Very Normal Benjamin Pointdexter Enjoyer

“So, what’s the plan here?” Hope trailed behind the one question you didn’t want to answer like a child who only knew broken promises. You were overwhelmed by it all at once, having been all too familiar with the deep cuts of disappointment yourself, now having to stifle the emotions to maintain your own sense of control. The bottle of Malbec taunted you, but you couldn’t afford any more liquid courage with which to coat your senses further. Either you hobble together some semblance of a plan or you fess up. The latter wasn’t an option, you decided, pressing your knuckles into your thigh.

“I’m tuned into an officer Powell, who is apparently heading your search team. Right now, I’ll be able to keep you one step ahead of them until I can get closer to him. The closer I am, the deeper I can plug in, and the more I can do to keep them out of our hair. Then, I figure we’d just reverse engineer their trail until we have the evidence needed to prove your innocence. If I play it right, I might be able to tune into a few others on their team as well. Basically, I just need a little more time to plug in and gather more info. Then we’ll figure out our offense from there.” Dex nods, his eyes drifting to some far off place as the information settled into his mind. He didn’t seem dissatisfied with your answer, which was a good sign, but he didn’t seem convinced of it either, just puzzled. The sudden urge to reach out and trace your finger along the jagged flesh that marred his cheek was only stifled by how anxious his ensuing silence made you. 

“And how do you know? That I’m innocent?” His question slammed into you like a blow to your chest.  The child-like sadness–his– only amplified, now stinging at the corners of your eyes  and vibrating like a quiver in your lips. That wasn’t the question you expected him to ask, nor did it have the same protective edge that flowed consistently beneath all his other questions. You could’ve searched him deeper in that moment, could’ve met the young boy you knew was reaching out just behind the edges of the question, but you couldn’t—wouldn’t. All of your insisting that you hadn’t been listening in and you weren’t going to start now, not when the blooming buds of trust were peeking through your chests; and not when your answer could be the spark to burn it all down.

“I’ve technically been tuned into you for the better part of a year… When anyone gets particularly emotionally… loud… It becomes harder for me to tune it out… Losing your badge, job, and reputation to a government fuck up tends to get pretty loud.”  You offered slowly, like how a guilty dog might tread to greet its knowing owner. “I didn’t have as good a grip on my ability, back then. We must’ve passed by each other at some point when I wasn’t able to tune out the louder frequencies… From what I could make out as it all went down, you were justified. And… I have a personal gripe with rot in our governing bodies.” 

It was the truth, if not for the tiny part you had omitted about when you latched onto him. Worry wrung at your neck, cold and impatient. You wondered if he could accept that answer, or if he’d demand answers about your history you weren’t ready to confront. At least not with him, not yet. He brought a hand up to rub against his chin, taking longer to absorb your answer than you would have liked. His eyes scanned back and forth in a tight, swift line, focused on something that wasn’t there and nothing all at the same time. The quietness of the apartment descended on you then, interrupted only by the faint noises of the city emitting from your balcony door, which was still ajar. You felt your body rise from the couch then, unsure of what exactly willed you forward in the first place. The neck of the Malbec bottle found its way into your palm as a suitable excuse. Dex’s eyes wandered up toward you as you moved away from the couch, and if you were more of a romantic, you would’ve thought he was disappointed to no longer be close to you. A strange desire to close the distance and cradle his face in your hands until he begged to be touched anywhere else bit sharply along the length of your jaw as a sweaty adrenaline taste flooded your tongue. Instead, your legs willed themselves toward your kitchen, overriding your own free will to replace the bottle to its respective home on your countertop.

