#ddba

He only knew how to aim, how to follow through, how to kill. So he told himself that if he pointed all of that in the right direction, it would count. It had to count. 

Bad people existed. That much was obvious. And if bad people were gone, then… that had to count for something, right?

The Anti-Vigilante Task Force were easy enough to categorize as bad. They hunted vigilantes, tried to shut down the kind of people Dex had convinced himself were doing something close to good. And vigilantes were good. They had to be. 

So if he removed the ones hunting them, if he cut those threads before they tightened around someone else’s throat, then that meant he was helping. It meant he was balancing something, somewhere, even if no one was there to see it. Even if no one thanked him. Even if the city didn’t change at all.

That was how he justified it. The only problem was that no one paid him for being good.

His rent didn’t care about intention. His bills didn’t pause because he was trying. The notice on his counter sat there, the very proof that the world moved even as he was laying down the foundations of whatever moral framework he was trying to build. Dex had been ignoring it for days, like it might disappear if he didn’t acknowledge it. 

He was staring at it when his phone buzzed.

The sound was unsettling, mostly because Dex knew that people only messaged him for one of two reasons nowadays: to threaten him (best possible outcome, he could handle it) or to give him a job. When he looked at the notification, he knew it was going to be the latter. 

The text came from an unknown sender. It was encrypted, of course. Dex picked it up slowly, thumb hovering for just a second. He frowned. He really shouldn’t. This was the part of his life he was supposed to be moving away from. He opened it anyway. 

The file loaded quickly. As he suspected, it was an anonymous contract labeled high priority, with a bounty of… oh. 

2.5 million dollars.

Dex leaned back slightly, exhaling through his nose as that figure settled into place. It was much more than rent or bills. This kind of money would give him… breathing room. It would fund his good deeds for years. It would help his progress, right?

His eyes moved down to the target profile: a Former Red Room Widow. 

Objective: extract intel regarding active Red Room operatives. 

Secondary objective: termination upon completion.

Dex’s knuckles shifted slightly as he kept reading, attention narrowing the deeper he went. This wasn't a surface-level hit, like the usual contracts pushed into his number. He usually got the odd job of eliminating a business man’s biggest competitor (he never took those anymore) or a mother giving most of her life savings to him to kill her abusive husband (he did those ones more often than not), but this wasn’t it. Whoever had put this together knew what they were doing. They layered intel, cross-referenced sightings, stitched fragments of reports into something coherent enough to act on.

And then there was the ledger. Not labeled that way, but Dex knew what he was looking at.

Target Activity Log (Condensed): Kiev — 12 confirmed targets, political dissidents turned assets. Execution, no witnesses. Istanbul — Arms broker extraction turned termination. 7 additional casualties during exfiltration. Lagos — Undercover infiltration of rival weapons trafficking ring. Operation successful. Entire network eliminated. Collateral: high. Madripoor — Unverified mission overlap with Yelena Belova. Outcome classified. Buenos Aires — Diplomatic attaché poisoning. Death delayed 48 hours to avoid suspicion. Moscow — Internal Red Room purge survivor. Multiple handlers eliminated. 

Dex’s thumb paused against the screen as he read through it again. The pattern was obvious to him in a way it wouldn’t be to anyone else. This wasn’t chaos. This wasn’t someone losing control. On the contrary, this was someone who was terrifyingly in control.

This target was a dangerous killer, and Dex didn't arrive at the conclusion lightly.

He liked patterns, needed them. They made the world more predictable to the point where he could sort through without it splintering into noise. And this file was full of patterns.

He scrolled back up, then down again, slower this time, eyes catching on the details most people would skip over: the timings, the methods. 

The target made clean exits where possible and didn’t care much about collateral. Every action fed into the next like it had been mapped out long before the target ever stepped into the room.

Dex’s jaw tightened slightly as he read through the Kiev entry again. Twelve victims. It was not a firefight. It was twelve decisions. Twelve moments where the target could have stopped and didn’t. Istanbul, seven more added during exfiltration. They were not part of the objective, but handled anyway. 

He understood that, and that meant he also understood what it took to do it.

You didn’t rack up a body count like that by accident. You didn’t walk away from operations like Madripoor, with entire networks wiped out and “high collateral” written off like a footnote, unless something in you had already accepted the outcome before it happened.

Dex leaned back slightly, phone still in his hand, thumb hovering but unmoving now.

People liked to pretend there was a line. A moment where someone chose to be good or bad and stuck to it. But that wasn’t how it worked. It was smaller than that. It was in the repetition. And this file read like repetition, over and over. It might happen in different cities and to different victims, but it always had the same result.

Dex couldn’t find signs of deviation or hesitation. There was no indication that the target ever stopped to question it.

His eyes flicked back to the ledger, this time reading the latest additions, entries that hadn’t had time to settle into history yet.

Recent Activity: Prague — Corporate intermediary tied to OXE shell accounts. Interrogation lasted 18 minutes. Target terminated. Two security casualties. No witnesses. DODC Supermax Prison — Perimeter sweep. Three armed contacts neutralized before engagement escalated. Surveillance equipment disabled. Exit undetected. New York — Intelligence courier intercepted en route to New Avengers safehouse. Package recovered. Courier terminated. Civilian exposure: none.

Right. 

The target was still active. 

“Yeah,” Dex muttered, more to himself than anything else.

That was what tipped it for him.

Because even now, even with everything he’d done, Dex felt the resistance. The part of him that tried, however poorly, to redirect what he was into a force for good.  The file didn’t show that.

It showed someone who had been made into a weapon and never really tried to put it down. That meant the target wasn’t in the same place he was. This target wasn’t trying to balance the scales like he was. 

And that made this person not a good person in a way he could act on.

His eyes looked to the image of the target, like he was trying to reconcile the almost fragile and delicate-looking features with everything he’d just read. It didn’t match. It never did. Faces rarely carried the weight of what they’d done. But the file didn’t lie. The patterns didn’t lie.

Dex exhaled slowly, and decided this person was bad.

Not because of one mission. Not because of one mistake. But because of all of it stacked together.

And at this point, in order to preserve what precious progress he had made, he’d rather kill a killer for rent than his landlord. That would be inconvenient.

His thumb moved, tapping the file open fully, letting the image expand across the screen.

And for the first time, Dex really looked at you.

—

Dex expected you to be harder to find.

Most people with a body count like yours didn’t settle. They didn’t usually stay anywhere long enough to be known, didn’t leave behind anything that could be traced twice in the same way. He expected burner phones, rotating safehouses, and multiple fake ids that dissolved the second they were used.

But you hadn’t done that.

You were… easy. He found your address almost immediately. He found your number, your card details, and your passport quite quickly. 

It took him a couple of hours to accept that it wasn’t an error in the data. Financial records were always messy, layered under shells and proxies, but not impossible. He followed the money the same way he followed anything else— patiently, methodically, letting the inconsistencies stand out instead of forcing them to make sense too quickly. One payment turned into a trail, then into repetition.

But still, he found nothing out of the ordinary. You were just a regular person living in New York, paying rent on time. Unlike him this month. 

He stared at the screen longer than he needed today. The more he followed it, the clearer it became that this wasn’t temporary, wasn’t a waypoint or a cover that would disappear in a week. You weren’t passing through. You weren’t hiding. You were living here.

The rest of the records only reinforced it. He found your utility bills, with groceries spaced out in a way that suggested routine. He found nothing excessive, nothing careless. It was almost jarring, how normal it looked on paper, for someone with a history soaked in blood.

Next, Dex visited your building and expected that to be where the illusion broke, maybe an indication that this was all a front.

There wasn’t anything.

It was just a building. Unremarkable, forgettable in the way most of the city was. There were no visible security upgrades, no controlled access beyond the standard high rise. There was nothing that suggested someone with your file should be walking in and out of it every day.

He watched long enough to be sure. You came and went at predictable times, no visible countersurveillance, no adjustments to your movements that suggested you thought you were being watched. You carried your own groceries up the steps. You held the door open for someone once, an older man who thanked you without hesitation, like you were just another tenant, just another face he recognized in passing.

Dex didn’t like that it didn’t fit the rest of you. So he kept digging, because if there was going to be a crack, it would be in the routine and… you had one.

It took him three days to map it out in full, not because it was complicated, but because it wasn’t. You woke early. You jogged through Central Park along the same route almost every morning at the same pace, like it was muscle memory. You didn’t scan constantly, didn’t treat every passerby like a potential threat. You just ran.

After that, you hadcoffee at the same place every time, the same order. 

Dex watched all of it from a distance, writing it down in his little notebook. He told himself it was for this job, that he needed to remember things accurately if he was going to finish the job. 

By the fourth day, he knew watching wasn’t enough. It never had been. Patterns only got you so far before they started turning into assumptions, and assumptions got people wrong. 

The problem was, he didn’t have a plan for that. He wasn’t a spy. He didn’t build relationships, didn’t ease his way into proximity. 

But standing across the street, watching you disappear into the crown like you’d done every morning that week, he understood one thing clearly enough: He didn’t know how he was going to do this. He just knew he had to get closer.

—

The next day, he “accidentally” ran into you on that jogging trail in Central Park.

He already knew the exact time your foot would hit the gravel. All he had to do was figure which way you were going: was it the route you’d take when you wanted to clear your head, or the one you’d take when you wanted a challenge?

He waited outside your apartment today and…. You were taking the hard route.

He followed, and his plan of taking you until you got to the cafè, where he would sit next to you, would’ve been perfect until… Dex timed it wrong.

He knew he did the second he adjusted his pace to match yours and felt the rhythm slip. He was too fast for a clean pass, too close for it to look incidental. 

This wasn’t what he was good at. There was no distance. Only proximity and the vague, uncomfortable awareness that if you were anything like the file said you were, you’d clock him immediately.

You didn’t. You just kept running.

He tried to correct it, cutting slightly across your path like he meant to pass you, like he belonged in your space. The movement was off by half a second, just enough to turn clumsy. His shoulder clipped yours, momentum carrying him forward a step too far. You caught before you could trip and looked at him like, what the hell, man?

“—shit, sorry,” Dex said quickly, breathing unevenly. He turned back, forcing himself to meet your eyes. “I didn’t… are you okay?”

Up close, everything went a little sideways.

He’d seen your photo. But a still image didn’t account for the way you actually were when you looked at him. You were focused, yes, but there was no immediate suspicion or recalculation behind your eyes. He could tell you were doing a quick assessment and—

“You’re fine,” you huffed, brushing it off like it really had been nothing.

Dex blinked once, recalibrating, trying to drag himself back to the whole point of this endeavour: Intel. 

Simple, right? 

Except now you were standing there, waiting just long enough that it demanded a response.

Right. Say something. Anything.

“Uh… there’s a coffee place just up ahead,” he heard himself say, the words coming out before he could fully filter them. “I can make it up to you. Buy you one or something.”

There was a lull of silence where even he registered what he’d just done.

That wasn’t part of any plan. That was stupid.

Dex forced himself not to react to it outwardly, even as his chest tightened in irritation. This wasn’t how he should’ve handled a target like you. He shouldn’t’ve improvised like this. What was he thinking, basically asking you out like some idiot who didn’t know what he was doing?

But you were still just looking at him.

And up close, all he could think about was how… disarming you were.

That was the word his brain landed on, unhelpfully. You made him lower their guard without realizing he was doing it. 

Dex swallowed, keeping his expression neutral, like this was intentional, like this was just another step in a plan he actually had control over.

This is for intel, he told himself, firmly. Just intel via proximity. That’s all this is.

You tilted your head slightly, considering him in a way that made him feel, for a split second, like he was the one being assessed.

“Coffee?” you repeated. 

“Yeah,” he said, a little more steady now. “Least I can do.”

“For what?” you managed an amused chuckle, and Dex could’ve sworn that hearing you make that noise lit up the world around him. “bumping into me? Is this a line?”

“I just…” he stammered, and bit the inside of his cheek. “I’ve seen you around.”

I’ve seen you around??? He mentally slapped himself. What kind of fucking stupid explanation is that? What does that have to do with anything?

Surprisingly, though, all you did was tilt your head and said, “Okay.”

Oh?

Dex forced himself to nod once, like he’d expected it, like this hadn’t just gone completely off-script.

“Okay,” he echoed, turning slightly to fall into step beside you as you started moving again.

He kept his focus forward, matching your pace, already running through what he needed to ask, what he could realistically get without pushing too hard, how to steer the conversation where he needed it to go.

And still, somewhere in the back of his mind, something felt off. Dex ignored it, because this was a job. You were a target.

And this was just the easiest way to get what he needed. Nothing more.

—

The café was small, tucked between a bookstore and a laundromat.

On the way there, you exchanged your names— he said he was “Tony,” and you, surprisingly, had given him your real name. You were easy to talk to, and you talked about the weather, the park, the surprisingly little snow last winter.

When you got to the café, Dex was relieved to see that it wasn’t too crowded, just a couple of people on laptops, a murmur of conversation, the hiss of the espresso machine every so often. Fewer variables, Fewer eyes.

You ordered first: iced latte, like you’d done it a hundred times. He followed with an Americano, mostly because he panicked and it sounded normal enough.

Now he sat across from you, fingers loosely wrapped around the glass cup, watching the condensation bead along the outside of your glass as you stirred your drink with your straw. You looked… relaxed.

You took a sip, then glanced at him over the rim, and there was mischief in your expression. A second later, you let out a giggle, tapping the straw lightly against the lid.

“So,” you said, dragging the word out just a little. “Why does Bullseye want to take me out to coffee?”

Dex choked.

It wasn’t subtle. The coffee went down the wrong way, and he had to turn his head slightly, coughing into his fist. For a split second, he thought he might actually spit it out all over you, which—thank fuck—the café being mostly empty made slightly less of a disaster.

His eyes snapped back to you.

“…You knew?” he asked.

You blinked at him like that was the stupidest question you’d heard all day, then shrugged, taking another sip like this was a casual conversation. “Of course,” you said. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know me.”

There was no accusation in it. You said it as if it was a fact.

Dex just stared at you. His brain tried to catch up, running through possibilities, angles, trying to figure out where this had gone wrong. Had you clocked him earlier? On the run? Before that? Had he missed an obvious tell?

You didn’t look alarmed. You didn’t look like you were about to bolt or reach for a weapon. If anything, you looked… curious.

“Oh,” he said, because that was all that came out at first.

Great. Perfect. Real smooth.

He forced himself to take another sip of his coffee, buying a second to gather his thoughts, to shove everything back into place where it belonged.

She’s a target. This is a job.

“Yeah,” he added, steadier now, nodding once like this hadn’t just blindsided him. “I mean—yeah. I just…” His teeth tightened for half a second before he settled on the first thing that felt even remotely usable. “I’m a fan of your work.”

You didn’t react immediately. You watched him over your drink, eyes narrowing slightly.

Dex held your eyes, forcing himself not to overcorrect, to let it breathe. Let it land.

“Right,” you said finally. You didn’t sound entirely convinced, but you let it go.

The silence stretched, but not too uncomfortably. It was just charged. You knew there was no chance of going back to a civilian conversation as you leaned back slightly, exhaling.

“Alright. No, we’re not doing this version,” you decided, more to yourself than him. Then you straightened again, meeting his eyes properly. “Can we start over?”

Dex blinked, thrown just enough to answer honestly. “I… yeah.”

