#daredevil fluff

you sat curled beneath a blanket, one leg tucked underneath you, a book resting open in your lap. your apartment felt unusually warm compared to the weather outside. a small lamp glowed beside the couch, casting pools of amber light across the room along with some scented candles you lit.

you'd showered less than half an hour ago. your hair was still slightly damp, the ends leaving faint wet marks against the oversized t-shirt you'd thrown on afterward. the warmth from the shower lingered on your skin, making the apartment feel even cozier than usual.

it should have been the perfect night for reading, except you kept rereading the same page because your mind kept drifting. your neighbor. the man from across the hall. you didn't even know his name. all you had were brief encounters in hallways, shared elevator rides, nods of acknowledgement.

you stared down at the page. reading the same sentence for the fourth time and giving up. with a sigh, you lowered the book onto your chest. outside, headlights passed below your window. your thoughts wandered again.

you wondered if he was home, if he was awake, if he ever noticed you watching him the same way you noticed him watching you. you wondered what his voice sounded like. whether it was as sharp as his stare. whether he even knew how much space he'd started taking up inside your head. the thought made you smile at yourself.

this was getting embarrassing. you were imagining a man you'd never even spoken to.

you were just beginning to convince yourself to return to your book when three firm knocks sounded at your door. the sound startled you enough that you nearly dropped it. you sat up immediately, blinking toward the hallway. at almost midnight, you certainly weren't expecting visitors. another knock followed a few seconds later.

setting the book aside, you stood from the couch and crossed the apartment. the wooden floor felt cool beneath your bare feet as you approached the door. through the peephole you could only make out the dark shape of someone standing in the hallway.

curiosity got the better of you. you unlocked the door and pulled it open.

oh.

standing on the other side was the very man you'd been thinking about for the last twenty minutes. rainwater darkened the shoulders of his black jacket, suggesting he'd only recently come inside. his expression remained unreadable, but his eyes settled on yours almost immediately, familiar and unnervingly intense.

then he lifted one hand - dangling from his fingers was a set of keys. for a second, you simply stared at the keys in his hand, then recognition hit.

"oh my god."

you immediately reached for them, relief washing through you. "i've been looking for these all evening."

his gaze followed the movement of your hand. "figured."

your fingers brushed as you took them from him. it wasn't even enough to properly qualify as touching, but you still felt it. a brief spark of awareness that made you strangely conscious of how close he was standing. you glanced down at the familiar keychain attached to the ring and laughed softly.

"seriously, thank you. I thought I'd somehow lost them outside."

"found them in the lobby," he said. "you dropped them earlier."

you looked back up at him.

"and you remembered they were mine?"

"I've seen you carrying them."

the answer should have felt completely normal. instead, it made your stomach tighten. neither of you seemed eager to break eye contact. the hallway suddenly felt much smaller than usual.

you became acutely aware that you were standing in your doorway looking freshly showered and probably staring at him like an idiot. you cleared your throat.

"well." your fingers tightened around the keys. "I definitely owe you one..."

"tony." he specified. you introduced yourself in exchange.

tony... the name doesn't suit him that much, you thought to yourself.

"tony!"

his eyebrow lifted slightly. his gaze remained on you for a moment before shifting away. only then did you properly notice the state he was in.

his dark jacket was soaked through. rainwater clung to the fabric and dripped occasionally onto the hallway floor. his hair was damp too, slightly darker than usual, with a few strands falling forward.

you frowned. "jesus. it's pouring out there."

he glanced over his shoulder toward the building entrance at the end of the hallway. "yeah."

"you got caught in it?"

"something like that."

the man looked like he'd walked through a hurricane.

"something like that doesn't explain why you look like you swam home."

that earned a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth. you felt oddly proud of yourself.

"well, my apartment building has terrible timing too."

"how so?"

he looked back at you.

"no hot water."

you blinked. "what?"

"pipe burst." he said it casually. "and maintenance won't be here until tomorrow."

you stared. "you're kidding."

"wish I was."

you looked at him. then at the rainwater practically dripping off him. then back at him. a few seconds passed. no, don't even think about it.

"you can use my shower."

the words left your mouth before you could think about them. immediately afterward your brain caught up.

right. great. amazing.

you had just invited the attractive stranger you'd been obsessing over for months into your apartment to shower. excellent. very normal.

his eyebrows lifted slightly, looking skeptical. "your shower..."

you cleared your throat.

"I mean-" too late. you were already flustered. there was no recovering now. "I have hot water. you don't. that's the entire thought process."

"that's reassuring."

"don't make it weird."

his expression remained perfectly neutral. "I wasn't."

"you were thinking about it."

for a second you thought he might refuse, you expected him to. he seemed like the kind of person who rarely accepted help from anyone. his eyes drifted past you into the apartment. then his gaze returned to yours.

"you sure?" he asked, his question coming out quieter than you expected.

you nodded. "yeah."

finally he sighed through his nose. almost like he was giving in to something. "okay."

you blinked. "okay?"

"okay."

you hadn't actually planned for him to agree. now you were the one standing there staring. his eyes narrowed slightly. amused.

"you're the one that offered."

"I know, I just-" you stopped. because there was absolutely no way to finish that sentence without embarrassing yourself. he waited. "come in" you pointed toward your apartment.

the smile that appeared this time was small. brief but definitely real. you stepped aside and he finally crossed the threshold into your apartment. the scent of rain followed him inside.

you closed the door behind him and suddenly became painfully aware that your mysterious neighbour was standing in your living room. the same living room where you'd spent the last twenty minutes thinking about him. unfortunately, your brain chose that exact moment to remind you of this fact.

you immediately walked into the side of the couch. the impact echoed through the room. fuckkkk, that hurt. you closed your eyes from the pain and tried to ignore what just happened, pretending you were okay.

"I saw that."

of course he did. you rubbed your knee.

"no you didn't."

"pretty sure I did."

"well, as your host, I'm asking you to respect my privacy."

another laugh. somehow, hearing it while he stood dripping rainwater onto your floor made the entire evening feel a little unreal. you laughed alongside him.

you guided him to the bathroom - brought him towels and whatever men's clothing you had. the ones you usually bought to wear at home.

"If you need anything else let me know, tony!"

he thanked you and locked the door, turning the shower on. dex immediately started inspecting the whole place: what brand toothpaste and soap you use, what does your laundry detergent smell like, what scented shower gels do you have. he didn't forget to open some drawers and noticed a few pads and tampons laying around, as well as some razors and first aid kit.

after checking everything out, dex finally stepped into the shower. he didn't mind your haircare and skincare products - he thought they smelled sweet, just like you. he couldn't stop sheepishly smiling the whole time. like he finally got what he wanted without even trying too much - if we don't include the fact that he stole your lost keys earlier the day, and a few months of eye-fucking you two had.

after around 15 minutes, tony was out of your bathroom, dressed in your home clothes. he looked so unbelievably hot right now, hair still wet and messy, clothes a little too tight for his broad figure, his cheeks were pinkish and you could smell your signature scent across the living room.

"everything alright?" you peeked your head up from the couch.

"yep, I guess you don't owe me anymore" he smiled. "you're good". tony started walking over to you, the couch dipping at his weight. fuck, he looked so sexy manspreading right on your couch, drying his hair with one hand, his biceps flexing. this can't be real, you thought to yourself.

you were staring. it was becoming a genuine problem.

“you keep looking at me like that and I'm gonna start thinking I’ve got shampoo left in my hair.”

your eyes immediately snapped upward, face feeling warm. “you probably do.”

“wow.”

“check.”

tony dropped the towel onto his shoulder and patted around his head dramatically. after a few seconds of searching, he held up absolutely nothing.

“false accusation. I expect an apology.”

“you’ll survive.”

“barely.”

you rolled your eyes and tried focusing on the random movie playing on the tv because your extremely handsome neighbor looked like he had just walked out of a magazine cover to you. meanwhile, he was sitting on your couch wearing sweatpants that were definitely too small for him and a hoodie that looked like it was losing a battle against his shoulders.

it wasn’t fair.

“you know,” he said after a moment, “this is actually kind of weird.”

“you showering at my place?”

“that too. mostly the fact that your entire apartment smells like vanilla.”

“and?”

“and now I smell like vanilla too."

you laughed.

he looked offended. “I'm serious.”

“that’s your problem?” you rolled your eyes.

"pretty much, I've got a reputation to maintain" you stared at him. he stared back. then both of you lost it. the tension dissolved instantly.

“that’s the dumbest thing I've ever heard,” you managed between laughs.

“thank you.”

“that wasn’t a compliment.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

the laughter lingered for a second before fading away. the movie continued playing in the background, filling the apartment with distant dialogue and music neither of you were paying attention to anymore. somehow, the silence that settled between you felt different now. heavier.

tony leaned back into the couch, one arm stretched across the backrest. his head tilted slightly as he looked at the television, but you got the feeling he wasn't watching it either. you tried to focus on the screen. but every time you glanced over, he was still there - wearing your clothes, still smelling like vanilla and your shampoo, still taking up way too much space in your apartment and somehow making it feel smaller.

the realization made your stomach twist. because this wasn't normal. neighbors didn't usually end up sitting on each other's couches at midnight wearing borrowed clothes and they definitely didn't make it this hard to breathe. you swallowed and looked away.

"okay, what is it?" tony asked.

"what?" your head snapped toward him.

"you keep looking at me." his voice was quieter now - not teasing, just stating a fact.

heat crawled up your neck. "you're sitting in my apartment."

tony's jaw tightened slightly. just enough for you to notice. then his eyes dropped to the oversized sleeve hanging over your hand, to your bare legs tucked underneath you on the couch. then back up again, slowly. your breath caught. his expression changed for half a second. something unreadable flashing across his face before disappearing just as quickly.

it was the first time since you'd seen him that he looked uncertain.

"you should stop looking at me like that," he said quietly.

your pulse skipped. "like what?"

his eyes held yours for a second.

"you know exactly like what."

the air seemed to leave the room. you couldn't think of a single response, avoiding eye contact. your eyes dropped to the floor, then to the sleeve hanging over your hand, anywhere except him. meanwhile, tony didn't move. his gaze stayed exactly where it was, steady and impossible to ignore even without looking directly at him.

you could feel it lingering, feel the weight of the silence stretching between you. the room hadn't changed, the tv was still playing somewhere in the background, but everything else seemed distant, drowned out by the simple fact that neither of you had laughed your way out of this one.

when you finally risked a glance back up, his eyes were still on you. not challenging, not teasing - just watching. there was something unusually unguarded about him now, as if he'd forgotten to hide whatever was running through his mind. the silence settled heavily between you, charged with all the things neither of you seemed willing to say out loud.

all you knew was that your heart was beating hard enough to make it difficult to think. the space between you suddenly felt much smaller than it had a few minutes ago, despite neither of you changing position. tony's gaze dropped briefly to your lips before returning to your eyes.

the movement was subtle and impossible to miss. for the first time all evening, he looked genuinely conflicted. like he was arguing with himself, like part of him had already made a decision and the other part was trying to stop it.

"this is a bad idea," he said quietly. the words sounded more like a warning to himself than to you.

you swallowed. "then why aren't you leaving?"

for a moment, he just looked at you. then something in his expression softened.

"I don't want to." the answer barely came out above a whisper. somehow the distance between you disappeared. tony leaned forward slowly, giving you every opportunity to pull away, every opportunity to break the moment if you wanted to. when you didn't, his eyes flickered between yours one last time.

his hand came to rest against the couch beside you, close enough to make your pulse jump. close enough that you could feel the warmth of him. the air felt impossibly still. then he tilted his head slightly and closed the remaining distance.

It started off as hesitant at first, like he was unsure of it but soon enough tony leaned in closer, deepening the kiss. his hand came up to hold the side of your face - fingers brushing over your jaw. you could feel his desperation with the way he was kissing, it wasn't rough but passionate. his hand went down to hold your throat, softly squeezing it.

you felt yourself getting hotter every second, feeling goosebumps all over your body. you tried to break the kiss to take a breath but tony held it firmly, not letting it go. he pushed his tongue back into you, exploring every part of your mouth.

slowly both of his hands went down to hold your waist, pushing you closer. you used this chance to straddle his lap and he gladly let you. you felt the hardened bulge between your legs immediately, softly groaning at the feeling of him. tony squeezed your waist and pushed you to his chest, your arms wrapped around his neck.

the kiss got intense in matter of seconds, it wasn't innocent anymore. both of you were breathing loudly, holding each other impossibly close. you could feel yourself getting wet, pussy pulsing right on his lap. you decided to grind on him out of desperation.

"fuck" tony grunted loudly and pushed his head back on the couch. he started to push his hips up to feel you deeper. you moaned softly at the new sensation, your clit feeling the friction between layers of clothes. tony's hands moved to grab your ass and push you down on him again. you grabbed the back of his hair out of pleasure and hid your face in the crook of his neck.

tony's voice was low and rough, grunting from time to time. he started leaving kisses on your jaw, going down lower and biting your neck, softly sucking on it. his hands now trailed back up to slide under your shirt. he cupped and squeezed your breasts and twisted one of your nipples.

your moans started to progressively get louder, desperately grinding your clothed pussy on his sweatpants. you felt yourself getting closer, the friction, sensation and heat between your legs getting difficult to handle. you couldn't keep your composure anymore. neither could tony.

"am I making you feel good, pretty girl?" he smiled, whispering in your ear and gently biting it before going back on your throat. "come on, you're almost there, baby".

the praise made your walls flutter around nothing, the emptiness felt frustrating. you felt yourself getting impossibly close to cumming from just rubbing your clit on his bulge.

"fuck, fuck, fuck" the orgasm came crushing down on you. your back arched at the feeling, eyes and head rolling back, exposing your neck to the man under you. he didn't miss the chance to plant lingering kisses all over your throat.

"good girl" tony pushed himself up on you once again to ride out your pleasure and moved your body against him with force. he grabbed your face and kissed you rough and desperately, biting your lower lip.

his fingers tangled in your hair as the kiss turned filthy again - wet and deep and messy. every bite of his teeth sent sparks down your spine. then suddenly he pulled back just enough to yank off his shirt in one rough motion. the dim light caught every hard line of his chest filled with the scars.

without a word, tony lifted you effortlessly into him and pinned you beneath him on the couch cushion. his mouth found yours again but it wasn't gentle anymore.

tony’s hands slid under your shirt, pushing it up slowly - his lips never leaving yours as he kissed you through every movement. when the fabric was halfway off, he broke the kiss just to pull it completely over your head. the second cool air hit your bare skin, goosebumps erupted but tony warmed you fast with his mouth trailing down your neck.

his teeth grazed one shoulder before his tongue dipped into the hollow of your collarbone. each kiss grew hotter, needier, like he couldn’t get enough of you.

he reached behind to unhook your bra that stood in his way without hesitation - impatient but careful not to hurt you.

"you're perfect, sweetheart" he whispered against your bare skin.

tony kissed down your stomach, slow and deliberate - each press of his lips a promise. when he reached the waistband of your shorts, he paused. his fingers hooked into the fabric and peeled them down over your hips with torturous slowness. you could feel every brush of his knuckles against sensitive skin.

his soft lips pressed a kiss through thin panties that were already damp from everything before this moment ever started happening at all.

with one hand holding onto your thigh to keep you spread for him, he dragged those same panties down slowly - revealing everything inch by inch under dim living room light filtering through curtains.

the moment your panties were gone, he lowered his head and licked long, slow, deliberate - right through the center of your folds. a full-body shiver tore through you at the contact.

"tony!" you moaned out loud as your head fell back out of pleasure.

he did it again. then again. each stroke was different - teasing one side with his tongue while sucking gently on sensitive skin. his mouth sealed over your clit and sucked hard.

"sweeter than I imagined," tony groaned im your pussy, completely lost in your pleasure.

you gasped so loud it turned into a moan that echoed off the walls. tony growled against you and doubled down immediately: tongue swirling fast now while two fingers slid deep inside without asking permission. they curled just right inside you as he sucked relentlessly.

his fingers, which had been moving slowly at first, suddenly picked up speed - thrusting deeper and faster inside you while his thumb replaced his mouth for a split second to rub tight circles over your clit then he dove back in with force. it was relentless - curving those two digits just right every time they plunged deep. the heel of his hand pressed lightly against your pelvis, adding subtle pressure that made everything feel even more intense

you could hear him breathing heavy through it all - low groans vibrating against sensitive. each sharp inhale from him told you he was getting off on every sound spilling out of your lips

"please don't stop, please" you chanted his name like a prayer as you came apart instantly, your orgasm hit like a lightning strike fast and overwhelming. the way you came from tony’s mouth was messy.

fingers clenched around tony’s hair as waves of pleasure ripped through you. your back arched off the couch cushions and your hands fisted hard in his hair, pulling slightly without meaning to.

"there you go" tony didn’t stop. not even when he felt you shaking under him. he kept sucking gently now instead of aggressively - drawing out every last pulse until it became almost too much. sensitive and overstimulated.

finally, tony slowly pulled back - lips glistening in the low light, then crawled up over you. without hesitation or warning he crashed his mouth into you, kissing messy and deep with all that pent-up hunger still burning inside him.

his sweatpants thudded softly as it hit the floor. he didn’t hesitate when he finally peeled off his boxer briefs - freeing himself completely. hard, thick and aching for attention. you almost drooled at the sight. he kicked everything aside without looking and climbed back onto the couch with you - skin on skin this time. warmth everywhere.

tony hovered over you for a breath - just looking. your lips were swollen from kissing, your chest rising and falling fast. the room was quiet except for both of your breathing. heavy with want. he lined himself up slowly - tip pressing right where it mattered most and paused again, waiting, checking if you were okay with this. when you nodded and arched into him, he pushed forward slowly.

inch by inch, stretching gently as his body slid inside yours, heat meeting heat in the most intimate way possible.

"fuuuuck, baby, so tight f'me" his jaw clenched hard, eyes squeezing shut briefly from how good it felt.

the slow, careful pace didn’t last long. once tony was fully inside - buried deep where you were warm and tight around him. his hips jerked forward instinctively, driving himself deeper with a low groan that rumbled through his chest. the rhythm started steady at first, then faster and harder.

