Sleeping in Stardust

         “Don’t rope me into this. I only had 3.” Connor raises his hands in self-defense, prompting Mia to hit him with a throw pillow.

         “Oh my god, you liar, you made me get you 2 today.” She scoffs while Connor tosses the pillow right back at her.

         “I don’t make you get me a Capri Sun, I just want a drink.

         “And when I said, if you wanted one or two, you said you wanted two.”

         “Because you offered.”

         “Ok, stop you two!” Roy snaps as he yanks the throw pillow away and bonks both of them before throwing it to the other side of the couch.

         “What the heck, man?!” Mia cries out as she covers her face and lets herself fall on her side, now lying on the couch and kicking at Roy. Connor scoots away from the scuffle and goes back to watching on the sideline while shaking the box near Mia’s face.

         “I literally saw you with a new pouch every time I walked past you for the past 4 days, Mia. I know it was you,” Roy says while pulling away and scoffing over this whole thing.

         “Literally lying to my face, oh my god, and to think you’re a father.” She laughs as she sits back up on the couch. Before Roy can snap back, the front door opens, and everyone in the living room sees Oliver, sweaty and gross from his morning run. As if feeling the vibe is off from the moment he takes off his earbuds, Oliver looks confused upon seeing all his kids gathered in the living room.

         “What did I just walk into?” He asks Connor, gesturing toward Roy and Mia. Before Connor answers, Mia hits him with the pillow.

“Don’t bring the old man into this.” She grumbles as Roy wastes no time in pointing an accusing finger at her.

“Mia drank all of the Capri Suns I bought for Lian.” He claims without hesitation while Mia gasps.

“Oh my god, you literally just tattled on me to Dad; you’re like 30, Roy.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Oliver asks, now even more confused about the whole ordeal.

“She literally made fun of me for buying the boxes of Capri Suns and drank almost all of them.” Roy points out that while Mia rolls her eyes, finishing her juice pouch, and looks over at Oliver

“He said I could have some.”

“Dad, if you don’t ground her, I literally throw hands,” Roy says without missing a beat, his fists already up and ready to strike, while Mia rolls her eyes and glances at Oliver with the most bored face a 17-year-old could muster

“You’re going to throw hands over juice? You’re a father.” Oliver scoffs in disbelief, shakes his head, and makes his way to the kitchen.

“Literally that’s what I said!” Mia shouts before being knocked over by another throw pillow. “Oh my god, that was memory foam! That hurt you, prick.”

“Ok, now don’t start you two; I’ll buy more juice- problem solved.”

“No, Mia should buy the cases; she drank them all.” Roy counters, making Mia gasp and toss the throw pillow back at him. Oliver groans while he makes his way to the kitchen and rips the grocery list sheet from the fridge.

“With what money would she pay it with? It’ll be on my credit card bill.” Oliver's reasons were to finally look around the kitchen and update the list in his hands. “I’m going to Costco anyway.”

“Wait, you’re going to Costco; I wanna go.” Mia perks up as she turns from her spot on the couch.

“Why are you going to Costco?” Connor asks, also turning in his seat.

“You all decided to stay for the last month of summer here. I need to have enough food to feed you, freeloaders.” Oliver states as he walks to the room to change out of his running clothes.

“So can we go?” Mia hollers, getting off the couch to put on her shoes, with Connor following suit.

“Only if you carry everything back inside.” Oliver sighs. He walks back out in jeans and his brown leather jacket. He turns to Roy to see his oldest rubbing his temples, still somehow annoyed. “You coming along too?” Ollie asks as he pats Roy’s shoulder. Roy shakes his head no.

“No, can’t, I’m picking up Lian today at 5.” He said, looking down at his watch. Ollie nods as he gets out his wallet and counts some change to hand to Roy.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this, Matt. I doubt that you're going to call me back, but fuck, I just need to know you're alive. Call me back if you think of it.

Matt listened to your voicemail again in the cab on the way to the mediator’s. It was from the night he'd listened to your name chime from his phone on his nightstand over and over, but his own cowardice let it ring. He had it memorized down to the exact second your voice caught, forty seconds in, right before you took a breath and went back to the clipped voice he’d become used to. 

He deserved it, of course – how could he not after everything he’d put you through.

He'd never called back, but he'd kept the voicemails instead, which felt like either the bare minimum of cowardice or the only honest thing he'd done in months. He played it twice more before the cab pulled up outside the mediator's office, both times bracing for the catch in your voice. Part of him thought it might hurt less with practice.

Unfortunately for him, it never did. Every time he listened to your messages, or when he thought about what he heard you say on what would have been your wedding anniversary, the ache in his heart grew deeper.

Matt arrived at Ross, Toro, and Hurley’s twenty minutes early. Punctuality was a reflex he couldn't seem to turn off, even on a day he knew was going to destroy him. Foggy had offered to come, but Matt had said no. 

Part of him regretted it almost immediately once he was sitting alone in a waiting room that smelled like burnt coffee and stress-sweat, with nothing to do but listen to his own heartbeat outpace itself and think about exactly how little right he had to ask for anything from the woman about to walk through that door.

The receptionist offered him water twice. He declined twice, mostly because he didn't trust his hands enough to hold a small bottle of water. They also only had Dasani, which Matt couldn’t stomach without it being obvious that he could taste every added chemical, and that the water itself tasted like it came straight out of a community pool. He counted the seconds between the wall clock's ticks out of habit – something he’d developed when he needed his senses doing something productive instead of replaying your voicemails.

He heard your footsteps coming down the hall. When you entered, you gave him a clipped good morning and took a seat across the room from him. He gave one back, equally clipped but slightly warmer, and told himself the ache in his chest at hearing your voice was just background noise.

Someone calling out “Appointment for Murdock” snapped Matt out of his brain fog, and the two of you walked back into the mediator’s office.

The mediator's name was Patricia Hurley. She had the specific, practiced calm of someone who'd spent a career in rooms exactly like this one. It was a calm Matt recognized, because he used a version of it himself in depositions when the alternative was letting people see exactly how much he cared about the outcome.

"Let's start with the apartment," Patricia said, and Matt felt the air in the room change before anyone said anything else.

"The apartment's not in dispute," Matt said, before Patricia even finished. "It's hers, we settled that months ago."

"Correct," Patricia said, glancing at her folder. “The two of you seem to have settled on most of the big stuff before your appointment today, which is both unexpected and much appreciated. There's a note here about some remaining personal items, though."

"His braille books," you said. "And a mug."

"You can keep the mug," Matt said.

"I don't want the mug."

"Then throw it away."

"I'm not going to throw away your law school mug, Matt, that's –"

"You drink out of it more than I do." His voice came out sharper than he meant it to. He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. "Do whatever’s easiest for you."

Matt could hear Patricia’s pen pause on the page as soon as the words left his mouth. She was choosing not to comment on something she’d clearly noticed.

"Moving on," Patricia said. "The checking account's already split per the prenuptial agreement. Neither of you has visited the storage unit on Fifty-Third in six months, according to the access log."

"We know," you both said, at almost the same time. Neither of you acknowledged it.

"I can go through it this week," you said finally. "I'll set aside anything that's yours."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know I don't have to. I'm offering."

"Okay." His voice had gone quiet. "Thank you."

You got through insurance, and you got through the joint credit card, closed months ago, and a dozen smaller logistics Patricia efficiently moved through. By the time she reached the section marked Personal Property and Sentimental Items, Matt had stopped being able to tell whether the tightness in his chest was grief, want, or some combination of the two he couldn’t name.

"Do either of you want your wedding photos?"

Neither of them answered right away.

"I'll send it to you," Matt said finally. "You should have them, especially since you can, you know, see them."

"I don't want it if you don't want me to have it."

"What about your records?"

"Whatever you want," he said again. "I mean that for all of it. I'm not going to fight you over photographs, and I know you have a few favorites from my vinyl collection. They’re yours if you want them."

“I can’t take your Beggar’s Banquet record.”

"I want you to have it." His voice had gone quiet in a way he hadn't planned for. "I want you to have whatever you want, actually."

Patricia cleared her throat, which was the universal mediator signal for moving things along before they got any less professional, and the rest of the session passed in a blur.

"That concludes everything on my end," Patricia said, gathering the paperwork. "I'll have the final draft to both your attorneys by next Friday, if the two of you decide to continue with your divorce."

