drawer beside the bed.

Your heart jumped, not in fear at first, but in anticipation.

You knew that drawer and what was in it. The rope came out in his hand.

Your breath caught.

“Still green?” he asked.

Say yellow.

Say yellow.

Say yellow.

You looked up at him, at the way his chest rose and fell. You thought about the whole day: the train, office, light, the way you had cried on the hallway floor because your coat had fallen.

You thought, I can take it.

So you said, “Green.”

Dex looked relieved and hungry and dangerously grateful, like he had been waiting all night for permission to stop being human in exactly the way you usually loved.

He tied your wrists to the headboard, roughly, because he was Dex.

He checked the space between rope and skin automatically, two fingers, always. Your wrists went up as the expensive silken rope was bound to the bedframe. 

Your body went liquid for one dizzy second.

You loved the helplessness that made your brain melt in a good way. It was a dirty drop of the heart, knowing you couldn’t reach for him now unless he let you. You loved how Dex looked at you when you were restrained, like your trust was the most intimate thing you had ever given him. 

“Look at you,” he whispered.

You looked at him looking at you, and for a moment, it was perfect.

Then the rope shifted just slightly. The knot didn’t tighten or hurt. Still, it felt wrong.

The texture scraped your skin in a way it never had before. You could feel every fiber, every point of contact. Your skin pressing against the rope seemed to get louder than everything else in the room somehow, louder than Dex’s breathing, louder than your own heartbeat. 

Your fingers flexed, and the rope moved again.

Your stomach dropped.

No.

You tried to breathe through it.

You tried to get the good feeling back. You tried to look at Dex, at his face, at the hunger you usually loved so much. You tried to remind your body that this was chosen and safe and that Dex had checked. That you had said green twice. That you loved this. You loved this. You loved this!

But the rope kept touching you and it felt like pure, crawling wrongness. The feeling started at your wrists and travelled up your arms until your shoulders froze and your chest went tight. The knot might as well have been around your throat for how quickly your breathing changed.

Dex lowered his mouth to your chest, still murmuring something against your skin,filthy and half-mad.

You barely heard it as your eyes filled.

At first, you did not even know you were crying. Then a tear slipped sideways into your hair, then another.

Dex felt you go still, and this time, he noticed immediately.

His head lifted. “Hey,” he said.

You blinked hard, but the tears came faster.

Dex froze above you, that predatory stance gone now. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, panic filling the back of his eyes, unable to read your thoughts.

You couldn’t answer.

His eyes moved over your face, your mouth, your chest, your wrists. He looked almost frantic trying to identify the injury. Was it blood? Bruises, pulled shoulder? Dex was good at identifying wounds. 

Emotions made him useless unless you labelled them for him, but this was blatant enough that even Dex understood something was wrong.

“Baby,” he said, voice suddenly stripped bare. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Your breath caught as the rope brushed your wrist again when you moved.

You made a horrible little sound, unable to speak.

Dex’s eyes snapped to your hands.

“What?” he said, reaching up but not touching yet. “The rope?”

You nodded once, almost ashamed.

He nodded grimly. “What about the rope?”

“I-It feels wrong,” you choked.

Dex went white.

Your fingers flexed again, and the texture dragged at your skin, and suddenly you couldn't bear it for one more second. Not even half of one. Your whole body reacted around the rejection, and the word  whispered out of you before you had decided to say it. “Red.”

Dex moved instantly.

His hand went to his belt and to his weapons, and for one horrifying second your body thought knife and almost spiralled further under, but Dex was not looking at you like that anymore. 

He pulled the blade free with the same face he wore disarming a bomb.

“Don’t move,” he said, practical.

He didn’t untie the rope, because untying took time.

Dex cut it, a clean slice through the first binding, then the second. The rope fell away from your wrists in loose pieces, useless on the pillow, and Dex threw the knife across the room like he couldn’t stand to have it near you a second longer.

Your arms dropped free, and he was already backing away.

Dex had stopped being a man and become an emergency response. His shoulder hit the dresser, hands lifted, palms open.

You were crying, that was all he saw.

Because of me, he thought.

“I’m away,” he said, a little too loudly and too quickly. “I’m away. I’m not touching you.”

His voice was flat. Dex had never been truly calm a day in his life, so was just forcing panic into a box in his mind that was labeled “procedure.”

You tried to say his name, but it came out broken, and it made him worse.

“I’ll go,” he said. “I can go. I should go. You need space. You need me out. I’ll go to the living room. No, not the living room, that’s not far enough. I’ll go downstairs. Outside. I can wait outside. I won’t come back until you tell me. I won’t touch you, I won’t—”

“Dex—”

“I hurt you.”

You wiped at the tears from your eyes now. “Y-you didn’t.”

He wasn’t listening.

His eyes kept dropping to your wrists. His mouth had gone pale and his hands were still up, still shaking slightly like he didn’t trust them anywhere near you.

You said red and you’re crying, was all he could think of.

“I hurt you.” he said, words coming faster now. “I scared you. I tied you down and you cried. I had a knife in my hand. I shouldn’t have had the knife, I knew I was—”

“Dex.”

“I’ll go.”

You tried to get back up, but even the sheets were starting to crawl as you were getting more and more overwhelmed. “N-No.”

“I need to go.”

“Dex,” it came out breathy.

“I need to not be near you right now.”

“Nuh-uh. Dex—”

“I can’t be the reason you’re looking at me like that.”

You were crying harder now because he was spiralling, and you were spiralling, and the two of you were dragging each other down in opposite directions. Dex kept retreating. You kept trying to pull him back with a voice that was too fragile to reach him.

He turned toward the door, and you finally snapped.

“I need you!”

He froze.

The shout tore out of you raw, loud enough to hurt your throat. Dex stopped like you had fired a warning shot.

You shoved yourself upright, blanket slipping around your waist, cheeks wet, chest heaving.

“Stop,” you sobbed. “Don’t you dare fucking leave while I’m-I’m l-like this.”

His face fell, panic still prevalent. “I’m trying not to make it worse.”

You choked on a breath. “You are making it worse!”

Dex went still.

You pointed at the floor like you could physically pin him there with the gesture. “You are standing over there looking at me like you’re a monster and you keep talking about leaving and I can’t— I can’t do this too, okay? I can’t comfort you while you’re trying to punish yourself. I need you.”

He looked devastated, and maybe that meant he was finally listening.

“I just—” Your voice broke, and the next words came out almost screamed, because gentleness wasn’t cutting it anymore. “I just need you to hold me, you fucking idiot!”

Dex stared at you, looking completely lost.

Every terrible conclusion he had been building in his head had slammed into that sentence like a shield and shattered at his feet.

“You want me to hold you?” he asked, barely audible.

“Yes,” you cried. “Jesus Christ, yes.”

His hands lowered by an inch.

“But I scared you.”

“Because I was already scared of everything,” you managed through gritted teeth. 

“You said red.”

“And you stopped!”

You could see it finally go through to him. His eyes flicked to the cut rope, then to your wrists, then back to your face. He was still terrified of himself, but he stopped backing away.

“I need you clean,” you said, voice shaking. “Then I need you here.”

He moved immediately.

Thank God.

Giving him an instruction helped him. Dex disappeared into the bathroom with stiff purpose, and you heard water slam on. As he scrubbed his hands too hard. You heard him almost losing it over the sink and forcing himself not to because you had not asked for that.

When he came back, the blood was gone.

His shirt was gone too, replaced with the white sleeveless one you liked, because it made him look less like he had crawled out of an alley and more like the man who lived here. Your man, who slept with one hand searching for you.

He stopped by the bed, still afraid to presume after what happened.

You opened your arms.

He climbed onto the bed slowly, gave you every second to change your mind, and only closed his arms around you when you grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him in.

Then he was truly in, and you folded into him.

You cried into his chest with both fists clenched in his shirt, and Dex held you like he was learning how to touch you all over again. 

“Tighter,” you sobbed.

His arms tightened.

“More.”

He held you properly then, careful but not distant. His chin tucked over your head, one hand spread between your shoulder blades, the other on your back, keeping you against him without trapping you. You could feel his heartbeat racing under your cheek, and still, yours was worse.

For a while, neither of you said anything.

Words had been too much all day. Everything had been too much all day. So this was good.

Dex pressed his mouth to your hair.

“I just had a bad day,” you whispered into his chest.

His arms tightened again.

You felt him inhale. “All day?” he asked.

You nodded.

His hand flexed against your back.

He wanted to ask, you could feel it. He wanted names, causes, targets, so he could follow them home and put them through a wall for making you feel like this. But for once, he held it in.

You cried harder, because he was warm and clean and finally close enough. “I meant to say yellow,” you whispered.

His chest stopped moving for a second.

“I know,” you added, before he could spiral again. “I know I said green. I know. I just wanted to be okay. I wanted it to be like usual.”

Dex didn’t speak for a long moment.

Then he held you a little closer and pressed his cheek to the top of your head. “Okay,” he said roughly.

It sounded like he was swallowing glass.

You pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was serious, jaw tight, laying in bed with the woman he loved crying all over his shirt, trying to work out how to shoot a bad day.

And then, with absolute sincerity, he asked, “Do you want me to kill anyone?”

You stared at him.

He meant it.

Fuck. 

It was so shocking, so cathartic, that a sudden laugh burst out of you, half-strangled against his chest. You tried to stop it, but the look on his face only made it worse. He frowned slightly, earnest, still holding you like he would rather die than move wrong.

“I’m serious,” he said.

You laughed harder. “Dex.”

“What?”

“You can’t kill someone because I had a bad day.”

His brow furrowed. “Why not?”

“Oh my God.”

“If there’s a person responsible—”

“There isn’t.”

“There’s usually a person responsible.”

“There was Brad from HR.”

You blinked at him. “How do you know about Brad from HR?”

“You texted me about him once.”

“That was, like, six months ago.”

“I remember things.”

Despite yourself, you laughed again.