You nodded once, resetting playfully. 

“Hi. You already know my name, so I’m skipping that part,” you said, gesturing vaguely with your cup. “I’m a former Red Room Widow. I live in New York now.”

You said it like a random woman introducing themself as an accountant.

Dex opened his mouth, then closed it to filter through the responses. “Hi,” he tried again, because apparently that was all he had today.

You waited.

“Hi,” he repeated, then dragged a hand down his face, exhaling through his nose. “I’m Dex. Not—” he made a vague, frustrated gesture, “not Tony, I don’t…”

Your lips twitched. “I got that.”

“Right. Yeah.” He nodded once, a bit too quickly. Then, as if he was forcing the words out his throat. “I’m… a good guy.”

The second it left his mouth, he knew how weird it sounded. You blinked at him. Then, to his surprise, you chuckled, and it was not unkind.

“Hi, Dex Not Tony,” you said, teasing him. “That’s a strong introduction.”

His mouth pressed into a thin line, but his shoulder reluctantly eased a fraction. “It’s… yeah,” he muttered. “Workshopping it.”

That earned him a small huff of laughter, and just like that, the tension changed. It was not gone completely, but it loosened enough to breathe around.

“Mm,” you hummed, tapping your straw against the rim of the glass. “Maybe workshop faster.”

That earned you the smallest exhale that might’ve been a laugh.

“So,” you went on, glancing at his drink. “Americano?” 

He looked down at it like he’d forgotten it existed. “Mmm.”

“Do you actually like that,” you took a sip of your own drink, “or did you panic-order?”

Dex hesitated, but decided against lying. “Panic-order.”

You grinned. “Thought so.”

“Yours?” he asked, nodding toward your cup.

“Iced latte. Always.”

He nodded once, filing it away without thinking. “Predictable,” he said.

“Consistent,” you corrected.

“Same thing.”

“Not even a little.” Your smile tugged a little wider, and for a second, it made your whole face look gentle in a way that didn’t match anything he’d read.

The conversation after that was not awkward, even as it came in uneven starts. You both drifted out half-finished sentences, small corrections, circling around what you weren’t saying more than what you were. But eventually, it found a rhythm. 

You talked about nothing, mostly. The weather again, somehow. The park. The café. You made an offhand comment about the coffee being great here but the pastries were better two blocks over, and Dex filed that away without meaning to. He asked a question that sounded almost normal, and you answered it like it was. 

For some reason, he could not bring himself to ask about intel. Still, neither of you got up as time stretched right before your eyes. 

“Okay,” you said after a moment, glancing at your drink, then back at him. “For the record, this is the weirdest coffee I’ve had in a while.”

“Same,” he said.

“And I’ve had coffee in worse places.”

“Same.”

You narrowed your eyes slightly, amused. “You’re just copying me now.”

There was that pause again. This time, neither of you rushed to fill it. 

You checked your phone briefly, then sighed, like you didn’t actually want to say what came next. “I should probably…” you started, gesturing vaguely toward the door. “…go.”

Dex nodded immediately. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

You stood, grabbing your jacket, then hesitated just slightly. You looked at him, like you were weighing your options, then reached into your pocket and pulled out your phone. “Give me your number.”

Dex tilted his head. “…What?”

You held it out, unfazed. “In case you decide to bump into me again,” you said. “Might as well schedule it next time.”

He stared at you for a second, like he was trying to find an explanation, a reason not to… 

Then he took the phone.

“Right,” he nodded. “Yeah.”

He put it in and handed it back. After all, he had convinced himself that it was just so he could get the intel he was supposed to do today.

“See you around, Dex Not Tony.” 

“Yeah,” he said, quieter now. “See you.”

You turned, heading for the door. The bell chimed again as you left.

Dex stayed where he was for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the space you’d just occupied, the echo of your laugh still sitting somewhere in the back of his mind.

Something about that had gone very, very wrong. Or very right

—

That night, Dex had trouble sleeping.

The apartment was too quiet, the city noise bleeding faintly through the windows, the weight of the day sitting wrong in his chest. He laid there for a while, staring at the ceiling, replaying the conversation in fragments: your voice, your eyes, the way none of it lined up with the file. Eventually, he gave up trying to sleep at all. 

He sat up, reached for the notebook on his nightstand, and flipped it open. The logs he had on you were already there: Times, routes, and observations.

He stared at it for a moment, pen hovering. Then he added a new line, pressing just slightly harder than necessary: 

Likes iced lattes

—

Two days later, Dex’s phone buzzed.

He didn’t get messages he wanted to open. He didn’t need another contract— he got his hands full as is. So for a second, he just stared at it from across the room, letting it vibrate once. Unknown number.

His jaw tightened before he picked it up and unlocked it.

There was a photo of a newspaper, slightly crumpled, held down by what looked like your hand. The headline was clear enough:

THREE ANTI-VIGANTE TASK FORCE AGENTS FOUND DEAD IN ALLEY

Below it, you had texted: 

is this you?

Dex stared at the screen, figuring out exactly who it was. He read it again, trying to wrap his mind around this. His thumb hovered over the keyboard.

You knew. Or you suspected. Or you were testing him. All three were problems.

Dex exhaled slowly through his nose and typed.

Dex: no. Why would you think that?

He was lying, but then again, he was the one who’s supposed to do the interrogation here. It would be stupid to give anything away. 

He hit send before he could overthink it. Three dots appeared almost immediately.

You: just thought I’d ask

Dex frowned. That was it? No pushback? No follow-up? Did you not think he was interesting enough? 

Dex: You just ask people that? “hey did you kill three people”?

There was a pause this time. Dex found himself watching the screen, shoulders slightly tense without realizing it.

You: not usually, but you don’t usually “accidentally” run into me either so

Dex’s grip on the phone tightened just a fraction.

Right. You weren’t letting that go. Dex: I said I’ve seen you around.

He only had to wait a few seconds 

You: sure

He could hear the tone in it. That same almost-amused voice from the café. Not hostile, but curious. Dex leaned back against the wall, phone still in his hand, mind already thinking about what you knew, what you were pretending not to know.

You sent another message before he could respond.

You: also for the record, if it was you, I know you’d say no anyway

Dex managed a smile.

Dex: Probably.

You texted back just as quickly

You: so I’m choosing to believe you 🙂 You: congrats

He huffed, a dry laugh catching in his throat. This was… strange.

You weren’t pushing. You weren’t backing off either. You were just… there, talking to him like this was normal.

Dex stared at the screen for a moment longer, then typed again. 

Dex: Why’d you actually text me?

The typing bubble came and went once. Then, it stayed.

You: because I wanted to You: ??? You: do I need a better reason than that

Dex frowned slightly. That answer didn’t fit neatly anywhere that his brain could  categorize, 

Dex: People usually have reasons.

This time your reply took longer. Long enough that Dex caught himself rereading the earlier messages, analyzing tone, punctuation, timing, looking for something he might’ve missed.

You: okay, fine You: I was bored You: and you’re interesting You: better?

Dex froze.

Interesting. Was that what you thought of him?

Dex: You don’t seem like you get bored.

He could almost picture you rolling your eyes 

You: wow. you are a fan

He stared at the screen for a second, then forced himself to snap back into place. 

You were a target, he had to remind himself. Nothing more. He needed intel to pay rent, and he could only get that after he eliminated you, so… 

Dex: if you’re bored, we could go on another date

He hit send and immediately had what did you just do moment. This wasn’t part of the job. This wasn’t… date wasn’t the word he should’ve used. 

The typing bubble popped up, disappeared, and came back within three seconds. 

You: is that what that was the first time? a date??

Dex blinked.

“…No,” he muttered under his breath, already typing.

No. It was—

He stopped. What was it?

Dex: maybe?

That was all he could send. Oh, he was never playing spy after this job was done. Not ever again.

You: right You: with a guy who “sees me around”  You: very normal

Dex pressed his lips together.

Dex: Do you want to go or not?

During the wait, Dex felt something unfamiliar settle in his stomach. It was something he could only describe as butterflies. 

You: yeah sure 

His grip on the phone loosened slightly.

You: same place? or are you gonna “accidentally” run into me again?

Dex huffed.

Dex: how about the pastry place you were talking about? 

Oh so now he was paying attention to your recommendations?

You: okay. Friday?

The only thing he had on his calendar was killing task force, and that could wait, so… 

Dex: Friday works.

He tapped on his phone screen, anxiously waiting for confirmation.

You: cool You: try not to kill anyone before then. It ruins the vibe

Dex stared at that one for a second.

Dex: No promises.

There was no reply after that.

That night, in his notebook, he wrote another thing about you:

Initiates contact.

—

The second date felt different before it even started.

You were standing at the counter of the bakery when he saw you, pointing at something in the display case, smiling at the cashier like this was the easiest thing in the world. “Hey, Dex.” 

You ended up at a small table by the window, a couple of plates between you. A flaky and golden croissant, a banana-flavoured donut-like dessert dusted in powdered sugar (his choice), a molten-in-the-middle pain au chocolate, and one with custard that looked like it might fall apart if you breathed too hard near it.

Adorably, he knew you had picked too many things. Dex didn’t comment on it, but he noticed then, how you pointed without overthinking, how you changed your mind halfway through, how you added one more at the last second “just in case.”

It felt indulgent in a small, contained way. Like this was the only thing you let yourself have. 

The plate between you looked excessive now, but you nudged it toward him anyway.

“Try that one,” you said, already reaching for another.

Dex picked it up without arguing. It was… good, but he didn’t say that out loud.

You watched his face anyway, like you were waiting for the reaction.

“It’s fine,” he said.

You snorted. “Liar.”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t pretend it’s just fine,” you rolled your eyes, though you had said it with your mouth full, so it sounded more like downt pwetend it's jusft fwine.

“I’m not pretending.”

“You are.”

He hesitated, then let you win this one. “It is good,” he admitted begrudgingly.

“There it is.”

The conversation slipped into place easily after that. It was not smooth, but it didn’t catch as often. You didn’t circle each other as much. You just… talked.

You even went on for a good fifteen minutes about watching a squirrel in the park yesterday. You said something about how it would grab something, run halfway up the tree, stop, look around like it forgot what it was doing, then go back down and start over. You went on saying, it did this, like, five times, I think it lost the nut at some point but just committed to the bit.

Dex was surprised a former Red Room operative would even concern herself with things as trivial as a little rodent. He was even more surprised that he let you go on and on about it. It was as if he liked listening to you, no matter what you said. 

You reached for the sweeter pastry next, taking a bite, and Dex’s eyes automatically tracking the movement. A small smear of custard caught at the corner of your lip.

You didn’t notice. You kept talking, mid-sentence about the squirrel again, something about it being “committed to chaos, like hoarding random park objects were its hobby,” and—

Dex raised his hand before he could stop it.  “Hold on,” he said, almost a whisper.

You paused. “what…”

His thumb brushied lightly at the corner of your mouth, wiping the custard away, before licking the liquid off on his own tongue. The contact was brief and altogether too gentle for a man like him. For a second, neither of you moved.

His hand dropped back to the table. “You had…” he gestured vaguely. “Custard.”

“Oh.” You blinked once, then let out a small, surprised laugh. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” Dex looked down at his hands. That felt… Unfamiliar.

He didn’t know when the last time he’d done something like that was. He didn’t know when the last time he’d wanted to.

There was this strange warmth sitting in his chest now, almost weightless. He didn’t even have a name for it.

And while he wasn’t sure he liked that, he definitely didn’t hate it.

You were the one to break the silence, coughing awkwardly like you couldn’t stand another second of silence. 

“Ummm speaking of hobbies?” you echoed, wiping your mouth just in case. “You… don’t strike me as a hobbies person.”

“I had some,” he said, easing back into the chair. Thank fuck you could carry the conversation for the both of them, because his brain had just fully stalled. 

“Past tense is concerning.” You leaned forward just a little. “What, like, knitting?”

“No.”

“Scrapbooking?”

“No.”

“Be honest,” you taunted, “I can see it.”

He almost smiled, and looked down when he said it. “Baseball.”

You paused, then nodded, like that made perfect sense.

“Yeah, I can see that,” you said, then added casually, “I used to do ballet.”

Dex blinked. He looked at you differently now. like he was trying to fit that into everything else he knew. “Oh,” he managed to say.

You shrugged. “Standard Red Room stuff.”

Dex’s posture shifted slightly, attention narrowing. 

Oh, this was it. This was what he came for. This was the thread he needed. This was the confirmation that you had been trained in HQ, right? If you had survived it, then there were doors inside you that led back to places he couldn’t access any other way. 

These were not guesses, not patterns he had to infer from distance, but direct proximity to the Red Room itself, to its methods, its remnants, its current reach. He just needed to keep you talking, keep you close, long enough to pull it apart piece by piece. So he asked, “What does that mean?”

You froze, as if a flash of memories ran through the back of your eyes. Then shook your head once. “Mm—nope.”

“What?”

“Not here,” you said lightly, but there was an immovable conviction underneath it now. “I’m not getting into that here.”

Dex watched you as held his hazel eyes. Then, just as quickly, you leaned forward, resting your chin lightly against your hand, expression shifting back from dark to a lighter tone. “Come by my place on Saturday,” you said, like it had just occurred to you. “We’ll call it our third date.”

Dex blinked. “What?”

You shrugged, completely unfazed. “If you’re really curious,” you added, a small tilt to your head. “There’s… fewer people.”

He stared at you, his eyes empty and calculating at the saw time, fingers anxiously tapping the underside of the table. This was… this was not in the plan. This was not one of his controlled outcomes. This was not…

“Okay,” he said anyway. The answer seemed to have left his mouth before he fully processed it.

“Okay,” you echoed.

And somewhere between the pastries, coffee, and conversation, he realized, a little too late… 

This doesn’t feel like a job.

—

Dex had expected a decoy. A secondary location, maybe a shell apartment. He was expecting something stripped down and impersonal, designed to be burned the second it was compromised.

Not this. Not the exact place he had already mapped out in his notebook.

So yeah, you had given him your real address.

For just a second, he wondered if this was the play. If you knew how much he knew. If this was some test he hadn’t caught onto yet.

The building was exactly what he expected. It was a high-end high rise. The doorman glanced at him once, then nodded like he’d already been cleared.

“You’re expected,” he said simply.

Dex didn’t respond, already moving past him. The elevator took him straight up.

By the time he reached your door, he had an uneasy feeling in his chest. Was this… a trap? 

He knocked, and the door opened almost immediately.

“Hi,” you said.

Dex opened his mouth to respond, but you interrupted his train of thoughts by pressing a quick kiss to his cheek, right at the scar.

Dex froze. By the time you pulled back, his brain still hadn’t caught up.

You smiled like nothing had happened, stepping aside to let him in. “Come in.”

He couldn’t find words to say, because apparently, his brain was on pause now.

Still, Dex stayed half a step behind you as you pushed the door open, his eyes already scanning past your shoulder and realised…

The place was… expensive.

Not in a loud, gaudy way. You had no gold fixtures or ridiculous statement pieces. It was intentional. It had floor-to-ceiling windows stretching across the far wall with a view that swallowed half the city. It had two bedrooms, if he researched it right.

“How…” he started, then cut himself off. What he meant to say was, how can you afford this? But decided against it. 