THUMPTHUMP THUMPTHUMPTHUMP THUMPTHUMPTHUMP

Matt sat for a moment and shut his eyes, listening to your heart rate tick up when Patricia said if you decide to continue. It wasn’t from anger, or excitement – truth be told, Matt couldn’t figure out why your heart rate went up. For a split second he thought that maybe God was on his side, and his prayers for reconciling were about to be answered.

But you were the one who wanted the divorce, right?

The elevator ride down was four floors of silence he didn't know what to do with. He counted the dings anyway, out of habit, and by the time the doors opened onto the lobby he still hadn't decided whether four floors had been too long or nowhere near long enough before he was on the sidewalk, head tilted toward the street trying to pick out which approaching engine belonged to the car service. He heard your footsteps moving towards him faster than your usual walking pace, but slower than if you were to have been running.

"We need to talk, Matt."

He didn't turn around right away. When he did, he made his expression as carefully blank as he could manage.

"About what?"

"About the big, red elephant in the room!” Matt felt your pulse tick up, up, up with anger. "You've ignored my calls for three weeks. I know, Matt, and instead of owning up to it, you looked me dead in the face and ran. You let me believe, the whole time, that you'd been – " You took a deep breath to collect yourself. "I'm not doing this on a sidewalk. We are talking about this, whether you want to or not, because I am done being the only person in this divorce who doesn't know anything."

He let that sit for a long moment. Then he smiled.

"Karen and Foggy go home around five," he said. "Come by the office after."

He felt your surprise at it before you said anything based on a shift in your breathing. It wasn't the smile he used to give you, before any of this – this one had something underneath it, almost like relief. Matt didn't wait for you to agree. He just turned back toward the curb, and got into his Uber back to Nelson, Murdock and Page.

Foggy clocked something was off the second Matt got back from the mediation – granted they’d worked together for ten years, and had been college roommates for four before that, which game him years of practice reading Matt through every kind of disaster, He spent the better part of an hour finding reasons to walk past Matt's office, each excuse thinner than the last, until he finally just planted himself in the doorway around four-thirty.

"You gonna tell me why you look like you got hit by a truck," Foggy said, "or am I supposed to guess?"

"I'm fine."

"You've been 'fine' for three weeks, buddy, and it's gotten progressively less convincing each time." A pause. "She found out, didn't she."

Matt chose that time to be really interested in a loose thread on his suit jacket.

"Oh, this is great. This is genuinely the best thing that's happened, and I want you to know I feel a little bad about that, but not bad enough to stop because you can finally fucking talk to her."

"Glad my divorce is entertaining for you."

"How'd she find out, exactly? Did you finally trip over your own cape in front of her, or –"

"I don’t have a cape, Foggy."

"Seriously, though. How bad is it?"

"I've spent three weeks not answering her calls."

"Matt, buddy, my avocado at law, and love of my professional life – you do understand that's the single dumbest possible response to that situation, right? Out of every option available to you, you found the one that makes you look the most guilty and the least trustworthy at the same time. That takes a special kind of talent."

"I'm aware."

"Are you? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you panicked and then doubled down on the panic for twenty-one straight days."

"Thank you for the math."

"I do it so you don't have to." Foggy's voice softened, the teasing dropping out from under it for a second. "Matt. You're still in love with her. Karen and I have been watching you not deal with this for months. At some point you've gotta stop being a lawyer about your own divorce and just –" Matt heard Foggy’s shirtsleeve rustle against his jacket as he made some gesture Matt couldn't see, but could absolutely picture as the universal Foggy shorthand for figure your shit out, man. "Actually talk to her, don’t do whatever it is you've been doing instead."

"I saw her today at the mediation."

"And?"

"And I asked her to come by the office after you two leave."

There was a beat of silence long enough that Matt could practically hear Foggy doing the math on it.

"You're telling me," Foggy said slowly, "that you have a date with your soon-to-be-ex-wife in this very office tonight, and you mentioned it to me at four-thirty, on your way to looking like you got hit by that truck I brought up earlier?"

"It's not a date."

"Buddy. It is absolutely a date."

"Foggy."

"I'm just saying, if I had a dollar for every time you called something 'not a date' that ended up with you between –"

"Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"I do, actually, which is the only reason I'm not staying here interrogating you about this for the next three hours, much as I would enjoy it." Foggy pushed off the doorframe. "Good luck tonight. Try not to lawyer your way out of an actual conversation for once in your life."

Karen hadn't been any subtler on her way out the door. "For what it's worth," she'd said, pausing by his desk, "even Frank knows you're still in love with her. You're not as unreadable as you think you are."

"Foggy already covered that."

"I know, but you should hear it from two sources, in case you were planning to dismiss it as one person's opinion." She'd patted his shoulder on her way past. "Go fix your marriage, Murdock. Or don’t. Just don't be an idiot about it."

He'd sat with that for the better part of an hour after they left, alone in an office that felt considerably bigger empty than it ever did full, running his thumb over a ring he still hadn't taken off and trying to decide what he was supposed to do with the rest of tonight.

Somewhere around the forty-minute mark, he found himself praying, which wasn't unusual – he prayed more than most people, more than he let on even to Foggy, who'd long since stopped being surprised by it – but it was unusual that he didn't have a clear request to make. He wasn't asking for forgiveness yet; that belonged in the confessional, where he'd take it whether tonight went well or not. He wasn't asking for the conversation to go well either, because some old habit of honesty made him suspicious of asking God for outcomes he hadn't done anything to earn.

What he settled on, was a Heavenly Father, quiet the fear in my heart that tempts me to fall into defensiveness or despair. Replace my anxiety with the peace that surpasses understanding . Grant me the grace to engage with understanding, so that both of us may experience Your healing power today. Amen. He said it twice, like repetition might be the thing that finally made him believe it. He still didn't have an answer for what he'd actually say, how he'd start, or whether honesty alone could undo a year of his absence, when he heard you on the stairs.

He stood. Straightened his tie out of a habit that had nothing to do with anyone seeing it, and said one more quiet thing to no one in particular before the door opened.

Please.

You'd rehearsed three different versions of the conversation on the walk to Nelson, Murdock & Page, ranging from icy and brief to something with specifics l and grievances you'd planned to lay out one at a time so he couldn't dodge a single one. You'd planned not to feel anything until you'd said it all.

Unfortunately, that plan lasted exactly as long as it took to open the door.

The office was empty around him – no Foggy, no Karen, no buffer of any kind between the two of you and three weeks of silence. You'd spent three weeks certain whatever you felt walking in here would be pure, uncomplicated anger.

It wasn't uncomplicated; it never had been, not once in the five years you were happily married.

The door opened, and the first thing you saw was Matt standing too straight, like a man bracing for a verdict he'd already decided he deserved.

"I'm sorry," he said with no preamble.

You didn't move from the doorway. "That's it? Three weeks of nothing, and that's what you've got?"

"I have a lot more than that, but I didn't think you'd want to start there." He took a step toward you, slow, giving you every opportunity to tell him to stop. You didn't take it. "I let you believe I was unfaithful because I thought it would protect you. I signed those papers. I told myself losing you on those terms was safer than losing you on the real ones."

"Protect me?" The words came out flat. "Matt, I didn't know you were a fucking vigilante. I used to lie awake thinking you were being mugged and not telling me, I had no idea I was supposed to be afraid you might not come home one night. You took my right to actually be scared for you, away from me."

"I know."

"Do you?" Your voice cracked, the calm finally gone. "I started checking myself in mirrors for the flaw. I'd see a woman on the street and wonder if she was whoever you may have been cheating on me with. I would wonder if she was younger, prettier, whatever I'd clearly stopped being. I found marks on your back that looked like fingernails. I know now they were blade cuts.” 

Your eyes started to burn, but you blinked the tears away. “I spent eighteen months hating myself for a crime that never happened, and you let me. You sat there every time I cried and let me believe I'd driven you away, when the truth was sitting right behind your teeth the whole time."

Matt had braced for your anger. He hadn't braced the specific detail of how you’d been feeling for over a year and a half, delivered thin and exhausted instead of furious.

“I knew I was hurting you," he said finally, his own voice unsteady. "I told myself you'd be devastated and eventually fine, the way people are after a marriage ends. I never let myself imagine you doing that math in front of a mirror because of something I did." He had to stop and find his footing again. "I am so sorry, and I need you to know I'd undo all of it if I could, and I can't, and I have to live with that."

"You don't get to just –"

"I'm not asking you to forgive me." His voice cracked properly this time. "I'm not even asking you to believe me. I just needed you to hear me say it out loud. I know what I did to you. Me. Not some imaginary woman."

You hadn't expected him to come apart like that; Matt, who built a career on staying composed in rooms designed to break people, standing there with his composure gone.

