sparrow

He told himself he was protecting you. That was what he called it at first, because protection sounded more legal than obsession. He told himself the neighbourhood was unsafe, that you were too trusting, that someone had to watch you and your window and the dark corners of the street beneath your building because no one else would. He told himself a lot of things, and for a while, he almost believed them. 

Then there was the box under your bed.

That fucking box.

At first, Dex didn’t know what it was. It was small and tucked away like a dirty little secret. Maybe it was something you only pulled out when you were alone. Maybe it was something you kept hidden where no one else could see. Except Dex saw everything. He had a good view after all, a couple of stories up.

One night, he saw you come home exhausted, hair messy and shoulders slumped, still in your work clothes with your face drawn in a frown, making his hands flex in the dark because he hated anything that wore you down. He was by his window, watching you with the same dead-eyed patience he would with a target. You were safe. You were home. He should have left it there.

Then you reached under the bed, pulled out the box, and opened it.

Oh.

Dex went completely still.

It was… oh, no.

You pulled out a toy. The first one was a turquoise dildo, stupid and fake and smooth, curved like it had any fucking right to be shaped for you. Dex hated it immediately. He hated the colour, hated the size, hated the shine in your hand. He fucking hated the way you looked at it like it was familiar, like it belonged in your bed, like it had earned the right to be near you. It had known you before he did.

Because no. No, no, no. No, no, no! You didn’t need that!

You didn’t need that stupid silicone. You didn’t need some fake, lifeless object inside you like it could ever understand the divinity it was touching, like it could ever deserve the warmth of your body, like it could ever know what to do with the adorable little sounds that slipped out of your mouth when you started giving in. Dex had one too. It was real and throbbing so painfully against his zipper that his vision almost blurred, but that only made the humiliation worse, because he was standing there in the dark wanting you while some stupid thing got to be held by your hand and plunged into your body without earning any of it.

He couldn’t even bring himself to touch himself. His hand twitched once toward his belt, and then stopped, fingers curling into a fist so tight his knuckles ached. It felt too insulting to you, somehow. To stand there outside your life and get himself off like a stranger when what he wanted was to be chosen, to be invited in. Touching himself would have felt like admitting defeat to the fucking fake piece of silicone, and Dex would rather splinter his hand open against glass than give that thing the satisfaction.

Then, another night, you took out something smaller. It was sleeker, more curved. Dex watched it sit in your palm, watched your thumb brush over it, watched your body settle back against the sheets like you already knew exactly what it was going to do for you. A vibrator, he realized, and the hatred came back so fast it was almost clean. 

Of course. Of fucking course there was another one. Another stupid little object pretending it could take his place, not that he had a place at all.

Dex had hands. Dex had fingers that never missed. Dex had aim so perfect and patience like a sickness. He could hit a target without thinking; he could find the weak point in anything. If he had the right to touch you, if you let him get his hands on you properly, he would learn you so thoroughly there would be nowhere left for you to hide. He would make you understand that you had never needed anything from that box. You had only needed him to finally get close enough.

That toy was nothing. Plastic garbage. An object. And Dex was still jealous.

He hated, hated, hated it until the feeling sat under his skin like a fever. He hated that it touched you without wanting you. He hated that it got inside you without worshipping you. He hated that it could make your thighs part and your breathing change without even understanding what blessing had been given.

It had no mouth, no hands, no eyes, no mind. It couldn't watch the little twitch in your lips when you tried not to make noise. It couldn’t possibly hear the difference between a sigh and a groan. It couldn't know when to slow down, when to go harder, when to hold you still and make you take what you were pretending not to need. 

Dex could. Dex would. If he had you underneath him just once, he would make sure you forgot that stupid thing had ever worked at all.

His fist curled against the brick wall beside him until his knuckles ached. He was hard and furious and breathing too quickly.

You didn’t know it yet, but you didn’t need that to get off. You needed him. It was only rational.

You needed his focus, his precise attention. You needed to be laid out beneath him and taken apart piece by piece until you understood that pleasure didn’t have to come from a lifeless object. It could come from him. It should come from him.

Then your body arched. Your mouth fell open, your fingers tightened, and the thoughts inside Dex went black.

He punched the brick wall once, hard enough to split the skin over his knuckles and damage the paint. Pain flashed hot through his hand, bright enough to cut through the jealousy for half a second, but not enough to make him look away. Nothing was enough to make him look away. Not when the toy disappeared between your thighs again, not when your head tipped back, then when your chest rose and fell beneath the thin fabric of your shirt. Dex watched with his teeth clenched and blood sliding down his fingers, consumed by a jealousy so vile it should have disgusted him.

The next day, when he thought it couldn’t possible get worse, he was proven wrong. 

The rose toy was worse.

The rose toy made him want to burn the whole world down, because what the fuck did you need that for when he had a mouth? Dex stared at it from his window with a hatred he usually reserved for threats, for guys who looked at you too long on the street, for anyone who stood too close to you in line. But this was not a person who he could threaten or scare away or hurt. It was stupid little thing that sat between your thighs and pretended to do what his tongue should have been doing.

His mouth watered. His eyes dragged over you through the window, over your parted legs and rumpled clothes and the rise and fall of your chest. He watched your chest shift with every uneven breath, watched the way your body trembled when the toy stayed right where you wanted it. 

But when did you ever stop to think about what he wanted?

He wanted to put his mouth there. He wanted to drag his tongue over every inch of you. He wanted to learn what made you gasp, what made you mewl, what made you grab his body and hold him exactly where you needed him.

He wanted to master you, and that was the only word for it. Not have. Not fuck. 

Dex wanted to know every weak spot, every angle, every sound, every ruined expression you made when pleasure got too big for your body and spilled out of you. He wanted to know how much you could take. He wanted to know how pretty you looked when you were overwhelmed. He wanted to know if you would say his name like a warning or a prayer. 

The toy didn’t deserve any of that. It had never protected you, never watched your door, never memorized your footsteps on the stairs, never wanted to crawl inside you. 

But it had touched you anyway.

By the time you were finished, the inside of Dex’s mouth was bleeding and his breathing had gone unnaturally calm. He watched you clean the toys and tuck them away, watched the box slide back beneath your bed like it hadn’t broken his heart into a million little pieces. 

After that, he hated the box like it was alive. 

By the time he actually got close to you, Dex had already hated that box for months. You never knew that when he carried your groceries upstairs, he already knew which cabinet you kept the mugs in. You never knew that when he asked if you slept well, he already knew which nights you had tossed and turned. You never knew that when he looked around your apartment for the first time,  polite and almost shy, he knew exactly what was hidden under your bed.

Then you kissed him one night outside your door, giggling because he had gone so still, because he looked like he might actually die if you didn’t kiss him right then and there. 

After that, he was yours. Or you were his. Dex didn’t really care which way you phrased it. It was the same thing.

By some miracle, he became your boyfriend. 

He hated that word, and loved it all the same, because it sounded too tame for what you had done to him. Boyfriend sounded casual, temporary. As if it was something that could end. 

Lover was a better title, he thought. It felt more whole and all-consuming. But then your friends had cringed the one time he said it, and Dex had gone so still afterward that you could almost hear him tearing himself apart over it. 

He hated the idea that he had embarrassed you, hated even more that someone else had been there to see it, until you had to cup his face and tell him no, baby, you didn’t embarrass me. I thought it was sweet. Maybe, though, we should just say boyfriend with my friends, okay? 

And because it was you asking, he said of course, baby. 

Still, nowadays, he slept in your bed more than he did his own. He stood in your kitchen in the mornings. He learned the smell of your shampoo, learned the shape of your body under his hands instead of through glass and his own sick imagination. And when you finally let him touch you properly, Dex nearly lost his mind, because he was good at it. 

Of course he was good at it. Dex had focus like a camera lens, and once that focus turned on you, there was no part of your body he didn’t want to understand.

His fingers pressed and curled and learned you with frightening speed, finding the places that made your mouth drop open, the places that made your hips lift, the places that made you grab his wrist like you wanted him to stop and keep going at the same time. His mouth was patient, devoted, mean when it needed to be. He held your thighs open like he had been waiting his whole life to prove a point, like every gasp he dragged out of you was a personal victory over the stupid little rose toy.

When your hands fisted in his hair, when your thighs shook around his head, when his name broke out of you, all breathless and helpless, Dex thought, yes. there. That was what you were supposed to sound like. 

The first time he filled you up because he’d convince you to go on the pill, your whole face changed. Dex saw your eyes go wide, saw your lips part, saw your breath catch in your throat like you hadn't expected him to feel like that. For one strange second, he looked almost startled by his own satisfaction. Then he bent over you, mouth brushing your ear, and fucked you because he could, and he was grateful for it, gasping thank you, thank you, thank you over and over again, while his face was buried in the crook of your neck.

After that, you stopped using the box.

Dex noticed the dust beginning to collect on the lid. He noticed the charger cords stayed tangled and unplugged. Now, when you were needy, you reached for him. 

And there was nothing he loved more than you pawing his shirt, his wrist, his belt, his mouth. You reached for him in the morning, half-asleep. You reached for him at night with that little impatient noise in your throat that made him coo before giving you exactly what you wanted.

Good.

That was how it should have always been.

Sometimes, when you were asleep, Dex would look at the bed frame and think about the box beneath it. He should have been satisfied, but he wasn’t, because it still existed. 

And maybe, much later, you started noticing things too. You’d see the way Dex could flick a bottle cap across the room and land it in the trash without looking. The way his hands looked natural around the knives in your kitchen. 

You knew something. You weren’t stupid.

By the time you realised he was Bullseye, it was too late. By then, you already loved him. By the time you realised there was something violently wrong with him, you didn’t care enough to leave.

And the box under your bed stayed untouched, even though Dex thought about it every day.

—

The day he finally did something about it, he came back home to your apartment after a good couple of hours of donning the Bullseye mask, being a good guy and killing at least half a dozen task force agents.

Usually, when Dex came home buzzing like that, you were there.

