“Baby,” you greet him from the stove. He slides into place behind you, hands coming up to rest on your hips as you nuzzle into his cheek.

“Missed you,” he says, his breath warm against your neck.

“Missed you, too,” you answer.

Your Dex is a man of habit. He loves his routines, his rituals, and this familiar dance is one of them. The soft snick of the latch is your cue to begin. When Dex enters the apartment the first thing he wants is the heat of your body under his palms. Your scent in his nose. Your gentle affirmation to remind him that you’re here, you love him, you still want him.

In a few minutes he’ll peel away from you long enough to shed his jacket and his badge. His jeans and button-up will be replaced with sweats and a t-shirt, and the two of you will find a way to pass the evening as you curl into each other on the couch.

For now, he watches as you stir garlic into your simmering pan. The fragrance blooms rich and savory.

“I was thinking about you all day,” he says. His chest rumbles pleasantly against your back as he speaks.

“Oh, really?” you say. “You got a crush on me or something?”

He huffs and you feel his mouth curl into a smile against your skin. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I got a crush on you.”

You curl your fingers into his hair. “I was thinking about you, too.”

For all you’ve done to prove otherwise, there’s still a part of Dex that can’t believe you mean it when you say you’ll be here forever. That you love him more than anything and that your love won’t dry up and disappear one day. Over and over again, he wants to hear you say it. Over and over, you get to tell him.

“I thought about you on my commute, when that guy showed up on the train again.”

“The one with his cat in a backpack?” Dex asks.

“Yeah,” you say wryly. “That one.”

“Should be illegal,” Dex says as you pour a can of tomato sauce into the pan. “It’s animal cruelty or something.”

The first time you two had seen him last month, you joked that you were going to do the same with Dex. Tuck him into your bag and carry him everywhere with you. He said he was more of a guard dog than a scruffy orange cat. You said he was more like a lap dog with separation anxiety. The flash of mischief in his eyes was your only warning before he barked, a perfect imitation of a yappy little dog a grandmother might own, and you shh’d him furiously as both the man and the cat shot you disapproving looks.

With your sauce simmering on the stove, you turn to face Dex and take him into your arms properly.

“I thought about you on my lunch break,” you say, swaying gently with the rhythm of your music, Dex’s body moving stiffly with yours. “When I opened my lunch bag and found a protein bar I definitely didn’t pack myself.”

Dex gives you a lopsided smile. “You never pack enough to eat.”

“I didn’t realize you were inspecting my lunches in the morning,” you say, and to that he almost looks guilty. Dex’s monitoring habits are a hurdle you two have long since crossed. He wants to know when you’re leaving, where you’re going, who you’ll be with. If you remembered your medication, if you drank enough water, and apparently, if you’ve packed enough food for the day. You allow his micromanaging — within reason. And when it becomes too much, you let him know in gentle words and he takes a deep breath and gives you the space you ask for. Even if he has to remind himself that you still love him.

“I just want to be sure you’re all right,” he says quietly.

You take his face into your hands. The faintest remnants of his body wash remain, the scent clear and crisp. His jaw is prickly with barely-there stubble under your palms, and you imagine sitting him down in the bathroom and swiping a razor over the soft skin in the morning. He likes it when you take care of him. You’re the first who’s done it.

“I thought about you coming home,” you say, faces close enough that your breaths intermingle. “Thought about making dinner with you. Holding you. I was waiting for it all day.”

The hands at your waist tighten and Dex’s throat bobs as he swallows down his emotion. The silence hangs for a moment as you give him time to speak.

“I’m always waiting for you,” he says at last. “I feel like I was waiting my whole life for you.”

And now it’s your turn to blink at the emotion that stings behind your eyes. So often Dex says things like this, confessions so sweet and genuine it makes you ache with affection. His love and his loyalty are not bestowed freely, and to be the one he chooses to give them to is a rare and precious gift. Others have rejected it. Exploited and abused it. You guard it like the treasure it is, tending to it and nurturing it as often as it needs. With time, you’ve seen how it grows.

You press your mouth to his slow and deep. And again. And again.

The blare of a timer interrupts the two of you, and Dex reaches past your body to turn it off. He stares at it as if it’s offended him, and you laugh and press one more kiss to his cheek.

“Grab the plates?” you ask. “I’ll stir the pasta in. I’m starving.”

He leaves you with a lingering hand on your waist and you hear him digging in the cabinets as the last pieces of your meal come together. Tomorrow you both will be free from work. You’ll make coffee, wander the grocery store, and find an excuse to spend the rest of the day doing nothing in each other’s presence.

Tonight you’ll sit with him at the table and watch him eat the food you made for him. You’ll drink from the cup he cleaned for you. You’ll settle into the rhythm of your evening together with his constant presence beside you.

——————

Your boyfriend hides things from you. You don’t mind it. Everyone has secrets, old aches and wounds from the past that they would rather not reopen. Dex has more than most. You would never push him to reveal them to you, never pressure him to speak about anything that causes too much pain. When he wants to talk about them — if he ever wants to — you’ll be there.

His emotional issues and the strain they’ve put on your relationship stem from a past he hasn’t been willing to describe, although you’ve gathered over your time together that it began when he was very young. When those issues arise, you talk it over with him in a gentle tone.

“Baby, I know you’re anxious, but we talked about this. I promised my friend I’d go out with her tonight.”

“Dex, honey, I just need some space. Relax—just breathe, ok? I’m not leaving, I’ll just be in the other room.”

To his credit, he tries. Tries to breathe through the anxiety. To trust that you still love him, even when his thoughts are loud and grating. To not be too much. There are good days and bad, but you try to keep him grounded through all of it, praising him for his progress and thanking him for all the work he’s done to be better for you.

“I’m so proud of you.”

“Thank you for trying. I know this isn’t easy.”

And maybe you should be worried about all of it. About how dependent he’s become on you for support and stability. How he looks to you for validation always, his eyes watching your face for any sign of disapproval. How the slightest sense that you’re pulling away can send him spiraling.

You should worry, maybe, about how much you enjoy it. Dex needs an anchor; you’re it. The only thing keeping him grounded and steady through the storms of his emotions.

What Dex needs is patience, and someone willing to listen whenever — if ever — he decides to open up.

So when he asks you to get rough with him in the bedroom, you don’t pry. Dex likes it when you push him around. When you bite and scratch just a little too hard. When you tease him for his clinginess, his neediness. It’s fun to be a little mean during sex. Playful. You don’t think anything of it.

For Dex, it isn’t quite enough. He asks you to be rougher. Meaner. He brings it up while you’re on top of him with a hand wrapped firmly around his neck. Not enough to hurt, but enough to feel the pressure. The tensing and bobbing of his throat as he swallows beneath the pads of your fingertips. The request is breathless and desperate.

“Harder. Please, harder.”

You tighten your fingers where they rest around his throat, feeling the muscle and tendons underneath his skin. The hitch of his breath as that pressure increases. Dex groans and rolls his hips, rutting up into you. His face twists in frustration.

“Harder,” he repeats.

Your grip tightens again, and now his breath really is strained. Rasping underneath the heat of your palm where it presses against his airway. His hips roll underneath you again and the movement is tense, irritated. He grits his teeth, muscles clenching at his jaw, and you’re about to slow down, to ask him what’s wrong, when his hand flies up to cover yours and squeezes.

He clamps down on his throat with his own calloused fingers, forcing you into a grip more powerful than you’re comfortable with. In the beginning it was fun. Now it’s starting to feel violent.

You try to pull your hand away but he holds firm, locking you into place with ease.

“Dex,” you say. “That’s—this is too much. Relax.”

The skin of his face is blooming red all over, brows pinched, mouth slack as his hips drive up, up into you. His grip around your hand is almost painful, fingers locked over yours, and you can feel his throat clench and spasm under your palm as he tries and fails to suck in a breath. He’s strangling himself, actually strangling, and he’s making you do it.