“So, about me having the best hiding spot in the city…” You trailed off, hands nervously rubbing over your landlord special laminate countertops, trying your best to look at anything but him. That failed, though, because you couldn’t help but meet his eyes– eyes that you’d guess were trained on you the whole time. Disappointment melded deeper into his features as if he knew you were going to ask him to leave, and the fact that he looked like he didn’t want to leave terrified you. Another fact that terrified you was how much you wish you weren’t about to kick him out. Hell, you didn’t even really have a good reason for kicking him out. You’d just denied believing he was a criminal so you couldn’t use that excuse, and you had been the one to insist he find a hideout. You felt a desperate tugging at the hollow of your cheeks that pulled your jaw taut. He wanted to protest, loudly.

Images of waking up tomorrow to find Dex still in your apartment flashed behind your eyes in that moment. The morning sun filtering in through your bedroom curtains as you awoke, hearing him shuffling around your kitchen, familiarizing himself with the layout as he made you breakfast. You fought against the breaching images of him greeting you with a warm smile and a cup of coffee when you emerged from your room. Where he had slept in this daydream remained unanswered, but daydream you didn’t seem to mind the situation one bit. Real life you, however, felt a warmth pooling inside you that sent lightning up through your body despite your best efforts to deny it. What is it they say about taboos and how social prohibition only makes the heart grow… needier? Yeah, something like that… 

Your mouth opened to continue, but stopped dead when your eyes met again. He remained affixed on you with a palpable intensity, like if you had chosen that moment to plug into his brain you’d just see the image of yourself staring back at you. It was almost like a reflex in that moment, a fleeting peek into his thoughts, a glimpse you instantly regretted. Myrrh greeted your nostrils, something much stronger than need that pulled at you from underneath his steel gaze. That stare scared you almost as much as the images in your head did, but most terrifying was how badly you wanted to relinquish yourself to that pull. Before you could weigh the potential ramifications, you plugged in deeper, flooding his mind with the compulsion to leave for the night. His posture straightened up then, and his eyes snapped from analytical to a hollow conduit. 

“I should go. You have a good night, Echo.” The low hum in your chin almost made you take it all back. He stood up then, a glassy stare accompanying the sudden shift in his own intentions. Guilt wracked you deep into your bones, it was almost unbearable to watch him try to reason with the confliction warring inside of him. You hated doing that, you hated telling someone how to think, how to act. Had he really posed that much of a threat to you, that you had to chase him out like that? Was it worth it, betraying the lines you’d drawn for yourself, betraying yourself? The question gnawed at your mind in sync with the teeth gnawing on your bottom lip. He floated all the way to your sink, rinsing and cleaning out his wine glass with a sponge before grabbing the towel that hung on your oven handle to dry the glass. A deep, disobedient yearning joined hands with your guilt as you observed the domesticity of the scene. The exhaustion of the evening finally enveloped you, and you decided to blame your baser desires on the ensuing delirium instead of your own lack of sensibility.

“You’ll hear from me soon.” You promised as you followed him to your front door, forming your mouth into a yawn to mask the shake in your voice. Your eyes met one last time before you closed the door, and just like every other time you’d met his eyes before, you wished you hadn’t. Hope, disappointment, and a raw desperation exploded from him like a siren inside your skull, and you couldn’t tell if you had invited the noise or if it was just too loud for you to ignore. What you couldn’t ignore was the myrrh still lingering in your nose, how it smelled stronger as you stood inches from each other, and how much it felt like… reverence?  He pulled himself together with a short breath and a curt nod before turning to leave, cutting your own musings short. 

“Stay safe, Dex.” You called out, to no reply. But you knew he would.

——————

As Dex made his way back to the rooftop of your building, he couldn’t help but replay the scene that had flashed in his mind before he decided he needed to leave. He didn’t actually want to leave, so why did he? Or at least, he hadn’t decided that he’d wanted to leave yet. It was confusing. Maybe it was how fear flowed electric underneath the intruding image of him standing in her kitchen making breakfast. Maybe it was the reassurance and how unfamiliar it felt to believe her, to trust her so soon. Maybe it was the way it all felt together, to really see her and feel her and trust her and want her. And more than all of that was how badly he wanted, no needed, her approval. Just the thought of knowing more about her had him clawing up the walls of the service stairwell as he ascended.

