Sunflowers, Amber, and Gold

———————————————————————

For once in their un-lives, the cave was silent. Not the silence of mischief, nor the silence of tension before David lost his cool. This was the silence of four boys who thought they had been around long enough to forget the bone-ache of grief. Four boys who had dragged their broken bodies home, unable to even lick their wounded pride. Max was dead. The man who saved them and doomed them was dead and they no longer felt that pulling control to obey. They no longer felt the permeant caress in the back of their minds that meant there was always someone there for them. Silently, each unclaimed vampire slinked back into the shadows, feeling more alone than they have ever been.

-----------------------------------------------------

The next morning did not come gently.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!," Marko's screech bounced from the cave entrance. As the newest fledgling, he still struggled sometimes with staying asleep all day. Thus, he was the first to stumble upon the fresh body of a man facedown just outside, the remaining boys appearing immediately behind after the first sign of distress.

With a nudge of his food against the limp shoulder, Paul shrugged, "I bet a few too many beers close to the cliff's edge." He moved in to take a bite. Dwayne, who had crouched down to investigate shook his head, "No, look," he gestured to the sliver of neck visible from above, "claws to the throat."

“A BEAR!?”

“Yeah, one clean slice across the throat, definitely a bear, Marko ” Paul snarked, smacking said man of the back of the head.

As Paul roasted the pouting Marko, David and Dwayne gave each other the same suspicion look: if it wasn’t an animal, what—or more importantly, who—left a murdered body on their doorstep.

But was it a threat? Or something else entirely?

———————————————————————

I knew something had gone terribly wrong the second I was greeted for my morning shift, not by the sight of an empty video-store, but by a despondent Thorn lain across the doormat. With daylight rising above, I knew Max was currently unprotected, which meant either Thorn decided to take a vacation... or there was no one left to protect. Judging by the tone of despair in his whine, it had to be the latter. I quietly unlocked the door and curled up on the floor, Thorn’s head on my lap. The last time you were in this position, the roles were reversed: You remember the ache in your limbs and stomach from running for days without stopping for food, afraid of the hunters not far behind. All you knew was that once you were able to blend into a crowd, the men would lose the trail. Stealing a car would draw too much attention and shifting to hunt would be too risky. Your only option was to run. But, there was only so long you could make it on your own: lost, tired, and grieving. So it was a miracle that when you collapsed in a state park outside of Santa Carla, instead of being shot in your sleep by a silver bullet, you woke to the concerned licks of a hell hound.

Soon after, Santa Carla's video store gained a new daytime manager, quickly trusted with a key to the store. Although you only worked together for a few hours in the evening, you learned a lot about the area (from the best restaurants to the best locations to find victims whose absences won't be noticed) and, more importantly, about Max's four "sons". Every story of the boys left you either agape at the stupid shit they got up to or having to lean against the counter to stop from falling over from laughter. However, no matter how many times he asked, you couldn't bring yourself to say more than a few words about your pack your old pack, aside from the frantic ravings the night Max found you. Yet, even though you gave him so little information about yourself, he never seemed hesitant to extend trust your way. A few months into working, you decided to brave asking him why. His usually goofy smile turned serious.

"Because," he paused. "You remind me of my boys before I saved them: lost…alone. They'll like you, if you stick around long enough one of these nights for me to properly introduce you. Paul won't shut up about letting seeing 'the bitchin' new store girl' that keeps running out before he can 'pick her up'," he rolled his eyes. "Back to my point, us…uh--those of us who are different need to stick together." His smile then turned sharp, a reminder that despite his facade, his power was not to be forgotten. "And, since you aren't an Alpha, you pose no threat to our territory. Right, pup?" You shivered under his gaze, which suddenly snapped to something over your shoulder, "Speak of the little devils…"

You both watched as the aforementioned rowdy boys made their way in, taking this as your cue to go. David smirked as you accidentally met his eyes, Paul pouted as you turned from him, Dwayne silently watched, and Marko unsubtly checked out your ass as you passed by on your way out the door. Max turned to greet the crying young boy and anxious looking woman entering the store, "This boy seems to be lost…"

-----------------------------------------------------

This morning had been a whole new beast. Moving the entire Fisk operation to the Presidential Hotel had been a monumental task from the moment Agent Nadeem entered the office to announce the transfer; trudging countless boxes, files and equipment from the office in New York traffic was practically a prison sentence. A 7am start running back and forth – you were certain that you’d need to buy a new pair of shoes with the way you could feel the sidewalk grating against the balls of your feet, worn thin. And then there was that asshole, you didn’t even know his name, who’d snapped his fingers at you and demanded to know where his latest latte macchiato was.

So, yeah, you’d snipped at him. Told him to fuck off and exactly where he could find it along with the rest of his manners. That had been swiftly followed be a deafening silence across the room, every agent within earshot craning round to catch a glimpse of the drama. Agent whatever had only kissed his teeth and ticked his head to the side, told you to take the rest of the day off since the pressure was clearly getting to you.

The red-hot blush that rises on your cheeks is instant as you begin to shove belongings into your bag, doing your utmost to avoid catching the stare of anyone in the room as you slip away. The sensation of eyes boring into your skin doesn’t even begin to cease until you shove your way through the lobby and out onto the street.

It’s only then that you allow your eyes to glaze over, sucking in a sharp breath in an attempt to quell the tears that threaten to burst over the seams.

A clatter of footsteps stops them from falling.

“Hey, uh, I saw what happened in there. That wasn’t cool.”

You whip around to find the culprit, and to your surprise, it’s a man you only vaguely recognise.

Special Agent Poindexter – but all the others call him Dex. You’d never breathed a word to him, only ever witnessed him in passing moments in hallways, in one room and out of the next. People seemed to like him, he was personable enough, if not with a bit of a snarky disposition. It came with the territory, you supposed, elite SWAT sniper was bound to have something about him. He was handsome though, tall with a collection of sharp edges that contrasted starkly with his warm, brown eyes.

How embarrassing to be called out by someone of such high standing.

“I know,” you sniffed, fixing your eyes on a piece of gum smashed into the concrete, not quite able to meet his eyes, “it won’t happen again, I promise. I know it was unprofessional. It’s just been a long day.”

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say its shock that he draws back in, “Oh no, I didn’t mean you. That guy’s an asshole. He’d been snapping at you all day – only got what was coming to him.”

It’s then that you flick your eyes up to meet his, only to find them filled with something so deeply genuine it’s as though his face can’t contain it. Tender. That’s the word for it. Caring. You can’t seem to drag yourself away from his stare, not that you particularly want to.

“Oh, thank you,” it comes out as nothing more than a breath, but you’re certain he catches it anyway. You pause before adding, “Agent Poindexter.”

It’s his turn to blush then; you spy the way it shifts from the tips of his ears to lightly colour his cheeks. He seemed shy, an emotion ill-befitting of a man so notorious for his sharp attitude.

“You know my name?” There’s a reverence in the way he says it, like its tinged with awe. You’re not certain anyone has ever spoken to you with such veneration.

You bite back a laugh, “Everyone knows your name. Especially after you kicked ass with the Albanians.”

Something shifts in his expression briefly, the shine in his eyes seems to dull for just an instant before returning again. It’s practically undetectable, and quite frankly you only catch it because of your sheer inability to shift your gaze from his own. 

He breaks the spell quickly with a cough, thrusting a cup forward in your direction, “You said you’d had a long day. That sounds hard, really hard. I, uh, think I got your order right.”

Wordlessly, you collect the cup in your hands a take a sip. Probably not particularly good vetting for an FBI agent; you’d be terribly easy to poison. But it’s perfect. Exactly how you’d order it yourself. It’s impossible to stop the smile that splits its way onto your cheeks.

“How did you know?”

“Oh,” his eyes dot around a tad frantically. It’s endearing, particularly when his hand comes up to scratch his temple, “I’ve done the coffee run a few times.”

You don’t think you’ve ever ordered coffee with the group, preferring to get it from the cart in front of the hotel rather than the bar. It’s nicer there and the man pouring it always pays you a compliment. Poindexter’s observant, then.

“Well, thank you, Agent Poindexter. I should probably be heading home but,” you pause, offering him one final grin, “I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah. 7am sharp, right?” The exhale that leaves him seems to rattle, something of an ease settling over his features as you nod back.

It’s a tad awkward as you spin on your heel to leave, tucking the coffee cup closer to your chest.

“Oh, one last thing,” he calls out, grin stretching wider now.

“Yeah?”

“Call me Dex.”

2

There’s always something disorienting about cracking your eyes open in a bed that isn’t your own; different scents clinging to your skin, the sun slipping through the curtains at a different angle. The sheets feel starchier, crisper, lacking the worn in feel that you’d associate with home.

But home can very quickly become a person rather than a place, and it was by no means a hardship to get used to waking up in Ben Poindexter’s apartment. 

It had been no surprise to find that his place was absolutely pristine the first time you’d stayed over, everything had its place – some of it purely logical, other parts an order that existed only in the walls of his mind but mattered just as much regardless. It was conscious, you knew that, a choice to dedicate himself to a life of order, but despite his best efforts there were smatterings of himself throughout the place.

It lingered in the carefully folded civvies that sat somewhere amongst the countless pressed suits and tactical gear. Or the baseball paraphernalia tuckered away behind the door that would make him blush and bury his face into the pillow if questioned on it. The specific brands of coffee that he’d claim didn’t matter because he’d drink anything, but you could see the ease on his features when it was one he particularly liked.

You’d long since given up on him lingering in bed in the mornings, he was a stickler for routine that not even the allure of a lazy wake-up could shift. The telltale tinker of pots and pans rings out from the kitchen, the smell of breakfast loitering through the apartment. 9:18. He’d go for a run at 9:30.

It’s a herculean effort to tear yourself from the sheets, consciousness hastened by the biting cold that nips at your skin. Fucking aircon. He always does run hot. It’s soundless as you slip his shirt from the previous day around your shoulders, and act in an of itself that would set his teeth on edge. He liked to see it on you, though. The panelling is freezing against your bare feet, but all of it’s worth it to catch just a glimpse of him.

Naturally, he’s already kitted out in his running gear, headphones nestled in a mop of grey flecked blond as he moves about the kitchen without a sound. There’s a precision in every twitch of muscle, no movement unaccounted for even when swanning around his home. You’d never seen him in action, not truly, but you can imagine that it would be a sight to see.

You revel in the moment he clocks you, a soft grin splitting on his cheeks. The way the corner of his eyes crinkle, brim with a tenderness you’d like to believe was reserved only for you.

“Good morning,” his voice is still rough from disuse, quiet and croaky as he pulls his headphones round his neck. He doesn’t bother asking as he slips a plate in front of you, just slides the cutlery across the counter to slot exactly in your palm.

You’d never had to tell Dex what you liked, he always seemed to just know. He didn’t eat what you did, often opting for some bland, protein-based meal to keep him functional throughout the day. Yet, the first night you’d stayed over, the plate had appeared in front of you, exactly as you wanted.

And it had done every time since.

“Uh, god, I don’t know how you do it,” you yawn and stretch, beginning to stab at the plate with your fork, “I guess I’ll keep you around.”

He seems to preen at that, shoulders straightening out somewhat. Without fuss, he simply leans across the counter to press a quaint kiss your forehead, “I do anything for you, baby, you know that. Breakfast barely scratches the surface.”

“You’re too good to me,” you hum, shoving forkfuls in your mouth.

Something in his expression seems to flicker, his brows knit together in a quiet confusion. You can practically hear the mechanisms in his brain whirring, pupils darting from side to side. His shoulders drop again; the action being replaced with the grating of his jaw.

“Too good to you? Do you not like it?” It’s quiet, wavering, laden with insecurity. He looks hurt, confused even.

You practically lurch across the counter to take your hand in his own, “No, Dex, no. I didn’t mean it like that. You’re perfect. Everything is perfect.”

