He doesn't sleep much, and always tries his hardest not to wake you. He's remembered everything you've ever told him and even knows things you haven't said.

Dex is different from the men you've known before. He has a way of making you feel thrilled and on edge while comforting you like no other.

He's also better looking than your exes.

He's taller than you, and he's insanely muscular. He spends his days and nights throwing objects around, so his arms and back are more than exercised.

He has thin blond hair that just begs you to run your hands through it as you watch him melt.

And, goddamn, the scar on his cheek.

It lifts up together with the corner of his lip when he smirks—that's how you know he's plotting something.

He chews on the inside of it when he's nervous or bored, despite how many times you tell him to stop.

It makes him look dangerous, and it's soft to the touch. It's a sensitive part of his skin that makes him shiver when you place your fingers over it.

Dex sometimes rests his head on your chest at night, always with the scarred side facing upwards. You choose to take it a sign that he trusts you fully, like a pup showing its stomach.

And when you kiss it, everything fades. Every girl kisses her boyfriend's cheek, that's normal. However, you specifically choose to press your lips against the scar every time.

You were stepping out of your apartment when you saw him. At first, you only glanced over politely, because that's what neighbours did when they were trying to decide whether they had to be friendly or could get away with a nod, right? 

Then your eyes narrowed slightly, your hand still resting on the doorknob behind you. “You look familiar,” you said.

Dex froze.

Then you smiled, and it wasn’t the smile of someone who had recognised him from a news report or a file photo. 

You couldn’t place him yet, good. It would be a shame to have to kill you. Instead, you seemed curious, maybe a little teasing. 

Actually, it was worse than that. You looked interested.

“Got a name, new guy?” you asked.

He knew he should have had one ready. He had lied for far more important reasons before, but now, his pretty new neighbor was standing there in her doorway, looking at him with that faint little spark of amusement, and for one stupid second his mind went blank.

“Tony,” he said, and the name he made came out too quickly. It was simply the first thing he had grabbed because it was the first shape his panic could make.

“Tony.” You repeated it back to him, and really  that was where the trouble started, because you said it like you were trying it on. You looked over him once, not subtle enough to ignore but not bold enough for him to call you on it, and Dex felt the attention burn through his skin.

This must be what people meant when they said someone was checking them out. 

“Well,” you said, stepping back into your apartment, your smile wide just enough to make it clear you knew exactly what you were doing: flirting. “See you around, Tony.”

The door closed behind you.

Dex stood in the hallway with his duffel still on his shoulder.

From that moment, he hated Tony. 

Which was insane, obviously, because Tony was nothing but a mask, a lie invented in panic. Tony was supposed to disappear the second your door shut. He was supposed to remain a name, and it did.

But then you kept saying it.

You said, “Hey, Tony,” when you passed him by the mailboxes. You asked “How was your day, Tony?” when you caught him coming up the stairs too late at night. You said “Need some sugar, Tony?” when you leaned against your doorway. Every time you said it, the name felt warmer than it had any right to be. You made it sound familiar and intimate.

Well, Dex thought. Fuck. 

—

The first time Dex slept with you, it really wasn’t intentional. 

Well. 

It was almost ten PM on a Tuesday, when Mrs. Smithers, the neighbor across from you, had called you five minutes earlier in a panic because her cat had gotten out again, and Mrs. Smithers had a bad hip, no patience, and a fifteen-year-old “kitten” who liked to wedge himself under the radiator by the stairwell whenever he felt underappreciated. You were already dressed for bed when she rang, but she sounded so genuinely upset, you just had to shove your feet into slippers, dragged on the nearest cardigan, and went downstairs to retrieve her stupid cat like the apparently unpaid superintendent you had become.

By the time you got the cat back into Mrs. Smithers’ arms, you were thanked with three peppermints from the bottom of her handbag and very much ready to go back to your apartment.

Then you saw Tony coming up the stairs.

He had a shirt pulled tight across his chest, looking tired and hollow-eyed, yet still unfairly fuckable in every sensible thought in your head left the room. 

When he got to your level, his eyes dropped.

The nightgown you were wearing was not indecent, technically. It covered everything it needed to cover, and the cardigan did most of the work, but the hem had ridden higher than you realised, one strap slipping down your shoulder. 

You managed a smile. “Late night, Tony?”

You leaned against your door frame as if you hadn’t been waiting for an excuse to catch your weird, hot neighbour off guard for days. 

“Yeah,” he said.

“That’s it?”

His eyes moved over you once, but didn’t say anything more. 

“I… was about to make tea,” you said. “If you wanna join me?”

Dex didn’t drink tea. It had never been his thing. Apparently, Tony loved tea, because he said yes.

Your apartment was warm and lived-in, and he looked almost out of place standing in the middle of it. The click of the lock sounded louder than it should have.

“You always this… tense?” you asked.

“Yes.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“Sometimes.”

Something about how he said it made you laugh, and his eyes snapped to your mouth. 

There! There he was!

That was most definitely not Tony, though you didn’t know that yet. There was a sinking feeling that something else was underneath him, though, restrained and hungry and mean enough to make your stomach dip.

You moved past him toward the kitchen, close enough that your shoulder brushed his arm.

You reached for two mugs you both knew you were never going to use, then turned back and found him watching you with that same starving look. 

So you thought the best course of action was to be forward. Why waste time, right? “Can I kiss you?”

For one second, he did nothing.

Then, he walked to where you were slowly, and that almost made it worse. If he had rushed you, maybe you could have laughed. If he had grabbed you, maybe you could have pretended to be surprised. But he came to you like he was trying very hard not to scare you. 

He wanted to kiss you, but his mind didn’t know why. It wasn’t useful or necessary to his routine or his survival. Then why did he want you so much?

He struggled to place this desire, so it was eating him alive. Still, his hand settled at your waist

One second his mouth was careful, the next you made a  stupid sound against him and his whole posture changed. His control broke so fast it almost felt violent.

Whatever confusion he felt about wanting you dissolved, little by little. He just knew now that it felt right. 

You grabbed at his shirt as he pushed you back against the counter. The mugs rattled behind you, forgotten, and the kettle screamed itself while he kissed you harder, while you laughed once into his mouth because “Jesus Christ, Tony,” and then he went still for half a breath.

It was enough for you to understand why he flinched at the name. 

You said it again later. You couldn’t help it. You were under while he was stretching you out, dizzy and already too far gone, your fingers were twisted in his shirt, his mouth dragging every feasible thought out of your head until there was nothing left but the ruined sound of your own voice.

“Tony.”

Dex hated it.

The name felt wrong. It crawled under his skin. It made his teeth clench and his hand tighten against your bedpost because you said it as if Tony was the one making your thighs quiver. As if Tony was the one you wanted.

But what was he supposed to do? Tell you to stop? 

He couldn’t snap and tell you, That’s not my name. He couldn’t say, I’m not Tony. I’m Dex. Say Dex. Say my name. Say it like you mean it.

Because he had done this to himself.

He had handed you Tony on a silver platter. He had let you flirt with Tony. He had stepped into your apartment as Tony and kissed you as Tony and now your hands were on him and your mouth was saying the wrong name, and all he could do was take it.

And yes, he felt violent because of it, but he didn’t want to hurt you. So instead, in his head, he was punishing you, but not in the way that you could complain about. 

He fucked you harder and rougher in a way that made your head tip back and your smug little smile disappear.

You gasped his fake name again and felt him lose another inch of control.

“Ton—”

His mouth came down on yours before you could finish it.

You made a shocked sound into the kiss, and he swallowed it like it didn’t have any right to exist in this world. His grip tightened and body sank into yours until the whole apartment seemed to shrink.

You should have been embarrassed by how fast you folded. You should’ve been flustered by how rough this was, especially for the first time. 

That night, you thought Tony was the kind of man who didn’t talk much in bed because his body did enough damage on its own. You had no idea he was biting back his real name.

You had no idea every breathy little “Tony” made him jealous of a man who didn’t exist.

Later, when your breathing had finally slowed down, you laid beside him with one arm thrown over your face, feeling thoroughly ruined and pleased with yourself all the same.

He was still awake, flat on his chest, staring at you like he was still recovering.

You only reached out and traced the spine scar on his back. You placed two fingers there first, tracing the raised line gently. 

His whole body went rigid, like he had been waiting for the question before you even knew you were going to ask it. What happened? Who did that? Why do you have that?

You didn’t ask. Instead, you cupped his cheek and traced all the scars he had there too, and scooted ever closer for a cuddle.

You smiled against his shoulder. “Clumsy, Tony?”

Oh. You made it seem so… innocent, then.

“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

You shrugged, kissing the place beside the scar on his cheek. “So,” you said, voice rough, “tea?”

For a second, nothing. Then his mouth twitched. Eventually, a small, reluctant chuckle escaped his lips. 

You turned your head and smiled at him. “Was that a yes?”

He looked at you then, and there was something in his face you didn’t know how to read yet. His eyes felt too intense for this to be a one-time thing, as you intended. 

He should have left.

That was what guys did after a lapse in judgement, right? If this was even what that was. He had heard enough stories of it to know that they found their clothes, made an awkward joke and then went back across the hall and pretended none of this ever happened. 

That didn’t feel right, though. So Dex stayed.

You told yourself it was because he was tired. You told yourself he probably just fell asleep. You told yourself a lot of bullshit.

But in the morning, his arm was around your waist like it had always belonged there.

—

The thing about Dex was that he was a creature of habit. Ergo, he didn’t really do one-night stands.

So what you thought was a one-time pleasure fest ended with “Tony” showing up for “tea” every Tuesday at exactly 10 p.m., because apparently Dex had pencilled this into his schedule by now. Not that you were complaining, of course.

By week two, you had realised what tea stood for. By week three, you stopped acting surprised when the knock came like clockwork. By week four, you started answering the door in slips that made him forget how to speak for a second, his eyes dragging over you before snapping back to your face as if he had a single decent thought left in his head.  

That was also around the time Dex started thinking of you as his girl.

Obviously, Dex had never asked you officially. Dex didn’t do things like communicate. He observed and collected evidence instead: You opened the door for him every Tuesday, you let him in, you smiled when you saw him. So, naturally, you must be his girl.

The fact that you didn’t know was just a teeny tiny clerical error.

The bigger problem was Tony, because that was a hole he couldn’t un-dig. 

It started when you started asking things. Normal things, really, neighbor-y things. Things  a man with a fake name and a very real need to keep seeing you every Tuesday at 10 p.m. should have been prepared to answer.

“So, Tony,” you had asked once, sitting on your kitchen counter while he pretended not to stare at the bare stretch of your thigh beneath your nightgown, “what do you do?”

Dex should have said something boring like accounting. Or something closer to the bitter truth like security or freelance whatever. Instead, because you were looking at him with that teasing smile and he wanted you to keep looking, he said, “Carpentry.”

That was stupid. That was so goddamn stupid he wanted to punch a hole into the wall. Dex had never built a table in his life unless throwing someone through one counted, but you had smiled, and suddenly the lie was worth it. 

Of course you liked competent hands and l the idea of Tony making things instead of breaking them.

“Oh,” you said, smiling. “That’s kind of hot.”

And Dex, idiot that he was, took that information and buried himself alive with it.

Tony became a carpenter. Tony liked old buildings. Tony knew how to fix things, which unfortunately Dex actually didn’t really know, so he was really just winging it every time he repaired something in your apartment. Still, he kept doing it because you looked at him like you wanted to climb him.

Then it just spiralled from there.

Tony had a sister in Denver because you once said guys with sisters were usually less useless. Tony liked black coffee because you complained every time someone took too long to order their extra shit in coffee shops. Tony had once owned a dog named Felix because you said you didn’t trust people who hated animals. Tony listened to jazz because you said it sounded romantic, and Dex had gone home that night and listened to three hours of it with the focus of a man studying for a bar exam.

Tony was becoming a whole person.

Dex hated him because Tony was all the things Dex thought you would like, stitched together badly. Tony was a useful man, a normal man. Tony fixed your sink and let you make jokes and stood in your apartment at midnight with his shirt half-buttoned while you called him handsome.

Tony was the version of Dex who got you every Tuesday night.

You opened the door wearing something short and sheer. and Dex forgot about every lie he had ever told for one second. You looked sleepy and smug and too pleased with yourself, leaning against the doorframe like you had been waiting for him.

He had a routine now: Lock the door, check your window latch, then touch you. Except tonight you didn’t let him get that far. You grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him down before he could finish scanning the room.

He kissed you hard enough to make your back meet the wall next to your hanging jacket.

The lock clicked behind you. His hand found your waist. Your fingers dragged through his hair, and the sound he made into your mouth so unlike Tony the carpenter that your stomach flipped.

You said his fake name when his hand slid beneath the edge of your pyjama shirt. “Tony.”

His body seemed to reject the name even as his mouth pressed back harder, rougher, more desperate. You thought it was funny. You thought he liked being teased. So you said it again.

“Tony,” you mewled, softer this time, cruel even though you never meant to be.

Dex kissed you like he wanted to devour the name before it could escape.

He hated that Tony got your breathless voice and your hands pulling him closer. Tony got your shirt bunched in his grip. Tony got you looking up at him with your lashes heavy and your lips swollen and your whole body arching toward him like you had been made to fit under his hands.

Tony got the filth, and then he got to cuddle after.

Dex was the one doing all the wanting.

His mouth dragged back to yours, and the kiss turned messy. He lifted you off the floor like it was nothing, your legs locked around him, and he carried you away into the bedroom. 

By the time he got you there, you were clinging to him, needy and already smug about how wrecked he looked. His shirt was half-open because you had gotten impatient. His mouth found the sensitive spot beneath your ear that made you gasp every time because unfortunately Tony had learned you well.

No.

Dex had learned you well.

Dex was the one who knew how to kiss you until your sarcasm died in your throat. Dex was the one who knew exactly how to make you squirm and forget every clever thing you had planned to say.

Tony got the credit. Dex did the work.

Afterwards, Dex lay with you in the dark, and realised the hole he had dug was no longer a hole.

It was a grave, and Tony was lying in it with all the things Dex wanted.

Dex wanted to kill Tony, which was inconvenient, because this fake identity shared his body. Dex was jealous enough of himself that he once put his fist through the bathroom mirror just to watch Tony crack. Blood ran down his knuckles and the glass broke. Tony still wasn’t dead.

You turned your head toward him. “You know,” you murmured, “for a casual fling, you’re really clingy.”

His hand spread slowly over your stomach, possessive. “Casual?”

You smiled into the pillow, too ruined to work out the danger in it. “Yeah, Tony. Casual.”

His grip tightened.

And Dex, who had decided you were his girl weeks ago, stared into the dark and realised these clerical errors were seriously getting out of hand.

—

He left your apartment that Wednesday morning after you called him casual and Tony in the same breath, and for a while he convinced himself he was fine. 

He walked back across the hall and shut his door. He put the lock on and stood in the middle of his empty apartment with his shirt still smelling like you and your voice still in his head.

Tony. Casual. Tony. Casual. Tony. Casual. Tony. Casual. Tony. Casual.

His hand flexed once at his side.

He was angry, and Dex could admit that to himself in the privacy of his apartment, because there was no one there to look at him like he was a monster for it. 

Mostly, he was angry because none of it was your fault.

If you had done something wrong, he could have handled it. Wrong could be course corrected. But you had not done anything except believe the lie he gave you.

So, no. He was not going to knock on your door angry.

Never.

Still, the violence still had to go somewhere.

So he went out to kill task force agents. They had been getting too close anyway. They were a problem, and problems could be solved. 

These problems didn’t look up at him in bed and call him clingy. These problems didn’t touch the scar down his spine.

By the time the alley was bloody, Dex still didn’t feel any better.

That was annoying.

The next day, he heard you moving around through the wall, laughing at something the girl from 5B said. He could hear footsteps, the thud of a cupboard closing, and it made him feel worse. His girl was across the hall, and she didn’t know she was his girl.

By Friday, Dex admitted he needed information.

That was how he ended up watching the couple from 2C.

He wasn’t exactly stalking them in a creepy way, he told himself, which was a lie. It was objectively creepy. But they were together in a way that seemed stable and functional, so Dex observed them. The man from 2C had done something wrong. The woman was mad and said something like “boyfriends don’t lie to their girlfriends.” There were flowers involved. 

Then the man said, “I made a reservation.”

The woman paused.

Dex, standing one floor up in the stairwell like a lunatic, also paused.

Interesting.

Dinner seemed to help.

He followed them into the restaurant. He watched from across the room as they sat under yellow lights and talked too much and stole food from each other’s plates. The man held her hands, not to move her or stop her, just because he wanted to.

Dex frowned. Touch without purpose?

Then, he realised he did that to you all the time.

So maybe wanting was the purpose.

So he spent the weekend watching those two. 

By Tuesday, he had a plan.

At 10 p.m. exactly, he stood outside your door with dinner from the Greek place you liked and sunflowers from the florist down the street. 

You opened the door in your nightgown, smiling already.

Dex gripped the flowers a little tighter, holding up the food like an offering.

“I brought dinner.”

You blinked. Then your smile changed, softer and more confused at the same time. “Oh,” you said. “So we’re doing dinner now?”

Dex thought about the couple in 2C and how food fixed everything. “Yes,” he said.

Your eyes dropped to the flowers. “Are those for me?”

“Yes.”

You laughed, and for the first time in three days, the buzzing under his skin went quiet.

“Come in, Tony.”

Dex stepped inside as a man trying, very badly, to learn how to be yours properly.

He had done research. He had watched the couple, taken mental notes like a deranged field agent, and somehow arrived at the conclusion that dinner was the next step. Dinner meant intention and definitely not casual, right?

Except when Dex closed the door and saw your oven on cool down, he realised…. you probably had already eaten.

Shit.

Shit.

You seemed to notice, because you followed his line of sight, and then your eyes dropped to the bag.

“My dinner was honestly sad,” you said immediately, as if you could read his mind, pointing to the empty frozen box of hashbrowns in the recycling. “I needed more. I’m glad you got these.”

The tension in him loosened so quickly it was embarrassing.

You took the food from him and wandered into the kitchen, completely unaware that he was having a crisis behind you. You told him to put the flowers in water, so he did, arranging them so carefully like one wrong stem placement would ruin his chances forever.

Mostly, he was just bothered that he hadn’t kissed you yet. 

That's what he usually did, right? That was the routine. Usually, by now, the two of you would already be half naked. 

Then you opened the container. Steam curled up, and your face changed.

“Oh,” you said with a sigh. “Mhm.”

His jaw tightened.

You closed your eyes for half a second, before stealing a bite with your fingers. “That is so good.”

And just like that, breaking routine was worth it.

His thoughts went because you were sitting on your kitchen counter in your nightgown, eating the gyros he brought you, making happy little sounds like he had done something right for once in his fucking life. 

Dex got touchy after that, having his hand at your waist when he reached past you for napkins. His fingers would brush your knee when he handed you a fork. He would trace your skin absent while you picked at the chips and hummed over the sauce.

You noticed, but only barely.

“You’re touchy,” you said, amused.

He started to move back.

You caught his wrist without looking up. “I didn’t say stop.”

Dex froze and you kept eating, completely casual, completely clueless, like he had not spent three days trying to figure out how to win you over without once admitting that was what he was doing.

You took another bite and leaned on him. “I could get used to this.”

Dex stared at you, not knowing if you meant the food or him. 

—

You had sex eventually that night, because postponing routine was one thing, but he seemed unable to let go of it completely.

You were on the couch this time, because neither of you had made it to the bedroom. You were on his lap, your slip bunched up around your hips, one strap falling loose down your arm, your knees pressed into the cushions on either side of him. His trousers were shoved down just enough, his shirt half-open under your hands, and he was buried inside you so deep you kept forgetting that you were supposed to be the quippy one in this arrangement.

Usually, this was the part where you said something smug and made him look at you like he wanted to ruin you for sport.

Except, tonight, he didn’t look at you like he wanted to ruin you.

Tonight, he had both hands on your waist like he was afraid of leaving marks, which was new. His thumbs moved over your skin, almost soothing, while he watched your face for every microexpression. His hips rolled up into you instead of plowing in like he usually did. He was so fucking careful, which made you feel insane than when he was rough.

It felt horribly intimate.

You braced your hands on his shoulders and sank down on him again a shivery little, “Oh—”

Dex’s eyes flicked up to yours immediately. “There?”

You nodded, because yes, there, obviously there, and he did it again. He lifted his hips into you with the same angle, dragging himself along that perfect velvety spot inside you so slowly that your mouth fell open. Your whole body felt loose, thighs trembling, clenching around him before you could stop it.

His teeth clenched.

“F-Fuck,” he breathed.

You laughed, but it came out weak. “What?”

“Nothing.”

You leaned down to nibble on the shell of his ear. “Liar.”

His hands tightened for half a second, then loosened again as if he was remembering something. 

Because he had rules tonight.

Tonight, he was trying to be soft. 

You could tell, and it was making your chest do stupid little flips. You wondered quietly, what had gotten into him. 

Obviously, Dex wasn’t going to admit he had listened to the couple from 2C have sex.

Even Dex knew that were insane. That was weird. That was the kind of thing a normal person would not do, and Tony was supposed to be normal, wasn’t he? 

But Dex had installed a wire and listened in to study, of course. He got no sexual enjoyment out of them. 

The couple in 2C, when they sounded most in love, were gentle with each other, which had bothered him at first. The man had laughed into the woman’s mouth. The woman had said his name. He heard the whispering and pauses. These quiet sounds sounded like trust, and Dex had stood in his own apartment, furious at himself when he realized he had never given you that.

He had always been rough with you. And you had never complained. So he had continued being rough with you.

Because if you didn’t complain, it meant you liked it, right? It meant he was doing it right. It meant Tony was useful. 

But maybe, if he was going to stick around, he should learn how to be gentle, too.

So now he was under you, breathing hard, looking up like he was holding back every violent instinct he had ever had.

You leaned forward until your forehead almost touched his, still moving on him, devastating little rises and falls that made him slide in and out of your wet core with a filthy slick sound that didn’t match the tenderness at all. Your chest brushed his as his mouth parted. His eyes dropped to where your bodies joined, then snapped back up like he was trying to be respectful. Whatever that meant to him. 

“Fuck, Tony,” you moaned.

Ugh.

You felt him twitch inside you.

His hands flexed at your waist, but you were too fucked out to understand what that meant. You only smiled, dazed and mean by accident, and rolled your hips again.

“T-tony, hmm,” you whispered again.

Dex shut his eyes.

You thought he liked it, because he always reacted when you said his name. 

“Tony,” you said a third time, almost pleading.

“No.”

It came out before he could stop it.

Your hips slowed, but didn’t stop. You were still sitting full on him, pulsing around him, still too close to the edge to understand the stakes. 

Your eyes fluttered open, brows pinching. “Hm?”

Dex’s chest rose under your hands.

His self-control had been taking hits all night, how slow seemed to work on you and he had always been rough before. Then the fact that you looked at Tony with dinner as if you expected more from that.

But you were looking at Dex. You had to be. You just didn’t know it yet.

“That’s not my name,” he said.

You blinked down at him, breathless, confused, hips still moving in tiny unconscious circles because the pleasure coursing through your body was apparently not interested in pausing for plot.

“What?”

He swallowed hard.

He should have stopped. He should have pulled out, sat up, explained like a normal person. He maybe should’ve even had this conversation before he was inside you. There were probably social rules about this. 

But then you clenched around him because you were confused and needy, and his head tipped back against the couch with a wrecked little “hnngh—fuck.”

Your hands tightened on his shoulders, a bit concerned now. “Tony, w-what do you mean?”

“That’s not my name.”

Your hips faltered, but only for a second. Because his hands slid up your back, holding you close like he could feel you drifting away and wanted to pry you back.

“Call me Dex,” he said.

You stared at him.

What?

No, seriously, what?

Your brain tried to grab onto the sentence and failed because your thighs were still shaking around his hips.

That’s not my name.

Okay. That’s a huge red flag, right? It was a massive, bright, flapping-in-the-wind red flag. Normal neighbors-with-benefits didn’t reveal secret names mid-fuck. 

You should have stopped and asked why. You should have shoved yourself off him and said, hi, sorry, what the fuck do you mean?

Instead, you just kept staring at him, dazed and breathless, your heat fluttering around him like your body had absolutely no interest in self-preservation. So, because your body was a traitor and he was still stretching you open, you dropped down on him again.

Dex choked on a groan.

You moaned too, the new name falling out of you before your brain could catch up. “Dex.”

His eyes rolled back. 

Oh.

When he opened them again, his pupils were blown wide, his grip tightened, and his restraint dissolved. His hips jerked up to meet you, deeper than before, and the sound he made was so raw it punched heat straight through your stomach.

“Again,” he whispered.

You were panting now, hands sliding into his hair. “Dex.”

His eyes fluttered.

“Fuck.”

You said it again because you liked that. You liked watching him look ruined. “Dex.”

“Yeah,” he breathed, almost to himself. “Yeah, that’s—fuck.”

Your mouth parted around a shaky nervous  laugh, but it broke into a moan when he started moving again. Slow was gone, even though he wasn’t entirely rough. He was frantic now, almost emotional. He pushed up into you in deep strokes that made your thoughts scatter all over the couch.

Dex.

Dex.

Dex?

Where had you heard that name before?

It circled somewhere in the back of your head while he fucked up into you, while your squeezed around him. Dex. Dex. Not Tony. Dex. 

In your mind, you filtered through your memories on why he looked so familiar in the first place. 

You remembered a vague photograph through a newsprint and then a headline you had skimmed once at work. You read about the Task Force killings and though good, at least someone’s taking care of those assholes. 

Oh. 

Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter Still at Large, one of the newspapers said.

Your body went cold under your skin and fever-hot beneath your ribs, like your blood couldn’t decide whether to flee or boil. 

Your hands tightened in his hair and your hips faltered. But you didn’t stop.

Fuck!

Because his hands were still on your waist as he thrusted into you. He was looking up at you with a hungry devotion, like you were mercy and forgiveness and home all at once. Because the man beneath you—the man you had cuddled, kissed, let into your bed, let into your body—had just torn his own face off in the worst possible moment 

And the worst part was that he had not confessed because guilt had finally eaten through his soul. He had confessed because he wanted to hear his name.

“Oh my god,” you breathed.

His hands went still on your waist, panic slamming into behind your eyes so quickly it was almost boyish.

“What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?” 

He seemed to say it a split second before his eyes widened. That must’ve been the moment he realised, shit. She knows. 

His hands tightened on your hips, and before you could speak, he pushed up harder, dragging a sound out of you that made your stomach twist.

You stared down at him anyway. “That Dex?” You asked, after a barely contained mewl.

You stared at him, chest heaving, still so full that you could feel every twitch of him inside you.

“You’re— hmphh! You’re B-Bullseye?”

Dex didn’t deny it,.

You halfway hoped he would look confused, maybe even denied it. You hoped maybe he would say how dare you?

But none of those came out. 

On his face was this exhausted, naked look that said he was so tired of lying and so drowned by wanting you that he couldn’t even build a new story fast enough.

“Mmhmm,” he said.

Your stomach dropped, but Dex could feel how much more drenched you’ve gotten since you learned of that information. 

You hated yourself a little for that. 

“What the fuck?” you whispered.

“I know.”

“And what about— ahh... what about Tony?”

