psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?

Dex loved sushi night Fridays.

You two had settled into the routine months ago without either of you ever really acknowledging it. Fridays after work. The same tiny sushi place tucked between a laundromat and a pawn shop, the sign flickering like it was running on borrowed time.

Inside was all warm amber lighting and fogged windows, the air thick with rice vinegar and the low hiss of the grill.

The hostess smiled the second you walked in now, already reaching for a menu you never looked at, because you already knew what you wanted, and Dex already knew you’d order it before you did.

You referred to it as your “cheat day,” something Dex privately thought was bullshit. You were always working on cutting back on takeout or “trying to be healthier,” only to cave every Friday night without fail.

But the word cheat implied you were doing something wrong. Indulging something shameful. And he hated the idea of you apologising for your own appetite.

He’d watched the pattern long enough to know it by heart; Sushi Fridays. Thai food on bad days (red curry, extra spicy, no matter how much it made you sweat). Wings—any kind really— when you were too tired to cook… or on your period.

And coffee, too much coffee, all throughout the week, the same two-pump vanilla order from the cart on 47th.

Dex didn’t think you needed to worry about your weight. The thought irritated him every time it surfaced, a low-grade static at the back of his skull. You were beautiful exactly as you were.

If he had things his way, you’d indulge every craving that crossed your mind. Midnight milkshakes. Extra dessert. Those strawberry candies you liked from the bodega near your apartment.

He’d drive across the city at two in the morning if you suddenly decided you wanted dumplings or lemon cake or greasy diner fries.

The restaurant lights caught against your jewelry when you moved, tiny gold hoops glinting near your jaw. Warm light softened everything about you.

Your skin took on a honeyed tone, the shadows beneath your cheekbones gentle rather than sharp. It made you glow in a way Dex had never been able to properly explain to himself.

Like candlelight catching honey, or the last sun ray through a window at dusk.

He watched you pick up another fried roll with your chopsticks, your nose wrinkling slightly when it nearly slipped apart before you got it into your mouth.

That made him chuckle. A sound that died in the hollow of his chest, swallowed by the space between his ribs.

God.

He needed this.

Needed the quiet rhythm of it after the last week spent buried in FBI work. The lies. The noise. Too many voices in his ear, too many meetings, too much time spent orbiting Wilson Fisk and his suffocating shadow.

His apartment never helped either. Too quiet and too still. Silence had a way of making his thoughts louder, the walls pressing in until he had to pace just to feel like he still had room to breathe.

But here, things felt… normal.

Outside, rain poured weakly past the windshield of Dex’s car.

The wipers had been off for a while now, leaving the glass streaked with dried residue. The heater hummed low near his knees, filling the car with dry warmth and the heavy, layered smell of fried tempura, soy sauce, and burnt coffee that had long gone cold in the cupholder.

Across the street, through the fogged window of the sushi place, you laughed suddenly at something on your phone, leaning forward across the table.

Dex smiled before he could stop himself.

He adjusted the takeout container balanced carefully in his lap before it tipped against the console. The plastic lid was beaded with condensation, the heat of the food fogging it from inside.

Soy sauce packets crowded the cupholder beside the coffee and crinkled napkins were shoved messily near the parking brake.

One dumpling had leaked grease through the paper container onto his slacks minutes ago, a dark stain spreading across the fabric near his knee, but he barely cared.

He hadn’t even registered the warmth of it until it had already cooled.

Dex stuffed another piece of sushi into his mouth absently, chewing without tasting, his eyes never leaving you.

The rice was a little dry. The ginger had that sharp, stinging bite that made the back of his throat tighten.

He’d picked up the order right before you came in, timed it so the food would still be warm when he settled into the driver’s seat.

His monocular rested against his thigh for barely a second before he lifted it again automatically. He settled it back against his socket without thinking, the world snapping into that familiar, compressed clarity.

His pulse eased the moment your face sharpened back into focus.

There she is.

Chin propped lazily into your palm now, reading something intently on your phone. A server passed behind you carrying a tray and even distracted, you looked up at him automatically. Sweet and polite.

Warm in that effortless way that still twisted something painfully tight inside Dex’s chest after all these years.

You gave pieces of yourself away carelessly without even realising it. A smile here. A laugh there. A small wave to a regular who held the door for you.

You never hoarded your warmth. It just spilled out of you, abundant and unguarded, and Dex collected every stray drop like a man dying of thirst.

His thumb moved slowly against the steering wheel, tracing the seam where the leather had begun to crack near the top.

This was exactly what he needed after the week he’d had.

Just you and him.

The thought surfaced without permission, settling somewhere deep behind his sternum. He let it sit there as his hand drifted toward the glove compartment without looking away from you once.

The latch gave with a quiet click, and his fingers found the familiar bundle by touch alone, soft cotton folded neatly in the dark, tucked beside his registration and a crumpled gas receipt.

He drew it carefully into his lap, keeping his eyes fixed on your silhouette through the monocular.

The pale fabric bunched lightly in his fist. The lace trim was cool against his palm, delicate, a detail he’d traced with his fingertips so many times that he could map it blind.

Almost absentmindedly, like a man reaching for a cigarette or rubbing a familiar scar, he brought the stolen panties toward his face and inhaled slowly.

The smell hit him in stages. First the faint, clean scent of your vanilla lotion, the one you applied after every shower. Then the warmer note of your shea body oil, the one you massaged into your elbows and knees before bed.

Beneath that, something warmer and distinctly you, something saline and soft that settled low in his stomach hard enough to make his slacks tighten slightly. A familiar, hungry ache that bloomed behind his fly at just your scent.

He held the breath for a long moment, letting it steep in his lungs, before exhaling through his nose.

A small souvenir he’d rewarded himself four months ago, after letting himself into your new loft late one night to make sure everything was secure.

You’d forgotten to latch one of the windows facing the fire escape. Careless sweet thing. The lock had been loose, the frame warped slightly from humidity, and when he’d tested it with his fingertips, it had swung open without resistance.

Dex had fixed it for you before leaving. Tightened the screws on the latch, oiled the track, made sure it would hold.

He’d found the panties in your laundry basket on the way out. A pale blue cotton pair, with a small tear near the waistband that you’d never bothered to mend. He’d slipped them into his jacket pocket before he could think better of it.

Across the street, you laughed again, shoulders shaking lightly this time, your head tipping back just enough to expose the column of your throat.

He exhaled softly through his nose, smiling along with you like he really was sitting across the table

Just you and him.

That was all he needed.

He didn’t know what to think when he saw the newspaper.

For one suspended second, there was nothing. Not anger. Not fear. Not even confusion. Just a sharp, empty stillness, like a pin had dropped somewhere inside his head and every part of him had gone quiet trying to hear where it landed.

Dex had been sitting there for hours, spine rigid, eyes fixed on the bank of screens showing Fisk’s penthouse from every angle. The man himself was visible in one frame, seated at his dining table. Calm and unbothered like always.

Then the paper landed in front of him.

FBI INVESTIGATES ONE OF THEIR OWN.

Agent Kane shifted beside him. “I’m sorry, Dex. This isn’t right,” she said quietly.

He heard her voice, but it came from somewhere far away, as if she were speaking through water. The words landed and dissolved.

Dex stared at the headline until the letters stopped being letters and became just shapes—black ink pressed into pulp, arranged by somebody who didn’t know him, didn’t care about him, didn’t understand anything about what he’d done or why.

The static began to rise. It always started like this, a low hum at the base of his skull, building as the world pressed in.

Around him, the room kept moving. Agents passed behind his chair, their footsteps a rhythmic interruption. Phones rang in overlapping cadences. Somebody laughed too loudly near the elevators, the sound slicing through the air before smearing into everything else, sharp and meaningless.

He could feel them looking at him.

Not directly, none of them were stupid enough to stare. But he felt the glances anyway. The way people looked at car wrecks when they slowed down just enough to see blood but not enough to admit they wanted to.

His jaw tightened. The muscle in his temple pulsed once, twice.

He was being used as a scapegoat.

By the time Winn and Hattley called him into the office, the static had thickened. It filled the room around their fake sympathetic voices.

“We’re going to find out who leaked this,” Hattley said, leaning forward with that practiced look of concern people used when they wanted to seem human.

Dex looked at her mouth while she spoke.

Not her eyes. Her mouth.

The words were too clean. Too prepared. Every syllable landed exactly where she wanted it to, like she’d rehearsed this conversation. There was no surprise in her tone, no real outrage. Just a performance of solidarity.

She was lying.

They all were.

The thing inside him stirred, restless and cold. He pressed it down. But it was harder now, when the structure he’d trusted was cracking around him, when the rules he’d followed were being used to crush him.

It had been the Bureau.

They were throwing him under the bus because someone had to bleed publicly, and it was easier if it was him. Easier because he had no wife waiting at home. No kids. No loud, charming friends in the office to make a scene on his behalf.

Easier because he was useful until he wasn’t, precise until precision made them uncomfortable, disciplined until discipline stopped protecting him from becoming disposable.

After everything, they were disposing of him.

If he followed the rules, he could be normal. He could be safe. Everyone else could be safe.

But the rules had just thrown him away.

“Think of it as a paid vacation,” Hattley said, offering a thin smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

The static in his skull sharpened.

Dex looked down at his badge before he realised he’d already taken it off.

He didn’t remember doing it. His fingers had moved on their own, undoing the clip, sliding the leather folder from his belt.

Now it sat in his palm like something foreign, the gold shield winking at him tauntingly.

His hand didn’t feel like his own when he set it on the desk. The leather made a soft, final sound against the wood. Then the gun. The weight of it leaving him felt wrong in a way that made his stomach tighten sharply.

Badge. Gun. Credentials.

Structure.

Mercer’s voice rose in his head before he could stop it.

Get a job with structure, Dex. Rigid structure. Stay disciplined. Stay useful. Routine is important for you.

Routine. Rules. The job gave him rules. Rules told him what to do. Rules made the edges of the world sharp enough to hold onto. Without them, everything blurred.

Everything bled into everything else. The thing inside him pushed against its cage like an animal scenting an open door.

And now they were taking it away from him like it was nothing.

By the time he reached the hall, the migraine had settled behind his right eye, hot and pulsing. It pressed against his optic nerve, sending thin spokes of light across his vision.

Nausea turned slowly in his stomach, a greasy, rolling sensation that made his throat tighten.

He was aware of his body in pieces. His pulse hammering in his wrists, too fast. Sweat cooling under his collar, the fabric damp and clammy against his neck. The empty space at his hip where his gun should have been.

Empty.

Empty.

Empty.

By the time he stepped back out into the hall, the Bureau felt wrong around him. Hostile in a way it hadn’t ten minutes ago.

But the air had changed. It pressed against him differently now, thick and heavy, as if the building itself had decided he didn’t belong here anymore.

He walked past an agent he’d worked with for two years. The man met his eyes, then looked away.

Dex’s fingers twitched at his sides.

None of it belonged to him anymore.

Or he didn’t belong to it.

The job was gone. The badge was gone. The rules were gone. And without them, he felt himself starting to come apart at the seams, the threads that held him together snapping one by one.

His breathing thinned. Too shallow. Too fast. The edges of his vision began to grey, just slightly, like someone was turning down the lights from far away.

He needed out.

He needed air.

No.

Not air.

You.

He needed to see you. Now.

The thought cut through the static like a blade. A fixed point in the chaos.

Dex looked down at his watch.

6:17 p.m.

Thursday.

You did your grocery shopping on Thursdays after work because you hated weekend crowds. End of the week, but not the weekend. Practical. Smart.

Sometimes you bought tulips even though you worked at a florist and could probably get better ones for free.

He had never understood that.

He loved that he didn’t understand that.

The Bureau, Hattley, Winn, Fisk, the paper, the headline, the badge sitting on that desk like a dead thing. None of it mattered. Not right now.

Not when his mind was splitting open and the only thought holding him together was the image of you standing under grocery-store fluorescents.

He turned before he’d fully decided to move.

His feet carried him toward the elevator. Each step felt like pushing through water. The walls of the hallway seemed to close in, then expand, breathing with him.

By the time he reached the elevator and pressed the button, his jaw ached from clenching. His hands were steady, but only because he had trained them to be.

Inside, everything was coming apart in small, quiet pieces. Like a dam with a thousand tiny cracks, water seeping through each one, the whole structure holding only by habit and memory.

That was fine.

He didn’t need the badge.

He didn’t need their rules.

He had you.

The drive from the bureau to the grocery store did nothing to settle the storm clawing through Dex’s chest.

His palms were slick against his slacks. He’d just walked in. Empty-handed. Bereft of purpose beyond the single, desperate need screaming through every nerve ending in his body.

Find her. Find her. Find her.

The automatic doors hissed shut behind him, sealing him inside a world of too-bright lights and Muzak and the sharp chemical sweetness of floor cleaner.

His tie felt like it had shrunk two sizes since he’d left the Bureau, the knot pressing against his throat like a noose. He tugged at it once, twice, but it only made it tighter.

The migraine was still there, settled between his eyes like a hot coal. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat, a steady, throbbing pressure that made the aisles seem to swim when he moved his head too fast.

And Mercer’s voice.

She was there, in the back of his skull, the way she always was when things got bad. But today she wasn’t the steady, grounding presence he remembered.

Her voice flickered and warped, sliding between registers like a broken radio.

Stay calm, Dex. Breathe. You’re okay.

Then, lower, twisted. Freak. Look at you. They threw you away because they saw it. They knew what you were.

His fingers twitched at his sides.

You were supposed to be better than this. All that discipline. And you can’t even—

“Shut up,” he muttered under his breath, but the words came out wrong, too loud, and a woman passing with a toddler shot him a strange look.

He didn’t care.

He checked the endcaps, the seasonal displays, the little stand with flowers near the entrance because you liked stopping there.

You weren’t there.

His breathing got thinner, shallower, each inhale less satisfying than the last. A tightness gathered behind his eyes, hot and humiliating, frustration swelling so quickly it scared him.

Not here. Not here. Not—

He crossed the store, his shoes squeaking on the polished floor. He passed a man in a dark coat who frowned at him. He ignored him. He rounded the corner into the makeup aisle and his chest seized.

Empty.

The shelves stretched out before him, neat rows of bottles and tubes and compacts reflecting the harsh light. A woman stood at the far end, examining a lipstick, but she had different hair. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The frustration crested, crested, broke.

Tears pricked at his eyes, and he blinked furiously against them. His throat closed. His hands shook.

This was stupid.

This was—

Where the hell are you?

He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes until he saw stars. The pressure helped, briefly, grounding him in pain instead of panic. He counted to ten. Then to twenty.

He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, the way Mercer had taught him when he was thirteen and didn’t know how to exist without breaking things.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth. You’re in control, Dex. You’re always in control.

But the voice was quiet now, drowned out by the static.

He dropped his hands and looked up.

There.

The fruit and vegetable aisle. Eight feet away. Your back.

And everything stopped.

The world snapped into focus like a lens being adjusted. The lights dimmed to something bearable. The buzzing of the fluorescents faded to a dull hum.

A shock ran through his system, ice-cold and bracing, like being splashed with water in the middle of a fever dream.

His throat worked. He swallowed once, twice.

He dragged his eyes up, angry at himself and not angry at all. Angry that he couldn’t just walk up to you, couldn’t just be normal, couldn’t just—

His hands were still shaking.

His chest was still tight.

His breathing was still too shallow, too fast, each inhale catching on something sharp lodged in his lungs.

He was still falling apart, and you were right there, six feet away, squeezing pears and humming to music he couldn’t hear, and he couldn’t calm down.

The realisation hit him like a fist to his throat.

If he couldn’t pull himself together now, if he couldn’t drag his shattered pieces back into something resembling a whole person, he was going to have a full mental breakdown with you a few steps away from him.

He couldn’t let that happen.

He couldn’t.

He stood at the end of the aisle, frozen, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides, his heart hammering against his ribs, his eyes fixed on the curve of your spine and the gentle sway of your hips as you moved down the display.

And for a long, terrible moment, he didn’t know what to do.

The word nectarines repeated in his skull like a lifeline.

He didn’t know why that particular fruit had caught his attention—maybe because they were closest, maybe because they were red and blushing and reminded him of the colour your lips had been at the diner.

It didn’t matter. He grabbed one, then another, turning them over in his trembling hands pretending to inspect them.

Three steps away. You were three steps away.

Dex’s shoe scuffed against the linoleum as he adjusted his stance, positioning himself so he could see you in his peripheral vision without turning his head.

Look at something else. Let your eyes find the target naturally. But his eyes weren’t listening.

They kept sliding back to you, hungry and helpless, drinking in the curve of your hip where your sweatpants rode low.

He could smell you.

Estée Lauder. Beautiful Magnolia.

He knew the scent because he’d bought a bottle once, from a department store in Midtown, just to understand what it was that clung to your clothes and lingered in the air long after you’d passed.

He’d sprayed it on his pillow that night and buried his face in the fabric, breathing you in until the noise in his head quieted to a hum.

He inhaled now, deep and long, hoping it would do the same.

It didn’t.

His hands were still shaking. He could see the tremors as he turned a nectarine over, the fruit wobbling in his grip like he’d never held anything in his life.

Just breathe, Dex, Mercer whispered, but her voice was thin, frayed, like a recording stretched to breaking.

We don’t know how this got out, Hattley’s voice cut in, smooth and false, dripping with pity. We’re going to find out who leaked this.

His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.

He wanted to hit something. Wanted to drive his fist into the display of nectarines, into the wall, into his own skull if it would make them stop.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

He tried to focus on you. On the sound of your breathing. On the fact that this was the closest he’d been to you in years.

But nothing helped.

The voices swelled. The migraine throbbed. His hands shook. His chest constricted. And he was drowning, drowning, drowning in the fluorescent light of a grocery store—

“Excuse me.”

The world snapped into silence.

Dex’s head shot up so fast his neck cracked. His eyes found yours, and everything in him locked up like a circuit breaker tripping. You were looking at him.

He stared.

He blinked.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

The silence stretched, and your smile tightened at the edges, just slightly. You cleared your throat, shifting your weight, the picture of casual confidence.

“I don’t know if this is gonna sound a bit creepy,” you said, and your voice was smooth, rolling, the same voice he’d heard a thousand times in his memory, “but do I know you?”

His heart stopped.

Then restarted at double speed.

Say something. Say something normal. Say something human.

“I—” He cleared his throat. The sound was raw, scraping. He forced a smile onto his face, “I don’t think so.”

You tilted your head, studying him. “No, I do.”

There was no room for argument in your voice. No uncertainty.

He tilted his head, mirroring you. Let his eyes narrow slightly, as if he were searching his memory.

As if he didn’t have every moment he’d ever seen you catalogued and cross-referenced in his mind.

As if he wasn’t memorising the way the light caught in your hair, the faint sheen of gloss on your lips, the tiny beauty mark just above your collarbone.

You snapped your fingers, before pointing to yourself. “I used to work at this diner a few years ago. I don’t know if you know it—Bel Air Diner, maybe?”

He let the pause hang. Let his brow furrow. Let himself pretend, when all he wanted to do was reach out and touch you to make sure you were real.

“Bushwick?” he said finally, his voice steadier than he felt.

Your eyes lit up, and the sensation of seeing that, of being the cause of that light, was like injecting ecstasy straight into his veins.

“Yeah!” You nodded, your smile widening into something that crinkled the corners of your eyes. “The one on the corner of 9th Ave. That’s the one.”

Dex’s breath caught. He swallowed, trying to find his footing, trying to remember how to be a regular person, having a conversation with a woman who had no idea that she was the only thing that had kept him from falling apart for years.

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice cracked on the word. “Yeah, I remember.”

“But you don’t remember me?”

Dex blinked at you, the words landing like a slap he didn’t see coming.

For a long, terrible second, his brain seized, caught between the instinct to apologise and the dawning realisation that you were teasing him.

You were teasing him.

The corners of your mouth curved, and there it was, a glint in your eye, a playful tilt to your chin that he’d never seen before.

Not in all the hours he’d spent watching you. You were straightforward. Bold.

In his head, you were soft. Sweet. A little shy, maybe, the way you’d duck your head when a customer thanked you, the way you’d bite your lip when you were concentrating on an arrangement.

He’d built a version of you that was gentle and malleable, a fantasy that existed to be consumed, not to talk back.

“I’m kidding,” you said, after his silence stretched a beat too long. Like you could see him drowning and had thrown him a line.

He hated himself.

The feeling was familiar, worn smooth by years of repetition, but this was a fresh, raw kind of hatred that made his palms itch.

The Dex in his mind, the one he’d imagined a thousand times, would have had a smooth response ready. Would have leaned against the display, flashed a grin, said something that made you laugh.

That Dex was charming. That Dex was normal.

But that Dex wasn’t real. And the real Dex was standing here, sweat beading at his temples, hands shaking.

He scrambled, forcing a smile onto his face that he hoped read as charming rather than manic.

“No, no.” His voice came out too quick, too eager. He reined it in, softened his tone. “I do remember you now. I’m just surprised you remember me.”

You tilted your head smiling, and the movement pushed the apples of your cheeks up. God, you were beautiful.

“Can never forget a handsome face,” you said.

Handsome. She said handsome. She’s flirting with you. That’s what this is. Say something back. This is how it works. So do it.

But his brain was a white-noise void, every thought scattering like roaches in harsh light.

His smile felt brittle on his face, but he held it there, hoping you couldn’t see how badly his hands were shaking.

“Thank you,” he managed, and the words came out rough, almost shy.

He shifted the nectarine to his other hand, wiping his palm against his slacks in a motion he hoped looked casual. Then extended his hand.

“Dex.”

You smiled and told him your name. Like he didn’t already know it. Like he hadn’t whispered it into the dark of his apartment with his fist wrapped around his cock, gasping it into his pillow like a prayer.

Your hand slid into his.

The contact was electric. Your skin was warm, soft, impossibly real against his calloused palm.

He had to stop himself from closing his eyes, from letting the sensation wash over him and drown him.

Every nerve in his body screamed at him to pull you closer, to bring your hand to his mouth and press his lips to your knuckles, to your wrist, to the delicate skin where your pulse beat just beneath the surface.

Instead, he shook your hand once, twice, like a normal person, and let go before he did something he couldn’t take back.

“So, Dex,” you said, drawing his name out just slightly, testing it, like you were deciding whether you liked the way it felt on your tongue.

You had no idea he’d been waiting to hear you say it for years.

“What brings you to the supermarket at—” you glanced at your phone, then back at him, a small smile playing at your lips, “—seven pm on a Thursday.”

Simple question. Normal question. The kind of question one person asked another when they wanted to keep a conversation alive, when they wanted to prolong it.

And you hadn’t even seemed to notice that he had no shopping cart. No basket.

Just himself, standing here in the produce aisle like a man who’d wandered in off the street with no purpose other than to stare at fruit he had no intention of buying.

There was no way he could tell you the truth. That just hours ago he’d been framed by the FBI, scapegoated for an ambush he’d had no part in, cast out of the only identity he’d ever known.

That he’d spent the last hour spiraling in his car, hallucinating voices, pressing a gun to his own jaw before forcing it back into the glove compartment.

That he’d driven here not for groceries, but because your Thursday evening routine was the only fixed point left in his collapsing world.

He couldn’t say any of that.

So he said the first plausible thing that surfaced from the scrambled mess of his brain.

“End of the week,” he heard himself say instead. The words came out rough, but he pushed through. “But way less crowded on weekends.”

You raised your brows, a hint of a smile tugging at your lips. “So I guess I’m not original at all, huh?”

You were making a joke, and he’d walked right into it and now he was supposed to respond. Laugh. A laugh would be normal. People laughed at jokes. That was the expected behavior. He should laugh.

He made a sound that was supposed to be a chuckle but came out more like a choked exhale, his lips stretching into a smile that felt too wide, too stiff.

“Great minds think alike, I guess.” He tried for laid-back, tried to make his shoulders relax, but they stayed hunched, like he was bracing for impact.

You tilted your head, just slightly, and hummed in agreement.

And then there was a pause.

A little one, at first. The kind of pause that happens naturally in conversation, where one person waits for the other to speak next.

But it stretched. It grew. It filled the space between you like something physical, and Dex felt it pressing against his chest, tightening around his throat.

Say something. She’s waiting. She gave you an opening and now you’re letting it die.

But his mind was a blank wall.

He cleared his throat, the sound rough and too loud in the quiet aisle. “So, uh—” He glanced down at the nectarine in his hand, then back up at you. “You come here often?”

The words landed and he wanted to die. You come here often? That was the line he’d pulled from his brain.

The most generic, cliché, forgettable question in the history of human interaction. The kind of thing a mannequin would say if it were programmed to simulate human speech.

He braced for the look. The one that would say really? delivered with a curl of the lip, a shift of weight away from him. He’d seen that look on women’s faces before, when a man tried too hard or said the wrong thing.

So when you let out a laugh, genuine and surprised, it hit him like a punch to the chest.

You were laughing. At him, maybe, but not at him. With him. Like you found him funny, endearing even. Like his awkwardness wasn’t a turn-off but a joke you were both in on.

Dex felt his face go warm. He rubbed his brow, a nervous tick he couldn’t control, the heel of his hand pressing against his forehead as if he could massage away the embarrassment.

“Yeah, I heard it when I said it,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Sorry…”

He risked a glance at you through his fingers, and you were looking at him with an expression he didn’t recognise.

You looked like you were trying not to smile and failing, the corners of your mouth twitching upward.

His heart was hammering so hard he felt it in his throat, in his temples, in the tips of his fingers.

“I’ll give you a pass for now,” you said, a smile breaking through fully now.

Dex’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

Nothing came out.

He swallowed hard, his throat clicking. “Thanks,” he said again , the word barely above a whisper. “I—I’ll try to do better next time.”

You raised your brows again, but your smile didn’t shift. In fact, it seemed to deepen, the corners of your mouth curling with delight. “Next time?”

The question hung in the air, but to Dex it felt like a tightrope. One wrong step and he’d plummet.

He hoped to God you couldn’t see the sheen of sweat beading on his forehead, the way his pulse was visibly jumping in his throat.

Adapt. You have to adapt. She’s smooth, she’s quick, she’s going to eat you alive if you don’t keep up.

He forced his mouth into something resembling a smile, though it felt more like a grimace on the way up. “You’re the one who said for now.”

And that’s how Dex ended up with your number.

Thirty minutes earlier, Dex had been sitting in his car, the engine off. His spare gun had been in his lap, cold and heavy.

He’d pressed the muzzle against the soft skin under his chin, felt the metal dig in, tasted the copper of a future he’d almost chosen.

His career. His structure. His livelihood. His reputation. All of it gone, stripped away in a single afternoon by people who’d used him and discarded him like a broken tool.

One pull. That’s all it would have taken.

Now, driving home, the streets of New York blurring past his windshield in streaks of neon and headlights, Dex felt something he couldn’t name.

It wasn’t relief, exactly—the weight of what he’d almost done was still there.

But it was layered over with something else, something bright and unfamiliar, like sunlight breaking through clouds after a storm.

He kept glancing at his phone. It sat in the cupholder, screen dark, but he could feel it like a beacon. Your number. 

Your number, given willingly, freely, without coercion or manipulation.

The thought made his chest ache, a dull, insistent pressure behind his ribs. He flexed his hands on the steering wheel, and let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sob.

It was a high he’d never experienced before. And he was terrified of coming down.

He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, cut the engine, and sat there for a long moment, staring at his phone. The screen was dark, but he could still see your face, the memory of your smile burned into his eyelids.

And then his phone buzzed.

The screen lit up with a number he didn’t recognise, but the area code was familiar. New York. Manhattan.

He stared at it for three rings. Four. Five.

His thumb hovered over the decline button, but something made him pause. Something cold and familiar, settling in his gut like a stone.

He answered, “Hello.”

“When I was a boy…”

His skin wasn’t buzzing.

It was flaying itself from the bone, a high-frequency current ripping through every nerve ending until he couldn’t tell where the violence ended and his own body began.

The climb back through his window was a smear of pure sensation, the groan of the frame digging into his bruised ribs, the distant wail of a siren that might have been real or might have just been the echo of the screams still ricocheting inside his skull.

He tumbled into the living room, the red suit clinging to him like a second skin of sin and sweat, and the silence of his apartment hit him like a physical blow.

He spared a blank look at the microwave. 2:37 AM.

The high was curdling. The exquisite, crystalline purpose Fisk had injected into his veins was souring into a dense, suffocating fog.

The voices in his head were warping and overlapping, layered with the fresh screams of the people he’d just killed.

They weren’t separate voices anymore. They were a single, roaring static that made his skull feel too small for his brain.

He fumbled at the gloves, his fingers clumsy and uncoordinated, tearing at the constricting seams.

The helmet followed. The seal broke with a soft hiss of trapped breath, and the cool night air of the apartment hit the raw cuts on his cheekbone and split lip like a strip of litmus paper.

He wasn’t in control. He was a passenger, a ghost haunting a machine made of meat and bone.

The machine moved on autopilot, carrying him across the sticky floor through the debris of his life, toward his closet. His safe.

His fingers knew the combination better than his conscious mind. Beep. Beep. Beep. The door swung open.

Mercer’s tapes.

He reached for them, his fingers brushing the familiar edges, and he could already hear her voice in his memory. She would fix this.

She would rebuild the walls, draw the clean lines of the diagram, soothe the static into structured silence.

He paused.

The tapes felt dead in his hand. Cold. Alien. The thing inside him, that had killed tonight with a terrifyingly genuine grin splitting his face under the mask, revolted.

Structure was a cage. Control was a lie he told himself so he didn’t have to look at the abyss. Mercer’s voice was the voice of a woman who had never existed, a blueprint for a life he had never actually lived.

He didn’t want to be fixed tonight.

He wanted to be real.

He set the tapes down. The plastic clattered against the wood shelf, and the sound was a door slamming shut on his old self.

His body, no longer his to command, drifted to the phone on the nightstand. The screen was a blinding star in the gloom of his apartment.

Before he could rationalise the catastrophic stupidity of it, his thumb pressed the call button.

The phone pressed against his ear. The flat, electric hum of the dial tone filled his head.

First ring. A knife. 

Second ring. His breathing turned ragged, harsh stabs of air in and out. He couldn’t control it.

His hand shook, the tremors traveling up his arm to his chest, making his heart rattle against his ribs.

Third ring. Where the fuck were you? The thought was a claw in his chest, desperate and raw, scratched out from the bottom of his fractured soul. 

Fourth ring. Despair hit him like a bullet. The rejection he deserved. The silence he was born for.

His thumb was already moving to sever the connection, to retreat into the familiar dark, to let Mercer be the only voice he ever heard again.

The click.

A breath on the other end. The soft rustle of sheets. The sound of someone shifting out of sleep, pulling themselves back to consciousness for him.

A voice, sleepy and warm, cutting through the static in his soul.

“Hello?”

He opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out. His throat had sealed itself shut, his tongue a dead weight.

The buzzing in his head didn’t stop, it changed, shifting from static into a high, thin whine of pure panic.

What the fuck was he doing?

He should hang up. He should hang up right now, pretend this never happened, crawl back to the tapes and let Mercer stitch him back together.

But he didn’t move.

“…hello?”

Your voice again. Groggy, yes, but there was an edge now. Caution. Awareness creeping in.

He could picture you propping yourself up on an elbow, squinting at the phone, trying to place the unknown number glowing in the dark.

He cleared his throat.

“Hi. It’s Dex.”

Silence. Long enough that he felt his stomach drop through the floor.

“From the grocery store,” he added, stupidly. “Earlier today.”

More silence. He counted the seconds. One. Two. Three. His heart was a jackhammer against his ribs, and he was suddenly, acutely aware of how insane this looked.

He had your number for less than twelve hours. He had called you at 2:37 AM. There was no version of this that didn’t make him seem unhinged.

Then your voice came through, softer now, a hint of recognition bleeding through the drowsiness.

“Oh. Guy from the fruit aisle.”

The words were flat, stripped of the teasing lilt from earlier. He winced. He was an idiot.

But he couldn’t hang up either.

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice cracked on the single syllable. He cleared his throat again, harder this time. “Sorry. I know it’s late. I—”

He stopped. Ran a hand through his damp, tangled hair. The words weren’t coming. They never came when he needed them. “I couldn’t sleep.”

A beat. Then, “You call everyone you meet at the grocery store when you can’t sleep?”

There it was. The faintest edge of something, not quite playfulness, but not hostility either. A testing of the waters. He latched onto it like a drowning man grabbing a rope.

“No,” he said, and the honesty slipped out before he could stop it. “Just you apparently.”

The silence that followed was different. Softer. He could hear the rustle of fabric on your end, like you were shifting, settling deeper into the conversation.

“You’re weird, you know that?” you said, but your voice had lost its wariness. There was a thread of amusement in it now.

“I know,” he said. He didn’t even try to deny it.

He could have left it there. Could have apologised again, said goodnight, let you go back to sleep.

But the buzzing in his head was quieter now, drowned out by the sound of your breathing on the other end of the line.

“I was wondering,” he started, and his mouth went dry again. He pushed through it. “If you’re free tomorrow. Or, I guess, today now. For dinner.”

The words came out rushed, jumbled together like he was afraid he’d lose his nerve if he didn’t get them all out at once.

He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the rejection.

