#perfectsonnets

Here in Hell’s Kitchen he’s not exactly spoiled for choice, and after hours of poring over pictures of lifeless girls and their lifeless eyes and listening to Jack float dead end theory after dead end theory Will’s trigger finger is itching. 

So this isn’t the same person, at least not technically, but it’s the same type of person, and that’s good enough. A rose by any other name and all that. Will presses the muzzle of his gun between the man’s eyes, anticipating the hot spray of blood across his face like a benediction, and that piece of human filth is stammering something stupid about how he really did lose a dog named Candy, but it’s not Will’s first rodeo. He might have bought it years ago, might have settled for some half measure and gone home with that itch still unsatisfied, but now--

“You’re going to admit what you are,” he says quietly, cocking the hammer back, and the tune changes. Now it was a mistake, now it’s he’ll never touch another kid again, now he’ll leave town and never come back. Easy, clean, just like it’s been countless times, except this time they’re not alone. Will curses silently under his breath, turns to aim his gun into the darkness behind them instead.

bill’s secretary knows to let him in when he shows up, even though she’s getting her things ready to go for the night and closing up the office. he leans in the door as he watches billy move about the place, knowing he’d heard him come in. unlike billy, frank doesn’t come in silence, never has, can’t sneak and ambush worth shit. they both know it.

he takes one of his dogtags in his hand, eyes squinting as he makes the other out. 

the hand drops, gesturing to the bench adjacent from him with a nod of his head.

“you look very tense, dexter.” there’s a glint of amusement that teeters on the precipice of something else in his eyes, teeth bared in a sharp grin. luckily, isaak’s chosen a booth this time, far away from the speakers where britney spears’ discography blares loudly and away from the ebb and flow of the dance floor. he’d say it was intimate if he was ready for that yet, but it is, tucked away in the corner. 

he squints when he looks at him, reading the lines of his face, the veins in his forehead. universal signs of a drudging day. he supposes he should feel flattered that this is where dexter comes to alleviate some of that. 

She’s less alone now than she’s been for years, less alone here in this cheap apartment she wants to hate than she’s been on the slopes of the Alps, in the streets of Paris or by the river in Phnom Penh--she can’t hate it, though, because it smells like him. And right now, just the two of them with the sun streaming through the windows, she can almost pretend that she never lost him, that they’re still meant to be. 

She takes the mug he offers, wrapping her hands around it like it could somehow keep her warm, knows it’s going to be the same dishwater he drank in college no matter how many artisan roasts she bought him and sips it anyway. 

“Your coffee is worse than your beer. Have I taught you nothing?” Elektra keeps her voice light, pretends she doesn’t hear the ache in his voice when he answers her, pretends she doesn’t know how badly she hurt him all those years ago. 

“It means you still haven’t learned, Matthew. Maybe that expensive education paid off less than I thought.” She reaches out, lays a hand on the side of his face, and she’s as lost as she’d been that night in Roscoe Sweeney’s mansion, blood rushing in her ears, the heart she was never supposed to have pleading see me, choose me--

“I wasn’t coerced. I won’t say I was coerced.” Murdock hasn’t said anything about coercion, not yet, but Will does. A preemptive strike, so to speak, because it’s the most logical assumption and certainly the most logical defense, regardless of the truth of the thing. A jury might even buy it too, after everything, after Bedelia du Maurier set the precedent with her book tour. It would be easier to think he was drugged or intimidated or simply taken in by a master manipulator, than acknowledge the truth.

He could get up on the stand and lie, could probably even make them believe every halting, tremulous, regret-ridden word. Distasteful. Humiliating. A denial that has no place at the table in this life. And he’ll be damned if he tells any jury that it wasn’t his idea, that he didn’t want it, that abusers and murderers and the corrupt officers down at his old precinct didn’t deserve to die. 

Even without any murder charges, he’s facing years in prison. And he expects no leniency if he’s convicted in facilitating the escape of the 21st century’s most notorious serial killer.

Will folds his shackled hands on the table in front of him, looks up at his lawyer with a quizzical expression short of a smile and his head tilted in polite curiosity. 

            the night shift cop runs like clockwork. the night nurse goes in to check on billy. cop peaces out , goes to take a piss and get some coffee from the machine down the hall. comes back about seven minutes later , long after the night nurse has skipped off to the next patient. takes his seat outside the room , goes back to his crossword. no big deal. it’s quiet. nothing to worry about. henry knows he won’t go in the room because he’s watched security footage of him every night from the last two weeks. watched it and told himself that he was doing it to make sure billy wasn’t going anywhere. watched it and told himself that it wasn’t enough satiate his curiosity while knowing it wasn’t. wouldn’t be. couldn’t be.

Will doesn’t mask his disapproval when Jack tells him they’ll be working in cooperation with a private security company--a euphemism for military contractors, no better than mercenaries who kill for profit--but Jack remains unmoved. It’s a familiar dance, by now--Jack more or less tolerates Will’s insubordination, and Will’s long been resigned to the fact that his objections won’t actually change Jack’s mind about anything. So here they find themselves waiting to be formally introduced to Anvil’s CEO. Will doesn’t like the name any more than he likes their business, though he can recognize that, to a certain base, it would have some appeal. He banishes all thoughts of poetic justice, taps his foot impatiently against the shining wood floor. 

Billy Russo has piercing, beetle-black eyes, cuts a sharp figure in his tailored bespoke suit with not a hair out of place. A pretty face for an ugly business--though nothing ever sticks to him, that much is clear--and something about his bright, wolfish smile makes Will’s skin crawl. 

He folds his arms across his chest in deliberate refusal of Russo’s handshake--nothing left open to interpretation, nothing that could possibly be mistaken for awkwardness or a misreading of social cues.