Your earnest outburst seems to settle him somewhat; but you can still see the tension taut across his temples. He sucks in a slow breath, quiet and self-soothing, only to plaster a smile on his face that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“What are you doing today? Any plans?”

“Oh, I’m meeting an old friend from high school. It’ll be nice, we haven’t had the chance to catch up in years,” you offer it as casually as possible, trying not to give away the concern wedged in the back of your throat.

He hums, strained, “That sounds like it will be really nice.”

“I know, he was so funny in school—”

“He?” It’s severe and instant, and Dex reels so quickly his back hits the other side of the kitchen, “It’s a guy?”

“Dex—”

“No.” He shakes his head, half disbelief, half determination. It’s as though you’ve slapped him, abject horror lacing every feature. You don’t think you’ve even seen him so distraught.

The clock ticks over. 9:31.

“Dex, sweetheart,” it comes out as a shaky laugh, “He’s gay. It’s not like that. He’s just an old friend.”

“He could just be telling you that,” he spits, all venom. It’s a twisted, small anger that worms its way forward, and you can see just how desperately he’s trying to keep himself together, “What if he’s just telling you that?”

You deadpan, “Dex, I’ve watched him make out with men at parties for as long as I can remember. We met because I walked in on him and another man. Trust me, you’re much more his type than me.”

Something in him quiets at that, anger dissipating into something more delicate, “You’re sure?”

“There’s only one thing I’m more certain of.”

He looks like a skittish dog as he stares around the room, desperately searching for any kind of indication of what you could be referencing. It comes out stuttered and broken, “What…what is it?”

It’s 9:34.

“How I feel about you, Dex. I love you. Only you,” you approach him slowly, bringing a hand up to cradle his jaw in the hopes of redirecting his intention to you and you alone. “I want you to trust me.”

He practically melts under your touch, doe eyes split wide, “I love you. I love you so much. I do trust you. Of course I trust you. I just don’t trust them.”

Your heart aches for him, sadness practically bleeding onto the linoleum. You haven’t been privy to the nuances of his upbringing, only bits and pieces here and there, but you can’t stifle the blazing hatred you feel for anyone who would have ever done him wrong. 

It’s uncharacteristically violent, and you can’t help but wonder if maybe that’s the price of loving so deeply.

You’re not quite sure how long passes until you finally pull back from the embrace, but you’re satisfied with the unknitting of his brow.

“Why don’t you go out on your run? It might make you feel better, hm?” you offer, tracing circles on his palm.

“Can’t now.” Clipped. “It’s too late.”

“Well…why don’t you come to lunch with me? James would like to meet you. It could be nice,” you rake a hand through his hair, “Take your mind off things.”

His lip quirks upwards, contained but there. His features begin to brighten, “Really? You want me to meet your friend?”

“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I want them to meet the most important person in my life?”

You’re not entirely convinced he won’t cry, eyes glazing over somewhat. The nod is barely a twitch of his head, and you offer him the brightest smile can you muster. He lets you slip your hand into his own tugging him forward and round the counter.

“C’mon then, sunshine. Let’s go get ready. I think you’ll like the coffee there.”

3

“Dex, I already have a gun. FBI, remember?”

“Nah, that’s some standard issue bullshit. This is a proper gun.”

You’d hadn’t questioned him on it when Dex had told you he wanted to go try out a new shooting range upstate, thought maybe it might snap him out of his slump, ignoring the perfectly good training facility the FBI provided free of charge. Maybe it was some fancy place that would make it a tad more challenging for him. 

But no, it was some dump on the side of a random highway. The place was practically held together by sticks, it’s only patrons drunkards that you weren’t entirely convinced wouldn’t shoot your foot off by accident.

You fling your hands down at your sides in frustration, “I don’t know why we’re here. I can shoot well enough for the FBI.”

Dex only hummed, inspecting the new pistol he’d brought you over in his palms, testing the weight, “Not well enough for me.”

“Nobody can shoot well enough for you,” you huff, snatching it from him, “I hope that’s not what you’re expecting.”

“I’m not unreasonable, baby,” his smirk is coy, “Just wanted to give you some pointers s’all. Go on, give it a go.”

He nudges you forward into the booth with a soft tap on your ass, snapping the ear protectors over your head with a cheeky grin. But he looks tired in a way that no amount of laughing and giggling can mask.

You could just chalk it up to the situation with the Bureau – Dex had not long been reinstated after the drama with the Albanians, only after you’d had to watch him slip into a spiral for weeks. Fucking ridiculous shit. And the hours they’d had him working with Fisk since then. Of course, the asshole needed 24/7 security, but why it always had to be your boyfriend at all times of the night was beyond you.

It could be something more than that, but if there’s one thing you know about Dex, pressing him on it will not get you anywhere close to the answer.

“If I hit the target, will you tell me why we’re in the middle of nowhere?”

“I know you can hit the target,” his arms come to cross his chest, “I’ll tell you if you hit a bullseye.”

“Okay, asshole. What’s a bullseye? It’s a model of a person.”

Something inexplicably dark crosses his features, voice low and unwavering, “Killshot. Heart or Head. Dealer’s choice.”

 Fucking hell. You begin to worry your lip between your teeth, raising up the pistol and getting into the correct stance awkwardly. The gun is different to the ones at Quantico, that’s for certain, and yeah, the FBI taught you to shoot, but it’s not exactly your bread and butter.

Exhaling slowly, you fire two shots, aiming for the head of the target. They’re a bit crooked, one missing entirely and the other landing slightly off centre. Better than not at all. You don’t bother swinging round to gauge his reaction, sensing the word before it comes. Curt and short.

“Again.”

With a sigh, you make an overexaggerated performance of getting into position in the hopes it will break some of the nauseating tension emanating from the man behind you. You fire again, both hitting the chest this time – but again, ever so slightly off centre.

You hear his quiet tut, practically whispering to himself, “Not good enough.”

“Oh, come on, Dex,” you swing around, glaring at him expectantly, “It’s not like he wouldn’t be fucking dead.”

Without a sound, he marches to your side, snatching the damn thing from between your fingers. His eyes remain locked with yours the entire time as he raises his arm, unloading the rest of the clip into the target. Dead fucking centre, every single one. You can hear his teeth grinding against each other as he reloads it with ease, slamming it back into your palm.

“That’s fucking dead.” You’re not sure you’ve ever seen him so serious. 

You’d always known who Dex was, what he’d done and what he was capable of, but to see it so up close was another matter entirely. You’d never been frightened of him, and you weren’t, but there was far too much mystery around this particular hissy fit to let it slide.

“Again.”

“Dex.”

“I said again.”

“This isn’t funny, Dex–”

“Don’t hear any laughing, do you? You should get that checked, baby.”

“Don’t be a fucking–” you slam the gun down against the booth, “–asshole. I’m going to sit in the car.”

‘No, you’re not,” it’s infuriating, the way he can use his whole frame to block your escape. All he has to do is lean against the pillar and you can’t even see the exit, obscured by your ridiculously giant, stubborn-ass boyfriend. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

You’re fucking livid, “I’m not doing anything until you tell me why we’re in the middle of nowhere and you’re training me to be the fucking Winter Soldier.”

He snaps at that, yanking a frantic hand through his hair, “I want to know– need to know that you can protect yourself.”

“You’ve been just fine with how well I can protect myself until now! What’s changed?” You can only stare at him expectantly, glaring as he shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs with infuriating indifference.

“Things are different now.”

“What’s fucking different, Dex?”

“Everything!” He’s shouting, snapping even the drunkards from their daze to glare over at your little altercation. In an instant his voice drops dangerously low, “Things with Fisk are different now. It’s dangerous. And I need to know that you can protect yourself if I’m not there.”

You deflate a little at that, at least some of the tension draining away. Infuriating as he is, it was Dex 101. Overprotective and overzealous in making it known. In all likelihood, something small had ticked him off and he’d decided that it was a reason to kick off the next World War in the name of your safety. It probably shouldn’t endear you to him, it certainly doesn’t in the eyes of your friends, but it does you, nonetheless.

“C’mon Ben,” you sigh, poking his shoulder lightly, “Sweetheart. I can protect myself. You know that.”

It takes a second, but his jaw finally starts to slacken, hand coming up to massage his temple, “I know. I just don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to you–”

Hooking your fingers into his shirt, you yank him down to press a kiss against his lips, revelling in the way his body jumps in surprise. A momentary flinch before he melts into it completely.

“Dex, you barely ever leave me alone. I can defend myself, yes, but I also have you around,” you slip your hand under his shirt just to feel the heat burning off him. It’s a dirty trick, knowing the skin-to-skin contact would turn him to little more than a pile of mush.

Of course, it does.

His response is barely even words, a jumble of noises that you can vaguely decipher as yes, baby. Offering him a pointed glance, you slide your hand across the hold the pistol again, shifting it from palm to palm until it feels comfortable.

“Let’s go then, hotshot, hit me with your pointers.”

A sly smile returns to his cheeks as he slots himself behind you, bringing his arms around to cage you in, tweaking your position slightly with murmured instruction. At his command, you fire two more shots. Bullseye. Naturally.

He’s beaming at you when you spin back around, swinging your arms around his neck in a cacophony of giggles while he whispers quiet praise in the shell of your ear.

You draw back, aiming the thing in dramatic poses. “Well, if the Daredevil tries to come for me, I’ll lay him flat.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

4

You work. You pay your taxes. You always buy a sandwich for the guy sat outside the pharmacy on 9th Avenue on your way back home from work. You’d been found innocent in by a jury in the FBI-Fisk case, free and fit to carry on with your life without punishment.

There is absolutely no reason you should be summoned to Rikers Island.

It’s unnerving, and seemingly unnecessary. The Warden had claimed there was a ‘pressing matter that they would like to discuss in person’, only to clarify that you in fact had no choice in said matter as it concerned the Anti-Vigilante Task Force.

You have to choke down the bile rising in your throat as you recall the only vigilante you could be accused of knowing.

It had been a struggle to even get there, the journey adding another layer of complication to the affair. Just to rub salt in the wound, they kept you waiting for hours, watching aimlessly as the crowd in the waiting room dwindled down, filled up, and then dwindled down again before anyone called your name. At least they were making the day off work worth it.

The office is stifling, and before the Warden even opens his mouth, you know exactly the type. Smarmy and entitled, a power complex that could rival Fisk’s as he makes a point of standing over you perched in the seat in front of his desk. There’s another man there too, AVTF. Your FBI days may be far behind you, but your ability to read people had by no means faltered. He looked mean. Cocky in a way that’s only earned by those lording their power over others.

“We’re sorry to keep you waiting, ma’am,” the Warden folds his hands together in his lap, a disgusting grin plastered on his face, “you understand running a prison is a complicated and time-consuming affair.”

You only hum, unamused, “I can only imagine.”

“I know this may all seem rather unnecessary, but we do have a very important reason for calling you here today,” the man holds a finger up to your face, other hand fishing into his pockets for god only knows what.

He places a tooth on the desk next to him.

Shuffling uncomfortably, you offer him a tight smile, crossing your arms across your chest, “Warden, I don’t know if you’ve got me confused with someone else but I’m no dentist.”

“Well, it’s less a matter of the tooth itself and who it belongs to–”

“Ben Poindexter has escaped.”

Four words and your blood runs ice cold. It’s the AVTF officer who interrupts, barging his way in front of the warden to sit only inches away from your face, pure, unfiltered disgust glaring down at you.

Ben Poindexter has escaped.

You might be sick.

“What…what do you mean Ben Poindexter has escaped?”

The Warden barks out a laugh so jarring it makes your skin crawl, desperate to reinsert himself in the exchange. “We’ve avoided leaking information to the public for the time being – no use creating needless anxiety. He escaped last night after killing two guards and a prison doctor. We have reason to believe he took the staff bus into the city.”