His hips slowed beneath you, like the name still hurt him even now.

“I made Tony up for you,” he groaned, and then seemed to realise he was saying it out loud. But he kept going anyway, because apparently the truth had started hemorrhaging out.  “I made him and you liked him and I— f-fuck.”

He cut himself off with a broken sound when you moved again, because even now, your body needed friction to deal with all the terror and heat currently detonating in your head.

“I hated him,” he said, breath catching as you lifted yourself and sank down again. “I — hmm—I fucking hated Tony. You wanted him.”

“I didn’t know there was anyone else,” you said, voice cracking into a moan at the end.

“There wasn’t,” Dex said desperate. “There wasn’t. It was me. It was always me.”

Except now you knew the sister in Denver, the dog, and the carpentry was all probably fake. 

“D-do you even like tea?” You managed.

He looked ashamed, and all he could say was, “I do now.”

An abrupt laugh burst out of you, completely hysterical and immediately turned into a gasp when he thrust up. “Fuck— Dex!”

None of this should have been sweet. He was a killer and a fugitive. You should have been terrified and you were, but you were just not terrified enough to stop.

In hindsight, it made sense.

The scars made sense. The late night stumbling home made sense. He even told you that your bloody knuckles were from sanding cabinets, and you should’ve known that it never looked like that at all. 

Fuck.

Fuck.

Then why did that make your stomach flip?

Dex’s hands gripped your waist.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, voice cracking. “What’s wrong? Do you want to stop?”

You were breathing hard, forehead nearly touching his. Your whole body was wound tight, your orgasm crawling up your spine with the worst timing in human history.

“Did I fuck up?” he asked, panic rising. “Did I make you want to stop?”

You made this desperate sound and shook your head.

His eyes searched yours like he didn’t believe you. “Say it.”

“No,” you cried, grabbing his face between both hands. “Dex, don’t you d-dare stop, I’m so close.”

For a second, he looked like he might die from relief.

Then his mouth crashed into yours in a messy and frantic kiss, drawing out broken little noises. He grabbed your hips and helped you move, thrusting further up to meet you halfway now, no longer pretending he could be gentle when you were moaning his actual name into his mouth. He drove into you hard and deep, every stroke dragging sparks through your body until you were trembling.

“Dex,” you gasped.

“Yeah,” he said, voice ruined. “Yeah, I’ve got you.”

“Dex—”

“I know. Fuck, I know.”

His hand slid down between your bodies.

You jolted when his fingers found your sensitive spot, rubbing tight circles exactly where you needed him. Your hips bucked, pleasure coursing through you so sharply you almost sobbed. He kept fucking up into you, kept his eyes on your face, kept touching you like he needed you to come before the rest of the truth caught up and took you away from him.

“There,” he panted. “There, right?”

You nodded frantically. “Yes, yes, fuck! Right there—”

His fingers moved faster.

Your body folded into him. Your arms locked around his neck as your living room blurred through the most insane confession of his life.

“You’re so—hngh— fucking insane,” you choked out.

“I know.”

“Y-you made up a whole identity f-for sex?”

“For you,” he corrected, thrusts becoming sloppy, sounding wounded that you would come to that conclusion. “I wanted you.”

Oh, you were done.

You came with his name in your mouth.

“Dex,” you cried into his skin, shaking so hard he had to hold you down on him while you pulsed around his own orgasm. Dex swore under his breath, hips stuttering as he felt you soak him, but he kept moving, his face buried against your throat, buried himself as deep as he could as he filled you out. 

After a while, you collapsed against him, panting into his shoulder, your slip twisted up around your waist, one of his hands spread over your back like he was holding you together or himself. More likely both.

And then your brain started working again.

Unfortunately.

You were sitting naked on the lap of a fugitive assassin who had lied about his name, invented a fake life, possibly murdered people between your Tuesday meetings, and somehow decided that buying you dinner was a relationship milestone.

You should tell him to leave.

You should scream or call someone to turn him in. You should be a better person, probably.

But he was looking up at you with those glassy fucked-out eyes and a mouth swollen from kissing you. 

In all honesty, he expected you to recoil now, bracing for you to finally do the sane thing.

The problem was the sane thing had left about three Tuesdays ago.

Sure, Tony had been a lie, yes, but the wanting had not. The flowers and dinner and the checking for the window latch had been. He sat under you now, naked and terrified and so stupidly in love he had confessed to being Bullseye mid-fuck because he wanted to cash all his percieved good deeds in and finally make it real. 

Finally, you lifted your head and slowly cupped his face in both hands.

His eyes flicked between yours, half-feral with hope.

Then you squished his cheeks.

Dex blinked.

It made his mouth purse slightly, which would have been funny if you were having a moral collapse on your couch.

“Don’t lie to me ever again.”

His lashes fluttered, and he looked like you had handed him absolution.

Then Dex nodded carefully between your palms. “Boyfriends don’t lie to their girlfriends.”

You, a reasonable person in any other aspect of you, should have been scared that a criminal was calling you his without any prior discussion.

But all you could think of now was: oh. I’m his girlfriend. How sweet. 

“No,” you agreed, kissing the corner of his mouth. “They don’t.”

—end.

Dex taglist: @itsdynotdaddy @diabolicallydownbad @doesanyonereadthis @meicore @pixie2k5 @bibiishin @starlitflora @pearlstiare @glorybeat @stardustworlds @castawaybarnes @supervampireflame @not-the-teen-witch @billybonesxx @ultimatewolverine @treetrees-world-of-imagiation @bitch-spaghetti-o @lostinthes4uce @cotton-eee @weallhaveadestiny @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @moonbug333 @yujyujj @mattdexx @lostfallenangelsblog @bloomsberryfairy @flimsysquid @abbotfan @leonetta2014 @ficcharsimpsblog @odairtrqsh @ugh-whytho @noonenuts @akiyhara @genya1617 @itzrachel04 @avidreader73 @quicksilver21 @lmg-stilinski24 @magnificentlymoltenpatron @natalia42069 @eaumyth @hxdxs @cemeterystardust @alligatortears87 @outpostsworld @scarlet48 @lunarbandwidth @star-yawnznn @smorgasbrods

Matt had stood there in front of God, Fisk, Karen, the cameras, all of New York, basically, and said it. He had torn the last piece of himself open with his own hands.

He was Daredevil.

There was no putting that back.

Fisk took the plea, and he was finally out of office. Fucking finally. The city had helped, and for better or for worse, the streets had bled because of it. Riots broke out, and sirens were everywhere. The whole city sounded like it was trying to crawl out of its own skin.

And Matt knew his days of moving freely were numbered.

It would not take long for the paperwork to be in order. It would not take long for the police to get their arrest warrant.

His name would spread through every system he had spent years trying to evade. Matthew Michael Murdock, Daredevil.

Whatever he was to people; Catholic boy, blind lawyer, vigilante, hero, hypocrite, all of it? That meant nothing. He was just a criminal who had to pay for breaking the law now. 

So, fine.

But before all of that happened. He needed to tie up loose ends.

That was what he told himself as he put on a hoodie the morning after the courthouse, at 2 AM. 

He crossed rooftops and fire escapes, ribs aching, lungs burning, sweat cold beneath his hoodie.

He was gonna check on him, that’s all. Make sure Dex was not out there killing people for the love of the game. Make sure the city didn’t have one more monster loose before he was taken away.

This better be quick, because would really rather spend his time with Karen before getting locked up.

By the time Matt reached Dex’s apartment building, the riot noise had thinned, like thunder moving farther away without ever really leaving.

Outside, New York still burned in fragments. Inside the building creaked. Old pipes ticked in the walls. Someone two floors down whispered angrily behind a locked door. A television murmured emergency coverage through cheap speakers. The exhaust fans gave a faint metallic complaint above him.

Matt climbed the stairs, knowing Dex’s apartment was ahead.

And then… Matt heard sobbing.

He stopped at the door.

It wasn’t theatrical, not the kind of crying meant to pull attention from the other side of a wall.

It was smaller than that. It almost made it… worse.

It came through Dex’s door in little broken pieces, like your body had run out of strength before it had run out of panic. One shaky breath, then another, then a thin, wet sound you tried to swallow and failed. You were trying to be quiet, Matt could tell. You were trying not to make noise and still the hurt kept leaking out of you anyway.

Matt stopped dead and assessed the situation.

There was a woman crying inside Benjamin Poindexter’s apartment.

For one second, Matt thought about every horrible thing he already knew about him.

Foggy, Father Lantom, all the other bodies he left in his wake.

All of them were there in his head at once, not as memories, but as evidence. As proof against Dex. As a case already built and closed in his mind.

Dex had never been someone Matt could afford to give the benefit of the doubt, not after what he had done. Not after who he had taken. Not even after all that bullshit about one good deed, about evening out the scales, as if taking another life could balance out the lives he had destroyed.

So Matt listened.

And then Dex spoke. “Baby, breathe. Come on. I’m here.”

Matt’s stomach tightened.

Baby?

From anyone else, maybe it would have sounded the way it was meant to: a soft comfort, words meant to soothe.  

But coming from Dex, the words twisted in Matt’s ears.

Still, Matt knew it sounded… sincere. 

Soft, but not fake-soft. Not mocking. Not cruel. Not even controlling.

It sounded… exhausted and careful. It frayed apart at the edges, like he had been kneeling there for hours, saying the same few words over and over because he was terrified you would disappear somewhere he couldn’t pull you back from.

“I’m right here,” Dex murmured. “You’re okay. You’re with me.”

You made a small, broken sound.

It was this heartbreakingly helpless, breathless little noise that caught in your throat and dragged itself out anyway. It was as if your body was trying to keep crying after you had already run out of strength for it.

Your breathing was too fast; Matt could hear every jagged inhale scraping up short in your chest, every failed attempt to steady yourself. Your heartbeat fluttered, frantic and uneven, skipping over itself like it was trapped.

You were on the floor. He could tell by the way your sobs hit the wood first, the way it sounded low and folded down. You were curled into yourself, maybe. 

And Dex was too close. He was close enough that his voice barely had to rise. He was close enough that Matt could hear the shift of his body beside yours, the drag of fabric against the floor, the way he moved like he knew exactly which sounds would hurt you and which ones would not.

Everything Matt heard told him Dex was not hurting you.

The care was there. The patience was there. The way he kept his voice quiet enough not to startle. The way he didn’t grab at you, didn’t bark orders, didn’t crowd too fast. He seemed to be making himself smaller just to keep from adding to whatever was tearing through you.

Benjamin Poindexter sounded…. kind.

Matt hated that. his senses were giving him one answer and his memory was giving him another.

His senses said Dex was helping you. His memory said Dex hurt people.

His senses said Dex was gentle with you. His memory said Dex had killed Foggy.

His senses said there was love in the room. His memory said Benjamin Poindexter didn’t know how to love correctly.

His mind immediately assumed the worst.

Had he held you here? Kidnapped you? Had he convinced himself he loved you, and was he trying to convince you to love him, too? 

Your sob hitched again.

“I can’t,” you whispered, voice shredded thin. “I can’t, Dex, I can’t—”

“I know,” Dex said immediately, and Matt could hear his skin on yours, rubbing gentle circles on your arm. You weren’t pulling away. “I know. Stay with me.”

There it was, the softness again.

That was an almost desperate patience in his voice, and still, Matt couldn’t make himself trust it.

Not with Dex crouched close enough for his voice to brush your skin. Not with you breathing like the room itself was killing you. Not with the door locked and the city screaming outside and no one else coming.

Then your breath snagged hard “Dex.”

“I’m here.”

“No.” Your voice thinned, almost terrified. “Someone else is h-here.”

Matt went completely still.

Behind the door, the apartment changed.

It was just a shift in the air. Dex went quiet all of a sudden. Matt understood, somehow, that you knew he was there.

For one suspended second, no one moved.

Your breathing trembled in the silence. Then Dex’s heartbeat slowed as he turned.

That was what made Matt decide. The sudden stillness of a killer turning his attention toward the door.

Whatever comfort Matt had heard before, whatever gentleness had almost confused him, it collapsed under the weight of everything else he knew:

A woman was crying in Dex’s apartment. Dex was too close to you. Ergo, Dex was hurting you and Matt had to get you out.

So Matt stepped back once he kicked the door down, and it broke inward. The sound tore through the apartment, wood splitting against the wall.

Matt stepped, expecting you to recoil.

He expected you to scramble backward on the floor, away from Dex. He expected fear to pull you toward the farthest corner, toward the broken doorway, toward him.

Anything but what actually happened.

You moved toward Dex.

It was a clumsy, desperate little scramble, knees dragging over the floorboards, one hand slipping against the wood as you tried to push yourself up and failed. Your breath came in miserable pieces, your whole body folded around the panic like it hurt to exist inside your own skin.

“Dex,” you choked.

Dex was already moving. He closed the distance before you could reach him properly, like he couldn’t stand the sight of you having to cross even that little distance alone. His hands came out, open, and you clambered into him.

There was no other word for it.

You climbed into his arms like you were trying to get beneath his ribs. As if you pressed close enough, hid deep enough, the rest of the world might lose track of you. Your fingers caught the front of his shirt and twisted there, tight and frantic, pulling yourself higher until your face was buried against his chest.

Dex caught you with his whole body. One of his arms was wrapped around your back. The other came up over your head, shielding your face, tucking you under his chin. He bent around you so gently it was almost painful to process, all that deadly mass turned into cover, into shelter.

Matt froze.

You… were not trapped.

Your cheek was pressed to his chest, hands fisted in his shirt. Your body shook against his, but the second he held you, your heartbeat changed. It was still too fast, still terrified, still broken up with panic, but it reached for his rhythm like a drowning man reaching for shore.

Dex lowered his mouth to your temple.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “I’ve got you, baby.”

You made a devastated sound and curled tighter.

Your knees drew up against his thigh. One of your hands slipped from his shirt to his shoulder, then to the back of his neck, gripping there like you were afraid Matt might pull him away from you.

“He’s loud,” you managed.

Dex’s eyes stayed on Matt, who still hadn’t said anything. “I know.”

“He’s loud, Dex, he’s so loud.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

You shook your head against him, hiding your face harder in the hollow of his throat. “Baby,” you whispered, voice barely there. “He thinks you’re hurting me.”

Dex went still. 

“I’m not,” he said.

“I know.” Your voice cracked on it. “I know. But he thinks it and I can hear it and it hurts.”

Matt’s throat tightened. What did that even mean?

He heard it then, not just the panic and sobs. He heard the trust.

Your fear was everywhere, all over the room, spilling out of you in ragged breaths, but it was not aimed at the man holding you. Dex was the only place in the apartment your body seemed to recognize as safe.

You kept trying to disappear into him.

Every time Matt shifted, even slightly, your fingers tightened. Every time the broken door creaked behind him, your breath snagged and Dex’s palm moved slowly over the back of your head, as if smoothing you back into yourself.

“Don’t listen to him,” Dex murmured against your hair. “Listen to me.”

“I’m trying.”

“I know.”

“It’s too much.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

Matt took half a step forward. Dex’s head snapped up. “Don’t.”

The word was quiet to not startle you, and that was enough to stop Matt anyway.

Dex shifted on the floor, turning his body more fully between you and the doorway. You followed without thinking, clinging to him as he moved, your face still hidden against his chest. He kept you tucked there, one arm firm around your back, the other curved protectively around your head like he could keep Matt’s thoughts from touching you if he just covered enough of you.

“Poindexter,” Matt started, and it was smaller now.

Dex’s expression did not change. “Get out.”

“I thought—”

“I don’t give a shit what you thought.”

You trembled harder at the anger in his voice. Dex felt it instantly. His eyes flicked down, and when he spoke again, it wasn’t to Matt.

“Not you,” he whispered, pressing his mouth briefly to your hair. 

You made another broken little noise and pushed closer, like the words had gone straight through your heart.

Dex held you tighter, not possessively in a way that trapped, but just enough to tell your body there was he was around it. 

Matt stood there in the wreckage of the door, listening to your heartbeat try to steady itself against Dex’s chest, and for one awful second he didn’t know what to do with what his senses were telling him.

Because Benjamin Poindexter was still the reason too many people Matt loved were dead. But you were curled into him like he was the last quiet place in New York.

“He’s still here,” you whispered.

Dex’s eyes lifted. “I know.”

Dex’s face changed, but not by much. Matt doubted anyone else would have noticed, but he did. He heard it in Dex’s breathing, in the shift of his weight, in the sudden burst of restraint. The city outside was loud. The riots were loud. Matt was loud. His suspicion was loud. His righteousness was loud. His judgment was loud.

And somehow, you could hear all of it.

“I don’t want him here,” you said.

That was it. Whatever patience Dex had left for Matt died right there on the floor.

His hand stayed gentle on your back, but his voice didn’t. “Get the fuck out.”

For once, he did what Dex told him to do.

Matt stepped back into the hallway and got out.

The ruined door dragged crookedly against the floor when he pulled it mostly shut behind him. The lock was useless now, broken out from the frame, hanging loose in splintered wood, but Matt still closed it as much as he could.

He stood there in the hall, one hand still near the broken door, breathing quietly through the dust and old paint and the faint metallic tang inside the apartment.

He should have left. He knew that.

You had wanted him gone. Matt had seen enough, heard enough, to know he had been wrong about at least the first thing: Dex hadn’t been hurting you.

But Matt still could not make himself walk away.

Because Matt has convinced himself that love, in the hands of someone like Benjamin Poindexter, could become a locked room so easily.

Matt stayed.

Not close enough to push the door open again, but not far enough to pretend he wasn’t listening.

Inside, your breathing was still ragged.

Dex was still on the floor with you.

Matt could hear the tiny, frantic movements of your hands in Dex’s shirt. The tremor in your inhale. The way you kept trying to tuck yourself into him like the world might stop finding you if there was enough of his body between you and everything else.

“He’s still out there,” you whispered.

Dex’s answer came after a second of consideration. “Is he, now?”

Your breath hitched. “He didn’t leave.”

Fuck.

Matt stood very still in the hall.

“I’ll take care of him,” Dex murmured.

Your breath snagged. “Don’t hurt him.”

There was a pause. It wasn’t long, but long enough.

Then Dex said, “I won’t kill him.”

“Dex.” You didn't sound convinced.

“I won’t kill him,” he repeated, softer this time. “Promise.”

“You’re mad.”

“I know.”

“It’s sharp,” you winced.

“I know, baby. I’m sorry.” Inside the apartment, Dex went quiet in a way that felt less like guilt and more like being seen too clearly. “I won’t hurt him unless I have to.”

“Dex.”

“I won’t hurt him,” he said, and this time there was no loophole in it. There was only surrender, because it was you asking. “Okay? I won’t.”

Your breathing shuddered as Dex shifted on the floor.

“I’m going to move you, okay?” he said. “Just to the bed. I’ve got you.”

You made a small sound, and Matt could picture it too clearly now. You curled in on yourself, face hidden, body shaking from too much of whatever it is you could sense. 

Dex crouched slowly, though he was already close. Like even now, even with you clutching at him, he was careful not to startle you.  He slid one arm under your knees and the other behind your back.

You clutched at his shirt with shaking fingers. “I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“No.” His voice went firm immediately. “No, don’t say things like that.”

“I ruined your night.”

“You didn’t ruin anything.”

“I came here and I—”

“You came to me.” Dex pressed his mouth to your temple, quick and fierce. “That’s all. You came to me.”

You made a broken little noise against him.

Matt stood in the hallway, just outside the ruined door, listening to Dex lift you from the floor.

He heard the way your breath caught when your body left the ground. He heard your hands grip for a better hold. He heard Dex adjust instantly, pulling you closer.

“I’ve got you,” Dex murmured. “I’ve got you. I know.”

“You’re going to leave.”

“No.”

You sounded so small when you said, “You are.”

Dex carried you to the bed like every step had been chosen before he took it. Like he knew which floorboards made noise and which ones didn’t. Like he had learned how to move through this apartment in a way that made the least amount of noise for you.

“I’ll take care of him, okay?” Dex murmured. “I’ll make him go away.”

Your breathing hitched as you started to say something, but Dex shushed you gently.

“Yes, I know,” he said, softer. “I know you don’t like it when people see you like this. I know. It’s just gonna be me and you, okay? Just me and you.”

The mattress dipped down under your weight.

“I’ll close the door,” Dex continued. “I’ll turn the lights off. I’ll come right back.”

Your fingers caught the fabric of his shirt again. “Don’t leave.”

“I’m not leaving.” Dex let out a slow breath. “I’m right here.”

“You’re thinking about going.”

“I’m thinking about making him leave.”

“I can’t tell the difference.”

Dex went quiet.

Matt heard him sit beside you instead of standing right away. The mattress shifted again as the room settled around the two of you.

You cried a little, more exhausted now, as if the panic had torn through you and left you hollowed out behind it.

Dex’s hand moved over fabric in a slow, repetitive pass. Matt realised he was making the sheets smooth for you as he laid you down.

His hand slid up from your back to the side of your face, thumb hovering near your cheek, not quite wiping the tears away until you leaned into it first. “Look into my mind, baby.”

Matt’s head tilted from the hallway.

What?

Inside the studio, everything went still except for your breathing.

The room was not large enough for privacy. Not really. The bed sat pushed into the far corner. The broken front door was too close. Matt was too close. The whole world was too close.

But Dex bent over you like he could make distance with his body alone.

“Go on,” he murmured. “Look at me.”

You stared up at him through wet lashes, face blotched from crying, lips parted around breaths that still would not come right. Your fingers trembled against his shirt, twisted in the fabric so tightly the seams strained.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then your grip loosened by a fraction.

Your eyes fluttered.

A shaky breath left you, not calm, not even close, but relieved enough that Dex’s shoulders almost caved in with it.

“You’re coming back,” you whispered.

Dex nodded once, forehead nearly touching yours. “Yeah.”

“You’re not leaving forever.”

“No.”

The answer was immediate. No room for doubt. No space for the thought to grow teeth.

But then your expression crumpled again.

“You’re mad.”

Dex closed his eyes for half a second.

He didn’t deny it. He couldn't, even if he wanted to. Not to you. “I am.”

Your breath caught so suddenly it sounded like it hurt.

Dex’s whole face changed. The anger was still there, Matt could hear it in him, running hot under the skin. But with you looking at him like that, terrified because his fury had no color, no label, no clear direction once it got inside your head, Dex felt almost sick with it.

“I’m not mad at you,” he said, urgent in a way that made the words rough. “Never at you.”

Your mouth trembled and repeated yourself. “You know I can’t tell the difference sometimes.” It came out so pained Matt felt it in his own chest.

You said it like an apology, like you hated needing him to explain the direction of his anger because you could feel it anyway, and feeling it didn’t mean understanding it.

Dex swallowed. His hand curved more fully around your cheek now, warm and steady, thumb finally catching one tear before it slid down to your jaw.

“I know,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

You looked at him for another second, searching his face like your own mind wasn't enough tonight. Like even seeing inside him had not made your body believe it yet.

Then he lowered his voice. “I have to make him leave.”

Your fingers tightened again, not as badly this time.

Dex did not pull away. He leaned in instead, pressing a short kiss to your forehead, then another to the corner of your temple, like he could nail the promise into place with his mouth.

“I’m going to turn off the lights, okay?” 

You nodded, barely, as breathing scraped in and out through your nose.

Dex shifted only when you let him. He eased you back against the pillows in the bed, not putting you down so much as arranging the room around your collapse. One hand stayed on you the whole time, a constant point of contact while the other reached for everything else.

He crossed the few steps to it and slid the window shut with painstaking care, catching the frame before it could knock. Street noise dulled at once.

Then he pulled the curtains together until the thin spill of city light vanished from the wall and your face disappeared into darkness.

As promised, he clicked the lamp off.

The studio fell dimmer, warmer, reduced to the weak strip of hallway light bleeding through the ruined front door.

The phone was next. He picked it up from the small table beside the bed and silenced it without looking, thumb moving from memory. He put it back, screen turned down.

A radio sat near the kitchenette, cheap and old, still plugged into the wall. Dex crossed to it barefoot and pulled the cord free. The plastic scraped faintly against the outlet, and even that made your breathing tremble.

Then, he opened a drawer near the bed.

Something rattled softly as he picked it up. A pill bottle, maybe? No, it could be earplugs in a little tin. 

He came back with them in his palm.

You must have watched him through the dark because your breathing changed when he got close again, sounding less lost than before.

Dex sat on the edge of the mattress.

He tucked the blanket around you, drawing it up over your shoulder, smoothing the edge down like he was sealing the world out inch by inch. His hand lingered there after, broad against the blanket, feeling the shake of you through the fabric.

The apartment had become smaller. Every sound had been answered. Every light had been put down. Every little edge of the room had been softened, covered, turned away from you by hands that knew the ritual too well.

He had done this before. Like he had learned, piece by piece, how to make the world survivable for you.

At some point, you must have reached for him again, because Dex’s voice dropped inaudibly. “Hey,” he whispered. “I know.”

The bed creaked as he leaned closer.

A kiss touched your skin. Your forehead, maybe. Then another, lower. Your temple. The damp line of your cheek.

“I’ll be right back,” Dex breathed.

You made a small sound.

He stayed another second, maybe two. Long enough for your fingers to loosen.

Then he stood.

Dex walked to the other side of the apartment without turning on a single light. He made no wasted movement, not a single sound he didn’t mean to make.

At the broken front door, he paused and looked back once.

Matt could hear the small turn of his head. The habit of making sure you were still under the blanket, still breathing, still there.

Then Dex slipped into the hall and pulled the ruined door mostly shut behind him.

It couldn’t latch. But he cracked it closed as carefully as if it still mattered, leaving only a narrow gap of darkness between the apartment and the hallway.

He was keeping the light out. He was keeping Matt out.

When Dex turned, he stood half-shadowed in the corridor, eyes red-rimmed and flat with exhaustion. His face was calm in the way loaded weapons were calm. His voice stayed quiet, almost gentle, but not for Matt.

He did it for yous

“I told you,” Dex said, “to get the fuck out.”

For a while, Matt didn’t say anything.

The hallway held them in the aftermath of what Matt had done. The door hung crooked in its frame, pulled mostly shut even though the lock was split and useless, the wood around it cracked open where Matt’s boot had forced its way through. It couldn’t protect you anymore. It could barely pretend to be a door. Still, Dex stood in front of it as if his body could replace what Matt had broken, as if he could become the lock, the wall, the whole goddamn building if he had to.

Matt could hear the anger in him as clearly as he could hear traffic below: hot, contained, and viciously focused. Dex wanted to do something with it. Matt knew that, but he kept it buried beneath his ribs because you were behind that broken door, and if he let the rage rise any higher, you would feel it.

That was what Matt could not stop noticing. Not the anger. The restraint.

Inside the apartment, you shifted under the blanket. It was only a movement of fabric, barely anything, followed by the small uneven catch of your breath as you tried to settle yourself in the dark corner Dex had made for you. Dex turned his head at once. Not fully, not enough to take his attention off Matt, but enough that Matt realised that some part of Dex had never left the room with you. Some part of him was still sitting beside the bed, counting your breaths, waiting for the slightest sign that you needed him again.

For one moment, Matt didn't feel like he was looking at Bullseye. He was looking at a man furious enough to kill and still aching to go back inside because the woman he loved was trying to remember how to breathe without him there.