She was strong, we could be strong together. An easy smile tugged at his lips as he navigated the rooftop back to the old shack. He decided then and there that he would earn your trust, earn his way to entering through your front door, earn his way to abating the fear that shadowed you when he was near you, earn his way to making you breakfast. He would do whatever it took to become worthy of your help, he would not let your efforts be in vain, 

——————

You spent the remainder of the night obsessively tuned into Powell, digging around for any kind of hint as to what the next plan was, desperately trying to occupy yourself with anyone else’s thoughts but your own. Or Dex’s, for that matter. You didn’t end up hearing anything of note, and if you were being honest with yourself, you almost wish you would’ve spent the night fantasizing instead, it would’ve been just as productive. Exhaustion awaited patiently at your bedside with little regard for the mission you clung to, taking full advantage of each moment of weakness to flash that image of Dex in your kitchen making breakfast. As the night wore on, it only grew stronger, playing evil, delicious tricks on your mind, like dropping you center stage of your own musical moment with delirium as your wretched director. There you were, perched on the kitchen island in a nightshirt and boxers— his?— while he hovered close, shirtless, over the stove. In some scenes, you could practically feel his hands on your hips, could practically feel your fingers twisted in his hair as his head nudged your legs open. At your weakest, you imagined him slotted between you, eyes praying to his feet, like he wouldn’t move a muscle or even look at you without your command. You could almost taste him on your lips, could almost hear his appreciative groans, your hand traveling south his reward for telling you what he wanted. Those had you squeezing your thighs, begging to release the familiar yet unwelcome feelings slowly, rebelliously simmering inside you. Unwelcome, you repeated like a mantra until the sun and your alarm finally, thankfully urged you out of your bed. You decided to spend the majority of your morning routine reinforcing the reasons why you weren’t allowed to indulge those fantasies instead, a warning to your own mind to behave.

These days, you harbored loneliness like a leper. It was easier for you to isolate, to push out rather than let anyone in. Relationships never suited you anyways, they always ended with you at the end of the pointed finger. You always knew too much, knew what was going to happen before it did (or always “assumed” the worst). You lived in a constant state of dropping the other shoe on partners and potentials alike as soon as you’d heard too much of their thoughts. You embraced it all the same, though, favoring what you knew to what you could have, it was safer that way. Before, relationships felt like hurricanes, hammering you into a perma-flattened existence that compelled you to consume all their thoughts and feelings, all the time. It wasn’t easy to filter through the deluge of constant snap reactions, or have to weigh initial thoughts against the inevitably ensuing contradictions. Thoughts and feelings are so messy, so disorganized, and worst of all: so utterly untrustworthy. And that was the worst of it all, the hardest lesson for you to learn: that even when you could hear people’s actual thought patterns and had learned to plot data points than their own subconscious wasn’t aware of, none of it was guaranteed to be true. Now, you knew better. What you didn’t know could kill you. And don’t they say old wounds always feel the freshest? 

You decided against breakfast in the morning, opting to close your eyes the extra 20 minutes before you had to get out of bed and start getting ready for work. It took everything in your power to focus on the needs of the day rather than your needs of the night. Powell could be at the office again, and you needed to keep up your ruse a little longer for you to get an adequate hold on his frequency. That would require a little extra effort into your appearance, you figured, opting for a tighter fitting pencil skirt that came just a smidge above regulation’s requirements, a smidge more eyeshadow and approximately an extra 15 seconds to make sure your hair was tied up nice and out of your face. The reflection staring back at you felt foreign in the worst way. You couldn’t tell if you looked like a clown or just like less of a desk chair, but at this point you didn’t have time to fix anything if you wanted to get to work on time. 