Usually, the second he stepped through your door with that electric stillness in his body, you would look up from the couch or the kitchen counter or the bed, take one look at his face, and your eyes would change from curious to knowing immediately. You wouldn’t ask what happened. You wouldn’t ask where he had been. You would just set down whatever was in your hands and say, “Come here, baby.”

And Dex would go to you like a starving little thing. You would let him bury his face in your neck, let him grip your hips too hard as you murmured sweet, filthy little things into his ear about how he could take it out on you, how you could handle him, how he didn’t have to hold it all in himself. 

Sometimes you made him wait. Other times, you made him ask. Most of the time you let him fuck you against the nearest wall before either of you even made it to the bedroom, because you liked him like that, wrecked and keyed up and desperate enough to turn all that focus on to you. 

But that day, you weren’t home. Earlier in the morning, you had kissed him on the cheek with your keys in your hand and said, far too sweetly, “Baby, I have overtime today.”

You’d said it like it was just a schedule change. As if you hadn’t just sentenced him to four or five extra hours all alone.

Dex had been fine then, and said okay, because a normal boyfriend would. He had watched you leave, watched the door shut behind you, watched the lock turn, and told himself he could wait. He had waited for worse things. He had discipline. He had control.

But now, control was suddenly a very stupid word.

He was still buzzing. His hands felt awake. Every little sound in the apartment was a little too overstimulating, and he needed something to distract him from it: the refrigerator humming, a pipe knocking behind the wall, traffic below, the faint settling creak of the floorboards under his boots.

He stood in the middle of your apartment and breathed.

For one insane second, Dex considered going to your workplace.

He could picture your startled little gasp when he appeared where he shouldn’t be. He’d drag you to a single-cubicle bathroom, crowd you against the sink and cover your mouth with his hand because you had laughed last time, whispering, “Dex, we shouldn’t,” while your fingers undid his belt. He remembered the first time he had done it, remembered your skirt shoved up, remembered you biting his shoulder to stay quiet, remembered how smug he had felt afterward when you had gone back to work with his handprint on your hips beneath your clothes.

He could do it again.

He almost did.

But then his eyes moved toward the bedroom. Toward the bed and the space underneath it.

That fucking box.

It was such a stupid thing to notice, such a small thing. A corner of it was barely visible in the shadow under the bed, tucked away like it had nothing to fear from him. Like it hadn’t sat there while you slept beside him, while you kissed him, while you reached for him, while you let him make you fall apart and then kept that little graveyard of old pleasures under the same bed.

Dex stared at it.

The focus in him that had been looking for you found the box instead.

Before he could think better about it, he went into your bedroom, dropped to one knee, shoved his hand under the bed, and dragged the box out hard enough that it scraped against the floor. The lid snapped open under his fingers, and the dildo was on top.

Smooth, curved, stupid, fake little thing, sitting there like a dare.

Dex picked it up, and the second it was in his hand, he felt disgusted. There. There was the problem. There was something he could actually put his hands on. This. This thing. This lifeless piece of silicone that had touched you and survived.

Not anymore.

Dex had gone to the kitchen without even realizing he’d moved, grabbed a knife he recently sharpened, and came back with his breathing shallow and even. He sat on the bedroom floor with the open box between his knees and cut into the dildo like he was gutting a fish. The silicone resisted for half a second before splitting, and that drag of the knife through something shaped to imitate what he had made heat crawl up the back of his neck.

It was satisfying, mutilating this stupidly lifeless object.

His hatred didn’t care about logic. His jealousy had never needed the thing to be alive. It had only needed the thing to have touched you. That was enough to make the destruction feel intimate, corrective, and necessary.

He cut it again. Then again. Then, the rampage took shape quickly after that.

The man who folded his shirts in your drawer and rinsed his mug after coffee and kissed your forehead when you slept in too late was gone. As far as these toys were concerned, he was Bullseye.

The blade dragged through silicone again. His hands twisted. The fake curve lost its shape. He ripped it open, ruined it, carved it into useless pieces while his breath came harder and harder through his nose and his thoughts went noisy and repetitive:

It touched you.

It touched you.

It touched you.

The smaller vibrator went next. He hated how sleek it was, how obviously designed to find something inside you that belonged to him now. He slammed it against the floor once, hard enough that the crack of plastic snapped through the room. The sound felt good, so he did it again. A piece broke off and skittered under the dresser. He grabbed the rest of it and brought it down until the casing split open and its mechanical guts spilled out like it had finally been exposed for what it was: A battery. A lie.

Dex’s hand was bleeding again by then. He didn’t know if it was from the agents, the knife, the plastic, or the way he kept hitting things too hard. He didn’t care, though.

He picked up the rose toy next.

He remembered seeing it between your thighs through the window. He remembered his mouth salivating like an animal. He remembered wanting to bite through his own hand because that stupid little thing had been sitting where his mouth should have been, making you shake, making you breathe like that, ruining you without considering worship.

Dex’s fingers closed around it.

“You didn’t need this,” he muttered.

His voice sounded strange in the empty apartment.

“You had me.”

Not then, some small sane part of him might have said. Not yet. You hadn’t had him then. You hadn’t even known he was watching.

Dex ignored that thought.

He drove the knife into the gummy outer piece and tore it open. The rose came apart under his hands, the casing cracked, the wired snapped, pieces dropping into the box with the others until the whole thing looked like a little crime scene made of plastic and his own deranged need to be the only thing you ever reached for again.

The rampage didn’t make him calm.

It made him worse.

Because once he started, he couldn’t stop at the toys. He snapped cords. He ripped the satin lining out of the old box because it had held them. He crushed a bottle of silicone cleaning liquid in his fist and watched it spill slick and useless across the floor, then cursed and cleaned that part immediately because it was your floor and he was desperately trying to convince himself that he was definitely not an animal. 

By the time the box was ruined, Dex was breathing hard. The buzzing under his skin hadn’t disappeared, but it had direction now. His knuckles stung and his eyes stayed fixed on the mess in front of him with a focus so total it almost looked peaceful.

Then he gathered every broken piece.

He took the box outside behind the building, to the old metal bin near the alley where no one ever looked. He arranged the pieces, added kindling, added flame, and stood there watching as the fire caught.

The silicone melted slowly.

The dildo warped first, losing its already tattered shape, collapsing as the heat ate through it. Dex watched with his hands at his sides and felt something in his chest loosen by degrees. The vibrator casing blackened. The rose toy pieces curled and shrank into un ugly, unrecognizable puddle.

The smell was awful, chemical and bitter, crawling into the back of his throat.

Dex watched anyway. He needed to suffer through it to know he did it.

He watched until the pieces were ruined beyond saving. He watched until nothing in the bin looked like something you could have held, could have wanted, could have used. 

Only then did he go back upstairs.

Dex laughed once under his breath, not because anything was funny, but because the sound had nowhere else to go. He washed his hands in your bathroom, scrubbing blood and soot from his knuckles, cleaning under his nails with the same discipline he used after a kill. Then he dried his hands on the towel you always insisted was decorative and stood in the bedroom again.

He stared at the empty space under the bed no. There was no taking all the damage back now, not that he wanted to. But… it just felt wrong. 

Well.

Now he needed to replace the box, didn’t he?

That was what a boyfriend did after destroying his girlfriend’s private sex toy collection in a jealous, post-murder fugue state. He should replace it with something better.

There was a shop around the corner. Dex had passed it before with you and you had squeezed his hand and laughed under your breath when he looked away too quickly from the window display. It wasn’t because he was shy. Dex wasn’t shy with you anymore. He could put his mouth between your thighs and stay there until you were crying lightning and his name into the pillow, but there was something different about seeing all of it displayed in public: rows and rows of things made for people who didn’t have him.

He went anyway.

The little bell over the door chimed when he stepped inside. A woman behind the counter looked up. “Hi, let me know if you need help finding anything.”

Dex stared at her for half a second too long. “I’m fine.”

Spoiler: he wasn’t.

He walked past the first display and immediately regretted having eyes. Dildos, vibrators, and suction toys. Things in pastel colours and matte black. Things with little labels that promised intimacy from something battery-powered and dead. No. Absolutely not. He wasn’t buying you anything phallic. He wasn’t buying you anything designed to replace a tongue. He wasn’t paying money for a thing that would sit in your drawer and pretend it could do what he did.

He ignored every masturbation item with the offended dignity of a man who had, less than an hour ago, cut your dildo into pieces because it had hurt his feelings.

He wouldn’t buy you any pretty little objects that promised to “hit the right spot,” because Dex’s fingers hit the right spot. Dex’s mouth hit the right spot. Dex knew your body now, and anything that claimed it could do the same made him want to start another fire.

He moved deeper into the store, and that was when he found the restraints.

He picked up a metal pair of padded cuffs with real locks and tested the weight in his palm, expression blank. Good and sturdy. Soft enough not to hurt you unless you wanted it to. He placed them in the basket.

Then silk ties. Black, then red, then a dark blue because he imagined that one against your wrists and had to stand very still for a moment. Rope came next, the kind that would look filthy wrapped around you but would not actually hurt you. 

He found a blindfold and the thought of you wearing it made his mouth go dry. You, trusting him enough to give up sight. You, lying back and letting the world narrow down to what he was doing to you. That was good. That was right. That didn’t replace him. That made him necessary.

Into the basket.

A gag made him pause when he imagined your mouth around it and then imagined not being able to hear every little sound he worked so hard to drag out of you. He frowned at the display for a while, then chose one anyway because some nights, maybe, you would like being made quiet. Some nights, maybe, he would like the sight more than he hated losing the sounds.

Then he saw the collar.

It was not flashy, just black leather, with a small metal ring at the front. His hand closed around it as the leather bent slightly under his thumb. He pictured it at your throat. Pictured his fingers hooking under the ring to pull you close. Pictured you looking up at him with that half-angry, half-wanting expression you got when he was being too much and you liked it anyway.

Mine, he thought.

Not because he wanted to own you like an object, not exactly. Dex was too broken to make the distinction cleanly, but he knew this much: he wanted you choosing it. He wanted you holding your chin up while he fastened it around your neck. He wanted to see it on you and know you had let him put it there.