Another long pause. Then, a soft, breathy sound that might have been a laugh.

“You’re asking me out at three in the morning?”

“Depends on if you say yes,” he said, and the words surprised him. They were smoother than he’d intended, a sliver of confidence he didn’t know he possessed.

Your laugh came through fully this time, quiet and warm, and something in his chest cracked open.

“That’s a good line,” you said. “You rehearse that?”

“No,” he admitted. “I’m kind of making this up as I go.”

“Pretty good for improv.”

He felt the corner of his mouth twitch, almost a smile. “Does that mean you’ll say yes?”

A beat. Then, “Depends on what you’re offering.”

He let out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. His fingers tightened on the phone, grounding himself in the plastic and the warmth of your voice.

“Anything you want,” he said. And he meant it.

Dex prided himself on focus.

It was the cleanest thing he had, the discipline that held the loose pieces of him together. But here, across the table from you, that focus was a dead wire. Useless.

Ten minutes in and he still couldn’t land anywhere. His eyes kept skirting, from the deep crimson painted across your mouth to the sharp neckline of that tight black dress, down to where the fabric pulled across your chest.

He felt the heat crawl up the back of his neck, forced himself to your eyes instead. The dark liner made them bottomless, pulling at him with every slow blink.

His body was wired tight, locked up like he was bracing for impact. Every breath measured. Every movement too careful.

Terrified of the wrong word, the wrong look, shattering whatever luck had gotten you here.

You took a sip of your wine, watching him over the rim. Then you tilted your head, a smile catching at the corner of your mouth.

“Relax. You’re sitting like I’m gonna jump over this table and bite you.”

The image slid under his skin before he could stop it.

I’d let you, he thought. Anywhere you wanted.

He locked that down, managed a rough chuckle. “Still can’t wrap my head around why you said yes.”

You shrugged, setting the glass down. “Got nothing better to do. Thought I might as well get a free meal with a hot guy.”

Hot. You called him hot. 

Then your eyes narrowed. “Unless you’re one of those guys who believe in fifty-fifty for the first date.”

The question caught him off guard. For a second, he just stared at you, his brain struggling to catch up. Then he let out a choked laugh, shaking his head quickly.

“No. No, god, no. I promise.”

“Good.”

Your voice softened into something warm, teasing. You leaned back in your chair, swirling the wine in your glass, and the candlelight caught the curve of your smile.

The waiter appeared and Dex grabbed the menu like a lifeline, staring at the words without reading them.

He nodded when you ordered, asked for the same thing. When the waiter left, you leaned forward, elbows on the table.

The neckline of your dress dipped just slightly, and he caught the black lace underneath.

Fuck. Were you doing this on purpose?

“So, Dex from the fruit aisle.” Your voice had dropped, stripped of the teasing edge from earlier. Something warmer now. “Tell me something about yourself.”

His stomach dropped. Just a flash. He pushed it down.

“I’m an FBI agent,” he said. Safe. Simple enough. “Or—was. It’s complicated.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Complicated how?”

“The kind that makes for a bad first date story.” He tried to smile. It came out crooked.

You laughed, and the sound loosened something tight in his chest. “Fair enough. I’ll take a rain check.”

He nodded, scrambling for footing. “What do you do?”

You rolled your eyes and he felt a flicker of panic before you huffed, amused. “Just a florist. Completely boring compared to chasing bad guys, I’m sure.”

There’s nothing boring about you. The thought hit him hard and fast, and he heard himself say it out loud before his brain could catch up. “There’s nothing boring about you.”

You let out a small laugh. “So you do know how to sweet talk a girl.”

He couldn’t hide the blush that crawled up his neck to his ears, burning against the collar of his shirt. “I’m just saying it how I see it.”

“Maybe,” you hummed, “but then again you don’t know anything about me.”

Never had he heard a more untrue statement in his life. 

He knew your schedule. Your favourite coffee order. Your comfort shows you loved to binge. Which soap you preferred. Your go to nail colour. How you liked cats and dogs equally.

But he couldn’t say that. So he just looked at you across the table, watched the candlelight catch your eyes.

The food arrived. Steam rose from the plates between them, the scent of ginger and soy cutting through the moment. The waiter said something he didn’t catch.

“Well,” Dex murmured, “I’m hoping to learn if you’ll let me.”

Being here with you was something he had never experienced before.

The night before was a smear of violence but it all felt muted now, distant, like a transmission he couldn’t tune into anymore.

Not with you across the table, your voice cutting through the static in his head.

You kept the conversation easy. When he fumbled an answer or went quiet because his brain short-circuited trying to keep up with you, you didn’t pull back. You just smiled, shifted, let him find his footing again.

Once or twice he found himself wondering why you were even giving him a chance. You could have anyone. Smarter, smoother, someone without the weight he carried.

It made no sense that you’d picked him. Not that he’d let anyone else close enough to try, but the thought still lingered.

Still, there was a weight pressing down on him the whole time. A clock ticking. He felt it sharpest as the check arrived. Signing it, his stomach twisted into a knot so tight it made him nauseous.

The thought of leaving, of stepping into the cold air alone and watching you walk away, hollowed him out.

He could already feel the emptiness waiting. Maybe he’d just follow you home. Watch you through your window. It would be enough to comfort him.

“How are you getting home?” The words came out before he could stop them.

“Walked here,” you said, pulling out your lipstick. “Guess I’ll do the same.”

He watched your mouth as you reapplied it, the careful, practiced stroke of colour. He couldn’t look away.

“Let me drive you.”

You paused, the compact half-closed. Your eyes lifted to his, and he could see you weighing it, the stranger across from you, the risk of letting him know where you lived. The silence stretched. He felt the whole night teetering.

Fuck. He’d done too much. He ruined it. He’d pushed too hard, too fast, and now—

“Okay.”

It hit him somewhere between the Williamsburg Bridge and the mouth of your street, a strange hollow equation he couldn’t solve.

Away from you, the restlessness ate at him, he couldn’t settle, couldn’t quiet the noise inside his head.

But here, with you in the passenger seat, so close he could feel the warmth coming off your skin through the space between them, he wasn’t any better. His body was locked tight, every muscle braced for a mistake he hadn’t made yet.

He couldn’t stop glancing at you while he drove.

His hands were rigid on the steering wheel, knuckles pale in the passing streetlight. You leaned back in the seat, your head tilted, completely relaxed, watching the city slide past the window.

No tension in your shoulders. No flicker of anxiety. Just calm. It made him feel transparent, like you could see every loose wire and frayed thread in his head.

By the time he pulled up outside your building, his heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his throat, a quick, raw pulse that wouldn’t steady.

How had this happened so fast? He’d spent years wanting you, fantasising about you from a distance, and now that you were here, the wanting had twisted into a kind of fear.

The fear of doing something wrong. Of saying the wrong thing. Of breaking whatever fragile spell had let him into your space tonight.

You turned toward him. Your expression was different now. At dinner, your eyes had been sharp, playful, like a vixen toying with her prey.

But here, in the dim lamplight bleeding through the windshield, your lashes fluttered against your cheeks, and your gaze was wider, softer, something he didn’t have a name for.

“I had a good night,” you murmured.

Dex opened his mouth. His tongue felt thick, useless. “Me too.” It came out pitiful, barely a whisper.

You kept looking at him, waiting. Your lashes lowered, then lifted, like an invitation he couldn’t decode.

He stared back, frozen. Should he get out? Open your door? Walk you inside? He had no script for this, no smooth line rehearsed. His eyes drifted from yours to your parted lips. Red. Soft.

He was still scrambling through the noise in his head for the right move when your hand moved. It slid up the back of his head, fingers threading gently into his hair.

Before he could react, before his brain could catch up, you were pulling him forward.

Your lips met his.

For a long, heavy beat, Dex didn’t move.

His body locked up completely as the reality of your mouth sank in. You were kissing him. The thought cracked through the static in his brain like lightning. You. Kissing him.

Then instinct took over before he could wreck it. His lips started moving, awkward and unpracticed, trailing behind the rhythm you set.

A shaky breath left him, his shoulders dropping a fraction as he relaxed into the warmth of your mouth, the simple unimaginable fact of it.

Until he felt the wet tip of your tongue brush his bottom lip.

He tensed immediately. His eyes cracked open, found yours closed, your face slack and completely lost in it. He parted his lips. Let you in.

The second your tongues met, a raw sound caught in his throat. His cock hardened painfully behind his zipper, a rush of blood that made everything else go distant.

The taste of you flooded his senses, faintly sweet, the slick slide of your tongue against his. His brain went quiet for the first time all night.

Then something inside him snapped.

The careful, terrified version of himself fell away. He had to touch you. Now.

He pulled his hand off the wheel, lifted it. Fingers spread, hesitated. Your hair? Your waist? Your cheek? He had no idea what he was doing. Every option felt wrong, but doing nothing was unthinkable.

His palm landed on your throat before he could decide.

His fingers curved around the column of your neck, thumb settling against the flutter of your pulse. You moaned into his mouth, pleased and approving, and the sound shot straight through his chest. You liked it.

He pushed harder against your mouth, greedier. The hand on your throat tightened fractionally, pulling you closer across the console.

He didn’t care about breathing anymore.

The taste of you flooded every nerve in his body like a drug he’d been starving for his whole life. He’d rather suffocate against your mouth than take another clean breath of empty air.

Your hands found his jaw, and for a split second his brain screamed that you were pushing him away. Too rough. Too fast. He ruined it. 

His grip started to loosen, a fresh wave of shame crawling up his throat—

But your fingers dug into his skin and pulled him closer.

The sound that left him was raw, almost animal. Relief and hunger tangled together as you yanked him deeper into the kiss.

Little noises escaped your mouth, muffled against his tongue, and he tried to memorise each one even as he lost himself in the wet slide of your lips.

His hand slid from your throat to your jaw, fingers curling around the bone, tilting your head back as he pushed further into your mouth.

His tongue swept against yours, messy and desperate. He didn’t know what he was doing, he just knew he needed more. He wanted to crawl inside your skin.

Then your palms pressed flat against his chest.

Push.

The separation hit him like cold water. He broke away gasping, and his mouth chased yours before he could stop himself. But you didn’t pull further back.

You caught his lips in soft, quick pecks, barely there, just enough to soothe the ache you’d left behind.

Your mouth brushed against his when you spoke, voice low and rough.

“Do you wanna come up?”

Fuck. 

The words hit him square in the chest, then dropped lower, settling hot and heavy in his gut. He was already nodding before his brain caught up, pupils blown wide, lips wet and swollen.

“Yeah,” he breathed against your mouth, “Yeah. Fuck—yes.”

Dex’s pulse slammed against his ribs the second the lock clicked behind him.

Standing in your apartment. He forced his eyes to wander like he was stepping in here for the first time, even as his brain catalogued every detail against the map he’d already burned into his memory.

“Nice place.” The words scraped out of him, rough and distracted.

He tilted his head at the bookshelf, the framed photograph he knew was your mother, the throw blanket draped over the armchair that he’d watched you buy from a street vendor three months ago.

Every careful glance was a lie, but he wore it like a second skin.

“Thanks.” Your voice came from right behind him.

Then your hands were on him again, sliding over his shoulders, turning him around. He went without resistance, boneless under your touch. You pulled him down and met his lips halfway.

Your tongue pushed past his lips and he opened for you like a starving thing.

Your fingers twisted into his hair, yanking his head forward just enough to deepen the angle, and he let you. He’d let you do anything.

You bit his bottom lip, sucked it into your mouth, and his hips jerked forward involuntarily.

His hands began to move. Everywhere. Your waist, the dip of your spine, the swell of your hips.

He grabbed desperate handfuls of your ass, pulling you flush against him, and the heat of your body through that thin dress made his head spin.

You were soft in ways he’d only ever imagined, and his imagination had been thorough, but nothing prepared him for the reality of you pressed against his aching body. He wanted to touch every part of you at once, to map you entirely.

You broke the kiss first, panting, lips slick and swollen. Your forehead rested against his, your breath hot and uneven on his mouth. “I don’t do this often,” you murmured, the confession raw and almost shy.

“I know,” he breathed without thinking.

The second the words left him, he felt you stiffen. You pulled back, confusion knitting your brows. “What do you mean, you know?”

Dex’s stomach dropped into freefall.

His eyes snapped open, panic flooding his veins. 

Fuck. Fuck. 

He scrambled for a lifeline, his mouth opening and closing before the lie managed to crawl out. “I mean I—I know what you mean. Me too. I don’t—I don’t do this often either.”

You held his gaze for a long moment. The sharpness in your eyes softened, and you snorted, a puff of warm breath against his lips. “You’re so weird.”

Relief flooded him so fast it made him dizzy. Before he could dwell on it, you were kissing him again, swallowing whatever fragile composure he had left.

Your hands guided him backwards. He followed blindly, drunk on your mouth, stumbling until the back of his knees hit something soft. You shoved him. Hard.

He landed on the couch with a grunt, bouncing once before settling, looking up at you with wide, dazed eyes.

Before he could ask, you leaned down, bracing your hands on his knees, and kissed him again. Slow and deep, a thorough occupation of his mouth that erased every thought trying to surface.

He melted into it, his hands finding your thighs, stroking the warm skin exposed by the hem of your dress.

You broke the kiss gently, pulling back just enough that he could see you.

You were on her knees. Between his legs. Looking up at him through your lashes, your lipstick smudged, your hair loose around your face.

The sight of you there stole the air from his lungs.

“What—what are you doing?” Dex heard himself ask, his voice thin and wrecked, stripped of every layer he hid behind.

You smiled as your hands slid up his thighs, fingers pressing into the muscle.

“Having my dessert.”

Dex’s brain went completely blank when your fingers found his belt buckle. The soft click-clack of it coming undone rang through the room like a gunshot in his ears.

He opened his mouth to speak, to protest, to do something other than lie there like a trembling mess offering himself up to you, but all that came out was a strained, cracked confession,

“Are you sure—you-you don’t have to—”

His hips lifted off the couch cushions anyway.

A complete betrayal of every word coming out of his mouth. His body didn’t give a single fuck what his brain was trying to negotiate.

It wanted you. It had always wanted you.

You didn’t hesitate. You dragged his slacks and boxers down his thighs in one smooth motion, baring him completely to the warm air of your apartment.

He shivered, his cock springing free to slap against his stomach with a wet, heavy sound.

He was already painfully hard, leaking against his navel, the swollen head flushed dark and slick, and the sight of you looking at it made his stomach clench so hard he thought he might be sick.

Your hand wrapped around him like it belonged there. A firm grip that made him grunt, his hips bucking up into your fist before he could stop himself.

The heat of your palm was everything. He watched, completely mesmerised, as your thumb swept across the sensitive head, smearing the bead of pre-cum that had gathered there, using it to slick your stroke.

You looked up at him through your lashes, your mouth hovering inches from his tip.

Your breath was hot and uneven against his sensitive skin, and there was a tremor in your voice when you spoke that made his heart stutter in his chest.

“You don’t want me to suck your cock?”

Jesus Christ. 

The visual was so fucking obscene, you, on your knees, looking up at him with those wide, innocent doe eyes while your hand worked his shaft and your lips hovered so close he could feel the ghost of them.

He had to lean his head back against the couch cushion and squeeze his eyes shut. He was going to cum just from looking at you.

A soft, dark laugh came from between his legs. “That wasn’t a no.”

Before he could answer, something wet touched him.

His eyes snapped open. He looked down just in time to see your tongue trace a slow path along the thick vein on the underside of his cock.

An embarrassing, needy whimper crawled out of his throat before he could strangle it. His hips twitched, desperate to push into the warmth of your mouth, but he held himself still by sheer, crumbling willpower.

You didn’t stop. You laid a soft, lingering kiss right on the crown, your lips parting just enough to ghost over the sensitive slit before pulling away.

When you looked up at him, your eyes were dark and hooded, your lips slick and parted.

“Keep your eyes on me, Dex.”

He nodded. A dumb, jerky motion. He didn’t trust his voice. He didn’t trust anything. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

You didn’t even have his cock in your mouth yet and he swore he could feel the pressure building at the base of his spine, coiling tighter with every second you held his gaze.

His hands fisted in the couch cushions, knuckles white. His breathing was ragged, each inhale a desperate gasp.

He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached, watching in rapt focus as you parted your lips and took the swollen crown of his cock into your mouth.

Your eyes stayed locked on his. You held his gaze as you sank deeper, inch by agonising inch.

The wet heat of your tongue curled around his shaft, the velvet pressure of your cheeks hollowing as you pulled him further into the slick, perfect heaven of your throat.

Every inch you swallowed made his hips twitch involuntarily against the cushions. Every flutter of your lashes made his stomach clench tighter. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t.

Oh, fuck. Your mouth was so warm. So impossibly wet.

The slick slide of your tongue curling around his shaft, the flutter of your throat when the tip pressed against the back of your mouth, he didn’t think anything in this world could feel better than having his cock in your mouth.

He was certain of it. This was the single best moment of his entire miserable life. He was ready to die right here and call it a life well-lived.

You pulled back slowly, dragging your tongue along the thick, throbbing vein on the underside of his cock before taking him deep again with a low moan.

A broken whimper crawled out of his throat before he could clamp down on it. “Fuck—fuck, I can’t—” His voice was wrecked, barely more than a ragged whisper. “You gotta stop—or I’m gonna—”

You just hummed casually against his slick, swollen tip, your breath hot and uneven against his sensitive skin.

“No, no, wait—please, I want it to last,” he heard himself begging, the words tumbling out in a desperate, breathless rush. “I’m not gonna make it—I swear to God—”

You didn’t stop. You just held his gaze with those innocent, wicked eyes and took him deeper.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He was so fucking pathetic. Lasting like some inexperienced teenager, his first time all over again.

He tried to think of anything else; baseball statistics, the cold metal of his gun, the layout of the presidential hotel, but it was no fucking use at all.

Every nerve in his body was tuned to the wet slide of your mouth, the curl of your tongue, the soft, muffled gag when he hit the back of your throat.

He squeezed his eyes shut, could feel the frustrated tears prickling hot behind his lids. He couldn’t look at you anymore.

He had to stop himself, had to make this last, but his body was betraying him completely, trembling, arching, pushing deeper into your heat.

You took him back into your mouth in a single, fluid motion. Hollowed your cheeks. Pressed your tongue flat against the underside of his shaft.

And when you swallowed around the head of his cock, pulling him deeper into the wet velvet of your throat, he shattered completely.

“Oh fuck—I’m coming—”

His hips bucked involuntarily, driving himself deeper into your throat, feeling you gag around him, feeling your throat constrict and pulse as you swallowed, milking the orgasm out of him.

His release slammed into him like a freight train.

Hot, thick ropes of his come spilled into your mouth, and you swallowed around him, milking every drop, refusing to let him go even as he convulsed through the aftershocks.

His back arched off the cushions. His hands fisted so hard in the fabric he thought he might tear it. His vision whited out completely.

When his hips finally stopped stuttering, when his body went limp and trembling beneath you, you released him with a soft, wet kiss to his oversensitive tip.

The tenderness of it made his chest ache.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he felt himself mumbling, the words spilling out before he could stop them. “That was so fast—I couldn’t—I didn’t mean to—”

His hand came up to cover his face, shame and self-disgust crashing over him in waves.

But you wouldn’t let him hide. You caught his wrist, gently pulling his hand away, and crawled up his body.

Your lips were slick and swollen, your chin wet with him. You cut off his rambling apologies with a kiss, and his own taste flooded his senses. He groaned into your mouth, as your tongue played with his.

You broke the kiss just barely, your lips brushing against his as you murmured, “That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

He blinked up at you, dazed and trembling. “Yeah?”

You hummed against his lips, a slow, satisfied sound. “And I can’t wait for you to fuck me.”

The words hit him like a spark in a gas tank. The shame, the self-hate burned away in an instant, replaced by an animal surge of hunger.

He looked at you, still dazed, a slow, disbelieving smile pulling at his lips.

He still hadn’t ruined anything yet. He still hadn’t lost you.

His hands found your waist, gripping hard enough to bruise. Before you could react, he was moving, wrapping his arms around you and hauling you up with him.

You let out a surprised squeal, your legs wrapping around his waist instinctively.

He captured your mouth in a bruising kiss as he stood, walking blindly toward the hallway where he knew your bedroom was.

Dex lay perfectly still, afraid that even the smallest movement might shatter the fragile, impossible peace of the moment.

You were curled against him, your back pressed to his chest, your breathing slow and deep, the sound of someone completely and utterly spent.

He had never felt anything like this. Not once in thirty-two years. This is what it feels like. This quiet. This rightness. This terrifying, exhilarating certainty that he was exactly where he was supposed to be. Happiness.

His mind drifted back over the hours, replaying the sharp, vivid highlights like a film he couldn’t look away from.

He had learned so much about you tonight. How your breath hitched when he scraped his teeth along your pulse point. How your fingers twisted in the sheets when he found the perfect angle.

You loved being on your hands and knees for him. The first time, he’d followed your lead, sinking into you from behind, gripping your hips so hard he knew there would be bruises.

He pounded into you, watching your body rock forward with every thrust as you cried into your pillows, muffling your pleasure.

But something in him had itched. He hated it like this.

He couldn’t see your face. Couldn’t watch the expressions that flickered across your features when he hit that spot. Couldn’t feel your heartbeat against his chest or taste your moans with his own mouth.

It felt too much like taking, and not nearly enough like having you.

After you came the first time, your body shuddering and clenching around him, he pulled out before you could catch your breath and flipped you onto your back.

He needed to see you. Needed to watch the way your mouth fell open, the way your pupils blew wide when he settled between your thighs.

He buried his face between your legs and drank you in with a need that bordered on worship.

He lapped at your slick, swollen folds until your second orgasm crested, your hands fisting in his hair, your hips grinding against his mouth as you gasped his name into the dark.

By the time your third orgasm rolled through you, he had your legs wrapped high around his waist, his body pressed flush against yours.

He was buried so deep inside you that the world outside the space between your bodies ceased to exist. His nose touched yours. His forehead rested against yours.

He captured your gaze and held it hostage.

“Look at me,” he breathed, the command barely a whisper. “Don’t close your eyes. Look at me.”

He wanted you to see everything he had felt since the first moment he saw you in that diner. The obsession. The desperation. The hunger that had consumed him for years.

He wanted you to feel it in the way he moved inside you, as if he was trying to pour every ounce of himself directly into your bloodstream.

He knew you probably didn’t understand the full scope of it.

But lying here, in the aftermath, he let himself pretend. He pretended you had been waiting for him all this time. That your body recognised him. That this was always meant to happen.

When he finally let go, he held himself perfectly still, pumping his release deep inside you with a low groan.

He pressed so close that he could feel your heartbeat through his chest, grinding against you as if he could transfer his devotion through sheer physical proximity.

His nose stayed pressed to yours, his lips hovering just over your mouth, sharing the same warm, humid breath.

He whispered things against your lips. Broken things. Beautiful things.

Confessions that would never make sense in the harsh light of day, but here, in the dark, felt like the only truth that mattered.

“Been waiting so long. So long. I fucking worship you. You’re mine. I’m yours. Don’t ever leave me.”

His voice cracked on the last word. He didn’t care. He let himself be cracked open, let you see the raw, jagged edges of him that he had spent a lifetime hiding.

You didn’t answer. You probably didn’t even hear him. Your eyes had fluttered shut, your body going lax and heavy against him.

Lost to sleep. Lost to him.

He smiled against your hair, a real smile that softened all the hard lines of his face. He didn’t need you to answer. Not tonight.

Just having you here, warm and trusting and full of him, was already more than he ever dared to hope for.

The air in the room had cooled, but wrapped around you, he was warm for the first time in as long as he could remember.

Only twenty-four hours ago, he had been suffocating. Bound by rules and routines and the desperate need to keep himself contained.

But Fisk had shattered the cage he kept himself in. He had shown Dex a version of himself that was raw, hungry, and unapologetic. And instead of retreating from the wreckage, Dex had stepped into it.

He had let go of the ropes and the rules and the white-knuckled grip on control. He had chosen himself for the first time in his miserable, constrained life.

And by choosing himself, he had found the path that curved inevitably, beautifully, right back to you.

He pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the curve of your shoulder. His hand splayed across your stomach, feeling the warmth of you.

I did this, he thought, pride blooming in his chest. I chose this. I chose me. And it led me to you.

Dex buried his face in the curve of your neck, his nose pressing deep into the warm, sleep-soft skin just behind your ear.

He inhaled slowly, letting your scent flood his lungs. You smelled like home—the faint coconut trace of your shampoo, the salt of dried sweat from the hours you had spent tangled together, and something deeper, muskier, that was entirely, irrefutably you.

God. This was unbelievable.

And that was where his next problem laid.

He spared a glance down, past the rumpled sheet that clung to his hips, and saw the unmistakable tent of fabric where his cock had hardened again.

He let out a quiet, shaky breath, his eyes tracing the outline of his own need with a mixture of frustration and irritation.

He couldn’t fucking help it.

He felt like a kid in a candy store. The kid being him, a thirty-two-year-old man who had never known what it felt like to want something and actually get it. And the candy store was you. Access to your body.

The knowledge that he could touch you, taste you, sink into you whenever he wanted, and you would let him. You would want him to.

He had known it would be addictive. He just hadn’t realised how quickly the addiction would take hold, how it would wrap around his nervous system and tighten until he couldn’t think of anything else.

His body moved before his mind could catch up.

Spooned against you, chest to your back, he felt his hips roll forward in a slow, instinctive grind.

The thick length of him slid into the warm cradle between your thighs, pressing against the soft, slick heat of you through the sheet. A low sound caught in his throat, a choked half-groan that he swallowed against your skin.

Fuck. He should let you rest.

He had been so rough with you tonight. Your body had given him everything.You deserved sleep. You deserved peace.

But his cock didn’t give a shit about what you deserved.

Before he could stop himself, his hips rolled forward again, and this time the tip of him nudged past the edge of the sheet, finding the bare, wet seam of your cunt.

He gasped against your shoulder, his eyes squeezing shut. The slide of you against him was obscenely slick, unbearably warm, a friction so perfect it made his toes curl against the mattress.

Shit. You were still leaking him from earlier.

The evidence of what he had done to you was still there, pooled between your thighs, making you slick and ready for him all over again.

He pressed a quick, guilty kiss to your shoulder, his lips lingering just long enough to form a silent apology. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I just... I need you. I can’t stop needing you.

His hand moved, sliding over the curve of your stomach, tracing the soft dip of your waist before cupping your breast.

The weight of it filled his palm perfectly, the flesh so soft and warm, molding against his fingers like it was made for him. He squeezed gently, then let his thumb drag across your nipple, feeling the peak tighten and pebble under his touch.

A small shift rippled through your body. A subtle arch of your spine. A soft, breathy sound that caught in your throat.

He froze.

Every muscle in his body locked tight. His breath stopped. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard he was sure it would wake you on its own. He waited, suspended in the pure terror of being caught. 

She’s going to wake up. She’s going to see what I’m doing. She’s going to realise what a fucking creep I am—that I can’t keep my hands off her even when she’s asleep, that I’ve been watching her for years, that I am completely, irreparably obsessed with her.

The seconds stretched like hours.

But you didn’t wake. Your breathing deepened again, settling back into that slow, even rhythm. Your body relaxed against his, soft and trusting and completely oblivious to the war raging inside his chest.

He should have stopped. He should have been grateful for the reprieve, thanked whatever cruel god had given him this moment, and let you sleep.

Instead, he kept moving.

His hips resumed their slow, steady rhythm, grinding against your soaked cunt, the head of his cock sliding through the mess of his own release and your combined arousal.

The sensation was maddening; a wet, slippery tease that promised heaven without delivering it.

His hand stayed on your breast, rolling your nipple between his fingers, feeling the way your body responded even in sleep.

He pressed his lips to the back of your neck, a long, open-mouthed kiss that tasted of salt and skin. His breath came hot and uneven against your nape.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped against your skin, barely a whisper. “But I can’t... I can’t stop touching you. Every second I’m not inside you feels like I’m wasting time I don’t have.”

His hips rolled again, slower this time, deeper, the blunt tip of him catching at your entrance before sliding away, teasing both of you.

A shudder ran through his entire body.

“Please. Just a little more.”

The words slipped from Dex’s lips against the warm skin of your neck, a prayer offered to himself more than you, a plea for permission he was already taking.

He buried his face deeper into the crook of your shoulder, breathing you in until his lungs ached, and let his hips move.

There was nothing graceful about it. He rutted against you like a man possessed, the thick length of him sliding through the slick heat pooled between your thighs.

The sensation erased every rational thought. There was only you. The need to be inside you again. To own you. To fill you so completely that you couldn’t forget him, couldn’t leave him.

His breath came heavier against your nape, as his hand slid from your breast down to your stomach. He pressed his palm flat against the soft curve of your belly and pulled you tighter against him.

The arch of your back pressed your ass directly against his cock, and a fractured groan escaped him.

That’s when he felt it. A shift in your body. Your muscles tensed, your breathing changed, the subtle alertness of waking. Your voice cut through the dark, rough with sleep.

“Dex...?”

He froze for the span of a heartbeat. Then his hand came up to cradle your jaw, tilting your head back just enough for him to press a kiss to your cheek.

His hips never stopped their relentless grind, his cock catching at your entrance before sliding away again.

“Shhh,” he breathed against your ear. “Go back to sleep, honey. I’ve got you. Just let me stay right here.”

He needed you to stay in that space between dreaming and waking, where you were pliant and accepting and he could pretend his need wasn’t completely out of control.

But you turned your head toward him, your lips parting.

“Dex—”

He couldn’t let you finish. He kissed you, his tongue sliding into your mouth before you could form the rest of the sentence.

And you let him. No, you kissed him back. Your mouth softened under his, your body melting into his, your tongue meeting his with a lazy, sultry rhythm that told him everything he needed to know.

He felt your hand slide down between your bodies, your fingers searching blindly until they found him.

You traced the slick head of his cock, your touch featherlight, and a shudder ripped through him so violently he had to brace himself against the mattress.

“Fuck,” he gasped against your lips. His forehead dropped to yours, his breath ragged. “You want this too.”

You didn’t answer with words. You nudged the tip of him against your opening, a silent direction that drove the last shred of his restraint into the dust.

He answered with a small grunt as he pushed inside.

The heat of you swallowed him whole, and he dropped his forehead to yours, breathing you in. A soft, breathy moan escaped your lips, and your fingers curled against his back.

“Dex,” you murmured again, but this time it wasn’t a question. It was a sigh of surrender. A welcome.

He pressed another kiss to your mouth, before he began to move.

He tried to start slow. He tried to savour the sensation of sinking back into your slick heat. The attempt lasted only a handful of careful thrusts before the hunger surged through him.

His strokes turned hard and punishing. The rhythm of his hips fell into a desperate tempo that rocked the mattress beneath you, the steady thump-thump-thump of the headboard keeping time with the wild beating of his heart.

His hand slid up from your hip, fingers grazing the soft skin of your stomach, your ribs, before curling around your throat.

You looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes, your pupils blown wide, your lips parted around soft, broken ah-ah-ah sounds that spilled from your throat with every deep thrust.

He leaned down, his mouth hovering over yours, and deliberately let a thick string of saliva fall into your open lips. He wanted more of himself inside you.

More of his taste, his mark, his presence seeping into every crevice of your body.

A low, guttural groan rumbled up from his chest as he watched you swallow it without hesitation, without question. Your throat worked under his palm, accepting him, taking him in, and the sight nearly sent him over the edge.

“Fuck,” he murmured against your lips, his balls slapping wetly against your ass as he drove into you harder. “You liked that, didn’t you? Touching you while you were asleep. Groping you. Fucking you like I own you.”

Despite the dazed pleasure softening your features, despite the way he was fucking the very thoughts out of your head, you still had the audacity to smile.

That slow, lazy, knowing curl of your lips that had haunted him since the first time he saw it. You hummed a soft, satisfied, “Uh huh.”

“Yeah,” he breathed, a fractured sound against your cheek.

He hooked your thigh higher over his arm, opening you wider, sinking deeper into your perfect, willing heat.

Your voice came out in fractured moans, but there was a teasing edge to it. “’S fucking hot. Knew you were a freak the second I saw you.”

Dex couldn’t help it. A laugh cracked out of him, low and disbelieving, pressed against the warmth of your cheek.

Here he was, balls deep in the object of a years-long obsession, and you were calling him a freak like it was the highest compliment.

The laugh faded into a shuddering exhale as he shifted his angle, driving into you with hard, deep thrusts that pushed the air from your lungs and left you gasping beneath him.

He wanted to leave a permanent mark on your soul. He wanted your cunt to remember the exact shape of him, the exact weight of him.

He wanted the memory of this night imprinted so deeply into your body that you would feel the ghost of him every time you closed your thighs.

He leaned down, lips brushing your ear, breath ragged and hot.

“I’m gonna make sure you never forget who you belong to.”

Your response came as fractured, desperate moans, words swallowed by the rhythm of his hips driving into you.

Without breaking pace, his hand moved. Two fingers pressed against your lips. You opened without hesitation, taking them into your mouth just as you took every part of him.

He pushed them deep, curling them against your tongue in perfect time with his thrusts, a double rhythm that had you moaning around his knuckles.