You didn’t seem to notice. “Make yourself comfortable,” you said, already shrugging off your jacket and tossing it onto a chair like it wasn’t worth more than half the furniture in his apartment. “I just need the bathroom. I’ll be quick.”

And just like that, you disappeared.

Dex stood there for a second longer than necessary, processing everything. 

You lived here. And not as a cover, not temporarily. There were no signs of rotation, no packed bags, no readiness to leave at a moment’s notice.

“That’s stupid,” he muttered under his breath. Or reckless. Or you were just arrogant to a fault. Maybe you just didn’t think anyone could touch you.

Dex stood still for a second, listening to the water running. He heard the slightly delayed pipes and realised you weren’t rushing. Good.

His eyes tracked the room the way they always did, scanning for inconsistencies. He didn’t try to look for what was there, but what didn’t belong. Because people like you didn’t leave things out.

Which meant if anything existed, it would be hidden. His gaze slowed down and shifted… There. A section of the wall paneling near the shelving was barely misaligned. It was not enough for anyone else to clock, but Dex didn’t miss patterns like that.

He stepped closer, fingers brushing lightly over the seam. There must be a pressure point. Eventually the panel gave just enough of a click to confirm it. Dex didn’t hesitate before easing it open.

Inside was a compact hidden compartment.

The first thing he saw was a keycard, worn at the edges. The insignia was barely visible, but he didn’t need it to be clear. He knew what it was the second he saw it: Hydra.

“Of course,” he muttered under his breath.

Red Room had a historical overlap with Hydra. Old, but not irrelevant.

It surely was a small enough thing that you wouldn’t miss it, right?

He pocketed it and moved on to the only other thing hidden in the panel: Documents. It wasn’t exactly a full archive, but it was enough.

He flipped through them, scanning fast. Inside were names of Red Room operatives. The dead ones were labeled. He assumed the ones who didn’t have a red Xs on their files were still active. 

You had annotated them too, with locations, partial intel, and movement patterns.

This was the kind of access people killed for.

His thumb moved, grabbing his phone. He flipped through quickly, taking a picture of each page, each note, each annotation. He made sure, of course, that it was legible.

This was high-level access, closer than anything he’d gotten from a distance. This… This was the job.

Then he heard the sound of water shutting off.

Shit. Dex froze. Then, he moved. He closed the folder immediately, sliding it back in.

Everything went back exactly as it was, the panel sealed until the seam disappeared into the wall again like it had never existed. By the time you stepped back into the room, he was already on the couch.

“Sorry,” you said, drying your hands casually, completely unbothered. “That took longer than I thought.”

Dex looked up at you. There was a split second, where something in his expression didn’t line up. The. it was gone.

“You’re fine,” he said evenly.

You nodded, like that settled it, and stepped closer. You dropped down onto the couch beside him, close enough that your shoulder brushed his, as if this was normal. As if he wasn’t here to dismantle you piece by piece. He didn’t even realise that you had a bottle of wine and two glasses on your hand. 

You leaned back slightly, turning your head toward him, “…So,” you said, more direct. “What do you want to know?”

—

It can’t be this easy right? Dex thought. 

Turns out, it was. 

Which was weird, because people like you didn’t just… hand things over. So either this was the cleanest setup he’d ever walked into, or you really didn’t think he was a threat. Neither option sat right with him. 

His fingers flexed slightly against his knee as he watched you pour two glasses of red. You handed one to him, and Dex took it quickly. “Thanks,” he said, smaller than usual.

He didn’t even usually drink anymore. He turned the stem slightly between his fingers, watching the liquid catch the light. For a brief second, his mind did what it always did: it ran through possibilities. 

It might be a sedative. It could be poison. He could handle most of that, maybe. And if he couldn’t…  Well.

He huffed quietly to himself. What the hell.

Dex took a sip. It burned a little on the way down. Not unusual, just normal wine. 

The first sign that it wasn’t poison was that you were drinking it, too. The second sign was that you didn’t react; you didn’t watch him like you were waiting for something to happen. You just leaned back into the couch and tucked your leg under yourself.

It was cute, Dex thought. You looked like a bird, nesting. He liked it.

Then, he took a deep breath and started asking questions. At first, it was light, like where did you grow up? Where were you trained?

You answered, and you sounded detached for the first couple of sentences. It was as if you were testing the limits and throwing pieces out to see what stuck.

But when the alcohol kicked in and your cheeks turned rosy pink, you spoke more candidly. About the Red Room. About being taken. About being trained.

Even Dex, who was starting to feel more bubbly, didn’t interrupt.

At first, he listened like he always did. He filtered, sorted, and pulled out what mattered. But somewhere along the way, that changed. Because you started giving less intel and more… context.

“You don’t really realize it when you’re in it,” you said, staring into your glass like the answer might be somewhere at the bottom. “It just feels normal. Like this is what life is supposed to be. You don’t question it because there’s nothing else to compare it to.”

Dex’s grip tightened slightly, and you kept going.

“They don’t just train you. They… build you. Strip everything out first. Then put back only what they need.” You gave him a small laugh.“Honestly? It’s basically a cult. You have no idea what it’s like to be manipulated like that.”

Dex looked down, and exhaled slowly through his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

You glanced at him then, and your eyes shifted. You were not shocked at all, but you recognised it as well as you would recognise kin. “Oh,” you looked down. “Right.”

Dex poured himself another glass without thinking. You kept talking, but slower now. It was less like you were explaining, more like you were… unloading. Like you didn’t have anywhere else to put it.

That’s when it clicked: This must not be a trap or a strategy, he concluded, because the reason you were telling him all of this on a third date was… because, like him, you had no one else.

You might have neighbors, maybe even actual friends. But surely, you had no one else who could possibly understand you the way he did, because who else could you possibly know in this line of work? 

That was why you decided that he was the safest place to put it.

Dex stared at the rim of his glass for a second too long. That was stupid of you. And dangerous. And—

“…And you?” you said suddenly, nudging his knee lightly with yours. “C’mon.”

He blinked, pulled back into the moment.

“If we’re trauma dumping,” you added, a crooked smile pulling at your mouth, “we might as well commit. This is probably our only chance to say it out like.” You took another sip, then shrugged. “Doesn’t exactly look like either of us go to therapy.”

Dex huffed. “Yeah,” he muttered. His brain caught up half a second later.

He shouldn’t, though, right? He shouldn’t tell you anything about him that could possibly be compromising but… The booze was getting to him. 

And, besides, what harm could trauma dumping to you be? The job ends one way: with you dead after he got all the intel. So did it really matter what you knew about him?

Dex leaned back slightly, exhaling a little. 

And then, before he could stop himself, the extra bit of liquid courage bypassed his brain, and he told you everything. 

The words came out flat at first. But the more he drank, the less he cared about what he gave away and what he did not. 

You didn’t interrupt him. You just listened. And that, more than anything, kept him talking. 

At some point, the wine started to blur the edges for you, too. Your shoulders leaned closer. Your knee stayed pressed against his. Your laughter came easier as he cynically explained being in prison, and because you felt bad when you did, you gasped and covered your mouth. 

Dex didn’t seem to mind. He even smiled, the corner of his mouth warping the pronounced scar on his cheek. At one point, you tilted your head slightly, watching him with an understanding that hadn’t been there before.

“God,” you said, almost to yourself. “We’re so fucked up.”

Then, unexpectedly, you giggled. Dex, for once, cannot help but chuckle himself. 

“Yeah.” He took another sip, “You more than me,” he added, almost immediately.

Your head snapped toward him immediately. “Excuse me?”

A faint smirk pulled at his mouth. “Y’know,” he said, “Child soldier and all.”

You stared at him for a second, before letting out a disbelieving laugh. “Really?” you shot back, leaning closer, eyes narrowing in mock offense. “I’m more fucked up?”

He lifted a shoulder slightly in a shrug.

You pointed at him with your glass. “Your boss broke your spine and you lived.”

Dex managed to roll his eyes. 

“You got thrown off a roof and you lived,” you continued, leaning in further now, your voice picking up energy. “Sounds like you’re pretty far from normal.”

Dex huffed again. “Didn’t say I was normal.”

“Mm,” you hummed, satisfied. You sipped again. 

The space between you closed without either of you noticing when it happened. Your knee pressed against his. Your shoulder brushed his arm. Neither of you moved away.

The wine kept going. Half a glass. Then another.Words came easier after that, less filtered, less controlled.

You interrupted each other more. You laughed more. You even talked over the ends of sentences like it didn’t matter who finished them. At some point, you were both smiling for no reason.

Dex didn’t realize when the room started to feel warmer. He didn’t realize when your voice started to blur slightly at the edges. He didn’t even realize when he stopped thinking about the job entirely. He just knew, at this point, that you were close. Really close.

And you looked… Pretty.

That was a stupid word. It was too simple. It didn’t cover the gnawing claws that were starting to take over his heart.  

But it was the only word his brain gave him. You were smiling at something (he didn’t even remember what) and it made you look… harmless. 

Dex felt a warmth shift in his chest. As unfamiliar as it was, he didn’t pull away from it. For a second, you looked at him, too.

Dex swallowed the last of the wine, mostly because it was the only distraction that could possibly take up all the space you had started to occupy in his mind.

The room had dimmed at the edges in that deceptive way alcohol always did. The lights seemed warmer. 

Dex didn’t usually get to this point. He knew that with uncomfortable clarity. He also knew he should stop.

You were sitting too close, closer than before, closer than necessary, your shoulder pressed lightly into his as if neither of you had noticed the distance shrinking over time.

Your voice had gone gentler, words starting to come in slower waves instead of quick exchanges. There was less explanation, more confession disguised as conversation. And he was doing the same, even if he wouldn’t have admitted it out loud.

Parts of him he usually kept locked down were just… loosening, one by one, without permission.

You laughed at something he said, he didn’t even remember what it was, and the sound stuck in his head longer than it should have. 

“You’re smiling,” you observed suddenly, tilting your head slightly like it was a fossil discovery.

“I’m not,” he said automatically.

You hummed, unconvinced. “You are.”

He should’ve corrected you. Instead, his eyes drifted without meaning to, down to your mouth when you spoke again. The way your words drooped at the edges when you were tired, or tipsy, or both. For the love of god, he could not get over you the way you kept licking your lip absentmindedly, like you weren’t even aware of it.

It made something in his brain go pop.

You noticed. “…What?” you asked, pouting adorably.

Dex didn’t answer right away. Because, really, there was no tactical reason for him to be looking at you like this. There was no intel angle. No extraction logic. No job framework he could hide behind.

It was just you. And him. And the space between you that didn’t feel like space anymore.

He leaned in before he could reassemble himself. He hadn’t planned on doing it. It wasn’t even a decision he consciously made, really. 

It was, for lack of better word, gravity. As if he was a meteor falling into your orbit. 

For a while, you didn’t move away. 

Your breath caught in your throat, but you stayed there, watching him come closer instead of stopping it. Your eyes flicked down once, like you were considering it too.

Dex stopped just short of you. He wanted, no needed— to know you wanted it, too. 

Still, he was close enough that he could feel your breath now. Close enough that if either of you moved even a fraction—

That would be it. The line would be crossed.

You lifted your hand slowly, but you were not pushing him away. You weren’t pulling him closer, either. Your palm was hovering for a moment against his chest like you were testing whether this was real.

Dex didn’t move. Neither did you.

You exhaled. It was a small, almost reluctant sound. “…Dex,” you murmured, and his name sounded different like that. His eyes flicked to yours again.

Too close. This was way too close.

Your eyes dropped again to his mouth again, and stayed there. For a second, he could clearly see that fraction of hesitation where neither of you could pretend anymore that you weren’t thinking the same thing.

Dex leaned in that final inch… but you didn’t meet him halfway. Gently, your hand pressed into his chest.

“Mm,” you murmured softly, almost like you were trying to convince yourself this was wrong. Then you pushed him back.

“No,” you said, breath hitching slightly, but your smile was still there, playful, light. “It’s only our third date.”

Dex blinked, still a little too close, like he hadn’t fully processed the words.

You laughed under your breath, giving him a small shove to create space.

“Besides,” you added, eyes flicking down to his mouth for just a second before meeting his again, “I want you to kiss me when you’re sober.”

Oh.

He leaned back this time, letting out a deep breath. There was only one way he could describe how he felt, and that was disappointment. 

Oh, well. What else can he do?

“Yeah,” he managed to say. “Okay.”

Still, he didn’t move far, and neither did you.

And of course, his thoughts, intrusive as they always are, decided to ruin the only tender moment he had in years.  

You have enough. Kill her. 

Honestly, he had more than enough intel on the Red Room. Even the old Hydra keycard was a welcome addition to his anonymous employer’s request. It would most definitely make up for anything else they could have possibly wanted. 

What are you waiting for? Kill her. 

It was definitely more than what that had bargained for. So yeah, he could do it now. 

He had clocked many sharp objects he could throw at you— from your vase to a cheese knife you left out on the island kitchen. He didn’t even need a gun. 

Kill her.

And no, you wouldn’t even see it coming. His fingers flexed slightly against his leg.

Kill her.

But then he made the mistake of looking at you. And from there on out, all he could think was… 

I want another date.

No. He shouldn’t want that, right?

Kill her.

He didn’t want that either. 

But… he needed the money, and you had a body count higher than the Empire State Building. Killing you would make sense right? It would help balance the scales, right?

Right? 

Would it still make sense, even after you laid your heart and soul to him? Would it still make sense, even after he realised you were brought up as an enslaved child soldier? 

Kill her. 

No, he told himself, Not yet.

I want just one more date. 

And to Dex, that was reason enough not to kill you. Yet. 

—

Dex didn’t go to rest when he got home.

The second the door shut behind him, he frowned, burying his head in his hands before pulling himself together. He had called forth the part of him that knew what to do, what this was, what it had to be.

He pulled the notebook out before he’d even taken his jacket off.

He sat down, pen moving across paper. It started the way it always did: Structured and efficient. Intel, in detail.

He wrote of the interior of your apartment; top floor, two-bedroom, open sightlines, minimal obstruction points. Entry points limited. Windows large but not easily accessible from exterior. Security: building-controlled, doorman compliant, prior clearance confirmed.

He flipped the page. He wrote about the hidden compartment: wall panel, right side of shelving unit. Pressure point activation. Contents: Hydra-era keycard, confirmed overlap with Red Room operations. Documents: active survivor list, partial intel, movement logs. Photographic evidence captured.

Another page. This was where he started writing about your routine vulnerabilities, your Behavioral patterns. Trust threshold: high. Counter-surveillance: minimal to non-existent. Open, disarming, prone to disclosure under informal conditions.

His handwriting stayed tight. 

2.5 million dollars would only come after you were dead. That would fund his makeshift crusade for years to come. It was important work he was doing, balancing the scales. 

Dex paused, just for a second. Then he kept going.

Timeline: Saturday meeting. Entry granted without resistance. Physical proximity established quickly. Target displays—

His pen slowed to a stop. It hovered there, a warmth blooming in his chest. Dex frowned slightly, staring at the page like it had changed on him.

Then, almost absentmindedly, he wrote… she kissed me on the cheek, right on the scar.

The pen froze again.

That wasn’t— He exhaled, teeth clenching. —this wasn’t important. 

But still, he crossed nothing out. He just moved on.

Target displays lowered threat perception in close proximity. Conversational drift toward—

His handwriting had changed. Not messy, just less rigid.