Dex has escaped.

“I don’t understand,” your voice starts low, employing every attempt to steel yourself, “what Ben Poindexter escaping would have to do with me.”

The AVTF asshole leans forward, disgusting breath smothering your senses, “I think you know exactly what Ben Poindexter escaping would have to do with you.”

In a pinch, you muster together a faint laugh, desperately pleading that the men before you won’t peek through the façade, “Yes, me and Ben Poindexter dated a very long time ago. Before, he was found to be the fake Daredevil, institutionalised, murdered Foggy Nelson and got institutionalised, again. I haven’t seen him since before…that.”

“You seem to have a very extensive knowledge of Poindexter’s history, ma’am,” the AVTF officer snaps, laced with accusation. You’re not ignorant to the way his eyes narrow, peeling over every inch of you with pure distain.

It’s not an unfamiliar reaction to people finding out you had sex with Bullseye, regardless of the fact he had just been Dex back then. You’d have thought you murdered Father Lantom right alongside him.

“What can I say? Most girls like to keep tabs on their ex-boyfriends, Officer,” you shrug as nonchalantly as you can manage, ignoring the way it seems to grate your bones against each other.

Ben has escaped.

That gets the Warden howling, slapping his hand against his knee with an overexcited guffaw. AVTF seems less impressed, lips only barely twitching into what could be considered a smile.

“Harbouring anyone accused of vigilante crimes carries a sentence under the Safer Streets Act. You wouldn’t happen to have had any contact with Poindexter in the past 24-hours would you?”

“Do you really think that if Poindexter had paid me a visit in the past day, I would be sat here right now? Do you think he would’ve let me?” The rage is boiling now, and you can feel yourself spitting the words out. Probably not the wisest move, but it’s all you can do to detract from the churning sensation in your gut.

“Couldn’t say, ma’am, you’re much more,” AVTF pauses to rake his eyes across you, head-to-toe, “familiar with him than me.”

Dex would fucking kill you, is all you can manage to think.

You stand, pulling your coat tight across yourself, “No, I have not seen Poindexter in the past 24-hours. No, I do not expect to see Poindexter in the next 24-hours. I have not seen Ben Poindexter in nine years. Am I free to go or do you have something to charge me with, Officer?”

The Warden tuts, plucking the tooth up and inspecting it, “You are free to go, ma’am. Any time. However, we do have this to give you before you leave.”

It’s a feeling of vertigo that overcomes you, and you can only stare back in horror. He holds the thing out expectantly, shaking it in his palm until you open yours, dropping it into with a chuckle. You roll it between your fingers.

“I don’t understand,” you echo for the second time in far too short a time period, “Why are you giving this to me?”

“Poindexter left a note, you see, crazy bastard,” the Warden shrugs, “was very explicit. Said that we had to give it to you.”

Jesus Christ.

It was Dex’s fucking tooth.

You think you might pass out; it’s so miniscule yet so deeply, deeply disturbing. It makes you want to vomit, sit on the floor and wail, batten the hatches of your apartment and never leave to see the light of day again. It feels like a threat.

It’s borderline euphoric to touch a part of him again. 

“How…” you can barely find the words, your throat seeming to fail under the pressure, “how did you get it?”

AVTF offers you a sick smile.

“He spat it at one of the guards. Killed them on the spot.”

+1

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

The noise that crawls its way out your throat is guttural. You can barely find your way to your feet – blood is so much slipperier than the movies make it seem. It’s flooding every one of your senses, hot and metallic and rancid.

And the noise.

He lays flat on the floor, a horrible gurgling sound akin to a draining gutter pipe bubbling out of the wound in his neck. He has to be dead, he has to be, but every latent twitch of his fingertips sends you reeling backwards as far away as possible. All you can do is cry, heaving sobs that shake your whole body to its core. You can’t even wipe at your eyes, lest you get mouthful of another man’s blood congealing against your fingertips.

You’re not sure how long you sit there, crying sometimes, others just staring. Time seems both infinite and instant, the only soundtrack the protests raging on just outside your door.

You scream when the hand settles itself on your shoulders.

“Hey, stop it, it’s me.”

There’s no way.

“Dex?” you stutter out, barely able to form his name between your chattering teeth. It takes less than a second for another wail to tear through, “Dex.”

“I’m here.” He slots himself behind you, pulling you taut against his chest without hesitation; like it hasn’t been nine years or ninety bodies since the last time he held you so close. 

You vaguely notice the whispers he presses into your ear, blurring together in one long slur – he sounds different to how he did all those years ago, gruffer, more tired, but blanker too. Like someone kept all of his words and sucked out the cadence.

Eventually you recognise, “I think you’re going to want me to sort that out.”

You scramble away slightly, finally twisting round to look at his face, “Dex, what are you doing here?”

He looks so much older. There’s more grey striping through his blonde. New scars that litter his cheekbones, the smile lines you’d once worshipped embedded into an expression that was so much more sinister than you remember him. Maybe he always looked like that.

“Watching you,” he offers lazily, “obviously.”

Like that’s supposed to be comforting.

“You can’t– you’re not supposed to be here, Dex.”

He only raises a brow, nodding to the corpse in the corner, “You don’t want me to sort that out then.”

You let out another whimper as you force yourself to glance over to the body, detesting the way his open eyes seem to follow you no matter where you move. You want to protest, want to tell Dex to get the fuck out of your apartment and never step foot in New York again. Not that he would oblige by either.

An almost bored huff whistles through his lips as he begins to heave himself off the floor, “Go have a shower. Leave your clothes outside the door. I’ll sort it.”

“Dex, I–”

“Shower.”

You don’t protest, opting to let autopilot take over. You can barely remember clambering into the shower until the water is scalding your skin, raw and tender. It takes you a second to come to, surveying the welts that litter your arms, shredded skin at your knees. Breaths come heavy, like each one requires you to lift the weight of the world with your lungs. Eventually, you muster up enough air to push yourself forward, flicking the water off with a twitching finger and letting the cold air hit as you rip the curtain back –

Dex is sat on the fucking toilet seat.

It’s an odd sight; he’s massive, so much bigger than he used to be, clad head to toe in tactical gear and knives as big as your forearm, poised languidly in the corner like a cat basking in the sun. He’s picking at his fingernails with your file.

“What the fuck, Dex?” you practically rip the holder out of the wall with the force at which you gather the towel around yourself, hair dripping wet onto the floor.

He doesn’t even spare a glance up, “Not like it’s anything I haven’t seen before.”

For an instant it’s so easy to pretend. To forget about the corpse on your kitchen floor and imagine that it was just a stupid domestic. That Dex does this all the time and it’s just some endearing honeymoon phase quirk that he never quite developed out of. So easy to imagine what it would have been like if he’d been there the whole time.

Instead, you let out a slow exhale, forcing yourself past his outstretched legs only to falter at the doorknob, “Is he–”

“It’s gone,” Dex lets out a low whistle, “Like it was never there.”

You don’t dare ask what he’s done with it. It’s better if you don’t know. That way when they come asking questions you can–

“You wanna tell me why there was a dead AVTF guy in your apartment?” There’s no hostility in it, just infuriatingly casual. He finally sets the file aside with a heavy sigh, hooking two of his gloved fingers in yours like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“You wanna tell me why you’re in my apartment?” You watch as he lifts your hand steadily, eyes dropping down to your fingernails. He only tuts softly, reaching for the file again to chip away the blood left crusted there.

“Told you. Been watching you.”

“Dex.”

You watch his eyes roll, “You really think I’d get out of prison and not keep tabs on you. Especially after the Warden.”

You’re not sure you want to know the answer, “Is he–”

“Dead? Yeah. Other AVTF guy too.”

It’s silent for a bit after that, Dex chipping away at your hands while you stand and let him. At some point, he pulls his gloves off, skin brushing delicately against your own. It’s hard, mainly because you think you might cry. Mainly because nobody has touched you that delicately in nine years, and because it’s Dex who handles you so softly regardless of how many lives those same hands have snuffed out.

Satisfied, he eventually drops your hand and watches it swing at your side for a few moments before finally staring up at you, “Why was he here?”

“Since the Warden they were convinced that you were here, staying with me, or that I was helping you,” the words are wet and heavy in your mouth, “They’ve been by countless times, turn my apartment upside down looking for you.”

“I know. I keep killing them.”

You can’t help the laugh that barks out, and you can only slap your hand across your face in horror, an attempt to stifle the borderline manic giggles, “Well, that’s probably why they keep coming.” 

He laughs too at that, a deep rumble in the back of his throat. He may look a tad different to before, but there’s an occasional twinkle of warmth in his eye that reeks too much of a nostalgia you thought for certain you’d packaged away.

“I think with the protests, he thought he could slip in and take me out. Probably thought he’d save a lot of friends doing it.”

“He wouldn’t have,” there’s an unnerving certainty in Dex’s voice, “I would’ve killed them all.”

“Were you always this disturbed?” You hate the way there’s affection in your words, or the way that you seem to migrate to his touch without meaning to.

“Yes, and you’ve always been a shit shot. You’re lucky you severed his windpipe, because you missed every damn major artery,” the smirk plastered on his face is lethal, and for a second, he looks so handsome you can barely contain the feeling in your chest.

“Do you think they’ll come looking for him? The, uh, AVTF guy.”

“Nah,” he shrugs, “There’s going to be a lot of dead AVTF around tonight, and I made sure no one will be able to trace it back to here.”

For just a second, a sensation so overwhelming threatens to fight its way out of your throat, and you don’t manage to quell the urge to bring a hand up to cradle his jaw, featherlight, but enough.

“I never thought I’d say this,” you let out a breathy laugh, “it’s good to see you again. Thank you for helping me.”

His lip quirks ever so slightly, it’s not much, but it’s the closest thing to genuine you’ve seen written on Dex’s face all night.

“I told you a long time ago, sweetheart, breakfast barely scratches the surface.”

dex: who do you fink gave u the teef?

i wish this request hadn’t been anon so i could’ve tagged you! but here’s it is ;)

People watching is not a crime. 

If it was, it would be a victimless crime. The patrons at Fennel Fields seldom notice you, and when they do, they’re only registering you for a moment, eyes skipping over the scene of the restaurant inattentively to find a girl in the corner booth all alone.

They take pity on you, you guess. The corner booth is usually given to large parties as it can seat five or six people. So you’ve realized you probably look like somebody that’s been stood up by four or five people. 

The truth is that the corner is objectively the best view of the whole place, and by extension, the biggest cast of characters to pick from and carve into your sketchbook. And you never had any plans to meet anyone here, anyways. 

There's a simple pleasure in sketching someone beautiful. And not conventionally attractive, not necessarily. But someone, a stranger, a lover, an animal. You find yourself falling in love with the way they were made by mother nature. Delicate hands of DNA sculpt hook noses and soft jawlines and stoic, forward brow bones. 

Drawing still-lives brings great catharsis for some. Well, you assume. It must. But not you; you like the impermanence of the state of being. The way things can change so drastically so fast. One moment gets swallowed up by the vastness of a twenty-four hour day. But to bring someone to life on a page in that one particular moment of their lives… sometimes you can capture a whole world of emotions to remember for them. Sometimes it’s a moment of nothing, and much less something to be remembered, but you’ve made it something to remember by turning the mundane into intense detail. A mole, a wrinkle, a pair of bloodshot eyes. 

What better a place to find the mundane than Fennel Fields?

The staff are familiar with you. You order a meal so you won’t be technically loitering, you keep to yourself, and you tip well. Nobody has any problem with you, and if anything, you’re a much more favorable person to wait on compared to other, more demanding, whiter customers.

The patrons and staff of Fennel Fields don’t know they’ll come home with you in your notebook at the end of the night. 

Well…

You’d never intended for any of them to know.