You buried your face against him again, laughing and crying at the same time until you could barely breathe. Dex still looked confused, but his arms settled securely around you. He understood this much, at least, when you pressed closer instead of pushing him away.

“I don’t need you to kill anyone,” you murmured once the laughter faded.

“Okay.”

“I just need you to hold me.”

His mouth pressed to your hair again. “That I can do,” he said.

And he did, held you until your breathing slowed, until the room stopped feeling like it was on fire. 

After a while, very quietly, he added, “I would, though.”

You huffed a tired laugh into his shirt. “I know, honey.”

His arms tightened carefully around you.

“Just checking,” he said.

And because it was him, because he meant it with his whole heart, because the day had been awful and you were safe now, you laughed one last tiny laugh into the dark.

Dex held you like that until you slept.

—end. 

buy me a ko-fi here!

Dex taglist part 1:

He only huffed.

“Dex, put me down.”

His hand flexed against your thigh. “Pretty girl,” he murmured, voice feverish, like he was talking to himself more than you. “Can’t stay out of trouble for five minutes, can you?”

Your stomach dropped.

“I’m gonna keep you down here for a little while, okay?” he said, already reaching for the door. “Just while I clean up the mess. Then I’ll come back and make it nice. You’ll be safe.”

You went cold.

“Benjamin,”

He paused, because you using that name meant you were pissed pissed. 

Then the lock clicked under his hand. He had made this safe room for you, when you were manic and erratic and borderline uncontrollable. It worked, but you hated it, even if it did save your life more times than once. 

After all, free use was one thing. You had both agreed to that. Dex could have your body whenever he wanted, and you could have his, but your freedom was still yours, right?

“It’s for your own good,” he said.

Poor, stupid Dex.

He really should have remembered who he was in love with.

When he reached the bottom step and shifted his weight to unlock the inner door, you grabbed the heavy flashlight from the shelf beside you and swung it as hard as you could into the back of his head. Not enough to kill him, of course! You loved him. Just enough to knock him out. 

When he woke up, he was upside down.

His ankles were tied to the ceiling, body tied to the support beam in the center of the basement. His shirt was halfway dragged open by gravity, blood still smeared over his skin, rope shoved between his teeth like a gag and tied tight enough to keep all his bad ideas trapped behind it.

You knelt beside him, a pretty skirt pooled around your thighs.

Dex stared at you, testing the ropes.

His eyes were wild.

He was scared, and not of the ropes. Dex could chew through pain and spit out the bones. No, he was scared because you had that sad look on your face. Apparently, he had fucked up badly enough that you had stopped fighting and started doing whatever the hell this was.

“You hurt my feelings,” you said.

The sound he made around the gag was wet and pathetic. Spit had already slicked the rope, leaking from the corner of his mouth, sliding wrong over his cheek because he was hanging upside down. He tried to say your name. You could hear it outside of the noise: Sorry. Baby. Please. 

All those half-hearted apologies were useless behind the rope.

“I gotta punish you for wanting to lock me up in the basement again.” You frowned, reaching past his face and tapped the metal column he was tied to once to taunt him.

Dex swallowed around the gag, eyes locked on yours, then flexed his bound fingers.

Then, you looked up from where you were kneeling.

You could see that he was very clearly hard.

Of course he was fucking horrified and guilty and scared half to death, and still hard enough to strain obscenely against his pants. His length was trapped thick under the fabric, too obvious to ignore, the head pressing a dark wet spot where he had already started leaking.

You laughed under your breath. “Oh, Dex.”

His eyes squeezed shut.

You reached your hand up while still kneeling, sliding your palm over him anyway.

Dex groaned through the gag.

His hips jerked, hungry and humiliating. The ropes held him in place, but not enough to hide what he wanted. 

Your hand rubbed higher over the shape through his trousers, palm dragging up until you felt him throb under the cloth. He made a strangled sound as drool gathered at his lip and dripped onto the concrete.

Messy, just as you liked him.

Dex was always so clean, so fucking orderly. Seeing him fall apart just tickles that sweet spot in your brain. 

You shifted a bit, and your skirt swayed.

Dex looked straight up from  under the hem, and he went so still it was almost funny.

The angle was filthy. His face was right there, upside down beside your thighs, and he could see exactly what you had been pretending he couldn’t: your panties were soaked clinging wet to you because apparently nearly dying, getting carried like a hostage, knocking out your boyfriend, tying him up, and scolding him over his hard on turned you on. 

You noticed of course. “Fucking perv,” you breathed.

His length jumped under your palm as you widened your knees a little enough to be cruel.

Dex made a sound so needy it should have embarrassed him. Instead, he looked up your skirt with his mouth forced open around the rope, spit on his forehead, eyes lustful and glassy, twitching in your hand like the sight itself was going to finish him by itself.

You squeezed him through the fabric, and he arched as much as the ropes allowed, hips trying to fuck up into your fist through his pants. You finally stood up and leaned closer, your mouth hovering over the strain. 

You kissed his clothed bulge, and he had a better view up your skirt now.

A gutted groan tore through the gag as your lips pressed a flutter of kisses over the wet spot at the head. Your palm held his thighs while your mouth dragged over the length, kissing little pecks here and there. He shivered. Big bad Dex, hanging upside down in his own basement, gagged and drooling while you made out with his arousal through his pants.

Your lips pressed harder over the head of him, and his hips kicked uselessly into your mouth. His eyes were glued under your skirt, like being denied made him fixate harder on the wet little mess between your legs.

You pulled back with a slick sound.

Dex whined.

“You don’t get to feel any more than that,” you said, sweet as rot. “You tried to lock me up.”

His eyes went devastated, but he twitched anyway. “Yeah,” you murmured, rubbing him again. “I know, baby. It’s awful when someone else decides what you’re allowed to have, isn’t it?”

His eyes darkened as fear sank deeper. Shame, too, perhaps, because he finally realised he had hurt you and would have gutted himself open if you asked sweetly enough.

You kissed him through his trousers again, because you weren’t merciful. You had never promised to be.

This time it was filthier. Your tongue dragged up the hard line of him while your fingers pressed into his hip, holding him still as you left a trail of damp in your wake. You mouthed at the clothed head, until his thighs strained against the ropes, until every breath came out muffled, until he looked split between begging and apologising and coming in his pants like a fucking loser.

Then you stopped.

Dex jerked forward, chasing your mouth.

The ropes didn't allow for much movement. 

You laughed softly. “There. Lesson one.”

You stood over him, smoothing your skirt down.

His eyes were still glued down there, shameless.

You bent down and kissed his forehead, then the scar on his cheek.

“I’ll untie you later,” you whispered, sickening and loving all the same. “After you’ve learned not to lock me in the fucking basement.”

Dex made a broken sound.

You kissed the corner of his gagged mouth, tasting spit and rope, before you turned toward the stairs.

Behind you, Dex was silent, and not because he had learned his lesson.

Because the creep you called your boyfriend was still too busy watching the slick gathering under your skirt every step of the way.

—

Note: phew, this was done in under 30 minutes and I just needed to get it outta my system 🫠🫠🫠inspired by this Batman #147 variant cover by Jorge Jimenez! (Not saying reader is Punchline and Dex is Joker, this is just a pose reference for the story!)

So you found instant coffee in the back of the cupboard and made it too strong because you were already running late. You burned your tongue, while the clasp on your necklace got caught in your hair. Your tights had a ladder in them, a thin line running up the back of your calf that no one else would probably notice but that you could feel all day like a crack in glass.

You changed twice and hated both outfits.

The third one was acceptable until you got outside and realized the waistband sat weird when you walked. It pinched at one side and shifted at the other. You kept trying to fix it discreetly beneath your coat while waiting for the train, which only made it twist more.

Then the train was delayed.

You kinda wished it would’ve been canceled; it would at least have given you something to be angry about. It was delayed by six minutes, then nine, then twelve, with the announcement changing every time you looked up. The platform filled around you as a lady stood close enough behind you that her bag pressed against your back every time they moved. A man near the stairs was watching videos without headphones, and two women beside you were having an argument in furious whispers.

Your phone buzzed in your hand.

Dex. Coffee machine dead?

You stared at the message for too long.

Normally, you would have answered with something dry and funny immediately. Instead, you typed three different replies and deleted all of them because every version sounded irritated, and you were irritated, but not with him.

You sent a heart.

He replied with three.

That nearly made you cry again.

Work was not terrible enough to justify how terrible it felt.

Nobody screamed at you and nothing caught fire. You didn’t get fired or humiliated, but it was just a constant fucking drag.

An intern, a fresh graduate called Grace, stopped you before you had taken off your coat because they needed help with something they had known about since yesterday. Your computer decided to update while going to the double-booked meeting room, so everyone stood in the corridor pretending not to be annoyed while Brad from HR insisted he had reserved it first. When you finally got inside, the projector would not connect.

Then your manager, Amy said, “This should only take five minutes,” and it took forty-three.

At some point, your coworker Jack, put a hand on your shoulder from behind to get your attention.

You nearly snapped. They apologized. You apologized for reacting. Then you spent the next ten minutes thinking about whether your apology had sounded strange.

That was when you had to go to the bathroom and cry.

You sat in the last stall with the lid down, both feet planted on the floor, trying to breathe quietly so that no one would hear you. You hated crying at work and the bathroom lighting and the thin toilet paper scraping under your eyes. You hated that there was no single problem you could point to and say, there, that’s why I can’t do this today!

Your phone buzzed again.

Dex had sent you a message about going out because task force was spotted in droves on the other side of the city, and that he was going out to get them. 

Then cried harder because you missed him, even though he lived with you and you had technically seen him that morning. 

You washed your face, went back to your desk, and tried to finish the day.

At four, Dex texted that he would probably be home late.

You stared at that one until the words blurred.

It was reasonable and normal, by your standards. He worked strange hours and disappeared with even stranger explanations. You were used to eating without him. You were used to waking up with him suddenly in bed beside you, one hand finding your waist beneath the blanket.