Matt swallowed. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”

Dex looked back at him and the answer was obvious. Matt had no right to know. No right to ask. He had no right to stand there in the hallway after frightening you and pretend the question was harmless.

“I didn’t tell you.”

His voice was flat and guarded, the words set down like a barrier. Matt’s mouth tightened. 

Behind the door, your breathing hitched again, smaller this time, like the sound of voices through wood was still enough to scrape against you. Dex heard it too. The anger in him shifted immediately, folding smaller, tightening down.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked.

He knew it was wrong the second it left his mouth. The words were too blunt, too harsh, too clinical. He had meant, What happened? He had meant, Is she going to be okay? He had meant, What did I just walk into, and how badly did I make it worse? But none of that came out. What came out sounded like you were a problem. 

“Nothing is wrong with her,” Dex said, and Matt could tell he was trying his hardest not to snap.

Matt didn’t move. Dex stepped closer by the smallest amount, and the entire hallway seemed to narrow with him. His face had gone hard, but not empty.

“Nothing,” Dex repeated, each syllable harsh enough to cut. “She’s perfect.”

Matt exhaled slowly through his nose. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes, you did.”

Dex didn’t have to snarl. He didn’t have to raise his voice. The accusation sat there between them, plain and ugly, and Matt couldn’t defend himself from it because part of it was true.

Inside, you were quiet now. Not calm, but silent in the way people became when they were trying very hard not to take up too much space with their hurt. Matt listened to the small tremor and felt the pieces beginning to arrange themselves in his head.

You had known he was outside before Dex opened the door. You had reacted to him even before he even stepped inside. You had known Dex was mad but couldn’t tell where that anger was aimed. Dex had told you to look into his mind with the ease of someone offering proof, not metaphor, not comfort dressed up as poetry, but a real thing he knew you could do.

Oh.

Matt looked back at Dex and stated the painfully obvious explanation. “She can read minds.”

Dex’s expression changed only a little, but Matt heard the rest. The brief tightening of his mouth. The instinct to protect you by lying took over, followed almost immediately by the realization that lying to Matt Murdock was pointless.

Dex looked away, and said, “Yes.” 

His voice had changed, still rough around the edges, but the explanation seemed to cost him a part of his soul. Every word about you had to be handled carefully because it belonged to you first. He kept his eyes on the door as he spoke, as if even describing your pain required him to make sure it had not worsened.

“She hears thoughts, feelings. Most days she can keep it out, or keep it separate, or read one mind at a time. She knows how to get through the day.” His teeth clenched, and he looked down for half a second before forcing himself to continue. “But when there are too many people, when emotions run too high, it stops being individual thoughts and turns into noise.”

Oh.

Oh shit, Matt thought as he realized that last night hadn’t only been bad for you. It had been a disaster built exactly out of the things that hurt you most. 

Last night, protests clashed with Fisk’s Task Force. Bodies were pressed shoulder to shoulder in the streets, voices raised, officers behind their shields, civilians furious and terrified and righteous all at once. Fisk’s fall had moved through the city like a shockwave. Matt Murdock’s confession that he was a Daredevil had made a home on every screen, in every mouth, in every disbelieving mind.

His confession had not stayed in the courtroom. It had spilled outward, turning into rumor and revelation and riot, and you had walked straight into all of it because you thought Dex was hurt. Because you missed him.

Matt felt his stomach sink.

He thought of you moving through that crowd, not just hearing the sirens and shouting like everyone else, but taking in the thoughts beneath them. Panic layered over rage layered over grief. Thousands of minds all pushing against yours with no space between them. A whole city losing control at once, and you were caught in the middle of it, trying to find one person.

Dex’s face tightened as if he could see the same picture and hated it more because he had already lived the end of it. He hated that he had found you like that. 

Matt understood that without being told. Dex had found you shaking apart in this same apartment, or near it, or on the street outside, too overwhelmed by everyone else to find yourself. He had found you and brought you here and spent the night closing windows, killing lights, silencing phones, making the world smaller with hands that had done unspeakable things.

“She came looking for me,” Dex said.

The words were almost stripped of anger now. Dex looked at the door again, and his body softened before he could stop it. But Matt heard it in the way Dex’s breath caught around your existence on the other side of the wall.

Benjamin Poindexter loved you.

Matt didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to have to make room for it inside the shape of the man he hated. He wanted Dex to stay simple. A killer. Someone with a label simple enough to condemn without complication. But love was written through him now in ways Matt couldn’t ignore. 

Matt’s voice came quieter when he asked, “Does she need a doctor?”

Dex scoffed. “Doctors are what made her like this.”

Matt went still.

Dex didn’t explain. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe Matt hadn’t earned that part of the story. But still, he was opening just enough of a door for Matt to picture the white rooms, fluorescent lights and people calling pain research, behind him.

Dex looked back at the broken door, and for half a second, the rage in him gave way. “She has good days and bad days,” Dex said. His mouth tightened, and when he spoke again, the grief in it was almost unbearable. “And she was having a good week.”

That mattered.

Matt couldn’t possibly understand the full weight of that sentence, but Dex did. A good week meant sleep. It meant you could eat without feeling nauseous. It meant you had mornings where you didn’t wake up already bracing against other people’s thoughts. 

You’ve had several really good weeks, actually. 

It mattered because Dex had met you on a bad day.

—

Twelve months ago… 

OXE hired him to kill you.

A freelance gig, really. 

The file was from the private medical trial branch of the corporation. It said that you were a failed participant. You were a liability. You were just a woman whose condition had become unpredictable.

They sent Dex a name, a photograph, an address, and a warning not to engage longer than necessary.

The house they had sent him to had no security. It was an old, empty place with drawn curtains and stale air and dust gathered thick in the corners.

You hated it.

Dex found you in the attic under the slanted roof, sitting in the weak orange spill of late afternoon light, one wrist was handcuffed to an exposed pipe. Your knees were drawn up close to your chest. Your hair stuck damply to your face, and your lips were bitten raw, like you had spent hours trying to keep something inside your mouth by force.

The key was across the room.

It was kicked. Dex could tell from the scrape in the dust where it had skidded away from you, just far enough that your fingers couldn’t reach it unless you pulled hard enough to tear the skin around your wrist. The cuff had already bruised a dark, ugly ring on your skin. 

You looked at him once.

A small, breathless laugh left you. It wasn’t happy, not even close. It was more like your body had mistaken despair for humor because it had run out of other ways to hold it.

“You’re…” Your voice cracked. “You’re here to kill me.”

Dex didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

Your eyes moved over his face, and something strange passed through them. 

Then you laughed again, barely. “You think I’m pretty, Dex.”

The attic went still as dust drifted in the light between you.

Dex’s finger rested near the trigger.

“How do you know my name?”

You looked at him like the question itself was tired. “Mind reader,” you said. “Obviously.”

Dex stared at you for a long moment.

You didn’t look like what OXE had described.

Dangerous, yes, maybe. But not in the way they meant. You looked exhausted, cornered, and afraid of yourself than of him. Your whole body was tense against the cuff, but you weren’t trying to get free anymore.

Dex’s eyes flicked to the key, then back to you.

“Why lock yourself up here?”

For the first time, you looked ashamed. “Because it’s loud.”

Dex glanced around the empty attic.

You heard the thought before he could speak.

“Not here,” you said, swallowing, then pointing to your head with your free hand, “but here.”

Your hand then curled briefly around your own throat, not pressing, just remembering. 

“I kicked the key away,” you whispered. “So I’d have time to stop myself.”

“From what?”

You closed your eyes. Your voice came out small. “Strangling someone.”

Dex didn’t move.

You opened your eyes, wet and miserable, and looked past him because looking right at him was suddenly too hard.

“He was loud. He wouldn’t stop. He kept thinking and thinking and thinking, and I kept hearing it. I told him to stop to shut up, but they couldn’t, because people can’t just stop thinking, and I knew that, see, I knew that, but I—

Your breath broke as you looked down at your cuffed wrist. “So I locked myself up here. Before I kill someone again.”

Dex should have killed you. That was the job.

OXE had paid him to remove a problem, and there you were, handcuffed beneath a slanted roof, bruised and filthy and shaking because the world had made you into something you were terrified of becoming.

He should have pulled the trigger. Instead, he lowered the gun.

Your face fell immediately, like mercy was its own kind of threat.

“Don’t,” you whispered.

Dex paused.

“If you’re going to kill me, just do it,” you said, voice cracking. 

Dex’s mind went quiet.

He had no idea what to do with that. No idea what to do with you.

So he did the only practical thing he could.

He walked across the room and picked up the key.

You cried then, silently at first, tears spilling over without sound as he came back and crouched in front of you. Dex moved slowly. He set the gun down beside him, close enough to reach, far enough that you could see both his hands.

“I’m going to unlock it,” he said.

You stared at him.

“You can read my mind,” he added, awkward and blunt because gentleness was not a language he spoke well yet. “So you know I’m not lying.”

Your breath shook.

You looked at him, really looked, and you squinted your eyes in the smallest, most painful disbelief.

Dex unlocked the cuff.

The metal fell away from your wrist. 

You didn’t move.

You only stared at your freed hand like it belonged to someone else. The skin beneath the cuff was swollen and angry, the bruise already darkening. Dex looked at it for too long.

Then he took off his jacket.

He draped it over your shoulders.

You were shaking so hard the leather fabric around you.

Dex did not ask if you could walk. He already knew the answer. He saw the way your legs failed when you tried to gather them beneath you, saw the way your hand went out blindly toward the pipe, toward the wall, toward anything that would keep the room from tilting.

So he picked you up slowly, one arm under your knees, one behind your back, no grip tighter than necessary.

You went rigid in his arms for half a second, then sagged, exhausted past the point of fear.

“Why are you doing this?” you whispered.

Dex looked down at you.

He didn’t know how to answer out loud.

Because I know what it means to be made wrong for the world, too.

Maybe, now that we’ve found each other, we don’t have to be alone anymore. 

He said none of that. But you said, “okay.”

He carried you down from the attic and took you back to his apartment because he didn’t know where else to take you. 

You sat on the edge of his tub in his jacket while he ran the water warm.

Dex kept looking away, not because he was embarrassed, but because he understood, somehow, that being looked at was another kind of noise. He handed you a towel, found some soaps and put a clean shirt on the sink. 

When you could not lift your hands without trembling, he helped.

He helped you into warm water and rinsed dust from your hair, cleaning blood from your bruised wrist. His hand was steady on your skin when you started crying again.

He didn't ask you to stop.

He only said, once, very quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

And because you could read his mind, you knew he meant it.

Benjamin Poindexter had been hired to kill you.

Instead, he took you out of the attic and bathed you.

—

Over the next couple of days, you were mostly good.

Mostly.

Because Dex learned quickly that good didn’t mean cured. It meant you slept more than you usually did. It meant you could sit by the window without pressing your palms to your ears. It meant you could make tea in his kitchen and smile at some thought he hadn’t meant to give you.

Within the first week, his apartment changed because of you. He installed wall panelling first, because the building was old and thin and the neighbors came through the walls too easily when everything felt hollow. Then, he gave you thicker curtains, then rugs. Then a new refrigerator because the old one hummed at a frequency that made you bare your teeth and say it tasted wrong.

Dex didn’t ask what that meant.

He just replaced it.

After all, your mind was already susceptible to being invaded by foreign thoughts, he didn't want you to be overstimulated by your senses, too.

That was how it started with him, really. Not with declarations. Dex loved in corrections, adjustments, and threat assessments. He noticed what hurt you, and then he removed it. He learned the signs of your bad days and built around them, one practical act at a time.

You fell in love with him so fast it should have scared you.

It didn’t, but mostly because you knew he had already fallen too.

You could hear it.

He thought he was being subtle, which was almost funny. Dex, who could control his breathing to take a shot, couldn’t hide wanting you to kiss him for more than a week.

You could hear his thoughts every time you came too close.

Not words, exactly. More like flashes of your mouth, your hands in his mind. The curve of your shoulder when you wore one of his shirts. The split-second image of him leaning in, followed by a disciplined thought-wall of don’t, don’t, don’t, because Dex could kill a man without blinking but apparently touching you first was too much.

You let him suffer with it for six days, mostly because you were giving him time to change his mind. 

He didn’t.

On the seventh, he was fixing one of the new panels in the kitchen, teeth clenched because the wood refused to sit straight. You were sitting on the counter with one of his old FBI academy shirts that had since gotten too small for his bulk now, bare legs swinging, watching him pretend he was not acutely aware of your knees on either side of his ribs when he stepped between them to reach the wall.

You had laughed from where you sat.

He looked over at you. “You think that’s funny?”

You tilted your head. “You’re thinking about shooting the wall.”

Dex stared at you, setting the screwdriver down too carefully.

“You shouldn’t go digging around in my head.”

“I didn’t dig,” you said. “You’re loud when you’re annoyed.”

That should have bothered him. It did, maybe a little.

But then you smiled at him like his mind was not a terrible place to be. Like you could look at all the terrible things in there and still find him underneath. Like understanding him did not disgust you.

Fuck, he thought, don’t do things that make me want to—

“You want to kiss me,” you interrupted his train of thoughts.

Dex went so still it was almost sweet. Then he turned his head. “You shouldn’t listen to that.”

“You know I don’t mean to.” You hooked two fingers in the front of his shirt and tugged him closer. 

His eyes dropped to your mouth, and that was answer enough.

So you kissed him.

Gently at first, just to see what he would do with it. Dex froze under your hands like his body had forgotten every instruction except stay. Then he made this small, ruined sound against your mouth and touched your waist like you were a fragile crystal he had been warned not to break.

After that, neither of you stood a chance.

Neither of you did anything halfway. Dex didn’t know how to want normally, and you didn’t know how to be wanted normally. Kissing turned into touching, touching turned to stumbling into his bed, and being in his bed turned into Dex curling into you afterward like he had found heaven and was furious nobody had warned him it would feel like this.

Sex with a mind reader should have terrified him.

But after the first time he understood what it meant with you. There was no pretending or hiding behind control. He couldn’t pretend to be calmer than he was. He couldn’t hide how badly he wanted to kiss you again, how much he liked your hands on him, how ruined he got when you said his name in that breathless sigh. You knew when he was overwhelmed and you adjusted. You knew when he needed to slow down. You knew when he was thinking too much and when he needed you to pull him out of his own head.

You kissed him through it. You talked him through it. You touched him like his wants were not shameful just because they were intense, like the inside of him was not too much for you.

And you loved him for it.

You loved the strange, violent tenderness of him. The way he checked your face before his hands moved. The way he liked when you told him what he wanted. 

“You love me,” you whispered after the second month, half asleep against his chest, your fingers tracing lazy shapes over his ribs.

Dex went still beneath you.

You smiled into his skin. “Don’t panic. I love you too.”

He didn’t say it back then because he didn’t have to.

But his arms tightened around you like the thought of you leaving had become physically unbearable. His mouth pressed to the top of your head, then your temple, then the corner of your mouth, almost desperate.

He loved you with every ruined, desperate, loyal part of himself. He loved you like gravity, like a fixation, like a religion he had invented alone in the dark and then accidentally found living in your body.

You smiled up at him, eyes wet.

“I know,” you whispered. “I can hear you.”

Dex’s hand came up to the back of your neck and kissed you.

You heard it in him constantly after that, and not  like a normal man thinking I love you in a normal way. 

Still, there were rules.

You didn’t care that he killed AVTF agents and assassination jobs. You had heard enough of their minds to know duty didn’t make most men good. You didn’t hate him for coming home with blood on his hands. 

If anything, Dex loved that about you. Because for once, he didn’t have to explain himself.

He didn’t have to come home and build a careful human-sounding justification for the violence. He didn’t have to say he had no choice, or they were a threat. You already knew. You reached into his mind, found his reasoning, and understood it before he even greeted you.

And you would look at him and say, “That’s fine.”

Not because you were naïve. But you knew exactly what he was.

You knew the terrible things he had done. You knew the sound of his mind when he decided someone had to die. You knew how quickly he could make peace with blood if the reason made sense to him. And somehow, you accepted it.

But proximity to killing was a different thing altogether. A hurt mind was a loud mind and a dying mind was worse. 

You explained it after an agent got too close to the apartment. 

Dex knew that he couldn’t risk a search. He knew he couldn’t risk him writing down the address. He couldn’t risk OXE finding you again.

So he killed him outside, close enough for you to feel the pain. 

By the time Dex came back in, you were on the floor beside the bed, hands pressed to your ears even though that never helped. Your face was pale, eyes unfocused, like you were still hearing dead thoughts long after the body had gone limp.

“A hurt mind tastes like TV static,” you whispered.

Dex stopped with blood drying on his sleeve.

You tried to explain because he needed to understand, and with you, Dex always listened like the answer might save your life later.

“I don’t hear words when they’re hurt. Pain turns everything white and icky. It buzzes behind my eyes.” You swallowed hard, breathing through it. “And dying is worse. A dying mind clings to anything it can. A face, a  smell, a prayer. Some room they were in when they were little. Anything to stay. It’s so loud, Dex. I can’t filter it, I can’t, I-I… can’t.”

Dex didn’t look sorry for the dead agent, that was not how he worked. But he looked… hurt. He was hurt because you were.

“I know why you did it,” you said, eyes wet. “I know he got too close. I’m not mad.”

That was worse, because he could’ve handled anger. He didn’t know what to do with forgiveness. “I just can’t be near it,” you whispered. “Please.”

It had never been easy for him to change rules, but just like that, because you were hurt, he changed it. 

He promised no killing within half a mile of the apartment. He promised there would be no bodies in the building. If danger came near and you were close enough to feel it, Dex would send you away first. 

And if he had no choice, if someone had to die and had to die fast, Dex dragged the body away before the mind finished breaking.

He’d drag them down alleys, around corners, behind dumpsters, far enough that their minds could get loud somewhere it wouldn’t reach you.

For a while, that was enough.

Then one day, Dex came home and you weren’t in the apartment.

The door was locked. The curtains were drawn. The lights were low the way you liked them. The kettle sat cold on the stove, even though it was time you usually had tea. Your blanket was half-folded on the chair, one sleeve of one of his shirts hanging off the armrest where you had left it that morning.

But you weren’t there.

Dex stood in the middle of the studio and listened.

He couldn’t hear bare feet shifting against the floor of the bathroom. He could hear breathing from the corner beyond the bed, where you usually were when you were overwhelmed. 

Nothing.

His body reacted before his mind did.

A bloom of panic opened behind his ribs.

“Sweetheart?”

No answer.

He checked the bathroom, the closet, the fire escape. The bed, even though he could see you weren’t  in it. Then again, because panic didn’t care about logic once it got its hands around his throat.

No.

No, no, no.

For one sick second, all he could think was OXE.

Someone had found you. Someone had gotten in while he was away. Someone had taken you from the little box he had built to keep the world out, and he hadn’t been there to stop it.

Then he heard you.

You were… down the hall?

You let out a sob muffled through someone else’s door.

Dex turned toward it so fast the room seemed to tilt.

He knew that sound. He knew every version of your crying by then. The small ones you tried to hide, the sharp ones that meant you were hurt, the breathless ones that meant too many minds had gotten in and you couldn’t find your way back out.

This one was worse.

This one sounded like shock and the beginning of self-hatred.

Dex was already moving.

The neighbors’ apartment door was unlocked.

He pushed it open and found you on the floor.

You were curled up near the kitchen tiles, knees drawn tight, hands pressed over your mouth as if you were trying to hold the sobs in with your fingers. Your whole body shook.  

You were barefoot. Your hair was a mess. One side of your face was wet with tears.

Then Dex saw the bodies around you, and it belonged to the couple who lived there.

The ones who screamed through the walls so often their voices had become part of the building. The ones whose arguments rotted into your apartment at night. The ones whose thoughts were worse than their mouths, according to you. They were bitter and poisoned all the way through.

He knew pieces of them because you knew pieces of them.

You told them they had a son who didn’t live there anymore. The grandparents had taken him in because the father’s anger had become too physical and the mother’s neglect had become too easy to pretend not to see. The child’s room was now turned into storage. 

They had been horrible people.

That did not change the fact that you had killed them.

You looked up at Dex. “I’m sorry.”

Your hands fell from your mouth to your throat, fingers hovering there like you could still feel what you had done.

“They were so loud,” you whispered.

Dex stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Your eyes darted to the bodies, then back to him, wild and wet and ruined.

“I knew it would hurt,” you said, words coming faster now, tumbling out of you before you could stop them. “I knew. I knew dying minds hurt me. I knew it would be loud when they died, I knew it would get in, but they were already so loud, Dex. They were already in my head I couldn’t think.”

Your breath hitched hard.

“They were fighting again. Not just out loud outside, but inside. Inside was worse. He was thinking about what he wanted to do to her, and she was thinking about what she should have done to him years ago, and then they were thinking about the boy, and neither of them even missed him right. They just—”

You choked on it.

Dex took one slow step closer. You shook your head, frantic. “No. Don’t. I’m awful right now. I’m so loud.”

“You’re not too loud for me.”

That made you sob harder. You curled forward, forehead nearly touching your knees.

“I tried to go back,” you whispered. “I tried to go back to our apartment. I tried to shut it out, but they kept going and going and going, and I couldn’t tell what was mine anymore. I couldn’t tell if I hated them or if they hated each other or if the whole hallway hated them, and then I was here.”

Your hands twisted in your lap.

“I was just here.”

Dex understood, because it was you.

Because your mind had been filled past the point of reason by two people who had made a life out of being loud, and by the time you understood what your hands were doing, they were already dying. 

“I made it quick,” you said.

Your voice was so small it barely reached him.

Dex’s teeth tightened. You looked at him like you needed him to believe that one thing, if nothing else.

“I did. I promise. I didn’t want them to hurt. I didn’t want to hear that part for long. I just needed it to stop, and they were going to hurt each other anyway, and they were horrible, Dex, but I—” Your face fell. “I killed them.”

There was no justification, no defence. 

“I killed them,” you said again, and it sounded like you were trying to make yourself understand it.

Dex crouched in front of you, and your eyes flicked to his hands.

Dex knew too much about violence to be shocked by it. But seeing you like this, seeing the toll of it hollow you out from the inside, he understood one thing: The city was killing you.

It was simply too loud, too full for your mind. 

“Look at me,” he said.

You shook your head. “I can’t.”

“Look at me.”

Your eyes lifted.

Dex reached for you then, slow enough that you could stop him.

You didn’t.

The second his hand closed gently around your wrist, you collapsed forward into him with a sound so broken it made his throat tighten. He caught you against his chest, one hand to the back of your head, the other arm locked around you while you sobbed into his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” you gasped.

Dex held you tighter.

“I know.”

“I don’t want to be like this.”

“I know, baby.”

“They were so loud.”

“I know.”

And he didn’t mean it the way you meant it. He couldn’t. He would never know what it was like to have a dying mind claw through yours, to feel someone’s last panic splinter behind your eyes. But he knew enough. He knew you. He knew what this had cost you.

He looked over your shoulder at the dead neighbors, and there was no pity in him for them.

Only calculation. He was going to clean up this mess, maybe make it look like a murder-suicide, and make sure the investigation didn’t even look your way. 

You were crying so hard you could barely breathe.

Dex pressed his mouth to your hair.

“You’re okay,” he whispered, more to himself than to you. “You’re okay.”

That night, after he cleaned what needed cleaning and got you back behind your own door, after he tucked you into the bed and sat with you until exhaustion finally dragged you under, Dex stayed awake beside you and stared at the ceiling.

The panelling he put there was not enough. The blackout curtains he installed were not enough.

The quiet refrigerator, the rugs, the rules about killing, the way he had tried to make one studio apartment survivable — none of it was enough if the city could still get to you through the walls.

By morning, Dex had made up his mind.

He started taking bigger jobs after that, better paying ones. 

All with one thing in mind: relocate you from the city.

—

After that, every job had one purpose.

You.

And Dex had always been better when he had a purpose.

Every payment, every account number, every envelope, every favor owed became a way out of the city, a way to buy air your mind could survive.

But money was never quite enough. Money could buy a place, maybe, but money left a paper trail. Dex needed a cleaner solution. 

He got what he wanted when the property mogul came to him.

The man owned half a skyline and wanted another man dead over a development dispute he kept calling “a complication.” He met Dex in the private lounge of a building with marble floors and windows too high above the street for anyone inside to remember people lived below them.

He offered a number first.

Two hundred thousand dollars. 

Dex did not react.

The mogul smiled like he thought he had accepted the offer.

Then Dex gave him his price. “Two hundred thousand dollars,” he said, “and land.”

The mogul blinked. Dex leaned back in his chair.

“Upstate, and no close neighbors within half a mile radius. I want twenty acres at least. I want an existing cabin if you’ve got one. If not, build one.”

The man stared at him for a second too long, like money had made him forget people could ask for things that weren’t numbers. Dex’s expression didn’t change.

“You want him gone by Friday?” he tilted his head. “That’s my payment.”

The mogul laughed uncertainly.

Dex didn’t.

By the end of the week, the man was dead, the dispute was gone, and a plot of land upstate had quietly changed hands through three shell companies and a fake name. 

There was a cabin on it already.

It was small and slightly weathered, far enough from the nearest road that the city couldn’t reach it easily. It was enough from the nearest neighbor that even your mind would have to stretch to find another person.

Dex stood on the porch the first time he saw it and listened.

Nothing but birds and wind through the trees.

Perfect. 

Dex wanted to surprise you, which was adorable, because he had been thinking about the cabin constantly.

Not just the cabin itself, either. He had been fixing and sanding and checking the locks. He had managed to put extra shelves in the kitchen and fixed the creaky steps. He was planning to replace the bedroom window before you ever saw it because the old one rattled when the wind hit wrong and you’d hate it almost as much as he did. 

He wanted it perfect before he brought you there.

So you pretended not to know.

You let him come home with sawdust on his sleeve and plans tucked behind his eyes, let him sit beside you on the bed while thinking very loudly about the porch and curtain rods and whether the trees were far enough from the house to make you feel safe instead of watched.

“You’re in a good mood,” you said.

Dex glanced at you too quickly. “No.”

You smiled into your book. “Okay.”

Then, flatter, he realised, “You know.”

You looked up, trying so hard not to smile because he looked genuinely upset. “I know.”

Dex sighed through his nose. “I wanted to surprise you.”

“You did,” you said, reaching for the front of his shirt. “I’m surprised you thought you could surprise me.”

And poor Dex, murderous, meticulous, hopelessly in love Dex, let you pull him down into a kiss anyway. 

Of course, when he took you there the week after for the first time with your duffel bags in tow, you loved it.

You loved the curtains. You loved the little fire pit he built after you told him fire felt like the good kind of white noise in your head. You loved watching him chop wood with unnecessary precision. You loved sitting on the porch with a blanket around your shoulders while he checked the perimeter for the third time that day, because Dex couldn’t love normally. He loved like a security system with attachment issues.

And Dex loved that you knew.

He didn’t have to explain the strange shape of his obsession. You could reach into his mind and find the answer before he ever opened his mouth.

Why did he reinforce the back door?

Because if someone comes through it, I want three extra seconds.

Why did he move the bed away from the window?

Because glass breaks inward.

Why did he buy six bags of birdseed?

Because you smiled at the cardinals.

That one made him glare at you.

“You’re not supposed to listen all the time,” he said.

