AdrianChaseChaser

Adrian and Y/n’s relationship in his universe was simple. They worked together in A.R.G.U.S, Y/n having been someone who worked on Project Starfish with the rest of the group, and was thrown headfirst into Project Butterfly. Adrian considered her his number 4 best friend, behind Chris, Eagly, and Ads. She didn’t care for the BFF label, and he knew it. However, what he’d never admit was the reason she was so low behind everyone else was because his ‘emotional constipation’ kept him from accepting the fact he didn’t want her on his best friend list at all. He wanted Y/n in a category of her own. 

In the approximate two months that they’ve worked together, Adrian was smitten. Following her around HQ when he had nothing to prep for (which he rarely needed to prep for anything, since he showed up everyday fully geared up for whatever may hit him), making sure her mug of coffee was never empty at her desk, calling her with ‘facts’ about whatever animal had stolen his fascination that week. Normal Adrian stuff she assumed. He even tried to bring his fascination for her up to his BFF Chris once or twice, just to immediately be shot down with “In your dreams, you lunatic.” Nonetheless, Adrian was happy with the time he did get to spend with her. It was enough for him just to see her every day. Or at least that’s what he thought. 

That was until they had gone through the portal to their alternate Earth, to try and save Chris. Against the 11th Street Kid’s protests, he slipped away to hunt down the alternate version of himself. Giggling at all the strange indiscrepancies this Earth had from his own and making his way down to his alternate ‘super secret room’, he expected to be met with himself. But that wasn’t the case because curled up in his desk chair, scrolling away mindlesses through something on his computer was Y/n. Not his Y/n, but this universes. 

Her head immediately turned up to face him. Her grin was sickeningly sweet. “Back sooner than I thought you’d be.” she beamed up to him sweetly, making her way over to him. “Oh, hey Y/n! Actually crazy story-” but before he could tell her that he wasn’t actually her Adrian, and how cool it was that he was from another universe, her hand pressed flat against his chest snaking up around the back of his neck. The gaze in her eyes was almost hypnotizing, like they were reading past him straight through to his soul, and he really didn’t mind it. 

“Did something go wrong?” she asked, concern lacing her tone. Adrian had to pause and buffer for a moment. Y/n was never one to be physical with him. Never one to go into his home for that matter. He was a little confused, but not frightened by the contact. Not at all. “Oh, no it was super sick, uh… getting all those bad guys.” he stuttered out, trying to not give himself up and scare her off. “You uh… you were waiting for me?” he asked curiously. His hand was hovering over the small of her back, daring to touch but too nervous to actually make a move. 

“Well I was here when you left, wasn't I?” she teased lightly. He almost swooned over at just the sound of her laugh and soft grin up to him. “Right of course you were, it’d be silly if you had just left when I was gonna come back to you… right?” his voice crept higher at the end when he asked, almost searching for confirmation. The hand that rested on the back of his neck snapped his mask off, gently tugging it off his head as Y/n held it in one hand, and pulled him closer with the other. “I’m just glad you’re okay, baby.” She hummed softly. 

Adrian's cheeks instantly grew a deep red as the pet name rang through his ears. His mind was spinning with all the possibilities this world could have for him. Peacemaker was right, this was the best dimension ever. “Oh yeah, I cut it really close y’know. Super dangerous, but when have I ever feared danger?” He rambled nervously. And she just laughed. Not at him, it wasn’t targeted at all. The kind of laugh you give out of appreciation and care for someone. 

“As far as I can recall, never.” she said sweetly before closing the space between them and kissing him. Adrian stiffened at the contact, in more ways than one. But quickly leaned into it, wanting to savor as much of her as he could before the real him came busting though the door. The excitement of meeting his alternate self quickly washed away when he was met with the possibility of having Y/n exactly how he wanted too. 

His hands hurriedly came up to her back, tracing up and down its surface while he kissed her with a hunger she wasn’t used to on a normal day like this. He could feel her grin into the kiss, almost basking in it. And suddenly his quiet need for his world's Y/n was facing him ten fold. He let out a soft whine as she pulled away from the kiss, causing her to softly smirk up to him. “Really cut it close today, huh?” she teased him lightly. Her free hand came up to brush his hair out of his face. 

“Just reminding myself how much I wanna be with you.” he said, weak for her. And for the first time since he broke into this alternate Adrian’s basement, he was being honest. “God you’re just so beautiful.” He continued feverishly. “And you’re mine? I mean wow, I’m just the luckiest guy on the planet.” And another soft giggle and gentle smile came from Y/n, something he didn’t know he craved so much. Adrian was unsure if he’d be able to live without it after this. Before Y/n could even try to respond, his lips crashed back into hers. The kiss was desperate, like a starving man who’s been fed for the first time in days. Except for Adrian, he was starved of Y/n’s affection, and was being fed for the first time in his life. 

Adrian slowly walked her back until her back was pressed flat against an empty wall in the basement. He didn’t even need to look to see where he was going, the layout was exactly the same. As soon as her back was pressed up flat to the wall, his lips began to explore, starting at the corner of her lips and hurriedly making their way down her neck. “Fuck, Adrian. What’s gotten into you?” Y/n asked breathlessly, dropping his mask to the ground with a dull thud before her hands came up to the back of his neck, fingers lacing through his curls with a soft tug. As soon as her breathy words hit his ears he was done for. His gloved hands roaming around her sides fiercely, grabbing at any skin he could. 

He didn’t answer her question, just continued to nip and suck at any skin she left available to him. His hands fiddling behind her to pull his gloves off before making their way up her shirt to feel her for real. The way her soft hums and groans filled the room at his kisses was intoxicating. “Fuck, you’re perfect..” he sighed against her neck, working his way back up to her lips. 

“I mean really perfect.” he groaned. He pulled his lips away to face her fully, looking down at her with nothing but adoration in his eyes. “Do I tell you that enough? That you’re the most perfect woman I’ve ever seen in my life? Because it’s the truth. Not just because I’m seeing you like this, although that's definitely an added bonus, you’re also the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen. Besides the point, god you’re just- wow Y/n, like really blessing me in every form of the word.” He rambled breathlessly. Y/n’s hands stayed put around the back of his neck, running through his hair sweetly as she couldn’t fight a smile from his words. “I know baby, you remind me fairly often.” She said with a soft giggle. 

“Good, because I can’t stress enough how badly I need you.” His words came out with a soft whine, unable to hide how eager he was to get Y/n like this. Full of his soft words and needy grabs, Y/n dove in to kiss him again. Her hands left their spot on the back of his neck to trail down his armored chest. “I’m glad you came around,” she said softly, muffled between kisses. “Came around?” he asked, lifting his head up from the kiss to look up to her. Y/n then grew a little tense from bringing it up. “I mean, you’ve been so work oriented lately, I haven’t got you like this for days.” she admitted a little sheepishly. Days? Sure not weeks, or the months he’s been waiting to get his Y/n like this, but if he truly had her and she needed him, Adrian would never leave her to herself for days. He believed she deserved to be treated like a goddess, as a woman as beautiful and gracious as she was, was one. 

He then spoke up sharply, “Don’t listen to a word I say. You deserve my undivided attention.” Which he truly meant as if it were law, before he pulled her back in to kiss her again. Y/n let out a soft moan into the kiss, riled up by his fervor. One hand of hers stayed on his chest while the other snaked back up into his hair. As she lightly tugged on it he let out a moan of his own into the kiss. He was starving, and needed as much of her as she was willing to give him. 

Too riled up by the newfound intimacy, he neglected to pay attention to the footsteps approaching from outside the basement door. As the doorknob twisted, this universe’s Adrian began to speak up gleefully. “Babe, you will not believe who I found on my way home, it’s you!” He began cheerfully before facing his girlfriend with… himself? 

This universe's Y/n pulled back at the sound of his voice, jolted as her gaze landed on her boyfriend? But she was kissing her boyfriend, right? She instantly pushed Adrian off of her, face painted in confusion. “What the fuck?” she yelped as she jumped back. Adrian stood still, realizing that her real boyfriend had come home. And worse, he’d come home with his universe’s Y/n.  Both alternate Adrian and the real Y/n stood still in the doorway, perplexed by what they had walked into. 

“Shit- oh uhm, hey! Look, it's me! Or I’m you? Or uh- Woah, what’s that guy doing here, he looks like me!” Through a rollercoaster of guises, Adrian tried to play dumb when confronted by this dimension’s version of himself. His universes Y/n facepalmed with a huff. “Adrian, I know it’s you.” she sighed not wanting to get into whatever the fuck it was that she had just walked into. Adrian X, however, was fuming. “Why the fuck were you kissing my girlfriend?” he huffed angrily as he shoved Adrian back. Y/n X, pressed firmly against the wall trying to wrap her head around what she was seeing. 

“Dude, I’m sorry!” Adrian’s voice rang out in a high pitched squeal as he tried to run from Adrian X. As they continued to chase one another around the basement Y/n came face to face with her alternate self. “Uh… Hi, are you okay?” she asked softly. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m feeling right now.” Y/n X let out weakly as she watched the Adrian’s fight one another. Y/n then spoke up delicately. “Yeah, that makes sense…” she said, turning her shoulder to watch them tussling across the room. 

Y/n then scrambled over, getting between both Adrian’s. “Okay, cut it out, we’re here for a reason.” she huffed. What she walked in on can be discussed later. She then turned to Adrian, “Ads is in trouble, we need to go.” She said sharply. Adrian’s head cocked to the side in confusion. “Trouble? What do you mean trouble?” 

And then the whole nazi spiel was told, and the group set aside their differences to be discussed later as Y/n, Adrian, and Adrian X prepared to go rescue her. Adrian X giving Y/n X a soft kiss on the cheek with a soft muttered, “we’re discussing this later, love ya babe.” before they all dipped out of the room, leaving Y/n X to sit on the couch, dazed and confused. 

The walk back over to Chris’ house was tense and silent. That was until Y/n spoke up to Adrian, while Adrian X stayed ahead leading the way. “What the fuck were you doing in there?” She asked. If it wasn’t for his red visor, Y/n would’ve been able to see how red his cheeks got at the question. “I dunno, she came onto me?” It was a weak defense. While Y/n X did kiss him first, he was rather adamant to keep it going. “So you neglected to mention you are from another universe?” She asked sharply. Y/n couldn’t place her rage. Was it jealousy? Seeing a version of herself all wound up by the same guy who always filled her cup, always lingered around her desk after a mission. 

“What, I’m a guy! I got excited.” Adrian said weakly, holding his hands up in surrender. “A guy who was rather keen on making out with me!” Ash finally let out with a huff. As soon as she did she bit her tongue, looking away from him. Maybe she was jealous? Sure, he’s made his interest clear by the way he stares at her from across the room, but it’s not like he ever made a move. Adrian had no words for the first time since Y/n had known him. As soon as Y/n was about to push, they arrived at Chris’. 

The steps to save him were a whirlwind. What was supposed to be a quick in and out the dimensional door became an all out brawl between the 11th street kids and the cops. The thought of Adrian making out with the alternate Y/n subdued through the fight, then right before she brought it up they were met with A.R.G.U.S as soon as they got back to their world. In the crazy stir of events with Chris being arrested, and the rest of them frozen and unable to fight back as they watched him get dragged away in a cop car, the thought of what she saw subdued, but didn’t disappear. 

“You uh… you need a ride home?” Adrian spoke up amidst all the chaos. She was shocked by the request, not expecting him to want to be confined to the ‘vigilante-mobile’ when he knew a conversation needed to be had. Y/n begrudgingly accepted, and got into his passenger seat in an awkward silence. 

“So… alternate me..” she said softly, causing Adrian to grow stiff as he pulled out of his driveway. “Fuck, Y/n I’m sorry.” he let out weakly, his eyes trained onto the road ahead of them. “I know it was wrong, but it was you! Except not you, but then she kissed me, and all I wanted to do was kiss her back. And her version of me clearly had not been treating her how she deserved to be treated which killed me inside, and I-” before he could continue to ramble, Y/n voice cut him off. “Pull over.” she said plainly. Adrian’s eyes landed on her for just a moment. “What? Why-” “Pull over.” She said again firmer, so he did. “Look if you wanna walk home I get it, but I don’t think you-” and Y/n cut him off again. “Did you kiss her back because she needed it, or did you kiss her back because you wanted to?” she asked plainly. Her expression was unreadable, and it caused Adrian to get all flustered again. “Well it’s not like I-” and she cut him off once more. “Just answer the question, Adrian.” she huffed sharply. 

“I wanted to! Okay? I got excited because there was a version of you out there who wanted me as badly as I want you, and I couldn’t help myself when she was just there waiting for me.” And suddenly Y/n stilled. With the realization of what he had just admitted, Adrian froze too. “Then why’d you never do anything about it?” Y/n asked. It shocked Adrian to his core. She wasn’t mad at him, she was jealous. So he turned to face her fully, putting the car in park. “What, because you’d want me too? C’mon Y/n I was grasping at what could’ve been while I had it, and now it’s over so just stop reminding me.” He said through a soft sigh. His eyes trailed over her, unable to shake the way the alternate her kissed him back so fiercely, how her hands handled him so gently when he was used to her brute force on missions or her unassuming gaze at the office. 

“I never said I didn’t.” She said bluntly as she gazed over to him. That caused Adrian to freeze where he sat, hands clutching the wheel for some kind of stability. “What?” Was all he was able to muster in this moment. “Did you kiss her because it was her, or did you kiss her because it was me?” She asked bluntly once more. The tension was thick as Y/n leaned in closer as he asked the question. 

“I kissed her because she was you.” He finally admitted weakly, unable to look at Y/n.

________________________________________________________________

Dex went still. The principal kept talking beside him. Something about lockdown protocols, fire exits, parent pick-up procedures, and perhaps thanking him for the visit. Dex didn’t hear any of it. He watched the little boy rub his face with his sleeve, watched you reach into your cardigan pocket and produce a tissue because of course you had one ready, because of course you had walked through life expecting the world to hurt these precious little things and had prepared yourself to help.

“Reading slowly just means you get to spend more time with the words,” you told the boy. “That’s not a bad thing.”

The boy sniffled, and you smiled at him.

Dex felt that smile land in his cold heart, somewhere it had no business being.

It would have been easier if you were only beautiful. That would have been manageable. Uncomfortable, maybe, but manageable. Beauty was a fact. Beauty could be observed, catalogued, eventually put away. You were beautiful in a way that seemed unaware of itself, unpolished and terribly human. The cardigan sleeves falling too far over your hands, the loose strand of hair stuck to your cheek, the worn soles of your cheap flats, you smiling so easily for children who probably forgot to thank you for it.

Dex thought you were gorgeous with an alarmed resentment, as if his own body had betrayed him by noticing before his mind had given permission. Then you looked up at him.

Your eyes met his across the library, and for half a second, Dex forgot what face he was supposed to be wearing. You smiled politely, like he was just another adult in the building, not a man with a gun under his jacket teaching staff how to react in case of a school shooting.

“Hi,” you said. “Sorry, do you need the library?”

The principal brightened. “This is our librarian.”

You gave Dex your name. He repeated it silently once. Then again. Then a third time, because it felt like something he should store somewhere safe, somewhere no one else could touch.

“Special Agent Poindexter,” he said, holding out his hand.

You shook it, and your hand was warm. Dex noticed that there was a tiny paper cut near your thumb. 

You were still smiling at him. Not because he was FBI, and not because he was handsome, though he was. You smiled because you were kind.

Fuck. That’s inconvenient.

Pretty made him look, but good made him stay.

That first visit should have been the last. Dex knew that. There was no operational reason for him to return personally. The school’s safety review was a basic one. The principal had his notes, but the follow-up could have been handled by email. A junior agent could have dropped off the printed materials. Anyone could have gone.

But Dex went. That second time, he poked his head to the library, and said hi. You said hi back, right after you told two boys that no, the beanbags were not for wrestling, and yes, you were very impressed by the creativity of the attempt.

Dex couldn’t stop thinking about it for a week.

The third time, he told himself it was because the library’s rear exit needed another assessment. It was technically true. The lock was old, the corridor outside had basically no surveillance, and the staff entrance was too far from the main office. He made it seem like a legitimate concern, when really, it was a neat little justification. Dex was excellent at finding those.

You were reshelving books when he appeared in the doorway, balanced on the tips of your toes as you reached for the top shelf. The hem of your blouse lifted slightly at your waist. It was nothing indecent. Barely anything at all.

Still, his mind went briefly blank. 

He cleared his throat.

You startled, turned, and smiled. “Agent Poindexter.”

Dex liked the sound of it from you. That was inconvenient too.

“Sorry,” you added, stepping down. “Am I in the way?”

“No.”

“Good. Because if you were about to tell me my fiction section is a security risk, I might cry.”

His mouth twitched before he decided to let it. “I’ll leave fiction alone.”

“Very generous of the DOJ.” That’s when he realised you were teasing him. 

Dex looked at you and thought, you have no idea what a dangerous thing that was.

After that, the visits became a pattern.

Not obvious, because Dex was never sloppy when he could help it. He didn’t go every day. He didn’t stand outside the library staring like some lovesick idiot with no self-control. He knew how to make repeated contact look procedural. 

His supervisor barely looked up from the file the fourth time it happened. “Poindexter, you handled the school outreach last week, right?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve got some updated compliance questions. I can send Nadeem.”

Dex immediately shook his head. “I’ll take it.”

His supervisor paused, but Dex kept his face still. “I’m already familiar with the layout,” he said, and what a good excuse that was. 

The whole truth was that he had thought about you every day since the first visit. You came to him through triggers. When he saw children’s drawings in a hallway. A cardigan on a mannequin The smell of old paper. A mug with painted stars on it in a café window, because you had one on your desk.

You were good, and you were pretty, and that combination felt less like attraction and more like orientation. As if Dex had spent his whole life moving without a fixed point and then walked into a school library and found one.

So, yes, he came back to the school. And, yes, eventually, he followed you home.

The first time, he told himself it was because you were the last staff member to leave again and the car park lighting was poor, so he had to make sure you were safe. It had rained earlier, leaving the pavement slick and black. You walked out with a tote bag over one shoulder and an armful of books pressed to your chest, juggling your keys between your fingers. 

Dex sat in his car and watched until you pulled out of the lot. Then he followed. He learned the route to your apartment in fourteen minutes. He cleared that you lived in a building with a front door that did not latch unless pulled hard, that the hallway light on your floor flickered, that your window faced the street and your curtains were thin enough to turn your silhouette suggestive when you moved past them with nothing on.

He hated your building immediately. The lock was bad. The street was worse. Your neighbours were careless. The man in 2B smoked on the front steps and watched women walk past like a fucking creep. The laundry room was in the basement. The side gate did not close properly.

Dex catalogued every vulnerability, then sat in his car for twenty-three minutes after your lights went out and told himself this was a reasonable concern.

He was trained to notice risk, and you just had so much of it. You were too open, too trusting, too underpaid to live somewhere safe enough. 

He found out about the money without needing to try very hard.

He figured out your exact job title, your district, and salary ranges within twenty minutes. He knew what you could afford, what you probably couldn’t, what your grocery budget looked like if your car needed work or if the school asked you to buy supplies out of pocket again. And you did, apparently. He saw the receipts in your hand one afternoon when you came out of a discount store with construction paper, glue sticks, tissues, and children’s stickers paid for with your own money.

That bothered him more than it should have. It enraged him. Not because you were helpless. Dex didn’t think that. You were competent in the way good people often were, holding ten pieces of a room together while everyone else assumed the room simply stayed whole on its own. But you were tired and stretched thin. You loved your job, the children, the library with its peeling posters and overhandled paperbacks, but love didn’t pay rent.

I could, he thought. Dex could pay your rent without noticing. He could buy groceries without checking his account. He could fix the lock. Replace the car. Put you somewhere safe and close. That’s… a good reason to ask you out, right?

If he ever had the courage. 

By the fifth visit, you laughed when you saw him. “Again?”

Dex stopped in the library doorway, because he insisted to the bureau that some of the teachers were security risks. “Again.”

“Should I be worried about the state of our emergency preparedness?”

“No.”

“Should I be worried about you?” That caught him off-guard.  Your tone was teasing, but your eyes were warm and curious.

Should I be worried about you?

Yes, he thought. Probably.

Instead, he said, “No.”

You narrowed your eyes in mock suspicion. “I don’t know. Five visits to the school. Either we are extremely unsafe, or you really like laminated evacuation maps.”

Dex looked at the map beside your door. “It’s a good map.”

You burst out laughing.

Dex loved the sound immediately and started to memorise it so he could copy it when you made a joke. More than that, he wanted to be responsible for it. He wanted to know what your laugh sounded like in his car. In his kitchen. Against his mouth.

The thought came so suddenly that his teeth clenched.

You noticed. Your smile softened, and Dex had the devastating impression that you thought you had embarrassed him. “I’m sorry,” you said. “I didn’t mean to make fun of you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Okay.” You tilted your head. “Good.”

Good. The word followed him home.

So did you, though not physically. Not yet. But your image, your voice, the way you said his name after he told you to call him Dex, the way you remembered he took tea plain after seeing him drink it once in the staff room. The way you handed him a paper cup and said, “I made too much,” as if generosity was just something that spilled out of you naturally.

And then there were the guys around you.

He had watched a math teacher who lingered at your desk too long after school, making you laugh over some stupid story about a parent email. A divorced father at pick-up who asked whether you ever took private tutoring work and then smiled in a way Dex didn’t like. A man you met for coffee one Friday evening, two neighbourhoods over, at a café with steamed windows and terrible parking.

Dex hadn’t meant to follow you there. That was a lie.

He had followed you there because you had worn lipstick, the kind you probably put on in your rearview mirror after work, thinking no one would notice.

The date was unremarkable. The man was unremarkable. He wore a blue shirt, laughed too loudly, and checked his phone while you were talking. Dex watched from across the street with his hands still on the steering wheel and felt jealousy move through him.

The man was wrong for you.

He was careless, dull, and too impressed with himself. He made you pay for your own tea. That alone felt like a crime.

You left to do some off-the-clock work, and your date stayed. Dex waited until the man left to use the bathroom, then walked into the café and passed close enough to his table to see the phone he had left face-up beside his plate. He saw a message from someone named Laura lit the screen with a heart attached.

Dex smiled. That was useful.

The next morning, he sent an anonymous message to Laura. The following week, you didn’t see blue-shirt again.

You looked a little sad about it on Monday. Dex hated that. Then he hated the man more for making you sad. Then he told himself it was better this way.

It became easier to scare off your dates after that. All it took was an inconvenient scheduling conflict, a resurfaced truth, a gentle nudge. One man had an outstanding warrant for unpaid fines. One was married. One was simply easy to scare with the right look from the right federal agent in a parking lot.

By the sixth visit to the school, there was no reason good enough to fool anyone but himself.

A “Penultimate walkthrough,” he called it, before the final walkthrough next week. 

The principal seemed pleased, though you looked amused. “Penultimate?” you asked when Dex appeared outside the library.

“Yes.”

“Should I be honoured?”

“You should feel secure.”

“I do. The biography section has never been safer.”

He looked at you, and you smiled like you were proud of yourself. Dex couldn’t help but copy that smile back. Your expression changed when you saw it, going still for one second, like you liked him, too.

That day, he walked through the library with you while you pointed out doors and windows and places the children liked to hide during reading hour. This corner was where the overwhelmed ones went. That shelf had the books no one returned on time because they loved them too much. The lamp near the beanbag was too warm if left on all day, but you kept it anyway because the kids said it made the corner feel cozy.

“This is where they go when they need silence,” you said, gesturing toward a little space tucked behind a low shelf. A lamp. A basket of soft toys. Books with soft edges. A handmade sign that read: take a breath.

Dex looked at it.

You had made a place for children to be afraid safely. Of course you had.

“You did this?” he asked.

You shrugged, suddenly shy. “It’s not much.”

Dex looked at you. “It is.”

You met his eyes, and for a moment, the library noise faded behind you.

After that, he wanted to give you things. He wanted to give you better shoes. Better locks. A safer car. A warmer apartment. Groceries you did not buy with mental arithmetic running behind your eyes. A kitchen where your tea sat beside his coffee because it belonged there. A bed you didn’t have to assemble yourself. A life where you did not walk to your car alone. He wanted your life folded into his so completely that you never again had to stand unprotected in the world.

It was raining the day he finally asked.

The sky had turned the school windows grey, and the car park outside shone black under the streetlights. Most of the staff had already left. The corridors had emptied, and you were the last one in the library again.

Dex had lingered through a conversation with the principal he barely needed to have after the final walkthrough. He had checked the same exit twice. He had waited near the lobby until your light was the only one still glowing down the hall.

Then you came out with a tote bag sliding down your shoulder and a cardboard box of donated books pressed against your hip. Your umbrella refused to open, and you stared at it like it had stabbed you.

“Need help?”

You startled, then relaxed when you saw him. “Dex.” You laughed, breathless and embarrassed. “Do you just appear whenever I’m losing a fight?”

“Your umbrella is inside out,” he pointed out, before taking the box from you.

You tried to hold on. “I can carry that.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you take it?”

“Because it’s raining.”

You looked at him for a second, then smiled, soft and helpless and too fond for his sanity.

“Okay,” you said, as if letting him carry a box was nothing. As if it didn’t make a dark and pleased thought settle low in his chest.

He walked you to your car and put the books in the back seat. He noted the old jumper on the passenger side, the stack of overdue returns, the half-empty water bottle, the evidence of your life that was still not his.

You stood beside him under the broken umbrella, rain misting your hair.

You were gorgeous, he thought.

It struck him then in the stupidest way. No analysis or clinical separation. Just so pretty it made him feel young and strange and almost angry with himself.

“What?” you asked, smiling like you could tell he was staring.

Dex could’ve said nothing. He could have smiled, stepped back, wished you a good night, returned to his car, and come up with another reason to see you next week.

Instead, he looked at you and thought of your whole life together. Then he said it. “Have dinner with me.”

Your smile faded into surprise. The rain tapped against the broken umbrella between you. You blinked once. It wasn’t really a question, was it?  “With you?”

“Yes.”

“As in…”

“A date.”

Your cheeks warmed. Dex watched the colour rise and tilted his head.

“Oh,” you said softly. Then, after a second, you smiled. “Okay.”

Just like that, he got what he wanted. 