But you had spent the whole day thinking about going home to him.

You didn’t even want to talk to him. You wanted to walk through the door and see him standing in the kitchen. You wanted him to take your bag without asking and tell you to change into a soft cotton shirt so as not to trigger your sensory issues. You wanted to sit between his knees on the sofa while he rubbed slow circles into your thighs.

Instead, you sent. Okay. Be safe.

He reacted with a heart.

You put your phone facedown and finished the last hour.

The train home was worse than the train in.

You had to stand while a wet umbrella kept brushing your ankle, even though you didn’t realise it had been raining. A man across the carriage kept coughing into his fist and then touching the pole. Every time the train stopped, more people got on and nobody got off.

By the time you reached your building, your shoulders ached from holding them up around your ears. You dropped your keys in the hallway, and the sound of them hitting the floor was so annoying that you just stood there staring at them for several seconds before bending down.

The apartment was dark when you opened the door.

You turned on the lamp instead of the main light and you took off your coat and immediately felt colder. You put it back on. Took it off again because the lining felt horrible against your skin. You stood in the living room holding it, suddenly unable to decide what to do with it even though there was a hook three feet away.

You dropped it on the floor.

Then you felt guilty because Dex liked things clean and in their place.

Fuck. 

You sat down beside it and cried with one shoe still on and one shoe off, louder than you cried in the office bathroom. You cried because the apartment smelled faintly like Dex, but he wasn’t there. You cried because you had spent the whole day being reasonable, and now there was nobody in front of you to be reasonable for.

Afterward, you felt stupid and sticky-faced, which just made the sensations worse.

You picked up the coat and put your shoes away. You sent Dex a message asking when he would be home, then deleted it before sending because you didn’t want him distracted while he was out doing very dangerous Bullseye things.

You showered instead, and the water was too hot at first, but you didn’t fix it quickly enough, so your skin felt like it was boiling across your chest and shoulders. You washed your hair. Then the wet texture clung to your back and made you angry, so you wrapped them in one of Dex’s old shirts instead of a towel because it was softer.

You put on your sleep shorts and the gray shirt of his you always stole.

It smelled like the detergent you both used now, not specifically like him, which made you strangely sad.

You tried to eat.

There were pasta leftovers in the fridge. Dex had labelled the container DO NOT EAT in black marker, then added unless you are my girlfriend beneath it in smaller writing because you had told him one you liked one of those cheesy jokes, and Dex being Dex, listened and manufactured it into his life even though he got no real enjoyment out of it. You heated it up, took three bites, and put them back because the tomato sauce was chunky, and it felt weird on your tongue even though technically, there was nothing wrong with it. .

So you made tea and forgot the bag until it went bitter.

You turned on the television, then muted it because the voice of the newscaster irritated you. The silence irritated you too, so you turned it back on quietly with subtitles.

At some point, you checked the locks twice.

You knew Dex would not use the door when he came back. He would use the fire escape.

On most nights, the thought made you smile. Tonight, you wanted him to use his key like a normal person.

You wanted to hear it turn in the lock like a warning. You wanted him to call your name from the entrance so you had time to prepare for being touched.

But whatever. He probably didn't even bring his keys.

You climbed into bed with the lamp on.

Usually, you liked Dex coming home with that focus still in his eyes. You even loved the way he sometimes stood at the foot of the bed and looked at you as if he had followed you there. You liked the games he played to rile you up, because Dex knew exactly how to frighten you without making you unsafe. You liked restraints because he checked every knot, every buckle, every inch of space between your skin and whatever held you down.

You liked being helpless when it was Dex.

Usually.

But tonight, you just wanted him.

You wanted to press your face into his chest and let him complain that your wet hair was soaking his shirt. You wanted him to ask what happened, accept “nothing” as the answer, and hold you still.

The fire escape groaned outside the window.

Then the living room window slid open, and Dex climbed in with blood on his sleeve, still.

You were in that half-sleep state where your body had gone heavy but your mind was still floating somewhere above it, listening to the hum of the television you had left on in the living room and the old pipe knocking faintly in the wall. You were even still aware of your breathing, too shallow to be restful.

You knew what Dex was like after a long night. You knew the way adrenaline ran in his body like a live wire, making him hungry and a little fucking insane. Usually, you were more than happy to let him spend the rest of it on you.

That was the arrangement, after all.

The free use thing had happened over weeks of conversations, some serious, some filthy, some with you sitting cross-legged on the bed while Dex sat on the floor taking it all in like he was memorising a mission brief. What was okay, what was not. It was discussed and re-discussed, picked apart in daylight until even Dex’s paranoid brain had nothing left to gnaw on.

You had said it first half as a joke, grinning over your mug while Dex sat opposite you at the kitchen table looking like you had just handed him a loaded gun.

“What, you don’t like the idea?” you had teased.

His eyes had gone dark in a way that made your thighs press together beneath the table. “I like it too much.”

That had been the problem, Dex had always liked you too much, wanted you too much, so you made rules.

You told him what he could do if you were half-asleep, and what he could do if you were pretending to be asleep, which was different, because sometimes you liked lying there smug while Dex tried to kiss you patiently. You knew what he could do if he came home needy. 

Most days, you loved Dex coming into the bedroom while you were still sleepy, his hands sliding under your shirt like he owned every inch of skin he found there. You loved the first drag of his mouth against your shoulder and the rough sound he made when you pressed back into him without opening your eyes. You loved pretending to be annoyed while he kissed down your spine and told you that he knew you were awake because your thighs were already sticky for him.

You loved being wanted like that, loved Dex murmuring filthy nonsense against your skin about how pretty you were, how good you were for him even when you were barely awake. You loved the way he could make free use feel less like being used and more like being worshipped.

Sometimes he was sweet about it, climbing into the bed clean and careful, gathering you back against his chest, and kissing you awake inch by inch like he had all the time in the world. He would slide one hand over your stomach and whisper your name until you made that cute complaining sound he loved, and then he would laugh like you were the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Sometimes he was not sweet, still shaking with adrenaline and put a hand over your mouth before you could say something naughty, only to kiss your temple immediately. Sometimes he pinned your wrists because you liked to fight him for show, and he liked pretending not to know you were letting him win. Sometimes he found you half-asleep and still managed to fuck you awake so thoroughly that by the time you could think again, your face was hot, your hair was a mess, and Dex was in your ear telling you how good you were for letting him have you.

You liked that.

But tonight, your body had already been handled by the entire fucking day. Your nerves had been touched and touched and touched until touch did not feel like touch anymore. It felt more like threat.

You knew that, but then Dex came home and your first thought was still I want him.

You then heard the movement of him walking around the apartment, and not like a direct line to the bathroom, or the kitchen. Not even to check the lock, which he always did even when he had just broken into his own home like a lunatic.

Instead, he was coming to you.

The bedroom door was half-open, and you kept your eyes closed.

You told yourself it was because you were too tired to move, but part of you liked the game. Part of you wanted to be found like this, buried in the middle of the bed in his shirt and your sleep shorts, pretending you hadn’t been waiting all night, helping you forget the day, forget the job, forget everything except getting his hands on the one thing in the world that belonged to him.

He stopped in the doorway, and before you knew it, the mattress dipped.

Dex was always careful at first, even when he was feral. He put a hand beside your hip, not touching yet. His breathing was slow, but not steady. You could hear the way he held himself back for the sake of a rule he wanted to break only because you had once told him breaking it in the right way turned you into putty.

His fingers touched your ankle beneath the blanket, almost testing.

Your body gave a tiny shiver.

Dex went still, before his hand slid higher, possessive enough to make heat flicker through the exhaustion. His palm travelled up the back of your calf, over the bend of your knee, over your thigh. You heard him exhale, and the sound was so hungry it made your stomach flip despite everything.

“Pretty girl,” he whispered.

Your face warmed.

Stupid body. Stupid, fucking traitorous body.

He leaned over you, and his mouth brushed the back of your shoulder where his shirt had slipped wide at the collar. He started with one kiss, quickly followed by another. It became open-mouthed and filthy, like he was trying to be gentle and got overwhelmed. His hand found your waist beneath the shirt, fingers spreading against your skin.

For one second, it worked.

Your violent, devoted, half-mad Dex came home through windows and touched you like you were the only object of desire in the universe, who could make you feel filthy and adored at the same time, who could make being half-asleep feel like the dirtiest kind of safety.

His mouth moved to your neck, hand tightened at your waist.

“Missed you,” he breathed, rough against your skin. “Been thinking about you all night.”

Your thighs pressed together beneath the blanket before you could stop them.

Dex noticed and made a small sound against your throat, almost broken with relief, and shifted closer until his body was against your back. His hand slid over your hip, tugging you back into him.

For one second, you really wanted it.

Your body remembered him before it remembered itself. It remembered all the other nights he had come home ruined and desperate and crawled into bed like your body was the only place he knew where to put the violence. It remembered waking up already breathless to his greedy hands, his mouth saying filthy, adoring things against your skin until you went undone beneath him.

For one second, you wanted to be that girl again.

Dex’s hand tightened on your hip, and your breath broke in a way that sounded enough like pleasure to confuse both of you. He pressed his face into your neck and inhaled like he was trying to crawl inside your veins.

“Color?” he asked, it was rough, but still good of him.

You meant to say yellow.

The word was right there, sitting behind your tongue. Yellow meant slow down, meant you wanted him, but you needed him kinder. It would mean this was good, but also too much. But Dex’s mouth was on your throat, and his hand was warm under your shirt, and you had missed him so badly all day that admitting you needed less felt like losing him for a stupid reason.

So you said, “Green.”

Dex exhaled against your skin. “Yeah?” he murmured.

You nodded, eyes still closed.

You should have said yellow again then. You should have corrected yourself because there was still a good amount of space to do it, while his hand was only at your waist and his mouth was only at your neck, but your mind was gone and your body had betrayed you with that little shiver, and Dex had never been the best at reading the small things. He was more a flashing lights kinda guy.