You sat on the porch railing, grinning into your mug. “You’re not supposed to think so loudly.”

“I don’t.”

You shrugged. “You do sometimes.”

Your favorite part, though, was watching him practice.

He set up a target in the clearing behind the cabin, a clean round board nailed to a tree stump far enough away that any normal person would have missed half the time.

Dex never missed.

He would stand there in the cold morning air, sleeves pushed up, knife balanced between his fingers with that beautiful focus he had. Then his hand would flick, quick as a blink, and the blade would bury itself dead center.

Again.

And Again.

You sat on a log nearby, chin in your hand, trying very hard not to smile. “You’re showing off.”

Dex did not look at you. “I’m practicing.”

“You’re showing off because you know I’m watching,” you said, “You’re thinking, She likes when I do this.”

The knife hit the target with a sharp thunk.

Dead center.

Dex turned then, eyes narrowing.

You smiled sweetly.

Poor thing. He was terrifying to everyone else. To you, he was just your murderous little cabin boyfriend who would rather die than admit to liking your sweet little praises.

“You know,” you said, “you don’t have to impress me.”

Dex pulled the knife from the target. 

That one got him.

Dex walked across the clearing toward you, knife still loose in his hand, expression flat in that way that would have scared anyone who didn’t already know his mind was doing the emotional equivalent of tripping over furniture.

“You think you’re funny,” he said.

“You love me.”

Dex stopped in front of you.

The woods were quiet around him. Birds were shifting in the trees. Firewood was stacked by the shed. Morning light caught in his hair and across the sharp line of his cheek. His mind softened before his eyes did, and you felt it bloom warm in your chest before he ever touched you.

I do, he thought. More than anything in the whole goddamn world. 

You smiled up at him. “I know.”

Dex bent downs, caught your chin carefully between his fingers, and kissed you. It was ridiculously gentle for a man called Bullseye. 

When he pulled back, your eyes were still closed.

“You’re going to do it again,” you murmured.

“The knife throwing?”

“No.” You opened your eyes and smiled. “Kiss me.”

Dex managed a smile. And because he never missed, he did.

—

Dex still went back to the city sometimes.

He had scales to level, as he put it. Important vigilante work, in his head. It was the kind of work that involved blood and ledgers and moral math only Benjamin Poindexter could make sound reasonable. You never argued with him about that part. You could read his mind. You knew his reasons. 

Still, leaving you at the cabin always hurt him.

Not because the cabin was unsafe. It was practically a fortress by then, even with enough stored food to survive whatever apocalypse Dex had apparently been personally expecting.

But he still checked everything twice.

“You’ll call if anything feels wrong,” he said.

“I’ll call.”

“If someone comes up the road—”

“I go to the back room.”

“If the radio cuts out—”

“I use the satellite phone.”

“If you hear something near the woods—”

“I don’t go investigate like a stupid horror movie girl.”

Still, he never left for more than three or four days.

Never.

By the second night, his thoughts would start turning back toward you. By the third, they got restless. He’d think about whether you remembered to eat. Whether the firewood was dry. Whether the road was clear. Whether you were wearing his sweater because you missed him or because the house was cold.

Both, usually.

When he came back, it was almost always late.

You never waited inside.

You would be on the porch before he reached the steps, blanket around your shoulders, eyes bright from missing him too much. Sometimes he didn’t even get the Bullseye mask off before you had both hands on him.

“Missed you,” you whispered, then you’d kiss the mask, right over where his mouth should be.

And his brain would go completely, embarrassingly haywire with love, relief, home, you, you, you.

You laughed softly against the fabric surface of it. “You’re loud.”

Dex’s gloved hands found your waist. “I missed you too.”

“Mmm,” you hummed, “I know.”

He would pull the mask off properly after that, just to kiss you properly. And when his mouth finally found yours, you could feel the city fall away from him.

—

This time, Dex was gone for seven days.

He didn’t tell you why, and not because he wanted to scare you. Because in Dex’s mind, silence was kinder than worry. If he told you that he had played a part in killing the mayor's wife and had been injured, and now needed to do one last assassination before signing a contract with a government agency so he could start providing better for you, you would panic before he could get back to you.

So he kept quiet.

And that was worse.

By day five, the cabin stopped feeling peaceful and started feeling empty. By day six, you were sleeping in his sweater, radio in your lap, listening for a voice that never came. That’s when you realised his lines were non-active. By day seven, every crackle of static sounded like him dying.

He had never been gone that long.

So you left.

It took you hours to walk to the nearest train station, but you managed to do it. 

The train, once you got on, was too crowded, and you suddenly were reminded why Dex had moved you away.  There were too many shoulders, too many minds packed into one metal tube, all of them thinking too loudly at once. Fear about Fisk, about Daredevil. Anger at the Task Force. A woman was praying under her breath. A boy was trying not to cry. Someone was watching the footage of the protests on their phone.

You focused.

You filtered.

You had gotten good at that, hadn’t you? Dex had helped you get good at that. One mind at a time. One thought at a time. Find the edge of yourself. Stay there. Don’t let the fear become yours just because you can hear it.

And for a while, you managed.

Even with New York getting louder the closer you came. Even with every station spilling more panic into the train. Even as you got out, as the protests moved through the city like a fever, anger and terror and hope all tangled together until nobody’s thoughts came out clean anymore.

You pressed your nails into your palm and breathed.

In.

Out.

Find Dex.

That was all you needed to do. 

Find Dex and everything would be okay.

You could be overstimulated. You could be shaking. You could have the whole city scraping against the inside of your skull and still make it to him, because you had done hard things before. You had survived OXE. You had survived bad days. You had survived yourself.

You could survive a train ride and a trip to the city.

You were managing.

Barely, but managing.

Until…

Somewhere in the city, a Task Force Agent shot a man.

You felt it.

You didn’t even see it. 

But you felt the impact, the shock, the guttural animal panic of a mind realizing too late that the body was failing. His last thoughts clawed outward, grabbing at anything. He thought about a mother, a kitchen light, the taste of coffee, please, please, please — and it slammed through you so hard you thought you were the one dying. 

Too much.

Too much, too much, too much.

By the time you reached Dex’s apartment, you could barely separate yourself from the city.

You stumbled up the stairs with his sweater twisted in your fists and let yourself in with shaking hands and a spare key he kept in the cabin. The old apartment still smelled like him. The wall panelling he had installed for you was still there. The bed you loved was still there.

So you crawled into it.

You curled up small in the old place where he used to hold you through bad nights, pressing your face into his pillow because it was the only thing close enough to a hug you could get.

And when Dex finally found you, you were shaking in the bed, sobbing like the city had followed you all the way in.

—

Present day…

For a while, neither of them said anything.

The hallway held the two of them in the weak yellow light, close enough to fight, close enough for Matt to hear Dex's slight chatter behind his teeth.

The anger was there.

It moved through Dex like a live wire, and viciously restrained. Matt could hear through his heartbeat how badly he wanted to do something with it. He could hear it in the slight shift of Dex’s weight, in the way his fingers flexed once at his side, in the careful control of his breathing.

But Dex didn’t move.

He stood in front of the broken door like his body could make up for the lock Matt had destroyed. 

Behind him, inside the apartment, you made a small sound.

Dex’s head turned at once, not enough to take his eyes off Matt. But enough for Matt to understand that half of him had never left the room.

It was awful, seeing that.

It was awful because Matt struggled to see past his sins. He didn’t want to see past his sins. 

But the man in front of him was standing outside a bedroom he clearly wanted to return to, choosing not to kill because you had asked him not to.

Matt swallowed. “Does she need help?”

Dex looked at him. His face went cold enough that Matt knew, instantly, he had said it wrong. “She has help.”

Matt’s mouth tightened. “You?”

Dex stepped closer by half an inch. Not a threat, but rather a correction. “Yes.”

Matt let out a slow breath. “I—”

“No.” Dex cut him off. “You don’t get to stand there after kicking my door in, after scaring her half to death, and think you’re the reasonable one here.”

Matt’s jaw flexed. “I heard someone crying in your apartment.”

“And what?” Dex crossed his hand over his chest. “You decided she needed saving from me?”

“You’ve given me plenty of reasons to think that.”

Dex almost smiled. It was a terrible thing. It was humorless, dead before it reached his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said. “I have.”

Matt went still.

Dex didn’t deny it. He didn’t reach for innocence he had no right to hold.

“I know what I am,” Dex said, voice low now. “You don’t have to remind me.”

“I don’t think you do.”

Dex’s eyes sharpened.

Matt took one step forward, careful, measured. “You think because you think you love her, that makes this different.”

Dex’s face changed. Matt heard the hit land.

Dex didn’t hide his agitation well, because in his mind he was thinking how dare you even fucking insinuate that I think I love her. I know I love her. How dare you?

Inside, you must’ve felt the frustration flare, because shifted again, sheets whispering under your trembling body, and Dex turned his head immediately, rage folding down so fast it almost hurt to witness.

His voice dropped toward the door, not Matt. “Sweetheart, I’m okay.”

You didn’t answer, but your breathing slowed.

Matt listened until it settled by a fraction.

“You hear that?” Dex asked with a sigh.

Matt said nothing.

“You hear how she breathes when I’m here?”

Matt’s throat tightened.

Dex leaned in slightly, voice still controlled. “You heard her when you came in. You heard what happened when you kicked the door down. She didn’t run from me. She ran to me.”

Fuck. He had a point.

Matt’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “I’m not trying to hurt her.”

“You already did.”

The words landed flat in his chest and Matt flinched despite himself.

Dex saw it. 

“You came in here loud,” Dex said. “You brought in your thoughts, your judgment, your anger. You dragged all of it into the room with you and dumped it on her while she was already drowning.”

“I—“ Matt shook his head, turning it slightly down, “I didn’t know.”

“No,” Dex said. “You didn’t.”

The accusation wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

Behind the door, you gave another small, broken breath.

Dex’s hand twitched once at his side, like every instinct in him wanted to turn around and go back to you.

“You should go,” Dex said through gritted teeth.

Matt didn’t, at least not right away.

You were quiet now.

Not calm, Matt could hear that much. Your breathing still came unevenly from somewhere beneath the blanket, frayed at the edges, worn thin from crying. But you were quieter than before, and every time Dex shifted even slightly away from the door, your heartbeat changed.

Matt wanted to believe he was looking at Bullseye. At the man who had turned a courthouse into a warzone. At the man whose name belonged on a tip line, in a police report, on every alert system New York still had running after the riots.

Benjamin Poindexter was standing right in front of him.

Matt let him go only a couple of days ago, yes, but hasn’t he been pushing for transparency over the last twenty four hours?

He should believe in the law. Especially now. Especially after what he had said in front of the whole city. He had torn his own mask off for accountability. He had asked New York to believe there was still a line between justice and vengeance and was prepared to pay the price anyway.

So why was he standing here, letting a murderer guard a broken door?

Dex watched him think it.

His mouth barely moved.

“You want to hate me?” Dex said. “Fine. Hate me downstairs.”

Matt’s jaw clenched.

Dex stepped closer. His voice stayed low, but there was nothing soft in it now. “Just don’t do it near her.”

Matt shook his head and Dex shifted towards the door, like keeping Matt’s attention off you was as natural as breathing.

“She isn’t yours to protect,” Matt said quietly.

Dex’s eyes went flat. “No,” he said. “She’s mine to take care of.”

The words should have sounded wrong. Maybe they were wrong. But behind him, your breath hitched at the sound of his voice, and some tiny broken part of it steadied after.

A year ago, Matt would have heard that and called it delusion.

But tonight, he heard the window shut. Dex silenced the phone. Dex killed the lights and unplugged the radio. Dex tucked the blanket over you. He heard love in all the small, practiced mercies Dex had done without needing to be told.

Matt’s hands curled slowly at his sides.

He could still do it.

He could leave the building and call in an anonymous tip. That Bullseye was here, and they could go non-lethal because you were here and there was no way in hell Dex would kill near you. Matt could tell Brent this address, this floor, this door.

He could do it because it would be right.

Because Dex was dangerous.

Because the law had to mean something.

Because Foggy—

Matt’s throat tightened so sharply he almost moved.

But Matt understood, with a sick twist in his stomach, that if he took Dex away tonight, he didn’t know who would be left to tend to you. Who would know how to keep you from drowning in a city full of minds.

Because Matt had heard what one broken door did to you.

If cops came into that apartment with radios crackling, boots pounding, fear and adrenaline spiking out of every mind, you would fall apart. And if they took Dex away, then you would be well and truly fucked. 

He didn’t know what doctors would want their hands on you. He didn’t know who would look at you and see a woman before they saw a weapon.

Dex was dangerous.

But maybe that was exactly why he knew how to keep danger away from you. 

“She asked you to leave,” Dex said again, quieter this time. “So leave.”

Matt stood there a moment longer. Long enough to feel every reason not to. Long enough to know he might regret it. Long enough to know he would think about this hallway again, maybe for the rest of his life.

Then he stepped back.

Dex didn’t relax.

Matt took another step. Then another, until he reached the stairwell and stopped with one hand near the railing. His face angled slightly toward the apartment again, toward the woman he could still hear crying in the dark.

For a second, Dex thought he might come back.

Then Matt said, very quietly, “If she ever asks for help from someone else, don’t stand in her way.”

Dex’s fingers flexed.

The answer came immediately. “If she asks, I’ll listen.”

Matt could hear that he was telling the truth.  His fingers tightened once around the railing.

Still, he stayed there for one more second.

Dex waited him out, because if Matt needed to drag his reluctance down the stairs one breath at a time, fine. He could do that. Dex could stand there all night if he had to. He could become the door until morning if he had to.

Finally, Matt lowered his head and made his way down. 

Dex stayed in the hallway until Matt’s footsteps disappeared down the stairs.

Only when the last sound disappeared down the stairs did Dex turn back toward the apartment. The door was ruined, the lock hanging uselessly from splintered wood, the frame cracked where Matt’s boot had forced it inward.

For one second, Dex stared at it.

His anger flared, then he swallowed it down.

Not now.

Not near you.

He stepped inside and pulled the door closed as much as it would go. It dragged wrong against the floor, crooked and broken, but he eased it shut anyway. Then he picked up the kitchen chair instead of dragging it, because the first scrape of wood had made your breathing catch from the bed.

Everything had to be quiet.

He wedged the chair beneath what was left of the handle and pushed once, testing it.

The door held, only barely. It hurt him that it was imperfect, but it had to be good enough for tonight.

Then he turned back to you.

You were still crying, but not like before. Not the full panic that had torn through you until you couldn’t breathe. This was smaller, yet more exhausted. Like your body had run out of strength but your heart hadn’t figured out how to stop breaking yet.

You were curled on his bed under the blanket, face wet, shoulders shaking in little miserable tremors.

Dex  crouched beside you so carefully, like one wrong sound might split you open again.

“Hey,” he whispered.

Your mouth trembled. “I wanted to hurt him.”

Dex went still as your eyes squeezed shut, fresh tears slipping down your cheeks.

“I wanted to,” you whispered, horrified by yourself. “After he scared me, after he thought those things about you, after he came in so loud, when he was outside with you and he upset you, I wanted to hurt him, Dex. I did. I did, I—”

“Shh.” Dex’s hand came up slowly, waiting.

You leaned into it before he touched you, and only then did his palm settle against your cheek.

“Shh, baby.”

“I wanted to make him stop.” You shook your head, crying harder now, broken open by the confession.

Dex leaned closer until his forehead almost touched yours. “So did I, baby,” he whispered, rough and aching, “so did I.”

You opened your eyes.

Dex looked at you like it cost him to be that honest and he would pay it anyway if it calmed you. “But we didn’t.”

Your breath caught.

“We didn’t,” he said again, softer. “You stayed with me. I stayed with you. He left. It’s over.”

Your face fell, and Dex shifted up onto the bed then, slow enough not to startle you, and gathered you carefully against him. You folded into his chest with a broken little sound, fingers twisting weakly in his shirt.

He held you like he was trying to put your body back around your soul.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered into your hair. “I’ve got you. I know. I know, sweetheart.”

You sobbed once, small and ruined.

Dex pressed his mouth to your temple. “We’re going back to the cabin first thing tomorrow.”

Your fingers tightened. “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” His hand moved over your back, slow and steady. “You can sleep the whole way if you want.”

Your breathing shook against him.

“And my new work doesn’t start for two weeks,” he said, like he was offering you the only miracle he had. “So that’s two weeks, okay? Two weeks of nothing.”

You pulled back just enough to look at him.

Dex’s thumb brushed beneath your eye.

“Just me and you,” he whispered. “No one else. No noise. No city. Just us.”

Your mouth trembled and he kissed your forehead.

“I’ll chop wood. You can sit on the porch. We’ll keep the fire on. You can wear my clothes and sleep all day if you want.”

Another tear slipped down your cheek before you could help it, and he caught it.

“And I won’t leave,” he said. “Not for two weeks. Not for anything.”

You stared at him through wet lashes, searching his face first. Then, his mind.

He was thinking about…

The cabin.

You sleeping in the passenger seat.

You on the porch.

You wrapped in his sweater.

You, safe.

And underneath it all, over and over, so constant it almost broke you…

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Your breath hitched.

His face softened. “There you are,” he whispered.

You made a tiny sound and tucked your face back into him. “Okay,” you breathed.

Dex’s shoulders nearly gave out with relief. “Okay?”

You nodded against his chest. “Okay.”

He closed his eyes and held you tighter for one second, just one, like he needed to feel the word inside his own body. Then he kissed your temple again. “That’s my girl.”

Your crying slowed after that.

It didn’t stop, but it gentled into little exhausted shudders against his shirt while Dex kept his hand moving over your back, the way he knew helped. He stayed until your fingers loosened. Until your breathing stopped tripping over itself. Until your mind, still bruised and raw, found the steady line of his thoughts again.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

You could focus on it now.

Not the city. Not Matt. Not the broken door.

Just Dex and his thoughts, warm and obsessive and constant, wrapped around you from the inside out.

Finally, Dex pulled back enough to look at your face.

“I’m gonna clean up,” he whispered.

Your eyes opened again, instantly afraid. He shook his head before the fear could grow.

“I’m just going to the bathroom,” he said. “That’s all.”

You swallowed.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” he promised. “You should go to sleep, okay?”

You didn’t answer.

Dex kissed your temple. Then your cheek. Then your lips, so gently you almost started crying again.

“Try,” he whispered, because he knew you were so, so tired. “Just try for me.”

You nodded, barely.

Dex eventually eased himself away, slowly and careful, leaving the blanket tucked around your shoulders and the chair braced beneath the broken door.

The bathroom light stayed off, and the door stayed open.

Water ran low in the sink. 

You appreciated it more than you could say. The sound filled the little apartment gently, not enough to crowd your head, not enough to become another thing pressing at the inside of your skull. Just enough to give your mind somewhere simple to latch on to.

Dex didn’t need to read minds to know that running water settled you the same way fire did. It had the same white-noise hush. It had the same clear, constant sound that didn’t want anything from you. Fire and water didn’t think. It didn’t feel. It didn’t ask to be understood.

It just moved.

And Dex knew that. He knew you.

So you laid there in the dark, still hurting, still broken in places you could not name, but now, you were present.

You took a shaky breath.

For a while, there was only the water running low in the bathroom sink and Dex moving quietly through the dark.

You could hear him in pieces.

You heard the careful pass of his hands under the faucet, the soft drag of fabric as he wiped his face. The small, practical thoughts he kept lining up for tomorrow.

Cabin first thing.

Full tank of gas.

No tunnel.

Back roads.

Blanket in the passenger seat.

Radio off unless she asks.

Two weeks.

Just me and her.

You focused on him. On the shape of his mind. On the tenderness he had no idea how to say without turning it into a plan, a route, a locked door, a fixed window. Even now, Dex was thinking about firewood and the bedroom window and whether the car heater would be too loud for you in the morning.

It made you smile.

Then… oh.

Something else reached you. Someone else.

It wasn’t Dex; this thought came from outside.

It was a thought that came from out the street, clear and heavy through the thin glass:

I hope I’m doing the right thing.

Your eyes opened. For one second, you lay very still beneath the blanket.

Dex was still in the bathroom. But outside, across the street, Matt Murdock had not gone far.

You got up slowly and turned your head toward the window.

The curtain hadn’t been pulled perfectly shut. There was a narrow gap where city light slipped through, pale and dirty against the floor. You shifted, leaning just enough to see past it.

There he was, across the street, half-shadowed beneath a streetlamp, hood pulled up, face tilted toward the building like he was still listening to the apartments.

Matt Murdock stood there with one foot turned away and the rest of him refusing to follow.

He was hesitating.

His thoughts were still loud, but not loud like before.

It was no longer crashing through you with suspicion and anger and judgment. This was different. His thoughts now were coherent, almost. They came to you in pieces, clear enough to understand.

Benjamin Poindexter is still a dangerous man.

I shouldn’t leave him with her.

But she asked me to leave.

But she’s calmer when he’s near.

Your throat tightened.

Matt’s thoughts vibrated around the shape of Dex, for lack of a better word. There was still blood there, grief there, a wound so deep it had a name you didn’t touch because it hurt even from a distance.

But there was something else in his thoughts now, too.

You.

Because you could read minds, you knew he had heightened senses, and you knew you didn’t have to speak loudly to reach him. You only had to speak clearly.

So you turned your face toward the narrow gap in the curtain, toward the street where Matt Murdock stood beneath the weak glow of a lamp, and whispered into the dark, “I know what he is.”

Across the street, Matt went completely still.

You saw the subtle lift of his head, the tightening through his shoulders. His attention snapping back to your window because he could feel where you were.

He heard you. You knew he did.

You curled your fingers into the blanket.

“But he’s not that to me.”

Matt didn’t move.

You could feel his mind presently listening now. Not as Daredevil. Not as the man who had kicked down the door. Not as someone trying to decide what kind of danger you were.

“He loves me,” you whispered.

Matt’s thoughts shifted.

He does. Even a blind man could see that. 

The thought came so clearly it almost hurt.

You blinked, tears slipping sideways into your hair. “He’s good to me.”

You remembered him now, when it was Dex’s hand that unlocked the cuff, how he put his jacket over your shoulders. You thought about the cabin and the chair beneath the broken door. That man was in the bathroom, washing up with the door open because he promised he wouldn’t leave you alone.

You breathed in, shaky but steadier. “He’s a good man for me.”

Across the street, Matt’s face changed.

It was a small, tiny furrow of the brow. But then you heard the thought that followed.

I believe you.

Your breath hitched

Above all the doubt, above all the grief, above all the things Matt Murdock would never be able to forgive, that one thought came through clean.

I believe you.

Not Dex.

You.

He believed you knew what you were saying. He believed you were not trapped. He believed you understood the man beside you better than anyone else in the city possibly could.

And maybe that was the most Matt could give.

You, behind the glass, exhausted and half-broken in Dex’s bed.

Matt, across the street, carrying a truth he didn’t want and yet couldn’t put down.

Because maybe Benjamin Poindexter was not only defined by violence. Maybe there was something else buried deep under him, warped and wounded and difficult to look at, but human anyway.

A person.

Someone capable of loving. Someone, somehow, worthy of being loved.

Matt didn’t forgive him. But for the first time, he saw him differently.

Then he lowered his head and gave you a small nod.

Then Matt Murdock turned away.

This time, he truly left.

You watched until the dark took him, until his thoughts faded into the rest of New York and you could no longer separate him from the city.

But you knew.

You knew that Matt was starting to look at the man you loved differently.

— end.

Extra Note : Like the reader in this story, we all have good days and bad days. Please remember that needing help doesn’t make you weak, broken, or too much. It just makes you human. If you are struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or contact a crisis/support service in your area. You deserve care, patience, and support on your bad days too, lovelies! 🫶💕❤️

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Dex taglist : @itsdynotdaddy @diabolicallydownbad @doesanyonereadthis @meicore @pixie2k5 @bibiishin @starlitflora @pearlstiare @glorybeat @stardustworlds @castawaybarnes @supervampireflame @not-the-teen-witch @billybonesxx @ultimatewolverine @treetrees-world-of-imagiation @bitch-spaghetti-o @lostinthes4uce @cotton-eee @weallhaveadestiny @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @moonbug333 @yujyujj @mattdexx @lostfallenangelsblog @bloomsberryfairy @flimsysquid @abbotfan @leonetta2014 @ficcharsimpsblog

The threshold of the small, one bedroom apartment felt less like a physical boundary and more like the precipice of an entire world. To anyone else, the compact square footage, open-concept kitchenette, and the isolated bathroom were simply standard urban housing. But to you, standing perfectly still with your palms flat against the cool frame of the doorway, it was everything. All that you had spent years praying for, laid out in front of you.

You took a single, heavy breath, inhaling the sharp, unfamiliar scents of fresh paint, old plaster, and the distant, metallic tang of the city outside. You made it here to your new life. You arrived despite everyone's prediction of your failure, every quiet doubt whispered in the dark, and every loud, toxic absolute hurled at your head before you left. You crossed an entire continent with nothing but five thousand dollars in your pocket and a beat-up car crammed to the ceiling with your entire life. Somehow, the fragile hope of your survival had held together, delivering you straight ownership of this apartment in New York.

Your feet moved on their own volition, carrying you across the space as you began to map your new home. The wooden floorboards creaked beneath your weight, full of knots and individual character. Your gaze tracked the deep bay window that overlooked the elevated train tracks. Watching the late afternoon sun pierce through the glass, illuminating a slow, rhythmic dance of dust mites suspended in the air of your empty space. This was a life you could get used to loving, perhaps the life you should have been promised since the very beginning. One filled with serenity and the promise of stability within these walls. A life where you didn't have to balance on a tight rope on a daily basis, where home could foster growth and ambition rather than squander it. This is what it should have been like, not the terrible cards life had dealt you.

Suddenly triggered by the calm, an immense, suffocating sensation flooded the center of your chest. Your throat tightened to a painful knot, and your heart began to hammer against your ribs with a relentless, frantic tempo. It was a volatile, agonizing cocktail of pride and still resonating, white hot anger. Your fists clenched at your sides, your knuckles turning white as your eyes locked onto the pathetic, sparse collection of cardboard boxes sitting in the center of the empty room.

Fuck everybody.

The words echoed in your mind like a mantra. Fuck them all.

Your jaw locked so tightly your teeth ached. In the sudden silence of the room, the memory of your emotionally incompetent mother’s voice flooded back, louder and more invasive than the rumble of the subway outside the glass. Years of belittling, of being told you were useless, of being overlooked and treated not as a daughter, but as an unwanted burden. None of it held any leverage over you anymore. Because you were free. You were thousands of miles away, while they remained entirely stagnant, rotting back home, working themselves into an early grave at the same exact, unfulfilling job your mother had held for fifteen miserable years.

For over a decade, you had navigated the landmines of an emotionally abusive parent who viewed her own flesh and blood as direct, threatening competition. But the war was over. In a way it felt like victory. You won your freedom.

And that single realization should have been enough to calm the internal storm, but the peace felt incomplete as you stood there. Perhaps it was the empty space that left you wanting more. A deep, visceral part of you still craved violence. The quiet, dignified exit of the "being the bigger person" narrative society forced down your throat, felt unsatisfying compared to the scale of the damage. You felt a raw need to physically tear that woman apart with a knife, to make her feel the exact same pain she had inflicted upon your childhood. The concrete image of it flickered in your mind, vivid and bloody, because being better wasn't a currency that bought back the years that had been stolen from you.