… her past. She smells like vanilla. not perfume. Most likely clean laundry and sugar from baking.

Dex blinked. He looked at the lines then at the rest of the page.

What the fuck.

He flipped to the next page like that would fix it.

Red wine is her favourite.

His grip on the pen tightened slightly.

He should stop. This wasn’t relevant. None of the last couple sentences was relevant. Dex leaned back slightly in his chair, staring at the notebook in his lap.

He had everything he needed. He didn’t need to write anything else.

Dex scoffed quietly under his breath. Had he gone soft? 

Then, without really deciding to, he added one more line underneath it…

She laughed when she said “we’re so fucked up.”

He stared at it for a second longer than necessary. Then he snapped the notebook shut.

—

The restaurant for the fourth date was nicer than most places he even bothered to go to nowadays. But if this was going to be your last meal, he might as well make it memorable.

It had soft blue lights, a low hum of voices, the whoosh of knives behind the counter. Dex noticed all of it the second he stepped in, cataloguing angles and exits, the reflective panel behind the chef that gave him a partial view of the room without turning his head.

You need to kill her today.

He exhaled slowly through his nose and followed the host to the table.

When you sat down across from him, smiling like you hadn’t just walked straight into the middle of your own funeral, the room blurred at the edges for Dex.

“Hi,” you said with a smile

Kiss her.

He blinked once, forcing his brain back into place. “Hi.”

You tilted your head slightly, studying him like you always did, like you were trying to solve a puzzle with a missing piece. “You look like you’ve been here for a while.”

“I haven’t.”

“You definitely have.”

“Maybe five minutes.” That was a lie. He had been there for more than ten, cataloging what he could possibly use to finish the job.

You smiled, pleased. “Knew it.”

She’s faking it. She actually likes me. Kill her.

Dex picked up the menu just to give his hands something to do. “You’re late.”

“I’m two minutes late,” you corrected, leaning forward slightly to peek at what he was looking at instead of opening your own. “And I brought personality, so it cancels out.”

He huffed, hiding a smile. “That’s not how that works.”

“It is.” You insisted, tapping the menu. “Also, you picked sushi? I didn’t think you were a sushi person.”

“I’m not.” He immediately said. 

You blinked. “Then why…”

“Seemed efficient.” What he meant was; it’s a nice meal. You deserve a nice meal for the last day of your life. It’s efficient for him, who had an array of ceramic and silverware to kill you with.

You stared at him for a second, then broke into a grin. “You picked it based on efficiency.”

“Yes.”

“That is the least romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

Kiss her. Tell her she’s pretty.

He didn’t do either.

“You’re still here,” he pointed out instead.

“Yeah,” you said easily, settling back in your seat. “Because I actually like you.”

Liar. Kill her.

Somewhere between you stealing sushi off his plate and laughing at how aggressively he held chopsticks, you asked, almost casually, “You know anything about the ports here?” Dex paused slightly at that, eyes flicking up to yours over his glass. 

The question should’ve put him more on edge than it did, but you just looked curious, relaxed, like this was normal conversation. “Not much,” he admitted after a second. “Fisk uses them to move things through there sometimes.” 

You hummed thoughtfully, listening closely, and Dex found himself talking a little more than he probably should’ve just because you kept looking at him like that.

After a while, though, he managed to change the topic. Work was getting a little old. He found himself wanting to talk about you. “You always order too much.”

You lit up like he’d just handed you a piece of chocolate. “Oh, we’re judging now?”

“I’m observing.”

“Rude,” you said, already scanning the menu. “Also, it’s not too much, it’s strategic.”

“Strategic how?” He tilted his head, genuinely curious.

You shrugged, but there was a stillness underneath it. “You ever go hungry enough that your brain just… rewires? Like you don’t trust ‘enough’ anymore?”

Dex had never felt that way before. He wondered if you were indulgent because you had gone through missions with little food. Would you have gotten days without it, a week maybe? Your Buenos Aires mission was six days, your Lagos mission was seven days. Was it those missions?

How did you even survive? 

She’s a widow. She’s a weapon. She’s a person.

“…Yeah,” he said anyway.

Your eyes flicked up to his, and recognition passed between you. “Yeah,” you echoed. Then you nudged the menu toward him. “So I’ll over-order. It’s fine. We deserve it.”

We’re so fucked up. Kill her. Kiss her.

He nodded once. “Okay.”

You spent the next ten minutes ordering together, leaning over the table, arguing quietly over rolls like it mattered.

“Okay, this one,” you said, pointing. “We’re getting this.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“It has too much…. whatever that is.”

“That is eel,” you squinted.

“Exactly,” he shrugged.

“It’s just eel,” you pointed out. “You’ve eaten weirder things.”

He paused. “That’s not the point.”

You grinned. “I have enough of an appetite for the both of us.”

Kill her. Kiss her.

“…Fine,” he said, pushing his intrusive thoughts away.

You beamed. 

By the time the food arrived, the conversation had settled. You didn’t hold back when you ate, and you never did. You leaned forward, talking between bites, pointed things out like it mattered that he experienced them properly.

“Try this,” you said, holding your chopsticks out toward him without thinking.

Dex looked at it, then at you. You didn’t even realize what he was going to do to you.

Kiss her. Kill her.

He leaned forward and took the bite. Your eyes stayed on his face, waiting.

“It’s good,” he admitted.

“I know,” you said immediately, all too pleased with yourself.

He shook his head slightly.

She’s dangerous. She could kill you. Kill her first.

You wiped a bit of sauce off your thumb absentmindedly and kept talking. “We used to have this thing—training-wise—where they’d reward you with food if you hit certain targets.”

Dex’s attention shifted immediately.

There it is. Focus.

“Targets?” he repeated.

You winced slightly. “Okay, that sounded worse out loud.”

He didn’t respond.

You laughed, a little self-aware. “I mean—it was worse. But at the time it felt like a game, you know? Like ‘hit this, get that.’ Pavlov, but with putting bullets between your classmates' eyes.”

You popped another piece into your mouth like you hadn’t just said that.

She’s a monster. She’s a victim. She’s both. Kill her.

“Do you ever miss that?” he asked before he could stop himself.

You tilted your head, chuckling at the absurdity of the question. “The food or the brainwashing?”

“Either.”

You smiled faintly. “Sometimes I miss knowing exactly what I was supposed to be.”

That…. He understood.

Kill her. Ask her about OXE. Ask her about the DODC. Kiss her.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me too.”

You didn’t make a big deal out of it. Instead, you just nudged his foot under the table. “Hey,” you said, lighter now. “At least now we get sushi instead of, like… boiled cabbage or whatever.”

His lips formed the ghost of a smile. “I didn’t get cabbage.”

“Oh, sorry,” you deadpanned. “Did your government program have better catering?”

“No.”

You grinned. “Then you get it.”

He did. He really, really did.

You started talking about stupid things again—bad takeout, a guy you saw trying to fight a pigeon, the way you animated everything just enough to make it feel real.

Dex found himself watching your mouth when you talked.

Kiss her. Kill her. She’s faking it. She actually likes me.

He picked up his chopsticks again, turning them slightly between his fingers. These would be a good weapon to finish you off. He had calculated the angle, trajectory, and distance. He could do it from across the table. It would be clean, straight through the throat.

You wouldn’t even—

You laughed suddenly, bright and unguarded, and it snapped the thought clean in half.

“Earth to Dex?”

He blinked, refocusing on the world around him. 

You were looking at him like you’d caught his mind somewhere far away.

“What?” he said.

“You spaced out,” you said, narrowing your eyes slightly. “That was intense. Should I be concerned?”

Kill her. Kiss her. Tell her she’s pretty.

“No,” he said, coughing a little

You leaned forward slightly, studying him. “You do that a lot. Go somewhere else.”

He held your stare, feeling like an utter fucking coward. “I’m here,” he said. It came out quieter than he meant it to.

Your eyes softened. After that, you kept talking, and he kept listening, but the thoughts didn’t stop.

Kill her. She’s dangerous. She’s a Black Widow. She’s killed for corrupt governments. She’s taken down entire networks. She could kill you. Kill her. Kiss her.

He watched the way your fingers curled around your glass, the way you leaned closer when you got excited about a topic, the way your voice softened when you cared. 

He imagined reaching across the table, but this time not to put a piece of cutlery through your windpipe.

Instead, he imagined reaching out with his hand, touching your wrist. He imagined pulling you closer, kissing you.

—

When the bill landed between you, Dex felt his chest pulled tight, like a thread being yanked too hard. 

His hand moved first, grabbing it before you could even look properly. “I’ve got it,” he said, but it came out quieter than he meant, like the words had to push past thorns  lodged in his throat. You started to protest, but he cut in, “I want to.” 

That part slipped out, honest in a way he didn’t like. His fingers fumbled just slightly as he pulled his card out, a barely-there tremor that shouldn’t exist in a man like him, and he focused hard on the motion—insert, wait, sign—because that was simple, and that was something he understood. 

Kill her.

He could do it after this. He would. After all, that was the plan. But when he glanced up, you were watching him. and it threw everything off balance in a way that made his chest feel too full.

His thoughts only sped up after that. 

Kill her. She needs to go. She’s a monster. She’s a widow. She’s a fucking Black Widow. She could kill you. Kill her. She’s faking it. She’s dangerous.

He signed the receipt, but his grip was wrong. It was too tight, the paper crinkling under his thumb. When he set the pen down, his eyes betrayed him. They dropped to your mouth without permission. 

It wasn't strategic. It wasn’t calculated. It was instinct, human and stupid all the same.  

He imagined leaning forward instead of walking away, closing the distance instead of planning your doom, your lips against his instead of blood on his hands.

Focus.

His breath caught, and he looked away like that would fix it, like he could force himself back into the job he was supposed to do. 

He needed to do it. Now. Outside. 

He slipped a metal chopstick into his pocket. 

But the idea of ending it before he knew what your lips taste like made him recoil.

Kiss her. Tell her she’s pretty. Kiss her. Kill her. She’s a bad person. She’s dangerous. She’s so fucking pretty. She actually likes you. Kiss her. Kill her. Focus.

He stood too quickly, the chair scraping harshly against the floor, and reached for his jacket like movement might help ground him. It didn’t. You stood too, close enough that your arm brushed his.

He could still do it but his eyes betrayed him again, flicking to your lips like he was starving for something he didn’t deserve.

The realization hit all at once: he didn’t want to kill you before he kissed you. 

He needed that first. Just once. 

“I’ll walk you home,” he said, and the words came out before he could stop them. You looked up at him, surprised. When you said “Okay,” it didn’t make anything easier. It just gave him more time to ruin himself, one step at a time, chasing something he shouldn’t want before he did what he came here to do.

Kiss her. Then kill her.

—

The street outside your building felt eerily quiet, like the world had thinned down to just the two of you and the glow of the lobby lights behind glass. The doorman had the day off, you mentioned. There were no footsteps. No interruptions. 

Good. No witnesses.

Dex barely registered the thought this time. It flickered and passed, swallowed immediately by the thundering anxiety brewing in his mind.

Kill her.

“Hey,” you said. It was absurd, really, how shy you sounded.

He gulped. “Hey.”

His heart melted when a smile tugged at your mouth.

“I think,” you started, stepping just a little closer, your voice lowering like it was meant only for him, “you earned it.”

Dex didn’t get to ask what that meant, because you stepped in, closing that last inch of space like it meant nothing, and your lips met his…and everything in him just gave way.

His hand dropped from his pocket instantly, the weapon forgotten as his fingers caught your waist instead, pulling you closer like he was afraid you’d disappear. The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was only warm for half a second before it deepened, before he leaned into it with a careful urgency that didn’t belong to him.

Kiss her like you mean it.  

When you pulled back slightly, just to breathe, just to smile that pleased smile that made your whole face light up, he followed. He actually chased your lips, closing the distance again before you could get far, like he couldn’t stand the idea of it ending already. His hand slid higher, thumb brushing your jaw, tilting your face just enough to kiss you again. It was slower this time but no less hungry, like he was trying to memorize it.

You tasted… fuck! Sweet.

His brain latched onto it immediately, irrational and completely useless: Strawberries and cream. Probably lip gloss, but it didn’t matter to Dex. 

Kiss her like you fucking mean it. 

He smiled into it. It felt wrong on him, but he couldn’t stop it, not when you leaned into him like that, not when your fingers curled into his jacket like you wanted him just as much.

Kill her.

The thought slammed back in hard enough to almost make him flinch. His hand paused at your side. He knew the metal chopstick was still in his pocket.

Do it now.

He could, theoretically.  You were right there. You were more than close enough. More importantly, you were trusting enough.

One movement, and you would be dead. He would cradle your lifeless body in your arms and the last thing you would ever do was… kiss him. 

“I’ll see you soon?” you asked hazily when you finally pulled back, your voice carrying the echo of the kiss.

Dex froze.

You were smiling at him. You were not suspicious or guarded. You were just…  hopeful. And all he could think about was the way you’d kissed him. The way you’d let him.

Kill her.

His fingers curled in his pocket, brushing the metal again. He imagined it: a quick thrust, handled efficiently…

No. Not like that. I can’t kill her like that.

It was too slow, too messy. You’d bleed. You’d feel it. You’d die a slow, painful death…

She didn’t deserve that.

That was it. That was his excuse this time.

You deserved to die a quick, painless death. Maybe a shot in the back of the head when you weren’t looking. Just… bang! 

His chest ached at the thought. He was still leaning toward you, like part of him hadn’t caught up yet, like he might kiss you again if you gave him half a second more.

“I—yeah,” he said, voice, rougher around the edges. “You will.”

You smiled like that was enough. Like he hadn’t just made a decision that should’ve gone the other way.

Dex stood there for a second longer than necessary, like he was trying to memorize you again. He thought about your mouth, your eyes. the way you were still a little flushed… Then he stepped back, because if he didn’t—

Kiss her.

He almost did.

Instead, he let you go. And when he got home, all he wrote in the notebook was:

She tastes like strawberries and cream. 

—

The park on a Sunday felt too bright for what Dex had come to do.

Sunlight filtered through the trees in shifting patterns, the grass warm and uneven beneath the blanket he had brought.

It was your idea, “a picnic!” said so casually over the phone, like it was something people like you did, like it didn’t involve him sitting across from you with a gun tucked under his shirt, pressed against his side like a second heartbeat.

He’d decided before he even got there, that today, he was going to kill you.

It ends today. Kill her.

Then you showed up. And the world tilted for him.

You were wearing a sundress that moved with you when you walked. It wasn’t tactical, it wasn’t anything like the person he’d read about in that file. You looked… beautiful.

Kill her.

He swallowed it down. “You look…” he started, then stopped, like the word wouldn’t come out right.

You tilted your head, smiling. “What?”

His eyes dragged over you again before he could stop himself. “Nice,” he settled on.

It was insufficient. He knew it.

You laughed anyway, pleased, like you hadn’t just undone him.

Kill her. She’s dangerous. She’s a weapon.

He swallowed, hard, forcing himself to look away, to move, to do something before he stood there staring like an idiot. He dropped down onto the blanket he’d set up, hands already busy unpacking what he’d brought.

You noticed immediately. “You brought strawberries and cream?” You asked in disbelief. 

Dex shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal, like he hadn’t thought about it too much. “You like sweet things.”

