AMORE ❦

He isn’t sure why. He can’t exactly place it, but it’s just…there you are. Running right into him like that. Asking if he’s okay when you look like his shoulder bone might have fucking concussed you.

He reaches down, picks up your phone, and offers it to you.

“I’m fine.” He says, softer than he means to, and you open your other eye.

“Are you made of concrete or something?” You huff a laugh, accept your phone, and slide it into your pocket. He’s staring too hard. He needs to break the gaze but it feels impossible and wrong to even try.

“Not that I know of.”

A feeling like desperate need claws its way up his throat when you smile again. When you laugh at his words like you really hear them. He doesn’t know exactly what it is he needs, but it’s overwhelming to the point of near-pain.

“I’m sorry about that.” You say again, and you mean it. “If I left a bruise, don’t sue me.” You glance down, notice the badge clipped to his belt. “Or…arrest me.”

He can’t remember how to speak. How to breathe right. But he needs to act…normal. He can’t just yank you to him in the middle of the street, bury his nose in your neck and inhale your perfume. Not like he wants to.

The world is narrowed down to a pinpoint. The crowded, chaotic streets of the city are gone. The honking of taxis, the bustle of people trying to get to their destinations, the towering buildings, it’s all gone. It’s just you, and your smile, and your eyes looking up at him.

His smile twitches a little before it finally forms on his lips, lopsided and genuine. You relax at the sight of it.

“Don’t have my cuffs on me, so I guess you’re safe.” And you smile at the joke, and it’s perfect.

He’ll buy you coffee. He’ll talk to you. He’ll make you smile more.

Your phone dings, and you curse as you glance down at it. “Shit. I gotta go.” You murmur, shooting one more apologetic glance up at him. “Sorry again. Really.”

“It’s…okay.” But it’s not. You can’t leave. You can’t walk away from him he just found you he’s not done-

But you’re gone, and your sudden absence shudders his breath and makes his chest feel too tight. No. No, you need to be here. With him. He just found you. You can’t leave.

He doesn’t move for a good few seconds, frozen in place as the noise and chaos crashes back in, crippling and horrible.

The bell to the coffee shop dings. There. That’s where you are. Where you’re going. Not gone. Not too far for him to find again.

He waits sixty seconds, counts his breaths, and follows.

-

“Yikes, what happened to you?”

You’re rubbing your forehead. You’re hurt. His shoulder hurt you. The dull ache in the spot where you slammed against him feels like a connection. A tether holding you to him.

“Too embarrassing.” You grumble, but he can hear a hint of humor and familiarity in your voice. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Well now I have to know.” You smile at the blond man. Nelson. The lawyer. Dex knows about him. Are you with him, somehow? Is Nelson trying to take you away from him?

You huff a laugh, and plop down unceremoniously into the opposite chair, still rubbing your forehead. “I was trying to respond to your millionth text, and I just absolutely slammed into this smoking hot FBI guy.”

“FBI?” Nelson repeats, but you said hot. You called him hot. He’s so distracted by that that he barely hears your next words, dripping with sarcasm as you pull one foot up onto the chair and wrap your arms around your knee.

“Yeah, and then I told him all about my extra curricular activities, and my home address.”

“Your jokes aren’t as funny as you think they are, you know.”

“Neither are yours, and we’re still friends.” You accept the cup of coffee Nelson slides your way, and Dex’s heart stutters again as you smile over the rim of the mug.

“So, speaking of which…”

“I knew it. I knew it. You never just wanna hang out and get coffee.”

“We hang out and get coffee all the time.”

“The ratio is off, lately. You ask for favors more since you went into that corporate law job. Now your pro-bono work always goes through me and all my incredible skills like some dirty little secret.”

Pro-bono work. Secrets. What do you do? You’re kind. You’re good. He can feel it. Sense it like second nature. But the questions and lack of answers are making him grip his own mug a little tighter, making it difficult for him to lean back in the shadows and hide like he’s supposed to.

Nelson looks sheepish, but you give a good natured wave of your hand. A silent ‘go on’ gesture that Dex can’t help but find painfully charming.

“I have a case. This guy…” Nelson slides a file towards you, “didn’t do it. Works for a big company, going down for financial crimes that he didn’t commit. They’re trying to cover their tracks, and a little bit of proof might keep him from missing his kids’ elementary school graduation.” You raise an eyebrow, and Nelson smiles a little. “And middle school. And high school. And…college. The point is they’re gonna try to put him away for a long time, and he didn’t do it.”

You squint, and slide the file closer to yourself. “Financial crimes?”

“Just saying, a little bit of…evidence towards his innocence will really help.”

“Hm.”

“And it shouldn’t be a problem for the best hacker in New York.”

You raise an eyebrow again.

“Okay, the east coast.”

Your eyebrow climbs higher.

“America?”

You grin, and Dex twitches with the need to be closer to you. To see that grin directed at him.

“You’re gonna have to start paying me soon.”

“And if I do, it becomes illegal.”

You tilt your head back again, puff out a dramatic sigh, and curl your fingers around the file.

“I want one of your mom’s sandwiches, at two am. The one with the provolone that I like.”

Nelson grins, wide. “Done and done.”

And then, you tilt your head back towards Nelson. “Does this have anything to do with Fisk?”

Fisk. Fisk? That asshole? That annoying detail he’s about to be stuck on?

“Wilson Fisk?”

“No, the other one. The other crime boss who just got out of prison and has a bone to pick with you.”

Nelson rolls his eyes. “Still not funny.”

“Foggy.”

He hesitates, and frowns. “No. But don’t…just stay away from that, okay? We’ll figure it out. You getting involved, especially with your tendency to…piss people like that off…”

“I haven’t been caught.”

“You will be, if you keep up that little Robin Hood act you have going on. There’s only so much legal counsel I can give you. This is extra legal council. I should be charging you for this.”

“Those companies don’t notice any money missing. You know who does? Mr. Stevenson next door, who can pay off his damn bills and not have to work an extra six hours a day to afford medication for his bad leg.” Your tone is sharp. Defensive.

So you’re a criminal. A good one. Because stealing from the rich and giving to people who need it… that’s good. His own moral compass might be a little off-kilter, but he knows that much.

Then again, you could be a serial killer and he would probably still feel this way, but oh well.

Foggy frowns, like this is a conversation you’ve had many times before, and gives you a familiar little nod, like he knows arguing won’t get him too far. “Just…don’t get involved, okay? Stay away from it. This is more dangerous than you think.”

“Vague.” You grumble, but you’re sliding the file into your bag. “Sandwich with the provolone, three am.”

“You said two.”

You stand, finish your coffee, and smile. “This one’s gonna take a while.”

-

Watching you work is…fascinating.

It’s a slow process, Dex realizes quickly. You don’t click at your keyboard and bust through firewalls like in movies. You lay on your couch, bite your nails, and seem to work through problems one by one. It takes a while. It frustrates you. It makes you smile to yourself when you solve one of those problems.

You get your sandwich. You talk to Nelson for a while. Update him. Get back to work.

The sun is going to rise, soon. You’re still working. His eyes are starting to hurt from watching you through this telescope, but he can’t make himself look away.

When you move to the kitchen, you slide on the hardwood in your socks. You play music. You tap your fingers on your keyboard to the beat.

He watches every second. Every single twitch of your eye. Every frown when you can’t figure something out. Every bright little spark when you do figure it out.

Perfect. You’re perfect. And when you finally do fall asleep, computer resting on your stomach and eyes dropping closed like they’re weighed down by anvils, he wants more than anything to make his way into that dingy little apartment and carry you to your bed in the adjacent room. To slide his fingers through your hair, feel you smile, and listen to your heartbeat until he’s positive that nothing will ever be able to take you away from him.

But for now, he watches. He stays, long after you’ve fallen asleep, and he watches.

-

It takes planning. It takes hours of working himself up to it. Of watching you from afar, plotting every scenario out bit by bit and talking himself out of it a thousand times.

You consume his thoughts like a poison. He follows you to your work. Back to your apartment. Watches every interaction you have with everyone else and wishes it was him you were looking at until he stops fucking sleeping with the need to have you near him.

So, when the torture becomes too much, he follows you to a bar, and he sits in the corner, and he watches you laugh with your friends. Watches and watches and craves to be closer to the light that seems to emanate from your very being.

And he gets up at just the right time, and allows you to bump into him as you start walking back towards the group you came with.

Not a single drop of his drink spills on him - he’s still a little too organized to allow that to happen if he can help it - but he makes it look like it does. He catches your waist as you stumble with an ‘oomph’, and just like that you’re close to him. You’re touching him. He’s touching you. You’re here. With him.

“Oh, fuck. Sorry. Sorry.” You’re not drunk, barely even buzzed, but he knows you well enough now to know that you’re just a little clumsy, and this place is just loud enough for this to work.

Your eyes turn up to his, and you nearly stumble back.

Practiced smile. Fingers curling against your back a little because he just can’t help it. “We’ve gotta stop bumping into each other like this.” He’s practiced that line in the mirror, and it works. You laugh.

You laugh. At his joke. At his line that he’s practiced for this specific scenario. It worked.

“I know you.” You grin, wide, and then flinch a little, but you’re still laughing. “Have I said I’m sorry yet?”

“You did.” He has to let you go. He would rather die, but he can’t be holding you like this. You don’t know him yet. Not yet. “Never got your name, though.”

“I never got yours. Figured you hated me for dislocating your shoulder.”

“Dex.”

“Dex.” You repeat, and his blood hums in his veins at the sound. “Nice to meet you, Dex.”

“Nice to meet you…public hazard.” Lame joke. Bad joke. He just can’t string a fucking thought together when you’re near him and-

You snort. His heart bursts into flames.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Fuck. It’s too soon. Way too soon. You’re gonna say no, and leave, and he’s-

“Yeah.” You set your drink down. “Yeah, I do.”

-

“So…hobbies?” You take a bite of your pizza, heels clicking against the pavement, and he can’t stop looking at you.

“Not really.”

“Hm.” You don’t seem bothered by it. By his lack of interesting traits. He’s not lying to you. He doesn’t have to. You’re meant to be together, after all. He doesn’t have to lie about himself. Right? “Okay. Any special skills then, Special Agent?”

Actually, yeah. “I have one.”

You perk up, raise an eyebrow. “Really?”

He grins, real and genuine, and pulls a quarter out of his back pocket. “Think you’re ready for it?”

“More than.” You’re excited. Really, truly excited. It’s fucking adorable.

“Nah.” He flips the coin over his fingers, feigns pocketing it again. “Don’t think you are.”

“Aw, come on. Please?”

Butterflies swarm in his chest. A smile curls on his lips. He nods towards the darkened street before you. “Pick somethin’.”

You frown, cock your head to the side, and purse your lips when he doesn’t budge to give you any more information. “Okay….street sign. That one right there.”

“Letter.”

“What?”

“Pick a letter.”

Your brow furrows a little more, and your lips twitch in a smile. “T.”

The throws the quarter out, and the sound of metal on metal sings through the air.

There’s a dent in the T. It’s so small, so subtle, that you have to move over to the sign to inspect it.

“Holy shit.”

Do you like it? Are you impressed? He has to stop himself from grabbing your shoulder and demanding to know.

“Can you do it again?”

Yes. Yes of course he can. He’ll do anything. Anything to make you look at him with those wide eyes and that big grin.

You name five more things, he hits them all perfectly, and he doesn’t want to stop. He wants to keep impressing you. Keep hearing your startled noises of approval.

But you make it back to your apartment, and he has to force himself to let you leave. To not follow you upstairs and learn every inch of your skin until it’s locked into his memory forever.

Instead, he asks you to dinner, and you agree. You smile, and you agree.

-

He kisses you for the first time on your second date. Dinner and ice cream.

He’s walked you to your door, like he did the last time, and you’re standing there in your dress with that smile of yours and your eyes looking expectantly into his and he doesn’t know how to do this right. Sure, there have been women in the past. He’s kissed girls. Slept with them when the time was right, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and never really…felt anything. Never wanted anything like this. Fuck, he feels more excitement just looking at you than he did with every hookup he’s ever had.

He has to do it. Make it romantic. Make it perfect. He’s looked up the right way to do this. Studied romantic movies like it was some kind of assignment with life-or-death consequences.

Reach up, brush your hair behind your ear, drink in your shy smile, lean closer so his breath ghosts over your lips-

“You have ice cream on your nose.”

He freezes, fingers still cupping your jaw, and pulls back.

“What?”

You giggle, oblivious to how much his mind is spinning, and reach up to swipe it off with your thumb.

“Shit.” He mumbles, shaking his head and stepping back. “Shit. I’m sorry. I-“

You tilt your head to the side, curious and confused and beautiful as you seem to realize that he’s actually freaking out a little. Because it’s not perfect. It was supposed to be perfect because that’s the only way he gets to keep good things. Order. Focus. But he fucked it up and now you’re-

“Woah, hey. Hey.” You reach up, and turn his face towards yours. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry, it was cute. Just…try again.”

Try again. Yeah, he…he can try again. It can still be good. Still be perfect.

So he does. He leans down, and when his lips brush yours his breath comes out as a shaky exhale.

And then your mouth is on his, warm and soft and everything he’s ever wanted. Electricity shoots down his spine, through his blood, and some tether of control within him snaps. He presses closer, the hand on your cheek moving to the back of your head to keep you in place, and kisses you like he’s trying to devour you with a passion he didn’t know he possessed.

You gasp against his lips, arms coming up to wrap around his neck as you meet him with just as much enthusiasm. Just as much hunger. And this…this is perfect. This is rough and desperate and perfect. This didn’t need to go according to plan. This is so much better than the plan.