Her lingering voice was still a tenant in your head, she was the internal structure that spoke and criticized every waking minute of your day. Yes you had gotten away but in some ways she was still here. The heaviness settled right back over your shoulders, bringing the anger and a deep, nameless starvation along with it. You couldn't even identify what you wanted at this moment as you stewed. Did you want validation? Did you want happiness? Or did you simply want the dark daydreams of shoving a cold knife into her body to finally become real? And were you regretting not doing it before you left…

"That's interesting," a voice muttered from the hallway.

The sound shattered your trance immediately, pulling you back from the depths. Your head snapped toward the doorway, your gaze averting to the apartment door you had left wide open. Cussing yourself out silently for it as you schooled your expression and kept the emotions at bay.

Standing across the narrow, dimly lit corridor was a man. He had been in the exact middle of unlocking his own door before your rigid posture caught his eye. His sharp brows parted slightly as his cold eyes took in the sight of your moving boxes, your tightly clenched fists, and the mean, hostile frown you didn't even realize you had been wearing as you zoned out.

Dex studied you for a fraction of a second. To his hyper acute mind, you were a sudden, unregulated pawn in his clean, quiet hallway. He made the deliberate decision to pocket his hands, leaving the keys dangling on his lock as he began to walk directly toward your open door.

Your mind scrambled to re-engage with reality, your feet carrying you forward to meet him halfway at the threshold. Dex's focal moved with precision, immediately logging the sparse contents of your life: exactly four small boxes and a half-disassembled mannequin laying on the bare hardwood. His focus honed in on the heavy packing tape sealing the cardboard shut, explicitly stamped with a small, red maple leaf.

"Hi, I'm your new neighbor," you said.

Dex’s internal wiring instantly analyzed the pitch. Your words were incredibly tense, the register high enough to suggest performance of pleasantries, but there was a distinct strain underlying the syllables. He tracked the rigid alignment of your shoulders, noting how the tension made your collarbones stand out sharply beneath your skin.

"Not from New York?" he asked, raising a single brow. He already knew the precise answer based on the tape, but his programming needed him to hear the confirmation roll off your tongue.

"No," you shook your head, your posture remaining stiff.

"You sew?" Dex nodded his chin down toward the dress form resting on the floor.

"Um... yeah," you offered, your response clipped and protective. You had absolutely no desire to delve into how that purpose was the singular anchor of your soul, or how you had abandoned the little shred of safety back home just to pursue it here.

"Hm. Keep the noise down past ten. Thin walls," he said plainly.

You eagerly, rapidly nodded your compliance. Dex lingered for a moment, his body weight shifting. By all accounts of his daily routine, he should have walked away. Conventional human interactions were a tedious, exhausting ordeal that rarely benefited him unless they served a specific purpose. But the absolute immediacy of your agreement, the way you submissively shrunk back under the order, made his mind pause. He sees people afraid on a daily basis as Bullseye, yet you, for some odd reason, were already on edge before he even made his presence known.

"I'm Tony," he quipped, the introduction sounding just a fraction too rehearsed, a carefully selected line from his mental archives. His eyes flicked back down to the foreign maple leaf on the box before a low, quiet intensity crept into his voice. "But my friends call me Dex."

"Dex," you tested the name, the word falling softly between you.

A faint hum of genuine satisfaction vibrated in his chest. It had been an exceptionally long time since he had heard his actual name spoken by someone who wasn't a target or a handler.

"Don't let Mrs. Smithers hear you call me that," he said, offering a sudden, sharp grin that didn't quite reach his dead, unblinking eyes. There was an invisible, dangerous undercurrent to the words, a hidden threat wrapped in domestic clothing. "I'm serious, or else she's gonna start thinking we're not as close."

His delivery possessed a sudden, calculated charisma, a charm that successfully baited a small, hesitant half-smile from your lips.

"Knock at my door if you need anything," he added, throwing in a brief, practiced wink before he turned on his heel. He didn't truly understand the psychological impulse that had driven him to offer the concession, but his research on human integration had taught him that these specific gestures effectively relaxed women. He had already decided you wouldn't be a problem for his daily structure.

In the weeks that followed, you went to extraordinary lengths to avoid apartment 20B. It wasn't that the initial interaction had been explicitly unpleasant, but an invasive, persistent nervousness had settled deep in your stomach whenever you heard his footsteps in the hall. Dex’s presence made you feel extremely anxious, exposing a raw, aching deprivation of basic social interaction that you weren't ready to face.

But the avoidance strategy completely collapsed on a Tuesday evening over a remarkably stubborn jar of marinara sauce.

You had spent twenty-five agonizing minutes exhausting every trick in your arsenal. You had sandwiched the thick glass between your thighs, twisting until your skin was raw; you had hammered the metal lid with the heavy handle of a butter knife, praying for the vacuum seal to pop. Nothing worked. Looking back at your tiny kitchenette one final time, at the pathetic pot of rapidly cooling noodles and the messy counter, your feet began to move toward the hallway before your brain could protest.

You stood before apartment 20B and knocked once.

The sound had barely dissipated before the door swung wide open. Dex stood beneath the frame, wearing a plain white muscle shirt and a pair of loose gray sweatpants. His broad, heavily muscled shoulders completely blocked the view of his interior. He raised a single, questioning brow.

You pathetically shook the glass jar once in front of his chest. "Open," fell from your lips in a flat, monotone whisper.

Dex blinked, his gaze dropping to the jar.

"I mean- um, can you please open this? Please?" you tried again, your voice cracking with embarrassment.

Without a word, his large, calloused hand reached out and took the glass from your grip. With one smooth, effortless twist of his wrist, the metal lid popped open with a loud snap. Your eyes involuntarily darted to the thick expanse of his bicep, watching the muscles flex and shift beneath the skin with the casual display of strength. A sudden, suffocating feeling of intrusion washed over you, making you feel entirely out of place.

You frantically snatched the opened jar back into your possession, attempting to execute a rapid speed-walk back to the safety of your home before he could engage.

Dex watched your skittish retreat, a faint flicker of amusement piercing through his usual apathy. Conventional neighbors were loud, unpredictable nuisances, but you were different. You stayed entirely within your perimeter, exactly how he preferred it. You made no noise, you never slammed your doors, and you never returned home late. In fact, Dex had realized he almost never saw you leave the building at all. You treated apartment 20A like a hiding hole, a sanctuary against the outside world.

Perhaps that was the exact reason his mind felt inclined to participate. To actively engage and solidify the illusion of "Tony" as a real breathing person that cares about others.

"What're you making?" he asked, his voice a low interrogation that stopped you in your tracks.

"Um, one-pot pasta?" you murmured over your shoulder.

Dex's sharp brows furrowed instantly, his gaze narrowing into a harsh, hyper-focused line. You instinctively clutched the marinara jar tighter against your ribs.

"What the fuck is that," he cussed out, the sheer lack of culinary skills genuinely offending his sense of order.

"It's... pasta you make in one pot," you shrugged, your voice defensive.

The concept thoroughly grated on his compulsive need for proper sequencing. Before you could offer a verbal protest, Dex stepped over the boundaries of his apartment, his tall frame moving right past you and directly into your private space. You stood frozen for a second before silently trailing behind him.

His linear, tracking eyes scanned your apartment, and a cold weight settled into his chest. My god, it was sad.

In the center of the kitchenette sat the offending, solitary pot, filled with starch and water. Your bed wasn't even a proper piece of furniture; it was merely a single mattress dumped onto the floor, heavily dressed up in expensive duvets and a mountain of pillows to overcompensate for the lack of a frame. A small lap-table sat on top of the blankets instead of a proper dining set. Five long, perfectly level shelves lined the walls, crammed with meticulously folded fabrics. By the bay window sat an ancient, cast-iron sewing machine that looked at least a century old, positioned next to the dress form wearing a stunning, intricate gown that looked entirely too beautiful to exist within this depressing space.

"You're not okay," Dex deduced immediately, turning his rigid frame around to face you.

A nervous, fractured laugh broke from your throat. "What?"

"You're not okay," he repeated, stating it not as an insult, but as an absolute fact as he walked back over to the stove to inspect the cursed pot.

"I'm fine," you muttered, peaking through the kitchen archway, your arms crossed tightly over your chest. Jar forgotten beside you, a bystander in this weird conversation.

"Then why do you live like this?" His tone was sharp, accusatory, mildly insulted that any functional human being would willingly subject themselves to such a lack of domestic structure. It bothered him. It bothered him an extraordinary amount. Too much for him to resume his usual disregard of others personal business.

"Um, for the record, I live fine," you raised a single finger to defend yourself.

"Your bed is on the floor," he countered, his expression entirely unamused.

"There's a rug! And it's cozy!" you pointed down to the plush pink faux-fur rug stretching beneath the mattress.

"It's sad," Dex noted flatly. He deeply disliked the specific deregulation this room was forcing onto him. Without asking permission, his hands began to move, instantly taking ownership of the kitchen, determined to fix the failure of your meal. And you could only do nothing but watch in bewilderment as your next door neighbor moved with clear certainty in your home.

"What's that about," he asked after a moment, jerking his sharp chin toward the elaborate gown by the window.

"Someone's paying me to make it," you offered softly.

"So you're a designer?" he questioned, his large hands efficiently raiding the contents of your refrigerator. You tried your absolute best to ignore the terrifying reality that an exceptionally attractive, intimidating man was currently taking control of your life.

"No. Designers get people to buy their clothes because of their name. I just... I just make clothes." You clarified, shifting your weight on your feet.

"You have people buying your clothes for how they look. How's that any different?" Dex questioned, because truthfully your logic made no sense.

"It just is, okay!" your voice finally spiked, a sudden rush of raw, defensive emotion breaking through your shy exterior. "They have degrees, and money, and connections, and I just have a bed on the floor!" You pointed a trembling finger at the mattress.

Dex stared at you for a long second before a low, genuine laugh slipped past his lips. He bit down a smile, turning back to the stove to completely salvage your atrocious food. You amused him. Your strange, combative nature hidden beneath your meek form was fascinating enough to make him stay. So he kept cooking in the silence, letting you calm down from your outburst. For a while the only sound echoing the room was rhythmic cutting as he minced garlic with efficient speed.

"How'd you get that scar?" you blurted out suddenly when you decided to speak again, your eyes tracking the pale line slicing through his features. It was a brave question to ask, perhaps the wrong one, but it'd been the only thing you could focus on since the minute you met him. And you decided on impulse, that if he got to invade your life, you at least earned the right to ask an equally invasive question.

Dex’s muscles tensed for a solitary second, his fingers tightening around the kitchen knife. His mind instantly executed recalibration, regulating his breathing just as he had rehearsed a thousand times in institutional therapy. He locked the bloody, violent memories away in a vault, forcing a normal, charismatic mask over his face.

"It's New York," he said plainly as if that was enough of an explanation, which in a way it was. "What I wanna know is why you chose here over Canada?" He turned his head, his gaze drilling straight into your eyes.

"I didn't like it there anymore..." your voice dropped into a hushed, incredibly heavy register. The sheer, concentrated depression radiating from your small form filled the room like dense fog. It irritated him. It irritated him because a creature with your specific, meticulous talent shouldn't be radiating the scent of a wounded animal. He hated the lack of coordination between what you were capable of creating and how you viewed your own worth.

"Taste," he ordered softly, lifting the wooden spoon directly to your mouth.

Your lips parted in a slight hesitation, your eyes locking onto his as you slowly leaned forward. Dex watched with a hyper-focused intensity as your mouth closed over the wood, taking in the rich, perfectly balanced sauce.

"That's really good," you nodded, your cheeks flushing a brilliant pink as you stepped back, suddenly shy.

“Isn't it," he murmured in that attractive, playful lilt of his. The gesture and tones of his voice are a characteristic you'd come to associate with your odd neighbor. Without a hint of hesitation, Dex slid the exact same spoon into his own mouth, tasting the leftover sauce, his eyes never leaving yours.

That night he left you standing there in the center of the kitchen with a perfectly prepared plate of fresh food, not even bothering to sit down or have a meal with you. His mission for the day had been executed, leaving you thoroughly confused and breathless in his wake.

The confusion only deepened when the exact same sequence repeated itself the following morning. You opened your door at nine o'clock, only to be firmly pushed aside as Dex hauled a heavy canvas bag of groceries directly into your space.

"What're you making for breakfast now?" His voice carried a dry, biting edge as he interrogated you.

"I don't normally eat breakfast," you muttered, leaning against the counter.

Dex’s brows furrowed deeply. Wrong. That was incorrect in every preferable scenario to him. The human brain required proper nutritional fuel the precise moment it transitioned into an awake state in order to function throughout the day. And yet you skipped breakfast regularly.

"I brought proper food," he noted, emphasizing the word proper. Safe, balanced foods that didn't emerge from an aluminum can.

You paused, staring at the broad expanse of his chest, then down to the fresh produce, and then back up to his sharp features. "Why?" you asked, your voice small, genuinely confused why this terrifying neighbor cared enough about your life. Maybe he did care, or maybe the sheer lack of order in your existence simply violated his internal programming in an incomprehensible way. It didn't take much for you to realize that Dex most likely had OCD, judging by what you've observed from him, he was a very one track minded man.

"Why're you doing this shit," he countered, his hand gesturing vaguely to the fabrics, the mattress, the entirety of your isolated world.

Your brows knit together, trying to parse the exact thing he was attacking. You made an educated guess that he was referring to the fundamental reality of all of you.

"I moved here because I believed in myself," you said, trying to sound firm.

But the delivery was a far cry from actual conviction. To Dex’s tracking eyes, you looked like a frail, hyper-vigilant thing that was merely surviving the days rather than actively living them. It didn't look like belief; it looked like an escape. But Dex could respect the raw, stubborn determination underlying the performance. He had recognized your immense talent within the first sixty seconds of entering your apartment. You were a creature of singular focus, prioritizing the creation of a beautiful dress over basic human comfort. He wasn't one to judge an obsession. You possessed the spark required to carve your name into the stone of the city; you simply weren't fully convinced of your own gravity yet.

It reminded him entirely of his old, fractured self, desperately searching for a script to prove he was allowed to exist. Maybe that was the exact reason he couldn't just let you go. He tilted his head, his dark eyes narrowing as you visibly squirmed under the pressure of his gaze.

"But you still sleep on the floor," he said slowly, taking a deliberate step into your orbit.

"But I still sleep on the floor..." you confirmed, your voice hitching as you took a small step backward. He continued to advance, completely abandoning the grocery bags on the kitchen island.

"You should be sleeping in a bed made for royalty. Not that," he noted, a faint trace of dark amusement in his voice as he watched you try everything in your power to avoid his proximity.

"That requires princess money," you countered with your chin held high, your heel catching slightly on the edge of the faux-fur rug.

"That's not how the story goes. Isn't the fairytale answer to marry a king?" He crossed his massive arms over his broad chest, blocking out the light from the window with his form.

You stopped moving, taking a long, deliberate look at the rigid picture of his features. "Are you mocking me?" you asked after a heavy silence. "Is this a joke to you?"

"What? No,” he spat out with equal conviction.

“You are not a joke," the concept genuinely offended the man. You were everything but.

"I don't need help, Dex," your voice suddenly cracked, an exasperated, rushing tide of buried rage spilling through the seams of your composure. He had unknowingly poked at a raw, unhealed wound you didn't even know you had. "I don't need anybody. I've made it this far entirely on my own, and I-"

"I didn't say you needed it," the words rolled off his tongue like velvet, cutting through your fervor. "I'm offering it."

"Why?" your eyes narrowed into suspicious, defensive slits. You were a guarded little thing.

"Because you're alone. In a dangerous city," he pointed it out as if it were a fundamental law.

Truthfully, his conscious mind didn't fully comprehend the psychological reasonings driving his desire to intervene; he simply knew that his system demanded it. Perhaps it was merely basic human nature to seek out a companion. Or perhaps he decided that for "Tony" to maintain his flawless civilian disguise, he required a friend. Tony was a good citizen. Tony helped his neighbors; Tony fed the old lady's cat on the third floor; Tony fixed the plumbing for the single mother upstairs. Tony was a pillar of the community. Though it wasn't just that. Dex knew you had resonated with him, with your awkward self and unpredictable outbursts hooking him. Despite how it looked, he wasn't trying to fix you, he was in no position to be handling another person, instead he felt the urge to provide you with the support he never had.

"Sit down," he ordered simply, turning his back to you as he began to masterfully prepare the fresh ingredients he'd brought.

"You have talent," he said twenty minutes later after the silence got too heavy, his hands efficiently wiping down the counter space while you consumed the meal he made. You sat up a fraction straighter at the validation. "But talent without exposure doesn't mean anything."

You almost flinched at the sharp accuracy of the statement.

"You should be out there. Not locked in here all the time," he continued. By now, Dex’s surveillance of your habits had mapped your highly dysfunctional sleeping patterns. You remained awake through the entire night, whenever he left for an assignment or returned in the pre-dawn hours, the golden light from your windows were always visible. You spent the daylight hours sleeping, unless you were forced to leave for your underappreciated assistant position at the Daily Prophet.

He turned his head to look at you, tracking the way your soft lips parted slightly as you absorbed his assessment.

"You're a pretty woman. Here in New York, that's enough to open most doors," he said. The words weren't delivered as a compliment or a cheap attempt at flattery; it was simply a cold, structural fact.

A fact that caused you to violently choke on your eggs, a brilliant crimson blush detonating across your cheeks.

"You okay there?" he asked, his hand pausing its polishing over the mug in his hand. You urgently nodded your head, frantically reaching for a glass of water. Dex kept wiping the porcelain clean, a dark, thoroughly amused smirk settling onto his features.

Life with a man in your orbit was an entirely surreal reality, especially when that man was a massive, hyper-stabilizing force looming permanently in your background.

Dex had helped you source a proper, high-backed "princess bed" frame, assembling the heavy wood with a silent, terrifying efficiency. In return, you began to prepare your meals with his specific caloric needs in mind. You found yourself dressing in the mornings with the absolute certainty that you would be looking into the cold watchful eyes of your neighbor before the day concluded. No longer donning old sweats with thread stuck onto them, instead you chose more curated lounge wear. Nothing that suggested you were trying too hard but cotton sets and satin shorts that helped remind you that you were a girl. A girl with a very attractive man coming to her apartment on a daily basis. By the third month of this unspoken arrangement, Dex possessed a key to your apartment. You couldn't recall the exact moment he acquired it, nor did you feel any concern that he had it. Dex had proven himself to be so utterly dependable, so fiercely protective of your sanctuary, that you never once questioned the breach.

You simply allowed him to appear. Sometimes you would open your eyes in the morning to find him silently reading by your bed; other times, he wouldn't slip through the door until the dead of night. He had informed you, in his flat register, that his operational hours were highly dysfunctional as well due to his past employment with the FBI and his current status as a private contractor. It was the explanation that perfectly accounted for the jagged, violent scars lining his well maintained body.

The routine fractured slightly on a stormy Thursday evening. A violent thunderstorm had completely knocked out the power grid across your section of Brooklyn, leaving your apartment illuminated by the flickering, amber glow of a dozen candles. You sat across from him at the small table, the ambient silence magnifying the heavy, intrusive thoughts you normally managed to suppress. Without the distraction of your sewing machine or the television, the ghosts of your past were entirely too loud to ignore. It was better with Dex around, but tonight it was oppressing.

"You still with me?" His quiet, gravelly voice sliced through the dark.

"Yeah. I'm sorry," you nodded quickly, your shoulders drawing inward.

Dex’s eyes tracked the movement. He often wondered why that specific word, sorry, dropped from your lips with such automatic frequency, even when you committed nothing wrong. He had analyzed the way your entire system would shut down, retreating into a silent, unreadable fortress whenever you perceived even a flash of tension in his tone. He had logged it during his first critique of your mattress, and again when he regulated your breakfast habits. You would instantly succumb, allowing him to rewrite your parameters without an ounce of resistance.

It didn't align with the true matrix of who you were. It didn't fit the woman who possessed the fierce, unyielding determination to cross a continent alone for her art. You had been systematically programmed by someone else to react this way. It was a defect in your confidence, and it bothered him. He wanted to understand the code, but his lack of conventional empathy made the vocabulary invasive. He didn't know how to ask how you had been broken. He only knew that over the past five months, his motivation for being around you had completely evolved from a selfish need for a civilian disguise into an undeniable reality: he thoroughly enjoyed your company. You were awkward in a specific, quiet manner that made his own internal fractures feel normal. It was almost funny.

He searched his mental archives, selecting a play designed to foster emotional trust. Because he wanted you to trust him, he needed you to.

"You say that a lot. You okay there?" he asked, his chin gesturing toward your tense form. He worried the phrasing was either too forward or completely off the mark.

"Um, yeah. Sorry. It's just that..." You took a long, ragged breath, the amber candlelight catching the wet sheen of your eyes. "I grew up in a reactive home… and quietness kinda makes me uncomfortable" You nodded to yourself, tasting the bitter, familiar poison on your tongue as your throat tightened. Growing up was like navigating an active minefield. You were always criticized rather than praised. Everything you did was wrong. At some point, you just learn that it's safer if you shut down completely and don't engage.

Even now, miles away from the source, the conditioning remains a permanent tenant in your nervous system. It was an agonizing process trying to dismantle years of trauma; when you were raised by a monster, accepting genuine care or praise felt like a trap. You would hyper-fixate on every single micro-mistake you made throughout the day until isolation felt like the only true sanctuary available to you.

Dex offered a slow, deliberate nod. He lacked the capacity for conventional comfort, but he forced himself to try.

"My parents weren't really that involved," he offered, his voice a flat line of history.

Before he could expand on his own dark childhood, you cut through the quiet. "It was just me and my mom." You paused, your fingers tightening around the edge of your napkin. "But sometimes... I really wished it was just me."

Dex’s brow raised a fraction, a sudden spark of intense interest flaring in his irises. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean... I've definitely imagined pulling the trigger on her fucking head more times than I've said 'I love you,'" you said, a sharp, dark laugh breaking from your lips.

Dex’s jaw involuntarily ticked, smile flicking though his eyes remained ever dead.

Huh.

He never once suspected that you possessed such a beautifully morbid, violent architecture within your mind. You were laughing, your head tilted back, but Dex’s hyper-calibrated focus recognized the truth instantly: you were only partially joking. He knew that specific, cold look in a human eye; he had seen it in the mirror, and he had seen it in the field. He knew with absolute certainty that if a weapon were placed in your hand in that exact moment, you would have executed the directive without an ounce of hesitation.

This was an extraordinary development.

"Was she that bad?" he tested, his voice dropping into a low, predatory register.

You took the bait instantly, your fingers wrapping around the handle of your silver dinner knife with a white-knuckled, bruising grip. "She's an emotionally immature woman who never accomplished a single thing with her life, and she chose to take her anger onto me. She's a fucking bitch who was entirely content being the other woman to some married man rather than-"

You cut yourself off abruptly, your chest heaving as you realized you had allowed the floodgates to open entirely too wide. But Dex didn't pull back in horror. Instead, his focus was completely locked onto the violent, white-knuckled grip you maintained on the knife handle.

"Sorry," you whispered, trying to force your features back into a polite, submissive mask. "That was too much."

"It's alright," Dex murmured, his voice incredibly steady as he leaned across the small table, his shadow completely enveloping your form. "I wanna hear whatever's bothering my woman."

The phrase fell from his lips with an absolute, seamless finality. Your entire body locked up, your breath catching in your throat, but you didn't offer a single word of protest. My woman. You didn't argue the timeline; you didn't ask when the boundary had shifted. Instead, you slowly lowered the knife, took another quiet bite of your dinner, and tried your absolute best to suppress the small, genuine smile forming at the corners of your lips. You were somebody's woman!

To Dex, the word girlfriend was inadequate. It belonged to the fragile narrative of normal society, and absolutely nothing about Benjamin Poindexter was normal. He had initially categorized you as a necessary component of his disguise, but you had evolved into something infinite. The transition into ownership had been effortless, occurring somewhere between the hours he spent selecting your furniture and the quiet moments he spent watching you create. Girlfriend was a childish title. His woman possessed posture. It possessed permanence. His woman was a creature he took exquisite care of; his woman was an asset he would dismantle the entire world to protect if she asked. And now, he realized with a sick surge of adrenaline, that his shy but explosive woman might actually possess the exact same dark, violent streak that lived inside his own ribs.

He made the decision to test that thought on a violent, rain-slicked Saturday night.

The window to your fire escape rattled violently before swinging wide open, and Dex tumbled into your bedroom, his broad frame covered in dark fabric, heavily smeared with fresh, steaming blood.

"Oh my god! Dex!" You instantly bolted from your sewing machine, rushing across the hardwood without a single second of hesitation. You didn't scream; you didn't question the firearm strapped to his chest or the array of lethal tactical knives lining his thighs. Your system immediately engaged in operational mode. "What can I do? Tell me what to do."

"Need those hands of yours," he groaned through his teeth, his face pale as he collapsed onto the edge of the bay window, his large fingers frantically tugging the heavy curtains shut to kill the view. "My girl's amazing at sewing, yeah?" It was a desperate, raw plea masked as a casual question as he violently yanked his dark shirt upward. "Need you to deal with this for me."

Your eyes locked onto the jagged, deep gash splitting the skin over his ribs, the blood welling rapidly. You offered a sharp nod, your voice entirely steady. "I'm gonna clean it first, okay? I need to see exactly what I'm fixing up."

"Do what you gotta do, baby," he sighed, his head falling back heavily against the covered glass pane as his eyes closed.

Your small, nimble fingers moved with an extraordinary, professional efficiency. You didn't have medical-grade thread, but you swore by the integrity of your heavy-duty Guterman spool. You guided the needle through his flesh, weaving a series of incredibly precise, perfectly spaced navy-blue stitches to seal the breach. Dex remained entirely silent, watching your face through a haze of acute physical pain. His compulsive mind felt an immense, soothing wave of gratification at the perfect symmetry of your stitches. He found it incredibly, beautifully intimate that you had chosen a deep navy thread to match his clothes.

"So," you whispered, your fingers snipping the excess nylon. "Is this a common occurrence for a private contractor?"

"It's not normally this bad," he graveled out, his breath hitching. "But I ran into the devil tonight."

"And did you leave him looking worse?" you asked as you peered up at him, wiping the remaining copper from his skin.

Dex let out a low, ragged laugh, a fierce surge of pride warming his chest. It was an extraordinary response; a normal person would have demanded an explanation, but his woman's primary concern was the dominance of his performance.

"Mhm," he hummed in deep satisfaction.

From that exact night onward, you became a non-negotiable axiom in his existence. You were the absolute anchor of Dex's reality. Your domestic skills were remarkably useful, but more than that, he liked you. He liked you in a manner he had never experienced with another living entity. It boarded on enamored infatuation now. You remained your quiet, skittish self during the daylight hours, but Dex noted that your defenses dropped significantly whenever he returned bloody and damaged. You became infinitely more generous with your physical touch when he was vulnerable.

