Only For The Lonely

He starts paying attention to you during fights.

You’re always on-scene before him.

You don’t hit anyone in a way that matters.

You never once wear a mask. You stand in front of other vigilantes and block exclusively. No matter how hard you’re hit, no matter how many times. You use what’s around you as fodder and don’t carry any weapons. When you have a gun, it’s taken from someone else. it’s for cover. You miss every time on purpose and yell sorry when you accidentally shoot someone.

It’s almost a miracle when you make it out of confrontations without debilitating head trauma, but when you do, you stick around to ask how Dex is doing, giving him updates about your life that he doesn’t ask for but patiently sits through anyway.

He didn’t have to do much thinking after Minty’s to realize having someone to talk to feels better than being alone. So he stays. Laughs, listens. Makes up stories about things he doesn’t actually do, people he doesn’t really know or interact with, and you smile and believe him.

You’re excited for life. Always optimistic, always supportive, always touching him casually on the shoulder, on the back, grabbing his hand.

He comes to learn you do that with everyone, and doesn’t know if he should be happy you count him as safe enough to treat like everyone else, or upset that he isn’t the exception to some kind of rule.

He smiles anyway.

Touches you back.

You reward him for the effort with your continued presence in his day to day life. With your news from the real world, where he isn’t allowed to exist;

Bob, whoever that is, is apparently doing great in therapy.

There’s a new Chinese place you want to try.

You just bought a snake named Clementine.

You’ve been oil painting for years but you want to try acrylics soon.

You don’t always respond when he messages you first, but he doesn’t bring up the way his chest tightens when he checks his phone to the absence of notifications from you.

He’s being good. He doesn’t want to scare you. Doesn’t want to lose the approximation of peace the two of you have built to indulge his overzealous need to have access to the things that make him feel human.

It’s all very domestic. Comforting. until he sees a notification from a familiar name appear on your screen— one you frown at. You narrow. The wide spectrum of your happiness gone in a blink and replaced by blank space like a void around you as your fingers tap out a long message. the realization arrives that your concern and attention is temporary, and that someone could take it you from him at a moment’s notice.

It happens the morning after the second time he picks you up from the asphalt. He has a bit more respect. Bridal style instead of slinging you over his shoulder like a dead deer. You’re an integral part of his routine and his routine is sacred.

He watches intermittently as you toss and turn all night; Notices a rabbit’s foot hanging off your belt that wasn’t there last time.

He places a name brand women’s shampoo and conditioner on the lip of the bathtub that you playfully stick straight in the trash, and you walk out of his bathroom smelling of him again.

The food he ordered arrives while you dry off, so he spreads it out on his table for you with barely any room left for your elbows or his plate, which is a problem he adds to the list of improvements to make in your honor. There is actual coffee this time, the good kind, which he hands to you in a mug the same dark grey as your as your suit.

You notice the details.

He can tell you do by the way you grin into the warm ceramic as if it’s told you a secret. By the way your palm runs across the arm of the second chair he bought so you could eat together.

It isn’t much, and he can certainly afford to do better, but he doesn’t spend much time here as it is. There hadn’t been a reason to accumulate more than he could salvage from Craigslist.

Until you.

You with your dark grey suit and your easy smile and badly timed jokes that forgo the foundation of any conversation you insert them into, with your promise of enrichment that he as a caged animal desperately needs. You don’t judge him. You don’t press issues. He wants more of that. Needs it.

He’s telling you about his time in the FBI when it happens. You’re nodding along, asking relevant questions and looking him in the eyes, enthusiastic and interested as always.

You’re already two containers of lo mein deep, sounds of approval that come deep from in your chest warming his, when your screen lights up. A message from Bob.

His mood darkens along with yours, and he doesn’t get to glimpse the subject matter before the phone is in your hand, your fingers flying across the keyboard.

You mumble an apology for a response that takes too long. The silence stretches, and Dex stops eating to watch the subtle changes in your face. You don’t even notice him staring, and it makes him want to peel his skin off. He’s right there in front of you, but your focus has moved to something— someone who isn’t even in the room.

The two of you sit there with nothing but the sound of your tapping and his breathing for a few minutes. It takes a while after you set it down to fully come back to him. Your rays of sunshine spreading slowly but surely with a deep, even breath.

“Something wrong?” He asks.

