#ddba s2

Chapter 4

Y/N

After returning from Malibu, I couldn't stop thinking about his message. "Your route in California has been tracked." It sounded like an FBI report, but beneath the dry tone lay something far more complex and dangerous. Benjamin Poindexter was obsessed with control, and for some reason, I had become part of that control.

On Tuesday, the rain poured down nonstop in Hell's Kitchen. At midday, when most of the employees had gone to the cafeteria, I saw Dex. He was standing by the window in the empty hallway, his shoulder pressed against the wall. His fingers nervously fiddled with an ordinary paper clip, bending and unbending it with alarming, precise regularity.

I exhaled, steeling myself, and approached him.

"Dex."

He turned his head sharply. The paper clip in his fingers instantly froze. "Y/N. You're back on schedule. There was a four-minute delay due to traffic on Fifth Avenue."

"Yes, New York City traffic is inevitable chaos," I smiled softly, taking a step closer. "Listen... Did you have lunch today?"

He frowned, as if I'd asked him something in a foreign language.

"Lunch is scheduled for 1:00 PM. Meals: protein, complex carbohydrates, 500 milliliters of water."

"Great. It's already 1:05 PM. There's a small Italian place two blocks from here. It's quiet, almost deserted, and they make amazing pasta. Come with me?"

Dex froze. I could see the gears clashing in his head: FBI regulations, his own personal rules, a fear of social distancing, and... a desire to be close." “I'm on duty. My job is perimeter security.” “Agent Lima will relieve you for thirty minutes, I already asked him,” I replied, bowing my head slightly. “It's just lunch, Benjamin. No interrogations, no paperwork.” He was silent for five long seconds. His gaze scanned my face, searching for a catch. Finding none, he nodded slightly.

“Thirty minutes. No more.” The diner was indeed half empty. We sat at a small table in the very corner. Dex sat perfectly upright, his arms resting parallel to each other on the table. When the waiter brought silverware, Benjamin first carefully adjusted his fork and knife, aligning them with the edge of the napkin at a ninety-degree angle.

Noticing this, I said nothing. I merely quietly pushed a straw toward him for his drink. "Your father..." Dex suddenly said, not looking up from his plate. "Does he know you're here with me?"

"No," I answered sincerely. "And if he did, he'd send a couple of jets. But this is my life, Dex. Dad loves me, but his protection sometimes feels like steel armor, making it hard to breathe."

Dex looked up at me. Something akin to understanding flickered in his gray eyes.

"Armor protects against blows," he said quietly. "Without it... you're too easily broken."

"Perhaps," I chuckled, looking down at my pasta. "But if you're always in armor, you'll never feel warmth. You hide too, Dex. Behind your uniform, behind rules, behind straight lines."

He froze abruptly, fork in hand. The pulse in his neck quickened.

​"I need rules," a hard, defensive note crept into his voice. "Without them... everything falls apart."

​"I'm not suggesting we break them," I interrupted him softly, covering his cold palm with my own.

​Dex flinched at the touch, as if struck by an electric shock, but he didn't pull his hand away. He looked at my fingers on the back of his hand as if it were the most complex and incomprehensible physical phenomenon he'd ever encountered.

​"I just want you to know," I whispered, "that with me, you don't have to pretend to be the perfect soldier.

Benjamin Poindexter

Her hand was warm.

This was against the rules. FBI internal regulations prohibit physical contact with a protected subject. My personal rules prohibit allowing people within two meters.

But when her fingers touched my skin, the noise in my head—that eternal, damned hum of screams, spilled coffee, and rustling tapes—simply shut off. There was absolute, ringing silence.

Pulse: 68 beats per minute. Below normal.

I looked at Y/N. She was eating pasta, awkwardly adjusting a stray strand of hair. There was no falsehood in her. She wasn't trying to pry my secrets, like the psychologists in the army. She wasn't afraid of me, like Illena. She... accepted my order.

"Benji, find the empathic anchor," Dr. Mercer's voice came back.

Now I knew who my anchor was. Not the tapes. Not my FBI service.

She.

If anyone tries to harm her—Fiske, street thugs, or even her own father, who wants to take her from me—I will destroy them. I will count to ten and clear her perimeter of any chaos.

As we walked out of the diner and back into the New York rain, I took a step closer to her, opening the larger umbrella over her head, letting the drops run down my own shoulder.