He put it in the basket.

By then, the sales assistant had started watching him with polite concern.

“Shopping for a gift?” she asked.

Dex looked down at the basket. “For my girlfriend.”

“That’s sweet,” she said, which was such a wild misunderstanding of the situation that Dex only stared at her.

“Yes,” he said finally.

Sweet. Sure.

He added a proper storage box too, black and lockable, because if he was replacing your box, he was replacing it correctly. He added massage oil after checking three labels and rejecting anything that smelled too artificial. He added a small bottle of specialised cleaner because you would complain if he didn’t, and because even in the middle of this deranged little shopping trip, Dex was still painfully, pathetically attentive to the boring practical details of loving you.

At checkout, the woman rang everything up without comment.

Dex kept his eyes forward.

He didn’t look at the wall of vibrators behind her. He didn’t look at the glossy pink boxes promising pleasure in ten different speeds, because if he looked too long, he might start thinking about the one currently melting behind your building, and if he thought about that too much, he might smile.

So he paid, took the bag, and left.

When he returned to your apartment, he arranged the new box carefully. Handcuffs tucked to the side. Rope coiled neatly. Silk ties folded. Blindfold, gag, cleaner. The collar went on top. Maybe he should’ve gotten a leash. Oh well. If you really liked it, he’ll bring you to the store and get you to choose.

Dex stared at it for a moment before he closed the lid and slid the box under the bed where the old one had been.

There.

Fixed.

Not really, of course. Not in any healthy or normal sense of the word.

But when had Dex ever been healthy or normal about you?

—

You came home tired that day

When you unlocked the door, Dex had been waiting in the kitchen, wearing one of the shirts he had slowly migrated into your drawer.

“Hi, baby,” you murmured, already smiling when you saw him.

Dex walked towards you immediately, too fast, probably. He kissed you before you could take off your coat, hands going to your waist, mouth lingering like he had been counting the hours since you left because he had. You laughed into the kiss and pushed at his chest.

“Missed me?”

“Yes,” he said, too honestly.

For a while, everything was fine. You changed out of your work clothes. Dex followed you around like a shadow, trying not to look too often at the bed. He made tea. You drank half of it. You complained about overtime, about your feet hurting, and Dex listened with a deadly seriousness most men reserved for hostage negotiations.

Then you went into the bedroom to put something away. You crouched by the bed to shove your bag out of the way, and that was when you saw the box.

A new box.

It was black, neat, expensive-looking, tucked exactly where the old one used to be.

You pulled it out slowly, already suspicious, because Dex didn’t misplace things. Dex arranged. Dex corrected. Dex replaced. When you opened the lid, you immediately saw the collar laid right on top like a dark little apology ribbon.

For a second, you said, “Oh, wow," because you genuinelyliked it.

It was gorgeous. The cuffs were padded and clearly not cheap. The silk restraints were soft. The rope was smooth, the kind that would not burn if handled properly. The collar was simple black leather, pretty in a way that made your stomach give one stupid little twist before. It was thoughtful. Dex had gone shopping with your body in mind. He had pictured your wrists. your throat, your mouth. The little sounds you made when you were overwhelmed and pretending you weren’t.

And then you remembered the empty space where your actual things should have been.

“Ummm…” You looked up. “Where’s my stuff?”

Dex stood in the doorway, too still. That was answer enough, really.

“What stuff?” he asked, badly.

You stared at him. “What?”

Because really, what the hell did he think he was gonna get away with like that?

“My old box, Dex. The one that was here. The one this is replacing.”

“You don’t use it anymore.”

You blinked. "That's not what I asked.”

Dex shifted his weight, and there was something almost innocent in the confusion on his face. Though not innocent like harmless. Dex was never harmless. He looked innocent like he genuinely couldn’t find the part of the situation where his logic had failed. You had stopped using the old toys. You had him now. He had bought you better things. Things for both of you. In his mind, he had done everything right. Why did it matter? 

“You have me,” he said, like that settled it.

You stared at him for another beat. Then your tiredness warped into irritation. “Dex. Where. Is. My. Stuff.”

His eyes flicked away.

Your stomach sank. “Did you throw it out?”

“No.”

“Did you put it in the dumpster?”

“No.”

“Please tell me you didn’t donate it.”

Dex looked appalled, like that wasn’t his modus operandi. “Of course not.”

“Then where is it?”

He hesitated and Benjamin Poindexter did not hesitate unless the answer was somehow worse than every option you had given him.

“I destroyed and burned it.”

What. The. Fuck?

For a second, you genuinely couldn’t speak.

“I…” you looked empty. “You burned it.”

His mouth tightened. “You don’t use it anymore.”

“Oh my god.” You stood up with the collar still in your hand. “I know I don't use it anymore.”

“Then why—”

“Principle, Dex!”

He frowned, and that made you want to throw the collar at his head.

“Principle,” you repeated, louder. “It was mine. I bought it. You don’t get to decide something is useless and destroy it because you personally don’t like it.”

“You don’t need them,” he said again, and he was starting to feel like a broken fucking record.

“Principle!”

“You have me.”

“Principle, Dex!”

He looked genuinely distressed now, but not because he understood. Not because he had suddenly realized that taking your things from under your bed and burning them was unhinged. He looked distressed because you were upset, because the warmth had drained out of the room and he didn’t know how to get it back without lying about the one thing he couldn’t make himself regret.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. A pathetic last ditch effort, really.

You laughed once. “No, you’re not.”

“I am.”

“You’re not.”

“I said,” he managed through gritted teeth, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry I’m mad.”

Dex went quiet. There it was.

You watched him realize you had him cornered. His face went tense, his eyes a little too dark, his mouth pressed into a hard line. Dex was sorry you looked hurt. He was sorry your voice sounded like that. He was sorry there was a chance you might pull away from him and mean it. But he wasn’t sorry the toys were gone. If he was honest, he was relieved they were gone. He was relieved they were ash. He was relieved they could never sit under your folds again.

“Say it,” you said.

His eyes lifted to yours. “Say what?”

“That you’re not sorry you burned them.”

His throat moved.

“Dex,” you scolded.

He looked away again.

You stepped closer. “Say it.”

“I’m not sorry they’re gone,” he said at last, honest and rough.

Your anger went hot and bright. “Of course you’re not.”

“You don’t need them,” he said, almost pleading now, like if he could just explain it properly, you would understand. “You don’t. You reach for me now. You wake me up when you want something. You pull my hand between your legs. You say my name. You don’t need something fake. You don’t need something that works like—” He stopped, breath hard through his nose. “You don’t need it.”

You stared at him, stunned all over again by the sheer deranged sincerity of it. “You hated it.”

His silence answered for him.

“You hated my toys.”

“They touched you,” he said, as if that explained anything.

“They were objects.”

“They touched you,” he said again, as if he repeating it enough would make you believe.

He said it like he was naming a crime. They touched you. That was the entire case. The entire verdict. In Dex’s head, the old box was not just a box. It was proof of a life before him. Proof that your body had known pleasure without him. 

“You’re jealous of fucking objects,” you said, “Do you hear yourself?”

His mouth tightened.

“You are. Oh my god, you are so fucking jealous.”

“It was made to—” He cut himself off, eyes flashing, dark and humiliated. “You used it instead of me.”

You dragged one hand down your face. “I used it before I knew you.”

Dex swallowed then started, “Then what…”

“That still doesn’t mean you get to burn it!” you exclaimed, cutting him off.

Dex looked genuinely lost for a second, and that made the whole thing worse. He had walked himself straight into a psychosexual spiral and couldn't understand why the conclusion was not obvious to you. You belonged to yourself, yes, fine, he knew that was what he was supposed to think, and he did think that, but your pleasure had become his job, his purpose, his proof that you chose him. The old toys were obsolete. They made him imagine you alone, reaching under the bed instead of reaching for him, and even the thought made his brain go static with jealousy.

“I bought you better things,” he said, smaller now.

You looked down at the box again, then back at him.

“No,” you said. “You bought things that need you.”

He went still, because you were right.

“You bought cuffs because they need your hands. Rope because it needs you to tie it. A blindfold because it makes you important. A gag because you think would look pretty on me. A collar because—” You stopped, glancing at the leather in your hand. Dex’s eyes followed the movement immediately, hungry and ashamed. “Because you wanted to put this on me.”

His breathing changed. 

“You replaced my box with yourself,” you said in deft realisation.

Dex looked at you like you had cracked open his skull and read the ugliest scroll inside it.

“I bought things for us,” he said, but his voice had gone rough.

“You bought things that couldn’t touch me unless you were there.”

His lips parted, closed. Opened again. “I wanted to be there.”

“I know.”

“I should be there.”

“Dex.”

“It should be me.”

Dex looked almost sick, eyes fixed on you, shoulders tight. He was jealous, yes, but the jealousy had gone molten now, mixing with want and shame and the awful fear that you might still want something that wasn’t him.

Your frustration gentles for half a second. Then you remembered how fucking expensive those toys were.

“Principle,” you snapped again, because you needed the word to land in his skull. “Dex, I’m not mad because I desperately needed a vibrator. I clearly don’t. I’m mad you destroyed it.”

“I replaced it.” He had the audacity, even now.

“You replaced it with what you wanted.”

“I thought you’d like it.”

“I do like it!” you shouted, then immediately hated yourself for giving him that.

Dex’s eyes flicked to the box.

His face went blank, trying not to startle you further. “I’m sorry.”

“But you don’t regret it.”

He swallowed.

You stepped closer again, and he let you.

He could be terrifying. He could be impossible. He could turn an argument about property into an existential crisis about a lifeless object touching you before him. But when you came close, when your anger had nowhere else to go but into his space, he stayed. He let you corner him. Let you press the collar flat against his chest and watch his whole body react.

“What did you think was going to happen?” you asked, voice low now. “Honestly?”

Dex’s eyes dropped to the collar.

“You thought I was going to come home, find out you burned my things, and what? Say thank you? Let you put this around my neck?”

He looked at the leather in your hand. Then at your face.

