Spilled coffee and unnecessary noise
Chapter 3
Benjamin Poindexter
​Every object has its own route. The route is security.
​I started keeping a diary of her movements on Tuesday. Not for the FBI. Not for Radeh's reports. For myself. I needed to know exactly where Y/N was when I wasn't around, to keep the noise level in my head at 70 beats per minute.
​7:45 AM — Y/N exits Stark Tower. Black Cadillac. Happy at the wheel.
​8:12 AM — Coffee shop on the corner of 44th and 8th. Y/N buys two large cinnamon cappuccinos. Spills three drops on a napkin. Chaos.
​8:25 AM — Entrance to the DA's office.
​I had the day off today, but I couldn't stay in the apartment. Without a purpose, the walls loomed around me, and Dr. Mercer's voice seemed too far away. So I put on civilian clothes: a gray, nondescript jacket, a cap. At forty meters, I'm perfect. I blend into the New York grime.
​I stood in the shade of a newsstand across from the DA's office. In my pocket were compact binoculars and a stopwatch.
​At 1:00 PM, she went out for lunch. A colleague was with her—a young law school intern who laughed too loudly and walked too close to her. My hand in my pocket clenched into a fist. My fingers closed on a heavy steel coin. Distance: thirty-five meters. Angle: thirty degrees. Wind: northwest, two meters per second. If I tossed the coin right now, it would enter his temple directly through the carotid artery.
​"Benji, find the pattern. This is a violation of the rules," Mercer's calm voice sounded in my head.
​I closed my eyes. Inhale. Exhale.
​I didn't toss a coin. I simply followed them, three blocks behind. Watched her smile, adjust her scarf, choose a salad. She didn't know I was there. My presence was her invisible shield. I spotted every blind corner, every suspicious car on the street. If her father couldn't keep her 100% safe without his iron armor, I would.
Y/N
I've had this strange, sticky feeling for the last three days. A personal paranoia.
I constantly felt like someone was looking at the back of my head. When I left the coffee shop, when I walked through the park, when I got into Happy's car. I turned around sharply several times, but all I saw were New Yorkers scurrying back and forth, bundled up in coats.
"Y/N, are you okay? You've been fiddling with that key ring in your hand all evening," Dad tore himself away from the hologram and looked at me from across the table.
"Huh? Yes, Dad. Just... overworked," I tried to smile and sipped my cold tea. "Lots of paperwork." "If that prosecutor of yours is squeezing you dry, I'll crush his office," Tony muttered, but his eyes gleamed with the usual warm concern. "How about taking a day off? We'll fly to Malibu for the weekend? Just you, me, and the ocean. Without the FBI and those surly agents."
"I'll think about it, Dad. Honestly," I walked over and hugged him from behind, burying my nose in his shoulder. He always smelled of expensive perfume and solder paste. I was safe at home. But the moment I stepped outside...
The next morning, I met Dex again at the prosecutor's office. He was in uniform, stoic, and crisply pressed.
"Good morning, Agent Poindexter," I said quietly, passing his post by the archives.
"Good morning, Y/N," he replied.
He called me by my name for the first time at work. His voice was even, but when I looked at him, a chill washed over me. His gaze... he wasn't just looking at me. He scanned every detail of my clothing, frowned when he noticed my new scarf, and his pupils dilated slightly.
​"You changed the route from the parking lot," he suddenly said, his voice devoid of the tiredness of a man from an empty apartment. It was the tone of an appraiser. "You came through the backyard, not the main entrance. The lighting there is poor."
​I froze, clutching the folder in my hands.
​"Where are you from... you were on duty on the fourth floor, Benjamin?"
​Dex didn't blink. His face remained a complete, impenetrable mask.
​"I am responsible for monitoring the perimeter," he stated, taking a step toward me. "Always."
Y/N
The sound of the ocean always helped me breathe freely. Unlike the roaring, smog-choked, and anxious New York, Malibu breathed freely. Dad kept his promise: a morning flight on a private jet, and here we were, sitting on the terrace of our California home.
Tony looked different than he had in the Tower. He was wearing simple linen pants and a stretched-out T-shirt, holding a mug of black coffee, and there was a rare peace in his eyes.
"So, intern? Do you miss your Hell's Kitchen?" he winked at me, leaning on the railing and gazing at the waves. "I'm sure the prosecutor is crying into his pillow without your perfect file sorting."
"Dad, I've only been here four hours," I grinned, tucking my feet under me in the rocking chair. "But honestly... it's so quiet here, it's even unusual."
"Silence—that's what makes flying across the country worth it," Dad came up to me, placed his hand on my shoulder, and squeezed it lightly. "I've seen how overwhelmed you've been these past few weeks, Y/N. You looked like... like someone was chasing you. If there's a problem at work or someone's being rude, just say so. I could buy this prosecutor's office and turn it into an art gallery in five minutes."
"It's fine, really. Just a lot of work," I lied, looking out at the endless blue water.
I couldn't tell him about that creepy feeling of someone staring at the back of my head that had haunted me in New York. I couldn't tell anyone about Benjamin Poindexter either—his cold, scanning gaze, his daytime comment about my route through the backyard, and the deep, broken darkness I saw in his apartment. If Tony found out even a tenth of it, Dex would be destroyed or locked away in a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. prison. And I... for some completely illogical reason, didn't want that.
That evening, we grilled meat, argued about '80s cinema, and just laughed—the way only the two of us could. No Iron Man suits, no FBI, no law. Tony was just my dad, caring and funny.
But around midnight, when Dad went into the underground workshop to "tinker with some parts," I gave in to a strange impulse. I pulled out my phone and opened the prosecutor's office work chat. Dex's number was in my contacts.
​I hesitated, but then wrote a short message:
​"Warm in Malibu. Hope New York is calm."
​The reply came exactly sixteen seconds later.
​"New York City is 14 degrees. Wind gusts 5 m/s. No breaches of the Stark Tower perimeter have been detected. Your route in California has been monitored via FBI communications for your safety. Return on schedule."
​I stared at the screen. "Your route in California has been monitored."
​These words sent an icy chill down my spine. He wasn't just working a shift in New York. He was still tracking me, even three thousand miles away.
Benjamin Poindexter
Distance is chaos. Three thousand, two hundred miles.
When Y/N boarded the plane, my heart rate rose to 88 beats per minute. Dr. Mercer's voice on the iPod didn't help. I paced my apartment: four steps to the window, four steps to the wall.
One. Two. Three. Four.
New York had become too loud without her. Wilson Fisk, through his lawyers, had issued new instructions to the FBI. Agent Radeh was bustling. The city was buzzing. The only constant in my head these past weeks had become her—her even voice, her scent of vanilla, her habit of pouring coffee and looking at me without fear.
I had no right to fly to California. It would have been a direct violation of orders and a blown cover. But I had connected to a secure FBI database that tracks GPS trackers in escort vehicles and on the mobile devices of protected individuals.
Her dot glowed green on the map of Malibu.
When her message appeared on my screen—"Warm in Malibu. Hope New York is calm"—the noise in my head instantly died down. Absolute, perfect silence reigned. My pulse dropped to 72.
She thought of me. There, next to her all-powerful father, on the ocean shore, she wrote to me.
I typed a reply, strictly according to form. I couldn't tell her what had truly distorted my mind: that I was holding a steel coin in my hand and staring at its green dot on the monitor, that I hadn't slept for thirty-six hours, and that her departure had disrupted my entire life. If she doesn't return by 8:30 on Monday, I'll have to find a way to make her come back. Because without her, my structure will collapse.