When you finally break apart, he’s out of breath and more than a little pleased to see that you are, too.

“Wow.” You whisper, and he grins as his nose ducks back down to brush against yours.

“Yeah.” He breathes, unable to think of another response. Any other word to describe this feeling. “Wow.”

-

When you see the caller id, you can’t help but smile at the screen.

“Geez, you look so weird with the cartoon heart eyes.” Foggy’s voice breaks you out of your little trance, and you snort as you answer the phone, confirming that Dex is off work and headed back to his apartment. You feel a twinge of excitement, cheesy as it is, at the idea of seeing him soon. You try not to flag down the bartender too quickly, lest the mockery get any worse.

“FBI guy?” Foggy raises an eyebrow, and you smile again.

“His name is Dex.” Foggy’s eyebrows rise even higher. You flush. “I dunno, I like him. A lot, actually.”

“He’s in the FBI. You’re a pretty notorious hacker.”

“So we don’t talk about work.” You take a sip of your drink. “Plus, he’s not gonna turn me in. I’m too good in bed.”

“But he knows?”

“Of course he knows.” You raise your eyebrows, leaning forward like you’re explaining something imperative. “One you start having sex with someone, it’s important that you confess all of your crimes to each other.”

Foggy laughs, and shakes his head. “You’re insane.” And then, curious and caring as ever, “so what’s he like, if he’s got you risking federal prison?”

Your smile returns, cheeks heating a little, and you shrug. “Cute. Nice. A little weird. Well, actually a lot weird, but…I like it.” You think about the precise way Dex loads the dishwasher. How he carefully makes the bed every morning. How he makes an odd joke every now and then, and then looks absolutely panicked until you laugh, and that panic will always melt into an expression of relief and adoration.

Sometimes his emotions are a little…intense. He can get frustrated, and sometimes he doesn’t seem like he knows how to handle it. But you help. You always do. You tell him to breathe and help him work through whatever’s bothering him, and it works. He always listens. Always tries, even if it takes a moment.

You just…work. Something about you, and something about him, and all the weirdness in between…it works.

When you get back to his place tonight, he’s holding a bouquet of flowers and looking genuinely nervous.

“I don’t get this.” He admits before you even drop your keys onto the counter, frowning down at the colorful petals. “They’re just gonna die in a couple of days.”

“Then why did you get them?”

He cocks his head to the side, but you can see a tinge of pink on his cheeks. “They did it in the movie we watched last night. You smiled.”

You smile now. Wide. “You know, you’re kinda cute, Poindexter.”

Something like vulnerability sparks in his eyes. “Do you not like the flowers?”

You snort, and move forward to slide your hands up over his shoulders, feeling the crisp fabric of his white button-down against your palms. “I like them. You did good. Really good.”

He smiles at that, like those words are the best thing he’s ever heard, and you pull him down to kiss you.

Your conversation with Foggy flashes through your mind. You forgot to tell him that one thing. That one major reason why you like Dex. Why you’re with him.

You get him. And he gets you.

You just…work.

-

The newspaper sits on the counter, Dex’s picture stamped right on the front page. FBI investigates one of their own.

You try not to talk about work with him. After all, you’re technically a criminal and he’s in law enforcement. But you knew about the investigation. It’s unjust, Dex says, and you believe him because…well, of course you do. It’s Dex. He saved lives that night, and the few coworkers of his that you’ve met since you’ve been dating have confirmed it.

And then the suspension came.

“It’s bullshit. It’s fucking bullshit.” In what feels like only a few words, his voice morphs from a frustrated growl into something as sharp and loud as the crack of a whip. His hand moves faster than you can even register, and in a split second there’s a kitchen knife sticking out of a photo on the wall. Right in the forehead of the person you recognize as his boss.

“Shit, I keep forgetting how spooky that is.” You breathe, and Dex’s eyes whip back to yours.

“Breathe, Poindexter.” You raise your hands in surrender, and step ever-so-carefully forward, like one wrong move might frighten him off.

“Don’t.” He snaps, fingers curling on the counter, but his eyes don’t leave you. He’s breathing too heavily. Too raggedly.

You reach up, and turn his face down to yours. Gentle, but firm. “You gotta breathe. Tell me three things you can see.”

He freezes, eyes scanning your face like he’s trying to tell if you’re kidding or not, before he speaks. “Your eyes.” He finally says, voice softening a little with each word. “Your nose…your mouth.”

Okay, it’s usually supposed to be things around the room, but this works too.

“Three things you can feel?”

He blinks, eyes still fixed on you, and raises one hand to your cheek. “Your skin.” He leans closer, helplessly. His hand moves up to your hair, curling a lock of it around his finger. “Your hair…” his free hand drops to your waist, bunching in the fabric of your borrowed t-shirt. “Your shirt.”

“Your shirt, technically.”

He grunts, and buries his nose in your temple.

“Three things you can hear.”

“Your voice.” You hum in response, and he presses closer. “Your heartbeat. Your breathing.”

You nod, and reach up to wrap your arms around his broad shoulders. He holds you a little more tightly. “Your breathing is better, see?”

He nods, and pulls back to kiss you. It’s slow, hard and desperate, like he’s trying to memorize the feeling. You pull him closer, and he makes a soft noise against your lips before he lifts you up and carries you over to the counter.

“Do you feel better?” You ask against his lips, feeling his fingers push the hem of your shirt up so he can trace them over your skin.

“I’m still being framed.” He murmurs, pulling back to trail his lips over the line of your jaw. “It’s still bullshit.”

“I know.”

“You make it better.” His hands move up, higher, warming the bare skin of your back. “You make everything better.”

“Hell of a compliment.”

“I mean it.”

“Me too.”

You kiss him again, feel him press his body closer to yours until your fingers are moving up to fumble with the buttons of his dress shirt and his are sliding your t-shirt up over your head. Moving down to skate over the hem of your underwear.

“Bedroom?” You breathe, and he shakes his head, lips never leaving your body for a second as he lowers himself to his knees right there before the counter.

“Here.” He rasps, teeth scraping against the sensitive skin of your inner thigh, and pulls you to the edge of the counter in one sharp movement that has you locking your fingers in his cropped hair. “Please.”

“That’s my line, I think.” You’re breathless, his lips are trailing higher.

“No, it’s not.” His blue eyes are on yours, filled with something so much like worship that it halts your breath in your lungs. “It’s mine.”

-

“One more.”

The word is warm and sweet in your ear, a low hum paired with wandering hands and a soft, languid kiss to your jaw.

You snort, and you can feel him grin against your ear.

“I think one more will kill me.” You murmur, feigning misery, and his hand slides down over your hip, teasing. “Seriously, how do you have so much stamina?”

“Mm, it’s just you.” He murmurs, and trails his fingers over your stomach. “I can go all night.”

“We have gone all night.”

It’s been hours since he snapped in the kitchen, and your brain has become too mushy to even remember when the two of you migrated into his room. The problem with Dex’s…ability, is that he really never misses. He can take you apart almost embarrassingly quickly, immediately finding every spot and movement that has you seeing stars. And, with his obsessive personality, he has a tendency to try to one up himself. A lot. To see how many times he can make you fall apart until your legs are shaking and you’re spending the next day aching in all the best ways.

Which is why you’re pretty sure, even as his fingers find the apex of your thighs once more and he swallows your gasp with a smile against your lips, that he’s going to kill you. Death by too-many-orgasms has to be a thing, right?

“Dex…” you breathe, arching beneath him as your hands fly up to grasp at his muscled biceps.

“One more.” He repeats, the words a quiet rasp. “You can do it. Just give me one more. Please.”

How the fuck are you ever supposed to say no to him?

You kiss him, and he groans as he presses his body closer to yours.

One more turns into three more.

-

You can’t get a hold of Foggy. Or Karen.

Their names aren’t on the list of people who died at the Bulletin, so that’s something. Still, the chances of either of them being in the building during the attack are pretty damn high. And you don’t blame them for not answering. If they really were there, they must be fucking traumatized.

You would absolutely love it if one of them could pick up the damn phone, though.

Dex shows up around midnight, and you’ve already pulled on your jeans. Already grabbed your keys in preparation to run out the door and start banging on apartment doors. Hell, you might even go to the church Matt’s been hiding out in since he got back. Self-appointed recluse or not, you want answers. Before the news makes the information public, this time. There’s only so much information that hacking can give you, and if the cops and news outlets are currently scanning through the cameras for information of their own, it’s going to take a lot longer for you to find anything out than it will if your friends would just fucking talk to you.

“Hey, where are you going? What’s wrong?” Hands are on your shoulders, moving up to your cheeks, and you wonder if you look fucking insane with worry and confusion right now.

What the hell are you supposed to tell him? Oh yeah, Daredevil is my friend Matt. You know the one who died and kinda sorta came back? Have I mentioned him? Well apparently he’s gone fucking berserk and tried to kill Karen, but I’m absolutely fucking positive that it wasn’t him, which means that someone is out there murdering people in his old suit-

“I’ve…gotta go.” You say weakly, lamely, and start to pull back.

His hands tighten on you. Fast.

“Where? Where do you have to go?” He’s holding you surprisingly firmly, large arms locked around your body and making a frown curl your lips.

“Dex, let me go.” You can’t tell him. Of course you can’t. You have to figure this out on your own.

He doesn’t. In fact, he holds you even more tightly. “You can’t leave. You can’t leave me.”

“I’m-huh?” You turn to him, now, and blink in surprise at what you find. His eyes are dark. He looks like he’s sweating. Shit, he might be shaking. “Dex, what’s going on?”

“I need you here, okay?” He’s breathing a little strangely, hand smoothing up over your back with something like desperation. “I…you need to be here.”

You frown, and reach up to brush your fingers over his cheek. He closes his eyes, and leans into your touch.

“Okay. Hey, it’s okay.” He wasn’t able to help tonight. That’s it. He’s just been suspended. All of the order and structure he relies so heavily on is gone. You didn’t realize just how much it must be affecting him, and you feel like a shitty girlfriend for not immediately seeing just how off he is. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

He ducks down, fingers curling against your cheek and lips hovering over your own. “Tell me you need me.”

“Dex-“ you start, but his fingers slide into your hair and he backs you against the wall. It’s not aggressive, not quite, but it’s firm. Determined. Almost overwhelming in its desperation.

“Say it. Please.”

You frown, but reach up to wrap your arms around his neck. “I need you.”

He groans, and kisses you so hard your knees give out. He catches you, all-but scooping you into his arms as he traces his tongue over your lip and slides his arms around your waist.

You have to go find Foggy and Karen and Matt. You have to make sure they’re okay, and the four of you need to come up with some kind of game plan. Or, they do, and they’ll probably need your help because you just had to learn Matt’s secret. Just had to get mugged that night and recognize his voice. Just had to check security cameras and figure everything out and confront him about it.

So, with your particular skill set, and the information you have, they’ll probably need you, as outside of all this as you like to keep yourself. But Dex needs you more right now, and that matters more. You’ll get to the bottom of this mystery another time, when your boyfriend’s trembling hands aren’t pulling at your clothes and his lips aren’t trailing over your throat as he whispers your name like a prayer over and over again.

“What’s wrong?” You ask again, breathless and worried as he lifts you against the wall, as he wraps your thighs around his waist and curls his fingers against your skin hard enough that you worry it might bruise. You hope it does.

“You make it quiet.” He murmurs between kisses, tugging at your clothes until your shirt slides up over your head, discarded on the floor in a second. Messy. Disordered in a way that isn’t like him. “You make it all quiet. I need it to be quiet. Please.” His voice is shaking. Desperate.

You’re not quite sure what he means, but you nod anyway.

The moment you do, his body is pressing impossibly closer to yours. His lips are moving down your neck, kisses so rough and starved that you can feel his teeth scraping over your skin. His hands are tight on your body, hips rocking forward and making you gasp, and you can still hear the shakiness in his quickened breaths as he moves back up to kiss you so hard your head knocks lightly against the wall.

Your fingers move to the buttons of his shirt. His breaths are getting quicker. His grip is getting tighter.

“D-Dex.” You’re so breathless yourself that you can barely get his name out, but he doesn’t stop kissing you. Doesn’t slow his desperate movements until you finally reach up to pull his face away from yours.

His pupils are blown. His gaze is starved. He’s still shaking.

“Hey, stay with me.” You card your fingers through his hair, and kiss him slowly. Warmly. He doesn’t need rough and desperate right now. He needs reassurance. Grounding. Love.

He releases a shuddering breath, kisses you back, and nods as he rests his forehead against yours. “I’m here. I’m good.”

You nod, and as he carries you into the bedroom and lies you back on the mattress, you can see in his eyes that he’s telling the truth. He’s here. He’s with you.

He peels the rest of your clothing off slowly, trailing his mouth over newly exposed skin, and you do the same for him, barely able to keep your lips and hands off of him for a second.

It’s slow, and loving, and painfully intimate. He murmurs your name against your ear as he moves with you, and you drag your nails over his muscled back as you tell him how good it feels until he falls apart with a groan that almost sounds like a sob.

He holds you after, presses his lips to your forehead and trails his fingers over your body like he’s trying to memorize the feeling of you.

“Do you think I’m a good man?” His voice is low, quiet and vulnerable as he slides calloused fingers through your hair.

You look up, surprised by the question, and he holds you a little more tightly like he’s worried you’ll bolt.

“Of course.” You frown, reaching up to brush your own fingers over his cheek. He turns his face into your palm, kissing it once, and you turn his eyes back to yours. “You’re a good man, Benjamin Poindexter.”

