❝luke 10:30❞
parts: next plot: "You’re standing in your nightclothes in the dark, crying over spilled fucking milk, with a fridge full of food and a dinner going cold upstairs. Dex could think of worse things to cry about in this city. For the first time since the money had changed hands, he kinda gets why your ex paid him to kill you." pairing: benjamin poindexter x gn!reader. cw: canon-divergent from daredevil: born again s2e7, slow burn, crackfic that takes itself seriously sometimes, dark themes, stalking, attempted murder, reader is getting divorced, dex is bored so he gets involved in your marital drama, dex finds you kinda hot when you’re angry, your ex sucks and dex is willing to do something about it. dex cannot be assed to remember your ex’s name. words: 3k.
a/n: to make a long story short: it's been a long week, and I spilled the rest of my taco meat earlier when I was making dinner and almost had a crash out about it, and then I thought "I'm disproportionately upset about this. what if [character I have been thinking about every waking moment of the past month] saw me almost start crying in the kitchen? would he think that was funny?" and then I opened the notes app and starting writing
He sees it falling before you do: the angle at which you're about to make a very big mistake.
You're looking elsewhere, mind not really here with the grumble in your belly and leftovers hot on the stove. You go to put the Tupperware away, stacking one on top of the other, and the bowl is not perfectly balanced—too close to the edge—and so it tips over with the weight and—
It survives the first tumble, bouncing off the fridge floor with top still intact, but then it hits the kitchen floor and the bowl bursts open in a spray of cold, brown taco meat.
He sees it falling before you do, so his eyes have already focused in on your reaction, and he catches the second of false hope before the realization kicks in. You hitch your breath, then go still. Your eyes flicker around the mess blending into the tile, and Dex snickers. It's funny. Funnier even more since you'd just finished putting in the final touches on the remaining half of last night's dinner. It looked delicious with its melting cheese and sour cream sitting in a perky, chilled scoop in the middle. You'd taken the time to put it together, and none of the time to gently put the rest away.
A few seconds pass. He takes in the hunch in your back as if you were leaning forward to clean it up. Then he takes in the stillness of you; you have been standing still since it fell. In disbelief? Your parted lips and wide eyes give away that you're processing the loss at half-speed. In his own little world one rooftop away, Dex reaches into his bag with the hand not holding up his scope and eats a chip. In solidarity, or in amusement.
A few more seconds pass, and it's less funny now. He thinks about the pebble that had slipped into his boot earlier, and how he ought to shake it out and shoot it through your window, shattering it in a perfect bullseye. That'd be a real mess. Then you'd stop looking at $8 and a half pound of ground beef gone to waste on your floor. Then, he'd give you something real to look... sad about?
Your brows pinch together, then un-pinch. Your knees bend but don't buckle, like you almost dropped to the floor in agony but thought better of it. You dropping to your knees on stone like that would surely give you something better to cry about, right? But you're crouching down, trying and failing to decide on crying or not, and Dex isn't really amused anymore but he keeps on watching.
He reaches into his bag for a hairpin this time, long and slender fake gold with a polished (and also probably fake) jade pendant at the end. Small gold chain links hang from the heavy end of the hairpin, dangling with plastic petal charms that glint peach and pink. It makes a gentle twinkling sound when the pendants swing into each other. He’d been given it for free on a trip through Chinatown earlier, some old man selling jewelry in the market who’d thought Dex would make a great mark. “For the lucky someone in your life,” he’d told him, when Dex didn’t immediately reach out to take it, “I’m doing you a favor, kid.”
“Kid” had been pushing it, but that man had also been pushing 80, and he imagined that to some people, he did still have a boyish charm about him.
He twirls the metal in between his fingers, making the pendants clink together, tangle and untangle, as he recalibrates. He’d hoped to get you with it right over that stove, that steaming hot dinner. Denied satisfaction. Maybe then he’d step inside and over your dead body and take it off your hands. But he can’t do that now.
When Dex brings the scope back to his eye, he frowns. Your cheeks are wet. Had he missed the best part?
You’re sweeping meat into a dustpan and picking bits from under the fridge (as far as your fingers’ll let you), tears running down your cheeks as you sweep and wipe and sweep and wipe. It’s more pathetic than anything. He almost wants to kill you now anyway just to put you out of your misery.
He watches you stand, frustratedly throwing away your trash, tying up the bag, and stomping… out. You were leaving.
He’d had the blueprint of your apartment complex pulled up on his phone, memorized hours ago while he’d helped himself to street food and killed time. He knew how long it would take you to get down to the dumpsters which just so happened to be in the alleyway between your building and his. He casually leans over the ledge, looking down into the dimly lit abyss. Killing you here would raise a lot less questions. It wouldn’t be as funny, but it’d be quick.
He takes a breath. Then three. By the fifth, he’s in the stairwell, headed down to meet you by the dead rat.
He makes it just in time, spilling out into the dark, because then there you are stomping out in Crocs and a hastily thrown on hoodie, not even checking your surroundings as you lug the half-empty garbage bag all the way over to the dumpster. With more force than necessary, you hurl the bag in, heaving a little with the effort, your mouth in a pathetic downturn as if you’re trying to not cry again.