Your favorite subject is named Adrian. A busboy in his little busboy uniform. He’s refilled your water glass a couple times. Other than that, you know nothing about him. You observe, you listen, and you gather what you can about your victims. You overhear conversations about the frivolities in their lives. It only spurs your restless hands on.

Most sections of your notebook have multiple subjects per page. That is, until you reach about halfway through. From then on, it’s Adrian. You don’t even know his last name. 

Portraits of the busboy litter the pages. From the neck up, side profiles, various expressions of every ilk, his eyes behind his glasses, his hands… the list goes on. He’s an unusual beauty to watch, running himself into sharp counters and chairs on accident as he runs around Fennel Fields, and then trying to play it off super cool. How incredibly captivating his fluidity is. Everything rolls right off of him, like water off a duck’s back. He appears to be able to find something to think hard about no matter how boring the task at hand is. 

You’re extremely content to watch him do just about anything. 

Does it make you feel like a creep?

Of fucking course it does.

But alas, you can’t help that he’s so intriguing to you. You’ve thought that maybe you should stop frequenting the restaurant so much. Move on to a new place. 

You don’t know it, but as you slough food off into a styrofoam to-go container and seal it shut, your sketchbook slides off the table and onto the leather of the booth seat. It’s no longer visible to you, and you get up to go, confident that it’s in your bag. So confident, in fact, you have no reason to check or pay it any mind.

You leave your treasured corner booth and pay for your meal with a thirty percent tip. 

-

This has got to be the best day of Adrian’s life. 

For a while now, he’s noticed you in Fennel Fields. Okay, technically, he’s done more than just notice you. The first time he saw you, you’d pulled open the doors of the restaurant and a breeze blew in behind you. You walked past him to follow the hostess to your table, and you left an almost cartoonish trail of perfume and pheromones trailing behind you. It took him a second to recover.

He refills your water cup. You smile up at him from whatever holds your focus and softly utter a Thank you so easily, he can tell it’s a habit. The second or third time you’d made eye contact, Adrian looked up your transaction record in the POS system after you’d left. He knows the last four digits of your debit card, which was not useful— and your first and last name, very useful! 

It was a simple act of curiosity, Adrian assured himself. It’s good to know people’s names. Especially if said person is your future friend. Whatever the nature of friendship that may be. He has a few bashful ideas.

Adrian has become a creature of want, buzzing like static whenever you appear in your corner booth, but never self-possessed enough to do anything about it. 

And so, when he’s wiping each and every table down to its death at the end of the shift, he finds a notebook with a black cover. And it’s in your booth. 

This must be some sort of good karma for killing all those felonious people. 

It must be good karma again when he’s able to very easily find your name online registered with an address. 

-

It’s not a day later when Adrian next goes on patrol as Vigilante. It’s quite uneventful tonight, crime wise, and he’s trying to distract himself from driving in the direction of your house. He feels it’s too early, maybe, to return the notebook. That he might seem too eager. But he’s got nothing else to do, and no one to kill. 

So, as if his car started and steered on its own, he finds himself parked on your street. He hasn’t been in this neighborhood often, so he doesn’t know what he’s looking for besides a certain number on a house.

That is, until he sees someone who looks eerily like you get out of a shitty car and trail up the stairs to a little house. You don’t look up as you take the stairs, eyes trained on your keys, trying to find the specific key you need. You’re absentmindedly unaware of your surroundings. That’s not very safe, Adrian thinks to himself. He makes a mental note to warn you about shrouded, dangerous, figures in the night. 

His weight makes the stairs creak beneath him, and you begin to turn around at the sudden noise, as is the human condition to do so. He decides to make himself known before you see him and mistake him for a silent… shrouded, dangerous, figure in the night. 

You’re halfway pivoted towards him when he speaks.

‘Hey, there.’

At the sound of the stranger’s voice, your entire body jolts and the keys slip between your fingers. 

‘Ho—ly shit.’ He watches you clutch your heart in your hands. You’ve startled back a step and you take in the sight of him, eyes unblinking and fast.  You look him up and down, taking in his visage. His tall frame and what seems like a hundred holsters for various weapons. 

You can’t live on this planet without being aware of the metahumans and the superheroes and the alien threats and almost-world-endings. You’re actually a Superman fan, generally speaking. But you’ve never come eye to eye with one— a villain or a hero— before, and you’re anxiously unsure of where to place him in your brain.

Vigilante watches you curiously, as usually people don’t get this much time to make something of him before he starts cashing their checks.

‘Have no fear, citizen. Unless you’re a criminal. Are you breaking into this house?’

You kneel down and grab your dropped keys and raise them between you so he can see them clearly with no misconception. They barely perceptively jingle and catch the streetlamp and your porch light.

Shaking your head strongly in the negative, face frightful, the nerves in your bones make it to your voice, ‘…No, S’my place.’ 

‘Oh. Yep, all good, then.’ Rocking back and forth from heel to toe, the masked stranger seems almost unimposing if only you weren’t all alone in the dark.  

‘You scared me.’ 

‘Gosh, yeah, I’ve been meaning to work on that. So sorry.’

‘You’re that guy.’ You point at him, square at his face, and he uses a flattened, gloved hand atop yours to bat it away in a harmless manner. 

‘Do you have a disease where you can only speak in three syllable increments?’

Your lips part and open a bit, very obviously at a loss for words. That’s okay, he’ll fill in the blanks, trust him.

‘‘Cuz if you do, that’s totally fine. Like, maybe you got hit super hard by a baseball when you were a kid? And it knocked a chunk of your brain loose?’

‘You’re Vigilante.’ You clarify. Five syllables.

‘Yes, I am. But I’m not here on killing business. Just running an errand.’

‘That doesn’t make me feel any better.’ 

‘Um…’ Adrian scratches the top of his head, unsure of how to continue.

‘I’ve heard about you on the news, and you’re wanted for like, fifty grisly murders.’ 

Well, that’s an oddly bold thing to say to a supposed murderer.

‘Fifty? That’s so fucking embarrassing! It’s way more than that.’ Vigilante watches your face morph into wide-eyed fear, and you step back a little until your back hits your mailbox, eyelids fluttering when you do. 

‘Oh… no. No, no. Sorry, don’t worry. I only— look.’ He produces the black sketchbook from behind him, and you can only hope it wasn’t actually in the back of his pants like it seemed.

It was. 

‘This is yours, right?’

Adrian gets the chance to be your knight in shining armor, and god, does it feel good. Your whole face lights up, and the wary demeanor he’d given you is gone in an instant.

‘Oh, my god! Yeah!’ He hands the book to you and you accept it as gently as you can, but eager to get it back in your possession.

‘I only kill bad people, by the way. M’like… part of the good guys and stuff. Some would even say hero.’ He says lightly, but it falls on deaf ears as you look over your notebook in your hands.

‘I thought I’d lost this for-fucking-ever!’ You recount, shaking your head in happy disbelief, ‘W—… where’d you find it?’

‘… Nowhere.’

‘Nowhere?’

‘On the sidewalk.’ He blurts, ‘And I was there— right there on the sidewalk busting a crime, so.’

‘Oh. Thank you. That’s… that’s great!’ You huff a laugh at the absurdity and though you try your best to seem appreciative for fear of being knifed down, you do have questions. ‘How’d you know it was mine, though?’

‘Y’know like… I’ve seen you around.’ He puts on an unlikely faux casual energy.

‘Uh- Okay, I don’t one hundred percent believe this web you’re spinning, but however you ended up with this, I’m very grateful.’ He nods, and a second passes quietly. The cicadas chirp around you. You feel you owe him for his good deed. ‘Um… Is there anything I can like… help you with? I know it’s not exactly a part of the whole righter-of-wrongs thing to get something in return, but uh— I don’t know, I have a fifty dollar bill in my purse?’

You shrug softly, knowing there’s not much else you have to offer him. 

‘Would it be super uncool to say yes? I kinda need to fill up my gas tank on the way home. Maybe just a twenty, if that’s okay with you.’

‘Please, I love to fund my local watchmen.’

‘Do you really?’ 

‘Uh… no, first timer.’

Ah, sarcasm. Right. He doubles over in laughter, and it shocks you, jolting you again.

‘You’re funny!’

‘…Thanks.’

While you dig in your purse that hangs off your shoulder, Adrian’s brain reminds him of his current digging curiosity. And before this interaction comes to a polite close, he’s gotta ask. He puts a hand out, stopping you from going any further.

‘Just, before you— Um… sorry, but who is that guy you draw?’ He shuffles forward awkwardly with an outstretched finger pointing. 

‘Oh, uh… which one?’

Angling the sketchbook his way, you let him flip through pages until the Adrian-heavy section starts. He points to one closer to the spine of the book, it’s him looking askance, and he isn’t sure what he was doing while you drew this, but he looks annoyed. His chin dimple dips in hard. 

‘He’s a busboy at the restaurant I eat at a lot. He’s a good subject.’ You tell him openly, apparently excited slightly by the idea of someone asking about your art. Under the very first drawing, there’s a note scribbled in the same pencil you’d used, strokes wide and unsharpened:

Name tag reads Adrian

‘Why?’

‘Well, I guess he’s interesting to me. I only really draw people that have character. Some sort of distinctness.’

‘Do you… want to see?’ You’re sheepishly smiling now, eyelids fluttering a bit when you bring your eyes back to him, and Adrian thinks to himself that you’ve been sent to enchant him. To seek and destroy. The thought is fleeting but not any less believable to him. 

You take notice of his lack of response immediately, and your smile falls behind a newborn embarrassment. 

‘Sorry. You probably have, uhm—‘ clearing your throat, you shake your head to attempt restarting your brain, because what the fuck are you thinking? ‘—Vengeance to be seeing to right now.’

‘No!’ Adrian catches a bit of your embarrassment for himself, ‘Yes. I do want to see them, I mean.’ He’s nodding his head so hard it’s creating movement in his body. 

Moving to sit on the top step of your stoop, you put your keys back in your pocket and cradle the book in your arms, open and ready to be observed. You look up to find Vigilante standing in the same place as before, seemingly unsure of what to do. You gesture for him to sit next to you. It snaps him out of his stupor with an Oh! and he moves quickly to your side, hands folded politely in his lap. 

And so, you start close to the beginning. The first few pages are half-finished, like you’d done them distractedly. You decide to point out something you’re actually somewhat proud of.

The first is a woman with short dark hair looking down at her dog. The background is simple and unloved by your pencil, just a couple lines and necessary features to make it clear she’s on some sort of public transportation. She, herself, is carefully drawn, full of shading and precision and effort. The focal point.

‘I was on the train with this lady, and she had a tiny chihuahua, and y'know, most people carry them in bags or on a leash, but she had the dog inside her shirt and nestled in her massive cleavage. And he seemed like, totally okay with it.’ 

Adrian’s eyes move over the page, taking it in, and he notices some more writing below the woman and her dog.

Woman with squished dog. The dog’s name was, in fact, Guy Gardner

‘Do you write notes for all of them?’

‘Yeah. To remember.’ You point to the next sketch, this one of two people with narrowed eyes and furrowed brows, ‘These people were in the doctor’s office waiting room. They were whisper-arguing about the pronunciation of the word apricot for fifteen minutes. It might've been longer, I wasn’t there to see who won.’

Intense couple. Personally, app-ricot

The paper following the quarreling couple showcases a woman with long salt-and-pepper hair, mid-forties. She’s sitting with a plate of indistinct food in front of her, probably one of your Fennel Fields subjects. She looks thoughtfully at her dinner date from across the table. Her eyes glimmer and the corners of her full, round lips tilt up. She’s gorgeous. Astoundingly so. 

‘This is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen. I was, like, fully enamored. I had to draw her or the feeling was gonna consume me. That’s what I want it to feel like everytime.’