“Enough. That’s enough,” you say with another futile tug at your hand. This is not fun anymore. Something cold and heavy is pooling in your gut, and for the first time since you’ve been together, Dex is making you feel scared. You plant your other hand on his chest and pull hard at your arm. This needs to stop now.

Beneath you, Dex’s mouth pulls into a snarl. His other hand snaps to your arm where it’s braced against his chest and he locks you into place with it, like he can’t hear you at all, like he’s not going to let you go. Panic skitters up your spine.

“Dex, stop!”

Something inside him breaks back to the surface at the fear in your voice. His eyes snap open, face going slack with shock, and when his fingers release you snatch both of your hands away from him. He’s sucking in hungry breaths and looking at you like you’ve just struck him. For one charged moment, you think you could. Rear back and slap him for what he just put you through. You curl your fingers into fists and resist the ugly urge.

“What–what is wrong with you?” you say, and immediately regret it. You never speak to Dex like that. Never insult him or degrade him or imply that he’s broken, like he so deeply believes he is. You shift on top of him, to slide off of his member and end this session that got far, far out of hand, but Dex’s hands snap to your hips before you can leave and he sits up, chest pressing against yours and eliminating any distance you put between him.

“No!” he says, panicked. He seems to realize that he’s forcing you to do something you don’t want again, and his hands ease and slide up and down your waist in soothing, shaky strokes. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But it’s always been there. I was born wrong and I—I need you—I want you to hurt me.”

His eyes are almost manic as he stares up at you. You stare back, nerves still wrecked, as you struggle to form a response to his frantic rambling.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Dex,” you say slowly. He sniffles and you realize he’s got tears welling up in his eyes, red around the rims.

“I want you to hurt me,” he says. “I want you to hit me. I—I deserve it, right? For scaring you? You can hit me. You can hurt me for it. I deserve it. I’m sorry. I deserve it.” During his babbling, he’s pressed his face into your body, his mouth hot and wet against your skin.

In your mind, a thought is forming. A vague understanding of where this outburst has come from. The old wounds he’s been picking at, aches that he’s never spoken but that you’ve seen the lingering evidence of. Through your anger a dull ache begins to thrum in your heart, and you drop a hand to the top of Dex’s head. The action isn’t quite comforting. Your fingers are tense with your agitation, still simmering under your skin.

“You don’t deserve to be hurt,” you say slowly. “You just need to calm down.”

“I do,” he argues into your body. “I do. I deserve it. I didn’t listen, I didn’t—I wasn’t good. I deserve it.”

His hips roll again, a stilted little movement that has him hiccuping into you. Against the skin of your chest you feel a damp warmth where Dex has finally begun to cry, his tears catching between his face and your body. His shoulders shake with ragged breaths, and despite their broad width he feels small below you. As if he’s shrinking in on himself.

He ruts into you until he’s trembling, fingers clenching against your hips, voice catching mid-babble as he pulses inside of you.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—nngh.”

He spills inside of you as you watch in numb silence, your hand a weight against the back of his sweaty head. You sit, unmoving, as he sucks in breaths. Eyes on the wall. White. Empty.

When he’s slipped out of you without meeting your eyes, head bowed like a dog caught chewing the furniture, you slump against the headboard without speaking. Dex is panting where you’ve left him, a clarity returning to his eyes as he comes down from whatever manic space he’d sunk into. His fingers fidget with the sheets. From the corner of your eye, you can see him watching you, gauging your expression for how upset you are.

He crawls up the bed to lay beside you, his hand reaching for yours and stopping just short, as if he’s afraid you’ll pull away. The sound of both of you breathing is the only noise in the dim room.

In the time you’ve been together, nothing like this has happened. Dex has his issues, but he’s always been sweet to you. At times even excessively so. Eager to please. He’s never ignored you like this, and he’s never forced you into something you asked him not to. Especially not during sex. You swallow the thought down, bitter in the back of your mouth.

“You’re mad at me,” Dex says. His voice has leveled out again, tired and anxious but not frenetic. “I—I messed up, didn’t I?”

You take in a deep breath, letting it out in a slow exhale. “Yeah. You did.”

Dex shifts next to you and you feel his fingers clench in the sheet next to your hands. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“No, you’re not,” you say. “You’re upset that I’m mad at you.” You don’t know if he’s ever been sorry for anything in his life. Sorry isn’t something Dex feels. Guilt is not an emotion he’s familiar with. Anxiety, yes. Fear of being left. Fear of not being good enough. But not sorry.

“That can’t ever happen again,” you say.

“It won’t,” Dex answers quickly. “It won’t. I swear. I won’t scare you again. I won’t make you do anything you don’t like.”

“If you want to try something new in bed, something . . . intense,” you begin. “You have to ask me first. We have to talk about it.”

“I will,” he says. “I promise.”

A silence stretches between the two of you. Even in the dark you feel Dex’s eyes on you, watching and assessing. Always studying for your mood. Outside, in the streets below the window, a siren wails and rushes past, the sound dull and muffled. Dex extends a finger towards your hands, linking his pinky tentatively with yours.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asks.

You sigh. A moment passes, and you consider letting the silence hang, leaving him to stew in his anxiety. But you’ve never been very good at denying him. You curl your pinky around his and he sighs at the contact, relief softening his features as he drags your hand to his mouth, greedy for your touch. He presses the back of your hand to his lips, breath hot against your fingers.

You suppose you should shower. Brush your teeth and go to bed. Probably have another conversation about this in the morning, just to make sure Dex understands that it can’t ever, ever happen again. Before you can rise you feel his mouth move against you.

“If we do talk about it,” he starts, voice small. “If I tell you what I want first, you’ll do it?”

You sigh and grit your teeth. Squeeze his hand and stand from the bed.

“We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

———

Days later you stand in the hall bathroom in a t-shirt and underwear, staring yourself down in the pristine mirror. Not a speck mars its perfect finish — Dex and his compulsive cleanliness keeps the apartment as spotless as a showroom. You try to help where you can, sweeping, wiping down counters, scrubbing dishes. Dex inevitably follows behind you and repeats the work you’ve just done. It isn’t just about the cleanliness. It’s about the ritual. The routine of sterilizing the space himself.

Dex loves his routines. Loves order. Loves rules. You’d given him a lot of those after he told you what he wanted from you. A very long conversation and a few tears from him followed.

“Why do you want this, Dex?” you had asked him. He stared at you with an emotion you couldnt quiet place behind his eyes, heavy and intense.

“Because I trust you,” he said. “Because—because I trust you not to hurt me.”

Hurt as in mentally. Emotionally. The kind that would leave lasting scars on his already damaged psyche. The physical pain, he very much wanted.

And somewhere underneath his voice, quiet but sure, you thought you heard the words unspoken.

Because I trust you not to hurt me like they did.

Dex didn’t want a safeword. Didn’t want to hear you explain the stoplight system — green for continue, yellow for slow down, red for stop immediately. You made him learn it anyway and repeat it back to you, to his chagrin.

You know that behind the bedroom door Dex is laying right where you left him, bare-bodied and handcuffed to the headboard. You had cinched the cuffs around his wrists with a gentleness few others would offer to a killer. But this was your Dex. You can’t help but be soft with him. At least, until it’s time to begin.

In the mirror, your lips are still flushed lightly from when you had kissed him slow and deep, before leaving him with a soft “I love you” and a reminder to use his safe words. He huffed into your mouth. You stood and shut the door behind you.

That was ten minutes ago. It’s time for you to go back in.

Dex wouldn’t tell you where this request had come from. Wouldn’t explain his reason for wanting you to do everything he had asked of you. But you could infer. Dex wanted you to help him, in his own damaged way. Wanted you to soothe an ache he had lived with long before meeting you. And helping Dex was what you did; what you would always do. As you made your way back into the hallway and outside of the bedroom door, a part of you hesitated to do what came next, to play your role in this performance, but another part was thrumming with anticipation.

