triceraquake

Notes: Translation notes are at the end of the chapter for Albanian dialogue.

Whew. Trying to add these notes from my office because I'm working extra again today and didn't finish editing before I left. I truly hope this okay, because I'm not sure. It's… a lot. I'm trying at the same time as all this action to work these two idiots into a different emotional state for future chapters, because what's coming in 11-12-13-14 is SO. FUCKING. EMOTIONAL. Even the dirty stuff. So I promise things will get better. I am genuinely interested to see how you all feel after this. Also, please see my Miss Congeniality reference, thank you.

Also please accept my apology, I named reader's brother Vick before I realized that the Albanian Syndicate leader's name is Vic. So just know -- with a k means the brother, no k means Albanians.

ALSO. Here I am apologizing again like the village idiot: I am out of town next weekend! This time because I am traveling to San Diego Comic-Con International! I've been going every year since about 2010, so I'm excited to be back. But this year, I am probably going to hoist my computer all the way down there so I can write before Preview Night and maybe in the evenings after we're back from the con (although more likely it will be me, sitting in bed, slumped over asleep with the computer in my lap). No posting on Saturday though because I will likely be in Hall H, waiting for the Marvel panel.

If anyone is interested, I may post some photos of the con here on Tumblr -- proof that I am not just fucking off whenever to leave you hanging on (another) cliffhanger. As always, can't wait to hear what you think!

before all hell breaks loose breathe keep breathing don’t lose your nerve - Radiohead. “Exit Music (For a Film)” Ok Computer, 1997.

July 22, 2027 – and still

Dex hauled to a stop just around the corner and pressed his back to the nearest wall as if an ambush was imminent. City dwellers rushed past him, eyed him suspiciously while across the street a hawker tried to sell knock-off Birkins and the noise made his head pound. His heart thudded painfully in his chest, and his forearm clenched against an invisible rope that threatened to drag him back to his girl, lasso him at the neck like he was a stubborn horse refusing to be broken. ‘But I’m hurt and I haven’t seen you in so long—'

His girl’s voice, cracking just a little; his girl’s eyes, hurt as if he’d dug a spoon up into her gut and come away with flesh; his girl’s hands, held aloft between them like a bridge that would collapse if he didn’t reach out and grab her. And he hadn’t grabbed her. That he’d left her there, alone on the sidewalk – walked away when she was so upset? Dex breathed through his nose, intentional steps to clear his mind. It couldn’t happen again.

They had to stop this shit.

It was true, Dex was generally a morally flexible man, that he had only a few convictions left. But feeling that his soulmate should not withhold information from him was one of them. Especially information like that. But nothing in him felt vindicated any longer, having searched out her secret on his own. Only tired. Upset, betrayed, but tired. This wasn’t what he’d ever imagined an involvement would be like, truthfully. And a few casual fucks with local townies by his army base couldn’t come close to the shit show of complexity their words had pulled them into.

He was beginning to feel adrift at sea, lost in the sway of powerful waves and forces he couldn’t control when all he wanted was to dictate exactly what happened so that he knew how to react to it. Dex thought back to that first night, hearing gravel crunch under his boots and feeling the pain in his arm for the first time; looking down at her kneeling over Nelson’s body with her wide eyes and parted mouth and the wind whistling strands of hair across her cheeks. He’d felt chained to the bottom of the ocean floor, reaching up for the surface but never able to get there – did not like how this conflict felt so similar.

Too full, filling to the top with someone else and the more he struggled for space the more she seemed to enter his body and soul. Though some might argue he had no soul – even if he wasn’t created with one –  the words had forced one upon him in her and it was just too fucking much sometimes. If he vomited, only she would come out instead of bile, just her and the desire for forgiveness. 

His forearm itched pointedly, and Dex scratched so hard he nearly drew blood, raised red welts there. So, he owed her understanding – she owed him too. Owed him consideration instead of always trying to fly away from this shit, always resistant to being pulled in. This was his moral compass after all, what kept him walking on the ground instead of hanging from a fire escape with a rope around his neck. Painted the word black and white over all the gray for him. A piece of him so far down in the pit of his stomach, it couldn’t even be removed surgically. Even if she dragged him to the deepest of depths, tried to rip it out, he wouldn’t let go of it. And she couldn’t try to understand that at all?

These thoughts, he distantly acknowledged, were his own stubborn attempts to stay angry with her. To keep that feeling of self-righteousness that he so rarely could clothe himself in. The longer she looked at him with those eyes that shed cherry red tears in his dreams, the closer he was to falling to his knees at her feet, even when some part of him might still call for apology to be laid there instead. None of it felt right.

All around Dex, the world felt wrong with the brick of the building pressed into his back and his girl somewhere else without him. Clothing that didn’t fit right, skin that fit worse, a brain that didn’t fit at all. And a bond that was bursting until it bled out of him. He had to get the fuck out of there until he could control himself. Could get her to give him what he needed so could kneel there before her and feel nothing but the two of them together.

A buzzing noise and a chime sounded from his pocket, as if on cue, to distract him. On his phone screen was an automated notice from the surveillance cameras he’d planted at the Con Edison Facility by the East River weeks ago. And sure, he had cameras that notified him elsewhere – at Gracie Mansion, and City Hall, and the like – but this was a barrage.

