Hi! This is my first "official" tumblr blog. I write mostly Stranger Things and Marvel fics. I am just starting to publish stuff for the first time since my wattpad days during covid ;^;
I'm hoping to build a small community so please send in any asks, I am open to writing requests!! Please no incest or weird shit like that. This will be an 18+ blog so minors please dni
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doing summer courses sucks because it has sucked all motivation to write completely out of my body. it’s also a big birthday month for my family so i feel completely sucked dry. hoping to fix it soon 🤷♂️
synopsis: moving to a nowhere town in Oregon wasn't your first choice but with how rocky your marriage has been, you just want to keep the peace. but the man who lives in the forest does anything but bring peace to your life
authors note: this was beta read with my pussy so there's probably gonna be some mistakes, pls ignore!
“We couldn’t have moved to Portland or something?” You tried not to sound so terrified sitting in the passenger seat of your car, staring endlessly into the forest that flanked the road on both sides. You tried to see in the space between them, thick wilderness stretching miles into oblivion, a heavy fog making it near impossible to do so. Finally, you had enough of working yourself up and turned to the driver’s seat where your husband, Daniel, leaned in close to squint through the fog.
“I know you have a thing about the woods, but I promise it's not that bad, babe.” He offered you a smile that would have once made your heart swoon but now only made you sulk. It wasn’t quite the same anymore. A little strained, a little tight. It had been this way ever since you told him. Together since high school and married right after graduating, you had thought that your relationship with your husband was nothing short of perfect. He was kind, loving, your biggest cheerleader. Why wouldn’t you believe that he would support you when you told him you didn’t want to be a woman, he supported you in everything else?
But the way his smile faded was anything but supportive. His face, the face that you had loved for years, turned into that of a stranger’s. Maybe because that’s what you became to him. A stranger. You still remembered his voice, the incredulous little anxious laugh he gave like what you had told him in such confidence was a joke. “Babe, you can’t be serious.” You remembered the look on his face when you told him you were, in fact, very serious. He shook his head and ran his hands down his face. “Women can’t be men, babe, and besides, I’m not gay. You’re just confused is all.” So your husband coaxed you, like he always did, into that quiet complicity you always found yourself taking on. There was no reason to break up a marriage over this.
Daniel took one of his hands off the wheel and wrapped his fingers around yours, squeezing gently. “Hey,” You looked at him, into the gleaming eyes of the man you had given up so much of yourself for. “This will be good for us, okay? Some fresh air out of the city, my new job at this station. Everything will be alright.”
You found yourself nodding, slipping into the idea that maybe you could ignore this thing inside of you. Slowly, some semblance of civilization began to appear before you. A small market, a diner, a bar. It all put you at ease. At least you weren’t out alone in the middle of the forest. Your new home was a modest two story house, clearly old and in need of some repairs but all in all decent enough for you to find comfort in. Being homeowners at all at your age was nothing short of a miracle so you certainly wouldn’t complain.
The place smelled slightly like mildew when you stepped inside, something old and a little moldy. You caught sight of the forest behind your house through the window, a pre-paved path disappearing behind the trees. “The old owners must have liked hiking.” Daniel murmured as he set down one of the boxes beside you and slid his hand around your waist to draw you close to him. He didn’t seem to notice the way you shifted with discomfort, so painfully aware of the way your body fit into his the way a woman’s does. He planted a kiss to the top of your head, stroking the hair he had so desperately convinced you not to cut off. “I’ll bring the boxes in and you can start unpacking, yeah?” He didn’t wait for your answer before squeezing the round of your ass and walking off back to the car.
You sat there, staring out into the misty forest through the window as you anxiously twisted the symbol of your commitment around your finger. It sat on your nightstand later that night, gleaming under the solitary lamp that illuminated the body lunging forward above you. Daniel held his hands planted on either side of your head, panting as he thrusted into you. His eyes were all twisted shut, hands gripping at the sheets as he focused on his impending climax. And all you could focus on was how your breast jumped with each of his movements. You loathed the way they looked, the sagging mounds of flesh on a body that didn’t feel like your own. Daniel moved his hand to grip one. You hated that too but still pretended to moan so that maybe this would be over. Of course, you being you, felt endless guilt over thinking something like that. He was your partner, the man you chose to spend the rest of your life with, you should be enjoying this. Why aren’t you?
You closed your eyes to stop yourself from crying as you listened to his labored moans. Daniel sounded like a mammoth when he came. Loud and deep as his entire body shuddered on top of you. It was better this way, to just go to sleep as he collapsed beside you and drew you close and kissed your back while muttering a name that felt so foreign to you.
Maybe if you just went to sleep this would all go away.
-
Daniel left early in the morning for his first day as an officer at the local police station, his departure marked with a kiss on your cheek before watching him adjust his uniform and wink at you. The door clicked shut behind him and you released a breath that you had not been aware you were holding. Your shoulders lowered from their spot beside your ears. A quiet morning was a good morning; a morning where you could just make yourself a cup of coffee with too much sugar and admire the way the sunlight streaked through the gaps in the trees. The forest didn’t seem so scary now, birds singing their overlapping symphonies out of sight, calling you to confront your fear of the unknown. Maybe a morning hike wouldn’t hurt. Just as long as you stayed on the path.
You got dressed slowly, shrugging on a jacket to keep yourself warm. It was cold in the early mornings when dew drops clung to the grass blades and a low fog settled close to the ground. Standing at the foot of the path, feet sinking into the soft soil, you swallowed back whatever fear brewed deep within the pit of your stomach and began on your hike into the forest generations older than you. The trees were as wide as the length of your arm and towered like old gods looking down on your feeble mortal existence. How silly it would be to worry about such trivial things in their presence. Marriage, moving, identity. None of that mattered here. In the wilderness, you were like everything else. Inconsequential and ever important.
Walking the path felt like walking into another time and space. Your eyes kept going up, admiring squirrels jumping from branch to branch, birds swooping down and fluttering between trees, the way the leaves rushed with the early morning breeze. Peace could be found here, you thought. Peace in solitude.
A branch snapped behind you and you jumped like some quivering prey animal, eyes darting to the sound like some feral instinct awoke within you. Just behind you, maybe ten feet away, a large deer stood with great big antlers extending up and out like an extension of the trees. Its big, black eyes stared at you, glisteningly wet and empty as it licked its lips. So entirely still you didn’t even want to breathe, you stared at the majestic animal and watched as it turned it head and began to walk off the path into the depth of the forest.
You thought very little of what you had told yourself earlier. Staying on the path was a minor blip on the great map of your mind as you followed the deer from a safe distance.
You stopped when it stopped, walked when it did, your step matching it’s with precision. You could have been one with it, the way nature finds a way to come back in sync with itself. It stopped in a small opening where the light was golden and its fur shone. Mesmerized, your feet pressed forward as it stared at you. For the first time, you attempted to draw closer, lowering yourself to seem less threatening. Its tail flicked, eyes bright and so beautiful. You saw yourself in its eyes, a version of yourself that you actually recognized.
A loud bang rang out into the air, echoing off of the trees to make it impossible to know where it came from. The deer flinched and trembled then collapsed to the ground.
You were frozen, gaze clinging to the hole in it's side where blood poured out. Any logical person would have ran after so nearly being shot. Had you been a foot closer you would have taken that bullet. But you stayed, you knelt to the ground and stroked it's head as it stared up at you with it's now empty eyes. The one thing that ever saw you as you were. You hardly even noticed the footsteps approaching behind you, rustling through the tall grass.
“That's my buck.”
You flinched at the voice, low, a little rough around the edges. Turning, you came face to face with a pair of worn boots, layered in dried mud up to the ankles. You followed them up the cargo pants that were tucked into them, and your eyes latched on to the rifle hanging off the man’s shoulder. He was tall, too tall in your opinion. You craned your neck all the way back to get a good look at his face. His jaw was sharp, glistening little blonde hairs he hadn't shaved in a bit. There was something written on his lips, something like amusement at the frustration etched into your face. He was pretty though, dressed in camo, messy hair, a thick jacket that did absolutely nothing but make him look bigger.
You stood up. “Why did you kill it?” Maybe you were too emotional about the deer. Maybe you weren't upset about the deer at all.
The man readjusted his rifle over his shoulder, crossing the strap over his head so it hugged his chest. He passed you by and grabbed the deer by its ankles to tie its legs together. “It's a deer. I’m a hunter. That's kind of the whole point, Buck.” You watched him take the rope looped up at his side and wrap it around the deer’s legs. “You’re the one in a hunting zone.” He hoisted it up over his shoulders, not minding the way the blood began to trickle over his chest.
You ignored the name he had assigned to you and looked around to find that you had strayed so far from the path that it was no longer within sight. You were lost and the man was already beginning to walk away with his prize. “Wait!” You began to run after him. “Look, could you just point me to the right direction? I just moved here yesterday and I don't really know where I am.” The man continued to walk, readjusting his grip on the deer. “Clearly. I’d remember a handsome face like yours.” He glanced over his shoulder with a lopsided grin that revealed half a row of straight, white teeth.
You stopped for a moment, stunned by the use of such a compliment. Never once had you heard the word “handsome” be applied to you. You were always “pretty”, “cute”, and “beautiful”, but never handsome. It felt right, like slipping on a suit made just for you, tailored like a second skin. It struck you in a way that left warmth creeping all throughout your body. “I–”
“Should pass the path on the way back to my cabin.” The man spoke offhandedly, a slight grunt to his voice from the weight of his game. “I’m guessing you moved into the old house at the end of it.” Blood was starting to gather on his hands, smeared other the thick veins and tendons that lined them. “It’s not good to stray from the path. Easy to get lost out here if you don't pay attention.” You watched him walk, the broadness of his shoulders, the way his muscles bulged against the fabric of his jacket. Envy clung to your entire being like some slimy thing you couldn't wash off.
“You want help carrying it?”
The man looked back at you, his smile growing wider now. You liked the way the wrinkles around his mouth popped, the thickness of his neck, how much older he looked, how masculine. “You look big and strong enough but I think I got it.” Your chest puffed involuntarily, your head growing dizzy with the euphoria. You could have fainted there, passed out from the sheer weight of your joy.
You followed him closely, pulling your jacket tighter around yourself as if that would make your frame look less feminine. “Have you lived here long?” His hair looked so golden in the early morning sun, the angles of his face becoming ever more defined. You wondered what it was like to be born right, born perfect like he was. You felt something stir in you when he looked at you with those grey-ish blue eyes that looked stormy and interested, like he hadn't been invested in something in ages.
“Too long. But it’s nice here. Small town, everyone knows everyone, everyone leaves everyone alone. Got some great hunting grounds. Wouldn't have caught such a nice buck if it didn't.” There was something knowing in his eyes. He shot you a wink like he was in on your little secret and he would take it to the grave with him. “What brings you here?”
“My husband.” You cleared your throat. “He’s starting at the sheriff's office today. New deputy.” There was something embarrassing about that, of having to remember your husband existed, that you were married, that you packed up your entire life — said goodbye to your family and friends — and moved out here with him for some measly job. That you were some housewife who cooked and cleaned and did everything a woman was expected to do. Humiliation was the word.
The man hummed, something slight and unidentifiable twitched at the corners of his lips. “New deputy.” He echoed.
Soon enough, you found yourself back on the dirt path you had once been following, a clear line straight back to your new home. This is where you would part ways with the stranger you already knew you wanted to see again. He readjusted the stay on his shoulders once more. “Try not to go off path next time, Buck. These woods have a whole lot lurking in them just waiting to eat you up.” The stranger turned and began down the path in the opposite direction you were going.
“Wait!” The word fell out of your mouth before you could think better of it. He stopped and turned back to you like he had expected you to do exactly this. You shied away from his gaze that seemed to claw their way through your skull with such intensity. “What's your name?”
He smiled wide and never before had you found a smile so visually appealing.
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SUMMARY. Bullseye shows up bleeding in Matt Murdock’s arms. You have a clinic, a locked door, and a terrible habit of letting wounded things crawl into your hands.
WORD COUNT. 8.4K
WARNINGS. canon adjacent, wounded dex, mentions of blood, minor injury details and treatment, doctor/patient setup, emotional dependency, jealousy (dex is a jealous bitch), possessiveness, morally messy dynamics, matt murdock cameo, platonic matt, set after the events of episode 5 of DDBA S2, references to foggy’s and vanessa’s death, suicidal ideation/passive death wish from dex (canon😭), MDNI, explicit sexual content, praise, possessive language, riding, groping, tit play, unprotected pnv, creampie, soft aftercare, needy!dex, dex being a feral wounded dog of a man, no use of y/n.
KIE’S NOTES. I’ve been writing this on and off since episode 5 aired, and this is by far one of the hardest things I’ve ever written. Dex is such a complex character to write for holy fuck 😭 there are so many analogies to stray dog, like he just wants to be a good boy, you’ll see
READ ON AO3
A wounded dog will decide who counts as safe long before anyone else understands why it bites.
You learned that before medical school, before emergency rotations and back-alley sutures that made men in masks limp to you and bleed all over your tile at 3 AM. You learned it at eleven, crouched near an alley behind your old apartment, palm full of deli turkey your mother told you was for lunch, watching a stray with a torn ear bare his teeth at every adult who tried to corner him. Animal control had come with poles. A neighbor had come with a towel. Your mother came with her worried mouth pressed thin and her hands hovering near your shoulders, ready to snatch you back if the dog lunged. The dog had lunged at everyone except you. He had stared at you with yellow-brown eyes, ribs moving under filthy fur, every part of him made of pain and suspicion, and he had taken the turkey from your hand so gently that you cried on the spot. Full ugly tears, snot and all, as if tenderness from a ruined thing was the saddest miracle in the world.
Benjamin Poindexter reminds you of that dog every time he appears at your door.
Which is insane, clinically. Dex is a man. Dex is a killer. Dex is precise, lethal, too calm in ways that make the hairs on the back of your neck lift even when he is sitting on your exam stool with his shirt off and three cracked ribs under your palm. Dex looked at you with blood in his teeth and asked if you keep the good suture scissors in the second drawer or if you hide them from your 'less charming clients,' and he smiled when you stared at him too long. He is six feet of bad decisions and worse coping mechanisms, and yet the first thing your mind gives you when you think of Dex is that stray dog taking turkey from your fingers.
That knock at this time is unexpected. Matt.
Matt knocks like a man who hates needing help. Two firm taps, a pause, one more. Spiderman kncoks like he's not allowed to come in. Jessica once kicked the door and yelled your name until you opened. Dex, on his own, never knocks at all. He appears. He waits. Sometimes he bleeds on the mat. Sometimes he makes a small, polite comment about your hallway light going out.
You are across the room before the kettle finishes screaming. Your clinic is technically a closed flower shop with a fake lease and a drain installed under the center table, which makes you look deranged. Until someone comes in with a knife wound and then everyone suddenly appreciates plumbing. The place smells like antiseptic, old brick damp from rain, black tea, and the faint copper ghost that never fully leaves, because blood is part of everything. You unlock the deadbolt, undo the chain, tug the door open, and Matt Murdock nearly falls into you with Bullseye hanging off him like a corpse.
For one bright, stupid second, all your thoughts empty out into his name.
Dex.
His face is a mess. Blood has dried under one nostril and smeared across his mouth in a dark shine. His lower lip is split. One eye is swollen enough that it changes his whole expression, turning him younger in the ugliest way, all that sharpness buried under bruising and exhaustion. His suit is torn at the side, tactical fabric shredded into strips. When Matt adjusts his grip, Dex makes a sound so small you feel it under your bones.
Matt's mouth tightens. Blood mats his dark hair near his temple. Only consolation is that he looks a little better than Dex. "He needs help."
You stare at Dex. Dex stares back, or tries to. His good eye drags over your face with the slow, stunned relief of a man who expected darkness and got a porch light. The part of you with a medical license starts counting injuries in a list that stacks too fast. Facial trauma. Rib involvement. Possible abdominal injury. Scalp laceration. Possible pneumothorax. The part of you that has made the mistake of caring about him too much, looks at his lashes stuck together with rain and blood and wants to put his head in your lap.
With a gentleness reserved for skittish animals, you reach for his jaw, two fingers under his chin to angle his face toward the light. "Dex, can you hear me?"
Blood shines over his teeth, as his mouth twitches. "Hey, Doc."
Matt shifts him higher with a grunt, muscles in his forearms cording from the effort. Dex makes another small sound, angrier this time, as if the pain is just now surfacing. "He took the worst of it. I did what I could, but he kept telling me to leave him."
"Balanced the scales," Dex mumbles, head tipping back against Matt's shoulder. Rainwater slides from his hair down the side of his neck. "You had a city to save."
"Ma — you should come in." You catch yourself at the last second. It rises right up, soft from habit, and catches at the back of your teeth as Dex's good eye opens again.
He smiles at you through the blood. Barely. A broken curve of recognition, jealous even while half-dead, which is so Dex that something in you aches. "I know who he is, doc. You can call him Matt."
You close your eyes, breathe through your nose once, a fond sigh, which also is deeply annoying. "Of course you do."
Dex's smile widens enough to make the split in his lip bleed again. "Smart boy."
No. Nope.
"Table. Keep his neck aligned." You tell Matt, stepping back and sweeping one arm toward the center of the room. "If either of you tracked glass in here, I'm making you both sweep before sunrise." You add, not wanting to sound too soft.
Matt obeys with a silence that says he has learned, through years of being injured in your presence, that arguing only rises blood pressure. Dex tries to help. That is the horrible part. His fingers grip the edge of the exam table once Matt lowers him, knuckles white, body shaking with the effort of being useful. His legs drag a fraction of a second behind the rest of him. Your mind sees it, circles it, hates it. You pull trauma shears from the tray and cut through what remains of the suit before any panic can bloom large enough to slow your hands.
"Eyes on me," you tell Dex, softer than you mean to. "You do exactly what I say for the next hour. That's the deal."
His lashes flutter, and his ruined mouth quirks. "I'm always good for you."
Matt turns his head slightly, lips tugging on a frown half formed.
You feel it. Dex feels it too. They are both bleeding and somehow still measuring each other. Matt's face gives almost nothing away, but you have known him long enough to read the pauses, even the slight angle of his chin. He hears Dex's pulse change around you. He hears your answer. He hears the rotten little truth of it, warm and embarrassing under all the antiseptic.
You press two fingers to Dex's carotid and pretend the pulse under your skin is purely clinical. "That depends on your definition of good."
"Flexible," Dex breathes.
"Try alive."
"That's less flexible."
When you shoot him a look, he settles. It happens so fast Matt's brow pulls in, and despite the blood running down the side of his own face, despite the exhaustion in every line of him, you see him file it away. Dex does that for you. Dex, who would rather spit teeth than accept help from almost anyone, quiets under your hand like you found a switch under his skin.
You hate how much that means to you.
The shears bite up the side of Dex's suit. Rain-wet fabric peels away from him, exposing bruises already darkening over his ribs, long shallow cuts crossing his abdomen, a deeper gash near his left flank with slow, steady bleeding. You talk while you work, partly for him, partly for Matt, mostly for your own sanity. "Breath sounds normal. No deep lacerations. Two tiny blessings. Dex, if you lie about pain severity, I will find out and I will be extremely annoying about it."
His good eye trails over your face. "You already are."
"Funny. You get one joke per liter of blood loss."
Matt huffs through his nose, almost a laugh, then winces. You point at the chair by the wall without looking up. "Sit."
"I can take care of myself."
The room goes quiet enough for the kettle to click off in the corner.
You turn your head slowly, gloved fingers still pressed to Dex's side. Matt is standing near the exam table, one shoulder lower than the other, blood sliding past his ear, jaw set in that martyr shape you have wanted to smack off his face for years. "Sit down, Matthew."