The sight of you like this; mouth full of him, cunt full of him, eyes glassy and fixed on his face, pushed him to the edge. He could feel the tension coiling tight in his gut, the familiar ache building at the base of his spine.

He was seconds away from coming. But he couldn’t. Not yet.

He needed you there first.

With a wet gasp from you, he pulled his fingers from your mouth, a string of saliva breaking between his skin and your lips. His hand dropped without hesitation, finding your clit.

He rubbed fast, precise circles against the swollen bud, his own rhythm faltering as he poured every ounce of focus into your pleasure.

His eyes locked onto your face. He watched every micro-expression. The furrow of your brows, the way your lips parted on sharp, punched-out breaths, the flutter of your lashes as pleasure overtook you.

You looked up at him, dazed and pleading, and he nodded like a man possessed, a dumb, frantic motion that matched the speed of his fingers.

“C’mon,” he breathed, the words cracking. “Let go f’me. Let go, baby.”

And you did.

The orgasm hit you like a wave, your back arching, your mouth opening in a loud moan. Dex felt it, the way your cunt clenched around him, choked him, milked him.

The sensation ripped a loud, guttural groan from his chest, his hips stuttering as he followed you over the edge. He closed his eyes, the world going white, and let himself go.

Deep, pulsing spurts of cum filled you, and he thrust into you with every wave, pushing himself as deep as he could go, holding himself there, making sure every drop stayed inside you.

When it was over, the room was filled with nothing but harsh, shared breaths.

He collapsed against you, his full weight pressing you into the mattress. He made no move to pull out. No move to let you go. He stayed buried inside you, as close as flesh could get.

“Jesus Christ,” you murmured in a daze, the words barely a whisper.

The silence that followed was a dangerous thing. It let the thoughts back in. The insecurity. The horrible, gnawing fear that he had done too much.

He pressed his face into the curve of your neck, hiding, breathing you in until his lungs ached. His voice was rough, muffled against your skin.

“Too much?”

A beat. Then your hand, slow and heavy with exhaustion, slid into his hair. You laughed, soft and drowsy.

“No.” A pause. “By all means... keep me in your basement if you want.”

Dex’s eyes snapped open.

The joke hung in the air, clearly just a sleepy, affectionate jab. But he didn’t hear the joke.

He heard the offer.

Having you to himself. Forever. In a place where no one else could touch you, see you, take you. A place where you were his, every single moment of every single day.

And if you wanted it... if you offered it up with that same trust you gave him your body, your mouth, your cunt...

Then why the fuck wouldn’t he do it?

He lifted his head slowly, looking down at your face. You were half-asleep, lips curved in a soft sex-dazed smile. You had no idea what you had just given him.

His voice dropped, quiet and raw. Completely serious.

“Yeah?”

Your lashes fluttered. You hummed, already drifting back into sleep, but the sound was an affirmation. A yes.

His hand slid up, cupping your jaw, tilting your face toward his. His thumb traced your cheekbone, and when he spoke, the words were a vow pressed against your lips.

“Then I’m never letting you go.”

a/n | dex feeling absolutely blessed and a surreality of being seen and chosen by you, meanwhile reader is just a youngho and overly horny

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

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

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

Then came Julie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until he walked into your boutique.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And bless your heart, you were so unbelievably touchy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dex froze.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you do.

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

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

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

But his mouth would be.

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

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

“D-Dex.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” you nodded shamelessly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he decided then, he loved intimacy.

dex is a stalker. your stalker (he wouldn’t waste his time learning so much about just any person, thank you very much…). not that he would have labelled himself as such, dex himself would have rather called himself your protector. protector who watches you in your tiny, little flat, miles away on another building’s rooftop, spying through the window. a friendly watcher, a concerned… someone. that is what he settles on because right now, you don’t even know him.

the first time he inserts himself in your life, you immediately like him. of course you do, he had carefully assembled himself a mask in order to be the kind of person you like, would talk to. be friends with. in his mind, he makes a disapproving, little tsk sound. if only you knew how easy it was to hack your phone, look up internet searches, break into your home while you were away… but that would change, eventually. he would make you a safe home. he would protect you. he would provide for you. he would take care of you. he would shield you from the world, burn it down if he had to. that’s the thing about dex, he loves in radical extremes and catastrophes; there is no such thing as “casual” or “low-key” with him.

privacy is also a foreign concept to him. privacy? we’ve never even heard of her. jokes aside, dex genuinely thinks there are no secrets between the two of you. of course, there are… darker things, disturbing things, in his mind that he doesn’t tell you. but really, it’s for your own good. he doesn’t want to scare you away, give you a reason to run, knowing that if you did, he would run right after you. it was an instinct, the same way a cat couldn’t help but chase a little mouse. but you were his. as much as dex was yours. leave? you weren’t allowed to leave. or leave him out of anything—he wanted to know everything about you, every single thing there was. dex was overwhelming like that, all-consuming and intense in his loving, but you couldn’t help but fall for him anyway. it was hard to ignore that sort of loyal, undying devotion, that sort of… worship.

when you two started dating, he offered you himself wholly, his heart, his life, every breath he took; he would die for you, he would kill for you, he would do anything for you—take him. keep him. but don’t leave him. never leave him. his separation anxiety is severe like that. sometimes, dex gets anxious simply when you’re in a different room than him, even when he’s at your apartment.

he is a little ocd about… everything. he likes being in control, getting to call the shots, making the decisions. it’s not a masculinity thing, it’s just that dex prefers knowing where to go, getting to plan ahead and assess everything. he’s like a german shepherd that way—it’s ingrained into him, a habit more than a conscious want. but he needs it. and by god, do you love it. you yourself were incredibly indecisive, preferring to hang back and chill out rather than take the lead, which made the dynamic between dex and you pretty much perfect.

and because he is obsessive as hell, he always knows what you like and dislike. how, you have no idea. but dex is incredibly observant, very serious about getting to know you. he always knows things about you. like a clairvoyant, in a way.

dex puts your needs above his. usually, it means that he’ll do whatever you want him to do. his frantic, anxious heart tells him that if he does it, he’ll endear himself to you, earn your love, make him worthy of you not leaving him. because dex thinks he does not deserve you. you are a good person, in the purest, most literal sense of the word. overflowing kindness and a radiant sort of sweetness that attracted all kinds of lesser men, and an innocence that has dex hooked and addicted to you. you draw him in like a moth to a flame, and it’s inevitable, he thinks, that you’ll leave him. you’ll find a better man, a man who doesn’t need a north star to tell him how to be a good person, a man who is perfect and just as good as you.

but he’s selfish. he’s selfish, and he’s not even sorry for it. he wants you. needs you. has to have you. so, he endears himself to you. making it harder for you to leave. and if he is a little suffocating in his love, you don’t complain about it. after all, he showers you with affection and sheer love, and oh, if only you knew how far it went…

dex gets crazy possessive. he needs to be with you at all times, partly out of separation anxiety and partly because he doesn’t like the way some men look at you. hungry, greedy—disgusting. he hates it. but dex behaves, because normal men don’t kill the sleazy, creepy men sitting across the bar, winking at their girlfriend, with a vodka shot glass. it takes every muscle in him tensing and keeping his eyes trained on you to hold back. he knows you wouldn’t approve. he thinks he could get away with it without you knowing. but then you turn around, flash that wonderful, captivating smile at him, and he is… calm. calm in a way his thoughts have never let him be. and there is a hungry, starved urge in him to be closer to you, skin to skin, soul to soul, no, closer even, he needs to be closer than that, has to be, he would fold himself into you—

jealousy. a huge, huge everyday thought that dex carried with himself. for a man so composed and reserved, you can, surprisingly, tell quite easily when he is. he clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth against each other in a motion that flexes the sharpness of his face, and he begins to tense. which is, in its own way, a beautiful thing to witness: his biceps swells, back muscles becoming more and more defining as he tensed, veins popping in his huge, calloused hands and the spot around his strong, firm neck, and you swear he becomes even taller and bigger and larger… it’s s mouthwatering sight. or intimidating, for the ones he directs his dark, murderous glares at. you love it, love the way he automatically placed his palms on your shoulders as he guides you to a place more far away in the bar, taking the lead every step of course, tall frame willing any man stepping close to take an instinctive step back because that deadly stare has mine, mine, mine written all over it.

you actually find yourself finding your jealous boyfriend quite adorable. to everyone else, he is this unbelievably large mass of pure muscle, power and strength, a man you would very much not want to cross, but to you, that’s… dex. simply dex. your sweet, awkward, adorable unit of a boyfriend. who is so, so good at sex.

his favourite position is missionary. he likes you right where he can see you, observe every facial expression you make, every oh so little sound, gasp, whimper, whine… he likes it when you’re like this. unguarded. lost in the pleasure he’s giving you, hair flowing and framing you freely. he loves it when you cling to him, legs wrapping around his waist, giving him the sweetest sounds as you grab his arm helplessly for support. it makes him feel needed, appreciated, loved.

another position dex quite likes is burying himself into you from behind, because he gets to hold you. it’s pathetic, and depressingly romantic, he knows. but he can’t help it, he likes having you in his arms. where you can’t escape him. where you’re his willing prisoner. he likes pressing the weight of his body against your back, marking your neck in places you can’t see, it almost makes up for the fact he can’t see your face. but your body tells him everything he has to know. most times, he overstimulates you on accident, he has a high sex drive, he can’t help it, and after he tears orgasm after orgasm out of you, your legs usually tend to get all wobbly and weak. and your arms become so useless of all that overwhelming pleasure that you can’t even hold yourself up right, becoming entirely dependent on dex holding you up. arm hooked under your waist, he can do it effortlessly with just one arm. you can just stay there, look pretty, and let him do all the work. he doesn’t mind. in fact, he finds it sort of cute when you get all docile and pliant like this, because when you’re this out he can easily make you forget that he said he was going to pull out before he came. which… he usually does. but something in him, something vile and evil and selfish and dark, secretly loves the thought of knocking you up. just the thought of your belly all swollen, pregnant with his child, makes him go feral.

it’s not baby trapping. you don’t get it, dex loves you—it’s just that, well… he likes having you right where he can see you. by his side, in other words. which you of course would be, if you were pregnant. and would that be such a bad thing? he would… love that child, that baby growing in your womb. he would, he knows he would. and dex doesn’t make promises, but he would be a good father. he knows he would be. and he desperately, pathetically needs you to want him to be by your side.

dex needs affirmation more than anything. his separation anxiety is already the worst, but the paranoia… oh, the paranoia eats him up. this would solve it—a child. a child created by the little, good parts of him and the entirety of you. all of you. won’t you just give him a baby? please, pretty please?

the third position he loved getting you into is kneeling between his legs. when he sits on a couch, cradling your bobbing head between his impossibly large hands as you try to take all of him, that’s when he is at his happiest. that is when that serene feeling washes all over him, washing away all the paranoid voices screaming, when he looks down and just sees his girl. his sweet, darling girl, trying to please him, accommodating for him in your mouth, trying to make room for all of him. dex loves it when your eyes go a little glassy, when your gaze becomes a little bit dazed. that’s when he knows you’re in that sub space, where he knows your thoughts quiet down, too. and if he is honest, he may just be very attracted to you crying. a bit. he is not a pervert, he swears. after all, he’s one of the good guys now!

author’s note: i have SO fallen for the benjamin poindexter propaganda. curse wilson bethel and his enchanting face. um, i also have a confession to make: i have not watched daredevil… i’ve just been influenced by the tiktok edits… i’m sorry… have some pity for a fellow victim of the wilson bethel face card yeah? so if there are any canonical divergences—just ignore it lol. or pretend it’s part of the au. if it even can be called an au, as our darling dex is clearly very capable of being insane on his own?

anyways, enjoy my lovelies! lmk if you want a part two.

your boyfriend is incredibly intense when it comes to love. intense in a way like dex doesn’t know how to function without you, like he doesn’t know how to draw a breath without knowing you’re with him, like he his entire world gets put on hold when you’re not there. like he’s living just for you. it scares you a little, sometimes, his way of loving. it’s a little… too intense. but in the beginning, you didn’t mind. after all, you had to beg for crumbs of love in your other previous, failed relationships, so getting showered with affection and drowned in love wasn’t so bad. it was all in the details. it was sweet at first, innocent even, but turned out to be too scary in the end.

whatever you liked was always in the fridge. your cookies, your favourite brand of chips, the chocolate you always binge-ate when you were feeling down… it was nice to have someone know so much about you and care. it was a bit… surprising, let’s say that, that dex knew all these details about you one month into your relationship, some of those things you hadn’t even ever mentioned to him. but he was observant, a good listener and never failed to pay attention to whatever nonsense you were babbling, so even if you hadn’t explicity said it, he might have noticed it some other way anyway. it became a little… weird, when he would know things you were doing before you had told him, though.

like when you were late to your promised dinner date because you had fallen into your bed so exhausted and so tired from work that you had accidentally taken a three hour nap. one that had caused you to arrive half an hour later to the restaurant you had agreed upon, your outfit a mess and your hair an even bigger mess, but dex hadn’t been angry. he hadn’t been… worried, as well. he had just looked at you fumbling and stuttering around, trying to explain how much work had been draining you and how you had accidentally fallen asleep, and had simply said, “i know.”

which could have meant different things. after all, you had said “i’m sorry” after every second sentence, and he could have simply been saying that he knew you were sorry, or, an option you had never considered before, that he knew you were sleeping. for whatever reason, you didn’t look at it too closely. you were afraid of what conclusion you would arrive to if you thought on it too hard, and besides, things were good, things were going incredibly well and you thought yourself a fool to try and ruin it all. after years of failed relationships and dating, you were content to let things be. to let turn a blind eye once or twice, here and there, whenever something else that was weird would happen. whenever else he would drop predictive statements that would make him a clairvoyant in someone superstitious’ eyes.

but you ignored it. kept ignoring it, all of it. you didn’t care—you were madly in love with him, and he was madly in love with you. who were you to complain about it? so when you saw your friends less and less, you told yourself this was what happened when you got into a relationship. your life started revolving around dex and you, and it was even scientifically proven that women in a relationship would start spending less time with their friends. this all soothed you. except when you did meet your friends once after months, and they kept telling you dex was no good for you, that he was ‘isolating you’. you had gotten so upset you arrived home much earlier than you had told dex you would, bursting out in tears and becoming a mess as soon as you stepped over the threshold, and dex and been so understanding. back then, you hadn’t realised it. his words of comfort had mattered more, mattered more than the fact he had said “you don’t need your friends. you have me now, always.” like he had already known what had happened before you had even told him about it.

in hindsight, more creepy things had happened. and happened more than once. but it became too much one fateful night, when everything had turned into ashes and your relationship had ended.

you were quite a friendly person. someone extroverted and sweet, someone who was so nice to strangers it almost bordered on naivety, someone who liked to talk other people’s ears off. it was inevitable that you would make new friends wherever you went. like, at work. after all, dex had personally witnessed the fact you could talk to him for hours and hours and never tire. he had never been bored. he liked it, in fact. liked it when you were telling him about his interests, your passions, what you disliked about other people. he soaked it all up like a sponge, never tiring of knowing more about you. he wanted to know everything there was about you. he had been so pleased with himself when you had opened the fridge and everything you liked was there, and you had cast him a glance full of adoration as you had said “sometimes i think you know me better than i know myself”. dex had been so happy. still was, he cherished every minute with you. every moment spent together, every word breathed to each other. dex knew he was intense. and that this intensity made you uncomfortable sometimes. he had feared that you would leave him because of it. had feared that you would tire of him, tire of his worshipping. but you had ignored it. and to dex, this was nothing short of a love confession, really. finally. he had finally found someone who would take him as he was, who saw him as the person he was, who loved him despite his shortcomings. finally, he had thought, my true north star. there she is.

dex is anxious, especially about you. he didn’t tell you about the surveillance cameras in your apartment, where he had seen you all curled up on the bed, deep in slumber. he hadn’t minded sitting at that restaurant for thirty minutes. for a moment, when ten minutes had passed and you still hadn’t arrived, he had been afraid that he had scared you away, that his intensity had become too much, that you were leaving him. dex had been sick to his stomach, sweat had pearled down his forehead, and all of a sudden, his shirt had become so tight it wouldn’t let him breathe as he had fumbled around in his pocket, fishing out his phone. his heart had settled when he had clicked on the surveillance app, and an indescribable amount of weight had fallen off his shoulders when he had seen you there, on your bed. you weren’t going away. you weren’t leaving. you were just sleeping. and his heart swelled with obsession, loved you for this even more.

imagine his surprise when something happened he didn’t know about. lunch, you with your coworker. a male coworker. a male coworker who was much younger than him. your age. a male coworker who was… objectively speaking, handsome, he supposed begrudgingly. dex had tried to ignore that unpleasant rousing in his stomach, that nasty, ugly feeling of jealousy. you weren’t one to keep secrets from him. and the few that you did, he already knew about. nothing to be ashamed about, dex already knew about your long string of boyfriends and failed relationships and booty calls, but was pleased to see that you hadn’t contacted any booty calls or ex boyfriends ever since you had met him.

dex trusted you. but he was also insecure. so he followed you. you had told him about the dinner with your male coworker, but had conveniently left out the fact he was good-looking, your age and single. yes, dex had checked. it wasn’t any harder getting into that guy’s digital life than it was to hack into yours. it had made him nervous, seeing the location this guy had texted you to meet him. how did dex know about that? some might say he had the unhealthy habit of checking your phone, he called it precaution. it was a romantic restaurant—fairy lights, menus with meals for two, this guy was obviously trying to get into his darling’s pants.

he had stayed far, far in the back of the restaurant, cap covering most of his face, as he observed you, reading your lips. the way he was sitting, he only saw the back of the guy, but he had a full view on you, and you were relaxed, talking freely. you didn’t seem to notice the ill intentions your coworker habited toward you, and you were laughing at something he said. dex felt his body going still. intimidatingly still. not quite unlike the way he would go still during his ‘assignments’, when his heartbeat would start slowing down and the world would go calm and quiet.

dex contemplated murder. he went through the first two steps, but decided that if his intensity hadn’t scared you away yet, murder definitely would. you were a sensitive soul, after all, vulnerable and soft and not quite ready for the harsh realities of the world. he could never do that to you, traumatise you like that. but not only that, dex was pretty certain he wouldn’t get caught, but if he did, he couldn’t do his watching over you and protecting you very well from a jail cell. so he restrained himself, and your poor coworker hadn’t even realise he had drawn the ire of a very murderous, dangerous, dangerous man. that was obvious from the way your coworker then dared to put his hand above yours.

a look of surprised had crossed your face immediately, and although you had removed your hand from underneath his the very second you had felt it, the damage had already been done. all of dex’s patience had flown out of the window when he had dared to put his hand on you. you were his, his, his, and his only. he had made his way over to your table, restraint be damned.

it happened so quickly you didn’t even register it fully—something just flew against your coworker’s head with such a force that his entire body dipped forward, and before you knew it, a hand was grabbing him by the neck. by the time you looked up, he had been thrown against the bar of the restaurant next to your table, and only then did you realise just who exactly was throwing him around: dex.

that was when you broke it off. it seemed like such a long time ago, when the two of you had walked back to your flat in absolute silence, no words exchanged. you remembered dex sneaking glances at you, like he was trying to evaluate your reaction after the security guards had seperated dex and your coworker, and how he had cursed and held his bleeding nose. dex, on the other hand, had come out of the fight entirely unscathed for some reason. all there was were a few splatters of blood adorning his cheek, and it wasn’t even his blood. you hadn’t known what to say. he had followed you there, which was such an invasion of privacy. besides, nothing had even happened; you didn’t have any feelings for the guy, and the dinner was friendly. or supposed to be friendly. apparently, you had misinterpreted some of the signals your coworker was sending.

you decided to take a break. which had been a hard decision to make because dex had looked at you like a kicked puppy, but you knew it was for the best. you needed time to think… time to contemplate which steps to take from this day forward, time to think about whether this was a dealbreaker for you or not. one week turned into two, two weeks turned into three… for you, time had passed by quickly. work had kept you booked and busy, you hadn’t even noticed the time ticking by so fast. in those weeks, you had made it a point to not break the ‘no contact’. which meant: no phone calls, no texts, nothing. dex, on the other hand, was slowly going insane. he didn’t cope well without you. in fact, he didn’t cope without you at all, which led him to a radical idea: if you weren’t coming back to him, then he would just have to take you.

you woke up disoriented that day. you had gone home like always, more tired than usual, showered, slipped into your pajamas… everything was as usual. everything was normal. until you had turned around and suddenly seen nothing but blackness, and then something that smelled oddly like—

when you gained your consciousness, there was a face to greet you. dex, head tilted like a hawk watching its prey, was watching you as your eyes blinked away the sleep lazily. for a moment, it was like nothing had changed. during your relationship, moments like these had happened often: you would always wake up later than dex, and he would wake you up after. your brain didn’t register all that was wrong—like the fact your hands were tied to the bed, the fact there was a gag between your lips and the fact that you were… not home. no, you were somewhere else.

“you like?” dex whispered softly to you, crouching next to your bed as his fingers played with your hair. “it’s my vacation house. our vacation house.”

something in your stomach curled.

“welcome home, baby.”

Foggy’s voice carried clearly over the traffic, because Foggy didn’t do anything quietly. “Tell me you’re at least going to let me buy you dinner,” Foggy said, dragging the words like he was bargaining in a market. “You come back and you’re like, ‘hi, I’m here,’ and then you disappear into the lab. That’s criminal.”

Karen laughed, warm and sharp at the same time. “Foggy, you’ve known her for like five minutes again. Calm down.”

“Five minutes is all I need,” Foggy shot back. “It’s a gift.”

Matt’s mouth pulled into something that looked like a smile but didn’t reach his eyes, the kind he used when he was amused and exhausted at the same time. “It’s not a gift,” he said, mild enough that it sounded like he was humoring a child. “It’s a warning sign.”

Then Dex saw you, properly, instead of as a shape that had been there but hadn’t registered as important, and the shift hit like a sudden change in pressure.

You were walking on Matt’s right side with your arm linked through his, not pulling him, not steering him, not doing the gentle, careful guiding thing people did when they wanted to prove to themselves that they were kind, you were just there, close enough that it would have looked intimate to anyone who didn’t know better, and comfortable enough that it would have looked like habit to anyone who did. You had a tote bag slung over your shoulder, the kind that got heavier the longer someone insisted on carrying their life in paper and books, and you were talking while you walked, your head turning between Karen and Foggy like you belonged in that triangle without needing to ask permission.

Dex’s first thought was simple and sharp: she wasn’t part of the pattern.

He’d mapped the pattern; he’d watched it from rooftops and parked cars and the mirrored glass of storefronts, and he had never once seen you with them. Not with Matt, not with Foggy, not with Karen, not near the church, not near the office, not near any of the places that mattered. New faces happened, sure, but not like this, not inserted neatly into the center of the group like you’d always been there and someone had just forgotten to mention you.

You said something that made Foggy groan dramatically, and Dex narrowed his eyes, listening for the exact cadence. “You can’t just show up and declare dinner,” you told him, voice steady, amused, and not at all impressed by his performance. “I get asked questions all day by eighteen-year-olds who think mitochondria is a brand of Italian food. I’m not doing negotiations right now.”

Foggy made a wounded noise. “That’s a lie,” he said, scandalized. “No one is that stupid.”

Karen tilted her head toward you. “You’d be surprised.”

Matt’s hand shifted on the cane, not because he needed it, but because he used it like punctuation when he was choosing his words. “She’s not exaggerating,” he said, and there was something in his tone that Dex couldn’t place at first because it wasn’t flirtation and it wasn’t annoyance either—it was fond, but not soft, the way you sounded with someone you had known long enough to stop pretending.

You bumped your shoulder lightly against Matt’s, the movement small and practiced, and you didn’t let go of his arm. “Don’t team up on me,” you said. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am on your side,” Matt replied, and he said it with that calm certainty he used when he was telling the truth and didn’t feel like decorating it. “I’m also on the side of reality.”

“Traitor,” you said, but you were smiling as you said it, and Dex could hear it, not just see it.

Dex felt heat crawl up the back of his neck, the same kind he got when something didn’t line up, when a number was off in a sequence, when a shot was too easy and that meant it was a trap. You were too close to Matt, too familiar. If you were new, you weren’t acting new, and if you weren’t new, then Dex had missed you, which meant his surveillance had holes, and he didn’t tolerate holes.

He followed the line of you walking like that, like you’d done it a thousand times, like it didn’t matter that the contact would read as romantic to strangers, and he found himself focusing on Matt’s reaction instead of yours. Matt didn’t stiffen or adjust, and he didn’t do the careful thing men did when they were worried about how it looked. He simply let you keep your arm there, and he matched your pace without thinking about it.

You didn’t guide him, Matt guided you.

Dex watched the moment your foot hesitated near the curb when a cab surged past too fast, and Matt’s body angled just slightly, subtle enough that no one else would notice, putting himself between you and traffic without breaking the conversation. You didn’t even look at him when you stepped forward again, like you trusted him to handle it.

Karen glanced at you and lowered her voice, though not enough to stop Foggy from hearing because no one could stop Foggy from hearing anything. “Did you talk to your department chair?” Karen asked.

You exhaled, the sound full of tired patience. “I did,” you said. “He wants me to take on an extra section next semester because apparently being short-staffed is my problem now. I told him I’d rather chew glass.”

Foggy snapped his fingers like he’d been waiting for an opening. “Speaking of glass,” he said, brightening, “you know what fixes academic despair? Pasta. And wine. And someone else paying.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” you replied, and there was a warmth in your voice that didn’t match the way you were shooting him down. “Foggy, I’m not letting you spend money on me the first month I’m back.”

Karen’s eyebrows lifted, and she looked between you and Matt. “First month,” she repeated, like she was filing it away. “You really did just land and immediately get dragged into his gravitational field.”

Matt made a sound that could have been a laugh if he allowed himself the indulgence. “I didn’t drag her,” he said.

You squeezed his arm, not hard, but just enough that Dex could see the contact. “He absolutely did,” you said, and the way you said it didn’t sound angry. It sounded like something old between you, something that could survive teasing.

Foggy leaned closer to Karen, stage-whispering like he was sharing a secret even though he wanted everyone to hear it. “He missed her,” Foggy said.

Matt’s head turned toward Foggy with that quiet warning he did so well. “Foggy,” he said, and the name was enough to shut him up for about half a second.

You didn’t look embarrassed, and you didn’t look flattered either, you just looked… steady, like Foggy had said something obvious and you didn’t feel the need to perform a reaction for it.

Dex pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth and forced himself to keep breathing evenly, because his instincts wanted movement and closeness, and for him to cross the street and get a better look at you without relying on distance. He didn’t do it; he stayed in the shadow and watched like he always did, because watching kept him clean, calm, and in control.

You were still talking, and Dex focused on details that mattered because details were how you turned a person into something manageable. Your posture was relaxed, but not careless. Your eyes scanned without looking paranoid, like you’d trained yourself to be aware without letting it eat you alive. Your hands moved when you spoke, not wildly, but precisely, and when you adjusted the strap of your tote bag, you did it the same way twice, like you had habits that repeated without you thinking about them.

Habits were useful. Patterns were comforting.

Dex’s gaze went back to your linked arms, and he caught himself calculating the angle of Matt’s wrist, the point where your elbow rested against his forearm, how easy it would be to separate you if he wanted to. The thought came automatically, a reflex, and it didn’t make him feel better.

Karen stopped walking and pointed across the street. “There,” she said. “The place with the ridiculous pastries.”

Foggy made a noise of immediate approval. “Finally,” he said. “A woman with taste.”

You tilted your head. “I’m not eating a pastry the size of my face.”

“You’re absolutely eating a pastry the size of your face,” Karen replied, and she started walking again with purpose.

Matt shifted with the group, and as he did, he let his cane sweep forward, not searching, not needing it, just letting it exist. Dex’s jaw tightened at the sight, because the cane was part of a performance and Dex hated performances that worked.

You tightened your link for a second as you stepped off the curb, and Matt’s hand rose a fraction like he was bracing for you to tug, but you didn’t. You moved with him as though you’d learned the rhythm years ago and never forgot it. He could read enough from the way you moved and the way Matt’s shoulders eased when you were close. He could also read enough from Foggy’s familiarity and Karen’s tone. You weren’t a date or a new girlfriend, and you weren’t a fling. You were something that had existed before Dex started watching, which meant Dex had been late and he hated being late.

Foggy kept talking as they crossed, voice loud enough to bounce off the building fronts. “Okay, okay,” he said, “here’s the deal: pastry now, dinner later, and you can’t say no because I’m invoking the sacred law of ‘I missed you.’”

You laughed, a real laugh, not the polite one people used when they wanted to keep someone happy. “You can’t invoke laws you made up,” you told him.

Foggy spread his hands like he was presenting evidence. “Watch me.”

Karen looked over her shoulder at you again, something cautious behind her eyes that Dex couldn’t place, and her voice softened. “Are you okay, though?” she asked, quieter than before. “Really. Being back.”

You didn’t answer immediately, and Dex watched the pause like it mattered. Then you said, “yeah,” and the word wasn’t light, but it was honest. “I’m okay. It’s just… weird. Everything feels the same and different at the same time, like the city kept moving without me.”

Matt’s expression changed, small but visible, and Dex saw that he wanted to say something that wasn’t meant for the sidewalk. “It did,” Matt said carefully, “but you’re here now.”

Your fingers flexed where they rested on his arm. “Yeah,” you said again, and this time you sounded steadier. “I’m here.”

They reached the pastry shop, and Foggy immediately began arguing with the person behind the counter about how many pastries were “reasonable” for four people, which was not a real argument because Foggy didn’t believe in reasonable. Karen leaned in closer to you while Matt turned his head slightly, listening, but not inserting himself, and Dex watched you in that warm indoor light spilling onto the sidewalk.

You looked like you belonged with them, and Dex couldn’t stop the irritation from settling deeper, because belonging was something you earned, and you hadn’t earned it in Dex’s eyes, not yet. You had simply arrived and taken up space at Matt Murdock’s side like it was yours by right.

Dex stayed where he was, half-hidden, and let himself watch longer than he meant to, because the sight of you next to Matt made something in his chest tighten in a way he didn’t like. The feeling wasn’t clean enough to name quickly, and Dex didn’t tolerate unnamed things.

Foggy’s voice burst out again, triumphant. “Two boxes,” he declared. “One savory, one sweet. I’m a genius.”

Karen rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “You’re going to regret that.”

“I regret nothing,” Foggy said, then glanced at Matt. “Matt, back me up.”

Matt didn’t even pretend. “I’m not getting involved,” he said, and he angled his head toward you. “You tell him.”

You looked at Foggy, then at Karen, then back at Foggy, and Dex watched your mouth curve. “You’re going to regret that,” you told him, repeating Karen’s line with perfect timing.

Foggy clutched his chest dramatically. “Betrayal,” he said, but he was laughing too.

Dex’s eyes narrowed, and he memorized the way you smiled, not because he cared about smiles, but because it was another data point, another piece of you he could file away. He was already building a schedule in his head, already imagining where you’d go after this, already thinking about what it meant that you were “back” and that you hadn’t been here before.

He didn’t move when the group turned away from the shop, pastries in hand, heading down the block with the lazy ease of people who thought the day belonged to them. He waited until they were far enough that the crowd swallowed them again, and then he stepped out of the shadow, crossing the street with the flow of pedestrians like he’d never been there at all.

Dex looked in the direction you’d gone, and he set his mind to the new problem you represented, because a new variable demanded attention, and Dex never did well with anything he couldn’t account for.

Dex picked a different spot the next week because the city punished anyone who got lazy, and he wasn’t in the mood to be punished for something stupid like repeating himself. He stayed across the avenue this time, tucked into the mouth of an alley that smelled like old garbage and rain-soaked cardboard, with a clear view of the sidewalk and the building entrances Matt used when he wanted to avoid being seen. People moved around Dex without noticing him because people always did, and he watched their faces slide past like they were part of the background, because they were.

Matt showed up alone at first, cane in hand, suit jacket open, moving like he had somewhere to be and time to waste at the same time. Dex tracked him without shifting his weight, kept his eyes loose, let the traffic lights and passing buses break sightlines so he didn’t look like he was staring when anyone glanced his way. Matt’s head tilted toward the street as though he was listening for something particular, and Dex knew what he was doing even if nobody else did, because Matt never stopped measuring the world.

You came out of a building entrance a minute later, tote bag on one shoulder and a paper cup in your hand, and Dex felt the immediate, familiar jolt of irritation when your arm slipped through Matt’s again like it was the most natural thing in the world. You didn’t ask permission; you didn’t even hesitate. You moved into his space like you belonged there, and Matt didn’t move away.

“I’m telling you, you’re going to hate it,” you said, voice clear enough to carry between the cars. “It’s not a big deal until the week you realize you’ve spent three days straight explaining the same concept to people who are absolutely committed to misunderstanding you.”

Matt’s mouth curved in that restrained way it always did when he was amused but refusing to show too much of it. “That sounds like being a lawyer,” he said, and the words came out easy, like he was comfortable.

“You don’t have to deal with pre-med students,” you shot back, and the edge in your voice wasn’t anger. It was affection, which was worse, because it meant you’d earned the right to be sharp without it turning into a fight. “They’re relentless. They’re convinced every question is a trick question designed to ruin their lives.”