Feelings had to be handed to him with both hands. It had had to be said plainly, right in front of his face, with no riddles and no hoping he would guess. Dex, through no fault of his own other than his upbringing, didn’t always know the difference between you trembling because you were turned on and you trembling because your nerves were fraying apart unless you told him.

He caught your hip and flipped you onto your back in one rough movement, fast enough that the mattress jolted under you and your breath left in a startled little sound. Dex was above you immediately, one knee between your thighs, one hand braced beside your head, his eyes blown wide with whatever the night had left in him. There was blood at the edge of his collar, and a smear of it near his wrist. His hair was damp from the rain, falling over his forehead in a way that made him look more unhinged at the same time.

“Missed you,” he said, voice wrecked.

Your stomach flipped.

Fuck, he was beautiful like this. Even terrifying,  he was beautiful, and you had built so much of your wanting around those two things. Dex looked down at you like he wanted to ruin you and worship whatever was left. 

His hand slid to your chin, possessive.

Your thighs pressed together on instincts held apart by his leg between them.

“Mmm ,” he whispered. “My pretty girl.”

Heat curled in you, slick and stupid, even as your skin prickled at the edges. Your bad day had not killed the part of you that loved being grabbed by him, turned by him, handled by him. You loved Dex rough because Dex rough still meant Dex focused, Dex obsessed, Dex so fucking hungry for you that the rest of the world could plunge itself into a void and he wouldn’t give two shits.

His mouth was on yours before you could think. The kiss was hard enough to make your head press back into the pillow. His hand stayed at your chin, holding you there while he took your mouth in a way that made your body go loose for him out of habit. You kissed him back, finger catching the front of his shirt, and when you pulled, Dex made a groan against your lips Then his hand went to the hem of your shirt.

His shirt, technically. He dragged it up your body impatiently, and the cool air hit your skin. You lifted your arms for him before you remembered you were tired. 

“Fuck,” he breathed.

Your face went hot.

He threw the shirt behind him.

Usually, you would have laughed and he would have said something deadpan and filthy enough to shut you up. Tonight, the loss of the shirt made you feel exposed too quickly, like your body had not agreed to be perceived that much even if your mind wanted to. 

But then Dex kissed down your throat, and you forgot for a second.

His hands were everywhere, greedy at your waist, your ribs, your thighs, reminding himself you were real, coaxing himself out of whatever horror he had done.

You arched under him, and that was honest too.

Your back lifted as your hands found his shoulders. He caught both your wrists in one hand and pressed them above your head, pinning them there against the pillow.

His eyes lifted to yours, fever-bright. “Yeah?”

You swallowed, and this time, no color came out.

Dex took it for yes because it did feel like a yes to you. Usually, you liked being held down. Tonight, you were too tired to know the difference.

Dex reached for the drawer beside the bed.

Your heart jumped, not in fear at first, but in anticipation.

You knew that drawer and what was in it. The rope came out in his hand.

Your breath caught.

“Still green?” he asked.

Say yellow.

Say yellow.

Say yellow.

You looked up at him, at the way his chest rose and fell. You thought about the whole day: the train, office, light, the way you had cried on the hallway floor because your coat had fallen.

You thought, I can take it.

So you said, “Green.”

Dex looked relieved and hungry and dangerously grateful, like he had been waiting all night for permission to stop being human in exactly the way you usually loved.

He tied your wrists to the headboard, roughly, because he was Dex.

He checked the space between rope and skin automatically, two fingers, always. Your wrists went up as the expensive silken rope was bound to the bedframe. 

Your body went liquid for one dizzy second.

You loved the helplessness that made your brain melt in a good way. It was a dirty drop of the heart, knowing you couldn’t reach for him now unless he let you. You loved how Dex looked at you when you were restrained, like your trust was the most intimate thing you had ever given him. 

“Look at you,” he whispered.

You looked at him looking at you, and for a moment, it was perfect.

Then the rope shifted just slightly. The knot didn’t tighten or hurt. Still, it felt wrong.

The texture scraped your skin in a way it never had before. You could feel every fiber, every point of contact. Your skin pressing against the rope seemed to get louder than everything else in the room somehow, louder than Dex’s breathing, louder than your own heartbeat. 

Your fingers flexed, and the rope moved again.

Your stomach dropped.

No.

You tried to breathe through it.

You tried to get the good feeling back. You tried to look at Dex, at his face, at the hunger you usually loved so much. You tried to remind your body that this was chosen and safe and that Dex had checked. That you had said green twice. That you loved this. You loved this. You loved this!

But the rope kept touching you and it felt like pure, crawling wrongness. The feeling started at your wrists and travelled up your arms until your shoulders froze and your chest went tight. The knot might as well have been around your throat for how quickly your breathing changed.

Dex lowered his mouth to your chest, still murmuring something against your skin,filthy and half-mad.

You barely heard it as your eyes filled.

At first, you did not even know you were crying. Then a tear slipped sideways into your hair, then another.

Dex felt you go still, and this time, he noticed immediately.

His head lifted. “Hey,” he said.

You blinked hard, but the tears came faster.

Dex froze above you, that predatory stance gone now. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, panic filling the back of his eyes, unable to read your thoughts.

You couldn’t answer.

His eyes moved over your face, your mouth, your chest, your wrists. He looked almost frantic trying to identify the injury. Was it blood? Bruises, pulled shoulder? Dex was good at identifying wounds. 

Emotions made him useless unless you labelled them for him, but this was blatant enough that even Dex understood something was wrong.

“Baby,” he said, voice suddenly stripped bare. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Your breath caught as the rope brushed your wrist again when you moved.

You made a horrible little sound, unable to speak.

Dex’s eyes snapped to your hands.

“What?” he said, reaching up but not touching yet. “The rope?”

You nodded once, almost ashamed.

He nodded grimly. “What about the rope?”

“I-It feels wrong,” you choked.

Dex went white.

Your fingers flexed again, and the texture dragged at your skin, and suddenly you couldn't bear it for one more second. Not even half of one. Your whole body reacted around the rejection, and the word  whispered out of you before you had decided to say it. “Red.”

Dex moved instantly.

His hand went to his belt and to his weapons, and for one horrifying second your body thought knife and almost spiralled further under, but Dex was not looking at you like that anymore. 

He pulled the blade free with the same face he wore disarming a bomb.

“Don’t move,” he said, practical.

He didn’t untie the rope, because untying took time.

Dex cut it, a clean slice through the first binding, then the second. The rope fell away from your wrists in loose pieces, useless on the pillow, and Dex threw the knife across the room like he couldn’t stand to have it near you a second longer.

Your arms dropped free, and he was already backing away.

Dex had stopped being a man and become an emergency response. His shoulder hit the dresser, hands lifted, palms open.

You were crying, that was all he saw.

Because of me, he thought.

“I’m away,” he said, a little too loudly and too quickly. “I’m away. I’m not touching you.”

His voice was flat. Dex had never been truly calm a day in his life, so was just forcing panic into a box in his mind that was labeled “procedure.”

You tried to say his name, but it came out broken, and it made him worse.

“I’ll go,” he said. “I can go. I should go. You need space. You need me out. I’ll go to the living room. No, not the living room, that’s not far enough. I’ll go downstairs. Outside. I can wait outside. I won’t come back until you tell me. I won’t touch you, I won’t—”

“Dex—”

“I hurt you.”

You wiped at the tears from your eyes now. “Y-you didn’t.”

He wasn’t listening.

His eyes kept dropping to your wrists. His mouth had gone pale and his hands were still up, still shaking slightly like he didn’t trust them anywhere near you.

You said red and you’re crying, was all he could think of.

“I hurt you.” he said, words coming faster now. “I scared you. I tied you down and you cried. I had a knife in my hand. I shouldn’t have had the knife, I knew I was—”

“Dex.”

“I’ll go.”

You tried to get back up, but even the sheets were starting to crawl as you were getting more and more overwhelmed. “N-No.”

“I need to go.”

“Dex,” it came out breathy.

“I need to not be near you right now.”

“Nuh-uh. Dex—”

“I can’t be the reason you’re looking at me like that.”

You were crying harder now because he was spiralling, and you were spiralling, and the two of you were dragging each other down in opposite directions. Dex kept retreating. You kept trying to pull him back with a voice that was too fragile to reach him.

He turned toward the door, and you finally snapped.

“I need you!”

He froze.

The shout tore out of you raw, loud enough to hurt your throat. Dex stopped like you had fired a warning shot.

You shoved yourself upright, blanket slipping around your waist, cheeks wet, chest heaving.

“Stop,” you sobbed. “Don’t you dare fucking leave while I’m-I’m l-like this.”

His face fell, panic still prevalent. “I’m trying not to make it worse.”

You choked on a breath. “You are making it worse!”

Dex went still.

You pointed at the floor like you could physically pin him there with the gesture. “You are standing over there looking at me like you’re a monster and you keep talking about leaving and I can’t— I can’t do this too, okay? I can’t comfort you while you’re trying to punish yourself. I need you.”

He looked devastated, and maybe that meant he was finally listening.

“I just—” Your voice broke, and the next words came out almost screamed, because gentleness wasn’t cutting it anymore. “I just need you to hold me, you fucking idiot!”

Dex stared at you, looking completely lost.

Every terrible conclusion he had been building in his head had slammed into that sentence like a shield and shattered at his feet.

“You want me to hold you?” he asked, barely audible.

“Yes,” you cried. “Jesus Christ, yes.”

His hands lowered by an inch.

“But I scared you.”

“Because I was already scared of everything,” you managed through gritted teeth. 

“You said red.”

“And you stopped!”

You could see it finally go through to him. His eyes flicked to the cut rope, then to your wrists, then back to your face. He was still terrified of himself, but he stopped backing away.

“I need you clean,” you said, voice shaking. “Then I need you here.”