"I'm still angry," you said quietly. "That doesn't go away because you said all of that."

"I know."

"But I believe you didn't know about the mirrors." Your hand found his chest, resting there, feeling his heart going faster than it should have. "I think I needed you to actually feel something, and not just apologize for the sake of."

"I feel it." His hand hovered near your face like he wasn't sure he'd earned the right to finish the motion. "I’ve felt it every day for a year."

You closed the distance yourself, forehead dropping against his chest, his arms coming around you slow and careful, like he was afraid you'd change your mind.

"I missed you," you said into his shirt, the words coming out rougher than you meant them to. "I hate that I missed you the whole time I wanted to scream at you." You pulled back enough to face him. "I'm still so angry I could hit you. Some part of me still wants to."

"Then hit me." He said it like he meant it. "I’ve had worse, and I won't stop you."

You didn't hit him. You grabbed the front of his shirt instead, hard enough that a button strained, and kissed him like the anger hadn't gone anywhere. His hands gripped your waist almost immediately, and the kiss turned into teeth clashing, his name leaving you on something between a curse and a plea, both of you trying to consume an entire year of distance in one furious collision.

He walked you backward through the lobby without breaking the kiss once, one hand finding the wall for balance before correcting course toward his actual office, not the reception area, where anyone walking through the hallway could see exactly what Nelson, Murdock, & Page's most well-known attorney got up to after hours. You barely registered the change in rooms until your back found the edge of his desk.

The desk was right there. The folder full of dissolution paperwork was right there too, and somehow that didn't stop either of you. He lifted you onto the desk, papers crumpling and sliding beneath you, and you couldn't have cared less about anything with a case number on it.

"Matt –"

"I know." His voice had gone low, rough, his forehead dropping to yours for one second like he needed it as much as you did. "I'm not stopping unless you tell me to."

You didn't tell him to.

He undressed you slowly, his mouth following every inch of skin he uncovered like he was relearning a map he'd been forbidden from reading for months. You realized, somewhere in the haze of it, that he wasn't rushing because he didn't need to – there wasn’t a fight waiting three blocks away, or a high-profile case he had to work on. 

For the first time in longer than either of you wanted to admit, Matt had nothing but time, and the way his hands moved told you he intended to spend every second of it making up for the time he hadn't had. When he finally pushed the shirt off your shoulders, his hands traced the newly bared skin like he was recommitting it to memory. The swell of your collarbone and the spot where your neck met your shoulder were places he used to know better than his own hands and had spent a year trying to forget. 

"Matt, I swear to God, if you don't –"

"I will." His breath caught as his mouth found the curve of your breast through your bra before he unclasped it. "I'm not rushing this, especially after everything I owe you."

Matt’s lips made their way down your sides and between your thighs before he was on his knees in front of the desk, His hands slowly slid up the outsides of your thighs before parting them and ghosting his lips across your clothed center.

“Help me get these off, sweetheart.” He mumbled as he hooked his thumbs into the top of your bottoms. “I’ve got a lot of apologizing to do.”

The first swipe of his tongue up your folds was tentative, even though his body clearly hadn't forgotten a single thing it used to know about yours. He did one more swipe, then another before his lips wrapped themselves around your bud.

"Oh… Matt –"

"Mm." The sound he made against your lips might as well have been told you. He pulled back just far enough to talk, his breath hot against your slick.  "Can’t hear you." He mumbled before pressing a kiss to your mound. His hands pinned your hips to the desk every time you tried to chase a faster pace, until the only thing left to do was let him set it himself. He remembered what used to undo you in seconds and didn't deviate until your thighs were shaking against the sides of his head. 

"Matt…" Your hand found his hair, not pushing him away, not entirely sure what you wanted except more. "Matt, I can't –"

"One more sweetheart, you can do it." He didn't lift himself away from your center as his tongue circled your entrance. He pulled away, and two of his fingers slid inside you in the same breath, curling slowly and finding the spot he'd never once forgotten despite the lack of sex at the end of your marriage. "I owe you at least a year of these."

As much as you hated to admit it, he was right. The second one took you apart even faster than the first, his fingers and his mouth working in perfect, ruthless tandem, thighs trembling around his shoulders, his name and several things that weren't words at all spilling out of you into the empty office, loud enough that some distant, mortified part of you was grateful for how solid the walls in this building were.

When he finally pulled back, his face was covered in your slick, and he had the single most satisfied expression you'd ever seen on his face.

"You're unbelievable," you managed, voice wrecked.

"I aim to please." He stood and undid his belt with unsteady hands, and you reached for him before he'd even finished. You got his shirt open, hands flat against the heat of his chest, feeling his heart slamming against your palm just as hard as yours was slamming in your chest.

"Tell me something," you breathed, fingers working his belt the rest of the way. "All those law school girls, did any of them get this?"

"No." His voice had dropped, gone rough with want. He caught your jaw, made you look at him. "That's not – slow is just for you. Not for anyone else. Ever." He paused right at your entrance, forehead dropping to yours, breath ragged. "Tell me you want this. I need to hear you say it."

"I want this." The answer came out immediately. "Matt, I want you, please –"

“Please what, sweetheart?”

“Please fuck me, Matt.”

Matt pushed inside of you slowly, holding still for one long second after, like he couldn’t trust the moment to be real yet. You were tight around him, slick, impossibly perfect, and he needed a moment to savor the closeness he never thought he would have the privilege of having again.

"For the record," he murmured against your jaw before nipping the spot under your ear, "our sex life was never boring. And there's no dominatrix."

You barely registered the words, lost somewhere in the stretch and the heat and the simple fact that he was finally, finally inside you again. "What –"

"Nothing." He kissed the question off your mouth before you could chase it any further. "Later."

He kept one hand braced against the desk as he started to move, papers sliding further beneath you with every motion, and the other found your face again, like he couldn't stop checking you were real, that this was actually happening, that you hadn't disappeared the way every good thing in his life eventually found a way to. 

He set a pace that built slowly, like a man determined to give you everything he'd withheld for a year, all at once, like there might not be a second chance to do it properly. Every thrust dragged rough,  out of his throat, low enough that you felt it more than heard it, his hips finding the angle that had you arching off the desk within minutes.

"Matt, please…" The papers crumpled further beneath you. "Harder, I need –"

"Yeah?" His voice had lost every trace of its earlier control, gone rough and wanting in a way that undid you almost as much as his hips did. "This what you needed? Wanted to know if I'd still remember how you like it?"

"Matt –"

"Tell me. Tell me you still feel this." He put one of his hands under your pelvis, the new angle pulling a sound out of you that didn't sound entirely human, his own breathing gone ragged and uneven against your ear. "Tell me you still – fuck!"

"Yes!" Whatever the question fully was, the answer was yes, had always been yes, no matter how much paperwork either of you signed. "Matt, yes, don't stop, don't you dare stop –"

"Not stopping." His grip on your hip tightened, his thumb coming between you to circle your clip, his voice dropping lower. "Not for anything. Not for the firm, not for that decree, not for anyone who ever came before you. Just you, always just you."

You came around with his name in your mouth and the raised bumps of Matt’s copy of the divorce papers pressed hard into the back of your upper thigh. Matt’s climax tore out of him shortly after, with a sound that was half your name and half of a moan, face buried against your neck. He stayed there afterward, still inside you, both of you breathing hard against each other, his thumb tracing slow absent circles against your hip like he wasn't ready to stop touching you yet.

"I love you," he said, muffled against your skin, like he hadn't fully decided to say it out loud until it was already out. "I never stopped. Not for one single day of any of this."

You didn't say it back. Not yet. Some part of you still needed to hold onto that, even now, even like this. But you threaded your fingers through his hair anyway and let him stay exactly where he was for as long as he needed to.

It took a while to actually move after you finished. You found your shirt first, then his, both of you dressing in silence. He gathered the scattered papers off the desk without being asked, straightening them into something resembling order, and by the time you were both sitting – him in his desk chair, you on the corner of the desk itself, knee almost touching his – the silence had stopped being awkward, and started being the kind that just needed someone to break it first.

You broke it.

“Why didn’t you just tell me you were Daredevil, Matt?”

Matt took a deep breath before he spoke. “I was going to tell you before we started working on the Fisk trial, but I decided against it for your own safety. I'm the one who built the legal case that finally put him away, and I’m also the man under the mask who spent years before that taking apart his operation piece by piece, long before the legal case ever had enough to work with." His voice had gone softer. "The day Fisk ever figures out that I’m also Daredevil, the first thing he's going to look for is whoever I'd do anything to protect. Not because of anything you did, or anything you are. Just because you're mine, and that alone would be enough for him.