The want in him was so obvious it was almost embarrassing.

“You did,” you said because you knew. “You thought you were going to put this on me tonight.”

His breathing went uneven.

“You were going to be all sweet and insane about it, weren’t you? You were going to touch my throat and call me yours and pretend burning my stuff was just a little misunderstanding because the new box is prettier.”

Dex said nothing.

“No,” you said.

He looked up.

“You don’t get to do that,” you told him.

Disappointment flashed behind his eyes, then confusion. Then that needy, miserable focus again, like he didn;’t know where the scene was going anymore but he still wanted to follow you there.

You stepped forward until he backed into the doorframe.

“You don’t get to burn my things and reward yourself,” you said, pressing the collar higher against his chest, up toward his neck. “You don’t get to make this about what you want.”

Dex’s throat bobbed. “What are you doing?”

You smiled but it was slightly sadistic. “What do you think?”

His eyes dropped to the collar again. For one second, he genuinely didn't understand.

Then you lifted it to his throat, and he froze.

His brain went haywire so visibly you could almost see the wires sparking behind his eyes. He had thought about that collar on you. He had probably thought about it all afternoon. He had imagined his fingers hooking beneath the ring to pull you close. He had built the whole fantasy around possession moving outward from him to you, about you wearing the thing he chose, about you looking up at him and letting him see proof that he had replaced everything in your life before him.

But now your hands were at his neck. Now the leather was against his skin. Now your fingers were brushing the vulnerable place under his jaw, and the fantasy inverted so violently he looked like he was falling into an unpredictable void of your lust.

“Oh,” he breathed.

You paused with the buckle still loose.

Dex’s eyes had gone wide and dark, his mouth parted, all his vicious certainty suddenly gone. He looked overwhelmed by the speed of his own neediness. The collar was supposed to mean you were his, in that fucked-up symbolic language he had written in his head. But with you fastening it around him, with your furious hands at his throat, with your body pinning him in place without force, it meant he was yours.

Oh. He knew the difference now.

“Oh my god,” you murmured, studying his now half-lidded eyes. “You like this.”

His lashes fluttered once.

“Dex,” you said, squeezing his cheeks together with one hand. He swallowed against the leather as you buckled it with your other hand.

The tiny click sounded obscene in the otherwise quiet room.

His eyes closed for half a second, and his whole body seemed to shudder inward. When he opened his eyes again, he looked wrecked.

“Color?” you asked. 

Oh.

“Green,” he managed. Because of course it was. 

You pretended not to be pleased as you hooked two fingers through the ring. Dex stared at your hand. You tugged once.

It was barely anything, but he followed immediately.

The sight of it made your anger burn hotter and lower at the same time. Benjamin Poindexter, following one small pull at his throat like his body had decided before his pride could argue. All that violence, all that jealousy, all that insane possessive logic. And here he was, looking at you like punishment was the only language he fully understood.

You pulled him out of the bedroom by the collar, and into the living room, where the good chairs were. 

He looked confused and turned on and miserable, which was exactly what you wanted him to be. He still didn’t fully understand the principle. Fine. You would make him understand by the end of the night.

“Strip.”

He obeyed fast.

You watched the fabric hit the floor and felt your mouth go dry despite yourself. He was all lean muscle and restrained violence, chest rising and falling. It should have been absurd. But it was also fucking unfair how good he looked, how the leather made him seem both more dangerous and more helpless, how his eyes stayed locked on you like he would do anything if you kept looking at him like that.

“Don’t look so eager,” you said.

His jaw flexed. “You put it on me.”

“You bought it.”

“For you.”

“Funny how that worked out.”

Dex’s eyes darkened.

You pushed him back into the chair by the window, the one you usually curled up in with a book. He sat because he wanted you to push him, because being handled by you was the closest thing to absolution he understood. You had the cuffs on your other hand, the ones he had imagined around your wrists, and his gaze followed them with naked hunger.

“Hands behind the chair.”

He hesitated, but because he did not want to. He hesitated because some stubborn, spiraling part of him was still stuck on the same loop, still fighting from inside his own head. He had done everything right. He had removed what you didn’t need. He had bought better things, and you were clearly using them now. Why were you still angry? Why did you still want the old ones? Why wasn’t this enough?

You leaned down, holding the collar ring between two fingers. “Dex.”

His eyes snapped to yours.

“I said hands behind the chair,” he snapped.

This time, he obeyed.

The cuffs clicked shut around his wrists one after the other. Dex tested them once, shoulders pulling tight, then went still, his chest rising hard beneath the collar. You stood in front of him with the key in your palm and watched his eyes move over you, your work clothes, your tired face, your angry mouth. He looked like being denied forgiveness was hurting him. He looked like it was making him harder to breathe.

You stepped closer, close enough that his knees bracketed your legs, close enough that he had to tilt his head back to keep looking at you. The collar put his throat on display.  You could see every swallow, every uneven breath, every tiny betrayal of his body when you touched the ring again.

“I’m not letting you go,” you said.

His lips parted.

“Not until you promise me you’ll buy me new ones.”

Dex’s face changed immediately.

“No.”

You almost laughed. “Excuse me?”

“No.”

You smiled as if he had just fallen into your trap. “Then I guess you’re not going anywhere.”

“No. No, no, no.” The words started coming faster, tumbling out of him with a desperation that made his voice crack. “No, you don’t need them. You don’t need those. You have me. I’m here. I’m right here.”

You narrowed your eyes, but your anger snagged on the way he said it. He was not being smug now. He wasn’t calm, or even really arguing anymore. His wrists pulled once against the cuffs, metal clicking behind the chair, and he looked almost startled by his own helplessness before his eyes found yours again.

“Use me,” he said.

Your stomach tightened. “Dex.”

“Use me,” he repeated, rougher now, pleading. “You don’t need them. You don’t need it. Use me. I’ll do it. I’ll be good. I’ll be so good. Just don’t make me buy you something that replaces me.”

“No one said you were replaceable,” you frowned

“You want them back.”

“Because they were mine.”

“You want them back,” he said again, like he couldn’t hear the difference. “You want them back, but I’m right here.”

You grabbed his face, fingers firm on his jaw, and kissed him before he could say it again. It was supposed to shut him up. It did, for maybe half a second. Then Dex made a sound into your mouth, needy and broken, and started kissing you back like he was trying to climb out of his own skin. His hands flexed uselessly behind the chair. The collar pressed into your fingers when you tugged him closer, and his whole body followed the pull so immediately that heat between you legs through your anger.

You kissed him again. And again. And again, until his breathing was wrecked and his mouth was swollen and his begs had turned into a whine against your lips.

“No,” he whispered when you pulled away. “No, baby, please. Don’t make me. Don’t make me buy those. Use me. Please use me.”

“You don’t get to beg your way out of consequences.”

“I’m not,” he said, even though he absolutely was. “I’m giving you something better.”

“You are giving me a headache.”

“I’m giving you I.”

It shouldn’t have made your heart jump. It shouldn;t have made you look down at him, collared and cuffed and half out of his mind, and think that maybe the worst part was not that Dex was insane. It was that he was insane in ways that made you want to love him more

You stepped back.

Dex’s eyes followed you immediately.

“You want me to use you?” you asked.

“Yes.”

“You want to be useful?”

“Yes.”

“Then watch.”

His face changed into a flicker of confusion first, then anticipation, then frustration when you turned away from him and started unbuttoning your shirt.

Dex went silent so abruptly it almost made you smile. His eyes were locked on your fingers, on each button sliding free, on the thin strip of skin appearing beneath the fabric.

You stripped in front of him because you were angry and petty and tired of him thinking his jealousy got to be the only thing in the room. Your shirt fell to the floor. Then your trousers. Your bra. Your underwear. Dex watched every inch of you like it hurt him not to touch, his wrists straining once behind the chair before he forced himself still.

Dex’s mouth opened, as if he was getting exactly what he wanted, but then you walked to the couch and picked up one of the decorative pillows, the cotton one you usually shoved behind your back when you watched TV. 

Dex’s eyes shifted again as realization crept in.

“No,” he said.

You arched a brow.

His breathing changed. “No.”

“Oh?” You held the pillow in between your legs, watching his eyes go dark and frantic. “You don’t like this?”

“Don’t.”

“You were jealous of plastic, baby. Surely you’re not jealous of a pillow too.”

Dex made a sound that was almost a growl and almost a whine. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t make it sound stupid.”

“It is stupid.” You sank down to the floor in front of him, grinding down on the cushion keeping your eyes on him. “You burned my toys because you were jealous of objects. You’re sitting there in a collar you bought for me because you couldn’t handle a vibrator existing under my bed. And now you’re looking at this pillow like you’re going to kill it.”

His face twisted.

You had meant it to be teasing. Cruel, yes, but controlled. A punishment, a lesson, proof of how ridiculous he was being. But when you settled over the pillow and shifted your hips once, Dex’s reaction was so immediate and visceral that the room seemed to tilt around it.

He didn’t look angry anymore.

He looked distressed.

His wrists jerked against the cuffs, the chair creaking under the force, and his breath punched out of him like he had been hit. You saw his brain do the horrible thing it always did, watched him turn a pillow into another rival, another thing touching you, another thing getting what he wanted while he sat there forced to watch.

“Dex,” you said, but you moved again without thinking. 

His whole body flinched.

“No,” he choked. “No, no, no, no, please.”

You froze.

He was staring at you, eyes wet now, breath coming too fast. He wanted to obey. He wanted to be punished. He wanted to be good. But he also could not bear the sight of you taking pleasure from anything that wasn’t him, even in play, even as a punishment.

“Baby,” you said carefully, uncertain now.

Dex shook his head, almost violently. “Red.”

Oh.

Just like that, you stopped. 

Neither of you had ever used that safeword before, but you were glad he did.

You were off the pillow almost immediately, scrambling to him. 

“Oh,” you whispered. “Oh, fuck, baby, I’m sorry..”

Dex’s gaze snapped to you.