Matt angled his head toward you, and Dex caught the shift in his posture, like he was checking in without making it obvious. “Are you sure you’re not projecting a little?” Matt asked.

“I’m not projecting,” you said immediately, and then you added, “okay, maybe I’m projecting, but it’s justified. One of them asked me if bacteria are basically, like, tiny animals that want to be people.”

Matt let out a breath that could have been a laugh if he didn’t keep everything so controlled. “They said that to your face?”

“Worse, they said it with confidence,” you replied, and Dex watched you gesture with your coffee cup, careful not to spill. “They said it like they were waiting for me to congratulate them on being brave.”

Matt’s cane tapped the pavement, steady and deliberate, and Dex noticed the way it never caught on cracks, the way it never searched, the way it existed as a signal more than a tool. Your arm stayed linked through his, and the contact looked close enough that strangers would read it wrong, but your body wasn’t angled toward him the way lovers did when they wanted more space than the sidewalk gave them. You were facing forward, matching his pace, letting him set the rhythm.

A delivery truck rolled up too close to the curb, engine rattling, and you slowed half a beat because the sound and the bulk of it made you hesitate. Matt stepped first without any visible pause, not dragging you, not pulling you, just moving like the street belonged to him, and you followed his lead without thinking. Dex watched that exchange, watched the way Matt’s shoulder shifted, subtly, blocking you from the vehicle’s path as it edged forward, and you didn’t even glance at him like you needed reassurance.

“You’re doing it again,” Matt said, and he didn’t raise his voice, but Dex heard the change in it anyway.

“Doing what?” you asked, and your tone went lighter, like you already knew what he meant and wanted him to say it.

“You’re skipping breakfast,” Matt said, and the simple statement landed like it had a history behind it.

You made an offended noise. “I had coffee,” you replied.

“That’s not breakfast,” Matt said, and Dex couldn’t tell if he sounded annoyed or protective, but he knew it wasn’t flirtation. It didn’t have the softness of that, instead it had the steadiness of someone who was used to being responsible.

“I had a granola bar at like… nine,” you argued, and you sounded like you were smiling while you lied.

Matt didn’t even pretend to be fooled. “That’s not breakfast either.”

“Since when did you get so bossy?” you asked, and Dex watched you tilt your head as if you were trying to look at him directly even though you knew you couldn’t really catch his eyes the way you wanted.

Matt kept walking, unbothered. “Since you moved back and started pretending you can run on caffeine and stubbornness,” he said.

You clicked your tongue and squeezed his arm, quick and familiar, the kind of touch people didn’t do unless they’d done it a hundred times before. “You missed me,” you said, and it came out like an accusation and a joke at the same time.

Matt didn’t answer right away, and Dex saw the pause, saw the way his jaw tightened for a second like he’d swallowed something he hadn’t meant to. “Yeah,” Matt said finally, and it was quiet enough that the traffic should’ve eaten it. It didn’t. “I did.”

You didn’t make a big deal out of it, which was almost worse than if you had. You just nodded once, like he’d confirmed something you already knew, and you kept walking with him like that simple admission didn’t matter, like it wasn’t weighty, like it didn’t give you any kind of leverage. Dex hated that, too, because it meant the connection between you wasn’t fragile.

A group of college kids shoved past in a cluster, laughing too loudly, and you and Matt shifted without speaking, letting them flow around you. Dex tracked the movement automatically, noting how Matt angled his body again so the crowd would hit him first if it came to that, and you didn’t even notice you were being protected. You trusted the street because you trusted him, and Dex kept staring until the angle forced him to move if he wanted to keep you and Matt in sight.

Two days later he saw you with Foggy, and the difference in energy was obvious before Foggy even sat down. Foggy was louder in daylight, like he thought being seen was a human right, and he took up more room than the chair gave him by sheer force of personality. The place was a little café near campus with too many students and not enough space, and Dex stayed outside, just far enough that no one would clock him as a loiterer, close enough that he could hear through the half-open window when it mattered.

Foggy leaned forward over the table, elbows wide, talking with his hands like he was trying to physically convince you of something. “I’m just saying, it’s criminal that you’re back and you haven’t come to the office,” he insisted. “Like, I get it, you’re busy, you’ve got your fancy professor schedule, whatever. I’m not jealous, I’m not, but Matt is acting like a kicked puppy.”

You snorted, and Dex saw you rub your forehead with two fingers, like Foggy was giving you a headache you’d had before. “Matt isn’t acting like a kicked puppy,” you said. “Matt is acting like Matt.”

Foggy pointed at you like you’d personally betrayed him. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he said, and his voice lifted, drawing a few annoyed looks from nearby tables that he ignored completely. “You say that like it’s normal, but it’s not normal. He’s sitting there being all… all stoic and quiet, and then I bring you up and suddenly he’s doing this thing where he—”

Foggy stopped mid-sentence and waved both hands in front of his own face, as if mimicking Matt’s expression could explain it. “He does that face,” Foggy finished, frustrated. “That ‘I’m fine’ face that is not fine, y’know that face.”

You leaned back in your chair, and the way you looked at Foggy wasn’t indulgent the way Karen looked at him sometimes. It was direct, familiar, and slightly unimpressed. “Foggy,” you said, “I’ve known him since I was ten, he has had the ‘I’m fine’ face for most of his life.”

Foggy’s mouth fell open. “Okay, yeah, sure, but still,” he said, and Dex watched him grab his drink, then set it down again like he couldn’t sit still. “You can’t just waltz back into the city and not let us see you. Karen’s been weird about it too.”

Your posture changed at Karen’s name, not dramatically, but enough that Dex clocked it. “Weird how?” you asked.

Foggy hesitated, and for once he looked like he was choosing his words. “Not bad weird,” he said quickly. “Just… careful. Like she’s worried you’re going to vanish again. Which, honestly, fair. You did vanish.”

You stared at your cup for a second, thumb tracing the cardboard edge, and then you exhaled. “Doctors Without Borders isn’t exactly a nine-to-five,” you said, and Dex couldn’t hear pain in your voice, but he heard the weight of it, the kind of fatigue that came from living in a place where danger was normal. “I didn’t vanish because I wanted to. I just… didn’t have the kind of life where you can pop back for brunch.”

Foggy’s face softened in a way Dex didn’t like on him, because it meant Foggy was capable of seriousness, which was inconvenient. “I know,” Foggy said quietly, and he didn’t joke for a whole two seconds. “I’m not mad. I just missed you.”

You blinked at him like you didn’t know what to do with sincerity from him. “Yeah,” you said, a little awkwardly. “I missed you too.”

Foggy immediately seized the emotional high ground like it was a weapon. “Great,” he said, brightening. “So you’re coming to dinner Sunday. I’ll cook.”

“You can’t cook,” you replied.

Foggy slapped his hand to his chest again, dramatic as ever. “I can cook,” he insisted. “I cooked in college.”

“You cooked frozen pizza in college,” you corrected, and Dex watched you smile, small and genuine.

Foggy jabbed a finger at you. “That counts,” he declared. “Also, you owe me. I have been carrying Matt’s emotional baggage for years.”

You gave him a look, and Dex could practically feel the history in it. “That’s not a real thing,” you said. “And you love it.”

Foggy grinned, shameless. “I do love it,” he admitted. “But that’s not the point.”

Dex stayed outside long enough to see you stand when lunch ended, long enough to watch Foggy hug you without it looking like he was trying to make a point. It was quick, familiar, and brotherly in a way that didn’t match Dex’s first assumption about you, and Dex walked away before the two of you came out onto the sidewalk because he didn’t like the way his brain wanted to label what he’d just seen.

Later in the week he found you with Karen, and that took more effort because Karen didn’t move like Foggy; Karen blended when she wanted to, and she chose places where the light was low and the door was close, and Dex had to stay two blocks away and shift angles twice before he got a clean view through the bar’s front window.

You were sitting across from her with a drink that looked untouched, and Karen was talking with both hands wrapped around her glass like she needed something solid. Your face was turned toward her fully, not distracted, not scanning the room the way Karen kept doing, and Dex watched you nod slowly, taking in whatever Karen was saying without interrupting.

Karen’s voice didn’t carry as well through the glass, but Dex caught pieces when the door opened and a gust of noise spilled out. “—not the same,” Karen said at one point, the words clipped and tense. “Sometimes I think it never will be.”

You said something back that Dex didn’t hear, and Karen’s shoulders dropped a fraction, like she’d been holding herself too tight. She shook her head once, and her mouth twisted the way it did when she was trying not to let emotion show too much. You reached across the table and touched her wrist, not lingering, just contact for a second, and Karen’s eyes closed briefly like she’d been waiting to feel something simple and human.

“You don’t have to do that,” Karen said, louder this time, and Dex caught it clearly when someone walked out past the window. “You don’t have to take care of everyone.”

You leaned back, and Dex saw you tilt your head, expression dry even from a distance. “Says the woman who will literally bleed before she asks for help,” you replied, and your tone wasn’t cruel, it was the same steady bluntness Dex had heard from you with Foggy and Matt, like you didn’t do delicacy when honesty would work better.

Karen let out a humorless laugh. “Fair,” she admitted, and then she looked at you like she was trying to understand you. “Do you ever regret coming back?”

You didn’t answer immediately. Dex watched you lift your glass, take a slow sip, then set it down carefully. “No,” you said, and the word was even, not dramatic. “I regret leaving the way I did, sometimes, but I don’t regret coming back.”

Karen’s eyes stayed on you. “Matt’s happy you’re here,” she said, and the way she said it made it sound like she was testing a truth.

You huffed out a quiet laugh, like you were trying not to be affected by it. “Matt doesn’t do happy,” you replied.

Karen’s mouth lifted, small. “He does,” she said, and then she added, “not often, not loudly. But he does.”

You looked down at your hands for a second, and Dex saw you roll your thumb over the edge of your glass the way some people did when they were thinking. “Okay,” you said, and you sounded like you were accepting the statement more than agreeing with it. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Karen leaned forward, elbows on the table now, voice dropping again. Dex couldn’t hear what she said, but he saw the shift in your posture, the way you went still for a beat, and then you nodded once, sharply, like she’d told you something you didn’t like but needed to know. When you answered, Karen’s expression changed, relief mixing with something more complicated, and Dex watched the two of you sit there for another long stretch, talking like the noise of the bar didn’t exist.

Dex left before you did, because he didn’t like standing in one place for too long, and he didn’t like the way his attention had started to stick. He’d meant to watch Matt and his orbit, but now he was spending days tracking where you went and who you met, and he didn’t have a clean reason for it that would satisfy anyone who asked. He told himself it was still about Matt, because everything came back to Matt, but the truth was that he kept finding you even when Matt wasn’t there, and that was becoming its own pattern.

When he saw you again with Matt the following weekend, arm linked through his while you talked over the top of the crowd like you weren’t afraid of the city at all, Dex stayed far enough away that he could pretend it didn’t matter. He watched anyway, not because he had to, but because the question of you didn’t sit right in his head, and Dex had never been good at leaving questions unanswered.

Dex didn’t go back to the same places he’d watched you in, not right away, because repeating patterns got people noticed and noticed got people caught. He picked a public library two neighborhoods over, one of those old branches that smelled like carpet cleaner and paper dust, where nobody looked twice at a man with a hoodie and a cheap pair of glasses sitting at a computer terminal. The librarians were busy shushing teenagers and directing tourists, and the security guard by the entrance spent more time staring at his phone than at anyone who walked in, which was exactly the kind of negligence Dex preferred.

He logged on with a guest pass and the screen threw a pale glow across his knuckles, and he kept his posture loose, bored-looking, like he was killing time between errands. People believed boredom more readily than intensity, and Dex had learned that long before he ever wore a badge.

A man two computers down muttered at the screen, volume creeping upward as his frustration grew. “Why do they make it like this?” he complained, tapping the keyboard like it had personally insulted him. “I just want to print the damn form.”

Dex didn’t look over at him, but he spoke anyway, casual enough that it sounded like he was being helpful by accident. “You have to click ‘print options’ first,” Dex said. “Then pick ‘black and white.’ Otherwise it tries to send it somewhere else.”

The man stared, then did what Dex said, and the printer whirred a second later. “Oh,” the man said, a little embarrassed. “Thanks. Sorry, I’m not good with this stuff.”

Dex kept his eyes on his screen. “Yeah,” he replied, and the conversation died the way Dex liked conversations to die.

He searched you the way he searched everything, starting with the obvious and moving into the layers people thought were private. Columbia’s public-facing faculty directory gave him enough to start, not everything, but a clean outline that matched what he’d already seen. Biology department, faculty page, office location, office hours that weren’t really office hours because professors never stuck to their posted schedules unless they were terrified of their students. He clicked through the publications list and scanned titles without reading the full abstracts, because the details of your research weren’t the point yet, but the pattern of your mind was.

When he pulled up a CV, he didn’t smile, but something in his face settled, the way it did when chaos resolved into something catalogable. Degrees, institutions, dates, fellowships, field placements, then a stretch of years where the academic timeline was interrupted by work that had its own documentation. Doctors Without Borders didn’t advertise their staff like celebrities, but they left traces, the kind that existed because bureaucracies couldn’t help themselves.

He found a mention in a newsletter, a bland little paragraph about a field team and a project, and he clicked through the archived PDF without changing his expression. He read your name in a list, then read it again in a different format, then found a photo that had been uploaded with low resolution and worse lighting. You were standing in a cluster of people in front of a tarp-covered structure, sleeves rolled up, face sun-tired but steady. It wasn’t the kind of picture meant to show beauty, but it showed something else Dex cared about more, which was that you looked like you were used to holding your ground.

A teenage girl at the next station leaned too far back in her chair and bumped Dex’s elbow with hers, not hard, but enough to break the rhythm. “Sorry,” she said quickly, eyes wide, like she expected him to yell.

Dex kept his shoulders relaxed. “It’s fine,” he said, voice even.

She nodded, then returned to her screen, and Dex waited until she was fully absorbed again before he continued. He didn’t like interruptions, but he didn’t like attention even more, and attention was what you got when you acted like something mattered too much.

He opened another tab and searched your name alongside “St. Agnes,” then watched as the search engine offered him a handful of irrelevant results, a couple of archived charity posts, and one old article about an old fundraiser at the orphanage. Dex clicked anyway, because sometimes the useless links contained the right names, and names were handles you could grab.

The article didn’t mention you, but it mentioned a nun by name, and that name led to a small obituary on a church website, and that obituary linked to a memorial guestbook full of polite comments from people who’d once been children under her care. Dex scrolled until he found a line that made him stop, because it used your full name and referenced “the kids who came through together,” and it sat there on the screen like a breadcrumb someone had dropped without realizing what it was worth.

He read the comment twice, then copied the name of the commenter into a new search.

That line took him to a LinkedIn profile that still had a headshot from ten years ago and a job title that sounded too important for a person who typed in short, blunt sentences. The profile listed volunteer work at St. Agnes, years ago, and a current position with a nonprofit in the city that handled youth services and adoption placement support. Dex stared at that for a moment, then sat back slightly, not because he was thinking in circles, but because he was deciding which angle was cleanest.

He didn’t call from his phone—he never called from his phone when he didn’t have to. He walked out of the library and down the block, bought a cheap burner from a bodega that didn’t care who you were as long as your cash didn’t stick together, then went back inside the library and sat at a different computer so no one could place his face to the call if they reviewed camera footage later.

When he dialed, he pitched his voice slightly higher, a touch more clipped, like he was a hurried assistant who didn’t have time to be friendly. He waited through two rings, then three, then four, and he didn’t fidget when the line clicked.

“Family Connections, this is Marla,” a woman’s voice answered, weary but professional. “How can I help you?”

Dex kept his eyes on the screen, not because he needed it, but because it kept him steady. “Hi, I’m calling on behalf of Columbia University,” he said, and he made the words sound like they had authority without sounding like he cared. “We’re updating background verification for faculty records and I’m missing a piece related to St. Agnes. I’m trying to confirm dates of residence for a former minor. I have a full name and approximate years.”

There was a pause, not suspicion yet, but caution. “We don’t give out personal information over the phone,” Marla said, and Dex heard the practiced firmness.

Dex didn’t push immediately, he let the silence breathe just long enough to sound mildly annoyed, like he dealt with rules all day and hated them. “I get that,” he said. “I’m not asking for address history or placement notes. I just need confirmation of whether the person was in residence, because the university is cross-referencing for a scholarship record tied to alumni outreach, and the file is incomplete.”

“Alumni outreach?” Marla repeated, and her skepticism softened into confusion.

Dex made a small sound of impatience, like he wished she’d keep up. “The orphanage had a fund,” he said. “There’s an endowment that was used for education grants and I’m trying to confirm eligibility for a donor report. It’s routine.”

Marla exhaled, and Dex imagined her rubbing her forehead the way people did when they were tired. “What’s the name?” she asked, and her voice lowered, like she knew she shouldn’t be asking and did it anyway.

Dex gave it to her, clean and steady, and he listened as she typed. He didn’t move a muscle while she searched, because movement made noise and noise made people look up, and Dex didn’t want the librarian noticing him mid-call.

After a moment, Marla said, “I can’t confirm anything without written consent,” and then, as if she couldn’t help herself, she added, “but… if it’s who I think it is, yes, they were.”

Dex didn’t thank her, thanking made you memorable. He kept it transactional. “I’ll send an email request through official channels,” he said, like he intended to, and then he ended the call before she could reconsider.

He never sent an email request.

Instead, he woke the computer up and pulled your Columbia page again, then opened the archived alumni database he’d already accessed once years ago while tracking someone else. Universities kept records like religious texts, and once you knew where the rot was in their systems, you could slide through the cracks without even trying too hard. He searched by graduation year ranges that matched Matt and Foggy’s, then narrowed to the same program clusters, because people who grew up together tended to move in parallel even when they swore they wouldn’t.

Your name popped up with an old email address attached—a dormant one—and a line noting your undergraduate advisor. Dex clicked the advisor’s profile and scanned it, then opened another tab and searched the advisor’s last name with “St. Agnes” just to see if there was an overlap.

There wasn’t, but the advisor had published an article years ago about trauma-informed teaching methods for students with unstable childhood backgrounds. The acknowledgments section included a list of students who’d participated in a pilot program, and your name was there, along with Matt’s, which made Dex’s jaw tighten for a second because it confirmed something he’d already suspected but didn’t like seeing in print.

He stared at Matt’s name next to yours, then closed the tab, because he wasn’t here to think about Matt, not right now.

He was here to confirm where you fit, and the pieces were fitting too neatly.

Dex left the library after another half hour, not because he was finished, but because he’d pulled enough to move the work into the physical world, and he preferred the physical world. The digital traces were useful, but bodies were more honest; schedules more reliable when you watched them in person.

He went to Columbia the next day, not on your block, not near your building, but close enough to see the rhythms around it. He wore a cap and a jacket that didn’t fit him perfectly, because perfect fit drew eyes, and he kept his hands in his pockets like he was just another guy passing through campus to get somewhere else.

Outside a biology building, two students stood smoking, their backpacks slung low, and Dex slowed just enough to catch their conversation. “I’m telling you, she’s brutal,” one of them complained. “Like… she doesn’t even care if you’re dying, she’ll just stare at you like you’re a specimen.”

The other student snorted. “That’s not brutal,” she replied. “That’s fair, if you’re wrong, you’re wrong. She’s not gonna coddle you.”

The first student rolled his eyes. “You like her,” he accused.

“I respect her,” the second corrected, and her tone made it clear that the distinction mattered. “Also she brought donuts once, so she’s not a monster.”

Dex kept walking, but he filed that away, because it meant you weren’t a ghost here. You were known, you had a reputation, and you were consistent enough that students complained in predictable ways, and predictable meant trackable.

He moved to a bench across from a coffee cart, bought nothing, and waited.

You came out of the building an hour later with two graduate students trailing behind you, both talking too fast, both trying to impress you by throwing jargon into the air like confetti. You listened without looking rushed, but your stride was purposeful, and when one of them said something incorrect, you didn’t correct it gently, you corrected it precisely, with enough firmness that it wouldn’t happen again, and Dex felt his shoulders ease in a way he didn’t notice until afterward.

You stopped at the coffee cart, and the vendor greeted you like you were a regular. “Hey, Doc,” the vendor said, cheerful. “Same thing?”

You nodded, already reaching for your wallet. “Yeah,” you replied. “And if you have anything with actual protein in it today, I’ll take it, because I forgot to eat again.”

One of your grad students made a small, scandalized sound. “You always forget to eat,” he said, as if it was personally offensive.

You glanced at him, expression dry. “And you always forget to label your samples,” you shot back, and there was no malice in it, just the familiar bluntness of someone who cared enough to be annoying.

The vendor handed you your coffee, then slid a wrapped sandwich toward you. “On the house,” he said. “You look like you’re about to fight Thor.”

You huffed a laugh, and Dex watched it like it was evidence. “That’s just my face,” you replied, then you added, “but thank you.”

You turned, sandwich tucked under your arm, coffee in hand, and Dex watched you walk away with the two students still trying to keep up. Your pace didn’t slow for them, they had to match you, which meant you were used to leading without apologizing for it.

Dex followed at a distance, not close enough to be seen, but close enough to stay locked to you. He watched you split off toward another building, watched the grad students peel away toward a lab entrance, and watched you pause at the crosswalk when the light changed. A car rolled through the intersection too fast, and you didn’t flinch, but you did shift your weight slightly back from the curb, and Dex noted it because it was a small precaution that suggested you were more aware than you looked.

He didn’t approach you, and he didn’t want to yet. He wanted the last piece, the one that would explain how you could slip so naturally into Matt’s world without anyone having to introduce you.

That piece wasn’t at Columbia, that piece was at St. Agnes, even if St. Agnes wasn’t what it used to be.

Dex went there the following evening, when the streetlights were on and the building’s new facade tried too hard to look clean. Dex walked past the entrance like he belonged, because he did belong anywhere he decided to belong.

Inside, the church was quiet. A receptionist sat behind a desk with a mug that said “Be Kind,” and Dex almost laughed at it, but he didn’t. He leaned in slightly, polite in the way that got people to answer questions quickly.

“Hi,” Dex said. “I’m looking for someone who used to live at the orphanage. I’m helping coordinate an alumni event, and I was told there might still be a contact list.”

The receptionist brightened, because people loved feeling useful. “Oh,” she said, eager, “that’s sweet. I wasn’t here then, but we do have a couple of volunteers who were. Are you looking for Sister Maggie?”

Dex kept his expression neutral, interested but not too interested. “Possibly,” he said. “I’m also looking for someone named Marla, last name unknown. She used to coordinate records for placements.”

The receptionist frowned, thinking. “Marla,” she repeated. “I think she still comes in once a week for the youth program, actually. She’s here on Tuesdays.”

Dex checked the day in his head and adjusted without showing it. “Tuesday works,” he said, smooth. “What time is she usually here?”

“Late afternoon,” the receptionist replied. “Around four, sometimes five.”

Dex nodded like that was perfect, because it was. “Great,” he said. “I’ll come back. Thanks.”

He didn’t leave immediately, he walked deeper into the building like he was looking for a posted flyer, and he found a bulletin board with old photos pinned under a title that read “Our History.” There were black-and-white shots of children in uniform clothes, nuns lined up with forced smiles, then later color photos of renovation work, smiling donors, and ribbon cuttings. Dex scanned faces the way he always did, fast and ruthless, then stopped when he saw a group photo with a caption that included a year that matched your timeline.

The picture was grainy, but he could make out a boy near the back with a familiar posture, shoulders squared too young, jaw set like he’d already decided the world wasn’t safe. Matt Murdock, years before he became something else, was still Matt, and Dex stared long enough to feel irritation prick behind his eyes.

Then his gaze slid left, and he found you, smaller, younger, expression stubborn in a way that looked almost like a scowl. You were standing near Matt, not pressed against him, but close, a proximity that wasn’t accidental. You weren’t smiling at the camera, but you weren’t afraid of it either, and Dex took the image in like he’d been handed proof of something that had been bothering him.

A voice behind him interrupted, and Dex didn’t flinch because flinching was weakness. “Can I help you?” an older man asked, cautious.

Dex turned with a polite half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Just looking at the history board,” he said. “My uncle grew up here. I didn’t realize they kept photos.”

The older man relaxed slightly, sympathy landing on his face. “Yeah,” he said. “We try. People came through here with nothing. It mattered. It still matters.”

Dex nodded like he agreed. “Do you know if any of them come back?” he asked, casual. “Like, the kids from back then. Alumni.”

The older man shrugged. “Some do,” he said. “Not a ton. Life gets complicated.”

Dex let that sit, then asked, “Did you know a girl who went by—” and he said your name carefully, like he was testing whether it would spark recognition.

The older man’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh,” he said, and the recognition was immediate. “Yeah, I remember her. Smart kid. Tough. She came back years ago to donate books, and then she was gone again. She came by recently, though, a month back. I think she was looking for Father Lantom’s grave.”

Dex kept his face smooth, but his attention sharpened. “She’s back in the city?” he asked, as if he hadn’t known.

“Seems like it,” the older man replied. “She’s a professor now, I heard. Good for her.”

Dex nodded again, thanked him, and left with the calm of someone who wasn’t burning a hole through the inside of his own skull. Outside, the air felt colder than it had a minute ago, or maybe Dex was just more aware of his skin, of the tightness in his hands, of the way the pieces had clicked together so cleanly it almost felt like an insult.

You weren’t new. You’d always been there.

Dex had missed you because you’d been gone, and now you were back, and you had slipped into Matt’s orbit like a key sliding into a lock that had been waiting for it.

He walked away from the building without looking back, already thinking about Tuesday at four, already thinking about how easy it would be to get more records if he wanted them, and already thinking about the fact that this wasn’t just about Matt’s friends from law school, this was older than that, deeper than that, and that meant your connection to Matt was harder to break than Dex had assumed when he first saw your arm linked through his.

Dex didn’t like being wrong, and he didn’t like problems that required patience, but he adjusted anyway, because adjusting was what kept him alive.

Dex started carrying a small notebook again, the kind that looked like it belonged to anyone with a job and a commute, the kind people wouldn’t remember if they saw it in his hand while he waited for a light to change. He didn’t write in it like someone journaling their feelings, because that wasn’t what it was for, and he didn’t write in it like he was building a case file either, because case files had names and signatures and consequences. He wrote in it the way you wrote down a route you didn’t want to forget, quick marks and times and details that mattered, and then he closed it and put it away like it was nothing.

On Monday morning he got to the subway before you did, because arriving first meant he could choose a spot that gave him the best angle without having to shuffle around once you were there. He kept his hood down and his face neutral, and he stood with his shoulder near a support column where he could see the stairs and the turnstiles at the same time. People hurried past him with their coffee and their headphones and their purposeful little frowns, and none of them looked at him long enough to remember him later.

You came down the stairs with a tote bag that looked heavier than it should’ve been, phone pressed to your ear while you talked like you were already tired and still somehow making space to be patient anyway. Dex watched you weave through bodies without touching anyone, as if you had learned how to move in crowds without letting the crowd claim you.

“I know,” you said into the phone, and your tone had that careful steadiness that meant you were trying not to snap. “No, I know that’s what you want, but that’s not what you’re asking. You’re asking me to sign off on a timeline that’s unrealistic and then you’ll act surprised when it blows up.”

Whoever was on the other end spoke fast enough that Dex couldn’t catch words, but you answered like you were used to this kind of argument. You stopped near the edge of the platform, looked down the tunnel, then adjusted your stance back a few inches when a gust of air rolled through. “I’m not saying no,” you continued, calm but firm. “I’m saying if you want the results you’re asking for, you either give me more people or you give me more time. You don’t get both for free.”

The train screamed into the station, and you stepped on with the same timing you always used, not rushing, not hesitating, but just letting the chaos happen around you while you stayed in the middle of it like a fixed point. Dex stepped into a different car, not far from yours, but close enough to track you through the windows when the train curved. You didn’t sit, even when a seat opened up, and Dex noted it because it wasn’t about fatigue, it was about control.

When you got off at your stop you ended the call and immediately started typing, thumbs moving quickly, expression set in a way that looked like you were already planning your next three hours. Dex followed at a distance through the surge of students and commuters, watching the point where the crowd thinned as Columbia’s edges swallowed people into campus and routine.

He didn’t go into your building; he watched from across the street and let the day unspool with the kind of repetition that made other people bored and made him calm.

Two students came out first, arguing with each other about something that sounded like it had been assigned and not chosen. One of them waved a worksheet around like it was evidence in a trial. “I swear to God, if she cold-calls me again I’m dropping,” the student complained.

His friend snorted. “You’re not dropping,” she said. “You love acting like you’re dropping. Just read the chapter.”

“I read the chapter,” he insisted. “It’s not my fault it reads like it was written by a robot who hates joy.”

The friend rolled her eyes. “She’s not the one who wrote it.”

“Yeah, but she’s the one who looks at you like you’re stupid if you say something wrong,” he replied, voice rising with the righteous outrage of someone who had never been in real danger in his life.

Dex watched the building’s main doors while they bickered, and he kept waiting for the moment you’d appear again, because you always did, eventually. He was learning the intervals, the gaps between your movements, and he didn’t like surprises.

You came out a little after noon, walking fast, sandwich in hand, coffee in the other, and you didn’t look up until one of your students practically jogged to catch you. The kid looked nervous in that eager way that meant he was terrified of disappointing you. “Professor,” the student said, matching your pace, “can I ask you something about the lab report?”

You didn’t slow down. “If it’s about formatting, the rubric answers your question,” you replied.

“It’s not about formatting,” he said quickly. “It’s about the control group. I think I messed it up.”

That got your attention, but not as softness. Dex saw the shift in your face, the way your focus narrowed. You stopped near a trash can, took a bite of your sandwich like you refused to pause your life for anyone, and then you spoke around the bite without apology. “What did you do?” you asked.

The student started explaining, hands moving, stumbling through the logic, and you listened all the way through without interrupting him. When he finished, you took another bite, chewed, swallowed, and then you answered in a tone that wasn’t gentle but wasn’t cruel either, the way people spoke when they wanted the person in front of them to do better. “Okay,” you said. “You didn’t destroy it, but you need to fix it. If your control group isn’t controlled, your results don’t mean anything. You can’t argue your way out of that, and you can’t charm your way out of that, so don’t try.”

The student’s face fell, and then you added, not softer, but more practical, “Come to my office at three and bring your raw notes. We’ll map out what you can salvage and what you have to redo.”

He looked like you’d handed him a lifeline. “Really?” he asked.

You stared at him for a second, expression dry. “Do you want me to say no?” you replied.

“No,” he said immediately, flustered.

“Then stop acting surprised,” you told him, and Dex watched the corner of your mouth twitch like you were amused despite yourself. “Three o’clock.”

The kid nodded fast and peeled away, and you kept walking like it hadn’t taken anything out of you. Dex followed through the campus paths, then stopped once you disappeared into a different building, because he’d already gotten what he needed: confirmation that you ran your day on schedule and that other people adjusted themselves to fit into it.

Wednesday was the late day, and Dex didn’t need to guess anymore once he’d watched it twice. You stayed in the lab past sunset, and the building’s windows threw pale light onto the sidewalk while most of the campus emptied out. Dex waited across the street near a food cart, pretending to browse the menu without ordering, letting the vendor assume he was deciding, and then letting the vendor get bored of him. Eventually the vendor called out anyway, voice loud and impatient. “You buying or you just reading for fun?” the vendor asked.

Dex glanced up with a look that suggested he was mildly offended on principle. “Give me a pretzel,” Dex said.

The vendor slapped one into a bag and held it out. “Three bucks,” he said.

Dex paid, took the pretzel, but didn’t eat it. He held it like a prop, because props made you look normal and normal was invisible.

You came out around eight, exactly the way you usually did, shoulders slightly tense, tote bag heavier, phone already in your hand. One of your colleagues walked with you for half a block, talking quickly like they were trying to squeeze in a last conversation before going home. “I’m telling you, the department chair is going to push back,” the colleague said.

You let out a tired breath. “He can push back,” you replied. “I’m not taking another section. If they want another section, they can hire someone, or they can stop pretending adjuncts don’t exist.”

The colleague made a sympathetic noise. “You’re going to make enemies.”

You shot her a look that Dex caught even from across the street, and the look said you didn’t care. “I already have enemies,” you replied. “They’re eighteen and they think I’m personally responsible for their GPA.”

The colleague laughed, then peeled off toward the subway. You crossed the street alone, and Dex waited for the moment you’d usually hesitate at the curb, and you did, just a beat, like the city had trained that into you no matter how brave you tried to be.

Saturday was groceries, and Dex didn’t have to work hard to blend in because Amsterdam Avenue on a weekend was full of people who looked like they belonged there. He wore a plain jacket, kept his hands in his pockets, and stayed just far enough that if you turned your head you’d see a crowd, not him. You went into the same store you’d gone into the previous Saturday, and you walked the aisles like you had a list in your head.

You stopped by produce first, and Dex watched you pick up a bag of apples, weigh it in your hand, then put it back and choose a different one like you could feel which one would bruise first. You grabbed spinach, then eggs, then yogurt, and Dex tracked the order because order mattered. You didn’t wander or browse, you moved with intention.