"There's also an organization called The Hand. You've never heard of them, which is exactly how I wanted it to stay.” He said after a moment. “They don't care about money or territory the way everyone else in this city does. They care about leverage. They’ll find the people who matter to someone and use them however they see fit. They've done it before. I watched it happen once, and I promised myself I'd never let it happen to you, no matter what it cost me to keep that promise.”

"So you decided I was safer hating you?”

"I decided you were safer not existing, as far as The Hand were concerned." His voice had gone rough. "I know how that sounds, and I knew how it sounded the entire year I was doing it, and I did it anyway, because the alternative was you becoming a name on a list of people worth hurting to get to me. That wasn't a risk I was willing to take, even if it was a small one. I told myself it was the responsible thing to do. It took a long time, and a lot of very pointed commentary from Foggy and Karen, to admit some part of it was also just fear of losing you on terms I couldn't control."

"That makes sense," you said. "It doesn't explain the cruelty. You didn't have to let me believe you were unfaithful. You could have found a hundred other lies that didn't make me hate myself."

He didn't argue that.

"No," he said. "I couldn't have. Not because there wasn't a better lie, because there definitely was, but because some part of me wanted it to end on terms where you got to be the one who left. I’d rather be the cheating husband you safely walked away from, instead of the man you might have walked away from anyway, with the full truth, but with a target on your back." His voice had gone thin. “I'd rather you hate me for something I didn't do than know for certain you left because of something I am.”

You let that sit for a long moment.

"I spent a year hating myself because of that cowardice," you said.

"I know, and I'm so fucking sorry. I did that to you. I'm not going to spend the rest of tonight asking you to absolve me of it, because I haven’t earned that yet. I just need you to know I hear you."

You sat up slowly and looked at him in a way you hadn't let yourself in over a year. "I'm not ready to undo the separation, I want to be clear about that. I don't think either of us should pretend tonight fixes a year of this."

"I'm not asking you to pretend that."

"But I don't want to keep moving toward something final right now either." You looked down at his hand where his wedding ring still sat. "I think I want to pause the proceedings for now. And I think we should actually talk to a therapist, or some sort of professional, not just to each other in your office at midnight after sleeping together on top of our own divorce papers."

The corner of his mouth quirked up in a faint smirk. "Probably not, no."

"I'm not promising you anything beyond that," you said. "This isn't 'we're back together,' this is 'I'm willing to find out if there's still something left worth working on’, and you do not get to take that as a guarantee."

"I'm not taking it as a guarantee." His hand found yours, gentle, like he was asking permission with the gesture itself. "I'm taking it as more than I thought I'd get to have tonight. That's enough for me to work with."

You let him hold your hand for the first time in seven months. You didn't have an answer yet for if this was a turning point in your relationship, or just a very complicated detour on the way to the same ending, but for the first time in over a year, you weren't carrying any of it alone.

Taglist, and by taglist, I mean people who asked about a part 2: @ren-ash, @peterftpercy

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Ben would do whatever the hell he needed to for Her feel this. This strange fucking pull to be near Her all the goddamn time, and serve her, and talk to her. He’d throw everything he had into showing Her that he felt it—more than he’d ever felt fucking anything—and that if She could feel it too, he’d never allow her to stop feeling it. He’d fucking worship Her. He’d be whatever She needed him to be. 

And She just seemed to want Ben to be Ben. 

Which made him fall harder. 

And made him all the more resolved to romance the fucking Christ out of Her. 

He was picking Her up. Standing outside Her apartment with a bouquet of flowers like some goddamn idiot. Shifting on his feet as he waited for Her, because her roommates said she was still getting ready, and Ben wasn’t allowed inside. 

Her roommates didn’t really seem to like him. Ben didn’t really fucking care what they thought. They weren’t Her, and she was the only one who fucking mattered right now. Maybe ever.

Christ on a cross, that would be nice. If She got to be the only thing that mattered to Ben. If Ben got to be the only thing that mattered to Her.

He should knock on the door again, because it could not take that fucking long to get ready for a date. Ben had done fucking everything—suit, shaving, shoes, cologne—and that had taken him five goddamn minutes. Maybe those fucking bitches were trying to talk Her out of this. Trying to tell Her that Ben wasn’t serious about her, and she shouldn’t waste Her time with him.

She needed to waste Her time with him. Ben was here to do fucking everything with Her, and that included wasting time. Together. If he had it his way, they’d waste time all fucking night, and then keep wasting it for another million years.

He needed to break that fucking door down. He’d fix it after, too, for Her. He’d do fucking anything for Her, and if she was having doubts, he needed to kill them-

The door swung open only a second before his fist went flying, and Ben felt like he’d gotten punched.

She was flawless. Fucking gorgeous, designed by goddamn heaven and sent to Earth like some star that never burned out. Ben had never seen anything like Her, in front of him and smiling. Perfectly colored lips and styled hair and sinful body, more beautiful every second because She was being beautiful for Ben. She always looked like a fucking incarnation of Ben’s fantasies and dreams—no matter what She wore or how she did her makeup—and he’d seen Her look like this a million times for charity galas, but it had never been for Ben.

She’d chosen that dress for him. She’d done Her hair because they were going out. She picked a lipstick she wanted Ben to see.

And if Ben did this fucking right—did this like She deserved—he could have that color staining his cock by the end of the night. 

“Hi.” She whispered, giving him a sweet smile, and Ben was going to fucking explode. “I’m sorry about my roommates. They’re protective.”

“Good.” He grunted, glaring over Her head. “You deserve to be protected. But they don’t have to fucking protect you from me!”

She raised Her brows, even as a faint, pretty flush crept over her face. “I don’t think that’s going to convince them, Ben.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” He muttered, moving his gaze back to Her. Christ, She was too goddamn beautiful. It was trapping him in a loop. “You look fucking hot.”

“Thank you. You, um, you too.” 

Her voice sounded breathy, and She was looking at Ben like she wanted to jump on him. He needed to keep that look on Her face for the rest of goddamn time.

The stops. Ben needed to pull out the fucking stops.

“These are for you.” He shoved the flowers into Her hands, scanning over Her pretty features to check that they had the intended effect. They seemed to. Her eyes widened, her mouth fell open, and Ben could hear her heart do a little stumble in Her chest, so he was pretty damn sure they’d worked.

“Ben-“

“There’s paper in my car, too.” Ben jumped in, because She needed to know about everything before She formed an opinion. “And a fuck ton of pencils.”

She blinked at him. “Why?”

“You said you needed more paper and pencils.”

“I said-“ She swallowed, Her body leaning a little closer to his. That seemed good. “I said I needed more paper and pencils, so you bought me more paper and pencils?”

Ben frowned. He was pretty he’d made that damn clear. “What the fuck else was I supposed to do.”

“Nothing.” She smiled at Ben. The soft smile. He’d fucking nailed it. “Thank you, Ben.”

He grunted, offering Her his arm. “Are you ready.”

She nodded, disappearing back into Her apartment for only a second to put the flowers in a vase before returning, fucking smiling at him again, and letting Ben lead Her out of her shitty apartment building to his car. She looked fucking right in his car. The seat molded perfectly around Her, she was beautiful at Ben’s side, and this was where She belonged. Where Ben could touch Her—his hand curled into a fist in an effort to not touch Her, not yet—and she could be comfortable. In luxury. 

She deserved luxury more than fucking pussy Ben knew. More than the assholes who already had it, more than the brown-nosing dick-riders who chased it at Vought. Ben could fucking give it Her. She didn’t even have to ask, and he’d move the world onto a platter at Her feet. Because She was real, and beautiful, and so fucking sweet Ben got a little fucking high on it when She spoke. When She told him about all her students in the car, and giggled at his jokes. When She smiled at him in the golden light of the road, took his hand out of the car with sparkling eyes, and leaned into his touch as he guided Her into the empty restaurant.

He could get used to this. To the look of wide, blatant awe on Her face as they were led to their table—it was a nice fucking restaurant, and Ben had picked it out specifically for Her, so that was another damn good sign—and the way that whenever their eyes met, she’d give him that soft smile again.

“Ben.” She whispered as they sat down. “Where are all the other people?”

He shrugged, giving the waiter a curt nod as he poured the water and left them alone. “Not fucking here, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, I know that. Why aren’t they here?”

“Probably because I rented the place.”

She sat a little taller, and Her expression open as her lips parted and brow furrowed. 