You dropped in front of him, hands going to his face first because you needed him looking at you. His skin was hot under your palms. His eyes were wet, not fully crying yet but close enough. He looked wrecked, and not playfully desperate like usual, not turned on in that cocky way he got when he thought he had pushed you into giving him what he wanted. The sight of you using anything else, even a pillow, even as a punishment, had wrecked him.

“You actually hate it,” you said softly, almost to yourself. “You actually hate seeing that.”

He nodded pathetically. “Mmmhmm.”

“You said you hated the toys,” you murmured, thumb brushing over his cheek. “I thought you were being insane. I mean, you are being insane, but I didn’t realize it was hurting you like this.”

Dex looked away, ashamed, furious, overwhelmed by being understood too clearly. You leaned in and wrapped your arms around him carefully, pressing your face into his neck. For a second, he didn't move. Then his whole body sagged into you as much as the cuffs allowed, breath trembling against your shoulder, face turning blindly toward your warmth.

“We’re done,” you said. “I’m taking these off.”

You reached behind his neck for the collar first, but the moment your fingers found the buckle, Dex jerked his head to the side.

“Dex.”

“Green,” he said quickly.

You froze.

His voice was rough and wet, the word scraping out of him like he had dragged it up from somewhere raw. “Green.”

“You just said…”

“I know, I know, but—” He swallowed hard, throat shifting against the collar. “Green as long as you use me.”

Your breath caught.

Dex looked at you then, fully, and the tears finally slipped over. His face twisted with it, like he hated himself for crying but couldn’t stop. “Not the pillow. Me. Use me. Please. I don’t want to stop if it’s me.”

“Dex.”

“I need this,” he said, and it came out so naked that it hurt. “I need to know I’m better than a piece of plastic.”

Fuck.

“Oh, baby.” You cupped his face again, thumbs catching the tears before they could reach his mouth.. “I know you are. Of course you are.”

“Then why are you still mad?”

The question came out small, almost confused. Because there it was again: the part of him that truly did not understand. The part of him that had made a perfect little equation in his head and couldn't see where it failed. If he was better, why did you care? If you had him, why did the burned things matter?

You sighed, pressing your forehead to his. “Because they were mine.”

Dex shut his eyes.

You felt him breathe, shaky and uneven.

“I’m yours, too.” he whispered.

Your whole body went still.

Fuck fuck fuck. You were going to fold again, were you?

Dex opened his eyes. Damp lashes, ruined mouth, collar snug against his throat. He looked up at you like that was the only answer he had, the only thing he knew how to offer in return. I’m yours, that could balance the scales. Like giving himself over completely should make up for taking the box from you.

You should have argued. Instead, you kissed him.

“Yes,” you whispered against his mouth. “You are.”

Dex made a broken sound, and then he was kissing you back as much as the cuffs allowed, desperate and clumsy, trying to lean into you with his wrists still locked behind the chair. His mouth tasted like salt and need. You kissed him slowly at first, grounding him, giving him something real to focus on that was not the pillow, not the old toys, not the psychosexual spiral eating itself alive inside his head.

“Color,” you murmured.

“Green,” he said instantly.

“Not because you think I’ll be mad if you say red.”

“Green,” he repeated, steadier this time. Your hand slid down to the collar ring, and his breath hitched.

You kissed him until his begging started to lose shape.

It wasn’t really words anymore, just broken little sounds against your mouth, the scrape of his breath, the helpless pull of his wrists against the cuffs every time you shifted in his lap. Dex kept trying to follow you, kept trying to give you more than his body was allowed to give. 

Your hand slipped between you, hiking in his thighs, meaning to wrap around him, to give him pleasure with your fingers. 

Dex jerked so hard the cuffs clicked behind the chair.

“No,” he gasped into your mouth.

You froze immediately. “Color?”

“Green,” he said, frantic. “So fucking green, green, I just— not like that. Please, baby, not like that.”

You pulled back enough to look at him. His eyes were wet, pupils blown black, his lips swollen from kissing. The collar sat snug around his throat, rising and falling with every shaky breath.

“Then what do you want?”

Dex swallowed, and the motion pressed against the leather. “Use me.”

Your breath caught.

He looked ashamed of how badly he needed it and too desperate to hide. “Please. I don’t want your hand. I don’t want anything else. I want you on me. I want you to take it from me. I want you to ride me. I want to be what you use.”

“Oh,” you whispered.

His whole face changed at that, like the understanding alone almost broke him.

You climbed into his lap slowly, one knee on either side of his thighs, watching him fight himself not to move. He was already hard beneath you, hot and straining, his body tense with the effort of staying still while you settled over him. His hands flexed uselessly behind the chair. He wanted to touch you so badly it looked like pain.

You took the ring of the collar between two fingers and pulled his face up to yours.

“You sure want me to take what I need from you?”

“Yes,” he breathed, almost frantic now. “Yes, baby. Please. I can do it. I can be good. I can be so good for you.”

Oh.

Then you sank down onto him, so slowly that both of you stopped breathing.

Dex’s head fell back against the chair, mouth open, the sound that left him too raw to be pretty. You felt him stretch you open inch by inch, felt the heat and weight of him filling you so completely that your own voice broke before you could stop it. You had to stop halfway down, fingers tightening around the collar ring, forehead dropping toward his as your body adjusted to his stretch.

“Fuck,” you whispered.

Dex’s eyes opened at once, glassy and wild. “Say it.”

You blinked, barely able to think. “What?”

His voice cracked. “Say I’m better.”

Your heat clenched around him. “Dex.”

“Please,” he begged. “Please, b-baby. Tell me. Tell me I’m better than it.”

You should have scolded him. You should have told him again that this wasn't the point, that you were still angry, that he did not get to turn this into another deranged little competition. But then you sank the rest of the way down, taking him fully, and Dex made a sound so broken and grateful that your whole body went hot.

“You’re better,” you breathed.

He shuddered beneath you, hard enough to make the chair creak. “Again.”

You moved your hips once, slow and deep, and his entire body strained against the cuffs. “You’re way fucking better.”

Dex’s eyes fluttered, his breathing turning ragged. “Again. Please. Again, baby, tell me again.”

So you did.

You started riding him properly, lifting yourself up and sinking back down, bouncing on his length until neither of you could pretend this wasn’t affecting your train of thought. The cuffs rattled behind the chair every time he fought the urge to grab your hips. His thighs flexed under yours, his chest rising too fast, his throat exposed beneath the collar every time you tugged the ring and made him look at you.

“You’re better,” you said, breathless, riding him harder. “You’re better than it.”

Dex groaned, loud and wrecked. “Yes. Yes, fuck, yes.”

“You’re better than the stupid, the vibrator, the rose toy.”

His face fell with pleasure and humiliation, eyes wet, mouth open like every word was going straight through him.

“Better than the box,” you panted. “Better than anything under my bed.”

“Anything,” he echoed, desperate. “Anything. Say anything.”

“You’re so needy,” you whispered, but you were not much better. You were moving faster now, chasing the way he filled you, the way he looked under you, collared and cuffed and entirely yours. “You’re so fucking jealous, baby.”

“I know,” he gasped. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, just— fuck, don’t stop.”

You grabbed his jaw and kissed him,  barely a kiss at all with the way both of you were breathing. Dex tried to follow your mouth when you pulled back. 

“Look at you,” you murmured. “You just want me to choose you, dont’cha?”

His eyes locked on yours.

You rode him harder, your voice breaking as the pleasure started making your thoughts blur. “You’re better than anything. Better than anything I could buy. Better than anything I could touch.”

Dex looked like he was going to fall apart beneath you.

“Again,” he begged. “Please, again.”

“You’re better than anything,” you gasped, fingers tight in the collar. “Or anyone.”

Dex stopped thrusting his hips up so abruptly you yelped into a halt.

You barely had time to catch your breath before his eyes opened and darkened. “Anyone?”

Your stomach dropped.

It was one word. One stupid word you had said without thinking because you were dizzy and full of him, because Dex had begged you to tell him he was better and you had.

Oh. Fuck.

“Dex,” you said carefully. “No.”

His muscles flexed. “No?”

“No. We can’t do this.”

He stared at you, still in his lap, warm and shaking from the way you had been riding him. Still close enough to feel how badly he wanted to move, how hard he was holding himself back by force alone.

“Dex,” you tried again, softer this time.

His eyes did not move from your face. “Uncuff me.”

It should have scared you, how fast he switched.

One second, he was pliant beneath you, desperate to be used. The next, his voice had gone flat and enraged, eyes narrowing like a predator. 

But it was still Dex. Your Dex. He would never hurt you.

“Color?” you asked.

“Green,” he said immediately. Then, rougher and impatient, “Uncuff me.”

Your hands were not steady when you reached for the keys, then behind him, squirming because he was still inside you, and his size wasn’t making it easy for you to jostle around like that. 

The cuffs clicked open, and for a second, he only trailed his hands up your thighs he was so gentle, rubbing circles on your sweat-slicked skin.

“I know you had someone before me,” he said.

He knew, because Dex was jealous, not delusional.

He knew you had a life before him, knew there had been men before him, had even heard your friend’s tinny voice over the phone once saying, I met your crazy ex today? while you laughed awkwardly and changed the subject too quickly. He had stood in your kitchen with his hand frozen around a mug, filing that away in some dark corner of his mind.

But knowing was one thing. Hearing you say “anyone” while he was still inside you and your hand was tight in the collar he still wore for you, was another thing entirely. 

Your face went hot. “Obviously.”

“How many?”

“Dex.”

“How many?”

You swallowed. “I’m not talking about my exes while we’re having sex.”

His hand went up to the collar ring, not to pull it off. To press your fingers there. To make sure you were holding it right.

“How many?” he asked again, and this time his voice was demanding.

You tried to climb off him. “Baby, no. You don’t want this.”

Dex moved so fast you barely registered it.

One second you were above him, the next he had you up and over his shoulder, your breath punched out of you in a shocked little yelp. The room tilted. Your hands grabbed at his back, his waist, anything. Then he was putting you down on the couch, bending you over the arm with one hand between your shoulder blades, still wearing the collar. 