You shake your head and smile. “No, it’s nothing.”

And, though he knows it’s a lie, Dex can do nothing but nod in return.

Another notification comes as soon as you finally begin eating again. Dex sees the icon on your upturned screen, and bristles. It’s a dating app. More competition for your care and patience. “Trying out the dating scene?”

“Failing at the dating scene,” you correct him, leaning to lazily check another bright little notification. He gets to read this one.

Toby: down to meet up?

“Why’s that?” He asks, mouth full, eyes down, fork scraping through the fried eggs he’d made for himself, because somehow he’s convinced that not giving the appearance of his undivided attention will make him seem softer. Easier to share with.

You go back to your own food too, visibly unbothered. And that bothers him. “I guess my standards are too high.”

The mask of indifference drops as quickly as it’s raised and Dex locks onto that like a dog on a bite-suit. without meaning to, he leans forward. His fork lowers to his plate. “What are they?”

You shrug, talking around a mouthful of broccoli. “Tall, handsome, rich, can bend a pry bar in half with his bare hands, yadda yadda.”

Dex runs through his catalogue of randomly generated responses and finds none of them are good enough. He doesn’t like the answer. It’s hollow and brittle and he can tell you didn’t take it as seriously as he’d meant it. So he inserts himself into your orbit, and is disappointed again by the reply he gets. “Guess that takes me out of the running then,”

You don’t flinch. Wheels don’t turn in your head, no blush appears on your cheeks, none of the things he’d wanted actually happen. You just move on to your next plate of food and hum. “Two out of four’s not bad.”

“Three out of four.” He says sharply, oxygen evaporating from his lungs. His palm runs over his thighs under the guise of smoothing the fabric, fingers twitching at the outline of his phone.

He could show you. He could wave the number in his bank account in your face to prove a point, have the building torn down and rebuilt however you wanted in an urgent display of wealth.

You have friends in high places, and he is one of them.

He could watch your face, barbecue pork slice hanging out of your mouth and all, go from disbelief to surprise and ask, without words, to be praised for taking care of business. For having his shit together despite its outward appearance.

I’m impressed, Dex. Good job.

He could.

He doesn’t.

“Good to know...” You say slowly. Light dimming. Volume lowering. You change the subject. “Thanks, by the way.”

It takes effort to start breathing normally again. “What for?”

Your brows pull together— earnest. “Accommodating me. I know I’m not the easiest to deal with.”

He thinks on it. If you were some kind of problem for him, he wouldn’t have told you anyway. But the idea that you might feel less than comfortable around him, even by way of guilt, settles in his stomach wrong.

“If there’s anything you need, just ask.”

You like that. He can tell.

Beside you, there is another towel and a soft set of clothes and you giggle over the gesture on your way to the open bathroom door. The light inside flickers and hums and isn’t all that bright, but it’ll do.

While the water gets hot, you check the time, send off a summary of the night before to Bucky and a sorry I never showed up last night text to tinder date.

You hope he’ll let you reschedule. You really need to get laid.

The damage to your body isn’t as bad as you expected. The side of your head was probably stripped down to your grey matter but a thick scar has knitted over the spot. it’ll be gone and your hair will grow back within a few hours.

The spray of lacerations and holes all over you will disappear in time too, so everything looks great if you ignore the inconceivable pain in your abdomen.

Doctor Paylei will be pleased when she looks you over. She might be a little pissed off that you haven’t been taking your multivitamins, but the fact that you go to her checkups at all is effort, so you don’t let that bother you.

Gold star. Participation points.

In the shower is a bar of the kind of soap that could melt the rust off an old car and you opt to use the half empty bottle of shampoo as body wash instead, humming in delight at the sound of pebbles falling from your hair to ricochet around the tub.

As a courtesy, you fish them out and throw them in the trash when you’re dried and dressed.

You check the time again and get antsy. If he doesn’t show up within ten minutes you need to leave. You can feel it.

You keep busy by going through his cupboards for anything edible and find a thousand year old can of coffee grounds.

You sigh. There’s a coffee maker, so why not.

It’s almost finished by the time he arrives.

He.

Him.

You know his real name— and you’ve tried very hard to forget it, as if dumping the memory somewhere outside of your skull would erase the man altogether, but he just keeps showing up and spreading kerosene all over the fires you start.

keeping him just Bullseye has been a good way of keeping him in the part of your mind labeled classified.