He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, something raw and pained and full of hope, and tucks you closer to him like you’re the most precious thing in the world. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” You kiss his shoulder, and let your eyes fall closed. “You’re gonna be okay.”

And for a moment, as he breathes something like a sigh of relief into your hair, you think he believes you.

-

“I need you to listen to me, and listen carefully.”

“Oh, now the zombie hiding in the basement is making demands. It’s good to see you too, Matt. I’ve been great, how about-“

“The man in the daredevil suit is Special Agent Benjamin Poindexter.”

That shuts you up, right the fuck away. “Very funny.”

“I’m not joking. He’s working for Fisk. He’s killing for him, and framing me.”

You feel cold. “No, he’s not. He wouldn’t do that.”

Matt’s expression is intense, his words are low and pointed. Urgent. This is his stupid fucking Daredevil voice. “He would. And he is. Fisk has him convinced that doing this will keep you with him. You have the means and the skill to prove me right. I need you to do that, as soon as possible. You need to get as far away from him as you-“

“Stop.” You snap, holding up a hand you know he won’t see. He’ll feel it though, or whatever. “Stop, Matt. You have the wrong guy.”

“You know that’s not true, and we don’t have time for you to come to terms with it. You are in danger, and you need to-“

“It’s not him.” Your ears are ringing. Your voice sounds desperate. Angry, even. “He’s…he’s a little intense. He’s a little weird, sure. But he wouldn’t…he wouldn’t do that.”

Matt’s jaw tightens. He shakes his head.

“You look into it the way you know how. You know. You’ll see it.” Matt reaches to grab your shoulder, and you flinch back. He looks pained, like he’s genuinely worried and didn’t call you here after all this time to falsely accuse the man you love of mass fucking murder. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been here for you enough. For Foggy and Karen. But I’m here now. I can protect you now. And you need to stay away from him.”

You pull back, and shake your head again. “I…no. You have the wrong guy, Matt. He’s…you’re wrong. We’ll find who’s doing this, but it’s not Dex.”

“We can keep you safe. You can hide-“

“No.”

“Please. He’s unpredictable. He’s dangerous. He could kill you if he knows you know.”

“I don’t know. I know you’re…you’re wrong.” He is wrong. He has to be wrong. “I’ll find out who it is, okay? But it’s not Dex. Just…it’s not Dex.”

And yet…

No. No. It’s not possible. There’s no way.

Matt spends the next ten minutes trying to convince you, and you block all of it out. You refuse to listen. You tell him you’ll go home, and you’ll avoid Dex until you can find the proper evidence.

You lie. And as you walk out of the church into the suddenly too-bright, too-loud city, you wonder if… if he could…

Fuck. You need to get to your computer. You need to prove him wrong.

-

He killed Ray tonight.

It doesn’t bother him. That kind of thing never has. What bothered him was Nadeem talking about you.

“He’s lying. He’s using you. He’s using her.” Dex’s hands had tightened reflexively on his gun. “You think he’s gonna keep her safe? You think this is how she stays in your life? Whatever he told you, he’ll hurt her the second it’s convenient for him, and he’ll take you out too.”

“You need to stop talking about her, Ray.” Dex’s voice is low. Quiet.

“When she finds out, you think she’s gonna stay with you? You think Fisk is gonna make her stay with you? How does this plan of yours work, exactly?”

Yes. Of course. Whether Fisk needs to make it happen or not, you’ll stay with him. And it will be okay, because you love him. Sure, you’ll be upset, but he can make that better. He will make it better. All of it. Everything he does is to keep you happy. Keep you by his side. But for now, you don’t have to know anything. You can just be with him, and love him.

If you learn a little too much, learn about the darkness that lives inside of him, about the things he’s done, Fisk will do what he needs to do, what he promised, and make sure you stay. Simple as that.

And you’ll still love him, right? Right. You’re meant to be together.

The shot lands perfectly between his former friend’s eyes. And, once it’s all said and done, he goes home to you.

-

You’re on the couch when he walks through the door. You’re chewing on your nails. You’re staring at your computer screen.

So perfect. So beautiful. All his. Just like he’s all yours.

Like he has a hundred times before, he moves over to gently move the laptop out of your hands, leaning you back against the cushions with a smile that surely holds all of the affection that feels like it’s about to overwhelm him.

“What’re you doing?” He presses his lips to your nose, your cheek, your jaw.

You’re tense. Something’s bothering you. He can fix that.

“Looking something up.” You murmur, soft and hesitant. “Or…I should be. I can’t…make myself do it.”

He can see in his peripheral that your screen is blank. You’re still tense, and when he kisses you he can taste the faintest tinge of iron from where you were biting your lip.

You’re wearing his t-shirt. He moves to slide his hands under it, reveling in the softness of your skin, and presses another kiss to the shell of your ear. You relax, like you just can’t help yourself, and he smiles as he settles a little more comfortably atop you.

“Hm, you know you’re not supposed to tell me about any of your hacking stuff.” He jokes, but you don’t smile like you usually would. Don’t tease him back. “Might incriminate yourself a little too much. And you know there’s only one way I wanna see you in cuffs.”

You do smile now, though there’s something in your eyes that he can’t place. He wants to ask, but you kiss him and he forgets everything that isn’t you.

“Or, you know. Put me in cuffs.” And you hum, and smile a little more.

He peels your clothing off nice and slow, trailing his lips down to follow every movement. It’s warm, and safe, and soft and gentle in all the ways the rest of the world is not. You gasp his name, look into his eyes even as yours threaten to flutter closed, and he loves you so much it hurts. So intensely that he worries it might swallow him whole. He wants it to.

When it’s over, and he’s pressing his lips over your cheeks and nose again, heavy breaths matching your own, he tastes the saltiness of tears on your skin and pauses.

His brow furrows, and he pulls back.

You reach up, and smooth your thumb over his cheek. “You’re a good man.” You whisper, and you sound like you’re talking to yourself, but he melts anyway.

“I love you.” He breathes, and drags you closer so he can kiss you again. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” You murmur, and there’s never been so much of this strange emotion in your voice before. He can’t quite place it.

But you’re overwhelmed by your love for him, too. That’s all.

That’s all.

-

The worst part of it all is that you know you’re going to find it before you even bring yourself to open your computer.

And yet, it still feels like a punch to the fucking gut.

“Hello, Karen. It’s nice to see you again.”

You would recognize that voice anywhere.

It took you five minutes to get into the security cameras. Of the Bulletin. Of the church.

It took five more minutes for you to find all of the other evidence. The therapy sessions. The people he’s killed. The people he’s manipulated. Threatened. His lack of empathy. His obsessive behavior. His enjoyment of killing. Fuck, you even figure out that he was stalking you before you ever ran into him at that bar. You like to say, in your cockiest moments, that everything can be found online. Everything is documented even when people think it isn’t. You just have to look.

You didn’t look. In ten minutes, you found it all. In an hour, you’ve found too much for any excuse to ever work. For anything other than the truth to make sense.

And then, with perfect timing like the universe is making some sort of sick joke, Foggy Nelson tells you to come down to the old gym. He shows you Nadeem’s video, and you have to drag a trash can over so you can puke your guts up as the world drops from beneath your feet.

You cry silently. Curl in on yourself against the boxing ring while Foggy and Karen watch you, expressions filled with sympathy and guilt. Because they weren’t here. They didn’t check in on you. They let this get this far and it blindsided you because you were too wrapped up in stupid domestic bliss to even hang out with your friends like you should have.

Foggy’s hand comes down on your shoulder, comforting and kind. “Can you do it?”

You don’t look up from the phone screen even as you take it from his hand.

You nod.

-

“What are you-“

You aren’t supposed to be here. You aren’t supposed to be here. You aren’t-

Matt is gonna kill you, if Dex doesn’t do it first. And yet, you know without a shadow of a doubt that he won’t hurt you. Everyone else, maybe, but not you.

That doesn’t make him any less dangerous.

You grab his arm, and pull him outside with you, into the alley. It will be on camera. It will be obvious that you know, when Fisk sees it. But it doesn’t matter. None of that will matter soon, anyway.

His brow is furrowed, that look of frustration when he doesn’t have control of the situation tightening his features. After all, you did just show up to his work unannounced and drag him outside.

He reaches for you, and you step back.

“What the hell are you doing?” He asks, something in his face cracking a little. “Come here. Please.”

“Tell me it’s not true. Please, tell me it’s not true.”

Panic. Immediate, sharp panic. He knows. He knows you know. “Come here.”

“Dex.”

“It’s not true.” He says immediately, lies immediately, and reaches for you again. You back up again. “It’s not true. None of it’s true. Just-“

You pull out your phone, and play the video. Ray Nadeem’s confession. His eyes widen, and you already knew but the confirmation from him is fucking shattering.

“In three hours, it’s going out to every phone in the immediate area. To the cops. To the public. Everywhere. And if you kill me, it still goes out.” Your voice is tight, shaking. “You’re not gonna stop it.”

Dex tries to grab you now, not the phone, you, desperate. You jump back into the street. Into the public. Away from the dark alley and into the light of day.

“Don’t touch me. Do not fucking touch me.”

“Don’t do this.” He sounds dangerous now. You should probably be afraid of him. You’re going to fucking cry again and it hurts so bad you can’t think. You’ve never felt more stupid in your life. “Don’t you dare do this. Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me. You promised.” His hand catches your sleeve, and you rip it back.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Don’t leave me. Baby, don’t do this. You love me. I love you. We can-“

“What is this, fucking Barney?!” You snap, horror and shock making your voice shaky and shrill. “You’ve been murdering people.”

You’re fully in the street, now. You’re still shaking. He’s still approaching.

“If you come any closer, I’ll scream.” You mean it. He looks like he’s about to risk it. Like he’s moments away from covering your mouth and dragging you back into the alley. Into the shadows with him.

You turn, and walk away.

You hear him scream from a block away. It’s loud. Primal, even. It turns heads.

You keep walking.

-

He goes to prison that night. Matt defeats Fisk. You see it all on the news, from where you’re curled on the couch with tears drying on your cheeks.

He tried to kill Fisk at his wedding. Broke into the party in Matt’s Daredevil costume. It’s on the news. It’s on film.

He says your name before he starts killing people. Tells Fisk and Vanessa that the two of you wish them a world of happiness. You watch the clip. Newspapers call. You watch the clip again. You shut out the world.

It takes some time for you to leave your couch. Even longer to leave your apartment.

But time heals all wounds, even if they have to scab over and reopen a few too many times.

You meet Matt, Foggy and Karen at Josie’s on a Tuesday. They don’t mention it. You do. You apologize, and Foggy hugs you so tightly that your ribs creak.

And you heal. Slowly, surely, you heal.

Or at least, that’s what you tell yourself.

-

It’s a nice, normal Friday night.

Cherry’s retirement party is fun. You’re having fun. You’re laughing with Matt and Karen, listening to the laughter and jokes around you, teasing each other about Foggy’s attempts at hitting on Keirsten, and not thinking about Dex. Because you never think about Dex.

You don’t think about the way he made breakfast in the morning. Always so careful and precise. Always plating it perfectly like the act was a science, watching you when you ate it like he was either trying to figure out just how much you liked it or just…watching you. So much of him looking at you felt like he was basking in your mere presence.

Or the way he would leave on his way to work. Always the same pattern. The same habits. Wake you up with a kiss, get dressed, make breakfast, kiss you again on the way out the door.

The way he would smile at you like you hung the moon in the sky. The way he would hold you when you watched a movie on the couch. The way…

Warm lips against your temple. Your forehead. Your cheeks.

You hum, and feel Dex smile as his arm slides more tightly around you. “Morning.”

“S’the middle of the night.” You complain weakly, turning in his arms to hide your face in the warm skin of his chest.

“Five forty-five.” He murmurs, hand already coming up to slide through your hair. “Gotta get ready for work.”

“Play hooky.” You mumble, nuzzling closer, dreading the moment his warmth leaves the bed.

“Would if I could.” He means it, and you can tell, so you keep trying.

“You’re reinstated and promoted now…” you press a kiss to his collarbone, warm and slow and as tempting as you can make it. “Their apology should come in the form of as many days off as you want. Or going into work after dawn.”

His body relaxes a little. His hold on you tightens, like he’s thinking about it.

And then he sighs, and pulls back to press his lips against your forehead.

“I can’t.” He sounds so genuinely remorseful that you just might be falling in love with him all over again. Still, you plaster an exaggerated little pout on your face as you sit up.

“Goody two shoes.” You accuse, and if you were more awake you might think his laugh sounds a little…different. But he sits up with you, and kisses your neck, and wraps his arms around you again and any doubt or confusion flutters out of your mind as you melt into-

“Hey, you okay?”

Your eyes whip up, reflected in Matt’s glasses. You swallow. Smile. “Hm?”

“Your…” he lowers his voice, leans a little closer, “your heart is racing.”

Karen is looking at you, too closely, too kindly. You smile wider.

“I’m fine.” And you are. You’re fine. You’re absolutely, totally fine.

Ten minutes later, everything goes to shit.

Foggy goes outside. Matt hears something wrong. Karen follows You stay in the bar.

A gunshot outside. The bang of a flash grenade. The screams of panicked patrons.

You’re frozen for a moment, smoke and shock filling your lungs and fogging your mind. Gunshots. Screaming. The heavy sound of footsteps and-

“Hey, baby.”

A low, familiar growl of a voice, barely raised enough to be heard over the commotion but cutting through it all like a knife and zeroing your attention on the approaching figure.