—

The first date was dinner at your favourite restaurant, though you couldn’t recall ever telling Dex that.

You paused outside the little place with the handwritten menu in the window, your hand tucked into the crook of his arm. “Oh,” you said, surprised. “I love this place.”

Dex looked down at you, calm as anything. “Do you?”

You laughed. “I come here all the time.”

“I didn’t know that.”

The lie was smooth, but Dex said it with such calm that you accepted it because you wanted to. So you smiled up at him and said, “Then we have similar taste.”

His eyes held on your face. “Maybe we do.”

“Maybe we belong together then,” you joked.

Dex’s brain went to a catastrophic halt.

You didn’t see it from the outside, not really. His face barely changed. Maybe his eyes went a little too still. Maybe his fingers pressed once, carefully, against your hand where it rested on his sleeve.

But inside him, his heart lit up white-hot. Belong together.

You had said it so lightly. Dex heard it like a verdict. Like the universe had leaned down and put a hand on his shoulder and said, yes, that one.

He opened the restaurant door for you and followed you inside with your words still burning through him.

You had no idea he had chosen this restaurant because he had followed you there three weeks before, parked across the street while you sat by the window with two friends and laughed over a bowl of pasta. You had no idea he had watched you order the same thing twice. You had no idea he knew which seat you liked, which dessert you split with your friend and pretended not to want more of, which route you took home afterward, how tightly you held your coat closed when the wind picked up.

But yeah, dinner was great. 

The second date was coffee because you were trying to take things slower.

He was already there when you arrived, sitting by the window with your drink waiting in front of the empty chair. Your exact order, right size, right syrup.  He claimed similar taste innocently again. 

You should have been alarmed. Instead, you chuckled and sat down.

Coffee turned into a walk. The walk turned into him standing beside your car, close enough that your shoulder brushed his sleeve. He looked at your mouth once, then back at your eyes. “Can I kiss you?”

You didn’t even answer. You just stood on your tip toes and kissed him, carefully at first. But his hand came to cup your face, so you made a hum into his mouth and felt him unravel. 

When he pulled back, his eyes were dark. You smiled, dazed. 

The third date was dinner at his apartment.

He cooked for you, because apparently Dex did everything like it was a mission and feeding you was no exception. His apartment was neat  and perfectly arranged, but then you were there with your jacket on the back of his chair and your laugh in his kitchen, and he kept looking at those little disruptions were worth you being here.

The food was good, so you smiled and pushed a little harder. “You’re very good at taking care of me.”

Dex went still, and you could’ve sworn his ears went pink. 

After dinner, you kissed him on the couch. That was all it was supposed to be: A kiss.

Yes, maybe Dex made it feel a little too deep. Maybe it was too hungry. Maybe it was a little reckless, considering this was only the third date and you weren't the kind of woman who did things like this. You didn’t tumble into a man’s bed after three dates and let your body make decisions your brain would have to defend in the morning.

Your brain was trying, to be fair. The little voices there had formed a whole committee meeting about it.

This is too fast. This is insane. You have work tomorrow. You barely know him.

Unfortunately, Dex was kissing you, open-mouthed and desperate, his hands tight on your waist, breathing against you like every second of restraint physically hurt him, and your body didn’t seem particularly interested in attending the discussion.

You climbed into his lap because there was nowhere else you wanted to be.

Dex let out a breathy moan when you settled over him,  his head tipping back against the couch. His shirt was still on, but you had already pulled half the buttons open, enough to get your hands on skin, enough to feel his chest rise under your palms every time your mouth found his again.

Your skirt was hiked high around your thighs, his fingers trembling at the hem of it.

Dex, who could easily take what he wanted, sat beneath you with his hands on your thighs and waited for you to tell him he was allowed.

You kissed him harder for it.

His mouth opened under yours immediately, wet and so eager that you felt your stomach twist. You threaded your fingers into his hair and tugged once, just to steady yourself, just to feel him closer.

Dex sighed into your mouth.

“Oh,” you whispered, breathless.

His eyes opened, fixed on you. You smiled because you understood then that Benjamin Poindexter liked being told what to do.

He wanted to be good for you. He wanted to earn every sound you made.

You shifted in his lap, and his whole body reacted. His fingers slid higher under your skirt, then stopped again.

“Dex,” you breathed.

His throat worked. “Tell me.”

You leaned down, your lips brushing his as you spoke. “Touch me.”

He obeyed so fast it made you gasp.

Your panties were pulled to the side with clumsy, shaking urgency, his pants shoved down just enough because neither of you had the patience anymore. It was filthy how desperate it was. There was no time for the bedroom, no careful undressing, no pretending this was slower than it was. It was you in his lap, his open shirt under your hands, your skirt bunched around your waist, both of you panting into each other’s mouths like you had been struck by fucking lightning.

He was so intense you expected him to take over. Because he could’ve flipped you under him. He could have pinned you to the couch and made you forget every thought you had ever had. He had the body, he had muscles, he had the skills. 

Instead, he looked at you like he needed permission to breathe. “Like that?” he breathed.

You nodded, nails dragging over his chest nodding frantically. “Don’t stop.”

He didn’t.

Dex listened like obedience was devotion, like your pleasure was a commandment, like the only thing in the world that mattered was keeping you exactly like this: skirt up, mouth open, shaking in his lap while he looked up at you like you were holy.

You knew this was too quick. You never had one night stands. Even three dates was way too quick, by your standards. 

But his hands were on your waist, his shirt was open, his breathing was breaking, and when you whispered, “Fuck, baby,” he shuddered so hard beneath you that all your remaining common sense died on the couch.

Afterward, you stayed folded against him, both of you warm and breathless, your face tucked into his neck.

Dex’s hand moved slowly up your back, careful now. 

You lifted your head enough to look at him. His hair was wrecked. His mouth was red. His eyes were softer than you had ever seen them, though there was still a frightening stillness underneath, satisfied and hungry and already too attached.

You touched his cheek. “I should probably go home.”

Dex went still.

He looked at you from beneath those dark lashes, still flushed, still breathing hard, still beautiful enough to make bad decisions feel like fate. “Stay the night,” he said, trying not to say please.

You swallowed. “I have work tomorrow.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“My things are at home.”

“You can wear something of mine.”

“I need my toothbrush.”

“I have a spare.”

A laugh slipped out of you, helpless and fond. Of course he did. 

Dex’s mouth barely moved, and it was always a smile.

He looked at you like he needed you to say yes and hated that you could tell. Like letting you leave after this would physically hurt. Like you had crawled into his lap and accidentally turned yourself into the centre of his orbit.

You should go home. Your sensible little inner committee was banging on the table now.

But Dex looked at you like he was unaware he had puppy dog eyes, and you couldn’t say no to that, right? 

So you kissed him once. “M’kay, baby,” you said.

Dex held you tighter then, giving an upbeat little whine as he peppered kisses on your collarbone.

Little did you know, there was no going back now. 

—

The next day, Dex picked you up from work, even though you hadn’t asked him to.

He had driven you that morning as promised, his hands on your waist while he kissed you goodbye like he was trying not to follow you into the school library.

You had spent the whole day after that with his shirt on, but it was terribly oversized on you. Still, you managed to make it look intentional under your blazer, tucked and adjusted just enough that no one could tell. You had pinned your hair neatly, put your librarian face on, and acted very normal. Very professional of you, honestly.

Then the final bell rang, the library emptied, and by the time you stepped out of the front entrance with your bag over your shoulder, Dex was already there, waiting by his car with a suit jacket on and badge hidden. 

You stopped mid-step. “Oh,” you said, lighting up.  Beside you, Jonathan stopped too.

Jonathan, the music teacher. Nice Jonathan. Harmless Jonathan. Jonathan who lived two streets away from you and always carried a canvas tote bag with an embarrassing number of reusable water bottles inside it. He had been walking with you because you didn’t have your car with you and he offered to drive you home because you were both headed in the same direction. 

Dex’s grip tightened around his keys.

You were still wearing his shirt, and this man wanted to take you home? Cute.

“Dex?” you called, surprised.

Dex barely spared Johnathan a glance. He came to you instead, handsome in that frightening l way, his attention fixed you that it made the other man feel like background noise.

“What are you doing here?” you asked.

“Picking you up.”

You blinked, then laughed softly. “Why?”

Because you were wearing my shirt. Because I spent all day knowing you were out of sight. Because I don’t like it when you’re not with me.

“Your car’s not here,” he said, and that was reasonable enough, right?

“Oh.” You glanced back. “Jonathan was going to offer me a ride. He lives a few blocks away, so—”

“No.” The word came out flat.

You tilted your head, confused. You tried to recover, sweet thing that you were, turning half toward the man beside you. “Dex, this is Jonathan. He’s the music teacher. Jonathan, this is—”

Dex opened the passenger door. “You’re coming with me.”

Jonathan stopped with his polite smile halfway formed.

You looked at Dex for a second, and your sensible little inner voice probably tried to say something about how this was strange. 

Then Dex looked at you, and you melted, because fuck! Some foolish, lovesick part of you found that endearing. He came all this way for me? 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jonathan,” you said gently.

Dex shut the passenger door after you climbed in and stood there for one extra second, hand still on the handle, the word burning through him. What did that mean?

He got into the car.

The drive started silent. You settled beside him, and Dex saw you cozy up one the corner of his eye and had to tighten both hands on the wheel.

“Tomorrow?” he asked finally.

You looked over. “Hm?”

“You said you’d see him tomorrow.”

A little smile pulled at your mouth. You leaned across the console and kissed his cheek, like you thought jealousy was cute when it came from him.

“We work together, Dex.”

Oh. Okay. Okay. That’s fine, right?

Normal boyfriends were fine with that, right?

Still.

Then, asked if you wanted to come over to his place again because he couldn’t help himself. Because having you in the passenger seat made it feel obscene to let you leave again. Because you were already dressed in his things and smelled faintly like his apartment and he couldn’t understand why the day had to end anywhere else.

You looked down at yourself and laughed. “Dex, I am literally wearing your clothes. I need to go to mine.”

He kept his expression calm, but his fingers went still on the wheel.

You noticed enough to furrow your brows. “I’ve got work stuff to do,” you said. “I’ll call soon, okay?”

He nodded. He could do that. He could be normal. He could drive you to your car and let you go back to your apartment with its bad lock and pathetic hallway light and no trace of him except the marks he had left under your clothes. He could.

He pulled up beside your car outside your building and watched you unbuckle your seatbelt. You said your goodbyes and were halfway out when he blurted out, “I love you.”

You stopped.

Fuck. Fuck! 

He had not planned it like that. Not in the car, and definitely not with you leaving. But there it was.

You turned back to him slowly.

For a second, you bit your lip in shock. 

It was quick. Too quick to say that. You’ve been going on dates for what? Two weeks? 

You supposed he’d been around the school for two months now with the outreach program. But even that didn’t really make sense, right?

So now, your inner committee was no longer holding a meeting. It was pounding on the table, screaming that this was insane, that love wasn’t supposed to arrive between a third date and a school pick-up, that normal people didn’t do this.

But Dex was looking at you like you hung the stars for him. 

So leaned back into the car and kissed him. Gently first, then deeper, because his hand found your jaw like he had been waiting for permission to touch you again since the school gates.

“I love you, too,” you whispered.

Oh. Oh.

You left before you could take it back.

Dex watched you wave from your door, hands resting on the wheel, mouth curved in a small, helpless smile he couldn’t seem to stop.

She loves me.

The thought repeated all the way home.

She loves me. She loves me. She loves me.

By the time he reached his apartment, he was still smiling.

Then he opened the door, and the smile vanished immediately because you were not there.

The apartment was exactly the same as it had been that morning, clean and perfectly ordered, but suddenly none of that mattered. The couch was empty. The kitchen was empty. The bed was empty. All those neat, controlled rooms had become useless because you weren’t inside them.

Dex stood in the doorway with his keys in his hand and felt his stomach in him turn over.

You loved him, so why were you not here?

The question sat in his head with terrible simplicity. 

You loved him. He loved you. He could take care of you. He had the space, the money, the locks, the discipline. Your apartment was unsafe. Your building was bad. Your neighbours were careless. Jonathan from music lived too close. The world kept touching you and taking from you and making you tired.

Here was safer. Here, it made sense. Here, he could see you.

The thought came fully formed before he knew to stop it.

He could go get you.

He could get in the car. Drive to your apartment. Knock. Tell you that you should change your mind. Tell you the city was unsafe. Tell you your lock was bad. Tell you to pack a bag. Tell you you belonged in his apartment. Tell you until you believed him.

If you said no, he could still bring you back.

He was stronger than you. Faster than you. He was trained. He knew exactly how to move you without hurting too badly. He could overpower you, get you inside his apartment, lock the door, hide the keys, take your phone just for a while. He’d you keep warm. Feed you. Talk to you until the panic passed. He’d do that just until you understood. Because you would understand.

You loved him, so eventually you would understand that this was not cruelty, right?  This was not punishment. This was him seeing the truth faster than you did. This was him making the hard decision because someone had to. This was him saving you from all the places that were not him.

It took him an embarrassingly long time to realise that was kidnapping.

Actually, legally, literally kidnapping.

Kidnapping. False imprisonment. Coercion. Felony. It was bad.

“Oh,” he whispered. Then, after a beat, “Shit.”

His breath went wrong. The heat in him snapped into panic so quickly he nearly staggered. He saw himself then, not as a man in love, not as someone protecting his girlfriend, but as exactly the kind of thing you would need protecting from.

No.

No, no, no.

He backed away from the door like it had opened onto a cliff.

He loved you. He loved you. He wasn’t going to make you afraid of him. He wasn’t going to put his hands on you. He wasn’t going to lock you inside his life and pretend that was the same thing as being chosen.

Even if some awful part of him wanted to. Especially because some awful part of him wanted to.

Dex went to the drawer with shaking hands and pulled out the tapes.

Dr. Eileen Mercer’s voice filled the apartment through a soft crackle of static. “Your internal compass isn’t broken, Dex. It just works better with a North Star to guide you.”

Dex sank onto the couch.

North Star.

That was what you were.

Of course you were. You, with your kind heart and your gentle voice and your stupidly good heart. You, making safe corners for children. 

He had simply made the catastrophic mistake of falling in love with the star.  Which complicated things.

Because you were supposed to guide him, not belong to him. You were supposed to be fixed above him, untouchable enough to follow. Not in his apartment. Not in his bed. Not wearing his shirt and saying I love you in his car like you had any idea what those words would do to a man like him.

Dex pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes and forced himself to breathe while the tape kept playing through the static.

The apartment was still wrong without you. His hands still shook. The need to leave and get you didn’t disappear just because he had named it correctly. The desire sat there, dark and patient, waiting for him to mistake it for devotion again. But he stayed where he was.

He stayed on the couch with his teeth clenched so hard it ached, listening to the tape like it was the only thing holding him in place.

He loved you. That had to mean something better than possession. It had to.

So Dex sat in the empty apartment and tried, breath by breath, to become the kind of man who could love his North Star without building a sky small enough to trap her.

—

Dex barely made it through the week by hearing your voice through the phone.

You were busy with the school, chaperoning a trip, dealing with children and permission slips and packed lunches and museum gift shops, so he did the good thing, the normal thing. He didn’t show up. He didn’t follow the bus route. He didn’t appear outside your apartment just because he knew you would be exhausted.

Well. Maybe he just did it once, but he didn’t even stop! He just took a quick peek around the block to make sure you got home safe. 

After that, he took it one day at a time.

At night, he lay in bed with the phone pressed to his ear and listened to you talk when you called. You told him about the children, the chaos, the little girl who tried to correct the tour guide, the boy who cried because his sandwich got crushed in his bag.

He hated that he couldn't tell if you were warm enough. Hated that you sounded exhausted and he wasn’t there to put a blanket over your shoulders or press his mouth to your temple or make the world stop asking things of you for five minutes. But he behaved.

When you said, “I’m so tired, baby,” he closed his eyes like the world wrapped a hand around his throat.

When you said, “I miss you,” he pressed his fist against his mouth until the feeling passed enough for him to answer normally.

“I miss you too.” An understatement so violent it almost made him laugh.

Then you came back to regular life, and started spending more time with him. 

And naturally, you started spending more nights at his place.

It was easy. His apartment was closer to the school. His shower was better. His fridge always had food you liked. Your tea was already in his cupboard. Your toothbrush was still in his bathroom from that first night, and the spare charger by his bed somehow became yours without either of you discussing it.

One night a week became two. Two nights a week became most of the week.

Your laundry ended up in his machine. Your favourite cardigan stayed folded in his bedroom. Your substitute teaching papers got graded at his kitchen table while he made dinner. Your commute became easier because he drove you when he could, and when he couldn’t, he made sure your car had petrol, the tyres were checked, and the weird noise under the hood had been fixed before it became a problem.

It was dangerous, how much easier he made your life.

Dangerous because you were a school librarian on a school librarian salary, and Dex had big boy FBI paychecks and paid for groceries without mentally rearranging the rest of the month around it.

You tried to argue about that once. He looked genuinely offended.

“I should help,” you said.

“You do.”

“I mean with bills.”

“You buy supplies for children who are not yours because no one else will. Let me pay for dinner.”

That shut you up, not because it was fair. But because it was kind. Or because it sounded kind. Or because, with Dex, the difference had started to blur.

Your car made a noise; he had it checked. Your shoes wore thin; a new pair appeared by the door. You mentioned once that you were out of your favourite cereal, and the next morning there were two boxes in his cupboard.

By five months, you were barely at your own apartment.

You still paid rent. You still had mail there. Technically, you still lived there. But most nights, you went home to Dex.

Then one night, while you sat at his kitchen table grading reading logs and wearing one of his shirts under your cardigan, Dex said, “You should move in.”

You looked up. “What?”

“You should move in here.”

He said it so calmly. Like he was pointing out the weather. Like he had not been waiting weeks to say it. Like he had not already measured the space in his closet, looked up your lease date, and made sure there was room for your books.

You felt your inner committee rise from the dead.

Babe. What the fuck. Five months. Are you actually considering this? What’s wrong with you? Huh?

So you pushed back, but not very well.

“Dex,” you said, looking around his apartment. “We’ve been dating for five months.”

“I know.”

“Moving in would be very quick.”

“I know.”

But would it? You were at his kitchen table in one of his shirts, your papers stacked on his coffee table, your mug in his sink, your shoes by his door. Half your life was already there.

Suddenly, Dex leaned down and kissed you before you could keep arguing.

He did it because he had seen men do it in movies when they wanted to calm the woman they loved. 

That was how affection started with him, really.  He imitated touch. He put a hand on your waist because that was what boyfriends did. He rubbed circles over your hip because that was what loving partners did.

But then you melted under his hands and sighed into his mouth. Your fingers curled lightly into the front of his shirt.

And Dex thought, oh. So that was what it was supposed to feel like.

So after the first time, it no longer felt like pretending. It was no longer fake, no longer a costume he wore to convince you he could be normal.

He liked this. He liked the warmth beneath his palms. Liked the trusting weight of you leaning into him. Liked that touching you made him feel whole.  His thumbs kept moving in slow circles at your hips, more because he wanted to than because he remembered he was supposed to.

“I love you,” he murmured.

You closed your eyes like the words had done exactly what he hoped they would. “Dex…”

“You love me too.”

You laughed softly. “That is a terrible argument.”

“It’s my best one.”

Unfortunately, it was.

You hummed, but you were smiling now, and Dex felt his whole chest go warm.

He kissed you again, a little braver this time, still rubbing those gentle circles into your hips like he had finally found a love language that made sense in his hands.

You sighed, and he smiled against your mouth. It surprised him, even after five months, how much he wanted to be good at this. 

“Okay,” you whispered.

Dex went very still.

You opened your eyes and looked up at him, soft and doomed and already half his. “Okay, baby. I’ll move in.”

—

People got weird when you told them you had moved in with Dex.

Your friends did that careful-smile thing. Your mother went quiet on the phone before saying, “Already?” like the word had three question marks and a police report attached. One coworker just blinked at you over her mug and said, “Wow. That’s… fast.”

You kept giving the same answers. My lease was ending. His place is closer. It makes sense financially. He takes care of me.

Jonathan was the most obvious about it.

You told him in the staff room, after he was complaining about one of his classes committing recorder-based psychological warfare. “I moved in with Dex,” you said, trying to sound casual.

Slowly, he turned around. “Your fed boyfriend?”

“He has a name.”

“Agent Intense?”

“Dex.”

“Right. Your fed boyfriend.” He stared at you. “That’s so fast.”

You sighed. Here we go again. “My lease was ending.”

“You’ve known him for six months.”

“If you count his school outreach, seven actually.”

“That’s not better.”

You crossed your arms, already defensive. “He’s not bad.”

“I didn’t say bad,” he shrugged, “I think more like…  creepy.”

“Jonathan.”

“What? He once looked at me like I was trying to steal you because I offered you a ride home.”

“He’s just protective, that’s all,” you huffed.

“I’m gay.”

“I know that.”

“Does he?”

“He does now,” you said.

“Does he care?”

You opened your mouth and closed it. Because no, Dex didn’t care when you told him. Johnathan was still just another person standing between you and him, platonic or romantic or whatever. Jonathan could have been gay, married, celibate, and allergic to women, and Dex still would have watched him with that flat suspicion the second he stood too close to you.

Jonathan pointed his teaspoon at you. “Exactly.”

Your phone buzzed before you could answer.

Dex: Did you eat lunch?

You smiled and held up the phone like evidence. “See? He’s sweet.”

Jonathan looked at the message, then at you. “Sure,” he said carefully. “Sweet.”

You texted back yes, baby, and when Dex replied within seconds, Jonathan sighed. You ignored him.

After all, Dex cared. That was all.

—

The people who thought the move-in was quick were in for a treat, because one month after you moved into Dex’s apartment, he asked you to marry him in the back seat of his car.

See, you had shown up because summer holidays had made you stupid with missing him. You were bored. You had no school, no library chaos, no children asking where the glitter glue went. Just too much free time and the embarrassing realization that you had become the kind of woman who missed her boyfriend at eleven-thirty in the morning like an addict running out of nicotine patches.

So you brought him lunch and went to his workplace. That was a normal girlfriend thing, right? Except the lunch did not get opened.

Dex had barely gotten the car door shut before you were kissing him, and he had barely made it through the first breath of your mouth before his hand slid under your thigh and dragged you into his lap in the back seat.

“Dex,” you laughed into his mouth.

He made a low and lewd sound into his mouth. Then his hands were on you again, pushing your skirt up around your hips with a little too much force, a little too much need, until the seam gave with an unmistakable rip of fabric.

Dex stared at the torn fabric in his hand with the horrified focus of a man who had committed a federal offence against cotton blend. “I’ll buy you another one.”

“That is not the point,” you chuckled.

“I’ll buy you five.”

You should have been annoyed. But his eyes were black with want, and there was something so obscenely flattering about Benjamin Poindexter accidentally ruining your clothes because he needed you too badly to be careful. So you tightened your fist in his tie and pulled. “Later,” you whispered.

Dex obeyed, because liked it when you pulled him by it. He liked the pressure, the direction, the filthy little reminder that he was still half-dressed for work while you were undoing him in the back of his own car. His mouth opened under yours, hands clamped on your hips like he was trying not to lose the last piece of his mind.

Your inner committee, exhausted from the moving-in situation and still technically on unpaid leave, attempted to return to service.

Babe. This is his workplace. This is a federal garage.

Babe, your skirt is ripped.

Babe, we cannot keep replacing clothes every time this man gets horny and emotional.

Then Dex kissed down your throat and the committee immediately lost quorum.

By the time you were done and either of you remembered he had to go back inside, the windows were fogged at the edges. His hair was ruined from your hands. His tie was loose and crooked. His shirt was open at the collar, your lipstick low enough on his skin that he would need to button all the way up and pray no one noticed. His mouth was swollen. 

You sat in his lap, skirt torn and shoved badly back into place, one hand still looped lazily around his tie. “You have to go back in,” you whispered.

His forehead rested against yours. “I know.”

“You look…”

His eyes lifted to yours.

You smiled. “Compromised.”

Dex’s mouth twitched. His thumbs moved on your thighs, circling through the thin fabric of your ruined skirt.

You tugged his tie gently. “I should let you go.”

His hands tightened, only barely.

“Marry me,” he said suddenly, as if he would die if he let you leave without saying it first.

For a second, you just stared at him. Somewhere inside your head, your inner committee walked back into the room, saw the situation, and immediately considered retiring.

Babe, no. Babe, absolutely not. Babe, stand up for yourself!

“What?” you managed to choke out.

“Marry me,” Dex calmly, like the idea had been sitting in him for weeks, waiting for the right opening, and apparently the right opening was you flushed and breathless in his back seat. 

“Dex.”

“I love you.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Your inner committee sighed so hard the lights flickered.

“I love you,” he said again, quieter. “You love me. We already live together. It gives you legal protection. If something happens to me, you’re taken care of. If something happens to you, they call me first.”

“You are making a case,” you realised, though you shouldn't have been surprised.

He just shrugged. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t get married.”

There it was, the simple Dex logic of it: I love you. You love me. Why wouldn’t we?

It was reasonable if you ignored the fact that he was clearly halfway to losing his mind and had probably been planning this long before he said it out loud. And underneath that, there was the thing he did not say. Because sure, the practical reasons were true. But underneath all that, there was the darker, sweeter logic he kept tucked behind his teeth. If you were only his girlfriend, you could change your mind. You could wake up one morning, decide he was too much, pack a bag, and walk out before he had time to kiss you and remind you how gentle he could be when he was trying. A girlfriend could leave in one terrible conversation. A wife had to take steps.

And Dex loved steps. You’d have to go through lawyers, papers, and waiting periods. A marriage would buy him time, and time meant he could come to you, he could hold your face, and remind you that you loved him as much as he loved you. He would never hurt. But if the law could slow you down long enough for him to convince you that leaving was a mistake, Dex couldn’t help loving that, too.

He didn’t say that, though. He only looked at you with his hair mussed and his mouth ruined and said, “It makes sense.”

Your inner committee made one last brave attempt: Babe. Please. We JUST moved in.

But you banged the gavel at the head of your imaginary table and pouted. But look at him! He’s so hot! 

In the real world, Dex was looking at you like you were already his wife, like the ring was only a formality. Then he kissed you, tenderly this time.

“I love you,” he murmured against your mouth.