Dex makes a low sound, a grunt, or an attemp at it. "Matthew."
Matt's eyes go over Dex, jaw clenching and unclenching. "This is a bad time."
"For you, maybe," Dex says, and then coughs hard enough that the joke breaks.
You lean over him fast, one hand at his shoulder, the other bracing his ribs. "Small breaths. Look at me." His eye finds yours again, frantic for a second. He would kill anyone else for witnessing this, but not now. Your voice drops even further. "That's it. You can hate me after."
He breathes the way you tell him to. Obedient.
When Matt sits, some ridiculous, childish part of you wants to clap. Another part wants to cry. You do neither, since your hands are full of a man who has decided your voice is a leash he can tolerate.
The first twenty minutes disappear into work. Blood pressure readings, pupils, pulses, lung sounds again, neuro checks, wound depth, rib stability. You listen to Dex's chest and feel him try to keep still under the stethoscope, sweat shining at his hairline while his fingers curl over the table edge. When you clean his lip, he keeps his eyes on you as if the room might vanish if he looks away. When you probe near the gash at his side, his breathing goes jagged, but he bites down on the inside of his cheek instead of jerking away.
"Hey." You catch his face in your hand before he can sink his teeth deeper. "Open."
He opens his mouth, shaking while he does it.
You can feel Matt's head turn again. You ignore it, cheeks heating as you slide gauze between Dex's teeth to keep him from chewing himself bloody. "Better. Bite this if you need to. No hero teeth."
Dex's gaze moves over you, half-lidded, feverish, words coming out mumbled over the piece of gauze. "Do you treat all your patients like dogs?"
You secure a dressing against his side and let the pressure hold under your palm. "Only my favourite strays."
His eye softens like he cannot control himself. It is small. A tiny failure of the mask. A starved thing hearing a bowl set down.
Matt hears that too. You can tell from his silence, from the careful stillness in his chair. When you finish with Dex, you cross the room with a suture kit for the cut at his temple. Matt turns his face towards you before your knees touch the edge of the chair. He smells like rain, blood, city smoke, and that faint soap he uses which you have always found unfairly comforting. You have stitched Matt under worse circumstances. You have dug glass out of his shoulder while he spit blood into your sink. You have fed him soup with one hand while keeping pressure on his dressing with another. That comfort is old. It sits between you now.
Dex watches it like it is a blade aimed at him.
You dab antiseptic at Matt's temple. "This is shallow. You are lucky."
Matt's mouth curves in that tired, self-punishing way. "People keep telling me that."
"Maybe try believing them once in a while."
Ignoring that, he dips his chin towards Dex. "How bad is he?"
You glance back at Dex. He has his head turned toward the ceiling now, but his eye is still angled in your direction. Watching. Always listening. "Bad enough that moving him tonight would be stupid. He's stable enough. But I need imaging he will never agree to. Possible rib fractures, soft tissue trauma, no obvious neuro deficit from what I can assess here, but I want repeat checks every hour. He needs observation."
"He wanted me to leave him," Matt says quietly, like his voice won't carry in the small room.
Dex speaks from the table, voice rough around the gauze and dried blood. "You should've. Still think you should."
You thread the needle through Matt's skin with more force than strictly needed, anger showing up in a different place. Matt says nothing, but his mouth pinches.
"No one dies in my clinic unless I say so," you call over your shoulder.
Dex exhales, a soft sigh followed by a start of a complaint. "You really —"
"Please lie down and stop talking."
Matt's hand closes around your wrist after you finish the last stitch. He does it carefully, fingers warm, thumb pressing once against your radius as if he is asking permission through touch. Comfort. Familiar, heavy with years of people trying to survive horrible nights. "Fisk is still moving," he says. "Karen..." His voice thins for half a breath. "Karen may kill him if I bring him anywhere near her."
Dex smiles at the ceiling. "Smart woman."
You look from Matt to Dex, then down at the blood-speckled gauze piled near your knee. "You want to leave him here."
"I think he is safer here than anywhere else tonight." Matt's mouth tightens, next words dragging through his teeth. "I think everyone else is safer too."
Your laugh comes out dry and humorless. "So I get custody of the homicidal puppy while you go deal with the rest of the apocalypse."
Dex turns his head toward you. Even wrecked, even pale, even with gauze stuffed in his mouth and bruises swallowing half his face, the look he gives you has teeth in it. Offended by the word puppy. Pleased by the word custody. Matt catches every ugly shade of it.
"He listens to you," Matt says.
"He has limited hobbies."
Dex murmurs, "You."
The word drops into the room with a wet little thud. One syllable dragged over broken lips, and still it finds some secret place under your ribs and presses. You hate him a little for that. You hate Matt a little for hearing it. You hate yourself most of all for wanting to go back to the table and touch Dex's hair until his eyes close.
Matt rises slowly. You stand with him, suddenly aware of how small the clinic is with three people and so many things no one should say. He reaches for the cowl, then stops. "Call me if he gets worse. If he loses consciousness, if he starts vomiting, if he says anything about numbness or weakness."
"I went to med school, Matt."
His mouth tilts, a small smile, the first real one from him tonight.
You can feel Dex watching you, clear enough to hurt. Pain pulls his face tight, yet jealousy sits in him like a second pulse, stubborn and alive. He has killed for balance tonight. He has decided dying would be neat, fair. Still, your hand on Matt's wrist bothers him. Your voice saying Matt's name bothers him. The fact that you can tease the Devil of Hell's Kitchen into sitting down while Dex lies cut open on your table bothers him so much that he has dragged himself back from the edge purely to be petty about it.
Trying to ignore him, you walk Matt to the door and keep your voice low. "You owe me."
"I do."
"No, you really do. This is beyond the usual owe me. This is pay my fake flower shop's electric bill for six months owe me."
His hand finds the doorframe. "Send the amount."
You blink at him, at his audacity. "I was making a point."
"I heard the point." His face softens toward yours, bruised and tired, but warmth nonetheless. "Thank you."
You almost touch his arm. You stop yourself, which is silly, since Matt would sense the hesitation anyway and Dex would read the shape of it from across the room. "Go. Try to keep your skull intact."
Before the door closes, Matt turns his head toward Dex. "If you hurt her, I will hear it."
Dex laughs once, and the sound turns into a wince. "If I hurt her, you can have what's left."
The clinic holds the echo of Matt's footsteps after he leaves. Rain ticks against the front window. Dex's breath is slow but uneven, the gauze in his mouth damp with blood and spit. You stand with your hand on the lock and try to make sense of this situation. A murderer on your table. A city outside eating itself alive. A man who wants to die looking at you like he would crawl back through hell if you asked him to stay.
You lock the door.
Dex watches the motion, tracking you. "You're awfully close."
You cross to the sink and strip off your gloves. The snap of latex feels too loud. "You were actively bleeding out fifteen minutes ago. Pick a smarter topic."
"Answer."
Water runs pink down the drain. Your hands shake only after the gloves are off. "Matt and I have history."
Dex's jaw works around the gauze. "So do we."
"You show up here, bleed on my furniture, say alarming things, refuse hospital transfer, and once asked if I had a membership program after your fifth visit." You shut the water off and look at him. His face makes you angry. But only a little. That hungry stare from a man who has no right to demand any part of you after deciding twenty minutes ago that death sounded fine. Yet under it is the dog with the torn ear. The animal watching every hand, every doorway, every flick of attention, trying to figure out who belongs to him, who might leave, who might choose some other dog with a clean fur.
You walk back to the table and take the gauze gently from his mouth. "You are exhausting."
Dex's throat move with effort, swallowing, saliva wetting his mouth. "Do you look at him like this?"
The question is quieter than the others. Worse. It has no blade in it. Only a man lying open under fluorescent light, too hurt to hide the wound he actually cares about.
Your fingers hover near his cheek. You let them settle at his jaw, light enough that he can turn away if he wants. He does no such thing. He leans into the touch so fast it ruins you.
"Dex."
His lashes lower, tickling your palm when he seeks the warmth.
"I am going to clean you up, give you fluids, keep you awake for neuro checks, and cuff you to the bed in the back room so you avoid doing some noble-suicidal assassin bullshit the second I blink." Your thumb moves once along the unmarred edge of his jaw. His skin is cold. "After that, you can interrogate me about Matt Murdock until I regret saving your life."
A sad smile curves his lips. "You already regret it."
"No." The word comes out so soft. "I really, really do not."
The clinic's back room used to serve as a supply closet, then you stopped having supplies. Now it holds a narrow bed bolted to the wall, clean sheets, a cabinet of emergency meds, and a chain you bought after a masked idiot with a concussion tried to wander into traffic with three fresh staples in his scalp.
Dex sees the cuff and laughs until pain takes the laugh away from him. You roll your eyes while helping him shift down onto the mattress, every inch a negotiation with his battered ribs.
"You chain all your favourite patients?" He asks once his uninjured ankle is secured with a padded restraint and the chain runs through the bedframe.
You tug the blanket over his waist. "Only the flight risks."
"Matt ever get the chain?"
Your hands pause, which already gives him a lot without meaning to.
Dex smiles without opening his eyes. "Interesting."
You secure the IV line, check the dressing at his side, and sit on the small chair beside the bed with your back against the cabinet. "Go to sleep, Dex."
"Can't."
"Then lie still and pretend. You're talented."
His fingers slide over the edge of the mattress until they find your sleeve. He grips the soft cotton near your wrist, clumsy but careful. He has enough strength left to hurt you if he wanted. He holds the fabric instead.
You let him.
Near dawn, after the third neuro check, after he has told you the year, the president, your clinic address, and the exact number of tiles in the ceiling section above him like an asshole, his voice comes out thin and drugged by exhaustion rather than meds. "I did it."
You sit up straighter. Hearing him talk through pain is something you don't want to go through, but have to. "Did what?"
"Balanced it. Vanessa for Foggy."
A chill moves through you so slowly it feels like a hand closing around your heart. Foggy. Matt's grief. Karen's rage. Dex's worst crime. The city's endless appetite for payment. You look at him and see, for one horrible second, a man lying at the bottom of a ledger with a red line drawn under his own name. "And now?"
Dex's fingers tighten in your sleeve, holding you closer. "Now I'm tired."
You reach up and press your hand over his. He looks at the place where your skin covers his knuckles. His expression is too human for the man the papers called Bullseye, and you hate every person who helped turn him into a weapon, including Dex himself. He leans toward the comfort like he never learned how to ask.
"Then be tired here," you whisper. "I can handle tired."
He studies you for a long moment. "Can you handle me?"
You should say something clinical. Something careful. Something with the kind of boundaries you teach medical students when they come through your legitimate daytime job, wide-eyed and terrified of liability. But, you tell the truth. "I keep opening the door, don't I?"
Dex's eye closes. His fingers stay wrapped in your sleeve until sleep finally drags him under.
By late morning, the rain has stopped. The city has that scrubbed-clean look it gets after a night of lying through its teeth. Pale sunlight presses through the frosted glass in the back room, turning the sheets gold where Dex's hand rests on top of them. You wake in the chair with your neck bent at an angle that will punish you for days, hair coming loose from its clip. For one muzzy second, you forget the night. Then the chain gives a soft metallic scrape, and you remember every part of it at once.
Dex is awake.
He is lying still, which is encouraging. Too still, which is irritating. His good eye follows you as you straighten. He looks better, at least in the way people look better when they are still severely injured but no longer actively trying to bleed into the afterlife. Less gray. More focused. The swelling around his eye has deepened purple. His mouth is still split and tender. Stubble darkens his jaw. His bare chest is bandaged in three places, bruises blooming under the tape like ugly weather.
"You stayed," he says.
Your back cracks when you shift, a grunt escaping you. "I live here during disasters now, apparently."
His gaze drops to your wrinkled shirt, the blanket you must have pulled over yourself at some point. "You slept in a chair."
"I have made worse choices." Liking him was one.
His mouth moves like he wants to smile, but the split in his lip stops him. "Name one."
"You, repeatedly." Apparently early morning you has no filter.
That pleases him far more than it should. He watches you stand, and when you come over to check his pupils, he tilts his face up before you ask. Trying to be good again. It is awful to your chest, that easy offering. Dex, who fights everyone, lets you put your fingers under his jaw and angle him towards the light, eyes tracking your face more than the penlight.
"Headache?" you ask.
"Not really."
"Nausea?"
"No."
"Vision changes?"
"Ugly curtains."
"Those are original to the building, and they have seen too much to be insulted by you."
Ignoring that, he looks toward the ankle cuff. "Am I still a flight risk?"
"You murdered someone last night, tried to die at least twice by my count, and keep making jealous comments about a blind lawyer. So, Id say yes."
Dex's eye comes back to you. Slower now. "You're bringing him up."
The audacity if this stupid, beautiful, injured man. "You were going to."
"I was waiting."
"That must have been hard for you."
His fingers flex against the sheet, head dipping once towards his ankle. "Take it off."
You fold your arms, and his gaze moves briefly over your chest before he makes himself look back at your face. The tiny effort, the discipline of it, should not be as intimate as it is. "Tell me why."
"So I can leave if I want."
"Wrong answer."
The old Dex sits up under the wounded one for a second, teeth showing in spirit, even if his mouth is too sore for the full shape. He exhales, irritated. "So I can stop feeling like you expect me to run."
That one is a better answer. He sees that getting to you, which is annoying. Your mouth softening by degrees, fingers loosening against your arms, he sees all of it. You crouch near the bed and unlock the cuff with the key on your necklace. His eyes follow it, the little brass thing sliding from between your breasts, then the lock, then your hand closing around his ankle to ease the padding away from skin.
The chain falls with a dull clink.
Half of you, the pessimistic half, expects him to lunge. But he just lies there and looks at you with wonder in his eyes, as if you have handed him a weapon and he has chosen, for this one morning, to set it down.
"If you run, I will find you and sedate you in public," you say.
"You promise?"
"Dex."
With effort, his hand lifts. The tremor is subtle, visible only because you have spent too many nights learning his tells. He reaches for your wrist and stops halfway, waiting.
You wouldn't have thought more about this if he'd just reached. The waiting is what burrows under your ribs.
When you give him your wrist, his fingers close around it with almost no pressure, thumb restinh over your pulse like he wants to feel proof you are still here, flesh and warmth, no trick. "Does he get this?"
He should feel your pulse jump under his thumb, as you sigh and look at him. "Matt gets stitches. Lectures. Soup if he looks starved."
Dex studies your face, eyes tracking every one of your features, scanning. "And me?"
"You get the chain."
He huffs out something close to a laugh, with whatever energy that's left in him.
"You get me missing sleep, changing your dressings while you say upsetting things. You get me pretending I don't worry when you vanish for weeks and then show up with half your side open like a wounded dog dragging itself under a porch."
His hand tightens around the hold, eyes darkening. They are fixed on you with concentration, feeling more like a touch than his actual hands.
Dex has always looked at targets with focus. You have seen him do it through security footage Matt once brought you, body still, gaze calm, all the world narrowed into distance and outcome. This is different. Messier. He looks at you like he wants to crawl into the space behind your ribs and sleep there where no one can reach him.
"Do you want him?" The question comes out blunt. Too wounded. Subtlety has been stripped from him. What remains is one battered man, waiting to hear if he has already lost something he never properly held.
You sit on the edge of the mattress, careful near his ribs. The warmth of his body seeps into yours. "Matt is my friend."
"He touches you like he has rights."
"He touches me like he trusts me."
Dex's eyes looks pained, his jaw tightening. When you lean closer, his gaze drops to your mouth. Your eyes cleanly capture that small betrayal. His thumb strokes once over your pulse, helplessly possessive. You could still walk away. Probably change his dressing, make tea, text Matt an update, maybe contact someone with imaging access who asks fewer questions than the hospital would. Your brain produces tasks in a neat row. Your body knocks the row over like dominoes.
"He doesn't get this look," you sigh. Hazel eye lifts to yours, stripped clean. You almost laugh at yourself for what you're about to say, too honest for this setting. "No one else gets this look."
His breathing changes. Shallow for a second, then controlled since his ribs hurt. He has to choose restraint with every inhale. It makes the want on his face worse. A man who can hit a target precisely even in motion, is trying to keep still under your hand. The effort has sweat gathering at his temples. His hand closed around your wrist tugs you towards him, wordless, but you don't think words are needed.
"You have bruised ribs, multiple lacerations, and an ego wound the size of Manhattan," you say, but lean towards him anyway.
"Your bedside manner was better last night."
"Last night you were closer to death."
His mouth curves faintly, the split lip threatening to open with themotion. "I'm improving. Reward me."
The nerve of him. The absurd, devastating nerve of him, lying in your bed bandaged to hell, asking for you like he has any right, like he has every right. He has learned the existence of a spot in you where affection, fear and desire knot together, and has decided to press his thumb there. This is medically stupid, ethically worse, emotionally catastrophic.
But his hand on your wrist makes you feel chosen by a creature who has bitten everyone else, torn ear flashing before your eyes once more.
You bend down and kiss him. You mean to make it careful. A little thing. A test. Dex makes a sound into your mouth, and the kiss opens wider before you can organize your thoughts. His lips are split, so you keep the pressure light, but he chases you anyway, hungry in a ruined, restrained way that sends a wave of heat through your skin. His hand rises to the back of your neck. You expect him to pull your closer, but he just holds you there, that being somehow worse. His palm is warm, fingers trembling slightly against your hairline, whole body focusing on the point where your mouth meets his.
You pull back first, breathing hard, sharing oxygen. "Pain?"
His eyes open slowly, hazel swallowed by black. "Yes."
"From the kiss?"
"No."
"Dex."
"Everything hurts," he says, voice rough, like he's holding on by a thread. "That felt better."
The thread is thin. Your forehead lowers to his temple for one second. Just one. But it's enough to smell antiseptic on his skin, blood in his mouth, rain still caught somewhere in his hair. Enough to feel him exhale like the thread has finally snapped.
"This stays slow," you whisper against his mouth. "You tell me if I need to stop."
His thumb moves along your jaw, soft, so soft. "I'll behave."
That word is so gentle, that he has no practice giving, and you kiss him again before you can lose your nerve. Dex kisses like survival has always been a contact sport. Even injured, even careful, his mouth has a desperate steadiness to it, as if he is memorizing the limits of what he can take from you without breaking the spell. His hand slides from your neck to your waist, then stops. Waiting again.
You place his hand over your hip.
A sound leaves him, too soft to be a groan, too hungry to be a sigh, and his fingers dig into the flesh of your hips. Your thighs press together, his eye tracking the movement with a precision that makes your skin prickle. "Doc," he murmurs against your mouth.
"Mm?"
"You're shaking."
"So are you."
"I have an excuse."
A laugh from your mouth, but it comes out breathy and uneven, not nearly as cool as you need it to be. "Shut up."
You don't have a comeback, no sharp thing to say. You're letting Ben Poindexter slide his hand up under your shirt. There's an awful tenderness in being wanted by someone who rarely wants anything without destroying it. So, no. No sharp comeback.
His palm spreads over your waist, careful of his taped fingers, of the bruises on his own knuckles, careful with you in a way that feels learned from watching rather than experience. His thumb brushes the lower curve of your breast through your bra, and your breath goes thin.
His gaze locks on that reaction. "Can I?"
When you nod, his hand moves higher, cupping you with an aching slowness that makes your hips shift on the mattress. Dex's eyelid lowers, mouth parting slightly as if the feel of you under his palm is enough to daze him more than his injuries. He squeezes once, gentle at first, then firmer when your fingers curl into the sheet.
"Tell me," he says.
"Half-dead, but still you demand."