“What’s-“

“The whole restaurant?” Her voice was barely a breath, and Ben frowned. 

“Obviously,” He grunted, trying to work out why the fuck this was freaking Her out. “Do you not like it?”

“Not at all, it’s just-“ She pulled her lower lip between Her teeth, fingers fidgeting with her napkin. “You didn’t have to do that. For me.”

Ben scowled. “Of course I fucking had to-“

“Ben-“

“Sweetheart, if I didn’t, people would be gawking at us all damn night. Sticking their fucking noses in your business, crawling up your taint like they’re always up mine.” Ben leaned forward, holding Her wide gaze. She needed to know he was serious. That She was damn worth this, and Ben would keep Her safe. Keep Her at peace, away from the fucking vultures and monsters, at Vought and in the media. “This is for us, babygirl. I’m not going let any fucking pussy bother you, let anyone look at you who you don’t want to. And nobody,” he shot Her a wink. “Is going to crawl up your taint but me.”

She giggled, Her body relaxing, and Ben counted that as another fucking victory. “That’s gross, Ben.”

“It’s true.” He shrugged, bracing his forearms on the table. “Until you say the word, nobody’s going to know fucking shit about us.”

“The waiters will know.” She pointed out, even as the pretty flush returned. “About… us.”

Christ, the word us had never sounded so fucking good. Ben never wanted to hear anyone but Her say it again. He never wanted it to mean anyone but them. Her and Ben. Us. Something he could defend and protect and keep just for them, together.

He chuckled. “The waiters will keep their pussy fucking mouths shut, if they know what’s good for them.”

She rolled Her eyes, but her smile remained. “You’d murder a waiter for me?”

She was joking. Ben would murder a waiter for Her, if she asked—She never would, but if she did, she wouldn’t even have to say please—but She was joking, so he just laughed.

“For you, I’d kill the damn president.”

Another fucking giggle escaped her. Ben wanted to bottle that sound and shoot it into his blood like goddamn heroine. “That’s not very American of you, Soldier-“

“Don’t fucking say it.” He raised an accusing finger at Her, even as a smile tugged at his mouth. “It’s Ben to you, sweetheart.”

She hummed, raising Her brows slightly. “Is it Ben for all the other girls, too?” 

“Wouldn’t know.” He leaned forward with a smirk, lowering his voice to the rumble that always seemed to make that slack, wanting expression pop up. “There aren’t any other girls.”

“Oh.” She whispered, and there it was. Ben had Her. So fucking close. “No girls?”

“No girls,” Ben’s voice was firm as he said Her name, because he’d had countless other women in his bed but none of them had been his. None of them had been even fucking close to what She was, what Ben hoped she could be to him. “I was damn serious, sweetheart. I haven’t fucked another woman in a year.”

She swallowed. “For me?”

He nodded, watching Her carefully, and she gave him a soft, slightly nervous smile.

“No sex?” She raised Her brows. “You must have a lot a free time now, huh?”

Ben laughed. It was loud and rolling through his chest, breaking the static silence of the restaurant because Christ, he needed to have Her. 

“Smart fucking mouth, babygirl.” He smirked, leaning forward. “Not wrong, either. You’re going to get a fucking master.”

He winked, and there was a soft hitch in Her breath.

“I’m getting a master?”

“I haven’t be keeping it in my pants for fun,” Ben drawled Her name, and he could get addicted to that flush and small gasp. “We’re going to fill up that free time together.”

“Oh. Okay.” 

She was gaping at Ben—practically fucking drooling—and if he grabbed Her face, he could kiss her. Here. Now. Blow Her fucking mind and fill that free time right here on the damn table. Fill Her on the damn table-

“What have you been using the free time for?” She asked. “While you’ve been, um, keeping it in your pants.”

He shrugged. He’d waited a year. He could wait a few more hours to fuck Her stupid. “Watched TV. Smoked.” He tilted his head at Her. “What do you use your free time for.”

“I, um, I don’t really have free time,” She mumbled, and Ben frowned. He’d have to fix that.

“What would you do?” He pushed, ready to mentally mark whatever he’d need to keep around for Her, once she had that time. “If you had the time?”

“Maybe a hobby?” She pulled her lips between her teeth, and if She kept doing that, they wouldn’t make it to actual dinner. “I could make art. Or write. Or bake.” She tilted Her head. “I think I just like making things. Seeing that I did something, and it was me. I did it.”

Ben nodded. He could get paint. And more fucking paper and pencils. And whatever the hell people used to bake. He didn’t understand Her making something shit, but Christ, he liked Her for feeling it and saying it. She was so fucking caring and sweet, he was going to lose his damn mind. “That why you teach?”

“Yeah, actually. I think it is.” She gave him an odd look. “What about you? What would you do as a hobby?”

Ben opened his mouth, and She shook her head.

“Don’t say drugs. Or me.”

He scoffed, and fuck, She looked hot when she was smug. “Fuck off, Sweetheart-“

“Was I wrong?”

“No.” He grumbled. “But I don’t fucking do hobbies.”

She snorted. “Everyone does hobbies, Ben. You just haven’t found one you like.”

Ben rolled his eyes, but he was still grinning. He didn’t know how the fuck She did that to his face. “What, you think I’m going to start fucking knitting, like some damn pussy grandma-“

“You could collect something,” She offered, and Ben might fucking die if She kept sounding so sincere. Like She actually fucking cared that he found something to enjoy. “Or do a sport-“

He snorted. “I don’t fucking do sports. No one can keep up with me, it’s not fucking fun.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She swallowed, and Ben didn’t miss how She glanced at his arms, and chest, and hands. How that expression like She wanted to jump on him was back. “How about woodworking?”

Ben raised his brows. “Woodworking.”

She hummed, nodding with a small, teasing smile. “It’s a very masculine hobby, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s probably that, or coaching little league.”

Ben chuckled, but his brain started to spin into images of coaching little league for their kids. And he’d be more fucking thrown by that image if similar ones didn’t flash through his brain all the damn time. If he didn’t constantly fucking imagine a real life with Her. If he didn’t think about it all the goddamn time, because She was it. Ben wanted all of Her, and he’d be damned if he didn’t give Her his own all once he had her-

Right before Ben could damn it, throw himself over the table at Her, and prove to her that he was damn serious about his with his mouth and hands and cock—that he’d never fantasize about fucking Little League for any other woman—the waiter interrupted them to get their orders.

Ben ordered first, and She just took what he was having. She didn’t even glance at the damn menu.

“You know,” he drawled Her name, raising his brows. “I just fucking eat whatever the hell people put in front of me. That food might be fucking shit.”

She didn’t laugh like he’d expected. She just gave him an odd, unreadable look, and moved on. It wasn’t until the end of the night, when the food was gone and Ben felt fucking high on Her laugher and beauty, that it was mentioned again. When he asked if the food was worth the risk, and that look came back, this time with a question that threw Ben right off his goddamn axis. 

“What’s it like?”

He frowned. “What’s what-“

“Having your life be a brand? Designed by Vought?”

Ben’s blinked. If it wasn’t Her asking, he would’ve stormed off with a roar. But that wasn’t some fucking gotcha question, meant to make his head spin and test his temper. She just wanted to know, so she could know Ben. And if that was all She was asking for, fuck him if he wouldn’t give it to Her.

“My job is the brand.” He shrugged. “And Vought is full of fucking pussies, but they do their damn jobs, I do mine, and we all fucking go home. That’s all it is.”

The Vought assholes went home to families, and Ben went home to cold, empty riches, but that wasn’t the point. Ben did his job, and he was fucking good at it, and the brand—Soldier Boy—was the fucking job. Simple as that.

“Do you like it?” 

Her voice was still fucking soft. She was going to goddamn kill him, if She kept fucking caring. If She kept making Ben think about how he fucking loathed it. It was filled with gold and wealth and fucking nothing. All the light was just cameras flashing. All the warmth only stayed on his skin, never sinking into his muscles and organs. All his co-workers were fucking pussy idiots. And that had always been enough. It had always been all he wanted.

Until it wasn’t.

Ben leaned forward, holding Her wide, open gaze. “I like that it got me to you.” He muttered, and that was the goddamn truth. “And you’ve fucking got me, babygirl. I meant it, there wasn’t a damn lady before you. Not like this. And I’ll keep fucking saying that until you get it. Solider Boy might be the brand, might be the job, but I’ll keep it in my pants for another damn year and pick up fucking woodworking if I get you. Understood?”