He moved immediately.

Thank God.

Giving him an instruction helped him. Dex disappeared into the bathroom with stiff purpose, and you heard water slam on. As he scrubbed his hands too hard. You heard him almost losing it over the sink and forcing himself not to because you had not asked for that.

When he came back, the blood was gone.

His shirt was gone too, replaced with the white sleeveless one you liked, because it made him look less like he had crawled out of an alley and more like the man who lived here. Your man, who slept with one hand searching for you.

He stopped by the bed, still afraid to presume after what happened.

You opened your arms.

He climbed onto the bed slowly, gave you every second to change your mind, and only closed his arms around you when you grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him in.

Then he was truly in, and you folded into him.

You cried into his chest with both fists clenched in his shirt, and Dex held you like he was learning how to touch you all over again. 

“Tighter,” you sobbed.

His arms tightened.

“More.”

He held you properly then, careful but not distant. His chin tucked over your head, one hand spread between your shoulder blades, the other on your back, keeping you against him without trapping you. You could feel his heartbeat racing under your cheek, and still, yours was worse.

For a while, neither of you said anything.

Words had been too much all day. Everything had been too much all day. So this was good.

Dex pressed his mouth to your hair.

“I just had a bad day,” you whispered into his chest.

His arms tightened again.

You felt him inhale. “All day?” he asked.

You nodded.

His hand flexed against your back.

He wanted to ask, you could feel it. He wanted names, causes, targets, so he could follow them home and put them through a wall for making you feel like this. But for once, he held it in.

You cried harder, because he was warm and clean and finally close enough. “I meant to say yellow,” you whispered.

His chest stopped moving for a second.

“I know,” you added, before he could spiral again. “I know I said green. I know. I just wanted to be okay. I wanted it to be like usual.”

Dex didn’t speak for a long moment.

Then he held you a little closer and pressed his cheek to the top of your head. “Okay,” he said roughly.

It sounded like he was swallowing glass.

You pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was serious, jaw tight, laying in bed with the woman he loved crying all over his shirt, trying to work out how to shoot a bad day.

And then, with absolute sincerity, he asked, “Do you want me to kill anyone?”

You stared at him.

He meant it.

Fuck. 

It was so shocking, so cathartic, that a sudden laugh burst out of you, half-strangled against his chest. You tried to stop it, but the look on his face only made it worse. He frowned slightly, earnest, still holding you like he would rather die than move wrong.

“I’m serious,” he said.

You laughed harder. “Dex.”

“What?”

“You can’t kill someone because I had a bad day.”

His brow furrowed. “Why not?”

“Oh my God.”

“If there’s a person responsible—”

“There isn’t.”

“There’s usually a person responsible.”

“There was Brad from HR.”

You blinked at him. “How do you know about Brad from HR?”

“You texted me about him once.”

“That was, like, six months ago.”

“I remember things.”

Despite yourself, you laughed again.

You buried your face against him again, laughing and crying at the same time until you could barely breathe. Dex still looked confused, but his arms settled securely around you. He understood this much, at least, when you pressed closer instead of pushing him away.

“I don’t need you to kill anyone,” you murmured once the laughter faded.

“Okay.”

“I just need you to hold me.”

His mouth pressed to your hair again. “That I can do,” he said.

And he did, held you until your breathing slowed, until the room stopped feeling like it was on fire. 

After a while, very quietly, he added, “I would, though.”

You huffed a tired laugh into his shirt. “I know, honey.”

His arms tightened carefully around you.

“Just checking,” he said.

And because it was him, because he meant it with his whole heart, because the day had been awful and you were safe now, you laughed one last tiny laugh into the dark.

Dex held you like that until you slept.

—end. 

buy me a ko-fi here!

Dex taglist part 1:

Buck checked his watch as he hurried down the hall to your office. The Mayor had tasked him with giving you firearm training and he needed to try to catch you before you left for a meeting outside the building.

He slowed as he noticed your office door was open and your light was on. Good, she's still here.

He knocked on the open door. "Excuse me, darling."

You looked over at him briefly and smiled, then resumed typing. "Hi, sweetheart. Sorry, I have a meeting in an hour with the head of BronxWorks and I'm —"

Buck shook his head. "Actually, you don't. The mayor has cleared your schedule for the rest of the afternoon."

He had been relieved when you had agreed to join your father's enterprise — as he had told you earlier that morning, he felt like he could better protect you if you were aware of and involved in your father's business dealings.

However, he also knew that being part of the Mayor's non-mayoral business came with certain hazards, so when he had returned from speaking with you he and Mayor Fisk had discussed possible safety measures, including acquiring a weapon for you and teaching you how to use it.

You stopped typing and looked back over at him, your eyebrows furrowing. "What? Why?"

"Given… recent events, he wishes for you to learn how to properly arm and protect yourself."

You sighed. "Does it have to be now? I have so much that I need to do here."

Buck shrugged. "It's either that or I go tell the Mayor that you decided to go with the option of having a Task Force member designated as your personal security instead. I believe he said something about assigning Powell personally to the task…"

He paused as he waited for you to make your decision. Buck knew Powell made you uncomfortable — he himself had caught the man leering at you on more than one occasion — so he was pretty certain that you would wind up accepting firearm training.

You made a face, then sighed. "Okay, fine. Let's go."

Buck waited as you shut your computer down and grabbed your purse, then he and you headed to the parking garage.

Buck unlocked the car he had reserved and opened the passenger door for you.

"Thank you, sweetheart," you said as you got in.

Buck smiled. You couldn't have been that annoyed at having your afternoon disrupted if you were still using your preferred term of endearment for him. "You're welcome, love."

He shut the door and went around to the driver's side to get in.

"So which firing range are we going to?" you asked as Buck fastened his seatbelt and started the car.

Buck shook his head. "Your father has arranged for private instruction at the Red Hook port facility. Given the protests a few nights ago, he doesn't wish to stoke further dissent by having his daughter spotted taking firearm training."

You nodded. "Ah, yeah, okay, that makes sense."

Buck pulled out of the parking garage and onto the street, then headed towards Brooklyn, glancing over at you as you sighed and looked out the window. "Everything alright?"

You looked back over at him and shrugged. "Just thinking."

Buck reached over and took your hand in his. "I know it's been a difficult few days, love."

You sighed again and shook your head. "At least I slept a little better last night. I wouldn't want to accidentally shoot myself or someone else because I can't focus on what I'm doing."

Buck squeezed your hand in reassurance. "If I didn't feel comfortable with your competence in handling a firearm at the moment, I would have insisted that your training wait until another day. I would never let anything happen to you, my darling. Your safety is paramount."

You smiled softly. "Your safety is important to me too."

You both were silent for the rest of the short drive to Red Hook, your hand in Buck's a comfort. With everything that had been going on — the vigilante trials, the security incident at Red Hook, locating the first mate of the Northern Star, and now the death of your stepmother — the two of you had hardly seen each other over the past couple of weeks, much less spent any significant amount of time together, and Buck had missed you. At least it seems like we should both be home this evening.

He turned into the port and parked.

You looked up at the building as you both got out of the car. "I don't think I've been here since the ribbon-cutting after the renovation," you said. "I guess I'm still in the mindset of 'port dangerous, avoid if possible'."

Buck chuckled and held the door open for you. "After you, darling."

He walked in behind you then led you to the area he had set up as a makeshift firing range.

You looked around. "Will the instructor be here soon?"

Buck shook his head. "My apologies, love, I thought you understood. I'll be training you."

Your eyebrows raised. "You'll be — oh. Okay then."

Buck eyed you curiously. "Is that a problem?"

You shook your head. "Oh no, no, that's fine. I guess I just assumed when you said private instruction that Dad had gotten the head of the NYPD's Firearms Licensing department or someone like that to teach me."

You waved a hand at him. "Ready when you are."

"Okay then." Buck nodded then guided you over to the table of various handguns he'd had sent over. "First task is to choose your armament. I took the liberty of selecting a few that I think might suit you."

"So do I just pick one based on vibes?" you asked as you looked at each gun. "They all look the same to me."

Buck huffed out a laugh. "There's subtle nuances between them that can make a rather large difference in your aim. You don't want a firearm that's too unwieldy — it should feel balanced in your hand."

He picked up the gun he had felt most would suit you and turned the safety off before handing it to you. "Here, try this one."

You took it. "It's lighter than I expected."

Buck nodded. "This one is highly recommend for concealed carry. Hold it up, get a feel for it."

You turned towards the target and pointed the gun at it, gripping it with both hands as if clasped in prayer. "Yeah, this one feels okay."

Buck shook his head. "Second step is learning how to properly hold a firearm. That gun shouldn't have much kickback, but you don't want to injure yourself should you ever have to use it."

He stepped behind you, trailing his fingers down your arms to your hands in order to adjust your grip. "You want your hands a bit closer together."

You took a deep breath. "Like this?"

"Mmm." Buck nodded. "Just like that, darling. Very good."

"What's next?"

"Next is aim."

"Which is point and shoot, right?"

Buck chuckled. "Not quite. Look down the barrel at the target, aim, then fire."

You bit your lip. "Could you show me first? Like, as an example?"

Buck nodded. "Certainly, love."

He let go of your arms and pulled his own gun out of its holster, then stepped up to the firing line he had marked on the floor. "Watch closely."

He raised his gun, aimed, then fired, hitting the figure on the target right in the middle of the head.

He reholstered his gun. "Now, your turn."

You looked at the target. "If I hit it, do I get a prize?"

Buck chuckled. Nothing wrong with a little positive reinforcement. "Sure, darling, why not?"

You raised the gun, looked down the barrel, and fired at the target, hitting it almost dead center. "Hmm, sight must be off."

Buck stared at the target for a few moments in bewilderment, then huffed out a laugh and shook his head. "You naughty little minx. You already knew how to shoot, didn't you?"