Dex wanted you to make him feel worse, and then better. No one in the world knew how to make Dex feel better than you.

You push open the door. At the other end of the room, Dex lies on the bed, naked except for his sock-covered feet and looking at you with the weariness of a caged animal. You take a long moment to rake your eyes over him, the strong muscles of his body, the red marks on his wrists where he’s pulled at the cuffs while you were gone, his cock lying soft against his leg. You move across the room in languid strides, coming around to stare down at him from the side of the bed. His chest rises and falls in barely-controlled breaths, the tension in his body betraying that he’s already worked himself up into fear.

“Don’t look so scared,” you say, your voice a perfect mask of indifference. “We both know you’ll enjoy this.”

The line of Dex’s mouth presses flat. He doesn’t respond. You bend and tug open a drawer in the nightstand by the bed, rummaging in it for one special item. Your hand closes around it and you take a moment to feel its weight, the smooth silicone of the shaft, the soft leather of the harness. When you stand and dangle the strap from your hand, displaying it like a threat to the man in front of you, his nostrils flare at the sight of it — and his cock twitches. The corner of your mouth tugs up.

“See?” you simper. “If you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t have pissed me off.” You step into the harness smoothly, cinching the straps around your thighs and hips. The weight of the dildo is familiar, and you trace a finger from the tip to the base, watching it bob between your hips. Dex’s eyes are fixed on it, pupils blown wide.

“You know what happens when you disobey,” you say conversationally. “So I don’t want to hear you bitching and crying when you take it.”

You swing a leg onto the bed, climbing between his thighs and he flinches like he’s going to resist. You swat him on the ass — hard.

“Uh-uh,” you chide him, voice low. “I can make this a lot worse for you, sweetheart.” You snatch his ankle in one hand and heft the leg up into the air, swinging underneath it and positioning yourself between his hips. His body is tense and flushed before you, sweat already beginning to dot his chest and neck. You lower the leg to rest on your shoulder, tracing a finger down the outer length of his muscled thigh. He shivers and tries to pull away, but you pin him against your shoulder and graze his calf with your teeth. Tasting the salt on his skin, already dotted with nervous perspiration.

“Look at you,” you sigh against his skin. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty. I guess it’s the only thing you’re good for anymore.”

From where it’s pressed into his calf, you let a hand trace down the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, drifting nearly to the crease where it meets his pelvis and sending more shivers across the muscle while you continue sucking and nipping at him. Between his hips his cock kicks again, and you laugh, dragging your fingertip to skirt around the edge of his member.

“See?” you say. “You’re already acting like a slut for it.”

A rustling from the handcuffs has you looking up just in time to see Dex spit at you, the glob of saliva landing on the front of your shirt. For a moment, you’re frozen, eyes stuck on the dark spot in the fabric. When you lift your gaze to meet his, he’s staring back at you with whatever defiance he can muster. It’s less than you know he’s capable of, in different circumstances. When he isn’t naked and restrained.

“Fuck you,” he says, but his voice lacks the fight you would expect. Instead he sounds . . . resigned. Like he already knows what’s coming, and that he can’t stop it.

Your mouth breaks into a grin that doesn’t reach your eyes. You laugh once, clipped. “Oh no, sweetheart. I’m not the one who’s about the get fucked.”

You pitch forward and slap him. The impact lands with a crack that bounces off the walls and sends shocks through your palm. Dex gasps and you freeze, a pang of worry shooting through you that almost has you breaking the performance. You want to cup his stinging cheek in your hand, to press your mouth to his face and say you’re sorry, you’re sorry, everything’s ok — and then you see his dick beneath you, stiffening into an angry erection.

He likes it. He wanted this. He asked you for this.

You take a breath and settle.

“You must really want me to make it hurt,” you say. You shove his legs up to his chest and line up the tip of your strap with his hole. “And you know what, baby? I’ll give it to you exactly how you want it.”

You push inside of him in one fluid thrust. A strangled sound punches out of Dex from his gut and his entire body pulls tight, arching and curling against the bed. You would be struck with worry again, if you hadn’t stretched him out with a finger and lube just minutes before. Not enough to fully prepare him, but enough to blunt the pain. You place your hands on his thighs and press them into his chest as he takes deep, ragged breaths, eyes scrunched shut and face screwed up.

“There’s my pretty whore,” you coo. “Always desperate to get fucked. Is this why you’re always being so fuckin’ difficult? You just want my attention? Want my cock inside of you?”

Dex takes a sharp breath. “I—I’m not a whore,” he says weakly.

“No?” you reply. “But you take it so ___well.” You punctuate the sentence with a slam of your hips, punching into him with force. “You like being used. You like getting fucked. You’d let me take you whenever I want, wouldn’t you?”

The pace you set has Dex groaning, choked and raspy. He shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “No, no, I don’t. I don’t.”

You hit him again, a sharp slap against his already red cheek.

“What did I say about crying?” you say, voice low. “If you can’t stay quiet maybe you should roll over and whine into the pillow. Ass up.”

You pull out of him at once and Dex jerks as the head slides out of him with a wet pop. With clumsy movements he scrambles to turn over, the chain of the cuffs twisting, burying his face in the pillow and presenting himself exactly as you ordered, hips up and waiting. You smooth a hand over the curve of his ass. The muscle trembles under your palm.

“See? You do know how to listen.” When you line up the dildo with his hole again, you take a moment to linger, tracing the tip around his opening as he tenses up underneath you. He clenches around nothing, his body practically vibrating with nerves. From here, you have a perfect view of the jagged scar that follows the length of his spine. Another permanent reminder of the abuse his body has taken.

When you press inside him again he groans low into the pillow, the sound muffled into the soft fabric. You curl your fingers into his hair and wrench his head back, and he rewards you with another pitiful noise. You just told him to be quiet, but fuck it. You want to hear him when he moans.

You set a brutal pace again, hips snapping against his ass as he cries.

“You love it,” you say with effort, you breath becoming heavy with exertion. “You were practically begging me to fuck you.”

“I wasn’t,” he cries. “I don’t! I don’t like it.”

“No?” you ask, releasing his hair and letting his forehead drop to the bed beneath him. “You know what happens. If you don’t want it,” you say, punctuating your next words with unforgiving punches of your hips. “Then why do you always—piss me—off?”

Dex wails into the bed. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to,” he cries. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t want it!”

Dex cries into the bed with earnest. That ache in your heart starts up again, thrumming beneath the surface.

“I never—never wanted it. I didn’t want it then, and I didn’t want it when — when they put me in — they told me I wouldn’t be there, they said I would be in solitary.”

Your pace stutters. Something hot is building behind your eyes, and Dex’s shoulders are wracking with sobs as he babbles into the sheets.

“Dex,” you say, your voice a touch too soft to be in character. “What’s your color?”

“Green,” he gasps. “Green. I’m green.”

You continue pounding into him, sweat beading on your skin as Dex sobs underneath you. A thought creeps into your mind then. Would Dex even tell you if he needed you to slow down? If he needed you to stop? Or is he so far gone that he would let you do anything to him? At some point this could have moved from catharsis into self-flagellation, and Dex would grit his teeth and bare it because he believes he deserves it. Because he’s only ever known love through pain.

You make a decision. It’s time to tone things down. This needs to end soon.

Your hips slow into a softer grind and Dex pants into the sheets, now wet with snot and tears.

“Look at you. My pretty boy, taking my strap so well.” Dex shivers under your hands.

“You don’t like this? You don’t want it?” you coo at him.

“No,” he rambles. “No, no, no, no—“

“Shh, I know. I hear you,” you say. “Roll over for me.”