Speaking of knives, you hear one whir through the air just before your wrist is slammed back against the wall, a blade attaching your sleeve to the surface with perfect precision. You reach up in a panic to remove it, only for another knife to slam your other arm back against the same wall. Neither blade comes close enough to even nick your skin, but you’re still completely trapped against the old wooden surface, eyes wide as Benjamin Poindexter stalks over to you like he has all the time in the world.

He’s wearing a mask, but you’d recognize his eyes anywhere. You’ve never seen them so fucking crazed.

“I missed you.” His hand is on your waist, large and gloved and firm even as you try to kick him away from you. He grunts, and halts your movements with a knee pressed between yours.

And then he rips off his mask, and kisses you. Hard. Rough. Tongue forcing its way past your lips and arm locking tight around your hip as his body presses against yours like it’s drawn there by a gravitational pull. It’s been so long, and you are most certainly in shock, but you can’t help the soft noise that pulls its way from your throat at the feeling. The way your toes curl a little at the rough sound he makes in response.

He reaches up, and pulls one of the knives out of your sleeve before throwing it towards Daredevil so quickly you almost miss it. He doesn’t even look. He keeps his gaze right on you.

The knife is deflected. Of course it is, because it’s fucking Matt, but Dex looks down at you, grins, and presses his lips to your cheek before pulling his mask back down just in time to be knocked to the ground.

The battle happens all around you, too quick for you to keep track of, and it takes you a good fifteen seconds to register that you need to get the fuck out of here.

The knife attaching your sleeve to the wall is in the wood so deep that you can’t get it out. You grunt in frustration, and finally rip your sleeve to free yourself. You think, vaguely, that you liked this jacket, before the sound of glass shattering makes you flinch and stumble back towards the door.

Your ears are ringing. You can’t think. You make it out into the street just in time to fall to your knees beside the body of your friend, nearly get trampled by people screaming and running and Karen is crying and you can’t think.

And Foggy Nelson dies on the sidewalk.

And, a few horrible moments of silence later, you hear a thud behind you.

And you don’t scream. You don’t cry. You still don’t even speak. Your clothes are stained with blood, and you can still taste the mint of Dex’s toothpaste on your tongue. Foggy dies, and Dex’s body just hit the pavement behind you.

You crawl to him in a haze of screams and the ringing of a thousand bells in your ears, and you can hear Karen sobbing behind you.

You think you might throw up. Or pass out. Or die right here next to Foggy Nelson and Benjamin Poindexter.

Dead. He’s dead. Oh God, Foggy isn’t breathing and now…and now Dex…he’s-

Blue eyes shoot open, wide and pained and crazed, and a gloved hand grabs your wrist. You didn’t even realize that you were touching him, hands shaking as they move over his body like you can fix it. Like you should even want to. Your palms sting. Knees, too. You think you scraped them on the pavement when you crawled over here.

“What did you do?” You ask, numb and confused and horrified, and Dex groans and presses his injured face into the pavement like the sound of your voice is the sweetest relief. His hand tightens on your wrist, relaxes, doesn’t let you go. “Dex, what did you do?”

-

ONE YEAR LATER

There is a deep, prominent scar on his cheek. He’s even larger than you remember. His eyes are different, like he’s allowed the illusion of control and sanity to shatter.

You’re here for Foggy. You haven’t seen Matt or Karen in almost a year. You are not here for Benjamin Poindexter.

But you’re here. Maybe you shouldn’t be, but you owe it to Foggy. To the other people this man has killed.

So many people. So many deaths. So many, because of you. And now Foggy, for reasons you still can’t understand.

The sentencing comes. The gavel is banged. You can’t hide your flinch at the sound. Dex’s eyes move right over to you, and lock in.

He smiles, eyes filled with a sick sort of love, and your fingers dig into your palms until your nails bite into the skin hard enough to draw blood.

They take him away, and he doesn’t stop smiling at you.

-

“He refuses to speak unless you’re in the room.”

Your fingers curl painfully tightly against your coffee cup. Your eyes fly up to Matt’s face.

“No.”

“I need information. We need information. He’ll be cuffed the entire time. He won’t touch you.”

“I’m not worried about that. I don’t want to speak to him.”

“They moved him to gen pop.”

You try to hide the way your heart pounds at the implication. You fail. And it’s Matt, so there’s no use pretending.

“Is…did they…” Gen pop. They’ll fucking kill him in there. Good, right? Someone like that shouldn’t be walking the Earth. He killed Foggy. He killed so many people.

“They will. He won’t last a week. Which means Fisk wants him dead.” Matt’s hand rests on the table before you, and he leans closer, adamant. “We need to know why. And then he can rot in prison until-“

“I want him out of gen pop.” You hate yourself so, so much for saying it that you feel like you’re going to be sick. “I want you to get him back in protective custody.”

Matt looks like you just slapped him across the face. You don’t blame him.

But he agrees. So you go. God help you, you go.

-

“Hi, baby.” His grin is fucking manic. His eyes are starved as they rake over you like he’s filing away every inch.

You glare, and sit down across from him. He leans forward, almost jerking in your direction, like he momentarily forgot about the cuffs in his desperation to touch you. Well, he’s not going to get to. Never again.

“You killed Foggy Nelson.”

“Your hair is longer.”

“You killed Foggy.”

“Do you think about it? The way it felt when I touched you again?”

“Shut up.”

“I’ve thought about it every minute. You tasted just like I remember.” His tongue darts out, smile lopsided as he traces it over his lip, eyes raking over you again so intensely that ice trickles down your spine in a way you really wish was unpleasant. “I wonder what else tastes just like I remember.”

You slap him, the sound cracking through the room, and his head whips to the side. His smile doesn’t fall.

“Do it again.”

“Fuck you.”

“Get me out of these cuffs, baby, and I will.”

“If you think I’ll ever, ever let you touch me again, you’re more fucked in the head than I thought.”

His smile cracks. Falls a little. His eyes darken. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Why did you kill Foggy Nelson?”

“You still love me.”

“No. I don’t.”

“You’re lying.” He’s still looking at you, intensely enough that you have to fight the urge to squirm. “Say it.”

“Fuck. You.”

His head rolls back, like those two words were a confession on their own. “Fuck, I missed your voice.”

“You said you’d speak if I came here. Answer me.”

“Do you remember our three month anniversary?” He asks, unbothered, and you want to throw something at him. Cuffs or not, the asshole would probably catch it. “Chinese food on the couch. The first time I told you I loved you.” Pain twists in your chest at the memory, and Dex leans forward when he sees it, another horrible smile curling on his lips. “I took my time with you that night. I had you making these noises, do you remember? These high pitched, sweet little begging sounds.” His fingers tap absentmindedly against the arms of his metal chair, and your face bursts into flames. “Think about them every night, but you know it doesn’t compare to the real thing.”

“You’re trying to get in my head.”

“I’m already in your head. Just like you’re in mine. We’re connected, forever.”

“Did you kill Foggy to punish me?”

He frowns, eye twitching a little when you refuse to give in. “No. But you shouldn’t have left me.”

“So what? Are you gonna kill me if you get out? Are you gonna kill me now?”

He looks genuinely pissed that you would even suggest something like that, jaw clenched and fingers flexing on the metal table again. “When I get out of here, I’m not going to hurt you.” The intensity of his gaze makes your blood feel cold. “But you’re not leaving me again. Ever.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“I do. I already have.”

“Fuck this.” You push yourself to your feet, the metal chair scraping against the floor like a gunshot. Like the shot that killed Foggy. Fired by the man in front of you. “Fuck you.”

That gets to him. “You’re not leaving. We’re not done.”

“We’re done.” You lean over the table, eyes hard as they look into his. His hands are already struggling against the cuffs locking him to the chair. “We’re done, Dex.”

“I haven’t seen you in a year. You can’t walk out like this.”

“And you’re not gonna see me for another eleven life sentences.”

His voice is a low, violent growl. “Don’t say that.”

And, because you’re a fucking idiot, you do exactly what you told yourself you wouldn’t do.

They confiscated your phone when you came in here. They didn’t confiscate your watch.

One button. One stupid thing you set up in anticipation for this meeting. That you promised you wouldn’t use. And yet, reckless fool that you are, you knew you would.

The security camera light flickers off.

Dex notices immediately, and the hunger that burns in his eyes and curls on his lips lights something aflame in your stomach that you don’t want to think about. Not right now.

You lean both arms on either armrest of his chair. His hands jerk against the cuffs, still trying to reach for you.

You lean closer. You don’t break eye contact. His mouth moves up to chase yours, and you pull back just enough to pull a frustrated grunt from his throat.

“If you ever, come anywhere even close to the people I love again…” you whisper, leaning in so your lips are close enough to his ear that he moans and tilts his head to the side, like he’s silently begging you to rip his throat out with your teeth. “I will kill you myself. Do you understand me, baby?”

For a moment, the thrill of it all makes you forget just how stupid you were for this. Just how dangerous this man is.

And then, as if to remind you himself, you hear a pop. A sharp, pained intake of breath.

Your eyes drop down to Dex’s right hand, just in time to see him slide it out of the cuff.

The crazy motherfucker dislocated his own thumb.

You jerk back, but Dex is faster. Of course he’s fucking faster. His arm locks around your middle, yanking you down onto his lap hard enough to pull an ‘oomph’ from your chest, and his breath is hot on your neck as you squirm against him.

“Shhh, shh.” His rough voice is too soft. You turned off the cameras. You’re a fucking idiot. Something hotter and more intense than panic shoots through your veins, and your breath catches in your throat. “I’ve got you.”

“That’s the problem.” You gasp, but his hand comes up to the back of your head, fisting in your hair and pulling you back so he can look at you.

“I did it for you.” He whispers, reverent. “I bought my freedom with it. For you.”

And then he kisses you, rough and hard, and your attempts to shove him off are met with nothing but a low and hungry growl.

There’s a moment, brief but painfully there, where the feeling of sparks lighting down through your blood is too overwhelming. Where his lips moving against yours is too familiar. Where you kiss him back, and his groan is nothing short of victorious as he wraps his arm more tightly around you.

And then the door opens, and he doesn’t let go. You sink your teeth into his lip, and bite down hard enough to draw blood. He moans shamelessly, but holds you tighter.

It takes two guards to get you out of his vice-like grip. His lip is bleeding. You can taste the iron of his blood. He’s smiling. Wide.

It’s only when the guards start pulling you toward the door that his smile falls, like he hadn’t expected that. Like he hadn’t even considered that you would be leaving again.

“No. Don’t take her. Stop it.” He snaps, as two more guards force his hand back into the cuff. “Don’t take her from me again. Stop it!”

They close the door behind you, and you wipe his blood from your lip with the back of your shaking hand as his scream echoes through the prison.

-

“You didn’t do it. You didn’t help him.”

Matt turns to you, and you can feel the surprise emanating from his very being at the sound of your voice. Here. At this fancy gala to celebrate the esteemed mayor.

“What are you doing here?” He asks. Deflection. And then, concern. “Have you slept?”

No. No, you haven’t. But you’re not going to tell him that. That ever since you went to that prison your thoughts have been more consumed by him than ever. That every beat of your heart has been chanting Dex, Dex, Dex and it’s getting more and more difficult to tell yourself that it’s because you want answers.

And you have them, now. Because you couldn’t help it. You couldn’t ignore it anymore.

“I did it for you.”

“It’s not exactly an invitation you can refuse.” Your dress is uncomfortable. Your heels hurt your feet. You can feel eyes on you from all around the fucking room and you’re going to crawl out of your skin. “And yes. I’ve slept.” You don’t care that he knows that you’re lying.

“I-“ he’s going to come up with an excuse, an apology, but Dex is probably already dead. You’ll probably be dead soon, too. So what’s the fucking point? What’s the point of being subtle? Of trying to be careful, anymore? You weren’t careful when you looked into all of this. You didn’t cover your tracks, and you know. You know it all. And they know you know. You’ll be in the ground in a week at best.

“It was Vanessa. She was in charge of his businesses. She did it.” You don’t even lower your voice. You’re exhausted, and you’re hurting, and you’re angry, and who fucking cares anymore?

Matt grabs for your arm, already beginning to steer you away from watching eyes and listening ears. You pull back, whirl to face him. “Stop. They know I know. They know what I do. That’s why I’m here. They’re probably gonna kill me too, tonight.”

For a moment, you think Matt Murdock might actually be speechless. You just keep talking.

“It’s fine. It’s a long time coming, right?” You run a hand through your hair, and your smile is a pained and humorless thing. “Do you know how many people have been killed, just from me loving him? Because he loved me too, and they used it to manipulate him?”

And Matt is still looking worried, still bothered that people might hear you. But who fucking cares?

“But it’s fine, right? At least the ‘weapon of mass destruction’ who did it is rotting in a prison morgue now. He didn’t deserve help. I didn’t deserve to ask for it. Not for him.”

Matt’s hand is on your arm. You want to cry, but you’ve cried all night and the tears won’t come anymore. You’ve cried so many tears for him. Maybe that makes you a monster, too.

“Keep it down.” Matt says, hand tightening on your arm, but you ignore him.

“I know everything, too. Do you know how many pills he was on in that prison, when she got to him? The inside of his body was a fucking pharmacy. I saw the signature. He couldn’t even hold the pen right.”

Matt Murdock’s jaw twitches. He looks right at you, through his glasses, and you can feel his unseeing gaze on your face. “He still did it.”

He’s right. He did. But-

“You don’t know him. He…he doesn’t think like other people. They got to him. They did this.” Matt opens his mouth, and you raise a hand. “I’m not an idiot. He did it too, okay? He did it. But…” and your exhausted eyes rise to the dance floor, and it all makes sense.