Completely out of her date’s league. Captivating laugh

You flip to the next page and, lo and behold, there’s a face Adrian’s knows very well. You explain, ‘He came into the restaurant, actually the same restaurant as the busboy, and he had a costume on. He called the waitress sweetcheeks. I think he’s Justicemaker. Peaceman, whatever.’

Justice Gang inductee, one can only assume

‘Peacemaker!’ Vigilante exclaims beside you, leaning over the notebook with you now.

‘Right.’

‘I know him, it’s fuckin’ uncanny!’

‘Wow, really? Thanks.’

Once again, Adrian can’t keep himself from asking.

‘What’s so special about the busboy?’

‘Well…’ Thumbing through the paper quickly, searching, you aim to find a drawing you know you did of just his eyes. You find it, and you’ve successfully drawn the texture of his glasses, the silver glinting. 

‘You never see anyone wearing this style of frames anymore. I love vintage stuff, so his glasses caught my attention first.’ He’d already flipped through all the pages of the notebookbook when he’d found it, so Adrian looks at you as you speak about him, not the drawings. ‘He’s… very awkward. In an endearing way. He gets lost in thought a lot, like— okay, for instance, this one time he was refilling a salt shaker but not paying attention, and it overflowed. He didn’t notice for like fifteen seconds. It was so… human.’ 

You turn another Adrian page, ‘I think the only things worth capturing in art are things desperately alive.’

He’s glad you can’t see an inch of his skin, because at your words, he gulps and reddens. He feels very exposed. He should be made sad, he thinks, to be described as awkward. 

Though, you speak of it— his awkwardness— with hushed tones and attentive, reverent favor.

You offer a window into your thought process. And if his awkwardness is what’s gotten your attention, holy fuck, he’ll start tripping over himself to keep it.  

‘You- you draw him a lot.’ 

‘C’monnnn. He’s cute! Something of a muse, in my humble opinion.’ A red string ties itself in his chest as he listens to you go on, weaving in and out of his ribs until it makes a bow. The beginnings of attachment. ‘With these people, you wonder what they think about, what they go home to. What do they notice in other people? Sometimes you can even try to pin a kink on ‘em.’

‘That’s disgusting!’ He laughs, clearly not disgusted, ‘What’s Peacemaker’s kink, do you think?’ 

He didn’t mean to rhyme. Fuck.

‘Oh, god.’ You laugh through these two words, then you settle back down into your original tone, ‘Probably mass orgies.’

‘Ha!’ He bellows, ‘I want to do one!’

‘Okay, um…’ Your grin is unstoppable. You’re very charmed by his openness. You flit back a couple pages until you reach an old man at a bus stop with an umbrella shielding him from the harsh rain. 

‘Him.’ You direct his attention to your pick. 

‘Mmmm… choking.’ 

‘Doing the choking or being choked?’

‘Oh, he’s the chokee. Like getting the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube, but it’s his neck. Old men are freaks like that.’ He nods with total confidence in his conclusion.

Adrian gazes at you as you giggle softly. He feels buried under your temperament. He thought you were beautiful from a far, but now, up close— he’s bearing witness to all the characteristics that make you up, and he sees in you what you see in your subjects.

You continue going through the book, looking for your next shared target. He asks,

‘And the busboy?’

You barely react. And you answer quickly, like you’ve thought about it extensively.

‘Facesitting, definitely.’ 

‘Wow. That was really fast.’

‘It’s just a guess.’

Not that you would know, but Adrian opens and closes his mouth a couple times before he’s able to get his next question out.

‘Well, I mean, is that desirable? In— in a boyfriend? If he’s cute like you said, would you do that?’

‘What’s hotter than a guy who actually wants to eat you out?’ Adrian feels his face heat up, ‘But I don’t know. I think I’d be too scared of breaking his face and neck by way of vagina.’ 

You fidget with the edges and binding of your sketchbook, staring off into the street with an upturn to your mouth like you’re really thinking about his question. You seem utterly comfortable.

Adrian scratches the back of his neck timidly. He looks out into the dark with you now, too warm under his mask to keep looking at you.

‘No way. He looks like he has a really strong face. And he probably, definitely knows where the clitoris is. And he probably doesn’t even finish kinda fast sometimes.’ With each sentence, your face drops a little more from the encouraging grin you’d had before, thoroughly enlivened by the conversation. ‘And probably Fennel Fields has shitty fucking salt shakers to begin with. It’s a losing battle, y’know.’

Head snapping back to him, you make eye contact through his red visor. 

‘I… never said it was Fennel Fields.’

The both of you stare into each other for a good while. An unusually quiet while. Adrian is dumbfounded by the fact that he’s fucked up so royally. And not that he especially knows what to say anytime he opens his mouth, but he definitely doesn’t know now.

You realize now why he’s asking so much about the busboy.

You stand suddenly, sketchbook snapping closed.

‘You’re him! Holy fuck!’ These are words spoken with all the essence of a child that’s been told Santa isn’t real. You’re embarrassed, too, for all the exposing you’d done on your thoughts about the busboy.

Any mystique the either of you had lays shred to ribbons at your feet.

‘N—… no…!’ Anxiety crawls up into Adrian’s chest.

‘Oh, god.’ You step up on your porch now to put some distance between the two of you.

‘Shh!’ He follows you, waving his hands and whipping his head around to make sure nobody’s come out of their house to see about the calamity.

‘Oh, god!’ 

Yes, he fears for his secret identity, and heavily. But he also wonders if you, too, felt something snap open inside of you while sitting here with him. He wonders if you’d gotten comfortable, letting it seep into your bones, too. He worries that he’s just ruined it all, starts to panic.

‘Shut up! No, I’m not. I’m who? I don’t even know— Who’re you even talking about? The busboy? I’d never be a busboy.’ His hands come to rest on his hips, and he starts pacing, which isn’t making his argument any more convincing. ‘Not because they aren’t valued workers. Because they very much are! But not me, no way. I work at a different restaurant with better salt shakers. Ones with actual sea salt and— and grinders. So…’

‘Adrian?’ You call to him when his back is to you during his pacing and rambling, just to see if it works— if he reacts to his name out of muscle memory. You’ve never seen it work in real life. You’ve never needed it to work in real life.

He spins around at the sound, frustrated.

‘What?’

A gasp escapes you.

His head drops towards the ground in disappointment. Another dead silent moment passes between the two of you. Your lips curl into themselves and your eyebrows bend into each other, and then it all breaks loose. 

‘Oho-ho! You’re really not good at this, dude!’ You bust out in laughter, head thrown back, unable to keep it down at the hilarity of the situation. Though, you suppose you’ve no right to be laughing. You’ve lost something too, even if it is just your dignity.

‘No! Fuck— you tricked me!’ He points and points and points at you accusatorily, index finger wagging up and down. ‘Look—!‘ 

Adrian places his gloved hands out in front of him in a pacifying manner, like how you’d try to talk someone out of stabbing you. He steps a little closer, prepares to strike a bargain with you, or beg, or perhaps appeal to your humanity, or beg. Yeah, probably begging is the best course of action. But you interrupt him before he’s got the chance.

‘I’m not gonna tell anyone.’

‘No?’

‘Got no reason to. You brought my baby back to me.’ You make your intentions clear, nodding to the sketchbook in your hands, and Adrian has no good reason to not believe you other than the fact that he can mistake sarcasm for candor. Your intonation, if anything, is still friendly. You aren't cruel, or condescending, or taking him for an opportunity to blackmail someone. 

‘That’s… okay, yeah. Good. Thanks.’

‘No problem. I’m gonna keep my fifty, though.’

‘Sure, yeah.’

‘Just— did you… I mean,’ You struggle to find the correct words to not embarrass yourself, ‘I’ve never shown anybody my work before. Did you like how I drew you?’

‘They’re so cool, are you kidding? It’s like looking in a mirror, but more handsome and juicy. I want to tape those over every mirror in my house.’ He reverts back to the person you were talking to comfortably five minutes ago, like all strange interaction between the two of you is forgotten, a smile evident in his tone. ‘I’ve never been drawn before. Didn’t think I was a good reference outta the suit.’

‘Well, now you know better.’ You smile at him for what you think is the last time. 

Adrian feels the conversation close naturally, and thinks this would probably be the appropriate time to leave. His legs start to walk down the stairs and then away forever, but his foot never touches down on the step, because he’s spinning back around to you almost immediately.

‘Before I go, though… can I ask a teensy favor?’

-

You move a chair from your kitchen to a place with better lighting. Adrian no-last-name, or Vigilante, sits well for his portrait. While you’ve been sketching away, he’s been trying his damn hardest to stay as still as possible. That is, he keeps his body in place, but he talks like he’s running out of time on earth. 

Usually one portrait would take you about twenty minutes, but you allow yourself to stretch it to a half hour to make sure it’s adequate for such special circumstances, and because you’re very much enjoying this dynamic. You’ve missed it, all this time; the connection between muse and artist. How bonding it can be.

There are very little pauses between the two of you because he’s got so much on his mind. The conversation flows freely. And when one of his questions is answered graciously by you, another takes it’s place. You keep the wheel spinning, much to his delight, by asking him questions right back. About his suit, his job, his other job, his hobbies— the things that make him happy. Adrian smiles giddy and easily excitable under his mask. His friends rarely ask him honest questions, as he’s already so eager to give too much information. It feels good to be inquired about. You don’t shush him or ask him to do anything differently. Your mistrust of him is all used up and long abandoned the moment he revealed your lost sketchbook. 

It’s not a regular sketch, this one. He keeps his suit and mask on. You don’t ask why, and you don’t ask him to take it off. It’s possible he’s just not comfortable enough, and you aim to draw people exactly as they are, not how they should be. You think maybe after already having so many portraits as Adrian, he’d like one as his counterpart.

You put more effort and time into this drawing. You shade the darkest parts of his visage with a deep blue pencil instead of black, and you make his red visor the centerpiece. It’s stylistic, still, but it would be easy for anyone to tell who the drawing represents.

It’s that murderer guy from the news. 

You realize you can’t remember the last time you drew someone that asked to be drawn. And in the same vein, someone you’ve honestly connected with. That murderer guy has thrown a wrench in your routine. You open up to it, letting it wash all over you. 

You place the finishing touches, clean it up around the edges, and you’re about to slide the drawing into a manila envelope to ensure it won't smudge on the ride home when he bounds over from his chair and points to it. 

‘Hey, it’s not done.’

‘Hmm?’

‘You forgot your note. Your caption thing. To remember.’

‘Yeah, bossy? Anything else?’ You raise your eyebrows, giving him a clear opportunity to try his luck at getting your contact information. Or maybe giving his. Something. Anything.

‘You’re doing the hinting thing that girls do.’

‘Mhm.’

‘I’m never good at this. Um… A kiss on the mouth part of my mask?’ He points, as if his words hadn’t been enough to paint an image.

‘I was thinking more like… my phone number.’

‘Oh! Yes, please.’ He pulls his phone from his belt and hands it to you.

It’s time for Adrian to go, though he wishes he could stay for a very, uncomfortably long time. Maybe sleep in the bed with you, too. 

You don’t rush him. You let him talk your ear off on the way to the door about every single thing he can conjure up, perhaps trying to stall. Which is completely fine with you— because you wish that you could come up with an appropriate reason for him to linger, too.

‘And— he’s like my best friend. My #1 best friend. We’re birds of a feather. Which, by the way, in case you were wondering, if I were a bird I’d be a Peregrine Falcon. They’re the fastest animal in the whole world. You’d think it’s a cheetah, but I looked it up, like, five times to make sure. What bird would you be?’

‘I guess…’ Shrugging, you say, ‘I’ve always thought of myself as a mourning dove type of person. But I think I want you to pick something more interesting for me. Since you’re the bird guy.’

If there’s a certified way to gather what facial expression someone’s making behind a full disguise, you’ve surely mastered it. The cheeks of the mask fill out more, the eyes are blown wide and laser focused, and that’s how you know he’s smiling big. Along with the obvious bodily excitement.