His legs shake as he turns over for you again, wincing as he rolls without losing the strap inside of him. When he slumps against the bed you settle his legs around your hips, rubbing your hands up and down the shaking muscles of his thighs.

His face is red and wet with tears, snot smeared under his nose, mouth trembling. He is absolutely wrecked. Pathetic and broken beneath you.

“Oh, baby,” you say, swiping away the snot on his face with your hand. “My poor baby. You look just pathetic.”

Dex sniffles, fresh tears sliding down his cheeks. His limbs are limp, the fight drained out of his body and mind.

“Not pathetic,” he argues weakly.

You cup his wet cheek in your palm. “Hmm,” you say, as if you’re thinking. “You don’t like it when I fuck you? You don’t like this?” You drag the tip of your strap over that spot you know makes him melt, and a moan tears from his lips. Dex jolts underneath you, his cock bouncing with the movement. His erection looks painful, red and leaking at the tip. He hasn’t been touched since you began, and you know him well enough to understand that he needs to come, soon.

You swat at his ass again, just hard enough to get his attention. “Answer me when I ask you a question, baby.”

“No,” he moans. “No, I don’t want it. I don’t —ohhh,” his voice breaks off into a keen as you stroke that spot again, rocking into him with steady movements.

“Right,” you say, leaning over him. “You don’t like it. What else does my baby not like?”

The muscles of his abdomen tense up, and you know that heat is pooling in his belly, the beginning of the slow build-up of his orgasm.

He huffs, a frustrated little breath as he tries to gather himself enough to speak. “I don’t — I don’t like it when you fuck me. Don’t like it when you touch me. When you call me — call me baby. When you, when you . . .” his eyes drift down to your mouth. “When you kiss me.”

“Oh, baby. You want a kiss?” you fold over him, taking his face in your hand and catching his mouth in a tear-damp kiss. He moans into you, panting against your mouth. Your lips work against his steady and firm, and you feel the hard length of him twitch where he’s pinned beneath your belly.

As if remembering that he doesn’t like this, not at all, he tries to turn away from you, snapping his mouth shut. You follow him, fingers grasping his chin and mouth hovering over his.

“Where you going? You don’t want anymore? You want something else?”

Your hand skims down his chest to the sensitive skin of his belly, where his cock lies hard and waiting. He jumps when you wrap your fingers around it, not stroking, but holding its weight in the warmth of your palm. Your hips are still grinding in little back-and-forth motions over that sensitive spot, and the twist of his face tells you that he’s fighting a losing battle. Tipping closer and closer over that edge.

“Is it time to come, honey? Hm? Are you ready?” His exhaustion is wearing him thin, the emotional drain of the role play breaking him down into someone small and weak below you. This is your baby. Your baby, protesting with half-hearted nonono’s as you slide your hand up his shaft and his legs begin to shake around your hips. You know what he needs. You always know what Dex needs.

Your hand moves in steady strokes, pumping him firmly as your strap works over his prostate in rhythm. His body pulls tight with the rising pressure of his climax, legs curling up into his chest, toes flexing in his socks. His lips part around an agonized “ah, ah, ah.” The strong shape of him splayed out in front of you, desperate and needy and perfect.

“There you go,” you say. “Give it to me. Let me see that pretty face.”

His orgasm spreads through him slow and thick like honey. Every inch of him reacts as it thrums under his skin, from his feet that flex and curl, thighs shaking, to the taut flex of his belly and the anxious scrunch of his brows. His cock kicks as he spurts onto the soft skin of his belly, the plane of his chest. Dex comes like it hurts, like every part of him is buzzing with a heat that overwhelms. No one else knows how to break him down like this. No one else gets to see Bullseye, big and vicious and terrifying, open up the softest and most vulnerable parts of himself.

His voice pitches up into a pained keen. “Ughnn, ughn!” Cheeks blotchy and wet. Lips pink and bitten.

“There it is,” you breathe. “There’s that pretty face.”

With one last little twitch, his cock spends the rest of his cum onto his tummy. His body stays locked up, muscles tensed and rigid, panting through his teeth as the last remnants of his climax fizzle out. You spread your palms over his thighs and rub soothing strokes up and down them, encouraging him to relax, “shh”ing him as he whimpers.

His body wracks with fine tremors, exhausted and spent. Taking mind of your own body, you realize how tired you are as well. Aching, sweaty.

That ache in your heart persists as you remember Dex’s ramblings. His mindless begging and pleas. The implications behind all of them. Dex has hurt people; you know this. But he never, ever deserved anything like that.

His voice cracks as he calls your name, quietly bringing your attention back to the present. Looking up at him you see his hands tugging at the cuffs.

“Ok, ok baby,” you say, and slide out of him. He winces as the head pulls free and you hurry to loosen the straps around your hips, tossing the strap away and crawling over him to remove the cuffs. Finally freed, he slumps into the bed and pulls his arms to his chest where you take his wrists gently in your hands, rubbing at his stiff muscles, taking care not to irritate the angry red marks where the metal bit into his skin.

He reaches for you and you collapse into him instantly. Pull him into your arms, cradle his head against your chest. He curls into you without hesitation.

“It’s ok. It’s ok, honey,” you say as his shoulders begin to shake. Fresh tears spill down his face and into the soft fabric of your shirt, the cotton muffling his weepy breaths. His crying brings heat to your own eyes, and you blink the tears back before they can fall.

“I don’t want it, I don’t want it,” he rambles into your chest.

“I know. I know, baby.” You stroke his back with a warm hand. “You’re safe.”

“I didn’t want it. I didn’t mean — didn’t mean to — to mess up again.”

“Dex,” you say. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything to deserve it. You didn’t mess up.”

His hands fist into your shirt as his sobs go dry. Like his tears have been spent. Like his voice has gone hoarse from all of his protesting. You hold him through it, let him listen to your heartbeat and the steady rate of your breathing.

“Just breathe, baby,” you say. “Breathe with me.”

His chest stutters as he tries to match your breathing, deep and slow and controlled. It’s an exercise you’ve done many times before, when he’s lost in a spiral he can’t end on his own. The media calls him cold and the internet calls him heartless, an unfeeling psychopath with a glaring hole where his heart should be. But you know the truth. Dex feels everything in overwhelming intensity, and never learned how to bring himself back from the highs and lows of his moods.

“There you go,” you say as his breathing begins to slow. “It’ll pass. The feeling will pass.”

Minutes pass with his head tucked into your shoulder and your hands rubbing soothing circles across his back. When he at last pulls away to look at you, his eyes are still red and weary but the panic has faded. His mind is back, the clarity in his eyes returned. You comb your fingers through his sweat-damp hair, brushing sticky strands away from his forehead.

“You want to talk about it?” you ask.

He looks away. “No.”

You won’t press him to speak. You never do.

“Ok,” you answer, and press a kiss to his brow. His skin is hot and flushed beneath your lips. Tacky with drying sweat and tears.

The room falls into silence for a moment before he speaks again, and there’s a scraped-raw quality to his voice that tugs at the strings of your heart.

“Thank you,” he begins. “For doing that for me.”

“Did it help?” you ask. “I mean, do you feel any better?”

He takes a moment to consider, brows furrowing slightly. “I think so. It feels like . . . like picking at a scab.”

Picking at a scab, or clawing into an old wound? you want to say. Instead, you say, “I want you to tell me if it’s worse. If I did anything you didn’t like.”

“You didn’t,” he says quickly. “I wanted it. I trust you.”

A part of you is anxious, fearful of the possibility that you hurt him in any way that would linger. That he would ask you to do it again.

“I don’t ever want you to use me to hurt yourself. Ok?” you say quietly.

His eyes dart away again, fixing on a spot somewhere on your shoulder. “Ok.”