Fisk took everything from you. From so many people. Foggy is dead. Dex is dead. And they’re dancing and smiling like this is the happiest day of their fucking lives. They don’t care. Sure, you don’t care. You’re numb. You’re hurting and confused enough that you don’t care what happens to you, but them… these people did all of this, and they’re happy about it.

“They did this.” You murmur, just to yourself, and start to move forward.

Matt catches you, hard. Fast. In one smooth move, he twirls you onto the dance floor, deflecting your momentum and still trying to fucking cover for you.

“You’re delirious.” He says, voice low and grip tight. “You’re acting irrationally. Don’t-“

But you’ve made it close enough. Just close enough to hear what Buck says to Fisk, quiet and serious but very much audible over the din.

“Benjamin Poindexter killed three guards and escaped prison.”

The world narrows. The floor tilts beneath your feet. Matt holds you upright, and you barely register what he’s saying over the rapid beat of your heart.

Dex. Dex. DexDexDex-

“We have to get you out of here.” Matt’s voice by your ear, his feet already beginning to move you away. You blink, too shocked and…relieved to even force your own feet to move. “He’ll be coming for you.”

Alive. Alive. DexDexDexDex-

You may not have Matt’s senses, but you swear you hear the click of the gun at the same time his head whips up to face the balcony.

“Not me.” You whisper, eyes on the dark shape above you. The dark, achingly familiar shape of a man who should be dead.

And the gunshot launches the party into chaos.

Matt. Matt just jumped in front of the fucking bullet and you’re trying to get to him but you’re being dragged away by the crowd, nearly carried off in the commotion and panic as people rush to the door. You almost fall at one point, stumbling in your heels and nearly getting trampled before you’re saved by the arm of some kind civilian, and by the time you make it back into the ballroom to where the paramedics are crowding around your friend you can’t see the shape on the balcony anymore.

You reach towards Matt, and something on your wrist catches your eye. A small etching of marker on your skin that definitely wasn’t there before.

A bullseye.

-

Hours later, you climb the stairs to your apartment, aching and tired and knowing damn well what you’re going to find.

You spent every free minute tracing the bullseye on your skin with the tip of your finger, sitting in the hospital waiting room and listening to the beat of your own heart.

Alive. Alive. Dex. Alive. Dex. Dex. Dex.

The power is still out. You’re exhausted. There’s still blood on your dress.

Matt begged you not to go home, but he would find you anyway. Anywhere.

There’s a bullseye painted on the door of your apartment. Small, but noticeable. Right above the handle.

You drop your keys on the counter. Loud. No use in trying to hide.

“You moved.”

“Yeah.” You say, voice steadier than it should be. “My boyfriend ended up being a serial killer.”

“I don’t really fall under that definition.”

You hum, casual, and move to the dingy fridge in the open kitchen. Pull out a bottle of wine.

“You look tired.”

“You’re missing a tooth.” You pop the cork with your teeth. Take a swig right from the bottle. “You gonna kill me now?”

“Stop saying that.” It’s still dark, you still can’t see much more than his silhouette, but the words sound like they’re gritted out through his teeth. “I love you.”

“I trusted you.” You grit your own words out, fingers tightening on the bottle.

“You still can.”

You take another swig, and lean against the counter. “Now that’s funny. Didn’t know they taught comedy classes in prison.”

“I thought about you every day. Every minute.” His boots thud against the hardwood, and you turn before he can reach you.

“Funny. I thought about Foggy.”

“That sounds hard. Really-“

“Shut the fuck up.” And now, you have to stall. You have to find your phone, and dial Matt’s number. Or reach one of the panic buttons you installed that will call him. With the power out, there’s a pretty good chance neither of those things will work anyway. “Get out.”

“You don’t really want me to.” It sounds like a plea, beneath the roughness of his words. “You still love me.”

You pull out your phone. It flies out of your hand in a second. Shatters against the wall. You jump back.

“Was that a fucking knife?”

“Bottle cap. I don’t wanna cut you.”

“But you’ll shoot at me.” Well, not at you, but you know mentioning it will bother him.

“I would never in a million fucking years-“

“You. Killed. Foggy.”

“And we’ll work past it, baby. We can work past it.” And there he is, turning you in his arms and walking you back until your lower back hits the counter. His breath is warm, ghosting over your lips, and you hate how your body responds to it.

“You’re delusional.”

“You want me. Say it. Please.” Too close. Too close. His hand is wrapping around the wine bottle, pulling it from your grasp and raising it to his own lips. The moonlight spilling in through the window illuminates the lines of his face, so agonizingly familiar. So beautiful.

You reach up like a woman possessed, and brush your fingers over the scar on his cheek. He groans, and leans into your touch.

In a blink, your other hand whips up, and you press the blade of a kitchen knife to his throat.

He smiles, and you wonder if he’s always been this crazy. He leans forward, letting the blade dig into his skin to brush his lips over yours again, and now you genuinely wonder if he would let you do it.

“I should kill you.”

“I’d let you.” He murmurs, a truly sick confirmation, and your hand is trembling and you hate yourself for it. “But you won’t.”

“I don’t have Daredevil’s moral code.”

“No.” His mouth closes over yours, just enough to feel his teeth scrape against your bottom lip. “You love me.”

“I don’t.” But your voice catches on the word, and your hand shakes more, and he’s bleeding and he doesn’t seem to care.

You pull the knife away, and his fingers curl around yours on the handle, guiding your hand to lower it onto the counter beside you.

“You asked Murdock to get me out of gen pop.” He hums, still so close that you can feel his heartbeat against your own. “Didn’t work, but I appreciate the thought.” The confirmation. “Helped me get back to you.”

“I didn’t want you to get back to me.”

“Liar, liar.” He murmurs, teasing and soft, and kisses you again. These kisses are nothing like the last couple of times, so rough and nearly violent with their desperation. No, these kisses are brief and soft, gentle presses of his lips against yours between words like he can’t help himself.

“I thought you were dead.” You don’t mean to say it. You don’t mean to acknowledge it. “Matt left you to die.”

“And you mourned me.” Another kiss. Slower this time. More lingering. You need to pull away from him. You need to shove him the fuck off of you. This is so wrong. So fucked up. He has killed so many people. Lied so many times. He’s fucking batshit insane. “I saw you. You were about to confront Fisk. For me.”

“I don’t know what I was gonna do.” You breathe, and your eyes are already falling closed. Your body is giving in to him like it doesn’t belong to you. Your heart is still beating heavy in your throat.

Dex. Dex. Dex. Dex.

This time, you lean up and press your lips to his. Wrap your arms around his neck. Tangle your fingers in his hair and devour him. He makes a noise that’s almost akin to a whimper against your mouth, his own hands flying up to your face to angle your head so he can kiss you fucking breathless.

You bite at his lip. Pull at his hair like you’re trying to punish him for how much you want this. How much you missed him. How fucking good this feels.

He moans, lifts you onto the counter and presses his body up against yours like he can’t get close enough. Cradles the back of your head and all but sobs into your mouth when you whimper and kiss him hard enough that his teeth click against yours.

You hear a soft, metallic noise, and feel cool metal on your thigh as Dex slices through the fabric of your bloodstained dress to allow himself more room to press his large body between your legs, the prison guard uniform digging into your burning skin and making you arch against him.

You slide your hand over his neck, thumb digging into the thin cut beneath his chin. His moan vibrates through your entire body, and you smear the blood over his throat as you angle his head to pull him closer to you.

His hand slams into the cupboard by your head like he’s trying to brace himself, the fingers of his free hand gripping your hair so tightly you see stars, blunt teeth digging into your lip like a silent and desperate plea for more.

“Say my name.” He whispers, rough, and you don’t. You fucking moan his name, a sound you’ve never heard from yourself before ripping its way from your chest and making him shake as he releases you to rip his gloves off like separation between your skin is physically burning him.

He doesn’t leave you for long, warm fingers sliding up your thigh and trailing sparks in their wake until you’re trembling against him. Until you’re gripping the back of his head and yanking him down to kiss you again. His fingers slide higher. Higher. Until they’re curling in the waistband of your underwear and every kiss comes on a swallowed and ragged breath.

You nod your consent, fingers curling even more tightly against his scalp, and he kisses you again. You hear the click of the knife, feel the flat end of the blade slide up your thigh again, and can’t find the words to complain as he slices your underwear from your body.

When his long, skilled fingers reach the apex of your thighs, and he feels just how desperate you are for him, the noise that rips from his throat sounds like the most fucked up prayer that’s ever been uttered.

“Fuck.” He pulls back, presses his nose against your temple, and when his fingers immediately find the spot that has you fucking whining you hear a breathless chuckle against your ear.

“Never miss.” He whispers, cocky and infuriating and agonizingly intimate in the dark apartment, and you’re going to fucking kill him.

Kill. Kill.

All those people. Father Lantom. Nadeem. Foggy.

Clarity rips back into you like a fucking car crash. Like a bolt of lightning. It freezes your burning blood, rises to your throat, and makes you shove him so hard his back hits the wall across from you with a dull thud.

You’re just as breathless as him, and his eyes are on fire as they look into yours. As they rake over you, slow and hungry, and he doesn’t even try to catch his breath even as he realizes why you pushed him away.

“Why?” He asks, but he knows. He knows and he’s goading you and you need to make yourself-

“I hate you.” It is the least convincing sentence you have ever uttered. You’re still breathless, still flushed with need, still spread out on your kitchen counter with his name lingering on your kiss-swollen lips.

Slowly, without looking away from you, he raises his fingers to his mouth, and your next breath catches on a whimper at the sight.

He moves forward at the sound, and your foot flies up to stop him, heel digging into his chest.

Something flashes in his eyes. Something you can’t place. You don’t know what’s in your own expression, but you see him scan it. Watch the breath shudder out of his chest as his hand rises up to trail lovingly over your calf.

And then, scarred and beautiful and illuminated by moonlight, he drops to his knees.

Benjamin Poindexter looks up at you like he’s worshipping at your fucking altar, and refuses to look away from you as his lips press against the skin below your knee.

“Stop it.” You try. You really do.

He shakes his head, and blunt nails drag down over your thigh as he moves closer. Kisses higher. Keeps his eyes locked on yours as he guides your heel over his shoulder.

“Dex.” It’s supposed to be a warning. It comes out as a plea.

And then he’s right where you need him, on his knees before you with your hands gripping at his hair and his fingers digging into your thighs to keep you in place, and it feels so good that your eyes are watering with something between pleasure and emotion so intense it’s going to drown you.

Your hand leaves his hair, flying up to scramble for purchase on the creaky old cupboard behind your head as Dex doubles his efforts like he’s desperate to pull more noises from you. He moans into you, gripping you more tightly as your heel digs into his back, and your hand leaves the cupboard to slap over your mouth as a near-wail of pleasure echoes off the walls. It doesn’t do much. Doesn’t muffle your helpless noises nearly enough, and before long Dex is sliding his large hand up your body to pull your palm away from your mouth, fingers tangling with yours as his too-skilled tongue turns your blood to lava in your veins.

You fall apart in minutes, shattering with a sharp gasp of his name as your thighs tremble and your nails dig into his scalp. He pulls back like it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, resting his head against your thigh and staring up at you with a breathless smile on his lips and you want to hate him so badly it hurts.

But you pull yourself off of the counter, slide onto his lap and kiss him hard as you fumble blindly with the belt of his stupid fucking prison guard uniform, and before you know it he’s rolled you onto your back and you’re ripping his shirt open as he hikes your ruined dress up over your hips and-

“Tell me you want this.” He rasps, low against your ear, and when you nod emphatically he grabs your chin and turns your face towards his. “Tell me.”

“I want this.” It’s a sick, horrible confession, but it’s true. “I want you.”

He groans, like it’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever heard, and his first thrust hits home and your moan is loud enough to wake the neighbors.

“I love you.” He breathes against your lips, as you scramble at him like a wild fucking animal, desperate for more. “I love you.”

You won’t say it back. You can’t say it back. This is already fucked up beyond belief.

He holds you like he’s trying to touch every inch of you at once, lips trailing down your jaw until every near-whimper is vibrating against your ear. You can’t stop touching him, either. You yank at his open button-up shirt so hard you hear it rip, until he moves to help you pull it the rest of the way off of him, bracing himself against the floor beside your head and rolling his hips into yours until you’re sobbing his name on every breath.

When you break for a second time, your nails are dragging thin red marks down the skin of his back. He doesn’t stop. He keeps going, keeps relentlessly hitting that spot inside you until the pleasure builds up all over again and it is fucking unbearable.

“Dex.” You manage to gasp, mindless, head rolling back against the floor as he bites at your shoulder and speeds up his movements until you’re practically sobbing.

“One more.” He growls, low and rough and just as wrecked as you are. “Give me one more.”

The third time, he’s right there with you, pressing his nose into the hollow of your throat with a groan of your name that burrows its way into your very bloodstream. Locks itself in your soul and becomes just as much a part of you as the color of your eyes and the bones beneath your skin.

It takes a long time for you to come back to earth. Longer for Dex to pull himself away from you, just enough to roll onto his back and tug you into his side.

“I love you.” You whisper, like a shameful confession, and he shudders like the sound of it is a drug and he’s more than happy to relapse.

He pulls you closer. You rest your cheek against the sweat-damp skin of his chest. Try to even out your breathing as he cards his fingers through your hair.

You have to go. You have to get out of here. Fisk is gonna be coming for you soon.

He grunts, and you make a soft noise as he sits up and gathers you into his arms, drags himself to his feet and carries you into your bedroom.