Yet, the conditioning of your childhood still dictated your movements. Whenever you sat on the velvet sofa together to watch the news, you automatically maintained a strict, ten-inch barrier between your bodies. Whenever you walked down the crowded concrete stretches of Brooklyn, you never reached for his hand; it was always Dex who had to reach out, wrap his massive arm around your shoulders, and physically drag your frame against his side to close the distance.

Dex began to wonder if your mind truly comprehended what it meant to be his woman. You didn't have to exist on the defensive; you didn't have to carry the weight of the world in isolation because his weapon was entirely at your disposal. But your broken programming prevented you from understanding intimacy. Reading your desires was like parsing ancient hieroglyphics, he was forced to rely entirely on your micro-expressions. Because apparently you would rather die than verbally articulate what you wanted. But at the same time you'd get silently pouty whenever he couldn't read your mind, which was almost never but it has happened once or twice. And that was more than enough times for Dex to start picking through your preferences.

Dex knew with absolute certainty that you liked his hands; your eyes would track their movement whenever he was using a blade to prepare food. And his hyper-calibrated focus had noted the way your demeanor changed when he altered his training regimen to bulk rather than cut. You liked his size. You liked the security of his weight.

The realization reached its zenith on a quiet Monday evening. You were hand-sewing an intricate, embroidered bodice, completely ignoring his repeated words, that strayed too closely to whines, to abandon the work and rest with him while he cooled down from the high adrenaline of a recent assignment. Your nimble fingers reached across the coffee table, casually grabbing one of his tactical throwing knives to cleanly slice your thread.

Dex watched the interaction with an intense, quiet focus. You were comfortable with the weapon. Though you had always been unbothered by his brutality.

"Have you ever used one before?" he asked, his voice a low vibration in the silence.

"No," you hummed, your eyes never leaving the fabric in your lap.

"Ever wanted to?" he pushed, a split second later.

"Yes," you answered truthfully, the syllable rolling off your tongue without a hint of hesitation.

A profound, intoxicating wave of pleasure flooded Dex’s chest at the confirmation.

"Stand up. I'll show you how," he ordered, his body instantly shifting into motion.

The command broke your creative trance, but your body automatically complied with his authority. You watched as he stalked into the kitchenette, his large fingers fishing an empty soda can out of the recycling box. He placed the aluminum on the far edge of the island, turning to trail back to you.

Dex stepped directly behind your frame, guiding your body to stand perfectly parallel to the target, exactly twelve feet away. The moment his large palms settled firmly onto the soft skin of your hips, your entire spine went completely rigid. With a hitched breath, your focus momentarily shatters as he holds out the cold steel.

"Hold it like this," he whispered against your ear, his large fingers wrapping over yours to adjust your grip on the hilt. The metal was ice-cold, perfectly balanced, and terrifyingly thin.

You didn't wait for the final instruction. Driven by a sudden, volatile surge of adrenaline and need to please, your arm snapped forward, hurling the blade across the room with a terrifying amount of force. The knife sliced through the air, striking the exact center of the aluminum can, knocking it to roll tarnished on the floor. If Dex had been satisfied before, his cerebrum was now operating at absolute capacity. A low, feral sound of pure delight escaped his lips as he prowled across the hardwood, inspecting the absolute ruin of the can before plucking the blade from its body. He turned, his whirlpool eyes raking over your flushed, trembling form.

"Impulsive," he murmured, his voice dropping into a dark, heavy register as he slowly stalked back toward your position. "I bet if I gave you a gun, you'd be a trigger-happy little thing..."

You didn't utter a word. You stood completely frozen, your chest heaving as you stared up into the dangerous, unblinking intensity of his face. There was nothing left to say. Without a doubt, he enjoyed what you had done, it was evident in the way the corner of his mouth threatened to pull.

"Should I?" Dex asked softly, stepping into your immediate personal space. He lifted the throwing knife, using the flat, ice-cold plane of the steel blade to gently tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear. The contrast of the freezing metal against your hot skin sent a violent, electric shiver straight down your spine.

"Should you what?" you breathed out, your posture straightening in raw anticipation.

"Give you a gun," he nodded, his gaze tracking the frantic pulse fluttering in your throat. "You're my girl now. You have to know how to handle yourself." He tilted your chin upward with the spine of the knife, forcing your eyes to lock onto his. "What if someone takes you when I'm not here?"

The question was heavy with an invasive paranoia that constantly plagued his mind. The mere possibility of an external threat having access to your sanctuary was enough to deregulate his entire system. His breathing grew ragged, his self-control straining at the seams as you stepped back against the wall. He feared for a microsecond that his darkness had finally shattered your views on him.

But you didn't look terrified. Your eyes were wide, dark, and obviously earnest. You wanted more, but didn't know how to ask for it.

The knife in his hand moved with instantaneous precision. Before your brain could process the movement, the razor-sharp edge sliced cleanly through the left strap of your tank top, the fabric snapping away from your shoulder. You let out a sharp, gasping breath. With a flick of his wrist, Dex flipped the blade within his palm, the steel flashing once more as he severed the right strap, letting the material pool at your waist.

Your hands immediately moved to cover the view, only to stutter hesitantly when Dex decided that he didn't like that. Brows knitting in disdain like you had offended every fiber of his being. His armed body moved, tapping the blade once over the shield of your hands before guiding it back down with the weapon. Hunger invaded his irises as his pupils dilated, taking in the portrait of you in a baby blue bra, top irrelevant and ruined around your waist. You watched as his head imperceptibly weighed side to side, as if he was conversing with the devil and angel on his shoulders.

And as always, the side that benefited him the most won.

In a blink, the knife had slipped beneath the center of your bra and with a firm grip Bullseye had sliced it in half. An audible sound of shock broke from your lips as you stammered back slightly. At that he took a moment to observe you, looking for the silent cues of your discomfort and was pleased to find none. Though the wide eyed expression on your face didn't distract him from the way your thighs pressed together, and how your stomach clenched in flutters to try and suppress the butterflies panicking.

A melodic hum escapes him as he uses that damned blade to push the scraps of your bra aside to expose and show off your skin. His focal trained on the bare swell of your chest, sharp metal purposefully grazing over one hardened nipple and your breathing sucked in. Dex’s eyes snapped back to your face, taking in the way you refused to look at him or down at yourself, instead paying very close attention to the overhead light. He watched your parted lips exhale with baited breaths, how your shoulders caved in an attempt to shrink into yourself and disappear.

Though, contrary to your demeanor, your core gave you away. Direct in the way your hips angle towards his, pressing into him despite how very hard you tried to avoid acknowledging the situation. Dex knew you'd never outwardly say what you wanted due to your own personal struggles expressing your needs. You two weren't there yet, not until he builds consistent intimacy to disassemble your preconceived notions.

So instead of teasing you, his lips moved forward, peppering affection on the skin beneath your ear before claiming your lips. Kissing was not a thing between Dex and his woman. A flaw in the architecture that he eagerly wanted to change the very moment he decided you were his. It was extremely grating in ways that he didn't understand. Poindexter had never been interested in the idea of sharing saliva with another human being, sure he's kissed women before, not many, but enough for him to decide that kissing was pointless. Yet when you became his, it was all that he could think of. Being near you wasn't enough, he needed to be on you, in you. All over, everywhere, connected in every possible way.

An invasive need that grew tenfolds when you melted because of his touch, reciprocating in a skittish dance of squirming away and pressing back onto his lips. His large hands held you in place by your waist, forcing you still as his kisses migrated. Your body was electric, writhing from him and anxiety, mind desperate to form any thoughts that weren't: my man, my man, my man. But his next action only made it worse and an actual, involuntary, moan echoed out of you as his hot tongue licked a slow path up your neck. Your head anchored back against the wall, biting down the sounds that threatened to sing again. With eyes blurred and focused on the surroundings as you tried to compose yourself, only for you forced them shut as Dex does it again.

“Stop doing that,” he whispered with no conviction, the words dancing the thin line between a plea and playful attempt at banter. Though his easy tone did little to calm the building anxiety. Stop doing what? Stop being so fucking needy and desperate and–

“Stop denying yourself,” he clarified.

“I know, it's new, I know you feel weird. And I know your brains talking” Dex rasped out into your ear, pressing himself impossibly closer to you as his hand reached to adore one breast. He didn't offer any following words of reassurance, and you silently thanked him for it. God, you couldn't handle the embarrassment from being comforted because of your own inability to express yourself.

“I'll make it feel good.” He nodded a promise as he stared into your unsure eyes. “So good that it all shuts up.”

With certainty in his tone, Dex gently tugs you towards the bed, brushing the remnants of your bra off your shoulders before tearing the fabric of your disgraced tank top off your body. Your eyes immediately locked onto his biceps as he exuded force, yet with the gentleness of a true man, he laid your body down as if you were fragile. Large hands roaming your body, tugging at your shorts till they were stolen from you. Every ounce of security you had now gone with them.

He noticed almost immediately the crease settling home in your brows and he moved to balance out the scale. Removing his own shirt to display equal vulnerability in the hopes that it'll calm you. Your fingers at your side twitched once, unsure and hesitant, before your open hand raised, heel of your palm still planted on the mattress but you were indicating that you wanted touch. Dex complied, pushing your thighs apart to settle between them. The broad form of this man comfortably laid over you, chin resting on your abdomen as he laced his hand with yours.

He stayed like that for a moment, breathing with you. The analytical voice in the cortex of his mind knew that he was asking a lot from you, to be so open and bare when all your body had ever known was to hide and shrink. Dex wanted to make sure that your nervous system had calmed down enough to embrace what he gave you without fear of overthinking. In a rare human moment of easy sentiment, he brought your intertwined hands closer, planting a small kiss over the back of yours. The gesture soothed the tempest wake of your internal storm and you subconsciously parted your legs around his laid form wider. It was a barely there action but an entirely unavoidable movement for Dex as he took it as a welcome.

With firmness embedded in his bones, his other hand crept up to your inner thigh. Two fingers sliding up barely an inch beneath the elastic of your underwear. A raw, strangled exhale forced its way out of you as glossed irises darted down to meet him. Watching as he just laid there, playing wth your underwear as his fingers glided along the thin elastic. Up and then back down, too close to your soaked entrance but never touching, when he'd get too close his rhythm would change and you tried to ignore the way his knuckles brushing against your pelvis made you go insane.

Dex’s eyes watched you, rapt as the war on your face played out. Maybe he was doing this to try and soothe you, but he knew it in his heart that he wasn't that pure. He was absolutely doing this to fuck with you. He wanted to see if you were capable of getting over yourself, if that explosive nature of yours would finally appear if you were frustrated enough. And judging by the way you looked at the ceiling like it was the sinner, he knew he was getting close.

You blinked once at the myriad of thoughts, chewing on your bottom lip. The monster that he was, grew green with jealousy when he decided that your attention strayed far enough. Fingers drawing back to snap the elastic of your cotton blue panties against your inner skin where thigh met heat. A fraction of a second was all it took for you to pin the smug image of him with your gaze and the dam broke the self conscious overthinking.

“Oh for fucks sake!” You groaned, ripping your hand out of his and burying your face in your palms. Frustration and something you don't dare to name blossoming in your soul.

A sinister laugh corrupted the air, insidious and dark. “You gotta tell me what you want.” He shook his head, his fingers still doing that criminal trail. For a man who had such little regard for your clothing earlier, he sure treated your underwear like some sacred thing to devout himself to.

You huffed, eyes avoiding him. “I want you… but I feel terrible being naked,” Dex tried to suppress how absolutely adorable he found you right now, stubborn and pouty, like voicing your wants was such a painful task.

Maybe he should've thought the moment out some more, pick apart your statement and the context clues of your precise wording. But instead he found himself crawling over your body before his hand moved on its own accord, pushing his sweatpants down, along with his restrictive boxers. Hearing you say that you wanted him was the only incentive his veins needed.

“You don’t have to be naked,” A purr invades your ears as your jaw slacks when you feel him. The hard tip of his length pushing up against your entrance, through the barrier of your drenched underwear.

Your gaze travels down finally, watching as he rubbed his hard length on your clothed cunt. Blinking in an attempt to regain focus, you never thought about that… You didn't have to be completely bare. And secretly you thought the sight of Dex playing with you like that was the most erotic thing you've ever witnessed. For a man as condemned as yours was, God was certainly very generous with all of him, and his cock was no exception. Solid with intimidating girth that made you equally nervous as you were excited.

Your hips responded to the pleasing revelation, moving to match him despite your anxiety.

“There she is, that's it….” He groaned out as he rutted onto the soaked fabric, your lustfilled eyes darting to lock onto the scar on his cheek. It was one of the things you found so devastatingly attractive about Dex, save for his broad shoulders. Maybe you were drunk off the liquor of your own pleasure induced stupor. Hive mind calming as you reigned control over the tempest anxiety. Whatever had become of you was needy, leading with your chest as your tongue darts out to lick at his marred cheek. Copying the same sanctified ardor he had with your neck.

The sound that left him was barely restrained, if at all. Your focus is drawn to the way his biceps strained around your form and how his large palms gripped at the pillow beside your head. It was honest, an uncontrolled groan as his hips staggered once, followed by one hard grind before that incisive obsession in his genes demanded more. Ears perking at the curse he spat, and you saw it there, barely a second appeared that pensive expression that came when he weighed out the consequences of his actions. That one you'd come to know as Tony , Tony was good, Dex was questionable. As he once worded it, Tony was the structure whereas Dex was the wild card. It was a never ending impulse for him to switch between the two.

Before you could question who had won, Dex’s volatile, steadfast precision tipped the scales, pulling back away from you. And as concern began to take its hold on your features, his deadly hands took what they wanted, ripping the drenched fabric and security of your panties apart. You gasped, a startled wail that blurred the lines between fright and thrill, gaping at the torn scraps around your thighs. Peering up at the heaving man but his attention was locked onto your gleaming cunt, exposed and waiting for him. No longer hidden as the last bit of safety you had was reduced to a sorry excuse of a shield, torn hole evidence of his ferocity.

Dex’s calloused hand moved, palm pushing one thigh back as his thumb stroked your clit once. With starved gentleness that wasn't there before, he touched you with fondness. Preening at the pretty sight as he took note of how your thighs would flutter when he applied a certain amount of pressure.

Despite your debilitating infrastructure that had deduced you into a stubborn woman, you could only handle so much of his analyzing gaze. You knew he meant well, taking in the image of you and committing it to flesh till it was root memorization but fuck it was insanity.

“Dex….” A shy request that made him focus on you.

“Please…. Just…… fuck me already…” Muffled in embarrassment as a heat kissed your cheeks, he didn't say anything more, knowing that it'll only make things worse for you. He didn't dwell on the adorable mess that you were for too long. Not when his woman had given him an order.

He sat back on his knees, hand knowingly fishing into the pocket of the forgotten sweatpants loose on his thighs. Pulling out the condom wrapper Dex made sure to carry with him all times when he entered your apartment. A little thing that had earned its way on the check list of items he required on his body along with his knives. The act was fueled by preparation rather than the perverse idea that sex was his intention every time he crossed the threshold. Although sex was nice it was never his mission, you were. He rolled the rubber on, hands stilling half way when he took in that forming expression he categorized was your pout. It was a mean scowl but so fucking cute in a way that made him admit weakness. With your brows pulled, gaze narrowed and bottom lips so inviting, he raised a brow in question.

“Why do you need that?”

You said it with such distaste in your tone that the sheer vigor of it made Dex blink. Society had instilled in him that a condom was expected, it was the right course of action when you're with a woman to be a gentleman and always protect her body. But your words indicated absolute certainty that you didn't want him to use protection.

“I'm on birth control,” you nodded.

He blinked again. Dex didn't know that, and he knew everything about you, he had made sure to learn all that there is to. And yet he was unaware of this very important knowledge.

“Since when?.” He asked slowly.

“It doesn't matter, fuck me….” You let out a bold whine and his gaze turned piercing. It did matter. If it was a fact he didn't know thoroughly well about you, it mattered more than anything.

“It does, when?”

He repeated firmer, his mind wondering when you'd managed to slip pass your shared schedule long enough to maintain it. Wondering if there were gaps in the day or if he wasn't paying close enough attention to you.

“3 years ago, I have an IUD,” you murmured under your breath, arms crossing over your bare chest and Dex's eyes momentarily drop down to your cleavage.

Okay, that was a much better answer. He wasn't neglectful or blind, and relief dispelled his nerves. Though the calm was cut short when your nimble fingers suddenly found its way on his cock, pulling at the rubber with deliberate slowness causing his head to lull to the side. He'd never seen that look on your face in the kaleidoscope of pretty expressions he'd cataloged.

Your eyes were pinned up, defiant and dead in a way that almost mirrored his own. The ones he's come to intimately know, only ever seeing that assertiveness in the throne of the mirror, never on you. Dex's internal world halted as a groan rumbled in his chest caused by whatever the hell you were doing with your hand. Looking down to watch you pull at the condom, only to roll it back up when you stroked him. Again and again, for minutes too long.

Fucking hell you were vengeful.

Stubborn and shy, harboring immense emotions in your little body, and now you wanted revenge for his game earlier. Dex tries to suppress the smile that threatened to break free because my god weren't you just perfect.

You pulled the condom off with a snap, throwing the useless thing for him to catch mid air before he was on you again. Peppering kisses along your cheeks, causing you to squirm and laugh at the attack.

Though the sweetness of the moment only lasted half a second as a sharp audible gasped that sounded remarkably too close to a moan escapes you. Mouth parted wide with your head thrown back as Dex fucked into you with no warning. His face morphs into something unrestrained as he buries himself to the hilt, deep and unforgiving. Eyes locked onto the sight of your tight cunt fluttering around him, soft fabric still framing your skin.

“Dex….” You whined out a plea.

“What? You wanted me to fuck you raw and now you can't handle it?”

His hips moved, accentuating his spat words with thrusts so leisurely that it all but melted and ruined you. The heat between your legs intensifies at the feeling of him. Maybe he should have given you a warning, eased himself into you inch by inch till you got used to the stretch of him. But Dex was so far gone pleasantries at this point, not when you asked him so earnestly to fuck you raw.

And God did the thought stroke something greedy inside him. All he ever wanted was to be close to you in every possible way, and to know that you wanted that as well fed something insatiable in him.

Your moans were a hiccup of an orchestra as Dex maintained a bruising pace, fucking into you with a hungry force, expertly angled to dismantle your body. His thrusts were harsh and drawn out, almost pulling out all the way save for his tip kissing at your entrance before sliding back into you again. The sheer duress of his movements filled the room with lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin and your thighs quivered.

Dex forces them to stay put, large hands gripping at the torn fabric of your underwear and using them to pull your cunt close, forcing you to meet his thrusts. You were a mess. A beautiful, vocal mess that struggled against the sheets. Hands trying to find anything to stabilize yourself as you writhe beneath him. He didn't know which sight pleased him more, your tits bouncing to the rhythm of his thrusts or your leaking sex.

You were far beyond drenched, your slick spreading with every thrust in a way that was shockingly satisfying. Dex was a man that prided himself in strict cleanliness, evident in his spotless apartment, but in this moment he wanted nothing more than to make a heap of you. He didn't really understand it, this revelation that fueled his avaricious hands as they gripped at the fabric tighter. A covetous need that called to him like a siren song to see your cunt painted with his cum. As if somehow, someway, it laid his claim over you. He groaned out at the thought, picturing it as he watches you swallow his length whole. Strings of your liquor sticking to his pelvis with every movement back and the obscenity of it only made him want to fuck you harder, if that was even feasible.

“D-Dex….”

You mewled out and his focus was on your face instantly, only to snap back down to where you both connected. Your heat clenching around him in beats.

“I know baby, I know,” he breathed out, heart pounding in his ears as he readjust his angle, your body involuntarily arching as a loud whimper left your lips. You were close, the pressure in your stomach threatening to snap and he wasn't far behind either. Fuck he should've just done this from the start instead of wasting time teasing you, maybe if he had the pretty sight of your pussy would've been covered in his cum by now before he even got the chance to fill you.

His hands migrate from the makeshift handles of your ripped panties, finding home on your hips as he leans down to take one nipple in his mouth. You cried out, arching into him, hands finding place on his shoulders as he nibbled and sucked. That action was the last bit your self restrain needed to devastate. Ecstasy floods you in white-hot waves as you came without warning around him, your hips moving on their own accord to meet his movements. Your muscles tensed as your nails dug into his skin, baiting a loud groan from Dex. His hips stilling deep inside as his cock twitched, mouth still on you as he watched you get lost in your own pleasure. Hips locked against each other as ropes of his cum filled you.

Only when your breathing calmed did he decide to pull out gently. The serenity that had taken hold of you shattering when Dex groans, opening your eyes in alert. Though his attention was only onyour heat, wet and abused with his cum spilling out of you. His hands moved, thumbs caressing your folds once before he pushed the dripping mess back into you. Body giving out in exhaustion at this point as you collapsed back down onto the pillow, letting him do whatever his hyper acute mind demanded of him. Even if it meant lazily finger fucking his cum back into you.

Poindexter delivered a heavy, velvet-lined case to your kitchen island the next afternoon. Still motivated by the absolute high that came with being with you, his gaze was a fond sentiment as he waited for you to approach. Inside rested a custom, matte-black semi-automatic firearm, its weight perfectly balanced for you. Engraved into the reinforced steel of the handle, rendered in a brilliant, metallic pink that perfectly matched your sewing spools, were two distinct words: My Woman.

You took the weapon into your hands, feeling the cold, lethal weight of his protection settling permanently into your palm. You liked the feeling infinitely more than you were ever willing to admit. Smiling up at him as you got on your tip toes to shyly press a kiss over his scarred cheek.

That evening, the apartment was quiet once again, save for the rhythmic, comforting click of your ancient sewing machine. Dex sat on the edge of the velvet sofa, his broad shoulders relaxed, one large hand resting flat on his knee as he watched you work. The other however, was outstretched and playing with your hair, lazily twirling a strand around his finger. Since yesterday, a new habit of his began to form, embedding itself deep in his bones, flooding him with the need to constantly be touching you. You were not so different as you found yourself craving for his touch since the very first second you woke up this morning.

You stopped your machine for a brief moment, your eyes drifting over to the vanity where the matte-black firearm rested directly beside your pastel spools of thread. You looked at the weapon, then turned your head to meet the unblinking, intensely possessive depth of Dex's gaze.

"Thank you, Dex," you murmured softly.

"Anything for you" he replied, his voice a low, steady register that filled every corner of your empire.

You smiled, turning back to your fabric, completely filled with a profound, unyielding sense of safety. Gleaming that you had found a beautiful, eccentric savior, a man who simply loved you enough to build a fortress around your dreams. You sat in the warm, golden light of your home, entirely unaware of the psychological reality of the danger beginning to form between you. Because Bullseye had found himself his twin moon, no longer a north star galaxies away, but rather a beautiful equal that orbited together. You didn't know that he didn't view your love as a choice, but as a permanent assignment. And that gun was the first promise of many, the first test as he knew instantly that you liked it, unaware of what you could become.

You didn't know that he had already cataloged every exit of your building, or that his mind had already mapped out the exact tragedies required to execute anyone that ever dared to come near you. You were his sanctuary, his absolute identity, and as Dex watched your nimble hands guide the thread through the needle, his dark smile widened in the shadows. You were completely free, entirely safe with him, and he was never, ever going to let you go.

The threshold of the small, one bedroom apartment felt less like a physical boundary and more like the precipice of an entire world. To anyone else, the compact square footage, open-concept kitchenette, and the isolated bathroom were simply standard urban housing. But to you, standing perfectly still with your palms flat against the cool frame of the doorway, it was everything. All that you had spent years praying for, laid out in front of you.

You took a single, heavy breath, inhaling the sharp, unfamiliar scents of fresh paint, old plaster, and the distant, metallic tang of the city outside. You made it here to your new life. You arrived despite everyone's prediction of your failure, every quiet doubt whispered in the dark, and every loud, toxic absolute hurled at your head before you left. You crossed an entire continent with nothing but five thousand dollars in your pocket and a beat-up car crammed to the ceiling with your entire life. Somehow, the fragile hope of your survival had held together, delivering you straight ownership of this apartment in New York.

Your feet moved on their own volition, carrying you across the space as you began to map your new home. The wooden floorboards creaked beneath your weight, full of knots and individual character. Your gaze tracked the deep bay window that overlooked the elevated train tracks. Watching the late afternoon sun pierce through the glass, illuminating a slow, rhythmic dance of dust mites suspended in the air of your empty space. This was a life you could get used to loving, perhaps the life you should have been promised since the very beginning. One filled with serenity and the promise of stability within these walls. A life where you didn't have to balance on a tight rope on a daily basis, where home could foster growth and ambition rather than squander it. This is what it should have been like, not the terrible cards life had dealt you.

Suddenly triggered by the calm, an immense, suffocating sensation flooded the center of your chest. Your throat tightened to a painful knot, and your heart began to hammer against your ribs with a relentless, frantic tempo. It was a volatile, agonizing cocktail of pride and still resonating, white hot anger. Your fists clenched at your sides, your knuckles turning white as your eyes locked onto the pathetic, sparse collection of cardboard boxes sitting in the center of the empty room.

Fuck everybody.

The words echoed in your mind like a mantra. Fuck them all.

Your jaw locked so tightly your teeth ached. In the sudden silence of the room, the memory of your emotionally incompetent mother’s voice flooded back, louder and more invasive than the rumble of the subway outside the glass. Years of belittling, of being told you were useless, of being overlooked and treated not as a daughter, but as an unwanted burden. None of it held any leverage over you anymore. Because you were free. You were thousands of miles away, while they remained entirely stagnant, rotting back home, working themselves into an early grave at the same exact, unfulfilling job your mother had held for fifteen miserable years.

For over a decade, you had navigated the landmines of an emotionally abusive parent who viewed her own flesh and blood as direct, threatening competition. But the war was over. In a way it felt like victory. You won your freedom.

And that single realization should have been enough to calm the internal storm, but the peace felt incomplete as you stood there. Perhaps it was the empty space that left you wanting more. A deep, visceral part of you still craved violence. The quiet, dignified exit of the "being the bigger person" narrative society forced down your throat, felt unsatisfying compared to the scale of the damage. You felt a raw need to physically tear that woman apart with a knife, to make her feel the exact same pain she had inflicted upon your childhood. The concrete image of it flickered in your mind, vivid and bloody, because being better wasn't a currency that bought back the years that had been stolen from you.

Her lingering voice was still a tenant in your head, she was the internal structure that spoke and criticized every waking minute of your day. Yes you had gotten away but in some ways she was still here. The heaviness settled right back over your shoulders, bringing the anger and a deep, nameless starvation along with it. You couldn't even identify what you wanted at this moment as you stewed. Did you want validation? Did you want happiness? Or did you simply want the dark daydreams of shoving a cold knife into her body to finally become real? And were you regretting not doing it before you left…

"That's interesting," a voice muttered from the hallway.

The sound shattered your trance immediately, pulling you back from the depths. Your head snapped toward the doorway, your gaze averting to the apartment door you had left wide open. Cussing yourself out silently for it as you schooled your expression and kept the emotions at bay.

Standing across the narrow, dimly lit corridor was a man. He had been in the exact middle of unlocking his own door before your rigid posture caught his eye. His sharp brows parted slightly as his cold eyes took in the sight of your moving boxes, your tightly clenched fists, and the mean, hostile frown you didn't even realize you had been wearing as you zoned out.