A woman near you dropped a jar, and it shattered, and people froze for a second in that communal moment where everyone decides whether they’re going to help or pretend they didn’t see. You stepped around the spill without stepping through it, then crouched and picked up the woman’s phone off the floor because it had skidded away. You handed it back and said something Dex didn’t hear, and the woman’s shoulders loosened like you’d reassured her without making it a performance.

When you got to the checkout lane, the cashier greeted you like she knew you. “Hey,” the cashier said, scanning your items. “Back again. You’re consistent.”

You smiled in that small way Dex had seen before, the smile that didn’t ask for anything. “I’m predictable,” you replied.

The cashier snorted. “Must be nice,” she said.

You glanced down at the groceries, then back up. “It is,” you said, and you didn’t say it like a brag, you said it like a fact you’d earned.

Dex waited until you left before he moved, because he didn’t want to share the same exit, not yet. He watched you walk home carrying bags with a steady pace, not rushing, not drifting, and he noticed you always adjusted the strap of your tote bag with the same hand in the same motion, like your body had decided on a method years ago and never bothered to change it.

Sunday nights were different, and he figured that out because you didn’t go every week, but when you went, you went with purpose. Twice a month, you ended up with them, and Dex had to admit he liked that it wasn’t random. It was scheduled, intentional, almost ceremonial, like you were making sure you stayed stitched into their lives.

He found the dinner the first time by tracking Foggy instead of you, because Foggy was louder and easier, and because Foggy never checked his blind spots. He waited outside a walk-up building with too many steps and a narrow hallway where the smell of garlic drifted down, and he listened through the thin windows because the building made it easy.

Foggy’s voice boomed first, as always. “Okay, everyone shut up, I have an announcement!” he declared.

Karen’s voice cut in immediately. “If this is about your lasagna again, I swear—”

“It is absolutely about my lasagna,” Foggy said, offended. “Also, it’s not just lasagna, it’s a labor of love.”

You laughed, and Dex heard you clearly through the crack in a window. “Foggy, you bought pre-made noodles,” you said.

“That’s efficient,” Foggy insisted. “That’s modern. That’s—”

Matt’s voice slid in, calm and too controlled. “That’s cheating,” Matt said.

Foggy made a dramatic sound. “You’re all ganging up on me,” he complained.

Karen sounded amused, but careful in the way she always did. “We’re not ganging up on you,” she said. “We’re just united in the truth.”

You replied, and Dex heard the smile in your voice even without seeing it. “It’s okay,” you said. “You can still take credit. No one else is going to cook.”

Foggy latched onto that like it was a win. “Thank you!” he said. “Finally, someone appreciates me.”

Matt’s voice softened, the smallest shift, like he couldn’t help it. “We appreciate you,” Matt said, and Dex could picture the expression even if he couldn’t see it, because he knew Matt’s tells by now.

Foggy went quieter for half a second, then recovered like sincerity was a threat. “Don’t get emotional,” he warned. “I’m fragile.”

Karen laughed, and then she said your name like she was bringing the room back to you. “So,” Karen asked, “how’s the chaos at Columbia?”

You groaned. “Don’t,” you said. “I had three separate emails about the same assignment and every single one of them started with ‘I know you said not to email, but—’”

Foggy cackled. “They fear you,” he said, delighted.

“They should,” you replied, and the line made them laugh again.

Dex stayed outside long enough to hear more of it, not because he needed it, but because it gave him something he couldn’t get from schedules and public records. It gave him your cadence when you were relaxed, the way you teased Foggy, the way Karen’s voice eased around you, the way Matt spoke more freely in your presence without sounding like he was trying to perform anything.

At some point Foggy said, louder, “Matt, tell her,” and Matt answered, “I’m not getting involved,” and you shot back, “coward,” and it all sounded easy in a way Dex didn’t like, because easy meant stability, and stability meant you weren’t temporary.

When Dex finally walked away from the building, he didn’t head toward Hell’s Kitchen rooftops or toward any of Matt’s usual routes. He went the other direction, toward the subway, because the next morning was Monday and you would be on the platform at 8:49 a.m., and he wanted to be there before you again, not because he needed to prove anything, but because he didn’t like the feeling of arriving late to something that was becoming routine.

everything: @clxt-lamb1 @person-005 @bookoffracturedescapes @macbaetwo @demiebarnes @angel113431

dex poindexter: @ultimatewolverine @nightmerzer @hexedangelx@avidreader73 @satorusbbymomma@skollinghunter @magicataxes @star-yawnznn @10ava01 @clowninavan

Dex had gone white.

Then he had walked very calmly into the bathroom with one hand over his mouth and vomited until his ribs hurt.

Because yes, he loved you too.

He loved you so badly it felt like his body had mistaken affection for a terminal illness. He loved you until being away from you made his skin crawl. He loved you so much it made him cruel to himself. He loved you so much he wanted to crawl out of his own skin because wanting to keep you felt like a crime. He had wanted to be loved his whole miserable life, and then when you came along and loved him, he wouldn’t fucking trust it.

Because there was no way you loved him back.

Not really.

Not if you were whole.

Not if he had not done something to you first.

Because the first time you met, he had broken into your apartment. After all, your window had the perfect sightline into the building across the street.

Because you had caught him in your living room with a mug in your hand and sleep shorts riding high on your thighs, and he had looked at you like you were a small obstacle.

“What the fuck—”

His hand covered your mouth before you could get any louder.

“I’m sorry,” he said, genuinely, because he was one of the good guys now. “I just gotta do this one thing.”

You bit his palm.

He hissed, then caught your wrist and handcuffed you to the exposed water pipe under your kitchen sink.

He flexed his bitten hand once. “I said sorry.”

You glared up at him.

That day, you should have screamed yourself hoarse.

Instead, you had talked for six straight hours. 

You. Fucking. Yapped. 

Like a pomeranian on cocaine.

You had insulted his boots, his posture, his insane audacity. You demanded coffee. You asked if the gun was compensating for something (you later found out it was definitely not). You asked if he always tied women up before breakfast or if you were getting special treatment. You even threatened to bite him again if he came too close, then immediately asked if he was single.

Dex had sat by your window with a rifle scope pressed to his eye. He was pretty sure he fell in love somewhere between the twelfth complaint that your ass was sore and the twenty-first threat to sue him.

So now, eight months later, with you under him, legs wrapped around his waist and your body taking him so well he could barely breathe, all he could think was…

He had done this.

He had broken something in you.

Still, he moaned your name. You were perfect beneath him, pleasing him so well that his own voice kept dying in his throat every time he tried to speak. He could barely form the guilt into words because you kept squeezing around him like your body wanted him closer than close, like every thrust dragged a sound out of you that went straight through his cogmium spine and lit him up from the inside.

“You don’t love me,” he suddenly rasped, because of course he had to bring it up again while he was inside you.

You laughed, but it broke into a moan halfway through when he moved again, and the stretch of him made your whole body seize. “Dex…”

He choked on the spit buildup in his mouth because he was drooling at this point, his hands fisting in the sheets beside your head. “Fuck,” he breathed, voice ruined. “Don’t—don’t say my name like that.”

You tried to answer, but he was too much, too deep, fucking you into the mattress hard enough to make the bed frame knock harshly against the wall like every thrust was an argument he was losing.

“You’re so… hmph,” His forehead dropped against yours. His voice cracked. “God, you’re so fucking tight. I can’t think when you— when you feel like this.”

You could barely hear what he was saying, you just dragged him down by the neck and kissed the scar on his cheek. You were practically making out with it, because hyperfocusing on it helped bring you back to earth. “Dex… fuck!”

His whole body jerked at the sound.

“Don’t,” he rasped, but he didn’t stop.

His hips kept driving into yours, deep and rough, punching the breath out of you until your hands pawing at his skin. “Don’t say it like that.”

You tried to laugh again, but it came out as a shaky gasp when he pushed deeper. “Like what?”

“Like you, hmm.” His head dropped now, his mouth dragging wet and open against your throat. “Like you love me.”

Your nails dug into his back, giving his back scar company. “I do.”

Dex’s brows furrowed like you had hit him.

His pace faltered for half a second. Then the panic caught up to him and he thrusted harder, like he could outrun the words by burying himself deeper inside you. “N-no.”

“Yes.”

“No,” he said again, and it came out so small it was nearly swallowed by the filthy sound of his body moving against yours. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what this is.”

“I know exactly what this is.”

“You don’t.” His hand grasped the sheets. “You can’t. You can’t love me.”

You were struggling to keep your eyes open. He was stretching you so much every thought came apart before it finished forming, pleasure dragging through you hot and heavy, making your thighs shake around his hips.

Still, you forced yourself to look at him. “I do love you.”

Dex looked like he might be sick again.

Every time.

Every fucking time you said it, even if it was a hundred times a day, his heart broke a little. Like his body wanted the words and his mind rejected them. Like being loved by you was too impossible to fit inside him without tearing a wormhole open.

“You hear y-yourself?” he demanded, breathless, furious, hips still snapping into yours. “You hear how insane that sounds?”

You moaned, head tipping back against the ridiculously expensive pillows he had bought you because his last one ‘made your neck a little stiff’ once.

He groaned at the feel of you tightening around him. “Fuck… don’t—don’t do that.”

“I… ahh, can’t help it,” you managed, voice shaking. “I fucking love you.”

“No, you don’t.” He sounded almost angry now, but all of it was pointed inward, all of it soaked in guilt. “I cuffed you to a pipe. I— Fuck— scared you. I held you hostage and now you’re here, telling me you love me while I’m—” His teeth clenched, his body shuddering over yours. “While I’m doing this to you.”

“You’re not doing anything to me,” you forced out, gripping his arm hard enough to make him hiss. “I asked for this.”

His eyes burned. “That doesn’t make it better.”

“It does, actually.”

“You’re sick.”

“So are you.”

He laughed once, but there was no humor behind it. He then buried his face in your neck as his pace got messier. “I think I gave you Stockholm syndrome.”

“You didn’t,” you insisted. It was barely a sound, it was a miracle he heard you at all.

“You’re not listening.”

“You’re not thinking.”

“I am thinking.” His voice cracked on the last word because you tightened around him again and his forehead dropped to yours, “Shit, you drive me insane.”

“Good.”

“No.” He kissed you hard. “No, not good. That’s what I mean. You make me like this. You make me want too much.”

“You already want too much.”

His hips stuttered, and you saw the guilt pass over his face at once.

Then he drove into you harder. You cried out, and his eyes went dark.

“There,” he said, voice ragged. “That. You should hate me for this.”

“No, Dex.” Your hands slid up, catching his chin, forcing his face close to yours while he kept fucking you breathless. “You didn’t give me Stockholm syndrome. I. Love. You.”

He shuddered. His mouth opened, but nothing came out at first. Then a broken moan as his body betrayed him again.

“You don’t,” he whispered.

“I do.”

“You can’t.”

“I can.”

“You’re perfect.”

“I’m not.”

“You are to me.” His voice sounded raw, almost boyish in its disbelief. “And if you love me, then I did something to you. I had to. I had to have broken something, because there’s no– hnggf— no other way.”

Your chest tightened.

He was still moving, still taking you apart with a rhythm so desperate it bordered on punishing, but his eyes were wet. His eyes filled with self-hatred. He looked like a man starving at a feast and hating himself for opening his mouth.

“Fine,” you gasped. “Have it your way.”

Dex went still for exactly one second. Not fully, and definitely not enough to pull out. Then his body reacted before his mind did and he thrust harder.

It was as if the sentence had scared him so badly he had to pin you beneath him with his weight, his mouth, his hands, his hips. Like if he stopped moving, the words would become real enough to take you away. “W-what?”

“Maybe— hm, maybe you did g-give me Stockholm Syndrome,” you said, voice shaking, half from pleasure, half from fury. “Now what?”

His breathing turned ragged.

“So what, huh?” Your nails dragged up his neck into his hair, combing his scalp “You gonna tell me to go?”

Dex’s face soured. “No.”

“You gonna leave me?”

“No.” The thought of it made him sick. You could see it. You could feel it. His whole body tensed, his grip tightening, his hips losing rhythm for a moment before coming back rougher, deeper, more desperate. 

Leaving you was the one noble thing he kept threatening himself with, and the second you suggested it, it destroyed him.

“No,” he said again, like he hated you for making him admit it. Like he hated himself more. “Don’t f-fucking ask me that.”

“But that’s what you’re… you’re saying.” You were so close now you could barely speak, words breaking apart every time he drove into you. “If you really think you ruined me, then stop.”

Dex’s eyes locked on yours.

Your mouth trembled into a cruel little smile. “If you really think, you— shit, you broke me, t-then stop fucking me.”

His breath hitched.

He didn't stop. 

You felt it in the way his body went even harder, even more frantic, like the command had gone straight into the darkest, neediest part of him and went feral.

“I-if you think you’re bad f’me, then get off me,” you whispered, mean and gentle all the same, by his ear, close enough to lick the lobe. “Then don’t touch me. Don’t kiss me. Don’t come in me, because we b-both know you’re— hmphh— planning to.”

Dex groaned, tortured, burying his face against your throat.

“No,” he rasped.

“No?”

“No.”

“Thought so.”

He kissed you then, hard enough to steal the rest of the taunt from your mouth.

It was perfect after that, fucking perfect and awful. Your bodies slick with sweat, his hands gripping your hips like he was trying not to bruise you and failing at restraint in every other way. He fucked you like he was confessing and denying the confession in the same breath, like every thrust said mine and every sound said I’m sorry.

“You should run,” he rasped.

“You’d follow.”

His eyes burned.

You smiled up at him, breathless and shaking. “And I’d let you c-catch me. I’m fucking into it.”

Dex looked ruined.

His rhythm stuttered, and for a second you thought that was it, that he was going to fall apart right there, but he grabbed your hips and flipped you with quick motion that left you dizzy.

Then you were on top of him.

Your thighs trembled on either side of his hips, your hands braced on his chest, and Dex looked up at you like you were killing him. His face was flushed, eyes wet, mouth parted as you sank back down onto him.

“Say it,” he said, voice destroyed.

You moved over him, thighs shaking, pleasure making you unsteady. “Say what?”

His eyes opened, furious and starving. “Say– fuck, baby— that you know you could leave and I’d let you leave.”

Your chest tightened. “Dex.”

“Say it.” His grip tightened, not forcing, just holding on. “Say you know the door isn’t locked. Say you know I’d let you go.”

You stared down at him. At the man who had wanted love so badly it made him monstrous with fear. At the man who still believed wanting you was worse than first degree murder. At the man underneath you, shaking, begging for proof that this was not captivity while his body betrayed how badly he needed you to stay.

You leaned down until your mouth brushed his.

“I know I can leave,” you whispered. “I-I know you’d let me.”

His breath collapsed.

Then you kissed the corner of his mouth without ruining your rhythm. “But I’m not.”

Dex broke under you.

His hands slid up your back, dragging you down against his chest as he thrust up into you, needy and completely undone. You could barely keep up, barely keep speaking, your forehead pressed to his as you rode him. 

“I love you,” you said again. and this time, he knew you meant it.

That was what did it for him. Not the heat. Not the filth. Not the way you tightened around him or the way he was losing himself inside you, though that helped.

That.

The idea that you had chosen him with all your mind intact.

Your breath hitched first, then your whole body seized, pleasure dragging you under so good that your words turned into a ruined little sound against his mouth. Dex’s eyes widened, his hands clamping around your waist as you went through it.

“There,” he rasped. “There she is.”

You came too hard to answer him properly, nails digging into his chest as he kept you there. “There she is,” he said again, almost broken. “That’s my girl.”

And then Dex broke completely.

He buried his face in your neck as he came after you, groaning your name like an apology, like a confession, like it was the only prayer he knew. His body trembled beneath yours, his arms locked around you while he spilled inside you, holding on as if letting go too soon might make the whole thing disappear.

Afterward, Dex held you like an apology.

His mouth fluttered gentle kisses over your temple, your cheek, your throat, frantic in little broken bursts. He kept whispering sorry so many times the word stopped sounding like language and started sounding like breathing.

You were half-asleep against his chest, your fingers tucked loosely against his ribs.

He kissed your forehead again. “Sorry.”

You breathed out, half asleep. “For what?”

Dex went quiet.

He didn’t know, not really. He was sorry for the pipe, for wanting you too much, for needing you in a way that still scared him. He was sorry for looking at your love and thought it must have been damage.

His arms tightened around you.

You opened your eyes just enough to look at him. His face was ruined, like he was still trying to decide whether holding you counted as selfish.

You giggled softly.

“Dex,” you murmured, eyes half-lidded, fingers lazy in his hair. “If I’m broken, then I was broken when you found me.”

His breath stopped.

You smiled like that was supposed to comfort him.

Instead, it crawled into him and settled under his ribs, sweet and infected. It made his heart thump hard against his ribs. It made the guilt twist, mutate, turn into a warm and fuzzy feeling. Because there you were, looking at him like he wasn’t the man that had ruined you, but the man that had finally made sense. Like whatever was wrong with you had looked at whatever was wrong with him and fuckin’ purred.

Dex stared at you, eyebrows relaxing.

You touched his face, thumb dragging gently over his cheek scar, and he leaned into it before he could stop himself. 

Pathetic. So utterly gone for you. 

“I love you,” he said.

It came out hoarse. 

You shrugged like you knew all along. 

“I love you,” he said again. His hand tightened at your waist. “I love you.”

And for the first time, Dex wondered if Stockholm syndrome could happen the other way around, to the captor instead.

There was probably a fancy word for it. Some clinical term made by people with normal hearts. Something he could look up, self-diagnose, dissect, pretend to understand.

But Dex didn’t care.

If that was what had happened to him, then fine.

He didn’t want it cured.

—end. 

So you found instant coffee in the back of the cupboard and made it too strong because you were already running late. You burned your tongue, while the clasp on your necklace got caught in your hair. Your tights had a ladder in them, a thin line running up the back of your calf that no one else would probably notice but that you could feel all day like a crack in glass.

You changed twice and hated both outfits.

The third one was acceptable until you got outside and realized the waistband sat weird when you walked. It pinched at one side and shifted at the other. You kept trying to fix it discreetly beneath your coat while waiting for the train, which only made it twist more.

Then the train was delayed.

You kinda wished it would’ve been canceled; it would at least have given you something to be angry about. It was delayed by six minutes, then nine, then twelve, with the announcement changing every time you looked up. The platform filled around you as a lady stood close enough behind you that her bag pressed against your back every time they moved. A man near the stairs was watching videos without headphones, and two women beside you were having an argument in furious whispers.

Your phone buzzed in your hand.

Dex. Coffee machine dead?

You stared at the message for too long.

Normally, you would have answered with something dry and funny immediately. Instead, you typed three different replies and deleted all of them because every version sounded irritated, and you were irritated, but not with him.

You sent a heart.

He replied with three.

That nearly made you cry again.

Work was not terrible enough to justify how terrible it felt.

Nobody screamed at you and nothing caught fire. You didn’t get fired or humiliated, but it was just a constant fucking drag.

An intern, a fresh graduate called Grace, stopped you before you had taken off your coat because they needed help with something they had known about since yesterday. Your computer decided to update while going to the double-booked meeting room, so everyone stood in the corridor pretending not to be annoyed while Brad from HR insisted he had reserved it first. When you finally got inside, the projector would not connect.

Then your manager, Amy said, “This should only take five minutes,” and it took forty-three.

At some point, your coworker Jack, put a hand on your shoulder from behind to get your attention.

You nearly snapped. They apologized. You apologized for reacting. Then you spent the next ten minutes thinking about whether your apology had sounded strange.

That was when you had to go to the bathroom and cry.

You sat in the last stall with the lid down, both feet planted on the floor, trying to breathe quietly so that no one would hear you. You hated crying at work and the bathroom lighting and the thin toilet paper scraping under your eyes. You hated that there was no single problem you could point to and say, there, that’s why I can’t do this today!

Your phone buzzed again.

Dex had sent you a message about going out because task force was spotted in droves on the other side of the city, and that he was going out to get them. 

Then cried harder because you missed him, even though he lived with you and you had technically seen him that morning. 

You washed your face, went back to your desk, and tried to finish the day.

At four, Dex texted that he would probably be home late.

You stared at that one until the words blurred.

It was reasonable and normal, by your standards. He worked strange hours and disappeared with even stranger explanations. You were used to eating without him. You were used to waking up with him suddenly in bed beside you, one hand finding your waist beneath the blanket.

But you had spent the whole day thinking about going home to him.

You didn’t even want to talk to him. You wanted to walk through the door and see him standing in the kitchen. You wanted him to take your bag without asking and tell you to change into a soft cotton shirt so as not to trigger your sensory issues. You wanted to sit between his knees on the sofa while he rubbed slow circles into your thighs.

Instead, you sent. Okay. Be safe.

He reacted with a heart.

You put your phone facedown and finished the last hour.

The train home was worse than the train in.

You had to stand while a wet umbrella kept brushing your ankle, even though you didn’t realise it had been raining. A man across the carriage kept coughing into his fist and then touching the pole. Every time the train stopped, more people got on and nobody got off.

By the time you reached your building, your shoulders ached from holding them up around your ears. You dropped your keys in the hallway, and the sound of them hitting the floor was so annoying that you just stood there staring at them for several seconds before bending down.

The apartment was dark when you opened the door.

You turned on the lamp instead of the main light and you took off your coat and immediately felt colder. You put it back on. Took it off again because the lining felt horrible against your skin. You stood in the living room holding it, suddenly unable to decide what to do with it even though there was a hook three feet away.

You dropped it on the floor.

Then you felt guilty because Dex liked things clean and in their place.

Fuck. 

You sat down beside it and cried with one shoe still on and one shoe off, louder than you cried in the office bathroom. You cried because the apartment smelled faintly like Dex, but he wasn’t there. You cried because you had spent the whole day being reasonable, and now there was nobody in front of you to be reasonable for.

Afterward, you felt stupid and sticky-faced, which just made the sensations worse.

You picked up the coat and put your shoes away. You sent Dex a message asking when he would be home, then deleted it before sending because you didn’t want him distracted while he was out doing very dangerous Bullseye things.

You showered instead, and the water was too hot at first, but you didn’t fix it quickly enough, so your skin felt like it was boiling across your chest and shoulders. You washed your hair. Then the wet texture clung to your back and made you angry, so you wrapped them in one of Dex’s old shirts instead of a towel because it was softer.

You put on your sleep shorts and the gray shirt of his you always stole.

It smelled like the detergent you both used now, not specifically like him, which made you strangely sad.

You tried to eat.

There were pasta leftovers in the fridge. Dex had labelled the container DO NOT EAT in black marker, then added unless you are my girlfriend beneath it in smaller writing because you had told him one you liked one of those cheesy jokes, and Dex being Dex, listened and manufactured it into his life even though he got no real enjoyment out of it. You heated it up, took three bites, and put them back because the tomato sauce was chunky, and it felt weird on your tongue even though technically, there was nothing wrong with it. .

So you made tea and forgot the bag until it went bitter.

You turned on the television, then muted it because the voice of the newscaster irritated you. The silence irritated you too, so you turned it back on quietly with subtitles.

At some point, you checked the locks twice.

You knew Dex would not use the door when he came back. He would use the fire escape.

On most nights, the thought made you smile. Tonight, you wanted him to use his key like a normal person.

You wanted to hear it turn in the lock like a warning. You wanted him to call your name from the entrance so you had time to prepare for being touched.

But whatever. He probably didn't even bring his keys.

You climbed into bed with the lamp on.

Usually, you liked Dex coming home with that focus still in his eyes. You even loved the way he sometimes stood at the foot of the bed and looked at you as if he had followed you there. You liked the games he played to rile you up, because Dex knew exactly how to frighten you without making you unsafe. You liked restraints because he checked every knot, every buckle, every inch of space between your skin and whatever held you down.

You liked being helpless when it was Dex.

Usually.

But tonight, you just wanted him.

You wanted to press your face into his chest and let him complain that your wet hair was soaking his shirt. You wanted him to ask what happened, accept “nothing” as the answer, and hold you still.

The fire escape groaned outside the window.

Then the living room window slid open, and Dex climbed in with blood on his sleeve, still.

You were in that half-sleep state where your body had gone heavy but your mind was still floating somewhere above it, listening to the hum of the television you had left on in the living room and the old pipe knocking faintly in the wall. You were even still aware of your breathing, too shallow to be restful.

You knew what Dex was like after a long night. You knew the way adrenaline ran in his body like a live wire, making him hungry and a little fucking insane. Usually, you were more than happy to let him spend the rest of it on you.

That was the arrangement, after all.

The free use thing had happened over weeks of conversations, some serious, some filthy, some with you sitting cross-legged on the bed while Dex sat on the floor taking it all in like he was memorising a mission brief. What was okay, what was not. It was discussed and re-discussed, picked apart in daylight until even Dex’s paranoid brain had nothing left to gnaw on.

You had said it first half as a joke, grinning over your mug while Dex sat opposite you at the kitchen table looking like you had just handed him a loaded gun.

“What, you don’t like the idea?” you had teased.

His eyes had gone dark in a way that made your thighs press together beneath the table. “I like it too much.”

That had been the problem, Dex had always liked you too much, wanted you too much, so you made rules.

You told him what he could do if you were half-asleep, and what he could do if you were pretending to be asleep, which was different, because sometimes you liked lying there smug while Dex tried to kiss you patiently. You knew what he could do if he came home needy. 

Most days, you loved Dex coming into the bedroom while you were still sleepy, his hands sliding under your shirt like he owned every inch of skin he found there. You loved the first drag of his mouth against your shoulder and the rough sound he made when you pressed back into him without opening your eyes. You loved pretending to be annoyed while he kissed down your spine and told you that he knew you were awake because your thighs were already sticky for him.

You loved being wanted like that, loved Dex murmuring filthy nonsense against your skin about how pretty you were, how good you were for him even when you were barely awake. You loved the way he could make free use feel less like being used and more like being worshipped.

Sometimes he was sweet about it, climbing into the bed clean and careful, gathering you back against his chest, and kissing you awake inch by inch like he had all the time in the world. He would slide one hand over your stomach and whisper your name until you made that cute complaining sound he loved, and then he would laugh like you were the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Sometimes he was not sweet, still shaking with adrenaline and put a hand over your mouth before you could say something naughty, only to kiss your temple immediately. Sometimes he pinned your wrists because you liked to fight him for show, and he liked pretending not to know you were letting him win. Sometimes he found you half-asleep and still managed to fuck you awake so thoroughly that by the time you could think again, your face was hot, your hair was a mess, and Dex was in your ear telling you how good you were for letting him have you.

You liked that.

But tonight, your body had already been handled by the entire fucking day. Your nerves had been touched and touched and touched until touch did not feel like touch anymore. It felt more like threat.

You knew that, but then Dex came home and your first thought was still I want him.

You then heard the movement of him walking around the apartment, and not like a direct line to the bathroom, or the kitchen. Not even to check the lock, which he always did even when he had just broken into his own home like a lunatic.

Instead, he was coming to you.

The bedroom door was half-open, and you kept your eyes closed.

You told yourself it was because you were too tired to move, but part of you liked the game. Part of you wanted to be found like this, buried in the middle of the bed in his shirt and your sleep shorts, pretending you hadn’t been waiting all night, helping you forget the day, forget the job, forget everything except getting his hands on the one thing in the world that belonged to him.

He stopped in the doorway, and before you knew it, the mattress dipped.

Dex was always careful at first, even when he was feral. He put a hand beside your hip, not touching yet. His breathing was slow, but not steady. You could hear the way he held himself back for the sake of a rule he wanted to break only because you had once told him breaking it in the right way turned you into putty.

His fingers touched your ankle beneath the blanket, almost testing.

Your body gave a tiny shiver.

Dex went still, before his hand slid higher, possessive enough to make heat flicker through the exhaustion. His palm travelled up the back of your calf, over the bend of your knee, over your thigh. You heard him exhale, and the sound was so hungry it made your stomach flip despite everything.

“Pretty girl,” he whispered.

Your face warmed.

Stupid body. Stupid, fucking traitorous body.

He leaned over you, and his mouth brushed the back of your shoulder where his shirt had slipped wide at the collar. He started with one kiss, quickly followed by another. It became open-mouthed and filthy, like he was trying to be gentle and got overwhelmed. His hand found your waist beneath the shirt, fingers spreading against your skin.

For one second, it worked.

Your violent, devoted, half-mad Dex came home through windows and touched you like you were the only object of desire in the universe, who could make you feel filthy and adored at the same time, who could make being half-asleep feel like the dirtiest kind of safety.

His mouth moved to your neck, hand tightened at your waist.

“Missed you,” he breathed, rough against your skin. “Been thinking about you all night.”

Your thighs pressed together beneath the blanket before you could stop them.

Dex noticed and made a small sound against your throat, almost broken with relief, and shifted closer until his body was against your back. His hand slid over your hip, tugging you back into him.

For one second, you really wanted it.

Your body remembered him before it remembered itself. It remembered all the other nights he had come home ruined and desperate and crawled into bed like your body was the only place he knew where to put the violence. It remembered waking up already breathless to his greedy hands, his mouth saying filthy, adoring things against your skin until you went undone beneath him.

For one second, you wanted to be that girl again.

Dex’s hand tightened on your hip, and your breath broke in a way that sounded enough like pleasure to confuse both of you. He pressed his face into your neck and inhaled like he was trying to crawl inside your veins.

“Color?” he asked, it was rough, but still good of him.

You meant to say yellow.

The word was right there, sitting behind your tongue. Yellow meant slow down, meant you wanted him, but you needed him kinder. It would mean this was good, but also too much. But Dex’s mouth was on your throat, and his hand was warm under your shirt, and you had missed him so badly all day that admitting you needed less felt like losing him for a stupid reason.

So you said, “Green.”

Dex exhaled against your skin. “Yeah?” he murmured.

You nodded, eyes still closed.

You should have said yellow again then. You should have corrected yourself because there was still a good amount of space to do it, while his hand was only at your waist and his mouth was only at your neck, but your mind was gone and your body had betrayed you with that little shiver, and Dex had never been the best at reading the small things. He was more a flashing lights kinda guy.

Feelings had to be handed to him with both hands. It had had to be said plainly, right in front of his face, with no riddles and no hoping he would guess. Dex, through no fault of his own other than his upbringing, didn’t always know the difference between you trembling because you were turned on and you trembling because your nerves were fraying apart unless you told him.

He caught your hip and flipped you onto your back in one rough movement, fast enough that the mattress jolted under you and your breath left in a startled little sound. Dex was above you immediately, one knee between your thighs, one hand braced beside your head, his eyes blown wide with whatever the night had left in him. There was blood at the edge of his collar, and a smear of it near his wrist. His hair was damp from the rain, falling over his forehead in a way that made him look more unhinged at the same time.

“Missed you,” he said, voice wrecked.

Your stomach flipped.

Fuck, he was beautiful like this. Even terrifying,  he was beautiful, and you had built so much of your wanting around those two things. Dex looked down at you like he wanted to ruin you and worship whatever was left. 

His hand slid to your chin, possessive.

Your thighs pressed together on instincts held apart by his leg between them.

“Mmm ,” he whispered. “My pretty girl.”

Heat curled in you, slick and stupid, even as your skin prickled at the edges. Your bad day had not killed the part of you that loved being grabbed by him, turned by him, handled by him. You loved Dex rough because Dex rough still meant Dex focused, Dex obsessed, Dex so fucking hungry for you that the rest of the world could plunge itself into a void and he wouldn’t give two shits.

His mouth was on yours before you could think. The kiss was hard enough to make your head press back into the pillow. His hand stayed at your chin, holding you there while he took your mouth in a way that made your body go loose for him out of habit. You kissed him back, finger catching the front of his shirt, and when you pulled, Dex made a groan against your lips Then his hand went to the hem of your shirt.

His shirt, technically. He dragged it up your body impatiently, and the cool air hit your skin. You lifted your arms for him before you remembered you were tired. 

“Fuck,” he breathed.

Your face went hot.

He threw the shirt behind him.

Usually, you would have laughed and he would have said something deadpan and filthy enough to shut you up. Tonight, the loss of the shirt made you feel exposed too quickly, like your body had not agreed to be perceived that much even if your mind wanted to. 

But then Dex kissed down your throat, and you forgot for a second.

His hands were everywhere, greedy at your waist, your ribs, your thighs, reminding himself you were real, coaxing himself out of whatever horror he had done.

You arched under him, and that was honest too.

Your back lifted as your hands found his shoulders. He caught both your wrists in one hand and pressed them above your head, pinning them there against the pillow.

His eyes lifted to yours, fever-bright. “Yeah?”

You swallowed, and this time, no color came out.

Dex took it for yes because it did feel like a yes to you. Usually, you liked being held down. Tonight, you were too tired to know the difference.

Dex reached for the drawer beside the bed.

Your heart jumped, not in fear at first, but in anticipation.

You knew that drawer and what was in it. The rope came out in his hand.

Your breath caught.

“Still green?” he asked.

Say yellow.

Say yellow.

Say yellow.

You looked up at him, at the way his chest rose and fell. You thought about the whole day: the train, office, light, the way you had cried on the hallway floor because your coat had fallen.

You thought, I can take it.

So you said, “Green.”

Dex looked relieved and hungry and dangerously grateful, like he had been waiting all night for permission to stop being human in exactly the way you usually loved.