"eyes on me, baby" each thrust made the couch creak beneath you both. tony’s breathing turned ragged, mouth falling open as pleasure overwhelmed every nerve. without warning, one hand shot up and wrapped loosely around your throat. just enough pressure to make your pulse jump under his palm. then he pinned both of your wrists above your head with one strong grip.

"fuck, feels so good" you moaned against his lips.

"oh yeah? you like how I fuck you, baby?" tony teased.

the pleasure was building too fast, like a wave about to crash. every snap of tony’s hips sent electric shocks through your core, each movement perfectly calculated to drag the most intense sensations out of you. his voice alone - low and teasing made your stomach flip.

"tony, please" you could feel him everywhere - the heat of his skin against yours where sweat-slicked bodies pressed together; the way muscles in arms flexed as he held himself up over you.

"please what, baby" he repeated slowly, voice dripping with false innocence like he hadn't just wrecked you seconds ago. his hips gave a tiny roll - not enough to give real relief; just a cruel little tease of movement. he saw it in your face immediately: that perfect mix of desperation and neediness. "use your words," he murmured against your neck, lips brushing skin between syllables.

"please, tony, wanna cum on your cock, please" your voice came out breathless, wrecked already. tony’s expression shifted. the playful teasing vanished in an instant, replaced by something far darker and hungrier. his pupils dilated further; his jaw tightened with sudden intensity.

without warning, he slammed back into you - harder this time. no slow buildup now; just raw force as his hips with renewed aggression. the couch creaked violently beneath you both like it might actually break from how rough and fast things got all of a sudden.

a groan ripped from tony’s chest at the feeling - the way you clenched around him so perfectly. "fuck!" your third orgasm hit like a tidal wave, unexpected and overwhelming, eyes rolling back to the back of your skull. one second tony was pounding into you with that perfect rhythm, the next your whole body clenched around him - walls fluttering as pleasure erupted through every nerve ending.

you gasped his name. he felt the way you squeezed him so tight and that was all he needed. his thrusts turned erratic. desperate. losing their control fast as his own release barreled toward him.

a few more rough pumps and he buried himself deep inside you and came hard - body tensing above yours like a coiled spring finally snapping. heat flooded between you both in waves. the second his orgasm peaked, tony collapsed onto you - heavy but careful not to crush you completely.

his lips found yours in a messy, desperate kiss. when he pulled back, neither of you got very far. his forehead nearly brushed yours. for a second, he simply stared at you, breathing unevenly.

your breath was still coming in slow, shaky waves - post-orgasm haze thick around your mind as you looked around the room. the tv had been playing some late-night news segment after the movie ended - volume low, background noise. neither of you really paid attention before. but then you glanced at it, eyes half-lided, mind floaty.

Benjamin Poindexter. Also known as, Dex - Bullseye. a headline flashed. there was a live shot of him brutally attacking the police - his figure was tall, broad shoulders, that confident stride you’d recognize anywhere. then they showed a mugshot of his face without the mask: dark eyes, sharp jawline, face filled with scars that were still red.

your stomach dropped. tony saw the second your eyes widened - that specific kind of panic, the sharp inhale that wasn’t pleasure-related and the way your whole body locked up. he turned his head slowly toward the tv. without hesitation dex reached for the remote and hit mute first, then power-off button right after.

the room plunged into silence the second the screen went black - no more news, just suffocating stillness. dex’s movements were precise, calculated; even now, there was something terrifyingly methodical about him.

he turned to face you fully. the dim light from your bedside lamp caught his profile - the same scars you’d seen on tv moments ago now in real life: jagged across his cheekbone, a thin line over his eyebrow. His expression wasn’t angry, but it wasn’t calm either.

the silence felt fragile now, stretched so tightly that even the smallest movement seemed capable of breaking it. dex's gaze lingered on yours before drifting toward the dark window across the room. his shoulders had gone rigid.

"I should go," he said eventually.

whatever had been there moments ago was gone. the guarded expression had returned, settling over him like armor. his jaw tightened as he looked toward the door instead of at you.

"tony?"

"dex." he corrected. closing his eyes briefly. that single hesitation told you more than anything else could have.

when he finally stood, the apartment felt strangely empty despite the fact that he was still there. every movement seemed deliberate, controlled, like he was forcing himself to leave before something happened that he couldn't take back.

"thanks for letting me use the shower," he said quietly.

you rose from the couch too. his eyes met yours then. and you saw something dangerously close to the truth. whatever it was, it scared him. the silence stretched. then he gave a small shake of his head.

"goodnight."

his hand remained on the handle. his back to you.

"for what it's worth," he said quietly, "I'm really glad you opened the door tonight."

the door clicked shut behind him, and you stood there staring at it long after he was gone. the apartment suddenly felt too quiet.

slowly, you sank back onto the couch, your mind replaying every conversation, every look, every pause that had lasted a second too long. beneath the shock and confusion, you couldn't figure out what had happened. the pieces were all there, yet none of them seemed to fit together, leaving you with more questions than answers.

You cocked your head, and your warm cheeks pulled tight with a smile as you traced the same line again.

"Your scar," you said, idly stroking the skin. "I've never noticed this one before." He could hear your eyes shift back to his face. "What happened?"

A breathy chuckle left his mouth, and he hung his head, a lock of damp hair sweeping past his flushed cheek.

"It's hard to remember," he admitted, skimming his lips over the inside of your knee. "They've all started to blur together at this point."

You pressed your lips together in amusement, and your hands shifted to tickle his delt, tracing the silver lines littering the flexing muscle as he shifted above you.

"I like looking at them," you murmured as his mouth wandered back to your knees, the sound of your drumming pulse drowning out most of your audible sentiment. "I like looking at you."

"I like looking at you, too," Matt murmured, a smile splitting across his busy lips at your following giggle. His eyes flicked in the direction of your face, and he raised a brow. "Can I continue now?" he asked, already beginning to trail kisses down the inside seam of your thigh. You hummed in confirmation, but your hands continued to wander.

The warmth of your scent overwhelmed his senses as Matt lowered his face between your parted legs. Heat radiated from your parted folds, and the resounding sound of your hammering pulse had his eyes rolling back into his head. He took you by the ankles when your legs threatened to close, grounding himself as his thoughts grew hazy. Your body twitched with anticipation, and your breath hitched as his lips skimmed your slick skin. The sheets shifted beneath you as your shoulder drew together.

And yet, despite gripping your thighs as they quivered with pleasure, despite smelling your arousal as it flooded your slit, despite listening to the high-pitched noises as they freely left your parted lips, and despite sensing all other clear signs of your obvious, mind melting pleasure, you still managed to ask, "And this one?"

He blinked, and the sound of your steady voice had his working mouth pausing.

"What?"

A full laugh rumbled through your body, and he listened to the friction of skin against fabric as you relaxed back deep within the ruffled sheets. You brushed your thumb over a thick, raised piece of healed skin stretching from the tip of his bicep down to the junction of his elbow.

"This scar, Matt," you said, the sensation of your fingers sending goosebumps erupting across his upper body. "How'd you get this one?"

Matt's face contorted out of confusion—brows rubbing one another and nose wrinkling—and audible evidence of his perplexity escaped from his throat as he opened his slick mouth.

"You're still talking about the scars?" he asked, and the heat of your cheeks moved as you nodded. "Really?"

"Afraid so," you teased, and you must have noticed his face falter because you quickly added, "I'm curious!"

"But why now?" Matt asked. "I'm sort of in the middle of trying to do something with you, and you—" he began, frustration apparent as he shifted, "—and all you want to do is... is—what?" he asked, shadow swallowing you as he buried his anchoring hand into the sheets besides your head. "Listen to me talk about all the times I've been stabbed?"

It was difficult to differentiate between the beat of his own irritation-fueled, escalating pulse and the excitement of yours. One of your wandering hands smothered itself over his heart and the other cupped his heaving side, and the effect of your hot palms on his skin was immediate and obvious; his jaw fell open, his eyes practically crossed, and his entire body jolted under the touch of your nimble fingertips as you played his protruding abs like the strings on a guitar.

Matt couldn't hold back the strangled mewl that fell from his numb mouth as his dick twitched against the smooth skin of your belly.

"I thought you liked it when I touched you, Matthew," you murmured, and he grit his teeth at the clear amusement in your voice. "Do you want me to stop?"

"No," he said quickly before snapping his jaw shut and hanging his head. "Don't."

"Then tell me about this one," you said, and he felt the tip of your finger encircle a prominent scar on his lower ribs. A whine left his throat at the sensation, and he struggled to keep his answer steady.

"Bullet," Mat bit. "'Just grazed me. I—" he began, but the words fell out of his wide open mouth as you palmed his twitching pec. "I can't remember who shot it."

He felt your hand wander from his side, and you repositioned your arms to rest over his shoulder, your fingers continuing to explore the expanse of his quaking back.

"You've got a lot over here," you murmured as he managed to slowly lower himself to his elbows. His hips moved at their own accord, smothering his dick between his own quivering stomach and yours. Matt had to bury his face in the crook of your neck to muffle his groans as you poked and prodded at his back. "You should watch your back more often."

"I'll keep that in mind," he grunted only for his entire body to seize as you dipped two fingers into the cavern of muscle that trailed along his spine. You hummed and followed the wide scar all the way down to his lower back which arched into your touch. His hips twitched out of instinct, and Matt moaned as his dick pulsed.

"What happened here?"

"Jesus, woman," he whined, fisting the sheets beside your face. "Knife—no—hook," he said, swallowing. "It was—uh—Japanese mobsters—the Yakuza."

"Did they catch you by surprise?" you asked, and his breath hitched as you dug your fingers into the superficial skin. "'Seems like it was deep."

"It was," Matt wheezed, audibly out of breath. "It was very," he murmured, and thrusted his hips against your stomach, desperate for friction, "very deep."

Your fingers danced over the healed-over skin, gently massaging the growing ache in his tense muscles.

"Do any of them still hurt?"

He huffed into your neck, and his jaw felt like it was permanently hinged open.

"That one does sometimes," he murmured into your skin, lips wet with his own saliva and your slick, "but it's better when you—" he tried, and his back arched like a cat's into your palm, his dick bobbing against his stomach "—when you touch it like that."

"Maybe I should touch you more often," you said, and his eyes rolled back into his head as your hands flattened out across his lower back and sunk his hips into yours. The tip of his dick ground into your folds under the pressure of your hands, pushing roughly against your slit for somewhere to go before clipping your hole and slipping inside in one swift motion.

Matt's entire body shuddered, already overstimulated as he wetly moaned your name in your neck. You hummed, and your smile brushed the shell of his ear. "It seems like you enjoy it when I touch you, Matthew."

No longer able to think clearly with the horny haze fogging up his mind, Matt's hips moved on their own accord. His own slick, trembling skin slapped against your composed hips, and his cock chased its own high while the rest of his body found overwhelming stimulation from your prodding fingers. Every swipe, smother, and stroke of your hands had his body jerking and twitching like a man possessed.

Matt desperately mouthed at your pulse, and he swallowed around the pound of your heartbeat to muffle his whines when the signs of your whittling composure flooded his senses; your breathing had grown erratic, the rise and fall of your hips threatened to fall out of time with his own rhythm, and the most wonderful sounds vibrated the box deep in your throat.

"Matt," you gasped as his hand reached up to rest around your throat. A strangled cry left his wide open mouth as your vocal cords hummed like electrical wire beneath his palm, the signs of your need overwhelming his system. Your hands grasped his shoulders to ground yourself as his pace began to falter. His mouth moved against your neck, but he couldn't form words. "Oh, Jesus, Matthew."

The noises fell freely from his mouth as he felt your slick legs lock around his tilted hips, and your hands desperately clawed at his back for something to hang onto. Matt's entire body convulsed as your nails dug themselves deep into his middle back and dragged themselves all the way back up to his shoulders. And as your body seized around his, the pressure inflaming the burn of the long scratches marring his back, for a moment, Matt swore he saw God. His hips chased the internal pleasure as a hot, white, overstimulated shock overwhelmed him, and his dick jerked within your mutual release.

It sounded like he was underwater, and only the thunderous, slowing pulse of your heartbeat broke through his waterlogged ears. His whine was muffled as he slowly pulled his hips from yours, his core quivering and his thighs trembling, and he lazily reached up to wipe the mess of drool from his lips as he raised his head.

One of your hands cupped his jaw, and your thumb smeared the remaining spit on his lips.

"What's this one from?"

Matt hummed as your voice broke through the obstruction in his ears, and he leaned into your palm as your thumb passed over his top lip to follow the ridge of an old scar. An exhausted chuckle ripped through his spent lungs.

"You really are somethin' else," he grumbled, leaning down and pressing his lips to yours. You grinned against him and lazily threw your arms around his neck, brushing the fresh marks lingering in his skin.

"I think you might've given me some new scars," he murmured, rolling his shoulders back. Goosebumps erupted across his body as you tickled the fresh area of sensitivity.

Who knew the Teacher Voice would be effective even on vigilantes? The command hits him like muscle memory; he freezes and sits back down before his brain catches up. You fold your arms, shooting him a glare. “You’re not fine, Matt. You’re barely upright.”

He tries to shrug and immediately winces. “I’ve been through worse.”

“Try anything funny,” you say dryly, “and I’ll put you in time-out.” You suck in a breath. “Say it with me: ‘I am not going out.’”

“I am not going out.”

“‘I am not going to decide I am well enough for a ‘little walk’ when my girlfriend goes to work and then end up in an alley with a mugger and a new concussion.’”

“...It’s a little early for muggings, isn’t it?”

“Say it.”

Matt smiles impishly into the distance, seemingly not having heard you. You don’t know why he won’t just lie to you—hell, that’s what you’d do in his place—but all the better for it, you suppose. He turns his head toward your voice, those unfocused brown eyes catching the light just right, turning them to gold. “You really think you can keep me down all day?”

Okay. You want to stay angry, but that smile cracks through your irritation like sunlight through fog. You still remember the shaking in your hands when you stitched him up at two a.m., the heartbeat under your palms too shallow, like a spider’s fragile skittering.

“You know what,” you say. “Fine. Get dressed.”

His brow furrows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re coming with me.” 

Matt blinks incredulously, like he’s sure he’s misheard. “With you?”

“Yeah,” you say, slinging your tote bag over your shoulder. You jangle your keys. “C’mon. Get dressed, Mister, if that’s what you want so badly. You have”—you glance at the clock—“fifteen minutes before I leave without you.”

“You’re seriously taking me to school?”

“You bet.” You flash him your brightest smile. “Don’t worry, the kids have zero survival instincts. You’ll blend right in.”

You should clean up more. You know. Your classroom looks like something exploded in it—a mishmash of alphabet borders, crooked paper-chain rainbows, glitter perpetually embedded in the carpet. You’re both glad and saddened Matt can’t see just how much of a mess it is.

For the first hour, you stash Matt in the breakroom. This is partly to keep him from wandering, and partly to shield him from twenty high-decibel five-to-six-year-olds until caffeine has done its job. But it takes about three minutes for the other teachers to notice the mysterious man in the corner with the bandaged hands and movie-star jawline. They descend like curious pigeons, and within moments, he’s surrounded.

“So, you’re the lawyer?” asks Mrs. Kowalski, whose retirement countdown has been in progress since the Clinton administration.

“I am,” Matt answers smoothly.

“Do you work for one of those fancy firms?” another teacher asks. He’s leaning on the counter towards Matt like he’s in a rom-com coffee shop.

“Something like that,” Matt says, trying not to sound too much like he’s calculating the distance to the door by sound alone.

And then (inevitably) Mrs. Novak, who once told you she “couldn’t be trusted to be left in a room alone with Ryan Gosling,” leans forward and says, “You’re not married, are you, handsome?”

The pause that follows could power the city grid. Matt’s head tips just slightly in your direction, as if to check whether this is some kind of prank. His mouth opens, closes, and then ever the gentleman, he clears his throat. “Uh… no, ma’am.”

Mrs. Novak beams like she’s just won the lottery.

You sip your coffee and very generously decide that this is absolutely none of your business.

You come to collect him an hour later, and when you step into your classroom together, twenty pairs of eyes snap toward the door. 

“Friends,” you announce, your voice slipping into that vibrant brightness, “I brought someone new with me today. This is my friend, Mister Matt!”

A hush falls, followed immediately by chaos.

“He’s wearing a suit!”

“Is he famous?”

“Why you got sunglasses? It’s not even sunny!”

“He looks like he’s from the government.”

Matt’s mouth twitches. He raises a hand in a small wave. “Hi, everyone.”

You set a chair beside you, trying not to laugh as he navigates the forest of sneakers and rolling crayons. His cane rolls lightly against the carpet, a rhythmic sound that hushes them faster than your voice ever could.

“So,” you say, sitting on the rug, “today’s circle time is going to be a little special. Mister Matt is blind, which means he can’t see with his eyes”—you tap yours for emphasis—“the way we do. He’s going to tell us a little about what that’s like, and how he does things a little differently.”

Several hands shoot up at once.

“You can’t see anything? Like, nothing nothing?”

“Do you got a robot dog?”

“Do you watch Bluey?”

Matt takes it in stride, amused. “No, no robot dog—yet. And I can’t watch Bluey, but I can listen. I use my ears, my nose, my hands… and sometimes I just remember how things feel. Like how you know where your bed is when the lights are off.”

A collective “ohhh” sweeps through the group.

He lifts his cane lightly. “And this helps me find things in front of me so I don’t trip.”

“Like a hockey stick!”

He smiles. “Something like that.”

“Do you bump into stuff?” another asks.

“Only when the furniture sneaks up on me.”

Giggles ripple across the rug.

“How d’you eat spaghetti?”

“Very very carefully,” he says solemnly, which earns another round of laughter.

Then, a small voice asks, “But how can you read to us?”

You jump in, delighted. “Because, my friends, some books have braille. That’s a special kind of writing you can feel with your fingers.”

A chorus of little oooohs rises. You take the book from your bag—The Very Hungry Caterpillar. You had glued Braille labels on its pages one evening, just to test out Matt’s new label printer. You hold it up for effect. 

“See, you know how we use our eyes to look at letters—A, B, C? Well, braille has letters too! They’re made of tiny bumps you can touch instead of see. So people who can’t see with their eyes can still read stories and signs and labels and everything else.”