He ignores your words. "Tell me what you like."
The command, irritating from any other mouth, only drags heat through every inch of you now. You cover his hand with yours and guide him, showing him the pressure, the spot, how your nipple tightens when his thumb rubs over it through cotton. His attention is unbearable. "Like that," you breathe. "A little harder. Yeah, like that."
"He ever hear you sound like that?"
You kiss him harder, stealing those words from his mouth. He absorbs it with a shudder, hand tightening around your breast while his other reaches for your thigh.
The position is so awkward, you help him a little to sit up. Two bodies learning each other in the small space of a spare room cot.
Jealousy is still there, you can feel it threaded through every question, but now it has heat behind it, a wounded need that makes him cling and challenge at once. You swing one leg over his hips before he can try to move too much, settling carefully over his thighs, your palms braced on either side of his shoulders so none of your weight hits his ribs.
For once, Bullseye looks struck.
You look down at him, at the swelling, the bruises, the blood cleaned from his mouth, the bandages you placed over skin you are now aching to touch.
A man who tried to die last night is now staring at you like your thighs around him might be a reason to reconsider.
"This okay?" you ask, voice soft, not to startle him.
Dex swallows as he nuzzles closer, as if it was even possible. "Better than okay."
"Hands stay where they won't pull stitches."
A faint smile, soft enough to pull your heartstrings, looks up at you as if you have given him an order he would follow through fire. "Yes, doctor."
Your fingers tighten in the sheet beside his hip at his words. His thumb keeps moving on the bare strip of your stomach like he has found a place warm enough to keep him, palm heavy with feverish want and restraint that looks painful on him.
When you reach for your shirt, his hand tightens at your thigh. "Slow… let me see."
You almost laugh at the nerve of him. When the shirt drags up your ribs, his eyes follow every inch as if the fabric itself has offended him by hiding you this long. You pull it over your head and toss it to your back. Your bra is plain, worn from too many overnight shifts, and the fact that he looks at it like lace from some altar makes heat crawl over your cheeks. "Say something," you murmur, fingers hovering near the clasp.
Dex's mouth parts, then closes again. The split along the lower one shines where he has worried it open with every kiss. "I'm trying to think like a man with blood left in his head."
"That bad?"
His thumb brushes under the curve of your breast, barely grazing the band of your bra. "Worse."
You unhook it before the embarrassment can make you hesitate. The straps slip down your arms, and Dex goes still. Your breasts fall free, nipples already tight from his earlier touch, and the look on his face makes you feel naked in a deeper place than skin. He reaches up with both hands, then winces at the pull across his ribs. His frustration flashes sharp in his jaw.
"Let me come to you," you offer.
He gives a tiny shake of his head, annoyed at himself. "I hate this."
"You hate being cared for."
"I hate having hands and not able to use them."
That almost makes you smile. You shift closer, one hand cupping the back of his head, other hand cupping your breast and guiding him towards it. "Then use your mouth."
Dex groans like that instruction broke him. His lips close around your nipple, careful for all of two seconds before the pull turns needy. His tongue works over you, slow at first, then firmer when your hips shift against his. He makes a sound into your skin, less like hunger, more comfort, like he has found some impossible warmth in you and intends to live there now.
One of his hands finds your waist. The other slides around to your ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh he can reach. He cannot pull you hard without hurting himself, so he holds you in place and sucks like he needs the taste of you to steady him.
"Dex," you breathe, your hand tightening in his hair. His eye lifts without his mouth leaving you. "That's... yeah. Keep doing that."
He answers by drawing you deeper into his mouth, cheeks hollowing with a careful pull that sends a wet, aching spark down between your legs. The sound you make embarrasses you, and he hears it. Feels it. His hand slides lower, greedy over the curve of your ass. When you rock against him, his cock presses thick and hard under the loose pants you put on him hours earlier.
He releases your nipple with a soft sound, mouth shining. "Take these off me."
"Demanding, are we?"
His gaze drags up to meet yours. "Please. I need you closer, and these are in my way."
That is worse than anything filthy he could have said. Your fingers go to his waistband, tugging carefully, your focus split between wanting him and watching the tight pinch around his mouth whenever his ribs object. He helps as much as he can, lifting his hips an inch, hissing through his teeth. His cock slips free against his stomach, hard, already wet at the tip.
You stare for half a second too long. Even when he's injured, Dex notices everything. "Still want to scold me?"
"Constantly," you say, hating the softness in it, and wrap your hand around him.
His laugh turns into a groan, head dropping back against the wall while your thumb spreads the wetness at his tip down his shaft. He is warm in your hand, heavy, alive. The thought makes your throat ache, so you lean in and kiss him instead, messy and careful at once, your bare chest pressed near his bandages, your fingers stroking him until his hips twitch. "Stop moving," you whisper against his mouth.
"I barely moved."
"You moved enough." Your fingers don't stop their graze on his cock.
"I missed you." His voice comes apart on the last word. "Grant me a little mercy."
You rise onto your knees instead of answering the smarter way, tugging at your pants with one impatient hand while the other stays braced near his shoulder. The fabric catches at your knees, and for one stupid second you almost laugh. This is so ungraceful, far from the kind of fantasy you would have let yourself have about him. Dex does not laugh. His gaze follows the slow drag of your pants down your thighs like he is watching something holy and obscene at once. By the time you kick them off near the foot of the cot, your underwear is damp enough to cling, and his fingers flex against your hips like he is fighting the urge to help. "Those too."
"You're very annoying for a man who can barely sit upright, you know?"
"Please." There's just desperation.
You push your underwear down just enough at first, suddenly shy under his gaze, then give up and pull them off completely. Your slick coats your fingers when you touch yourself, and Dex's mouth parts like the sight has taken the last good thought from his head.
He watches entranced while you drag that wetness over his cock, making the slide easier, making a filthy shine of both of you. His hands flex against your hips, then still when you lower yourself over him.
The first stretch steals the words from both of you. You sink slowly, one hand braced on the wall over his shoulder, the other gripping his upper arm where the muscle tenses under your palm. Dex looks wrecked before you are even halfway down. His mouth hangs open, eyes fixed on your face, then dropping to where his cock disappears into you, then come back up as if he needs to see you take him more than he needs air. "Too much?" he asks.
Lowering anothet inch, you shake your head, thighs already trembling from the angle. "Just — just let me take my time."
"I'm yours," he says. "Take all of it."
The words do terrible things to you. You sink the rest of the way, cunt closing around him in hot, slick pulses.
Dex's hands clamp down on your ass with a force that almost breaks through his weakness. His forehead falls against your sternum. He breathes there, mouth brushing your skin, then he turns his face and sucks one breast back between his lips while you start to ride him.
The cot creaks under. Your thighs burn almost immediately, cramped from sleep in the chair and the span of his hips beneath yours. Still, you lift and sink, taking him deeper each time.
Dex tries to stay still. You feel the fight in him. His palms keep sliding under your ass, helping you rise, helping you drop, giving you just enough strength to keep moving without letting his ribs tear at him.
Then he thrusts up like he can't stop himself. A sharp little cry leaves you, pleasure striking so deep your knees almost give. Dex makes a pained sound in the same second, and your hand flies to his shoulder "Do that again and I swear I'll chain you back to the bed."
His face is tight, sweat shining at his temple. "I can take this."
"You are actively proving the opposite."
"Please." He says it into your breast, lips brushing the skin as he speaks, hands still cupping your ass. "Let me help. Sitting still while you do everything hurts worse."
Your scolding dies half-formed. If there's a tease, you could've gone through with it. But there's only need. Nodding your head against him, you let his hands guide you again.
He lifts as much as he can with his arms, careful of his side, and you ride the motion, cunt sliding down his cock with a wet sound that makes both of you shudder. His mouth finds your nipple again, sucking harder, and you feel him everywhere, under your skin, in your thighs, between your ribs. "I'm close," you tell him.
His hand leaves your ass, searching between your bodies. But when he twists wrong, pain catches him. You grab his wrist and press it back to your hip. "No. I'll do it."
"I want to make you cum."
"You are." You touch your clit with slick fingers and circle it the way you need, riding him in short, deep rolls. "Just stay with me. That's what I need."
His head drops back against the wall, watching your hand move, watching his cock fill you, then watches your face break open around pleasure. "Look at me. P-please. Let me see you."
When your eyes find his, your orgasm hits you you hard enough to turn your thighs useless, cunt clenching around him in tight, wet pulls.
Dex curses softly, hands locking on your ass as he spills inside you, hot and endless, body going rigid beneath yours while he tries to keep from thrusting. You keep your mouth against his, breathing into him until the shaking eases.
He says something too low for you to catch.
"What?"
His eye opens, glassy and spent. "Mine."
Your fingers slide along his jaw, careful around the bruising. "You don't get to say that unless you stay alive."
"I'll stay alive." The answer comes fast, hoarse, almost angry with how badly he means it.
Before you can respond, he catches the wrist of the hand you used on your clit and brings your fingers to his mouth. His lips close around them, sucking you off your own skin with a slow hunger that makes you clench again around his softening cock.
Like he cannot bear another second apart, he pulls you down and kisses you, your taste on his tongue, his hand weak but certain at the back of your neck. His pulse slams under your palm where it's holding onto his neck. Alive. Alive. Alive.
Getting off him is slow and messy. His cum slides down your thigh while you stand naked beside the cot.
Dex watches with a dazed, almost helpless look that follows you even when you grab a warm cloth. You sit beside him and clean his cock first, gentle around oversensitive skin, and he inhales like this care is harder to take than the sex. "I can do that," he mutters.
"You are injured. Shut up." You continue your path down his thighs.
"You like telling me what to do."
"I like keeping you alive." You check the bandage at his side next, still naked, still dripping, fingers clinical even while his gaze keeps dropping to the mess he left between your thighs. "Looks okay. Nothing opened."
When you clean yourself, he watches your hand move between your thighs with a frown that is almost offended. "That should be me."
"You can do that when you aren't fighting for your life."
His eye lifts to yours, begging, exhausted. "Next time?"
"Next time." Next time means he's planning on staying.
Your phone buzzes, the sound cutting through the moment. One small vibration against the metal cabinet, and Dex already knows. His eye shifts before yours does, tired and sharp at the same time, like the rest of him is sinking under but that sharp little blade in him still knows how to lift its head. "Matt," he says.
Offering him a bottle of water, you pick up your phone. Sure enough it is Matt.
"Tell him I didn't vanish." The bottle is unopened at his hands.
Sighing, you grab it from him, uncap and press it to his lips. Dex looks at you stunned, almost offended that you're holding a bottle to his mouth. "Drink."
Whatever response that was about to spill from his lips is interrupted by another buzz of your phone, currently on the cot beside him.
Dex's eyes drop to the screen. Bruised, naked under the too-thin blanket, barely keeping himself awake, and still he finds the one thing in the room pulling your attention away from him. "Persistent," he rasps.
"You're one to talk." The bottle stays at his mouth until he takes one grudging swallow, then another. His throat works, lashes lowering for a second.
The phone buzzes again.
Dex's mouth leaves the bottle. "Just — just reply him."
You pick up the phone with a sigh, and type back a response.
Still here. Stable.
Dex's eye tracks every letter. "That's all?"
"You want a performance review?"
His almost-smile tugs at the torn corner of his mouth. "Five stars. Charming. Didn't vanish."
You set the phone facedown beside his hip and lift the bottle again. "One more sip."
He groans, but drinks. This time he doesn't look offended. When a drop slips from the corner of his mouth, you wipe it with your thumb before thinking better of it. Dex catches your wrist before you can pull back. His grip has almost no strength left, but he holds you like letting go is the worst thing that could happen. "I behaved."
Just two words, like that wounded dog setting its head down because it has run out of places, but has finally found home. Your eyes sting so fast it's embarrassing. You settle your palm against his cheek. "Yes, you did."
Matt's reply comes through, unseen and ignored.
Dex's eyes close as he nuzzles deeper into your palm, your wrist still trapped in his loose hold. And all you can think is, stay.
EXTRAS. you can tell i almost gave up in the end. also… my man is so puppy dog. prove me wrong…
No pronouns used for reader (let me know if I missed any)
CW: minor blood/injury, BPD, Dex has unhealthy obsessions
Word Count: 2k
Summary: Dex is losing his North Star. His pushy neighbor keeps trying to nudge into his life and he isn't quite sure whether he should let this perfect angel into his life or let himself stay in his solitude.
The apartment was clean, everything was pristine from the few glances you got whenever he entered and exited. It was white, almost blinding. Like if the sun shone too bright through the windows, it would hurt your eyes to look at it.
Your apartment was different. It had the same white walls—your landlord was against painting them—but they were covered in photos and memorabilia. Some of your family, others of your college friends. Your diplomas hung by the door, encouraged by your mother. Why she had suggested that, you weren’t quite sure. But she’d helped you through university and grad school, co-signed on the apartment and helped you move in, so you didn’t object.
He had moved in a year after you did. He was quiet, kept to himself. From what you could tell about him and from those sparing glances at his lack of decor, you concluded he didn’t really have friends or anyone close for that matter.
You made a point to say hello whenever the two of you passed in the hallway. You even tried to make conversation when you rode the elevator together. His cold exterior made it seem like he was almost trying to push others away without even saying a word. If you didn’t know better, you’d think that he could kill you with just a glance.
After 6 months, you pried his name from his pretty lips—he was attractive, that was a given. His name was Ben, but everyone called him Dex.
“Your friends call you that?”
“Some.”
“Didn’t realize you had any of those.”
He’d looked away after that and you left him alone. Murmuring a goodbye as you parted ways, stepping off the elevator and parting to your respective doors.
It took you a couple months afterwards to get him to tell you that he worked as an FBI agent.
“So what’s that like?”
“It’s…tough.”
“I bet. What’s the craziest case you’ve worked on?”
He had looked at you like you were crazy, grinning at him. He thought you might be just as fucked in the head as he was.
“Well, right now I’m guarding Wilson Fisk.”
“That bald prick?”
He’d laughed at that and you’d never felt prouder of yourself.
“Yeah, that one.”
“That’s gotta be a rough job. Just hearing about some of the things he’s done makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Yeah…”
You weren’t one to give up. You were determined to keep making this man smile and laugh because you believe he deserves it. You were going to be his friend.
When you’d told some of your coworkers about him, you were met with people telling you he didn’t seem worth it.
“He seems like a dick.”
Over and over again, what you perceived as loneliness and a longing for connection, your coworkers deemed to be some sort of sociopathic solitude.
You were walking to work one morning when the newspaper stand you always walked past had a front page that stuck out to you through the messy chaos of New York City. A picture of Dex. “FBI INVESTIGATES ONE OF THEIR OWN”. Your heart dropped. The thin paper crinkled in your grasp.
“You gonna buy that sweetheart?” The man in the cart muttered with a cigarette pressed between his lips.
You frowned, fishing your wallet out and handing the man a few crumpled bills. You read the story as you walked, mind racing as you struggled to comprehend why they were investigating Dex. He’d only been protecting the other agents, and well, Wilson Fisk.
Your whole shift you sat puzzled. Your coworkers poking questions at you that you couldn’t be bothered to answer. All you wanted was to go home and check on him.
When you did get home, you heard crashing, the sounds of glass breaking and things being thrown about. Before you even fished your apartment key out of your pocket, your fist was pounding against his door.
“Dex!” You shouted. “Dex! Can you hear me? Open up!”
The door cracked open. Dex peered at you, both of you breathing unsteadily. His hand on the door frame was bloody.
You chewed on your bottom lip, flicking your eyes over his disheveled appearance. “Are you okay?” Your words were just above a whisper, dripping with worry and concern.
Dex looked on the verge of tears. “Yeah, um, I’m fine.”
You frowned, unsatisfied with his answer. “Dex, you’re bleeding. Can I come in?” His eyes shot to the interior of his apartment which you assumed to be in disarray. “I can help, Dex. I won’t judge. I just want to help.”
His eyes met yours and you could see the desperation beneath them. Reaching out for something you couldn’t quite understand. Without saying another word, he closed the door. Your breath paused for a second as you contemplated whether or not he was blocking you out. Then, you heard the soft, bare perceptible sound of the chain lock moving and the door opening once again. Dex opened the door just enough for you to walk in before closing it gently behind you.
You scanned over the apartment. A hole in the wall and a knife through a picture frame that was hanging right beside the door. The knife cutting straight through a woman, an ex maybe?
You didn’t let your gaze linger. You snapped your attention back to Dex. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
He nodded, slipping past you to move through his apartment. When he handed it to you, you directed him to sit down at the table so you could clean him up. You noted the damp white shirt that sat limply on the edge of the kitchen sink. You tried not to look at his bare chest as you inspected his knuckles. They were slightly torn, but mostly superficial. You cleaned them and gently wrapped some gauze around his hand, tying it securely once you were finished.
You raised your head to look at his face. His hazel eyes pierced through you. He had a conflicted look on his face. His injured hand was held loosely by yours, resting in your lap. You offered him a small smile, rubbing a few tight circles against his wrist.
Dex wasn’t sure what to think of you. Were you an angel? Or maybe just another false gift meant to pull him away from his routine. Fisk had taken Julie from him. If you were offering him such kindness, he didn’t want to lose this as well.
“Dex,” You murmured gently, a hand raising to cup his jaw. “Go take a shower, put on some fresh clothes. Try not to get this wet.” You squeezed his hand, giving him another smile. He nodded carefully, deciding then that he would follow any instruction you gave him without question. If Julie couldn’t guide him, maybe you could.
Once he got up and you could hear the shower running, you started cleaning up. First the medical supplies, sticking them back in the medicine cabinet you’d watched him pull the container from. Then you searched for cleaning supplies, finding a dust pan among other supplies tucked away beneath the sink.
You carefully took the shattered picture frame off of the wall, dislodging the knife that had further embedded itself into the wall, which you pried out of the frame and left in the sink to be dealt with afterwards. You cleaned up the broken glass, swiping into the dustpan and discarding it in the trash. You couldn’t easily fix the holes in the wall, that would have to be fixed on a different day—you had the next day off so you could pick up supplies then, giving you some time to look up youtube tutorials.
Cleaning what you could wasn’t too hard of a task. Gathering the thrown items into piles that you could ask Dex to direct you to their homes once he was cleaned up.
When he exited what you presumed to be his bedroom, he was dressed in a fresh pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. His hair was damp, you could smell the freshness of the shampoo permeating the air. What struck you, more than the faint outline of his chest from where his shirt clung to wet skin, was the heaving, laboured breaths coming from his lips. His fingers clenched around nothing.
You stood instantly, nearly sprinting to him. You held your hands out and he took them, palms landing on your forearms, holding onto you for what seemed like a lifeline.
“Dex,” you murmured gently, “I want you to copy my breathing. We’re going to breathe in and out together, real slow, okay?” He nodded quickly and you squeezed his arms. “Okay, in….and out.” You repeated it a few times, taking deep breaths until you were sure his breathing had evened out. You smiled, “Good job, Dex.” You led him to the couch, sitting down beside him. His hands landed on his thighs, raking up and down. You gently touched his bicep. “Dex, is there anything I can get you?” You asked slowly.
His eyes squeezed shut for half a moment before staring at you again. They were watering and he seemed to be on the verge of bursting into tears. He cleared his throat, “uh, in the back of my closet there’s a safe. It has my tapes.”
“Okay, what’s the code? And is there a specific one you’d like?” You offered him another smile, gently squeezing his arm.
He shook his head, telling you the code. “Any of them will work.”
You got up and walked into his bedroom. You glanced over the room, just as empty as the rest of the apartment and just as pristine as you assumed it was when Dex was having a normal day. The bed was perfectly made as if it had been done by a professional.