You put the safety on and turned back towards him, shrugging sheepishly. "Vanessa took me to the firing range while my dad was in prison, said a girl needed to learn how to protect herself. I don't guess she ever told him, unless he forgot."

Buck nodded. "Well played, darling. Well played."

You walked back over to the table and set the gun back in its case. "Haven't shot a gun in a while, figured I could probably at least use a refresher course."

You wrapped your arms around Buck's waist. "Besides, I thought it'd be nice to spend the afternoon together. I've missed you."

Buck gave you a soft kiss as he wrapped his arms around you as well. "I've missed you too, my love."

You hummed. "Now, I believe I was promised a prize?"

Buck chuckled. "You were. Did you have something in particular in mind?"

You bit your lip. "Pick up something for dinner, then go home to cuddle?"

Buck nodded, a soft smile on his face. "That sounds suitable."

You let go of him and took his hand in yours. "Good, then let's go."

Later that night, as you lay naked and sleeping in his arms, Buck's mind drifted to the engagement ring that was currently hidden in an empty bullet box in his gun safe in your bedroom. He had originally planned on whisking you away to Niagara Falls over the weekend to propose, but with your stepmother's death and the Mayor needing both of you closer to home, proposing would have to wait.

The man waited outside.

Your stomach sank.

You pulled out your phone and called Dex. It rang once before going to voicemail, which meant he was either working or already packing his things and moving towards you. You left the line open anyway, slipping your phone into your coat pocket as you stepped back onto the pavement.

“I’m on Stanton,” you said, quiet as you could, knowing the microphone would catch it. “I’m going on the safe route, and there’s a man following me.”

You headed towards the twenty-four-hour diner two streets away. At least there were lights, cameras, and most importantly, people there.

You almost reached it, but the man caught you when you passed the narrow service road behind an apartment building. One moment his footsteps were behind you; the next, his hand gripped around the back of your coat and dragged you hard enough that the thicker collar choked into your throat.

Your keys fell from your fingers, and all you could manage was a pathetic little scream before he could cover your mouth.

His palm immediately struck your lips and teeth, crushing the sound back into your skull as he hauled you into the darkness of some random New York alley. Your heel scraped uselessly across the pavement as you bit down until you tasted blood that wasn’t yours. It worked! He swore, jerking his hand away.

Immediately, you drove your elbow backwards.

Dex had shown you where to aim for, and you were trying to retrieve it from the rolodex of information in your mind, not quite the ribs, but lower in the soft tissue. 

The man grunted, but he didn’t let go. His arm locked around your throat instead, squeezing until firework-white sparks burst across your vision.

“You stupid fucking—”

You stamped on his foot before he could finish his sentence and threw your weight forwards, turning beneath his arm, exactly as Dex had taught you.

Eventually, his hold broke.

You stumbled free and ran, but the man recovered faster than you initially expected. His hand found its way and tangled his fingers in your hair, snapping your head backwards so violently that your neck burned.

He slammed you face-first against the brick wall.

Oh. Fuck. 

A burst of pain exploded through your cheek, teeth unintentionally biting into the inside of your mouth. Warm, fresh blood flooded on your tongue, thick and metallic, while his body pinned you against the wall.

The panic bells ringing in your head turned everything white-hot. “S-stop!”

He didn’t.

No. No. You were better than this.

You reached behind blindly, clawing for his eyes, his throat, anything you could find. Your nails found skin, raking down as he cursed and drove you against the brick again.

Maybe your nose broke, you couldn’t really tell.

His hand slid beneath your coat, and that’s when your vision went red. Rage flared hot inside you, burning through every thought in your head. You threw your skull backwards and felt his cartilage collapse beneath it.

His grip loosened, howling in pain.

You spun and shoved him with both hands.

He stumbled off the curb at the edge of the service road. His ankle twisted beneath him, and he went down hard. The man managed to catch himself on one palm before his shoulder struck the pavement.

You could have run.

The diner was less than a hundred yards away. You could see its red sign glowing at the end of the road, bright as a fresh exit wound.

That was when the man looked up at you.

A sick, satisfied feeling churned in your stomach as red poured from his nose and over his mouth.

And… he was smiling.

Oh. 

He still believed he was going to win.

He pushed himself onto one knee. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Your hand found the loose brick beside the wall, and it was heavier than you expected. Its edges bit into your palm as you lifted it with both hands.

When the man saw it, his smile vanished in an instant.

You brought the brick down across his temple.

The sound that came off it was shockingly small. It sounded like a damp knock, followed by the scrape of his body collapsing onto the road.

He rolled onto his back, blinking rapidly. One side of his face had already begun to swell around the ripped skin as a blotch of blood ran into his ear and disappeared beneath his head.

You stood over him, panting.

He was still conscious. “Wait.”

You could’ve stopped. You could’ve shown mercy. 

Instead, you struck him again.

This time, the brick split the skin above his eyebrow. Blood sprayed across your coat and speckled your face in warm droplets.

He raised one arm to protect himself.

Huh. Cute. 

You hit that too.

His arm gave beneath the brick with a muffled crunch. His forearm bent where it shouldn’t have been bent, and he screamed, the sound travelling through the empty service road.

You dropped the brick.

For half a second, the sight of his ruined arm nearly pulled you back into your logical self.

Then, his good hand closed around your ankle.

You shrieked and kicked him in the face. Your heel connected with his mouth as teeth snapped together. One of them even skipped across the pavement and vanished beneath a parked car.

He released you, but you fell on top of him.

Your knees struck the ground on either side of his hips, and your hands seized the front of his jacket. His blood made the material slippery beneath your fingers.

Before you could think any better of it, you dragged his head upwards, then slammed it against the curb.

The back of his skull struck concrete with a thick, hollow crack.

His eyes rolled, and it horrified you how much you liked it, seeing the man who wanted to touch you fucking bleed out. 

So you did it again.

Blood spread beneath his hair.

Again.

The hard crack now sounded wetter as the skin split and bone began to cave in. His body jerked beneath you, heels scraping against the pavement, but there was no strength left in it.

He made a noise through his broken mouth. You didn’t know whether it was a plea or merely air left escaping.

“You followed me!” you sobbed. “You fucking touched me!”

You brought his head down again.

The edge of the curb disappeared beneath blood. It ran between your fingers, coating your palms each time you pulled him upwards.

“I did everything right.”

Again.

“I—”

Again.

“Have—”

Again.

“A—”

Again.

“Fucking—”

Again.

“Boyfriend—”

Again.

“You—”

Again.

“Asshole—”

Again.

“He’ll fucking kill you!”

The last word broke somewhere in your throat, ragged. You were crying now, maybe. You couldn’t really tell. Your face was wet, your hands were red, and the whole world had shrunk down to the most-likely-dead man in your grip and the curb beneath him and the memory of his hand on you where it never should have been.

The back of his skull was now the shape of the concrete underneath.

You felt the structure collapse beneath your hands where there should have been resistance. It didn’t feel dramatic or righteous. All you could think was how it felt gooey in the wrong places. 

You pulled him up again anyway.

“I told you,” you sobbed, or screamed, or whispered. You couldn’t tell anymore. “I told you to stop.”

But his eyes were open and empty, staring past you at nothing, and when you tried to lift him one more time, your hands slipped in all the blood and he dropped back against the curb with a sound that made your stomach sink

That was when the anger went out.

All at once, as if someone had blown out a candle inside your chest.

You stared down at your hands and the red beneath your nails. You saw a dark smear across your wrist where he had grabbed you. “I did everything right,” you said again, smaller this time.

His face had lost all expression. Blood bubbled faintly at his lips before spilling down his cheek.

He was dead.

You knew he was dead.

You screamed as you struck him again, though you no longer knew whether you were furious or terrified.

You remembered Dex telling you never to stop until you were safe.

Make sure they cannot get back up. 

You had done everything he told you to do.

The man’s head struck the concrete one final time and didn’t bounce.

You released him.

His ruined skull settled crookedly against the ground. The road beneath him shone black-red beneath the distant streetlights, and blood soaked through your tights at the knees and dripped from your hands in heavy threads.

The dead man’s head no longer looked human.

Your stomach heaved.

You tried to stand, but your legs folded beneath you. The world tilted violently, the brick walls stretching upwards as though the road had dropped away beneath your body.

Footsteps thundered behind you, but you couldn’t turn around.

Your vision narrowed until the alley became a tunnel.

Then a hand touched your face, but this time, the touch was gentle.

His thumb swept carefully beneath your eye, avoiding the swelling along your cheekbone, as an arm curved around your waist before you could collapse fully onto the body.

“There you are,” Dex whispered.

His voice sounded distant beneath the rushing in your ears.

You tried to tell him what you had done, but your lips would not let you.

Dex’s palm cradled the back of your head, carefully nudging your nose back into place. He pulled you into him, turning your face away from the ruin on the pavement.

“My smart girl,” he murmured, stroking your hair with bloodless fingers. “You remembered everything.”

The praise sank through your heart as he felt his lips press against your temple.

“You saved yourself.”

Eventually, dazed and overwhelmed by the adrenaline crash, your eyes closed.

The last thing you felt was Dex’s thumb moving across your cheek, wiping away a tear.

—

Dex knew you.

He knew you were nothing like him.

That much had been obvious almost from the beginning, though he hadn’t understood it properly. Dex’s first instinct had always been violence. Whenever a problem appeared, his mind found that the bloodiest way was often the fastest way to solve it. Even inconveniences made his skin crawl, from a jammed drawer, a car alarm that would not stop, to a man looking at you for half a second too long across a restaurant. 

You were different.

You were gentle in ways Dex had once found impractical.  

You apologised to furniture when you bumped into it. You cupped moths in your hands and carried them outside. You left sugar water out for bees in summer and lowered your voice around frightened dogs. You once stopped walking entirely because there was a snail on the pavement after rain, and you refused to let anyone step on it until Dex moved it safely into the grass with a leaf.

He had stood there watching you then, half-annoyed, half-fascinated.