He tied your wrists to the headboard, roughly, because he was Dex.

He checked the space between rope and skin automatically, two fingers, always. Your wrists went up as the expensive silken rope was bound to the bedframe. 

Your body went liquid for one dizzy second.

You loved the helplessness that made your brain melt in a good way. It was a dirty drop of the heart, knowing you couldn’t reach for him now unless he let you. You loved how Dex looked at you when you were restrained, like your trust was the most intimate thing you had ever given him. 

“Look at you,” he whispered.

You looked at him looking at you, and for a moment, it was perfect.

Then the rope shifted just slightly. The knot didn’t tighten or hurt. Still, it felt wrong.

The texture scraped your skin in a way it never had before. You could feel every fiber, every point of contact. Your skin pressing against the rope seemed to get louder than everything else in the room somehow, louder than Dex’s breathing, louder than your own heartbeat. 

Your fingers flexed, and the rope moved again.

Your stomach dropped.

No.

You tried to breathe through it.

You tried to get the good feeling back. You tried to look at Dex, at his face, at the hunger you usually loved so much. You tried to remind your body that this was chosen and safe and that Dex had checked. That you had said green twice. That you loved this. You loved this. You loved this!

But the rope kept touching you and it felt like pure, crawling wrongness. The feeling started at your wrists and travelled up your arms until your shoulders froze and your chest went tight. The knot might as well have been around your throat for how quickly your breathing changed.

Dex lowered his mouth to your chest, still murmuring something against your skin,filthy and half-mad.

You barely heard it as your eyes filled.

At first, you did not even know you were crying. Then a tear slipped sideways into your hair, then another.

Dex felt you go still, and this time, he noticed immediately.

His head lifted. “Hey,” he said.

You blinked hard, but the tears came faster.

Dex froze above you, that predatory stance gone now. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, panic filling the back of his eyes, unable to read your thoughts.

You couldn’t answer.

His eyes moved over your face, your mouth, your chest, your wrists. He looked almost frantic trying to identify the injury. Was it blood? Bruises, pulled shoulder? Dex was good at identifying wounds. 

Emotions made him useless unless you labelled them for him, but this was blatant enough that even Dex understood something was wrong.

“Baby,” he said, voice suddenly stripped bare. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Your breath caught as the rope brushed your wrist again when you moved.

You made a horrible little sound, unable to speak.

Dex’s eyes snapped to your hands.

“What?” he said, reaching up but not touching yet. “The rope?”

You nodded once, almost ashamed.

He nodded grimly. “What about the rope?”

“I-It feels wrong,” you choked.

Dex went white.

Your fingers flexed again, and the texture dragged at your skin, and suddenly you couldn't bear it for one more second. Not even half of one. Your whole body reacted around the rejection, and the word  whispered out of you before you had decided to say it. “Red.”

Dex moved instantly.

His hand went to his belt and to his weapons, and for one horrifying second your body thought knife and almost spiralled further under, but Dex was not looking at you like that anymore. 

He pulled the blade free with the same face he wore disarming a bomb.

“Don’t move,” he said, practical.

He didn’t untie the rope, because untying took time.

Dex cut it, a clean slice through the first binding, then the second. The rope fell away from your wrists in loose pieces, useless on the pillow, and Dex threw the knife across the room like he couldn’t stand to have it near you a second longer.

Your arms dropped free, and he was already backing away.

Dex had stopped being a man and become an emergency response. His shoulder hit the dresser, hands lifted, palms open.

You were crying, that was all he saw.

Because of me, he thought.

“I’m away,” he said, a little too loudly and too quickly. “I’m away. I’m not touching you.”

His voice was flat. Dex had never been truly calm a day in his life, so was just forcing panic into a box in his mind that was labeled “procedure.”

You tried to say his name, but it came out broken, and it made him worse.

“I’ll go,” he said. “I can go. I should go. You need space. You need me out. I’ll go to the living room. No, not the living room, that’s not far enough. I’ll go downstairs. Outside. I can wait outside. I won’t come back until you tell me. I won’t touch you, I won’t—”

“Dex—”

“I hurt you.”

You wiped at the tears from your eyes now. “Y-you didn’t.”

He wasn’t listening.

His eyes kept dropping to your wrists. His mouth had gone pale and his hands were still up, still shaking slightly like he didn’t trust them anywhere near you.

You said red and you’re crying, was all he could think of.

“I hurt you.” he said, words coming faster now. “I scared you. I tied you down and you cried. I had a knife in my hand. I shouldn’t have had the knife, I knew I was—”

“Dex.”

“I’ll go.”

You tried to get back up, but even the sheets were starting to crawl as you were getting more and more overwhelmed. “N-No.”

“I need to go.”

“Dex,” it came out breathy.

“I need to not be near you right now.”

“Nuh-uh. Dex—”

“I can’t be the reason you’re looking at me like that.”

You were crying harder now because he was spiralling, and you were spiralling, and the two of you were dragging each other down in opposite directions. Dex kept retreating. You kept trying to pull him back with a voice that was too fragile to reach him.

He turned toward the door, and you finally snapped.

“I need you!”

He froze.

The shout tore out of you raw, loud enough to hurt your throat. Dex stopped like you had fired a warning shot.

You shoved yourself upright, blanket slipping around your waist, cheeks wet, chest heaving.

“Stop,” you sobbed. “Don’t you dare fucking leave while I’m-I’m l-like this.”

His face fell, panic still prevalent. “I’m trying not to make it worse.”

You choked on a breath. “You are making it worse!”

Dex went still.

You pointed at the floor like you could physically pin him there with the gesture. “You are standing over there looking at me like you’re a monster and you keep talking about leaving and I can’t— I can’t do this too, okay? I can’t comfort you while you’re trying to punish yourself. I need you.”

He looked devastated, and maybe that meant he was finally listening.

“I just—” Your voice broke, and the next words came out almost screamed, because gentleness wasn’t cutting it anymore. “I just need you to hold me, you fucking idiot!”

Dex stared at you, looking completely lost.

Every terrible conclusion he had been building in his head had slammed into that sentence like a shield and shattered at his feet.

“You want me to hold you?” he asked, barely audible.

“Yes,” you cried. “Jesus Christ, yes.”

His hands lowered by an inch.

“But I scared you.”

“Because I was already scared of everything,” you managed through gritted teeth. 

“You said red.”

“And you stopped!”

You could see it finally go through to him. His eyes flicked to the cut rope, then to your wrists, then back to your face. He was still terrified of himself, but he stopped backing away.

“I need you clean,” you said, voice shaking. “Then I need you here.”

He moved immediately.

Thank God.

Giving him an instruction helped him. Dex disappeared into the bathroom with stiff purpose, and you heard water slam on. As he scrubbed his hands too hard. You heard him almost losing it over the sink and forcing himself not to because you had not asked for that.

When he came back, the blood was gone.

His shirt was gone too, replaced with the white sleeveless one you liked, because it made him look less like he had crawled out of an alley and more like the man who lived here. Your man, who slept with one hand searching for you.

He stopped by the bed, still afraid to presume after what happened.

You opened your arms.

He climbed onto the bed slowly, gave you every second to change your mind, and only closed his arms around you when you grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him in.

Then he was truly in, and you folded into him.

You cried into his chest with both fists clenched in his shirt, and Dex held you like he was learning how to touch you all over again. 

“Tighter,” you sobbed.

His arms tightened.

“More.”

He held you properly then, careful but not distant. His chin tucked over your head, one hand spread between your shoulder blades, the other on your back, keeping you against him without trapping you. You could feel his heartbeat racing under your cheek, and still, yours was worse.

For a while, neither of you said anything.

Words had been too much all day. Everything had been too much all day. So this was good.

Dex pressed his mouth to your hair.

“I just had a bad day,” you whispered into his chest.

His arms tightened again.

You felt him inhale. “All day?” he asked.

You nodded.

His hand flexed against your back.

He wanted to ask, you could feel it. He wanted names, causes, targets, so he could follow them home and put them through a wall for making you feel like this. But for once, he held it in.

You cried harder, because he was warm and clean and finally close enough. “I meant to say yellow,” you whispered.

His chest stopped moving for a second.

“I know,” you added, before he could spiral again. “I know I said green. I know. I just wanted to be okay. I wanted it to be like usual.”

Dex didn’t speak for a long moment.

Then he held you a little closer and pressed his cheek to the top of your head. “Okay,” he said roughly.

It sounded like he was swallowing glass.

You pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was serious, jaw tight, laying in bed with the woman he loved crying all over his shirt, trying to work out how to shoot a bad day.

And then, with absolute sincerity, he asked, “Do you want me to kill anyone?”

You stared at him.

He meant it.

Fuck. 

It was so shocking, so cathartic, that a sudden laugh burst out of you, half-strangled against his chest. You tried to stop it, but the look on his face only made it worse. He frowned slightly, earnest, still holding you like he would rather die than move wrong.

“I’m serious,” he said.

You laughed harder. “Dex.”

“What?”

“You can’t kill someone because I had a bad day.”

His brow furrowed. “Why not?”

“Oh my God.”

“If there’s a person responsible—”

“There isn’t.”

“There’s usually a person responsible.”

“There was Brad from HR.”

You blinked at him. “How do you know about Brad from HR?”

“You texted me about him once.”

“That was, like, six months ago.”

“I remember things.”

Despite yourself, you laughed again.

You buried your face against him again, laughing and crying at the same time until you could barely breathe. Dex still looked confused, but his arms settled securely around you. He understood this much, at least, when you pressed closer instead of pushing him away.

“I don’t need you to kill anyone,” you murmured once the laughter faded.

“Okay.”

“I just need you to hold me.”

His mouth pressed to your hair again. “That I can do,” he said.

And he did, held you until your breathing slowed, until the room stopped feeling like it was on fire. 

After a while, very quietly, he added, “I would, though.”

You huffed a tired laugh into his shirt. “I know, honey.”

His arms tightened carefully around you.

“Just checking,” he said.

And because it was him, because he meant it with his whole heart, because the day had been awful and you were safe now, you laughed one last tiny laugh into the dark.

Dex held you like that until you slept.

—end. 

buy me a ko-fi here!

Dex taglist part 1:

Adrian thought it was kismet when the two of you got paired together, seeing as it was your first mission as a quote-unquote couple since the drunken makeout you shared in Harcourt’s bathroom some weeks ago. He was like a stray puppy that way — you fed him once, and he kept on coming back because he assumed that meant you actually wanted him.

You just thought it was a pretty genius move on Harcourt’s part, really. What better way to ensure a swiftly done mission than to put you in a tin box with the most annoying man on the face of the planet?

But what Waller failed to brief you on was that The Architect was a total fucking psychopath, far beyond usual supervillain standards. The layout of his warehouse was nothing like the one Economos had found — it was more maze-like, and descended nine floors into the ground, not quite unlike a replica of Dante’s fucking Inferno.

It wasn’t until you and Adrian were ambushed by a series of armed guards that you realized that The Architect wanted to be found. He wanted Economos to locate the warehouse, and he wanted Harcourt to think the mission looked easy. The Architect was looking for someone to play cat and mouse with, and you fell right into his trap. Like a total fucking idiot.

You and Adrian seek sanctuary in what seems to be the storage area. The windowless room is filled with cardboard boxes, all packed and organized on metal shelves against the wall that rise to the ceiling. It’s lit by a single white-green fluorescent light that clicks and buzzes every so often. The heavy door shuts behind you and locks with a heavy ca-chunk.

It does not open again.

Dead guards litter the hallway outside, and both of you wear the woes of battle over. The left side of your face is burning and throbbing with it. Metallic blood pools in your busted mouth and seeps from your bruised nose. A kick to the chest from a man twice your size has left you wheezing, and your ankle still throbs from where you’d stomped at him until his handsome face turned into a mangled, unrecognizable mess.

You’re still not sure how much of the blood stained on your jeans and fitted black t-shirt is actually yours.

Adrian got the worst of it, though — all of that and then some.

Along with various raging scrapes and blossoming bruises, he sports a number of lacerations on his lean body from a psycho wielding an army knife. Most of them are surface-level, and hardly any of them will require stitches. Save for the one just under his ribcage, maybe, that weeps and trickles like a waterfall of deep red crimson.

“Fuck!” Adrian whimpers as he stumbles to the opposite side of the room, wrenching off his mask with one hand and clutching his wounded side with the other. He leans his swaying body against the metal wall and slides slowly until he’s sitting down. Then he winces, swallows hard, and pulls his gloved hand away.

The leather of his suit is torn around the cuts on his torso. The teal blue stripes are tinted a darker purple from the blood. The deepest puncture at his side pounds like a heartbeat, and the sight of his open flesh makes his head spin.

Adrian cradles himself there once more and squeezes his eyes shut when the dim room starts to spin around him.

“Holy fuck!” he bellows in pain.

“Can you shut up!” you shout from the other side of the room, dragging in another rasping inhale. “I’m trying to hear!”

You turn away to press your ear back to the vault door. You find nothing but an eerie silence on the other side, save for the faint rattling of dying guards. It’s quiet. Too quiet. A quiet you’ve learned to be wary of — it’s hardly ever the end of a thing, but typically the beginning. The calm before the storm.

You just hope the rest of the team had heard your calls for backup before your comms got smashed to pieces.

Adrian winces and swallows down his strangled whimpers of pain. Being stabbed hurts, of course, but not quite as much as you being angry at him. He thinks it must be in his blood to obey you. The blood which rushes from his body like an open faucet now.

“Sorry. I’m just—” He drags in a wavering breath through his gritted teeth. “I’m pretty sure I’m bleeding out over here…”

“You’re not bleeding out,” you scoff, spitting dark blood from your mouth onto the tile floor below. “Jesus, you’re so dramatic…”

Adrian finds a strange comfort in your innate insensitivity. He always has. Every time you’re mean, it always feels a little like you’re flirting. Each of your hurtful jabs has a funny way of finding him like kisses on the cheek.

“Yeah… You’re probably right…” he sighs and tries to catch his breath. The air feels weirdly thinner now, though, and he convinces himself that the oxygen is running out accordingly. “Oh, fuck…”

Your head whips over your shoulder at his trembling tone. “What?”

“‘M gonna pass out…” Adrian slurs, squeezing his eyes shut when his vision starts to blur.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” you snap and storm the short distance towards him, the best you can on one good foot.

Adrian can hear the sound of your heavy boots against the metal ground, but they sound muffled and far away, like he’s hearing them from underwater. And when you crouch down beside him, you feel much further away than that, too.

He can still smell you, a delirious combination of rich copper blood and musky vanilla perfume, but he can’t see you behind the black evading his vision.

“Oh, fuck,” he echoes. “I can’t see…”

“Open your eyes, you idiot!”

Adrian realizes his eyes are closed, and they snap open in an instant, round and slightly glassy. He finds you much closer than he’d expected, kneeling at his side and looking almost worried behind the bruises and cuts stamped to your skin.

His gaze darts wildly around the room. Everything in it feels light years away, like he’s seeing it all in some kind of movie theater in the very back of his mind.

“I can’t see!” he insists dramatically, anyway.

You huff and roll your eyes, reaching over his battered body for the top pocket of his suit — careful to avoid his many injuries when you retrieve his glasses for him there. You shove the thing back over his face, stamping a bloody thumbprint on the bottom of the right lens. The left one, wounded in battle, is now cracked and splintered in the middle.

“Better?” you monotone.

Adrian opens his eyes wide only to squeeze them shut again in an utterly stupid-looking cycle, like he’s trying hopelessly to re-orient himself. His chest heaves under his fitted suit, each breath trembling through his gritted teeth. He’s very visibly hurt. The foreign look of panic pinching his face makes your chest ache with a distant worry.

“I swear to god, if you pass out in here, I’m leaving you,” you tell him.

His breath catches for a moment. His green-eyed gaze glimmers with uncertainty when they lock with your unsmiling ones. “…Seriously?” he murmurs.

You cave almost instantly at the look of puppy-like hurt twisting his features.

“No…” you sigh, still scowling, even as Adrian musters a trembling smile that looks more like a wince. “But if you die on me, Vij, I will fucking kill you. Do you understand?”

He goes to make a joke — about how in love with him you are despite always being so mean — but the words get lost somewhere in his throat before he can. He hardly notices when his eyes flutter shut and his heavy head starts to loll to his shoulder, until you grab him firmly by the jaw.

Adrian blinks like an owl when you grip his chin between your thumb and forefinger. “I said, do you understand?”

He opens his mouth to answer, but then he pauses for a few moments more.

“…Do you hear that?” he slurs.

“Hear what?”

“That.”

You hold your breath and strain your ears. Only then do you hear the quiet hissing sound coming from far away — not outside, but in here. It rumbles faintly in the walls, like an old A.C. clicking on with a heaving whoosh.

When your eyes flit up to the vents, you find a strange mist seeping from the rusted metal slats. Fine scarlet particles billow in wispy clouds on either side of the room.

The Architect surely knows you’re in here. You figure he must’ve been the one to lock the door behind you. Now, he’s just experimenting with you — like rats in a maze, or bacteria in a petri dish. You wonder if it was his plan all along to trap the two of you in here. You wonder if he’s watching you now, from some camera hidden in the walls.

Adrian’s glazed-over eyes swim with terror. “…What the fuck is that?”

“Cover your nose,” you tell him, wide eyes trained on the slowly sinking fog.

“What?”

“Cover your nose!”

You shield your bloodied one in the crook of your elbow. Adrian tries to follow suit, but finds his limbs have gone strangely heavy. His hands feel like they’re made of brick. “I can’t feel my arms—” he tries to whine. The complaint gets lost in his mouth when you cover it with your free hand.

His round, panic-stricken eyes flit between your worried face and the crimson mist rolling along the pristine metal floor. It feels strangely cold when it meets the exposed skin of his face, billowing in threadlike clouds over his legs and feet. He tenses and waits for it to burn, for it to pierce through his suit and skin like acid. It never does.

Feeling a little safer than before, he goes to take a much-needed breath in. He finds you’re holding him much too tight for that. Your scraped hand deprives his nose and mouth of any air, even when his lungs begin to scream for it.

He tries to tell you this, but the words turn to mush as they rumble against your palm.

“Shut up and wait,” you spit in a muffled scold.

The heavy red mist turns pink when it dissipates, then evaporates entirely a few dragging moments later. You wait a lingering beat after that, just to make sure it’s really gone, before letting either of you breathe again.

Adrian takes in a deep, ragged exhale that rattles through his aching chest. His pulsing rib cage stings when his stomach heaves, and he winces accordingly. He needs to catch his breath, but it hurts too much to do so — and when he holds it, his body only screams for it more.

You watch him writhe with an unenthusiastic stare. “You okay?”

His only answer is another gasping breath.

You sigh and stand to walk away. “Yeah, you’re okay…”

Adrian scoffs bitterly at your limping figure, holding tightly to his wounded side. “Trust me. I think I’m far from fucking okay—”

“You’re fine.”

“I got stabbed—” he shouts, then cuts himself off with a groan when he tries to sit further up. A wave of white-hot pain spreads from his ribcage to the entire left side of his body. He bites back a strangled cry and slouches slowly against the wall again. “And also, I’m pretty sure my lung collapsed after that asshole kicked me in the back…”

“So, you should probably stop talking then, huh?” you huff and press your shoulder into the heavy metal door.

“But I love this back and forth we have going, don’t you?” Adrian pouts. You roll your eyes and say nothing. He doesn’t let the silence linger for long. “Is that stuff gonna kill us, you think?”

“No,” you answer instantly, then doubt your confidence a second later. You exhale a wavering breath that you feel rattling in your lungs. “I— I don’t know. It’s still in the air, but it’s not as— as strong so… I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t feel it,” Adrian says, almost optimistically so. “Do you feel it?”

You think for a moment, then shake your head. “No…”

“Yeah, I… I kinda feel good, actually.”

Your eyes narrow in a disbelieving squint. “I thought you were bleeding out?”

Adrian tilts his heavy head to his shoulder and lifts his trembling fingers. The sight of his open flesh doesn’t get any easier. It’s still raw and still weeping, though a little bit less than before. The stinging pain has ebbed some, too, replaced now with something slightly more numb that he can feel radiating up and down the length of his body.

“Yeah, I think I still am…” he nods with a faint grimace. “But it— It feels a little different now, though…”

“…Different how?”

“Different… tingly,” he answers. “Like, you know how, back in the day, when you’d turn on your television and the screen would feel a little furry?”

“No?”

“Well, that’s what it feels like.”

You open your mouth to make fun of him. It’s instinct to at this point. But the words get trapped in your throat when you realize what he means — this strange tingling sensation that starts at the tips of your fingers and toes. It rolls through the opposite ends of your body, like your veins are made of live wires, until it meets finally in the pit of your stomach.

A warm feeling swirls there. Not painful by any means, or entirely foreign for that matter, but the chemically produced reaction still frightens you a little.

“Oh, fuck…” you waver under your breath as you limp towards the shelves at the other side of the room.

The fear flickering across your face fills Adrian with an immediate worry. It’s easy not to be scared when you’re around, ‘cause you never get scared. Ever. So, naturally, you’re sudden panic strikes him hard in the chest.

“What is it?” Adrian wonders aloud, wide eyes following your form behind his dirtied glasses.

You say nothing as you tear into the sealed packages with your bare hands. The sound of dull pops and harsh rips fills the quiet, windowless room. You find nothing in these boxes other than neatly packaged vials, filled with the same scarlet substance from before. You toss each one to the floor with an impatient huff — on an evident mission that Adrian doesn’t quite understand.

“What are you doing?”

“If The Architect stores his stuff in here, maybe he keeps the antidote in here, too.”

Adrian’s face screws. “Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” he tells you, not argumentative by any means, but trying to be constructive.

“I don’t see you offering up any ideas!” you shout back.

The venom in your tone makes him flinch. “I’m fucking dying!” he reminds you.

“Oh, my god,” you scoff a wheezing breath. “You’re fine—”

The argument dies in your throat when the familiar whoosh-ing sound returns. It’s followed quickly by a faraway hiss, and then by wisps of red fog from the vent above your head. You rush instinctively back to Adrian when the thin mist makes its swift descent, all but stumbling over your twisted ankle and toppling into his wounded side.

His pained scream gets buried in the skin of your palm.

Your face twists into a sympathetic wince behind your elbow. You can feel each of his distressed whimpers rumbling against your hand.

You try to ease some of your body weight off the boy below you. Your knee brushes against his parted legs as you try to rise into a crouched position. You freeze when you feel something hard between his thighs.

Adrian tenses, too, eyes wide behind his crooked glasses. He cowers under the glare you give him.

You don’t say anything until the red fog has dissipated into pink mist, and then finally into nothingness. Then you jerk away from him like he’s burned you.

“Are you hard?!” you exclaim, voice ringing through the metal room, as you stand upright on your sore foot.

“No!” Adrian shouts back, features screwed in a feigned offense. Your scowl never wavers. He swallows hard and shrinks under your towering form. “Yes…”

“What the fuck, Adrian?!”

“You know I like it when you’re mean to me! It’s not my fault!” he defends in a feeble whine. You roll your eyes and stumble away from him with a deep huff. Adrian’s face twists, mourning the closeness between you. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m not thinking straight! It’s the blood loss!”

“I can’t believe this…” you scoff.

“Aw, honey…” Adrian coos sympathetically. “I’m gonna be okay—”

“What? I’m not talking that, Vij!” you argue, spinning on your good foot to face him as you gesture wildly with your hands. “I’m talking about how we’re trapped in here, breathing in some goddamn chemical we weren’t properly briefed on! We don’t even know what’s going to happen to us down here! The Architect is probably watching us right now!”

“We’ll be okay, honey—”

“Stop calling me that!” you shout.

“But you like it when I call you honey.”

“No, I don’t!”

(You do. But that’s not the point.)

You take in a wavering breath. Your lungs fill with something heavier than air — something warmer and fuzzier, something that feels like static. The feeling makes you suddenly lightheaded, though that’s probably just all the shouting. (Adebayo always blames your frequent headaches on your quote-unquote yelling problem.) You figure that, along with the borderline beating you took no more than ten minutes ago, must be the culprit.

So you limp to the opposite wall and slide yourself into the furthest corner from Adrian, aching for a little bit of distance now. You bend your knees to your chest and tilt your head back until the crown of it meets the metal shelves behind you.

“You just stay over there, and I’ll stay over here, and…” you sigh a rasping breath. “The others will find us soon, and we’ll figure it out…”

“Well, it’s not like I’m going anywhere, right?” Adrian scoffs, then winces at the ache it puts in his side. “Ouch…”

You keep your eyes closed and your breathing steady, trying to keep the panic at bay while you wait for the strange feeling to subside. Only it never truly eases. It just keeps on building. Like a Fourth of July sparkler set aflame behind your ribcage, that flickers and fizzles without end.

You squeeze your eyes shut and pretend you don’t feel any of it.

“Is it starting to hurt for you?” Adrian’s voice pierces the heavy quiet, face screwed behind his crooked glasses.

“No,” you lie through your teeth.

“Yeah, me neither…” he says with a disbelieving waver, blinking hard to clear the haze. He finds your scraped features twisted into a pained sort of look as you swallow down tiny whimpers, bruised hands balling into trembling fists at your side. “…You okay?”

“I don’t know,” you pant, finding it suddenly very difficult to catch your breath.

Adrian perks with concern almost instantly as he shifts on the wall to sit further up. The worry pinching his chest hurts him far worse than the fresh wound at his side. “Are you in pain?”

“Just— Stop talking—” you tell him, much softer than the usual bite you use with him.

“‘Cause you look like you’re in pain.”

“I’m not, alright? I can just…”

You realize you’re holding your breath and opt to take in a much-needed inhale — a horrid idea in retrospect. ‘Cause it’s not the scent of dust and old metal that pervades you then, but something muskier, like oaky cologne — and something distinctly salty, like sweat and skin.

Everything smells like Adrian, and your lungs fill with it.

“It’s the chemicals, I think,” you tell him, jaw clenched tight. “I feel like I can smell you.”

“Sorry…” Adrian hums with a sympathetic wince. “I think that’s just me, actually… I ran out of soap this morning, so I had to use shampoo instead, and I don’t think it worked very well—”

“Adrian…” you caution in a strangled voice.

It’s the first time you’ve ever used his real name, and the notion isn’t lost on him. Instead, it finds him like a punch to the gut — a distant pounding he can feel in his most sensitive depths.

“Do you feel that, too?” you ask him.

He thinks for a moment and tries to guess what you might mean. The swimmy head? The sparkling chest? The swirling stomach? The throbbing between the thighs?

“Yeah…” he answers, quavering voice filled with a palpable panic. “Holy fuck— Are they spraying us with that weird chemical shit to make us horny? Are we gonna have to fuck each other to get out of here? You know, like those guys did in Saw?”

“What?” you snap. “Nobody fucked in Saw.”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure they did—”

“Adrian…” you repeat in that same pitiful tone that makes him dizzy. You look like you want to say more, but can’t quite get the words out. Your face just scrunches together until you look like you might cry.

Adrian wants to comfort you. His entire being aches with it, and it hurts far worse than being stabbed. He’d crawl to you if he had the strength for it.

“Can you just—” Adrian swallows hard. “Can you just come here?”

Your heavy eyes flutter open, more glazed over than usual. You stare daggers at the boy across the room anyway. You find him still slouched against the wall, clutching his side and peering at you through his cracked lenses. There’s something strikingly soft in the way he looks at you, despite all the bruises on his face.

“…What are you talking about?” you ask.

“Nothing. Just… Just come over here,” he shrugs. “M—Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

Your eyes narrow into a challenging squint. “You’re such a fucking creep,” you scoff.

“Remember what Harcourt said? About how The Veil makes people crazy until they— act on their impulses or whatever? Maybe it’s like that now! Maybe we just need to be, you know, close. That’s all.”

There’s a hopeful glint in his dark eyes and a pleading twist to his features that makes your aching that much worse. You almost think you could cry if you’d let yourself. Instead, you just squeeze your bent knees together and pray the heartbeat between your thighs goes away on its own.

“I can’t…” you tell him after a few long moments of heavy silence.

“Can’t what?”

“Be close to you.”

Adrian swallows hard. He can’t tell if it’s a flat-out rejection or an attempt at self-restraint. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what I’ll do…” you confess in a pained whisper. “And I don’t wanna hurt you…”

Adrian shakes his head in response. He doesn’t think anything could hurt him more than the distance between the two of you now — not so cavernous in hindsight, but feeling close to it anyway.

“You couldn’t,” he promises, he pleads.

Your skin starts to buzz, like there’s fizzling electricity rushing through your veins instead of blood. You grit your teeth and ball your hands into fists until your nails dig burning crescent shapes into the skin. The pain does little to distract you from the tingling warmth that’s already swallowed you whole — or from the throbbing between your legs that beats out of sync to the thrumming of your pulse.

You wonder briefly if the pounding between your squeezed thighs belongs to Adrian’s heartbeat instead of yours. The thought alone makes the world sway beneath you.

“Fuck—” you hear yourself cry in a strangled voice as your half-numb limbs lift you from the cold, unforgiving ground.

You hardly notice the dull panging in your ankle when you stagger the short distance back to Adrian. You tumble gracelessly into his side, straddling one of his legs between both your thighs, as you cradle his bruised jaw between your calloused palms.

The thought to take a breath doesn’t once cross your mind as you pull him into a searing kiss. Adrian grumbles a quiet moan against you when you lick into his parted mouth without warning.

You exhale a heavy sigh as you relish the foreign flavor of him. You remember the boy tasting once of beer and salty chips and boy — now he tastes mostly of copper blood. Blood and something distinctly sweet, which you chase with your tongue just now.

Adrian keeps his head tipped back and his mouth open for you, letting you kiss him the way you want.

He reaches out for you with numb and heavy hands. His gloved fingers tremble until they find purchase on your thighs, adding to the bloodstains smeared on your dark jeans. He’d pull you closer to him if he had the strength for it, dig his finger into your skin until it left a mark. But now he just holds you there, and lets you make a mess of his mouth.

Your noses smush together at the intensity of your kiss. He can feel each of your exhaled sighs fanning across his cupid’s bow, and you can feel his muffled groans rumbling against your mouth.

You kiss him hard enough to bruise. Adrian finds himself praying that you do. He wants to be marked and stamped and burned by you. He wants a souvenir to remember this by.

But when you lean further into his chest, a white-hot pain sparks across his whole body, stemming from his bloody torso. Only then does he remember the stab wound he sports there. Warm blood seeps and stains the leather fabric of his suit, and Adrian pulls instinctively away with a hiss through his teeth.

“Oh, shit,” you pant. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay—” he shakes his head and leans in for another kiss.

You flinch back before he can. “No, I’m hurting you—”

“I want you to,” he pleads, round eyes darting wildly back and forth between your wet ones, half-hidden behind his glasses. “It’ll make us feel better, okay? I know it will—”

“I am not fucking you in here, Adrian.”

“W-What if it’s the antidote—?”

“No!” you interject with the stubborn shake of your head, voice breaking in a fragile protest. “No. Not like this.”

You’ve spent so much time making him chase you — so much wasted time that’s culminated in this. Some kind of chemically induced hook-up that neither of you particularly wanted or asked for, but was thrust upon you anyway.

You thought that when you finally let Adrian fuck you — because, let’s face it, you were always going to let him fuck you — that it might actually mean something. That he might actually want it.

Now, all you are is a means to an end.

So you’re not sure why Adrian still looks at you like you’re everything he asked god for, anyway.

“Please…” he begs in a broken whimper, bruised features twisting into a pitiful look. His hips shift beneath you, aching and desperate to feel you again, never minding the searing cut pulsing at his side. “Please, I need it— Fuck, I… I’m beggin’ you—”

His words find you like a punch to the stomach. You feel very suddenly like you’ve been starving for decades. The urge to take a bite out of him overwhelms you to the bone. Adrian lays his affection before you like a tablecloth, and what else are you meant to do, other than devour him completely?

You make quick work of undoing his pants, careful not to agitate the raging wound at his ribcage. The faint clinking of his belt buckle fills the quiet room, along with the sounds of eager, panted breaths. Adrian’s wide eyes dart from your bruised face to your impatient hands as they slip beneath the hem of his boxers, colder than silk against his burning skin.

He inhales through his teeth when your fingers brush the coarse thatch of pubic hair above his cock. He’s already half-hard and warmer than velvet when you grip him in a loose fist.

The breath leaves his lungs in a wavering exhale when you drag his cock from the confines of his briefs. It sits heavy on his right hip, glowing a faint pink color at the tip, with a singular vein that trails from the base to the head.

You can’t believe you used to laugh when Peacemaker would call him Thimble.

“I was a late bloomer!” Adrian would always say. “Excuse me for not hitting puberty until my mid-twenties!”

If that was the case, then you figure puberty must’ve hit him pretty damn hard.

You rise slowly to take your pants off and grimace at the distant ache in your ankle. Adrian’s gloved hands reach out to steady you on instinct, though the strength is still slow to return to them. He tilts his chin to keep your gaze when you loom over him, watching your anxious fingers fumble with the buttons of your jeans.

He curls his buzzing fingers around the hem, tugging them down your thighs, along with the black cotton panties you wear underneath. It leaves your lower half totally bare at his eye line. His head swims at the sight of your plush thighs, littered with leftover bruises, and the manicured hair just above your glittering pussy.