You went quiet for a second. “I…” you started, “I do.”

He didn’t look at you. If he did, he’d…

Kiss her. Kill her. Focus.

You sat across from him, smoothing your dress under your legs, and that was so normal it made his chest ache.

For a while it was just conversation, the kind that didn’t feel like work. You started with small things, normal things. Then, maybe out of morbid curiosity, you asked him about Fisk, almost casually, like it was something you were only half-remembering. Dex hesitated before answering, more out of instinct than suspicion.

Red Hook came up next, and that made him pause longer, because it wasn’t the kind of thing people usually asked about in passing. Still, he gave you what he had, watching you the whole time for a reaction that never really came. You just nodded along like it made sense to be talking about it like this, and that made him talk more than he should have.

But how could he focus on any of that when his mind…

Shoot her in the head.

“I’ve never done this before,” you said after a moment, glancing around. “A picnic, I mean.”

That caught Dex off guard. “What?”

You huffed a small laugh, a little embarrassed. “Yeah. Not like this, anyway.” You picked at the edge of the blanket. “We used to pretend, though. In the Red Room.”

You said it so lightly. Like it wasn’t something that should gut him. “In the basement of the facility I was raised in,” you went on. “Some of the girls would lay out scraps of cloth, call it grass.” You smiled, but it was fragile. “We’d share whatever we could steal from the kitchen and pretend it was… nice.”

Dex stared at you.

Kill her. She’s a Black Widow. She’s killed people. She’s—

“You deserved better,” he said.

You looked up at him, surprised. Then you smiled. “Yeah,” you said, after a second of consideration. “I think so too.”

Make it quick, coward.

He grabbed a strawberry just to have something to do with his hands, dipped it into the cream, and held it out toward you. It was an imitation of what you had done with sushi the other night. 

You chuckled, then leaned forward, taking it gently, your lips brushing his fingers just slightly.

Kiss her.

He watched you bite into it, watched the way your mouth curved, the way your eyes closed like you were enjoying it. Cream caught at the edge of your lips, but you didn’t notice. And that was it.

Kiss her. Indulge.

He leaned in because he couldn’t help it. He did it slowly, like he was giving you time to stop him.

You didn’t.

Your lips met his, and it was not rushed, not desperate like before. His hand came up to your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek as he tilted your face slightly, deepening it just enough to feel you respond, just enough to feel you lean into him.

You don’t deserve her. Kill her. Get it over with. 

His chest tightened painfully as he pulled back, breathing uneven, forehead almost brushing yours.

You smiled at him, a little dazed, and he knew. He couldn’t do it here. Not like this.

He leaned back fully, dragging a hand through his hair, trying to put himself back together. “I don’t…” he started, then stopped.

You tilted your head. “What?”

He looked at you again, and felt his heart break in real time. “I don’t want to stay here,” he said.

You were now confused and a little unsure. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” he said immediately, more panicked than he meant to. “No. It’s not that.”

Kill her. Do it right.

He let out a deep breath. “Come back to mine,” he said.

Fucking coward. What are you waiting for?  She’s a terrible person. She’s killed more people than you. 

Your brows lifted slightly. “Your place?”

He nodded once.

If he did it there, it would be quiet. He would still make it quick and painless. And afterwards… he could mourn you in peace. He could hold your body as he cried into your neck. And maybe, some part of you would stay with him forever. 

“Yeah,” he said, voice smaller now. “I just… want more time with you.”

That part wasn’t a lie.

You studied him for a second, then you smiled the same trusting smile. “Okay,” you said.

And just like that, you followed him home.

—

The walk should have been simple. It was a straight line, a familiar route, nothing Dex hadn’t done a hundred times before without thinking. 

But inside his head, his thoughts were deafening.

Kill her.

It wasn’t a thought anymore. It was a command, pressing in from all sides until it felt like it might split him open from the inside.

Kill her. She’s dangerous. She’s lying. She’s done this before. You know what she is.

His jaw tightened, teeth grinding together as he kept walking, forcing his steps to stay even. You were beside him, close enough that your shoulder brushed his every few strides, like you hadn’t noticed the tension winding tighter and tighter in him.

Kill her. Do it before she does it first.

The words didn’t fade after they came anymore. They repeated, layered and stacked on top of each other until they stopped sounding like language and started sounding like pressure.

Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.

But then, another voice cut through.

Kiss her.

It didn’t argue. It pulled.

Kiss her again. Don’t let this end. She chose you. She’s still here.

His breath hitched slightly, chest tightening as the two sides collided, over and over, faster now, louder now, until there was no space between them.

Kill her. Kiss her. KILL HER. KISS HER.

It built and built, escalating into unbearable noise. They clawed and scraped and demanded all at once. His fingers twitched at his side, curling slightly like they were reaching for an answer, like his body was trying to decide for him.

One pull of the trigger. That’s all it would take, that’s—

Then, he felt your hand slip into his.

And for the first time in a long time, his brain was… quiet. 

It wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t forceful. It was almost tentative at first, how your fingers trace his thumb lightly before settling into his palm like you’d done it a thousand times before. Like you hadn’t even considered that you shouldn’t.

Dex stopped breathing. His step faltered, just slightly, like his body didn’t quite know how to move without the noise driving it forward.

The commands that had been screaming seconds ago, the overlapping voices, the relentless pressure…they just ceased. As if you had reached inside his head and flipped a switch.

Dex stood there for half a second too long. His mind, which had been a constant storm of instruction and contradiction, felt… clear.

His fingers closed around yours slowly, almost cautiously, like he was afraid the moment would shatter.

You didn’t pull away. You didn’t even hesitate. You just… walked with him. 

And the quiet stayed. Step after step, it stayed.

By the time you reached his building, a fact had already settled into place inside his chest. He didn’t have to argue with himself about it. There was no internal debate, no weighing of outcomes or consequences.

He just knew he wasn’t going to kill you anymore.

Not tonight. Not later. Not at all.

Good person be damned. Bad person be damned. Rent be fucking damned. Whatever fragile system he’d built to justify what he did, none of it held any weight here, not anymore.

He wasn’t looking for redemption, and he wasn’t chasing some shallow kind of bliss that killing you might give him. That had never really been the point, no matter how many times he told himself it was. He just wanted you.

And it was a primal, wild want. 

He wanted your mouth on his again. He just wanted you to kiss him deeply and show him everything he’d missed, everything he’d never been given.

Dex slowed as he reached his door, keys already in his hand, but he didn’t unlock it right away. Instead, his eyes dropped briefly to where your fingers were still threaded with his. Then he looked at you. And there was nothing in his head telling him what to do anymore.

His thumb brushed lightly over your knuckles, a small, almost absent motion, before he finally unlocked the door. “Come in.”

—

His apartment was nothing like yours. In was just one open space, a bed pushed too close to the wall, a kitchen that barely separated itself from the rest of the room. No personality, no indulgence other than you. 

You didn’t say anything, though. No teasing comment, no subtle comparison, just that same acceptance you always gave him, like this was enough. Like he was enough.

Dex barely gave you time to take it in. The second the door shut behind you, he lost any semblance of restraint. 

His hand caught your waist and pulled you into him, his mouth crashing against yours with a kind of hunger that didn’t belong to a man who was ever in control. The kiss was messy, as if he was trying to take something he didn’t know how to ask for.

You gasped against him, your hands coming up to his chest, then his shoulders, leveling him and undoing him all at once. 

He walked you backward without breaking contact. One step, then another, until the back of your knees hit the bed and you fell onto it with. He followed instantly, like space between you was unbearable.

His hands were everywhere, your neck, your sides, your thigh, like he needed to confirm you were real, that you were still here, that you hadn’t disappeared the second he let himself want you this much. And then you felt him shudder just a bit, shoulder shaking. 

You pulled back just enough to look at him, your breath uneven, your hands coming up to his face, thumbs brushing his cheekbones.

“Dex?” you whispered, concern threading through everything. “What’s wrong? ”

“Nothing,” he insisted, almost defensive. “Nothing.”

But his eyes were glassy. He swallowed hard, like he was trying to force it down, trying to push it away before you could see it. After all, he didn’t know how to explain it.

How would he even begin to explain that you made his head quiet? That just being near you feels like something he’s never had before? That he doesn’t know what this is, but it’s too much and not enough at the same time?

“I’m fine,” he added, but it didn’t sound convincing. Not even to himself.

You said his name again, gentler this time. 

And that was it. That was the last thing holding him together.

“I wanna taste you,” he said honestly, almost reverently. 

You were caught slightly off guard. A small, breathy laugh escaped you. “You’ve kissed me before.”

But he shook his head, his big hands already frantically bunching the fabric of your sundress with an urgency that didn’t feel casual anymore. It felt like a need. Like an instinct he couldn’t hold back even if he tried. One hand gripped on your ass as the other hooked on the waistband of your panties, tugging it down desperately.

“No,” he said, voice deeper now. “I want to taste you.”

Oh.

Your breath hitched, but you didn’t stop him. You didn’t pull away. You let him move closer, let him guide you, let him fall on his knees like he was praying to a goddess in the altar of an ancient temple. You let him take that space between your legs as he wondered how much sweeter you could get. 

Here, he could at least pretend that he hadn’t been thinking about killing you not that long ago.

Dex sank lower, slower now, like he was trying to learn you, not take from you. His hands steadied himself against your thighs, his forehead dipping for just a second like he needed to breathe you in. He felt… wrecked.

His breath hitched softly as he leaned closer, the space between your heat and him shrinking until there was almost nothing left and then—

click.

It was quiet, but unmistakably the sound of safety coming off. 

Every instinct he had lit up at once, snapping back into place so violently it almost hurt. His body froze, breath catching.

He lifted his head slowly. And there you were, with a gun pointed at his head.

It was small, and easy to hide, the red room insignia etched to the side. You probably pulled from that little purse you always carried like it was just an accessory.

Of course.

Dex didn’t reach for anything. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even try to put space between you. He just… looked at you.

And instead of anger, his chest folded in on itself. What he felt was closer to heartbreak than it was rage. Because for one stupid, moment he had naively believed you felt safe with him.

“…Oh,” he said softly.

The gun wasn’t the most horrifying part. It was the fact that even now, even with the metallic click of the safety still ringing in his ears, even with death staring him directly in the face, Dex could not stop looking at you.

You were sprawled beneath him on his bed, dress dragged up your thighs by his own hands, your breathing still uneven from the way he had kissed you seconds earlier. Your lips were swollen and puffy. Your chest rose and fell too quickly. One of your sandal straps hung loose around your ankle where he’d nearly pulled you apart getting you onto the mattress. And somehow… he still wanted you so badly it physically hurt.

How could he be this fucking stupid?

He should’ve known. Especially with questions about Red Hook. The ports. Fisk. That was why you kept asking.

Every little question over food and coffee and pastries. Every casual mention between laughter. Every moment he thought you were trying to know him better—

No. You were working. Just like him.

Your employer wanted information, and you had been sent to pull it out of him piece by piece while he sat there completely fucking mesmerized by you.

And now you had what they needed. Or maybe they realised he didn’t know enough to be valuable. That was worse, because it meant that he was just another loose end.

His stomach twisted hard enough to hurt. Not because you’d played him, because some pathetic, starving part of him had genuinely believed this had stopped being a job somewhere along the way. That maybe the way you kissed him outside your building had been real. That maybe when you held his hand and silenced every screaming voice in his head, it had meant something to you too.

Humiliating. Absolutely humiliating.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

It you had looked cold, detached, amused, even cruel, this would have been easier. He would have known where to put it. Would have known how to hate you properly. But you looked devastated.

Your hand trembled slightly around the weapon pointed at him, and your eyes kept betraying you, flicking down to his mouth before snapping back up again. You looked like you hated this.

“I…” You swallowed. “You’re not useful to OXE anymore.”

He had known something felt off. He just hadn’t cared enough to stop. He just wanted you more than he wanted to survive.

Dex let out a shaky breath that almost sounded like laughter. “Fuck,” he murmured softly, and you twitched, feeling his breath on your naked core. 

You flinched immediately. “No. Don’t do that.”

His eyes flicked back to yours.

“Don’t act like this was just me manipulating you,” you said, and your voice cracked slightly now. “I know there was a contract on me. I know you got sent it. I know about the gun under your shirt. Don’t you dare pretend like you weren’t planning to kill me too.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Because what could he even say? You were right.

The notebook was sitting in his apartment right now, pages and pages documenting your routines, your apartment, your vulnerabilities.

He had memorized the ways to kill you before he ever memorized the sound of your laugh.

And all this time, you had let him follow you, let him think he was in control in that “accidental run in” in Central Park, when you were planning to eliminate him, too. 

And somehow, the two of you still ended up tangled together on his bed, half-dressed and breathing hard from kissing each other like starving people.

Dex’s gaze dropped involuntarily to your thighs, to the skin exposed beneath the ruined hem of your dress. To the way your body was still open for him despite the gun in your hand.

Fuck.

His fingers tightened unconsciously where they still gripped the fabric pooled around your hips.

You looked vulnerable.

And the absolute worst fucking part was that he still wanted to bury himself between your legs so badly he could barely think straight. Even now. Even knowing this was the end.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

“You know what’s pathetic?” he asked quietly.

Your brows pulled together slightly.

Dex looked up at you from between your thighs, eyes dark and wet and unbearably earnest. “I still want to taste you.”

Your breath caught audibly.

“There’s a gun pointed at my head,” he whispered in disbelief. “and all I can think about is that I never got to know what you taste like.”

“Dex…” you breathed shakily.

But he shook his head immediately. “No, listen,” he said quickly. “I know what this is. I know what happens next.”

You looked away for half a second. That almost destroyed him, because he realized then that you didn’t actually want to kill him either. And that made him want you even more.

God, I’m so sick.

“I know you’re gonna kill me because it’s the job,” he continued. “Fine. I get it.” His eyes dropped again helplessly to the way your thighs trembled around him, then back up. “But Christ…” His voice cracked. “Just let me have this first.”

Dex looked humiliated and ruined all the same. And still completely sincere.

“I could die happy,” he admitted. “Just… let me taste you first, sweetheart.”

Your hand trembled. Not enough to miss, but just enough that Dex noticed.

The barrel of the gun was pressed against the center of his forehead now, cool metal against flushed skin, and still he didn’t move away from you. 

“Do it, then,” you whispered.

You swallowed hard, trying to steady yourself, trying to force your hand not to shake while he knelt there between your thighs looking at you like this was the closest thing to worship he had ever known. Amazed that even like this, you were soaked for him.

“Fucking do it,” you said again, almost pleading now. “Before I…”

Before you what? Changed your mind? Cried? Dropped the gun?

Dex could see every possibility running through your brain all at once.

His hands slid down your thighs reverently.  “You’re shaking,” he murmured quietly.

“So are you.”

That almost made him smile.

The apartment felt impossibly small around the two of you. The warm yellow light above the kitchen sink made you look divine, coupled by the sound of your uneven breathing. The mattress dipped beneath your weight every time you shifted. Dex tilted his head slightly against the gun like he was accepting his fate. Accepting you.

That should have terrified him. Instead, all he could think about was how beautiful you looked above him— dress ruined, eyes glossy with tears you clearly didn’t want him seeing.

He had wanted you from the beginning, even if he hadn’t admitted it. But this was something else entirely. This hurt.