"Dex, you're getting wet!" she cried, trying to move the umbrella.

"It's normal," I replied. My voice was firm. "The main thing is that you stay dry." She smiled. And that smile is imprinted in my memory like a clear, perfect frame that I will replay in my head again and again.

Y/N

I've always felt that gaze. That same heavy, fixating gaze that leaves no blind spots. Deep down, I already knew Benjamin was watching me far more closely than FBI protocol required. The message about California, the remark about taking the route through the backyard... A normal agent wouldn't behave like that. But I didn't believe he wanted to harm me. There was no malice or greed in it. It was the desperation of a man grasping for the only lifeline in a storm.

I wanted to help him. Really. Not as a lawyer, not as Tony Stark's daughter, but simply as someone who knows how painful it is when your inner world crumbles.

Around four o'clock on Thursday, Agent Radeh called Dex in for an emergency briefing. Taking advantage of the fact that the duty room was empty, I decided to bring him his favorite black coffee without sugar from a trusted coffee shop. The door to the break room was slightly ajar. I quietly pushed it open with the toe of my shoe and walked in.

"Dex?" I breathed.

The room was empty. His work clipboard and his leather organizer lay open on the desk. I hadn't meant to spy, honestly. But my gaze accidentally caught something sticking out from the file.

It was a photograph. My photograph.

The hand holding the coffee cup froze. I walked closer and slowly lowered the mug onto the edge of the table. My fingers trembled slightly as I pulled out the photos.

They weren't just photographs. There was my entire life, dissected with frightening, meticulous precision. A photo of me with my dad at the entrance to the Tower. A shot taken through the glass of the coffee shop. A photo of me laughing on a street in Malibu—clearly taken from a surveillance camera or through a powerful lens.

Beneath the photos, in neat, perfect, blueprint-like handwriting, were tables:

"Y/N. Sleep time: 6-7 hours. Risk level: high (no armor). Center of gravity: family loyalty. Acceptable distance: 0.5 meters. In case of threat: neutralize the target of chaos within 1.2 seconds."

My heart pounded somewhere in my throat. Fear—pure, sticky fear—paralyzed me for a second. It was full-blown stalking. He knew when I drank water, when I changed my route, when I sighed.

But then I looked at the next sheet. There were no threats. There were his own notes, scribbled in a jagged, shaky hand:

"If she leaves, the silence will disappear. Y/N is my center. Stick to the rules. "Don't harm her. Protect her."

Fear gave way to a deafening, piercing pity. He wasn't a monster. He was a gravely, deeply ill man, struggling to cling to the edge of a cliff, and that edge was me.

A quiet, measured step sounded behind me. The door closed.

Benjamin Poindexter

The lock clicked.

I froze in the doorway. Y/N stood by my desk. She held pages from my organizer. My diagrams. My notes. My obsession.

My entire system, weeks in the making, collapsed in a second. The noise in my head returned with such force, as if a lathe had hit my skull. My ears rang. My pulse: 110. 120.

Chaos.

She saw everything. Now she knows. She will call my father. Stark will fly in and destroy me. I will be suspended, locked up, stripped of my uniform, stripped of my structure. Stripped of her.

“You... shouldn’t have touched this,” I whispered. My voice trembled treacherously. My fingers clenched into fists. I took two quick, heavy steps forward. “This is... a violation. This is confidential. Put it down!”

​I looked wild. I knew it. My jaw clenched, my eyes widened, and my breathing became ragged, like a cornered animal. Any normal person in her place would have been screaming or running for the door.

​But Y/N didn’t run. She didn’t even flinch.

​She slowly lowered the papers onto the table, took a step toward me, and looked up at me with her surprisingly warm brown eyes. There was no disgust in them. There was no horror.

​“Benjamin...” she said quietly, very softly. “I’ve known for a long time.”

​I froze, as if struck dead. Stupor gripped my body.

​“What?” I managed to force out.

​“You were following me.” "In the coffee shop, near my house, even in Malibu," she took another step, closing the distance between us to half a meter. "I felt your gaze. At first, it was terrifying. But now I see those recordings... Dex, you're in a lot of pain, right? There's too much noise in your head."

​I swallowed the dry lump in my throat. Dr. Mercer's voice in my head finally fell silent, giving way to her living voice.