There was a long moment of silence as She scanned over his face—looking for whatever She needed to find—and Ben felt an itch on his skin and a prickle over his heart. It might be fucking nerves.

He didn’t care for it.

“Understood.” She whispered, and the nerves vanished into some sort of euphoria as She smiled at him. “Do you, um, you want to go? Back to my place?”

Ben’s grin was unrestrained and probably looked a little feral, but thank fucking Christ. He had Her. He didn’t have to keep it in his pants, because he had Her.

And when he stood up, picking Her up into his arms with a squeal and carrying Her out of the restaurant, he made a silent vow.

He wouldn’t give Her a single goddamn reason to ever leave.

And he’d start proving why She should stay right fucking now.

—————————

Ben’s really strong. And you’d known that—it was the whole Soldier Boy brand—but that didn’t stop you from being shocked by how that strength feels wrapped around you. Pressed right up against your body, arms flexing and muscles shifting under his shirt, his chest and shoulders like a rock, but still somehow comfortable and warm.

You’d like to stay here, in Ben’s arms and against his body, for maybe the rest of your life. It feels safe, but not like a cage. Like a blanket or shield around you, promising that harm wouldn’t even dare to look at you, because only a fool would try to attack something that belongs to Ben.

Fuck.

You don’t belong to Ben. Not in the way you’d want to mean it, where it’s your heart out of your chest and into his hands, and you never have to worry about it again. Never have to worry about anything again. 

It doesn’t help that it feels like you could belong to him. Like if you asked, he would keep you here. Maybe he’d carry you everywhere. Maybe he’d offer his heart back.

He won’t. You can hear his heart pounding, when you turn your head and press your ear to his skin. It’s loud and powerful, and you’d really like for it to move in a rhythm with yours. But you don’t know if you could keep up, and you’re terrified to learn that he wouldn’t slow down.

But your lips graze his neck when you breathe, and you could swear he shudders. That his grip on you tightens, and a low grunt escapes his throat that has nothing to do with walking to the car.

You’re too far gone. This is exactly what you’d been trying to avoid, trying to dodge and weave around with giggles and eye rolls. Belonging to Ben. Making your dumb little heart really believe that he’d care about you in a way that he’d fight for. Falling into him until he’s less taking you, and more being offered to have you. However he’d like. 

And God, if he asks to have you tonight, you’ll say yes. All your previous rules will fly out the window. Rules about waiting a certain number of dates, kissing first before going right into more, or ensuring that—when the sun rises the next morning—you won’t be alone in bed. Rules that would be pointless, because this is Ben and you’ve been dreaming about touching him for a year. He can never know you’ve lost sleep to it. To feeling heat between your legs at just the thought of him, to covering your face with a pillow because just the idea of him was enough to make you scream and moan and wake your roommates up.

Shit. Your roommates. 

You’re going to have to figure out how to justify to them that you will be seeing Ben again, because you hadn’t stopped feeling dizzy and drunk on him for the whole night, and now you’re gone—the last piece of your resistance to his advances gone, your will to not fall in love completely dissolved—and you won’t be coming back until Ben breaks you in half.

That if Ben doesn’t break you—if he chooses to keep you, just you, because for reasons you don’t understand he seems to only want you—but holds you close and stretches tonight into sixty years, you’ll never even bother to try and return.

You don’t know if he’ll want to keep you. He’s placing you in the passenger’s seat with careful movements, but brushing hair from your face with an unreadable expression and restrained hands. He kisses your brow before drawing back up, and he glances at your lips, but he doesn’t touch them. He doesn’t say a word, only closing the door behind him and walking around the hood of the car.

When he drops in the driver’s seat, his hands rest on the wheel, and he stares ahead with a frown. He doesn’t grab the keys from his pocket. He doesn’t speak, or look at you, or move. 

There’s a long and horrible moment when you think he’s done with you. Where everything tastes like ash and dust, and you can feel your body deflating and crumbling. Of course he wouldn’t want you. You’re normal and boring and wouldn’t look right on his arm. You’d fit there—you know you would, because you’d slotted right into him all night like you were meant to be there, and now that will haunt you for the rest of your life—but you wouldn’t dazzle and sparkle and flash. You aren’t a good accessory. You’d cleaned up best you could for this, but your clothing was cheap, your lipstick cheaper, and your hair styled by your own hands. Hands with little bumps on the fingers from writing, that you did your best to keep soft but also ended up dry, because your apartment’s humidifier was broken, and it’s the middle of winter.

You’re nothing horrible. Nothing worse than anyone else. But also normal. So painfully average, just another face that walked on the street. 

Ben should be with someone bright. Someone blinding who wore lipstick that cost as much as that fancy dinner, and clothing that could probably out-sell this car. Someone who had their hair styled by a team, because they were American royalty like Ben was.

Girls like you don’t get to linger in divinity. They don’t get more than a night.

And you might not even get a night. Ben isn’t moving or talking or teasing about how he’s going to touch you, so he might not want to. He might have been trying you on, and now he’s ready to throw you out because he’d realized you didn’t look as good on him as he’d thought you would-

“We’re going to my place.” He grunts, and you blink at him.

“Your place?”

He nods, and finally looks at you. He’s so handsome. You’ve never seen anyone have a face like that. You’d been being dramatic and lovelorn before, thinking of him as divinity, but there couldn’t possibly be another reason for him looking like that.

Untouchable.

Reaching out to touch you.

Ben’s hand cups your face, keeping your gaze trapped on his, and his words are a low rumble that rip through your body like a wildfire. Your skin and heart are ablaze, and you’re completely ruined, and he’s only talking.

“I’m going to touch you, babygirl.” He mutters, and you think you whine. “Going to fucking ruin you.”

This isn’t fair. He looks like he’s about to ask you a question, and you’ll never be able to give an answer that isn’t a breathless plea.

“Ben-“

“But,” he pushes on, smirking as your breathing start to get ragged. “I’m going to have you screaming my name all fucking night, and I’m not interested in having an audience. I fucking love you, but your apartment is goddamn fucking. Dramatic roommates who won’t let me fuck you like you deserve, too goddamn small, and not nearly fucking good enough for you. So come back to my place.”

That’s probably supposed to be a question. Ben’s tone didn’t sound like he was asking—more like ordering, or telling you what was going to happen—but he’s also not starting to car or letting go of your face, so you think he’s waiting for an answer.

It takes a moment, because you’re trapped in his voice, still echoing in your head. 

I fucking love you.

You don’t know if he’s aware he said that. If he is, it doesn’t seem as if he’s about to elaborate.

But he did say it. And he’s not taking it back.

You’re kind of done with testing the waters. With holding yourself back from what you want for the sake of your sanity. 

Sanity that’s already long gone anyway. Razed and wrecked and shaped into the same sound of Ben saying I fucking love you, all while touch you and looking at you and speaking to you, and you alone.

“Okay,” you whisper, and you can’t really imagine saying anything else.

Ben nods, his hand moves to your thigh, and you can feel something changing inside of you. His touch is so measured—so carefully controlled with a big, rough hand that kneads mindlessly at your skin—and it’s igniting your whole body up in a way you’ve never felt. It’s like lighting in your blood and water on your skin, soothing and electric and so completely consuming. 

He really is consuming. You’ve never met anyone whose very presence devours your every thought and nerve until you’re glowing from inside. Even if you weren’t being branded by his touch on your body, weren’t drowning in his cologne, you’d still only be thinking about Ben. He’d said you looked hot, and under his cannon-like attention—loud and powerful and demanding—you’d really felt like you were. He’d said there were no other girls, and you believed him because you could feel the words over your bones. He’d said he’d kill the president for you, and it had oddly been the most romantic thing any had ever told you.

Ben’s life was Solider Boy. Soldier Boy’s brand was America. 

He didn’t want to be Solider Boy with you. He didn’t care about Soldier Boy for you. 

And you’d never tell him to kill the president, but if you do get to ask for anything—just one thing for Ben to give you, and only you, because you asked for it—it would be that he keeps doing that. Keeps being consuming. Keeps looking at you like you’re all the stars in the sky, when you’re the one getting lost.

Because you’re so lost. You’d promised yourself you’d be careful, but now you’re lost in Ben, and you’d never chose to be anywhere else. Not when his hand on your thigh is a promise of being a master and filling free time. You’d love to waste free time with him. You’d love to get more and more lost in this odd sense of given security—Ben is here, and he’s built like a tank that’s designed to keep you from horror—for the rest of your life.

And you’d think that was dramatic, if Ben didn’t keep looking at you like that. Like you’re a rare treasure he’d found buried underground, and he’s going to make you shine.