Dex tilted his head just enough to press a slow kiss against the inside of your thigh, and the sound you made nearly destroyed him. 

His eyes flicked up immediately, watching your reaction with awe. He couldn’t believe he was allowed to touch you like this. Like he couldn’t believe you were reacting to him this way.

Dex kissed higher, and your hand flew to his hair immediately, fingers tangling there hard enough to pull a rough sound from his throat in return. He moaned against you.

The vibration of it shot through you so suddenly your back arched off the mattress, breath breaking apart, embarrassingly needy.

Dex's eyes kept fluttering shut every time you touched his hair, every time your thighs trembled around him, every time another helpless sound escaped you. He looked less like a man in control and more like a vampire feeding on his first prey. It was overwhelming.

Every time you twitched or gasped or tried to pull away from how intense it felt, he noticed immediately. He adjusted immediately, making you feel good mattered more than breathing. Like your pleasure mattered more to him than the gun pressed to his skull.

And fuck, did his tongue feel so fucking good. You could barely think straight. The room blurred at the edges, your thoughts dissolving one by one. Every nerve in your body felt lit raw, burning hotter and hotter every time he moaned pathetically against you again like he couldn’t help himself.

Dex sounded addicted to you already. He was too consumed by you and the sounds you were making now. They were small broken noises you clearly hated letting out but couldn’t stop anymore. Too consumed by the way your body kept reacting stronger and stronger beneath him despite your obvious attempts to stay composed.

Your hands tightened helplessly in his hair as another wave hit you, harder this time, your thighs trembling violently around his shoulders. “Dex—” you gasped brokenly.

He looked up instantly at the sound of his name. His eyes were blown wide. His lips swollen from kissing your skin. Hair ruined beneath your fingers. 

Then he sank back down, a man eating his last meal. He needed it to be a feast. 

Too much. It was too much.

Your body tightened all at once, every nerve pulling taut as pleasure crashed through you so hard it hurt. A sob tore from your throat before you could stop it, your entire body shaking as you finally came apart beneath him. Dex held onto you through all of it.

Your fingers slipped from his hair eventually, weak now, trembling as you tried desperately to catch your breath. Tears blurred your vision completely by the time the waves finally started easing enough for you to think again.

Dex pulled back immediately the second he realized you were crying harder.

“Hey,” he whispered instantly, breathing unevenly as he came back up toward you. His hands slid shakily to your waist, then higher, like he didn’t know where to touch to make sure you were okay. “Hey— look at me.”

You were still trembling beneath him, chest heaving as you struggled to come down from the drug-like high of the orgasm he gave you, the barrel of your gun on his temple now.

His thumb brushed shakily beneath your eye, catching tears against the pad of his finger. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, like the idea genuinely horrified him.

“Fuck—no,” you sputtered immediately, breath still wrecked as you stared at him through blurred vision. “Dex, fuck! How could you even say that?”

The concern on his face was so raw it physically ached to look at.

You were still shaking, your body trembling, your thighs dripping with spit and arousal like neither of you knew how to stop this anymore. 

You could trace every conversation backward now, see all the moments you carefully guided him toward the information you needed while he sat across from you like some fucking idiot who came to the conclusion you actually liked him. Except… 

You had fallen utterly in love with him.

Somewhere between the pastries and the wine and him writing down your coffee order in that stupid little notebook of his, the job had become real. Somewhere between him kissing you and him looking at you like your body wasn’t shameful or weaponized or ruined… you had stopped wanting this to end. 

And now here he was. Kneeling between your thighs with your gun to his head and your taste still on his mouth, looking at you like he’d die grateful if you asked him to.

It was as if, somewhere deep down, Benjamin Poindexter truly believed that if loving you ended in death, then maybe that was simply the closest thing he would ever get to being loved at all. That thought almost made you vomit from grief.

Your breathing broke unevenly as you stared down at him.

He still had one hand on your thigh, so fucking gentle.

“I don’t understand you,” you admitted shakily.

A sad smile ghosted across his mouth at that. He was exhausted. “I don’t either.”

You let out this awful sound halfway between a laugh and a sob as tears spilled harder down your face. “Fuck, Dex,” you choked out, “you were supposed to be a job.”

“So were you.”

You swallowed hard enough it hurt. “I should kill you,” you whispered suddenly. The sentence sounded wrong coming out now, like it was collapsing under its own weight before it even reached his ears.

Dex lowered his forehead slightly more firmly against the barrel of the gun, offering himself to you. He readjusted it, making sure that if you shot him now, it would be painless, like he was going to do to you. 

“Do it,” he whispered. “It’s what you were sent to do.” He sounded like he genuinely believed his life was worth less than your mission.

Your vision blurred hard. “I can’t,” you whispered.

He exhaled through his nose. “Yes, you can.”

“No!” You shouted out, panicked. “Don’t fucking… don’t even try to make this easier!”

When your finger jerked against the trigger, Dex still wouldn’t move. Fuck, he really trusted you to end it quick, did he? Even with doom pressed cold against his skin.

Your eyes squeezed shut hard enough to ache. You tried to force yourself back into training, back into discipline, back into the little girl who would get extra pieces of scrap food if she finished her mission well enough. 

But all you could feel was him. His mouth on your skin. The way he’d looked at you while you fell apart beneath him. The way he kept loving you despite knowing exactly what you were. “I’m gonna…” you whispered shakily, but you couldn’t finish the sentence.

You didn’t want to kill him. And that was the first truly selfish thing you had ever wanted.

You pulled the trigger anyway, and the gun went off.

The sound exploded through the apartment violently enough to shake the walls, but the bullet slammed into the floor behind him instead. You had missed a point blank shot intentionally. 

Your hand dropped. You stared at the damage of the splintering wood, breathing hard, horror rushing through your body all at once like ice water. “Oh my god,” you choked.

Dex thought he was dead.

For one longs excruciating second. He truly thought you had killed him. When he realised he wasn’t, he said your name immediately, climbing up the bed toward you “Hey, look at me.”

You genuinely couldn’t. Your entire body started shaking harder now, all the adrenaline and terror and grief finally catching up at once. “I can’t fucking do this,” you sobbed. “I can’t… I can’t—”

Dex cradled your face in both hands immediately.

“I’m a monster,” you whispered brokenly. “Dex, I’m a fucking monster.”

Dex said nothing. He only leaned forward slowly and kissed the tears from your cheeks one by one, like guilt itself had become holy.

And suddenly you understood something terrible about him: He does not love cautiously, nor rationally.

Every ounce of affection he gave came directly from the part of him that had been hurt the most. His soul had been beaten bloody and kept reaching anyway. The heart is a muscle, and his had torn itself apart trying to hold both of you afloat.

“You don’t get to say that like you’re different from me,” he whimpered against your skin.

Your breath hitched and that was when he kissed you like he was trying to pour every shattered piece of himself into your mouth before the world took it away again.

When his mouth parted against yours, you could still taste yourself on him. That made it more devastating. This ruined, trembling man was still carrying evidence of your pleasure on his tongue while he kissed you like you were worth saving.

Dex made a small sound against your mouth when you started crying harder, and suddenly his hands were everywhere, trying to hold you together physically because he didn’t know how else to do it.

His forehead dropped against yours when he pulled away. “We’re both monsters,” he whispered.

But it didn’t sound cruel. It sounded heartbreakingly close to love.

You learned that before medical school, before emergency rotations and back-alley sutures that made men in masks limp to you and bleed all over your tile at 3 AM. You learned it at eleven, crouched near an alley behind your old apartment, palm full of deli turkey your mother told you was for lunch, watching a stray with a torn ear bare his teeth at every adult who tried to corner him. Animal control had come with poles. A neighbor had come with a towel. Your mother came with her worried mouth pressed thin and her hands hovering near your shoulders, ready to snatch you back if the dog lunged. The dog had lunged at everyone except you. He had stared at you with yellow-brown eyes, ribs moving under filthy fur, every part of him made of pain and suspicion, and he had taken the turkey from your hand so gently that you cried on the spot. Full ugly tears, snot and all, as if tenderness from a ruined thing was the saddest miracle in the world.

Benjamin Poindexter reminds you of that dog every time he appears at your door.

Which is insane, clinically. Dex is a man. Dex is a killer. Dex is precise, lethal, too calm in ways that make the hairs on the back of your neck lift even when he is sitting on your exam stool with his shirt off and three cracked ribs under your palm. Dex looked at you with blood in his teeth and asked if you keep the good suture scissors in the second drawer or if you hide them from your 'less charming clients,' and he smiled when you stared at him too long. He is six feet of bad decisions and worse coping mechanisms, and yet the first thing your mind gives you when you think of Dex is that stray dog taking turkey from your fingers.

That knock at this time is unexpected. Matt.

Matt knocks like a man who hates needing help. Two firm taps, a pause, one more. Spiderman kncoks like he's not allowed to come in. Jessica once kicked the door and yelled your name until you opened. Dex, on his own, never knocks at all. He appears. He waits. Sometimes he bleeds on the mat. Sometimes he makes a small, polite comment about your hallway light going out.

You are across the room before the kettle finishes screaming. Your clinic is technically a closed flower shop with a fake lease and a drain installed under the center table, which makes you look deranged. Until someone comes in with a knife wound and then everyone suddenly appreciates plumbing. The place smells like antiseptic, old brick damp from rain, black tea, and the faint copper ghost that never fully leaves, because blood is part of everything. You unlock the deadbolt, undo the chain, tug the door open, and Matt Murdock nearly falls into you with Bullseye hanging off him like a corpse.

For one bright, stupid second, all your thoughts empty out into his name.

Dex.

His face is a mess. Blood has dried under one nostril and smeared across his mouth in a dark shine. His lower lip is split. One eye is swollen enough that it changes his whole expression, turning him younger in the ugliest way, all that sharpness buried under bruising and exhaustion. His suit is torn at the side, tactical fabric shredded into strips. When Matt adjusts his grip, Dex makes a sound so small you feel it under your bones.

Matt's mouth tightens. Blood mats his dark hair near his temple. Only consolation is that he looks a little better than Dex. "He needs help."

You stare at Dex. Dex stares back, or tries to. His good eye drags over your face with the slow, stunned relief of a man who expected darkness and got a porch light. The part of you with a medical license starts counting injuries in a list that stacks too fast. Facial trauma. Rib involvement. Possible abdominal injury. Scalp laceration. Possible pneumothorax. The part of you that has made the mistake of caring about him too much, looks at his lashes stuck together with rain and blood and wants to put his head in your lap.

With a gentleness reserved for skittish animals, you reach for his jaw, two fingers under his chin to angle his face toward the light. "Dex, can you hear me?"

Blood shines over his teeth, as his mouth twitches. "Hey, Doc."

Matt shifts him higher with a grunt, muscles in his forearms cording from the effort. Dex makes another small sound, angrier this time, as if the pain is just now surfacing. "He took the worst of it. I did what I could, but he kept telling me to leave him."

"Balanced the scales," Dex mumbles, head tipping back against Matt's shoulder. Rainwater slides from his hair down the side of his neck. "You had a city to save."

"Ma — you should come in." You catch yourself at the last second. It rises right up, soft from habit, and catches at the back of your teeth as Dex's good eye opens again.

He smiles at you through the blood. Barely. A broken curve of recognition, jealous even while half-dead, which is so Dex that something in you aches. "I know who he is, doc. You can call him Matt."

You close your eyes, breathe through your nose once, a fond sigh, which also is deeply annoying. "Of course you do."

Dex's smile widens enough to make the split in his lip bleed again. "Smart boy."

No. Nope.

"Table. Keep his neck aligned." You tell Matt, stepping back and sweeping one arm toward the center of the room. "If either of you tracked glass in here, I'm making you both sweep before sunrise." You add, not wanting to sound too soft.

Matt obeys with a silence that says he has learned, through years of being injured in your presence, that arguing only rises blood pressure. Dex tries to help. That is the horrible part. His fingers grip the edge of the exam table once Matt lowers him, knuckles white, body shaking with the effort of being useful. His legs drag a fraction of a second behind the rest of him. Your mind sees it, circles it, hates it. You pull trauma shears from the tray and cut through what remains of the suit before any panic can bloom large enough to slow your hands.

"Eyes on me," you tell Dex, softer than you mean to. "You do exactly what I say for the next hour. That's the deal."

His lashes flutter, and his ruined mouth quirks. "I'm always good for you."

Matt turns his head slightly, lips tugging on a frown half formed. 

You feel it. Dex feels it too. They are both bleeding and somehow still measuring each other. Matt's face gives almost nothing away, but you have known him long enough to read the pauses, even the slight angle of his chin. He hears Dex's pulse change around you. He hears your answer. He hears the rotten little truth of it, warm and embarrassing under all the antiseptic.

You press two fingers to Dex's carotid and pretend the pulse under your skin is purely clinical. "That depends on your definition of good."

"Flexible," Dex breathes.

"Try alive."

"That's less flexible."

When you shoot him a look, he settles. It happens so fast Matt's brow pulls in, and despite the blood running down the side of his own face, despite the exhaustion in every line of him, you see him file it away. Dex does that for you. Dex, who would rather spit teeth than accept help from almost anyone, quiets under your hand like you found a switch under his skin.

You hate how much that means to you.

The shears bite up the side of Dex's suit. Rain-wet fabric peels away from him, exposing bruises already darkening over his ribs, long shallow cuts crossing his abdomen, a deeper gash near his left flank with slow, steady bleeding. You talk while you work, partly for him, partly for Matt, mostly for your own sanity. "Breath sounds normal. No deep lacerations. Two tiny blessings. Dex, if you lie about pain severity, I will find out and I will be extremely annoying about it."

His good eye trails over your face. "You already are."

"Funny. You get one joke per liter of blood loss."

Matt huffs through his nose, almost a laugh, then winces. You point at the chair by the wall without looking up. "Sit."

"I can take care of myself."

The room goes quiet enough for the kettle to click off in the corner.

You turn your head slowly, gloved fingers still pressed to Dex's side. Matt is standing near the exam table, one shoulder lower than the other, blood sliding past his ear, jaw set in that martyr shape you have wanted to smack off his face for years. "Sit down, Matthew."

Dex makes a low sound, a grunt, or an attemp at it. "Matthew."

Matt's eyes go over Dex, jaw clenching and unclenching. "This is a bad time."

"For you, maybe," Dex says, and then coughs hard enough that the joke breaks.

You lean over him fast, one hand at his shoulder, the other bracing his ribs. "Small breaths. Look at me." His eye finds yours again, frantic for a second. He would kill anyone else for witnessing this, but not now. Your voice drops even further. "That's it. You can hate me after."

He breathes the way you tell him to. Obedient.

When Matt sits, some ridiculous, childish part of you wants to clap. Another part wants to cry. You do neither, since your hands are full of a man who has decided your voice is a leash he can tolerate.

The first twenty minutes disappear into work. Blood pressure readings, pupils, pulses, lung sounds again, neuro checks, wound depth, rib stability. You listen to Dex's chest and feel him try to keep still under the stethoscope, sweat shining at his hairline while his fingers curl over the table edge. When you clean his lip, he keeps his eyes on you as if the room might vanish if he looks away. When you probe near the gash at his side, his breathing goes jagged, but he bites down on the inside of his cheek instead of jerking away.

"Hey." You catch his face in your hand before he can sink his teeth deeper. "Open."