Matt tilts his head toward you, smiling fondly. He takes the book. “Ready to see if I can keep up with your reading level?”

“Think you can handle it?” you tease.

He runs his fingers over the thick paper, smirking. “I’ve handled hungrier clients.”

The kids gather close, cross-legged and fidgeting with excitement. Matt clears his throat, and when he starts to read, his voice seems to fill every corner of the room. Low and even, it’s rich with rhythm that makes every syllable and pause sound deliberate. Perfectly timed.

“In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf…”

You’ve heard him speak in his courtroom voice. You’ve heard him speak in the quiet drawl of late-night confessions. This is something else entirely. It almost sounds like poetry, his words slow and warm, like honey. The class falls silent, spellbound. Even the usually restless ones sit still with their eyes wide, breathing in sync with the story.

When he reaches the part where the caterpillar eats through the fruit, the kids finally join in, shouting out the fruits in chorus.

“One apple! Two pears! Three plums!”

Matt laughs softly, his shoulders shaking. It is real laughter, not the weary kind you’ve heard too often. It fills the little room like sunlight.

He reads on steadily, the lilt of his voice weaving through the children’s bright interruptions. (“He sounds like a nice Batman.” “Yeahhhh!”)

And when he closes the book at last, there’s a heartbeat of silence before the room erupts into cheers. Tiny hands clap wildly, mesmerized by the “magic trick” of Matt being able to read without seeing. Someone shouts, “Again!” and Matt chuckles under his breath, the faintest flush creeping up his neck.

Thankfully, snack time arrives before they can demand an encore. You set him up on a miniature plastic chair near the reading rug—ostensibly to “rest,” though you suspect that’s a lost cause. 

The moment you turn your back, the kids descend on him. They surround him like puppies, tugging at his sleeves, pressing crayon drawings into his hands, proudly narrating every squiggle. He listens to each one with his head tilted just so, offering gentle Oh, really?’s and That’s beautiful’s as he traces the surfaces of their paper with his fingers.

They also seem to enjoy dressing Matt up, for the sole reason that he “can’t see” (you suspect this is a premise to the natural conclusion of “therefore he can’t stop us.”) A tiny girl with pigtails climbs onto a chair and pins an apple hairclip on his head, her tongue sticking out in concentration. The room dissolves into giggling.

Matt adjusts it carefully. “Does it suit me?”

“Yeahhhh!” they shout, chortling so hard one nearly falls over.

You manage to herd them toward their snacks, but within seconds, Matt is surrounded again. Besieged by a crowd of tiny, sticky hands and juice boxes.

“Mister Matt, I can’t open mine!”

“Me too!”

“Do mines! Do mines!”

The chair Matt is sitting on seems seconds from collapse under his large body. His long legs are folded awkwardly; his elbows tucked in tight. His bandaged hands work slowly but surely, sliding straws into foil holes found by sound and touch. Each successful “pop!” earns an impressed “whoaaa” from his audience.

You stand by the wall, biting your lip to keep from laughing outright.

Matt Murdock is a lawyer by day, vigilante by night, and now juice box technician by popular demand.

When playtime rolls around, you guide him outside to the bench beneath the brittle autumn sun. The air smells of mulch and crayons, and the playground is alive with motion: squeaking swings, sneakers pounding the pavement, shrieks of joy no jury on earth could silence.

Matt sits with his cane across his lap, head tilted up and listening to it all with a faint, meditative smile.

You join him after a round of pushing swings, handing him a coffee. His face softens instantly at the sound of your steps.

“So this is what you do every day.”

“This,” you sigh, gesturing toward the whole ruckus, “and reading the same book forty times a week.”

Matt chuckles. “This is incredible. I mean it.” He tilts his face toward you, the wind lifting a stray curl from his forehead. “It’s… peaceful here,” he says quietly. “I can hear their hearts, you know. All of them. They’re so... Light. Untangled. It’s nice.”

You don’t know how to answer that, so you just let your fingers drift until they find his, his hand curling over yours.

Then a little boy toddles up, wide-eyed, clutching something tight in his fist. His sneakers are squeaking with every step.

“Hi, Mister Matt,” he says shyly, shuffling his shoes.

Matt turns toward the voice, smiling. “Hey there, buddy.”

The boy squints, catching sight of the bandages peeking from Matt’s sleeve. “You hurt?”

“Hmm?”

“You hurt—your fingers?” he repeats, pointing earnestly.

It’s amazing how children can be so thoughtful and so observant, the way concern comes so naturally to them. 

“Oh,” Matt says, leaning forward slightly. “Yeah, a little.”

The boy brightens immediately. “My daddy gets ouchies like that too!”

Matt’s brows lift, amused. You turn to him, smiling. “Matt, this is Charlie. Charlie’s dad is a boxer.”

His whole expression shifts: surprise, then delight. “A boxer, huh?”

Charlie nods, all confidence now. “Yup-yup!! He fights bad guys!”

Matt huffs an amused laugh. “That so? You know,” he leans in conspiratorially, “my dad was a boxer, too.”

Charlie’s eyes go huge. “Reallyyyy!! S’he good?”

“Pretty good, you could say that,” Matt says. “Is your daddy good?”

“Uh-huh!! He’s the toughest!” Charlie announces proudly, chin lifted. You murmur his dad’s name under your breath, and Matt nods in recognition. “Oh, I’ve heard of him. Tough guy,” he says with an OK sign—and Charlie practically glows at the praise.

Then, a little shyer again, Charlie opens his small hand. A single gold star sticker glints in his palm, bent at the corner from being clutched so tightly.

“Ummmm, this helps,” he explains. His voice has dropped into a whisper. “I give my daddy stickers when he gets hurt. S’makes him betters faster.”

Your heart squeezes. You crouch beside him and help him peel the backing loose where it’s stuck to itself. 

“All right?” you say gently.

Charlie grins up at you, gap-toothed, then turns back to Matt.  Carefully, with all the focus in the world, he presses the sticker onto Matt’s sleeve. It’s crooked, just above the cuff. “Feel betters, Mister Matt.”

Matt’s fingers lift, tracing the sticker’s bumpy edge, the faint adhesive tacky beneath his skin. 

“Thank you, Charlie,” he says, smiling. “I already do.”

Charlie beams. The job is done, and just like that—with a “‘Kayyyy! Bye!”—he takes off toward the monkey bars, yelling the whole time.

You glance at Matt. His fingers are still ghosting over the star, and the gold gleams against the dark wool of his jacket. 

By dismissal, he looks lighter than you’ve seen him in months. One of the kids has given him a crayon-colored card, all rainbow scribbles and shaky hearts, and he carries it tucked under his arm. It’s too valuable to fold into his coat.

On the train ride home, Matt sits with his head leaned toward the window, lit by the passing gold of evening.

“See?” you say, nudging his knee lightly. “Not so bad, right? They loved you.”

“Mm, they have good taste.”

You snort affectionately. “Oh, don’t let it go to your head. They’ll forget you by snack time on Monday.”

“Still,” he murmurs, his smile deepening. A pause settles between you, then he adds, “Thank you for bringing me.”

“Just had to make sure you didn’t make a break for the rooftops,” you say. “How’s the ribs?”

“Better. A lot better.” 

“Good. If you ever get hurt like that again, I’m dragging you straight back to my classroom.”

Matt chuckles, fingers finding the sticker. “I should get hurt more often, then,” he jokes, and you kick his shin so hard he lets out a yelp.

bonus:

By Monday, the week begins as usual. The shoes squeak, and tiny voices rise in overlapping chatter. You’ve barely settled when Charlie marches up to your desk, flashing you his famous gap-toothed smile, clutching a folded sheet of paper.

“This is for Mister Matt,” he says solemnly. “You gotta give it to him, please, thank you.”

You take it carefully, smoothing out the creases. The handwriting is large, wobbly and nearly illegible, done in thick black marker. They are the kind of letters written with a tongue peeking out in deep concentration, under the guidance of a well-meaning parent.

Dear Mister Matt, I hope your hands feels better. When I grow up I want to fight bad guys but only if they are mean to dogs. —Charlie

You laugh so hard you have to sit down. 

The sidewalks of Hell’s Kitchen still glistened from the rain that had fallen an hour earlier, reflecting the glow of storefront signs and passing headlights in fractured streaks of gold and red. The city never really slept – not in this neighbourhood – and even this late at night there were voices drifting from bars, distant sirens somewhere farther downtown, the low groan of buses lumbering through intersections.

Matt walked beside you with one hand wrapped around yours and the other loosely holding his cane. His suit jacket was slung over his shoulder despite the chill in the air, and his tie was loosened. He looked tired in that familiar way he always did lately – like sleep was something that happened to other people – but tonight there was a lightness to him that hadn’t been there in weeks.

Maybe it was because the case at the office had finally settled.

Maybe it was because Foggy had practically shoved the two of you out the door after catching you lingering by Matt’s desk again.

Or maybe it was simply because the two of you had stopped pretending.

“You know,” you said, nudging his shoulder lightly, “Foggy’s getting way too smug about this.”

Matt smiled immediately, the expression slow and crooked. “About what?”

“You and me.”

“That’s fair.” His thumb brushed over your knuckles absentmindedly. “He earned the right to be smug. He spent… what, a year listening to me deny I was in love with you?”

You laughed softly. “You denied it?”

“Oh, aggressively.”

“You are such a liar.”

“I’m a lawyer,” he corrected. “Different profession entirely.”

You snorted under your breath, and Matt’s grin widened at the sound. He always reacted to your laughter like it was something precious — something he wanted to memorise. Even now his head tilted slightly toward you, listening closer than sighted people ever did.

It still amazed you sometimes, how attentive he was. Matt noticed everything: the subtle hitch in your breathing when you were stressed, the way your footsteps changed when you were angry, the difference between your real laugh and the fake polite one you used around difficult clients.

Sometimes it felt impossible to hide from him.

Not that you wanted to.

“I still think Karen knew before either of us did.”

“Oh, Karen definitely knew.”

“And she said nothing.”

“She likes watching people suffer.”

“That explains why she works with you.”

Matt barked out a laugh at that – an actual laugh, warm and unguarded – and your chest tightened at the sound. You loved those moments most because they were rarer than they should’ve been. Matt carried so much tension inside himself all the time, so much guilt and responsibility and exhaustion that seemed woven directly into him. But every now and then, usually late at night when the city quieted enough, he let himself relax around you.

And when he did, he was unbearably charming.

“You’re mean to me,” he said lightly.

“You like it.”

His smile softened. “Yeah,” he admitted quietly. “I do.”

The conversation drifted after that into easier things. Stories from the office. Foggy’s latest disastrous attempt at flirting with a waitress during lunch. Fran cornering Matt in the apartment hallway earlier that week to complain about the laundry machines again. Matt mimicked her perfectly, down to her exasperated sighs and sharp little gestures, and you nearly doubled over laughing.

“Don’t encourage her,” you managed between breaths.

“She likes me.”

“She manipulates you.”

“She gives me empanadas.”

“God, you’re easy.”

“You offering food, too?”

You rolled your eyes fondly. “Maybe.”

“Then I’m yours forever.”

His voice dipped lower on the last part, teasing but sincere underneath it. Your stomach flipped in that ridiculous way it always did when he said things like that — casual little comments that somehow landed with startling honesty.

By the time you reached your apartment building, the laughter had faded into something softer. The street around you buzzed faintly with distant traffic, but your corner of the block felt oddly still. Matt stopped when you did, cane tapping lightly against the concrete before settling beside him, his other hand remaining wrapped around yours.

For a moment neither of you spoke. You looked up at him beneath the amber wash of the streetlamp. His red-tinted glasses hid his eyes, but you could always tell when his attention narrowed entirely onto you. It was in the slight turn of his head, the stillness that came over him, the way his mouth softened at the corners.

His thumb traced another slow line across your hand. Then, quietly and with a small grin pulling at his mouth, he said, “Alright. I’m gonna kiss you.”

You laughed softly, and so did he before he stepped closer, slowly enough to give you time to close the distance yourself if you wanted to. He always did that. Careful in ways people rarely expected him to be. His free hand found your waist gently. Then he kissed you.

At first it was soft — warm lips brushing yours in a slow, familiar rhythm that immediately melted the lingering chill from your skin. Matt kissed like he did everything else emotionally: cautiously at the beginning, like he was trying not to take more than he deserved. But there was always hunger underneath him, too. You felt it in the way his fingers tightened slightly against your hip. In the quiet breath he exhaled through his nose when you kissed him back harder. In the subtle shift closer until there wasn’t space left between your bodies anymore.

Your hand slid up into his dark hair, and Matt made a soft sound against your mouth that nearly unravelled you on the spot. “Careful,” you murmured teasingly between kisses. “Someone might see us.”

“Mm.” Another kiss. Slower this time. Deeper. “Let them.”

You laughed softly against his lips, but it dissolved into another breath when he tilted his head and kissed you again with more intention. Matt always seemed slightly surprised by affection, even now. Like part of him still expected tenderness to disappear if he held onto it too tightly. Sometimes after long days at the office you’d catch him going quiet when you touched him first, almost stunned by how naturally you did it. And tonight, standing outside your apartment with his mouth warm against yours and his hand steady at your waist, you could feel that same carefulness giving way to something more vulnerable.

He pulled back only slightly, forehead resting against yours. “You know,” he said softly, voice rougher now, “I had an entire walk-home speech planned.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to it?”

“You laughed at me.”

You grinned. “That sounds fragile for a lawyer.”

“It was a very good speech.”

“You can still give it.”

Matt considered that for a second before leaning in to kiss you once more instead — slower now, lingering. “Nah,” he murmured against your lips. “Think I made my point.”

Your heart felt embarrassingly full. You brushed your thumb lightly along his stubbled jaw. “You wanna come upstairs?”

There was the briefest pause — not hesitation exactly, but consideration. Matt was always thoughtful about boundaries, about making sure you meant what you said. Then his expression softened into something warm enough to make your chest ache. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I’d like that.”

You squeezed his hand and guided him toward the apartment entrance. Matt followed easily beside you, cane tapping lightly against the front steps before folding neatly once you got inside. He slipped off his shoes near the door automatically, setting his cane carefully atop the table beside your front door. There was something deeply intimate about that. Not dramatic intimacy. Not cinematic. Just Matt in your apartment late at night, loosening his tie the rest of the way while you kicked off your shoes beside him.

You watched him shrug out of his dress shirt cuffs, rolling them up his forearms with tired precision, before you asked, “You want something to drink?”

“Water’s good.”

“Boring answer.”

“I’m tired.”

“You’re always tired.”

Matt leaned against your kitchen counter, smiling faintly. “Occupational hazard.” You handed him a glass, and his fingers brushed yours when he took it. “Thank you.”

There was that softness again. That quiet sincerity he carried into small moments when nobody else was paying attention. You moved closer without really thinking about it, resting your hand lightly against his chest. Beneath your palm, his heartbeat was steady and strong, and Matt covered your hand with his own immediately.

“You okay?” you asked softly.

He nodded once. “Yeah,” he said after a second. “Just… happy.” The honesty in it caught you off guard. Matt ducked his head slightly afterward like he regretted admitting it aloud, but you smiled and stepped closer instead.

“You know,” you murmured, “for someone who planned a whole speech, you’re getting really sentimental.”

“Don’t ruin the moment.”

“I would never.”

“You absolutely would.”

You laughed quietly, and Matt smiled again before reaching for you instinctively, fingertips brushing your waist until he found you completely.

Then he pulled you in gently, pressing another lingering kiss to your mouth like he still couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to. His hand came up to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing across your cheekbone. There was no urgency, no hunger — just a deep, patient affection that made your heart ache. You felt his other hand settle at the small of your back, pulling you against him. The warmth of his body seeped through the layers of your clothes.

You pulled back after a long, languid moment and took his hand. “Come with me.”

He followed without hesitation, his fingers interlaced with yours as you led him through your apartment and into your bedroom. The room was dim, lit only by the city glow filtering through the curtains. You turned to face him, and he stood there, his head tipped slightly downward as if he could see your outline with his other senses.

You reached for the hem of your sweater and pulled it over your head. He heard the soft rustle of fabric, and a quiet breath escaped him. “Let me,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

He stepped forward, his hands finding your shoulders first, then sliding down your arms. He traced the straps of your bra, then hooked his fingers under them, easing them down. Each movement was deliberate, reverent, as if he were memorising every inch of you through touch alone. You undid the clasp of your bra and let it fall, and his hands skimmed over your breasts, his thumbs brushing your nipples.

You shivered under his touch before you returned the favour, unbuttoning his shirt slowly, pressing kisses to his collarbone as the fabric parted. He let out a low hum of pleasure, his head falling back. You pushed the shirt off his broad shoulders, and soon, you were both naked, the cool air of the room raising goosebumps on your skin.

Matt reached for you, pulling you into a kiss that turned deep and searching. Then he guided you gently backward until your knees hit the edge of the bed, urging you to lean down onto your elbows, then onto your back as he followed you, settling his hips between your thighs. The weight of him was grounding, solid, but there was no rush. He kissed your forehead, your nose, your lips.

He removed his glasses, setting them on your bedside table, before he began to press a trail of soft kisses down your neck, over your collarbone, between your breasts. His lips travelled lower, his hands caressing your ribs, your stomach. When he reached your thighs, he parted them gently, settling his shoulders between your legs and kissing the inside of your thigh, then the other, each kiss deliberate and tender. When his mouth found the heat between your legs, you gasped, your hand reaching down to grip his hair.

Matt ate you out slowly, his tongue working in long, languid strokes. His fingers parted your slick folds, and he hummed against you, the vibration sending sparks through your body. He took his time, drawing out every sensation, learning your rhythms.

“Fuck,” you moaned softly, brows pinching lightly and head falling back against the pillow momentarily before lifting your head again to watch him between your thighs. When he found the spot that made you arch your back, he lingered there, coaxing you higher until you finally shattered — a soft cry escaping your lips as he drank you in, his hands stroking your hips through the aftershocks.

He kissed his way back up your body, his lips tasting of yourself. He found your mouth and kissed you deeply, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. His cock pressed against your thigh, hard and ready, but he didn’t rush. He reached down between you, his fingers brushing your slick entrance, making sure you were ready, and then he was guiding himself to your opening.