Do not touch. Do not engage.

And up until now, you haven’t done either.

That he bothered to move your body— which was essentially a corpse until an hour ago— at all is quite the conundrum, since he seemed more than satisfied to leave you where you were all those other times.

You don’t bother asking what changed. It won’t do anything but spawn more questions that you’ll let fester inside you until you can’t think about anything else.

Nonchalant has never been your strong suit.

Maiming the problems you create in your head like a rabid dog and then staring at your reflection as if you’re a monster for accidentally killing pieces of yourself is why you don’t have many friends— except for the ones who have no choice but to deal with you.

You breathe a sigh of relief every night knowing you aren’t there in person to ask Yelena if she still likes you every time you have a disagreement, or ask whether Bob would still want you to play games or see movies with you if you had met as two strangers on the street.

The answer to your questions is always yes. Of course. They like you, they really do.

They’ve gone out of their way to welcome you, feed you, put clothes on your back, but most often you still feel… hollow.

Other.

It’s good you have your own place now, really, it is!

Only, you’re lonely. And all your friends are inside the Watchtower.

So you turn your eye to that corner labeled do not touch.

You kick open the door.

And you let Benjamin Poindexter walk right into your thoughts, a free man.

His apartment isn’t much of a mess— two mugs in the sink, your bloody imprint in his bed, and your Swiss-cheese’d suit in a heap on his bathroom floor— but you still have to tear him out by the hand like tweezing a stubborn splinter out of an even more stubborn callous when he agrees to come with you to Minty’s.

You have less than an hour before your body begins to metabolize itself to continue healing you— you can feel blood sloshing freely between your intestines where it doesn’t belong, a few fragments of what you assume used to be a bullet being pushed into soft spaces that refuse to accommodate them— and he’s walking so slow.

“Have you ever been to Minty’s?” You ask to distract yourself from the pain of your muscle fibers, slowly, slowly parting to eventually spit out the jagged foreign bodies.

Poindexter speeds up when you do, matching the urgency that’s probably written all over your face as you cross the street. You still have his hand— and his grip tightens around yours so you don’t suddenly detach.

You appreciate that.

“Can’t be that different than any other diner on the block, can it?” He asks, looking both ways before leading you through another crossing so you don’t have to waste your precious brain power on a safety assessment.

You appreciate that too.

“That’s blasphemy,” you scoff, and maybe you are a little biased, having eaten here thousands of times, but no one does life-sustaining calories quite like Jordan Minty. “They have a maple bacon milkshake that’ll clog your arteries in ten seconds flat.”

He laughs and you fight the moan that wants out of your throat the moment you smell pancakes and sausages around the corner, floating like a zombie towards the door, which Poindexter rushes to open for you.

A gentleman, of course.

The place is newly remodeled, with neon lights everywhere and beautiful tables with plush red seats that you could sleep on— You wave to the counter and before you even scoot all the way into your booth, Jordan comes straight out of the kitchen with a plate of random shit and a waitress on his tail, stolen from another table but ready to take an order.

Jordan Minty has known about your… condition, for a while now. And this is just one of the many restaurants Valentina has placed on retainer for you.

As a man who gets paid thousands of dollars to feed you, he takes your wellbeing very seriously.

You rattle off a few menu items you’ve known forever and ask for a pitcher of lemonade to wash it all down before handing the metaphorical stage to Bullseye, who says he still needs time.

When they walk away, his eyes don’t trail after either of them. They fix on you.

They follow your hands as you sort through the puzzle of French fries on your plate to find a curly one, lips parting as you raise it to your mouth. They trace the curve of your neck when just a small, curious tilt stretches one side open to the sunlight.

You watch him watch you and, not for the first time since you learned who he is behind the mask, consider how good the man looks. he's on the older side, compared to you, at least. His hair is silvering out on either side of his head, and you’d say that’s a plus. it looks good on him— he has the neck muscles of a horse, a strong jaw with a dimpled chin and a tasteful scar cutting from his ear to his nose. You don’t need to look at his body to know he’s strong, seeing as he’s hit you once or twice, but you’ve also hit him so you aren’t in much of a position to count that against him. But the smile he gives you when you cock your head is where it’s at. His face creases at the edges, his eyes light up as he shows you his perfect teeth.