​"I... I need order," I said with difficulty, looking down at her hands. "You... you give me silence. If you tell your father... if they take me away... I won't be able to maintain control."

​"I won't tell Dad anything," Y/N replied firmly.

​She reached out and gently, weightlessly touched my wrist—where my pulse was pounding. Her touch sent a wave of warmth up my forearm, and that damned buzzing in my ears slowly began to subside.

​“I won’t tell him, Benjamin. And I won’t run away. But you need help. Real help. We can’t continue like this as if everything is fine. Let’s find a way to get through this together? Without surveillance. Without fear.”

​I looked at her fingers on my wrist. My pulse began to slow: 95... 85... 74.

​She knew about my darkness. She saw the most shameful, the most terrifying fragments of my mind—and instead of destroying me, she offered her hand. For the first time in my life, someone wasn’t just demanding I be the perfect soldier, but wanted to fix me.

this scene changed lives what can i say 😮‍💨

Series: Part 1 of The Only Church for Sinners is Trial by Fire Summary:

After Poindexter’s brush with death following the assassination of Vanessa Fisk, he finds refuge in Matt’s hideout. His quest for penance leads him to search for a new North Star in the Devil himself. Matt reluctantly agrees, but deeper feelings are revealed on both sides…

AKA my first ever Dexmatt fanfic... I’m hoping to turn it into a full series, lmk what you think

Chapter 3

Benjamin Poindexter

​Every object has its own route. The route is security.

​I started keeping a diary of her movements on Tuesday. Not for the FBI. Not for Radeh's reports. For myself. I needed to know exactly where Y/N was when I wasn't around, to keep the noise level in my head at 70 beats per minute.

​7:45 AM — Y/N exits Stark Tower. Black Cadillac. Happy at the wheel.

​8:12 AM — Coffee shop on the corner of 44th and 8th. Y/N buys two large cinnamon cappuccinos. Spills three drops on a napkin. Chaos.

​8:25 AM — Entrance to the DA's office.

​I had the day off today, but I couldn't stay in the apartment. Without a purpose, the walls loomed around me, and Dr. Mercer's voice seemed too far away. So I put on civilian clothes: a gray, nondescript jacket, a cap. At forty meters, I'm perfect. I blend into the New York grime.

​I stood in the shade of a newsstand across from the DA's office. In my pocket were compact binoculars and a stopwatch.

​At 1:00 PM, she went out for lunch. A colleague was with her—a young law school intern who laughed too loudly and walked too close to her. My hand in my pocket clenched into a fist. My fingers closed on a heavy steel coin. Distance: thirty-five meters. Angle: thirty degrees. Wind: northwest, two meters per second. If I tossed the coin right now, it would enter his temple directly through the carotid artery.

​"Benji, find the pattern. This is a violation of the rules," Mercer's calm voice sounded in my head.

​I closed my eyes. Inhale. Exhale.

​I didn't toss a coin. I simply followed them, three blocks behind. Watched her smile, adjust her scarf, choose a salad. She didn't know I was there. My presence was her invisible shield. I spotted every blind corner, every suspicious car on the street. If her father couldn't keep her 100% safe without his iron armor, I would.

Y/N

I've had this strange, sticky feeling for the last three days. A personal paranoia.

I constantly felt like someone was looking at the back of my head. When I left the coffee shop, when I walked through the park, when I got into Happy's car. I turned around sharply several times, but all I saw were New Yorkers scurrying back and forth, bundled up in coats.

"Y/N, are you okay? You've been fiddling with that key ring in your hand all evening," Dad tore himself away from the hologram and looked at me from across the table.

"Huh? Yes, Dad. Just... overworked," I tried to smile and sipped my cold tea. "Lots of paperwork." "If that prosecutor of yours is squeezing you dry, I'll crush his office," Tony muttered, but his eyes gleamed with the usual warm concern. "How about taking a day off? We'll fly to Malibu for the weekend? Just you, me, and the ocean. Without the FBI and those surly agents."

"I'll think about it, Dad. Honestly," I walked over and hugged him from behind, burying my nose in his shoulder. He always smelled of expensive perfume and solder paste. I was safe at home. But the moment I stepped outside...

The next morning, I met Dex again at the prosecutor's office. He was in uniform, stoic, and crisply pressed.