“Okay?” he asked, his forehead against yours.

“Yes,” you breathed.

He pushed in slowly, inch by inch, filling you completely, and you both let out a long, shuddering breath. He stayed still for a moment, letting you adjust, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding back. Then he began to move — slow, deep, steady thrusts that rocked your body into the mattress. His rhythm was gentle, each roll of his hips a silent declaration of care.

“That’s it, sweetheart…” Matt murmured, his hand coming up to rest on the front of your throat. Not to squeeze, not to exert any pressure — just to feel.

His palm lay flat against your skin, his fingers lightly curving around your neck, and you realised what he was doing. He was feeling the vibrations of your pleasure — the hum of your moans, the pulse of your heartbeat, the tremors that ran through your body. His eyes were closed, his lips parted, his expression one of rapt concentration, as if he were reading you like braille.

“You feel so good,” he murmured, his voice rough with emotion. “I can feel every sound you make. Every little gasp. God, I love that.”

You reached up and threaded your fingers through his hair, tugging gently as he thrust deeper. He groaned, and the sound was raw, honest, unguarded. He lowered his head to bury his face in the curve of your neck, his breath hot against your skin. His hand never left your throat, his thumb stroking softly across your pulse point.

The pace built gradually, not frantic but more urgent, more intimate. His hips pressed harder, his breathing grew ragged, and you felt him losing himself in the feel of you. He whispered your name like a prayer, over and over, his movements growing sloppier as his climax approached. You were close again, too, the friction and the heat and the tenderness pushing you toward the edge.

“Come for me,” he whispered against your ear. “Let me feel it.”

His words, his touch, the steady rhythm of his body — it was enough. A few deep thrusts later, his hips angled *just right*, and suddenly he struck that hidden place inside you that unravelled everything at once. The jolt of pleasure was white-hot, tearing through you so swiftly that you couldn’t hold it back. A moan spilled from your pillowed lips as your body clenched around him, pulsing in waves you couldn’t control. He didn’t falter — he drove into you steadily, prolonging the bliss until you were shaking beneath him. Your breath hitched and your thighs trembled as the ecstasy consumed you, your eyes squeezed shut whilst every nerve lit like fire.

That was all he needed. With a low, broken moan, he pressed his face into the crook of your neck and buried himself to the hilt as he emptied himself inside you, spilling inside you with a shudder that seemed to wring every last ounce of tension from his body. His hips ground into yours, his body tense, as he rode out the waves with you, his hips stuttering to a halt.

He collapsed against you, his weight a reassuring pressure, his face buried in your hair. You both lay there, breathing hard, the only sounds your mingled heartbeats and the distant sirens of Hell’s Kitchen. After a long moment, he shifted, pulling out gently and rolling onto his side, one arm wrapping around you and pulling you close.

He pressed a kiss to your shoulder. “Thank you,” he said softly, the words full of meaning beyond just the moment.

You turned in his arms to face him, your hand finding his cheek. “For what?”

“For trusting me,” he said, his thumb tracing your spine.

You kissed him, soft and slow, and felt him smile against your lips. The night outside hummed on, but in your small apartment, wrapped in Matt’s arms, time felt like it had no meaning. You were just two people, learning each other, one gentle touch at a time. When you pulled back, Matt’s forehead rested against yours, his breathing finally evening out in the quiet dark. The sheets were tangled around your legs, the radiator hissing softly somewhere across the apartment, but he stayed close like he couldn’t quite bear to put any distance between you yet.

His fingers moved lazily along your arm, memorising you in the absent, affectionate way he always did. You had started noticing it weeks ago — how Matt touched like he was learning a language nobody else could hear.

“You’re smiling,” he murmured suddenly.

You let out a quiet laugh. “You can tell?”

“I can hear it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It does to me.”

You brushed your fingers through his hair, and you felt him grin faintly before he turned his head, pressing another kiss against your temple this time — slower, sleepier. The kind of kiss that held no urgency at all.

Just affection.

The silence around you was an intrusive, grating entity. A presence with the kind of suffocating quietude that did not soothe, but rather amplified the discordant chorus of voices whispering within the recesses of your mind. Your brain, frantic as it is, tried desperately to hold onto anything it could. The hum of electricity in the air, the faint ringing in your ear that was always there, sometimes drowned out but never truly gone. But nothing anchored you, not in the way motion did. The present threatened to bore you to the point of violent madness. Until you actively resisted the urge to shatter your own skull against the unforgiving concrete. Muscles in your body ached to move now.

You had never possessed an affinity for the calm.

To you, tranquility was not sanctuary; it was a profound, treacherous lie whispered by the world before the inevitable storm tore it apart. Calm was the agonizing static prelude that rendered you restless. Inciting a bloodlust that could only be quieted by the frantic tempo of survival.

You understood the concept of fear, yet not through the visceral, heart-hammering literal sense. The torrent of adrenaline coursing through your veins was always far too potent, far too intoxicatingly absolute, for your consciousness to register anything as mundane as hesitation or terror. You had inhabited this bloody existence for far too long to be swayed by the moral gravity of what you do. Instead, you conceptualized fear intellectually, recognizing it in the way a freezing silent atmosphere sharpens the human instrument. Heightening the somatic senses until the air itself feels heavy with malice. Fear was that creeping phantom sensation that you were not entirely alone when you should be.

Yet, within your internal landscape, fear had been reduced to a voice that rarely spoke. A subtle, fleeting inkling that your hyper-vigilant brain acknowledged with cold clinical precision, but refused to welcome. And you weren't about to step aside and invite it in now.

The desert vault loomed before you, a brutalist monument of uncompromising concrete. Impenetrable and cold-rolled steel in its hulking form. Though that didn’t deter your body away, but rather flicked a match as your posture squared and your heart felt heavier, faster, excited. You knew a thing or two about being impenetrable.

Your gait was deliberate, almost lazy. Chunky platformed heels striking the floor with a rhythmic, resonant echo that refused to hurry as you traversed the narrow corridor. Downward you stared, your gaze flickering to the digital tracking device cradled in palm framed by impeccably manicured pink nails. On the small screen, a solitary, blood-red dot pulsed with patterned malice, mapping a trajectory deeper into the belly of the facility.

With effortless practiced grace, you adjusted the weight of your customized, high-caliber submachine gun, letting the cold metal rest familiarly against your bare shoulder. Stepping into the waiting elevator, you slid the tracker into your black leather utility belt that dangled loosely across your hips. A belt that served absolutely no structural or modest purpose, existing solely as a morbid, high-fashion harness for a dozen gleaming daggers and three heavily modified handguns. All custom-made with sterling metal and pink marble enamel, decorated with a bit of lace, just because. Though the black, razor-pleated mini skirt that swirled about your thighs was far more dangerous than your arsenal.

You sighed, a soft, melodious sound of utter exasperation. Heel taping impatiently as you waited. Jesus, how many floors did this place have?

Taking advantage of the elevator’s sluggish descent, you reached up to adjust the straps of your baby-pink bikini top. It was a preposterous thing a for a black-ops infiltration, but that was the entire, intoxicating point: another day, another kill, and another absolute refusal to hide behind the heavy, suffocating cowardice of Kevlar.

You told yourself, not for the first time, that this was your last pro-bono contract. You desperately needed to stop giving charity to the intelligence community. Executing high-risk liquidations with little to no recompense. Yet, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine had been extraordinarily, almost hysterically eager to scrub this particular name from the ledger.

Benjamin Poindexter. Or "Dex," as his dossier indicated he preferred to be called.

Now, you had always favored a more intimate, psychological approach to your hunts. Finding no joy in the sterile, detached efficiency of one-and-done bounties. So before arriving, you had briefly, almost cursorily, familiarized yourself with the legend of the man known as Bullseye. You didn't study him with the meticulous rigor you usually reserved for your targets, but you had gathered enough fragments to paint a deeply disturbing, yet strangely inviting, portrait.

The man was unequivocally sick in the head. But hey, weren’t we all? He, as you categorized, was a fractured soul bound by an agonizing obsessive need for perfection and external validation. And, according to every rumor whispered from Hell's Kitchen to Madripoor, he never missed a shot.

You smiled, plotting as the elevator neared the bottom, your glossed lips curling into a sharp, beautiful sneer. It was a pity for him then, that you never get hit.

As the elevator doors groaned open to reveal the freezing expanse of the subterranean vault, your kinetic awareness bloomed. The bootleg Super Serum in your blood didn't grant you the roaring, tank-flipping strength of a super-soldier. But it did elevated your central nervous system to a state of terrifyingly efficient. You could feel the microscopic shifts in the air density; you could hear the subtle, metallic click of a firing pin before the hammer even dropped. And right now, your ears heard the song of gunfire like a gavel brought down by a judge demanding order. A ceremonial hum left your lips in anticipation.

You stepped out into the dark, your pink platforms clicking softly against the concrete, ready to find out what happened when an unstoppable trajectory collided with a mystery.

The heavy vacuum of the Vault didn't contain the violence. It incubated it, transforming the chamber into a claustrophobic amphitheater of slaughter. Inside the cavernous expanse, the air was thick with the ozone stench of discharge and the bitter, metallic tang of panic. Somewhere in the room, John Walker and Yelena Belova were already locked in a grueling, graceless battle of mutual survival. Their movements are a frantic testament to tactical desperation. Yet, your entry into this brutal performance was characterized by an almost sacrilegious levity. Your heightened cortex parsed the symphony of chaos with clinical detachment, filtering out the desperate grunts of exertion until your focus narrowed entirely upon him.

Benjamin Poindexter.

He was a monument to terrifying, rigid efficiency, his silhouette cutting through the dimness as he hurled a barrage of lethal projectiles towards Taskmaster, whose vibranium shield was preoccupied with deflecting Walker’s unhinged, heavy-handed strikes.

Your ears twitched, catching the faint, bewildered cadence of Yelena’s voice as she muttered a fractured question to the empty air: “What is happening?”

You didn’t know, nor did you possess the luxury of a singular damn to give.

“More extra credit,” you hummed to yourself, a soft, melodic purr of pure delight vibrating in your throat as your hands instinctively adjusted the weight of your submachine gun. Your eyes locked onto the broad plains of Poindexter’s back, your finger tightening against the cold trigger with the intent to paint the concrete in a single, devastating burst.

The trajectory was immaculate. The execution would have been flawless.

But the universe, in its infinite, irritating wisdom, chose that exact second to intervene.

A heavy, tactical boot collided with your flank. A jarring disruption that failed to compromise the dense, serum-enhanced architecture of your musculature. But the kick succeeded enough in rattling your pristine stance.

The sudden shift was enough to draw Bullseye’s hyper-fixated attention. His gaze snapped toward the source of the anomaly, his calculating eyes widening imperceptibly as they mapped the sheer, theatrical absurdity of your presence.

“Who invited the hooker?” Walker bellowed, his voice a crude, grating rasp that immediately sealed his fate.

Before the final syllable could fully leave his lips, your arm snapped forward with whiplash velocity. A pink-coated dagger, gleaming with deceptive cosmetic brilliance, whistled through the air. Aimed squarely and mercilessly for the center of his forehead. Walker flinched, the blade grazing the air close enough to leave a phantom sting.

Dex, however, remained momentarily paralyzed by the sheer, unadulterated picture of you. Enough for his brows to pull and head to tilt. His mind, traditionally bound to the rigid structures of military pragmatism, worked to process the data. The meticulously styled hair that defied the humidity of a warzone; the absurdly skimpy, pastel bikini top that offered an arrogant, naked invitation to death; the ridiculously chunky platform heels that should have rendered motion impossible; and the low-slung leather belt cradling a dozen lethal instruments like a macabre harness.

You were a vision meant for a beauty pageant, packaged in a lethal, hyper-feminine veneer. Yet, Bullseye’s obsessive mind could only linger on the aesthetic incongruity for a millisecond. Before the deep-seated compulsion of his programming yanked his eyes back to his designated target.

Your brows pulled together in a profound, agitated scowl as you turned toward your instigator. It was the phasing woman, The Ghost, as the intelligence dossiers labeled her. Flickering in and out of the physical plane like a dying television set. Your customized firearms swung toward the disappearing specter, but before you could waste the ammunition, Yelena materialized through the smoke, discharging a crackling, blue-white ĺelectrical pulse that temporarily anchored Ava to the floor in a state of paralysis.

With the nuisance sidelined, you were back on him. And he, inevitably, was back on you. The over-six-foot assassin found his pristine, orderly universe utterly upended by a barely five-foot-two asteroid. The man was forced into an immediate, breathless defense. His large, calloused hands coming up to block a succession of blindingly fast, fluid punches that carried the deceptive, bone-snapping density of you. It was a grotesque, beautiful dance; Dex was urgently trying to parry your incoming strikes while simultaneously attempting to calculate the trajectory of a knife intended for a shield-wielding target across the room.

For LoveShot, the lack of exclusivity in his attention was a profound insult. You grew rapidly, violently tired of vying for a man’s focus while his eyes remained stubbornly fixed on another. Worse still, there was the irritating, persistent peck of the phasing woman biting at your back, threatening to disrupt the polished rhythm of your game.

Without tearing your gaze away from the unsettling blue of Dex’s eyes, your perfectly painted pink nails dipped toward your belt. Your arm extended outward, not toward the man standing mere inches from you, but blind across the room, mapping the space entirely through the exquisite, hyper-acoustic map in your brain.

Bang.

The single, deafening report echoed through the vault. For a fraction of a second, Dex caught himself mid-dodge, his body tensing as his instinct prepared for the bullet to rip through his own flesh.

Instead, the slug traveled a perfectly calculated, cross-facility arc. It bypassed the chaos entirely, tearing with absolute, clinical precision straight into the skull of Antonia.

The Taskmaster’s body dropped to the concrete like a sack of unceremonious meat. The room stilled. The energy of the battle evaporated in an instant, replaced by a suffocating, bewildered paralysis. Everyone froze in their tracks. Yelena remained pinned beneath Walker; Ava hunched mid stand on the floor; and Dex blinked

Once, twice, an imperceptible glitch of his eyelids. His mind, a perfect organic computer, literally could not calculate the variable that had just rewritten the rules of the room. He hadn't missed. She hadn't missed. But she had stolen his kill with an indifferent, blind throwaway shot.

“Pay attention to me!” you yelled at him, the melodious quality of your voice twisting into a sharp, petulant demand as you stomped your chunky pink platform against the blood-flecked concrete.

Before he could articulate a response, your heightened ears picked up an entirely different unglamorous sound: a wet, violent gagging. Your brows pulled together in deep disgust as your eyes drifted to an unfamiliar, disheveled man stumbling into the periphery, his stomach violently rejecting the reality of the room. Your gun began to rise instinctively to silence the noise, but Yelena’s hand abruptly intervened. Pushing your forearm down with a firm warning pressure as she raised her own gun. Yelena knew you were messy, and the worst part of it all was that you liked it.

“Uh, okay, eww,” you muttered, your blush powdered nose wrinkling in revulsion as you eyed the puking intruder.

The distraction lasted for a single, fleeting second before your gaze snapped back to Dex. He was already staring at you, his pupils dilated with a dangerous curiosity, still high off of adrenaline as his built chest rose and fell. That prolonged eye contact was all the invitation you needed. Your painted fingers slipped to your belt, drawing a fresh, gleaming blade to finally finish the job you were here for.

“Is she actually dead—”

A voice broke the tension, and you bristled instantly. You felt the sudden, hot flash of a genuine tantrum fury, thrown completely off your game like a child whose favorite toy had been snatched away. The orchestrated, seductive atmosphere of your game was entirely spoiled now by this bumbling idiot, who immediately turned and ran straight for the primary exit. Only for the heavy security doors to slam shut with a definitive, hydraulic groan, sealing you all inside the tomb.

Your perfect brows raised at the minor inconvenience of the lockdown, but the logistical nightmare of escape was irrelevant to you. Your world has narrowed to a singular path. With a slow deliberate stomp, you began to stalk toward Ex-Special Agent Poindexter.

Dex slipped a knife of his own into his palm, his entire posture dropping into a coiled, predatory stance as he assessed the hyper-feminine nightmare advancing upon him. He didn’t know your name. He didn’t know what artificial poison touched your bloodstream to grant you that terrifying, supernatural latency. But as he watched you step closer, his mind fixated on a single, impossible detail that defied every law of order he worshiped: he had seen the stray bullets from the crossfire strike your exposed, bare skin. And instead of ripping through flesh, they flattened, dropping to the floor like harmless, discarded coins.

The sudden, jarring hiss of the vault’s primary seals locking into place did little to disrupt the highly venomous orbit established between yourself and Poindexter. But the rest of the room devolved into a predictable, tactical flurry as the disheveled man, Bob, stumbled backward. His presence is an unrefined blemish against your playground.

"Will you stand down," Yelena muttered, her tone lacking the sharp, militaristic edge she usually reserved for combatants. Instead, it possessed a weary, heavy cadence that suggested an undeniable familiarity.

More importantly, she said your name.

The syllable hung in the freezing, stagnant air of the vault like a tangible, glittering thing. To Dex, it was a sudden, seismic revelation; the nameless killer that had just systematically dismantled his carefully crafted inner workings finally had a designation. A name to pair with the feminine blood-splattered face. His eyes, cold and hazardous analytical, narrowed as he watched the subtle shift in your posture.

Everyone’s attention had inevitably drifted toward the trembling, figure of Bob, whose very existence screamed of some bureaucratic absurdity. Yet, yours remained entirely anchored to Dex. You were swaying, a slow, hypnotic rocking of your weight across the square platforms of your pink heels. An explicit, non-verbal manifestation of how desperately you were itching for the violence to resume. You were a coiled spring decorated in lace and pink marble enamel.

Yet, you didn’t advance. You didn't move to complete the contract Valentina had so eagerly requested. No; you listened to Yelena. You allowed her brief intervention to stay your hand.

To a mind as violently compulsive as Poindexter’s, that single, uncharacteristic display of restraint was a puzzle piece that refused to fit into the established picture. It suggested deference. It suggested respect. But why? his internal monologue parsed, the gears of his hyper-vigilant mind grinding with a sudden, localized agitation. Yelena Belova was a broken, disgraced operative. Systemic loss and currently amounted to no real, formidable title within the intelligence community. She possessed no leverage over a lethal creature like you. But you listened. And Dex had decided that you didn't seem like the type to listen.