Whoever made him must have loved art, music, poetry…

You’re so deep in wonderland that when you finally feel the pieces of metal exit your abdomen and fall into your lap, you forget the man across from you isn’t a friend and almost ask if he wants to see something gross.

The eager moron in you wants to ask anyway, but the stately diplomat lays a firm hand on your shoulder and says, not yet.

Not until you know him well enough to gauge if the result will be rejection or acceptance.

You listen.

You resist.

You begin to think maybe inviting him was a mistake.

Poindexter declines the offer of an onion ring, so you eat it instead, taking his answer as a clear rejection of you as a person.

After all, why would anyone want to know you when the option not to exists?

It’s just a fucking onion ring, the diplomat snarls.

The eager moron counters; an onion ring of friendship. Offer him a fry next. Offer him a blowjo—

“Wacha thinking about?” You ask, tight lipped. Jaw tense, because his eyes still have not left you, and it’s beginning to make you nervous.

He blinks, like he was somewhere further away than you, and starts lazily scanning the menu. “You didn’t seem surprised when I walked through the door.”

You know what he wants you to say, but you’ve had too much publicity training to just blurt out the fact that you know everything about him. “I was in your apartment.”

“It could’ve been anyone’s place.”

“But it wasn’t anyone’s, it was yours.” You lean forward, folding your hands atop the table.

His mouth twitches up, and then settles back down into a thin line. “Are the Avengers keeping tabs on me?”

You frown, but just for a fraction of a second before another tense grin knifes its way across your face. “I doubt there’s a single person in the city they haven’t somehow put a tracking chip in. But that’s not why I invited you.”

“Why then?”

You pause. Both of your inner voices scream. “I like you. You make my job harder, but I like you.”

“What exactly is your job?”

You think to your tower file— the unofficial one with newspaper articles whispering about a candidate for the Avengers that didn’t work out for some reason, your medical history, recordings of mandated therapy sessions and detailed, hand-written reports of every one of your contributions to Hell’s Kitchen’s night life — all encrypted, coded, and lovingly titled Bulwark.

“Anyways. I don’t have many connections in the underground, so maybe we can exchange numbers or something. Be more organized next time we meet on the street.” You shrug.

You notice the twitch of his fingers. His hands— the ones that kill people— pull toward the edge of the table, closer to his body.

Further away from you.

“Who is there aside from me?”

People you don’t like.

People who don’t like you.

“You ask a lot of invasive questions.” Your brows raise. He’s charming, but not enough to get the information he wants without bribing you or marrying you first. “You could at least learn my favorite color or something before crawling up my ass.”

Lightning flashes across Poindexter’s handsome face, first dejection, then anger, a heavily restrained tension that sits in his shoulders. “…What’s your favorite color?”

You move your arms so the three plates of food you ordered can be slid across the table by the waitress. “Blue. Now tell me yours.”

He doesn’t look at the woman leaning over between you, or even tilt his face to glance when she asks if he’s ready to order.

He looks so uncomfortable you wave her off for his sake, stabbing into a pile of pancakes and beginning to manhandle them apart with your fork.

“…Red.” He says, swallowing when your tongue comes out to lick syrup from the corner of your mouth.

Your eyes drop to your plate again, focusing on your hands, only your hands. “I can see you’re getting frustrated.”

“I’m just…” you hear his shoes shift position under the table. “I prefer when conversations are more streamline.”

Oh, boy, do I have news for you… “Sorry. I’m not that.”

There’s a bit of silence before he seems to gather the discipline to speak again. “Do you always eat this much?”

“I can’t tell if you’re disgusted or impressed, but yes.” You say flatly. Honestly. It’s how you’ve always been. And, as always happens when someone brushes up against this particular bruise, you begin to feel embarrassed by it. By the ritual that keeps you alive. “the healing factor suffers when I don’t.”

“Those are some inconvenient logistics,”

When you groan beneath his foot, he huffs, and kneels to sling you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. As far as the relationship he doesn’t have with you goes, this is a first. It isn’t the first contact because, between being crushed and burned and impaled, you always manage to ask if he’s okay right before collapsing. but he feels like leaving you where you are knowing you will almost certainly live would be a weight he doesn’t need on his conscience this time.