He opens his mouth, shaking while he does it. 

You can feel Matt's head turn again. You ignore it, cheeks heating as you slide gauze between Dex's teeth to keep him from chewing himself bloody. "Better. Bite this if you need to. No hero teeth."

Dex's gaze moves over you, half-lidded, feverish, words coming out mumbled over the piece of gauze. "Do you treat all your patients like dogs?"

You secure a dressing against his side and let the pressure hold under your palm. "Only my favourite strays."

His eye softens like he cannot control himself. It is small. A tiny failure of the mask. A starved thing hearing a bowl set down.

Matt hears that too. You can tell from his silence, from the careful stillness in his chair. When you finish with Dex, you cross the room with a suture kit for the cut at his temple. Matt turns his face towards you before your knees touch the edge of the chair. He smells like rain, blood, city smoke, and that faint soap he uses which you have always found unfairly comforting. You have stitched Matt under worse circumstances. You have dug glass out of his shoulder while he spit blood into your sink. You have fed him soup with one hand while keeping pressure on his dressing with another. That comfort is old. It sits between you now.

Dex watches it like it is a blade aimed at him.

You dab antiseptic at Matt's temple. "This is shallow. You are lucky."

Matt's mouth curves in that tired, self-punishing way. "People keep telling me that."

"Maybe try believing them once in a while."

Ignoring that, he dips his chin towards Dex. "How bad is he?"

You glance back at Dex. He has his head turned toward the ceiling now, but his eye is still angled in your direction. Watching. Always listening. "Bad enough that moving him tonight would be stupid. He's stable enough. But I need imaging he will never agree to. Possible rib fractures, soft tissue trauma, no obvious neuro deficit from what I can assess here, but I want repeat checks every hour. He needs observation."

"He wanted me to leave him," Matt says quietly, like his voice won't carry in the small room. 

Dex speaks from the table, voice rough around the gauze and dried blood. "You should've. Still think you should."

You thread the needle through Matt's skin with more force than strictly needed, anger showing up in a different place. Matt says nothing, but his mouth pinches.

"No one dies in my clinic unless I say so," you call over your shoulder.

Dex exhales, a soft sigh followed by a start of a complaint. "You really —"

"Please lie down and stop talking."

Matt's hand closes around your wrist after you finish the last stitch. He does it carefully, fingers warm, thumb pressing once against your radius as if he is asking permission through touch. Comfort. Familiar, heavy with years of people trying to survive horrible nights. "Fisk is still moving," he says. "Karen..." His voice thins for half a breath. "Karen may kill him if I bring him anywhere near her."

Dex smiles at the ceiling. "Smart woman."

You look from Matt to Dex, then down at the blood-speckled gauze piled near your knee. "You want to leave him here."

"I think he is safer here than anywhere else tonight." Matt's mouth tightens, next words dragging through his teeth. "I think everyone else is safer too."

Your laugh comes out dry and humorless. "So I get custody of the homicidal puppy while you go deal with the rest of the apocalypse."

Dex turns his head toward you. Even wrecked, even pale, even with gauze stuffed in his mouth and bruises swallowing half his face, the look he gives you has teeth in it. Offended by the word puppy. Pleased by the word custody. Matt catches every ugly shade of it.

"He listens to you," Matt says.

"He has limited hobbies."

Dex murmurs, "You."

The word drops into the room with a wet little thud. One syllable dragged over broken lips, and still it finds some secret place under your ribs and presses. You hate him a little for that. You hate Matt a little for hearing it. You hate yourself most of all for wanting to go back to the table and touch Dex's hair until his eyes close.

Matt rises slowly. You stand with him, suddenly aware of how small the clinic is with three people and so many things no one should say. He reaches for the cowl, then stops. "Call me if he gets worse. If he loses consciousness, if he starts vomiting, if he says anything about numbness or weakness."

"I went to med school, Matt."

His mouth tilts, a small smile, the first real one from him tonight. 

You can feel Dex watching you, clear enough to hurt. Pain pulls his face tight, yet jealousy sits in him like a second pulse, stubborn and alive. He has killed for balance tonight. He has decided dying would be neat, fair. Still, your hand on Matt's wrist bothers him. Your voice saying Matt's name bothers him. The fact that you can tease the Devil of Hell's Kitchen into sitting down while Dex lies cut open on your table bothers him so much that he has dragged himself back from the edge purely to be petty about it.

Trying to ignore him, you walk Matt to the door and keep your voice low. "You owe me."

"I do."

"No, you really do. This is beyond the usual owe me. This is pay my fake flower shop's electric bill for six months owe me."

His hand finds the doorframe. "Send the amount."

You blink at him, at his audacity. "I was making a point."

"I heard the point." His face softens toward yours, bruised and tired, but warmth nonetheless. "Thank you."

You almost touch his arm. You stop yourself, which is silly, since Matt would sense the hesitation anyway and Dex would read the shape of it from across the room. "Go. Try to keep your skull intact."

Before the door closes, Matt turns his head toward Dex. "If you hurt her, I will hear it."

Dex laughs once, and the sound turns into a wince. "If I hurt her, you can have what's left."

The clinic holds the echo of Matt's footsteps after he leaves. Rain ticks against the front window. Dex's breath is slow but uneven, the gauze in his mouth damp with blood and spit. You stand with your hand on the lock and try to make sense of this situation. A murderer on your table. A city outside eating itself alive. A man who wants to die looking at you like he would crawl back through hell if you asked him to stay.

You lock the door.

Dex watches the motion, tracking you. "You're awfully close."

You cross to the sink and strip off your gloves. The snap of latex feels too loud. "You were actively bleeding out fifteen minutes ago. Pick a smarter topic."

"Answer."

Water runs pink down the drain. Your hands shake only after the gloves are off. "Matt and I have history."

Dex's jaw works around the gauze. "So do we."

"You show up here, bleed on my furniture, say alarming things, refuse hospital transfer, and once asked if I had a membership program after your fifth visit." You shut the water off and look at him. His face makes you angry. But only a little. That hungry stare from a man who has no right to demand any part of you after deciding twenty minutes ago that death sounded fine. Yet under it is the dog with the torn ear. The animal watching every hand, every doorway, every flick of attention, trying to figure out who belongs to him, who might leave, who might choose some other dog with a clean fur.

You walk back to the table and take the gauze gently from his mouth. "You are exhausting."

Dex's throat move with effort, swallowing, saliva wetting his mouth. "Do you look at him like this?"

The question is quieter than the others. Worse. It has no blade in it. Only a man lying open under fluorescent light, too hurt to hide the wound he actually cares about.

Your fingers hover near his cheek. You let them settle at his jaw, light enough that he can turn away if he wants. He does no such thing. He leans into the touch so fast it ruins you.

"Dex."

His lashes lower, tickling your palm when he seeks the warmth. 

"I am going to clean you up, give you fluids, keep you awake for neuro checks, and cuff you to the bed in the back room so you avoid doing some noble-suicidal assassin bullshit the second I blink." Your thumb moves once along the unmarred edge of his jaw. His skin is cold. "After that, you can interrogate me about Matt Murdock until I regret saving your life."

A sad smile curves his lips. "You already regret it."

"No." The word comes out so soft. "I really, really do not."

The clinic's back room used to serve as a supply closet, then you stopped having supplies. Now it holds a narrow bed bolted to the wall, clean sheets, a cabinet of emergency meds, and a chain you bought after a masked idiot with a concussion tried to wander into traffic with three fresh staples in his scalp. 

Dex sees the cuff and laughs until pain takes the laugh away from him. You roll your eyes while helping him shift down onto the mattress, every inch a negotiation with his battered ribs.

"You chain all your favourite patients?" He asks once his uninjured ankle is secured with a padded restraint and the chain runs through the bedframe.

You tug the blanket over his waist. "Only the flight risks."

"Matt ever get the chain?"

Your hands pause, which already gives him a lot without meaning to. 

Dex smiles without opening his eyes. "Interesting."

You secure the IV line, check the dressing at his side, and sit on the small chair beside the bed with your back against the cabinet. "Go to sleep, Dex."

"Can't."

"Then lie still and pretend. You're talented."

His fingers slide over the edge of the mattress until they find your sleeve. He grips the soft cotton near your wrist, clumsy but careful. He has enough strength left to hurt you if he wanted. He holds the fabric instead.

You let him.

Near dawn, after the third neuro check, after he has told you the year, the president, your clinic address, and the exact number of tiles in the ceiling section above him like an asshole, his voice comes out thin and drugged by exhaustion rather than meds. "I did it."

You sit up straighter. Hearing him talk through pain is something you don't want to go through, but have to. "Did what?"

"Balanced it. Vanessa for Foggy."

A chill moves through you so slowly it feels like a hand closing around your heart. Foggy. Matt's grief. Karen's rage. Dex's worst crime. The city's endless appetite for payment. You look at him and see, for one horrible second, a man lying at the bottom of a ledger with a red line drawn under his own name. "And now?" 

Dex's fingers tighten in your sleeve, holding you closer. "Now I'm tired."

You reach up and press your hand over his. He looks at the place where your skin covers his knuckles. His expression is too human for the man the papers called Bullseye, and you hate every person who helped turn him into a weapon, including Dex himself. He leans toward the comfort like he never learned how to ask.

"Then be tired here," you whisper. "I can handle tired."

He studies you for a long moment. "Can you handle me?"

You should say something clinical. Something careful. Something with the kind of boundaries you teach medical students when they come through your legitimate daytime job, wide-eyed and terrified of liability. But, you tell the truth. "I keep opening the door, don't I?"

Dex's eye closes. His fingers stay wrapped in your sleeve until sleep finally drags him under.

By late morning, the rain has stopped. The city has that scrubbed-clean look it gets after a night of lying through its teeth. Pale sunlight presses through the frosted glass in the back room, turning the sheets gold where Dex's hand rests on top of them. You wake in the chair with your neck bent at an angle that will punish you for days, hair coming loose from its clip. For one muzzy second, you forget the night. Then the chain gives a soft metallic scrape, and you remember every part of it at once.

Dex is awake.

He is lying still, which is encouraging. Too still, which is irritating. His good eye follows you as you straighten. He looks better, at least in the way people look better when they are still severely injured but no longer actively trying to bleed into the afterlife. Less gray. More focused. The swelling around his eye has deepened purple. His mouth is still split and tender. Stubble darkens his jaw. His bare chest is bandaged in three places, bruises blooming under the tape like ugly weather.

"You stayed," he says.

Your back cracks when you shift, a grunt escaping you. "I live here during disasters now, apparently."

His gaze drops to your wrinkled shirt, the blanket you must have pulled over yourself at some point. "You slept in a chair."

"I have made worse choices." Liking him was one. 

His mouth moves like he wants to smile, but the split in his lip stops him. "Name one."

"You, repeatedly." Apparently early morning you has no filter. 

That pleases him far more than it should. He watches you stand, and when you come over to check his pupils, he tilts his face up before you ask. Trying to be good again. It is awful to your chest, that easy offering. Dex, who fights everyone, lets you put your fingers under his jaw and angle him towards the light, eyes tracking your face more than the penlight. 

"Headache?" you ask.

"Not really."

"Nausea?"

"No."

"Vision changes?"

"Ugly curtains."

"Those are original to the building, and they have seen too much to be insulted by you."

Ignoring that, he looks toward the ankle cuff. "Am I still a flight risk?"

"You murdered someone last night, tried to die at least twice by my count, and keep making jealous comments about a blind lawyer. So, Id say yes."

Dex's eye comes back to you. Slower now. "You're bringing him up."

The audacity if this stupid, beautiful, injured man. "You were going to."

"I was waiting."

"That must have been hard for you."

His fingers flex against the sheet, head dipping once towards his ankle. "Take it off."

You fold your arms, and his gaze moves briefly over your chest before he makes himself look back at your face. The tiny effort, the discipline of it, should not be as intimate as it is. "Tell me why."

"So I can leave if I want."

"Wrong answer."

The old Dex sits up under the wounded one for a second, teeth showing in spirit, even if his mouth is too sore for the full shape. He exhales, irritated. "So I can stop feeling like you expect me to run."

That one is a better answer. He sees that getting to you, which is annoying. Your mouth softening by degrees, fingers loosening against your arms, he sees all of it. You crouch near the bed and unlock the cuff with the key on your necklace. His eyes follow it, the little brass thing sliding from between your breasts, then the lock, then your hand closing around his ankle to ease the padding away from skin.

The chain falls with a dull clink.

Half of you, the pessimistic half, expects him to lunge. But he just lies there and looks at you with wonder in his eyes, as if you have handed him a weapon and he has chosen, for this one morning, to set it down.

"If you run, I will find you and sedate you in public," you say.

"You promise?"

"Dex."

With effort, his hand lifts. The tremor is subtle, visible only because you have spent too many nights learning his tells. He reaches for your wrist and stops halfway, waiting.

You wouldn't have thought more about this if he'd just reached. The waiting is what burrows under your ribs. 

When you give him your wrist, his fingers close around it with almost no pressure, thumb restinh over your pulse like he wants to feel proof you are still here, flesh and warmth, no trick. "Does he get this?" 

He should feel your pulse jump under his thumb, as you sigh and look at him. "Matt gets stitches. Lectures. Soup if he looks starved."

Dex studies your face, eyes tracking every one of your features, scanning. "And me?"

"You get the chain."

He huffs out something close to a laugh, with whatever energy that's left in him.

"You get me missing sleep, changing your dressings while you say upsetting things. You get me pretending I don't worry when you vanish for weeks and then show up with half your side open like a wounded dog dragging itself under a porch."

His hand tightens around the hold, eyes darkening. They are fixed on you with concentration, feeling more like a touch than his actual hands. 

Dex has always looked at targets with focus. You have seen him do it through security footage Matt once brought you, body still, gaze calm, all the world narrowed into distance and outcome. This is different. Messier. He looks at you like he wants to crawl into the space behind your ribs and sleep there where no one can reach him.

"Do you want him?" The question comes out blunt. Too wounded. Subtlety has been stripped from him. What remains is one battered man, waiting to hear if he has already lost something he never properly held.

You sit on the edge of the mattress, careful near his ribs. The warmth of his body seeps into yours. "Matt is my friend."

"He touches you like he has rights."

"He touches me like he trusts me."

Dex's eyes looks pained, his jaw tightening. When you lean closer, his gaze drops to your mouth. Your eyes cleanly capture that small betrayal. His thumb strokes once over your pulse, helplessly possessive. You could still walk away. Probably change his dressing, make tea, text Matt an update, maybe contact someone with imaging access who asks fewer questions than the hospital would. Your brain produces tasks in a neat row. Your body knocks the row over like dominoes.

"He doesn't get this look," you sigh. Hazel eye lifts to yours, stripped clean. You almost laugh at yourself for what you're about to say, too honest for this setting. "No one else gets this look."

His breathing changes. Shallow for a second, then controlled since his ribs hurt. He has to choose restraint with every inhale. It makes the want on his face worse. A man who can hit a target precisely even in motion, is trying to keep still under your hand. The effort has sweat gathering at his temples. His hand closed around your wrist tugs you towards him, wordless, but you don't think words are needed. 

"You have bruised ribs, multiple lacerations, and an ego wound the size of Manhattan," you say, but lean towards him anyway. 

"Your bedside manner was better last night."