Everything is so different, now. Dex is a killer. A monster. Your life has been flipped upside down and shaken like a damn snowglobe. You’re probably going to be assassinated soon.

And yet, as Dex helps you out of your ruined dress, skating his fingers and lips over the newly exposed skin, and reaches into your dresser drawer, it’s all so familiar that you ache.

He digs to the bottom, and his grin is triumphant as he pulls an old FBI t-shirt out. His T-shirt. The one you couldn’t bring yourself to throw away.

He slides it over your head, presses a kiss to your cheek, and smiles a little wider when you relax.

And then, when he’s cleaned you up and pulled you into the rest of your pajamas, he smooths out the sheets behind you like a ritual before he lays you down atop them, sliding his body over yours and kissing you until you melt into your cheap comforter.

You make love again. You don’t think either of you even mean to. It isn’t as desperate as the first time, not nearly as mindless and rough, but his kisses deepen and he slides his scarred hand down your back until he’s shifting you beneath him, murmuring a quiet plea against your throat as his fingers tug at the waistband of your shorts that you respond to with another emphatic nod. And then he’s sliding them off, and you’re unbuttoning his pants again, and his tongue is tracing silent sonnets over your skin until you’re writhing against him.

He doesn’t tease, but he still seems to savor every second. He nudges your knees apart with his own, and pushes into you with a groan of your name. He moves with you like the tide, builds you until the wave crests and whispers praises against your ear as it crashes through you. You kiss him, tell him how good it all feels, and he tells you he loves you until he’s hoarse with it.

When it’s over, and you’re lying together in the rumpled sheets and he’s breathing shakily against your forehead and holding you like you might vanish at any moment, you finally speak again.

“We’re not back together.” You mumble, and he hums like you just told him the sky is purple but he couldn’t care less. Like it’s such a ridiculous lie that he may as well indulge it for now.

You frown, but you don’t double down. There’s no point, really. You know him. You know he’s not letting you go anywhere.

“How do I fix it?” He finally asks, and your brow furrows as you sit up a little to look at him.

“What?”

“How do I make you forgive me? For Fog-“

Your hand flies up to cover his mouth as if of its own accord. The movement surprises even you.

“Don’t say his name.” You snap, pain curling in your stomach. Guilt, too. But not enough. You’re lying naked in bed with the man who killed one of your best friends, and you don’t feel guilty enough, and you hate yourself for it. “You still don’t get to say his name.”

He looks at you. Nods. You pull your hand back, and he chases your lips with his own.

He kisses you. You kiss him back. You keep trying to hate yourself for it.

“What do I do?” He asks again, and he looks so earnest that you want to die.

You don’t know what crosses your face. What expression is in your eyes, but his own melt into a look of pure desperation.

It takes you a while to speak, and even when you do, the words spill unpracticed and quiet from your lips.

“He was good.” You whisper, and grief tugs at your stomach with enough force to nearly cripple you. “Foggy was so…good.”

“You said I was good, once.” Dex murmurs, brow twitching a little in that way it does when he’s trying to understand something.

“I did.” You reach up, hesitate, and give in. Your fingers trace over the scar on his cheek. “I think…I think you can be. You can be good.”

He melts. He turns his cheek into your palm, looks at you like you are both heaven and earth and everything in between. “I’ll be anything you want. I’ll do anything for you.”

Your heart crumples, and you see it. You shouldn’t, and you’re fucked up for it, but you see it. You see how he thinks. How he is. How he’s been manipulated and hurt and how he’s hurt others and you still fucking love him.

“I want to kill Fisk.” You whisper, like it hurts, and he reaches up to curl a lock of your hair around his finger like you just admitted nothing more intense than liking sugar in your coffee. “I want them both dead. And I don’t want it…I don’t want it for the right reasons, I think.”

“Why do you want it?”

“Revenge.” You whisper. “The greater good, yeah, but revenge. They killed Foggy. They hurt you. I want them to die for it.”

“Hm.” He slides his hand up your back, palm flat and warm, and turns his nose into your cheek. “If I help you kill them…it balances the scales.”

You frown. “It-“

“A good deed, to make up for the bad. Right?” He presses a kiss to your ear, and your eyes fall closed. “It balances out. You’ll forgive me.”

“I can’t forgive you.” You can’t. You shouldn’t. You won’t.

Even if you understand how his mind works. How he was tricked and manipulated and taken advantage of. Even if you understand him.

You pull back, look into his eyes, and the look on his face breaks something inside of you. The desperate hope. The need.

“We’re probably gonna have to move tomorrow. Fisk definitely wants me dead.” You murmur, and brush your lips over his.

He smiles. “We’ll move.” We. You and him.

“If we do this, you don’t do it for me. I’m not making you do anything.”

“I do everything for you.” He says, matter-of-fact, and closes the distance enough to peck you on the lips. “But okay. Let’s kill ‘em all.”

-

“Such a sweet boy.” The old woman across the hall is absolutely enamored with Dex, or should you say ‘Tony’. Sometimes you think he’s enjoying it a little too much. Especially now, as he crouches down to slide a fried egg into her cat’s bowl. “And what are you two up to?”

“Takin’ the missus to lunch.” He answers smoothly, sliding his arm around your waist and pressing a kiss to the side of your head. You smile brightly, and endure a few more minutes of cooing and fawning before making your way down the hall. He keeps his arm around you the whole time, humming absentmindedly as you make your way out into the street.

“You have got to stop telling her we’re married.” You chastise, and he doesn’t let you go even as he flips a coin behind him into a homeless man’s cup.

“I didn’t.”

“You just called me ‘the missus’.”

He’s smiling, a little too proud of himself. “Could mean anything.”

You still insist that you’re not back together. He still allows you to, but he seems to find it more amusing than bothersome. Which, you suppose, is understandable. After all, you woke up in his arms just this morning, like you do every morning. And, like you do most nights, you spent the majority of the evening moaning his name.

But fuck, he’s like a drug to you. You tried so, so hard to hate him. To pretend like he was a monster. Maybe he is, but maybe you are too.

Because whatever Benjamin Poindexter is made of, it calls out to something intrinsic within you. He knows it, and he’s just waiting for you to admit it.

You don’t know if the spring in his step and the smile on his face is from your activities last night or anticipation of what’s about to happen, but you would say it’s safe to blame both as he holds the door of the diner open for you with an exaggerated chivalry. And, because it’s him and he’s an asshole, he makes you yelp as you walk ahead of him with a playful swat to your ass.

You glare. He smiles, and leads you to the counter.

“You two ready to order?”

The woman behind the counter looks tired. Dex smiles like he’s been practicing how to, sweet and with his eyes crinkled in the corners. Sometimes, when you look at him, scarred and huge and absolutely fucking bonkers, you wonder how much he’s changed since you bumped into him on the street all that time ago. How much you’ve changed.

“My wife and I will have a…banana milkshake, then.” He grins at you, and it is so annoyingly hard not to smile back. “Does that sound good, sweetheart?”

You snort. “Sounds perfect, darling.”

His fingers come up, catching your chin and turning your head to him so he can press a soft, smiling kiss to your lips.

“Cute. I’ll be right back with that.” The woman says blandly, disappearing behind the counter as Dex pulls back.

“Menace.” You accuse, and he pats your cheek before he pulls out his phone.

He makes the worst, least convincing phone call you’ve ever heard. So unconvincing, in fact, that you almost giggle as he says “oh shit, he’s got a gun” in the most monotone voice you’ve ever heard. His eyes don’t leave you for a second. They rarely do. Like when you’re near, he’s locked in on a target.

Then again, hasn’t it always been that way?

You did the research. You did the tracking. All you have to do now is wait.

Dex unwraps two straws, carefully places them both in the milkshake, and leans down to take a sip.

You smile at him, roll your eyes, and lean down to the other straw.

You swear, in moments like this, that his eyes could be little cartoon hearts. He doesn’t stop smiling. Doesn’t look away. And shit, if you don’t feel like baby bluebirds could be tweeting around your own head. Like you’re the only two people in the whole world. Cue the cheesy, romantic music. Cue the world vanishing around you until it’s just you and him in this diner, smiling like idiots and sharing a milkshake.

You glance down at your phone. Watch him finish the milkshake. “Forty five seconds.”

He grunts, calm and relaxed, and starts pulling on his gloves. Pulls a toothpick out of the cup beside you.

“Aren’t you gonna tell me to take cover?” You hum, and the corner of his mouth rises even higher.

“No one’s gonna touch you.” You believe him, and you like that he acknowledges that you know what you’re doing.

“Everybody get on the ground!”

You throw your hands in the air, view blocked by Dex’s large frame, and shriek like a dramatic damsel in a movie.

His shoulders shake once. A silent laugh.

“Too much?” You ask, just as they shout again and come closer.

A toothpick finds its home in the ATVF officer’s eye, and all hell breaks loose.

You climb onto your chair, just in time for Dex to push you over the counter. You land with a roll, and in a second he’s on top of you, hands over your head and body covering yours.

“That was a really great milkshake.” He mumbles almost conversationally as the bullets slow, and you reach up to pull his mask the rest of the way down for him before he climbs off of you and snatches up a handful of silverware.

You manage to get to your feet just in time to watch three officers fall with forks sticking out of their eyes. Unfortunately, it’s also just in time for another man to grab you and press the barrel of a gun to your temple.

“Stand down!” He shouts, right by your ear, and digs the barrel in harder. Deeper.

Dex turns, and tilts his head.

“Ow.” You pat the arm wrapped around your throat. “Wrong move, dude.”

He screams as a fork impales the back of his hand, and you feel two more whir past you before they find their homes in his face. Not kill shots. Not yet. When you turn, he’s moaning on the ground with cutlery sticking out of his cheek and eye.

You tuck yourself into a booth as the rest of the men go down, bullets and weapons finally coming to a stop. Heavy bootsteps land beside you, and Dex pulls his mask off as the man in front of you trembles and clings to a tiny dog in his lap.

“Dogs in restaurants are unsanitary.” He says, genuinely perplexed but not quite annoyed.

“P-Please don’t kill me.” The man whimpers. Dex smiles in that unnerving way he has, and you smile too as you grab a bottle of ketchup off of the table.

“Don’t worry.” He takes your hand, stands you up with him, and throws a final pair of forks behind him to slam home into the retreating form of the man who just held the gun to your head. “We’re the good guys.”

You draw a bullseye on the door. He kisses the side of your head as you make your way out of the diner, stepping carefully over shattered glass with the sound of sirens wailing down the street.

-

ONE YEAR EARLIER

“This is no way to live, Benjamin.”

Vanessa Fisk sits across from him. He tries to focus on her. On anything. His mind has been scrambled since he was checked into this place. The cocktail of pills they have him taking every day makes it hard to think.

But you’re still there. You. You. You.

He lies in his bed at night, stares at the ceiling and blinks like his eyes are weighed down by anvils, and if he focuses hard enough he can almost feel your head on his chest. Almost feel your soft hair against his nose. Maybe your fingers tracing over his skin, soothing and warm.

Your voice, lips barely brushing his own. “You’re a good man, Dex…”

And he’ll reach up, searching for you, wanting to pull you to him and feel your body against his. Wanting you so badly that the pain is overwhelming.

And there’s nothing there. And the room is cold.

“I miss you.” He’ll murmur to the darkness, tongue heavier than his eyelids. And he won’t hear anything back.

Now, Vanessa Fisk pushes something towards him. A picture.

Of you.

His near-useless hand paws at the table, something like desperation surging through him as he grasps for it. They won’t let him have any pictures of you here. They call you one of his ‘victims’. He hasn’t seen your face in so long.

“She misses you.” And a part of him knows Vanessa is manipulating him. Even through the drugs, and the longing, he knows it.

And yet, she pushes the picture toward him a little more, and there you are.

You. You. You.

You, at that bar he found you at. The second time you met. You’re with Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdock, and Karen Page. You’re smiling, but not with your eyes. He knows what it looks like when you smile with your eyes.

You look sad. His eye twitches with the urge to fix it. The urge to touch you.

His fingers curl against the picture.

“I know what it is to love someone so much that being separated feels like…” Vanessa’s voice is gentle. Kind. Vulnerable, even. Dex can’t stop looking at the picture of you. That vulnerability in her voice is reaching him, matching with his own. “Like a hollowness in your soul.”

He makes a soft noise. It sounds desperate, even to his own ears.

His fingers curl a little more against the picture. Brushing over your cheek. Missing the feeling of your skin against his.

“They talk to her about you.”

His eyes, still slowed by the pills, move up to her face.

“They tell her that you were evil. Horrible. She is trying to convince herself that it’s true.” Vanessa leans forward, earnest. “If you want her, you cannot let that happen.”

His eyes fall helplessly back to the picture of you.

Vanessa slides a contract his way. He doesn’t look at it. His trembling fingers trace the printed line of your cheek.

“You can have her again. I only need one…favor. But you will have your freedom, and she will have hers.”

You. You. You.

Vanessa’s manicured finger taps the picture. Taps the face of Foggy Nelson. “I need you to kill him, and one of his clients.”

Dex looks up, a muddled question in his eyes. Foggy is your friend. You like Foggy. Foggy-

“They are poisoning her mind.” Vanessa repeats. “I do not want to see you lose the woman you love, Benjamin. I am offering you a mutually beneficial opportunity.”

You are so beautiful it hurts to look at you. His shaking hand holds the pen. Hesitates. He tries to form a clear and straightforward thought.

“With your freedom, you can get back to her.”

Back to you.

He signs the contract.

-

One good deed, and it’s all better. And you forgive him.