‘Oh, man! No one ever fucking asks me anything that cool! Okay, well first of all, doves are foragers, so that’s no good.’ 

‘Do tell.’

‘You’re a hunter. I mean, you’re so specific about the people you draw! You’d be a Great Blue Heron. They eat fish and frogs and shit. Even small human children sometimes.’

‘I don’t think that last part’s true.’ 

‘They’re solitary creatures most of the time, especially when hunting.’ You open the door for him and you both stand face to face in front of the night that’s ready to receive him again. ‘And they’ve got killer eyesight. And they’re smart and beautiful and majestic, like if dragons were real.’

You blink up at him, taken aback. ‘And… you think that’s like me?’ 

‘Well, yeah.’ He says it with utmost confidence as he turns to leave, like it’s plain to see that you’re all of those things. You grab his face softly before he’s able to go from you completely, and standing on your tiptoes, you plant a kiss on his shrouded mouth. You let it linger for a second so you can feel him tentatively press back against you through the fabric. And then in a moment, it’s over.

You search under his visor for a reaction, but his eyes are still closed.

‘Wow.’ He speaks, tone dreamy and uncaring about hiding his surprise. He’s uncharacteristically still, nothing having moved an inch except for his lips. 

‘You okay?’ You let your hands fall from his face and grasp his biceps comfortingly in concern.

‘You don’t even know how long that’s been a fantasy of mine. Thanks.’

‘You’re very welcome, Vigilante.’ You speak with newfound poise. 

‘I um—‘ He clears his throat, ‘I have a boner, so I have to go now.’ Vigilante skips down the steps of your stoop and you lean against the door frame, watching him go fondly. You gather your thoughts in your arms softly; about how weird this whole exchange has been. And how you have a strange feeling it’ll happen again. You just smile at him as he goes. He starts down the sidewalk, and you see him adjust the crotch of his pants.

‘Hey, don’t read it until you get home!’ You call after him, and he doesn’t turn around, but he does speed up his pace drastically into an all out run to where you assume his car is parked.

‘Kay!’ He calls back, feet carrying him swiftly into the night.

-

Surprisingly, he does wait to read it until he gets home. The page calls to him from the passenger seat, and he keeps sneaking glances away from the road to gaze upon the envelope. No one would ever know if he tore it open now, but no matter how serious or unserious your instruction was— it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth to disobey you.

Adrian arrives home and busts through the door to his top secret room like a storm. He sheds the Vigilante mask and wastes no time. He reads it, and he smiles big and wide and toothy and exuberant. 

Rereading it a couple more times from start to finish, he touches his bare fingertips to your handwriting. Then, he pins the portrait to the wall above his desk, careful to not crease it in any way as he does so. 

He stands back a bit from it and stares as if he’s at a museum. This is a trophy. A testament to how he can be perceived and remembered, even by someone as good as you. He lets his chest fill with hard-won heat. 

He replays the highlights in his head.

He remembers you calling him cute. 

He remembers you calling him a muse. Your muse. 

He remembers, with flushed red cheeks, how he didn’t even have to look you up in the Evergreen Whitepages to find your phone number. You’d willingly given it. 

He remembers the kiss. He laughs— howls in celebration. Grinning like an idiot, he bounces on his feet for a second before he breaks into a full body expression. He punches the air and mimes kicking ass until he’s out of breath. Mutters to himself,

‘Fuck, yeah.’

Thus, the caption reads:

Vigilante. Bad liar, exemplary subject, ostensibly into face-sitting 

And a little farther down, like it was added postscriptum,

Hero.

send me an ask to be added to adrian taglist!

But you just had to pick up the extra hours. When you could’ve passed on the extra cash and found an alternative way to save up some money. Couldn’t you have skipped out on grocery shopping this week? Gotten by on cup noodles and anything edible you could swipe from work? You do have exceptionally tasty mozzarella sticks at Fennel Fields, and a slightly off-putting line cook who’d be willing to look the other way for you. Not that your boyfriend slash coworker—who has made it his mission to protect you from any creepy customer or sleazy staff members—would be too fond of that plan.

The rest of the staff at Fennel Fields couldn’t believe it when you gave Adrian a chance. “Him, really?” they all asked. Dorky, socially inept, thickheaded Adrian? The one who still lives with his mother?

Despite what they all might think, you wouldn’t change a thing about him. Adrian drew you in with his sparkling positivity and ability to make you laugh. Not to mention, with a face like that and a physique so solid, he’s pretty easy on the eyes too. But what really stands out above it all, is how special he makes you feel. Adrian doesn’t seem to like a lot of people—doesn’t even seem to care about them at all. But you? Somehow, you’ve become his exception. And not just that, you’ve become the single most important thing in his life. He’d move mountains if you asked him to. He’d paint the sky with a billion new stars if it would make you happy. He’d watch the world burn as long as he could keep you safe from the flames.

So yes, he might be a little goofy, and as awkward as he is blunt, but no one has ever loved you as fiercely as he has. And you love him too, with your whole heart.

If Adrian had it his way, he’d have had you home hours ago. He would have been your ride, with your shift originally set to end around the same time as his. When you told him that it wouldn’t be necessary anymore, he didn’t seem too happy about it.

You slid up next to him as he was bussing down a booth, his flexing biceps briefly drawing your eye as he scrubbed extra hard at some sticky mess left behind by the previous guest’s toddler. You tapped his shoulder twice, smiling sweetly as he dropped the rag to grant you his full attention.

“Hi, babe!” he said, bright and chipper as ever. That many hours into a shift, you didn’t know how he managed to stay so joyful.

“Heyyy,” you replied, stretching the word awkwardly as if to soften the news. As if that ever works, particularly on him of all people.

Adrian did manage to pick up on something, though, even if he wasn’t sure what. And it wasn’t because he read your tone or noticed the slight grimace on your face. But because he’s made it a point to memorize some of your quirks. An active effort on his part to understand you better, maybe even be a better boyfriend because of it.

He noticed that you were rocking back and forth on your heels. Which meant you were about to say something hard or awkward or unpleasant or serious—he hasn’t quite nailed down the specifics. But he knew it was something.

“What is it?” he asked, tilting his head.

“A couple of people, uh, called out tonight. So I picked up the closing shift.”

Adrian frowned. “But we were supposed to go to your apartment and fool around ‘cause your roommate won’t be home.”

A surprised squeak slipped past your lips, and you glanced around to make sure no one was listening.

“I told you that you could come over and watch something on Netflix!” you corrected sharply, your cheeks heating up. The relevance of your roommate’s presence was simply to say you wouldn’t be bothered if you watched TV in the living room.

Although… you weren’t not planning on, well, fooling around with him, as he put it.

“Yeah,” Adrian said with a shrug, as if you just said the same thing as him. “My good friend Chris told me when a girl says ‘watch Netflix’, she never means ‘watch Netflix’, she means fucking.”

“Adrian, what did I tell you about talking about sex at work?” you asked exasperatedly.

“That I shouldn’t do it,” he answered, seemingly proud that he remembered, but his pride was short-lived. His eyebrows shot up, and his lips curved into an O shape as he realized he had just broken that very rule.

You shook your head at him, equally fed up with his antics as you are enamored by how adorably dumb he can be sometimes.

“Anyway,” you stressed, trying to steer the conversation away from such a very personal topic. “I just wanted to let you know there’s been a change of plans. It’ll be late, but maybe we can hang out after I close.”

Adrian turned very stiff, and his signature grin was wiped off his face. “I can’t,” he deadpans, with no other explanation.

Oh. Right.

There was one thing that bothered you about Adrian—his secrets.

He couldn’t come over after your shift because he had the ever mysterious “stuff” to do later. Or did he have a “thing” planned? Maybe it was another undisclosed “errand” he needed to run. Whatever it was, it’s not something you got to know about. Last time you pressed, he bluntly explained that “it wouldn’t be a secret if I told you” with an amused lilt in his voice as if you just asked the silliest question. As if keeping secrets from your girlfriend was perfectly normal.

You decided to drop the topic altogether, or else you’d spend the rest of your now very long shift in a sour mood because of it.

“We’ll see each other tomorrow, or something, then. We’ll talk about it later,” you muttered, pressing your lips into a tight line as you tried to walk past him and go check on your tables.

“Wait,” he said, catching your wrist. “How are you getting home if you’re not leaving with me?” Adrian asked, but he continued rambling, not even giving you a chance to reply.

“It can get really dangerous around here, especially at night. It’s Friday, did you know that means the crime rate is higher than usual? In most places it’s Saturday, but in Evergreen it’s actually Friday. You’re not walking home, are you? It’d be really dangerous-”

“I remember, Adrian,” you finally cut in. He’s only told you the same thing a million times before. It’s sweet how protective he is—and maybe a little strange that he knows so much about local crime rates—but you’d like to think you could take care of yourself.

“So you have a ride home, right?” he asked, watching you closely and expectantly.

“Yeah,” you shrugged. “I do.”

It was a lie, but you were certain at the time that you could find one.

Unfortunately, Adrian took you at your word and began happily humming to himself as he continued wiping down that table, because you were wrong. You had asked every one of your coworkers and damn near every contact in your phone, but to no avail.

So, here you are. Working up the courage to head off into the night with Adrian’s words still ringing in your ears, reminding you how high the crime rate is on a Friday night like tonight.

You briefly consider calling your boyfriend, admitting to him with your tail between your legs that you lied, and asking him to come and get you. But, he’s busy with who knows what. And you don’t think you’re ready to find out if, when presented the choice, he’d choose you or the nondescript “thing” he always has to do.

With one final deep breath, you shake off your nerves, and you head out. Away from Fennel Fields and towards the direction of your apartment.

It’s not a terribly long walk, you think, trying to convince yourself that you’ll be fine. But every sound makes you jump. And every hoot from some faraway owl makes you think of Adrian, stirring up a weird sense of guilt for lying, and because he’d probably be so mad if he knew about this.

You try to stop thinking about Adrian. He’s made you all paranoid. Over nothing! You’re halfway to your apartment now, and you’re doing just fine, aren’t you?

But just as you finally begin to let your guard down and start to think Adrian has you worked up for nothing, you hear a low whistle a few feet behind you.

Turning your head and looking over your shoulder at the two burly men is a mistake. You watch as their lips curve into matching sinister smirks. The one with the scraggly beard puffs out a cloud of cigarette smoke as he nudges his friend—equally ugly and severely more bald—and the pair step away from the bar they just emerged from to follow you.

“Shit,” you curse under your breath, picking up speed as the men call out to you, making lewd comments. Their words about your body and attire are crude and punctuated by loud, obnoxious laughter that’s only growing closer. You speed up, nearly into a jog, which only seems to amuse them more.

“C’mon, doll, where ya runnin’ off to?” one of them calls after you, his voice gravely from years of smoking.

“Come here, sweetheart, we just wanna talk to ya,” his counterpart adds.

“Fuck off!” you shout impulsively, trying to make yourself sound as intimidating as possible, but your voice wavers, which only serves to goad them on.

“Feisty one, eh?” one of them laughs, and the hair on the back of your neck stands at how close the voice sounds.

“Yeah, pretty little thing, too. Bet we could have some fun. What do you say, doll?” the man with the cigarette murmurs, close enough for the reek of smoke to hit your nose. Unshed tears sting your eyes as fear bubbles up in your stomach at the realization that they’re right behind you. You really wish you had listened to Adrian. You really wish he were here.

You’re about to break into a run, but Cigarette Breath’s rough fingers close around your wrist, yanking you towards him. The two men put their hands on you like they’re entitled to it, despite your shriek and sharp protests. You feel a hand squeeze your hip, another tugs at your hair.