The events of the last 8 hours had drained you completely, but there was one relief to Dex having found you so soon: passing by some of your favorite stops on your way to work. You had stopped by your favorite coffee stand, and were patiently waiting off to the side of your favorite food truck that always parked a block from your office. The two egg and cheese arepas on the grill would make your day bearable, if not even pleasant, pending no further disturbances to your day. The warm cakes and coffee blissfully muted your senses as you entered the office, only to be met with the unfortunate face of your obliged honey pot, Powell. 

Naturally, he had his elbow leaned up against the front desk, clearly caught in the middle of schmoozing the poor younger receptionist, Amanda, not a moment earlier. Obviously caught red-handed, he immediately removed himself from the counter and straightened his posture. Awkward… Awkward indeed, you silently agreed while morphing your face into a blissfully ignorant greeting. At least you didn’t put in the extra effort for nothing. 

“Good morning, officer Powell.” You sang, like a schoolgirl greeting the reverend, barely needing more than that to watch the guilt flush from his face. It was almost too easy, and that made it feel all the more disgusting.

“Good morning, Miss.” Was his salty reply, his eyes shamelessly and freely roaming the length of your body. “Would you like an escort to the elevator?” 

Salty, salty, salty. You offered a coy smile in response as you floated past him, turning your head ever so slightly to linger on him as you passed by. It was so easy to reel a man, any man in, but you could never be too easy.

“If I recall, it’s not my first day on the job, officer Powell. But thank you for the offer!” You sent the words tumbling over your shoulder as you continued toward the elevators, your nose punctuating the end with a scrunch. You pressed the button with your knuckle and raised your hand to take a bite out of your breakfast, your eyes closing and a satisfied breath exhaling through your nose. A presence emerged next to you as you waited, and you didn’t need the salty intrusion ruining the corn sweet aftertaste of your arepas to tell you it was Powell behind you. You prayed that your elevator was fast approaching– but alas, not fast enough. A saccharine smile found its way to your lips and you turned around to face him, preferring to be on the offensive.

“You wouldn’t be stalking me, would you, officer Powell?” You batted your eyelashes at him, taking another bite and wandering your eyes over his shoulders and plated chest before peering back up at him as you chewed. He smirked, eating up every minute of your charade like you were reading straight from the gospel on Sunday. The elevator arrived and the doors opened. Your eyes flashed as they pierced into his, and you let a single word flow from your mind into his as you stepped inside the cabin; one simple assurance. Behave.

“Connor, please.” His true voice ripped through you like a cheese grater straight to your cheek as he followed you in. “And, only if you wanted me to, sweetheart.”

Grace shined upon you, though, and you watched as he leaned past you to ring a different floor. Noticeably, keeping his free hand resting passively on his holster. You took a beat to dig deeper, paying attention to anything in that elevator that wasn’t the unfortunate taste of want flooding your mouth. 

“That depends on if you ever plan on responding to my texts, Connor.” You took another bite of your arepas, hoping to drown it out. The door finally opened on your floor. You stepped out quickly, turning back to raise your coffee in his direction and sending an effortless wink his way. The last thing you saw before the door closed was his own self satisfied smirk, but underneath it came through clear: the distinct and familiar feeling that he didn’t do something he wanted to. 

If you were a better person you would’ve felt bad, but you weren’t. And you didn’t. In fact, you wished more than anything that you did worse. Your imagination ran wild with that, delighting in all the different ways that you could ruin his day, or even his life. You could make him empty the contents of his coffee mug on his head and make him totally unaware that it was there. Maybe he could spill the cup full of tacks that sat untouched on the snack table, take off his shoes and socks, and walk across the spill. Or you could have him streak naked through the office until an agent managed to tackle him to the ground. A twisted but pure, unbridled joy bubbled through your cheekbones at that, just barely containing a laugh as you settled into your desk for the day. You realized you hadn’t felt that in a long time: pure joy. For the rest of the day you found yourself stuck on what that said about you. Not just how infrequent joy had become in your life, but how easily it came to you when imagining yourself compelling Powell into committing ultimate acts of degradation. Juggling the philosophical struggle back and forth, and how badly you wanted to give into it, occupied the rest of your workday with ease.