The committee dropped their clipboard. Fine, you win, they seemed to say, Whatever you say, handsome.

You laughed weakly into the kiss, and Dex pulled back just enough to look at you.

“What?”

You touched his face, thumb brushing over his cheekbone, and felt him lean into it like affection was still new enough to surprise him.

“Yes,” you whispered, hand tightening in his tie. “Yes, baby. I’ll marry you.”

For a second, he looked almost scared by how happy it made him. Then his arms locked around your waist and pulled you close, his face turning into your neck, breath hot and uneven against your skin.

“But you really do have to go back inside,” you whispered with a chuckle.

Dex lifted his head. He looked ruined, happy, and possessive in a way that should have made you run but somehow only made you kiss him again. “I have ten more minutes.”

You giggled and pulled him in by the tie.

Your inner committee walked directly into the sea, never to be seen again.

—

Dex let you pick the rings.

The engagement ring first, because he said you were the one wearing it, so you should love it. Then the wedding bands, including his, even though he tried to act like he didn’t care what his looked like. That lasted until you slid a simple band onto his finger in the shop and watched his whole face go still, almost overwhelmed.

A month later, you married him at the courthouse.

It was too soon for anyone around you to feel truly comfortable about it. Your family came anyway. Your friends came anyway. Even Jonathan, looking like he had accepted his role as the last remaining voice of reason, and still failing anyway. On Dex’s side, there was a couple of coworkers standing near the back in neat suits, polite and reserved, present more like witnesses than family.

Dex had no parents, no siblings, no cousins, no childhood friends with embarrassing stories. No one who could say they had known him when he was young. No one who could reassure your parents he was a good person through and through. Just coworkers, Ray congratulating him as the rest of his coworkers stood on the courthouse hallway while your side filled the room with nervous affection and badly hidden concern.

You saw the way your mother looked at him. The way your friends glanced at one another when they realised there was no one on his side who really belonged to him. It made them uneasy, and because you loved him, you rushed to explain it in your head before anyone even asked. His parents were dead. He grew up alone. It was complicated. He didn't have people the way other people had people.

You said little pieces of that aloud, as if it explained half of it away. Maybe to you, it did. Maybe that was a teeny part of the reason you kept choosing him. Dex had no one, and then he had you. But it was also tender, in its own damaged way. He stood across the room in his suit, eyes finding you every few seconds as if checking that you were still real, still walking toward him eventually. He looked alone until he looked at you.

The problem was not that Dex didn't love you. Anyone with eyes could see that he clearly did. That was half the horror, really. 

He loved you devoutly, too much for such a small courthouse. His attention followed you like a sniper scope. When someone hugged you, his eyes moved there. When Jonathan made you laugh, his face soured. When you looked at him, though, everything in him relaxed so completely that even your worried friends had to see it.

The ceremony itself was almost absurdly short, just a few legal words. A few signatures. Then came the ring that he slid on to your finger with a reverence that made your throat ache. His thumb lingered over the band once it was in place, brushing the metal like proof, like possession he was trying very hard to make gentle.

Your family saw it. Your friends saw it. Ray probably saw it too. But no one said anything anymore. They had tried to warn you. They had tried to tell you it was fast, intense, worrying. They had tried to point out all the red flags. But standing there, with Dex looking at your ring like the world had finally given him permission to keep the one good thing he had found, you knew why none of their warnings had worked.

Because you knew they were not entirely wrong. You just loved him anyway.

When Dex kissed you, it was gentle enough to make your mother cry. His hand came to your cheek, and his mouth touched yours like he was afraid of doing it wrong in front of everyone. But you felt the restraint beneath it, the hunger and devotion. The way he kissed you softly because that was what you deserved, even when every dark part of him wanted to hold on harder and bruise and mark his territory.

—

Two years later, Dex was in prison.

Jonathan tried not to say I told you so. To his credit, he really did try. He stood in your apartment after everything went public, arms folded too tightly, mouth pressed into a line while the news tore the FBI corruption apart in digestible pieces. Even family and friends looked at you like this was the ending they had feared from the start.

But you knew better.

Not because Dex was innocent. He wasn’t. You loved him too much to lie about that. He had done terrible things. There were parts of him that had always been hungry for direction, always been too easy for the wrong man to use.

And Fisk had used him perfectly.He had found every fracture in Dex and pressed his thumb into it. The instability, the need to be useful. The desperate, obsessive love Dex had for you. 

Fisk kept you in a basement beneath one of his shell properties and let the world mourn you.

That was the cruelty of it: Fisk did not need you dead. Dead was final. Dead meant there was nothing left to use. But alive, hidden in a cold and windowless place? That made you useful. That made you leverage. Fisk could keep your body locked away while giving Dex a grief designed to break him.

So Fisk staged your death. He built the lie piece by piece. He staged an accident, a fire. The reports say that the body burned beyond recognition was yours, and even had an urn with someone else’s ashes in it with your paperwork attached just in case people started asking questions.

Dex believed it, because why wouldn’t he? Fisk made sure every piece fit. Even Matt believed it for a while. Everyone did.

So when Dex found it, he carried the urn like it was alive. He thought he figured out that Fisk was manipulating him, which was correct. He thought that Fisk had killed you, which was false.

He put the ashes in the passenger seat. He drove to the hotel with one hand on the wheel and the other reaching over sometimes, hovering near the metal like it might feel lonely. He talked to it in that broken voice of his, the one he would have been humiliated for anyone living to hear. He told the urn things. He apologised. He told you he loved you.

Then Dex’s spine broke.

And you were found by the cops shortly after, alive. Bruised, starved, shaking under a blanket in the basement Fisk had buried you in, still asking for Dex before your voice had fully come back.

So when they told you he went into surgery under guard, he had fought your way into that hospital room on the only ground no one could deny: you were his wife, his next of kin, his legal family. You should be allowed in, and you eventually got what you wanted. 

During recovery, he looked wrong under hospital lights. The tubes and monitors and bandages made him look less like the terrifying thing the news kept replaying. Guards stood by the door. His wrists were shackled to the bed rails, his ankles too. You scoffed at that but couldn’t do anything about it, really. 

When his eyes opened, he came back fighting. His hands jerked against the restraints, chains snapping taut with a hard metal sound that made one of the guards shift forward.

“Don’t,” you said quickly. “Dex, don’t.”

His head turned and saw you. Suddenly, thoughts halted to a stop.

You had seen Dex angry. Jealous. Focused. You had seen him desperate in your bed and gentle in your kitchen. You had seen him worshipful, frightening, almost boyish with love.

You had never seen him look like that. Like he was staring at a ghost and trying to decide whether believing in it would kill him.

His mouth parted, but sound came out.

You stepped closer, hands trembling. “Hi, baby.”

Dex’s breath broke. “You’re alive.”

Your chest caved in. “yeah.”

“No.” His voice cracked in disbelief. “No, I saw— Fisk said—”

“I know.”

“You’re alive,” he said again, louder now, almost frantic. “You’re alive. You’re alive.”

“I’m here.”

The chains snapped tight again when he tried to reach for you. Pain tore across his nerves, but he barely seemed to feel it. His eyes stayed locked on yours,wild and terrified, like if he looked away, you would vanish and the whole nightmare would become true again.

“I thought you were dead,” he whispered.

“I know, baby.”

You moved to him before anyone could stop you. Your fingers found his hand where the shackle allowed, careful around the bruised skin. His grip closed around yours instantly, weak but desperate, like even broken he could not help trying to hold on.

Your wedding ring caught the light. It was a reminder that he was still yours, you were still his, and whatever was left of him seemed to collapse under the proof.

“You’re alive.”

—

Dex was incarcerated after he healed enough to be moved.

Not rehabilitated. Not treated. Incarcerated.

They put him in solitary confinement like that could contain him. Like isolation would ever make him better. Like locking him away from voices and faces and human contact would somehow fix a man whose worst injuries had always come from being left alone too long with his own head.

You hated it. So for three years, you fought to get your husband moved somewhere that might actually help him.

Three years of forms, lawyers, psychiatric evaluations, and rejected petitions. Three years of people looking at Benjamin Poindexter and seeing only what he had done, three years of people looking at you, Mrs. Poindexter, as if you were insane because you still loved him. Three years of explaining, again and again, that solitary confinement was not treatment. And Dex had always been dangerous when he was quiet.

Your old school library job no longer paid enough to carry the life Fisk had torn apart, so you took a better job at a public library. It's a better salary, but longer hours. More responsibility. You now had to think about staff rotas, community programmes, council meetings, difficult patrons, funding cuts, late nights under fluorescent lights while you built displays and answered emails with your wedding ring flashing every time your hands crossed the keyboard.

Every other day, you went to the prison.

Sometimes straight from work, your blazer wrinkled, your tote bag full of library paperwork, your lipstick faded from too many cups of coffee. Sometimes on your days off, when you could pretend the visit was the centre of the day instead of an activity squeezed between legal calls and grocery shopping and a life you had never wanted to live without him in it.

Dex always noticed when you were tired before you said it. He noticed when your shoes were new. He noticed when you had cut your hair, even slightly. He noticed when you had skipped lunch and lied about it. Even in prison uniform, even under the dead light of the visiting room, Dex was still your husband in all the ways that made people uncomfortable and all the ways that kept you coming back.

You told him about your days. You told him about the elderly man who came into the library every Wednesday to read the newspaper and complain about the chairs. The little girl who asked for “a book with a dragon but not a mean dragon because mean dragons have bad vibes.” The teenager who pretended not to care about poetry and then checked out three collections when his friends were not looking. You told him about staff meetings, leaky ceilings, broken printers, new shelving systems.

There were visits where he barely spoke. But even then, his eyes stayed on you. Even then, his fingers moved toward yours. Even then, when you said, “Baby,” parts of him came back to the surface.

You kept fighting because he needed help.

Then one afternoon, after three years of pushing against walls that did not move, one finally gave. The blip, after all, freed some space up. Though you really shouldn't celebrate such a tragedy, it was hard to ignore the fact that this time, it worked in your favor. That day, you carried the news into the visiting room.

His eyes moved over your face, your hands, the folder tucked beneath your arm. “What’s that?” he asked.

You smiled, biting your lip, “I have good news.”

You reached across the table. This time, they let you hold his hand. It was a small mercy. His fingers closed around yours immediately, like he could feel the tremor in you and wanted to steady it without frightening it away.

“A facility we applied to reviewed your case,” you said. “It’s looking good. The transfer is pending final approval.”

Dex didn’t move. You kept going before fear could steal the words from you.

“It’s a secure psychiatric institution. It’s not freedom, I know that. But it’s not solitary. You’d have doctors, actual treatment, scheduled therapy, medication reviews. You wouldn’t be in shackles.”

His face remained controlled, but you knew him too well. You saw the tiny shift in his breathing. 

“It’s going to be better,” you whispered. “Okay? Not perfect. Not easy. But better. You won’t be alone in a box, and we get longer visitation hours, okay?”

Dex was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded once. “That’s good.”

Your laugh came out broken, because part of you still found that endearing. “That’s good? That’s all you have?”

His mouth almost softened, guilty at the thought of offending you. “It’s very good,” he amended.

You squeezed his hand, and for one rare second, the visiting room didn’t feel quite so much like a cage. It felt like a door opening somewhere far away.Then Dex looked up again. “But I hope my request gets approved before I get moved.”

“Request?” You blinked. “For what?”

He held your gaze with the seriousness of a man discussing nothing more important than bills. “A conjugal visit.”

For a moment, your mind simply stopped. “What?”

“A conjugal visit,” he repeated, as if you might not have heard him the first time.

You stared at him. Of course he had thought of that.

In three years of legal petitions, medical reviews, prison visits, and fighting to have him treated like a person instead of a weapon, you had somehow not allowed yourself to think about that part. About being his wife in that way still. About how long it had been since he had touched you without guards and tables and rules between you.Dex had, though.

“Dex,” you said softly, rubbing slow circles on his hand.

“What?”

“You are in solitary confinement.”

“I know.”

“You’re probably not getting approved for a conjugal visit.”

“Probably not.”

His expression didn't change, but he squeezed your hand and your stomach turned over despite yourself. You leaned forward as much as the table allowed. The guard near the door shifted, but you ignored him. You kissed the edge of Dex’s mouth, brief and soft, but still enough to make his breath catch.

“Let’s focus on this, yeah?” you whispered.

His eyes stayed on yours. For a second, the hunger in him quieted, almost obedient. He nodded once. “Okay.”

Your hand stayed in his until the guard told you time was up. Dex didn’t let go until he had to.

—

He got approved. Somehow, Benjamin Poindexter got approved for a conjugal visit.

You read the notice three times in your kitchen, work bag sliding off your shoulder, lanyard still around your neck, your shoes aching from a long day on your feet. The letter was painfully plain and administrative. But it was approved nonetheless.

You stared at it until the paper blurred. “What the fuck?” you whispered.

Because there was no way. There was no reasonable, lawful way that your husband, a convicted killer, a high-risk prisoner, had been granted that kind of access.

You knew then that Dex had done something. Nothing obvious enough to get the request pulled. He might have threatened a guard. Maybe Dex had mentioned a name, a detail, some small piece of information he shouldn’t have known and let them do the rest.

You should have been horrified. Mostly, though, you pressed the paper to your mouth and laughed once, breathless and disbelieving, because all you could think was: That’s how badly he wanted me. That’s how much he loves me.

—

When the day came, you waited in the room alone.

You had done the paperwork, gone through twenty locked doors to get here. You came knowing you had a couple of hours with your husband. And forthe first time in three years, there would be no table between you, no visitor chair bolted too far from his. No guards close enough to hear every word. No one telling you not to lean too far across the table when all you wanted was to touch his face.

A couple of hours was not enough. 

You smoothed your hands over your blouse, then over your skirt, then clasped them together in your lap to make yourself stop fidgeting. You had dressed too carefully without really thinking about it. You had a white blouse, a nice skirt, because Dex liked seeing you in skirts. You were wearing the cardigan you were wearing when you met him.

You stared at your wedding ring until Dex stepped inside. For a second, neither of you moved.

He looked different. That was your first thought, blunt and stupid and immediate. He looked different, because of course he did. Years had happened. Prison had happened. Surgery had happened. His hair was shorter. His jaw looked sharper. But he was also bigger.

You noticed from your previous visits, of course, but seeing him a bit closer now, it was evident. His shoulders filled out the plain prison shirt. His arms looked stronger than they had in the hospital, muscle sitting heavy under institutional fabric, like all the recovery and physical therapy and whatever routines they let him have had made him sturdier.

You blinked before you could stop yourself. What were they feeding him?

Dex’s eyes found your face first, gaze locked onto you. For one fragile second he did not look like a prisoner at all.

He looked like Dex. Your Dex. Your husband, seeing you after being forced to miss you for too long.

“Hi,” you whispered.

His mouth parted slightly. When the door closed behind him, the lock turned, and whatever restraint he had used to walk in there like a normal person vanished.

You barely got to stand before his hands were on your face and yours were on his chest, and the first kiss was so clumsy it almost made you laugh. Your noses bumped. His mouth missed yours by half an inch and caught the corner instead. You made a tiny sound, half sob and half laugh, and Dex froze like he had done something wrong.

“No,” you said quickly, already smiling through the sting in your eyes. “No, come here.”

You took his face in both hands and kissed him properly, softly at first. Then again. And again.

These were little, ridiculous kisses. The kind you had imagined giving him in every prison visit where a guard stood too close. You kissed his mouth, the corner of it, his cheek. You kissed the line beside his nose, the skin under his eye, the edge of his mouth again.

Dex stood there and let you love him, as if he couldn’t believe you still did at all.

His hands stayed at your waist, almost uncertain, like after all this time he still didn’t fully trust that he was allowed to hold you without someone telling him to stop. But the longer you kissed him, the more his fingers settled. The more his body leaned into yours. The more the tension in his shoulders slowly started to melt.

“I missed you,” you said between kisses.

Dex’s eyes closed. “I missed you, too.”

“I missed you so much.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” You kissed his cheek again, because apparently now that you had started you couldn't stop. “I missed you in the kitchen. I missed you in our bed. I missed you when I had to fix the shelf myself because you would have been so annoying about doing it better.”

His mouth twitched. “You fixed a shelf?” he asked.

“I tried to.”

His eyes opened with attentive focus you had missed so badly. “What happened?”

“It’s currently leaning.”

Dex stared at you, then he laughed. It wasn’t loudly, or freely. It was small, rough, and almost startled, like his body had forgotten how to make the sound and needed you to remind it. 

You broke a little. “Oh,” you whispered, smiling like an idiot. “There you are.”

His expression changed before he leaned in and kissed you again, not clumsy this time. A kiss that said yes, here, I’m here, I came back up when you called.

His arms moved around you properly then, and fuck, he was solid.

You had expected him to feel fragile, because part of you still remembered the hospital bed, the shackles, the bruised skin around his wrists after surgery. But this Dex was heavy and strong under your hands. When your palms slid over his shoulders, you felt muscle there making your stomach drop and go hot at the same time.

Still, he stayed sweet for a little while.

You had both expected the hunger. But before that, there was Dex touching your hair like he had thought about the texture of it more than once. There was you smoothing your thumb over his cheekbone, relearning him up close. There was him pressing his face into the side of your neck and breathing in once like he had been living on memory for years and memory had never been enough.

“I missed how you smell,” he said, voice muffled against your skin.

You laughed. “That’s creepy,” you said, but smiled into his hair anyway.

Your fingers drifted to the back of his neck, then lower, over the ridge of his shoulder. You felt him shiver when your touch found the edge of the scar beneath his shirt. You paused, but he shook his head against you. “It’s okay.”

So you kept touching him gently. Through the fabric first, then at the collar where your fingers could slip just beneath. The scar was there, and Dex’s breathing changed when you traced it. Not with pain, exactly. It felt more… intimate.

“My baby,” you whispered before you could stop yourself.

His hand flexed at your hip. This time, when his mouth opened under yours, the sweetness warmed.His body crowded yours a little more. His hands moved from your waist to your back, then down again.

“You got…” You swallowed, then laughed softly because there was no graceful way to say it. “You got big.”

Dex blinked. For half a second, he looked genuinely confused. Then his eyes dropped to where your hands were spread over his chest. “Big?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I had physical therapy.”

“That is a criminal understatement.”

His mouth twitched again as you dragged your palms over his shoulders, shameless now, because you had earned this. You had earned the right to be stupid about your husband’s arms after three years of prison visits and legal calls and sleeping alone.

“You’re very…” You squeezed his bicep lightly. “Recovered.”

Dex looked at you. “You’re flirting with me.”

You shrugged, but didn’t deny it.

The sound he made was almost an arrogant chuckle.

He kissed you again, and this time there was no mistaking the heat under it. Then, his hands settled on your blouse.

Not grabbing yet, but touching the fabric at your waist, thumbs moving slowly over the buttons as if he had only just realised there was something between his hands and your skin.

You were still smiling when his eyes dropped.

Suddenly, his eyes were fixed on the small gap where one button had loosened, where the fabric had shifted just enough to reveal a flash of black lace underneath.

Dex recognised it at the same time you remembered. “Is that…”

Your face burned hot as you nodded.

It was the black teddy he had bought you for your first wedding anniversary.It was sheer lace at the cups, delicate straps, a low satin-trimmed neckline. Dex remembered the first time you tried it on. You stood at the foot of your bed, pretending not to be shy, while he sat there ruined, looking at you like his brain had briefly stopped receiving oxygen. And now, you had worn it here.

Dex’s thumb brushed the edge of your blouse, right where black lace disappeared beneath it. His eyes darkened. “You wore my anniversary gift under your blouse,” he said.

Your stomach flipped. “When you say it like that—”

“How should I say it?” He demanded, and it was a little mean. But that always did turn you on.

“I don’t know,” you whispered. “Less like you’re about to lose your mind.”

Dex looked back up at you, too focused, too hungry. “I am.”

Oh.

Your hands tightened in his shirt.

The room felt smaller after that, less like a prison facility and more like the bedroom he remembered, the one with your knees pressed into the mattress and his hands shaking at your waist because he hadn’t known a piece of lace could make wanting feel that violent.

His grip settled firmer on your hips. “You have no idea,” he murmured, mouth brushing your ear. “What you do to me.”

Your eyes fluttered shut. There he was. Your husband, touch-starved, breathing against your neck like he had waited years to find out if he could still make you tremble.

You smiled, kind and doomed all the same. “Show me.”

Oh, he had a list.

Dex was undressed before you could blink, all broad shoulders and blown pupils, moving with a focused urgency that made the sterile little room feel suddenly too small to hold him. The white walls, the bolted table, the narrow bed, the chemical-clean smell of the sheets, and none of it stood a chance against the way he looked at you.

He had been counting down to this for years. Every prison visit, every supervised touch, every night alone in a cell had led into this exact moment.

His hands were already on your blouse, quick but not careless, tearing through buttons, ripping them off with a precision that would have been funny if his breathing had not been so rough. The black teddy appeared inch by inch beneath the fabric, lace and satin and memory, and Dex looked ruined. 

First on the list: his mouth between your legs.

You understood that the second he dropped to his knees. Dex had barely gotten the teddy off before his hands were already under your skirt, gripping your thighs.

Then his mouth was on you, and every thought in your head broke apart.

“Oh,” you gasped, one hand flying to his hair, the other twisting in the clean white sheet beneath you.

Dex made a sound against you that was almost a groan, almost a laugh. His hands tightened on your thighs, holding you open for him, keeping you there like he was afraid you might disappear if he let go. He was not gentle, like he used to be. He was focused, hungry, and touch-starved enough that every reaction you gave him seemed to make him worse.

“Fuck,” he breathed against you, voice rough and ruined. “You taste so fucking sweet.”

Your whole body went hot. “Dex—”

He didn’t let you finish. His mouth returned to you, and the room became nothing but the wet heat of him, the harsh sound of his breathing, the narrow bed creaking under the way your hips moved despite yourself. The sterile little room had no right to hold something this filthy. 

He was still so good, it was unfair.

Dex had always been terrifying when he focused. When he learned something, he learned it completely. And you realised, breathless and shaking, that he remembered everything. Every place that made you gasp. Every rhythm that made your hand tighten in his hair. Every tiny, helpless sound you tried to swallow and failed.

You tried to move back once, overwhelmed, but his hands slid under you and dragged you closer with a low, possessive sound that made your stomach twist.

“No,” he murmured. “Stay.”

So you stayed while he buried himself there like he could spend hours between your thighs if time were not an issue. You stayed while his fingers dug into your skin, while his mouth made you forget the guards outside, the transfer, the years, the ugly world that had kept him from you. You stayed while he took you apart with the kind of devotion that felt less like softness and more like obsession given a mouth.

At some point, you said his name too loudly, and Dex groaned like that was the point.

Of course he wanted them to hear. Of course he wanted the men outside that locked door to know that whatever they thought they had taken from him was still his. You were still his. 

When you finally broke, Dex did not stop right away.

He held you through it palms spread over your thighs, breathing you in like the end of the world had tasted sweet and he couldn’t make himself pull away.

Only when you tugged weakly at his hair did he lift his head.

Dex looked up at you like he had just crossed the first thing off a list and still had every intention of finishing the rest.

Number two on the list should have been obvious when he suddenly looked shy. 

“Can I ask you something?” he murmured.

Your breath was still uneven. “Dex.”

His mouth pressed briefly to the inside of your knee, like he needed one more second to gather himself. “I want your mouth.”

Oh.

Your stomach flipped so hard you almost laughed. Who were you to deny this man anything? 

You slid off the bed and onto your knees in front of him, and Dex went very still.

His hand came to your cheek, careful at first, thumb brushing your skin like he needed to touch you gently before letting himself want. His breathing changed when you looked up at him. His pupils were blown wide enough to make him look almost feverish.

“Baby,” he said, voice rough.

You smiled before giving him what he asked for.

Dex’s hand stayed in your hair, not forcing, not taking. His head tipped back. His throat worked. His eyes squeezed shut and opened again because he seemed to hate missing even one second of you.

He was big in every way you remembered and worse because you had missed him.

Too much, almost. Overwhelming enough to make your eyes water, enough to make your hands press at his thighs when you needed a second, and Dex stopped immediately each time.

His hand softened in your hair. “Too much?” he rasped.

You shook your head, breathless, stubborn, and a little ruined yourself.

Dex looked like that might kill him. Then you kept going, and he fell apart beautifully.

He moaned your name like a warning, like a plea. His hand stayed on your cheek against your cheek, his thumb brushing away the wetness at the corner of your eye with such tenderness that the gesture felt obscene in context.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Fuck, you’re perfect.”

You felt him getting close, and you wanted nothing more than feeling him down your throat, but he pulled back, stopping himself so abruptly you almost protested.

Dex stared down at you, chest heaving, eyes wild, mouth parted like he had just survived something.

You blinked up at him.

He gave a rough little laugh, almost pained. “No,” he said, voice hoarse. “Not yet.”

You smiled slowly. “Not yet?”

His gaze darkened again. He reached down, thumb brushing your lower lip, still shaking from the effort of denying himself.

“I have two more things on the list,” he reminded you, making your thighs pressed together.

Dex helped you back onto your feet with hands that weren’t quite steady, then kissed you so deeply you tasted the restraint he had forced himself to keep.

“Bed,” he murmured against your mouth.

Number three on the list was taking you from behind, of course. 

He turned you toward the bed with hands that were still shaking his mouth at your shoulder, your neck, the back of your ear. 

He moved slowly at first, because even like this, rough and ruined and half-mad with missing you, Dex was still Dex. He still listened to every breath, every shift of your body, every little sound that told him whether you were overwhelmed or wanting more. The stretch of him made your hands fist in the sheet, your body tensing around the sheer shock of having him again after so long without. His mouth pressed to your shoulder. “Breathe,” he rasped. “I’ve got you.”

He took his time even though you could feel restraint burning through him. The way he cursed softly against your skin when you finally relaxed into him, when your body remembered him properly and pulled him closer.

“Fuck,” he breathed, voice breaking. “You’re so—”

He cut himself off with his mouth against your shoulder, like the words were too much, like saying them would make him less controlled than he already was.

Then he started moving. God, he hadn’t forgotten you, so of course you were loud almost immediately.

The first sound broke out of you before you could stop it, your whole face burning. Dex’s hand tightened at your hip, and the next lewd mewl came worse. He made a low sound behind you, smug and satisfied in a way that made heat crawl up your spine.