The response doesn’t assure you, but the slump of his shoulders and the weight of him cuddled up against you quiets any argument building under your tongue. That conversation can happen later. Right now, there’s a stickiness coating your skin where sweat is drying down, the fabric of your shirt and the sheets underneath you clinging uncomfortably to your body. What you need is a bath and a long drink of water, for you and for the man lying limp beside you. You start to rise but he stops you with a hand around your wrist and a noise of protest scraping from the back of his throat.

“Stay,” he says.

“We’re tired. And dirty,” you say gently. “Let me run a bath for us.”

“Later,” he says. “Just stay with me. Please?”

And because you’re still no good at denying him, you simply smile and say, “ok.”

When you let him tug you back down to the bed with a hand pressed into your hair, he stares up at you with tired eyes. “Kiss?” he asks.

You press a soft kiss against his lips, warm and lingering. And then again. And again. When you both fall back into the blankets, he curls into the heat of your body again. The room is quiet, the air cool against your sticky skin. You curl your fingers through Dex’s hair again and he turns into your palm with a pleased hum.

“I love you,” he says, muffled into your shirt.

“I love you,” you answer, your lips pressed to his hair.

He falls asleep to the beat of your heart, steady and constant beside him. You lie awake for minutes after. Counting his breaths, soothing him when he jerks and twitches in his sleep. When he wakes later in the night, you’ll slip out of bed as he paws at you again, return with a warm cloth and wipe away the sweat and spend on his body. He’ll tug you back into bed and you’ll cover him with a blanket before he returns to his refuge in the crook of your neck.

If you’re going out without him (which he, uh. doesn’t love) he prefers to drop you off and pick you up. It minimizes the time you spend away from him and gives him an excuse to know exactly where you are and exactly when he’ll see you again. It also gives him an excuse to be texting and calling you asking when you want him to come pick you up. Are you sure you don’t want him to come early? It’s late and you sound kind of tired. No, he doesn’t mind at all, ha ha, just let him come get you and you can come back to his place and curl up under the blankets with him and read until bed. Please. :)

Bed time for him is no later than 11 pm, by the way. If he’s waking up at 7 he wants a solid 8 hours of sleep, and he wants you under the blankets with him. If you’re late getting into bed with him he’ll sort of hover around you until you get the hint.

When you’re sleeping together he will always be touching you in some way. Even if you’re not cuddled up against each other he wants a hand on your waist, his forehead tucked into your shoulder, feet touching under the sheets, just something. And you cannot escape it. If you roll over in your sleep he’s following you across the bed, and if you move away from him on purpose he will look at you with those sad wet puppy eyes. It genuinely hurts his feelings.

Just go ahead and sign up for a Life360 account with him. Or any other location sharing app. It will greatly ease his anxiety and he would just find another way to keep tabs on you anyway. Sometimes he keeps the app open next to him while he’s preoccupied with other things, just glancing at your location on the map every so often, even if he already knows where you are.

You’ll have to establish strong boundaries around your private life, because he feels like you should have absolutely no secrets from him. Like, what do you mean he can’t read your diary? Why did you leave the room to take that call with your friend? You’re texting her about a breakup she’s going through and he wants to be over your shoulder reading all of it. No sense of privacy.

Please note that this does not apply to him lmao, there are many things about himself and his past that he would prefer you don’t know about. He worries that you would think less of him or leave him if you found out about some of the more violent things he’s done. He desperately wants you to think highly of him, but at the same time he wants someone to see every ugly part of him and love him anyway. He doesn’t know how to manage these two feelings in the beginning, and will probably try to hide those uglier parts of himself until he inevitably makes a mistake and ends up confessing everything to you at once. If you stay with him anyway and assure him that it hasn’t scared you off, it will be a huge trust-building moment for him.

Clingy. So clingy. He’s always touching you in some way. A hand on your leg while you’re sitting on the couch. A foot pressed up against yours under the table while you’re at a restaurant. A hand on your back while you’re walking. You tease him about his “separation anxiety”, but you both know it’s true. You go to the bathroom to wash your face and he’s sitting on the tub, watching. He wants to be involved in anything you’re doing, chopping onions in the kitchen, going to the gym, reading quietly on the couch. Anything.

He would be the only significant relationship in your life if he could. He doesn’t like your friends, although he tries to be courteous with them for you. Seeing your attention directed at anyone else makes him anxious and insecure, and he can get moody if he thinks you’re doing too much of it (his threshold for “too much” is very low). Dex doesn’t have friends. You are the only person who really means anything to him, and he feels like he should be the same for you. The two of you against the world.

His fear of abandonment is easily triggered and his mood can flip on a dime. He can get really ugly when his mood takes a turn for the worst, accusing you of not loving him, saying that you’re going to leave him like everyone else has, crying, yelling. He can be manipulative and tends to resort to guilt-tripping. Bringing up how lonely he was before you, how much he needs you, how awful he feels when you do whatever behavior he’s spiraling about this time. He cries a lot. You will need to have strong boundaries and frank conversations about all of this to stand up for yourself.

He is a very self-centered person, by which I mean his own needs are front-and-center of his mind at all times. Dex has not had healthy relationships, romantic, platonic, or familial. For most of his life, if he wasn’t looking out for himself, no one was. Learning to care for another person genuinely and not just for what they can do for him will be a learning experience and a big hurdle in your relationship.

He seems very kind and generous at the beginning of your relationship, but he’s motivated primarily by fear that you’ll leave him or find him unworthy. He’s trying to do what he thinks a partner should and what he thinks you want him to do, but at its core it’s self-serving behavior. He doesn’t know how to care for another person earnestly. He wants to, and he’s trying very hard, but it will take time and patience.

He does not like having his photo taken. The first time you pull out your phone and ask him to take a picture with you, he’s visibly uncomfortable and unsure of what to do with himself, although he does try for your sake. The next week, when he’s at your place and sees the photo printed and stuck to your fridge with a kitschy magnet, he changes his mind. He’ll let you take as many pictures as you want, even if he still looks like he’s grimacing in half of them.

He starts keeping photos of you too, many of them taken without your knowledge. His favorites are the ones of you doing totally mundane things. You, curled up under his sheets. Folding socks on the floor. Brushing your teeth in your bathroom mirror. Sipping on a coffee with your friends while you didn’t know he was watching you through the window. He looks at them when you’re away.

Dex is awkward. His usual behavior is a mask he puts on to try to meet whatever standard is expected of him at the moment. The more time he spends with you, the more you start to see behind the mask. He can be stilted. He makes odd remarks and observations. He has a strange sense of humor. Embarrassment strikes him when he first realizes he’s slipped up, but when you respond with a smile and acceptance it feels like a weight off of his shoulders. He can let down the burden of performing around you.

He can also have a mean sense of humor. He often comes out with things that are shocking or graphic. Someone cuts him off in traffic and he says “this guy should be shot on sight.” The barista is a little short with you and he mimes throwing a quarter through her head when she’s not looking. You’re pretty sure he’s joking. He wants you to laugh and joke with him, for the two of you to be mischievous and playful together. If you can match his humor, he feels even closer to you, like the two of you share a language that no one else is in on.

If you give him a compliment he will remember it forever. You tell him he looks good after a haircut and he’s making sure you see him after every cut from now on. You say he looks good in that quarter-zip and he’s wearing it twice as often. You think black looks best on him? He wears black every day now. He won’t buy a cologne unless you approve of it first.

Dex has never been preoccupied with his looks. At least, not beyond looking professional and appropriate for whatever environment he’s in. He knows he’s good looking, but hearing it never really mattered to him until you were the one saying it. He loves hearing you call him handsome and pretty. He just wants you to look at him and enjoy what you see.

He needs a lot of validation and he’ll ask for it if he’s feeling especially insecure. “Are you mad at me?” “You still like having me around, right?” No matter how many times you reassure him, he can’t quite bring himself to believe it.