Dex has got his hairpin still, but the chains are clenched in his hand to keep them from making a sound, and he is tucked just far enough behind the dumpster that you do not see him seeing you, nor how he lines up the sharp end of the pin for your eyeball. He wonders if he ought to let you keep it when he’s through. Your reparations for being his “lucky someone”.
And then you press the palms of your hands against your eyes and sob.
It really kills the mood for Dex; he drops the hairpin from where he’d been angling it and all but sucks his teeth at you. You’re standing in your nightclothes in the dark, crying over spilled fucking milk, with a fridge full of food and a dinner going cold upstairs. Dex could think of worse things to cry about in this city. For the first time since the money had changed hands, he kinda gets why your ex paid him to kill you.
His hand unclenches on it’s own, the chains falling loose, and—
You look up.
It’s concerning how quickly you spot him in the low light, barely a whisper of metal entangling with metal while the city roars as usual and yet you still see him. He’s in his suit which ought to make him blend into the night, but his eyes… you lock right onto them.
He thinks your mouth drops to say, “Who the fuck are you?” But then you know. The way you go still again like you did upstairs. You see the gun holster strapped to his chest, and perhaps the plenty of knives strapped about his person. The little gold hairpin in his hand is the least of your worries.
“Oh my God.” Is what you do say, and it’s pretty anticlimactic. A lot of people had said that same thing in the moments leading up to him killing them.
Dex steps out slowly, avoiding the light cast off the side of the building that bathes you in warm yellow. He stays to the shadows, circling you.
“Please don’t kill me. I didn’t— you’re not even here. I didn’t see…” You struggle to say something convincing, feet shuffling in place like you’d like to run away but you know he’d catch you before you could get far. Your eyes shift around the alley and then up to the sky. “Please don’t kill me.”
Dex studies you. The slight tremble in your legs, your wobbly lip. He ought to throw it now and get it over with. “You gonna cry again?”
You blink and lock eyes with him again. Almost immediately, he takes in the shine on your lashes. “No.” You stammer. “Not if you don’t want me to.”
A thought crosses his mind. He hushes it for his own sake. His fist clenches around the hairpin. Any time now. “Why would I want to kill you?”
You frown. “Because I… I saw…”
His eyebrow raises, and he feels some of that amusement from earlier slipping into his tone. “You saw?”
“I…” You swallow, and take a breath of air. “I imagine… if you’re out here in the dark… that maybe you were doing what I— someone would think you were doing. And you didn’t want anyone to see. But I won’t tell anyone.”
“There’s nothin’ to tell.” He gestures lazily to the alleyway. You look hesitant to follow his hand, afraid he’ll get you in that moment you’re left unaware. He twirls the hairpin now and your eyes catch it, light glinting off the metal. You seem fixated on it. He holds it up a little and you look between it and him, back and forth.
“So I can go?” His head tilts slightly. Your next words come out a little desperately, “Look. I didn’t see anything. As far as I know, you were out here skewering rats for all I care. I’m just nobody. I’m nobody.”
“People don’t put hits on nobodies.”
At that, you freeze. You were starting to take a step back toward the side door of your complex, and now you were blinking rapidly as if to quell your tears again. “What? Me?”
It had been a bad idea, but the bar was busy enough (and drunk enough) that no one could see his face straight. So, last night, when he’d taken refuge at the far end of the bar nursing a Negroni, he had hoped that no one would notice him for the rest of his miserable, boring night. And then this asshole came strutting up, piss drunk and smelling like both, and settled into the seat next to him.
A lot had been said by your ex in those twenty minutes of conversation (read: monologue). A complaint, a price, a legal term or two, and your name. And he remembered the most important thing: “I just wish someone would push ‘em down a sinkhole.”
It had interested him, then. His ears perked like a dog’s. “You want ‘em dead?”
Your ex heaves a deep sigh. “I mean… yeah. It’d make my life a hell of a lot easier, and this whole legal process a lot quicker.”
Dex sips from his glass, watching the room with his back to the wall. His drinking partner could barely sit up straight. “It would, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s what I’m trying to fuckin’ tell ya.”
“You won’t do it yourself, though?”
“‘Course not.” The man laughs, pointing to himself. “They’d know it was me. It’s always the fuckin’ husband.”
“You’d want it to look like an accident.”
“Or something. I don’t know.”
Dex watches the man closer now. The hairline pulling away, his gaunt cheeks and thin wallet on the bar. This man picked him to vent to. He doesn’t even know who Dex is. He’d be lucky if he knew where he was.
And Dex thinks that—at least from what little he bothered to remember from the conversation—you probably deserved it. Trying to take the guy’s life savings. Ruining his good name with his family. You wanted the divorce to be messy, to hurt. You wanted him dead. Right? So maybe he ought to do this guy a favor. That would be nice, right? A Good Samaritan would do the same.
So Dex scratches his nose and nudges the man with his elbow. “I’ll do it for $350.”
The man snorts. “Man, you got jokes.”