“It’s just a snail,” he had said.

You had looked up at him like he had spouted bullshit from his mouth. “It’s alive.”

From then on, he realized alive mattered to you.

Even small alive. Even when it was inconvenient .

Dex hadn’t been raised with that as a natural instinct. As a boy, he had thrown stones at birds because he found that he liked the little burst of movement. He hadn’t thought of it as cruelty then. It was just aim, maybe boredom. 

Then you bought a bird feeder for your apartment.

You hung it outside the kitchen window with such bright delight that Dex hadn’t even known what to say. You filled it every morning, scattering seed with your bed hair falling over your face, then stood there with your coffee while sparrows and blue tits flickered down. You loved them. You loved their stupid little hopping, their bright feathers.

You loved listening to birdsong most of all.

You whistled back sometimes without realising it while you watered plants or folded laundry. At night, when you were deep enough asleep that your body forgot to be self-conscious, you made the same small breathy sounds in your dreams, sweet enough that Dex would lie awake beside you and listen as he calmed down.

So instead of throwing rocks at it like he used to, he learned how to imitate their songs.

At first, only because you smiled when he whistled them. Then, he did it because you looked at him like he had performed a miracle when a robin landed on the feeder while Dex stood still by the window, unknowingly calling them closer.

Without realising, he had learned to mimic their distinctive calls.

He even stopped exterminating annoying bugs because of you. 

You were afraid of spiders, yes, but when one of them showed up in the nightstand and you screamed, hiding behind him like a shield, you would make this horrified and pleading sound because he reached for a shoe instead of a cup. To you, being afraid of the little thing didn’t mean it deserved to die. 

“Dex, no. Outside. Alive.”

So for you, he learned to trap spiders beneath glasses and slide envelopes carefully underneath them. He learned to carry them to the windowsill instead of crushing them. 

Eventually, he learned not to flick beetles off the balcony, because you worried about whether the fall would hurt them. He learned to scoop flies out of half-open windows with hands while you hovered behind him whispering, “Careful, careful,” like he was defusing a bomb.

He learned to pretend he cared whether tiny, ugly things lived.

Eventually, he cared because you cared, and caring about what you cared about was the closest thing to general empathy Dex had ever understood.

And that was why Dex knew that you could not wake up knowing what you had done.

Because you had not even wanted him to kill spiders.

How the hell were you supposed to survive knowing you had killed a man?

Dex had known that the moment you went limp in his arms, your bloodied hands curled weakly against his shirt, your body giving up its adrenaline high only after it was finally safe to stop fighting. You had passed out before he could praise you properly, even before he could look you in the eye and tell you that you had done exactly what he taught you to do.

You had saved yourself.

Dex was proud of you in a way he knew he couldn’t show when you woke up.

Especially not with the body in the trunk of his car and your clothes stuffed into a sealed black bag hidden in the closet. His own clothes in there too, soaked with blood where he had held you, smeared bleach where he had poured it over the concrete. 

He would deal with it later, when you were properly asleep, because the body could wait and you could not.

So Dex got you, half-passed out and half mumbling nonsense, home. Perhaps it was simply your mind coping on a traumatic memory.

He stripped you carefully, cutting fabric where it stuck, easing sleeves down your arms, peeling everything off your skin piece by piece until there was nothing left between you and him. His clothes came off too, though nothing was ever sexual about that, but because his soaked shirt was evidence, too. 

He washed you in the shower while you leaned against him, barely conscious, your forehead pressed to his shoulder, your knees buckling every time the warm water hit another bruise. He did this all while murmuring sweet nonsense into your ear, words he knew your body understood even when your mind was tuned out. “You did so good, baby. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

He washed you until water at your feet ran pink, then red, then thin and clear.

Your hands took the longest as he held each finger between his own, washing beneath the nails, over the knuckles, around the raw places where the brick and pavement had scraped you open. You whimpered once, so quietly he almost missed it, and he kissed your wet temple before continuing.

He had to make them clean because you would look at your hands first.

When it was done, he carried you to bed and lay down naked beside you, pulling you onto his chest before the cold could bite.

The skin to skin was its own kind of intimacy, no barrier, but his body around yours.

By 2 a.m., he had not slept. He had tried, once or twice, mostly for the performance, because if you woke up and found him sitting upright in the dark watching you breathe, you would know something was wrong. 

So he lay with you until dawn, and every time your breathing hitched, Dex tightened his hold. Every time you made a frightened sound, he kissed your head and whispered until you settled. He kept one eye on the bedroom door, one ear tuned to the street.

But mostly he watched you.

You looked smaller when you slept after fear, lashes clumping from old tears. Your mouth was swollen and a bruise was blooming along your cheekbone where the man had slammed you against brick, and Dex had to look away from it more than once because all he felt was red-hot rage. 

But it wasn’t like he could do anything. The man was already dead.

You woke up sometime around 3 a.m.

Dex felt it when you choked on a breath, curled against him, cheek on his chest, one leg tangled with his. Your fingers twitched against his ribs, and he knew some part of you had surfaced too quickly.

Your eyes opened.

Almost immediately, panic tore through you.

You jerked upright so fast the sheet slipped from your chest. 

Your hands flew up in front of your face, fingers spread, as though blood might still be dripping from them. They were clean, but you stared anyway. 

You turned them over, looking at your palms, backs, nails, and wrist.

You seemed shocked to find them… clean. 

Dex sat up behind you. “Baby.”

You flinched at his voice, and that knee-jerk reaction hurt more than he expected.

You twisted towards him, naked and shaking, eyes wide with a terror that had no full memory attached to it yet. 

Dex could see your mind reaching and clawing through fog, finding only flashes of memories. Maybe you remembered a streetlight, maybe a hand on your throat. 

Your lips parted, but no sound came out.

Dex reached for you.

You scrambled back half an inch, and he frowned immediately. 

He tried to make himself look harmless, like there was nothing hidden near the closet, nothing dead cooling in the back of his car.

“There you are,” he murmured.

Your face fell, but the sob didn’t come out. It got trapped in your chest, making your whole body shake. You looked down at yourself then, at your bare skin, at his bare skin, at the tangled sheets, and your confusion quickly became fear. 

Dex moved carefully, scooting closer until his thigh touched yours.

“You were cold,” he said, pulling the duvet back up around you before you could ask. “ I had to get you warm.”

Your eyes darted around the room.

The bedroom looked normal. That made it worse. 

There was no proof of anything, no blood, no alley, no proof of anything but your body remembering what your mind could not grasp.

Dex placed one hand over your knee.

You stared at it.

He expected you to pull away, but instead your breath hitched and your whole body tilted towards him, helplessly, like a compass finding north. He gathered you before you could think better of it.

You collapsed into his lap.

Dex wrapped both arms around you and pulled you against his bare chest again, tucking your face beneath his chin. You were shaking so hard it passed into him. You pressed your hands flat to his shoulders, then curled, then opened again, like you could not stand the idea of grasping flesh too tightly.

“There,” he whispered. “That’s it. Come here, baby.”

Your breath hitched against his throat, and he felt the first wet tear hit his skin.

Then you were crying without sound, which was worse than sobbing. Violent tears shook you from the inside while your body stayed stiff with shock.

Dex rocked you slowly, enough to give your panic a rhythm to follow.

“You’re home,” he murmured into your hair. “You’re with me. No one’s gonna touch you.”

Your fingers dug into him. “I—I…,” you whispered, not quite coming out with words yet

Dex closed his eyes for half a second. “It’s okay, baby.”

Your eyes darted in a panic. “I don’t know what happened.”

He tried shushing you. “You don’t have to know all of it right now.”

“I-I don’t know, Dex.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

Your breathing grew shallow, almost choking. You tried to pull back and look at your hands again, but Dex caught them between your bodies, folding them against his chest where you could feel his heartbeat beneath your palms.

Focus there.

You did.

“I-I remember him,” you managed to say.

Dex stroked the back of your head. “Okay.”

“I remember walking. I took the right way.”

“You did.”

“I did what you said.”

“You did everything right.”

The sentence seemed to be a trigger, ripping a sob out of you.

Dex held you tighter.

“I-I did everything right,” you repeated, smaller now. “I promise.”

“I know.”

“I went inside. I waited. I called you.”

“You were so smart.”

Your face pressed harder into his neck.

“So smart,” he whispered again. “My girl, you did so well.”

You shook your head, frantic, because praise did not fit beside the images cutting through you. 

You didn’t remember much, but you saw flashes of blood and concrete behind your eyelids. 

Your breathing stopped.

His hand slid up the back of your neck and held you close. “No,” he murmured, soft as velvet. “Stay with me.”

“I saw—”

“You saw too much.”

“I… did something.”

“You protected yourself.”

“No, I—”

“You protected yourself,” he repeated, more insistent this time. 

Your fingers twisted against his chest.

Dex let his voice warm up, like honey in warm water. “You were scared and hurt and you did what you had to do.”

He felt you take the information in, but your panic continued circling it like vultures on corpses.

Dex kissed the top of your head, then your temple, then the bruised corner of your brow. “You’re okay,” he breathed. “I promise.”

You made a wounded noise, and he knew exactly what he was doing.

The kindness was not accidental, it was architecture. He was building a room inside your memory, where the bloodier parts could be locked outside until you forgot where you held the key.

“Where is he?”

Oh. So you vaguely knew there was a he now. 

“He’s in the hospital.” He lied easily. 

Dex knew this was how it would happen. One lie was enough to sound like mercy, and you would hold on to it because you trusted him more than you trusted your own shattered memory. He was making you need his version of the truth because he truly believed it was the only one that would save you.

You froze in his arms, and Dex held you through it.

“The hospital?” you whispered.

“Mm.”

Your hands clutched him harder. “He looked...”

“I know what it looked like.”

You pulled back just enough to see his face.