You didn’t linger long, making your way to the closet, pushing aside the suits you often saw him wearing. Behind them was the safe, perfectly aligned. You worked the locking mechanism quickly, only screwing up the dial once before twisting it open.
When you opened the safe, the arsenal of weapons shocked you. You knew it shouldn’t surprise you, he was FBI after all, not to mention serving in the army. Shaking the tinge of fear off, you grabbed one of the tapes and the headphones.
When you returned to the living space, Dex was shaking hard enough that he was practically vibrating.
You quickly crossed the room, “Hey, hey, it’s okay.”
You popped the tape into the player and slipped the headphones over his ears. He took the device from your hand and hit play. You were crouched in front of him. With his other hand, he grabbed yours. His eyes were closed. As the seconds, minutes passed, his face grew calmer and more relaxed. His steady grip on your hand relaxed and eventually, his eyes opened again. The fearsome storm that was once held behind those glassy eyes, dissipated faster than you’d expected.
The calm smile that graced your lips slowly echoed on his face. With your free hand, you cradled his face, wiping a stray tear that had fallen. “Are you feeling better?”
It was a quiet question, one that he should’ve expected. He knew the car was waiting downstairs for him. The man that had been at his door while you were in his room, he was terrified. You’d taken this much time to take care of him, to talk him down from the ledge and for what? Was he really going to throw that away to do the bidding of the very man he had sworn to keep locked up.
And you- you were so kind to him. He’d tried Julie and she’d rejected him. He wasn’t that sure what to think of you. This perfect soul who seemed to do no wrong. You had to be some sort of angel. He was almost certain of it now.
And you just had to be perched so perfectly at his feet. So beautiful. He could feel the obsession growing. He wanted to claim you as his—protect you at any cost. He would do whatever it took to keep you safe.
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i have bullseye clips playing on my tv while i write and the current clip is the daredevil/bullseye/fisk fight from the s3 finale and i never noticed that vanessa is reacting in the background when dex is throwing silverware at matt and he's deflecting it with his makeshift batons. i had glanced up and saw her in the background and had to replay it cause its maybe 3 seconds but i thought it was so ridiculous cause it looks like she's mimicking matt.
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while i’m fully on board with wilson bethel saying he wants dex to have a freak4freak gf in ddba, he already has one. matthew murdock is literally right there. you can’t give me 2 seasons of them hate fucking each other and expect me not to want more of that
summary: Your boyfriend comes to the apartment with Dex in tow—except Matt says that some test tubes broke during their fight, and now they're infected with a mysterious airborne substance. And now you're starting to feel it too...
word count: 19.7k+ (pls don't shoot idk how that happened)
pairing: matt murdock x fem!reader x dex poindexter
notes: yeah so... this got... out of hand. i spent weeks on this, whenever i had the *horny urge* i wrote a short scene and i kept doing it for weeks. that's what i get for getting my period every 2 weeks, my hormones like to fuck me just like all the fucking in this
warnings/tags: no use of y/n, established relationship (matt and you), sex pollen, EVERYONE IS CONSENTING!!!, threesome (mmf), fingering (f!receiving), handjob(s), oral (f&m!receiving), unprotected piv, cum play (idk kinda? there's a lot of orgasms in this lol), creampie(s), headlock by dex yes plsss, one use of the word 'slut', a little bit of biting, i meant it when i said a lot of orgasms there's so many omg, grinding, honestly dex is a third wheel, teasing, dex kinda has a humiliation kink honestly, you and matt use dex as a table (?), choking - as in matt chokes dex bc i said so, fingers in mouth (or rather dex sucks ur fingers), a lot of kissing (sadly no dexmatt kiss i'm so sorry y'all i'll make up for it next time), slight edging, dex has a praise kink (he just wants to fuck you good!), 69ing with some pizzazz, kinda cum eating?, bratty!dex, dom!matt, sub/switch!dex, it's kinda a competition to see who can fuck u better, lightly proofread
The lock clicks, then the door shoves open like somebody hit it with a shoulder instead of a key, and the first thing you hear is a breath that doesn’t belong in your quiet apartment. It’s too rough, too fast, the kind of breathing that comes after a sprint or a fight, and then there’s the scrape of boots on the wood floor as someone drags weight over the threshold.
You sit up against your pillows, nightgown twisted around your thighs, skin warm from sleep, and you blink hard at the clock because your brain tries to insist this is a nightmare before it accepts that Matt is actually home, and he didn’t come home alone. “Matt?” Your voice comes out husky, still fogged with sleep, and you swing your legs over the side of the bed as your pulse starts climbing. “What the hell is going on?”
“Stay in the bedroom,” Matt says immediately, and the way he says it makes your stomach tighten because it’s not a suggestion. It’s his command-voice—his Daredevil-voice—the one he uses when something is wrong, and he doesn’t want you anywhere near it.
You ignore him anyway, because you always do when it’s your apartment and your life, and you can hear him struggling to keep somebody upright. You move down the hall barefoot, the hardwood cool under your feet, and you catch the shape of him in the living room by the dim kitchen light. He’s still in his suit, mask off, shoulders rising and falling too hard. One of his hands is clamped around an arm that doesn’t belong to him, hauling a second man forward like he’s refusing to let him hit the floor.
The second man stumbles, catches himself at the wall with a palm, then tilts his head toward you with a lazy kind of confidence that doesn’t match how unsteady he is. He’s dressed in blue gear that looks expensive and ruined at the same time, and the second his eyes land on you, his mouth curls like he just found something amusing. “Well,” he says, drawing it out like he’s tasting the word. “Hi.”
You stare at him, then back at Matt, and you don’t bother lowering your voice. “Why is there a stranger in my apartment, and why does he look like he crawled out of a fire?”
Matt’s head turns in your direction with that pinpoint focus he always has when he’s tracking your voice. “He’s not a stranger to me,” he says, and you can hear how carefully controlled he’s being. “He’s hurt and I didn’t have another choice.”
Dex laughs under his breath like that’s the funniest thing he’s heard all week. “You make it sound like you rescued a kitten. I’m touched.”
Matt’s grip tightens on Dex’s arm, and Dex hisses like it actually hurts. “Watch your mouth,” Matt snaps, then forces his voice back down when he speaks to you again. “We ran into each other on a call. There was a lab. Something broke. There were… containers.”
“Containers,” you repeat, flat, because it’s absurd and vague and you can see the way Matt’s suit is flecked with something that might be dust or dried chemical residue. “You’re bleeding?”
“I’m fine,” Matt says too fast, which is how you know he isn’t, and his shoulders hunch like he’s bracing against heat or pain. “It’s not bad.”
Dex slides down the wall like he’s trying to sit without admitting he needs to, then he looks at you again with that same sharp interest that makes your skin crawl. His gaze drags, slow and deliberate, from your face to the thin fabric of your nightgown and back up, and he doesn’t even pretend he’s being subtle.
You fold your arms over your chest and let your expression go cold. “Can I help you?”
His smile widens a fraction. “You’re prettier than I pictured.”
Matt’s head snaps toward Dex so sharply it’s almost violent, and for a second you see the exact moment his restraint threatens to split. “Don’t,” Matt says, low and dangerous.
Dex’s eyes flick up, mocking. “Don’t what? Look? Talk? Breathe in her general direction?”
You step closer without thinking, because you hate the way Dex is taking up space in your living room like he belongs here, and you hate even more that Matt is shaking with something that looks like exhaustion mixed with anger. Up close you can see the sweat at Matt’s temples, the damp hair stuck to his forehead, and the way his chest rises like he’s struggling to pull air deep enough.
“Matt,” you say, softer now, because whatever this is, it’s making him feel wrong in his own body. “Talk to me. What happened?”
Matt swallows, and his jaw flexes. “We fought,” he admits, like it costs him to say it with you standing there. “He showed up where he shouldn’t have been. We went through a glass enclosure, and there were test tubes inside it. They shattered.”
Dex shifts, his voice turning conversational like he’s discussing the weather instead of the aftermath of a fight. “You should’ve seen his face when the thing popped. Real dramatic. Whole room went sparkly.”
“You’re enjoying this,” you say, and you don’t bother hiding how much you dislike him.
Dex tips his head. “I enjoy most things.”
Matt exhales through his nose like he’s trying not to say something that would turn this into an even bigger disaster. “There was a chemical. I don’t know what it was. I just know the heat hit fast, and then we both went down for a minute.”
He shifts his grip, reaches into his suit with his free hand, and you instinctively lean forward because the motion looks clumsy, like his hands don’t want to cooperate. When he pulls his fist back out, he’s holding a broken length of glass, the snapped end jagged and cloudy like something coated the inside.
“I kept a piece,” Matt says, and his voice is tight with the kind of practicality that always kicks in when he’s scared. “I didn’t want to leave without something. If we can figure out what it was—”
“Matt,” you cut in, because the glass makes your stomach drop. “Why are you holding that with your bare hand?”
“I’m not cut,” he says, and you can tell he’s telling the truth, because his voice doesn’t hitch the way it does when he lies to you. “It’s not sharp on this end.”
Dex snorts. “Sure. He’s very careful, your boyfriend. Extremely careful. That’s why he dragged his enemy into your apartment at midnight, wearing his murder pajamas.”
Your eyes cut to Dex. “Stop talking.”
Dex’s grin turns delighted. “Aw. You tell him what to do too? That’s cute.”
Matt’s patience finally cracks in a way that has nothing to do with you. He yanks Dex’s arm up, not enough to dislocate anything, but enough to remind Dex who’s stronger, then he shoves him toward the couch with a controlled kind of force. Dex stumbles, catches himself on the back cushion, and laughs again like it’s foreplay.
“Sit,” Matt says, clipped. “And if you say one more thing about her, I’m putting you through the wall.”
Dex settles onto the couch with exaggerated ease, stretching his legs out like he’s in a waiting room. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
Matt turns back to you, and the aggression falls away from his face like it was never there, replaced by something strained and urgent. He holds the broken tube out in your direction, and you take it because you don’t want it in his hand anymore, even though you don’t know what you’re supposed to do with it.
The glass is warm, warmer than it should be, and the cloudy residue inside catches the light faintly. You angle it away from your body on instinct, then look up at Matt. “Okay. You brought me… a dirty shard of a test tube.”
“I know,” Matt says, and he sounds frustrated with himself, like he can hear how ridiculous it is. “I didn’t think. I just—I wanted it here. Safe.”
“You couldn’t have put it in a bag?” you say, and you can’t help it, because your nerves are trying to get relief through sarcasm. “Or a sock? Or literally anything that isn’t my bare hands?”
Matt’s mouth twitches, but it’s not a smile, not really. “I’ll clean up after. I just need you to—” He cuts himself off, breath stuttering like the heat is spiking again. “I need you to help me keep a clear head.”
You don’t say what you’re thinking, which is that he doesn’t look like he has one right now. Instead, you lift your chin toward the bathroom. “Both of you need to change, shower if you can. At least get those suits off, because whatever this was, it’s on you.”
Dex’s voice floats over, bright with amusement. “Oh, yeah. Tell him to take it off.”
Your eyes flick to him again, and you don’t bother masking the disgust. “You can shut up and do as you’re told too.”
Dex raises an eyebrow. “Bossy. I like it.”
Matt takes a step toward him like he’s about to make good on the wall threat, but you touch Matt’s forearm before he can. “Matt,” you say, grounding him, and his head turns back to you immediately. “Bathroom. Now.”
His throat works, and he nods once, sharp and obedient, because he trusts you. “Dex first. I’m not letting him wander.”
Dex pushes himself up with a lazy stretch, then pauses just long enough to look you up and down again, slow as he pleases. “Your nightgown’s a nice touch,” he murmurs.
Matt’s hand shoots out and clamps on Dex’s shoulder, and Dex makes a sound that’s half laugh, half choke. “Move,” Matt growls.
Dex lifts both hands like he’s surrendering, but the grin never leaves. “Okay, okay. Lead the way.”
You step back to give them space, holding the broken glass out away from your body like it’s something that might bite you. Matt herds Dex down the hall, and you watch them disappear into the bathroom, the door shutting with a firm click that sounds like Matt trying to lock his temper away in the same place.
For a second, the apartment is quieter, except for the muffled sound of water turning on and the rough edge of Matt’s breathing bleeding through the door. You look down at the test tube shard in your hand, then at your nightgown, then toward the kitchen where you keep plastic bags and gloves under the sink, and you mutter to yourself because you can’t believe this is your life. “Okay,” you say under your breath, moving toward the kitchen. “Cold water. Towels. Gloves. Something to cool them down. Then we figure out what the hell you two brought home.”
From the bathroom, Dex’s voice carries, too clear, too smug. “So, this is the girlfriend.”
Matt’s reply is low and sharp enough that even through the door you hear the warning. “Don’t.”
Dex laughs again, softer this time, like he’s savoring it. “God, you’re fun.”
You grab a roll of paper towels with one hand, dig for a plastic bag with the other, and you tell yourself you’re not going to let Dex get under your skin, because you’ve dealt with Matt’s stubbornness, his bruises, his secrets, and the way he tries to carry the whole city alone, and you can handle one sarcastic asshole on your couch.
Then the warmth hits you, subtle at first, like your apartment suddenly got too hot even though the thermostat hasn’t changed, and you pause with your fingers still in the cabinet because your skin prickles in a way that makes no sense.
You take a breath, then another, and the air feels thick in your lungs, not choking, just… heavy, like it’s carrying something you didn’t notice before. “Matt,” you call, raising your voice toward the bathroom. “How sure are you that stuff wasn’t airborne?”
There’s a pause, water still running, and then his voice comes back through the door, tight with a kind of grim certainty. “I’m not sure,” he admits. “But I think it was.”
Your stomach drops, and you stare down at the glass shard in your hand like it just turned into a live wire. You shove it carefully into the plastic bag, seal it with shaking fingers, and tell yourself you’re being dramatic, because you’re fine, you’re just warm, it’s probably stress, it’s probably adrenaline—
Except your nightgown suddenly feels too soft and too clingy, and your thighs press together on instinct like you’re trying to get friction from nothing. You swallow hard, forcing your hands to keep moving, forcing your brain to stay on the list of practical tasks you can control.
Cold packs. Water. Clothes. Get them out of the contaminated suits.
You grab two bottles of water from the fridge, then a third, because Dex can suffer but dehydration is still dehydration, and you yank the freezer open for ice packs. The cold air hits your face, and it should feel good, but it only makes the heat under your skin feel sharper by contrast.
You stand there longer than you mean to, letting the freezer’s cold wash over you while your pulse kicks harder for no reason you want to name. Your nipples tighten under the nightgown, your stomach flips, and you force your mouth into a hard line because this cannot be happening, not tonight, not with Dex in your living room and Matt barely holding himself together.
The water shuts off and then there are two sets of footsteps. One steady, one dragging with theatrical exaggeration.
You straighten up, slam the freezer closed, and turn with the water bottles in hand like you’re about to run a triage station, because if you keep moving, you can pretend your body isn’t suddenly acting like you’re the one who came home from a fight covered in whatever the hell was in that lab.
You hand them the water bottles like you’re running a field hospital out of your kitchen, and the second Matt’s fingers brush yours you feel how hot he is, like his skin is holding heat instead of just warming you the way it normally does. Dex takes his bottle without a thank you, of course, twisting the cap with a lazy flick and drinking like he’s trying to look unbothered, even though sweat is still beading at his hairline.
“Sit,” you tell them, nodding toward the couch and the armchair like you’re assigning stations. “Both of you. If either of you falls over, I’m not catching you.”
“I’m not going to fall,” Matt says, and he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as you. He’s in a dark t-shirt and sweatpants now, hair damp from the quick rinse, suit shoved somewhere in the bathroom, and he’s still breathing like his lungs are running behind his body. He stands there for a second, head slightly tilted, listening to the room like he’s trying to find the chemical in the air by sound alone.
Dex drops onto the couch and sprawls like he lives there, one arm slung over the back cushion. Matt doesn’t sit, not yet, and you can tell he’s vibrating with it, the need to keep moving, to keep control, to not let his body win.
“You said you don’t know what it was,” you say, and you keep your voice even because if you let yourself sound scared, you’ll make Matt spiral. “Did you see labels? Any markings? Anything at all?”
Dex snorts into his water bottle. “He didn’t see shit.”
Matt’s jaw tightens hard enough that you can see it. “There were racks. Glass. It was like a display enclosure more than storage. Maybe a demonstration.” He pauses, then adds like he hates the words, “there was a sweet smell. Like… hot metal and sugar.”
“That’s helpful,” you say automatically, even though it isn’t, and you can feel your own skin prickling again, that wrong warmth spreading across your chest and down your stomach. You shift your weight, trying to ignore it, trying to treat it like the apartment just got stuffy because two overheated men dragged themselves in and your adrenaline is still high.
Dex’s gaze drifts to you again, and this time it lingers longer, sharper. “You’re sweating,” he says, like it’s an observation and a victory at the same time.
“I’m fine,” you snap without thinking, and it comes out too fast, too defensive, which is annoying because it makes it sound like you aren’t fine.
Matt’s head turns toward you immediately, and his voice drops into that careful calm he uses when he’s trying not to panic. “You’re sweating?”
“Matt,” you say, trying to laugh it off, but it sounds thin. “It’s late, my boyfriend came home half-dead with a lunatic, I’m running on caffeine and anxiety. I’m allowed to sweat.”
Dex’s mouth curls. “He’s not your boyfriend right now. He’s a furnace.”
“Okay,” you say, too bright, already done with him. You point toward the hallway. “No more commentary from the peanut gallery. You’re sitting there, you’re drinking water, and you’re shutting up.”
Dex lifts his hands in fake surrender again, then settles back with an obnoxiously pleased look on his face. “Yes, ma’am.”
Matt finally lowers himself into the armchair, but he doesn’t relax into it. His hands stay on his thighs like he’s bracing, and when he exhales it’s rough, like the air drags. You set the ice packs on the coffee table and slide one toward him, and another toward Dex, trying to keep this practical because practical means you’re not thinking about the heat crawling under your nightgown.
“Put those on your neck,” you tell them. “Or your wrists. Something.”
Dex picks his up, presses it to his throat, and groans like he’s being dramatic on purpose. “Oh, that’s nice.”
Matt takes his, but he doesn’t immediately put it on. He lifts it, then pauses like he’s listening again, and his head tilts toward you in a way that makes your stomach drop because he’s noticed something, and Matt noticing something is never casual. “You’re breathing differently,” he says.
You stare at him. “What?”
“You’re breathing differently,” he repeats, steady, like he’s trying to keep it neutral. “It’s… faster.”
Dex’s eyes flick between you and Matt, and his smile turns sharp, like he’s watching a show start. “Uh-oh.”
“I’m fine,” you insist again, and you hate how your voice shakes at the end, because it makes Matt’s posture go even tighter.
Matt’s hands curl around the ice pack, and he forces himself to stay seated. “Tell me if you feel anything,” he says, and there’s a hard edge beneath the calm. “If it’s airborne, you’re exposed too.”
“I know,” you say, and you hate that the admission makes the warmth in your body flare like it’s responding to being acknowledged. You swallow and shift again, rubbing your thighs together without meaning to, then stopping when you realize you did it. “I’m going to look it up. Something has to match those symptoms.”
Dex’s gaze drops to your legs like he’s cataloging the movement, and your cheeks go hot in a way that isn’t just temperature. You pick up your phone before you can think too hard about that, because thinking too hard about Dex watching you is a problem you don’t want tonight.
You walk into the kitchen with your phone in hand, because if you stay in the living room with both of them staring at you in different ways, you’re going to lose your mind. You type fast, thumbs slipping a little because your hands feel clammy.