“Eyes forward,” he said.

Your thighs clenched at the sound of his voice. “Dex—”

“Eyes forward.”

You hated that you listened. You that your body shivered. 

He pressed in behind you, close enough that he made your knees weak all over again. One hand slid over your hip, shaking with restraint, almost tender before it turned possessive. The other covered kept your ass up for him to line up.  “Tell me how many.”

You exhaled hard. “Three.”

Dex went silent.

Then, softly, terribly, he echoed it, “Three.”

“Before you,” you snapped, trying to sound angry even though your voice was already ruined. “Before I even knew you like this. Before us. Dex, this is stupid.”

He laughed once. It sounded broken. “Names.”

“No.”

“Full names.”

“No, I’m not giving you their full names so you can go insane and hunt them down.”

His breath hitched behind you.

Oh.

That was not the wrong thing to say. That was the worst thing to say. Because now he had pictured it. Now some awful part of him had lit up at the thought, and you felt his body go harder against yours, felt the way his grip tightened like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin.

“Fine,” he said, trying so hard to compromise. “First names.”

“You don’t want those either.”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t,” you whined, “You think you do because you’re jealous and insane and horny and trying to hurt your own feelings.”

His forehead dropped between your shoulder blades.

For one second, he just breathed there, shaking. When he spoke again, his voice was wet.

“First names,” he whispered. “And what was wrong with them.”

He knew it would hurt. Dex wasn’t confused about that. He was not so far gone that he thought hearing their names would make him feel better. He knew it would put pictures in his head he would never be able to scrape out. He knew he would imagine their hands, their mouths, their stupid little claims on you. He knew every detail you gave him would become a weapon turned inward first, he wanted you to press this emotional knife into his ribs just to see if the pain proved how much he loved you.

But that was exactly why he needed it.

Dex didn’t know how to be reassured gently. Soft comfort slid off him too easily. He needed the wound opened first. Needed to be shown the ugliest picture and survive it. It was emotional masochism dressed up as jealousy, and the sickest part was that he knew. He wanted you to hurt him with the truth so your praise would feel earned when it came after.

“Tell me,” he said again, voice breaking at the edges.

“Dex…”

“I need to know,” he said, and the desperation in it cut through you. “I need to know what they did wrong. I need to know I’m better. I need you to say it while I’m fuckin’ deep inside you, while you’re fuckin’ clenching me, baby please.”

You closed your eyes.

His mouth pressed to your back. It was almost a kiss. Almost an apology. Then he pushed into you again, and the sound that tore out of you was so loud it made your own face burn.

Dex groaned behind you, ugly and wrecked. “Tell me.”

You gripped the couch cushion, because fuck it. What the fuck did you owe them anyway?

“Finn.”

His hips snapped forward harder.

You cried out, body jolting against the couch.

Dex groaned like the name had hurt him exactly the way he wanted it to. “What was wrong with him?”

“His nails,” you gasped, already struggling to keep your voice steady. “College boyfriend. His nails were always too long and when he fingered, it hurt. I took it, but then he blamed me when I bled.”

Dex’s hand slid over your stomach, pulling you back into him, his breath breaking against your skin.

“Careless,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“I’m not careless.”

“No,” you said quickly. “No, baby, you’re not.”

“Say I’m better.”

“You’re better.”

He thrust harder, and your answer broke apart into a moan.

“Say it properly.”

“You’re better than Finn,” you choked out. “You’re so much better than him.”

Dex shuddered and you felt it in his chest, in his grip, in the way his mouth dragged wetly over your back.

He was crying, you realised, when you felt hotlittle drops against your spine while he kept fucking you like jealousy had turned him feral. Dominant and ruined at once, giving orders while crying because he had asked for the knife and now wanted you to twist it.

“Next,” he said.

“Dex,” you moaned, shaking your head. “Please.”

“Say red and I’ll —fuck! — stop. Until then…” His fingers tightened around your hip. “Next.”

You tried to breathe. You tried to remember why this was a bad idea. You remember that you didn’t want your stupid dickhead exes in the room with you while Dex was behind you, collared, crying, and pounding into you like every name was a target he needed to hit.

“Matteo,” you managed.

Dex’s rhythm stumbled for half a second, then came back harder.

You sobbed his name.

“What was wrong with him?”

“You don’t want this one,” you managed to hiccup.

“Yes, I do.”

“No, baby. You really don’t.”

He laughed, but it wasn’t amused. He moaned again as he managed, “Tell me.”

“He was a creep,” you finally said, the words scraping out of you. “From my old job. He shared p-private pictures. With his friends.”

Dex stopped breathing, his forehead hit your back again.

“Oh,” he whispered.

It was horrible. 

You felt the tears fall faster now, sliding down your skin while his hand trembled on your waist. For all his violence, this was the part that broke him. Someone had treated you like something to pass around. Someone had treated you like you were anything less than sacred.

“Dex,” you warned softly, because you could feel him thinking.

Dex made a small, broken sound, then moved again, harder, like he could fuck the memory out of your body. You gasped, eyes rolling back. 

“He didn’t deserve to look at you,” Dex said, voice shaking.

“No,” you breathed.

“He didn’t deserve anything from you.”

“No.”

His tears kept falling, pathetic and hot against your spine, even as his body stayed rough behind yours. He had asked for this. He had wanted the wound. Now he was bleeding into it.

“Tell me I’m better,” he begged.

“You’re better than him,” you said quickly, before he could ask, before he could spiral too far away from you. “You’re better, Dex. You don’t make me feel like I’m just here to be shown off. You make me feel wanted.”

He sobbed against your back.

“Again.”

“You’re better than Matteo.”

Harder.

“You’re better than him.”

Harder.

“You’re better because you actually care if I want it,” you gasped, barely able to speak now. “Because you ask. Because you listen. Because even when you’re like this, even when you’re out of your fucking mind, you still need me to want it, too.”

Dex’s whole body jerked.

“Next,” he choked.

You shook your head, cheek pressed to the couch cushion, eyes wet now too. “Dex, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I hate this.”

“Say red, then.”

You couldn’t bring yourself to. Because he was right. You might pretend to hate this, but fuck, you were sick. 

Sick enough for this to get you off. 

You managed a pathetic little, “g-green.”

His breath hitched, satisfied. “Thought so.”

He liked it, too. He liked it like self-punishment. Liked it because it hurt. 

“Last one,” he whispered.

You swallowed around a moan. “Colin.”

Dex’s hips snapped into you so hard you cried out.

The hand on your hip slid up to your chest, holding you back against him as he bent over you, making the most pathetic sound you had ever heard from him.

“What—hnghhh—  was wrong with Colin?”

“He was possessive,” you said, barely coherent. “But not like you.”

Dex went rigid. “Like w-what, then?”

“Shit,” you gasped. “He was controlling. Mean. He wanted to own me, but he didn’t love me. Not like you. He didn’t want to be good for me. He j-just wanted to win.”

Dex was sobbing now.

You could hear it. Feel it. His mouth was pressed to your shoulder, his breath hitching, tears smearing over your skin while his body kept driving into yours with desperate, punishing force. He had you pinned beneath him, yes. He was the one moving you, the one holding you, the one demanding answers. But the collar was still around his throat, and you now managed to trail your hand up and grab the ring. You held the fucking collar and tugged, and he was surprised he didn’t come then and there as he gasped, breaking a little more.

“I’m not him,” he said.

“No.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, t-too.”

“I’d never—” His voice cracked. “I’d never make you feel like that.”

“I know, baby.”

“Tell me.”

“You’re better than Colin.”

His rhythm faltered. “Tell me why.”

“Because you’re mine,” you moaned. “Because you— fuck!— want to be mine. Because you don’t just want to have me, you want me to choose you. You want t-to be useful. You want to be good— hmphh— to me.”

Dex sobbed so hard his hips stuttered.

“Yes,” he gasped. “Yes, fuck, yes.”

“You’re better than all of them.”

“Again.”

“You’re better than Finn.”

He groaned.

“Better than Matteo.”

His grip tightened.

“Better than Colin.”

He started breaking, cracks building through him in these beautiful little fractures. Your pleasure was already rising too fast, your thighs trembling, your voice gone thin and helpless beneath him.

“Dex!” you cried.

“I know,” he whispered, frantic and wet. “I know, baby. I know. I’ve got you. Tell me again.”

“You’re better,” you sobbed. “You’re better than anyone. Anything, Dex, anyone.”

He came with your hand fisted in his collar.

The pull of it dragged a sound out of him that was almost a sob and almost your name, his whole body folding over yours as he spilled into you, shaking so hard you felt it everywhere. You could hear the broken relief in his voice as he kept whispering yours, yours, yours like he could make himself believe it if he said it enough.

That was what tipped you over, when your orgasm hit so hard your whole body seized beneath him.

You cried out into the couch, fingers yanking the collar ring without meaning to, and Dex choked behind you, shuddering again like the pull had gone straight through him. Pleasure tore through you in waves, hot and blinding, your legs trembling, your voice breaking on his name until it didn’t even sound like a word anymore.

Dex held you through it, crying into your back like he was the one who had been ruined.

When it finally ebbed, he stayed folded over you, his mouth pressed between your shoulder blades, breath ragged. Your hand was still caught in the ring of the collar.

For a long moment, neither of you moved.

The couch was too small for both of you, but Dex made it work because Dex always made himself fit wherever you needed him. 

His body was still trembling in little aftershocks, but the violent edge had burned out of him. What remained was his mouth against your shoulder, his hand spread over your stomach, his thumb moving in slow, soothing circles like he was trying to apologize through touch before words.

You could feel the little ring of the collar cool against your wrist when his head dipped and nuzzled into the space between your neck and shoulder. 

Fifteen minutes later.He wasn’t crying anymore. His lashes were damp, his breathing uneven, but he had settled down. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though he still wasn’t sure for what.

You were too boneless to answer properly. Your whole body felt heavy and melted into the cushions, your skin still humming everywhere he had touched you. You only reached back, clumsy and tired, and found his hand.