“It’s a good deal. $350 for the rest of it.”
Your ex looked at him with little recognition. A light was on but no one was home. Dex thinks for a moment that maybe he might be… taking advantage of this guy.
But was that true? He was going to help him! And only for a third of his rent.
Dex watches him press a hand to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. The man wobbles in his seat. “Yeah. Three hundred for you to go push my ex down a sinkhole.”
“$350, and I’ll drop them dead in their apartment.”
The man’s face turns serious. Not sober, but serious. “To make it look like an accident?”
Dex’s eyes squint. Back in the FBI, you had to have good reason to put a bullet through someone's head. As Fisk’s plaything, he was allowed all the grandeur Fisk’s money could afford (and that was a lot of money), but he was restricted, playing the role of rogue vigilante. As Murdock’s knight and shining armor, he’d killed AVTF agents with a weightless flair he hadn’t been able to indulge in before, but even that took restraint. And now, as a wanted criminal with no one in his corner, if he wanted to kill again, he’d have to behave again. Be reasonable. Be hidden. There were limits to how much fun he could have with this one, so he’d squeeze out every last drop. He’d put up with it. Just like a Good Samaritan would.
Somewhere within that bar, a deal had been made. And now here you were and his pockets that little bit thicker. “You’re taking a lot in the divorce. Some would say it’s a little unfair.”
It happens in an instant. One second, you’re quivering, nervous, hugging yourself like it’d save you a painful death. The next? Your shoulders drop. Your eyes narrow. You look him dead on and it’s like something finally clicks for you. “No. You’re shitting me. Kyle?” So that was his name. Dex files it away, surely to be lost to time in an hour or so. “This has to be a prank. You’re not the real Bullseye. There’s no way he’d be this stupid.”
You say “stupid” with such venom that Dex almost laughs. “You sure?”
To make your point, you stalk right up to him and it makes his lips twitch into a smile under the mask. “Fucking positive. I don’t know how much he paid you to come out here in a ski mask and khakis to scare me, but you can tell him I said ‘Go to hell’. I invested more in him and that stupid falafel business than he ever did in our marriage! And I promise the next time I see him in court, I’m taking the fucking food truck with me.”
“Falafels.”
“Yeah?”
Dex probably should’ve paid more attention to Ken last night. “So, let me get this straight,” He leans against the dumpster, crossing one leg over the other. “Your ex-husband runs a falafel food truck—“
“Ran.”
“Ran a falafel food truck. Didn’t do well. And you tried to take all his money in the divorce?”
“It was my fucking money. He couldn’t get the business off the ground without all the loans I cosigned for him. I pulled strings with my cousin to get him that truck. I paid all his bills with my job while he squandered what little he had on chickpeas! And then he had the gall to ask for a divorce because he said I made him feel like a failure? Of course I’m taking everything. It’s mine.”
Unlike in the bar, Dex can’t help but keep track of every word you say. Perhaps the incredulity of the situation was hitting him harder than he expected it to, or perhaps the sudden fire burning out your fear had gotten him… excited. Giggly, even. You had singlehandedly squashed his boredom in ten minutes flat.
“That’s… a lot.”
You laugh, humorless. “You’re telling me. He’s telling all our friends how much of a major asshole I am. I have barely anyone in my corner now.” Your eyes flicker to his, wetting again, and then to the dumpster. “And then I get home and I…”
Dex frowns. The mood sours for him again, no longer having as much fun now that you’re somber again. He doesn’t much know what to say, and he feels a little less eager to kill you now. He fishes in the depths of his vocabulary for something familiar. “I’m sorry. That must be really hard.”
You look at him like he’s grown two heads. Then, you sigh. “No. I’m sorry. You probably get paid by the hour to dress up for birthday parties, huh? Look, I don’t know how much he paid you to stand out here and menace me but just go home. Tell him you got me real good, whatever. Just go home.”
He could. He’d taken Karl’s money and left the drunk bastard with a promise that the job would be done in the next 36 hours. He’d taken Karl’s number, but he could block him. He could keep that $350 and the biggest spike of excitement he’s had in weeks and take it all the way home. Leave this whole thing in the alleyway between your building and “his”.
He could do that.
“I could kill him for you.”
You blink. Scoff. “Dude.”
“I’m serious,” He promises. “I can make it look like an accident. You get it all in the settlement. Probably.”
You look like you’ve accepted some double meaning to his words, your face relaxing as you nod your head in exaggeration. “Oh, yeah? How much would I owe you?”
“Consider it a favor.”
You laugh. The wind whistles between the buildings and you inch closer, raising a finger to poke at his chest above his gun, which, perhaps, you thought was all plastic. You’re close enough that he can smell the fresh shower you’d taken, from when he’d spied you creeping out of the steam a half-hour ago. With all this hindsight, he struggled to see what Kyle had to complain about with you. Maybe that’s what falafels did to a guy.
You look at him. His mask can’t hide the crow’s feet at his eyes, or the way they deepen with his hidden smile. A seriousness begins to creep into your expression. Suspicion. Confusion. “Okay. Seriously. Who are you?”
“A Good Samaritan.”