You stare at the results like they’re in another language, and you scroll anyway, because you’re stubborn and you need something concrete. Your mind keeps snagging on the words sweet smell, heat, exposure, and every time you try to force it back onto “poison” or “irritant” your body does something else entirely, like it’s dragging you toward a different conclusion. Your nipples ache against the thin fabric of your nightgown, your stomach tightens low, and the slick heat between your thighs becomes impossible to pretend is stress.
You type again, more frantic.
Your phone gives you a bunch of useless articles, clickbait and vague warnings and the word aphrodisiac showing up in places that make your pulse jump. You read half a sentence, then realize you’re not reading at all because the heat in your body is swallowing your attention. You grip the counter and try to breathe slowly like that will fix it, but the second you inhale, the air feels thick again, and the warmth in your lungs makes your thighs clench.
From the living room, you hear Dex’s voice carrying, casual and taunting. “So, how long you think before she starts climbing you like a tree?”
Matt’s voice is low, dangerous. “Don’t talk about her.”
Dex laughs, and you hate that the sound makes something flutter in your stomach, like your body is reacting to the idea before your brain can slam the door on it. You squeeze your eyes shut and force yourself to think about anything else. Cold water. Ice packs. Gloves. Cleaning supplies. Bag the glass shard. Call someone. Call—
You realize you’re holding your breath, and when you exhale it trembles.
Your nightgown clings to your stomach and thighs, damp where you’re sweating, and the sensation is suddenly unbearable, too soft, too much. You tug at the fabric like it’s suffocating you, then stop because your hands shake, and you’re not sure if it’s fear or need. Your phone is still in your hand, screen glowing with the word arousal, and you want to throw it across the room.
Instead, you set it down on the counter, hard, like you can punish it into giving you a better answer. “Okay,” you mutter to yourself, voice tight. “Okay. I’m not doing this. I’m not—”
You walk out of the kitchen, meaning to go back to the living room, meaning to keep control of the situation, meaning to tell Matt what you found and keep Dex from running his mouth. Halfway down the hall, the heat spikes again, sharper, and you stop like you ran into a wall.
Your skin feels too sensitive, like every brush of air is a touch. Your panties suddenly feel like a cruel joke, a thin strip of fabric that’s rubbing exactly where you can’t stand it, and you press your thighs together hard enough that it almost hurts. You try to keep walking, you really do, but your knees go a little weak and your breath catches, and you end up turning into the bedroom without making the decision out loud.
The room is dim and familiar and smells like you and Matt, clean sheets and laundry detergent and something warm underneath, and that makes it worse, because it makes the need feel safe enough to bloom.
You shut the door halfway behind you, not all the way because you don’t want to look suspicious, and you stand against the wall with your back against it like you’re steadying yourself. Your nightgown rides up when you shift, and the cool air hits your thighs, and your body reacts so hard you actually gasp.
“Fuck,” you whisper.
You try to be rational again, you try to talk yourself down like you’ve never been turned on before in your life, like this is just horny and not chemical and not dangerous. You tell yourself you can take a cold shower, you can drink water, you can breathe it out, and then your fingers slide under the hem of your nightgown anyway, because your body is done waiting for your permission.
Your hand slips into your panties, and the second your fingertips find your slick pussy you go still, eyes squeezed shut, because the relief is immediate and dizzying. You bite your lip hard enough to sting, because the sound that wants to come out of you is not something you can let Dex hear from your bedroom, not when he’s sitting on your couch like a smug parasite.
You circle your clit carefully at first, trying to keep it quiet, trying to keep it controlled, and it doesn’t work. Your hips rock into your hand without you telling them to, and the wet sound of your fingers moving makes your cheeks burn. You press your head against the wall, breathing through your nose, trying to keep your mouth shut, but the heat keeps climbing, building like pressure under your skin.
“Come on,” you whisper to yourself, harsh and frustrated, like you can bully your body into settling down. “Just—just calm down.”
You don’t calm down. Your fingers slide lower, two of them pushing into your cunt with a slow, shaking thrust, and you have to clamp your other hand over your mouth momentarily because the moan nearly spills out anyway. The stretch makes your stomach flip, makes your thighs tremble, and you can’t decide which is worse: the relief or the fact that it’s making you want more instead of fixing anything.
You pull your fingers out, then push them back in again, deeper this time, and your knees flex like you’re about to sink to the floor. You grip the fabric of your nightgown at your waist with your free hand, bunching it up so you can spread your legs wider, because you’re chasing friction now, chasing anything that makes the burning need feel like it has a direction.
The thought of Matt flashes through your head, automatic, grounding and devastating. Matt’s hands. Matt’s mouth. Matt’s voice telling you what to do when you can’t think straight.
Then Dex’s voice flashes too, the way he looked at you, the way he said you’re sweating, the way he keeps pressing at Matt like he wants a reaction. The idea of Dex hearing you through the wall makes your stomach clench again, and it’s not all disgust, and that realization pisses you off so much that you shove your fingers in deeper like you can punish yourself back into sense.
You’re panting now, sweat slick on your back, nightgown twisted up around your ribs, and you can’t get enough air. Your clit throbs under your thumb, oversensitive, and you move faster even though you’re trying not to. The sound of your own wetness fills your ears, and you tilt your head back like you’re trying to keep your mouth away from the urge to moan.
From the living room, you hear a muffled sound, probably Dex shifting, maybe Matt saying something sharp, and you freeze for half a second, panic jolting through you. You listen hard, holding your breath, fingers still buried in your cunt.
No footsteps yet.
You swallow, shaky, and start moving again because stopping feels like dying. You bite your lip again, harder, and the sting makes your eyes water, but it keeps you quiet. Your body builds toward the edge anyway, tightening and tightening until it feels like your skin is going to split open with it.
“Fuck,” you breathe, almost silent, and you chase the pressure harder because you need it to break. Right as you feel your orgasm start to crest, the sound of footsteps hits the hallway, steady and purposeful, and your whole body jolts like you’ve been caught doing something criminal.
Matt’s footsteps.
They’re careful, controlled, and they stop outside your bedroom door for half a beat like he’s listening, like he already knows exactly what you’re doing, because he always knows. Matt’s footsteps stay outside the door for a beat too long, and you can feel him there the way you always can when he’s focused, like the air in the room shifts around his attention. You freeze with your hand still in your panties, fingers slick, thighs trembling, breath coming in shallow, broken pulls that you’re trying to force quieter.
The door nudges open, not hard, just enough that it moves on its hinges with a soft click, and Matt’s voice follows immediately, low and careful like he’s holding himself back by the teeth. “Sweetheart… are you okay?”
You swallow, throat tight, and you try to make your face normal even though you can’t stop shaking. Your fingers twitch against your cunt, and the tiny movement shoots a hot jolt straight up your spine. “Yeah,” you say too fast, and it comes out wrecked anyway, breathy and cracked like you’re already begging. “I’m fine. I just—I’m hot. I’m just—”
Matt steps in and closes the door behind him with the gentlest touch, like he doesn’t want the sound to carry, and then he stops again, head tilted, listening to you the way he listens to everything. You know he can hear your pulse slamming in your throat, can hear how wet you are, can hear the way you’re trying to keep your breathing from turning into moans.
“You’re not fine,” he says, and it isn’t accusing, it’s steady, like he’s naming a fact. “Talk to me.”
You laugh once, short and sharp, because it’s either that or cry. “I tried to look it up. I tried to be normal about it. I—” You cut yourself off when your hips rock into your own hand again, helpless, and your eyes squeeze shut. “Matt, I can’t—I can’t think.”
He crosses the room fast, but not frantic, and the difference matters because it’s Matt; even when he’s losing control, he tries to make you feel safe first. His hand finds your wrist unerringly, gentle but firm, stopping your movement for a second, not taking it away, just holding you still long enough that you have to breathe.
“Hey,” he murmurs, closer now, and his other hand cups your jaw, thumb brushing the corner of your mouth like he’s checking if you’re real. “Look at me.”
You do, because you always do, and the sight of him in the dim light makes something inside you twist. He looks wrecked too, sweat still at his temples, hair damp, t-shirt clinging to his chest, and his mouth is set in this tight line like he’s trying to be your anchor while his own body is on fire.
“You don’t have to lie,” he says softly, and his thumb drags across your lower lip, slow and grounding. “Do you want help?”
Your throat bobs, and you try to answer like a normal person instead of somebody with their panties soaked through, but it comes out raw. “Yes.”
Matt doesn’t move right away. He holds your face, keeps his thumb at your lip like he’s keeping you from spinning out, and his voice drops even lower. “Say it again.”
Your breath shudders, and you nod even though you know he doesn’t need the nod, he needs the words. “Yes, Matt. I want help.”
His jaw flexes. His shoulders rise and fall once like he’s pulling himself together on purpose, and then he asks you the question that always matters more than anything else, even now, even like this. “Tell me what you want,” he says, and his voice is steady enough that it makes your eyes sting. “Use words.”
You wet your lips, and your cheeks burn because it feels too explicit to say out loud when he can already hear it, when he already knows, but he makes you do it anyway because that’s how he keeps you safe in the middle of chaos. “I want your fingers,” you manage, breath shaking. “I want you to make it stop—or make it better, I don’t know, just… please.”
Matt makes a sound in the back of his throat like the words hit him in the gut, and then his grip on your wrist loosens. He slides your hand out of your panties and brings it up, pressing your slick fingers to his mouth in a way that makes your stomach flip so hard you almost lose your balance.
He kisses your fingertips, slow and wet, and then he licks them, once, deliberate, like he’s tasting exactly what you need. His breath is hot against your skin, and he exhales through his nose like it hurts. “Okay,” he says against your fingers, voice rougher now. “I’ve got you.”
You barely have time to nod before his hand replaces yours, sliding down into your panties like he belongs there, like he owns the space because you gave it to him. He moves slow at first, two fingers brushing through your wetness, spreading it, teasing your entrance like he’s forcing himself to be careful even though your hips buck toward him immediately.
“Fuck,” you whisper, and it’s tiny, but Matt hears it anyway. His mouth finds yours, messy and hungry, like he’s starving and trying not to scare you with it. The kiss turns into something hot and open-mouthed almost instantly, your lips parting because you can’t do anything else, your hands grabbing at his shoulders to keep yourself upright.
Matt’s fingers sink into you, steady and deep, curling just right, and you make a strangled sound into his mouth because it’s too much relief and not enough at the same time. He keeps kissing you like he’s trying to swallow your noises, and the way he breathes tells you his control is fraying too, his exhale stuttering against your cheek.
“Good,” he murmurs, pulling back just enough to speak, then kissing you again before you can answer. “That’s it. Let me.”
You whine, hips chasing his hand, and your back hits the wall harder as you try to grind into him. Matt adjusts instantly, stepping closer, pinning you with his body without crushing you, and it’s the best kind of pressure because it keeps you from sliding apart.
Your hands are everywhere, grabbing at him like you need proof he’s here, and then your palms find the front of his sweatpants and you can feel him through them, hard and thick, and it makes you gasp into his mouth.
“Matt,” you breathe, half warning, half plea, and you rub him without thinking, dragging your hand over his cock through the fabric because the friction makes your whole body light up. He shudders, and his fingers thrust deeper like his restraint slipped a notch.
He breaks the kiss just long enough to press his forehead to yours, breathing hard enough that you feel it. “Jesus,” he mutters, and it’s the closest you’ve ever heard him come to sounding undone. “You’re soaked.”
“I can’t—” you start, and your voice breaks when his thumb finds your clit and presses in firm, circling just right. “I can’t, I’m gonna—”
“Go on,” Matt says, and his tone turns quietly possessive, not harsh, just certain. “Come for me.”
Your body snaps tight, knees shaking, and you clamp a hand over your mouth too late because the sound still leaks, broken and desperate. You grind into his hand, rubbing his cock harder because you can’t help it, and Matt’s breath turns ragged as he holds you steady and keeps working you through it.
You come fast, like your body was right at the edge already and he just pushed you over, shaking so hard your shoulders hit the wall again. Your cunt pulses around his fingers, wet and tight, and you moan his name into your palm like it’s a prayer and a plea all at once.
Matt doesn’t stop when you finish. He slows down, but he keeps moving, stroking you through the aftershocks with a tenderness that’s almost cruel because it drags the sensation out until you’re trembling and oversensitive, hips twitching away and then back again because you don’t want it to end.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, mouth at your cheek, kissing the corner of your jaw, then the side of your throat. “That’s my girl. Breathe.”
You try to, but every breath comes out shaky, and you can feel him shaking too. His chest rises hard against yours, his heart hammering so loud you can feel it through the thin fabric of his shirt, and his hand at your clit presses a little firmer like he’s fighting his own need by pouring it into you instead.
“Matt,” you whisper, voice ruined, and you tug him closer by the shirt like you need him to anchor you. “You’re… you’re not okay either.”
“I’m fine,” he lies automatically, and then exhales like he hates himself for it. His thumb keeps circling your clit, his fingers still inside you, and his hips jerk once when you brush his cock again through his sweats. “I’m managing.”
“You’re breathing like you ran a marathon,” you say, a shaky attempt at normal that falls apart when his hand hits a spot inside you that makes your eyes roll back. “And you’re hard.”
Matt lets out a rough laugh that doesn’t sound amused. “Yeah,” he admits, and his voice goes lower, tighter. “I noticed.”
You slide your hand over him again, slower this time, feeling the heat of him through the fabric, and Matt’s fingers stutter inside you like he lost the rhythm for a second. He pulls his mouth away from yours just enough to speak, and the words come out controlled only by force.
“Tell me you want me to keep going,” he says, because even now he needs it said. “Tell me.”
Your stomach flips, your cunt clenches around his fingers, and you nod too hard before you remember he wants words.
“I want you to keep going,” you say, breathless and shameless. “Don’t stop. Please, Matt, don’t stop.”
His hand flexes inside you again, and you feel him shudder against you like the fever is chewing through his restraint. He kisses you hard, messy, and keeps fingering you like he’s trying to chase the chemical out of both your bodies one orgasm at a time, even though you can hear it in his breath that he’s right on the edge of losing control too.
“You guys gonna do that all night, or are we sharing?”
Dex’s voice carries through the door like he’s leaning right up against it, like he wants you to know he’s listening on purpose, and it makes your whole body clench around Matt’s fingers.
Matt doesn’t flinch the way a normal person would. He goes still in that specific way he does when he’s deciding whether to be a man or a weapon, and his hand doesn’t stop moving even while his head turns toward the sound like he can see Dex perfectly through the wood. “Get out,” Matt says, and his voice is calm enough to be terrifying.
The doorknob turns anyway, and then the door opens just enough for light from the hallway to cut across the room, and Dex fills the gap with a grin and a body language that screams entitlement. He’s in Matt’s clothes like it’s a joke he’s telling with his whole presence, sweat darkening the collar of the t-shirt, hair damp, cheeks flushed. His eyes flick right to Matt’s hand between your thighs, then slide up your body, lingering on your bunched nightgown and your bare legs like he’s taking inventory.
“Wow,” Dex drawls. “And here I was thinking we were gonna be civilized about it.”
Matt’s hand tightens at your jaw, thumb still at your lip like he’s anchoring you there, and his other hand stays inside your panties like it belongs. “I said get out,” he repeats, and it’s not louder, it’s just sharper.
Dex leans on the doorframe like he lives there, like this is his apartment too and he’s just wandered into the room for a snack. “What, you gonna hit me? You gonna throw me out with your big righteousness routine?”
“Dex,” Matt says, and the warning in his tone is the same one you’ve heard on rooftops when he’s cornered someone and hasn’t decided yet how merciful he’s feeling. “Leave.”
You should say it—you should tell Dex to fuck off. You should tell Matt to shut the door, lock it, and keep taking care of you like he was. You can feel your body screaming for that simple outcome, begging for just Matt’s hand and his mouth and no complications.
Instead you hear yourself say, breathless and wrecked, “don’t leave.”
The words hang in the air for a beat, and it’s so quiet you can hear your own pulse thundering. Matt freezes like somebody stabbed him with the sentence, and Dex’s expression changes instantly, the grin turning sharp and delighted like you just handed him a key.
Matt’s head turns back to you, and his thumb presses at your lower lip, a soft demand. “Sweetheart,” he says carefully, “tell me what you mean.”
Your throat works, and your cheeks burn because you know how it sounds, you know how this looks, you know you’re standing here with Matt’s fingers inside you and your panties soaked and your nightgown twisted up like you got caught doing something you shouldn’t. You still say it anyway because the heat in your body doesn’t care about dignity, and because Matt asked you for words.
“I mean,” you manage, voice shaking, “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to stop. I don’t want him—” You swallow hard, and your hips twitch against Matt’s hand like your body is trying to talk for you. “I don’t want him to leave either.”
Matt’s jaw flexes, and his fingers don’t move for a second, like he’s forcing himself to prioritize the conversation over the way you’re clenching around him, and then he speaks like he’s laying down law in his own bedroom.
“You don’t touch her,” Matt says to Dex, voice flat. “You don’t come near her unless she says so again while you’re standing right here and I can hear her say it. You understand me?”
Dex’s smile turns almost polite, which is somehow worse. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Consent. Boundaries. Gold star, counselor.”
Matt doesn’t look at him, but his hand at your jaw tightens a fraction. “Tell me,” Matt says to you, slow and steady, “if you want him involved right now. Say it clearly.”
Your lungs pull in a shaky breath. You can feel Dex’s eyes on you like a physical pressure, and you can feel Matt’s body heat pressed close, the steady weight of him holding you upright. You don’t want Dex to have power over this, you want it to be yours. You nod, then force the words out because Matt needs the words. “I want him,” you say, and it comes out filthy in a way that makes you shiver. “I want… both of you. I want it to feel good. I want it to stop feeling like I’m gonna crawl out of my skin.”
Matt inhales through his nose, the sound tight. “Okay,” he says, like he’s agreeing to something dangerous because you asked. “Then it happens my way.”
Dex pushes off the doorframe and steps into the room like he’s been invited to a party he already planned to crash. “Your way,” Dex repeats, amused, and his gaze drops again to your thighs, to the wet line at the edge of your panties. “Sure. I’m flexible.”
Matt’s hand slips out of your panties, and you make a small, involuntary sound because the sudden emptiness is almost painful. He immediately replaces it with his palm over your cunt through the fabric, pressing firm enough to keep you from chasing him, and he leans in close to your ear. “We’re moving,” he murmurs. “Bed. Hold onto me.”
You wrap your arms around his shoulders, and Matt lifts you like it’s nothing, like your body is just another thing he knows by weight and balance and memory. He carries you the few steps to the bed, guiding you down onto the mattress with a gentleness that doesn’t match the heat burning through the room. The sheets are cool for half a second before your skin turns them warm.
Dex circles closer, eyes bright. “This is adorable,” he says, and the sarcasm doesn’t hide the hunger in his voice.
“Shut up,” you tell him, and it comes out breathless, half a laugh and half a warning, because your body is already arching for touch again.
Dex’s grin widens. “Yes, ma’am.”
Matt kneels on the bed beside you, then over you, and the way he positions himself is so Matt it almost makes you dizzy. His palm slides up your thigh, fingers splaying like he’s mapping you, grounding you. He hooks a finger under the strap of your nightgown and drags it down your shoulder just to kiss the skin there, slow and possessive, like he’s reminding you whose mouth you’re about to be moaning into.
Dex reaches for you, and Matt catches his wrist without even looking, grip iron. “Ask,” Matt says.
Dex holds your gaze, and his voice drops just enough to feel more real. “Can I?”