You bit down on your own wrist, trying to muffle yourself.

His hand slid up your body and gently pulled your arm away. “No,” he said, voice rough. “I waited three years to hear you.”

Your whole body went hot. “Dex—”

“Let me hear you.”

And then he made sure you did.

He got rougher, hungrier. His body covered yours, his mouth dragging over your neck while his hands held you exactly where he wanted you. The bed creaked under you. The sheet twisted beneath your fists. Your voice filled the room because he kept pulling it out of you, again and again.

At some point, there was a knock on the dorm but unfortunately Dex did not have enough self control to stop.

You looked over your shoulder, cheek pressed flush into the sheets.

The little window opened and a guard looked in. They were worried, you realised. You had been so fucking loud.

The humiliation should have swallowed you whole. Instead, your stomach flipped.

“You okay?” the guard called. 

You could barely speak. “Hmmph, Y-yes!” you managed.

Dex’s hand slid over your stomach, keeping you pressed back against him.

The guard moved away when he realised what he was seeing, face red.

The second the shadow disappeared, Dex’s mouth was at your ear. “You liked that.”

You shivered.

“You liked him checking,” he murmured, darker now. “Liked him hearing what I do to you.”

You should have denied it, but you could not bring yourself to lie, Dex made a rough, broken sound against your neck and moved again, deeper into the heat, rougher now because he was jealous, because some stranger had seen even a glimpse of your face like that and Dex couldn’t stand it. He kissed your shoulder hard and held you like he could erase the guard’s eyes from the room by making you forget anything existed except him.

“Mine,” he breathed. 

You answered with his name, exactly how he wanted it.

Number four on the list started with him denying you an orgasm.

That was how you knew prison had changed him.The old Dex, the one who melted when you praised him, the one who went doe-eyed and obedient under your hands, had been buried under three of whatever this was.

Dex flipped you over before you could come undone.

Your gasp broke against his mouth as your back hit the narrow mattress, the white sheet twisted beneath you, your body sore in the best, most aching way. You were already too close and he knew it. Of course he knew it. He knew your body like he had studied it for a test he refused to fail.

“Not yet,” he murmured.

You made a helpless little sound, half protest, half plea. Dex’s hand slid up your waist, and he was inside you again in no time. 

Oh. you realised, he wanted to look at you when you came. That was all. So sweet. So cute. 

But then you felt him twitch, and you realised that he was close before he did. Or maybe he knew, and he was just too far gone to care about anything else.

“Dex—” Your voice caught. “Dex, I’m not— fuck, I’m not on birth control.”

He didn’t stop completely. His whole body stuttered above yours, rhythm faltering, breath punching out of him like you had hit him in the chest.

“Hmph—fuck.” His forehead dropped against yours. “I know.”

Your eyes snapped open. “You know?”

His hand slid over your stomach, possessive, and the sound that left him was almost pained.

“I know,” he said again, rougher. “I know, baby.”

The words should have sobered you, but you loved him, and you loved that he was still above you, still shaking, still so close you could feel every tremor of restraint tearing through him.

“Dex,” you gasped.

“I thought about it,” he said, voice low and wrecked. “Every night.”

Your body went hot. His hand pressed a little firmer over your stomach, not forcing, just holding there like the thought had been living in him for years.

“You in our apartment,” he murmured, words breaking between breathless little sounds. “My wife, wearing my old shirts. Sleeping alone. Fighting for me. Sitting across from lawyers and doctors while I sit in a– hmmphh— a fuckin’ box.”

“Baby—”

“And all I could think was… fuck—all I could think was I should have left you something.”

Your breath caught so hard it almost hurt.

A baby, he meant.

A living tether. Something that would tie you to him in a way no prison door, no court order, no transfer file could undo. And sure, if you were going to leave him, you would have done it already. No court in the world would blame you for divorcing a killer. No friend, no family member, no sane person would call you cruel for walking away.

But you stayed. And fuck, somehow, staying was still not enough for Dex. He needed proof that some part of him could still belong to you permanently. 

In his mind, twisted and tender as it was, this was not a trap. It was a gift.

His eyes locked on yours, blown dark and terrifyingly attentive even through the haze.

His mouth was against yours, then your jaw, then your throat, never settling anywhere long enough to be gentle. He kept touching you like he could not decide what he needed more: your face, your waist, your hips, the heat of your body. 

“You feel that?” he rasped, voice wrecked as you squeezed him a little. “How bad you want it?”

You did want it, but you could barely answer. Every breath came out wrong, caught somewhere between a moan and his name. Your thoughts had gone useless, scattered apart by the obscene tenderness of his palm resting low and possessive like he was already imagining the seed taking root there.

“Dex—” you sighed, trying to bury your face in his ned

“No, baby.” His mouth brushed your ear, rough and hot, as he pulled your hair back gently to look into your eyes. “Don’t get… shit— shy now. Not after that. N-not after the sounds you’ve been making ‘f me.”

Your face burned, but your hands only tightened on him.

His voice dropped lower, filthier, the words breaking between harsh breaths. “My pretty girl wants something from me, huh?”

Your whole body went hot.

Dex’s palm pressed a little firmer over your stomach. “S-she wants me to leave her with something.” His breath hitched, and for a second his voice almost failed him. “Wants to walk out of here carrying more than m-my… hmm— fingerprints.”

You made a helpless sound.

“There it is,” he murmured. “You like that, fuck! You like thinking about it.”

“Dex-please—”

“Yeah?” His mouth found yours, messy and desperate, before he pulled back just enough to look at you. His pupils were blown wide, his face flushed, his control hanging by a thread he was clearly ready to let snap. “My pretty girl wants my baby, huh?”

Your breath caught so hard it hurt.

Dex saw it the way your body answered before your mouth could.

His face changed, hunger folding into something sickly sweet, almost tender in the worst possible way. “Fuck,” he whispered. “You do.”

Your eyes stung.

You hated and loved how well he knew you all the same.

“Wants something of mine when they t-take me back,” he breathed, mouth dragging along your cheek. “Something they c-can’t put in a cell. Something that— hnghhh — still has me in it.”

You were shaking now, overwhelmed and aching and so far gone that language felt like a thing happening on another planet. Dex was talking to you like he knew exactly where every dark little want lived under your skin, like he had spent three years locked away with nothing but the memory of you and all the ways he wanted to make himself permanent.

“Say it,” he murmured.

You couldn’t, not properly. Dex’s eyes darkened further.

“C-can’t even talk,” he whispered. “That’s okay. I know you.” His thumb moved slowly over your skin. “I know what my wife wants.”

Your breath broke.

His forehead pressed to yours, and for one second, under all that hunger, he was shaking with the effort to hold himself back.

“But you gotta tell me,” he said, voice raw. “Tell me no and I’ll stop.”

The restraint from him was phenomenal. Your hands slid up to his face, holding him there, forcing him to look at you while you gave him the answer.

“D-don’t you fucking dare stop,” you whispered.

“Yeah?” he asked, like he needed it again, like one yes was not enough to survive on.

“Yes–Fuck! Yes, baby.”

His mouth crashed back to yours, swallowing the rest of your answer, and the room disappeared into heat and the terrible intimacy of choosing this with him. His hand stayed over your stomach the whole time, almost reverent, like the fantasy had become real the second you let him have it.

He kept talking against your mouth, the words coming apart as badly as he was.

How good you were. How much he had missed you. How he had thought about you every night. How he wanted to leave something behind. How you would be going home with him in a way no guard could take from you.

You clung to him through it, nails catching on his shoulders, then his back, then the scar along his spine. Dex shuddered when you touched it, a broken sound leaving him before he buried his face against your neck and held you closer, closer, closer, like he could press three lost years into the space between your bodies and make them disappear.

When he finally came with you, he did it with your name on his mouth and his eyes fixed on yours, like he needed you to see every second of what he was giving you.

His forehead dropped to yours afterward, both of you breathing too hard.

For a while, neither of you spoke. The guards outside were silent. The room was wrecked in small damning ways: twisted sheets, scattered clothes, your blouse half on the floor, the black lace halfway off the bed.  

Dex kissed your cheek. Then your jaw. Then the corner of your mouth.“I missed you,” he whispered, and this time it sounded almost broken.

You closed your eyes and held him there. “I missed you, too.”

—

The knock came fifteen minutes later, and you hated it. “Poindexter,” a guard called, “Time.”

Dex was still against you, face buried in your neck, one arm locked around your waist like pretending not to hear it might make the door stay shut. For a second, neither of you moved. His breathing was still uneven against your skin, and your fingers were still in his hair, and the narrow bed beneath you looked absolutely ruined.

Another knock. You touched the back of his neck. “Baby.”

“I know.”

He didn’t sound like he knew. He sounded like leaving you there might kill him.

You both moved in a rush after that, half-dressed and breathless, trying to put yourselves back together before the guards came in. The sheet was twisted. Your skirt was crooked. Your blouse was missing buttons because Dex had been too impatient, so you had to clutch the fabric closed with both hands while smiling like an idiot anyway.

Then the guards stepped in. One of them looked at the bed, then at you, then at Dex. His face went carefully blank.

“Hands,” he said.

You stepped forward before Dex could turn around.

The guard sighed. “Ma’am—”

“One second,” you said.

Dex bent instantly, like he had been waiting for permission. You kissed him once. Then again. Then to his nose, because one kiss was not enough and never would be.

“I love you,” you whispered.

He looked like he might cry. “I love you, too”

Then they cuffed him.

You hated the sound of metal around his wrists. It meant the world taking him back. At the door, Dex looked over his shoulder, and you stood there still holding your blouse together, still smiling, still ruined.

The guard muttered, “Filthy animals,” as they disappeared into the hall.

Then you heard Dex chuckle, low and rough and proud. Like being filthy with you was the best thing anyone had ever called him.

You stood there for a second, and then you laughed under your breath, too.

Because you loved it. You loved being disgusting with him. Loved that the room looked wrecked. Loved that the guards knew. Loved that Dex would carry that insult back to his cell like a compliment, and that you would go home with the same stupid, shameless pride in your chest.

Filthy animals.

Yeah. You smiled to yourself, still holding your blouse together. Maybe you were.

—

You were pregnant.

You found out before the transfer, while Dex was still in prison, still waiting to be moved to the secure psychiatric facility you had spent three years fighting for. For three days, you carried the secret around yourself like a forcefield. You went to work, answered emails, helped patrons at the public library. You smiled politely at everyone while your whole body felt like it had become a locked room with a miracle inside.

When you told Dex, he knew something was different before you even sat down. His eyes went to your face, then your hands, then the way you kept pressing your palm nervously against your stomach. “What happened?”

You laughed once, shaky and soft. “Nothing bad.”

Dex didn’t relax, so you reached across the table and took his hand as much as the cuffs allowed. His fingers closed around yours immediately. “I’m pregnant.” For a second, it was like the whole visiting room lost sound. Then his eyes dropped to your stomach. “What?”

You smiled through the tears already coming. “I’m pregnant, baby.”

The chair scraped back before the guard could stop him.

Dex moved toward you on instinct, cuffed hands reaching for your face, not violent, not thinking, just desperate to touch. The chain between his wrists caught on the edge of the table, but he barely seemed to feel it. His palms found your cheeks, and then he was kissing you across the table like the whole room had disappeared.

“Poindexter,” the guard snapped.

Dex didn't hear him. Or he did, and for one dangerous second, he didn’t care.

You kissed him back, crying into his mouth, fingers gripping the front of his prison shirt because this was your husband, your baby’s father, and he was making this broken sound against your lips.

Another guard came over. “Back. Now.”

They had to pull you apart. Actually pull you apart.

They had one hand on Dex’s shoulder, another on his arm, dragging him back while his cuffed hands strained toward you and yours reached for him across the table. His eyes stayed locked on your face the whole time amazed and almost frightened by the size of what he felt.

The transfer happened not long after.

The institution was better than solitary. You reminded yourself of that every day. He had doctors now. Treatments, structure. He was not locked alone in a box anymore.

But he still was not free. He wasn’t there when your stomach first started to show, but the institution had better visitation rules than the prison, and the first time you came in visibly pregnant, Dex was allowed to touch you. His hand settled over the curve of your stomach so carefully it made your throat ache, like he was afraid the smallest wrong movement might cost him the privilege.

He wasn’t there when the baby kicked for the first time either, but later, during one of those visits, the baby kicked beneath Dex’s palm. Dex went completely still, eyes dropping to your stomach.

Still, he wasn’t there for the smaller, lonelier things. He wasn’t beside you in the maternity shop when you cried because nothing fit right and you wanted him there so badly it hurt. He should have been there making some too-serious comment about proper shoes, back support, and whether the changing room bench was structurally safe enough for you to sit on.

But even then, you told him everything. Every appointment. Every craving. Every scan. Every tiny development you could turn into words and carry to him.

Then Leonard was born. Leo, for short, named for his father.

Dex wasn’t allowed to be there.

That hurt him in a way he didn’t know how to hide. You didn’t know this, but one of the nurses told you he had become erratic after the call came through that you were in labour. Not violent, but frantic, pacing, asking the same questions over and over, trying to negotiate with people who had no authority to give him what he wanted. By the end of it, they had to force a couple pills down his throat so he could just calm down.

So when you finally called, exhausted and crying, with your son against your chest, the silence on the other end felt too careful.

“He’s here,” you whispered. “He’s here, baby.”

Dex didn’t answer right away. For a moment, all you could hear was his breathing, thin and controlled, like he was holding himself together by force. Then, very carefully, he asked, "Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yes.”

You could almost picture him sitting there, hand curled too tightly around the phone, trying to make himself calm enough to deserve hearing this.

“Tell me,” he said.

You told him Leo had blonde hair. You looked down at the baby curled against you, tiny and furious, with pale hair against his head and features that already made your chest ache because there was no denying whose child he was.

“He looks like you,” you whispered.

Dex didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice sounded stripped bare.

“He does?”

“Yeah, baby.” You smiled through tears, touching Leo’s tiny cheek. “He looks like his father.”

Still, after weeks, then months, then years of hearing about Leo through you, Dex began to know him in fragments.

Children were not allowed inside the institution, so Leo had never met his father. Dex knew him through the stories you told him in visitation rooms, through the photographs you were allowed to bring, through the change in your voice whenever you said his name. You gave him a picture of Leo asleep with one fist tucked under his cheek. Leo with blond hair and your eyes. Leo scowling at the camera in a way that looked so much like Dex it made him go silent the first time he saw it.

But he didn’t love Leo properly yet. How could he? He had never held him. Never felt the weight of him against his chest. Never smelled his skin, never rocked him through a cry, never watched him fall asleep in his arms. Leo was still partly an idea to him, a child made real through your love before Dex could reach him with his own.

But he loved Leo, in a way, because you loved him.

That was easier. You loved that baby, so Leo mattered. Your face relaxed when you spoke about him, so Dex learned to relax around the sound of his name too. And somewhere in the darkest, neediest part of him, he thought he owed Leo his life because he made you stay.

Leo was Dex’s gift to you, because he didn’t want you to be alone. 

So Dex loved Leo in the only way he knew how at first: because Leo was yours, because Leo was his, because Leo looked like him, and because Leo kept a piece of him in your life while the rest of him was locked away. He loved him for your sake, before he knew how to love him for his own.

—

Leo was three years old when Vanessa Fisk made Dex kill Foggy Nelson.

He was three, serious-eyed, stubborn in the exact way that made your mother sigh and say, “That’s probably his father,” under her breath. Leo had Dex’s watchful stare, Dex’s unnerving ability to go quiet when he was thinking too hard. But he was still a toddler, so the quiet never lasted long. One minute he would be silently studying the wheels of a toy truck like he was investigating a crime scene, and the next he would be shrieking because his banana had “broken wrong.”

He loved dinosaurs, but only “scary ones.” He refused to wear socks that had seams in the wrong place. He called the moon “the night light” and cried once because you explained he couldn’t take it home. He had Dex’s face in miniature and your habit of talking to himself while concentrating, which meant you spent most mornings watching your tiny blond child line up toy animals on the floor and whisper, “No, no, you go there. No, you not listening.”

You were a good mother. You packed snacks. You remembered nursery forms. You cut grapes in half. You kept emergency wipes in every bag you owned. You sang the same bedtime song three times if Leo asked, even when your throat hurt and your body felt hollow from work and worry and loving a man the world had never stopped punishing.

Dex knew all of that through you. Leo liked peas this week. Leo hated peas this week. Leo asked why cats had no eyebrows. Leo threw a shoe at the wall because bedtime was, apparently, “a bad idea.” Leo had asked about Daddy again.

You and Leo had become the one fragile architecture that kept Dex going. Vanessa understood that because Vanessa Fisk understood devotion, even when it was ugly. 

So when she found out about you and Leo, it was over.

She came to Dex with ammo in her metaphorical gun.

This was no way to live, she told him, taking away the meds. Was this what he wanted? To hear about his son in secondhand stories? To let you raise a child alone while other men opened doors for you, helped carry groceries, taught Leo to kick a ball, to ride a bike, to be brave? Raising a child was hard, wasn’t it? You were young. Lonely. Exhausted. Beautiful. How long before someone else started looking less like help and more like a replacement?

Didn’t he want to be a husband? A father? Didn’t he want to come home?

Then, she gave him a photo of you at home, hair tied back, Leo on your hip. How… did she get this photo?

Then she gave him structure: Kill Foggy first. Then he could go to you and Leo.

That was the order of how it went. It was a task, a reward, a way back to the only life he still cared about. And Dex had always been most dangerous when someone took his pain and turned it into a sequence.

So he killed Foggy Nelson. And afterward, when they dragged him back into court, you wanted to see him.

Not because you excused murder. Not because Foggy didn’t matter. But because you were his wife, and you knew that Dex didn’t kill like that out of nowhere.

He wouldn’t simply go on a rampage. He didn’t wake up one day and decide he would burn every bridge that led to you. He loved you too much for that. So you came to the conclusion that someone must've reached into the most frightened part of him, and aimed him again.

You knew that, but the court didn’t care. This time, the court issued an order. It was for your son’s sake, they said. An injunction, no contact. You and Leo were not to be in the same room as Benjamin Poindexter. Not in court, not in visitation, not anywhere a judge could prevent it.

You stood very still when they told you this.

Leo was at home with your mother, probably refusing lunch because the sandwich had been cut into triangles instead of squares.

You didn’t cry. Not when the injunction was read. Not even when Dex was sentenced for the second time. You just listened. Then you got to work.

Because crying would come later, probably in the shower, probably with one hand over your mouth so Leo wouldn’t hear. But right then, there were lawyers to call, motions to file, and records to request. You knew your husband. You knew what manipulation looked like when he was the one pointed like a weapon.

And after court, you went back to Leo. He was sitting on the living room floor in dinosaur pyjamas even though it was the afternoon, blond hair sticking up at the back, one sock on and one sock missing for reasons nobody could explain. He looked up when you came in, toy stegosaurus clutched in one hand.

“Mama,” he said seriously, “Nana said no more crackers.”

You knelt in front of him, your knees cracking with the exhaustion of the day. “Your grandma is probably right.”

Leo frowned like you had betrayed him on a legal level. “I need snacks.”

“You had a snack.”

“I need more snacks.”

“You need dinner.”

He considered that, then lifted the stegosaurus. “Dino needs crackers.”

“Dino can have pretend crackers.”

Leo stared at you with Dex’s eyes. For one awful second, you almost laughed and almost cried at the same time. Instead, you reached out and smoothed his hair down. It sprang back up immediately.

“Daddy has that face too,” you whispered.

Leo blinked. “Daddy?”

You had never lied to him. You told him Daddy was away. Daddy loved him. Daddy couldn’t come home yet. All true, and yet, none of it was enough.

“Yeah,” you said softly. “Daddy.”

Leo looked down at his dinosaur, then back at you. “Daddy like dinos?”

You smiled even though your throat hurt. “I think Daddy would like whatever you like.”

Leo nodded, satisfied by that, and shoved the stegosaurus into your lap. “Then Daddy like this one. He bite.”

You held the toy carefully, like it was evidence. “Yeah,” you whispered. “He bite.”

Leo climbed into your lap after that, all knees and elbows, and you wrapped both arms around him. He smelled like shampoo and the strawberry yoghurt he had somehow gotten on his sleeve. He pressed his face into your shoulder for exactly four seconds before wriggling away again because three-year-olds loved affection on their own schedule.

You let him go. You watched him return to his line of dinosaurs, babbling to himself, head bent in concentration.

You opened your notes app and started another list: Lawyer. Injunction appeal. Facility records. Contact restrictions. Dex’s medication logs. Visitor records.

You could be heartbroken later. Right now, you were Leo’s mother. Dex’s wife. And someone had used your family to turn your husband into a weapon again.

And you were going to find out why.

—

A year later, you were watching the news while Leo played on the carpet.

Not watching, really. You were letting it sit on in the background while you moved through the living room with half your attention split into a dozen places at once. Leo’s sippy cup was on the coffee table. His toy dinosaurs were arranged in a careful little line near your foot. A postcard Johnathan had sent from the Bahamas with his boyfriend on the fridge. There was a basket of laundry on the chair you had been meaning to fold since yesterday, and your laptop sat open on the sofa beside you, full of documents, court filings, old visitor logs, psychiatric reports, and all the research you had been collecting like ammunition.

You had been working for weeks. You had names, dates, transfer notices, facility records, connections that were too neat to be coincidence. You had followed the clues until your stomach turned. Dex was going to be moved into general population, and it was not an administrative error. It was not random. It had the Fisks’ fingerprints all over it, even if she was careful enough never to leave them where a normal person could see.

After all, it hadn’t taken you long to find out about the Red Hook charter. That part had been almost laughably easy. Child’s play, really.

The public library had a stack of old municipal records tucked away in the back, half-forgotten beneath outdated notices and donation forms. Someone had slapped a label on the box years ago — NEEDS TO BE SHREDDED — and then, by some miracle of underfunded bureaucracy, no one ever had.

So you had done the one thing you could think of and sent Matt Murdock an anonymous tip. You didn't give a signature or explanation. It was just enough information to make him look where he needed to look. It was just enough to prove to him that Dex was not acting on his own.

Matt went to see him that morning. You knew because you still had someone inside the prison willing to tell you what the official channels never would. A friend, barely. A contact, more accurately. 

Then, that night, the news broke: Benjamin Poindexter had escaped from prison and attempted to assassinate the mayor.

Your husband’s name was on every channel again. Your husband’s face was dragged back into the world as a threat, a headline, a monster with a body count and no context anyone cared to say out loud.

You stood frozen in the middle of your living room, remote in hand, while the news anchor spoke over footage you could barely process. On the carpet, Leo lifted his plastic stegosaurus and made it bite the sofa cushion.

“Rawr,” he said seriously.

You looked down at him and how completely unaware he was that his father had just broken out of prison and tried to kill a man.

Leo was too busy frowning at the stegosaurus with Dex’s whole face in miniature, pale brows pulled together, mouth pressed into a stern little line. “No,” he told the dinosaur, pushing its plastic nose away from the triceratops. “No bully.”

The stegosaurus apparently disagreed, because Leo made it chomp again. Then he gasped, offended by his own storyline. “No. Bully bad.” He picked up the stegosaurus, turned it toward the triceratops, and shook it gently. “You say sorry.”

You stared at him.

Leo bumped the stegosaurus’s head carefully against the triceratops. “Sowwy,” he said in a deeper voice.

Then he made the triceratops pat the stegosaurus on the head. “Okay. Be kind now.”

Your chest tightened so hard you had to sit down.

Leo looked up. “Mama?”

“I’m okay,” you said too quickly.

He stared at you with your own eyes, unconvinced.

You turned the volume down, but not off. You couldn’t make yourself turn it off. You sat there with Leo at your feet and the whole city falling apart on-screen, trying to understand the sequence. Matt’s visit. The transfer. The Fisks. Dex escaping. The mayor. None of it random. None of it was out of nowhere, and you probably were the one to set this into motion the second you gave the anonymous tip.

“Mama,” Leo said again, holding up a toy. “Dino hungry.”

“Dino is always hungry,” you whispered.

“Need snack.”

“Okay,” you said, because your voice was already too close to breaking and arguing with a four-year-old about a plastic dinosaur felt like the one thing you could actually survive. “Let me check what we have.”

You stood and crossed into the kitchen, still listening to the news. The fridge light came on cold and white across your face. You stared into it without really seeing anything: half a punnet of strawberries, Leo’s yoghurt, and Leftover pasta. A little container of cut grapes.

The news anchor said Dex’s name again. Your hand tightened around the fridge door.

You reached for Leo’s yoghurt, then stopped because he had asked for a snack for the dinosaur, not himself, and for one absurd second that distinction mattered enough to make you laugh under your breath.

Then you realised that Leo was… silent. He wasn’t babbling. He wasn’t talking to his toys. Is he okay?

Worried, you looked back into the living room.

Leo was standing in the middle of the carpet, one dinosaur clutched in his hand, his small body frozen in a way that made the back of your neck prickle.

He was waving at the window.

No. Not the window. The fire escape.

Beyond the glass, half-hidden in the dark metal lines of the fire escape, was his father.

Oh.

Little did you know, Dex had already been there for fifteen minutes.

Fifteen whole minutes of being half-hidden in the dark, one hand braced against the cold metal railing while he looked into the life he had only known through your stories. At first, he watched you, moving through the living room with the television flickering against your face, beautiful and alive, one hand absently touching your wedding ring while you tried to hold the world together through the sheer refusal to give up on him.

But when his eyes found Leo, Dex forgot how to breathe.

He knew what his son looked like from photographs. He knew he had blond hair, serious eyes, and that little frown you always said was his. But seeing Leo in person was different. It was jarring, how much he actually looked like him. Leo was now a real person to Dex, sitting cross-legged on the carpet in dinosaur pyjamas, scolding a plastic stegosaurus for biting another toy.

Dex watched Leo make the dinosaur apologise. He watched Leo say that bullying was bad. He watched his son choose kindness with no one guiding him toward it.

Oh. Leo looked like him, but he was good in a way Dex had never been able to be without help. Dex had always needed a North Star, someone outside him to point toward right when his own internal compass spun uselessly in the dark. He would always need you that way, always look to you when the world blurred at the edges and everything started to feel lost.