But, as you’re winding up to put up a fight, to punch and claw your way out of this, you’re suddenly set free. The bald man has stumbled away from you, hunched over and clutching his jaw, moaning in pain. And the other?

Locked in a chokehold by none other than the masked crime fighter Vigilante.

“Don’t touch her, motherfucker!”

You gasp, stumbling back and almost tripping over the curb. Despite the sheer size of the man in his grasp, Vigilante easily overpowers him. A sharp kick knocks him to his knees with an awful snap. Another lands square in his face, scattering his blood and teeth across the pavement.

You clap a hand over your mouth. The logical side of your brain screams at you to run. Most people would be running for their lives in fear at the mere sight of violence like this. But with the ghost of the man’s unwanted touch still on your skin, you only feel your fear dissipate when he goes down.

Vigilante turns his head at the sharp snick of a switchblade opening. The other man holds it up defensively, and Vigilante waits. Bouncing on the balls of his feet as if he’s excited to see what the man does. The man lunges. Vigilante blocks and dodges, as if the moves are second nature. He grabs the arm with the knife, twists until something breaks, and the man lets out a strangled cry. Vigilante snatches the knife and drives it forward without hesitation, slamming the man against the brick wall that lines the sidewalk, driving the blade deeper.

The man gurgles, trying to speak as blood spills down his chin.

“What was that, Baldy? You want me to stop? Ohhh, so you do know what no means? Too late!” Vigilante says, twisting the knife before letting him slide to the ground into a heap.

“Oh fuck!” you cry out, finally realizing what you’re bearing witness to as you look into the man’s lifeless eyes. You turn around so that you don’t have to see any more of it.

Vigilante doesn’t seem to notice your panic, humming as he removes the blade from the man’s body and wipes it clean on the leg of his suit before pocketing it. Switchblades are illegal in this state after all! It’s imperative that he keep it from falling into the wrong hands.

“Hey-” Vigilante starts, approaching you, but a groan from the bearded man catches his attention as he makes a pathetic attempt at crawling away. Vigilante pulls out a knife of his own, throwing it with perfect precision to put an end to any further interruptions. The sound of the blade piercing flesh makes you flinch.

“Hey,” he tries again, placing a gloved hand on your shoulder.

You jump what feels like several feet into the air, scrambling to put some distance between you and him.

“What the fuck. They- they’re…” You run your hands down your face, holding them in front of your mouth as you grapple with what just happened, shaking your head.

Vigilante tilts his head, perplexed by your reaction. “Wait, why are you still freaking out? They’re gone?” he asks, as if he truly doesn’t understand why killing someone—someone bad—in cold blood would stir this kind of reaction.

“Gone?” you repeat, gaping at his nonchalance towards the brutal deed. “You killed them!”

Vigilante scoffs, crossing his arms like a scolding parent. “Well, if you didn’t want to see murder, maybe you shouldn’t have been walking around by yourself on a Friday night.”

You stare at him—really looking at him for the first time. Vigilante is infamous in this town, the star of every breaking story on the news each night, but you’ve never seen him in person before. Let alone this close. You can just barely make out a pair of eyes scowling at you behind his red visor.

“What?!” you finally shout. Is this guy serious?

“I’m just saying! It’s dangerous, hasn’t anyone ever told you that!” he responds in clipped syllables dripping with barely restrained irritation.

Your fingers press at your temples, trying to stave off the headache building from this unbelievable conversation and scarring event. “Why are you mad at me?!” you ask, flabbergasted. Did he forget that you’re the victim here?!

“I’m not mad!” he shouts, poorly concealed anger evident in his tone, balling his hands into fists as his sides like only someone who’s mad would do. “I’m just sure there are people out there who care about your safety who wouldn’t want you walking around by yourself at night!” He points at you accusingly, “Maybe they’ve told you that before. Maybe you should’ve thought about them before you came out here!”

Something about his voice makes you freeze. You squint at the masked man, trying to get a better look at the sliver of his face that's only partially obscured by his visor. That familiar cadence, his petulant stance, the stubborn refusal to admit that he’s angry when it’s so obvious that he is. He’s acting a lot like…

“Adrian?” you ask, your voice trembling with the weight of the accusation.

Vigilante stiffens, standing tall like every muscle in his body was just strung taut at the sound of that name.

“Who-? Who’s Adrian? I don’t know any Adrian, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you, because that would jeopardize my secret identity,” he rambles, and every word only convinces you of it more.

“I think I’d recognize my own boyfriend’s voice, Adrian Chase!” you raise your voice.

“Shhh! Fuck—stop! Don’t say that so loudly!” he pleads, stepping towards you with his palms raised in front of him, urging you to stop.

You pace back and forth, each breath labored, pressing your palm to your forehead as you try to keep yourself from absolutely losing it.

“I don’t understand why you’re still freaking out! Okay, yes, I know I’ve been lying, and I feel really bad about that, but-”

You come to an abrupt stop. “It’s not about that, Ad—Fuck. You kill people!”

You can’t believe the words that are coming out of your mouth. Or how easily they do. This situation has stress pressing down on your chest, mingling with your shock and a spark of anger. But your fear? Conspicuously absent.

Why aren’t you afraid?

“Bad people!” he defends himself.

“Oh my god,” you mutter, pacing again as you grapple with the fact that your boyfriend’s moral compass is seriously fucked.

A petulant, grumbly little sound rumbles from Adrian’s chest because he thought you’d be more cool about this if you ever found out.

“Last week, when I was on the news for busting that drug ring and killing all those guys, you said the world was probably better off without them, though,” he says, trying to reason that you’re more okay with this than you’re letting on.

“Yes, but I- fuck, that wasn’t real. I don’t know if I meant it!” you shout, heart hammering. “It was some story on the fucking television, so far removed from my reality.”

“It actually didn’t happen that far from your apartment,” he can’t help but correct, not quite grasping that you’re not talking about literal distance. His voice softens, “Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. You don’t really live in the best area. Have you considered moving?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” you shout.

“Okay! We’ll talk about it later,” he mutters in the same snappy way he might speak during any ordinary argument.

“Oh my god,” you whine, burying your face in your hands, wondering how you could possibly process this life-altering revelation while your boyfriend acts like this argument is as trivial as whose turn it is to wash the dishes (answer: always Adrian’s).

Adrian frowns. Seeing you upset makes his stomach twist. It pulls at his heartstrings like nothing else ever could. Literally.

A moment later, his gloved hands wrap around your wrists, and you don’t flinch or pull away this time. Even if you are freaked out, you’re still not afraid. Because it’s not just the brutal Vigilante standing before you. It’s Adrian. Your Adrian. And you’ve always felt safe with him.

You suck in a breath when that’s who you see after you let him tug your hands away from your face. Not a dangerous man hidden behind a black and teal mask, but the face you’ve fallen in love with, with his mask off and wedged between his arm and his body.

“Adrian,” you murmur, the sound almost a helpless whimper, as your gaze bounces back and forth between his familiar green irises.

“They were going to hurt you,” he says quietly, features twisted in grief, the mere thought of harm coming your way hitting him deeply.

You start to turn your head, to look at the culprits, but his fingers catch your chin before you can look. The last thing you need to see is the broken, bloodied mess he left those men in.

“Hey, don’t look at that,” he says in a surprisingly gentle, surprisingly calm voice. “I’m sorry you had to see it, but I would do it again. They were bad men. They’ve probably hurt other people before. But I’d never let anyone hurt you.”

You swallow hard, letting Adrian’s words sink in. If you’re honest with yourself, maybe you do believe the world is a better place without men like that.

And Adrian? Well, he just wanted to protect you, didn’t he? It’s sort of like last week when Adrian scooped up a little spider and carefully released it outside because you were scared of it. Except that instead of the spider, it was two men who would have done a lot more than just scare you. And for that, maybe they did deserve the higher punishment he dealt them.

The line between the masked crime fighter on the news and your sweet, loving boyfriend starts to blur. Leaving you with one man who’s fiercely protective and driven by justice. And is that really such a bad thing to be?

You step a little closer, and he tentatively slides his fingers from your chin to your cheek, cupping your face. You lean into his touch.

You’re not really sure yet how you feel about your boyfriend being Vigilante and running around, murdering criminals. But in this world, there are certainly worse things to be.

You think about the men he killed tonight. The men he saved you from. That icy feeling of fear finally creeps back in, prickling up your arms and settling in your chest over your pounding heart. It’s not what Adrian did that scares you, but rather what could have happened if he didn’t.

You might even consider yourself grateful that he was here to save you.

Slowly, you snake your arms around his middle, inching forward until you’re close enough to tuck your head under his chin.

Adrian lets out a big sigh of relief, wrapping the arm that isn’t holding his mask around you, too.

“Are you okay?” he asks gently, wondering two things. Whether you sustained any physical injuries before he got to you (he might have to figure out how to kill those guys a second time if you did). And if you’re going to accept this part of him. He doesn’t know what he’d do if you don’t.

“Yeah,” you exhale, and then so does he once he realizes he was holding his breath. “It’ll all be okay,” you say, more a reassurance to yourself than anything else. “Can you take me home?” you murmur into the hard shell of his suit, wishing it wasn’t in the way. All you want now is to climb into bed with him, curl into his side, and find comfort in his warm skin pressed against yours—a closeness he allows only with you.

Adrian’s usual cheeriness is already bubbling to the surface. “Yeah,” he says happily, more than ready to get you off the streets as he untangles your bodies from each other.

He puts his mask back on, hiding his identity again before leading you away with a firm hand pressed to your back.

He leaves the bodies there. This street is poorly lit and lacks surveillance. This won’t come back to him, except maybe as idle speculation. More importantly, it won’t be traced to you either.

A silence settles between you as you walk, and in true Adrian fashion, he can’t resist breaking it.

“Can we circle back to you moving into a safer neighborhood?”

After a brief pause -- in which you held your breath with the same unconscious intensity with which you still gripped the pot -- Adrian rose from his half-squatted position by the dishwasher. He turned to face you, face pinched in discomfort, no doubt from the feeling of wet food gliding down his shirt collar. 

“Ugh,” he groans. “Feels like barf.”

You grimace. Someone takes the pot from your hands. Someone else begins mopping up behind Adrian. You don't really notice these things, though. Too focused on how badly you feel. “I'm really sorry, Adrian.”

“S'alright.” He gives his head a little shake, and it makes your heart skip a silly little beat over how... cute the motion looked. 

“Is there- um,” you start. “Is there anything I can do to help? Get you a change of clothes?”

“Oh, yeah, sure!” He fishes around in his pants pocket and pulls out his car keys. “I keep a change of clothes in my car. It's the Sebring. Bag's on the passenger side.”

You reach for the keys with a bit of relief. He really doesn't seem upset with you, which is cool. But then he snatches his hand back, and you flinch in surprise, searching his face. 

“But don't,” he stresses, eyes growing wide behind his glasses as he holds your gaze, something kind of desperate in his irises. “Look in the trunk.”

You blink, shrinking back a little. “O-okay...”

“Promise you won't.”

“I... promise?“

A few seconds pass before he's satisfied, finally handing you the keys. 

He walks stiffly off to the bathroom to start cleaning up, but not without reassuring you in a forced, lighthearted tone that there's nothing weird in his trunk, just that a man is owed his privacy, is all. 

You find his car easily enough, despite not knowing what the hell a Sebring is. You make your way back through the restaurant with Adrian’s bag of clothes in hand. It’s after hours, the only people left are just part of the closing crew, so you don’t let the worry of walking in on a customer stop you from entering the restroom. Just pause for a quick second to wait for Adrian to okay your entry.

You walk in with your head down, once again apologizing. “I still feel really bad. It really was just an accid-”

You come to an abrupt halt, the door swinging shut behind you. The temperature in your body rises very suddenly at the sight of Adrian, shirtless, at the bathroom sink, neck twisted as he attempts to look over his shoulder through the mirror. Your eyes trace along the bulge of his biceps, drink in the freckled mass of his shoulders, ogle at the thickness of his chest.

