desire, i want to turn into you

north star | part one

summary: benjamin poindexter does not believe in fate. he believes in structure, routine, and predictability. but then, he meets you. his new next door neighbor. pairing: benjamin poindexter x f!reader content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), mentions of PTSD/OCD/schizophrenia/anxiety, medications, coping mechanisms (fairly healthy…for now), obsessive behavior, canon divergent, no use of y/n word count: 2.3k A/N: wow. my first fanfic written and published in over 6 years!! actually insane. i’ve been lurking on Tumblr recently and rediscovered the absolute goldmine of works that i had forgotten existed since like 2014 (lol). i’ve read works from so many amazing authors here who reignited my love for reading and being a part of creative spaces, and in turn finally felt that desire to write again for fun <3 also introduced me to this deranged blonde man who bewitched me heart and soul and pussy fr. this is all to say apologies if this is a bit crusty, i’m still dusting off the ol’ keyboard and getting back into it. i’m planning that this will be a mutli-part series that i regularly update, but full disclaimer that other responsibilities may get the best of me!! also apologies for the lack of action in this chapter, i promise x100 it’s on the way. anyways, hope you enjoy and i hope i can keep creating :-)

Benjamin L. Poindexter did not believe in fate. 

No, he did not. Because in order for fate to inhabit this world, that would mean there would have to be something higher than man. Something that created the structure the little lives below were meant to follow. A higher being would imply the existence of God, or Yahweh, or Brahma, or whatever deity man chose to worship. And God, in turn, implied that there is a distinction between good and bad. 

Unfortunately, nobody had ever bothered to explain the difference to Dex. 

Other people claimed to know, like priests or teachers or politicians when they had a point to prove. They could preach and teach and debate all they wanted, but it just…never made sense. 

If good and bad were as clearly defined as everyone insisted, then somebody should have been able to explain, really explain it by now.

Nobody ever had.

So…that must have meant that there was no God. And that meant there was no higher being. And no higher being, of course, meant no fate. 

For a long time, Dex was content with that explanation. He didn’t need theology or karma or the cosmos to keep him going. What he needed was routine. Structure. Rules. Baseball, once. Mercer. Then the Army. And now, the FBI. 

What could be more ordered than working in bureaucracy? There were procedures, badges, clearance levels, dress codes… It was, in theory, exactly the sort of environment a 33 year-old man with a multitude of mental health disorders should find for himself. 

And the best part about it was that it worked. 

The paperwork, the filings, the endless codebooks and all the cogs of a federal interagency machine churning, it kept things…quiet. Subdued, even. Yes, Dex still had his moments. Times where the federally-issued gun felt too heavy in his hand. When he would pass by a bar on his way home and overhear the crack of a bat and the rise of a commentator’s voice from a television inside. When the aripiprazole would take a bit longer to kick in and memories of Mercer’s voice felt closer than just a fragment of his mind. 

But the system always brought him back. Because no matter what, he knew what the next day held. Wake up, morning jog, coffee, newspaper, badge, suit, commute, work, home, exercise, shower, dinner, television, meds, sleep, repeat. 

It was good for him. Good for who he was. 

What he was. 

This is all to say, that no, Benjamin Poindexter did not believe in fate because he had no need for it. It was not needed to explain, or justify, or defend. 

He did not believe in fate. 

Until August 9th, 2018.

8:37 PM.

Yes, Dex remembered the time. What type of man would he be if he forgot? He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. 

It was hot outside that day. So hot that he had considered not taking the subway after work for how crowded and smelly and sweaty he knew it would be (he took the train anyway. Detours from routine had a tendency to create problems.). So hot that by the time he had arrived at his apartment building, perspiration had glued the fabric of his white button-down to the middle of his back. So hot that he wondered if he should turn the fan on when he got into his apartment (but what if the force was too strong and it knocked off the papers on the coffee table like it had last week? Not acceptable.). 

Dex was so deep in heat-agitated contemplation that he nearly missed the stack of boxes outside the apartment across his. It wasn’t until he put his key in the door of unit 415 that he recognized there was something behind him. 

He turned. 

Boxes. Cardboard. Stacked neatly against the wall, like they were waiting for their turn in line. 