You swallow. You’re still trembling, still slick, still aching in a way that feels endless, and you nod once before forcing it into words, because Matt made you do that, and it matters. “Yes,” you say.
Dex exhales like that was the only permission he needed, and then he’s climbing onto the mattress like he belongs there, pushing your knees apart with hands that are firm and unashamed. His grip isn’t rough enough to hurt, but it’s controlling, pinning you open like you’re something he’s been hungry for since the moment he saw you.
“You’re gonna hate how much you like this,” Dex murmurs, and then he tugs once, hard, and your panties tear with a quick rip that makes you gasp.
“Dex!” you start, half shocked, half turned on by the audacity, and Matt’s hand slides up your throat at the same time, not choking, just holding you steady, thumb under your jaw like he’s keeping you anchored in your own body.
“Breathe,” Matt says against your mouth, then kisses you before you can say anything else.
Dex doesn’t waste a second, he grabs your thighs and drags you closer, burying his face between your legs like he’s trying to inhale you. His mouth is hot and wet and mean about it, tongue flattening and pressing hard against your clit like he wants you to break fast. The sound is obscene immediately, loud enough that you jerk and try to clamp your legs shut on instinct.
Dex’s hands tighten on your thighs and hold you open. “Nah,” he mutters into you, voice vibrating against your pussy. “Not running.”
Your back arches off the bed with a strangled noise, and Matt is there instantly, crowding your space above, one hand still at your throat and the other sliding up under your nightgown to cup your breast. His thumb circles your nipple slow at first, then harder when you whimper, and he kisses you like he’s stealing your breath on purpose.
“Put your hand on me,” Matt says, guiding your wrist down to the front of his sweatpants. His cock is hard and heavy under the fabric, and the second your fingers curl around him you moan into Matt’s mouth like you can’t help it. “Slow,” Matt warns, voice rough. “Touch me slow. Keep breathing.”
Dex hears Matt directing you, and he gets worse on purpose. His tongue pushes deeper, his mouth noisier, suction turning brutal on your clit until your hips buck hard enough you nearly slide up the bed. Dex holds you in place like he’s built for restraint, palms on your hips now, fingers digging in just enough to make you feel it.
Matt makes a sound in his throat that you feel against your lips more than you hear, and his hand at your breast squeezes like he’s fighting the urge to grab Dex by the hair and drag him off you. Instead he uses it, and the fact that he uses it makes your stomach flip.
“What do you think it is?” Matt asks, voice low against your mouth.
You try to answer, you really do, but Dex sucks harder on your clit like he’s punishing you for even attempting to talk, and Matt kisses you again like he doesn’t want the words out of you either. You break the kiss with a gasp, trying to speak, and Dex shifts his mouth just enough to drag his tongue along you in a slow, vicious stroke that makes your eyes roll back.
“Matt,” you choke out, voice fractured, “I—I don’t—”
Matt’s thumb presses under your jaw, steadying your head. “Use your words,” he says, and his tone turns gentle in the middle of all this like he’s still your anchor. “Tell me.”
Dex’s mouth goes back to your clit, relentless, and you clutch at Matt’s shoulder and stroke his cock through his sweats harder just to keep yourself from losing it. Matt’s hips jerk once into your hand, and his breath turns ragged, but he doesn’t stop you. He wants you to feel how much you’re getting to him.
You force your eyes open, force your brain to drag itself back from the edge. “It’s—it’s gotta be an aphrodisiac,” you gasp, and Dex growls into your thigh like he approves. “Airborne. It’s—it’s making us… like this.”
Matt hums like he already knew, mouth brushing your cheek. “And?”
You swallow, shaking, because your orgasm is building again, fast and merciless, and Dex is not giving you a single second to calm down. “And I think—” you try, then choke when Dex’s tongue hits exactly right and your whole body jolts. “I think it needs… multiple… releases. To burn off. To… feel normal.”
Dex mutters something into your thigh, words you feel more than hear, and his grip tightens like he’s proud and furious at the same time. Matt’s hand slides from your breast down your stomach, then between your legs, and for a second you think he’s going to push Dex away.
He doesn’t—Matt’s fingers slide into you from above while Dex keeps working your clit, and the double sensation is so sharp you make a broken sound that you can’t hide. Matt’s palm presses to your lower belly like he’s holding you in place, and his other hand returns to your throat, steady, not choking, just making you feel owned and safe in the same breath.
“That’s it,” Matt says, mouth at your ear now, voice so low it feels like a secret. “Let it happen. I’ve got you.”
Dex’s mouth doesn’t let up, and you can’t stop your hips from bucking against him. Your hand clenches around Matt through his sweats, stroking him in short, desperate movements, and Matt’s breath stutters like he’s right there with you, trying to hold control and failing.
You come hard, the orgasm ripping through you so fast your vision goes white at the edges. Your cunt tightens around Matt’s fingers, your thighs shake against Dex’s hands, and the sound that finally comes out of you is loud and wrecked and absolutely not quiet enough for anyone to pretend this isn’t happening.
Matt keeps you steady through it, hand firm at your throat, mouth on yours, kissing you messy while you shake. Dex stays between your legs like he’s starving, licking you through the aftershocks with a stubborn, hungry intensity that makes you twitch and try to squirm away.
“Don’t,” Matt warns softly, and the word isn’t a reprimand, it’s an instruction. “Breathe. Stay with me.”
Dex lifts his head just enough to look up at you, lips wet, chin shining, eyes bright with something sharp and satisfied. He smirks like he’s won a round, then glances toward Matt like he wants a fight. “See?” Dex says, voice rough. “Sharing. We can all be adults about it.”
Matt’s hand tightens on your throat just a fraction, enough that you feel the threat and the control. “Don’t push it,” he says, and the calm in his voice is the kind that makes people smarter.
Dex’s smirk only widens, because of course it does, but Matt doesn’t let Dex’s little victory sit in the air for long. His hand stays firm at your throat as you ride out the aftershocks, thumb resting under your jaw like a reminder that you’re still right here with him, still safe, still his responsibility even when you’re begging for things that make him grit his teeth. “Up,” Matt says, voice low, and his palm slides over your hip, guiding you before your legs can decide to give out. “Come here.”
Dex makes a sound like he wants to argue, like he wants to make a joke about being ordered around in another man’s bedroom, but Matt doesn’t give him the space. Matt doesn’t look at him, he doesn’t have to, and the stillness in his posture makes Dex go quieter in the way predators do when they realize they’re not the only one in the room.
Matt shifts back against the pillows, bracing himself with one hand behind him while the other finds your waist again. He pulls you up by feel, thumbs digging in just enough that it grounds you, and you end up straddling him before you can overthink it. Your nightgown is still bunched up around your hips, your thighs are slick from Dex, your pussy is swollen and oversensitive, and Matt’s sweatpants are a problem you can’t ignore.
Dex stays close, kneeling behind you on the mattress, crowding your back without touching yet, like he’s waiting to see what Matt allows. He’s breathing hard too, the heat in the room making everything feel too close, too intimate, too dangerous.
Matt’s hands map you like he’s memorizing all over again. He starts at your hips, then your waist, then slides up your spine with a slow drag of his fingertips that makes you shiver. He cups the back of your head, and he angles your face down so he can take your mouth the way he wants, slow at first, then deeper when you whimper into him. “Tell me you’re with me,” he murmurs against your lips, and it isn’t poetic, it’s practical. It’s Matt making sure you’re still choosing.
“I’m with you,” you breathe, and your voice shakes because the need keeps pulsing through you like a fever.
“Good,” Matt says, and his thumbs press into your hips, guiding you forward. “Now take it.”
He tugs his sweatpants down just enough, and you do the same motion with clumsy fingers, because your hands don’t feel coordinated anymore. His cock is hot in your palm, heavy and hard, and the second you brush the head you feel him flinch under you like he’s been holding back since the moment he walked into the apartment.
You line yourself up and sink down, slow because your body is already wrecked, but you still gasp when he fills you. Matt’s hands lock in on your hips, steadying you, and he exhales like it hurts and feels good at the same time.
“Fuck,” you whisper, and your forehead drops to his shoulder, because the stretch is perfect and too much, your cunt fluttering around him like it’s trying to pull him deeper.
Matt kisses the side of your head, mouth rough and greedy now that he’s inside you. “That’s it. Slow. Let me feel you.”
You rock your hips on instinct, searching for the angle that makes your nerves light up, and Matt gives it to you without you even having to ask. He shifts his grip, thumbs digging in, guiding you into a steady rhythm, easing you up and down on him like he’s taking control so you don’t have to.
Dex leans closer behind you, breath hot at your ear. “Jesus,” he mutters, voice thick, and you can hear the way he’s trying not to sound needy. “He gets to sit there and you just… slide right onto him.”
Matt’s head turns slightly, attention flicking toward Dex without his face changing. “Keep your mouth under control,” Matt says, quiet and deadly. “Or I’ll remind you whose bed you’re kneeling on.”
Dex lets out a low laugh, but it comes out strained, like the chemical has him by the throat too. “Yeah, yeah. Big scary—”
You gasp because Matt’s hips buck up, suddenly deeper, catching a spot inside you that makes your thighs tremble and your pussy clamp around him. Matt’s hand slides to the back of your neck, guiding you down so he can kiss you again, messy and hungry, like he’s using your mouth to keep himself from snapping at Dex with his fists.
Dex’s fingers sneak around your front like he can’t help himself. His hand slides between your thighs, finding your clit with a practiced ease that makes you jerk. His touch is rougher than Matt’s, more impatient, rubbing hard enough that it makes your nerves spark and your stomach tighten.
“Dex—” you start, voice breaking, and your hips stutter.
Matt’s grip tightens on your hips, keeping you steady on his cock. “Breathe,” he tells you, and he says it like an order because your body needs one. “Stay on me.”
Dex’s fingers keep going, rubbing your clit faster, and he presses his mouth to your shoulder like he wants to bite but settles for breathing you in. “You’re gonna come again,” Dex whispers, too pleased with himself. “You’re gonna come on his cock and he’s gonna feel it, and I’m gonna—”
“Dex,” Matt says, and the warning in his voice makes the air feel sharper.
Dex doesn’t stop, he can’t. He’s too much of a problem, too much of a little shit, and the heat is making him reckless. “What?” he taunts, rubbing your clit harder like he’s trying to make you cry. “You want her to beg? She’s already—”
Matt’s hand slides up from your hip to your jaw, and he tilts your face toward his, kissing you hard enough that it steals your breath. When he pulls back, his voice is low, controlled, and it lands like a line drawn in ink. “Shut him up.”
You blink, dazed, and your lips part on a shaky inhale. “Matt…”
Matt’s thumb presses at your chin, guiding, not forcing, and the look on his face—tight, heated, possessive—makes your whole body clench around him. “If you want him here,” Matt says, “then you listen. Shut him up.”
Dex makes a pleased, ugly sound behind you, like he’s thrilled to be included and furious that it’s on Matt’s terms. “Go on,” Dex murmurs, leaning in closer. “Do what he says.”
You reach back with shaking hands and grab Dex by the collar, yanking him forward. His breath hits your mouth, and then you kiss him, rough and immediate, because you’re too hot for hesitation and because Matt told you to.
Dex melts into it in a way that’s almost shocking, mouth opening for you like he’s starving, kissing you like he wants to prove something with his tongue. There’s anger in it, too, a bitter edge that feels like he’s biting down on his own resentment just to keep kissing you anyway.
Matt fucks up into you while you’re kissing Dex, slow at first, then harder when you whimper into Dex’s mouth. The movement jolts your whole body, makes you cling to Dex’s collar tighter to keep from falling forward, and Matt’s hands keep you anchored on his cock like he refuses to let you slip away into the haze.
Dex’s fingers never stop rubbing your clit. He’s using you and being used at the same time, and you can feel him shaking behind you like he hates how much he wants it.
Matt’s mouth finds your throat, kissing the skin there, and his voice drops against you. “Say it,” he murmurs. “Who do you belong to?”
Dex goes still for half a second behind you, like the words hit him in a place he didn’t want exposed. His kiss turns sharper, almost punishing, like he wants to keep you from answering.
Matt’s hand cups your skull, steady, guiding you through it. “Say it,” he repeats, and it’s quiet, certain.
You pull back just enough to breathe, lips swollen, eyes unfocused. Dex’s hand keeps rubbing your clit like he’s trying to make you forget language entirely, but you force it out anyway because the control in Matt’s voice is grounding in the middle of all this.
“I belong to you,” you gasp, voice wrecked. “Matt. I belong to you.”
Dex shudders behind you like it physically hurts, and the sound he makes is torn between a growl and a laugh. He kisses you again anyway, swallowing the words like he’s furious you said them and even more furious he liked hearing you say them.
Matt’s hips snap up, deeper, harder, and you cry out into Dex’s mouth because the pressure hits perfectly. Your cunt clenches around Matt, slick and tight, and Dex’s fingers press your clit in relentless circles until your nerves feel like they’re sparking.
You break the kiss with a gasp, head falling back onto Dex’s shoulder, and Dex grabs your jaw, possessive and mean, forcing you to look at him while Matt keeps thrusting up into you.
“You hear her?” Dex mutters, voice low and rough. “She said it. She’s yours. Doesn’t mean I can’t make her come, though.”
Matt’s hands clamp on your hips, and he takes control of the pace fully now, rocking up into you in a steady, relentless rhythm that makes your breath stutter. His mouth is at your ear, and you can hear the strain in his control finally cracking.
“That’s it,” Matt murmurs. “Hold on. Don’t you dare stop.”
Dex’s fingers go faster, brutal on your clit, and your body tightens like it’s being drawn into a knot. You grab at Matt’s shoulders, nails digging through his t-shirt, and you feel your orgasm build fast, almost too fast, the chemical making it sharp and unavoidable.
“I’m gonna—” you gasp, and you don’t even finish the sentence because your body does it for you.
You come hard on Matt’s cock, shaking, pussy clenching tight around him, and the way Matt groans is low and wrecked, like your orgasm pulled him right to the edge. Dex’s hand stays on your clit through it, not letting you escape the sensation, and you cry out again, broken and breathy, head tipped back against Dex’s shoulder.
Matt keeps thrusting through your orgasm, chasing his own, breath turning ragged. His hands hold you in place like he refuses to let you slide off him, and his mouth finds your throat, biting lightly, then kissing the spot like an apology he doesn’t have time for.
“Fuck,” Matt groans, and then his whole body tenses under you. His hips snap up once more, deep, and he comes hard, spilling inside you with a rough sound that turns into your name against your skin.
He doesn’t collapse afterward. He stays braced, arms around you, holding you chest-to-chest like he needs to keep you there, keep you claimed, keep you safe while the heat still burns. His breathing is too fast, his hands still tight on you, and you can feel the way his body is already refusing to settle, like one release didn’t fix anything.
Dex’s fingers finally slow on your clit, but he doesn’t pull away. He stays behind you, crowding your back, mouth at your shoulder, and when he speaks his voice is low with something sharp and pleased. “Damn,” Dex murmurs. “He came in you. That’s… cute.”
Matt’s head turns toward him, and the calm in his expression is the kind that makes your skin prickle for a different reason. “Don’t,” Matt says, voice even. “Not right now.”
Dex smiles against your shoulder like he can’t help himself, like he’s already planning the next push, and your body is still too hot, still too needy, still trembling on the edge of another want you haven’t even named yet. Dex’s fingers hook under the hem of your nightgown, and he doesn’t ask permission with words this time because he already did, because you already told him yes, but he still looks at you first anyway, eyes bright and sharp. “Still want it?” he murmurs, voice rough. “Tell me.”
“Yes,” you manage, and it comes out small and wrecked, because you’re still trembling on Matt’s cock and everything feels too sensitive. “I want it.”
Dex yanks the nightgown up and off in one impatient motion, tugging it over your head like it’s in his way, then tosses it somewhere behind him. The air hits your bare skin and you shiver hard, goosebumps rising and then flattening instantly under the heat. Matt’s hands spread over your ribs and stomach like he’s making sure you’re steady, like he’s keeping track of you the way he always does, and then he shifts you carefully off his lap because he isn’t going to let you fall in the middle of this.
“Easy,” Matt murmurs against your jaw, kissing you once, slow and grounding. “I’ve got you.”
Dex doesn’t wait for you to fully settle before he’s pulling you back into him, knees on the mattress behind yours, his chest pressed to your back. He loops an arm around your neck in a headlock hold that’s controlled, not crushing, forearm across your collarbone, hand braced at your shoulder so he can keep you upright and close. The position is meant to make you feel pinned, meant to make you feel owned, and your body answers with a violent clench that makes you gasp.
Matt’s head turns toward the sound immediately, like the gasp is a flare he can’t ignore. His hand slides to your hip and stays there, thumb rubbing slow circles into the skin like a quiet claim. “Breathe,” he says, calm and firm. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
“It’s not,” you breathe, and your voice shakes anyway. “It’s not too much.”
Dex laughs softly against your ear, the sound more bite than humor. “Of course it isn’t,” he murmurs. “You’re fucking soaked.”
He frees himself from his sweatpants with a quick, impatient shove, and you feel the blunt heat of him press against your ass, then slide down between your thighs. The second his cock drags through your slickness, you whimper and your knees flex like you’re going to collapse forward, but Dex tightens his arm and holds you in place. He doesn’t thrust in right away; he grinds against you first, spreading you open, pushing the mess around, making it obscene on purpose, like he needs you to feel exactly what’s still inside you.
“You feel that?” Dex whispers, mouth brushing your ear, and his tone turns mean in a way that makes your stomach flip. “That’s him. Still in you. Still there, even when it’s me.”
Matt’s thumb stops for a second against your hip, then starts again, slow and steady like he refuses to react the way Dex wants. “Dex,” Matt says quietly, warning without raising his voice. “Don’t.”
Dex ignores him, because of course he does, because he can’t help digging for the bruise. He lines himself up and pushes in with one hard, deliberate thrust that knocks the breath out of you. You cry out, sharp and broken, and Dex’s arm around your neck keeps you upright while his hips press tight to your ass, burying himself deep like he’s trying to overwrite what Matt just did.
“Oh, fuck,” you gasp, hands scrabbling for something to hold, and Matt’s hand catches yours immediately, fingers lacing with yours so you don’t have to search. The touch is steady and warm, anchoring you even while your body is being pulled in two directions.
“That’s it,” Matt murmurs, lips near your cheek, voice close enough that you feel the air of it. “Take what you need. Keep breathing.”
Dex starts to move, slow at first, grinding deeper on every thrust, making sure you feel the drag of him against your swollen cunt. The mess inside you turns it slicker, filthier, and you can feel it in the obscene sound of it, the wet slap of his hips against your ass, the way your body takes him like it’s desperate for anything that pushes back against the heat.
Dex’s mouth finds your shoulder and he bites down, not hard enough to break skin, just enough to make you gasp again. “Listen to you,” he mutters, voice low and sharp. “You sound like a fucking slut when you’re full.”
Matt’s hand tightens around yours, and his other hand slides up your side to your jaw, tilting your chin slightly like he’s guiding you back from the edge. “Hey,” Matt says, calm and deadly at the same time. “Watch your mouth.”
Dex’s thrusts get harder, like the warning turned him on or pissed him off or both. He keeps talking anyway, because he wants Matt to hear it, wants Matt to hate it, wants to provoke something ugly. “She’s taking me so fucking easy,” Dex whispers, breath ragged at your ear. “Like she’s made for it. Like she wants it dirty.”
You try to pull air in through your nose, but every time Dex drives into you your breath breaks, the sound spilling out of you in helpless little moans. Your cunt clamps around him, slick and tight, and Dex makes a rough noise like he’s losing control faster than he wants to admit.