Dex studied you for a fraction of a second. To his hyper acute mind, you were a sudden, unregulated pawn in his clean, quiet hallway. He made the deliberate decision to pocket his hands, leaving the keys dangling on his lock as he began to walk directly toward your open door.

Your mind scrambled to re-engage with reality, your feet carrying you forward to meet him halfway at the threshold. Dex's focal moved with precision, immediately logging the sparse contents of your life: exactly four small boxes and a half-disassembled mannequin laying on the bare hardwood. His focus honed in on the heavy packing tape sealing the cardboard shut, explicitly stamped with a small, red maple leaf.

"Hi, I'm your new neighbor," you said.

Dex’s internal wiring instantly analyzed the pitch. Your words were incredibly tense, the register high enough to suggest performance of pleasantries, but there was a distinct strain underlying the syllables. He tracked the rigid alignment of your shoulders, noting how the tension made your collarbones stand out sharply beneath your skin.

"Not from New York?" he asked, raising a single brow. He already knew the precise answer based on the tape, but his programming needed him to hear the confirmation roll off your tongue.

"No," you shook your head, your posture remaining stiff.

"You sew?" Dex nodded his chin down toward the dress form resting on the floor.

"Um... yeah," you offered, your response clipped and protective. You had absolutely no desire to delve into how that purpose was the singular anchor of your soul, or how you had abandoned the little shred of safety back home just to pursue it here.

"Hm. Keep the noise down past ten. Thin walls," he said plainly.

You eagerly, rapidly nodded your compliance. Dex lingered for a moment, his body weight shifting. By all accounts of his daily routine, he should have walked away. Conventional human interactions were a tedious, exhausting ordeal that rarely benefited him unless they served a specific purpose. But the absolute immediacy of your agreement, the way you submissively shrunk back under the order, made his mind pause. He sees people afraid on a daily basis as Bullseye, yet you, for some odd reason, were already on edge before he even made his presence known.

"I'm Tony," he quipped, the introduction sounding just a fraction too rehearsed, a carefully selected line from his mental archives. His eyes flicked back down to the foreign maple leaf on the box before a low, quiet intensity crept into his voice. "But my friends call me Dex."

"Dex," you tested the name, the word falling softly between you.

A faint hum of genuine satisfaction vibrated in his chest. It had been an exceptionally long time since he had heard his actual name spoken by someone who wasn't a target or a handler.

"Don't let Mrs. Smithers hear you call me that," he said, offering a sudden, sharp grin that didn't quite reach his dead, unblinking eyes. There was an invisible, dangerous undercurrent to the words, a hidden threat wrapped in domestic clothing. "I'm serious, or else she's gonna start thinking we're not as close."

His delivery possessed a sudden, calculated charisma, a charm that successfully baited a small, hesitant half-smile from your lips.

"Knock at my door if you need anything," he added, throwing in a brief, practiced wink before he turned on his heel. He didn't truly understand the psychological impulse that had driven him to offer the concession, but his research on human integration had taught him that these specific gestures effectively relaxed women. He had already decided you wouldn't be a problem for his daily structure.

In the weeks that followed, you went to extraordinary lengths to avoid apartment 20B. It wasn't that the initial interaction had been explicitly unpleasant, but an invasive, persistent nervousness had settled deep in your stomach whenever you heard his footsteps in the hall. Dex’s presence made you feel extremely anxious, exposing a raw, aching deprivation of basic social interaction that you weren't ready to face.

But the avoidance strategy completely collapsed on a Tuesday evening over a remarkably stubborn jar of marinara sauce.

You had spent twenty-five agonizing minutes exhausting every trick in your arsenal. You had sandwiched the thick glass between your thighs, twisting until your skin was raw; you had hammered the metal lid with the heavy handle of a butter knife, praying for the vacuum seal to pop. Nothing worked. Looking back at your tiny kitchenette one final time, at the pathetic pot of rapidly cooling noodles and the messy counter, your feet began to move toward the hallway before your brain could protest.

You stood before apartment 20B and knocked once.

The sound had barely dissipated before the door swung wide open. Dex stood beneath the frame, wearing a plain white muscle shirt and a pair of loose gray sweatpants. His broad, heavily muscled shoulders completely blocked the view of his interior. He raised a single, questioning brow.

You pathetically shook the glass jar once in front of his chest. "Open," fell from your lips in a flat, monotone whisper.

Dex blinked, his gaze dropping to the jar.

"I mean- um, can you please open this? Please?" you tried again, your voice cracking with embarrassment.

Without a word, his large, calloused hand reached out and took the glass from your grip. With one smooth, effortless twist of his wrist, the metal lid popped open with a loud snap. Your eyes involuntarily darted to the thick expanse of his bicep, watching the muscles flex and shift beneath the skin with the casual display of strength. A sudden, suffocating feeling of intrusion washed over you, making you feel entirely out of place.

You frantically snatched the opened jar back into your possession, attempting to execute a rapid speed-walk back to the safety of your home before he could engage.

Dex watched your skittish retreat, a faint flicker of amusement piercing through his usual apathy. Conventional neighbors were loud, unpredictable nuisances, but you were different. You stayed entirely within your perimeter, exactly how he preferred it. You made no noise, you never slammed your doors, and you never returned home late. In fact, Dex had realized he almost never saw you leave the building at all. You treated apartment 20A like a hiding hole, a sanctuary against the outside world.

Perhaps that was the exact reason his mind felt inclined to participate. To actively engage and solidify the illusion of "Tony" as a real breathing person that cares about others.

"What're you making?" he asked, his voice a low interrogation that stopped you in your tracks.

"Um, one-pot pasta?" you murmured over your shoulder.

Dex's sharp brows furrowed instantly, his gaze narrowing into a harsh, hyper-focused line. You instinctively clutched the marinara jar tighter against your ribs.

"What the fuck is that," he cussed out, the sheer lack of culinary skills genuinely offending his sense of order.

"It's... pasta you make in one pot," you shrugged, your voice defensive.

The concept thoroughly grated on his compulsive need for proper sequencing. Before you could offer a verbal protest, Dex stepped over the boundaries of his apartment, his tall frame moving right past you and directly into your private space. You stood frozen for a second before silently trailing behind him.

His linear, tracking eyes scanned your apartment, and a cold weight settled into his chest. My god, it was sad.

In the center of the kitchenette sat the offending, solitary pot, filled with starch and water. Your bed wasn't even a proper piece of furniture; it was merely a single mattress dumped onto the floor, heavily dressed up in expensive duvets and a mountain of pillows to overcompensate for the lack of a frame. A small lap-table sat on top of the blankets instead of a proper dining set. Five long, perfectly level shelves lined the walls, crammed with meticulously folded fabrics. By the bay window sat an ancient, cast-iron sewing machine that looked at least a century old, positioned next to the dress form wearing a stunning, intricate gown that looked entirely too beautiful to exist within this depressing space.

"You're not okay," Dex deduced immediately, turning his rigid frame around to face you.

A nervous, fractured laugh broke from your throat. "What?"

"You're not okay," he repeated, stating it not as an insult, but as an absolute fact as he walked back over to the stove to inspect the cursed pot.

"I'm fine," you muttered, peaking through the kitchen archway, your arms crossed tightly over your chest. Jar forgotten beside you, a bystander in this weird conversation.

"Then why do you live like this?" His tone was sharp, accusatory, mildly insulted that any functional human being would willingly subject themselves to such a lack of domestic structure. It bothered him. It bothered him an extraordinary amount. Too much for him to resume his usual disregard of others personal business.

"Um, for the record, I live fine," you raised a single finger to defend yourself.

"Your bed is on the floor," he countered, his expression entirely unamused.

"There's a rug! And it's cozy!" you pointed down to the plush pink faux-fur rug stretching beneath the mattress.

"It's sad," Dex noted flatly. He deeply disliked the specific deregulation this room was forcing onto him. Without asking permission, his hands began to move, instantly taking ownership of the kitchen, determined to fix the failure of your meal. And you could only do nothing but watch in bewilderment as your next door neighbor moved with clear certainty in your home.

"What's that about," he asked after a moment, jerking his sharp chin toward the elaborate gown by the window.

"Someone's paying me to make it," you offered softly.

"So you're a designer?" he questioned, his large hands efficiently raiding the contents of your refrigerator. You tried your absolute best to ignore the terrifying reality that an exceptionally attractive, intimidating man was currently taking control of your life.

"No. Designers get people to buy their clothes because of their name. I just... I just make clothes." You clarified, shifting your weight on your feet.

"You have people buying your clothes for how they look. How's that any different?" Dex questioned, because truthfully your logic made no sense.

"It just is, okay!" your voice finally spiked, a sudden rush of raw, defensive emotion breaking through your shy exterior. "They have degrees, and money, and connections, and I just have a bed on the floor!" You pointed a trembling finger at the mattress.

Dex stared at you for a long second before a low, genuine laugh slipped past his lips. He bit down a smile, turning back to the stove to completely salvage your atrocious food. You amused him. Your strange, combative nature hidden beneath your meek form was fascinating enough to make him stay. So he kept cooking in the silence, letting you calm down from your outburst. For a while the only sound echoing the room was rhythmic cutting as he minced garlic with efficient speed.

"How'd you get that scar?" you blurted out suddenly when you decided to speak again, your eyes tracking the pale line slicing through his features. It was a brave question to ask, perhaps the wrong one, but it'd been the only thing you could focus on since the minute you met him. And you decided on impulse, that if he got to invade your life, you at least earned the right to ask an equally invasive question.

Dex’s muscles tensed for a solitary second, his fingers tightening around the kitchen knife. His mind instantly executed recalibration, regulating his breathing just as he had rehearsed a thousand times in institutional therapy. He locked the bloody, violent memories away in a vault, forcing a normal, charismatic mask over his face.

"It's New York," he said plainly as if that was enough of an explanation, which in a way it was. "What I wanna know is why you chose here over Canada?" He turned his head, his gaze drilling straight into your eyes.

"I didn't like it there anymore..." your voice dropped into a hushed, incredibly heavy register. The sheer, concentrated depression radiating from your small form filled the room like dense fog. It irritated him. It irritated him because a creature with your specific, meticulous talent shouldn't be radiating the scent of a wounded animal. He hated the lack of coordination between what you were capable of creating and how you viewed your own worth.

"Taste," he ordered softly, lifting the wooden spoon directly to your mouth.

Your lips parted in a slight hesitation, your eyes locking onto his as you slowly leaned forward. Dex watched with a hyper-focused intensity as your mouth closed over the wood, taking in the rich, perfectly balanced sauce.

"That's really good," you nodded, your cheeks flushing a brilliant pink as you stepped back, suddenly shy.

“Isn't it," he murmured in that attractive, playful lilt of his. The gesture and tones of his voice are a characteristic you'd come to associate with your odd neighbor. Without a hint of hesitation, Dex slid the exact same spoon into his own mouth, tasting the leftover sauce, his eyes never leaving yours.

That night he left you standing there in the center of the kitchen with a perfectly prepared plate of fresh food, not even bothering to sit down or have a meal with you. His mission for the day had been executed, leaving you thoroughly confused and breathless in his wake.

The confusion only deepened when the exact same sequence repeated itself the following morning. You opened your door at nine o'clock, only to be firmly pushed aside as Dex hauled a heavy canvas bag of groceries directly into your space.

"What're you making for breakfast now?" His voice carried a dry, biting edge as he interrogated you.

"I don't normally eat breakfast," you muttered, leaning against the counter.

Dex’s brows furrowed deeply. Wrong. That was incorrect in every preferable scenario to him. The human brain required proper nutritional fuel the precise moment it transitioned into an awake state in order to function throughout the day. And yet you skipped breakfast regularly.

"I brought proper food," he noted, emphasizing the word proper. Safe, balanced foods that didn't emerge from an aluminum can.

You paused, staring at the broad expanse of his chest, then down to the fresh produce, and then back up to his sharp features. "Why?" you asked, your voice small, genuinely confused why this terrifying neighbor cared enough about your life. Maybe he did care, or maybe the sheer lack of order in your existence simply violated his internal programming in an incomprehensible way. It didn't take much for you to realize that Dex most likely had OCD, judging by what you've observed from him, he was a very one track minded man.

"Why're you doing this shit," he countered, his hand gesturing vaguely to the fabrics, the mattress, the entirety of your isolated world.

Your brows knit together, trying to parse the exact thing he was attacking. You made an educated guess that he was referring to the fundamental reality of all of you.

"I moved here because I believed in myself," you said, trying to sound firm.

But the delivery was a far cry from actual conviction. To Dex’s tracking eyes, you looked like a frail, hyper-vigilant thing that was merely surviving the days rather than actively living them. It didn't look like belief; it looked like an escape. But Dex could respect the raw, stubborn determination underlying the performance. He had recognized your immense talent within the first sixty seconds of entering your apartment. You were a creature of singular focus, prioritizing the creation of a beautiful dress over basic human comfort. He wasn't one to judge an obsession. You possessed the spark required to carve your name into the stone of the city; you simply weren't fully convinced of your own gravity yet.

It reminded him entirely of his old, fractured self, desperately searching for a script to prove he was allowed to exist. Maybe that was the exact reason he couldn't just let you go. He tilted his head, his dark eyes narrowing as you visibly squirmed under the pressure of his gaze.

"But you still sleep on the floor," he said slowly, taking a deliberate step into your orbit.

"But I still sleep on the floor..." you confirmed, your voice hitching as you took a small step backward. He continued to advance, completely abandoning the grocery bags on the kitchen island.

"You should be sleeping in a bed made for royalty. Not that," he noted, a faint trace of dark amusement in his voice as he watched you try everything in your power to avoid his proximity.

"That requires princess money," you countered with your chin held high, your heel catching slightly on the edge of the faux-fur rug.

"That's not how the story goes. Isn't the fairytale answer to marry a king?" He crossed his massive arms over his broad chest, blocking out the light from the window with his form.

You stopped moving, taking a long, deliberate look at the rigid picture of his features. "Are you mocking me?" you asked after a heavy silence. "Is this a joke to you?"

"What? No,” he spat out with equal conviction.

“You are not a joke," the concept genuinely offended the man. You were everything but.

"I don't need help, Dex," your voice suddenly cracked, an exasperated, rushing tide of buried rage spilling through the seams of your composure. He had unknowingly poked at a raw, unhealed wound you didn't even know you had. "I don't need anybody. I've made it this far entirely on my own, and I-"

"I didn't say you needed it," the words rolled off his tongue like velvet, cutting through your fervor. "I'm offering it."

"Why?" your eyes narrowed into suspicious, defensive slits. You were a guarded little thing.

"Because you're alone. In a dangerous city," he pointed it out as if it were a fundamental law.

Truthfully, his conscious mind didn't fully comprehend the psychological reasonings driving his desire to intervene; he simply knew that his system demanded it. Perhaps it was merely basic human nature to seek out a companion. Or perhaps he decided that for "Tony" to maintain his flawless civilian disguise, he required a friend. Tony was a good citizen. Tony helped his neighbors; Tony fed the old lady's cat on the third floor; Tony fixed the plumbing for the single mother upstairs. Tony was a pillar of the community. Though it wasn't just that. Dex knew you had resonated with him, with your awkward self and unpredictable outbursts hooking him. Despite how it looked, he wasn't trying to fix you, he was in no position to be handling another person, instead he felt the urge to provide you with the support he never had.

"Sit down," he ordered simply, turning his back to you as he began to masterfully prepare the fresh ingredients he'd brought.

"You have talent," he said twenty minutes later after the silence got too heavy, his hands efficiently wiping down the counter space while you consumed the meal he made. You sat up a fraction straighter at the validation. "But talent without exposure doesn't mean anything."

You almost flinched at the sharp accuracy of the statement.

"You should be out there. Not locked in here all the time," he continued. By now, Dex’s surveillance of your habits had mapped your highly dysfunctional sleeping patterns. You remained awake through the entire night, whenever he left for an assignment or returned in the pre-dawn hours, the golden light from your windows were always visible. You spent the daylight hours sleeping, unless you were forced to leave for your underappreciated assistant position at the Daily Prophet.

He turned his head to look at you, tracking the way your soft lips parted slightly as you absorbed his assessment.

"You're a pretty woman. Here in New York, that's enough to open most doors," he said. The words weren't delivered as a compliment or a cheap attempt at flattery; it was simply a cold, structural fact.

A fact that caused you to violently choke on your eggs, a brilliant crimson blush detonating across your cheeks.

"You okay there?" he asked, his hand pausing its polishing over the mug in his hand. You urgently nodded your head, frantically reaching for a glass of water. Dex kept wiping the porcelain clean, a dark, thoroughly amused smirk settling onto his features.

Life with a man in your orbit was an entirely surreal reality, especially when that man was a massive, hyper-stabilizing force looming permanently in your background.

Dex had helped you source a proper, high-backed "princess bed" frame, assembling the heavy wood with a silent, terrifying efficiency. In return, you began to prepare your meals with his specific caloric needs in mind. You found yourself dressing in the mornings with the absolute certainty that you would be looking into the cold watchful eyes of your neighbor before the day concluded. No longer donning old sweats with thread stuck onto them, instead you chose more curated lounge wear. Nothing that suggested you were trying too hard but cotton sets and satin shorts that helped remind you that you were a girl. A girl with a very attractive man coming to her apartment on a daily basis. By the third month of this unspoken arrangement, Dex possessed a key to your apartment. You couldn't recall the exact moment he acquired it, nor did you feel any concern that he had it. Dex had proven himself to be so utterly dependable, so fiercely protective of your sanctuary, that you never once questioned the breach.

You simply allowed him to appear. Sometimes you would open your eyes in the morning to find him silently reading by your bed; other times, he wouldn't slip through the door until the dead of night. He had informed you, in his flat register, that his operational hours were highly dysfunctional as well due to his past employment with the FBI and his current status as a private contractor. It was the explanation that perfectly accounted for the jagged, violent scars lining his well maintained body.

The routine fractured slightly on a stormy Thursday evening. A violent thunderstorm had completely knocked out the power grid across your section of Brooklyn, leaving your apartment illuminated by the flickering, amber glow of a dozen candles. You sat across from him at the small table, the ambient silence magnifying the heavy, intrusive thoughts you normally managed to suppress. Without the distraction of your sewing machine or the television, the ghosts of your past were entirely too loud to ignore. It was better with Dex around, but tonight it was oppressing.

"You still with me?" His quiet, gravelly voice sliced through the dark.

"Yeah. I'm sorry," you nodded quickly, your shoulders drawing inward.

Dex’s eyes tracked the movement. He often wondered why that specific word, sorry, dropped from your lips with such automatic frequency, even when you committed nothing wrong. He had analyzed the way your entire system would shut down, retreating into a silent, unreadable fortress whenever you perceived even a flash of tension in his tone. He had logged it during his first critique of your mattress, and again when he regulated your breakfast habits. You would instantly succumb, allowing him to rewrite your parameters without an ounce of resistance.

It didn't align with the true matrix of who you were. It didn't fit the woman who possessed the fierce, unyielding determination to cross a continent alone for her art. You had been systematically programmed by someone else to react this way. It was a defect in your confidence, and it bothered him. He wanted to understand the code, but his lack of conventional empathy made the vocabulary invasive. He didn't know how to ask how you had been broken. He only knew that over the past five months, his motivation for being around you had completely evolved from a selfish need for a civilian disguise into an undeniable reality: he thoroughly enjoyed your company. You were awkward in a specific, quiet manner that made his own internal fractures feel normal. It was almost funny.

He searched his mental archives, selecting a play designed to foster emotional trust. Because he wanted you to trust him, he needed you to.

"You say that a lot. You okay there?" he asked, his chin gesturing toward your tense form. He worried the phrasing was either too forward or completely off the mark.

"Um, yeah. Sorry. It's just that..." You took a long, ragged breath, the amber candlelight catching the wet sheen of your eyes. "I grew up in a reactive home… and quietness kinda makes me uncomfortable" You nodded to yourself, tasting the bitter, familiar poison on your tongue as your throat tightened. Growing up was like navigating an active minefield. You were always criticized rather than praised. Everything you did was wrong. At some point, you just learn that it's safer if you shut down completely and don't engage.

Even now, miles away from the source, the conditioning remains a permanent tenant in your nervous system. It was an agonizing process trying to dismantle years of trauma; when you were raised by a monster, accepting genuine care or praise felt like a trap. You would hyper-fixate on every single micro-mistake you made throughout the day until isolation felt like the only true sanctuary available to you.

Dex offered a slow, deliberate nod. He lacked the capacity for conventional comfort, but he forced himself to try.

"My parents weren't really that involved," he offered, his voice a flat line of history.

Before he could expand on his own dark childhood, you cut through the quiet. "It was just me and my mom." You paused, your fingers tightening around the edge of your napkin. "But sometimes... I really wished it was just me."

Dex’s brow raised a fraction, a sudden spark of intense interest flaring in his irises. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean... I've definitely imagined pulling the trigger on her fucking head more times than I've said 'I love you,'" you said, a sharp, dark laugh breaking from your lips.

Dex’s jaw involuntarily ticked, smile flicking though his eyes remained ever dead.

Huh.

He never once suspected that you possessed such a beautifully morbid, violent architecture within your mind. You were laughing, your head tilted back, but Dex’s hyper-calibrated focus recognized the truth instantly: you were only partially joking. He knew that specific, cold look in a human eye; he had seen it in the mirror, and he had seen it in the field. He knew with absolute certainty that if a weapon were placed in your hand in that exact moment, you would have executed the directive without an ounce of hesitation.

This was an extraordinary development.

"Was she that bad?" he tested, his voice dropping into a low, predatory register.

You took the bait instantly, your fingers wrapping around the handle of your silver dinner knife with a white-knuckled, bruising grip. "She's an emotionally immature woman who never accomplished a single thing with her life, and she chose to take her anger onto me. She's a fucking bitch who was entirely content being the other woman to some married man rather than-"

You cut yourself off abruptly, your chest heaving as you realized you had allowed the floodgates to open entirely too wide. But Dex didn't pull back in horror. Instead, his focus was completely locked onto the violent, white-knuckled grip you maintained on the knife handle.

"Sorry," you whispered, trying to force your features back into a polite, submissive mask. "That was too much."

"It's alright," Dex murmured, his voice incredibly steady as he leaned across the small table, his shadow completely enveloping your form. "I wanna hear whatever's bothering my woman."

The phrase fell from his lips with an absolute, seamless finality. Your entire body locked up, your breath catching in your throat, but you didn't offer a single word of protest. My woman. You didn't argue the timeline; you didn't ask when the boundary had shifted. Instead, you slowly lowered the knife, took another quiet bite of your dinner, and tried your absolute best to suppress the small, genuine smile forming at the corners of your lips. You were somebody's woman!

To Dex, the word girlfriend was inadequate. It belonged to the fragile narrative of normal society, and absolutely nothing about Benjamin Poindexter was normal. He had initially categorized you as a necessary component of his disguise, but you had evolved into something infinite. The transition into ownership had been effortless, occurring somewhere between the hours he spent selecting your furniture and the quiet moments he spent watching you create. Girlfriend was a childish title. His woman possessed posture. It possessed permanence. His woman was a creature he took exquisite care of; his woman was an asset he would dismantle the entire world to protect if she asked. And now, he realized with a sick surge of adrenaline, that his shy but explosive woman might actually possess the exact same dark, violent streak that lived inside his own ribs.

He made the decision to test that thought on a violent, rain-slicked Saturday night.

The window to your fire escape rattled violently before swinging wide open, and Dex tumbled into your bedroom, his broad frame covered in dark fabric, heavily smeared with fresh, steaming blood.

"Oh my god! Dex!" You instantly bolted from your sewing machine, rushing across the hardwood without a single second of hesitation. You didn't scream; you didn't question the firearm strapped to his chest or the array of lethal tactical knives lining his thighs. Your system immediately engaged in operational mode. "What can I do? Tell me what to do."

"Need those hands of yours," he groaned through his teeth, his face pale as he collapsed onto the edge of the bay window, his large fingers frantically tugging the heavy curtains shut to kill the view. "My girl's amazing at sewing, yeah?" It was a desperate, raw plea masked as a casual question as he violently yanked his dark shirt upward. "Need you to deal with this for me."

Your eyes locked onto the jagged, deep gash splitting the skin over his ribs, the blood welling rapidly. You offered a sharp nod, your voice entirely steady. "I'm gonna clean it first, okay? I need to see exactly what I'm fixing up."

"Do what you gotta do, baby," he sighed, his head falling back heavily against the covered glass pane as his eyes closed.

Your small, nimble fingers moved with an extraordinary, professional efficiency. You didn't have medical-grade thread, but you swore by the integrity of your heavy-duty Guterman spool. You guided the needle through his flesh, weaving a series of incredibly precise, perfectly spaced navy-blue stitches to seal the breach. Dex remained entirely silent, watching your face through a haze of acute physical pain. His compulsive mind felt an immense, soothing wave of gratification at the perfect symmetry of your stitches. He found it incredibly, beautifully intimate that you had chosen a deep navy thread to match his clothes.

"So," you whispered, your fingers snipping the excess nylon. "Is this a common occurrence for a private contractor?"

"It's not normally this bad," he graveled out, his breath hitching. "But I ran into the devil tonight."

"And did you leave him looking worse?" you asked as you peered up at him, wiping the remaining copper from his skin.

Dex let out a low, ragged laugh, a fierce surge of pride warming his chest. It was an extraordinary response; a normal person would have demanded an explanation, but his woman's primary concern was the dominance of his performance.

"Mhm," he hummed in deep satisfaction.

From that exact night onward, you became a non-negotiable axiom in his existence. You were the absolute anchor of Dex's reality. Your domestic skills were remarkably useful, but more than that, he liked you. He liked you in a manner he had never experienced with another living entity. It boarded on enamored infatuation now. You remained your quiet, skittish self during the daylight hours, but Dex noted that your defenses dropped significantly whenever he returned bloody and damaged. You became infinitely more generous with your physical touch when he was vulnerable.

Yet, the conditioning of your childhood still dictated your movements. Whenever you sat on the velvet sofa together to watch the news, you automatically maintained a strict, ten-inch barrier between your bodies. Whenever you walked down the crowded concrete stretches of Brooklyn, you never reached for his hand; it was always Dex who had to reach out, wrap his massive arm around your shoulders, and physically drag your frame against his side to close the distance.

Dex began to wonder if your mind truly comprehended what it meant to be his woman. You didn't have to exist on the defensive; you didn't have to carry the weight of the world in isolation because his weapon was entirely at your disposal. But your broken programming prevented you from understanding intimacy. Reading your desires was like parsing ancient hieroglyphics, he was forced to rely entirely on your micro-expressions. Because apparently you would rather die than verbally articulate what you wanted. But at the same time you'd get silently pouty whenever he couldn't read your mind, which was almost never but it has happened once or twice. And that was more than enough times for Dex to start picking through your preferences.

Dex knew with absolute certainty that you liked his hands; your eyes would track their movement whenever he was using a blade to prepare food. And his hyper-calibrated focus had noted the way your demeanor changed when he altered his training regimen to bulk rather than cut. You liked his size. You liked the security of his weight.