You’re already shining. Just that look—full of promises and stoic, firm care–makes you sit a little taller in your seat, warmth sparking and pooling in your gut like an oil meeting a match.

The explosion is going to wreck you. 

You’re more than ready for it.

Ben parks outside of a shocking normal apartment complex, helps you out of the car, and half covers your body with his—his face bent down and hidden, you barely a shadow below him—before moving you inside. 

This is a normal building. You’re awestruck, how average this place is. You’ve heard about Ben’s house, but it’s further upstate. You’ve been to one of his apartments for a Vought party—and ended up mostly curled near him, but not against him, on a couch—but that was across the city. And this place didn’t have the marble floors and doorman and oil paintings. It was all stained brown carpet and small mailboxes, walking up concrete stairs and passing worn welcome mats.

“Ben?” You lean back to look at him, and he seems vigilant. Watching every corner you turn and tensing at every creek of the building.

He grunts, his eyes falling to yours—something that’s always rough behind them not softening, but becoming honed, and aimed all at you—and you take it as a cue to continue. 

“Where are we?”

Ben lets out a long, heavy breath, stopping in front of another, boring, generic door. “My apartment.”

“Oh.” You look around the hall, then back to Ben. He’s started to fidget with the keys. You didn’t hear him wrong. 

You’re still incredibly confused, right up until Ben pushes the door open.

This is more what you expected. Plush sofas and polished chairs, a glass table and expensive looking art on the walls. It’s a little different that his other apartment—there seems to be more personal things scattered across the room, bits of Ben left out on the side table and shelves—but not at all in line with the rest of this building.

And Ben must see all your questions on your face, because he leans down to whisper in your ear, his arms wrapped around your stomach and light stubble brushing on your skin. 

“Bought this place off the books.” He starts to guide you further inside, his hands rubbing slow, mind-numbing circles on your hips. “Place for myself, when I don’t want anyone intruding or interfering with my shit.”

You swallow. “Does anyone else know-“

“Just me.” He mutters, starting to kiss a very distracting line up your throat. “Not one damn pussy at Vought knows this place exists. Landlord thinks I’m a reclusive artist or some shit. Like I said, sweetheart. My place.”

Ben’s place. Just his place. For his shit. That he doesn’t want intruded on. 

It takes you longer than you’d like to piece it all together. In your defense, you’re a little overwhelmed—in all your wildest fantasies about Ben looking at you and meaning it, you still hadn’t manage to imagine this—and Ben’s not really helping your thought process at all. One hand has moved down to pull and squeeze your upper thigh, the other is still keeping you pinned to his chest, and his mouth has started to wander. Grow bolder. Wet, sloppy kisses over your collarbone and along your jaw, sucking a small bruise behind your ear and making you a little dizzy. 

But you slot it all into place.

And there’s not a thing in the universe that could save you now. Fuck, if anyone tried, you’d probably punch them.

“You’re serious about me.” You mumble, and Ben hums, the sound echoing around your head like a fucked up, love drunk lullaby.

“About fucking time you got it.” He mutters, his hands sliding up to grip your throat. It’s a light touch, barely any pressure at all, but Ben doesn’t need to be firm. He tilts your head slightly back, and you go all the way. Leaning on his shoulder, holding his darkened gaze with your own, slightly dazed one, smiling at him like an idiot.

You can be an idiot for this. For Ben, you’ll be a fucking fool, because you can be. There’s nothing else to do here. Nothing to work for. He’s won. You’re his. 

All that’s left to do fall down. 

Ben smirks at you, that hand on your thigh starting to drift further and further between your legs, and you don’t think he’s going to make this easy on you.

“Do you know how much I’ve fucking dreamt about this?” Ben drawls, his lips brushing over the corner of your mouth. It’s light, and taunting, and in perfect time with his fingers. Playing with the hem of your panties, knuckles occasionally bumping on your clit and making your knees weak, all while he continues talking. “I’ve spent fucking months working out exactly how I want to fuck you, babygirl. Thought about how fucking good you’d feel, wrapped around my cock, how pretty you’d sound screaming my name, how fucking beautiful you’d look all fucked out and wrecked under me, or against me, or fucking riding me. But nothing,” Ben nips at your ear, and you think you squeak. “Could’ve gotten me ready for this. Look so fucking gorgeous just here. Hardly ever touched you yet and you look like a dream.”

You’re going to lose your fucking mind. Ben’s hand has moved to cup you over your underwear, and you can’t stop yourself from grinding shamelessly onto him.

“Christ, sweetheart, already fucking soaked just from dinner.” Ben looks awestruck, his lips parted and breath hot on your skin. It just makes you more desperate. “You like it when I talk dirty? Like it when I tell you how much I fucking want you? How much I need you?”

You moan, nodding like a bobble-head, and he chuckles.

“Tell me what you want,” Ben says your name, pressing his thumb over your clothed clit, and you definitely squeaked that time. 

“You, want you-“

“How do you want me. Get specific, babygirl, want to hear-“

“I want you with me,” you gasp, rolling your hips in search of any friction at all, whining when his grip on you tightens. “Want to have you Ben, fuck- Want all of you-“

You might have ascended. Ben cuts you off with a strangling, heavy, starved kiss, and if it wasn’t the most carnal thing you’d ever experienced you’d have thought it was holy. It’s invasive and rough—his tongue down your throat and his teeth nipping at your lower lip, swallowing your moan when he rips off you panties and shoves one, broad finger into your cunt—but there’s something softer behind it. His hand stays on your neck, but only to tip you further back and grant him more access, never tightening enough for you to really feel it. Your legs give out as he starts to finger-fuck you at a brutal, unforgiving pace, but he also keeps you upright and steady. 

Ben pulls you apart on just his hand—palm rolling on your clit, fingers taunting and teasing on the deepest, most sensitive place inside of you—and he never breaks the kiss. You reach behind your body, wrapping an arm around his neck and running your fingers through his hair, and when you tug it, he groans. The sound moves through your whole body, fueling every bit of your arousal, melting you further into Ben’s body as he picks up his speed. He keeps a rough pace and firm pattern, drags your right up to the edge until you’re writhing against him and scratching hopelessly at his arm in a slight plea for more. You need more, you’re already inhaling him and filled with him but it’s not enough. 

When he finally crooks his fingers inside of you, everything goes white. It’s only Ben sucking on your upper lip and pumping his fingers through your orgasm, only his pounding heartbeat near your ear and ragged breath over your face.

He’s hard. Pressing right up against your ass, and hard, and big. He’s fucking huge. 

You need him. You need him now. 

“Ben,” you tug on his hair again—your voice breathy and weak as your head spins—and he hums against your skin, that sinful fucking mouth sucking small marks along your jaw. “More. Need more, please-“

“Patience,” he mutters your name, and you moan, shaking your head. “I’ve been waiting too fucking long to take this slow. Got fucking months to make up for. You’re not going to be able to walk for a goddamn year when I’m done with you, babygirl, so calm the fuck down, and take what I give you. Got it?”

You nod a little stupidly, and Ben draws back from your neck with a smirk, teasing along your pussy with those same, sinful fingers before pulling them away and—before you can even whine from the loss of him—bringing them to his mouth. Licking your arousal off his skin, never breaking your gaze.

You can’t be patient. It’s an impossible thing to ask, when he’s toying with you like this. When he looks like that—so fucking satisfied from the taste of you and cocky when you moan from only the sight of him—and wraps his arm back around your waist, keeping you steady as he kisses you again. It should be illegal to be this good a kisser. It’s like a drug right into your bloodstream, making everything just pleasure and Ben. He tastes like wine and smoke and you. That’s you on his tongue.

You’re going to fly out of your skin. 

“Please.” You gasp, tugging on his hair again until that same groan from before rumbles in his chest. “Ben, please-“

Ben squeezes your throat once before dragging it away, prying your hand off his head and kissing your knuckles with a softness that might be worse than the animalistic lust. It’s just a small, tiny second of care—silent, real affection—but you’re still going to go mad from it.

“You want my cock, babygirl?” He asks the question with the most smug grin you’ve ever seen. Like he knows there’s not a world where you’ll say anything but yes. “Want me to fuck you nice and dumb, take good fucking care of my girl?”

His girl. You’ve put it together that he really somehow means that, but it doesn’t change how the words are electric in your body. Your legs almost give out just from the sound of Ben’s deep voice saying them.