"Good morning, Agent Poindexter," I said quietly, passing his post by the archives.

"Good morning, Y/N," he replied.

He called me by my name for the first time at work. His voice was even, but when I looked at him, a chill washed over me. His gaze... he wasn't just looking at me. He scanned every detail of my clothing, frowned when he noticed my new scarf, and his pupils dilated slightly.

​"You changed the route from the parking lot," he suddenly said, his voice devoid of the tiredness of a man from an empty apartment. It was the tone of an appraiser. "You came through the backyard, not the main entrance. The lighting there is poor."

​I froze, clutching the folder in my hands.

​"Where are you from... you were on duty on the fourth floor, Benjamin?"

​Dex didn't blink. His face remained a complete, impenetrable mask.

​"I am responsible for monitoring the perimeter," he stated, taking a step toward me. "Always."

Y/N

The sound of the ocean always helped me breathe freely. Unlike the roaring, smog-choked, and anxious New York, Malibu breathed freely. Dad kept his promise: a morning flight on a private jet, and here we were, sitting on the terrace of our California home.

Tony looked different than he had in the Tower. He was wearing simple linen pants and a stretched-out T-shirt, holding a mug of black coffee, and there was a rare peace in his eyes.

"So, intern? Do you miss your Hell's Kitchen?" he winked at me, leaning on the railing and gazing at the waves. "I'm sure the prosecutor is crying into his pillow without your perfect file sorting."

"Dad, I've only been here four hours," I grinned, tucking my feet under me in the rocking chair. "But honestly... it's so quiet here, it's even unusual."

"Silence—that's what makes flying across the country worth it," Dad came up to me, placed his hand on my shoulder, and squeezed it lightly. "I've seen how overwhelmed you've been these past few weeks, Y/N. You looked like... like someone was chasing you. If there's a problem at work or someone's being rude, just say so. I could buy this prosecutor's office and turn it into an art gallery in five minutes."

"It's fine, really. Just a lot of work," I lied, looking out at the endless blue water.

I couldn't tell him about that creepy feeling of someone staring at the back of my head that had haunted me in New York. I couldn't tell anyone about Benjamin Poindexter either—his cold, scanning gaze, his daytime comment about my route through the backyard, and the deep, broken darkness I saw in his apartment. If Tony found out even a tenth of it, Dex would be destroyed or locked away in a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. prison. And I... for some completely illogical reason, didn't want that.

That evening, we grilled meat, argued about '80s cinema, and just laughed—the way only the two of us could. No Iron Man suits, no FBI, no law. Tony was just my dad, caring and funny.

But around midnight, when Dad went into the underground workshop to "tinker with some parts," I gave in to a strange impulse. I pulled out my phone and opened the prosecutor's office work chat. Dex's number was in my contacts.

​I hesitated, but then wrote a short message:

​"Warm in Malibu. Hope New York is calm."

​The reply came exactly sixteen seconds later.

​"New York City is 14 degrees. Wind gusts 5 m/s. No breaches of the Stark Tower perimeter have been detected. Your route in California has been monitored via FBI communications for your safety. Return on schedule."

​I stared at the screen. "Your route in California has been monitored."

​These words sent an icy chill down my spine. He wasn't just working a shift in New York. He was still tracking me, even three thousand miles away.

Benjamin Poindexter

Distance is chaos. Three thousand, two hundred miles.

When Y/N boarded the plane, my heart rate rose to 88 beats per minute. Dr. Mercer's voice on the iPod didn't help. I paced my apartment: four steps to the window, four steps to the wall.

One. Two. Three. Four.

New York had become too loud without her. Wilson Fisk, through his lawyers, had issued new instructions to the FBI. Agent Radeh was bustling. The city was buzzing. The only constant in my head these past weeks had become her—her even voice, her scent of vanilla, her habit of pouring coffee and looking at me without fear.

I had no right to fly to California. It would have been a direct violation of orders and a blown cover. But I had connected to a secure FBI database that tracks GPS trackers in escort vehicles and on the mobile devices of protected individuals.

Her dot glowed green on the map of Malibu.

When her message appeared on my screen—"Warm in Malibu. Hope New York is calm"—the noise in my head instantly died down. Absolute, perfect silence reigned. My pulse dropped to 72.

She thought of me. There, next to her all-powerful father, on the ocean shore, she wrote to me.