Matt doesn’t insult him, he doesn’t even rise to it with words. He corrects Dex with touch, the way he always does when he’s angry and refusing to show it. His fingers slide to your chin and guide your face toward him, and his mouth finds yours in a kiss that’s slow and possessive, claiming without needing to look at Dex at all. His lips are warm, firm, steady, and it makes you melt even while Dex is fucking you hard from behind. “Say my name,” Matt murmurs into your mouth, barely audible. “Let me hear you.”
Dex’s arm around your neck tightens just enough to remind you he’s there, and he thrusts harder like he’s punishing you for obeying. The sensation spikes sharp, makes your eyes flutter shut, makes your pussy clench around him so hard he stutters.
“Matt,” you moan, the name spilling out as a broken sound against Matt’s lips.
Matt kisses you deeper, like he’s swallowing it, like he’s keeping it. “Good,” he murmurs, and his thumb strokes your jawline, calming and possessive all at once. “That’s it.”
Dex makes a furious, ragged sound behind you and snaps his hips faster, chasing his own relief in hard, brutal thrusts. “Say it again,” Dex growls into your shoulder, and you can hear the ugly need in it, like he wants you to say his name and hates that Matt’s making you say something else.
Matt doesn’t change his tone. He doesn’t have to. “Breathe,” he tells you, then kisses your mouth again, slower, and it makes your whole body soften into him even while Dex is trying to wreck you from behind. “Stay with me.”
Dex’s thrusts turn frantic, the heat and the jealousy and the chemical all smashing together into something that makes him reckless. His arm holds you pinned upright, cock driving deep, and the mess inside you makes every shove obscene, slick and loud. Your legs start to tremble, not from fear, but from overload, your cunt tightening and fluttering like it’s trying to drag both men into the same spiral.
Dex bites your shoulder again, harder this time, and you hiss at the sting. “Fuck,” Dex mutters, voice shaking. “You feel so good it makes me fucking mad.”
Matt’s hand slides down to your hip again, thumb rubbing slow circles, calm and steady, and you hate how much you love the contrast. Dex is all sharp edges and spite, Matt is quiet control, and your body is greedy enough to want both.
Dex’s breathing goes ragged, and his thrusts turn brutal for a few seconds like he’s trying to force his orgasm out of himself. He jerks once, then again, hips stuttering, and you feel him go rigid behind you. He clamps his teeth into your shoulder, not as a threat this time but as a way to stop himself from making a sound he’d hate, and his whole body shakes as he comes hard inside you, hot and thick, filling you in messy pulses that make you gasp.
He stays buried for a second, trembling, arm still around your neck, forehead pressed to the side of your head like he can’t pull away yet. Matt’s hand remains on your hip, thumb still moving, and his lips brush your cheek in a kiss that feels like reassurance and possession at the same time.
“That’s it,” Matt murmurs in your ear, steady. “Good. Breathe.”
Dex finally loosens his hold, just enough that you can take a fuller breath, but he doesn’t move away. He’s still behind you, still crowding your back, still panting like he ran a mile. When he lifts his head, his eyes flick to Matt with something sharp and furious, like he hates that Matt is still calm, still in control, still close.
Dex swallows, voice rough and bitter when he finally speaks. “Happy now?” he mutters, not really to you, not really to Matt, just to the room.
Matt’s hand stays on your hip, thumb still moving in slow circles like he’s keeping you anchored while your body tries to float right out of itself. Dex is still inside you, still trembling from his release, still crowding your back like he doesn’t know what to do with the fact that he got what he wanted and it didn’t fix the burn.
Matt shifts first, practical even when he’s wrecked. He eases Dex out of you with a controlled pull of your hips, not yanking, not careless, and you whine at the empty feeling because your cunt is greedy and overstimulated and already angry about losing the pressure. Dex makes a sharp sound behind you, half frustration, half hunger, and he starts to reach like he’s going to drag you back.
“On your back,” Matt tells him, and it’s not a suggestion.
Dex laughs breathlessly, but he listens, because even he can hear the edge in Matt’s voice. He drops onto the pillows with a rough exhale, legs spreading a little like he’s trying to pretend it’s his idea, cock already hard again and shiny with slick. His eyes track you the whole time, bright and feral, like he’s daring either of you to deny him.
Matt guides you forward with both hands on your waist, turning you and pushing you down until your knees sink into the mattress. He nudges you back so you’re over Dex, straddling him, your pussy hovering over his cock. You’re slick enough that the slide of your cunt over him feels obscene even before you take him, wetness smearing over his shaft with every tiny shift.
Dex’s hands clamp onto your hips immediately, grip firm, thumbs digging into the soft skin like he’s marking where you belong right now. “Yeah,” Dex mutters, voice rough. “Right there. Don’t be shy.”
You try to roll your hips, trying to find friction, and Dex helps, guiding you in short, grinding strokes so his cock drags against your clit and the swollen lips of your cunt. You’re not fully taking him yet, just teasing, just rubbing, and it still makes you gasp because everything is too sensitive. Your thighs tremble as the wet, hot slide keeps building pressure that you can’t relieve.
Matt kneels behind you, close enough that you feel his heat at your back before he touches you. His hands land on your hips over Dex’s, and the difference between them makes you shiver. Dex is possessive and impatient, Matt is steady and precise, and you’re trapped between them like a bad decision you can’t stop making.
“Stay right there,” Matt murmurs, mouth brushing your ear. “I’m going to fuck you from behind.”
Your breath stutters, and you nod too fast. “Please,” you whisper, because you’ve lost any ability to pretend you’re in control.
Matt lines himself up behind you, guiding you back onto him. The first press of his cock at your entrance makes your whole body clench, and Dex’s grip tightens like he’s furious that Matt is taking what Dex wants. Matt doesn’t rush. He slides in slow, inch by inch, making you take him fully, making you feel him again after Dex, and the stretch turns sharp and perfect.
“Fuck,” you choke, hands flying to Dex’s chest because you need something to hold. Dex’s skin is hot under your palms, his heartbeat too fast. He glares up at you like he wants to bite, like he wants to pull you down and ruin you, but he stays still because Matt’s hands are on your hips and Matt is in charge.
Matt sinks all the way in and stills for a beat, pressed tight to your ass. He leans forward until his chest meets your back, his mouth at your ear again, voice low and commanding. “Moan my name,” Matt says. “Right there. Into his shoulder.”
You make a helpless sound, and your body obeys before your brain catches up. You lean forward, mouth landing against Dex’s shoulder, and the next breath that leaves you is Matt’s name, broken and desperate like you’re confessing something you can’t take back.
Dex snarls, half-laughing, half-livid. “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Matt starts to move, slow at first, deep thrusts that use the angle of your body to hit exactly where you’re already trembling. Every push drives you forward onto Dex, and every pull drags Matt’s cock through your soaked cunt in a way that makes your vision blur.
Dex’s hands squeeze your hips hard enough to bruise later. “You’re using me as furniture,” he growls, then his voice goes strained because the grind of your pussy over his cock is driving him insane. “And it’s—fuck—it’s working.”
Matt leans over you more, pressing his weight into your back, pushing your chest closer to Dex until your back arches. His hands slide from your hips up your sides, then one of them reaches forward and clamps around Dex’s throat. Not choking him out, not cutting off air, just holding him there, forcing him to stay still and feel it.
Dex’s eyes widen, then narrow, the rage and the thrill mixing into something ugly. “Touchy,” he spits, but his cock jumps under you anyway.
“Shut up,” Matt murmurs, calm as sin. “Take it.”
Your hips stop grinding on their own because Matt’s hold and the arch of your back locks you into the position he wants. Now all you can do is take Matt’s thrusts from behind, feel the deep roll of him in your cunt, and feel Dex under you getting more desperate with every movement.
“Matt—” you gasp, cheek pressed to Dex’s shoulder now, lips dragging over the skin because you need something to do with your mouth besides scream.
Matt’s pace picks up, still deep, still controlled, and his breath turns rough against your ear. “Good,” he says, like he’s praising you for falling apart exactly the way he wants. “That’s it. Stay open.”
Dex’s hands shift, one sliding down your thigh like he’s about to pull you down onto him properly, and Matt’s grip at his throat tightens just enough to stop him.
“You get what I give you,” Matt says softly, and it’s the kind of possessive that makes your cunt clench hard around him.
Dex laughs through his teeth, breathless and furious. “You’re insane.”
Matt doesn’t argue, he just fucks you harder, using you like you’re his, and every thrust makes your pussy flutter and drip, wetness smearing over Dex’s cock underneath you. The sound is filthy, slick and loud, and it makes Dex jerk under you like he’s about to lose it again.
Your hand moves between your bodies and you push two fingers into Dex’s mouth, because you need leverage and because the idea hits you like a spark. Dex’s lips part instantly, tongue sliding over your fingers with a hungry, spiteful eagerness. He sucks like he’s trying to prove a point, cheeks hollowing, eyes locked on yours as if daring you to flinch.
You pull your fingers out shining with spit and use it to stroke Dex, slow and cruel, palm sliding down his shaft, thumb smearing over the head. Dex’s head falls back into the pillow with a broken sound, eyes rolling, hands tightening on your hips like he’s trying not to buck.
“Fuck,” Dex breathes. “You’re—you’re doing that on purpose.”
“Yeah,” you manage, voice shaking, because Matt’s cock keeps hitting that spot inside you and you can’t think straight. “Shut up.”
Dex’s gaze snaps back to you, bright and pissed and turned on. He drags you down by the hips just enough to steal your mouth, grabbing your jaw with one hand and forcing a messy tongue kiss that tastes like heat and spit and something too sharp to be sweet. You whimper into it, and the sound gets swallowed between you.
Behind you, Matt’s breath catches like the sight and the sound hits him somewhere deep. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t stop. He keeps fucking you from behind, hand still around Dex’s throat, using the hold to keep Dex right where he wants him while you fall apart on top of him.
“Eyes on me,” Dex mutters against your mouth, possessive and mean.
Matt’s mouth brushes your ear again, and his voice is quieter, steadier, like a blade. “Say my name.”
Your body clenches hard, and the next moan that spills out is Matt’s name again, muffled into Dex’s mouth. Dex shudders like it hurts, like it makes him want to bite, and he kisses you harder anyway. Matt’s thrusts turn relentless, hips snapping in tighter rhythm, and you feel his control thinning. His hand at Dex’s throat tightens, then loosens, then tightens again like he’s gripping the last thread of restraint.
You stroke Dex faster now, spit making it slick, your fist sliding up and down his cock while your cunt takes Matt from behind. Dex’s breath turns ragged, hips twitching under you, and his hands clamp down like he’s trying not to shove you down and take what he wants.
“Jesus—” Dex gasps. “You’re gonna make me—”
“Not yet,” Matt says, and it isn’t loud, but it lands like a command anyway. “Hold it.”
Dex’s eyes flash, furious, and he trembles through it. “Go to hell.”
Matt’s answer is a hard thrust that makes you cry out and clench around him so tight his breath breaks. You feel his cock pulse, feel his whole body go rigid behind you, and then Matt groans low against your back as he comes again, deep and hot, holding you still with both hands while he rides it out. One hand stays on your hip, the other keeps Dex pinned by the throat, and the control in it makes your whole body melt even while you shake.
Matt doesn’t collapse afterward. He stays pressed to you, chest to your back, breathing hard, lips at your shoulder like he needs to keep contact. His grip loosens slowly, like he’s easing himself back from the edge by inches.
“That’s it,” Matt murmurs, voice rough, thumb stroking your hip again. “Breathe. Stay with me.”
Dex is staring up at you like he wants to kill someone and kiss you at the same time, cock twitching in your hand, frustration and need making his jaw clench. He swallows, then drags his thumb across your lower belly like he’s claiming a piece of you he doesn’t have the right to claim.
“You two are disgusting,” Dex mutters.
Dex doesn’t wait for Matt to answer, because Dex isn’t actually asking. He’s already moving, already reaching, already turning that restless, hungry energy into action like he can’t stand sitting in the aftermath for even one more second.
He hooks an arm under your thigh and drags you off him with a sharp pull, flipping you onto your back in one quick motion that knocks the air out of you. The mattress dips hard, sheets bunching under your shoulders, and your head ends up near the edge of the bed, slightly hanging off. Dex climbs over you immediately, sweat shining on his throat, eyes wild and focused like you just became his target.
“You think you’re done?” Dex mutters, and his hands clamp down on your thighs, spreading you open like he owns the right to. “You’re not done. I’m not done.”
Matt is close enough that you can feel him shift, and you can hear his breathing change, sharper, more controlled. He doesn’t grab Dex off you, but his hand lands on your ankle for a second, thumb pressing into your skin like a quiet check-in. It’s Matt’s way of asking without interrupting, and you answer the same way, flexing your foot gently against his touch because you’re too wrecked to form a full sentence without it turning into a moan.
Dex lines himself up and pushes back into you with a rough thrust that makes your whole body jolt. Your cunt takes him easily because you’re soaked and overstimulated, and the obscene slick sound that comes with it makes Dex’s mouth twist like he’s pleased and pissed at the same time.
“Fuck,” you gasp, hands grabbing at his shoulders because you need something to hold while he starts moving. Dex doesn’t build slowly, he drives into you like he’s determined to make you forget how Matt felt, like he’s trying to pound the comparison out of your body with brute force.
Matt moves to your head, not away, not sulking, just repositioning like he’s doing damage control the way he always does. He sits beside you on the bed and cups the side of your face, thumb brushing your cheekbone, then your lower lip. His voice is low and steady, close enough to be private even with Dex right there.
“Breathe,” Matt murmurs. “You’re okay. You tell me if you need anything.”
Dex hears it and gets worse on purpose. He leans down and kisses you mid-thrust, mouth hot and messy, swallowing the sounds you can’t keep back. His tongue pushes in like he’s trying to claim your mouth the same way he’s claiming your cunt, and you whine into it because the pace is brutal and the heat in your blood makes it feel too good.
When Dex pulls back for air, he keeps one hand on your jaw, fingers digging in just enough to make you look at him. “Look at me,” Dex demands, voice rough. “Say it. Say my name.”
Your eyes flutter, unfocused, and you try to glare at him because he’s being an asshole, but your body betrays you immediately. Dex thrusts deep again, hitting a spot that makes your thighs shake, and the sound that breaks out of you is helpless. “Dex,” you gasp, and his grin turns sharp and satisfied like he just scored a hit.
“Again,” he says, and he thrusts harder, making the bed creak, making your breath break. “Come on. Louder. I want him to hear it.”
Matt’s hand slides down to your shoulder, thumb pressing into the muscle like he’s keeping you grounded. He doesn’t argue with Dex, he just stays there, close, letting you hold onto him, letting you decide what comes out of your mouth.
Dex keeps driving into you, rhythm turning relentless, and you grab Matt’s wrist with shaking fingers because you need something solid. Matt’s palm flips and catches your hand, squeezing once, and you feel your stomach flip because even with Dex fucking you like he’s trying to win, Matt’s touch still feels like home.
Dex’s eyes flick to Matt’s hand holding yours, and something mean flashes across his face. He leans down again, kissing you hard, swallowing your moans, then breaks the kiss just to speak right at your mouth. “You like me?” Dex spits, like it’s an insult. “You like how I fuck you? Tell me.”
“Fuck, yes,” you choke out, because you’re too hot to lie and too far gone to be polite. Dex’s thrusts stutter for half a beat like the answer hit him hard, then he snaps back into a faster pace that makes you see stars.
Matt shifts slightly, moving closer to your head, and you turn into him automatically. His mouth brushes your forehead, then the corner of your lips, and you can tell he’s holding his restraint by force, breathing too hard for someone who’s “fine.”
“You can hold onto me,” Matt murmurs, voice rougher now. “Do what you need.”
Dex hears that too, and it makes him furious. He grabs your thigh and hikes it higher over his hip, angling you so he can go deeper, harder. The change punches a sharp moan out of you, and Dex makes a satisfied sound like he’s collecting it. “There,” Dex says, grinning. “There you go. That’s what I want. That’s mine.”
Matt’s thumb slides along your cheek again, and his voice stays calm even if the tension in it is obvious. “Don’t,” he warns quietly, like he’s reminding Dex he’s allowed to be here but not allowed to claim.
Dex doesn’t care, he leans down and kisses you again, filthy and hungry, and the way he thrusts turns almost frantic. He’s chasing something now, not just relief, but proof, and he wants it so badly it’s making him reckless.
Your hand slips down between your bodies, reaching for Dex’s wrist like you’re trying to steady him, and he catches it, pins it above your head with one hand while the other stays on your jaw. You’re spread wide, legs shaking around his hips, pussy clenching and fluttering around him like you’re teetering on the edge of another orgasm you can’t control.
“Say it,” Dex demands again, breath ragged. “Say my name. Please me. Come on.”
“Dex,” you moan, and then it turns into a breathless string of it because he won’t stop hitting that spot. “Dex—fuck—Dex—please—”
Dex’s eyes blow wide, and his mouth twists like he hates how good it feels to hear you beg. He thrusts harder, faster, the slick sound turning obscene, and you feel his control shredding.
Matt’s hand tightens around yours at your side, a steady squeeze that keeps you from floating away completely. He doesn’t interrupt, but his mouth brushes your temple, and his voice is low enough that only you can catch it. “I’m here,” Matt murmurs. “Stay with me.”
Dex’s breath turns jagged, and he makes a harsh sound like a laugh that got twisted into a groan. “Yeah, yeah,” he grits out, then thrusts deep and holds it there, shaking. “Fuck—”
Dex comes hard, angry and shaking, cock pulsing inside you in thick, hot spurts that make your body clench around him. He squeezes your jaw, then releases it like he just realized he was holding too tight, and he drops his forehead to your shoulder with a rough exhale that sounds like he wants to scream and refuses to give anyone the satisfaction.
He stays there for a second, still buried, breathing like he’s furious at his own body. Then he lets out a low, bitter laugh under his breath, the kind that doesn’t sound happy at all. “God,” Dex mutters, voice shaking. “That felt… so fucking good.”
Matt doesn’t let the silence after Dex’s last laugh turn into another round of posturing. He’s breathing hard, his palm still warm against your skin, and you can feel the difference now that the worst of the chemical spike isn’t clawing at your throat anymore. The heat is still there, still sticky under your ribs, but it isn’t as sharp as it was ten minutes ago, and that almost makes it worse because you can think again just enough to realize how fucking wrung out you are.
Dex shifts off you with a rough exhale, rolling onto his side like he’s trying to hide how shaky he feels. He looks at you like he wants to say something clever, something mean, something that puts him back on top of the moment, but the words don’t come as easily now. He settles for a tight smile and a hand on your thigh, thumb pressing into your skin like he’s reminding you he’s still here.
Matt’s voice cuts in, low and steady. “We’re close.”
Dex scoffs, but it’s weak. “Close to what, the end of your little domestic nightmare?”
“Close to it wearing off,” Matt says, and he shifts closer by sound and feel, his hand finding your hip like it always does. His fingers spread, grounding, and his thumb starts that slow circle that’s become the rhythm of the whole night. “You’re not shaking as much. Your breathing’s different.”
You swallow and nod even though he can’t see it, then force the words out because that’s how you’ve stayed sane through all of this. “It’s not gone,” you say, voice raw. “It’s still there. It’s just… not screaming.”
Matt hums once, like he agrees. Dex drags the back of his hand across his mouth, eyes flicking between you and Matt like he’s trying to decide if he hates the idea of it ending more than he hates the fact that Matt’s right about it.
“We finish it,” Matt says, simple as that.
Dex’s smile sharpens. “We?”