Dex hated it, and not because he couldn’t lie to your face. He could, he had, and would again if it meant it would preserve and protect your sense of self. Instead, he hated it because you looked so desperate for him to make the world kinder than really it was, and he loved you so much it nearly made him crueler.

He cupped your cheeks.

“Head wounds bleed badly,” he said. “You know that, sweetheart.”

Your eyes blazed into his, and he knew he made a mistake then. You didn’t remember that part.

“H-head wounds?” You breathed out in disbelief, unable to claw the memory now. 

“He was breathing when I got there,” Dex lied again.

A strangled sob left you, but it didn’t sound like relief yet. For now, it was only the body realising it had been offered a way out.

“Head wounds a-are dangerous.”

“I know.”

You hiccuped. “I thought— I remember—”

“Pieces,” Dex murmured. “You remember pieces.”

“But I saw blood.”

“There was blood.”

“On me?”

“Yes.”

Your face fell, Dex pulling you back in before the horror could.

“That’s why I cleaned you up,” he whispered, and that part, at least, was not a lie. His thumb moved slowly along your cheek, careful in a way Dex was rarely careful with anything that wasn’t you. “That’s why we ended up like this. You were shaking so hard, and I couldn’t get you warm. I tried. I swear I tried.”

His mouth brushed your temple, barely a kiss.

“I kept trying to move,” he murmured. “I kept thinking I should get you a shirt, but every time I pulled away, you reached for me again like you thought I was leaving, and I couldn’t—” His voice snagged, just slightly. “I couldn’t make myself do it. Not when you looked at me like that.”

You stared at him, still heavy-limbed, your thoughts coming back to you in pieces. It sounded embarrassingly believable, because there was a warmth in your chest that remembered him. Your hands had always found him before the rest of you caught up.

“I did?” you asked quietly.

“Yes.”

Your eyes narrowed, weakly suspicious. “You’re lying.”

Dex leaned down and kissed your forehead, lingering there like the answer mattered more than the accusation. 

“About you needing me?” His voice dropped. “Never.”

You cried harder then, finally making messy little sobs that broke against his chest while Dex rocked you, He ran his hands up and down your back, whispering into your hair. He called you precious until the word stopped sounding like a word at all. 

You shook your head.

Dex closed his eyes and held you tighter.

“You’re my girl,” he whispered. “Nothing about you changed.”

His gaze drifted once, towards the closet.

The black bag waited.

Behind the wall, beyond the apartment, beneath the ordinary morning, the dead man waited too. 

Later, he would get rid of the body. Later, he would burn what needed burning. For now, you were shaking in his lap, believing him because you needed to.

“Dex,” you whispered.

“I’m here.”

“You promise?”

He knew what you were asking.

You promise I didn’t? You promise I’m still me? You promise whatever I don’t remember isn’t real?

Dex pressed his lips to your temple and held them there. “I promise you’re safe.”

It was not the answer you wanted, but it was the one he gave.

You sagged against him after that, emptied by tears, your body surrendering. Dex eased both of you down until he was lying on his back and you were draped over him, skin to skin beneath the sheet. Your cheek rested over his heart, hand curled weakly near his ribs.

He kept touching your scalp, your spine, and the back of your neck in gently repetitive strokes until your breathing evened out. 

Eventually, sleep took you again. Poor girl, still so tired after murdering an evil man. 

Every few minutes, you twitched. Every time, Dex whispered you back down.

My precious girl, he would praise. You did so well.

At last, your body grew heavy over his, your fingers stopped moving. Your mouth grew pliant against his chest.

Dex waited for five minutes, then ten, then twenty.

Only when he was certain you were properly asleep did he turn his head towards the closet again.

He had things that needed doing.

But you stirred faintly against him before he could move, and Dex froze. Your brow pinched, your hand tightening on his skin, some nightmare threatening to pull you under.

He settled back immediately.

Not yet.

The dead could wait a little longer.

Dex brushed his mouth over your hair and smiled.“My sweet girl,” he whispered.

His hand covered yours, pressing your clean palm flat over his heart.

“You did everything right.”

He adored you for last night, even if he could never let you know exactly what you had done.

He adored the shaking, furious thing you had become when there had been no one left to save you. He adored the fact that some part of you had remembered him, remembered every warning, every lesson, every instruction, just in case. 

He adored that you had survived. More than that, in some terrible private corner of himself, he adored that you had survived violently.

He adored that for a split second, you had become him. 

But he knew you best, and he knew you weren’t made for that. 

So he would take that truth to the grave, and you would wake up tomorrow with the love of your life beside you.

You would wake up believing you had done only enough to live.

And Dex loved you enough to make that true.

—end.

NOTE : I genuinely love seeing all your requests in my asks, but I do get a lot and I physically can’t write every single one. I usually write the ones that catch my eye, and it’s probably every 1 in 5. 

That’s why I have Ko-fi! If you request there, it’s pretty much guaranteed I’ll write it within a month of responding as a token of appreciation (keep this post in mind for July and August 2026). If I’m uncomfortable with the request or don’t think I can do it justice, I’ll let you know and we can brainstorm something else.

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Dex taglist part 1:

The man waited outside.

Your stomach sank.

You pulled out your phone and called Dex. It rang once before going to voicemail, which meant he was either working or already packing his things and moving towards you. You left the line open anyway, slipping your phone into your coat pocket as you stepped back onto the pavement.

“I’m on Stanton,” you said, quiet as you could, knowing the microphone would catch it. “I’m going on the safe route, and there’s a man following me.”

You headed towards the twenty-four-hour diner two streets away. At least there were lights, cameras, and most importantly, people there.

You almost reached it, but the man caught you when you passed the narrow service road behind an apartment building. One moment his footsteps were behind you; the next, his hand gripped around the back of your coat and dragged you hard enough that the thicker collar choked into your throat.

Your keys fell from your fingers, and all you could manage was a pathetic little scream before he could cover your mouth.

His palm immediately struck your lips and teeth, crushing the sound back into your skull as he hauled you into the darkness of some random New York alley. Your heel scraped uselessly across the pavement as you bit down until you tasted blood that wasn’t yours. It worked! He swore, jerking his hand away.

Immediately, you drove your elbow backwards.

Dex had shown you where to aim for, and you were trying to retrieve it from the rolodex of information in your mind, not quite the ribs, but lower in the soft tissue. 

The man grunted, but he didn’t let go. His arm locked around your throat instead, squeezing until firework-white sparks burst across your vision.

“You stupid fucking—”

You stamped on his foot before he could finish his sentence and threw your weight forwards, turning beneath his arm, exactly as Dex had taught you.

Eventually, his hold broke.

You stumbled free and ran, but the man recovered faster than you initially expected. His hand found its way and tangled his fingers in your hair, snapping your head backwards so violently that your neck burned.

He slammed you face-first against the brick wall.

Oh. Fuck. 

A burst of pain exploded through your cheek, teeth unintentionally biting into the inside of your mouth. Warm, fresh blood flooded on your tongue, thick and metallic, while his body pinned you against the wall.

The panic bells ringing in your head turned everything white-hot. “S-stop!”

He didn’t.

No. No. You were better than this.

You reached behind blindly, clawing for his eyes, his throat, anything you could find. Your nails found skin, raking down as he cursed and drove you against the brick again.

Maybe your nose broke, you couldn’t really tell.

His hand slid beneath your coat, and that’s when your vision went red. Rage flared hot inside you, burning through every thought in your head. You threw your skull backwards and felt his cartilage collapse beneath it.

His grip loosened, howling in pain.

You spun and shoved him with both hands.

He stumbled off the curb at the edge of the service road. His ankle twisted beneath him, and he went down hard. The man managed to catch himself on one palm before his shoulder struck the pavement.

You could have run.

The diner was less than a hundred yards away. You could see its red sign glowing at the end of the road, bright as a fresh exit wound.

That was when the man looked up at you.

A sick, satisfied feeling churned in your stomach as red poured from his nose and over his mouth.

And… he was smiling.

Oh. 

He still believed he was going to win.

He pushed himself onto one knee. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Your hand found the loose brick beside the wall, and it was heavier than you expected. Its edges bit into your palm as you lifted it with both hands.

When the man saw it, his smile vanished in an instant.

You brought the brick down across his temple.

The sound that came off it was shockingly small. It sounded like a damp knock, followed by the scrape of his body collapsing onto the road.

He rolled onto his back, blinking rapidly. One side of his face had already begun to swell around the ripped skin as a blotch of blood ran into his ear and disappeared beneath his head.

You stood over him, panting.

He was still conscious. “Wait.”

You could’ve stopped. You could’ve shown mercy. 

Instead, you struck him again.

This time, the brick split the skin above his eyebrow. Blood sprayed across your coat and speckled your face in warm droplets.

He raised one arm to protect himself.

Huh. Cute. 

You hit that too.

His arm gave beneath the brick with a muffled crunch. His forearm bent where it shouldn’t have been bent, and he screamed, the sound travelling through the empty service road.

You dropped the brick.

For half a second, the sight of his ruined arm nearly pulled you back into your logical self.

Then, his good hand closed around your ankle.

You shrieked and kicked him in the face. Your heel connected with his mouth as teeth snapped together. One of them even skipped across the pavement and vanished beneath a parked car.

He released you, but you fell on top of him.

Your knees struck the ground on either side of his hips, and your hands seized the front of his jacket. His blood made the material slippery beneath your fingers.

Before you could think any better of it, you dragged his head upwards, then slammed it against the curb.

The back of his skull struck concrete with a thick, hollow crack.

His eyes rolled, and it horrified you how much you liked it, seeing the man who wanted to touch you fucking bleed out. 

So you did it again.

Blood spread beneath his hair.

Again.

The hard crack now sounded wetter as the skin split and bone began to cave in. His body jerked beneath you, heels scraping against the pavement, but there was no strength left in it.

He made a noise through his broken mouth. You didn’t know whether it was a plea or merely air left escaping.

“You followed me!” you sobbed. “You fucking touched me!”