Only then did you realise that it was red from how hard he was pulling at the handcuffs. Because despite the fuzzy liner, it was still metal underneath.

Dex threaded his fingers through yours immediately. That was answer enough for him.

He kissed your shoulder again. Then the back of your neck. Then your cheek when you turned your head just slightly. 

These were small, careful kisses. Sweet, almost shy.

His voice stayed low when he spoke again. “I’ll be good.”

You closed your eyes.

The jealousy had calmed, but he still needed to be chosen. 

Dex held you like service. Like worship. Like if he could keep you warm enough and safe enough, maybe it would balance out everything else he was.

His hand slid over your side, checking without asking. He smoothed your skin gently over your hip and your thigh. His mouth touched the back of your shoulder, and his breath relaxed when you relaxed into him instead of pulling away.

You should have been angry.

You were angry, maybe, somewhere far away. Obviously, there were things to say later. Things about boundaries and consequences and the fact that Benjamin Poindexter could not solve every insecurity by turning it into sex so absolute it felt like a salvation. 

But right now, Dex was curled around you like a guard dog who had been allowed into bed after making a big mistake, and you couldn’t bring yourself to bring it up.

His big arms were careful around your body, face pressed to your skin. The collar still snug at his throat because he had not asked you to take it off, because maybe he liked the reminder that even when he got like that, he was still yours.

Your fingers brushed the ring lazily.

Dex melted immediately.

“Oh, what the hell,” you mumbled with a hazy smile, mostly into the couch cushion. “I don’t need those toys anyway.”

Dex tried not to look smug, but you felt it. 

You knew what that little hitch of breath meant, the way his mouth pressed to your shoulder and stayed there, hiding whatever painfully pleased expression had crossed his face. 

You didn't have the strength to scold him for it.

He kissed your shoulder again, grateful this time.

Still, you knew you had just signed a death warrant for Finn, Matteo, and Collin.

You hadn’t given Dex their full names, but Dex had heard enough. He could find people with less. He had found you, hadn’t he? 

You knew they were as good as dead. And if Dex could destroy and burn your old toys with that much passion, you couldn’t imagine what he would do to living men who had actually hurt you. Whatever came for them would not be quick or merciful. You knew that.

You shouldn’t want that.

On principle, you shouldn’t want that.

On the principle that you were better than them, that you were obviously morally superior, that you should not want three men dead just because they had once made you feel small, even if they deserved it.

But then Dex nuzzled closer in his devotion. His lips brushed your shoulder, and even half-conscious, he murmured your name like a prayer. His hand slipped over your stomach, protective now, his thumb moving in small circles like he was still trying to soothe you from your last.

You looked down at him and thought, I hope you make them beg.

Oh, principles.

Who needed those anyway?

—end.

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Dex is only able to fall into deep sleep when he is assured that you are in his orbit, heavy arms locked over your waist or your chest, with a pull that’s stronger than an ocean’s current. Holds you like an anchor, a crushing heaviness that refuses to let go the moment you fall asleep in his embrace. Don’t be surprised, he is a man who has been deprived and hungers for physical contact, immediately latching onto you the moment you are within his range. The feeling of your back against his bare chest makes him euphoric and trust that he will keep squeezing you close to him until he feels there is no longer any space between the two of you, until your body familiarizes with the shape of his embrace.

Even as you drift off peacefully to your dreams (which he hopes are about him), he showers you with his never-ending affection by pressing kisses to any skin he could reach, your neck, your shoulders, your jaw. His thumb pressing patterns on your wrist and your cheek as he inhales the scent of your signature shampoo. His mind constantly circles on you, his light, the most important person in his gloomy life, he would do anything and kill anyone for you. Those restless thoughts only go quiet from the physical proof that you’re here, in his bed, in his space, that you continue to choose to be here despite the fragile mess that he is behind his controlled exterior.

❦ Matthew Murdock

Reverent. Matt clutches you to his chest like a devotee holding rosary. Despite your initial protests, he will pull you to rest on top of him, nevermind the lingering bruises on his chest or the small cuts on his abdomen, he’ll insist that those will heal anyways. He’s well aware that he’s injured, so what? What he needs is you, your presence and the peace that you bring him in these mere hours he is blessed with before he gives himself to the city again.

He ends your sentences before you complain because the weight of you on top of him brings him immense comfort, the rarest kind, a solace he’s been seeking since the day he met you. The city is too loud, overwhelming if he doesn’t tune out his senses. But with you resting your head on his hard chest, his defined arms over your back, he feels like he found heaven on earth. . . We know this man uses his heightened senses, not just to listen past the walls of your bedroom for any looming danger in the darkness that threatens your safety but also to ground him. He goes quiet, only to direct his entire senses on your warmth, your heavenly scent and the slight inhales and exhales as you sleep. You don’t hear how many times he whispers “I love you” like a prayer while you continue to slumber.

Can only fall asleep from the calm pattern of your heart. To him, your pulse is a rhythm that sounds like serenity. It’s a pattern he’s most familiar with, the same way he learned the prayers. He unashamedly listens to your heartbeat every night he is granted to spend with you. His large hand cradling the back of your head, stroking your hair until he falls asleep with the most content smile in his face, knowing that your heart beats only for him.

❦ Buck Cashman

Starved. Buck presents himself to be someone so collected and calm, but deep down he has been yearning to have someone to call home. He carries a quiet arrogance knowing he’s the best in his job and he’s not oblivious to the fact he carries a charm which he doesn’t bother to take advantage of when it comes to others who aren’t you. As awful as the truth may be, he is a lonely man because of his work. Because of that, he comes home to you, hungry, craving for something only you can fill. He isn’t new to physical affairs, yet Buck holds you like a man who’s been starved of an embrace for decades.

He wasn’t like others who enjoy sleeping, he only does it because it is the body’s natural requirement for him in order to perform his best. Until you arrived and disrupted that concept, now he looks forward to every night (even the early mornings) whenever he gets to have you in his side. Indulging in sleep like a greedy man only because he gets to have you with him. It never fails to surprise him whenever you fall asleep in his embrace, how someone as dangerous as him makes you feel so safe. He feels a certain triumph, nearing on possessiveness, in being the only one who gets to see you in this state.

He could never grow bored of you. In fact, watching you fall asleep is his favorite activity, a few minutes he enjoys for himself before he closes his eyes. Hiding your face to his chest while he continues his playful gestures, twirling your hair, teasing your arms with feather-light touches from the tips of his fingers, chuckling to himself when it makes you shudder in your sleep. How adorable. He simply can’t get enough of you as he’s fighting the urge to deliciously bite your exposed shoulder. If only the hours of the night lasts much longer, he wouldn’t complain at all if he gets to sleep more next to you.

Dex had gone white.

Then he had walked very calmly into the bathroom with one hand over his mouth and vomited until his ribs hurt.

Because yes, he loved you too.

He loved you so badly it felt like his body had mistaken affection for a terminal illness. He loved you until being away from you made his skin crawl. He loved you so much it made him cruel to himself. He loved you so much he wanted to crawl out of his own skin because wanting to keep you felt like a crime. He had wanted to be loved his whole miserable life, and then when you came along and loved him, he wouldn’t fucking trust it.

Because there was no way you loved him back.

Not really.

Not if you were whole.

Not if he had not done something to you first.

Because the first time you met, he had broken into your apartment. After all, your window had the perfect sightline into the building across the street.

Because you had caught him in your living room with a mug in your hand and sleep shorts riding high on your thighs, and he had looked at you like you were a small obstacle.

“What the fuck—”

His hand covered your mouth before you could get any louder.

“I’m sorry,” he said, genuinely, because he was one of the good guys now. “I just gotta do this one thing.”

You bit his palm.

He hissed, then caught your wrist and handcuffed you to the exposed water pipe under your kitchen sink.

He flexed his bitten hand once. “I said sorry.”

You glared up at him.

That day, you should have screamed yourself hoarse.

Instead, you had talked for six straight hours. 

You. Fucking. Yapped. 

Like a pomeranian on cocaine.

You had insulted his boots, his posture, his insane audacity. You demanded coffee. You asked if the gun was compensating for something (you later found out it was definitely not). You asked if he always tied women up before breakfast or if you were getting special treatment. You even threatened to bite him again if he came too close, then immediately asked if he was single.

Dex had sat by your window with a rifle scope pressed to his eye. He was pretty sure he fell in love somewhere between the twelfth complaint that your ass was sore and the twenty-first threat to sue him.

So now, eight months later, with you under him, legs wrapped around his waist and your body taking him so well he could barely breathe, all he could think was…

He had done this.

He had broken something in you.

Still, he moaned your name. You were perfect beneath him, pleasing him so well that his own voice kept dying in his throat every time he tried to speak. He could barely form the guilt into words because you kept squeezing around him like your body wanted him closer than close, like every thrust dragged a sound out of you that went straight through his cogmium spine and lit him up from the inside.

“You don’t love me,” he suddenly rasped, because of course he had to bring it up again while he was inside you.

You laughed, but it broke into a moan halfway through when he moved again, and the stretch of him made your whole body seize. “Dex…”

He choked on the spit buildup in his mouth because he was drooling at this point, his hands fisting in the sheets beside your head. “Fuck,” he breathed, voice ruined. “Don’t—don’t say my name like that.”

You tried to answer, but he was too much, too deep, fucking you into the mattress hard enough to make the bed frame knock harshly against the wall like every thrust was an argument he was losing.

“You’re so… hmph,” His forehead dropped against yours. His voice cracked. “God, you’re so fucking tight. I can’t think when you— when you feel like this.”

You could barely hear what he was saying, you just dragged him down by the neck and kissed the scar on his cheek. You were practically making out with it, because hyperfocusing on it helped bring you back to earth. “Dex… fuck!”

His whole body jerked at the sound.

“Don’t,” he rasped, but he didn’t stop.

His hips kept driving into yours, deep and rough, punching the breath out of you until your hands pawing at his skin. “Don’t say it like that.”

You tried to laugh again, but it came out as a shaky gasp when he pushed deeper. “Like what?”