Dex loves being loved by you. He loves to hear you say it. Notices every way you show it, no matter how small. Keeps every note you write him, every sweet text, every gift you give him, no matter how insignificant. They’re all proof that you care about him. You’re the only person who ever has.

Once he gets a taste of affection from you he is both starved for it and terrified of it. You made him realize what was missing in his life, how empty and miserable he was without love and touch. The thought of losing it, of losing you, makes him feel like he can’t breathe. The slightest sense that you’re pulling away from him has him clinging even more desperately. He cannot lose you. He doesn’t know if he would survive it.

He gets attached fast. Very fast. One date together and his every thought is consumed by you. A week in and he’s sure you’re the one. He’ll rush into relationship milestones like saying “I love you,” clearing out a drawer in his dresser for you, asking you to move in with him. If you want to take things slower, you’ll have to be very gentle and reassuring when you bring it up, because if he feels like you’re rejecting any part of him he will start to spiral.

He loves it when you get possessive over him. Loves it even more when you show your love for him in strange ways. You text him one evening “I miss you. I want to crawl inside your rib cage and live there,” and he spends the rest of the week thinking about it. Screenshots it and looks at it when you’re apart.

He does not judge you for any of your odd habits or behaviors. In his mind it truly is the two of you against the world. If you fidget a lot, have a weird sense of humor, a strange hobby, an unusual laugh, he takes it all in without any hesitation. He wants to learn every secret and hidden part of you, especially the things you might be embarrassed of or try to keep from others. He wants to know you fully, in a way that no one else does.

He will go through your phone and your diary and anything else you keep private information in. Especially if he feels like you don’t want him seeing it. What are you hiding from him? ___Why would you hide it from him? He needs to know all of it. He does not respect your privacy in the least. If you catch him and bring it up he’ll just get better at hiding it.

Dex doesn’t really have hobbies, but he would love to incorporate you into his routine. You want to start working out? He’ll write up a plan for you and show you how it’s done. Teaching you proper form at the gym, or spotting for you if you already know. Going on runs together, pacing you, pushing you to do your best. He loves doing the most mundane things together like meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking side by side and eating the meals you prepared together. His routine is the foundation of his life and he would deeply appreciate your efforts to fit into it and accommodate it.

Dex is very intelligent. You start picking his brain about the things he’s knowledgeable of, advice about the skills he’s mastered, and it fills him with pride. He’s got experience with the military and the FBI, he stays up to date on current events, he’s obsessive about his fitness and nutrition, and he was a straight A student. He’s got a razor-sharp mind and plenty of expertise, and he loves feeling useful to you and like you see him as someone worthy of respect.

He likes it a little too much when you hurt him. Playfully biting him, squeezing him a little too hard, swatting at him when he’s bothering you, kissing him with too much force. He’s vibrating with the intensity of the feelings it digs up in him. He wants you to do it harder and more often but he’s not sure how to bring it up, so he’ll find ways to bait you into it, like wrapping an arm around your neck to tempt you into sinking your teeth into the muscle. He’ll offer to teach you self-defense so he has an excuse to tell you to hit him. He just wants to be sure you’re doing it right, you know? That you’ve got the technique and the force down. He hopes you don’t notice that he’s just a little too into it.

He doesn’t really get empathy. He tries for you, though. God, does he try. The experience of empathy is a very logical process for him, trying to map out your feelings and reactions in his mind. It can come across as mechanical and detached, but he really is trying to understand you and make you feel better. It will take a lot of trial and error, and you’ll have to be patient with him and offer lots of gentle feedback to help him improve.

He struggles with insomnia. Sometimes the medication helps, sometimes it doesn’t. He lies awake and focuses on your peaceful face, the rise and fall of your chest, the warmth of your body next to him. Sometimes, when you wake up, he’s already awake and watching you. He doesn’t try to hide it.

He tends to make excessive eye-contact with you. On top of his general lack of social skills, it’s just his fixation on you and his need to know your every thought and emotion. He’s constantly trying to gauge your feelings towards him and whether or not he’s done something wrong.

He will watch your favorites shows and movies and read your favorite books to better understand you. Especially if you’re the type to annotate your books. It’s like a window into your mind. (He never marks up his books it does trigger his issue with obsessive neatness to see you do it, but he’ll tolerate it for the sake of reading what you have to say)

He gets emotional when you shower him in affection. You press kisses all over his face, his forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks and chin. Soft and adoring. His eyes are stinging with tears before you’re even done. He didn’t know how starved he was for gentle touch until you gave it to him, and now he craves it. He won’t ask for it with words but he’ll stare at you with big, wet eyes until you get the hint. Nudging your shoulder with his nose. Brushing your fingers with his. He melts when you finally give him what he needs.

The hallway is narrow and familiar, and you’ve walked it a thousand times, but tonight it feels like a corridor in someone else’s life. You keep the gun up, not waving it around, not shaking, just steady, and you listen with everything you’ve got. There’s no heavy breathing, no footsteps scuffing. That’s what makes your stomach tighten, because a drunk would stumble, a thief would rush, and a normal person would knock at your door.

The living room opens up around you, a patchwork of darker shadows where your furniture sits. The window by the fire escape is cracked open by a few inches, the curtain pushed aside like a hand slid it back and held it there. The air coming in is colder than the air in your apartment, and it carries the faint scent of city grime and rain. You take one more step in, muzzle tracking toward the window, and then you see him in the corner where the light from the street doesn’t quite reach.

He’s standing with his back close to the wall, like he chose a spot that gives him the whole room and keeps him out of the line of sight from anyone walking past outside. He’s dressed dark, of course, and he’s not moving like he’s trying to spook you. He’s still in that unsettling way that makes it feel like the apartment belongs to him now, like he’s been there longer than you have and he’s just waiting for you to catch up.

“Step into the light,” you say, and your voice comes out flat, the way it does when you’re forcing yourself not to feel something first.

He exhales, slow, and the sound is quiet but familiar enough to pull at something inside your chest. Then he shifts, and you get a glimpse of his face as he moves just enough that the streetlight catches the curve of his cheek and the pale line of his mouth. The light shows the tension in his jaw before it fades again as he settles back into shadow.

A pause, and then a voice from the darkest part of your living room, low and steady like he’s been standing there listening to you breathe. “You still sleep with it that close.”

Your grip tightens before you can help it. Your aim doesn’t wobble, but everything in you goes hot and cold at the same time, because you know that voice, you know the cadence, you know the way he makes the simplest sentence sound like he’s filing it into place. You take another step forward without meaning to, then stop yourself before you get too close. “What are you doing in my apartment, Dex?”

He says your name, and he says it like he’s allowed to, like he hasn’t earned the right to have it in his mouth. It hits you anyway, because your body is stupid and memory is worse, and there’s something about hearing him say it that makes your grip tighten on the gun until your knuckles ache. “I needed to see you,” he says.

“That’s not an answer.”

His shoulders lift a fraction, not quite a shrug. “It’s the only one I have.”

You keep the muzzle steady, aimed center mass, the way you were taught, the way you taught yourself when no one else was around to correct your stance. “How did you get in?”

He glances at the window. “You already know.”

“I want to hear you say it,” you tell him.

He shifts again, and this time he steps out far enough that you can actually see him. The light catches more of him now: the shape of his shoulders under the jacket, the tired set to his eyes, the faint shadow of bruising that’s either healing or never fully fades when a body’s been through too much. He looks leaner than you remember, like prison carved away whatever softness he had left, and he looks too controlled for someone who just climbed up to your window in the middle of the night.

“I came up the fire escape,” he says, and then his eyes flick down for a second, to the gun, and back to your face. “You didn’t change the latch.”

Your pulse jumps, not because he’s wrong, but because you hate that he knows. You hate that he’s cataloging details like he’s always done, like he can’t help it, like your life is a pattern and he’s already traced the lines. “You could’ve knocked,” you say.