But Leo did not need a North Star. Leo had one inside him. Leo had a functioning moral compass in a tiny body with Dex’s face and your kindness. Dex’s focus, but not his emptiness. Dex’s intensity, but not his fracture. Dex, if someone had loved him correctly from the start.

And that was when Dex understood that he loved him. And not in the distant, complicated love he had forced himself to. Not just because Leo was yours, or because Leo was his, or because Leo had kept you tethered to him while the rest of the world tried to take him away.

Now, he loved Leo because Leo was a good version of him. Because protecting Leo suddenly felt a lot like self-preservation. Like if Dex could keep this child safe, if he could make sure the world never reached into Leo and broke the compass before it had a chance to grow, then maybe some part of himself could be saved too.

Then Leo noticed him.

Dex saw the exact second it happened. Leo’s head turned, eyes lifting past the kitchen table, past the window, to the dark shape crouched on the fire escape.

For one breathless second, Dex couldn't move. He had been caught. Not by the police. Not by guards. Not by Daredevil. By a four-year-old boy. 

Leo didn’t scream. He didn’t cry. Of course not. He was your son, too. He was brave, like you. 

He only blinked, then lifted one small hand and waved.

Because Dex didn't want to scare him, because he did not know how fathers were supposed to wave at sons they had never held, Dex lifted his hand and waved back.

That was when you noticed.

And fuck, he couldn’t wait to be in your arms again.

The second you got the window open, Dex came through it, one hand catching the frame, the other already reaching for you. The sniper rifle was still strapped across his back, cold against the warmth of your apartment.

You barely had time to say his name before his hands were on you.

He pulled you into him so quickly your feet left the floor, spinning you half across the living room with a strength that startled a laugh out of you before it broke into a sob. His arms locked around your waist, your hands flew to his shoulders, and then his mouth was on yours. The kiss was clumsy in the way only grief and longing could be clumsy. He kissed you like every locked door, every court order, every year stolen from you both had narrowed into this one second.

He tasted like blood and rain.His lip was split. One of his teeth was missing. There were stitches along his forehead and dirt at the edge of his chin, but he was here. Your husband was in your living room with his body against yours and his hands on your back like he was trying to convince himself you were not another trick his mind played against him.

“I missed you,” you breathed against his mouth.

Dex made a broken sound and kissed you again. “I missed you.”

“No, baby,” you whispered, laughing and crying at the same time as you pressed kisses to his mouth, his cheek, the corner of his cheekbones, the scar you’ve yet to trace there. “I missed you. I missed you so much.”

His forehead dropped to yours. For a second, he just held you there, eyes closed, breathing you in like he had forgotten the world. His fingers moved at your waist, not quite gripping, not quite letting go, that old helpless need in him trying so hard to be gentle and failing only because there was too much feeling in one body.

Then a small voice behind you said, “Mama?”

It went through him all at once, the way a person remembered fire after touching a flame. His hands stayed on you, but his whole body locked up, breath caught, eyes opening with a kind of fear you had never seen in him. 

Because no, Benjamin Poindexter had no defence against a four-year-old boy in dinosaur pyjamas.

Slowly, you turned in his arms to see Leo stood in the middle of the carpet with one sock missing and his stegosaurus tucked under one arm. His round little face was serious, sleepy, and curious. He looked much like Dex, it made your chest hurt, but he was smaller, untouched by every cruel thing that had made his father into a weapon.

“Mama,” Leo asked, pointing the dinosaur toward Dex, “who’s this?”

Dex’s breath hitched, you felt it under your palm.

For a moment, you couldn’t answer. You had imagined this introduction a hundred different ways over the years. Maybe in a supervised visitation room. Or through a phone call. Maybe one day in some future where paperwork finally gave way and Leo was old enough to understand more than he should have to. You had not imagined Dex standing in your apartment with a rifle on his back, blood at his mouth, wanted by half the city, looking down at his son like the universe had placed his missing pieces in a boy that looked like a mirror.

You swallowed.“Leo,” you said softly, voice shaking. “This is Daddy.”

Dex inhaled like the word had gone straight through him.

Leo blinked up at him. “Hi daddy,” he repeated, testing the shape of it.

Dex was still trying to keep himself held together with force and habit and whatever discipline had survived. But a foreign emotion moved across him as you felt your own eyes fill again.

“Hi, Leo,” he whispered. His voice was wrecked.

Leo studied him with the grave suspicion of a child encountering an adult who looked both interesting and badly assembled. His eyes moved over Dex’s face. Then his little brows pulled together.

“Your teeth is missing,” Leo said.

You made a small sound, half laugh, half sob.

Dex blinked at him. “What?”

Leo took one step closer, stegosaurus still tucked under his arm like backup. “Your teeth is missing. Are you okay?”

And that was what broke him.

Not the years he had lost. Not even the word Daddy, though that had nearly taken his knees out. It was the concern in his son’s voice, the immediate, unprompted softness. The way Leo saw something wrong and, instead of flinching from him, asked if he was okay.

Dex lowered himself slowly to one knee, as if sudden movement might shatter the moment.

The rifle shifted against his back, so violently out of place beside your son’s little bare foot on the carpet. Dex seemed to realise it too. His hand moved as if to take it off, then stopped, uncertain, afraid to do anything too fast with Leo so close.

“I’m okay,” Dex said carefully.

Leo looked unconvinced. “Mama has plasters.”

Dex looked up at you.Your hand went to your mouth, and you cried properly then, because Leo had no idea what he was offering. No idea that his father had come through the window carrying a weapon and a history no child should have to understand. No idea that asking about a missing tooth and suggesting a plaster was the kindest thing anyone had said to Dex all year.

Dex looked back at him, and saw a person. A tiny person with Dex’s hair and Dex’s nose and Dex’s mouth, but he was human, in the way he never was. He was kind.

Leo was everything Dex had wanted to be and never knew how. Leo was a good version of him.

For the first time in Dex’s life, he looked at someone smaller than him and thought, with stunned humility, that he might have something to learn.

From his son, his better self.

Leo tilted his head. “You want Dino?”

Dex looked at the stegosaurus like it was sacred.

Then he held out both hands, slowly, carefully, letting Leo decide.

Leo stepped closer and placed the dinosaur into his palms.

Dex took it as if it weighed more than the rifle on his back. As if this battered little plastic toy had more power to undo him than any weapon ever made.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Leo nodded, satisfied by the manners, then moved closer. His small hand lifted and patted Dex’s cheek, not quite where the scar was, gentle in the imprecise way of toddlers trying their best.

Dex’s eyes snapped to yours. There was panic there. Wonder. A silent, helpless question: What do I do?

You sank down beside them, one hand on Leo’s back, the other reaching for Dex’s face.  “You’re doing okay,” you whispered.

Leo patted him again, then leaned forward and, with the sudden trust only children could offer, pressed himself into Dex’s chest.

Dex stopped breathing. Then, slowly, so slowly it made your heart ache, his arms came around your son.

Leo fit against him like he had always belonged there, his same-colored hair tucked beneath Dex’s chin. Dex held him as if the whole room might punish him for wanting it too much, as if any wrong movement would prove he didn;t deserve this.

You watched his hand spread carefully over Leo’s back. The same hand that had hurt people. The same hand that had held weapons. That same hand that now shook from the effort of touching his son gently enough.

Leo looked up from Dex’s chest. “Are you cold?”

Dex swallowed. “A little.”

Leo considered that, then turned to you. “Mama, Daddy need blanket.”

You laughed through tears. “Yeah,” you whispered. “Maybe he does.”

Dex closed his eyes.

His face bent toward Leo’s hair, and for a second he didn’t quite kiss him, He only breathed there, close enough to smell the child he had made and never held. Shampoo. Crackers. Life. His son smelled like life.

When Dex opened his eyes again, they were wet. He looked at you over Leo’s head, and the room seemed to fold around the three of you. 

“I missed everything,” he whispered.

You moved closer, pressing your forehead to his shoulder, one hand covering his where it rested on Leo’s back. “You’re here now.”

It was not enough, you both knew that. It was nowhere near enough.

But Leo wriggled in Dex’s arms and said, “Daddy, Dino hungry,” with the complete seriousness of a child who had accepted this new adult into his world and immediately assigned him responsibilities.

Dex looked down at him. Then at the dinosaur. Then back at you, for instruction. You tilted your chin like, go on.

“What does Dino eat?” he managed.

Leo gasped, scandalised that his own father didn’t know. “Crackers.”

Dex looked at you, and you nodded, so he also nodded, “Okay.”

Dex knew now that he was meant to love Leo because Leo was his second chance in miniature. 

And Leo had no idea his father would burn the world to keep him safe. Because in the end, that's what makes him a good man, right?

—end.

Extra note : I keep getting distracted from my Dex x reader / ex!Bucky fic, but I promise it’s on its way. In the meantime, my immediate thought after writing this is a sequel where Reader and Dex finds out Leo has powers (is a mutant) and that’s why Dex starts killing anti-vigilante task force. Because he wants to protect his son. (No promises, but let me know if anyone’s interested!)

The floating was the bane of his folks’ lives. He’d knock out on the couch after school, reruns humming in the background, and Ma and Pa would walk in to find him two feet above the cushions, blanket draped over him like some half-formed ghost.

Ma used to screech him awake, hands on her hips, warning he’d “fall and crack his fool skull open if he kept showin' off like that.”

So Clark learned quick. He got it under control.

No more unplanned levitating. No more slip-ups. He only floated when he wanted to—whether that meant shooting two hundred feet into the sky to take down whatever monster was wrecking Metropolis…or quietly hovering to snag a book off the top shelf in the safety of his apartment.

He had control. Perfect control.

Until he started dating you.

And suddenly, gravity didn’t mean a damn thing anymore.

But you weren't the only one who floated for. In fact, it was for Clark’s biggest idol, who was also his crush.

Which, unfortunately for him, was you.

How could it not be? You were gorgeous. Brilliant. The kind of mind that could unravel the biggest story in Metropolis before anyone else had even found the thread. You asked the right questions, wrote the sharpest copy, and stacked front-page bylines higher than Clark could dream of.

So of course he fell for you. Or, well—floated for you.

He remembered one night especially. Late. Perry had cornered him with another impossible deadline, and Clark, ever the eager reporter, had agreed with a smile even though every bone in his body wanted to curl into a ball and disappear under his desk. He was stirring his coffee like it might magically write the story for him when—

You walked in.

No makeup. No usual pencil skirt and pressed blouse. Just an oversized t-shirt, flannel pants with cartoon teddy bears on them, and the kind of tired smile that knocked the air right out of him.

Clark gaped. You laughed.

You told him you always kept spare clothes in your desk for nights like this, suggested he do the same if Perry kept running him ragged. Simple, casual advice—but it was you of all people. Talking to him. Looking at him. Smiling at him.

Clark could only nod, wide-eyed and wordless, like a puppy trying not to drool as you grabbed your food from the fridge, wished him goodnight, and padded out.

He looked down at his coffee, stirring faster and faster like it could disguise the fact that his heart was about to beat right out of his chest.

You had talked to him. You had talked to him. Offered tips. Given advice. Dear Lord, this was the best night of his life—

Until the clatter of metal on tile made him jump out of his skin. His spoon had fallen. Louder than he expected.

Which was odd, because he knew he was tall, but not tall enough that things sounded like a bomb going off when they dropped. He hadn't grown again, right? Cause that would make fitting into his car very inconvenient—

That's when he discovered the fact that he was hovering three feet above the ground.

Clark crashed back down instantly, cheeks blazing, darting his eyes to the door, the windows, every corner of the empty lounge.

There was no way that just happened to him.

And it got worse and worse.

It was like his body couldn't help but float up to cloud nine every time he thought about you. Like you were some unattainable angel that his body unconsisly decided he was going to try to reach, no matter how high, or the situation.

He’d be at his desk, pretending to focus on copy while you leaned over Perry’s shoulder to argue about a headline, and suddenly his knees were pressed uncomfortably against the bottom of his desk.

Just an inch, maybe two—but enough for him to clamp both hands on his chair arms and pray no one noticed.

Or that time you brushed past him on your way to the elevator—nothing special, just the barest touch of your sleeve against his—and by the time you disappeared around the corner, Clark realized both of his shoes weren’t quite on the ground.

He practically slammed his heels down, heart racing, swearing to himself he’d start carrying weights in his pockets.

Even at home, he wasn’t safe. He’d think about the way you said his name—soft, casual, like it meant nothing—and next thing he knew, he’d be making eggs six inches above the kitchen floor.

And then… you started dating.

Clark remembered asking you out with all the calm of a man trying not to shake apart at the seams. You’d said yes—yes—with the faintest blush touching your cheeks, a blush he’d never seen before, one that sent his heart straight into orbit. When you turned, waving casually over your shoulder like you hadn’t just changed the course of his entire life, Clark barely managed to keep it together long enough to round the corner.

Then he bolted for the nearest supply closet.

Not for anything scandalous—his Ma and Pa would’ve knocked the sense back into him if that thought had even crossed his mind. No, Clark needed space. Space to float.

He shot up into the cramped air, spinning in the tiny room, fist-pumping, grinning so wide his face hurt, letting himself cheer like a fool where no one could hear him. For once, he didn’t fight the floating. He let it happen.

And when he finally touched down, smoothing his tie and combing a hand through his hair, he walked out like nothing at all had happened.

But after you said yes, everything got harder.

Clark had spent years perfecting the art of hiding Superman—but now? Now, every smile from you sent him halfway to the ceiling. His floating got worse. Way worse.

There was the time you kissed him goodbye outside the Planet and he barely managed to keep his feet on the pavement. He gripped a lamppost like it was a lifeline, praying you wouldn’t notice his heels hovering half an inch above the sidewalk.

Or the dinner at your apartment, when you leaned across the table to wipe a smudge of sauce from his chin. Clark’s chair screeched back an inch—except it wasn’t from him pushing.

His whole body had started to drift upward, legs lifting under the tablecloth until he had to stomp his feet down so hard the silverware rattled. He laughed it off, muttering something about “uneven floors.”

And then there was the worst close call of all: the movie night. You’d fallen asleep against his shoulder, warm and soft and utterly perfect, and Clark had been so overwhelmed he hadn’t realized he was floating both of you a good foot off the couch cushions.

He only caught it when the popcorn bowl slid onto the floor with a crash. He dropped them both so fast the couch springs nearly exploded, and you stirred, mumbling, “Clark, you okay?”

He’d lied through his teeth—“Yeah, yeah, just dropped the bowl”—while his heart hammered like he’d just outrun a tornado.

But he knew. He knew he couldn’t keep Superman away from you forever.

When he finally told you, it went just the way he’d imagined: the shock, the questions, the proof, the tears and fears tangled in with relief and awe—and finally, your acceptance.

Clark had never been happier.

From that day on, he stopped fighting it. He let himself float, drifting weightless around you like it was the most natural thing in the world.

In the mornings, he’d hover an inch off the ground while you tugged him closer by the tie, tightening the knot with a soft smile. He felt like something out of a fairy tale.

And at night, he let himself fall apart.

The kitchen smelled faintly of coffee grounds and toasted bread, but Clark only tasted you. His mouth was hot and insistent, slanting over yours again and again. His hands framed your waist, fingertips digging into the curve of your back.

You gasped, but he swallowed the sound greedily.

“Can’t—can’t stop,” he mumbled into your mouth, breathless, already rutting his hips against you through the thin barrier of clothes. His voice broke into a shaky whine when your fingers tugged at the buttons of his shirt. “Gosh, please—”

Fabric tore somewhere between frantic hands and the solid press of his chest against yours. Your shirt was gone first, discarded onto the floor, his lips following the new stretch of bare skin like he couldn’t decide whether to kiss or worship.

When his slacks hit his thighs, there was no hesitation. Clark hauled you up into his arms. Your legs locked around his waist instinctively, heels digging into the hard muscle of his back.

He pushed inside you in one long, overwhelming stroke, and the sound he made nearly undid you—high, broken, a moan that cracked into a desperate whimper as he bottomed out.

“H—heavens,” he gasped, clinging to you like he might fall apart if he let go. “You’re so—so tight, baby, oh my Gosh—” His hips jerked, shallow at first, and then harder, faster, until every thrust had you bouncing in his arms.

You clutched at his shoulders, nails biting deep, your cries mixing with his. His head dropped to your neck, his teeth grazing, his breath hot and uneven.

“Feels so good—I can’t—don’t wanna stop,” he babbled against your skin, each word punched out with another snap of his hips. His moans spilled freely now, unrestrained, a needy counterpoint to the slick sound of your bodies colliding.

And then—

The counter wasn’t there anymore. The solid press against your back vanished, and Clark heard something metal clatter uselessly to the floor below. His stomach lurched as he realized you weren’t grounded anymore—you were rising with him.

His eyes flew open, wide and startled, his thrusts stuttering to a halt for the barest second. Oh Gosh—oh Gosh, I’m—

But then his gaze locked on you. Your arms wound tight around his neck, your eyes blown wide, lips parted, the sweetest little sound breaking out of you when his cock shifted inside you in this strange, weightless pull.

And that was it. He was gone.

“Baby,” he gasped, clutching you tighter, rocking his hips forward again without meaning to. The sensation ripped a broken moan from his chest, high and needy. “Oh, baby, I can’t—oh my Gosh, I can’t stop.”

You shrieked his name, fingers clawing at his shoulders, but he barely heard you over the sound of his own whimper. His cock dragged through you deeper now, gravity no longer slowing the thrusts, every stroke hitting a spot that had his knees threatening to give out, even though he wasn't on the ground.

He buried his face in your throat, sucking hot kisses into your skin, whining every time your gummy walls clenched around him. “Please—don’t tell me to stop—please, I need it—need you—golly, you’re so tight—ohhh Gosh—”

He shifted his grip under your thighs, spreading you wider, bouncing you helplessly on his cock while his hips pumped up into you.

Clark thought he might die from it—the weightlessness, the heat of you, the way you looked at him like he was the only thing holding you together. His chest ached, his cock throbbed, his vision blurred at the edges.

“I’m yours,” he babbled, forehead pressed to yours, his thrusts sharp and frantic now. “All yours—always yours—fuck, don’t let me go, baby—don’t let me—”

And then you clenched around him. Hard. A shudder ripped through your body, and your cry tore from your throat as your pussy clenched, walls squeezing him like fire. Clark’s eyes went wide, his breath catching, the sensation driving him completely over the edge. He couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop—every muscle in his body tensed, and his hips slammed into yours with abandon.

“Baby, you’re—yes! Yes!—” he groaned, his voice breaking, his hands clutching at your thighs to keep you pressed to him. Your orgasm wrapped around him like a vice, and he felt it—every pulse, every squeeze, every shiver—pulling him over the edge.

Clark’s own climax hit like a tidal wave. He shuddered violently, buried deep inside you, and filled you to the brim, groaning your name as his release rocked through him. The world spun, but slowly, gently, he began to float back down.

When your feet finally touched the cool kitchen tile, Clark collapsed on top of you, trembling, forehead pressed to yours, lips seeking yours in frantic, messy kisses. He was still panting, still flushed, still impossibly needy.

“I—I’m so sorry,” he whispered between kisses. “That… that shouldn’t have—won’t happen again, I swear. I—”

You pressed your lips to his, cutting him off with a soft, teasing smile. “It’s… not so bad. Pretty impressive trick, actually.”

Clark froze for a heartbeat, then let out a sheepish laugh, brushing hair out of his eyes. “Really? You think so?” he murmured, his cock still hard but easing as he nuzzled your neck.

“Mm-hmm,” you purred, tracing your fingers along the line of his jaw. “I think I could get used to it.”

His smile was sheepish. He would never admit it aloud, but floating or not, being with you like this?

He could get used to it faster than anything else in the world.

Lowkey rambled on this one... but he's such a lover boy it hurts. How could I NOT do a drabble about that?!

They say broken souls are born broken.

That there is no way to fix them, no matter how hard you try.

That villains are villains forever, that they can never change, that the evil inside them is like a stain nothing can wash away.

They also say that those born in hell are consumed by the same fire, that there is no escape, that pain is the only thing they know and the only thing they will ever have until the very end.

And you heard those words so many times that eventually, you believed them. You carried them carved into your bones, into the way you learned to stay quiet, into the way you lowered your gaze whenever someone spoke to you. Because for you, kind words never existed. There were only orders, blows, experiments, and the cold silence of the laboratories where you spent almost your entire life.

You should have known your life would be like this. From the very beginning. From before you opened your eyes for the first time. You should have known your destiny was to be called nothing more than a project, a thing, a number. Labeled as a machine created to obey, to do what it was told, to bow its head and never ask questions.

But the saddest part, the part that hurts the most, is that your first cry had been more human than any other baby's. Your first breath was just as fragile, just as small. Your wounds were as visible as anyone else's. The blood running across your skin was red, just like everybody else's. But the only difference, the only damned difference, was that you had not been born from a family. You had been born from studies, from numbers, from a project no one asked if you wanted.

No one asked for your permission to bring you into the world.

No one asked if you wanted to feel pain.

They just used you.

They injected things into you ever since you were so small that you cannot even remember a single day without needles. They pierced your skin over and over again, until the memories from when you were tiny disappeared completely.

The pain was so overwhelming that your mind chose to forget. Only the scars remained. Those pale marks on your skin that follow you everywhere. And the number on your shoulder. As if you were an animal. As if you were something that could be branded and locked inside a cage. “L008L.” That was what they called you. That was how they knew you. A code. A label.

Maybe you once had a family. Maybe someone loved you before you were ripped away from their arms. But you do not know. You cannot know. Because you had no father or mother. You only had an owner. Someone who created you, designed you, decided that you would exist only to serve him.

Your oldest memory, the only one that survived all that pain, was when you arrived at the laboratories. You were nine years old. Luthor was not in charge yet. But years later, he arrived. He was the one who, once you grew older, made you his. One day, he placed a hand on your shoulder and told you, “You are my project.” And he named you that way. As if you were a brand-new car or a weapon he had just purchased.

The other scientists used to say they had never managed to get anything useful out of you, that they had wasted years without using you properly, that you were a failure. But Lex Luthor looked at you differently. He gave you something that, in your ignorance, you called affection. Because you did not even know what that word meant. No one had ever taught you. No one had ever shown you what it felt like to truly be loved.

So when Luthor’s hand brushed through your hair after they broke your nose during a fight, after you collapsed onto the floor with blood dripping down your face, you felt it as if it were praise. Like a caress. Like something good.

“You passed the test,” he would say in that serious voice of his while wiping the blood from your lip with a white handkerchief. “You are strong. You are the best. But you are still lacking.”

And you would look at him with swollen eyes from crying so much, even though by then you could barely cry anymore. And you felt proud. Proud that he approved of you. Proud that he had not thrown you aside like garbage.

During those tests, they would pit you against two gifted subjects at the same time. They had families, real names, people waiting for them outside. You only had the cold laboratory floor and Luthor’s gaze watching from the other side of the glass.

The tears disappeared when you turned sixteen. You could no longer cry. Something inside you had broken completely, or perhaps it had simply dried out. You were only a project. They had told you that so many times that it no longer hurt. Or at least, that was what you wanted to believe.

They had carved it so deeply into you that nobody even had to deny you anything anymore, because you accepted it yourself. You never intended to resist what Luthor did to you. The thought of saying “no” never even crossed your mind. You were never taught that you could say that word.

At first, you were just another project. One among many. A strange little girl in a white room. But when Superman appeared in the world, when that flying man started saving people and being loved by everyone, then you stopped being “just another project.”

You became the one.

The one who needed to improve. The one with the power to manipulate things with her hands, to release energy like green rays of sunlight, to read minds. Necessary things. Useful things. Things meant to defeat Superman.

Luthor wanted you strong. Even when your hands burned from moving objects with your mind. Even when your head felt like it would explode from hearing other people’s thoughts. Even when it felt like your skull was splitting in half. He would only glance at the clock and write numbers into a notebook.

“Again,” he would say. “Do it again.”

And you obeyed.

You always obeyed.

One time, when you failed, when you could not raise the energy barrier quickly enough and they hit you so hard you collapsed onto the floor gasping for air, Luthor approached you with fury in his eyes. Not the fury of concern.

The fury of disappointment.

He grabbed your arm and yanked you upright before snarling through clenched teeth:

“If you are not stronger than Superman, then you are nothing. NOTHING. Do you understand me? You are worthless if he is stronger than you.”

He did not ask if you were okay. He did not take you to get treated. He simply let go of you and walked away, leaving you there on the floor, coughing up blood and feeling like you were dying from the inside out.

Luthor shaped you as if you were a sword. He sharpened you with pain. Hardened you with blows. And you let him do it because you knew no other way to live.

Maybe the flaw in Luthor’s plan was not assigning you to fight Superman directly. Maybe the real mistake was assigning you to go after Clark Kent. That clumsy journalist with thick glasses and wrinkled suits who always seemed to stick his nose where it did not belong. The one who looked so ordinary, so normal, so weak.

But Luthor knew something many others did not.

And one night, inside his office, with the lights turned off and only the city glow behind him, he called you in and said:

“Clark Kent is the idiot who knows everything about Superman. Everything. If we have him, we have that alien. You capture him, bring him to me, and put him on his knees in front of me.”

You nodded, just like always. You did not ask why. You did not ask how.

You only said:

“Alright.”

And he smiled. That cold smile he gave you whenever he was pleased with you. And for one second, just one second, you felt something close to happiness. Because he had looked at you. Because he had spoken to you. Because he had chosen you for that mission.

Of course he would send you. You had turned twenty-six a few days ago. An age where other women think about marriage, children, careers they enjoy. An age where people celebrate with cake and candles.

You had none of that.

Only a new number added to your file and another order.

Infiltrate the Daily Planet, that enormous newspaper where Clark Kent worked. Pull strings, forge documents, create an entire fake identity. For a man with the kind of money that swarmed around Luthor like ants, it was effortless. One check here, one phone call there, and suddenly you had a false name, a false story, a false life.

That was all.

You never intended to know Clark Kent. Your objective was something else. Your objective was to kill him once he told you where Superman was hiding. That was what you were supposed to do. What you had been ordered to do.

But that was the thing.

No.

You never truly had the intention.

Because to have intention, to want to do something, you first have to desire it. And you desired nothing. You only complied. You only obeyed. You only did what you were told, like a machine, like a trained dog, like a weapon someone loads and fires without asking.