The realization reached its zenith on a quiet Monday evening. You were hand-sewing an intricate, embroidered bodice, completely ignoring his repeated words, that strayed too closely to whines, to abandon the work and rest with him while he cooled down from the high adrenaline of a recent assignment. Your nimble fingers reached across the coffee table, casually grabbing one of his tactical throwing knives to cleanly slice your thread.

Dex watched the interaction with an intense, quiet focus. You were comfortable with the weapon. Though you had always been unbothered by his brutality.

"Have you ever used one before?" he asked, his voice a low vibration in the silence.

"No," you hummed, your eyes never leaving the fabric in your lap.

"Ever wanted to?" he pushed, a split second later.

"Yes," you answered truthfully, the syllable rolling off your tongue without a hint of hesitation.

A profound, intoxicating wave of pleasure flooded Dex’s chest at the confirmation.

"Stand up. I'll show you how," he ordered, his body instantly shifting into motion.

The command broke your creative trance, but your body automatically complied with his authority. You watched as he stalked into the kitchenette, his large fingers fishing an empty soda can out of the recycling box. He placed the aluminum on the far edge of the island, turning to trail back to you.

Dex stepped directly behind your frame, guiding your body to stand perfectly parallel to the target, exactly twelve feet away. The moment his large palms settled firmly onto the soft skin of your hips, your entire spine went completely rigid. With a hitched breath, your focus momentarily shatters as he holds out the cold steel.

"Hold it like this," he whispered against your ear, his large fingers wrapping over yours to adjust your grip on the hilt. The metal was ice-cold, perfectly balanced, and terrifyingly thin.

You didn't wait for the final instruction. Driven by a sudden, volatile surge of adrenaline and need to please, your arm snapped forward, hurling the blade across the room with a terrifying amount of force. The knife sliced through the air, striking the exact center of the aluminum can, knocking it to roll tarnished on the floor. If Dex had been satisfied before, his cerebrum was now operating at absolute capacity. A low, feral sound of pure delight escaped his lips as he prowled across the hardwood, inspecting the absolute ruin of the can before plucking the blade from its body. He turned, his whirlpool eyes raking over your flushed, trembling form.

"Impulsive," he murmured, his voice dropping into a dark, heavy register as he slowly stalked back toward your position. "I bet if I gave you a gun, you'd be a trigger-happy little thing..."

You didn't utter a word. You stood completely frozen, your chest heaving as you stared up into the dangerous, unblinking intensity of his face. There was nothing left to say. Without a doubt, he enjoyed what you had done, it was evident in the way the corner of his mouth threatened to pull.

"Should I?" Dex asked softly, stepping into your immediate personal space. He lifted the throwing knife, using the flat, ice-cold plane of the steel blade to gently tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear. The contrast of the freezing metal against your hot skin sent a violent, electric shiver straight down your spine.

"Should you what?" you breathed out, your posture straightening in raw anticipation.

"Give you a gun," he nodded, his gaze tracking the frantic pulse fluttering in your throat. "You're my girl now. You have to know how to handle yourself." He tilted your chin upward with the spine of the knife, forcing your eyes to lock onto his. "What if someone takes you when I'm not here?"

The question was heavy with an invasive paranoia that constantly plagued his mind. The mere possibility of an external threat having access to your sanctuary was enough to deregulate his entire system. His breathing grew ragged, his self-control straining at the seams as you stepped back against the wall. He feared for a microsecond that his darkness had finally shattered your views on him.

But you didn't look terrified. Your eyes were wide, dark, and obviously earnest. You wanted more, but didn't know how to ask for it.

The knife in his hand moved with instantaneous precision. Before your brain could process the movement, the razor-sharp edge sliced cleanly through the left strap of your tank top, the fabric snapping away from your shoulder. You let out a sharp, gasping breath. With a flick of his wrist, Dex flipped the blade within his palm, the steel flashing once more as he severed the right strap, letting the material pool at your waist.

Your hands immediately moved to cover the view, only to stutter hesitantly when Dex decided that he didn't like that. Brows knitting in disdain like you had offended every fiber of his being. His armed body moved, tapping the blade once over the shield of your hands before guiding it back down with the weapon. Hunger invaded his irises as his pupils dilated, taking in the portrait of you in a baby blue bra, top irrelevant and ruined around your waist. You watched as his head imperceptibly weighed side to side, as if he was conversing with the devil and angel on his shoulders.

And as always, the side that benefited him the most won.

In a blink, the knife had slipped beneath the center of your bra and with a firm grip Bullseye had sliced it in half. An audible sound of shock broke from your lips as you stammered back slightly. At that he took a moment to observe you, looking for the silent cues of your discomfort and was pleased to find none. Though the wide eyed expression on your face didn't distract him from the way your thighs pressed together, and how your stomach clenched in flutters to try and suppress the butterflies panicking.

A melodic hum escapes him as he uses that damned blade to push the scraps of your bra aside to expose and show off your skin. His focal trained on the bare swell of your chest, sharp metal purposefully grazing over one hardened nipple and your breathing sucked in. Dex’s eyes snapped back to your face, taking in the way you refused to look at him or down at yourself, instead paying very close attention to the overhead light. He watched your parted lips exhale with baited breaths, how your shoulders caved in an attempt to shrink into yourself and disappear.

Though, contrary to your demeanor, your core gave you away. Direct in the way your hips angle towards his, pressing into him despite how very hard you tried to avoid acknowledging the situation. Dex knew you'd never outwardly say what you wanted due to your own personal struggles expressing your needs. You two weren't there yet, not until he builds consistent intimacy to disassemble your preconceived notions.

So instead of teasing you, his lips moved forward, peppering affection on the skin beneath your ear before claiming your lips. Kissing was not a thing between Dex and his woman. A flaw in the architecture that he eagerly wanted to change the very moment he decided you were his. It was extremely grating in ways that he didn't understand. Poindexter had never been interested in the idea of sharing saliva with another human being, sure he's kissed women before, not many, but enough for him to decide that kissing was pointless. Yet when you became his, it was all that he could think of. Being near you wasn't enough, he needed to be on you, in you. All over, everywhere, connected in every possible way.

An invasive need that grew tenfolds when you melted because of his touch, reciprocating in a skittish dance of squirming away and pressing back onto his lips. His large hands held you in place by your waist, forcing you still as his kisses migrated. Your body was electric, writhing from him and anxiety, mind desperate to form any thoughts that weren't: my man, my man, my man. But his next action only made it worse and an actual, involuntary, moan echoed out of you as his hot tongue licked a slow path up your neck. Your head anchored back against the wall, biting down the sounds that threatened to sing again. With eyes blurred and focused on the surroundings as you tried to compose yourself, only for you forced them shut as Dex does it again.

“Stop doing that,” he whispered with no conviction, the words dancing the thin line between a plea and playful attempt at banter. Though his easy tone did little to calm the building anxiety. Stop doing what? Stop being so fucking needy and desperate and–

“Stop denying yourself,” he clarified.

“I know, it's new, I know you feel weird. And I know your brains talking” Dex rasped out into your ear, pressing himself impossibly closer to you as his hand reached to adore one breast. He didn't offer any following words of reassurance, and you silently thanked him for it. God, you couldn't handle the embarrassment from being comforted because of your own inability to express yourself.

“I'll make it feel good.” He nodded a promise as he stared into your unsure eyes. “So good that it all shuts up.”

With certainty in his tone, Dex gently tugs you towards the bed, brushing the remnants of your bra off your shoulders before tearing the fabric of your disgraced tank top off your body. Your eyes immediately locked onto his biceps as he exuded force, yet with the gentleness of a true man, he laid your body down as if you were fragile. Large hands roaming your body, tugging at your shorts till they were stolen from you. Every ounce of security you had now gone with them.

He noticed almost immediately the crease settling home in your brows and he moved to balance out the scale. Removing his own shirt to display equal vulnerability in the hopes that it'll calm you. Your fingers at your side twitched once, unsure and hesitant, before your open hand raised, heel of your palm still planted on the mattress but you were indicating that you wanted touch. Dex complied, pushing your thighs apart to settle between them. The broad form of this man comfortably laid over you, chin resting on your abdomen as he laced his hand with yours.

He stayed like that for a moment, breathing with you. The analytical voice in the cortex of his mind knew that he was asking a lot from you, to be so open and bare when all your body had ever known was to hide and shrink. Dex wanted to make sure that your nervous system had calmed down enough to embrace what he gave you without fear of overthinking. In a rare human moment of easy sentiment, he brought your intertwined hands closer, planting a small kiss over the back of yours. The gesture soothed the tempest wake of your internal storm and you subconsciously parted your legs around his laid form wider. It was a barely there action but an entirely unavoidable movement for Dex as he took it as a welcome.

With firmness embedded in his bones, his other hand crept up to your inner thigh. Two fingers sliding up barely an inch beneath the elastic of your underwear. A raw, strangled exhale forced its way out of you as glossed irises darted down to meet him. Watching as he just laid there, playing wth your underwear as his fingers glided along the thin elastic. Up and then back down, too close to your soaked entrance but never touching, when he'd get too close his rhythm would change and you tried to ignore the way his knuckles brushing against your pelvis made you go insane.

Dex’s eyes watched you, rapt as the war on your face played out. Maybe he was doing this to try and soothe you, but he knew it in his heart that he wasn't that pure. He was absolutely doing this to fuck with you. He wanted to see if you were capable of getting over yourself, if that explosive nature of yours would finally appear if you were frustrated enough. And judging by the way you looked at the ceiling like it was the sinner, he knew he was getting close.

You blinked once at the myriad of thoughts, chewing on your bottom lip. The monster that he was, grew green with jealousy when he decided that your attention strayed far enough. Fingers drawing back to snap the elastic of your cotton blue panties against your inner skin where thigh met heat. A fraction of a second was all it took for you to pin the smug image of him with your gaze and the dam broke the self conscious overthinking.

“Oh for fucks sake!” You groaned, ripping your hand out of his and burying your face in your palms. Frustration and something you don't dare to name blossoming in your soul.

A sinister laugh corrupted the air, insidious and dark. “You gotta tell me what you want.” He shook his head, his fingers still doing that criminal trail. For a man who had such little regard for your clothing earlier, he sure treated your underwear like some sacred thing to devout himself to.

You huffed, eyes avoiding him. “I want you… but I feel terrible being naked,” Dex tried to suppress how absolutely adorable he found you right now, stubborn and pouty, like voicing your wants was such a painful task.

Maybe he should've thought the moment out some more, pick apart your statement and the context clues of your precise wording. But instead he found himself crawling over your body before his hand moved on its own accord, pushing his sweatpants down, along with his restrictive boxers. Hearing you say that you wanted him was the only incentive his veins needed.

“You don’t have to be naked,” A purr invades your ears as your jaw slacks when you feel him. The hard tip of his length pushing up against your entrance, through the barrier of your drenched underwear.

Your gaze travels down finally, watching as he rubbed his hard length on your clothed cunt. Blinking in an attempt to regain focus, you never thought about that… You didn't have to be completely bare. And secretly you thought the sight of Dex playing with you like that was the most erotic thing you've ever witnessed. For a man as condemned as yours was, God was certainly very generous with all of him, and his cock was no exception. Solid with intimidating girth that made you equally nervous as you were excited.

Your hips responded to the pleasing revelation, moving to match him despite your anxiety.

“There she is, that's it….” He groaned out as he rutted onto the soaked fabric, your lustfilled eyes darting to lock onto the scar on his cheek. It was one of the things you found so devastatingly attractive about Dex, save for his broad shoulders. Maybe you were drunk off the liquor of your own pleasure induced stupor. Hive mind calming as you reigned control over the tempest anxiety. Whatever had become of you was needy, leading with your chest as your tongue darts out to lick at his marred cheek. Copying the same sanctified ardor he had with your neck.

The sound that left him was barely restrained, if at all. Your focus is drawn to the way his biceps strained around your form and how his large palms gripped at the pillow beside your head. It was honest, an uncontrolled groan as his hips staggered once, followed by one hard grind before that incisive obsession in his genes demanded more. Ears perking at the curse he spat, and you saw it there, barely a second appeared that pensive expression that came when he weighed out the consequences of his actions. That one you'd come to know as Tony , Tony was good, Dex was questionable. As he once worded it, Tony was the structure whereas Dex was the wild card. It was a never ending impulse for him to switch between the two.

Before you could question who had won, Dex’s volatile, steadfast precision tipped the scales, pulling back away from you. And as concern began to take its hold on your features, his deadly hands took what they wanted, ripping the drenched fabric and security of your panties apart. You gasped, a startled wail that blurred the lines between fright and thrill, gaping at the torn scraps around your thighs. Peering up at the heaving man but his attention was locked onto your gleaming cunt, exposed and waiting for him. No longer hidden as the last bit of safety you had was reduced to a sorry excuse of a shield, torn hole evidence of his ferocity.

Dex’s calloused hand moved, palm pushing one thigh back as his thumb stroked your clit once. With starved gentleness that wasn't there before, he touched you with fondness. Preening at the pretty sight as he took note of how your thighs would flutter when he applied a certain amount of pressure.

Despite your debilitating infrastructure that had deduced you into a stubborn woman, you could only handle so much of his analyzing gaze. You knew he meant well, taking in the image of you and committing it to flesh till it was root memorization but fuck it was insanity.

“Dex….” A shy request that made him focus on you.

“Please…. Just…… fuck me already…” Muffled in embarrassment as a heat kissed your cheeks, he didn't say anything more, knowing that it'll only make things worse for you. He didn't dwell on the adorable mess that you were for too long. Not when his woman had given him an order.

He sat back on his knees, hand knowingly fishing into the pocket of the forgotten sweatpants loose on his thighs. Pulling out the condom wrapper Dex made sure to carry with him all times when he entered your apartment. A little thing that had earned its way on the check list of items he required on his body along with his knives. The act was fueled by preparation rather than the perverse idea that sex was his intention every time he crossed the threshold. Although sex was nice it was never his mission, you were. He rolled the rubber on, hands stilling half way when he took in that forming expression he categorized was your pout. It was a mean scowl but so fucking cute in a way that made him admit weakness. With your brows pulled, gaze narrowed and bottom lips so inviting, he raised a brow in question.

“Why do you need that?”

You said it with such distaste in your tone that the sheer vigor of it made Dex blink. Society had instilled in him that a condom was expected, it was the right course of action when you're with a woman to be a gentleman and always protect her body. But your words indicated absolute certainty that you didn't want him to use protection.

“I'm on birth control,” you nodded.

He blinked again. Dex didn't know that, and he knew everything about you, he had made sure to learn all that there is to. And yet he was unaware of this very important knowledge.

“Since when?.” He asked slowly.

“It doesn't matter, fuck me….” You let out a bold whine and his gaze turned piercing. It did matter. If it was a fact he didn't know thoroughly well about you, it mattered more than anything.

“It does, when?”

He repeated firmer, his mind wondering when you'd managed to slip pass your shared schedule long enough to maintain it. Wondering if there were gaps in the day or if he wasn't paying close enough attention to you.

“3 years ago, I have an IUD,” you murmured under your breath, arms crossing over your bare chest and Dex's eyes momentarily drop down to your cleavage.

Okay, that was a much better answer. He wasn't neglectful or blind, and relief dispelled his nerves. Though the calm was cut short when your nimble fingers suddenly found its way on his cock, pulling at the rubber with deliberate slowness causing his head to lull to the side. He'd never seen that look on your face in the kaleidoscope of pretty expressions he'd cataloged.

Your eyes were pinned up, defiant and dead in a way that almost mirrored his own. The ones he's come to intimately know, only ever seeing that assertiveness in the throne of the mirror, never on you. Dex's internal world halted as a groan rumbled in his chest caused by whatever the hell you were doing with your hand. Looking down to watch you pull at the condom, only to roll it back up when you stroked him. Again and again, for minutes too long.

Fucking hell you were vengeful.

Stubborn and shy, harboring immense emotions in your little body, and now you wanted revenge for his game earlier. Dex tries to suppress the smile that threatened to break free because my god weren't you just perfect.

You pulled the condom off with a snap, throwing the useless thing for him to catch mid air before he was on you again. Peppering kisses along your cheeks, causing you to squirm and laugh at the attack.

Though the sweetness of the moment only lasted half a second as a sharp audible gasped that sounded remarkably too close to a moan escapes you. Mouth parted wide with your head thrown back as Dex fucked into you with no warning. His face morphs into something unrestrained as he buries himself to the hilt, deep and unforgiving. Eyes locked onto the sight of your tight cunt fluttering around him, soft fabric still framing your skin.

“Dex….” You whined out a plea.

“What? You wanted me to fuck you raw and now you can't handle it?”

His hips moved, accentuating his spat words with thrusts so leisurely that it all but melted and ruined you. The heat between your legs intensifies at the feeling of him. Maybe he should have given you a warning, eased himself into you inch by inch till you got used to the stretch of him. But Dex was so far gone pleasantries at this point, not when you asked him so earnestly to fuck you raw.

And God did the thought stroke something greedy inside him. All he ever wanted was to be close to you in every possible way, and to know that you wanted that as well fed something insatiable in him.

Your moans were a hiccup of an orchestra as Dex maintained a bruising pace, fucking into you with a hungry force, expertly angled to dismantle your body. His thrusts were harsh and drawn out, almost pulling out all the way save for his tip kissing at your entrance before sliding back into you again. The sheer duress of his movements filled the room with lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin and your thighs quivered.

Dex forces them to stay put, large hands gripping at the torn fabric of your underwear and using them to pull your cunt close, forcing you to meet his thrusts. You were a mess. A beautiful, vocal mess that struggled against the sheets. Hands trying to find anything to stabilize yourself as you writhe beneath him. He didn't know which sight pleased him more, your tits bouncing to the rhythm of his thrusts or your leaking sex.

You were far beyond drenched, your slick spreading with every thrust in a way that was shockingly satisfying. Dex was a man that prided himself in strict cleanliness, evident in his spotless apartment, but in this moment he wanted nothing more than to make a heap of you. He didn't really understand it, this revelation that fueled his avaricious hands as they gripped at the fabric tighter. A covetous need that called to him like a siren song to see your cunt painted with his cum. As if somehow, someway, it laid his claim over you. He groaned out at the thought, picturing it as he watches you swallow his length whole. Strings of your liquor sticking to his pelvis with every movement back and the obscenity of it only made him want to fuck you harder, if that was even feasible.

“D-Dex….”

You mewled out and his focus was on your face instantly, only to snap back down to where you both connected. Your heat clenching around him in beats.

“I know baby, I know,” he breathed out, heart pounding in his ears as he readjust his angle, your body involuntarily arching as a loud whimper left your lips. You were close, the pressure in your stomach threatening to snap and he wasn't far behind either. Fuck he should've just done this from the start instead of wasting time teasing you, maybe if he had the pretty sight of your pussy would've been covered in his cum by now before he even got the chance to fill you.

His hands migrate from the makeshift handles of your ripped panties, finding home on your hips as he leans down to take one nipple in his mouth. You cried out, arching into him, hands finding place on his shoulders as he nibbled and sucked. That action was the last bit your self restrain needed to devastate. Ecstasy floods you in white-hot waves as you came without warning around him, your hips moving on their own accord to meet his movements. Your muscles tensed as your nails dug into his skin, baiting a loud groan from Dex. His hips stilling deep inside as his cock twitched, mouth still on you as he watched you get lost in your own pleasure. Hips locked against each other as ropes of his cum filled you.

Only when your breathing calmed did he decide to pull out gently. The serenity that had taken hold of you shattering when Dex groans, opening your eyes in alert. Though his attention was only onyour heat, wet and abused with his cum spilling out of you. His hands moved, thumbs caressing your folds once before he pushed the dripping mess back into you. Body giving out in exhaustion at this point as you collapsed back down onto the pillow, letting him do whatever his hyper acute mind demanded of him. Even if it meant lazily finger fucking his cum back into you.

Poindexter delivered a heavy, velvet-lined case to your kitchen island the next afternoon. Still motivated by the absolute high that came with being with you, his gaze was a fond sentiment as he waited for you to approach. Inside rested a custom, matte-black semi-automatic firearm, its weight perfectly balanced for you. Engraved into the reinforced steel of the handle, rendered in a brilliant, metallic pink that perfectly matched your sewing spools, were two distinct words: My Woman.

You took the weapon into your hands, feeling the cold, lethal weight of his protection settling permanently into your palm. You liked the feeling infinitely more than you were ever willing to admit. Smiling up at him as you got on your tip toes to shyly press a kiss over his scarred cheek.

That evening, the apartment was quiet once again, save for the rhythmic, comforting click of your ancient sewing machine. Dex sat on the edge of the velvet sofa, his broad shoulders relaxed, one large hand resting flat on his knee as he watched you work. The other however, was outstretched and playing with your hair, lazily twirling a strand around his finger. Since yesterday, a new habit of his began to form, embedding itself deep in his bones, flooding him with the need to constantly be touching you. You were not so different as you found yourself craving for his touch since the very first second you woke up this morning.

You stopped your machine for a brief moment, your eyes drifting over to the vanity where the matte-black firearm rested directly beside your pastel spools of thread. You looked at the weapon, then turned your head to meet the unblinking, intensely possessive depth of Dex's gaze.

"Thank you, Dex," you murmured softly.

"Anything for you" he replied, his voice a low, steady register that filled every corner of your empire.

You smiled, turning back to your fabric, completely filled with a profound, unyielding sense of safety. Gleaming that you had found a beautiful, eccentric savior, a man who simply loved you enough to build a fortress around your dreams. You sat in the warm, golden light of your home, entirely unaware of the psychological reality of the danger beginning to form between you. Because Bullseye had found himself his twin moon, no longer a north star galaxies away, but rather a beautiful equal that orbited together. You didn't know that he didn't view your love as a choice, but as a permanent assignment. And that gun was the first promise of many, the first test as he knew instantly that you liked it, unaware of what you could become.

You didn't know that he had already cataloged every exit of your building, or that his mind had already mapped out the exact tragedies required to execute anyone that ever dared to come near you. You were his sanctuary, his absolute identity, and as Dex watched your nimble hands guide the thread through the needle, his dark smile widened in the shadows. You were completely free, entirely safe with him, and he was never, ever going to let you go.

Dex loved sushi night Fridays.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God.

He needed this.

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

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

But here, things felt… normal.

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

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

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

Dex smiled before he could stop himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There she is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just you and him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just you and him.

That was all he needed.

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

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

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

Then the paper landed in front of him.

FBI INVESTIGATES ONE OF THEIR OWN.

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

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

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

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

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

He could feel them looking at him.

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

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

He was being used as a scapegoat.

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

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

Dex looked at her mouth while she spoke.

Not her eyes. Her mouth.

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

She was lying.

They all were.

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

It had been the Bureau.

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

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

After everything, they were disposing of him.

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

But the rules had just thrown him away.

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

The static in his skull sharpened.

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

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

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

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

Badge. Gun. Credentials.

Structure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Empty.

Empty.

Empty.

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

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

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

Dex’s fingers twitched at his sides.

None of it belonged to him anymore.

Or he didn’t belong to it.

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

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

He needed out.

He needed air.

No.

Not air.

You.

He needed to see you. Now.

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

Dex looked down at his watch.

6:17 p.m.

Thursday.

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

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

He had never understood that.

He loved that he didn’t understand that.

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

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

He turned before he’d fully decided to move.

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

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

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

That was fine.

He didn’t need the badge.

He didn’t need their rules.

He had you.

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

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

Find her. Find her. Find her.

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

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

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

And Mercer’s voice.

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

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

Stay calm, Dex. Breathe. You’re okay.

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

His fingers twitched at his sides.

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

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

He didn’t care.

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

You weren’t there.

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

Not here. Not here. Not—

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

Empty.

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

The frustration crested, crested, broke.

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

This was stupid.

This was—

Where the hell are you?

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

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

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

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

He dropped his hands and looked up.

There.

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

And everything stopped.

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

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

His throat worked. He swallowed once, twice.

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

His hands were still shaking.

His chest was still tight.

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

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

The realisation hit him like a fist to his throat.

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

He couldn’t let that happen.

He couldn’t.

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

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

The word nectarines repeated in his skull like a lifeline.

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

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

Three steps away. You were three steps away.

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

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

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

He could smell you.

Estée Lauder. Beautiful Magnolia.

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

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

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

It didn’t.

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

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

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

His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.

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

Stop. Stop. Stop.

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

But nothing helped.

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

“Excuse me.”

The world snapped into silence.

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

He stared.

He blinked.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

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

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

His heart stopped.

Then restarted at double speed.

Say something. Say something normal. Say something human.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But you don’t remember me?”

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

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

You were teasing him.

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

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

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

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

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

He hated himself.

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

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

That Dex was charming. That Dex was normal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dex.”

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

Your hand slid into his.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He couldn’t say any of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then there was a pause.

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

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

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

But his mind was a blank wall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dex’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

Nothing came out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then his phone buzzed.

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

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

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

He answered, “Hello.”

“When I was a boy…”

His skin wasn’t buzzing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mercer’s tapes.

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

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

He paused.

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

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

He didn’t want to be fixed tonight.

He wanted to be real.

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

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

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

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

First ring. A knife. 

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

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

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

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

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

The click.

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

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

“Hello?”

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

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

What the fuck was he doing?

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

But he didn’t move.

“…hello?”

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

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

He cleared his throat.

“Hi. It’s Dex.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh. Guy from the fruit aisle.”

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

But he couldn’t hang up either.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the rejection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pretty good for improv.”

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

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

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

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

Dex prided himself on focus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot. You called him hot. 

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

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

“No. No, god, no. I promise.”

“Good.”

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

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

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

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

Fuck. Were you doing this on purpose?

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

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

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

You raised an eyebrow. “Complicated how?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let me drive you.”

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

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

“Okay.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I had a good night,” you murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

Your lips met his.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then something inside him snapped.

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

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

His palm landed on your throat before he could decide.

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

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

He didn’t care about breathing anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then your palms pressed flat against his chest.

Push.

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

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

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

“Do you wanna come up?”

Fuck. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know,” he breathed without thinking.

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

Dex’s stomach dropped into freefall.

His eyes snapped open, panic flooding his veins. 

Fuck. Fuck. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Having my dessert.”

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

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

“Are you sure—you-you don’t have to—”

His hips lifted off the couch cushions anyway.

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

It wanted you. It had always wanted you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus Christ. 

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

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

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

Before he could answer, something wet touched him.

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

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

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

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

“Keep your eyes on me, Dex.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh fuck—I’m coming—”

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

His release slammed into him like a freight train.

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

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

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

The tenderness of it made his chest ache.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He captured your gaze and held it hostage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lost to sleep. Lost to him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God. This was unbelievable.

And that was where his next problem laid.

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

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

He couldn’t fucking help it.

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

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

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

His body moved before his mind could catch up.

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

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

Fuck. He should let you rest.

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

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

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

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

Shit. You were still leaking him from earlier.

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

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

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

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

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

He froze.

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

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

The seconds stretched like hours.

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

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

Instead, he kept moving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A shudder ran through his entire body.

“Please. Just a little more.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dex...?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Dex—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

He answered with a small grunt as he pushed inside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He needed you there first.

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

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

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

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

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

And you did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Too much?”

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

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

Dex’s eyes snapped open.

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

He heard the offer.

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

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

Then why the fuck wouldn’t he do it?

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

His voice dropped, quiet and raw. Completely serious.

“Yeah?”

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

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

“Then I’m never letting you go.”

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