Holy shit, the cute busboy had all this beef underneath the silly work uniform? Like, this whole time?

Adrian glances over at you. “Hey, thanks. I can’t tell if I missed a spot, can you check?”

“Wuhhh… Huh?” You snap your eyes up and your mouth shut. “Oh, yeah, sure.” 

He hands you the dishrag he was using to wipe himself down, and turns his back towards you. You audibly gulp. You start wiping down the center of his back after placing his bag of clothes down on the sink.

This close, you can count his freckles and the odd few scars that you know better than to ask about. And despite the overwhelming smell of tomato, you get a whiff of his personal scent, too, and it’s nice. 

This restroom sure is warm. 

“Hey. Your hands are shaking.”

Oh. They are.

“S-sorry.”

“You say that a lot.”

Your cheeks feel unbearably warm, at this point, and you force yourself to take a step back away from the shirtless man so you can try cooling down. 

Adrian turns to give you a quizzical look that slowly turns into realization. “Wait… Do I make you nervous?” Before you can respond, he laughs. “Don’t worry! It’s not like you’re going to get fired over this. I know you didn’t mean to spill tomato sauce on me. Plus, nobody got hurt.”

You don’t want to admit that you’re only nervous because his very bare chest and abs and arms are making you lightheaded. So you just chuckle instead, agreeing with him. 

“Thanks for… not being mad at me,” you say, a bit sheepish. 

“Please. I’ve had worse things down my clothes.”

You laugh more earnestly this time, scrunching your face at the implications.

“At least now if I get sprayed by a skunk on my way home, I'll be immune.”

You wait, leaning against the wall, arms tightly wrapped around your body and foot tapping nervously on the ground. You’re cold and embarrassed in your tiny tank top, and just because Evergreen’s a small town doesn’t mean there’s any shortage of coming and going in the station, despite it being 3 in the morning. You’ve already earned more whistles than you can handle for the day.

You should have taken the time to grab a jacket, you’re well-aware of that, but it didn’t cross your mind back then. Not after that insane call from your brother, when he’d told you that Adrian Chase of all people had been picked up by two of his colleagues and was going to spend the night in jail if no one posted his bail. Something about him being jumped by half a dozen guys — fuck, you couldn’t imagine what state he had to be in. You were ready to drive straight to the hospital, where he likely should have been instead of here.

That was a good point actually. You were gonna go over there and chew your brother up way harder over that. That man was damn lucky you were so out of it from being woken up at such a stupid hour.

“Aw, you didn’t have to come get me!” a familiar voice calls out just as you’re making up your mind.

Immediately, your eyes dart over Adrian’s body, searching for wounds, broken limbs, something. Instead, you find absolutely nothing, except for some suspiciously rusty looking stains on his cardigan.

“Adrian?” you call out, just in case you’re facing some long lost twin brother he’s never told you about. “Are you okay?”

He laughs, eyes crinkling behind his glasses.

“Ha, you should see the other guys.” When you don’t react, he adds: “No, really, it was ugly. It’s always a surprise how much blood comes from a head wound.”

“Er,” you answer, smartly. “Do you… need a ride to the hospital?”

He looks genuinely surprised at that.

“Why would I need to go to the hospital? No, you can drop me home, if you want to.” He frowns. “It’s pretty late, actually. I can just walk.”

“Er,” you repeat, at a loss for words one more. “It’s fine. I’ll drop you.”

“You sure? You’ve got a long shift tomorrow.”

The more this conversation goes on, the less it makes sense. Adrian’s always been a little weird — Lord knows Taylor complains about it more than enough at work — but this is next level.

“Yeah. I’ll take you.”

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Adrian says in the car.

The silence’s been stretching for five long, awkward minutes at this point, but you’re too tired to care. Also, your brain hurts from trying to figure out what happened.

“Do what?”

“Post my bail. I’ll wire it back to you when I get home, by the way. It was all self-defense, and they would have seen that right away once they got the camera footage.”

Yeah. So you’d heard.

“Well, my brother called,” you say. “I thought you’d gotten hurt.”

His laugh startles you.

“Hurt? That is so cute.”

You blink, struggling to focus on the road ahead of you.

“I don’t get it,” you admit. “You can fight?”

“Well, you could say that…” Adrian laughs, and then stops abruptly, facial expression changing into something that looks a lot like realization, “…if you didn’t know anything about fighting. ‘Cause that’s not what I do. For sure. I just got really, really lucky.”

“I thought there were like, five guys there.”

“Uh, it was more like ten, actually,” he corrects you, sounding a lot like he’s bragging, before another brutal tone change. “But really clumsy ones. They basically fell all over themselves. I think one of them tried to headbutt my fist like, five times. What a weirdo, am I right?”

This all feels like a fever dream, but you still end up slowly shaking your head. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it was luck.

“How did that even happen?” you can’t help but wonder aloud, even if you know it's not recommended to bring up traumatic memories right away. “I mean, did they jump you out of nowhere?”

“I did go up to them because they were being very unpleasant to a cashier,” Adrian says, not sounding traumatized in the least, even though you’re pretty sure he should be. “Then they threatened to kill me, I told them I’d fucked all of their moms, then they actually tried to kill me, and that went really bad for them.”

“You told them what.” You’re not even asking. You know what you heard.

“I was being a little provocateur,” Adrian admits, “but in my defense, they were being really mean, so I think it was fair to be mean back.”

“Did the cops not let you make your phone call?” you ask, changing the subject. “That’s against the law, you know.”

“No, they gave me one.”

“Oh.” You’d be lying if you said you didn’t feel a little hurt. You weren’t sure how you’d define your relationship with him, but you were close — by Adrian’s standards, anyway, considering how few people he had around him. You were coworkers, sure, but you’d hung out on other occasions, too. He liked to talk to you about birds, and you knew that he’d asked Taylor to work the same shifts you did. He’d bought you a drink after you let him use your laundry machine when his was broken. He’d also invited you over to his home — to watch a Die Hard marathon, sure, but you were pretty sure that was his love language. You wouldn’t necessarily have placed yourself at the top of his ‘people to call in case of emergency’ list, but you had assumed you were pretty high up. He had like, three phone numbers saved, and you knew for a fact you were one of them. That didn’t leave a ton of competition.

Okay, maybe all that was just your raging crush on him talking.

“Wait, you called someone else? Were they going to come pick you up?” you ask belatedly, understanding what he meant.

“Hm? Oh, no, there’s no way he’d show up,” Adrian answers, shaking his head. “He’s in jail.”

Deep breaths. Deep. Breaths.

He called some guy in jail rather than you? Oh, you’ve been reading this relationship wrong. You know there’s no reason for that to make your eyes water, because clearly that was all on you, but for fuck’s sake, you really liked him, and you’re so tired, and you just drove twenty minutes in the dead of night for him, and that was two hundred dollars, and you just want to be home under the covers with a fucking bucket of ice cream, damn it!

“Why would you call someone who’s in jail for your one phone call?”

You’re trying your best to keep your voice even, but your voice is still significantly more high-pitched than it usually is.

“’cause he’s my best friend,” Adrian answers matter-of-factly.

Awesome. You’re not even best-friendzoned. Hell, are you even friendzoned? Your brain is recontextualizing every part of the relationship that you have with him and, because you’re your own worst enemy, it’s doing it in the least flattering way possible.

“Well, that’s you,” you say, tone flat and dejected, as you pull up in front of his house.

“Thanks!” he says, and with that, he’s out.

You groan, letting your head hit the steering wheel. You really need to start putting your phone on airplane mode at night. Then you could have avoided this whole — debacle.

And then, there’s a knock on your window.

You’re horribly embarrassed to find that it’s still Adrian, looking considerably more worried now.

“Are you crying?” he asks.

You’re not. Yet.

“I’m just really tired,” you answer him, voice quivering a little. At least it’s not a lie.

“Your brother shouldn’t have called you,” he says, shaking his head. His lower lip is jutting out in that tiny pout he does when he’s annoyed. “I had it under control.”

“Well, isn’t it good that you didn’t spend the night in jail at least?” you attempt, trying to salvage your ego one last time.

“Not really,” Adrian replies with a shrug. “It would have been an experience to have, that’s for sure.”

Well, that will do it. Now you’re crying.

Adrian’s eyes go comically wide, and he opens the door to awkwardly tap you on the shoulder. You think he’s going for a pat, but it looks more like he’s trying to ask you what time it is or something.

“Are you hurt?” he asks with genuine concern. “Do you need to get to the hospital?”

“I’m fine,” you lie. “I’m just really tired.”

He shakes his head.

“Well, duh. You had a 10-hour shift scheduled for today, right?”

You sniff and nod your head. It makes you feel a tiny little bit better that he remembers that even if he didn’t work today and—

“That’s why you really shouldn’t have come tonight!”

Never mind. You feel way worse.

You don’t even have it in yourself to yell at him. What are you gonna do, be mad that he’s not grateful for something he didn’t ask you to do? You don’t want to be that person.

You let out another pathetic little sniffle, and Adrian stiffens.

“Do you… want me to beat up your brother? Would that make you feel better?”

“No, Adrian,” you sigh, “it wouldn’t make me feel better if you beat up my cop brother and got yourself immediately locked up for years.”

“I could wear a mask. Would it make you feel better if I wore a mask while I beat your brother up?”

Why are you even into that guy?

When you don’t reply, Adrian takes a few seconds to consider the situation — that is to say, you, crying in your car in his driveway, at almost 4 am now, after what he knows was a very long day. Now, you didn’t have to be here, so that part is your own fault, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to help. Sure, usually when he helps someone it’s by murdering someone else, but that doesn’t appear to be appropriate for the situation, which means he needs to find something else to do.

“What are you doing?” you ask the next second.

Adrian’s leaned into the car and put his arms around you, as if to hug you, except it seems that he’s also simultaneously trying not to touch you. As a result, his arms encircle you, but only his hands rest on your back.

“I read somewhere that physical contact is comforting,” he replies. “So I’m hugging you, to comfort you.”

You fail to contain a chuckle. Then, with a sigh, you put your arms around his neck, bringing him closer.

“That’s how you give a hug, Adrian.”

“It is?”

He tightens his hold on you, and the warmth of his body spreads through yours. Part of you wishes he hadn’t done that — part of you wishes you could have gone on not knowing the scent of his aftershave, how soft his skin feels, how his hair tickles against your neck. The other part just lets itself sink into it. Adrian’s surprisingly toned, and there is, in fact, great comfort to be found there.

When you start to worry you’ve let it gone on too long, you pull away.

“Thanks, Adrian,” you say with a hesitant smile. “I should really get going right now.”

“No worries,” he answers lightly. “You sure you don’t want to spend the night at my place?”

Before you can get your hopes too high, he adds, “My mom makes killer pancakes in the morning. She gets up early, so I can take the couch if you want.”

“I’m good,” you reply. “Bye Adrian. I’ll see you on Tuesday?”

“Sure,” he says with that smile of his that’s just a little too wide. “And, hey, I appreciate you coming to get me. Even if you really didn’t need to, it came from a good place.”

“Any time,” you say, trying not to grit your teeth, and then you take off, not giving him the opportunity to twist the knife any more.

Adrian watches you leave, expression turning thoughtful — and even a little pouty. Aw, man, you didn’t have to run away that fast after he’d offered to have you spend the night. He had even fought against his instincts and offered to take the couch so you wouldn’t think that he was just trying to sleep with you! Yeah, sure, he’s trying to do that too, eventually, but he mostly was looking out for your sleep right now.

“Nice guys truly do finish last,” he sighs before turning on his heels to walk into his house.

That hug was pretty nice though. He wonders if you’d object to more of these.

Oh well. Guess he’ll just have to try it and find out.