He gives you a look that’s almost dry, almost amused, and it doesn’t belong on his face after everything. “Would you have opened the door?”

You don’t answer that, because the truth is complicated and ugly and it doesn’t deserve to be spoken out loud with a gun between you. “What happened?” you ask instead, because something had to have pushed him here. “Did someone follow you? Is this some kind of—” You cut yourself off before you say trap, because saying it gives it more shape than you want to hold in your head.

He shakes his head. “No one followed me.”

“Then why are you here?” you repeat, and you keep your voice sharp enough to cut. “Why now?”

His mouth opens like he’s going to say something, then closes again. For a second he looks almost… careful, like he’s choosing words in the same way someone chooses where to step on thin ice.

“I got out,” he says finally, and his voice stays quiet, but there’s a roughness under it that wasn’t there before. “And the first night I was out, I didn’t come here. I didn’t come anywhere near you. I went somewhere else and I sat there until morning, because I told myself if I made it through one night, I could make it through the next.”

You don’t let yourself soften at the sound of him trying. You keep the gun up, because you remember the things he’s done and you remember how quickly trying can turn into something else when it’s Dex Poindexter doing it.

“How many nights did you make it through?” you ask.

His gaze holds yours, steady as the muzzle pointed at him. “Not enough.”

Your breath comes out harsh. “So you decided to break into my apartment.”

He doesn’t flinch. “I decided to see you.”

“You don’t get to decide things for me anymore.”

His expression shifts at that, something tightening behind his eyes like he’s swallowing down a reaction. “I’m not asking for permission,” he says, and then he adds, almost softer, “I’m here. That’s all.”

“That’s not all,” you snap, and the gun wavers a fraction before you force it steady again. “You don’t show up like this and pretend it’s nothing. You don’t get to stand in my living room like you didn’t—”

The words knot in your throat and refuse to come out, and Dex watches you with that awful focus that makes you feel seen in a way you never asked for.

He takes one step closer.

“Stop,” you say immediately.

He stops, but the fact that he moved at all sends heat crawling under your skin. He’s closer now, close enough that you can see the faint scar on his cheek you don’t remember from before, close enough that you can see how his pupils look too wide in the low light. His hands hang at his sides, relaxed but not casual, and he keeps them visible like he knows you’ll put a bullet in him if you have to.

“You’re shaking,” he says.

“I’m not,” you lie, and it’s stupid because he’s right. The tremor is small, but it’s there.

His mouth twitches. “You used to shake when you were angry.”

“Don’t,” you warn him.

He doesn’t stop, because Dex has never been good at stopping once he’s latched onto a thread. “And you used to hate it when I noticed,” he continues, and his voice is almost gentle now, like he’s trying to smooth something over with tone alone. “But you always let me.”

“I don’t let you do anything,” you say, and you lift the gun a fraction higher, aiming for his head this time because you want him to understand you mean it. “Take one more step and I’ll put you down.”

He looks at the gun, then back at you, and then he does the most infuriating thing he could do: he steps forward anyway, slow and deliberate, like he’s approaching an altar instead of a weapon. You don’t move, because you refuse to give ground in your own home, and the next second the barrel meets his forehead with a soft, undeniable bump.

He doesn’t jerk away, he doesn’t blink fast, he just leans in until the pressure is firm, and you feel it through the gun, through your arm,, straight into your chest. “There,” he says, voice low. “That’s better.”

Your stomach flips, half disgust and half something you don’t want to name. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

He breathes out through his nose, and you can feel it in the space between you. “A lot.”

“Back up,” you order, but he doesn’t move an inch. Your grip tightens again. “Dex.”

His eyes stay on yours, and there’s something in them that’s so naked it makes your throat go tight. It’s not a plea, not exactly, and it’s not a threat. It’s need in its purest form, stripped of all the lies he usually wraps around it.

You hold the gun steady even though your arm is starting to ache, and you hate that he can stand there with the barrel pressed into his skin like it’s a point of contact instead of a warning. He stays close enough that you can see the faint sheen of sweat at his hairline, close enough that you can feel his breath when he exhales, and he doesn’t do the decent thing and back away.

“On your knees,” you say, and you make your voice mean it.

For a beat he doesn’t move, not because he’s refusing, but because he’s watching you like he’s memorizing the exact set of your mouth, the angle of your wrist, the way you’re not stepping back. Then he nods once, slow, and he lowers himself like he’s trying not to startle a wild animal. His knees touch the floor with a quiet sound that makes your stomach twist, because the sight of him down there is wrong in a way that feels too right, and his hands lift up beside his head with his palms open.

“Like this?” he asks, and the question comes out calm, almost polite.

“Don’t talk to me like you’re doing me a favor,” you say, and you keep the muzzle angled down at him, not because you’re easing up, but because the geometry changes when he kneels. “You don’t get to play nice now.”

His eyes flicker, and something tight pulls at the corner of his mouth like he wants to smile and doesn’t trust himself to. “I’m not playing,” he says. “I’m doing what you said.”

“Good,” you tell him, because you need something solid to hang onto. “Stay there.”

He stays there, hands still up, shoulders squared even on his knees like posture is another kind of armor. The streetlight catches his face better now, carving shadows under his cheekbones and making his eyes look even darker, and you hate how familiar he still is. He looks at the gun, then at you, and he doesn’t look away from either like he’s proving he can take it.

“You shouldn’t be here,” you say. “You shouldn’t even know where I live anymore.”

“I didn’t forget,” he answers, and he says it like it’s a simple fact instead of a confession. “I missed you.”

You swallow and your throat aches, because you can hear the old softness threaded through the words and you don’t want it. You don’t want the version of him that sounded like that when he was in your bed, when he’d tuck himself behind you and pretend the world couldn’t touch him if he had you in his arms.

“Don’t,” you say again, and this time it comes out quieter than you meant it to.

His gaze lifts to your face and he holds it like he’s holding onto a ledge. “I missed you, baby,” he repeats, and he doesn’t push the nickname like a knife. He says it the way he used to say it when you’d fall asleep mid-sentence, the way he’d say it when he was trying to be gentle.

Your breathing shifts, shallow for a second before you force it back into something steadier, and the gun stays in your hand even though your fingers tighten around it like you’re afraid it will disappear if you loosen your grip. “You don’t get to just show up,” you tell him. “Not after everything.”

He doesn’t argue, and the lack of fight is almost worse than if he’d tried. His shoulders rise and fall with one slow breath, and his hands stay up where you can see them. “I know.”

“You don’t get to stand in my living room and look at me like that,” you add, because anger is easier than the other thing pressing up behind your ribs. “You don’t get to say you missed me like it means something.”

His throat works like he’s swallowing down something sharp. “It means something to me,” he says, and he says it like he hates himself for it. “I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

“You should be,” you say. “If you had any sense left, you’d be begging.”

His mouth opens, then closes, and for a second he looks almost like he wants to laugh and can’t find the sound. “Do you want me to beg?” he asks, and his voice stays even, but there’s a tremor under it that makes your teeth clench. “If you tell me to beg, I will.”

Your hand trembles just enough that you feel it in your wrist, and you hate that he notices because he always notices. His eyes flick to your hand, then back to your face, and the intensity in his stare doesn’t change, but his posture does. It’s small, careful, and it makes your skin prickle, because his hands lower a little from beside his head to hover closer to his shoulders like he’s testing whether you’ll stop him.

“Hands up,” you order immediately.

He freezes with his hands halfway down, and he lifts them again without complaint. “Okay,” he says, soft.

You take a breath that scrapes, and you try to keep your voice sharp enough to protect you. “You think you can come back and act like this,” you say. “You think you can walk right into my life and—what? Remind me of how it felt? That’s your plan?”