So the deduction arrived with certainty: you knew each other personally. You shared a history that existed entirely in the peripheral shadows, away from the sterile text of official governments. And then there was John Walker. The disgraced Captain America was currently nursing his bruised ego and a near-miss from your dagger, his jaw tight as he glared across the room. He hadn't merely thrown a generic insult when you breached the perimeter; he hadn't called you a hooker. He had explicitly called you the hooker.

The definite article was damning. It implied a recurring character in a sordid, violent history. A known variable in a world Dex had thought he fully planned out. A subtle, subcutaneous itch of possessive annoyance began to dig beneath Bullseye's skin. An irritating, foreign friction born from the realization that this beautiful, bullet-flattening psycho already belonged to a narrative he wasn't a part of. Not yet.

"The doors are dead," Ava's voice cut through the tension, her form flickering violently as she leaned against a console, her breathing shallow as the heat in the room rises.

"The main terminal is completely unresponsive. This isn't a containment protocol. We're locked in an incinerator!" She declared as red floodlights filled the room, painting the walls in danger and peril. The ominous warning partnered by a loud urging siren that made you cringe at the volume.

"She's right," Yelena said, her eyes shifting from you to the reinforced steel barrier, her expression darkening with a cold, retrospective clarity. “Two minutes and Valentina’s slate is wiped clean."

Walker let out a harsh, mocking laugh, though his hand remained close to his sidearms, his eyes darting warily toward your pink-belted arsenal. "You're telling me Val put us in a box? Why? We secured the asset." He gestured aggressively toward the dead body he raided on the floor.

Ummm no, you, secured the asset. They did nothing.

"Because we're fuck ups," you chimed, your voice a sweet hum that completely contrasted the grim reality of the realization. You stopped swaying on your heels, your painted fingernails tracing the delicate lace wrapping the grip of your submachine gun. "We're on clean up duty. She didn't send us here to retrieve anything. She sent us here to be deleted. Why'd you think we were all trying to kill each other?"

"A sterilization protocol," Dex summarized, his voice flat, devoid of fear, but entirely focused on you as he balanced his own blade in his palm. His mind skipped over the betrayal of his handler entirely, far more captured by the way your lips curved at the prospect of a trap.

"Well," you sneered, a beautifully wicked expression taking hold as your eyes locked back into his, completely ignoring the frantic tactical chatter of the others as the ceiling vents began to hiss with a heavy, pressurized gas. "It would be a terrible shame to disappoint her. Don't you think, Dex?"

Yelena’s voice sliced through the ambient dread once more, explicitly uttering your name in a sharp chastise. You whirled on her, your pink platform heel stomping against the concrete with the indignity of a slighted princess.

"What!? I shot the bullet, I got the kill!" you yelled, your voice a beautiful, discordant screech of entitlement that utterly refused to acknowledge the impending lethality of the scarlet room.

Ava, her form flickering with an erratic, painful instability against the backdrop, let out a harsh, breathless rasp. "You can't win anything if we're all fucking dead."

"What a perfect world that would be," you countered, blinking with a serene lack of self-preservation.

Across the space, Dex slowly crossed his arms. His analytical gaze was entirely rapt, his mind meticulously cataloging every erratic variable of your demeanor. He wasn't looking at the locking mechanisms or the gas vents, or listening to the warning sounds and the panic in the room; he was studying the strange woman who treated an execution chamber like another day at work. You caught his look and leaned into it.

Your chest rose proudly beneath the baby-pink bikini top as you declared. "And I can't die," the statement dripped with an absolute, delusional certainty. Your eyes locked onto Ava, a wicked, knowing smirk pulling at your glossed lips. "You were given a suicide mission the moment you got my name."

"We need to get out of here!" Yelena bellowed, her pragmatic instincts overriding the absurdity of your tantrum. She snapped her gaze toward the phasing operative. "Ava, can you walk through the door and open it from the outside?"

You let out a loud sigh, rolling your eyes so hard it practically hurt as you bypassed the frantic huddle entirely. With an air of boredom, you sauntered over to a nearby crate and sat down, crossing one bare, unarmored leg over the other, utterly indifferent to the collective weight of the eyes tracking your movement. It was a stupid idea, you decided within the confines of your mind Ghost was an unstable element; given the opportunity to slip the noose, she would simply leave them all to rot.

You watched the digital countdown on the security console bleed away. Death was a profound, terrifying conceptualization for the rest of them, a looming existential finality that made their hearts hammer and their movements frantic. But in your beautifully deranged mind, the concept simply did not apply. You were a creature meticulously designed to survive. The universe had provided ample, physical proof of your permanence with every flattened bullet that had ever dared to touch your skin.

And, as if to prove the accuracy of your intuition, the universe intervened again. Ava appeared back through the opening barrier, her expression frantic as she signaled the breach.

Before you could offer a sarcastic commentary on her return, Yelena’s calloused hand gripped your bare shoulder, violently hoisting you up from your perch and dragging your dense, heavy-laden frame toward the exit corridor just as the secondary demolition system triggered.

The ensuing explosion was a catastrophic, blinding wall of fire. The force was massive, a roaring wave of heat and displaced air that completely defied your augmented center of gravity, sending your body flying through the smoke-choked air like a mannequin.

You hit the ground with a heavy, unceremonious thud, landing squarely on top of a broad torso. A sharp, breathless groan escaped your lips as your vision cleared through the haze. You blinked down, realizing your dense weight was currently pinning Dex directly to the debris-strewn floor. He was staring up at you from behind his tactical mask, his breathing labored but his pupils still violently fixed on your face.

"Dammit, you're still alive," you huffed, your face mere inches from his as you frowned in profound disappointment.

"Unfortunately," he groaned back, the single word a rough, scraping cadence of dry amusement and physical strain.

With a look of exasperation, you pushed yourself off his chest, your perfectly manicured pink nails digging briefly into his tactical gear for leverage as you rose back onto your chunky platforms, dusting off your black pleated mini skirt as if the demolition was nothing more than an inconvenient gust of wind.

The vertical chasm of the elevator shaft stretched upward into a daunting infinity, a hollow concrete throat that seemed to swallow their collective, muttered fucks.

"So none of us fly?" Yelena questioned, her voice dripping with flat exhaustion as she stared into the dark expanse above. "What, we all just punch and shoot...?"

You pursed your lips to the side, your acute mind evaluating the sheer impossibility of the obstacle before you. "Okay, John, today's your lucky day," you announced with a flourish of condescending benevolence, nodding decisively. "I'm letting you throw me."

The knock-off Captain America let out a harsh, incredulous scoff, but the survival instinct overrode his ego. He unfastened his heavy shield, positioning the vibranium surface as a crude, metallic launch pad.

Taking a head start, or as much as the claustrophobic perimeter would allow, your platform heels struck the cold metal surface with a resonant clang. John braced and shoved, sending your body hurtling upward into the gloom.

The ascent lasted for a single, fleeting breath before gravity reasserted its absolute authority. Your trajectory stalled, and you plummeted straight down, collapsing back onto John Walker’s chest with an unceremonious, bone-jarring impact. You immediately let out a whine, a vocalization far too theatrical, far too perfectly curated to indicate actual physical pain, as your head shook no against his tactical vest, your styled hair spilling across his shoulders.

Across the narrow shaft, Poindexter’s jaw tightened. A sudden, uncalculated spike of visceral distaste rippled through his chest, a foreign friction that rubbed beneath his skin like coarse sand. He didn't like the sight of you draped across Walker's frame, and his fixated mind, usually so immaculate with its internal algorithms, failed to deduce why.

"Okay... new idea..." you wobbled up, smoothing down the edges of your razor-pleated mini skirt with a huff.

What followed was, by every metric of black-ops pragmatism, the single most ridiculous logistical solution ever conceived.

"I can't believe you all actually listened to me!" you gleamed in pure, unadulterated disbelief, your melodious voice echoing off the concrete as the six of you engaged in a grueling, synchronized army stomp up the narrow walls of the elevator shaft.

It was a claustrophobic, friction-locked nightmare. Backs pressed against one another, boots wedged against the wall, the group moved in a stuttering climb born of sheer desperation.

"Somebody has a hard butt," Dex groaned out, his low, gravelly cadence vibrating with irritation as he struggled to maintain his own gravity-defying weight.

He didn't do this. He didn't participate in collaborative, touchy-feely teamwork. It would have been infinitely preferable if the facility had simply collapsed, or if they had each discovered an independent method of escape. Rather than enduring this ridiculous, feet-up, back-to-back transit toward liberation. Yet, by some cruel twist of fate, he found himself intimately sandwiched between John Walker and the trembling, unrefined bulk of Bob.

"That's not my butt, it's my suit!" you argued petulantly from your position around the chain, nestled tightly between the defensive boundaries of Yelena and Ava.

"What suit? You're half naked!" Walker scoffed from the left, his voice strained under the immense physical exertion of the climb.

"Ummm, you weren't complaining when you saw an eyeful up my skirt!" you snapped back, attempting to twist your neck to glare at the disgraced soldier.

Then a sudden, erratic disruption broke the fragile, rhythm of the collective. The entire human chain staggered, slipping violently down the concrete shaft for twelve agonizing inches before everyone’s boots bit back into the wall, catching the descent with a unison gasp of panic.

"Sorry. Slipped," Dex huffed out. His cold, blue eyes remained locked onto the concrete wall directly in front of him, staring at the structure as if it had personally offended him. Though as he said it, there was no actual apology in his words.

Eventually, against every probability, the group breached the surface, dragging their bruised and thoroughly degraded frames out into the blinding, oppressive glare of the entrance room. But there was no sanctuary awaiting them. A heavily armed greeting of Valentina’s clean-up crew stood entrenched across the dunes, weapons drawn to finish the sterilization protocol that the vault’s demolition had failed to achieve.

Your augmented nervous system immediately mapped the exit trajectories. You knew you should run now. You should ignore everyone’s frantic attempts at a coordinated escape, shut down their stupid, collaborative plan, and save your own skin. It was what you always did. Yet, for some entirely foreign, almost lonely reason, you hesitated. It was... kinda nice being around people, you thought with a strange, fleeting twinge of sentimentality. So, you stayed, and you played your part.

With a burst of velocity and vigor, the five of you ambushed the perimeter, hijacking one of the heavy tactical vehicles in a flurry of synchronized violence. You scrambled into the back of the transport, completely elated that you had all actually made it out alive.

Well, most of you.

Before a single tire could kick up dust, the mundane reality of the fight was shattered. Bob, the shivering asset they had dragged from the depths, suddenly ignited awake. A decisive, terrifying stillness bled from his skin, and then he was flying. He was fucking flying.

The five of you sat frozen in the cramped cabin of the hijacked vehicle, your faces pressed against the reinforced glass, watching in absolute, deadpan silence as he launched himself into the stratosphere. He vanished into the horizon like a runaway god, leaving the entire battlefield in a state of stunned silence.

"You all fucking saw that right!?" you asked into the quiet cabin, your finger still hovering over the trigger of your pink gun.

Nobody answered. The sheer absurdity of the spectacle was still processing when the shockwave of Bob’s sonic boom hit the vehicle. The concussive blast rolled across the dunes, catching the side of the transport and violently tipping it over. With a metallic crunch, the car flipped, rolling once before landing heavily on its side, leaving the wheels spinning uselessly against the empty air.

By the time you managed to kick the shattered doors open and crawl out of the wreckage, the blistering sun had completely dipped below the horizon, plunging the desert into a freezing, deceptive night.

The remaining five of you turned your backs on the smoking overturned vehicle. With no functioning transport, no definitive plan, no backup, and absolutely no remaining allegiances, the long, silent march began.

The endless expanse of the desert night was vast and unfeeling. It was a bizarre, slow-moving parade of tactical pragmatism: Walker nursing his bruised pride, Yelena trudging forward with a low, muttered string of Russian curses, Ava treading sporadically to save her energy, and Dex walking with a rigid, calculated stride.

Yet, the entire bleak landscape remained anchored by a single, defiant flash of baby-pink lace moving through the dark, your chunky platform heels sinking into the cold sand with every lazy, deliberate step. The temperature in the desert dropped rapidly, the freezing night air cutting through the vast emptiness as the five of you trudged onward. The silence was broken only by the rustle of the paper Yelena had managed to salvage from the wreckage.

"She did that to him. To test on someone like that, it's inhuman," Yelena declared, her eyes fixated on the stark black ink on the document in her hand.

"Project Sentry," you nodded, your voice taking on a slightly higher pitch in confirmation.

"You know what that thing was?" Dex asked. The question cut through the dark, perhaps a bit harsher and more immediate than he had originally intended.

"Well, yeah. I know that many doctors have been trying to recreate whatever happened with me, but I didn't know they'd go to that extent," you mused, thinking back to the staggering, impenetrable density Bob had displayed before ascending. Your lips pouted slightly as a brand-new, thoroughly superficial grievance crossed your mind. "Why does he get to fly and I don't!?"

Dex completely ignored your slight jealousy, his mind already jumping to the next piece of the puzzle. "That woman back there. Did you know her?" he asked suddenly.

You blinked, pausing for a moment before it registered exactly who he was talking about, the masked woman, Taskmaster, whom you had carelessly executed across the room.

"No," you shrugged indifferently, eyeing whatever fruit Walker had managed to scavenge and deciding you wanted some of it, so you took it. The man could only grimace in exhaustion.

"I knew her," Yelena nodded, her voice heavy with the grim reality of their shared past. "She had a tough life. She killed a lot of people and got killed. Same as us someday."

“That's a shit life.” Ava commented.

Dex remained half a step behind, his devoid eyes studying the absolute vacancy of guilt or remorse in your demeanor. Your long, dark lashes merely blinked, your face remaining entirely neutral. You had shown far more genuine, visceral emotion when you grew tired of vying for his attention and shot Antonia out of pure pettiness. By all accounts of his rigid, obsessive-compulsive programming, he should have been violently irritated that you had stolen his kill. The contracts Valentina had given them were entirely irrelevant now, yet the theft remained.

But instead of anger, Dex found himself experiencing a strange, foreign sensation: amusement.

His fingers clutched his tactical mask a bit tighter against his palm as he actively forced down a smirk in the dark. Was he flattered? Excited? Drastically drawn to the sheer chaos of your presence? He couldn't entirely formulate the answer, but he knew he liked whatever the feeling was.

It wasn't the same predictable gravity he felt when he used to search for a north star, a moral anchor like Julie or Fisk to dictate his actions. His compass didn't feel guided toward the concept of 'good' when he looked at you; it felt perplexed and challenged. It was challenged in a unique, exhilarating way that made a small voice in his fucked up head whisper, "This isn't right," at whatever bullshit you pulled. Dex had spent a long time reigning in his desperate need to seek out external validation to show him what was acceptable. He had finally made peace with the stark reality that there was no pure good or absolute evil in their bloody line of work. There were only actions, and the positive or negative outcomes they generated.

And this LoveShot Killer balanced directly on the precipice just right. You were human enough to exhibit raw emotion, yet completely desensitized to the gravity of a body dropping. And you possessed an accurate terrifying shot that rivaled his own.

He watched your gait through the shadows of the dunes. He cataloged the hypnotic sway of your hips as you walked, moving through the sand as though you were following a melody playing exclusively inside your head. There was a distinct, unbothered pep to your step, a radiant, terrifying air of genuine happiness in your isolated world, despite the utterly miserable situation you all found yourselves in.

A situation that somehow managed to get more miserable. The confines of Alexei Shostakov’s dilapidated limousine were, without a doubt, the true zenith of psychological torture. The air inside the cabin was a stagnant cocktail of cheap upholstery, stale sweat, and the distinct, alarming odor of whatever concoction resided within the questionable cup.

"Do not drink out of the Big Gulp," Alexei warned with a boisterous, entirely unbothered wave of his hand.

Your face pulled into an immediate, violent grimace of disgust. You pointedly tuned out the ensuing emotional debris as Yelena and her father launched into a thoroughly depressing, sentimentally hijacked conversation regarding her childhood pee-wee soccer team. The sheer absurdity of the moment was only exacerbated by John, who offered a half-hearted cheer of, "Go Thunderbolts!"

This was a disaster. Dex sat rigidly in his seat, his internal monologue cataloging the sheer, unrefined ridiculousness of the environment with a dangerous venom. They were not a team. They were a collection of weaponized criminals who simply needed to escape the perimeter of this hellscape. So that they could disappear and never lay eyes on each other ever again. Dex didn't do teams. His historical record with structural alliances was a pristine ledger of catastrophe. His tenure within the bureau had been an entirely different situation, he possessed a script then, a rigid hierarchy, and explicit directives dictating precisely who to neutralize and when. But in this lawless team, Alexei was currently dangling the treacherous, highly volatile promise of redemption and camaraderie. Dex knew better. He was a fractured soul; he would never fit into the equation.

"Ah! Bullseye, the man that never miss!" Alexei’s thick, aggressively boozy Russian accent suddenly boomed across the cabin, slicing through the assessment. Dex didn't even bother to verify if the genetic relic was entirely sober.

The heavy, bearded man then turned his attention toward your corner of the leather seating. "And LoveShot Killer! I heard you never get hit, eh?"

For all your hyper-sexual, bullet-flattening bravado, you merely offered a brief, uncharacteristically awkward nod. You possessed an absolute deficiency when it came to navigating parental figures, so your eyes instinctively darted across the cabin, searching for a familiar target. They found Dex.

He was already side-eyeing you from the shadows of the vehicle, his mask cradled loosely in his large hand.

Under the intrusive, blinding shafts of sunlight cutting through the limousine’s grimy windows, the intricate network of creases around his eyes became starkly prominent. A large, jaggedly healed scar traced an uneven trajectory across his cheekbone, mirroring another violent marker just above his eyebrow. Like someone had driven a knife across his face in an attempt to dishonor. Yet, the physical disfigurement did not render him grotesque; it didn't project the unrefined aura of a convict that might make a person feel unsafe. It suited the sharp symphony of his features. He looked beautifully wild, dangerous, thoroughly rough around the edges, with a faint, predatory gleam vibrating in the blue of his irises.