Matt turns his head slightly toward him, and even without eye contact it’s obvious who’s in control. “You’ve been in my apartment for hours,” Matt says, tone flat. “You can handle ten more minutes without trying to start a fight.”
Dex opens his mouth and then closes it again, jaw working like he’s biting down on the urge to run it. His gaze drops to you, then to Matt’s hand on you, then back up to your face like he’s looking for the crack he can wedge himself into.
You breathe in, slow, then say it before Dex can poison the moment. “If it’s fading, I want the last part to… end. Like, actually end.”
Matt’s hand slides from your hip up your side, his palm flattening over your stomach for a second like he’s checking you’re steady, then he kisses the corner of your mouth, slow and grounding. “Alright,” Matt says, and his voice drops into that calm command that makes your body settle even while it’s on fire. “Dex. On your back. Head on the pillow. Hands where I can find them.”
Dex stares at him for a beat, then smirks like he’s about to refuse on principle, but he doesn’t. He flops back onto the pillows with exaggerated ease, arms spreading out like he’s presenting himself for inspection, cock already half-hard again and twitching like the chemical is refusing to fully let go. “Bossy,” Dex mutters. “Thought you were the Catholic one.”
Matt’s answer is quiet. “Keep talking and you don’t get anything.”
Dex shuts up immediately, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t also obscene. Matt guides you by your waist, turning you carefully, helping you get your knees under you again because your legs are still shaky from everything. He doesn’t look at Dex to place you, he doesn’t need to; he uses touch the way he always does, hands firm on your hips, moving you inch by inch until you’re positioned over Dex’s face.
Dex’s eyes go bright, and his hands lift like he can’t help himself, then he freezes when Matt’s fingers press into his wrist as a reminder. Dex’s mouth opens slightly, tongue visible, and he looks up at you like he’s about to ruin you just to prove he can. “Sit,” Dex murmurs, voice rough. “C’mon.”
Matt’s hands tighten on your hips. “Slow,” he tells you, close to your ear. “You tell me if you get dizzy. You tell me if you can’t breathe.”
“I can breathe,” you manage, and you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself, because the position alone makes your cunt throb. “I’m good.”
Matt helps you lower, guiding you down until you’re hovering right above Dex’s mouth, then another inch, until Dex’s lips brush your slick skin and you jerk with a gasp. Dex’s hands clamp onto your thighs immediately, holding you open, and he moans into you like he’s been denied air for hours.
“Fuck,” Dex breathes against your pussy, and the vibration makes your thighs tremble. “That’s—yeah. That’s it.”
He starts eating you out like he’s making a point. His tongue is flat and heavy, pressure too much and perfect, and you have to grab Matt’s forearm to keep from collapsing forward. Matt steadies you instantly, one hand on your waist, the other sliding up your back, holding you upright while Dex’s mouth works you open and greedy.
Your head ends up near Dex’s cock, and the sight of it—hard and flushed, twitching—makes your stomach flip. Dex notices, of course he notices, and his fingers squeeze your thighs like he’s trying to keep you exactly where he wants you.
“Go on,” Dex says, voice muffled against your cunt. “Use your mouth.”
You lean forward and wrap your lips around him, and Dex makes a harsh sound that turns into another groan into your pussy. The combination is instantly overwhelming: Dex’s mouth on your clit, your mouth on his cock, and Matt behind you, hands steady on your hips like he’s preparing to do the last thing your body needs to finally stop buzzing.
Matt shifts behind you, and you feel him press in close, his breath hot at your shoulder. His fingers slide down your spine, then to your hips again, and he nudges you forward just enough to get the angle he wants.
“Breathe,” Matt murmurs, and he kisses your shoulder once, slow.
You moan around Dex’s cock, the sound vibrating, and Dex’s hands tighten on your thighs like he’s losing patience. Matt pushes in slowly, stretching you in a way that makes your eyes water, and the moment he’s inside you, the world narrows down to sensation again. It’s not the frantic, desperate edge from earlier; it’s heavy and deep, like you’re so sensitive that every inch feels doubled.
Dex’s tongue goes meaner the second he feels Matt moving inside you. He sucks hard at your clit like he’s trying to pull your orgasm out of you first, like he’s trying to prove he can still win something even in a setup Matt arranged.
You pull off Dex’s cock just long enough to gasp, “fuck—Dex,” then you take him again, because the heat is still there and the only way through it is more. Dex’s cock jerks in your mouth, and his groan turns into another muffled sound against your pussy as he eats you out harder.
Matt sets a pace behind you, steady and controlled. His hands stay on your hips, guiding the motion when your body tries to squirm away from the overstimulation, and every time you wobble, he corrects you with touch instead of words, keeping you upright, keeping you open, keeping you from falling apart too early.
Dex tries to talk again, of course he does, and it comes out broken between breaths. “You taste—fuck—you taste so good,” he mutters against your cunt, loud enough that Matt can hear it. “You’re gonna—yeah, you’re gonna come all over my mouth.”
Matt leans closer and his mouth brushes your ear. “Stay with me,” he says, and his voice is calm even though his thrusts get a little deeper, a little firmer. “Don’t rush it. Let it build.”
Dex’s hands slide up your thighs like he wants to drag you down harder onto his face. Matt’s grip on your hips tightens, and he pushes you down just enough that Dex’s mouth is fully buried, your pussy pressed into his face. Dex groans into you like he’s in heaven and hell at the same time, and the vibration nearly makes you lose your grip on his cock.
You gag slightly when Dex twitches hard in your mouth, and you pull back for air, spit shining on your lips. Matt’s hand slides to the back of your head immediately, not forcing, just guiding, and his voice turns low and firm. “Back on him,” Matt murmurs. “Just like that. Take what you need.”
You do it because you can’t not, because the structure is the only thing keeping you from going dizzy. You take Dex again, sucking him slow and deep, and Dex makes a strangled noise that turns into a growl into your pussy. His tongue keeps working your clit with brutal, perfect pressure, and his fingers dig into your thighs like he’s trying to hold you still while his whole body wants to buck.
Matt’s thrusts deepen, steady and relentless, and the way his cock hits inside you makes your entire body tighten. You moan around Dex’s cock, the sound wet and obscene, and Dex shudders under you like that noise just tipped him closer to the edge.
“Fuck,” Dex gasps into you. “Matt—stop—she’s—”
Matt doesn’t stop, he doesn’t even acknowledge the plea with words. He simply changes the angle, lifting your hips slightly with his hands and driving into you a little harder, and the shift makes Dex choke on a groan because your pussy grinds down on his tongue in a way that feels like punishment and reward at the same time.
You can’t keep quiet anymore. The orgasm builds fast and heavy, not the sharp frantic spike from earlier, but a thick wave that keeps rising, and you’re trapped between them—Matt filling you, Dex swallowing you—until your whole body starts trembling.
“Matt,” you gasp, pulling off Dex’s cock just long enough to say it, voice broken. “I’m gonna—”
“I know,” Matt says immediately, and his voice turns softer even while he keeps thrusting. “Let it happen. Breathe.”
Dex doesn’t give you time to breathe. He sucks hard at your clit like he’s trying to make you black out, and your thighs shake around his head as your orgasm hits. You come hard, cunt clenching around Matt, hips jerking downward onto Dex’s face, and the sound you make is messy and loud and completely uncontrolled.
Matt holds you through it, hands locked on your hips to keep you from collapsing. His thrusts turn shorter and tighter, chasing his own edge as your pussy clamps around him, and you feel him go rigid behind you. His breath breaks against your shoulder, and he groans low as he comes, deep and hot, holding you still while he rides it out.
Dex’s cock twitches in your hand as he hears Matt lose control, and Dex makes a furious, needy sound like he hates that it turns him on. You take him back into your mouth without thinking, sucking him through it, and Dex’s hands squeeze your thighs hard enough to leave marks.
You don’t. You keep sucking him, spit slick, rhythm steady even while your body is still shaking from your orgasm. Dex’s mouth is still on your pussy, tongue slower now but stubborn, like he refuses to give up the contact. The chemical is fading, but Dex is greedy and spiteful and desperate to get his last release before it fully lets him go.
Dex bucks once under you, hard, and Matt’s hands tighten on your hips again to keep you balanced. Dex’s cock throbs in your mouth, and he comes with a rough, broken groan that he tries to swallow, but fails. His orgasm makes him tremble under you, hands clamping down like he’s trying to hold onto something while it slips away.
For a few seconds none of you move. You’re panting, slick, shaking, and the heat in your body finally starts to ebb in a way that feels real, like the pressure is draining out instead of building again.
Matt stays behind you, chest pressed to your back, mouth at your shoulder, breathing hard but slower now. His hands soften on your hips, turning from control into support.
Dex lies under you with his eyes half-lidded, still flushed, lips wet, chin shining, and he looks up at you like he wants to say something cruel just to prove he can. What comes out is a rough exhale and a bitter, shaky laugh. “Holy shit,” Dex mutters, and he sounds like he hates that he means it. “I think it’s actually… wearing off.”
Matt’s hands stay on you for a while after, not gripping anymore, just steadying, like he’s making sure you’re actually present and not drifting. He shifts carefully to get you off Dex, guiding you by the waist and shoulders so you don’t topple on shaky legs. The second your feet touch the floor your knees threaten to give, and Matt catches you like he’s done it a thousand times, one hand at the back of your neck, the other braced at your hip.
“Slow,” Matt murmurs, mouth near your temple. “Breathe for me. In and out, don’t rush it.”
“I’m breathing,” you rasp, then immediately prove you’re not by sucking in a short, shaky inhale that turns into a laugh because it’s either that or cry. Your skin feels too warm, tacky with sweat, and the air in the room feels thick even though the worst of the fever is finally fading.
Matt steers you to the edge of the bed and sits you down, then disappears for a second. You hear the faucet run, cabinets opening, the muted clink of a glass, and then he’s back with water and a cold washcloth. He presses the cloth to the back of your neck first, then your forehead, then your cheeks, gentle and methodical.
“Drink,” he says, and he guides the glass into your hands like he’s worried you’ll spill it.
You take a few sips and immediately realize how dry your throat is. “Jesus,” you mutter, swallowing again. “I feel like I ran a marathon.”
“You kind of did,” Matt says, dry but not teasing. His thumb drags over your pulse point at your wrist in a small check, then his palm settles there like he wants to feel you steady. “Any dizziness? Any nausea?”
“No,” you say, then pause because your stomach flips once as the room tilts slightly. “Okay, maybe a little dizzy.”
Matt’s hand tightens lightly on the back of your neck. “Then you sit,” he says, calm and firm. “You don’t try to be brave right now.”
Across the bed, Dex is quieter than he has been all night, which is almost unsettling. He’s sitting on the floor with his back against the side of the mattress, head tipped back, forearm over his eyes like he’s trying to hide the fact that he needs a minute. His breathing is still too fast, but it’s not frantic anymore, and the sharp edge of him looks blunted, like somebody finally turned the volume down.
He lifts his arm just enough to peer at you and Matt, and even now he can’t help himself. “You always this domesticated?” he asks, voice rough. The line is clearly meant to be snarky, but it lands thin, like he didn’t have the energy to sharpen it.
Matt doesn’t take the bait. He wipes your cheek with the cloth again, then sets it on your shoulder and keeps his hand there. “You’re leaving as soon as you can stand without falling,” he says, like he’s reading a grocery list.
Dex’s mouth quirks. “So romantic.”
“You’re still in my apartment,” Matt replies, and the calm in his voice is the kind that makes the room feel smaller. “Don’t make me regret letting you walk out instead of dragging you.”
Dex’s eyes flick up toward Matt’s face, then down to Matt’s hand on your shoulder like he’s cataloging the claim again, even if he’s too wrung out to argue with it. “Relax,” he mutters. “I’m not staying for brunch.”
You take another sip of water, then set the glass down on the nightstand with a careful clink. Your muscles feel heavy, and your skin feels too sensitive in that post-overload way that makes the idea of putting on clothes feel like work. You grab the sheet and pull it over your lap because you need one normal human action to latch onto. “Okay,” you say, voice steadier now. “We’re not doing the ‘stand around and glare at each other’ thing. We need to clean. We need air. And we need to get rid of anything that might still have that chemical on it.”
Dex makes a noncommittal sound, but he pushes himself upright with a small wince, like his body is protesting. Matt’s head turns toward you immediately, attentive. “You want windows?” Matt asks.
“Yes,” you say. “All of them. Bedroom, living room. And we need trash bags. Gloves. Anything that touched your suits needs to get bagged.”
Matt nods once and stands, moving with that careful efficiency he slips into when he’s trying not to think about what just happened. You hear the bedroom window slide up, then the living room windows. Air drifts in, cool and city-dirty, and it helps. It doesn’t erase the heat in your blood, but it takes the edge off the room.
Dex gets to his feet and stretches like he’s trying to shake out the last of the chemical from his bones. He looks steadier now, but his gaze keeps drifting to you like he’s trying to memorize the situation and file it away for later. You point at him. “Bathroom. Wash your hands. Like, actually wash them.”
Dex’s brows lift. “Bossy.”
“Not negotiable,” you shoot back, and you’re proud your voice doesn’t wobble.
Dex’s smile twitches, then he actually goes, disappearing down the hall. You hear the faucet turn on and, shockingly, soap.
Matt comes back in with trash bags and a roll of paper towels. “I’ll bag the suits,” he says, and you can hear him trying to keep it neutral, trying to turn it into a task so he doesn’t have to sit in the reality of having Dex here at all.
“I’ll wipe down surfaces,” you say, already standing carefully, sheet clutched at your waist. “Coffee table, counters, doorknobs. Anything you two touched.”
Matt’s hand finds your elbow immediately, steadying you without smothering. “If you start to sway, you sit,” he says quietly.
“I will,” you promise, then add, because you know he needs to hear it, “I’m okay.”
He pauses like he’s listening to your heartbeat, then leans in and presses his forehead lightly to yours. “Okay,” he says back, softer than he’s been all night.
You move into the kitchen and find the plastic bag with the broken test tube shard where you left it. Seeing it again makes your stomach tighten, because it’s a stupid little piece of glass that caused all of this, and it feels unreal that it’s still sitting there like any other mess.
Dex comes back from the bathroom wiping his hands on a towel he definitely didn’t ask permission to use. He stops when he sees the bag on the counter, eyes narrowing slightly like his brain is finally catching up to the mission part of the night.
“That the souvenir?” he asks.
“Yeah,” you say, and you keep your tone flat. “And you’re not touching it.”
Dex gives you a look that says he’s annoyed you clocked him so easily. “Wasn’t going to.”
Matt’s voice comes from the hallway, calm and cold. “You were.”
Dex turns his head toward the sound with a sharp little grin. “You can’t prove that.”
Matt doesn’t move closer, doesn’t raise his voice. “Try it,” he says simply.
For a second the room feels like it’s on the edge of snapping again, not chemical this time, just old hatred and pride and the fact that Dex is Dex. You step between it before it can happen, because you’re done with men trying to make your apartment a battleground.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” you say, and you make your voice firm enough that it cuts through both of them. “Dex, you’re leaving. Not later when you feel like it—when you can walk straight, which looks like it’s basically now. You don’t take anything from this apartment. You don’t touch that bag. And you do not come back.”
Dex’s eyes flick to you, then soften into something sharper. “Aw,” he says, quiet and ugly-sweet. “You’re making rules.”
“Yes,” you say. “Because you clearly don’t know how to exist without someone making them for you.”
Dex’s jaw flexes, and you can see the irritation, the spite, the obsession all mixing behind his eyes. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something cutting, then his gaze flicks past you to Matt. “You hear that?” Dex says, voice low. “Your girl’s got a spine. I like that.”
Matt’s answer is immediate and controlled. “Leave.”
Dex takes a step backward toward the door, then pauses like he can’t help himself. “This isn’t over,” he says, and it’s not even a threat that’s trying to sound cool. It’s just a fact in his tone, like he’s already decided he gets to stay in your orbit.
You stare at him, letting your expression go flat. “It is for me.”
Dex’s smile twitches like you slapped him. He looks at you too long, then turns and walks out. He doesn’t slam the door; he lets it click shut behind him like he’s leaving on purpose instead of being thrown out.
Matt locks it immediately. The sound of the deadbolt sliding home is the first thing all night that makes your shoulders drop. Matt stands there for a second with his hand still on the lock, head bowed slightly like he’s listening for Dex’s footsteps in the hall, for the elevator, for proof he’s actually gone.
Then Matt turns and comes back to you, and the moment he reaches you he cups the back of your neck and leans his forehead to yours again, breathing like he’s finally allowing his lungs to work.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
“You can apologize later,” you murmur, and you squeeze his wrist. “Right now, I want a shower and clean sheets and, ideally, a world where nobody ever breaks a glass cage full of mystery chemicals again.”
Matt lets out a strained laugh that sounds like relief more than humor. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”
---
Two weeks later, the apartment feels normal again in the way it always does after something violent tries to stain it. The sheets are clean, the couch has been scrubbed, the trash bags are long gone, and you’ve managed to file the whole night into that mental drawer labeled “never talk about this unless you absolutely have to.”
Matt comes home with groceries and bruises and a tired kiss that makes you feel like your body belongs to you again. You make dinner, you argue about whether he needs more sleep, and you pretend you don’t flinch when you hear sirens outside.
On a Tuesday afternoon, you bring the mail upstairs in a messy stack, flipping through the usual junk with your thumb. Matt’s at the kitchen counter, rinsing fruit, head tilted toward you like he’s listening for the tone of your voice more than the words.
“Bills,” you mutter. “Ads. Something for you from the bar association.” You pause, because one envelope doesn’t match the rest. It’s a plain envelope with no return address, and your name printed neatly on the front like somebody took their time. “Matt,” you call, trying to keep your voice casual and failing.
“What is it?” He asks, turning off the faucet.
“There’s… a letter,” you say, and you pick it up carefully, like it might bite. “No return address.”
Matt’s footsteps are quiet, controlled, and he stops close enough that you can feel him beside you. “Don’t open it yet,” he says, and his voice goes tight in that way it does when his instincts are screaming.
You don’t, not until he’s right there, one hand hovering near your wrist like he’s ready to pull you back if something goes wrong. You slide a finger under the flap and open it slowly, trying not to tear the paper. Inside is a single card, thick and clean, like it came from a nice stationery shop.
There’s no long message; no rant, no explanation. Just a small circle drawn in black ink, and inside it, a clean bullseye.
Your stomach drops.
Matt’s hand closes around your wrist gently but firmly. “What is it?” he asks, already knowing it’s bad from your breathing.
You swallow and slide the card toward him even though he can’t see it. “It’s… a symbol,” you say, voice tight. “A bullseye.”
Matt goes very still. His jaw clenches. His thumb presses once at your pulse point, not to calm you, but like he’s grounding himself too. “Is there anything written?” he asks, voice low.
You flip the card over with shaking fingers. There’s one line in the same neat print as the envelope:
Thanks for the hospitality.
You look at Matt, and his face is calm in the way it gets right before violence, right before he turns into Daredevil instead of your boyfriend.
“Was he here?” you whisper.
Matt’s hand slides from your wrist to your cheek, warm and steady. “No,” he says quietly. “He wants us to think he was.”
You stare at the stupid little card, anger and fear twisting together in your chest. “He’s not done.”
Matt’s mouth tightens, and he leans in until his forehead touches yours again, voice low enough that it feels like a promise. “Neither am I.”
extra notes: look, all i'm gonna say is, i prob will come back to this as my horny release, lol. mostly because i feel betrayed by myself and really want to write a dexmatt kiss. like could you imagine them fucking you from each end while kissing over you?????? yeah can't believe i didn't write that