He drops you on his mattress, which creaks so loud you stir, propping your head up with a towel that will need to be burned the second your blood and spinal fluid dries. The blankets and sheets, too, for that matter— but that’s a problem for later.

You don’t move for hours, breaths coming shallow, eyes twitching behind the lids. It happens so slowly he doesn’t realize you’ve fully regenerated the missing piece of your skull until you flip over in his bed for the first time.

There is gravel in your hair and blood all over your clothes so he puts together an outfit that might fit and lays it beside you under another towel in case you wake while he’s gone.

He isn’t out for long, just a quick trip to grab cleaning supplies and food, since there is nothing in his fridge, but there you are when he gets back. Showered, changed, waiting for coffee made from century old grounds you found somewhere in the bowels of his narrow kitchen.

You look comfortable there. Like you belong. Instead of startling when he enters with his hands full, you place your phone face up on the chipped countertop and go to help him.

He isn’t expecting the touch, so his hand jumps back from yours like you’ve burned him, and you retreat to the wall by the window, watching him for so long he feels the need to perform under your watch. His muscles tighten up, his teeth grind. he tosses a crumpled paper bag across the space into the garbage can beside you and his synapses light up like a Christmas tree when you cheer for his shot.

You wave when he’s done putting things in their respective places, the wide cuff of his shirt slipping down your wrist. You have a tattoo there. It looks like a— “hi.” You say.

Dex takes note of your waistline, your hips, your hands. The places he would have thought to hide a weapon if he were a woman in an unfamiliar place with a man blocking the door. His shirt and sweats fall around you without resistance and once he notes all of his kitchen knives are still in the block, the set of his shoulders relaxes. “Hello.”

“I didn’t want to leave without saying thank you.” Your phone vibrates and he leans over to check it for you. “And you aren’t getting these clothes back.” You add while his head is turned.

Your screen lights up a few times in a row, enough time to see your screensaver is a selfie of you and Yelena Belova and Bucky Barnes in civilian clothes. Not a very smart move as a vigilante to carry leverage around in your pocket like that.

Dex takes his time to read off each of the messages as they move down your screen to make room for the next. Who would have thought the Avengers had a group chat.

Lena: eat something quickly before you get dead

Buck: wellness check tomorrow morning, don’t miss it

Bob: League of Legends after?

His line of vision is blocked by your palm settling over the screen, which makes him chuckle as you slide the phone back into the pocket of his sweats. “They fit you better anyway.”

You look down at yourself, smile a little, and startle at the beep of his coffee maker.

In turn, he tenses. Fast reactions in close quarters. Unknown variables. He can never be too careful. But all you do is pull one of his mugs closer to fill, then the second, and carefully turn to hand him one.

He looks down at the liquid inside. Its old and probably tastes like rubbing alcohol, but the gesture alone— the consideration, the togetherness of sharing a cup of coffee with someone who isn’t the rats that live in his walls— is enough to make him take it.

His fingers brush yours at the handle, and there go his synapses again…

There isn’t enough time for him to take a second sip before you’ve already gone through your whole mug and Dex finds himself disappointed by the missed opportunity to ask you anything, to listen to the sound of your breathing, to hear a witty comment about something; learn anything about you at all. And yet…

You have a tattoo of a plant on your wrist.

You play video games.

You go to the Watchtower for wellness checks.

You’re good friends with the Avengers.

You smell like his detergent and his three-in-one shampoo.

“Well, I’m going to get out of your hair and eat like a pig at Minty’s Diner.” You sigh, rinsing your cup but leaving it in the sink. Leftovers to remind him you were here when he decides to wash it.

You glance around, like people do when they’re cataloguing what they’ve packed before leaving home on vacation. “Can I leave my suit here? I’ll pick it up later, if that’s okay.”

More leftovers. And a promise that this won’t be his last opportunity to know you. “That’s fine.”

“Cool.” You nod, turning in one more circle that ends facing the door. Your weight shifts back and forth, and he waits, mug in hand, and takes his second sip. “Wanna come with me?”

The muscles in his neck pull too quickly. If you could see him, you might have cocked your head— if cocking your head is a thing you do. “I don’t want to impose,” he says carefully.

You spin on your heel, making a squealing sound on the linoleum. “Actually, scratch that; I want you to come.” You lean forward, smiling big. “Please come have breakfast with me? Please?”