And more than that, there was…music? Piano. Saxophone. Jazz, he thought. Something slowly flowing out of the cracked open door to apartment 416. 

He paused, key still stuck in the doorknob. 

A new neighbor, then. 

No one had told him anyone was moving in. He corrected himself. No one needed to tell him, it just…would have been nice. New neighbors meant new information, new routines. New personalities to deal with. 

The old resident of 416 was a twenty-something year-old named Casey who worked somewhere in finance. JP Morgan, maybe. Dex didn’t like him. Not just because he left trash in the hallway or he talked too much if they happened to ride the elevator together. It was more than that.

Casey had a complete lack of consistency. His schedule was erratic. One day he would be out the door by 7:23 AM, clad in his yuppie suit and tie, yapping on the phone while chugging an energy drink. The next day he wouldn’t emerge from the apartment. Then the day after that, music and drunken laughter or yelling from his equally-as-annoying friends would blast out of the apartment from dusk til dawn. 

So yes, maybe it was a blessing that Casey was gone, because in a way, his behavior and whatever semblance of a routine (if you could even call it that) was stressful to Dex. But he had gotten used to Casey. Change was hard. 

Looking at the open door, the boxes on the hallway floor, Dex could feel that familiar tightness spreading across his chest. 

No.

He turned away and forced himself into his own apartment, closing and locking the door behind him. He couldn’t hear the jazz anymore. Dex closed his eyes.

Breathe in, breathe out. 

In…and out.

His eyes opened. He clenched his fists, and then unclenched them. He did it again. Once more, for good measure. 

Okay. It was fine. He was fine. 

Change is inevitable, he reminded himself. Everything would be fine. His routine would remain. A new neighbor would not derail what time he woke up, or took the train, or how he made coffee in the morning, or what stretches he did before working out. Yes, that was all correct. 

One more deep breath, and…silence. The feeling had passed. 

Dex nodded to himself in confirmation, and went about the rest of his evening. 

The night’s routine was, for the most part, unaffected. Dex changed out of the sweat-damp button-down, put the laundry in the hamper. He stretched in front of the window. The workout was the same as always. Thirty pull-ups on the bar mounted on the bathroom doorway. One hundred push-ups after. Then one hundred situps. Afterwards, he let himself sit in silence, feeling the ache in his muscles and allowed himself to catch his breath for approximately six minutes. And then he got up, showered, changed, and started dinner. Salmon in the airfryer, bag of rice in the microwave, because it was Tuesday.

It was only after dinner, in between washing dishes and before watching TV (local news first, then one episode of a sitcom rerun) that the routine altered. 

There was a knock at the door. 

Dex paused at the kitchen sink, sponge in one hand and plate in the other. 

Another knock. Timid-like. 

He turned off the faucet, put the sponge and dish down. Wiped his hands on the dish towel. Walked to the door, and slowly looked into the peephole. 

The fisheye lens revealed a young woman, probably close to his age or a few years younger. She was holding something (a plate, maybe?), shifting back and forth on her feet. Chewing on her lip, she looked behind herself at apartment 416. 

Unusual circumstances for a Tuesday night. 

His years at Quantico would tell Dex he probably shouldn’t open the door to strangers. Especially strangers holding an unknown object. But a woman knocking on his apartment door at night was not a typical circumstance, or at least one that the Bureau or Riveria or Lyndhurst or Fort Moore had prepared him for.

So, he unlatched the deadbolt, unlocked the knob, and opened the door. 

It was you. 

He blinked. You blinked back. 

“I, um…” you stopped yourself, and then smiled. “Hi.”

Dex blinked again. You looked at him, smile faltering only slightly. Your gaze flicked downward briefly before returning to his face. Shifting on your feet, you craned your neck to look behind him. Were you trying to…look into his apartment? Why?

“Sorry, I uh…I didn’t mean to interrupt anything, I just–”

“No,” Dex interjected suddenly. The word left his mouth before he could stop it. His voice continued, sounding distant, like someone else was talking. “No, you’re not… You’re not interrupting anything.”