“Like you, hmm.” His head dropped now, his mouth dragging wet and open against your throat. “Like you love me.”

Your nails dug into his back, giving his back scar company. “I do.”

Dex’s brows furrowed like you had hit him.

His pace faltered for half a second. Then the panic caught up to him and he thrusted harder, like he could outrun the words by burying himself deeper inside you. “N-no.”

“Yes.”

“No,” he said again, and it came out so small it was nearly swallowed by the filthy sound of his body moving against yours. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what this is.”

“I know exactly what this is.”

“You don’t.” His hand grasped the sheets. “You can’t. You can’t love me.”

You were struggling to keep your eyes open. He was stretching you so much every thought came apart before it finished forming, pleasure dragging through you hot and heavy, making your thighs shake around his hips.

Still, you forced yourself to look at him. “I do love you.”

Dex looked like he might be sick again.

Every time.

Every fucking time you said it, even if it was a hundred times a day, his heart broke a little. Like his body wanted the words and his mind rejected them. Like being loved by you was too impossible to fit inside him without tearing a wormhole open.

“You hear y-yourself?” he demanded, breathless, furious, hips still snapping into yours. “You hear how insane that sounds?”

You moaned, head tipping back against the ridiculously expensive pillows he had bought you because his last one ‘made your neck a little stiff’ once.

He groaned at the feel of you tightening around him. “Fuck… don’t—don’t do that.”

“I… ahh, can’t help it,” you managed, voice shaking. “I fucking love you.”

“No, you don’t.” He sounded almost angry now, but all of it was pointed inward, all of it soaked in guilt. “I cuffed you to a pipe. I— Fuck— scared you. I held you hostage and now you’re here, telling me you love me while I’m—” His teeth clenched, his body shuddering over yours. “While I’m doing this to you.”

“You’re not doing anything to me,” you forced out, gripping his arm hard enough to make him hiss. “I asked for this.”

His eyes burned. “That doesn’t make it better.”

“It does, actually.”

“You’re sick.”

“So are you.”

He laughed once, but there was no humor behind it. He then buried his face in your neck as his pace got messier. “I think I gave you Stockholm syndrome.”

“You didn’t,” you insisted. It was barely a sound, it was a miracle he heard you at all.

“You’re not listening.”

“You’re not thinking.”

“I am thinking.” His voice cracked on the last word because you tightened around him again and his forehead dropped to yours, “Shit, you drive me insane.”

“Good.”

“No.” He kissed you hard. “No, not good. That’s what I mean. You make me like this. You make me want too much.”

“You already want too much.”

His hips stuttered, and you saw the guilt pass over his face at once.

Then he drove into you harder. You cried out, and his eyes went dark.

“There,” he said, voice ragged. “That. You should hate me for this.”

“No, Dex.” Your hands slid up, catching his chin, forcing his face close to yours while he kept fucking you breathless. “You didn’t give me Stockholm syndrome. I. Love. You.”

He shuddered. His mouth opened, but nothing came out at first. Then a broken moan as his body betrayed him again.

“You don’t,” he whispered.

“I do.”

“You can’t.”

“I can.”

“You’re perfect.”

“I’m not.”

“You are to me.” His voice sounded raw, almost boyish in its disbelief. “And if you love me, then I did something to you. I had to. I had to have broken something, because there’s no– hnggf— no other way.”

Your chest tightened.

He was still moving, still taking you apart with a rhythm so desperate it bordered on punishing, but his eyes were wet. His eyes filled with self-hatred. He looked like a man starving at a feast and hating himself for opening his mouth.

“Fine,” you gasped. “Have it your way.”

Dex went still for exactly one second. Not fully, and definitely not enough to pull out. Then his body reacted before his mind did and he thrust harder.

It was as if the sentence had scared him so badly he had to pin you beneath him with his weight, his mouth, his hands, his hips. Like if he stopped moving, the words would become real enough to take you away. “W-what?”

“Maybe— hm, maybe you did g-give me Stockholm Syndrome,” you said, voice shaking, half from pleasure, half from fury. “Now what?”

His breathing turned ragged.

“So what, huh?” Your nails dragged up his neck into his hair, combing his scalp “You gonna tell me to go?”

Dex’s face soured. “No.”

“You gonna leave me?”

“No.” The thought of it made him sick. You could see it. You could feel it. His whole body tensed, his grip tightening, his hips losing rhythm for a moment before coming back rougher, deeper, more desperate. 

Leaving you was the one noble thing he kept threatening himself with, and the second you suggested it, it destroyed him.

“No,” he said again, like he hated you for making him admit it. Like he hated himself more. “Don’t f-fucking ask me that.”

“But that’s what you’re… you’re saying.” You were so close now you could barely speak, words breaking apart every time he drove into you. “If you really think you ruined me, then stop.”

Dex’s eyes locked on yours.

Your mouth trembled into a cruel little smile. “If you really think, you— shit, you broke me, t-then stop fucking me.”

His breath hitched.

He didn't stop. 

You felt it in the way his body went even harder, even more frantic, like the command had gone straight into the darkest, neediest part of him and went feral.

“I-if you think you’re bad f’me, then get off me,” you whispered, mean and gentle all the same, by his ear, close enough to lick the lobe. “Then don’t touch me. Don’t kiss me. Don’t come in me, because we b-both know you’re— hmphh— planning to.”

Dex groaned, tortured, burying his face against your throat.

“No,” he rasped.

“No?”

“No.”

“Thought so.”

He kissed you then, hard enough to steal the rest of the taunt from your mouth.

It was perfect after that, fucking perfect and awful. Your bodies slick with sweat, his hands gripping your hips like he was trying not to bruise you and failing at restraint in every other way. He fucked you like he was confessing and denying the confession in the same breath, like every thrust said mine and every sound said I’m sorry.

“You should run,” he rasped.

“You’d follow.”

His eyes burned.

You smiled up at him, breathless and shaking. “And I’d let you c-catch me. I’m fucking into it.”

Dex looked ruined.

His rhythm stuttered, and for a second you thought that was it, that he was going to fall apart right there, but he grabbed your hips and flipped you with quick motion that left you dizzy.

Then you were on top of him.

Your thighs trembled on either side of his hips, your hands braced on his chest, and Dex looked up at you like you were killing him. His face was flushed, eyes wet, mouth parted as you sank back down onto him.

“Say it,” he said, voice destroyed.

You moved over him, thighs shaking, pleasure making you unsteady. “Say what?”

His eyes opened, furious and starving. “Say– fuck, baby— that you know you could leave and I’d let you leave.”

Your chest tightened. “Dex.”

“Say it.” His grip tightened, not forcing, just holding on. “Say you know the door isn’t locked. Say you know I’d let you go.”

You stared down at him. At the man who had wanted love so badly it made him monstrous with fear. At the man who still believed wanting you was worse than first degree murder. At the man underneath you, shaking, begging for proof that this was not captivity while his body betrayed how badly he needed you to stay.

You leaned down until your mouth brushed his.

“I know I can leave,” you whispered. “I-I know you’d let me.”

His breath collapsed.

Then you kissed the corner of his mouth without ruining your rhythm. “But I’m not.”

Dex broke under you.

His hands slid up your back, dragging you down against his chest as he thrust up into you, needy and completely undone. You could barely keep up, barely keep speaking, your forehead pressed to his as you rode him. 

“I love you,” you said again. and this time, he knew you meant it.

That was what did it for him. Not the heat. Not the filth. Not the way you tightened around him or the way he was losing himself inside you, though that helped.

That.

The idea that you had chosen him with all your mind intact.

Your breath hitched first, then your whole body seized, pleasure dragging you under so good that your words turned into a ruined little sound against his mouth. Dex’s eyes widened, his hands clamping around your waist as you went through it.

“There,” he rasped. “There she is.”

You came too hard to answer him properly, nails digging into his chest as he kept you there. “There she is,” he said again, almost broken. “That’s my girl.”

And then Dex broke completely.

He buried his face in your neck as he came after you, groaning your name like an apology, like a confession, like it was the only prayer he knew. His body trembled beneath yours, his arms locked around you while he spilled inside you, holding on as if letting go too soon might make the whole thing disappear.

Afterward, Dex held you like an apology.

His mouth fluttered gentle kisses over your temple, your cheek, your throat, frantic in little broken bursts. He kept whispering sorry so many times the word stopped sounding like language and started sounding like breathing.

You were half-asleep against his chest, your fingers tucked loosely against his ribs.

He kissed your forehead again. “Sorry.”

You breathed out, half asleep. “For what?”

Dex went quiet.

He didn’t know, not really. He was sorry for the pipe, for wanting you too much, for needing you in a way that still scared him. He was sorry for looking at your love and thought it must have been damage.

His arms tightened around you.

You opened your eyes just enough to look at him. His face was ruined, like he was still trying to decide whether holding you counted as selfish.

You giggled softly.

“Dex,” you murmured, eyes half-lidded, fingers lazy in his hair. “If I’m broken, then I was broken when you found me.”

His breath stopped.

You smiled like that was supposed to comfort him.

Instead, it crawled into him and settled under his ribs, sweet and infected. It made his heart thump hard against his ribs. It made the guilt twist, mutate, turn into a warm and fuzzy feeling. Because there you were, looking at him like he wasn’t the man that had ruined you, but the man that had finally made sense. Like whatever was wrong with you had looked at whatever was wrong with him and fuckin’ purred.

Dex stared at you, eyebrows relaxing.

You touched his face, thumb dragging gently over his cheek scar, and he leaned into it before he could stop himself. 

Pathetic. So utterly gone for you. 

“I love you,” he said.

It came out hoarse. 

You shrugged like you knew all along. 

“I love you,” he said again. His hand tightened at your waist. “I love you.”

And for the first time, Dex wondered if Stockholm syndrome could happen the other way around, to the captor instead.

There was probably a fancy word for it. Some clinical term made by people with normal hearts. Something he could look up, self-diagnose, dissect, pretend to understand.

But Dex didn’t care.

If that was what had happened to him, then fine.

He didn’t want it cured.

—end.