You descend slowly back over him again. Adrian swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He rests his tingling hands over your waist to keep you steady as you straddle his lean hips. You prop yourself on his shoulder with one hand and slide the other between your bodies, wrapping a loose fist around his stiff cock.

Adrian’s breath hitches in his throat. Your heavy eyes lock with his lidded ones, half-hidden behind the crack in his lenses, as you drag the bulbous tip between your drenched folds.

His chest deflates with a wavering sigh.

You feel like silk. Softer than silk.

“Do you want this?” you ask on bated breath.

Adrian can’t find the words, so he just nods rapidly in response.

“Tell me,” you command.

“Please,” he begs in a fragile whisper almost instantly. “Please, fuck me—”

His plea trails off into a groan when you pierce yourself on his cock.

A gasp gets caught in your throat when you sink down over him. You relish in the distant burn in the pit of your stomach as you stretch around his cock. The ache washes away as fast as it came, leaving a velvet-coated pleasure in its wake.

Your exhale leaves your parted mouth in a faraway whimper when he’s buried to the hilt. He’s in you and all over you, and still not quite close enough. It’s overwhelming in the best way possible. Enough to make tears burn in the backs of your eyes.

You rock your hips over his lap without warning. Adrian’s kissed lips curl into a tight line, trapping a moan there, as his eyes flutter shut and his head falls back against the metal wall behind him.

“Oh my god…” he murmurs within a dragged-out exhale. The boy babbles to himself while you sway back and forth over his thighs in a slow, methodical rhythm — careful not to hurt him more than you already have. “Fuck me… This is so— so fucking hot. Holy shit…”

Adrian swallows hard and forces himself to keep his heavy eyes open, to watch you as you work yourself over his lap. He tilts his chin to his chest and shifts his hips to have the perfect view of your pussy as it splits open around his cock.

Your inner thighs glimmer with the honey you drool for him. His stiff cock and chestnut pubic hair shine with it, too. The sight of him all slick with you makes him dizzy.

You keep one hand curled around his neck while your other trails between your bodies, down to where the two of you meet. You tilt your heavy head back when your fingertips find your clit, face scrunching when you rub yourself there with a lust-fueled fervor.

A coil tightens in the pit of your stomach. Your pleasure begins to crescendo all at once, and your weeping cunt clenches somehow tighter around him.

“That feel good?” Adrian pants, eyes darting attentively over your fucked-out features, half-blurry behind his fogged lenses. You nod wordlessly in response as a whine sounds in the back of your throat. “Tell me,” he begs. “Tell me I’m making you feel good.”

“Fuck…” you whimper in a strangled cry. “It feels so good, Adrian— Fuck.”

Your hips stutter over his lap, losing their rhythm as your body fights to find its own pleasure. Your drooling cunt pulsates around him, suckling his cock impossibly deeper inside of you. When you duck down to hide your face in his neck, to bury your pathetic whimpers in his sweat-slick skin, Adrian wonders what it’d take for you to stop.

If the rest of the time came rushing in right now to save you, or if The Architect himself barged in prepared to destroy you both — would you keep on fucking him, too far gone on his cock and totally dumb on the pleasure?

The thought makes his stomach swirl. He imagines you riding him for all he’s worth, crying as you squirm on his cock while all your friends watch, seeing firsthand who you belong to. It’s enough to make him burst inside of you.

“Holy fuck, you feel so good…” Adrian murmurs between choppy breaths. “’S gonna— Shit… You’re gonna make me— You’re gonna make me cum if you keep riding me like that… Fuck, yeah, honey… Just like that…”

His praise trails off into a groan.

Adrian tenses beneath you, choking on his moans, as you cum together in a tangled mess of battered limbs and broken whines.

His eyes squeeze shut behind his crooked glasses as his cock spits inside of you, jerking wildly in your fluttering confines. “Fuck—” he shouts in a strangled whimper, blinking away stinging tears as the pleasure erupts so suddenly within him.

Your orgasm finds you much more quietly than his, though it racks through your body in more merciless waves.

Your face screws in a pained look as your jaw clenches, biting back the moans that swell in your throat. The hand on your sensitive clit stills, far too sensitive to touch now, though it’s quickly replaced with Adrian’s gloved one.

The warm, textured leather at his fingertips rubs relentlessly at the swollen button until you’re crying at the overstimulation. The static shocks it sends up your spine contrast heavily with the warm feeling of his cum seeping out of you.

“Adrian!” you gasp as you shake violently in his hold, twitching against his chest.

Adrian grimaces when you press against the fresh wound at his side. It sends a sharp, searing sort of ache up and down the length of his torso. He pulls you closer with his free hand on your thigh, anyway — keeping you close while you moan his name in his ear like it’s the only word you can remember.

Even as your orgasm fizzles slowly out, you’re still left trembling — whimpering pathetic little Adrian, Adrian, Adrian’s into his burning skin.

Your hips come to a slow stop over his lap, too quickly and yet not soon enough. You pick up your heavy head and press your forehead against his own, noses knocking as you catch your breath.

The effects of The Veil ebb like a low tide.

The gravity of the situation hits you like a freight train.

You pull back from him, chest heaving, and lift your hand to set his crooked glasses back on straight over his nose. It’s a subdued sort of affection that he’s never seen from you before now.

“You okay?” you ask, panting.

Adrian says nothing for a moment, as his lips curl into a lazy grin. “Told ya it was the antidote,” he lilts.

Your usual scowl returns to you. You roll your eyes and lift yourself from his softening cock, feeling instantly empty when he’s gone. You can still feel his cum seeping out of you as you slouch against the metal wall beside him — half-naked, leaking, covered in a mixture of his blood and yours.

Neither of you says a word for several long moments. You’re not sure what to say, or how to move on from this — or if you’ll ever be able to.

“So…” Adrian starts, because he’s never met a silence he wasn’t able to break. When the feeling returns to his tingling hands, he tucks his soft cock back into his boxers. “How, uh… How was it for you?”

He tilts his flushed cheek to his shoulder to look at you. His eyes dart wildly over your profile when you keep a thousand-yard stare at the locked door across the room.

“I wasn’t at the top of my game. Just, you know, by the way,” Adrian continues with an awkward chuckle. “‘Cause I’m— bleeding out and all, so… We should— We should probably do that again sometime, right? You know, when I’m not dying…”

He gets no sympathy from you, though he wasn’t exactly expecting any.

He smacks his lips against his teeth when you say nothing, nodding to himself as he turns away. “Yeah, that’s… I think that’d be best, you know? So you can get, like, the full scope of what I’m capable of…”

Your chest deflates with a heavy sigh as you reach for the pile of clothes at your feet. You grit your teeth and power through the ache in your spine as you tug your pants and underwear back on.

“‘Cause I’m usually like a machine, you know—” the boy continues hopelessly.

“Adrian…” you huff with a shake of your head, grimacing when you lift your hips to slide your jeans underneath them.

“Like a sex machine—”

“Adrian.”

He nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a gloved knuckle, blinking hard behind the splinter in the left lens. “Yeah?”

“Please shut the fuck up.”

He frowns. “Is that a no?”

“It’s a ‘please shut the fuck up,’ actually,” you deadpan.

His rosy, kiss-bitten mouth curls into a smug grin. “So then it’s a yes?”

Your head snaps in his direction to flash him a hardened glower. His smile ebbs as he flinches softly beside you. You like him best this way, you think — utterly taken by you, but always a little scared in his way.

“If we somehow get out of here…” you start slowly. “And if somehow Waller doesn’t ship our asses to Belle Reve… Then maybe— maybe— I will think about entertaining the idea of you possibly taking me out on a date… Is that clear enough for you?”

Adrian blinks like an owl. “Not really, no.”

You roll your eyes and turn your attention to the hands buttoning your jeans. “It’s a yes, Adrian…” you murmur shyly, with an audible smile in your voice, though it’s long gone by the time you look at him again. “As long as you don’t die on me in here.”

“You wish,” Adrian scoffs with a lopsided grin. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy, honey.”

You shake your head, dismissing the soft way he looks at you, as you stand on a wobbling foot. “Contrary to popular belief, Vij, I don’t wanna get rid of you at all.”

(The 11th Street Kids rescue you an hour or so later, littered in blood and bruises from a battle of their own. They’re only slightly surprised to find you and Adrian in a worse off state, as they survey the windowless room with matching glances of confusion. It smells of dust and blood and very faintly of sex.

“What the hell happened to you guys?” Lee wonders aloud.

“Long story—” you huff.

“—Oh, we had sex,” Adrian answers at the same time, as mindless as ever. You turn slowly to flash him a disbelieving glare over your shoulder, and his proud smile ebbs. “…What?”

He risks pulling you closer to him, and you come willingly with a sleepy sigh that just might be the sweetest sound he’s ever heard. His eyes move across your room, landing on the gun on your nightstand. Not totally safe, especially if it’s loaded, but you’ve been so paranoid lately that he’s not too surprised. Hopefully you won’t change your locks again. It’s a pain in the ass to break the one on your window without actually breaking the window. Besides, you don’t need to be so overly cautious. He’ll take care of you, just like he always does. He’ll keep killing the guys who are creepy towards you. He’ll keep up with his patrols by your house. He almost wants to wake you up to tell you that, but he’s pretty sure you won’t be soothed by it.

You stir again, always so fussy in your sleep when he’s close to you. He likes to think you can sense him, somehow. That maybe something subconscious is alerting you to his presence, rousing you just enough to snuggle up to him but not quite enough for you to wake up all the way. He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that your panic is because of him. Because you’re smart and you’ve seen the missing items in your home and obviously noticed the broken locks enough to keep changing them, but you’re safe. You’ll always be safe because he’ll always keep it that way.

His armor has blood on it. He hopes it doesn’t smudge on your face again. You always get so upset when that happens.

“I love you.” He whispers, nose brushing your cheek. Your own nose scrunches again, and he can’t help his grin. Fuck, if he could just kiss you, just once, he’d be the happiest man in the world. But you’d wake up, and probably freak out, and with his mask off and his face exposed that’ll be a whole new mess to deal with. He doesn’t know a whole lot about relationships, but he’s pretty sure this one won’t start too wonderfully if he has to tie you up and keep you locked in your own apartment until you calm down.

“But I gotta go, okay?” You don’t answer, but the feeling of his breath against your cheek and his voice in your ear is beginning to make you rouse. As much as it kills him, he has to leave, “I’ll be back tomorrow. Sleep tight.”

He risks a kiss to your forehead as he untangles himself from you. When you hum, and turn into the pillow, it takes everything he has to not climb back into bed. If he could just take off his armor, and slide beneath the covers with you, and hold you in his arms until the sun comes up with your warm breath against his skin and your body against his own…

No. He can’t. You’re not ready for that.

But when you’re sleeping, so soft and warm and sweet in his arms, he can pretend. So he’ll keep pretending.

But he isn’t a very patient man, even on his best day. Maybe… maybe he doesn’t have to pretend too much longer.

-

You wake fully clothed, on top of your comforter, with your mouth dry and the smell of pine and blood in your bed.

That smell. That familiar, bone-chilling smell, makes you scramble for the gun on your bedside table and bolt upright before your eyes are even fully open. A habit, now, built up since the first time you woke to a broken lock on your front door and bootprints staining your carpet.

Once, when you woke up like this, there was blood on your shirt. Another time, the window was open and you had creases on your cheek like you’d slept on something harder and firmer than your pillow.

You think you might be losing your mind. And, worst of all, you think you might prefer to be losing your mind. The alternative is so much more horrifying.

Your room is empty. The window is closed. The sun is creeping over the horizon, and your phone is dead.

Before, when this first started happening, you would take an extra few minutes to tremble and re-check the apartment. Maybe cry with a mixture of horror and frustration. Now, you know you won’t find anything. You know that sitting frozen in fear won’t help. It never does.

You just go through the motions, trying to remain as numb as possible. You set the gun back down on the bedside table, shuffle out of your clothes, plug your phone in, and do your best to drift off.

Your eyes are on the window, and as you finally start to drift off, you think you might glimpse a smudge of teal in the soft light of dawn.

-

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks, Dave.”

“Are you still not sleeping?”

“Sleeping like a fucking baby, Dave.”

“You’re not going to be able to serve tables if you’re looking like you’re gonna pass out.”

You grit your teeth, and try for a bright smile. Judging by your manager’s reaction, it might not look entirely right.

“I’m fine.” You insist, folding up your jacket and trying not to shove it too hard into your little cubby. “Just…been a rough week.”

“You’ve been having a few rough-“

“And have I been bad at my job?” You finally snap, doing your best not to whirl on him. “Have I had bad reviews or something?” You don’t mean it to sound so much like a challenge, but you’re more than a little cranky.

“No.” He admits, frowning, “you’re fine. I’m just…oh shit, incoming.”

You know what that means. But, unlike Dave and everyone else you work with, the warning doesn’t make you prickle, or brace yourself. In fact, you feel your shoulders relaxing before you even hear his voice.

“Hey! Did you see that National Geographic special last night?” Adrian Chase, in all of his overzealous glory, appears by your side just as you begin to tie your apron around your waist.

And you did. Because you haven’t been sleeping. And the last time you did, you passed out on the couch and woke up in your bed. Tucked in. Fully clothed, and with the faint scent of blood and pine lingering in the air.

You’ve been up for two days, since then.

“The one about penguins, right?” You ask, and move over to the computer to clock in, trying to blink the exhaustion from your mind as your free hand continues to fumble with your apron.

“Right.” Adrian breathes the word, like your confirmation that you watched it is the best thing he’s ever heard, and you know without needing to look that he’s grinning. “Did you know they mate for life?”

“Mhm.” You punch in your number. Grab a pen off the counter. “The pebble thing they do is cute.”

“Hey, c’mere.” His words barely register in your mind through your haze of exhaustion, but suddenly his hands are on your waist. He spins you to him like it’s second nature, and you don’t even realize what he’s doing until you feel your apron cinch around your middle, surprisingly deft fingers tying the strings for you.

He’s close. When you look up, he’s still grinning down at you, white teeth and bright green eyes and fingers still lingering on your waist.

You know he likes you. You’re not an idiot. While he seems to shy away and avoid any and all physical contact with your other coworkers, he also seems to always be looking for a reason to touch you. It’s usually simple gestures - a hand brushing your arm as he walks past you in the dining room, a finger tapping lightly against your nose when he’s rambling about something, or even the way he stands beside you so closely that his shoulder brushes yours when you talk.

But he’s never touched you like…this. 

“Thanks.” You say, entirely unsure of what to do. He’s never been this…bold, before. He’s so close that you can feel the ghost of his breath on your lips.

“Penguins propose to other penguins with pebbles.”

You’re exhausted, and definitely still only half awake, but you can’t be imagining the way his green eyes darken as they move over your face.

“Yeah?” You’re so tired you wonder if you might be imagining this. Sure, Adrian likes you, but he also calls you his best friend all the time, so you’re not totally sure how he feels about you. Besides, the horror movie you’re currently living in isn’t exactly conducive to a new relationship, so you haven’t thought to pry into whatever feelings he might have for you.

If it weren’t for the thick fabric of your apron, you might feel his fingers curl against your waist. Barely there, but possessive.

“And then they mate for life.” His nose is so close to yours that they’re about to touch, if he leans any closer.

“You mentioned-“

“You have table twelve.” You jump back at the sound of the hostess’s voice, shaking off the…whatever that was, and running a hand through your hair with a noise of confirmation.

When you look back at Adrian, he’s still smiling. His eyes are still dark. Still locked right on yours.

And you’ve been convincing yourself that you’re imagining things for weeks, now. But it’s a little more difficult to think you were imagining that.

-

Adrian almost kissed you. He came so, so close.

And you were actually awake, this time. In his arms, right where you belong, talking to him about that nature documentary that you watched because he recommended it and looking up at him with your big sleepy eyes - you look too tired, lately, you should be sleeping more - and for a second he was positive that if he just leaned down a little more he could have kissed you. That he might have been able to slide his arms a little more tightly around your waist, and pull you to him, and feel your body against his and taste your lips in the way he’s been thinking about for so long.

But the first time he kisses you has to be perfect. Not at work, in front of everyone - he’ll kiss you in front of everyone a thousand times when you’re officially together. When you’re officially his and you actually know that you’re his.

So the moment ended. And now he’s watching you smile tensely at table twenty as they say something to you that you clearly don’t like, and he’s trying to see what they look like over the booth but he can’t quite lean over enough to-

“Sir? Sir!”

He blinks, and only then notices that the water glass he’s been refilling has overflowed onto the table to the point that the liquid is spilling over the wooden surface, onto the floor and right into the customer’s laps. But now you’re walking back to the computer, and if he waits too long you’ll go check on your other tables and you seem upset. And tired.

“Whoops.” He says simply, and places the too-full water glass down, eyes never leaving you.

“Whoops? What do you mean by whoops? We’re soaked! Sir, excuse me! Aren’t you going to clean this-” 

But Adrian is already walking away.

-

You look annoyed, and even more tired now. The night air is chilly in the back alley of Fennel Fields, and you didn’t bring your jacket. Maybe he should go in and get you his. Maybe he could wrap his arms around you, and use his body heat to warm you up. He’s pretty sure you won’t let him, but the brief fantasy of you melting into his embrace makes something warm tingle beneath his skin.

“Hi.”

You look up from where you’re sitting on a small pile of crates, and when you smile at him his stomach does a backflip and explodes into a thousand tiny butterflies.

“Hey.” You’re so sleepy. He’ll definitely be able to hold you later. You’re gonna conk out right when you get home. “Table twenty hated their ravioli.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.” You sigh, and tilt your head up towards the dark sky. “But they also mentioned that I have a very ‘spankable ass’, so their overreaction to not liking ravioli isn’t so bad in comparison.”

If you were looking at him, you might see Adrian’s eyes darken. See the way his entire body tenses at your words, even as his voice remains light and easy.

“Want me to kill them for you?”

You snort. You think he’s joking. “Yeah, that’d be great, thanks.”

And just like that, you seal their fate. And you’ll never even know.

He opens his mouth to speak again, and the ‘I love you’ is on his lips. It always is. He pushes it back, hides it away to keep you from panicking like he does all the damn time, but he almost kissed you earlier and he might be closer to blurting it out than ever.

“Do you know what kind of owl that is?” You ask, just as he hears a soft hoot in the distance. Oh, he loves you. He loves you so, so much. You’re tired and annoyed and you’re still asking him questions because you want him here. You want him to talk to you. Obviously, you love him too. Even if you don’t fully know it yet.

He smiles, and his heart does another backflip.

“Eastern barn owl.” He says, confidently, and you make a soft noise of acknowledgement. “Because of the long hoots.”

“Huh. Cool.” You look out towards the dark woods, and take a moment to listen. The hoots are not long. You don’t mention it. “Okay, I’ve gotta go back in there.” And yet, your eyes move to his. “Are you good? Anyone been a dick to you tonight?”

“Nope.” Well, they have. People have actually been ruder and shorter with him than usual tonight. But he doesn’t care. It doesn’t actually get to him, like it seems to get to everyone else.

You rise to your feet. Stretch. The movement makes your uniform shirt tighten, and his mouth gets a little dry. “Maybe we should pick up smoking or something. Then we’d get more breaks.”

“Smoking’s bad for you. Plus, too many smokers litter cigarette butts all over the place.” His voice must hold a little more disgust than he means for it to, because your eyebrow is raised when you look back at him.

“That really bothers you, huh?”

“Littering? Of course it does, it’s illegal.” His brow furrows, genuine confusion lacing his tone, but then you smile again and he forgets what he was talking about. God, you’re beautiful. Maybe it would still be a perfect first kiss if he just grabbed you and kissed you right here. Maybe you would let him. Maybe you’d even let him back you up against the wall of the alley and rip off your uniform and-

The door swings shut behind you, and he stares at it for a moment. Since he’s already out here, he should call Economos and tell him about that cute thing you did a minute ago. How you asked about the owl. That way, he can show off how much he knows about owls and brag about his girlfriend.

Instead, he forms a plan. A simple, easy plan. Maybe not the nicest thing he’ll ever do to you, but…

But if it works, you’ll finally be with him. And when you’re with him, he’ll make sure that you’re so unbelievably happy that you’ll forgive him. It’ll be worth it.

Just a little bit longer.

-

Two days later, your sleep deprivation and paranoia have become more debilitating than ever.

When you went home the other night, you tried to sleep, only to wake an hour or so later with another bloodstain on your t-shirt and a draft creeping into your room through the open window. The window you keep closed. And locked. You were warmer than you should be, despite the blankets on you, and you couldn’t fight the overwhelming feeling that someone was just holding you.

When you’d gotten up to close the window, you heard something rattle on your fire escape. Your panicked inspection of the rickety structure had turned up empty. You hadn’t fallen back asleep.

The next night, there was a crash outside as you started drifting off. Your lock was broken. You spent the night with your back against the wall, gun aimed at the door.

Now, you’re leaning a little too heavily against the POS system at Fennel Fields, trying to remember if the guy at your table ordered a vodka soda or a plate of mozzarella sticks, when the sound of your coworkers voice makes you nearly jump out of your fucking skin.

“Ugh. What a waste, right?”

Your head might move a little too slowly as you turn to her. You feel like you’re underwater, even as your gaze follows hers to where Adrian is loading up a bus tub. You can see defined biceps flexing as he lifts the heavy container, and furrow your brow as you look back at the girl beside you.

“Hmm?” If you’re not at a table, words aren’t necessary. Too much thinking involved.

“I mean, he could be so hot, right? All that potential hotness just wasted on a total weirdo. That jawline? Those muscles? And he just talks about spiders and acts like a total freak all the time.”

“I…” your frown deepens a little. Her words dig at you enough that your reaction actually surprises you. “I don’t think he’s that much of a weirdo.” Not in a bad way, at least.

“Well that’s probably good.” She finishes punching in her table’s order at the computer beside you, and adjusts her uniform a little. “I mean, he is like, obsessed with you. If the serial killer glasses don’t turn you off, you should totally go for it.”

“We’re friends.”

She gives you a look that you don’t feel like arguing with. Don’t even feel like fully interpreting. You’re light-headed. Your body aches with exhaustion, and that empty booth across the walkway is looking like it might be really comfortable. If you could just lie down and close your eyes for a minute…

“You don’t look so good.” She says, and when you look up you blink a few times to clear your vision. “Are you still not sleeping?”

“I’m fine.” You feel like you say that all the time, now. The constant tension in your shoulders isn’t helping. You jump at the smallest movements, now. You barely listen when people talk. You would give anything, anything at all, to just close your eyes and sleep. Even five minutes might help. Just five minutes of feeling fucking safe and not worrying about how or where you’ll wake up or if the fucking lock is broken or-

“Take a nap, babe. Try melatonin or something.” She says, so unhelpfully that you feel your jaw clench, and pats your arm as she walks away.

-

The shift goes by in a blur, and you’re fumbling with your keys by your car when Adrian finds you.

God, you’re tired. You are so, so tired it almost hurts. You probably shouldn’t even drive, but the idea of sleeping in your car is more vulnerable than trying to sleep in your own apartment and-

“Hey, you okay?” Adrian’s voice is by your ear, and it’s softer than usual. Despite your constant paranoia, you don’t even have it in you to jump.

His hand comes up to where you’re fumbling with your keys, like he’s about to help you with them, and you suddenly find yourself dropping them into his hands and thunking your head back against his shoulder, way more familiar than is at all appropriate for a coworker, friend or not. If you were any more awake, you might be embarrassed by the gesture.

“I don’t wanna go home.” You mumble, miserably, the honesty feeling like a breath of relief, and you feel him tense all over, if only for a second.

And then his arm sneaks around your waist, holding you up, and his nose turns into your hair. He’s warm, and steady, and his chest is surprisingly firm against your back.

“Okay.” He hums, still so uncharacteristically quiet. “Do you wanna come over?”

You shouldn’t. It probably won’t be safe for him, after all. Whatever is out there, whatever or whoever is following you and breaking your locks and moving things in your home and making you feel like you’re losing your fucking mind, they might hurt him. You might be putting him in danger.

But you’re not thinking straight, and his arm is solid and strong around your middle, and you feel surprisingly safe right now. For the first time in what feels like forever.

You nod. And you think, vaguely, you feel him smile as his arm tightens around you.

“M’kay. C’mere.” He murmurs, and you begin to pull away before he moves to wrap a hand around the backs of your thighs, scooping you up bridal-style against a broad chest.

“I can walk, Ade.” You say, unable to fight back a surprised laugh, and he matches the sound with a wide grin of his own.

“Nah, I gotcha.” He hoists you up a little higher as he carries you over to his car. It’s ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous. You’re so tired you can’t think straight. This is definitely a stupid idea - you’ve never even been to Adrian’s place before, and as much as you like talking to him at work he could be a fucking serial killer for all you know.

And yet, the idea of going home alone is…terrifying. The idea of being awake all night again, of seeing things outside your windows and being so exhausted that you can’t tell if it’s some kind of hallucination or the real thing, is so frightening you just might be willing to risk ending up in some Silence of the Lambs situation with Adrian Fucking Chase.

“You don’t have to-“ you start, but Adrian has already opened the passenger door of his car, and is leaning over you to buckle you up. He’s humming. He smells like mozzarella sticks, cheap cologne, and maybe a little bit of bleach. It’s nice. Comforting, even.

“Seriously, I’m fine. You really don’t have to do this.” You try again, and he shushes you with a pat to your cheek as he moves over to the driver’s seat.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’ll take you home tomorrow. Just lemme take care of you.” He says, and you frown.

“Are you-“

“Shush.” He insists, and one large hand pats your thigh as he settles himself behind the wheel. “I’ve gotcha. For reals.”

And, as weird as it is, as ridiculous as this whole thing might be, you smile.

-

You fall asleep within minutes.

You fight it, of course. You’re so adorable, trying to focus long enough to talk to him as he drives, humming along to the music he plays and fighting to keep your eyes open.

But he blasts the heat, and he even stays as quiet as possible, until your eyes finally flutter shut and your breathing evens out.

You’re in his car. You’re so pretty he can barely focus on the road. When he pulls up in front of his place, you stir, but you don’t wake.

He’s waited so long for the day that he gets to hold you when you’re not sleeping. Gets to run his fingers through your soft hair without worrying that he’ll wake you. Even asleep as you are right now, it’s close. Because if you wake up now, you won’t try to run. Probably.

He carries you inside, and you still don’t wake. So cute. So perfect. So soft as he risks leaning down to brush his lips over your forehead. You’ve always been a heavy sleeper, never really waking too much when he first started breaking in. But now, now that you keep trying to stay awake all night all the time, it’s like you can sleep through anything. Through him snuggling you into his chest, or carrying you from the couch into your room…

He’s taking risks. He knows he is. What happens the night you do wake up? When you look up to see him holding you in his armor, and freak out? All of his plans for that day involve…shit, they mostly involve kidnapping you until you stop freaking out. And maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. He could take care of you more easily, without having to follow you around to make sure you’re safe. And he’ll get to see you more often. And maybe you’ll even like it, after a while.

But with that plan, you’ll be mad at him for weeks. Maybe even longer. And you just let him take you home. Just trusted him to take care of you.

No, he needs to wait. He needs to play this smart. He already feels so guilty for spooking you these last couple of nights, just enough to keep you awake until you nearly collapsed into his arms in the parking lot. It’ll be worth it, of course, but it doesn’t make him feel any less like a bad boyfriend.

You wake as he lays you down on top of his comforter, jolting up with surprise and all that familiar paranoia. All he can think is that you’re in his room, in his apartment, and you look like you belong here.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” He greets, fighting the urge to climb atop you and figure out how many ways he might be able to keep you awake, just for a little longer. “Want some pjs?”

You frown, taking in your surroundings, and seem to think through your situation. You’re in your coworker’s apartment, in his bed, without a car and still in your work uniform. You just so much as passed out in his arms, and allowed him to carry you to his car and up a few flights of stairs.

“I can sleep on the couch.” You try, and he shakes his head.

“Hey, it’s not weird. It’s totally fine.” He has to fight tooth and nail to keep the desperation out of his voice, shuffling through his drawers until he finds you a t-shirt and some sweatpants. “Plus, you’re all freaked out about something. That’s why you haven’t been sleeping, right? You can stay in here. I’ll protect you.” Yeah, he sees the irony, but so what? At least he’s not tying you to the bed or something. That would be fucked up. This is chivalrous.

You hesitate. Rub at your eyes. He sees the bags under them. Sees the gears in your mind turning. You might just be exhausted enough to push past all the social norms everyone seems to care so much about. All those annoying little things that tell you that this is weird that he can’t for the life of him figure out.

C’mon. Please, please, please….

“Okay. Yeah, okay.” You nod, making your decision, and gather the clothes in your arms. “Bathroom?”

He points you to it, and manages to keep himself from grinning until the door clicks behind you.

No way. No way he’s this lucky. Good things really do come to those who wait, huh? He should call Chris. Or John. But then again, they think you sleep over here all the time, so they won’t get it. And you’ll probably hear the phone call, and…

He shakes off the thought, changes into his own pajamas, and nearly climbs back into bed to wait for you before he realizes that he should probably hide the pictures of you in his room. The items he’s taken from your home. A pillow, a couple articles of clothing…

He’s just slid back under the covers when you shuffle out of the bathroom, and you look perfect in his clothes.

And you’re looking at him, in his simple white tank top and sweatpants, and your eyes have drifted down to his exposed biceps and he’s totally not flexing. Totally not.

“C’mere, sleepy.” He pats the spot next to him, and you come. You follow his order, and slide beneath the covers of his bed, and he feels like he might start fucking vibrating with joy.

You’re hesitant. Still a little weirded out, maybe. A little awkward with how you’ve found yourself in your coworkers bed, in his clothes, picking nervously at his sheets. The urge to wrap you up in his arms is so strong that he almost surges forward and does it, and barely manages to hold himself back.

“Is your door locked?” You ask, eyes flitting to the windows, to his bedroom door.

“Yup.” What would you do if he kissed you right now? Or leaned closer and inhaled the lingering scent of your perfume? He wonders if you’ll still smell like you in his clothes, or if the scents will mix together and create a new smell that’s uniquely you two. “Windows, too. Do you wanna watch a movie?”

You still look like you’re about to fall asleep sitting up. That’s okay. You might fall asleep on him, and wouldn’t that be perfect? Maybe he can get you to lie down, and slide atop you and trace his lips and tongue and teeth over every inch of your body until you’re-

“Adrian?”

“Hm?” Oops. How long has he been staring at you? Is he drooling?

“…yes? To the movie?”

“Oh, yeah!” He rolls over to the other side of the bed, scrambles for the remote to the little TV on his dresser, and uses the excuse to roll back a little closer to you.

Your shoulders touch. Your eyes are fighting to stay open. He’s too happy that you’re here to risk draping an arm around you, so he opts for focusing all of his energy into the feeling of the barely-there points of contact between your bodies.

All according to plan.

-

He’s not surprised that you only lasted five minutes into the movie before you fell asleep again. After all, you were so exhausted before that you basically passed out in his arms, back in the parking lot.

And now, before the opening credits of the movie were even over, your head fell heavily against his shoulder. He’d grinned, and took extra time to guide you carefully down with him against the pillows, making sure not to wake you. He has the practice, after all.

He brushes your hair back from your face, bolder now that he doesn’t need to be worried about you waking up and panicking. Now that he’s not in full armor, or covered in blood, or…well, in your apartment without your knowledge.

You don’t stir. He leans a little closer, tucks your body into his chest, and inhales. You smell so good. Like you’re his. You look so amazing tucked beneath the blankets of his bed that his mind is already racing with ways he might be able to keep you here forever.

You wake at the movement, just a little. Just enough to puff a breath against his shoulder and blink your eyes open. Just enough that every instinct in him tells him that he should jump out the window. But he doesn’t need to. You’re here, in his bed, warm and safe and in his arms because you chose to be.

“Ade?” You mumble, and the nickname makes him have to fight back a delighted laugh. Look at you, calling him by the nickname you use at work with your soft lips brushing against his shoulder. In his home, in his bed, right where you belong. Finally sleeping after you’ve been so unnecessarily paranoid for so long. You don’t feel safe, but you always have been. You always will be. At least, without the mask and the armor, he can show you just how safe he can keep you.

“Mm?” He hums, feigning sleepiness of his own, and pulls you closer like he might just be too tired to realize that he’s doing so. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s wide the fuck awake, and banking on the fact that you aren’t.

You fall right into it, the twitch in your brow smoothing as you seem to come to the realization that he’s only half-awake, too. That moving might stir him, and it’s better to just snuggle closer and drift off again.

It takes a while for Adrian to actually fall asleep, but when he does, the last thing he remembers is tracing featherlight touches over your back, wishing with all of his might that he could just tilt your head back and feel your body relax against his in every other way than falling asleep.

He reacts like he always has, in those incredibly rare moments when you’ve even come close. He immediately tries to fix it, still not understanding exactly why you’re feeling what you're feeling but doing his best to calm you down until you feel ready to explain it to him.

He moves forward, and tries to wrap you up in his arms.

“Hey, it’s okay. Do you wanna-“

“No, Ade. I don’t want to quiz you on animal facts, okay? Just-”

“Hey.” Other Adrian looks at you. At Adrian. “Stop.”