"Last night you were closer to death."

His mouth curves faintly, the split lip threatening to open with themotion. "I'm improving. Reward me."

The nerve of him. The absurd, devastating nerve of him, lying in your bed bandaged to hell, asking for you like he has any right, like he has every right. He has learned the existence of a spot in you where affection, fear and desire knot together, and has decided to press his thumb there. This is medically stupid, ethically worse, emotionally catastrophic. 

But his hand on your wrist makes you feel chosen by a creature who has bitten everyone else, torn ear flashing before your eyes once more. 

You bend down and kiss him. You mean to make it careful. A little thing. A test. Dex makes a sound into your mouth, and the kiss opens wider before you can organize your thoughts. His lips are split, so you keep the pressure light, but he chases you anyway, hungry in a ruined, restrained way that sends a wave of heat through your skin. His hand rises to the back of your neck. You expect him to pull your closer, but he just holds you there, that being somehow worse. His palm is warm, fingers trembling slightly against your hairline, whole body focusing on the point where your mouth meets his.

You pull back first, breathing hard, sharing oxygen. "Pain?" 

His eyes open slowly, hazel swallowed by black. "Yes."

"From the kiss?"

"No." 

"Dex."

"Everything hurts," he says, voice rough, like he's holding on by a thread. "That felt better."

The thread is thin. Your forehead lowers to his temple for one second. Just one. But it's enough to smell antiseptic on his skin, blood in his mouth, rain still caught somewhere in his hair. Enough to feel him exhale like the thread has finally snapped.

"This stays slow," you whisper against his mouth. "You tell me if I need to stop."

His thumb moves along your jaw, soft, so soft. "I'll behave."

That word is so gentle, that he has no practice giving, and you kiss him again before you can lose your nerve. Dex kisses like survival has always been a contact sport. Even injured, even careful, his mouth has a desperate steadiness to it, as if he is memorizing the limits of what he can take from you without breaking the spell. His hand slides from your neck to your waist, then stops. Waiting again.

You place his hand over your hip.

A sound leaves him, too soft to be a groan, too hungry to be a sigh, and his fingers dig into the flesh of your hips. Your thighs press together, his eye tracking the movement with a precision that makes your skin prickle. "Doc," he murmurs against your mouth.

"Mm?"

"You're shaking."

"So are you."

"I have an excuse."

A laugh from your mouth, but it comes out breathy and uneven, not nearly as cool as you need it to be. "Shut up."

You don't have a comeback, no sharp thing to say. You're letting Ben Poindexter slide his hand up under your shirt. There's an awful tenderness in being wanted by someone who rarely wants anything without destroying it. So, no. No sharp comeback. 

His palm spreads over your waist, careful of his taped fingers, of the bruises on his own knuckles, careful with you in a way that feels learned from watching rather than experience. His thumb brushes the lower curve of your breast through your bra, and your breath goes thin.

His gaze locks on that reaction. "Can I?" 

When you nod, his hand moves higher, cupping you with an aching slowness that makes your hips shift on the mattress. Dex's eyelid lowers, mouth parting slightly as if the feel of you under his palm is enough to daze him more than his injuries. He squeezes once, gentle at first, then firmer when your fingers curl into the sheet.

"Tell me," he says.

"Half-dead, but still you demand."

He ignores your words. "Tell me what you like."

The command, irritating from any other mouth, only drags heat through every inch of you now. You cover his hand with yours and guide him, showing him the pressure, the spot, how your nipple tightens when his thumb rubs over it through cotton. His attention is unbearable. "Like that," you breathe. "A little harder. Yeah, like that."

"He ever hear you sound like that?"

You kiss him harder, stealing those words from his mouth. He absorbs it with a shudder, hand tightening around your breast while his other reaches for your thigh. 

The position is so awkward, you help him a little to sit up. Two bodies learning each other in the small space of a spare room cot.

Jealousy is still there, you can feel it threaded through every question, but now it has heat behind it, a wounded need that makes him cling and challenge at once. You swing one leg over his hips before he can try to move too much, settling carefully over his thighs, your palms braced on either side of his shoulders so none of your weight hits his ribs.

For once, Bullseye looks struck.

You look down at him, at the swelling, the bruises, the blood cleaned from his mouth, the bandages you placed over skin you are now aching to touch. 

A man who tried to die last night is now staring at you like your thighs around him might be a reason to reconsider.

"This okay?" you ask, voice soft, not to startle him.

Dex swallows as he nuzzles closer, as if it was even possible. "Better than okay."

"Hands stay where they won't pull stitches."

A faint smile, soft enough to pull your heartstrings, looks up at you as if you have given him an order he would follow through fire. "Yes, doctor."

Your fingers tighten in the sheet beside his hip at his words. His thumb keeps moving on the bare strip of your stomach like he has found a place warm enough to keep him, palm heavy with feverish want and restraint that looks painful on him. 

When you reach for your shirt, his hand tightens at your thigh. "Slow… let me see."

You almost laugh at the nerve of him. When the shirt drags up your ribs, his eyes follow every inch as if the fabric itself has offended him by hiding you this long. You pull it over your head and toss it to your back. Your bra is plain, worn from too many overnight shifts, and the fact that he looks at it like lace from some altar makes heat crawl over your cheeks. "Say something," you murmur, fingers hovering near the clasp.

Dex's mouth parts, then closes again. The split along the lower one shines where he has worried it open with every kiss. "I'm trying to think like a man with blood left in his head."

"That bad?"

His thumb brushes under the curve of your breast, barely grazing the band of your bra. "Worse."

You unhook it before the embarrassment can make you hesitate. The straps slip down your arms, and Dex goes still. Your breasts fall free, nipples already tight from his earlier touch, and the look on his face makes you feel naked in a deeper place than skin. He reaches up with both hands, then winces at the pull across his ribs. His frustration flashes sharp in his jaw.

"Let me come to you," you offer.

He gives a tiny shake of his head, annoyed at himself. "I hate this."

"You hate being cared for."

"I hate having hands and not able to use them."

That almost makes you smile. You shift closer, one hand cupping the back of his head, other hand cupping your breast and guiding him towards it. "Then use your mouth."

Dex groans like that instruction broke him. His lips close around your nipple, careful for all of two seconds before the pull turns needy. His tongue works over you, slow at first, then firmer when your hips shift against his. He makes a sound into your skin, less like hunger, more comfort, like he has found some impossible warmth in you and intends to live there now. 

One of his hands finds your waist. The other slides around to your ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh he can reach. He cannot pull you hard without hurting himself, so he holds you in place and sucks like he needs the taste of you to steady him.

"Dex," you breathe, your hand tightening in his hair. His eye lifts without his mouth leaving you. "That's... yeah. Keep doing that."

He answers by drawing you deeper into his mouth, cheeks hollowing with a careful pull that sends a wet, aching spark down between your legs. The sound you make embarrasses you, and he hears it. Feels it. His hand slides lower, greedy over the curve of your ass. When you rock against him, his cock presses thick and hard under the loose pants you put on him hours earlier.

He releases your nipple with a soft sound, mouth shining. "Take these off me."

"Demanding, are we?"

His gaze drags up to meet yours. "Please. I need you closer, and these are in my way."

That is worse than anything filthy he could have said. Your fingers go to his waistband, tugging carefully, your focus split between wanting him and watching the tight pinch around his mouth whenever his ribs object. He helps as much as he can, lifting his hips an inch, hissing through his teeth. His cock slips free against his stomach, hard, already wet at the tip.

You stare for half a second too long. Even when he's injured, Dex notices everything. "Still want to scold me?"

"Constantly," you say, hating the softness in it, and wrap your hand around him.

His laugh turns into a groan, head dropping back against the wall while your thumb spreads the wetness at his tip down his shaft. He is warm in your hand, heavy, alive. The thought makes your throat ache, so you lean in and kiss him instead, messy and careful at once, your bare chest pressed near his bandages, your fingers stroking him until his hips twitch. "Stop moving," you whisper against his mouth.

"I barely moved."

"You moved enough." Your fingers don't stop their graze on his cock. 

"I missed you." His voice comes apart on the last word. "Grant me a little mercy."

You rise onto your knees instead of answering the smarter way, tugging at your pants with one impatient hand while the other stays braced near his shoulder. The fabric catches at your knees, and for one stupid second you almost laugh. This is so ungraceful, far from the kind of fantasy you would have let yourself have about him. Dex does not laugh. His gaze follows the slow drag of your pants down your thighs like he is watching something holy and obscene at once. By the time you kick them off near the foot of the cot, your underwear is damp enough to cling, and his fingers flex against your hips like he is fighting the urge to help. "Those too."

"You're very annoying for a man who can barely sit upright, you know?"

"Please." There's just desperation. 

You push your underwear down just enough at first, suddenly shy under his gaze, then give up and pull them off completely. Your slick coats your fingers when you touch yourself, and Dex's mouth parts like the sight has taken the last good thought from his head.

He watches entranced while you drag that wetness over his cock, making the slide easier, making a filthy shine of both of you. His hands flex against your hips, then still when you lower yourself over him.

The first stretch steals the words from both of you. You sink slowly, one hand braced on the wall over his shoulder, the other gripping his upper arm where the muscle tenses under your palm. Dex looks wrecked before you are even halfway down. His mouth hangs open, eyes fixed on your face, then dropping to where his cock disappears into you, then come back up as if he needs to see you take him more than he needs air. "Too much?" he asks.

Lowering anothet inch, you shake your head, thighs already trembling from the angle. "Just — just let me take my time."

"I'm yours," he says. "Take all of it."

The words do terrible things to you. You sink the rest of the way, cunt closing around him in hot, slick pulses. 

Dex's hands clamp down on your ass with a force that almost breaks through his weakness. His forehead falls against your sternum. He breathes there, mouth brushing your skin, then he turns his face and sucks one breast back between his lips while you start to ride him.

The cot creaks under. Your thighs burn almost immediately, cramped from sleep in the chair and the span of his hips beneath yours. Still, you lift and sink, taking him deeper each time. 

Dex tries to stay still. You feel the fight in him. His palms keep sliding under your ass, helping you rise, helping you drop, giving you just enough strength to keep moving without letting his ribs tear at him.

Then he thrusts up like he can't stop himself. A sharp little cry leaves you, pleasure striking so deep your knees almost give. Dex makes a pained sound in the same second, and your hand flies to his shoulder "Do that again and I swear I'll chain you back to the bed."

His face is tight, sweat shining at his temple. "I can take this."

"You are actively proving the opposite."

"Please." He says it into your breast, lips brushing the skin as he speaks, hands still cupping your ass. "Let me help. Sitting still while you do everything hurts worse."

Your scolding dies half-formed. If there's a tease, you could've gone through with it. But there's only need. Nodding your head against him, you let his hands guide you again. 

He lifts as much as he can with his arms, careful of his side, and you ride the motion, cunt sliding down his cock with a wet sound that makes both of you shudder. His mouth finds your nipple again, sucking harder, and you feel him everywhere, under your skin, in your thighs, between your ribs. "I'm close," you tell him.

His hand leaves your ass, searching between your bodies. But when he twists wrong, pain catches him. You grab his wrist and press it back to your hip. "No. I'll do it."

"I want to make you cum."

"You are." You touch your clit with slick fingers and circle it the way you need, riding him in short, deep rolls. "Just stay with me. That's what I need."

His head drops back against the wall, watching your hand move, watching his cock fill you, then watches your face break open around pleasure. "Look at me. P-please. Let me see you."

When your eyes find his, your orgasm hits you you hard enough to turn your thighs useless, cunt clenching around him in tight, wet pulls. 

Dex curses softly, hands locking on your ass as he spills inside you, hot and endless, body going rigid beneath yours while he tries to keep from thrusting. You keep your mouth against his, breathing into him until the shaking eases.

He says something too low for you to catch.

"What?"

His eye opens, glassy and spent. "Mine."

Your fingers slide along his jaw, careful around the bruising. "You don't get to say that unless you stay alive."

"I'll stay alive." The answer comes fast, hoarse, almost angry with how badly he means it.

Before you can respond, he catches the wrist of the hand you used on your clit and brings your fingers to his mouth. His lips close around them, sucking you off your own skin with a slow hunger that makes you clench again around his softening cock. 

Like he cannot bear another second apart, he pulls you down and kisses you, your taste on his tongue, his hand weak but certain at the back of your neck. His pulse slams under your palm where it's holding onto his neck. Alive. Alive. Alive.

Getting off him is slow and messy. His cum slides down your thigh while you stand naked beside the cot. 

Dex watches with a dazed, almost helpless look that follows you even when you grab a warm cloth. You sit beside him and clean his cock first, gentle around oversensitive skin, and he inhales like this care is harder to take than the sex. "I can do that," he mutters.

"You are injured. Shut up." You continue your path down his thighs. 

"You like telling me what to do."

"I like keeping you alive." You check the bandage at his side next, still naked, still dripping, fingers clinical even while his gaze keeps dropping to the mess he left between your thighs. "Looks okay. Nothing opened."

When you clean yourself, he watches your hand move between your thighs with a frown that is almost offended. "That should be me."

"You can do that when you aren't fighting for your life."

His eye lifts to yours, begging, exhausted. "Next time?"

"Next time." Next time means he's planning on staying. 

Your phone buzzes, the sound cutting through the moment. One small vibration against the metal cabinet, and Dex already knows. His eye shifts before yours does, tired and sharp at the same time, like the rest of him is sinking under but that sharp little blade in him still knows how to lift its head. "Matt," he says.

Offering him a bottle of water, you pick up your phone. Sure enough it is Matt.

"Tell him I didn't vanish." The bottle is unopened at his hands.

Sighing, you grab it from him, uncap and press it to his lips. Dex looks at you stunned, almost offended that you're holding a bottle to his mouth. "Drink."

Whatever response that was about to spill from his lips is interrupted by another buzz of your phone, currently on the cot beside him.

Dex's eyes drop to the screen. Bruised, naked under the too-thin blanket, barely keeping himself awake, and still he finds the one thing in the room pulling your attention away from him. "Persistent," he rasps.

"You're one to talk." The bottle stays at his mouth until he takes one grudging swallow, then another. His throat works, lashes lowering for a second.

The phone buzzes again.

Dex's mouth leaves the bottle. "Just — just reply him."

You pick up the phone with a sigh, and type back a response. 

Still here. Stable. 

Dex's eye tracks every letter. "That's all?"

"You want a performance review?"

His almost-smile tugs at the torn corner of his mouth. "Five stars. Charming. Didn't vanish."

You set the phone facedown beside his hip and lift the bottle again. "One more sip."

He groans, but drinks. This time he doesn't look offended. When a drop slips from the corner of his mouth, you wipe it with your thumb before thinking better of it. Dex catches your wrist before you can pull back. His grip has almost no strength left, but he holds you like letting go is the worst thing that could happen. "I behaved." 

Just two words, like that wounded dog setting its head down because it has run out of places, but has finally found home. Your eyes sting so fast it's embarrassing. You settle your palm against his cheek. "Yes, you did."

Matt's reply comes through, unseen and ignored.

Dex's eyes close as he nuzzles deeper into your palm, your wrist still trapped in his loose hold. And all you can think is, stay.

MY MASTERLIST

EXTRAS. you can tell i almost gave up in the end. also… my man is so puppy dog. prove me wrong…