"You're older than I thought you'd be," your mouth moved, the observation slipping past your glossed lips before your filter could actively suppress it.

Dex’s head tilted slightly, his voice dropping into a low, testing register. "Is that a problem?"

"No," you answered instantly, the syllable clipping short as your trained vision caught a sudden flash of polished metal in the rear-view.

The heavy, armored silhouettes of approaching pursuit vehicles were rapidly closing the distance through the dust.

"Someone do something about that!" you alerted the cabin, your arms crossing defensively over the scant, baby-pink lace of your bikini top.

Dex’s gaze dipped, his pupils tracing the sudden movement of your arms before snapping forward toward the windshield. The limousine barely reached an acceleration, the engine groaning in deep agony. And Bullseye let out a harsh, impatient exhale that vibrated through his chest like a low growl.

"Activating defensive measures!" Alexei yelled with a triumphant madman’s grin.

Instead of a localized smoke screen or an oil slick, the vehicle’s sound system violently detonated to life, blaring aggressive, bass-heavy stripper music through the cracked speakers. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of the countermeasure struck your core so perfectly that a massive, unbridled laugh broke free from your throat. Dex watched the transformation of your features, his obsessive mind immediately deciding that he liked the addictive sound of your amusement.

Then, the rear window violently disintegrated into a shower of lethal glass shards. The bubble was popped. Dex was on his feet in an instant, his heavy frame shifting as he helped Walker anchor his massive vibranium shield against the incoming rain of high-caliber military fire.

"What happened to bulletproof!?" Dex yelled over the deafening music and gunfire.

"Bulletproof-ish! Everyone is a critic today!" Alexei bellowed from the driver's seat, spinning the wheel with manic indifference.

Ava attempted to intercept the threat, her form flickering wildly as she phased through the trunk of the limousine. But the pursuing vehicles were equipped with high-frequency sonic countermeasures; the moment the soundwaves blared across the sand, her kinetic matrix crumbled, and she collapsed onto the metal chassis in a state of agony. Dex and Walker immediately reached out, their combined physical leverage yanking her back into the relative safety of the cabin.

You decided you had endured enough of this. Squeezing your dense, serum-enhanced frame through the crack of the window, you hoisted yourself onto the exterior of the speeding vehicle. A fraction of a second later, Yelena materialized opposite behind you in the passenger side, her movements mirroring yours with practiced efficiency. The two of you raised your respective weapons, your acrylic pink fingers tightening against the trigger of your submachine gun as you prepared to paint the dunes red.

But before either of you could discharge a single round, the lead pursuing truck violently detonated.

The chassis flipped into the air in a spectacular arc of fire and displaced metal. You and Yelena paused mid-aim, your eyes locking onto one another for a single, bewildered millisecond through the smoke before the two of you slithered back down into the cramped interior of the limousine.

"It's Bucky!" Walker yelled, his voice carrying a sudden, triumphant inflection as he watched the dark, unmistakable silhouette of the Winter Soldier systematically clearing the remaining threats with clinical, heavy-handed precision from his own bike.

You let out a loud, elated cheer at the sight of the metallic arm cutting through the chaos.

But the celebration was violently short-lived. Through the smoke, Bucky’s focus remained utterly fixed on the rogue assets inside the limousine. With a fluid, unblinking aim, he deployed a magnetic explosive. The projectile whistled through the air, latching onto the undercarriage of the limousine with a definitive, metallic clack. Detonation was immediate. The under-blast tore through the axle, lifting the massive, rusted luxury vehicle entirely off the desert floor and sending it flipping violently through the air.

Fuck.

The constraints of the cold iron links wrapping around your torso were a suffocating, uninvited weight, yet your posture remained entirely fluid, entirely unbothered by the sudden, aggressive containment.

"You always did like it tight," you purred into the stagnant, dusty air of the abandoned gas station, your voice a wicked drop that cut straight through the tense atmosphere.

The so-called team immediately bristled. John Walker let out a sharp, uncomfortable cough, and Yelena simply closed her eyes as if praying for a sudden aneurysm to take her from the room. Across the concrete floor, Poindexter’s brows furrowed into a tight, menacing knot where he sat bound in his own heavy restraints. His calculating eyes flicked between your unbothered smirk and the broad, stoic shoulders of the man who had just neutralized them. A violent, possessive irritation flared beneath Dex’s skin, a friction he could neither calculate nor suppress. He didn’t like that comment. He didn’t like the inherent, unvarnished history bleeding out of your mouth.

"You look disappointed, James," you pouted, your lower lip jutting out in a display of mock grievance.

James?

The name echoed within the dark chambers of Dex’s mind like a jarring, misaligned gear. He questioned the syllable with a silent, hyper-vigilant intensity, trying desperately to work the answers of the situation as the six of you sat marooned inside the rotting carcass of the gas station. You didn't use titles. You didn't call him the Winter Soldier, nor did you use the sterile, bureaucratic designations of global intelligence. You called him James. It was an intimacy that suggested a deep history, a shared landscape of shadows that Dex was entirely excluded from.

"And you're still dressing like that," Bucky muttered, his deep, gravelly cadence devoid of amusement as his gaze flicked momentarily over the bikini top before settling back onto the collective group. "Look, save it. You're all evidence in the impeachment trial against Valentina."

"We don't even work for Valentina," Ava rolled her eyes, her form hunched with fatigue.

"I get it— she has some threat named Bob, and you're all heroes ready to save the day. Am I supposed to believe that?" Bucky said, his posture unyielding, entirely unswayed by the sheer absurdity of your group’s narrative.

"Yes!" you yelled petulantly, stomping a heel against the floor.

"We weren't going after her together," Walker gruffed out, his jaw tight.

"We're not a team," Dex stated at the exact same moment, his voice flat, mechanical, and entirely focused on separating his identity from the collective meat on display for the butcher.

"We were just trying to get home alive, actually," Yelena clarified, her tone heavy with the exhausting realism of their failure.

"That's even more pathetic," Bucky countered, his voice rising with a hard, uncompromising edge as he stepped away to answer a vibrating phone.

Your perfect brows raised as Bucky spoke into the receiver, his hushed, low-register tones seemingly deciding the ultimate fate of your company. To be truthfully honest, you had tuned out the vast majority of the reality surrounding you, the geopolitical nuances of impeachment trials and intelligence ledgers entirely failing to capture your interest. It wasn't until the heavy, clanking weight of the chains around your body suddenly dropped to the floor that you snapped back into the sharp, immediate present.

"Bucky. You have the wrong people," Yelena said, her voice sounding entirely defeated as she rubbed her wrists.

Bucky stood before the group, his cybernetic arm gleaming faintly under the dying fluorescent tubes, his eyes carrying the heavy, ancient weight of a man who had survived his own trail. "Look, I've been where you are," he began, the words slow, deliberate, and thick with a grim, universal truth. "You can run, but it doesn't go away. You can either do something about it now, or live with it forever."

The words hung in the freezing air, and for a rare, terrifying moment, the frantic tempo of your internal landscape ground to a sudden, agonizing halt.

Live with it forever.

The phrase dug deep into your chest, forcing your mind to retreat into the one place you spent every waking second trying to escape: the quiet. It was the exact reason you possessed such a violent, subcutaneous evasion to calmness. The silence was an intrusive entity that amplified the voices, the memories of the labs, the phantom scent of ozone and blood, the realization that you were an anomaly designed solely for the execution of others. You felt the sudden, terrifying weight of why you constantly had to keep killing, why you actively sought out the choice of survival. The bloodlust wasn't just a preference; it was a shield. If the guns stopped barking, if the bodies stopped dropping, the noise of your own fractured existence would finally catch up to you. You had to keep moving, keep fighting, because the alternative was drowning in the static of a normal, quiet world that had no place for a creature like you.

Beside you, Dex sat entirely motionless, Bucky’s heavy words striking a resonant chord within his own psychology. He stared down at his large, calloused hands, his mind turning inward in a rare, sentimental display of self-examination.

Redemption.

It was a beautiful, entirely treacherous concept that he had spent years convincing himself he didn't need. He had made peace with the stark reality that he was a monster, an instrument of pure murder who had caused an infinity of unvarnished pain from Hell's Kitchen to the dark corners of the globe. He had told himself that there was no pure good or absolute evil, only actions and outcomes. But as he looked at the others, broken side characters standing in the ruins of this gas station, a small, stubborn voice in his head began to reshape itself. He wanted to mean something. He wanted to prove, if only to the architecture of his own brain, that his life wasn't entirely fixed on destruction. He didn't want to be a weapon discarded in a sterilization protocol; he wanted to dictate his own outcome. He wanted validation that didn't come from a script or a handler like Fisk or Valentina.

And then his eyes drifted back to you. You were standing there, a defiant flash of baby-pink lace amidst the grimy concrete, looking just as beautifully damaged as he felt. He didn't want to live with the darkness forever. He wanted to challenge it. He wanted to see what happened when two broken stars decided to rewrite their own orbit.

"Stop Val and save Bob," Yelena sighed, the concession heavy but definitive as she looked around the room.

"Fine. Yeah," Walker agreed, stepping forward with a reluctant nod.

"Alright," Dex found himself nodding, his voice low, his gaze locked entirely onto your face as he committed.

"Sure," you shrugged indifferently, a beautiful, wicked little smile returning to your features as you smoothed down your pleated skirt, the weight of the silence instantly evaporating the moment a new target was established.

"Go on then," Ava nodded out as Alexei’s loud, boisterous, yelling suddenly filled the air, shattering the lingering sentimentality of the room as he heralded the official birth of their ridiculous, lawless crusade.

It was a wonderful morning in New York, clear skies and busy streets awaiting for some action. The vibrating cargo of the unmarked delivery truck hummed with a strange, domestic sort of friction. Bucky was somewhere up front, steering them directly into the jaws of a corporate hellscape with a tactical plan that amounted to “crash the doors and improvise,” while Alexei occupied the passenger seat, likely muttering to himself. But back here, isolated from the political gravity of the situation, the atmosphere had devolved into something bordering on a high-stakes pajama party.

Your laugh was a bright sound as Yelena and Ava offered deadpan nods to whatever military theory John was currently spinning. This show-and-tell was your group’s third attempt at artificial entertainment during the seemingly endless transit back into the city. It had been a necessary pivot, following a highly volatile round of "Put a finger down: Never have I ever" and a deeply questionable game of "Take a shot if," fueled by the single bottle of Smirnoff Ice you successfully smuggled away in your utility belt from Alexei’s limousine.

"What about you, huh?" Ava asked, her chin jerking toward Bullseye, who sat with one long leg extended completely across the metal floor, the other casually crossed over the other.

"Yeah. Why is your gun holster brown? Wouldn't it have made more sense if it was black or blue?" Yelena questioned through the haze of severe sleep deprivation, her Russian accent thick and sluggish.

Dex’s expression rendered itself thoroughly, genuinely amused at the sheer absurdity of the interrogation. His sharp brows raised, and he forced down an instinctual eye-roll with a slight, unconscious tick of his head.

"Forget the color, why do you only carry one gun?" you chimed in, your own perfect brows furrowing as you gestured toward his sparse, rigid arsenal.

"I didn't know color coordination was such a big deal," Dex replied, his gravelly voice cool and thoroughly unserious. It wasn't the sterile, calculated performance of feigning human emotion he had so meticulously rehearsed during his days observing Julie; this was entirely unrehearsed, unburdened, and light.

You watched, entirely rapt, as his large hand slipped inward, pulling the solitary firearm from the tactical strap secured across his broad chest.

"And I only carry one because I only need one shot," he stated flatly with absolute certainty, his gaze locking onto yours as he turned the weapon slightly. "Also, because I have favorites."

He held the gun up, a subtle, deliberate alignment aimed loosely in your direction, and for some entirely wrong reason, the gesture caused a strange, intoxicating sensation to dance directly in the pit of your stomach.

"Okay, my turn. I have my baby here—" you announced proudly, hoisting your customized submachine gun into the dim light, the white lace wrapped around the grip looking considerably more grimy and blood-flecked now than when you had initiated the contract. "Oh, and we have my honey— and sweetie— oh, oh—and I can't forget my girls!" You pointed in rapid succession to the two secondary handguns nestled against your hips and the dozen gleaming, pink-enameled knives tracing your waistline.

"That's cute," Ava nodded, though the flat cadence of her voice made it abundantly clear that she didn’t mean it.

Yelena seamlessly took the floor next, launching into a granular breakdown of her own specialized gear, while Walker nodded along with an air of grim, nostalgic recognition, loudly voicing that he vividly remembered the devastating efficacy of Yelena’s high-voltage electrical shockers.

At some point during the chatter, your roaming gaze found the discarded, dark blue pile of fabric tucked away in the shadows of the corner. Without a second thought, your grip snatched the material, pulling it over your head in a single, fluid motion before peeking out through the cut-outs.

Dex’s head turned, his internal algorithms instantly grinding to a halt as he caught you mid-motion.

You were sitting there on the vibrating metal floor, peering out from beneath the iconic, stark label of the Bullseye mask. It smelled entirely of him, a heavy intoxicating mix of expensive cologne and dried violent copper.

Fucking hell.

Dex stared, his jaw freezing as a sudden heat surged beneath his skin. He liked that sight. He liked it with a terrifying intensity that threatened to rewrite every piece of discipline he possessed. The very mask he had worn to commit an infinity of horrific, calculated atrocities, the symbol of his deepest damnation, was currently being worn by this tiny half-naked creature. Your massive, doe-like eyes stared up at him from behind the target emblem, and the image struck his brain with the force of a grenade. Sitting there in your pink lace and his dark hood, you looked, for all intents and purposes, entirely branded as his.

His mind raced, a hundred different dark, possessive thoughts colliding within his skull, only to be made violently worse when you playfully raised your own customized gun at him, closing one eye and pretending to shoot him dead center. His jaw clenched so hard the muscle twitched beneath his scarred cheek, his large fists tightening into white-knuckled blocks against his knees as he actively, desperately restrained himself from reaching across the short distance and pulling you into his lap.

"Are we there yet!?"

The roaring torrent of his internal monologue was violently severed by Yelena’s sudden, exhausted screech toward the front cabin. A fraction of a second later, you joined in, your voice echoing her petulant cadence as you yelled the exact same thing, completely unbothered by the fact that you were still wearing his identity over your face.

The terrifying portrait of a god completely dismantling your capacity without blinking was a deeply irritating check to your ego. The sheer absurdity of the violence left a bitter spike of pure envy in your chest. Why did the shivering, untrained asset get the cosmic, reality-warping powers while you were left with the pedestrian reality of invincibility and pretty guns?

You had watched from the debris-strewn floor as John’s vibranium shield was folded like a cheap piece of tin, Ava and Yelena dropped like discarded marionettes, and Dex was forced into a dance of parrying his own bounced-back projectiles. But Bucky had sustained the most visceral, uncompromising trauma. The heavy, metallic thud of his severed cybernetic arm hitting the concrete was the ultimate, unvarnished signal that the script was entirely dead.

Your little group weren't the Avengers. You possessed no grand, selfless illusions of martyrdom or moral nobility; you were weaponized threats, and you knew exactly when the situation demanded retreat.

Clutching Bucky’s severed limb to your bare chest like a trophy, you scrambled into the relative, groaning sanctuary of the elevator with the others. Once outside the building and into the stinging New York air, the seven of you attempted to process the absolute, reality-shattering failure that mission was. You handed the heavy, metallic arm back to its owner. Taking an uninvited familiar liberty in aggressively locking the cybernetic joint back into its socket for him.

Dex’s calloused fingers brushed lightly over the fresh, blooming cut on his bottom lip, his dark blue eyes fixated entirely on the display. His jaw tensed as he watched you tend to another man’s anatomy, all while his own iconic Bullseye mask remained perched casually on the crown of your head like a ridiculous beanie.

"Okay, we need a new plan," Alexei tried to nod, his massive, boozy body thoroughly beaten and leaking blood into the dirt.

"Nah—no new plans. That thing's too powerful," Walker sighed, his large hands clutching the pathetic ruin of his tactical shield.

"We just need to regroup and think—" Alexei tried again, his stubborn, Soviet-era optimism entirely unaligned with the reality of the crater behind them.

"This isn't regrouping. We're not even a team," Dex cut in sharply. His voice was a flat rasp as he slid his solitary firearm back into its chest harness, his aching, bruised musculature dropping into a rigid, defensive stance. All hope he was foolish enough to have in the gas station was gone.

"Of course we're a team! We're the Thunderbolts!" Alexei yelled, the delusion so thick it forced a loud, unbridled scoff from your throat.

"I don't know what that means," Bucky exclaimed, his expression darkening with a deep, historical exhaustion.

"It's her pee-wee soccer team-thing," Ava tried to explain, her voice flickering with a fatigued, erratic latency.

The argument that followed instantly degenerated into a frantic, overlapping chorus of panic. Everyone was yelling over the other with no apology until the sheer volume of the yelling finally snapped your remaining patience.

"There's no regrouping! He turned John's shield into a taco! And look at my gun!" you shrieked, hoisting your disfigured, custom submachine gun into the light. The sterling metal permanently warped with the deep, violent imprints of Bob's physical superiority.

"Oh my god, stop! There is no us, there is no we!" Yelena suddenly exploded, her voice carrying the absolute, suffocating weight of a defeat that reached back into her very childhood. "Bob changed into that thing, and there's nothing any of you can do about it!"

"And what did you do, exactly!?" you countered instantly, your painted pink fingernail pointing directly at her face. "Because I seem to remember you getting your ass beat way worse than mine!"

"Yeah! I suck! I'm terrible! We're all shit!" Yelena screamed back, her face flushing with a raw, unvarnished venom bathed in exhaustion. "You're not a hero! You're not even a good person!"

You grimaced, your features pulling into a genuinely offended scowl at the blunt, unglamorous evaluation.

"Alright, go easy on her," John Walker intervened, his hands lifting in a half-hearted attempt to dispel the sudden volatility of the Russian's anger.

"Oh, so what, you're nice now!?" she bit back, her eyes flashing with a terrifying malice.