“Oh! That’s good. That’s, um…” you paused, then shook your head and laughed nervously. What was funny? “Sorry, I just– wait, let me just start over. I was moving all today and am just, like, totally discombobulated right now.”

You took a breath, then straightened yourself up and presented the plate in your hands. It was covered in tinfoil. You were still smiling as you shared your name. 

“I just moved in,” you gestured behind yourself. Apartment 416. “I wanted to introduce myself to the hall, so I thought I would make some cookies, but I got caught up in all the boxes, of course, and so by the time I actually got around to the cookies and had them ready, it was like, way too late to be running up and down the hall, banging on people’s doors like a crazy person so…” 

You looked down at the plate again, then did a little shrug. “I figured the person right across the hall was probably the most important one to win over, so…here I am, and I guess you get all the cookies to yourself!”

You laughed nervously again, and then waited, cookie platter presented. 

Dex looked at the plate, and then back at you. 

Silence. 

You cleared your throat. “They’re…chocolate chip. In case you were…wondering.”

Dex knew what the regular response to this should be. He watched enough television and movies to know at this point, he should take the platter, spare you the confusion as to why your new neighbor was so socially inept, thank you for the kind gesture, and introduce himself. He just…his brain wasn’t working, for some reason. Nobody had ever brought cookies to apartment 415 before. He didn’t have the manual for this. 

The silence was seeming to unnerve you. You continued speaking, hands tightening slightly around the covered plate. 

“If you don’t like chocolate chip, or– or if you’re allergic to dairy or gluten, which, God that would be so me to give a new neighbor anaphylactic shock on my first day in a new apartment, I could–”

In the moment, Dex’s mind finally connected nerve-endings and he found his voice once again. “No, I–I like chocolate chip. I’m not…allergic.”

His hands made their way from the door to the plate. It was still warm when he took it from you. “Thank you.”

You seemed more than relieved that your new neighbor was not selectively mute. A bright smile had returned to your face. “Yeah, of course! I love to bake. It’s hard to find the time to do it, especially nowadays with my work, but I actually used to want to own a cake shop when I was younger, like, I was obsessed with Cake Boss, but then I went to college and–” You stopped yourself, and let out a small laugh again. Why did you laugh so much? Your cheeks had gone pink at this point. “I’m sorry, I have the tendency to ramble a lot. Anyways, I just wanted to introduce myself. Sorry it’s so late. I promise I don’t have a habit of banging on people’s doors at night and shoving baked goods in their face.”

“It’s okay.”

You nodded, looking a little relieved to almost be done with the encounter. You glanced down at the cookies in his hands, and then at his face again. “Well…I won’t keep you anymore. I’m sure I’ll see you around!”

You turned, walked three steps to apartment 416, and looked over your shoulder at him as you opened your door. “Have a good night!”

Dex watched as you slipped into the apartment. Only once the door closed behind you did he return back into apartment 415. He put the locks back into place. Set the plate on the countertop, then peeled the tinfoil back. The plate was green, like the color of a frog. Atop it sat six chocolate chip cookies, each one nearly identical to the next. He took one, and bit into it. 

It was good. 

He took another bite, and then another. The cookie was gone. 

He placed the tinfoil back onto the frog-colored plate, and gently pushed it into the middle of the counter. 

Dex looked at the clock above the stove. It was 8:37 PM. 

He let the remainder of the evening unfurl as it should have. He watched the evening news where the anchor droned on about ongoing city council budget disputes and a robbery in Midtown. After that, he flicked through stations until he landed on a rerun of some 90s sitcom he had already watched twelve times before. 

Afterwards, he brushed his teeth, took his prazosin and aripiprazole, flicked off the lights in the apartment, double-checked the stove was off, triple-checked the door locks, and finally made his way into the bed. 

As he lay in the sheets, staring at the ceiling and listening to the distant sirens that never seemed to stop in New York City, he reflected. Not on train time schedules like he usually did before he attempted sleep, or bureau mandated procedural sequences. Calm things, routine things. 

Instead, Benjamin L. Poindexter thought about chocolate chip cookies. 

He thought about the frog-colored plate sitting centered on his kitchen countertop. 

He thought about you, with your pink cheeks and nervous laugh. 

He thought about apartment 416.