You had an order. That was all.

The order of your owner.

That man who waited for you every single day with questions, demands, and that cold stare asking for results.

“What did you find out?”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Did you get information out of him?”

“Do you already know where the alien is hiding?”

And you had to answer. You always had to answer. You always needed to have something to say, something to show, something to prove that you were not wasting time, that you were not a failure, that you were worth something.

That pressure crushed your shoulders as though you carried a massive stone all day long.

And at the same time, you had to pretend you were a normal employee at the Daily Planet. You had to smile, greet people, learn names, remember birthdays, laugh at jokes that were not funny to you. You had to act like you were a real person, like you had a life, like you had gone to school, like you had friends.

Pretending exhausted you more than any fight ever had.

Pretending hollowed you out in a way you did not know how to explain.

And all of it together—the pressure from Luthor and the pressure of pretending—squeezed you tighter than ever before. You felt trapped. Suffocated. As if your chest were collapsing inward and you could no longer breathe.

Maybe that was why you never saw it coming. Maybe that was why Clark Kent took advantage of that gap. That small space between the pressure of work and the pressure of Luthor, that moment when you were so exhausted you could no longer keep your defenses up. And he slipped straight into your soul.

No blows. No orders. No violence.

Just by being himself.

That clumsy man who wore suits too big for him, who tripped over chairs, who blushed whenever someone spoke too loudly to him. That man who stopped being just “the target” and became “the one teaching you.” Because at first, when you arrived at the Daily Planet with your false identity and your invented name, Perry White, the boss, looked at you over his glasses and said:

“She’s new. Clark, help her settle in. Make sure she learns how everything works around here.”

And Clark smiled at you. A shy smile, with his cheeks slightly flushed, and said:

“Of course, Perry. Don’t worry.”

It was simple at first.

You hated him.

Of course you hated him. And not because you wanted to hate him. Not because he had done anything wrong to you. You hated him because that was what you were supposed to do. It was the order. It was the plan. You had to keep your distance, keep the hatred, keep your mind cold.

But when you realized that hating him was not working, it was because of something so small, so simple, that you were almost ashamed to admit it. It happened a month after you started working there. An entire month of watching him arrive every morning with his coffee thermos, of hearing him murmur to himself while he wrote, of seeing how he laughed at the jokes from the other employees.

A month of trying to read his mind and finding yourself met with a wall. A month of failing your mission because you could not get close enough, because something about him made you lower your guard without meaning to.

That morning, the coffee burned your hand.

You had been distracted. You filled your cup too much, and the hot liquid splashed over your fingers. It was a small pain. Nothing compared to what you had felt before. A simple sting in your body. One among the thousands you had already endured.

But Clark’s eyes widened as if you had screamed, and quickly, very quickly, he took the cup from your hands. Carefully. Without roughness. As if he were afraid of hurting you even more.

You looked at him. You had been hurt before. Many times. For much less. You had been hit for spilling things, for breaking things, for simply existing. But he only looked at you with concern, those clear eyes behind his glasses, while he held the steaming cup away from you.

“I can do it, Clark,” you said.

And your voice sounded different. Softer. More human. The voice you had been using there, in that place full of normal people, had stuck to you without you realizing it. You no longer sounded like a weapon. You sounded like a person.

Clark did not give the cup back to you. Instead, he took your hand very gently and looked at the burn. A red mark on your skin. Nothing serious. But he frowned as if it were something terrible.

“I know,” he told you, without letting go of your hand. “I know you can do it. But I’m supposed to take care of you. You’re assigned to me. Besides...” He paused and looked at you with those eyes that seemed to understand things you had never told him. “You’ve been working very hard. Really hard. Let me do it. I don’t mind.”

He said it and looked at you with a smile. His cheeks were red. You looked away.

You looked at your hand, the one he had carefully released, and felt something strange inside your chest. You had never looked away from anyone. Never. Not even when Luthor yelled at you. Not even when they hit you. You always stared straight ahead, like an animal that could not show fear.

But with Clark, you couldn’t.

You could not hold his gaze when he smiled at you like that. And the worst part, the strangest thing of all, was that you had never been able to read his mind. It was as if a simple human had a strong mind. And Clark did. But not a hard kind of strength, like a wall. It was a soft strength, like a deep current you could not cross.

And that confused you.

It scared you.

Because if you could not read him, you could not control him. And if you could not control him, you could not hate him. And if you could not hate him, what did you have left?

It was the strange things he did.

Strange to you, of course. Because you had never been treated that way. Never. Not once in your entire life. You had never felt what it was like for someone to buy you coffee without you asking. Because you were used to begging. Begging for food when they punished you. Spending entire days with your stomach empty, hearing it growl inside you, while the scientists ate in front of you as if you did not exist.

And of course, despite being named a project, despite being called L008L as if you were a box, your powers did not take away your hunger. Because despite everything, despite the way they had discarded you like trash, despite the fact that you never had a family who loved you, despite the way they treated you like a thing... you were human.

You had a human body.

You needed to eat. You needed to sleep. You needed someone to see you for what you were.

And Clark gave you coffee. Sometimes a pastry. He always said the same thing, with that silly smile and those red cheeks:

“Oh, I stopped by the bakery on my way to work. Bought too much. Want one?”

And you accepted it.

Because you were hungry. Because the hot coffee warmed your hands and your chest. Because the pastry tasted like something you did not remember ever tasting before. Something like... affection? You did not know. You did not know what that was called.

But you liked it.

And it scared you that you liked it.

Clark carried the papers for you. When you came back from an interview and had piles of documents with you, he took half of them or more, just so you would not have to carry so much. Sometimes, when they received small gifts at events or press conferences, bags with notebooks, pens, brochures, he took those too.

“So you don’t have to carry them,” he would say.

As if it were the most normal thing in the world. As if taking care of you were not an effort.

And he smiled. Every chance he got. When he saw you arrive in the morning, he smiled. When you finished a difficult article, he smiled. When you made a mistake while writing something and he corrected you in a low voice so no one else would hear, he smiled.

And he got so nervous.

So much that sometimes he stuttered. So much that things fell from his hands.

And you had never felt it until that day in the elevator. Never in your whole life. Not when they treated your wounds. Not when they said “good job.” Not when Luthor ran his hand through your hair after a fight. None of that had made your heart beat.

You thought you did not have a heart. Or that you had forgotten you had one. Because after so many years of pain, something inside you had fallen asleep. Or died. You did not know which one.

But that day, in the elevator, something woke up.

It happened so soon. So quickly that you almost did not notice it. The two of you were alone, going up to the office after coming back from an interview outside. The elevator was small, one of those old ones that made noise and moved slowly.

You were looking at the floor, as always, thinking about nothing and everything at once. Clark’s hand brushed yours by accident. A small touch. Nothing. Almost nothing.

But he looked at you. And he pointed at your face with a trembling finger.

“You have a... paper,” he whispered.

His voice sounded low, soft, as if he did not want to scare you. As if speaking too loudly would break something fragile.

You looked at him without understanding. You did not feel anything on your face. You did not know what paper he was talking about. You had worn your hair loose all day, and sometimes things stuck to it without you noticing.

But when you were about to raise your hand to your face to find it, he stopped. Clark lifted his hand, but froze in the air, halfway between you and him.

“May I?” he asked.

And that question went through you like a knife.

Because no one had ever asked you “may I?” No one. Not to touch you. Not to treat your wounds. Not for anything. They simply grabbed you, moved you, put needles in you, hit you, lifted you from the floor when you fell.

Never, never had anyone asked for your permission to come close to you.

That was when you felt it for the first time.

Your heart.

It was there. Waiting. And it began to beat hard, fast, like a bird trapped between your ribs. You had spent days wanting to feel him. Not just see him, not just observe him from a distance the way you did with everyone else. You wanted to feel Clark. You wanted to know what it was like for someone to touch you without it hurting.

And you nodded. You moved your head up and down, only slightly, because your throat had closed and you could not speak.

He came closer. Very slowly. Very carefully. His hand rose to your head and removed a small piece of paper hanging from your hair, the kind that comes from notebooks when you tear out a page.

But along the way, his fingers brushed your cheek.

A small touch.

Perfect.

So soft you almost did not feel it.

But you did.

You felt it down to your bones. It was as if that touch had lit something inside you, something that had been turned off for as long as you could remember.

Clark looked at the paper in his hand and then looked at you. His eyes were bright behind his glasses. And he smiled. That smile you were beginning to recognize, the one that made you feel less alone.

“That makes you officially a full-time newsroom employee,” he joked gently.

He tried to make a joke. He tried to say you had passed the test of having papers stuck in your hair. And something happened inside your chest. Something you could not control.

You smiled for real.

Not like the rehearsals you did to behave human, even though you were. Not like those fake smiles you practiced in front of the Daily Planet bathroom mirror so no one would suspect anything.

No.

This smile came out on its own. Without permission. Without an order. Without practice. Because Clark’s smile reached you, touched you, and you could do nothing but return it.

You lowered your gaze with red cheeks. They burned. They stung. But it was not a bad pain. It was a pain you wanted to keep feeling. You felt so much that you never wanted to stop feeling it.

Never again.

But outside, in the real world, in the cold world that waited for you every night, Luthor wanted proof. He wanted something. Anything. You had been at the Daily Planet for weeks and you had given him nothing useful.

Only silly things, things from Clark’s daily life, things that were useless for capturing Superman. Luthor was giving you time. Of course he was. He knew it was not an easy job. He knew you had to earn people’s trust, that you had to pretend, that you had to wait.

But time was running out.

And every day you spent beside Clark, Luthor’s orders weighed more heavily on you. Because what you had were not secrets or plans or Superman’s weaknesses. What you had were irrelevant things. Things about Clark’s parents. Stories from his childhood in Kansas. Names of his friends. Places he visited.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing about Superman.

And maybe, deep inside, you already knew. You were already beginning to understand why Clark never mentioned Superman. Why, whenever people in the office talked about the hero, Clark stayed quiet or changed the subject. Why he never, not once, said anything bad about him, but never anything good either.

It was as if he avoided the topic carefully, like someone walking over thin ice.

And that made you afraid.

Because if your theory was right, if what you were starting to suspect was true, then your mission became impossible. Then you had to choose.

And you had never chosen anything in your life.

One night, after a long day of pretending, you returned to the laboratory. Luthor was waiting in his office, the lights turned off, illuminated only by the reflections of the city outside. He did not greet you. He did not ask how you were.

He only said:

“What do you have?”

“There’s nothing related to Superman and Clark,” you replied without expression. Your voice sounded flat, empty. Maybe because you wanted to hide what was already beginning to fall into place deep inside your mind. Maybe because you were afraid he would see in your eyes what you could barely believe yourself.

Luthor nodded. Slowly, he rose from his chair and walked toward you. You did not run. You did not step away. You knew what was coming. It was part of life. Part of being a project.

A harsh slap struck across your face, so violent it forced your gaze down to the floor. Your cheek burned. The same cheek Clark’s fingers had brushed days before. And that contrast hurt more than the blow itself.

“I need that stupid flying man in the grave,” Luthor hissed, his voice dripping with venom as he stood so close you could feel his breath against your forehead. “Do you understand me? In the grave. And if that doesn’t happen, you’ll kill Clark Kent. Maybe then Superman will come to claim him. Maybe then he’ll crawl out of hiding to save his little journalist friend.”

You nodded.

You were used to it. The blows were part of you. The orders too. But something twisted painfully inside your chest when you heard his name.

Clark.

Kill Clark.

The words sounded different when you repeated them inside your head. It was not like killing a target. It felt like killing something you were beginning to love.

And no one had taught you how to survive that.

That was not part of the project.

You wanted to push him away. To tell Clark to leave. To run. To leave the country. To never come near you again.

So, in the following days, you started giving him options without him realizing it. You left papers on his desk. Job offers in other countries.

A job in Germany, you thought. He would be perfect there.

Clark would read them and look at you with a smile, not understanding what you were truly trying to tell him.

“Are you thinking about changing jobs?” he would ask with that innocent tone of his, with that way he had of looking at the world as if everyone in it were good.

You would smile and shake your head. Then you would leave more offers. New Zealand. A journalism exchange program in London. Good opportunities, the kind any reporter would accept without hesitation.

But he did nothing.

He read the papers, stared at them for a moment, and then set them aside. As if they did not matter. As if where he already was had become enough for him.

One night, while you were gathering your things to leave, being among the last people left in the office alongside Clark, he finally spoke. His voice sounded different. More serious. As if he had been thinking about it all day.

“I don’t want to change jobs,” he said suddenly.

Clark stood near the door, his jacket hanging from one hand.

“Did I make you think that?”

You shook your head quickly, maybe too quickly.

“No, I just... think you’re very good at what you do. That you could become a great international journalist.”

You played with your bag strap without looking him in the eyes. Your fingers trembled slightly.

Clark stayed silent for a moment. Then he nodded.

“That would be a big step, I admit.”

You nodded too, your head lowered. But he kept speaking.

“But I think I’m happy here. I have a good job. Good friends.” He paused, and when you finally looked up at him, his cheeks were red again. “And this job gave me the chance to meet you.”

Your eyes widened slightly.

Clark swallowed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I think you’re... a great journalist,” he corrected awkwardly, as if he had realized he had already said too much.

But it was too late.

You had already heard him.

You swallowed hard. Your heart was beating again, just like it had that day in the elevator. And for the first time, for the first time in your entire life, you decided to be honest.

Not because someone ordered you to.

Not because you had to pretend.

But because you wanted to.

Because you needed him to know.

“I’m happy here too,” you admitted softly, your voice barely above a whisper. “The difference between you and me is that... I don’t care whether I have friends or a good job. Working beside you somehow feels like enough.”

The words lingered in the air.

Silence followed. A deep, endless silence that filled the empty office. Through his glasses, you could see something shining in Clark’s eyes. Something you had never seen there before.

And then, without either of you planning it, you stepped closer.

He did too.

As if your bodies already understood what words could not say. As if both of you had realized that somehow, impossibly, you seemed to need each other. Ever since the moment you met, something in the world had changed for both of you.

Clark kissed you.

And you rose onto your tiptoes just to reach him.

His lips were soft. Warm.

You did not know how to kiss. No one had ever taught you. You had never kissed anyone before. But your body knew what to do. As if it had been waiting for this moment your entire life.

As if every blow, every wound, every night filled with pain had only been the path leading you here.

To this kiss.

To Clark.

And that was enough for you to realize that another life existed. A different kind of life. One where nobody demanded that you be the best. One where you did not have to beg for food. One where affection was not something you earned only after winning a fight.

A life without humiliation. Without blows. Without numbers tattooed into skin. Without laboratories, owners, or orders.

There was only Clark.

Clark with his glasses.

Clark with his flushed cheeks.

Clark with his gentle hands and tender voice.

Clark, who had unknowingly taught you that you were not a project.

That you never had been.

Clark was strangely adorable.

You did not say it lightly. It was not a word you used carelessly. But he truly was. Everything he did felt sweet in a way you could not explain.

The good morning hugs, when he arrived at the office and saw you sitting at your desk, and he would walk toward you slowly as if he did not want to bother you, only to wrap his arms around you and squeeze you just a little, whispering “good morning” against your hair.

The goodnight hugs, when he walked you to your apartment building after the two of you wandered through the dark streets together, and he stayed standing outside until you went inside, just to make sure you were safe.

Holding your hand while walking, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if his fingers needed yours to feel complete.

Kissing your forehead. Your cheek. Sometimes your nose, whenever he was being silly and trying to make you laugh.

Kissing you.

That.

The kisses he pressed against your lips, soft and slow, as if he had all the time in the world and nowhere else he would rather be except there, with you.

And that life, the one you had created with a name that was not a number, with someone who did not scream at you that you belonged to him as if you were an object... that was the life you wanted to live.

For the first time in your life, you wanted to wake up the next morning.

For the first time, you were not afraid of what would happen next. You wanted to get up just to see him, to hear his voice, to feel his hands. You wanted to keep pretending to be a normal employee, but not because you had been ordered to. Because that disguise allowed you to stay by his side.

That life was a dream.

A dream you never wanted to wake up from.

But the code carved into your shoulder, those letters and numbers you had carried for as long as you could remember—L008L—always reminded you of reality. They burned against your skin like a brand. Whispering into your ear that you were not real, that you were not a person, that you were only a project.

Reality waited for you outside.

Outside of Clark’s arms. Outside of his kisses. Outside of that bubble of affection that had wrapped itself around you without you even noticing.

One night, Clark invited you to his apartment for dinner. He said he was tired of restaurants, that he wanted to be alone with you, without people around, without noise, without anything except the two of you.

You accepted.

Of course you did.

You would have accepted anything he offered you.

When you arrived at his apartment, it felt so... him. Cozy. Messy but clean. With books stacked on tables and plants resting by the windows. It smelled like homemade food, like something cooked slowly and lovingly.

Clark was chopping tomatoes in the kitchen, wearing an apron that was slightly too small for him. You laughed seeing him so focused, his tongue peeking out a little while he cut them.

And suddenly, without stopping, he said:

“I think shaving your head during hot weather is actually a pretty smart strategy. I wouldn’t do it myself, but it’s a good strategy.”

You laughed. A genuine laugh, the kind that came more easily every time you were with him.

“But if you lost all your hair, you’d end up...” You gestured toward your head playfully. “That would hurt more, wouldn’t it?”

Then you handed him the onion you had chopped. He took it carefully and dropped it into the pot where something bubbled softly, releasing steam that smelled incredible.

“Well, that is an excellent point,” Clark admitted, turning to look at you with that smile of his. The one that completely unraveled you.

You smiled back.

But maybe your smile wavered a little. Just slightly.

Because deep inside your mind, in that dark corner you kept trying to ignore, you knew you had spent days ignoring Lex. You were not answering his calls the way you were supposed to. You were not giving him full reports. You kept telling him there were no updates, that Clark knew nothing, that you were still investigating.

You lied.

You lied every single time you opened your mouth in front of him.

And that lie sat inside your chest like a stone. But you could not stop. You did not want to stop. Because every time Clark looked at you, every time he touched you, you forgot Luthor existed. You forgot you had a mission. You forgot you were a project.

There was only him.

Only this moment, in this kitchen, with the steam rising from the pot and the smell of tomatoes and onions filling the air.

His hands were skilled and steady, even though he always pretended to be clumsy at the office. And you only helped when necessary, because he kept telling you to sit down, to rest, that you already did enough during the day.

“All I need is for you to kiss me every once in a while,” Clark would say whenever you complained about not helping enough.

He always said it with a mischievous smile, those flushed cheeks you loved so much coloring pink again.

And you would laugh.

And kiss him.

And he would continue cooking as if nothing had happened, though you could see the foolish smile spreading across his face every single time you did it.

At some point, your gaze drifted away.

You did not know how long you stayed like that, staring into nothing while thinking about everything. About Luthor. About the mission. About what would happen once all of this ended. About what would happen if he discovered you no longer wanted to obey him.

Clark noticed.

He always noticed everything about you.

Slowly, he walked closer, his hands still slightly damp from washing vegetables, and carefully tucked your hair behind your ear. His fingers brushed your skin, and you felt that familiar shiver running through your body every time he touched you.

“Everything okay?” he asked softly, concern filling his voice.

You nodded, even though it was not entirely true.

But you could not tell him the truth. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

He smiled, as if he had decided to believe you, and said:

“You’re my main assistant. Without your kisses, I can’t continue. Dinner will burn if you don’t give me one right now.”

“So dramatic,” you whispered.

But you stepped closer and kissed him anyway. Short. Quick. But filled with everything you did not know how to put into words.

Clark nodded in satisfaction.

“That’s better,” he said, continuing to cook as if nothing had happened.

If only he could hear you.

If only he were the one reading your mind and knew the guilt you carried.

That heavy, dark guilt crushing your shoulders every night when you were alone. The guilt of knowing you were supposed to obey, that Luthor was waiting for you, that the mission still existed even if you no longer wanted to complete it.

Because you did not want to anymore.

You did not want to obey.

You did not want to hurt anyone.

You did not want to return to that cold laboratory, to those needles, to those beatings, to those sleepless nights listening to the scientists’ footsteps echoing down the hallway.

You only wanted to stay with him.

You only wanted this forever.

This kitchen. This smell of homemade food. Clark’s hands holding yours.

But you were certain the world would still point at you and call you the villain.

Because that was what you were, wasn’t it?

That was what you had always been. A project built to hurt people. A weapon. A thing.

People never understand that sometimes villains do not choose to become villains. Sometimes they are placed on that road from the moment they are born and never given another choice.

And you had never been given a choice.

Not until Clark arrived.

You watched him smile while stirring the pot.

And then you remembered.

You remembered that night after the kiss in the office. The night he walked you home and stayed by your door because neither of you wanted to say goodbye. You remembered how he kissed you again, slower this time, deeper, as if he were trying to tell you something he could not put into words.

And during that kiss, in that moment when his lips touched yours and the world stopped moving, his mind opened to you.

Not intentionally.

Not because you searched for it.

It was as if the kiss had broken down a wall. Or as if, for the first time, he had lowered his guard completely.

That was how you found out he was Superman.

You discovered the truth you had spent months suspecting, the one spinning around inside your head like a knife that refused to sink all the way in.

Clark was Superman.

The man who flew. The hero Luthor wanted dead. The alien your owner claimed needed to be destroyed.

And you held him there in your arms while he kissed you as if you were the most important thing in the world.

Your suspicions were confirmed.

But not because you used your powers.

Because he revealed himself without meaning to.

Inside his mind, in that moment of tenderness, you saw everything. You saw the child arriving in a spaceship. You saw the parents who raised him in Kansas. You saw the first time he flew. You saw the symbol on his chest.

You saw Superman.

And you saw him smile, and cry, and love.

You saw him be more human than anyone who called him an “alien.”

Your mission was complete.

That moment should have been the end of everything. You had what Luthor wanted. The final proof. The connection between Clark Kent and Superman. You could have gone back that same night and told him everything.

And he would have smiled at you. Congratulated you. Given you that twisted version of affection you once mistook for love.

But you did not do it.

You could not.

You did not want to.

So you kept it to yourself.

Like a secret.

Like a treasure.

Because you wanted it to last a little longer. You wanted that night to never end. You wanted to keep feeling his lips, his hands, his warmth. You wanted to keep being the girl from the Daily Planet, the one with the fake name and the invented life who, for the first time, finally felt real.

You were afraid Luthor would grow tired of waiting. Afraid he would train you until you were capable of fighting Superman yourself.

And not only him.

You knew Luthor had other creations. Other projects. Other weapons. You knew that if you failed, he would use someone else.

And that terrified you.

Terrified for Clark.

Terrified for yourself.

Terrified for everything you had started to build.

But good things always come to an end.

You knew that. You had known it from the beginning, even if you had tried to cover it up with kisses and dinners at his apartment. Because a villain never got a happy ending.

Villains did not deserve one.

And at the end of the day, no matter how Clark looked at you as if you were a person, no matter how his hands treated you as if you were made of porcelain, you were still a project.

And projects were only carried out.

Or, if they did not work, they were discarded. Sometimes, they were useful until they fulfilled their purpose, and then the same thing happened.

They were discarded anyway.

Like trash. Like something useless. Like a broken toy no one wanted to fix.

You looked at Clark that day.

It was a night like many others, one of those nights you had started treasuring like someone saving coins in a jar, knowing that sooner or later, they would run out. You were standing at the door of your apartment after walking together through streets lit by lampposts.

He was saying goodbye with a kiss on your lips, one of those slow kisses that left you breathless. Your hands were on his shirt, tucked beneath his jacket, feeling the warmth of his chest through the fabric.

You were smiling.

You could not help it.

And your eyes shone like they had never shone before. As if, somewhere inside you, tiny lights had been switched on and no one had managed to put them out yet.

“We should go out tomorrow,” Clark whispered close to your lips, with that voice that made you shiver.

It was not an order.

It was never an order with him.

It was an invitation. An I want to be with you disguised as simple words.

“We’ve been dating for three months. I think I want to surprise you for the fourth.”

You smiled. But inside, something shifted. Something uncomfortable.

Because surprises were not meant for you. Gifts were not meant for you. Beautiful things had never reached your hands without you having to pay a price first.

“A surprise?” You looked at him, searching for his eyes behind his glasses. You swallowed before speaking. “I don’t think I deserve a surprise.”

The truth escaped your mouth before you could stop it. Because deep down, in that dark place Clark could not see, you believed it.

You did not deserve anything good.

Projects did not deserve.

Projects only received orders and punishments.

But Clark did not understand the depth of your words. He couldn’t. Because he did not know what you were. He did not know where you came from. He did not know what you had done, what had been done to you, what you still had to do.

He only saw you.

The girl from the Daily Planet. The shy reporter who blushed whenever he held her hand.

And he smiled at you with that wide, sincere smile of his, the one that broke something inside you every time you saw it.

“You deserve it more than anyone,” he whispered.

His hand rose to your face, and he tucked that same rebellious strand of hair behind your ear. The same gesture as always.

The one you loved so much.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at that Italian restaurant you like so much. Eight o’clock, after work.”

“Alright, then I’ll see you tomorrow... even though we’ll see each other at work,” you said, and your voice sounded happier than you felt inside.

Clark laughed again. That laugh that soothed your soul.

“Well, I’ve realized that seeing you at work isn’t enough.” He smiled, soft and impossibly fond. “I want to have you for my whole life.”

You looked at him with flushed cheeks. They burned. They stung. But it was a beautiful warmth, the kind you wanted to last forever.

You hugged him. Pressed your body against his and felt the way he wrapped his arms around you, holding you as if you were fragile, as if he were afraid of breaking you.

He had no idea.

No idea that you wanted to leave your real secret behind too.

No idea that while he was planning a surprise for your fourth month together, you were planning something much bigger.

Something that terrified you and gave you hope at the same time.

You looked into his eyes. Took a breath. And spoke from the deepest part of your heart, from that place you had believed empty until he filled it without asking permission.

“I want to have you for my whole life too, Clark,” you whispered.

The words came out trembling, but firm. It was the first time you had ever said something like that. The first time you had wanted something for yourself.

Not for Luthor.

Not for the mission.

For you.

And in that moment, you decided.

You would tell him.

Everything.

The laboratory. The experiments. The number on your shoulder. Luthor. The mission. Superman.

Everything.