He’s not talking to your Adrian. He’s talking to you. He’s looking at you. Because he knows that, with all of your love and patience for the gaps in your boyfriend’s empathy, the last thing you ever want to be is short with him. When you look back at your Adrian, he still looks so frustrated by his own confusion that it makes you hurt even more.

It’s too much. All of this feels like too much. All of this love he feels for you… you don’t know what to do with it. For what might be the first time, you genuinely don’t know how to explain what you’re feeling to him. You don’t even know how to apologize for snapping at him a moment ago.

So you default. You go straight to physical touch - the most tried and true form of affection for him - with you, at least. You reach up, cup his cheek, and pull his mouth down to yours.

His brows are still furrowed against your forehead, but he kisses back just like he always does. Intensely. Eagerly. He pulls you into him, lips moving against your own and body pressing against yours in that can’t-get-close-enough way that always makes your heart melt a little.

When you pull back, his hand slides over the small of your back, thumb brushing soothingly over your spine.

“You’re sad.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re sad. I know when you’re sad. You’ve got that little twitch under your right eye.” He reaches up to tap the spot in question. “And your nose scrunches a little. Like when you’re mad, or when Chris says something to me that you don’t like.” He taps your nose, now. He’s spent so long studying you, and he’s trying so fucking hard, and the overwhelming adoration you feel for him in this moment is just making everything even more confusing. “Plus, my kidneys hurt. I told you that happens when you’re sad.”

“Adrian, it’s fine, okay?”

“Why are you sad?”

“I’m not.”

“Why won’t you tell me? You always tell me.”

You pull away from him. He lets you, but his fingers twitch at his sides and his eyes remain locked on your face.

“I just…I need some air.”

He moves forward. Other Adrian stops him.

You don’t hear what they say. You don’t hear the conversation. You glance at the back of the couch, then to the floor, and then finally find your jacket on the hook by the door where Other Adrian must have picked it up and placed it at some point. For some reason, that makes your heart crack even more. That small difference between them. How he’s so organized while you and your Adrian are so chaotic.

You throw your jacket on, refuse to look back, and leave.

-

“Okay, yeah. She’s gone. She left. I’ve gotta-“

Adrian’s arm darts out, catching him before he can finish making his way to the door.

Gone. Upset. Maybe even crying and outside alone in the alley near the apartment that he’s walked through a thousand times just to make sure it’s not too similar to the one his version of you you died in. It is. They all are. Every alley, no matter where it is, will always be too similar to that one.

The Adrian from this dimension responds to the movement with pure, protective instinct, grabbing his arm and beginning to twist it to dislodge his alternate’s grip. Adrian snaps to action, and slams his hand into his shoulder, twisting until he has the other man pinned.

“Let me.” You’re alone. You’re upset. Gone. Alone. Fuck. Fuck. It’s getting a little more difficult to cling to his sanity - he’s been so good at it, lately. He almost forgot how hard it can be to keep the darkness from fogging over his every thought.

Your Adrian twists again, knocking him off, and tries to punch him in the face.

And how odd of a thing it is, to be able to sense his next movement like it’s the purest instinct. Because it’s exactly what he would do.

Adrian catches his fist, but he doesn’t throw a punch of his own.

“Let me.” He says again, and he’s gritting his teeth so hard to keep himself from slipping away that he’s worried they might crack, but seeing you might make it better. He can’t lose himself now. He needs to be there for you.

The Adrian from here falters. Blinks.

“I don’t get why she’s upset.” He finally says, and his shoulders hunch a little. “She always explains it.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t get it, dude. She won’t explain it. She always explains it.” And there is real, genuine frustration in his voice.

And fuck, fuck, because now he knows. He sees it. He’s called this version of himself an idiot. A’ frog-catching fucking fanboy’. He’s convinced himself that he’s better for you, because at least he knows why you’re upset. Knows your emotions as well as he knows his own. Shit, he even knows them well enough to be able to play you like a fiddle, working you up until you’re frustrated and pissed enough to admit what’s actually bothering you to him before you even admit it to yourself.

But this him, your him, he doesn’t. He doesn’t get it. He genuinely doesn’t understand why you’re so bothered right now, and it’s driving him fucking nuts.

“I get why she’s upset. Let me talk to her, okay?” Adrian’s hand rests on the other man’s shoulder, as comforting as he can possibly make it. He wishes he wasn’t realizing all of this. He wishes there wasn’t so much love for you reflecting in his alternate’s eyes. He wishes this idiot would get distracted or seem unbothered or something to vindicate him in his ever-present desire to have you, in any way that he can, and convince himself that he’s the right one for you. That he loves you more.

The Adrian from this dimension frowns. Hesitates. Deflates a little more.

And Adrian sees, in this moment, that this other version of him does get you. Sure, he doesn’t seem to understand why you’re sad, or angry, or even upset. He tries to deflect by showing you tree frogs, or making jokes, or telling you a fun fact that isn’t anywhere near correct. But it works. Because he knows you. He knows it will make you feel better.

And maybe this version of you needs that, just as much as you need him to work with your emotions until you finally admit them. Maybe…maybe they both work. Maybe they’re both good for you, in their own way.

The way you’re so patient with this version of him. It’s not just patience, is it? It’s understanding. Understanding that he’s trying. He’s really fucking trying, and he’s frustrated as hell that he can’t figure it out.

Maybe it would be easier if Adrian didn’t see that, now. Maybe he would feel better about all of this if he could still convince himself that he’s the better version of himself for you.

“She calms down if you compare her to a manta ray. Or an alligator. She calls you a weirdo, but she calms down.” His alternate says now, jaw still twitching with hesitation, fingers still flexing at his sides like he’s about to shove him aside and bolt out the door himself. “If she calls you a weirdo, she’ll let you hold her. And if she doesn’t and she’s still pissed, sometimes you can just kiss her. But you can only do that if she’s scrunching up her eyebrows.”

He doesn’t understand your emotions, and yet he’s studied every inch of you. Obsessively. Lovingly. He still doesn’t get it, but he‘s tried. He’s still trying.

And he should leave now, but Adrian still asks, “what if she doesn’t do either of those things?”

“It usually works. But if not you just follow her around until she’s better. Tell her you love her a lot.” His eyes dart to the door. Back to the other man’s face. “I’m only letting you go out there because you’re me.”

“Yeah, I know.” He’s already making his way towards the door, but the Adrian from this dimension catches his arm.

And there’s the danger. The promise of violence and pain. The proof, once again, that even this dumbass version of himself is a trained killer. Possibly more of a psychopath than him, and that’s fucking saying something.

“If you hurt her, or try to kidnap her again, or do anything fucked up, I’ll kill you.”

For what might be the first time, Adrian smiles at his alternate self, and really, truly means it.

“Okay.”

-

You can’t…think. You can’t sort through any of this bullshit. You can’t place a single emotion shooting through your veins enough to actually deal with it and it’s driving you crazy.

You snapped at Adrian. You never do that.

Fuck.

“Hey.”

You whirl around at the familiar voice, and run a hand through your hair. It’s starting to rain. And sure, you live in Washington, where it’s always fucking raining, but still.

“Are you fucking making it rain?” You snap, the memory of the last time you argued with this Adrian in an alley rising to mind. 

“I…huh?”

“Every time we have a…nevermind.”

“You’re not gonna ask which Adrian I am?”

“I know which one you are. You’re not wearing glasses.”

“Oh, right. Still forget about that.” He leans against the alley wall, casual, and watches you.

“Go away.”

“Does he have an extra pair?”

“What?”

“Glasses.” He points to his eyes. Raises an eyebrow. “Almost out of contact solution. I was thinking of getting gold frames or something, like the ones I have back in my dimension, mostly so you can still tell us apart. But-“

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re leaving.”

“Why?”

“Stop doing that.” You grit your teeth, glare at him. “You’re leaving. You should leave.”

“You don’t want me to, and I love you. Why would I leave?”

“Should I make a fucking list?”

“Sure.”

“Stop that!”

“Stop what?” He pulls off of the wall, and begins to make his way over to you. You back up. He doesn’t stop. “You’re thinking too hard. You’re working yourself up. It’s not a hard decision, baby.”

“It’s complicated. It’s too fucking complicated.”

“Yeah? We live in a world where people fly and aliens invade. I came from another dimension, and me loving you is too complicated?”

“Stop trying to make this make sense.”

“Stop acting like it can’t make sense.” He’s getting frustrated. You can see it in the tension in his shoulders. The way his hands twitch at his side - the telltale sign that he’s anxious. Ready to jump into action. “You’re saying people can fly, aliens can invade, and we can jump through other universes like we’re walking through a fucking door, but you can’t love me too?”

“It’s not that simple-“

“It’s us!” He’s shouting at you. Adrian Chase doesn’t shout at you. When he does, it’s to get your attention to tell you about a new cool thing Eagly did in the other room. Or to insist that he’s totally not mad at all, and that he’s never even been mad before in his life, he doesn’t care that you watched that nature show without him why would he care?

He doesn’t shout. Not with this much anger and desperation in his voice. Not like this. The sound of it jars you enough to make you still, just long enough for his hands to wrap around your upper arms and keep you locked in place. Not threatening. Never threatening. Never even hard enough to make your honed instincts kick in. Just holding you there. Making sure you hear him.

“It’s us.” He repeats, firm, and there’s an intensity to his gaze that shudders your next breath. “And I’m not talking about her, baby. I’m talking about us. I’m talking about the you that held a knife to my throat the moment you thought this version of me was lying to you. I’m talking about the you who punched Chris Smith in the fucking face, and then cried in my arms and forgave me when I realized what I’d done to you.”

You don’t speak. One hand leaves your arm, moving up to slide over your cheek, and you feel the prickle of tears forming behind your eyes, threatening to mix with the rainwater already beginning to flatten your hair to your head.

“I’m talking about this version of you, who fell in love with this version of me. And I’m talking about the version of you who loves me, despite all of the mistakes I’ve made. Despite all of the differences between me and him. You love me. I love you. And we can make it work. We’ll figure it out.”

A tear falls. He sweeps it away with his thumb.

There’s a little scar on his cheek, just below his cheekbone - faded, small, and barely noticeable. But you know it. You know it like you know the slightly crooked fingertip on your Adrian’s left hand, where the bone broke and never healed quite right. Something you would never see, never think about, unless you saw it every day.

How long ago did you notice this scar? How long ago did it become so familiar to you?

“You want me to stay.” He says now, and he isn’t shouting anymore. The thumb that brushed away your tear sweeps over your lower lip, reverent and soft. “But I need you to admit it. I need you to tell me.”

“I…”

You shake your head. You start to pull back.

“Don’t.” And it’s a warning and a plea all at once. Danger and promise and hope. Because you can’t tell him that you love him. That you want him. But you can’t tell him that you don’t, and he isn’t going to give up. Not unless you tell him to.

The rain falls. Heavy. Cold.

“You kidnapped me.” You try, and it is such an obvious deflection that it’s almost fucking laughable.

“You love me.”

“You tried to trap me in an alternate dimension. You fucking lied to me.”

“You love me.”

“Stop fucking saying that!”

He’s back on you in a second, hands in your hair and arms caging your body between his and the brick wall behind you. “Admit it.”

You’re like a deer in headlights, frozen and trembling with anger and frustration and unable to speak. He’s so close. He looks beautiful. Water trails it’s way down his face, darkens his hair and makes his gaze burn even brighter as he looks down at you. You can think of four ways to dislodge yourself from his grip. He wouldn’t fight back. He would let you. He might even leave, if you made a single defensive move.

You kiss him, instead.

You crash together like a shipwreck, the heavy rain around you the ocean you’re destined to drown in together. His hands grip at you so tightly you worry you might break beneath them. Your own rip at every part of him you can reach until he grunts against your lips and lifts you against him with a sigh that sounds too much like relief.

“Say it.” He whispers against your lips, never once removing them from yours. “Tell me.”

And he hasn’t won. This wasn’t a battle, only a mimicry of one. When you confess the words to him, there is no victory to be had. It doesn’t feel like giving in. It feels like relief. Like you’re releasing a breath you’ve been holding for months, and he’s there to catch it for you.

“I love you.”

And still, his hands grip you tighter. Your back hits the brick wall behind you so roughly that the collision might concuss you if his hand didn’t protect the back of your head like it’s a second instinct.

“Say it again.” He demands, breathless, teeth scraping over your lip.

“I love you.” You sob, this time. Because it’s so much. It hurts and heals and rips you apart and pulls you back together all at once.

His feverish kisses slow, no less heated but taking on a soothing edge, and he pulls back to press his lips along your cheekbone, catching your tears with rainwater as his lips move down to your ear.

“I’ve got you, baby.” He whispers, and the tone of his voice pulls another helpless sob past your lips. “I’m here. I’ve got you. I love you.”

And he whispers it again against your jaw. “I love you.”

You cling to him like he’ll vanish if you so much as loosen your grip. He kisses the spot below your ear. “I love you.”

Down to your throat. “I love you.”

-

When you come back to the apartment that night, soaked with rain and eyes still red with tears, your Adrian is there. He moves forward without a word, wrapping you in his arms and burying his nose into the side of your head.

You don’t speak. You just pull his face back, and press your lips to his.

“Are- mm…” he starts, melting into your embrace without a second thought. He still starts to pull back a little, concern creasing his brow. “You’re crying.” His gaze lifts to the man behind you. “Why is she crying?”

“Adrian.” You draw his attention back to you, and his frustrated expression finally seems to melt a little as he begins to understand what you want. What you need.

“Okay.” He whispers, like he just looked into your mind and read every thought there. His arm snakes around your waist, pulling you into him as he leans down to kiss you again. “Yeah, okay.”

It’s weird. It’s still weird. In the beginning, you’re not quite sure how to…fit. Not just physically, but…lovingly. There is so much love in you, so much directed towards the two men before you, that you aren’t quite sure where to put it. It’s always been so focused on one person. On your Adrian.

And now, you’re pulling back from your Adrian and being pulled into the arms of his other self. That other self kisses you, slow and deep and reverent, and your Adrian threads his fingers through yours, like a silent, comforting reassurance.

“I’ve got you.” Other Adrian whispers against your lips. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

So you nod, step back, and pull your shirt over your head.

Your Adrian is there in a second, nosing against your cheek and sliding his large hands over your exposed skin like he’s been waiting to touch you his entire life. He’s always like this - no matter how many times you sleep together, he always seems to behave like it’s the very first time.

“You sure?” He asks, quiet. Meant just for you.

You nod. “Not sure…how. But yeah.”

He nods back, and presses his lips to the tear tracks still staining your skin. “Let’s figure it out, kay?”

And then he’s pulling back, and Other Adrian is surging forward to kiss you so deeply it steals the breath from your lungs all over again.

“I love you.” You whisper, somewhere between desperate hands and warm lips, and he groans as he lifts you off of your feet. There’s a desperation to his kiss, to the way he backs you into the wall as your legs wrap around his waist. His hands are in your hair, calloused fingers tangling in the still-wet strands as his palms cradle your cheeks. You gasp into his mouth, and the sound pulls a response from him that comes out as something between a moan and a growl.

He presses searing kisses over your jaw, down to the hollow of your throat, and grinds his hips against yours as he speaks in a breathless rasp. “Say it again.”

“I love you.” You whisper, and he moves up to kiss you again like he might be able to swallow the declaration.

Your Adrian catches your chin, and turns your head to face him, wrenching you away from the kiss and leaning forward to press his forehead to yours. Other Adrian’s hands tighten possessively on your thighs, mouth moving down your throat once again, and your Adrian just looks into your eyes so closely that you feel his glasses dig into your forehead. Feel his ragged breath against your lips.

“Now me.” He says, leaning closer until his lips brush over yours. His counterpart bites down, and your Adrian smiles wickedly as you whimper in response. “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you.” And fuck, you really do mean it just as much. In all the times you’ve said those words tonight, not a single one of them has held any less meaning than the last.

To your surprise, he pulls back. His alternate’s lips leave your throat, and the smile they share is so sharp and hungry that it drops molten heat from your cheeks down to your core.

“Bed.” Your Adrian says, and Other Adrian nods.

He throws you onto the mattress so quickly you think you might actually be airborne for a second, bouncing against the comforter once with a breathless giggle as your Adrian climbs atop you, one hand moving behind him to tug his shirt up over his head.

He cages you in between his muscled biceps, tongue tracing the seam of your lips before his teeth catch your bottom lip in the way he knows drives you crazy, and you arch into him.

“Him first.” He says, and your eyes flutter open in surprise. “Kinda wanna see what it looks like. You okay with that?”

You can do nothing but nod, and he presses a final kiss to your lips with a smile and a little nod of confirmation before climbing off of you.

“This is so weird.” You breathe for what must be the millionth time, and Adrian laughs a little as he leans over and kisses your cheek from where he’s now settled behind you.

Your eyes land on Other Adrian. On the way his tight t-shirt still clings to his skin with rainwater. On the way he’s standing still like a wild animal preparing to pounce. The way his green eyes have become nearly black as they look down at you.

“Take off your clothes.” You whisper, desperate and demanding, and his lips curl into a smile that drips with absolute danger.

He shakes his head, slowly, and moves toward you.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” He says, low, and tugs you to the edge of the bed by the backs of your knees, “for so fucking long.” He kneels between your legs, deft fingers already beginning to unbutton your pants like the action is something he’s thought about every minute for weeks. “Gonna take my time with you, baby.”

You shiver, squirm, and your Adrian huffs a soft laugh behind you as his lips trail over your shoulder. His own hands slide up over your stomach, trailing to your back to unclasp your bra and slide it off of your shoulders. You would help him, but you can’t pull your gaze away from Other Adrian’s eyes, locked on yours as he slides his thumbs into the waistband of your underwear and pulls them down over your thighs.

When Other Adrian’s mouth finds the apex of your thighs, you jolt so hard with a surge of pleasure that your Adrian grips you tighter and shushes you with a soothing kiss to your neck. And as he begins to work you with a skill that should be fucking illegal, you find yourself clawing at your Adrian’s arm in your desperation to hold onto something solid. He groans at the feeling, freak that he is, and bites at your ear in response. His hips grind against your back, rocking you with the movement in a way that has Other Adrian moaning into you as his hands come up to grip your thighs and keep them held firmly apart.

“Oh my- fuck. Fuck, please.” You don’t even know what you’re begging for, but your head drops back against Adrian’s shoulder and, to your surprise, he nudges you off of him, catching your chin in his fingers and forcing your gaze back down to Other Adrian’s.

Your hazy eyes meet his, and his pupils seem to have completely overtaken his irises. His gaze remains locked on yours, fingers tightening against the flesh of your thighs until you’re almost positive he’s going to leave bruises. You hope he does.

When you do fall apart, it’s with a sharp cry of their name as your Adrian whispers almost nonsensical praise into the skin of your cheek.

It takes you a moment to even register that you’re moving, too exhausted and blissed out to think as you try to drag yourself back to earth, and then your head is resting against the pillows, and Other Adrian is above you, shirt gone, the skin of his chest warm against yours as his lips catch your own.

“You okay?” He whispers, already shaking with restraint as his nose bumps against yours. “You still want this?”

You just nod, breathless, and you think you might hear him whimper as you lean up into his kiss. His hips roll against yours, and your hands move down to tug his pants down and off with a noise so desperate it barely sounds like you.

“I love you.” He murmurs against your lips, one hand in your hair as his other moves between you to guide himself, and-

“Oh.” The word falls out as a sigh of something almost like relief as he pushes inside of you for the first time, slow and careful as he trembles with restraint above you. Trying not to move yet. Trying not to push too far, or too fast, or to overwhelm you.

“Holy shit.” He groans, forehead dropping to yours and eyes squeezing shut. “Fuck. Holy shit, baby…” he sounds like he’s fucking dying, hand moving up to brush the hair from your eyes, fingers curling against your scalp like he’s using you as an anchor to this world. “You okay? Tell me you’re okay.”

“M’okay,” you whisper, body adjusting to the feeling that is so familiar and yet so oddly foreign. He groans as he rocks his hips once, like he truly can’t help it, and your hands fly up to dig your nails into the overheated skin of his back. “Oh God. M-Move, please.”

And he does. And you match his movements with your own, rock your hips in time with his, and he buries his face in your neck and murmurs that he loves you against your skin over and over. One hand remains tangled in your hair. The other slides over your body like he might really and truly break if he doesn’t touch you as much as possible, finally wrapping around your thigh to pull you closer and change the angle until every breath comes out as a sharp gasp.

You’re already close, already clinging to him as he devotes himself to you with every movement of his hips, every press of his mouth against your heated skin, when you feel your Adrian’s lips on the other side of your throat. Feel him press against your thigh where it’s wrapped around his alternate’s hips, and the evidence of his arousal alone is almost enough to send you over the edge.

And then, without a word, his fingers slide between you, moving in small and practiced circles right at the spot he knows will make you-

You come apart with a sob. Your body tenses. Your nails dig into skin damp with sweat and heat. You think you might be crying because it’s too much but it feels so good you can’t breathe…

Other Adrian shatters with you, groaning your name into the flushed skin of your shoulder and pressing his body impossibly closer to yours.

“God, you’re amazing.” He whispers, nuzzling into the hollow of your throat as you both try to catch your breath. “You did so good, baby. So fucking good…”

When he pulls back, eyes raking over your face like he truly can’t believe what just happened, you find yourself reaching up to trace over the little scar on his cheek.

The exhausted smile that splits his face is so boyish and downright giddy that you match it before you can even think. He leans down, and kisses you so slowly and sweetly that it nearly brings you to tears again.

“Beautiful.” He whispers, almost to himself, and your smile widens.

“Hey,” your Adrian says, leaning over to press a soft kiss to your cheek. The Adrian atop you moves aside, and you make a soft noise as he pulls away from you, still oversensitive.

But there’s the Adrian you’ve known and loved for years, settling above you like he was born to be there, and you smile again and try to find words as he kisses your cheeks. Your nose. Your forehead.

“Hi.” You murmur, voice surprisingly hoarse.

“Hi.” He breathes, like that simple greeting was a thousand declarations of love all at once, and you love him so much it hurts.

“That was awesome.” He whispers, and you smile again as you reach up to card your fingers through his hair. “You’re so fucking hot. I mean it. I love you so much.”

You could love him for his earnestness and honesty alone. You lean up, kiss his nose, and watch him scrunch it up with a grin that feels like a ray of fucking sunlight directed at your very soul.

“Can I?” He asks, nosing at your cheek and sliding his hand down to your thigh, tracing the fingerprint-bruises his alternate left there not long before. “Do you think you can go again?”

You’re sore, and exhausted, and Other Adrian is pressing his lips to the back of your hand like he can’t bring himself to let you go yet, but you nod. You trace your hands over his arms, up to his shoulders, and finally cradle his cheek in your palm as you pull him down to kiss you. He wastes no time at all kissing you hard enough to make you gasp into his mouth, knee nudging yours apart as he settles himself between them.

“I gotcha.” He whispers, and as he pushes inside of you a whimper punches out of your chest that he meets with a groan of approval.

It’s different. They’re more different than you expected. There’s still desperation, still intensity and hunger and love, but your Adrian’s hands move over you in a way that is less roaming and more like he’s trying to touch all of you at once. His hips snap forward hard enough to make you jolt with a gasp, overeager as always, and he murmurs an apology into the kiss as he tries to steady his rhythm, trembling a little with restraint.

“Missed this. Missed you so, so much. Holy shit, you’re amazing. I love you so much. Feels so good…” you don’t think he’s even aware that he’s speaking, the words coming out as a rasp against whatever part of your skin he can reach. You love it. You always have. You love when his voice gets low and breathless like this, how his already nonexistent filter is thrown even further out the fucking window. How he kisses you and touches you like he might be able to absorb himself into you completely.

It takes longer this time, of course, and Adrian has to pause with a mumbled apology or two as he tries desperately to get you to finish before him. It’s a ritual for him - an unspoken rule since the very first time you hooked up, let alone made love. His hand once again comes between you, and he hums with approval as the noises he pulls from you get increasingly louder, more desperate.

“I wanna- fuck. Mmm, I wanna feel this all the time. Can I fuck you forever? Yeah, you’d let me. You’d…holy shit, yes. Right there?” His babbling only brings you closer and closer to the precipice, and he catches your hand in his own as it claws at his back to tangle his fingers with yours and press them into the pillow by your head. “So perfect. Best sound I’ve ever heard. Need to - fuck. Fuck, m’close. I wanna - nngh - wanna make you feel so good, holy fuck-“

When you fall apart for the last time, you’re almost too far gone to even make a noise, squeezing Adrian’s hand so hard you might feel bones creak beneath your fingers as he moans shamelessly loudly and digs his teeth into your collarbone, marking you with an almost feral growl of your name.

As you lay there, your Adrian pressing slow kisses to your bruised shoulder while the other leans over and ghosts his lips over your forehead and brushes the hair from your eyes, you can’t help but laugh.

“What’s up, crazy?” Adrian asks, smiling down at you, eyes full of a love so overwhelming you don’t know if you’ll be able to contain it.

“Mm, you’re crazy.” You mumble back, the words a familiar cadence on your lips.

“Yeah, I am. I’m your crazy.” He responds, just as familiar, and presses a gentle kiss to your lips. “What’s up, my crazy?”

You shake your head, and laugh again. “If this is how it’s gonna be, I’m never gonna walk right again.”

Adrian’s grin widens, and he laughs. The sound is always so bright, but now it’s low and subdued with exhaustion and digs its way into your bloodstream like a drug you’ll never get enough of. “Fuck yeah. You’ll still be able to fight crime all wobbly.” He nips at the hollow of your throat, and you can feel his manic smile against your skin as he nuzzles you with a playful growl, tugging your body closer to his until you’re completely enveloped in love and adoration.

The other Adrian smiles too, wicked excitement sparkling in his eyes, and leans in to kiss you so deeply that it’s almost fucking obscene.

Oh, you are definitely, definitely fucked…pun intended.

-

Morning comes, and Adrian wakes to the feeling of your breath against his skin.

The version of him from this dimension is wrapped around you, too, snoring into your hair and still mumbling occasional nonsense against your scalp. He takes a dangerous risk, driven by the intoxicating feeling of your bare skin against his, and pulls you a little closer to him, stealing you away.

“Mmh.” You murmur, and you may as well be writing him a sonnet with the noise as your arms tighten around him and you snuggle a little closer.

He could die like this. Just like this. Alternate self, alternate dimension be damned, he could die happy with you humming sleepily into the skin of his chest and your legs tangling through his to seek more of his warmth.

“Love you.” He whispers, though he knows you can’t hear him. It just feels too good to say out loud. Without the fear of you tensing up, trying to bury your own emotions down. With the knowledge that, if you were awake, you would say it back. In the soft, sleepy silence of this bedroom, Adrian can pull you a little closer to him. He can feel you snuggle into his chest. Remember the way you felt beneath him last night, the way your eyes glossed over with pleasure and love as he moved inside of you, as you fell apart with a desperate cry of his name.

“I love you.” He whispers again, into your hair.

“Mmmph.” You murmur, responsive even now, and his heart fucking explodes. You said it last night. You confirmed it. You love him back.

He has lived for so long with nothing but emptiness. Loss. Grief.

And the grief is still there. Of course it is. His version of you is gone, and he loved her so much that it really and truly broke him when she died.

And then, there you were.

Not the you that he knew, but his soulmate in a different form. His equal. His match in every way that mattered. And somehow, despite you having your own version of him and despite the jump into another dimension and despite nearly losing you again, here he is.

You’re in his arms. Peaceful. Soft.

And you aren’t the you he fell in love with so long ago, but he loves you. He loves you for your differences. For the way you’re still so similar at your core. For your ferocity. Your kindness. The way you feel so unbelievably perfect against him.

For a while, Adrian just holds you. Occasionally, he presses his lips to the top of your head. Inhales your scent. Listens to your steady breathing.

But his eyes are starting to itch, and his contacts aren’t going to last much longer. The extra fluid and backup pair he always leaves in his suit have long since run out by now, and if he’s going to live in this dimension he’s going to need to get more. But, in the meantime, he can probably find an extra pair of glasses in the nightstand if he just-

The ring blinks back at him from the bedside table drawer, the case is open. The sight of the diamond stamped in the middle makes his fucking blood freeze in his veins.

As if on cue, you seem to sense his sudden tension in your sleep. You hum something incoherent, and nuzzle your nose into his shoulder. You don’t wake. He can feel your lips against his skin, the contact warm and familiar and right. Too right.

His. You’re his. You should be only his.

The darkness doesn’t creep in, now. It floods him like a wave. It absorbs his heart into itself, fogs his brain like a poison.

He can take care of you. He can take you home with him. Emilia left the key card.

It would be so easy, too. He did it before. You were warming up to him before. With just a little more time, you might…

No. No, no no. You don’t want that. You don’t love only him. You would be miserable.

If he grabs you now, hand over your mouth and arms locked tight around you, he could get you out of the apartment before the other version of himself wakes up. He’d have to be careful. He’d have to be quick. He could-

No. Fuck. Stop.

The other version of him stirs, too. Snuggles closer to you and tugs you a little closer to his chest. Tugs you back to him. Mumbles something about spiders into the bare skin of your shoulder. The shoulder that he marked by his teeth last night. The shoulder that should be marked by his teeth, instead.

Darkness. Hunger. A need to grab you and claim you and make you scream his - his name - over and over again that is so strong his hands flex at his sides and he can’t think.

Carefully, he rolls back to his side, leaving the drawer open, and brushes his fingers through your hair.

Beautiful. His. He’s falling back into the darkness, that cold and desperate place that made him take you away the first time.

“Mine.” It’s so quiet that it’s barely even a sigh, too soft for you to hear. Your fingers still curl against his bicep, fitful. You’re perfect. You even want him in your sleep, don’t you? Sure, he’s holding you - the other him. But you’re touching him. You’re touching this version of him like-

Three minutes, and he could get you-

Fuck, no.

The idea comes to him slowly. So, so slowly. As he decides it, his eyes never leave your face.

He presses a gentle kiss to your lips, savoring the way you hum and curl your fingers again.

And then, he leaves. Pulls his clothes on, silent as a ghost, grabs the keycard off of the table, and leaves.

-

His own dimension feels so different, now. So…empty. The sky seems darker. The shadows longer. The air more stale.

No worries. He won’t be here long.

It takes him five minutes to find what he’s looking for. All he needs. He’ll buy more clothes. More of the day-to-day necessities. He doesn’t need anything here. He can leave this life behind. He wants to leave this life behind.

The ring he bought the other you is oddly similar to the one he found in the bedside drawer. Simple. Perfectly sized. If you think it’s weird, or don’t like it in any way, he’ll just get you another.

He’ll go back to the other dimension, back home, and he’ll take you out on a date. A real one. Just you and him, and he’ll even check with his alternate self and make sure you’re all on the same page. Like he said in that alley: people fly. Aliens invade. He loves you, and you love him, and you can marry him too.

At the last second, he digs through the bedside table, and grabs his extra pair of glasses. He can get more contacts, maybe. But for now, he can wear the gold rimmed aviators, so you can still tell them apart.

He takes one last look at the apartment before he leaves. The life he used to have. The pictures of the woman he loved on the wall. The clean, quiet shrine to a life of grief and loneliness.

And all he wants to do is go home to you.

Excitement prickles at the ends of his fingers like electricity. He’s already thinking about how he’s going to wake you up when he gets home. He could crawl into bed, pull you close, and even drift back to sleep with you curled in his arms. He could make breakfast. Maybe he’ll ask you to marry him right fucking there. He’s definitely more…patient, than his alternate self. Likes to plan more. Likes to think things through a little more. But the idea of waiting another moment to hear you say yes seems impossible right now.

He makes it to the bottom of the stairs, and goes still.

Keith Smith is there, backed up by his crew of racist demons, and he’s looking right the fuck at Adrian.

“Adrian. Fucking. Chase.” He says, dry and furious. The man who killed the woman he loves. Who nearly killed you, too. “Vigilante. Can’t believe we didn’t put it together before.”

Adrian smiles. And it is a dark, empty thing. He’ll kill him. Happily. And then he’ll go home to you. Ask you to marry him with bloodstains on his shirt to match the ones Keith left on you all those weeks ago.

The darkness is cold. Almost comforting, now.

“Hi.” He says, simply. Easily. Save for the hollowness in his tone, they could be two old pals bumping into each other on the street.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen.” Keith says, and Adrian raises his eyebrows in silent question. “You’re gonna tell us where that little zombie bitch is, and how we get to the dimension you’ve been hiding in with her.”

“Keep talking.” It’s a challenge. A direct, sharp reaction to the way he just dared to insult you. His voice is still bright, almost friendly, and dripping with danger.

“And then, I’m gonna finally fucking kill you. And then I’m gonna kill her. And whatever other versions of you two psychotic shithead monsters might exist out there.”

Adrian’s fingers twitch at his sides, and he palms a small knife in a move so swift and practiced that even Kieth doesn’t see him pull it from his pocket.

Right into Kieth’s neck. Easy peasy. Then he’ll take the assholes behind him, and-

He’s so focused on Keith Smith’s jugular, planning exactly where he’s going to plunge the blade, that the sudden prick in his own neck makes him blink with genuine surprise.

And then, everything goes black.

-