John slowly turned his head, his wide eyes landing on Dex, the closest variable to him in the immediate space. Silently signaling a bewildered disbelief at the scale of the emotional outburst. Dex merely allowed an uncontrollable, sinister smirk to tug at the corner of his bleeding lip, his entire posture explicitly projecting that he wanted absolutely no legal or physical part in this.

“So it's my turn now?” John asked.

"No, you know you're a piece of trash, Walker. So does your family," Yelena delivered the final, crushing blow.

"Jesus," Dex muttered under his breath, his brows lifted imperceptibly and your jaw dropping in offense for John.

"We're all losers. And we lost."

With that grim, definitive finality, Yelena turned and walked away into the urban sprawl. You didn't hesitate; pivoting sharply on your chunky heels, you began to trudge in the exact opposite direction, your pleated mini skirt swirling with the momentum of your own tantrum.

"Where to now?"

Dex’s tall, imposing frame appeared seamlessly at your flank, his long legs instantly matching the lazy, deliberate rhythm of your stride. He didn't frame the words like a question; it was a flat, possessive statement of fact. It carried the certainty that whatever destination your brain decided on, his body would follow.

"Well, I need a new gun. And I want a taco," you shrugged indifferently. Dex offered a single, understanding nod.

Two blocks away, you both found yourselves in the vinyl-wrapped interior of a greasy, fluorescent-lit diner. It wasn't a taco establishment, but the fading neon sign in the window had promised a good milkshake, which was good enough for you. Ignoring the overt, lingering stares of civilian patrons, who were understandably alarmed by a six-foot scarred assassin sitting next to a half-naked woman in a pink bikini, you slid onto a chrome bar stool. Dex claimed the seat immediately beside you, his large hands settling on the counter.

"Are you okay?" he asked. The syllables were stiff, delivered with the awkward, hesitant cadence of a man who possessed absolutely no blueprint for treading on sensitive emotional terrain. The hesitation wasn't born from an uncertainty regarding your physical state. He knew you were fine, he simply just didn't ask people if they were okay. In his universe, targets either lived or died. But looking at the tight line of your shoulders, his fractured mind had deduced that this was the correct, human protocol to initiate, even if the underlying sentiment felt entirely foreign beneath his skin.

"Yeah. Yelena's right. I'm not even a good person," you shrugged it off with a lazy indifference, wrapping your fingers around the cold glass and taking a slow, rhythmic sip of your vanilla milkshake. "And I'm okay with that," you added, your doe eyes tracking the condensation down the glass.

Dex went quiet, his analytical brain turning the statement over like a complex equation. "Why?"

"I can't handle being America's sweetheart," you confessed, the words carrying a rare, unpolished truth. The mere conceptualization of it, being anchored to a rigid, moral team where you had to behave, follow a script, and act with selfless restraint. It was a suffocating, unbearable prospect.

"We are who we are," Dex nodded. The statement was absolute, a cold comfort born from a man who had finally stopped trying to force his broken pieces into a normal template.

"And I'm not sorry I took your kill," you chimed in, your tone instantly shifting back to its signature, provocative sweetness.

A genuine, slow-burning smile spread across Dex's scarred face, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked down at his own drink. "No... I didn't think you were."

"I would've gotten you too, if none of this shit fucking happened," you hummed.

Having thoroughly finished the contents of your own glass, your roaming gaze landed on his milkshake. Without a single shred of respect for personal space, your manicured fingers plucked your red straw out of your empty glass and slid it directly into his, leaning in close enough for the scent of your perfume to collide with the metallic edge of his cologne as you began to drink.

Dex didn't flinch. He didn't pull away. Instead, his large, calloused hand reached up, his fingers sliding against your hair as he wrapped his palm around the dark blue fabric of his mask, lifting it off your head like a hat.

"Nothing's stopping you now, angel," he hummed, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that sent a sudden, dangerous spark straight down your spine.

"Hey!? I liked that!" you protested, reaching for the hood as he twirled it around his fingers. "And you're wrong."

His sharp brows furrowed, the system of his mind slightly disrupted by the contradiction. "How?"

"There's this annoying feeling now... like, like I can't just end it that way. That you shouldn't go out that way," You expressed, your voice tight with a genuine, thoroughly frustrating confusion at the uninvited moral latency currently taking root in your brain.

A dark, mocking glint danced in Bullseye’s eyes. "What? Does it ache right here, Love?" he mocked softly.

Before you could dodge, his large, heavy palm slid across the exposed skin of your midriff, settling flat and warm over your bare stomach. The sudden, intense proximity of his touch sent a visceral jolt through your nervous system, and your thighs subconsciously pressed tightly together against the chrome base of the stool.

Your mouth opened to deliver a sharp, defensive retort, but the words were violently severed as a sudden, concussive rumble of chaos began to stir outside the diner windows. The civilian patrons let out a synchronized gasp, scrambling toward the glass as the distant sound of detonations and screaming echoed down the asphalt.

"Trouble in paradise," you calculated down to, your eyes tracking the plumes of dark smoke rising toward the neon skyline.

"I can think of ten other bad things we can do instead of that..." Dex murmured, his gaze shifting from the window back to your face. He nodded toward the back exit, his mind instantly mapping a path that involved leaving the city to burn while the two of you discovered exactly what happened when two monsters stopped pretending to be soldiers. A slow, sinister smile flashed across his scarred face, an unsettling predatory expression that should have terrified you, but instead it felt entirely beautifully fitting.

The temptation was immense. God knows every subcutaneous instinct in your blood desired nothing more than to slip into the dark with a man who looked at you like you were his entire universe. But as you stared into the fractured blue of his eyes, that small, stubborn voice in the back of your head, the one that had felt a fleeting, lonely warmth while army-stomping up a concrete shaft with a group of rejects, spoke up. And somehow, against every law of your selfish, bulletproof physics, it completely overpowered the rest of the noise.

"We can't leave the team hanging," you sighed begrudgingly, letting out a heavy, dramatic breath of utter exasperation.

Sliding off the bar stool, your small, perfectly painted hand slid into his large, calloused palm, your fingers locking tightly around his as you began to physically drag the massive, muscular assassin toward the front doors of the diner. And Dex, with a slow, resigned exhale that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle, simply let you.

The bell above the diner door jingled a useless, cheerful note as you burst through the threshold, the neon-lit sanctuary instantly dissolving into a gray, suffocating landscape of dust and screams. Your scuffed heels skidded over loose gravel just in time for your acute vision to map the immediate layout of the street.

Across the avenue, the rest of the team was violently strained against a massive, shearing wall of concrete that had sheared off an office building, currently teetering at a devastating angle above a trapped, weeping civilian woman.

"Move!" you shrieked, playfulness vanishing in a fraction of a second as the bootleg serum in your veins surged, elevating your central nervous system to a state of roaring, singular focus.

You and Dex arrived at the structural ruin simultaneously, a synchronized strike of absolute physical momentum. Your small, unarmored hands slammed flat against the freezing, jagged stone right alongside John Walker’s straining shoulder, your hyper-dense musculature locking into place as Dex wedged his broad frame directly beside yours. His large, scarred forearms flexed, veins bulging against his tactical gear as he poured every ounce of his mortal strength into the vertical plane. Together, a group of rejects and assassins heaved against the dead weight of the world. With a deafening, grinding screech, the massive slab shifted, toppling backward away from the civilian and shattering into harmless, billowing plumes of white powder on the asphalt.

Instantly, the atmosphere shifted. The trapped woman scrambled to her feet, her face streaked with tears as she looked at the bizarre, mismatched group.

"Thank you! Oh my god, thank you!" she sobbed, and a small, scattered chorus of surviving onlookers joined in, cheering openly for the monsters who had just played the part of saviors.

Slowly, you lowered your hands, turning your head in absolute, unvarnished confusion toward Dex. He looked equally, profoundly perplexed. The white target emblem on his mask sat static as his empty eyes darted across the appreciative crowd. Neither of you had ever received positive feedback so openly, so unprompted, without a script or a handler validating the kill. It was a completely foreign, intoxicating frequency.

But the celebratory high was violently short-lived.

The air temperature plunged into an impossible, sub-zero freeze. Several sharp gasps and panicked screams cut through the dust, and ahead, a towering, absolute darkness began to bleed over the high-rises. A void of crushing anti-matter that defied the afternoon sky. The sheer, existential weight of it pressed down on your chest, and for the first time in your bulletproof existence, a visceral, heart-hammering panic rippled through your core.

You took a staggered step backward, your heels clicking weakly against the debris. Instantly, Dex’s heavy, solid arm snapped out, anchoring you firmly against his side. You looked up at him through the gloom, your doe eyes pleading, silently begging the one man who never missed a shot to never, ever let that abyssal thing consume you, as a far more troubled vulnerability awakened deep within your mind.

You looked back up at the hovering, empty silhouette at the center of the dark.

"I think Bob's not playing nice anymore..." you whispered, an uncharacteristic, terrifying edge of genuine fear slipping into your melodic voice.

The street erupted into instantaneous tactical pandemonium. Walker and Bucky were already yelling, their voices booming over the din as they commanded the civilian crowd to get inside the nearest shelter before the growing void could swallow the block. But amidst the sweeping panic, your gaze drifted to the center of the avenue.

Yelena was standing there, her unmoving figure a monument of shock against the oncoming blackness. Then in the next microsecond, a distortion rippled through the air, her solid form was there, and then she was simply gone, sucked violently forward into the unknown of the dark.

Your brain barely registered Alexei's distant, heartbroken roaring before your body acted on pure, human instinct. You tore away from the perimeter, sprinting directly toward the mouth of the void after the fallen widow. And Dex, without a single syllable of hesitation, was running right beside you.

As the threshold of the dark swallowed his physical frame, Benjamin Poindexter’s internal universe fractured entirely. He didn't fully comprehend the reason why he had been compelled to move, why he had abandoned a perfectly viable exit vector to sprint into a cosmic meat-grinder. But his body had long since decided its primary directive: it would follow you into the dark, regardless of the chances of survival.

His mind twisted under the sudden manipulation of Bob's influence, the reality around him bending as his thoughts turned violently inward. He was deeply, agonizingly confused by these new moral tugs. He had spent his entire life operating as a perfect organic machine, requiring a rigid script, a Julie, a Fisk, a bureau manual, to dictate what was acceptable. He didn't like people. He didn't form attachments to the meat he was assigned to clean.

Yet, your chaotic, hyper-feminine frequency had dug so deep beneath his skin that the song of your pink heels had become his new operational baseline. He liked you with a terrifying, possessive intensity because you didn't ask him to be a hero, nor did you look at his scars and see a monster. You saw an equal. You were just as beautifully broken, just as desensitized to the slaughter, yet you moved through the world with an unbothered, radiant happiness that he had never been permitted to possess.

And that cheering... the sound of the civilian woman thanking him... it had sparked a dangerous, volatile wildfire within his compulsive brain. For a man who had spent his existence begging external forces for a sign that he was doing a 'good deed,' that unscripted, organic praise was the ultimate narcotic. He realized, with a sudden surge of adrenaline, that he would do absolutely anything, he would dismantle a god, he would march through hell itself, to receive that kind of unvarnished validation again. To be worth something.

But the void didn't offer redemption; it offered psychological execution.

The gray dust of the street suddenly dissolved, and Dex found himself violently wrenched out of the present, waking up with a gasping lurch on the floor of his old, sterile apartment in Hell's Kitchen. He was entirely alone. The air smelled of stale rain and old paper.

Through the dim, unfeeling light, he watched in horror as a familiar silhouette began to systematically destroy the room. It was him. A younger, unscarred version of himself, still clad in the rigid, pristine tailoring of his FBI tactical uniform. The younger Dex was unhinged, his eyes wide with a manic, obsessive-compulsive desperation as he smashed furniture, searching for an order that didn't exist in the world.

Suddenly, the younger iteration stopped. He drew his standard-issue sidearm, his large hand trembling with a pathetic, agonizing instability as he aimed the barrel directly at the framed photograph of Julie affixed to the wall.

The sight struck the current Dex like a physical blow to the sternum, transforming the space into a theater of pure torture. He hated this exact point in his timeline. He loathed every single second of that stifling, rigid era, the suffocating loneliness, the terrifying mental instability. The pathetic dependency on a woman who was nothing more than a temporary bandage on a bleeding psychic wound. He watched his younger self weep in the dark, a visual manifestation of how desperately unstable and unloved he had felt before the world had finally broken him completely. He wanted to scream, to reach out and shatter the mirage, to pull his identity out of the pathetic trap of his own history.

The younger himself stood frozen in the center of the decaying room, his knuckle whitening against the trigger as the barrel of the service weapon migrated from the wall, finding a jagged home directly beneath his own chin. His fractured, inexperienced mind had seemingly calculated a final, desperate answer to the static noise. The current Dex explicitly looked away, his jaw clenching as he refused to witness the pathetic, unvarnished depth of his past misery. Even though he knew that he had never possessed the nerve to pull the trigger.

"Dex!"

The heavy wood of the apartment door violently bursted open, splintering against the drywall as you crashed through the threshold.

More importantly, you were bleeding. LoveShot Killer never bled. The universe simply didn't permit the ballistic physics of flesh-ripping trauma to apply to your augmented skin. Yet, here you stood, looking entirely worse than he had ever seen you. Your meticulously styled hair was completely disheveled, your glossed lip split open, and deep, blooming cuts traced the exposed skin of your thighs. Worst of all, a dark, smoking bullet wound marred the toned surface of your stomach, the left strap of your top torn and dangling loosely off your bare shoulder.

The visual layout of your desecration struck Dex with a sudden, roaring wave of overwhelming anger. It wasn't an offense born from your sudden indecency; it was a found protective fury directed at whatever psychological entity had dared to lay a hand on you.

You ran straight past the current Dex, your awareness entirely blinded by the illusion of the void as you scrambled toward his younger, uniform-clad self.

"Hey— what're you doing?" you asked, your frantic gait halting as a pained gasp escaped your throat. "Stop being silly, okay?" Your sweet voice broke under the weight of the exhaustion, your painted fingers desperately reaching out to pry the cold metal of the service weapon from his stiff fingers.

"I-I'm here now, s-so we can go and find Yelena, okay?" you whispered urgently, your chest heaving beneath the ruined lace as you pleaded with the ghost.

"Who are you," the younger Dex spoke. The syllables were flat, dead, and entirely devoid of the predatory heat you had grown accustomed to.

You took a staggered step backward, your perfect brows pulling together in a grimace of profound distaste. You hated that look in his eyes, the hollow, mechanical emptiness that mirrored a clinical ledger. Those weren't the same electric, obsessive blue irises you had looked into across the diner counter merely twenty minutes ago.

"What?..." you muttered, unsure.

"Who are you!?" the younger Dex yelled, his posture dropping into an aggressive, unrefined sprint as he approached you with a manic malice.

He didn't waste a single second evaluating the outcome. His choice was instantaneous, a reflex born of his need for your safety. His solitary firearm raised, aligning perfectly with the space of the room, and he fired a single, deafening shot.

Bang.

You flinched violently as a hot spray of crimson landed across your cheek. Downward you stared, your wide, terrified eyes tracking the heavy thud of his body hitting the linoleum, your brain temporarily freezing as you tried to register the paradoxical sight of Dex killing himself to keep you unblemished.

Dex stepped forward through the smoke, his large, rough hand reaching out with a rare, uncharacteristic gentleness to guide your chin upward, forcing your gaze away from the corpse until your eyes finally locked onto his current, scarred face.

"That version of me died a long time ago, okay?" Dex muttered softly, his large thumb brushing against your cheekbone to smear the wet blood away from your skin. It was the only clumsy, unscripted statement of reassurance his damaged psychology could offer.

You let out a ragged breath, your chest heaving as the sheer horror of the void threatened to pull you under. But looking at him, really looking at the rigid intensity in his irises, the terror in your veins suddenly mutated into something else entirely. A sharp, intoxicating surge of adrenaline. You didn't want comfort; you wanted to feel alive, to feel the brutal, grounding heat of the only person who understood the dark as deeply as you did.

Your fingers curled into the fabric of his tactical shirt, aggressively yanking him down to your level. The collision of your lips was instant and unrefined, a heated, desperate crash of friction that tasted faintly of copper and vanilla. Dex let out a low, guttural growl in his throat, his restraint snapping like brittle glass. His large hands instantly abandoned their gentleness, trapping the sides of your face and sliding into your disheveled hair to tilt your head back, burying his mouth into yours with a fiercely hungry desperation.

It was intoxicating. The world around completely dissolved as he dragged your body flush against his broad chest, his heavy grip sliding down to clamp around your waist, lifting you slightly off your platforms. Every subconscious barrier you both possessed collapsed. You whimpered into the kiss, your mouth parting to invite the suffocating, dark heat of him, your hands moving frantically up his neck to anchor him closer, needing to consume him just as badly.

The heat turned dangerous, spiraling rapidly out of control as Dex backed you into the nearest wall. The thud of your spine hitting the plaster didn't even register. His hand slid beneath the torn bikini, his calloused palms searing against the bare skin of your breast, his thumb digging into your hip with a bruising, desperate possessiveness that signaled he was ready to completely lose his mind right here in the ruins of his past. The kiss grew deeper, heavier, a breathless, bruising dance that went entirely too far, blurring the line between survival and volatile ruin.

A sharp, concussive rumble from the hallway outside rattled the floorboards, the reality of the collapsing void violently bleeding through the threshold.

The sudden vibration forced Dex to tear his mouth away from yours with a sharp, ragged gasp. His forehead dropped heavily against yours, both of you breathing the same hot, frantic air as his chest heaved against your ruined lace. His pupils were completely dilated, dark and wild with an unadulterated, dangerous desire that took every ounce of his remaining physical leverage to actively restrain. Your breathing increased to a frantic, erratic tempo, lungs hitching as you stared up at his flushed, scarred face, your heart hammering a relentless rhythm against your ribs.

"What happened, hm... Love?" Both hands cradled your face again, softer now.

"It was so awful...... I was in the lab and I had to watch myself get locked in the room and it was dark—then I started attacking myself!?" you heaved out in a sudden, panicked rush of words, your knees buckling slightly under the weight of the memory.