Not like you haven’t already. Even if you won’t admit it, he knows you have. He can see it on your face. Feel it in your quickened breaths at night when he’s got you laid out on the sheets, or on the couch, or against the wall…

And when you eat breakfast together, and he’s staring at you and you’re grinning right back at him, and the sounds of the chaos and the city and the world around him fade and everything is just you. You. You. You.

You’re out at the bodega down the street, grabbing more bandages and water. You’ll be back in ten minutes, tops.

You’re gonna be mad at him. He hates that.

But Matt Murdock showed up four minutes ago, and now the apartment is an absolute fucking wreck, and the lady down the hall is screaming and terrified because Dex had to use her as a human shield for a minute there, and you’re gonna come home to that wreck and worry but…

One good deed. He can do it now. Earn your forgiveness. Earn his redemption. If he doesn’t move now, he might lose his chance. And then what? What’s the point of living if it’s in a world absent of your love? Despite everything, he can’t help but fear a day when you decide that you can’t forgive him. That his sins were simply too much. Where you deprive him of the love you offer now because you just can’t seem to help it, where you stop smiling at him and letting him touch you completely.

No, he has to go now. Killing Fisk solidifies your forgiveness. Allows him to keep you. Keeps the world balanced right.

So he leaves. He leaves the apartment for the last time, and prays to whatever God might exist that you’ll forgive him.

- 

He throws the snowglobe. Plans the trajectory against Wilson Fisks’s swing. Watches the shard pierce Vanessa Fisk’s temple.

It was easy. Almost too easy.

But the bullet. That’s the problem. That landed home, and it hit all the wrong places.

He’s going to bleed out. You’re going to be upset.

But he did it. One good deed. He didn’t kill Fisk, but he killed Vanessa. At least, at the very least, he took that pain away. She ordered the hit on Foggy. Your friend. She made you hurt. She just made him the weapon. And now, she’s going to die.

-

“Mrs. Smithers, please shut up.”

She’s screaming, and crying, and you should probably be comforting her. ‘Tony’ just held a gun to her head, after all. And yet, you have bigger things to worry about.

Two minutes, and they’ll be here. Cops have been called. AVTF is on the way, guns blazing and you have seconds to find him and your heart is hammering in your chest in that familiar staccato beat.

Dex. Dex. DexDexDex.

There. The church. The fucking church, of all places.

Vanessa Fisk, mortally wounded. Daredevil and Bullseye at the boxing match. Dex Dex DexDexDex.

You smash your computer against the counter, cracking it in half, and bolt.

You take the fire escape, and begin scrambling down just as you hear them bursting into the hall.

And you pray, with every last shred of your desperate heart, that you’re not too late.

-

He’s bleeding out. He knows it. Seen it enough times to know he doesn’t have long, and Murdock isn’t gonna stick around to help him.

He misses you. He wishes you were here.

The dizziness of blood loss is a little frustrating, but Murdock is busy calling him a piece of shit. Fair. He shot his best friend, after all. If you’re still mad about that, it makes sense that he would be too.

“One last good deed.” He hums, propped up against the wall as blood leaks between his fingers, pooling onto the floor beneath him. “N’then she forgives me.”

“Asshole.” A whole conversation in the pews a minute ago, Dex’s whole speech about how he’s making it better and earning forgiveness and getting his mind back, and that’s all the guy can say. He thought lawyers were supposed to be more eloquent.

“Take care of her when I’m gone.” You. You. You. He sees Daredevil tense. He’s pissed at you, sure, but he cares about you. So Dex smiles, tired, and tilts his head back against the wall, confident in his next words. “Yeah, you will.” And if he ever touches you, Dex will return as a ghost and put a pencil through his eye. But hey, just something to worry about in the afterlife.

Murdock stutters some sort of apology. Has a whole little crisis about whether or not he can save him. He’s so stressed it’s almost funny, but he’s not gonna save Dex. He did it. He earned forgiveness. It’s time for judgement day.

The room pulses. The sounds of ATVF bootsteps echo above. His eyes close, and you’ll be okay. You forgave him. You didn’t admit it aloud, but he doesn’t need that. Never did.

Judgement day ticks ever-closer.

“Dex!”

His eyes open, and it’s too bright in the dark room. He’s too tired, but…

There you are. In the church and illuminated by low light like an angel. He smiles, bloody and exhausted and more than a little out of it. “Hey, baby.”

“Wake up. Dex, wake up.” You sound so panicked. So scared. For him. You love him. You. You. You….

“Dex! Fuck, please wake up. C’mon.” You’re pulling at him, trying to drag him across the floor and failing miserably, and he wishes you would just stay. Just admit that this is hopeless and let him hold you close. Admit that you love him, and that you need him, and let him feel your breath and smell your hair in his last few minutes on this earth.

“Fuck. Why are you so heavy?! Where’s Matt?” You’re trying to get your hands under his shoulders. It’s a little funny, but it hurts like a bitch when you jostle his bullet wound, so he grabs you and spins you down in front of him.

“In the wind.” He reaches up, fingers sliding over your cheek and smearing it with red. Fucking beautiful. They write poems about this shit. About women so lovely they steal souls and start wars. “You gotta go, too.”

“Fat fucking chance.” You press your forehead to his, unbothered by the blood, and cradle his own face in your hands. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you. I love you. Do you hear me? I love you.”

Oh, that’s the best thing he’s ever heard. It’s the first time you’ve said it since that night on your kitchen floor, when you were still lying beneath him and still catching your breath and still all his after so much time. Back then, you whispered it like some horrible confession. Sweet music to his ears.

“My girl.” He’s fading. He’s fading fast. You hold him more tightly, smearing his own blood on his face as he does the same to you, the matching stains like a tether. Like a claim. “North Star….”

“Dex. Dex. Stop. Wake up. Don’t leave me don't you dare leave me-“

The sound of your voice is swallowed by the tide, and he doesn’t close his eyes, refuses to look away from you, but his vision begins to blur.

And then, from deep under the water, he hears it.

The door creaking open. Your panicked voice as your head whips to the side, dislodging his bloody hand from your cheek.

“Matt?! Matt! Help him! Please-“

…

-

You’re by his bedside. You have been for hours.

Karen is not happy with you. Neither is Matt. Soledad is stitching up Dex’s wound, pulling the bullet out, and he keeps waking up.

Not only does he keep waking up, he keeps jolting awake from the pain. Keeps squeezing your hand so tightly you wonder if he’ll break bone. Keeps finding your face in the haze of sleep and agony, and grinning like a lunatic when your eyes meet.

And then he’s healed. Somewhat. For now. And you’re fighting exhaustion of your own in the chair you’ve pulled up to the cot he’s asleep in.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Karen sounds pissed. You get it. But Dex is pale and his breathing is ragged and slow and you can’t let go of his hand.

“Hey, Karen.” The casual tone of your voice is insulting. You know it. You think you’ve been spending too much time with Dex.

“Him?” Matt isn’t here. Not now. You see sweat on Dex’s brow. Look down to make sure that his bandages are still in place. Every time his breathing slows even a little, your ears ring and your vision narrows.

“Yeah.” You don’t look away from him. You’re still covered in his blood. “Cute, right?” A lame joke, like he’s some boy you just met at the bar, rather than…well, fucking Bullseye.

“We’ve been trying to find you. We thought he kidnapped you.”

Your thumb trails its way over bruised knuckles again. “Well…I mean, he kinda did.” However things ended up that night after the party, you’re pretty confident that he wasn’t going to let you leave. Not without him.

“Are you sleeping with him?” You’re getting a little tired of the twenty questions.

“I’m in love with him.” You answer simply, and hear her suck in a horrified breath.

“He killed Foggy.”

“I know.” Dex stirs, just barely, like he might be reacting to your admission even in sleep. You squeeze his hand, and when you reach up to brush your thumb over his cheek he turns his face into your palm. “And I still love him. Isn’t that fucked up?”

-

He wakes cuffed to the cot. They’re worried about what he might do. Honestly, you’re surprised they didn’t cuff you too.

He winces as his eyes open, and smiles when they land on you. His low rasp of a voice is even more gravelly, hoarse with sleep and pain.

“Hey, baby.”

He always says that in the most fucked up situations. It always makes your heart beat a little faster.

He sits up, slowly, and pulls at the cuffs on the bed.

“Do your staples hurt?” You ask, eyes falling down to the bandages. 

He grunts in acknowledgment. “C’mere.”

You do, slowly, and it’s only then that he seems to notice the gun.

“You gonna shoot me?” He asks, smile widening a little as he tilts his head to the side.

“I might.” You reach down, slip a paper clip into the cuff on his right wrist, and hear it pop free. He makes a soft noise, rolling his wrist once before sliding his hand up your back as you sink down to straddle his lap.

He leans in to kiss you. You press the barrel against his forehead and push him back. He smiles even wider.

“You disappeared.” You hum, and he pushes his forehead a little more into the gun. “You tried to get yourself killed.”

“Balancing the scales.”

“You got shot. You almost died. I watched you die.”

“You love me.” He breathes it like the memory is a fucking treasure - a shot of heroin straight to the system. His hand tightens on your back, pulling you more firmly onto his lap.

“I still hate you. For Foggy.” It’s a lie, but it should be true. He hums, and you slide the gun around to his temple.

“You love me.” He repeats, and brushes his nose against yours.

“I do.” You admit, soft, and he kisses you. Hard. Slow. His fingers slide up into your hair, curling into a fist behind your head as he completely ignores the firearm digging into his skull.

You pull back, and push it in harder.

“Listen to me, Poindexter.” You murmur, low and dark as your own hand slides up to his hair, pulling his head back and making him groan as he looks at you with a blissed-out grin on his scarred face. “Never do that shit again. You don’t get to leave me. Not now, not ever.”

Words he’s said to you before, albeit in different forms, back when you told yourself you hated him.

“Never.” He agrees, and his eyes fall closed like he would die happy if you pulled the trigger right now. He opens them after a moment, and leans up to bump his nose against yours again. “Wanna put that down?”

“I could shoot you.” You don’t know why you’re saying it. You’re smiling too.

“No bullets.” He hums, pleased. “And it’s not loaded.”

You laugh, and wonder just how crazy you’ve become. “The FBI trained you too well.”

He uses his free arm to tug you a little closer, until there’s no more space between your bodies, and you drop the unloaded gun in favor of wrapping your arms around him again.

“Not the FBI. I know you.” He kisses you again, in that slow and determined way, and slides the palm of his hand up beneath your shirt. “Uncuff me.”

You smile, and shake your head. Push him back down and chase his lips with your own.

He hums, nips playfully at your lip, and tugs on the other handcuff until it rattles.

“You’re injured.” You murmur, muffled by his kiss, and he tangles his fingers in your hair again.

“Feels better.”

“Liar.”

He grunts, and rocks his hips against yours. “This feels better. Let me touch you.”

“You are touching me.”

“Let me touch you more.”

You reach down between you, as wrong and stupid as it is, and unbuckle his belt.

He makes a very pleased noise, and moves his free hand down to unbutton your jeans.

“Uncuff me.” He growls again, demanding, as you shuffle out of your pants and move to pull his down.

“No.”

He pulls you back down to him by the back of your neck, traces his tongue over your ear. “Don’t wanna do this with one hand.”

“I could cuff your other hand.”

He grunts, and the next roll of his hips is harder. More punishing. You gasp, control slipping a little more than you want to admit, and he pulls at the hem of your blood-stained shirt.

“Off.”

You comply, and he leans back to look you over like you’re the most incredible thing he’s ever seen. You love how he looks at you like that. You love him so much it hurts.

“Your staples.” You murmur, as he drags himself back up to a sitting position, pulling you more firmly onto his lap until you can feel the very prominent evidence of his desire against you.

“Doesn’t hurt.”

It’s getting harder to breathe. Harder to focus as he moves his hand down to slide your underwear over your legs. You maneuver to help him, and his own breath catches in his throat.

“Liar, liar.” It comes out as a whisper, soft and teasing as you press a soft kiss to his lips, and his own lips curl into a smile.

“I want it to hurt.” He noses at your jaw. Down to the hollow of your throat. “Reminds me I’m alive.”

You kiss him, hard, because he is alive and he’s here with you and you suddenly need him so badly it hurts. When you finally sink down onto his lap, bodies joining and breath shaking with the feeling of becoming one, he buries a groan into your hair, hips stuttering as you begin to rock against him. Your thighs burn already at the angle, and he meets your movements with his own as he crushes you to him. It must hurt, and you want to tell him so, but when you open your mouth he groans low against your neck and finds that spot that has your toes curling and hands flying up to find purchase on his shoulders.

You slide your hands over his cheeks, pull his face back so you can kiss him breathless, and pleasure begins to build almost alarmingly fast in your core. You almost lost him. You love him. He’s kissing you like you’re the only oxygen he’s ever wanted to breathe and dragging his rough palm up over your bare back as he meets your movements with his own. The cuff rattles against the chair, but despite his restricted movement and injuries he’s still using his one arm to move you in his lap, angling your body to hit that spot in your core that has you gasping desperately against his lips.

One particularly rough thrust has him hissing in pain, and the reminder of exactly why he’s hurting like this possesses you in the strangest way as you slide your hand down to grip his throat, forcing his gaze to your own.

And there’s so much power in it. In watching this large, scarred, deadly man stare at you like he’s in awe of your existence. The sight of it alone has you falling apart, moaning his name as your body spasms against his. He clings to you, and your hand squeezes around his throat as he pushes his forehead against yours like he’s drinking in the sight of you, too.

“Mine.” You whisper, and he falls over the edge so violently you wonder if he might pass out, hand dropping down to grip your thigh tight enough to bruise.