If he could help you, if he could love every part of you, even with your past, with your scars, with the terrible things you had done and the terrible things that had been done to you, then you would help him defeat Lex.

Together.

Because you no longer wanted to be a weapon. You no longer wanted to be a project. You no longer wanted to be L008L.

You only wanted to be the girl Clark kissed in apartment doorways.

Clark kissed you one last time that night.

A long, soft kiss, filled with promises neither of you knew if you could keep. His lips parted from yours slowly, as if leaving was difficult for him, as if he knew something terrible was going to happen.

But he did not know.

He could not know.

“Tomorrow,” he said with a smile.

“Tomorrow,” you replied.

And he walked away down the sidewalk, looking back every few steps, smiling each time he saw you still standing in the doorway.

Until he turned the corner and disappeared.

You remained there, alone on the threshold, your heart beating so hard you could feel it in your ears.

Could you have a dignified life?

Was it possible?

Could someone like you, born in a laboratory, raised among needles and blows, trained to kill, have a happy ending?

You wondered that while climbing the stairs to your apartment. The building was old, the hallway lights flickered, and your steps sounded hollow against the concrete.

Maybe it was your illusion that blinded you.

Maybe it was hope, that new thing Clark had planted in your chest without you realizing it, that made you lower your guard.

Because as you climbed, you did not think to check the door. You did not think to listen before going inside. You did not think about anything except him, his smile, his I want to have you for my whole life.

You climbed the steps with a foolish smile on your face, your hands tucked inside the pockets of your jacket, feeling almost normal.

Almost happy.

You opened the door to your apartment.

The one you rented.

Or rather, the one Luthor rented.

Because nothing was truly yours. Not the walls, not the furniture, not the name you used, not even the clothes on your body. He had given you everything.

And everything had a price.

When you opened the door, your heart froze.

Lex Luthor was standing there, staring out the window as if nothing were wrong. As if it were his apartment. As if you belonged to him. As if nothing had happened.

His hands were clasped behind his back, shoulders straight, head slightly tilted. The streetlight filtered through the glass and painted his long, slender silhouette across the floor.

You walked forward slowly.

Every step took enormous effort, as if your legs had been filled with lead. The door behind you closed by itself.

Or not by itself.

You barely turned your head and saw one of his projects. One you had heard of, though you knew very little about him. Only that he was strong.

Very strong.

He was covered entirely in black, from head to toe, like a breathing shadow. He did not move. Did not speak.

He only watched.

Waited.

You looked at Luthor.

At last, he slowly turned around, wearing that false calm he always used when he was truly furious. His eyes traveled over you from head to toe, as if he were inspecting a defective product.

As if he had already decided you were useless.

“I don’t know what bothers me more,” he said, his voice low and dangerously calm. “That Clark Kent took advantage of my project, or that my project, the one that took me the longest to build, now has to be discarded.”

He stepped closer to you.

You stepped back.

One step.

Then another.

Your back hit the wall, but there was no way out. The man in black stood by the door. You could not escape.

“It’s part of the plan,” you said.

But this time, you did not manage to stay calm. Your voice trembled. Your hands trembled. You could not hold his gaze.

You lowered your eyes.

And that was the sign.

He knew that gesture perfectly.

He knew what it meant.

It meant you were lying.

It meant you were afraid.

It meant you were no longer his.

Luthor seized your chin harshly, his fingers cold as ice, and forced your face closer until his breath struck your skin.

You looked at him.

His eyes were full of rage. Disappointment.

Something worse.

“Part of the plan?” he spat the words like poison. “What the fuck is your plan?”

You trembled.

Your whole body trembled.

But you had to keep going.

You had to protect Clark.

Even if they killed you.

Even if they discarded you.

Even if they dragged you back to the laboratory and injected you until you forgot his name.

“Mr. Lex,” you said, your voice barely more than a thread.

He released your chin abruptly, as if you disgusted him. You stayed pressed against the wall, breathing fast, feeling as if your heart were trying to claw its way out of your chest.

“Clark Kent knows nothing about Superman,” you lied.

You wished it were true.

Wished he were not the flying man.

Wished he were only a clumsy, loving reporter who had nothing to do with the hero Luthor wanted to destroy.

“He doesn’t actually know where he is or where he lives. He thinks he comes to the planet whenever he wants.” Another lie. Your throat dried. “Clark Kent is just a... puppet. He is.”

Luthor stared at you in silence.

A long, heavy silence that crushed your shoulders.

He knew.

He knew something.

You could see it in his eyes. He did not believe you. He had never fully believed you. But he needed to hear you say it.

He needed you to condemn yourself.

“And what was my order if Clark Kent got in the way?” Luthor asked, his voice so cold it seemed to come from somewhere else.

You stayed silent.

The words stuck in your throat like thorns.

“What was it?” he shouted suddenly, and the sound bounced off the empty apartment walls.

You flinched.

The man in black did not move.

“To kill him and bring Superman down to earth,” you whispered.

The words tasted like blood. Like betrayal. Like everything you did not want to be.

Luthor nodded slowly, as if savoring your confession.

“Kill him,” he said.

It was not a suggestion.

It was an order.

Perhaps the last one he would ever give you.

“I want Clark Kent dead. Tonight.”

“I can’t,” you said.

And this time, you did not tremble.

This time, your voice came out firm, even as you were falling apart inside.

Luthor looked at you with a smile.

A small, ugly smile that did not reach his eyes.

And then came the slap.

Hard.

So hard it snapped your face to the side and made stars burst across your vision.

Before you could react, before you could raise your arms to protect yourself, the man in black grabbed you. He lifted you without any effort at all, as if you were a feather, as if you weighed nothing.

And hurled you against the wall.

The impact was brutal. The wall split open slightly, a long, ugly crack running through the plaster from top to bottom. The framed pictures hanging there crashed down over you, their frames breaking, glass exploding into shards that cut your face and arms.

You fell to the floor among the debris, your head spinning, blood running down your cheek, your ear ringing as if a bee were trapped inside it.

Luthor wiped his hand with a handkerchief, as if touching you had dirtied him.

He looked down at you from above, from that godlike height he had always held over you. And there was nothing in his eyes.

No rage.

No disappointment.

Not even hatred.

Only indifference.

As if you no longer existed.

As if he had already thrown you in the trash.

“Another damned failed project,” he said, sounding tired, as if even despising you bored him. “Take her.”

That was the last thing you heard.

The man in black approached you.

You felt a sharp sting in your neck, something cold, something metallic.

An injection.

The liquid entered your veins like liquid fire. Your body went numb. Your head filled with cotton. Your eyes closed without you being able to stop them.

And as you fell asleep, as the darkness wrapped itself around you like a cold blanket, you thought of only one thing.

Him.

Clark.

His smile.

His "You deserve it more than anyone".

The Italian restaurant.

The surprise you would never get to see.

His arms.

His warmth.

Everything you had wanted to have, now falling apart between your fingers like wet sand.

You did not need to open your eyes. The smell told you everything.

That cold, clean scent, like a hospital but worse, like something that had never seen the sun. That smell of disinfectant and metal and fear. The sound told you too. That low hum of machines, that heavy silence of empty hallways, that echo of your own heartbeat bouncing off white walls. You were in your cell. The one you used to call a room because you had not known it could be called anything else. Because they told you it was your room, and you believed them.

But now you knew. Now you knew it was a cage. It always had been.

You opened your eyes slowly. Your gaze scanned everything, just as they had taught you to do, like a weapon activating after being shut down. The narrow bed. The padded walls. The metal door with no handle on the inside. The large mirror on the far wall, behind which you knew someone was always watching. And the clock.

You looked at the time. Twelve noon.

They had sedated you. Most likely so you would sleep as long as possible, so you would be weak when you woke, so you would not be able to fight. But you had to get out of there. You had to see Clark. You had promised yourself. You were going to tell him the truth. You were going to ask for his help. You were going to start a new life. A real life.

You stood. Your legs trembled slightly, but you managed to stay upright. You ran to the door with your hand outstretched, hoping it might be open, hoping it had all been a mistake, hoping they had not locked you in again.

But the moment you touched it, an alarm went off. A sharp, violent beeping pierced your ears like a needle, and before you could pull your hand away, an electric current shot through your arm, your shoulder, your chest.

You gasped. The pain forced you back, stumbling until you fell to your knees on the cold floor. Your fingers still trembled from the shock.

“I thought I could trust you.”

Luthor’s voice echoed through the room, coming from speakers you could not see. You looked at him through the large mirror. He was on the other side, as always, arms crossed, wearing that godlike posture of a man who believed he owned the world.

“And my most... valued project,” he said, pausing dramatically as if saying it wounded him, “betrayed me for one of Superman’s friends.” He nodded slowly, as though processing something tragic. “How painful.”

But all you saw in his eyes was irritation. Not pain. Not sadness. Irritation. Like when a favorite toy breaks. Like when something that belongs to him stops working the way he wants it to.

You stared at the mirror and frowned. Your mind focused on the glass. You could break it. You could tear through it with your energy. You could reach him.

The glass trembled a little, barely at all, but Luthor noticed.

And he smiled.

“No scenes,” he said calmly, dangerously. “Or I’ll be forced to sedate you again. And this time, you won’t wake up in twelve hours. Do you understand?”

You stopped. Lowered your hand.

Rage burned inside you, but fear was stronger. Not fear of being hurt. You already knew that one. Fear of never seeing Clark again. That was new. That paralyzed you.

Luthor left. The screen went dark.

You stayed alone in the white room, sitting on the floor, your arm still tingling from the shock. You looked at the clock again. One in the afternoon. You had to get out. You had to see Clark.

The restaurant. Eight o’clock.

You had seven hours.

Seven hours to find a way to escape, to slip past the guards, to reach him. But you needed to be patient. You could not throw yourself against the door again. You could not hurt yourself. You had to think.

And then it happened.

Five in the afternoon.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Doors opening. Low voices. A man entered, deactivating the electric lasers with a remote control. You knew him. You had seen him before. One of the usual guards, the kind who looked without seeing, who spoke to you as if you were an animal.

Behind him came a woman you also recognized, holding a metal tray. On the tray was a syringe filled with a transparent liquid you knew very well.

Punishment.

The reward for misbehaving. For disobeying. For thinking for yourself.

“Hello, pretty thing,” the guard said with an ugly smile that turned your stomach. “We were told you behaved badly.”

You looked away. You did not want to see him. You did not want to give them the satisfaction of watching you tremble.

The guard stepped closer, confident, as if you were the same as before. The one who stayed still. The one who endured.

“You decide,” he said, his voice almost amused. “Do you want to do this sedated or conscious?”

The woman stepped forward too, the syringe ready.

You knew what “conscious” meant. It meant feeling everything. It meant they would not put you fully to sleep, only weaken you, only strip away enough of your strength so you could not fight, but you would feel every needle, every blow, every humiliation.

And Luthor always punished that way.

It was not enough to hurt you. You had to know you deserved it. You had to feel it.

But something had changed.

Something inside you was no longer the same.

You stood slowly. Both guards froze, surprised. You never stood. Never defended yourself. Never spoke. You only knelt and waited.

“I decide,” you said, and a smile spread across your face. A smile they had never seen before. “That I want to kill you.”

Your hand moved so lightly they did not even see it. A quick, precise movement, one they had drilled into you through years of training. The needle on the tray flew through the air, and before the guard could blink, it buried itself in his neck. His eyes went wide. His mouth opened to scream, but only a choked sound came out.

He dropped to the floor like a stone.

The woman screamed and stepped back, but you were already on her. You struck her in the head with the metal tray, and she collapsed too. Both of them fell to the floor.

It had all lasted only a few seconds.

Before, you had done nothing. Of course you had the strength. Of course you could. But it had been carved into your mind that it was your fault. That you had to endure everything, even if you hated it, even if you had nightmares.

Because Lex said it was your punishment.

Because Lex said you deserved it.

And you believed him. You believed him for so long that you forgot you could say no.

But not anymore.

Now you had Clark.

Now you had a reason to fight.

You stepped over the guards’ bodies and left the cell. The hallway was long and white, just as it had always been. The alarm activated immediately. Red lights flashing. A loud, irritating sound filling the entire place.

You ran.

Most of the doors were locked, sealed by security. So you used your powers. You pushed with your mind, with the energy flowing from your hands, and the doors burst open by force, shattering locks, ripping metal frames apart.

Corridors. More corridors.

Then came the guards. They fired. Bullets flew toward you. You deflected them effortlessly with a movement of your hand, sending them ricocheting into the walls.

You kept running.

And then, as you were deflecting those bullets, a blow slammed into your body. Something enormous, something unstoppable, lifted you off the ground and smashed you against the wall. The impact was so brutal you felt the air leave your lungs.

You fell to the floor, coughing, your vision blurred.

“Bad, bad, bad.”

Luthor’s voice came from speakers mounted in the corners of every hallway. Your head hurt. Your ribs hurt. You lifted your eyes and saw the man standing before you, the same one who had knocked you unconscious in the apartment.

He did not move.

He only stared at you, waiting.

“Did you think it would be easy?” Luthor continued, his voice almost cheerful, as if he were enjoying the spectacle. “No one betrays Luthor, my dear project. Never.” A pause followed. A silence that froze your blood. “Besides, you couldn’t leave without being properly introduced to my newest creation. The one who is going to replace you.”

The man in front of you slowly lifted his hands, calm, as if he were in no hurry.

Then he removed his mask.

Your pulse stopped for a second.

Maybe longer.

Your lips trembled. Your heart stopped beating, then began again harder, faster, more afraid. Because it was like looking at Superman. A corrupted version of him, yes, but still. The same strong face. The same jaw. The same dark hair, though longer, more unkempt.

But no.

It was not Superman.

It was worse.

It was like looking at Clark.

Clark without the glasses. Clark with dark, empty eyes, without a soul, without love. Clark the way you had once been. The way they had raised you to be.

A project.

A weapon.

A thing without feelings.

“Meet Ultraman,” Luthor said, pride overflowing in his voice. “Isn’t he nearly perfect? A few small defects, perhaps, but better than you. Much better.”

You shook your head. It could not be. There could not be another like him. There could not be another like you.

“I’m certain he would kill Clark Kent,” Luthor continued, as if thinking out loud. “But first, he has to kill you. A little training exercise, don’t you think? A warm-up.”

And then Ultraman attacked.

You had no time to react. His enormous hand closed around your throat and lifted you off the ground. He flew with you, squeezing your airway, crashing you through the hallway walls.

Wall after wall.

Your back hit concrete. Your head struck hard. The pain was immense.

Then he released you.

You dropped to the floor like a rag, groaning, blood running down your forehead. Before you could stand, he lunged again.

But this time, you flew upward, covering your body in green energy to escape. The energy shielded you, strengthened you. You shot through the hallway, but he followed.

He was fast.

Too fast.

He caught you, seized your wrist, and when he lifted his other arm to strike you, your energy stopped him for one second.

Only one.

He shoved you back, and before you could see it coming, he hurled you downward. You gasped as you hit the floor. Something cracked inside you.

A rib, maybe.

Or something worse.

“And one more thing,” Luthor said through the speakers, like a narrator enjoying his own show. “He knows Superman’s movements as well as yours. He studied you just as much as he studied Superman. There are no secrets from him. No tricks.”

You swallowed, staring up.

Ultraman watched you from above, floating in the air with his arms crossed. He was in no hurry.

He knew he was going to win.

You began to attack him. Green spheres of energy shot from your hands straight toward him. Entire walls wrapped in your energy rose from the floor to trap him. But he was strong. Too strong. He broke through everything with his laser vision, like Superman. Like Clark. You fell once. Then again. Then again. Blood dripped from your nose. Your entire body hurt. There were only minutes left before eight. Clark had to be at the restaurant by now. Because whenever you had dates, he always arrived early. Always. It was his way of saying he did not want to lose a single second with you. But this time, you did not even know if you would ever see him again. If you were going to get out of there. If you were going to stay alive.

He threw another massive wall at you. He lifted it from the ground and hurled it in your direction. You stopped it before it could crush you, your hands trembling, your arms on the verge of breaking. The effort was titanic.

“That’s enough, Ultraman,” Luthor said, already bored. “Just finish her.”

You shoved the wall off you with a cry of effort. You stood. You were going to attack him. You were going to give everything you had. But he moved with a speed your eyes could not follow. Everything happened too fast. His hand appeared at your back. He was close to you. For one second, only one second, you looked into his eyes. And you saw Clark’s eyes. The same ones. The same color. The same shape. But empty. Like a broken mirror.

You gasped. He held you still without expression, watching your reaction as if he were barely learning what it meant. As if he did not know what tears were.

You placed your hand over Ultraman’s other one. The same hand where he had buried a dagger. A strange dagger, glowing green and purple at the same time. You looked at him with tears in your eyes. You did not want to cry. But you could not stop it. He drove it in deeper. You trembled. Gasped. You felt the poison entering your blood, spreading through your body like frozen fire.

And then you felt your body move. The dagger was no longer in his hand. It was Lex. Lex Luthor had arrived, had stepped close without you seeing him, and now he held your body and the dagger’s handle in his hand. You looked at him without understanding. Your vision blurred. Everything became hazy.

“I’m sorry, Clark,” you thought. The words formed inside your head like a prayer, like a whisper he would never hear. “I’m sorry I won’t make it to the restaurant. I’m sorry I never told you how much I love you. Not even my first ‘I love you.’ I’m sorry I wasn’t honest. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything from the beginning. I’m sorry I lied to you, even if it was through silence. I’m sorry I didn’t kiss you one more time before leaving. I’m sorry I didn’t stay that night. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for everything, Clark. Everything.”

“My sweet, sweet project,” you heard Luthor’s voice pull you back to the present. He caressed your cheek with his cold hand, with a softness that disgusted you more than any blow ever could. His fingers traced your skin as if you were a pet, as if you were something pretty that belonged to him. “Do you know the best part?” he said, leaning close to your ear. His voice was a poisonous whisper, so close you could feel his warm breath against your skin. “How were you supposed to tell the man who was in love with you that sooner or later, you were going to betray him so I could stand face-to-face with Superman? How were you going to look him in the eyes and say, ‘I love you, but I was going to hand you over too’? See? This was better. I did you a favor. I spared you the shame. I spared you from having to see his face when he learned the truth.”

You looked at him in desperation. Your eyes, already fading, tried to throw hatred at him, but only sadness came out. You did not want his words to be true. But something inside you knew he was right. Not because of what you wanted. Because of what you were. Because of what they had made you into. Because you had been created to betray. Created to hurt. And even if you had wanted to change, even if you had wanted to be different, your fate had been written before you were even born.

“Don’t worry,” Luthor continued, straightening up and wiping his hand on his jacket as if he had touched something filthy. “Ultraman can finish your work for you. That dagger was necessary. Created from flowing energy and poisoned kryptonite. I just want you to know...” He paused. He looked at you with his cold eyes, without mercy, without a single trace of humanity. “Just as I created you, I can discard you. You are not the first. You will not be the last. You are only another number, L008L. That is all. You were never anything more.”

Those were his last words. He pulled the dagger out in one brutal motion. Blood spilled from your body, hot, too hot, and yet you felt cold. So cold. Your eyes slowly dimmed. The white ceiling blurred above you. The edges of your vision darkened. You could barely feel the pain anymore. Only an immense exhaustion. A deep sleep calling to you from the very core of your being. Your body fell to the floor with a dull thud. Blood spread beneath you like red wings. Your lips tried to form one word. Just one. The most important one.

Maybe it was not the life I wanted, you thought as the light went out forever. But I will never regret meeting you, Clark. Never. Not one day. Not one second. In the end, you freed me. You made me feel human. You gave me something no one had ever given me before: a reason to want to live. And even though I couldn’t stay... I leave peacefully. Because I had you. Because I felt you. Because for a few months, I was yours. And you were mine.

Maybe in another life, Clark. Maybe in another life I can have a better life. Maybe in another life I can be a real person. Someone who deserves you. Someone who can stay by your side forever. Maybe in another life, when you arrive at the restaurant, I will already be waiting for you with a smile. Maybe in another life I can tell you ‘I love you’ every morning. Maybe in another life, Clark... maybe in another life.

I love you, I love you, Clark...

And then, nothing. Silence. Darkness. Cold. Your heart, the one you believed you did not have, the one Clark had awakened with a touch inside an elevator, stopped. The heartbeats that had leapt with happiness when he kissed you, that had trembled with fear when Luthor caught you, that had cried with sorrow when you thought of never seeing him again... faded. One after another. Until none were left.

You never found out that Clark waited for you with a bouquet of purple and yellow tulips, the ones you liked because you said they looked like little suns. He had chosen them one by one at the flower shop, asking which were the prettiest, which would last the longest. The florist had laughed at him because he kept changing his mind. “They’re for someone special,” Clark had said with flushed cheeks. “For someone very special.”

You never knew that inside a small box lined with blue velvet was the key to his apartment. The one he was going to give you so you could spend more time with him. So you could stay. So you would know his home was yours too. He had gone to the hardware store that very morning, made a copy of his key, and placed it inside the little box as if it were a treasure. “I hope she likes it,” he had told the locksmith, who looked at him strangely. “I’m sure she will,” Clark replied, though he was not sure of anything.

You never knew he had rehearsed again and again in the men’s bathroom at work, standing in front of the mirror with a crumpled paper in his hand. That he had repeated the words until he memorized them, though he had written them down too, just in case. He had locked himself in the bathroom five times that day. His coworkers wondered what was wrong with him. Lois asked if he was sick. “No, no,” Clark said, “I’m just nervous.” “Nervous about what?” Lois asked. “Nothing,” Clark lied. And then he went back to rehearsing.

“I thought I would never meet the love of my life,” he whispered in the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror, holding the crumpled paper he could barely read anymore after folding and unfolding it so many times. “And then you appeared as if it were nothing. And I thought it was a dream. But I love you. I love you so much that keeping it to myself any longer would be bad for my heart, because I don’t like lying, and lying to you would be not telling you this. So here I am. Here I am, telling you that I love you. That I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. If you want that, of course. I don’t want to pressure you. But if you want to... I do.”

You never knew that he kept watching every time the restaurant door opened. That his heart jumped at every sound. That he ordered a glass of water just to have something in his hands, because he did not know what to do with his nerves. That he checked the clock every two minutes. That the tulips began to wilt on the table, their yellow and purple petals losing color, falling one by one like silent tears. That the waiter asked if he wanted to order something and he said, “No, not yet. She’s about to arrive.” That the waiter came back half an hour later and said, “Are you sure you don’t want to order something while you wait?” And Clark said, “No, thank you. She’ll be here any minute.” That the waiter walked away with a pitying smile, looking at him with sadness.

You never knew that the hours passed. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. The restaurant slowly emptied. Couples left hand in hand. Groups of friends said goodbye while laughing. The lights were turned off one by one. And Clark stayed there, sitting in the same chair, with the wilted tulips and the velvet box in his pocket, warm against his leg because he had touched it a thousand times to make sure it was still there.

You never knew he was the last customer in the restaurant. That the waiter had to tell him, regretfully, that they were closing. That Clark lifted his face, and for one second, the waiter saw something in his eyes he could not explain. An enormous sadness. An emptiness too vast to fit inside one person.

“Sir,” the waiter said gently, “I’m very sorry, but we’re closing now. We’ve actually been closed for an hour. We didn’t want to bother you, but...”

Clark blinked. He looked around. The restaurant was empty. Chairs were stacked on top of tables. The floor had been swept. Almost all the lights were off, except the one above his table. He had been waiting so long that he had not noticed everything slowly going dark around him.

“I’m sorry,” Clark said, his voice hoarse. He stood slowly, as if moving hurt. He took money from his pocket and left it on the table. Much more than necessary. He took the tulips and walked out slowly, aimlessly, with his heart heavier than ever. The streets were empty. The wind blew cold. Clark walked without knowing where he was going. He just walked. And walked. Until he reached the door of your apartment without knowing how.

You never knew that he did not sleep that night. That he called your phone again and again. Once. Ten times. Thirty. A hundred. That the phone rang and rang and no one answered. That he left messages at first, nervous, worried messages. “Hi, it’s me. Are you okay? I got to the restaurant. I waited for you. Did something happen? Please call me.” Then sadder messages. “Hey, it’s already eleven. Where are you? I’m worried because you’re not answering. Please call me when you get this.” Then more desperate ones. “It’s two in the morning. I called everywhere. No one knows where you are. Please, please answer me. Don’t do this to me. Don’t disappear like this. I’m begging you.” And then, near dawn, there was only one blank message. Thirty seconds of silence. Because he no longer had any words left.

You never knew that he went to your apartment and knocked on the door until his hand hurt. That he called the neighbors. That he asked people on the street. That no one had seen anything. That no one knew anything. That he sat on the hallway floor with his back against your door and waited until the sun came up. And when the sun rose, he was still there. With dead tulips in his pocket and the key he never got to give you. And he stayed there for much longer, until the building doorman had to ask him to leave because the neighbors were complaining.

You never knew that Clark returned the next day. And the next. And the next. That he searched hospitals, police stations, everywhere. That he used his powers, his superhero hearing, to listen for your voice somewhere. But he did not hear you. Because you could no longer speak. Because your voice had gone with your blood, with your heart, with your final breath. And Clark, no matter how hard he listened, no matter how much he flew across the city, no matter how many numbers he called... never found you. Because Luthor had erased you. Because the laboratories were hidden. Because the walls were thick and shielded. And because you were no longer anywhere.

You never knew that Clark never found out what happened. He never knew you had a number on your shoulder. He never knew you were a project. He never knew Luthor had created you. He never knew you had been sent to kill him. He never knew you protected him until the end. He never knew you died without telling him the truth. He never knew your final thought was him. He never knew you loved him. Because you never told him. Because you never had time. Because death arrived before your words could.

You never knew that you protected his secret with your soul. That not once, not even when the dagger was inside you, not even when you could feel death so close you could almost touch it, did his name escape your lips. You did not say that Clark was Superman. You did not betray him. You protected him. With your final breath. With your final thought. With the last beat of your heart. You protected him. And he never knew. He never knew that the girl who arrived at the Daily Planet with a false name and a rehearsed smile, the girl who blushed when he held her hand, the girl who kissed as if every kiss might be the last... had saved him. Without him doing anything. Alone. With her silence. With her death.