Dex muttered a succession of soft, low-register shhs into your disheveled hair, his broad chest anchoring your trembling frame against the concrete reality of his presence. His blue eyes darted across the ruined apartment, instantly finding a discarded, oversized button-down shirt draped carelessly over a baseball trophy in the corner. The fabric was stained with old, dried patches of his own blood, an atrocity in his historical world back then, but a thoroughly familiar, comforting sight in his current line of work.

Carefully, his large hands gathered the heavy shirt. He wrapped the oversized cotton around your bare, bruised shoulders, his fingers meticulously helping your small hands slip through the wide sleeves before he began to work the plastic buttons up to your collar, concealing the ruined pink lace beneath his own dark history.

"Let's go find the others, okay?" he nodded, the directive surprising his own internal computer the moment the words left his lips. He wasn't a team player. He didn't care about the meat. But as he looked down at you, swaddled in his clothes and breathing against his chest, he knew he couldn't leave the puzzle unfinished.

The illusionary walls of Dex’s old apartment didn’t shatter so much as they bled away, dissolving back into the shifting, unstable architecture of Bob’s fractured psyche. Navigating the void was like wading through a fever dream, but together, the two of you managed to anchor the crumbling pieces of the others.

Ava was discovered first, trapped in a terrifying, perpetual loop of high-frequency phasing, her form screaming as she rapidly disintegrated and rematerialized. It wasn't until you stepped into her space, your voice cutting through the static to explicitly remind her that she was no longer trapped in the clean-room labs of her childhood, that her molecular matrix finally stabilized. Bucky was worse. He was marooned in a desolate, frozen play of his own past atrocities, surrounded by the bleeding ghosts of the Winter Soldier program. The heavy weight of his historic damnation was palpable, but your presence offered an uncharacteristic, grounding sanctuary. You reminded him, with a blunt, unvarnished simplicity, that he had no choice that they made him do it. The ancient tension in his shoulders finally fractured just as Alexei and John stumbled into the perimeter, their own psychological hazes clearing in the wake of Bucky’s dissipating nightmares.

But finding Yelena required traversing the deepest, most concentrated gravity of the anti-matter.

She was entrenched at the absolute epicenter of the darkness, standing guard over the trembling figure of Bob. The real Bob. He was slumped on the floor of his own mental prison, his eyes wide and leaking brilliant, terrifying tears as he looked up at the mismatched, bruised assembly. He literally could not believe you had all descended into the abyss for him.

"We're a team, right?" you said, the sentiment delivered with a half-hearted, beautifully cynical shrug as you adjusted the oversized sleeves of Dex’s button-down shirt. The sentimental beat was violently cut short by your own impatience. "Now do that god-thing and break us out of here!"

"It's not that easy—they just get worse and worse, and I—" Bob’s voice cracked, a devastating thunder vibrating in his throat.

"We'll go through it together," Yelena nodded, her voice a solid, unyielding anchor as she stepped directly into his collapsing perimeter.

The space violently rejected the intrusion. The wall's physical form convulsed into visual manifestation of his internal monster, the Void itself. Shadows with the density of collapsing stars erupted around, lashing out with whiplash velocity to tear the room apart. The transition from a quiet mental prison to a raging internal warzone was instantaneous and brutal. As You anchored yourself in Bob’s collapsing perimeter, the darkness didn't just lash out, it organized itself. From the bleeding shadows surrounding the real, trembling Bob, a towering silhouette materialized. It was the absolute presence of his devil: a faceless, undulating mass of pure anti-matter. The shift in the architecture was instantaneous and violent, the metaphorical walls of the mind hardening into an industrial, sterile labyrinth.

The illusionary sky vanished, replaced by low-slung, humming fluorescent lights that flickered erratically as the fabric of the facility began to fold in on itself.

Bob didn't possess the roaring, cosmic majesty of a god here; he was stripped entirely of his radiant luminescence, reduced back to a trembling, frantic man trapped in a plain cotton shirt. He was locked in a brutal, desperate grapple with a towering, shifting silhouette of pure anti-matter, his own shadow,. Bob was flailing, his pained, unrefined punches cutting through the air as he desperately tried to beat back a psychological parasite that was physically suffocating him.

"He's killing himself!" You yelled over the rising, mechanical screech of the collapsing room.

The rest of the team was instantly pinned down by the sheer atmospheric pressure of the failing reality. The floorboards buckled upward, and gravity wells erupted across the laboratory floor, anchoring Dex's heavy frame and dragging Ava down as her phasing matrix flared out. Heavy steel support beams groaned and snapped overhead, dropping a cascade of sparks and debris that threatened to bury Walker and Alexei entirely.

But the restraint didn't hold. Not after what you all had just crawled through to get here. With a collective, roaring surge of adrenaline, you broke free from the spatial gravity. John shoved a falling concrete pillar aside with his bare shoulder; Bucky and Alexei used their combined physical leverage to clear a path through the warping space, and Dex moved with flawless, unblinking precision, using a discarded piece of rebar to block oncoming threats.

You and Yelena spearheaded, rushing headlong into the heart of the epicenter where Bob was violently collapsing under the weight of his own shadow.

"Stop! Bob, stop!" Yelena commanded, her voice an desperate, unyielding anchor as her arms wrapped securely around his right shoulder, using her entire body weight to stall his frantic, self-destructive momentum.

You slid across the cracked tile floor, your platforms skidding through the white dust as you threw yourself onto his left side. Your solid arms locked around his trembling forearm, your fingernails digging into the fabric of his sleeve as you forcefully halted another pained, desperate punch aimed at the empty, suffocating air.

"We've got you! Just hold on!" you shrieked over the roar of the void, your face flushed with sheer physical exertion as Dex materialized directly behind you, his large, steady hands slamming onto your shoulders to add his massive, stabilizing weight to the human anchor.

Bucky and Walker dove into the huddle next, their massive hands locking onto Bob’s chest and legs, physically pinning the man to the floor to separate him from the dark entity feeding on his panic. Alexei, the father and guardian that he was, hunched over the mess you all were, serving and protecting in the way that he knew how. The eight of you became a single, solid monument of support. Broken pieces whole by each other.

"Look at us!" Yelena ordered, her eyes burning into his leaking, terrified gaze. "We're leaving!"

The declaration was the final, critical and promising in a way the void could not assimilate. A collection of selfish, discarded assassins putting their bodies on the line for a man they barely knew. The towering shadow let out a final, deafening screech of frustration, its form fading into a harmless, dissipating thread of dark smoke as Bob’s chest heaved in a massive, ragged breath.

Gravity snapped. And it was like waking up from a dream. The heavy, real-world atmosphere of New York rushed back into your lungs with a vengeance. The eight of you collapsed in a tangled, bruised heap onto the freezing, unpolished floor, gasping for air as the cold starlight of reality finally washed over your faces. The velocity with which the universe could pivot from an apocalyptic nightmare into a complete, bureaucratic farce was a testament to the joke of their existence.

With Dex’s steady, calloused hand anchoring your weight, you rose from the cold concrete floor of the real world. Your knees were still a little weak from the phantom trauma of the void, but the mocking cadence of your voice returned the exact millisecond reality solidified around you.

"Dammit, you're still alive," you joked, a soft, melodic huff escaping your lips as you looked up at him through your disheveled hair.

"Unfortunately," he shot back, the gravelly register of his voice carrying an uncharacteristic fondness. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he stared down at you, his obsessive internal self completing a massive, definitive calculation. He was keeping you. How could he not? You were a beautiful, bulletproof thing that had literally shot its way through his worst nightmares just to drag him back to the light.

His analytical gaze wandered downward, mapping the damage. The blood-stained shirt he had buttoned around you in the dream was gone, vanished back into the confines of Bob's mind. Your own baby-pink top remained violently torn, the strap dangling loosely over your bare shoulder in an explicit invitation to indecency. Without a single word of hesitation, Dex stepped intimately behind you, his large, scarred forearms wrapping securely around your chest to serve as a firm, protective barrier against the elements. He would have to find you a completely new, meticulously styled uniform later, but for now, his body was your defense and he already liked the way you fit into him.

Your eyes instantly locked onto the distant, unmistakable silhouette of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine barking orders across the plaza, and a sudden, subcutaneous heat flared in your veins. You began to stalk forward, Dex seamlessly moving with you, his muscular form still securely wrapped around your short body as the rest of the broken team rallied into a tight, unified formation alongside a confused but conscious Bob.

"I'm going to kill that person," you nodded, your voice taking on a dangerously sweet edge.

"We stick together from now on," Yelena declared, her hand firmly pulling Bob along as she assumed the baseline orientation of a leader.

"We can't kill her. We have to take her in," Bucky countered, his cybernetic arm gleaming under the city lights as his moral programming reasserted its heavy, unyielding authority.

"Maybe we break a few bones," Alexei offered with a boisterous, entirely unbothered grin, cracking his massive knuckles in anticipation.

"I'd like to kill her," Ava nodded flatly, her form stabilizing as desperately tried to bend his taco-shaped vibranium shield back into a practical shape, failing miserably with a quiet grunt of frustration.

Valentina, sensing the immense threat marching down the avenue, scrambled backward into the false, temporary safety of a haphazardly strung perimeter of construction tarps. The team surged forward, preparing to execute a thoroughly unglamorous, heavy-handed arrest, only to be violently ambushed by a blinding, deafening wall of flash photography and shouting members of the press.

You felt Dex freeze instantly behind you, his large chest tensing against your back as the intrusive media lights washed over his scarred face. Your small hand subtly reached behind his hip, your small hands sliding into his low-slung utility belt to wrap around the grip of one of his blades. You weren't above a televised murder. In fact, you thought it would look rather spectacular on the evening news.

"For years, I've been secretly developing a new age of protection," Valentina’s voice boomed through a microphone, her performative, corporate-politician smile turning radiant as she completely hijacked the narrative in front of the rolling cameras. "Today, the citizens of the United States needed that protection, and thanks to my hard work, they got it. Ladies and gentlemen, meet... The New Avengers."

The sudden, sheer absurdity of the announcement hit your brain with the force of a physical blow. The blade slipped from your fingers, dropping toward the pavement before Dex’s secondary hand snapped out with whiplash velocity, catching the steel mid-air while his other arm remained firmly across your chest to keep you modest in front of the flashing lenses.

Your perfect brows raised to the clouds as you looked around at the mismatched, bruised assembly of rejects standing in the glare. Everyone was equally, profoundly confused.

A silent, completely bewildered laugh broke free from your throat, your shoulders shaking against Dex's chest. An Avenger? You? A hyper-sexual, bulletproof liquidator who wore lace to a black-ops infiltration? It was a hilarious, beautiful joke. Dex tried desperately to suppress the amused, sinister smirk tugging at his mouth, quickly deflecting by looking over at Walker, whose face was frozen in a comical state unvarnished cognitive dissonance next to Ava’s utterly stunned, wide-eyed expression.

As the media circus swarmed around Valentina, the chaotic, bright energy of the plaza seemed to soften into something entirely different, something uniquely quiet and grounding.

You leaned back into the heavy, solid density of Dex’s torso, your laughter fading into a soft, genuine breath of contentment. For the first time in your life, the silence that usually amplified the terrifying static in your brain didn't arrive. The frantic, subcutaneous urge to keep killing, to keep hunting just to survive the noise, simply wasn't there. The static had been entirely replaced by the steady, rhythmic thump of Dex’s heart against your shoulder blades and the unpolished, exhausting warmth of the people standing beside you.

You looked over at Yelena, who was currently nursing a bruised jaw but looking back at you with a faint, weary smirk of mutual understanding. Bucky stood half a step away, his cybernetic arm catching the starlight, his posture no longer carrying the crushing, solitary weight of his past atrocities. They were all pieces of trash, as Yelena had so eloquently put it, discarded side characters, losers who had been marked for deletion by the very system that created them.

But as Dex’s grip tightened just a fraction more around your waist, a possessive, silent promise cementing itself between the two of you, you realized that being a loser didn't feel so bad when you were surrounded by your own specific brand of freaks. You weren't America's sweethearts. You were never going to be good people who followed a script or sought the sterile validation of a heroic title. You were the Thunderbolts. You were broken, desensitized, and thoroughly unhinged, but as the eight of you stood under the flashing lights, whole by each other, you knew the universe was finally going to have to make room for the supernova unleashing.

Bonus :)

The heavy, reinforced doors of the infamous Midtown high-rise groaned as they were forced open, the pristine, high-tech sanctuary of the former Avengers Tower completely vacant and swaddled in dust sheets.

"Are we even supposed to be here?" Ava asked, her voice flickering with latency as she stepped tentatively into the cavernous, sleek lounge space.

"You heard what they called us earlier- The New Avengers. Why wouldn't the Avengers live in the Avengers Tower!?" you justified, offering a brilliant, entirely unbothered grin that completely brushed past the legal definition of breaking and entering.

"Seems perfectly reasonable," Bucky nodded, his eyes gleaming under the ambient security lights as he casually tossed his tactical duffel onto a multi-million dollar sofa.

"Where are you going," Dex’s low voice cuts through the spatial geometry of the room. His large, calloused hand snapped out with precision, his fingers catching the bare skin of your upper arm the exact second you attempted to slip away into the shadows of the corridor.

"Exploring!" you chirped, turning your head to pout at him.

"I'm coming with you," he stated flatly. It wasn't an offer; it was a baseline directive. He wasn't letting his bulletproof girl out of his sightline.

Behind you, the team seamlessly dissolved into their own pockets of the tower. Alexei and John immediately migrated toward the industrial kitchen, the super-soldiers already bickering over the expiration dates of the high-end rations left in the sub-zero refrigerator. Ava collapsed onto the expansive couch with a long sigh, her form finally resting against the cushions, while Bob quietly located the remote, turning on the massive television screen with the wide-eyed wonder of a man re-learning how to be human. Near the primary terminal, Yelena and Bucky were already huddled over the control panels, their heads together as they systematically began rewriting the building's security codes to ensure Valentina’s cleanup crew could never breach their perimeter again.

The transition into this bizarre, unauthorized new life was characterized by an unglamorous peace. When the bureaucratic handlers eventually attempted to deliver the official, standardized "New Avengers" uniforms. Stiff, unyielding suits of muted Kevlar and patriotic insignias, you had rejected the garment with a tantrum that nearly resulted in the delivery agent getting a pink dagger thrown through his shoe. You absolutely refused to hide behind the heavy, suffocating cowardice of standard armor.

Instead, a compromise was meticulously engineered in the privacy of the tower's lower levels, drafted entirely between yourself and Benjamin Poindexter.

The resulting uniform was a magnificent, feminine middle finger to military pragmatism: a baby-pink, high-collared crop top with form-fitting long sleeves, constructed from a dense, blast-resistant weave that left your midriff entirely exposed. Emblazoned directly across the center of your chest was a stark, stylized symbol, a pristine target, mathematically perfect in its form, but curved beautifully into the distinct shape of a heart.

Dex loved it. His obsessive mind was completely captured by the design; it was a flawless, physical synthesis of his rigid, ordered universe and your chaotic, beautiful self. It was a literal bulls-eye, a love invitation to the world to try their absolute best to hit you.

The eight of you were undeniably fucked up. There were no grand illusions of moral nobility or pristine redemption within the walls of the tower; you were a ragtag parade of weaponized rejects, side characters who had survived the cleaning house. Dex still spent hours silently realigning the silverware in the kitchen to achieve perfection, and the static in your own brain still whispered of the dark labs.

But as you sat on the edge of the polished mahogany bar, swinging your new platform heels while Dex meticulously strapped a fresh dozen of your custom enameled knives around your low-slung belt, you realized the noise didn't matter anymore. It was nice to finally be around a group of people who looked at your broken pieces, looked at the wild, predatory gleam in Dex's blue eyes, and didn't ask a single damn question. The team didn't blink at whatever it was that was happening between you and Dex. There were no juvenile jokes from Alexei, no mocking smirks from Yelena, and John Walker never offered a single, unsolicited piece of advice about workplace decorum. Nobody taunted you when Dex spent forty-five minutes straight meticulously sharpening your throwing knives at the kitchen island, his eyes tracking your movement across the room with a laser-focused, protective intensity. Nobody commented when you casually lay across his lap on the massive plush sofa while Bucky and Ava argued over what to watch on the monitor.

It simply made sense. In a world that had spent years trying to break, script, or eliminate every single one of you, you had found an equal who looked at your unhinged, bulletproof nature and saw an absolute certainty. The rest of the Thunderbolts understood what it meant to be an anomaly; they weren't about to interrogate the physics of the only two people who could look into Sentry's void and find a way to make it hotter.

The New Avengers and Bob will be back?

=========================================

matt doesn't need you to guide him in public but he will hold your arm or hand just because he wants too. he especially likes when your hands are loosely intertwined and he can feel your pulse against his skin. it's calming for him.

sometimes he forgets that you weren't always in his life. he'll tell a story from college as though you were because it just doesn't feel right to have lived a life where you weren't in it.

matt rarely calls you by your name. it's always sweetheart, and sometimes baby.

although one time foggy heard him call you the latter and then called matt baby girl and babycakes for a week until karen threatened to beat them both up

on the subject of foggy & karen -- they both love you!! they'd always been protective of their little trio but you fit in perfectly.

those two quickly become your best friends.

josie's for drinks after work on a friday is standard. matt will always have an arm looped around your waist, or a hand on your thigh, or just any form of physical contact really. mostly because he's over protective.

matt doesn't get hungover and it's really fucking annoying. you've seen him pound back pint after pint, just to wake up feeling fresh as a daisy the next day.

the good news?? he's vision impaired so he won't open the curtains when you're hanging out your absolute arse !!

he's the best at looking after you when you're hanging, though. he'll make you a smoothy and a greasy breakfast.

actually, matt is just the best in the mornings anyways. you'll always have a cup of coffee made before you're awake, with breakfast on the counter.

living with matt is domestic bliss tbh

that's not to say you don't argue -- you're both human and in his line of work, both day job and night job, it comes with its bad days and times when he keeps shit bottled up

so you prod and you poke until he explodes and finally, you argue and it's cathartic as hell

matty is very overprotective too, which has lead to tension

it was a little over the top at first, but you settle for having life 360 on both your phones and letting him know when you arrive places safely

even when you have really bad arguments, you always find your back to each other

one time you joked "i'll send you a text if wilson fisk murders me" and he didn't find it funny

actually he almost cried