You sit there for a while, tracing your fingers down the scar on his back as he catches his breath with his forehead pressed against your shoulder.

“I have to re-cuff you.” You murmur eventually, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. He uses his free arm to grip you tighter.

“No. Don’t move.”

“If they walk in here and see you uncuffed and inside me, they’ll probably cuff me too.” You hum, and feel him smile as his teeth dig playfully into your collarbone. You turn your head, lips brushing his ear in a conspiratorial whisper. “They think I’m crazy.”

He laughs, broad shoulders shaking as he pulls back to kiss you.

“Love you.” His fingers trace up your body, trailing slowly over your heated skin.

“Love you too, psycho.” You kiss his cheek. “No more suicide missions, or it’s both cuffs.”

Something sparks in his eyes. “Promise?”

“Both cuffs, and no touching.”

He frowns, and kisses you again like he’s trying to prove that he’s allowed to touch you now. “No more suicide missions.”

-

When Matt comes an hour or so later, you’re fully dressed and back in your chair at Dex’s bedside, one eye closed in concentration as you aim a knife at a bullseye you drew on the wall.

You throw it, and it bounces off the wooden surface and clatters to the ground.

“Flick your wrist.” Dex says, but his eyes are on you, hungry and dark. He’s tried to teach you how to aim weapons a few times before, and the lessons have more often than not been cut short by whatever seems to ignite in him like a bonfire at the sight of you holding a knife. It helps now that he’s in cuffs, but despite your activities earlier he looks damn close to trying to break out of them.

You pick up the knife, and try again. It sticks a little outside of the center, but it sticks. You turn to grin at Dex. He grins back, and the expression is downright feral.

“Uncuff me.”

“Bad boy. You’re gonna get me in trouble.”

Any response he may have, inappropriate or demanding or whatever it may be, is interrupted as the door swings open and Matt walks in. Angry. Silent.

He uncuffs Dex roughly. Sits across from him and doesn’t even acknowledge you. Rude, but fair. You can still understand why he and Karen are so pissed at you, even if you find it a little difficult to care.

“Let’s get one thing straight. I hate you for Foggy. And Father Lantom. And Agent Nadeem.” Dex’s eyes are right on you as he rolls his wrists, stretching the no-doubt stiff muscles and seemingly oblivious to how off-putting it must be that he won’t even spare a glance toward the man telling him how much he hates him. “And I even hate you for what you did to her. Whatever you did that broke her mind.”

“Woah, hey. I’m of completely sound mind.” You snap, defensive. Matt doesn’t turn around.

“Your shirt is on inside out.”

You look down, flush, and look back up in time to see Dex smirk.

“Dick.” You grumble, because he definitely knew, and he definitely didn’t tell you on purpose. You frown at Matt again. “I didn’t uncuff him.”

“Not all the way.” Dex supplies, and you glare so hard his smirk turns into a manic grin.

“Shut up.”

“Stop. Both of you stop.” Matt snaps, annoyingly serious Daredevil voice and all, and it takes a significant amount of effort to swallow your response and sit back in your chair.

He talks about forgiveness. About how he needs it for his own sake, and not for Dex’s or even yours.

But you saw Matt’s face, when you found him at the gala. When he tried to pull you out of there before you got yourself hurt in your anger and grief. And in the church, when he pulled you and Dex to safety as you begged the near-unconscious man to stay with you. To live because despite it all you couldn’t fucking lose him.

He’s angry. He’s hurting. But he cares about you. And you care about him, too. Your love for Dex doesn’t make those years of friendship just go away.

And then, the ultimate question. Aimed directly at Dex. “So, do you wanna do one good thing in a life full of shit?”

Benjamin Poindexter turns to you. You smile at him, an entire conversation passing between the two of you in the span of a second before he rolls his shoulders and turns to Matt.

“What do you need me to do?”

-

The whistle echoes through the vast expanse of the room. Three floors up. Directly and strategically across from the courthouse.

Four ATVF officers whirl, guns raised, and…

And then lowered out of pure confusion.

A woman stands in the doorway, in casual clothes, with her eyes wide and her hands raised in shocked and horrified surrender.

“I-I was just looking for the bathroom.”

Shit. A civilian. They’re gonna have to figure out what to do with her, now. There’s no way she didn’t see the fake Bullseye across the room, and if she tells anyone-

“Wait, please don’t shoot! I know what you do, right? You’re the good guys? You find vigilantes and…you know…” she curls her fingers into the shape of a pistol, aiming at the closest officer’s head, and pretends to fire in demonstration.

Exactly where the woman ‘shot’ him, a knife appears, jutting out right between a pair of wide eyes.

He goes down.

She jumps, surprised, and inspects her hand with alarm like smoke might start coming out of her fingers.

And then, she aims again, almost experimentally, at the second officer. The moment she ‘fires’, another knife flies through the air and hits home.

Just as the shock begins to wear off, spurring the startled men into action, she lowers her other hand into the same shape, and ‘shoots’ the final two men in rapid succession before they can even think to lift their guns.

And then, when all that’s left is the ‘fake Bullseye’, who is still standing there frozen and confused, she laughs.

The sound of heavy bootsteps echoes through the room.

“That was even more fun the third time.” She says, tone bright and amused as she tilts her head back towards the source of the sound.

Bullseye, the real one, appears behind her, and his low chuckle is the most frightening sound the other man has ever fucking heard.

The new Bullseye fires his gun, and screams as his hand is impaled by a knife. He goes down, crumpling to his knees and cradling the bleeding appendage, and his counterpart walks casually forward with the mysterious woman behind him.

He’s only in pain for a few seconds, just long enough to be pushed to the ground, and just long enough to see the glimpse of another knife before it finds its home in his eye.

-

“Holy shit.”

“Hm?” The click of the rifle. The subtle shift of his shoulders as he adjusts his shot. So careful and calculated, and yet you can feel him locked in on every word. Every blink. Every movement.

Even with another target in sight, he is always focused on you.

“Matt just told everyone he’s Daredevil.”

Dex hums, cocking his head to the side. “And?”

“And he’s probably gonna go to prison for it.”

Dex loads the sniper, the shell of the bullet clattering onto the floor. “Prison’s not so bad.”

“Says the guy who broke out of it.”

“For you.” He turns, and you can see his eyes crinkle in the corners even if you can’t see him smile behind the mask. “For romance.”

You hum, and pop your headphone back into your ear, eyes moving back to the monitor as you sit cross-legged atop the table beside the gun. “You’re a fucking psychooo~” you sing, under your breath, and feel him catch your chin between his gloved fingers before you have time to look back up. He tilts your chin towards him, and you feel the warmth of his lips beneath the rough fabric of his mask as he pulls you into a kiss.

He moves back to the gun with the grace of a cat, satisfied, and you do your best not to worry too much about Matt Murdock. Your friend. Daredevil, who has just outed himself to the entire world and sealed his own fate.

The shot is fired and thus your location is given up. It’s time to go.

You hesitate. You sit by the computer, and you watch the screen after it goes blank.

A gloved hand comes up, a warm chest against your back as that same familiar hand guides yours away from your lips.

“What’re you up to?”

Dex’s couch, so long ago. Your eyes locked on a screen. Warm fingers curling around your own. You must have been biting your nails again. It must be late. You barely even heard him come in.

“Tech company. Innocent employee. Spreadsheets.” You tilt your head back, sleepy, and catch his lips with your own. “Not supposed to talk about it though, remember?”

“Criminal.” He kisses you again, but he’s smiling.

“Not technically.” You kiss him back, pulling him closer, catching his hand to guide him around the couch and over to you. “You gonna tattle, Special Agent Poindexter?”

“Never.”

“Time to go.” That same voice is lower now. Raspier. Still just as achingly familiar. So much has changed, and everything is so different, and he’s still so incredibly yours.

“Matt…” the word is released on a breath, and that breath feels too heavy. Too weighed down by memories. Matt. Foggy. Karen. So many memories. So much loss.

“Can’t do anything for him now, baby.” His nose against your temple, his arm around your waist. He took his mask off, at some point. “But if they catch us up here, it’s gonna be a lot worse for him.”

You turn, still frowning, still worried, and reach up to brush your fingers over the deep scar on his cheek. He tilts his head into the touch, like he always does, and smiles.

That smile, sweet and scarred and as familiar as the palm of your own hand, will always feel more like home than any place in the world.

And that’s how it was always gonna go, wasn’t it? Since the day you ran into him in front of that coffee shop, the night he kissed you for the first time, the moment you saw the bullseye etched on the door of your apartment…

It was always him. It was always going to be him. The trajectory of your life changed before you even knew it was happening, jolting in a different direction like a ricocheted bullet, and always still pointed home.

Home, to him.

You smile back, and meet his eyes.

“Where are we going?”

-

Benjamin Poindexter rolls a coin over his knuckles, glances out the window of the airplane towards the earth thousands of feet below, and smiles.

The flight attendant speaks to the man in the seat beside yours, welcomes him into the ‘Million Milers Club’ or whatever, and he does his best not to glare at the noise. The man is beaming - annoying -  but you would tell him that it’s rude to glare if you were awake.

Speaking of which, your head is snuggled up to his shoulder, breath soft and even and both arms wrapped around his bicep like he’s some kind of teddy bear, rather than a dangerous assassin.

Then again, you’re almost just as unhinged as he is these days.

He hums, content, and turns his nose into your hair, inhaling deeply and feeling you sigh and shift a little closer.

“You two seem happy.” The too-friendly guy in the seat beside you is smiling, and Dex resists the urge to wrap his arms around you and pull you onto his lap, hiding you from the world because you’re his only his no one else-

He’s gotta reel that under control a little more. That possessiveness. But, well, you’re his. And he’s yours. Two sides of the same coin. Soulmates in every way.

And he knows that you do seem happy. You always do, because you are. You walked onto this plane together in an almost sickening display of blissful love. He lifted your bag into the overhead bin for you, pulled you into the seat after, wrapped his arms around you and basked in your laughter as he shamelessly pressed kisses to your neck and shoulder. You’d leaned back, grinned at him like you were the only two people on the plane, in the world, and slid your hand into his own.

No one suspected that you’d helped him kill people only a few hours before. That you washed the blood off of each other before you came to the airport.

He raises his eyebrows. Too-friendly Guy keeps going. “You headed to your honeymoon?”

The corner of his mouth quirks up. He rests his chin on top of your head. He has a ring in his pocket, and when you land in the next country, and he gets the very first opportunity that comes his way, he already plans to drop to his knee and beg you to marry him.

But for now, he nods, and fixes the stranger with a practiced smile.

“Yeah.” He hums, feeling you shift comfortably against him, sighing contentedly against his shoulder. Perfect. His. “It’s long overdue.”

The man looks the two of you over, and seems to be about to say something else, but you shift again and Dex’s attention suddenly couldn’t be any less focused on him.

Honeymoon. Yeah, you’ll have a thousand honeymoons. A thousand lifetimes of happiness and togetherness and love so intense it’s taken lives, saved lives, shattered governments, and so much more.

May as well start now.

~

Especially because it’s instinctive. If you’re particularly affectionate in the mornings, it completely disarms him. You burying your face against his chest, mumbling incoherently, your hand searching for him beneath the blankets without even opening your eyes. It affects him far more than he'd ever admit. You'd feel his hand slowly slide through your hair while he quietly exhales above you. That tiny gesture saying: I’m here. To reassure he still didn't leave.

Soft kisses against his jaw. Your fingers tracing over his hands. Sleepy “stay a little longer” whispers.

At first he tries to maintain composure. Then eventually he gives in with this low, quiet sigh and pulls you back against him. His forehead resting against yours with eyes closed as if this is the only place he truly allows himself peace.

You two sometimes ended up having morning sex. But if you initiated it after a particularly "active" night he didn't let you go any further. But it wasn't about denying you. He wouldn't let you do anything until he made sure you're not sore anywhere, you're hydrated and fed. It was about making sure you're comfortable and rested before anything else. Bringing you cold water to bed, making breakfast and adjusting blankets, everything with such calculated precision like he already knew you'd be eager in the morning as well. "Come on, Vergil, I'm fine"

"I can still sense you're exhausted." Before you can protest he leans in to quietly feel up your limbs if there's any tension in the muscles.

"You're being awfully protective" you whined.

"Yeah, I am being practical"

Later, when you lean over with a playful grin and murmur that perhaps the two of you could simply stay in bed all day together, with a clear suggestion, he regards you with that calm, unreadable look.

"No."

"No?"

"You require rest. And we both know that if we stay in bed together you won't get any." His hand finds yours, lacing your fingers together. "I refuse to indulge you until you've fully recovered." There's a quiet firmness to it that leaves little room for argument making you pout dramatically.

"So strict."

"So you remain well."

Because most of the times sex with Vergil was intense. His demonic side often took over, letting himself go and loose himself in pleasure with you. And with his size stretching your insides so wide it always took a toll on your body in the sweetest way. But he'd never wish to hurt you. After making sure the glass and plates are empty and there's no more drowsiness in your moves his face softens. You step closer, slipping your arms around him. For a heartbeat, he remains perfectly still before his posture relaxes, one arm settling around your waist.

"You're so serious about this" you murmur affectionately against his neck.

"I have learned," he replies quietly, "that caring for someone means ensuring they do not ignore their own limits."

"And now?" You tilt your head. His gaze lingers on yours, warmer than his composed expression lets on.

"Now," he says, brushing a thumb gently across your cheek, "I have no further objections."

There's a playful glint in your eyes. "So that's my official permission?"

A soft, almost amused exhale escapes him. "If you insist on calling it that."