Maybe in another life, Clark would not have let you go that night. Maybe he would have stayed one more minute. Maybe he would have held you tighter, longer, as if something inside him told him it was the last time. Maybe he would have said, “Don’t go alone,” and walked you to your door. Maybe he would have gone upstairs with you. Maybe he would have been there. Maybe he would have heard Luthor. Maybe he would have seen Ultraman. Maybe he could have done something. Maybe he would have saved you. Maybe everything would have been different.

But this life was not made of maybes. This life was made of pain. Of projects. Of numbers on shoulders. Of owners who create you and discard you as if you were trash. And sometimes, only sometimes, it was made of loves that arrive too late. Loves that arrive right when there is no time left. Loves that teach you what it means to be human just before you stop being one.

And maybe that, even if it hurts more than any dagger, is enough. Maybe for Clark, it will not be. Maybe he will spend the rest of his life wondering what happened, why you left, why you disappeared without saying anything, why you did not answer the phone, why you never arrived at the restaurant, why the tulips wilted alone on the table while he waited for you with a velvet box in his pocket. Maybe he will never find answers. Maybe he will always wonder. Maybe he will always look for you without knowing there is nothing left to find.

Because you are no longer here. Because you left the same way you arrived: in silence, without anyone seeing it, without anyone knowing. Alone. Like a project that stopped working one day. Like a light going out, and no one noticing it was gone.

"Dex?"

He heard you voice tremble beneath the downpour from above. Dex wanted to attribute it solely to the rain. His mind was desperate to connect the hesitation in your tone to the weather. To anything other than what he witnessed. To what you realized he saw. Your eyes -- the ones he came to memorize in his mind -- were wide with concern. Fear. It was an expression he had yet to see on you. Confidence was the standard and a smile was your default, but fear? It changed your whole body. What once were animated hands now hung limply, fingers restless at your side. Your posture had sunk slightly, crestfallen in the wake of the revelation. Dex wanted to form a concrete thought, but his mind buzzed with activity. He could see your lips moving, but the sound of static was too overwhelming.

"... somewhere and talk about this?"

Dex pushed through the white noise, clearing the thick haze of his mind until he was present once more. The mission. The rain. You. It all came surging back. You had moved closer. Did he miss you closing the distance the same was he missed some of your words? Had his overstimulated mind lose that time? Or had he chosen to ignore you to preserve what last bit of sanity he had left?

"Dex," you implored, "Can we talk? Please?"

The pad of Dex's thumbs pressed against the handles of the blades he held before he moved to slip them into his belt. He took a step back, then another. Your hands wanted to reach out. To connect. Being unable to only seemed to distress you more. He hated that. The mission was still active. He hated that more. There would be no closing it until you were both safe and out of sight.

"Target's eliminated," he reported, turning towards the direction of the stakeout point, "I'll grab the gear. Go back to the car."

"Dex--"

You had moved to follow after him. It was a mistake. Your steps were swiftly halted when Dex spun around. He stared you down, eyes hardened and void of warmth. The sight had you more than just pause. Danger didn't just tease at the edges. It consumed and filled the space between you.

"The car. Now."

The words had you flinching, as if delivered with a sturdy blow. The order had snapped something in you. Dex watched a your lips parted to speak, but no words came as you seemed to decide against it. You reached up to wipe the rain -- or at least what he thought was rain -- from the corner of your eyes before you turned to leave. You passed the two bodies, only slowing to pick up one of the flashlights from the ground. Dex didn't wait for you to leave. The target was down. It was only a matter of time before police would be dispatched and search the woods. The white noise rose in the back of his mind as Dex walked back to the stakeout point. He broke down the sniper rifle, secured it in the case, and collected all traces of your presence onsite. He picked up the now muddy coat that he threw off in haste to get to you, slipped it on to conceal his tactical gear. He found your fallen hat as well, tucking it into the backpack.

It was around that time Dex saw the first man begin to stir. Dex glared up ahead at the men that laid on the ground. They were the reason. The disruption was their fault. He moved without thinking. The slip of a blade cut through the rain, embedding itself into the skull of the first man. The same fate met the second man soon after. He picked up the remaining flashlight without slowing down his stride, continued his trek back to the car.

You were waiting by the rental, leaning against the passenger's side door as Dex cleared the woods and stepped onto the dirt road. He fished the key from his pocket and unlocked the car before he moved to store the bags in the trunk. By the time he slipped into the driver's seat, you had already seated yourself in the passenger's side seat and buckled yourself in. Dex yanked his Bullseye mask from his face and tucked it into the pocket of his coat. Between the rain and mud, the rental would be a mess. They'd have to pay extra fees for the carelessness. Something Dex knew would upset you... or rather upset you further. Dex risked a glance in your direction as he moved to buckle himself in. You were quiet, uncharacteristically so. Your arms were crossed over yourself, fingers curling into the soaked fleece you wore. Reddened eyes stared ahead, silently waiting for him to drive.

The drive back had only the sound of rain to fill the silence. The bed and breakfast had quieted down significantly by the time you both returned, granting the opportunity to grab the bags and make it to the rooms without anyone seeing the disheveled state you both were in. You both walked down the short corridor towards your separate rooms, keys quietly unlocking the doors across from one another. Dex's hand remained on the doorknob. Not yet pushing the door open to step inside. He listened for a pause, for the sound of you turning, for the possibly of even a word.

CLICK.

Dex looked over his shoulder as the door to your room ticked shut, followed by the flick of the lock. His jaw set as walked into his room. He let the door close behind him, dropping his case by his feet. Flipping the lock on the door, he stripped himself from his soaked coat. The fabric felt tougher, made it harder to peel off. Frustrated, Dex ripped the remainder of the coat from his arms. Hands clawed at the rest of his wet clothes until he was rid of them. He ran his hands over his face, raked through his hair as he forced himself to breathe. Steady breath in, hold, then slow breath out.

Just like you showed him once.

Fuck.

Dex dropped onto the bed, face down on the mattress. What the hell was he going to do now? Dex buried his face into the nearest pillow as the noise in his head turned up slowly. For once, he welcomed the static. He let the white noise in his head drown out the thought of you and what he saw, pushed the responsibility of figuring it all out until the next morning. He slept. Barely. Restless, he turned and twisted beneath the sheets. He fell in and out of consciousness, in-between the sleep he needed and the twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach that prevented him from a moment of respite.

"I saw the news this morning, bud. We're very happy about this one. I'll reach out with your next mission once it comes in. Absolutely crushing it, you two."

The message came in early morning from Mr. Charles. Things didn't feel right, even with the stamp of approval from the higher ups. Dex threw on a pair of sweats and a tank before he padded across the hall to your door. His knuckle brushed against the door before he tapped two solid knocks against the wood. He waited, only earning silence in return.

"It's me," he finally said, knocking once more.

Nothing.

Dex contemplated grabbing a knife and breaking the door open, even going so far as to check the hall around him. Setting his hand on the doorknob, he expected the resistance that came with a locked room. Instead, the handle turned completely, clicking open softly. Dex wordlessly slipped inside. Maybe you were in the restroom, maybe you were ignoring him still. Either way, he needed to see you. Better to ask for forgiveness than an apology. Not that he'd actually ask for either. He closed the door behind him, turned towards the room. The empty room. No suitcase. No bed that was slept in. Not a single trace of you left behind.

You were gone.

And you stayed gone for days.

More accurately, you were gone for nine days, one hour, forty-five minutes, and twenty-three seconds.

The first day was wasted in France, where you seemingly turned off your phone and forced Dex to search nearly every five star hotel and restaurant within a respectable distance from the airport for you.

He took a flight back to Washington on day two, where he spooked your address out of the poor girl who sat outside of Mr. Charles's office. Once that was obtained, he searched your apartment, which he suspected was the address you must have supplied to Charles for CIA records. The minimalist space he broke into in no way aligned with your personal style. It was too clean and muted. Boring. It has absolutely none of your touch, your style, or your warmth.

Day three consisted of combing through the dummy apartment, the leasing apartment, and what he could find of your financials to extract your real apartment address in DC.

Days four was spent casing your actual place, waiting for you to reveal yourself.

He lost his patience by day five, inevitably breaking into the window of your living room to take a look around. The sight of your apartment made Dex dizzy. Compared to the bogus apartment the CIA had on file for you, this place felt loud and lived in. Comfortable, if not a little chaotic. Plush seating overflowed with soft blankets and decorative pillows, bookshelves littered with paperbacks and trinkets. Each room had a wall of a different, deeply rich color. There was always something on a wall as well. Artwork, a mirror, a shelves filled with bottles and vases, a plant. There was still no sign of you though. He moved through the space and stepped into your bedroom, where he found a very old, very worn green sweater with NEW YORK in big, bold letters thrown over the small chair in the corner of your room. Dex found himself brushing his thumb against the soft cotton sleeve, contemplating the potential insanity of his next move.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Getting into New York unseen proved difficult, but not impossible on day six. From there, Dex moved a little more comfortably. This was his city. The same city he almost died and was reborn in. The same city that granted him his new life. He resumes his search similar to his method in France. Only instead of a five star radius around the airport, Dex lined up the top ten most expensive hotels in the city. He knocked the more traditional ones from the list with ease. You weren't going to stay in historic hotels, as nice as they were. Your choice in living space would be as colorful and sleek as you were. That fact was exactly how he spotted you.

Shopping bags swung from your hands and bright red heels click, click, clicked against the marble of the Baccarat Hotel. He kept his head down and stayed a safe enough distance away, but his eyes found themselves locked onto you. You looked... good. More than good, if he were being honest. Dressed in far finer garbs than the last time he saw you. He left a wide space, watching as you walked into the nearby elevator. Once the elevator doors closed with you inside, Dex moved from his cover. He observed each numbered floor above the elevator doors light up. One by one, floor by floor, until it stopped at the top floor. He scouted out the most expensive suite. The only one that occupied the top floor of the hotel. Bedroom, separate living and dining area, kitchenette. An opulent waste to Dex, but to you? He had no doubts you'd book the expensive suite without a second glance.

Dex had initially planned on cutting your trip short. Make his presence known. Yet somehow he found himself on day seven, waiting for you to leave the hotel. It was nearly afternoon when you finally appeared, immediately hailing a cab. He trailed the cab on the motorcycle he borrowed off some guy the night before, following you across town. All the way to... a maximum security prison. Despite his desire to track, Dex kept his distance. He may be working for the CIA now, but he knew better than to tempt fate and follow as you went inside. You were in there for two hours. The visitation time. Though his memory was spotty during his incarceration before Vanessa Fisk broke him out, he remembered how some inmates would receive visitors. Dex waited those two hours, noted the way your lips were set in a firm line when you left. He wondered what -- or who -- in that prison had caused that expression on your face. He wondered if he'd get the chance to ask about it someday.

He succumbed to the agitating feeling in his stomach on day eight and booked two tickets back to DC for the next morning. He kept his distance for eight days. You left without a warning or a trace. Without an explanation. Instead, you chose to run away to New York. He didn't understand it, yet he still sought you out. Still found you. That was honorable in his mind. A politeness. Surely you would agree with his assessment of the situation, if he could just get you alone. A task that currently felt impossible when you planted yourself in the middle of a packed night club that evening.

You wore a winter blue dress that draped over your front and dropped at your back. The fabric looked like it was dusted with sparkles. You looked like stars rippling across dark ocean waters as you danced. The lights in the club reflected against the glitter in your hair. At least that was how it looked from where he leaned on the second floor railing. Dex wasn't a fan of night life. The odd hours of service, the loud and unfamiliar music, the cramped space... It was a sweaty, sensory overloaded mess. He had little interest in it. Although it was impossible not to have his curiosity piqued at the sight of you that night. He watched as you moved to the music in the sea of bodies. The way your hips dipped and swayed, the way your hands trailed along your body and the body in front of you.

Wait.

Dex's grip on the railing tightened at the sight of another dancing near you. Was this normal? Did people just touch one another in night clubs? He watched with a different kind of intensity in his eye as you continued to move. This time his eyes were burning holes into the guy's hands, which trailed a little too close to your lower back. He considered his options, fairly certain he'd tip his hand if that man suddenly dropped dead on the dance floor. So his eyes continued following your movements, his feet stepping to keep you in his line of sight.

You departed sometime in the early morning on day nine, sweat covered and hair mussed from the night. Dex followed you down the streets of Queens, down the city blocks until you made your way up the ramp of a diner. Dex stared up at the giant letters above the building.

BEL AIRE DINER.

The space was nearly empty and looked like repairs had been made since the last time Dex was there months ago. A new lobster tank in place, patched up walls where bullet holes used to be. You sat at a window booth, eyes moving over the plastic menu in your hands. The glow of the lights was softer in the evening. Music softly played in the air as Dex made his way across the room. Your eyes don't lift from the menu when Dex slid into the booth across from you.

"Took you long enough."

You raised your gaze to look at Dex over the top of the menu.

"Over a week," you noted, "I was starting to think you weren't as good as they say you are."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"You didn't. At least not about that."

You set the menu down on the table, manicured nails tapping the tabletop as you leaned back in your seat. Dex set his forearms on the table as he leaned forward. He watched you, waited for your smile. You had smiled during the days he followed you. At the staff in the hotel, at the taxi drivers when you left the hotel, in the stores you shopped in. Your smile had been as carefree as your dancing earlier that night, but now? Now your face had none of that. You were pleasant, not openly hostile. However, the warmth that came so naturally to you had cooled significantly. Your lips parted to speak, but quickly stopped when a waitress made her way over to the table. Thankfully, it was not the same older woman as the last time Dex had visited the diner. The odds of anyone recognizing him diminished greatly. He sat back as the older woman smiled warmly as she approached.

"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes," the waitress said, "How long has it been, honey?"

"Too long," you replied, melting to the picture of ease.

"You're not getting your pancakes somewhere else, are you?"

"I wouldn't even dare to try and replace this place. However, if I were -- which I absolutely haven't at all -- they weren't half as good as here."

The older woman laughed, a hand resting on her hip. Dex watched as the waitress tipped her head in his direction, though she still addressed you when she spoke.

"And is this one the reason you haven't been around?" she asked, hint of a grin on her lips.

Dex raised an eyebrow faintly, interested in hearing your reply.

"Quite the opposite," you replied, "Benji here is the reason I'm back in town."

Benji? Dex made a face at the nickname, as you continued.

"Unfortunately, I got a job out of state," you explained further, "But I had some time and decided to take my friend here to my favorite place for breakfast."

"We'll get you the usual then. Same for your friend?"

The waitress looked at Dex, who nodded faintly.

"Yes, ma'am," he confirmed, earning a kind smile from the woman in response.

"Handsome and polite?" she grinned, scribbling down the order on a pad she pulled from her apron. She sent an obvious wink in your direction. "You got good taste in friends, honey."

You smile as the waitress collected the menu and made her way off to drop the orders into the kitchen. The curve of your lips faded slightly as you found yourself alone with Dex once more. Fingers itching for motion, you found yourself picking up the paper napkin nearby. You twisted it, then unrolled it. Repeated the motion in silence.

"If you're here to kill me," you finally said, eyes focused on the napkin as you continued to twist. "I'd prefer for it to happen after pancakes. Ideally, not in front of the staff. I've been coming here for years. It's a nice place and she's a nice lady. She works as a waitress most nights so she can watch her grandkids in the afternoon while her daughter's at work. If it happens here, the diner will be down for at least a couple days for a police investigation. She'll be out a few days worth of a paycheck. Some people live check to check. It'd be... rude. I don't want my last moment on earth to be an inconvenience in a place I really like."

"I'm not here to kill you."

Your fingers paused.

Your eyes rose.

"You're not?"

His answer was simple.

"Why would I?"

"Why wouldn't you?" you immediately asked, fingers tearing the napkin into strips as you added, "Mr. Charles would have dispatched you the moment you told him I ran. It would be the correct protocol for the CIA. AWOL or whatever..."

"Mr. Charles doesn't know."

Your eyes were touched with confusion.

"You didn't tell him I ran?"

"I didn't tell him anything."

You looked at him for a beat more before you began to lower your gaze to the napkin in your hand. Dex reached out, a large hand coming to rest over both of yours. It lingered there before Dex slowly curled his fingers around the torn napkin. He drew the pieces from your hands, leaving it at the edge of the table and out of your restless fingers.

"You--" you stopped yourself for a moment as the waitress brought over a couple waters, continuing when you were once again alone. "You saw what I did and then you just... sent me back to the car. You didn't give me the chance to talk about it. You were cold--"

"I was direct," he told you, "You were... upset. I was not equipped to fix that. We were in the middle of a mission. The target was just eliminated. Police would have been called. We already had two intruders onsite. You may not have liked it, but what I did was necessary."

Dex took note of your restlessness. The way your hands flexed open and closed, the feeling of your leg bouncing beneath the table. Quietly, Dex reached out and slid his napkin in your direction. He waited for you to take it. It seemed to soften some of the tenseness when you began to tear it to pieces.

"Why are you here, Dex?"

"You left," he simply replied, "I'm here bring you back."

"It can't be that simple."

"Why not?"

There was a brief pause as the waitress arrived with food. Two plates stacked with pancakes, fresh strawberries, and whipped cream. A small dish for butter and a bottle of syrup was left, as well as a few extra napkins. Neither of them moved as the waitress left them alone once more.

"Don't you have questions?" you asked him.

"I do," Dex replied, "I'll ask them when we get back to DC."

"Why?"

Dex gave you a look. Isn't it obvious? He motioned to the plates that sat between you both. Your ridiculously requested sweet treat in the early morning hours.

"It's 2AM, sweetheart."

Dex saw it then. The way you tried to bite down an incoming smile. The attempt was futile. There you were. The smile that was so big it touched your eyes and made them shine. The laugh -- soft at first, then slightly louder -- that took up space in his mind more then he'd like to admit. Dex found himself grinning. His first real smile in days. You picked up a fork and tugged your plate closer.

"These are my favorite pancakes in all of New York," you beamed, reaching out to drizzle syrup over your already sugar sweet plate, "From age six to ten, my parents would take me here before every drop off and after very summer pick-up from boarding school. Didn't matter what time of day. Pancakes were always ordered. I've yet to find a place that makes them this good."

"Why six to ten?" Dex asked, as he picked up his own fork.

"I was six when they first sent me to school in New York," you explained, "And they passed in a car accident when I was ten so..."

There must've been something in Dex's face -- the tilt of his head or a blink in the eyes -- that conveyed sympathy, because you were quick to keep talking.

"It's okay though. Really. I mean, at the time it definitely sucked. No one enjoys being orphaned during their formative years, but I ended up with a decent trust at eighteen. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough not to be terrified of the future."

Dex sat with that information for a moment. He was orphaned around that age. He didn't know why that sat on his tongue or why he wanted to share that piece of himself with you.

"Were you sent to an orphanage too?" he asked you.

Maybe one like Lyndhurst, where he had ended up, but for girls. Dex watched as you bit into a pancake piece before you shook your head at his question.

"A few of the teachers were concerned about a kid with my... condition being placed in the system," you shrugged faintly, "So when most of the kids went home to their families for the summer, I stayed at school. It wasn't too bad. There were other kids who didn't have places to go to and most of the teachers were around. It made it less lonely."

Dex felt his fingers tense around the fork he held, forced himself to soften the hold. Your experience was so unlike his own. Did that environment craft the person you became? Did his own upbringing make him the way he was? Would it have changed anything? He wasn't sure it would have.

"Sounds like a good place to land in."

"It was," you smiled, admiration in your voice, "I kinda owe my life to Xavier's. I make donations as frequently as I can. For a school for gifted youngsters, you can only imagine the kind of maintenance they need to keep that place running."

"'Gifted youngster'," Dex repeated, as he stabbed a piece of pancake onto his fork, "Is that what you are?"

"What I am is a mutant," you replied, thoughtfully, "Human-presenting, which others can't say, but I guess it's easier to call us 'gifted' when we're younger. Makes us feel special instead of different."

"You are different," Dex explained, simply, "But you're special too. You're... You're both."

He noted the way your face tinted faintly, a blush touching your cheeks. Your lips pressed to suppress a particularly deep smile. It took you a moment before you spoke again.

"I guess I stayed in New York because of Xavier's," you said, "Well, that and this place. There were a few years that I wasn't around. I got caught up in something that went sideways. I was advised to cut my losses and skip town, which I did. I tried Boston. I hated it. Thankfully, I got a call a few months back. A favor for a friend. My first time back in a while. I missed the city. I tried to visit this place, but the diner was closed for renovations. Some drug bust with the NYPD--"

"AVTF," Dex corrected, immediately, "And it wasn't a drug bust. It was a vigilante call."

"Whatever," you began to say, eyes focused on your pancake. You paused for a beat, eyes flickered up to look at Dex. "Wait.... How exactly do you know all that that?"

Dex smiled a little too proudly.

"You know what?" you quickly added, "I don't wanna know."

"You sure you don't want to know?"

"Of course I wanna know," you quickly replied, "Tell me everything and leave out nothing."

Dex smiled as you scooted forward in the booth, leaning in as he started to tell his story. You'd both spend the rest of the early morning meal that way. Just two people exchanging words over pancakes without a care in the world. Dex embraced the opportunity to speak with you, to witness your smile once again. It felt like catching up on time lost. It's nearly 3AM when you stacked the now-empty plates and moved to pay at the register. Dex stopped you, suggested you hail the taxi while he covers the tab. You waved goodbye to the staff, whispering for Dex to remember to tip before you left. Dex watched as you made your way outside, through the double glass doors towards the sidewalk.

"Give the girl your jacket, honey."

Dex turned to spot the waitress, who was all smiles as he moved towards the register.

"It's cold out," the older woman advised, "Offering your jacket would be sweet. She seems like the type of girl that likes sweet."

Dex looked over his shoulder slightly, caught the sight of you -- still in your shimmering dress and heels, most likely hopped up on sugar pancakes, and soon to experience the crash that followed -- slowly twirling circles on the sidewalk outside of the diner and not at all thinking about hailing a cab.

"Yeah," he hummed out, under his breath, "She's a sweet one."

He pulled out eighty bucks, dropped it on a thirty buck tab. He murmured a faint 'keep the change' before he made his way out of the diner. You were mid-spin when you came to a stop, eyes landing on Dex... and his jacket. Held open for you. He got the pleasure of seeing the glimmer of surprise, followed by earnest recognition. You said nothing as you turned to slip your arms through the sleeves of the jacket. You're instantly engulfed with heat. You silently insisted to yourself that was the reason your cheeks get warm.

A taxi is hailed moments later, Dex rattling off your hotel to the driver as you both slip into the back seat. The ride to the hotel is spent in relative silence, with only the sound of the radio playing. Some unfamiliar pop star singing some enchanted song. He couldn't focus on the lyrics. Not when the side of your body leaned into his. Not when your head finds its way onto his shoulder. Dex spent the next twenty minutes sitting completely still, unable to move. Not wanting to move for fear of disturbing you.

When the taxi neared the front of the hotel, Dex rouses you with a hand on your knee. You insisted on paying the taxi this time and bid the driver a safe night before you moved to join Dex on the sidewalk outside the hotel.

"Keep it," Dex said, as you began to shrug out of the jacket, "You can give it back to me at the airport. LaGuardia. 11:30AM. Gate B13."

"You were that sure you'd find me by today?" you asked him.

"Got the ticket yesterday," Dex smirked, nodding towards the jacket, "Ticket's in the inner right pocket."

Your eyes narrow playfully as you pat a hand over the right side of the jacket, fingers dipping into the front before you drew out a flight ticket from the pocket. You blew out a small chuckle before placing it back into the pocket once more.

"Where are you staying?" you asked him.

"Got a hotel down the road," Dex replied, "Cheaper. Guy at the front desk doesn't look too closely at IDs. Takes cash."

"Sounds about right," you laughed, "Do you need to get another cab?"

"I can walk."

"You'll be cold without your jacket."

Dex smirked.

"I'll live."

You smiled in return.

"You better."

Dex watched as you shifted on your feet. Weight from one heel to the other as you hugged the jacket around yourself. You shift closer to him. One step followed another until you stood toe-to-toe. You looked up -- and up -- to meet Dex's eyes. Your face softened, grew more heartfelt. Dex felt a chill roll down his spine as you rose onto the tips of your toes, arms reaching to wrap around his neck and shoulders. His hands took a moment before he remembered to move them, placed them cautiously at your hips. You're holding him -- hugging him -- with your face buried slightly into the crook of his neck.

"Thank you for finding me," you murmured against his shoulder, a small laugh in your words as you added, "And for not killing me."

You raise your head just enough to press small kiss to his scarred cheek. He wills his pulse to slow at the contact. It refused to. Instead Dex felt the beating go into overdrive. It continued to beat as you lowered yourself back to your height. A relentless pounding forming two words when you began to pull away. Don't go. Dex's fingers curled around the fabric of his jacket. He drew you closer before your arms could fall away completely from his shoulders.

His head dipped, swiftly closed what little distance there was between your face and his. Between your lips. Dex had never really been one to participate in gestures of romance. He had seen others perform the motions, yet so rarely engaged in it himself. But this moment? With you, in the early hours of the day, still beneath stars and moonlight and city lights? This he can do. So he kissed you. His lips were hesitant at first, unsure. A soft brush against softer lips. Testing. Slowly teasing. Then, when he was certain you wouldn't push him away, he tasted. He kissed deeper, hands slipped beneath the jacket you wore. Fingertips slid against your sides, gripped at your hips. Pulled you closer, kept you pressed against him. Your hands dropped from his shoulders and came to rest against his chest. His lips begged for entry and claimed your mouth completely once granted.

You'd both part slowly with shuddered, nearly desperate breaths. Dex dropped his forehead down, lightly rested it atop your head as you gathered your bearings. His thumbs brushed against your hips slightly before he withdrew his hands, taking the front of the jacket and drawing it closed. You said nothing as Dex brushed a hand along the length of your arm. A small touch. A quiet gesture. Your fingers grazed against his for a beat before breaking away completely. Neither of your spoke again. Dex simply nodded towards the hotel, a silent signal for you to head inside. You didn't question it. You moved on shaky legs towards the large entrance of the hotel doors, looked back slightly where Dex still remained. He waited until you were completely inside before moving from the sidewalk and down the long city block, towards his own hotel.

Something shifted in the air, changed the winds irrevocably, but Dex paid it no mind.

At this point in time, Dex simply existed with one simple fact.

You weren't gone anymore.