“I don’t have a plan,” he says, and his eyes flicker with something that looks like frustration, not at you, but at himself. “If I had a plan, I wouldn’t be here.”

“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said all night,” you mutter.

He shifts his weight slightly on his knees, the motion controlled, and the gun tracks him on instinct. He notices that too, of course, and his gaze drops to the muzzle for half a second like he’s checking where it is, like he’s measuring distance in his head the way he measures everything. When his eyes lift again, they’re too steady, too direct. “You’re still holding it like you mean it,” he says.

“I do mean it.”

“I know,” he replies, and he sounds almost relieved by that. “That’s why I came.”

Your jaw tightens. “What do you mean?”

He doesn’t move his hands, but his fingers flex once like he’s fighting the urge to reach. “You don’t lie to yourself,” he says. “You never did.”

“That’s not a compliment,” you tell him.

“I wasn’t trying to compliment you,” he says, and then he adds, quieter, like it costs him to say it out loud, “I needed something real.”

You stare at him, and the room feels too small for the two of you, because he’s taking up all the air with that gaze and you’re letting him. The gun is still there between you, still a line you can draw any time you want, but your arm is tired and your hand is shaking just a little, and you’re furious that he can make you feel anything other than disgust.

“Get up,” you say, and your voice is steady again because you force it to be. “Slow.”

He watches your face like he’s waiting for you to change your mind, and then he rises in the same careful way he knelt, one measured movement at a time. His hands stay up for a moment even when he’s standing, palms open beside his head, and the sight is almost absurdly intimate, like you’re the one holding him in place with nothing but a word.

When he’s upright, you lower the gun just enough that it’s not pressed against him anymore, but you don’t put it down. It stays in your hand, pointed between you, not quite aimed at his heart now but still close enough that he understands what it means. He steps closer anyway, not quickly, not like he’s trying to take it from you, but like he’s following a gravity he can’t resist.

“Stop right there,” you say, even though you don’t move back.

He stops, so close that your breath hits him you exhale. His hands are still raised, and you notice the tension in his forearms, the way he’s holding himself back on purpose. His eyes flick to your mouth and back up, and the movement is so fast you almost miss it, but you don’t. You never used to miss it.

“This doesn’t fix anything,” you say, and it comes out harsh, like you can say it hard enough to make it true.

“I know,” he answers immediately, and the speed of it makes your throat tighten because he isn’t pretending. “I’m not here because I think it fixes it.”

“Then why are you here,” you demand, “if you’re not here to fix it?”

His voice drops, and it’s barely above a breath. “Because I couldn’t stand not knowing if you’d look at me.”

Your fingers curl tighter around the grip. “You’re looking at me right now.”

He shakes his head once, tiny. “You’re looking back,” he says.

You hate the way your body reacts to that, the way heat crawls under your skin like an old reflex waking up. You hate that you want to slap him and kiss him in the same breath, and you hate most of all that he’s watching you like he can see every ugly thought as it passes through you.

“Don’t,” you whisper, and you don’t even know what you mean by it, because it’s too late for a dozen different kinds of don’t.

He holds still like you’ve pinned him there with your voice, and then he leans forward just enough that his forehead almost brushes the gun again. He doesn’t touch it this time, like he’s learned the boundary you’re actually holding, and he stays in the thin space you allow. “Tell me no,” he says, and his voice is steady even when his eyes aren’t. “Tell me no and I’ll go.”

You stare at him, and the word sits in your mouth like a coin you can’t swallow. You could say it—you should say it, but you don’t.

Dex’s breath stutters once, like he felt your silence land. His hands are still above his head, still open, and for a moment the two of you just stand there with the gun between you and the air too thick to breathe. Then you step in, because you’re tired of being the only one pretending you aren’t about to do something you’ll regret.

You kiss him.

It isn’t gentle, and it isn’t sweet, and it isn’t anything like an apology. It’s hot and angry and familiar in the worst way, like your mouth already knows his and your body already remembers the shape of him. His hands stay up for one strangled second like he doesn’t believe he’s allowed, like he’s waiting for you to shove him away, and that pause makes your pulse kick hard.

“Don’t—” you start, pulling back just enough for the words to hit his mouth, but you can’t finish because he swallows the rest of it when you kiss him again.

“I’m not,” he murmurs against you, and it’s breath and sound, barely a sentence. “I’m not.”

His restraint breaks in slow motion. One hand lowers first, hovering near your waist without touching, and he waits like he’s asking permission without using words. When you don’t flinch, his palm settles against you, warm and firm, and the contact sends a sharp shiver through you that makes you hate yourself.

Your other hand is still holding the gun, angled down now, forgotten and not forgotten at the same time, because you can feel its weight even as you drag your free hand up his chest. Your fingers catch on his jacket, then slide up to his collar, and when you fist the fabric there his breath turns rough.

Dex makes a sound that he tries to swallow, and his other hand comes down to your side, then your back, pressing you closer. He doesn’t force you, he just follows the contact like he’s starving for it, like he’s been holding himself together with rules and silence and the idea of you, and now you’re here and his hands don’t know how to be anything except reverent and desperate at the same time.

You break the kiss long enough to glare at him, your mouth still close to his. “This isn’t—”

“I know,” he says again, and his eyes flick to your lips like he can’t stop himself. “I know.”

“Say it like you mean it,” you challenge, because you need something that hurts more than this does.

He nods once, and his voice comes out rougher. “It doesn’t fix anything,” he repeats, and there’s no argument in him, no illusion. “It just… makes it quiet.”

Your chest tightens at that, and you should step back, you should put the gun away, you should make him leave, you should do a hundred sensible things. Instead you kiss him again, slower this time, and he sinks into it like he’s been waiting for permission to breathe.

His hand slides up to your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek with the kind of careful touch that makes your stomach flip because it’s so gentle it feels wrong coming from him. Your fingers tighten in his collar, and you feel the tremor in him when you do, like he’s trying to hold himself to a line he’s drawn and you’re daring him to cross it.

“Look at me,” you say, because you want to see if he’s still there in his own eyes.

He does, immediately, and he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what he is. “I’m looking,” he says, and his voice is low, steady, too intimate for the middle of your living room with your gun still in your hand.

You don’t answer with words. You answer by pulling him back into your mouth, and his hand tightens at your waist like he’s anchoring himself, like you’re the only thing keeping him from floating apart.

When the kiss deepens again, it’s messy in the way you remember, not because it’s out of control but because it’s full of everything you haven’t said. His hands roam—your side, your back, up to the base of your neck where his fingers curl like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he lets go—and he keeps checking you with tiny pauses, tiny hesitations, like he’s still waiting for you to push him away and he’s bracing for it even as he kisses you like he can’t live without it.

You don’t push him away; you keep him close, gun still hanging loose in your hand and angled toward the floor, because you haven’t decided what any of this means and you’re not going to lie and pretend you have.

Dex stays pressed to you like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he blinks, and when he kisses you again it’s slower, heavier, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth. He pulls back just enough to breathe, his forehead hovering near yours, and his eyes search your face like he’s bracing for the part where you tell him to leave. “Tell me to go,” he murmurs, voice rough, like it hurts to offer you the out.

You swallow, your grip on his collar tightening, and the words come out low and sharp like you’re daring him to believe you. “Don’t go.”

For a second he looks stunned in a way you almost never see on him, and then something in him gives with a quiet, relieved exhale. His hands tighten at your waist like he’s anchoring himself, and he kisses you again like he’s starving, like he’s been holding back for days and you just cut the last thread.

“Thank you, baby,” he breathes against your mouth, the nickname soft enough to make your chest ache. “I missed you.”

extra notes: one, i'm thinking of making a dex taglist, so if you want to be added, let me know! (here or on my taglist post). secondly, writing that last line made me realize that dex is the kind of guy that would ask to go down on you and say thank you when you let him... yeah