Dex would definitely pout his way through those initial planning discussions, fidgeting nervously with one of his knives while you laid down some groundwork. You’d explain that this isn’t just about what you want, but about what he needs to thrive. It’d be really hard for him to voice his own desires that lived deeper than just wanting to make you happy. You’d have to goad him into figuring out what he wanted, tricking him into expressing how he disliked the intensity he required from his rigid structure, how he wished he could enjoy anything on a whim without extreme guilt and panic overtaking him. Even then, it was undeniable that he’d live in a world of steel rule if that’s what you wanted. He’d be pacing, getting worked up at the mere thought of a task he would be completing for you, and then getting even more worked up that you were only talking about it and not just letting him do it already, goddammit.

But then you’d explain how jarring it would be for him to disrupt his existing routine with an immediate and total upheaval. How he might struggle to cope at first, which might lead to a failure or incompletion of the task, which would make it harder for him to recover. You’d remind him there’s no rule book for him to study from yet, and that it had to be made first. Then it would start to make sense to him.

To your glee, he’d suggest making the rulebook— like, an actual bonafide monthly/daily planner. Every single one of your agreed upon instructions would be carefully written out in the notes section, each monthly calendar color-coded with grouping of tasks, and each daily page pre-dated with all the day’s necessary tasks already laid out. He’d asked you to pick start dates for each new task and now you understood why.

First tasks to be rolled out would be your wake up routine. His alarm would go off at 5pm sharp, and he’d quickly silence it and remove himself from the bedroom so as to not wake you. First task is to attach his collar, because you both agreed he’d struggle to adjust to sleeping with it on and because it’d be a good way for him to start every morning in the right mindset. That was the easiest for him to adjust to— his collar was always placed on top of his alarm so that he had to grab it before he could silence the alarm. It did wonders for his anxiety to slip the cool leather around his neck and click it into place.

Then he would prepare breakfast, clad only in his collar. Mondays are french toast, Tuesdays are omelettes, Wednesdays are your choice, Thursdays are breakfast sandwiches, Fridays are yogurt parfaits, and the weekends are for him to decide, to surprise you with a pre-determined selection of your favorite cafes and breakfast spots. The surprise days were the hardest for him to adjust. You wouldn’t tell him where you wanted to go until the evening before, a whole day of anticipation itching under his skin. And not knowing if his selection would make you happy made his skin crawl with nerves, so intense sometimes that he’d get forgetful. You took it easy on him at first, showering him with praise for being so patient, reminding him that the surprise locations were all spots you’d visit every day in a heartbeat if only time and space allowed. Corrections could come later, right now was for building his confidence.

Once breakfast is just about ready, waking you up is the next step, and it’s the step he’s always most impatient to begin. A shower of kisses that began on your hands, trailed up your shoulders and chest, then made a detour for toes up to your hips and stomach, finally peppering his lips over your face until you had stirred enough to catch his chin between your thumb and knuckle, guiding his lips to yours. He’d let your tongue in immediately, of course, allowing you to explore his mouth to your hearts content. Only when you’d had your fill of tasting him would you shimmy yourself up the headboard in bed, carding your fingers through his hair and mumbling soft praise into his ear. You’d ask him to recite the morning’s tasks: collar, the day’s breakfast menu, and wake up call.

Then came the first command of the day— the first command he’d receive every morning for the rest of his life—a command that forced him into the earth, grounding him steadfast. Just the sight of you drove him over the edge as you gingerly arose from beneath the covers, pushing the sheets back, exposing your lower regions and beckoning him to lower himself to you. “Eat your breakfast, baby.” You were so generous, allowing him to eat before you. And he’d dive in, all mouth and tongue with no help from his hands allowed. Eventually you’d implement a timer into this step and see how well he worked against the clock, but for now your mornings were as blissful as ever with your good boy ravenous between your legs.