He tightens his grip around you, grabbing your chin and tilting your head backward. “Not a mind-reader, sweetheart, give me some fucking words-“

“Yes-“

The answer is barely out of your mouth when Ben hauls you off the ground and starts to move, walking into the bedroom and dropping you onto his mattress. This is Ben’s mattress. He’s slept on it before, and the sheets smell like him and have touched his bare skin.

You’re going to touch his bare skin. He’s ripping clothing off like it’s paper as you crawl backwards, and you barely have time to remove your dress—let alone take him in—before he’s prowling over you, his eyes gleaming and sparkling in a way that makes you start to drool.

He’s completely naked. You want to see him, see all that impossible, powerful glory that’s about to wrap around you, but you don’t get the chance before Ben starts to leave wet, open-mouthed kisses up your legs and your vision blurs with pleasure. He’s so good at this, and you’re not at all surprised, but it still makes every fantasy and wet dream you’ve had feel like a crude, faded sketch. The real thing is a work of art. You’d been joking when you’d called this his hobby, but he’s playing you like an instrument and molding you like clay. He finds his way between your legs, and stays there just long enough to work you into a frenzy. Broad licks up your pussy and flicks of his tongue over your clit, sucking the already burning nerve bundle into his mouth and letting his teeth graze against it until you’re grinding up into his face.

Then he’s moving on, leaving you dangling right on the edge and kissing over your stomach. Up your body until he drags you into a long, heavy kiss, silencing your every needy, high plea for release. He won’t let you have release. He’s kissing you far too passionately and firmly for you to do anything but melt further into him, but God you’re burning up from the inside and he won’t even let you move. He had dropped his waist to pin you down to the mattress, and you can feel him poking again your inner thigh, and fuck-

Ben rises up with a grin, and there’s the awestruck look again. He can’t keep looking at you like that. It’s going to kill you.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” He mutters your name, and you were wrong. That’s going to kill you. How sincere and blunt his words are, like they’re pure fact and not at all subjective. “Never seen a goddamn thing like it.” He rolls his hips against you, and you whine. “Look like a fucking angel.”

You want to tell him that he looks better, or at least thank him, but all you can remember how to do is moan, squirming a little beneath him as he chuckles. 

“You got something you need, sweetheart?”

He rolls his hips again, and your eyes almost roll back in your head as you nod. 

Ben clicks his tongue, leaning back down to speak against your lips. “Need you to fucking say it, baby.”

“Fuck me.” You gasp, because you’re past dignity and dancing around things. “Fuck me, Ben, please, fuck me-“

You yelp as he rolls you over, hauling you up onto his lap and impaling you on his cock in one movement. And when he starts to move—grabbing your hips and guiding them in a smooth rhythm with his thrusts—you know he’s not going to stop proving you wrong. He cares, and this is higher and better than any heaven you could’ve—and had—imagined. This is what’s going to kill you.

Because you’ve thought about this far too often, imagined this exact moment countless times, but it’s still more than you know how to comprehend. Ben’s splitting you open and bumping against all the right places inside of you, the angle pushing him so deep into your cunt there’s not a second where you aren’t on fire. He keeps alternating between wild, demanding bites—hickeys on your throat and shoulders—and gentle, hot kisses on your lips that swallow your every soft moan and whine. Your arms wrap around his neck as your try to drag him impossibly closer, and he smirks, his hold on your hips tightening as he starts to drill up into you.

It’s brutal and sudden and rough—his skin slapping on yours and his gaze burning right into your body—and if Ben wasn’t holding you up, you would’ve collapsed. You might be saying his name, might be begging for more, but you can’t hear it over a fogging haze of Ben, talking so dirty you’re surprised his voice alone isn’t bring you to release.

“Look so fucking hot, bouncing on my cock, such pretty fucking tits, fucking tight and warm, goddamn soaked for me-“

“Fuck,” you try to grind down onto him, but he’s too strong. All you can do is kiss on his jaw and pray he’ll give you more. “Feels good, so good, please-“

“Who’s fucking you good?” He demands, nipping on your lower lip and guiding you in a circle on his dick, smirking as you whimper from the sensation. “Fucking scream it, sweetheart, tell the whole goddamn world who’s fucking you-“

“Ben!“ You almost scream, and you’d be embarrassed if it didn’t immediately earn you another long kiss and groan of your name against your skin.

“There you go,” he mutters, snaking one hand around your body to rub at your clit. “Good girl, feel so fucking good squeezing my cock, so fucking needy-“

“Ben,” Your brow drops to his, and your nails scratching at his neck and shoulder blades. “Please, wanna cum, please-“

He cuts you off with a searing, almost violent kiss, growling down your throat. “Since you asked so fucking pretty,” he jerks his hips up in a rough, blinding movement, pinching your clit at the same time. “Cum for me, babygirl.”

This orgasm crashes through you like a tidal wave. Springing in your gut and washing your body in a burning but comfortable heat, filling your vision with stars and wracking your body with a pleasure you didn’t know you were capable of feeling. This is better than heaven. This is Ben kissing you through your high and still dragging you higher, rubbing his thumb around your clit and palming at your breast as you scream into his mouth.

And you don’t come down. Ben doesn’t stop, and you’re not sure if this is just a million smaller orgasms exploding like fireworks in your body, or if he’s trapped you in an infinite state of bliss, but the orgasm doesn’t end.

And Ben’s not done with you. 

He’s getting rougher. He’s still hard inside of you, starting to throb and lose rhythm with his movements, and you barely have the mind to gasp or whimper when he rolls you back under him, pulls out of you for a brief second, and flips you around onto your stomach. There’s a brief, cold moment where he’s gone—still hard against your thighs but no longer caging you against him—and then he drags your ass into the air, pushes himself back into your dripping, oversensitive pussy, and starts to hammer into you with a pace you can only describe as feral. His balls slap on your clit as he hits somehow deeper inside of you, groaning behind you as you grind back into him, and you’re still cumming. You don’t now know how that’s possible. You didn’t know your body could do that. 

You don’t really know anything but Ben right now. Thrusts becoming short and uneven, draping himself back over you to kiss at your shoulder and throat and behind your ear, pinching and rolling a nipple between two rough fingers, and groaning right in your ear in a way that just keeps everything going. 

Ben grabs your chin right as his hips stutter, turning your head to roar your name against your mouth as he cums. It finally brings you down—when he’s spent inside of you and pinning you to the mattress in his warmth—and you like out a soft, happy sound of content when he kisses your swollen lips with a gentler, easier pressure. It seems like he’s kissing you just to kiss you. Touching you just to touch you.

Laying with you just to lay with you.

“Christ on a fucking cross,” he mutters in your ear, pressing another small kiss to your cheek. “You’re so fucking good, sweetheart. Never going to go a week without this pussy again, best thing I’ve ever fucking felt.”

You smile, craning your neck back to look at him, and you’ve barely started to move before Ben’s flipping you one last time, keeping you caged between his body and the mattress.

And he’s grinning at you. A powerful, wide grin that would look strange on his face if it didn’t feel so natural. You rarely see Ben really grin—all joy and teeth and something unbridled and almost pure—at all, his expression usually rough smirks and more taunting smiles, but this is just Ben, grinning at you. 

And he looks like a human. He’s sweaty, short hair sticking up at odd angles and eyes a little brighter from his own release, and you really think this could be it. That he could be a life you’d be happy to lead. 

Because Ben’s got you. Outside of how he’d just fucked you within an inch of paradise, he’s also pressing a soft kiss to the top of your head, and a longer one to your lips, before moving away to grab a towel and clean the mess he left between your thighs. He’s bringing you water and tucking you right against his body, muttering that you should get some rest before round two, because there will be a round fucking two.

“Ben?” You mumble, and he grunts near your skin in a silent acknowledgment to continue. “What… um, I don’t know what you- what we-“

“We’re together.” He grunts, and you let out a long breath of relief. You hadn’t even had to say the stupid, embarrassing question aloud. “Nobody’s touch you but me, and not one single fucking lady is getting their hands on me but you.”

“Okay.” You hum, wiggling a little further into his hold. “Good.”

Ben chuckled. “Real fucking good, babygirl. You’re going to get spoiled fucking rotten.”

You smile, and you’ll fight that later. You don’t want to become only a doll on a shelf just because Ben’s got you. 

But you also think you have him. And that if you asked for the world he’d try and figure out a way to put it into your hands. That if you demanded he not be an asshole about you continuing to work, he’d grumble but relent.

And you can live with that. 

You can thrive with it.

End Note: Once again saying I really think Ben just needs a cool wife to obsesses over and be violent for and he'd chill out.

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