7/22/2027 1:03 pm EST Movement Detected, Camera 15 7/22/2027 1:03 pm EST Movement Detected, Camera 16 7/22/2027 1:03 pm EST Movement Detected, Camera 17 7/22/2027 103 pm EST Movement Detected, Camera 18

They kept coming until his notifications were full of them, each one stringing back and forth among his thoughts until a plan started to form, a plan made cohesive only by their connection. Reading them pulled Dex out of his spiral enough that he could push up from the wall, wiping brick dust from his palms, and start walking down the street, further away from his girl. He’d suspected some movements at the power plant with Fisk and Vanessa, from their colorful cohort of business contacts, and this would prove to be a timely distraction.

It would be a pain in the ass to go back to Tony’s to arm up first; check on the healing cut to his thigh; make excuses to Mrs. Smithers – but needs must. He wanted to be prepared for any number of attendees, including Vanessa herself; besides, it was good to have a purpose, and this gave him one. It was good to shoulder this load that others like Daredevil refused to take on, to be one of the good ones. Maybe his girl would see that better, when he saw her later. That he was good. 

‘Tonight.’ He told himself, turning down an alley that smelled of rats and cigarette smoke. First he’d get the hell away from her, then he’d work on his one good deed. But after that, ‘This has to end.’

***

July 22, 2027 – somehow still

From the back of the room emerged Mr. Jusufi, coalescing out of the shadows unexpectedly when you might have expected a villain. Except he was a villain, you realized. While you might blink and think of your friendly neighborhood beleaguered husband, this was a dangerous, dangerous man you faced. He did not greet you with the customary, ‘Hello zogu.’

He held court amongst the handful of men gathered round, his heavily rounded eyebrows and imperious expression controlling the situation easily. No friendly smile, no stack of his wife’s things in his arms – this was a different man who looked at you and the Zhangs like you were lesser peoples, bugs that had the misfortune of catching his attention. When he nodded his head at you, that was all the permission needed – one of the gray tracksuits rushed you, and though you tried to back away and run, it was but an inert attempt.

Made it as far as the front counter before a hand latched onto your hair and yanked, tearing strands out and snapping your neck backward. Scalp on fire, you struggled, you shrieked, you scrabbled at his hands. You even tried to employ SING, though it seemed Gracie Lou Freebush’s advice wasn’t salient for gangsters in the backroom of a Manhattan dry cleaners.

The one twisted his hand into a fist with your ponytail, grip like iron, and pulled so tight your whole head ached; another grabbed your shoulder with strength that seemed intent on breaking bone as you broke a fingernail trying to pry him off. He elbowed you in the back as retaliation – a painful, forced punch of air from your diaphragm as your back bent without intending to, and that same man took your wrists in his, wrenched your arms backward. Jim and Lea, for their part, were crying out in your defense, struggling though no one paid them any attention as your phone fell to the ground and skittered across the floor to wedge against the corner of the last industrial dryer in its row.

Brandon tried to lunge for it, with that optimism of a kid thinking, ‘If only someone would just try something.’ His angry eyes tracked its path across the floor, and was summarily cuffed hard in the head as punishment.

Immediately, Dex appeared in your head, of how he was watching you, how constantly irritated he was with you for ‘putting yourself in danger’ by doing the most mundane, normal things. The texts warning you to hold onto the railing for the stairs in the Subway, and to walk against oncoming traffic instead of with it. Your eyes darted towards the front door, where ludicrously a motorcycle cop was pulling up to start organizing the accident out front; to the back door, where he might be able to burst through and get to you. Here you were in danger through no fault of your own. Surely, he’d be here. He’d come.

He would.

In just moments, Dex would burst through the door, gun drawn, face tight and angry, the Bullseye prison guards had beaten on the courtroom floor. You wouldn’t even care that he was angry at you still, just wanted him to be there.

The hand in your hair was shaking your head violently, because someone had asked you a question and you hadn’t even noticed, too wrapped up in imagining a masked man in black and blue launch projectiles at these pieces of shit. And they were, pieces of shit, because Vic Jusufi was a good guy – you had thought. He was nice, he tipped, he held doors open for little old ladies when they entered the store – so fucking painfully normal. Except now, in this implicit betrayal of world order, he held a gun on you.

“Zogu,” Jusufi was saying while two of his men put zip ties on you, just as they had with Jim and Lea. “You have a gun? Give it to me.” Trying to somehow look fatherly over the barrel of a Glock.

Gun? You didn’t have a fucking gun. Shot the Zhangs a confused look, glanced at your cell phone and realized these men didn’t care about it. Ignored it purposefully even, because somehow – they knew it was useless.

At least your hands were in front of you, a small favor, and you struggled against the grip of the two underlings to hold them palm up, as if clueless. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Jusufi’s mouth ticked, irritated. “Search her.”

In that blistering half-second between his order and action, you looked expectantly towards the back door again, certain. Only a few more moments, right? He’d come.

But fuck. The hands, so many hands. They went searching gleefully to make sure you weren’t lying, took detours at every opportunity. Made you want to throw up with the way they touched your body like it belonged to them. Palming your legs in wrinkled linen shorts that made it obvious nothing hid there. Jabbing their hands in pockets and cupping your ass, grabbing at your sex from awkward angles while you bucked and tried not to give them the satisfaction of screaming.

Feeling up your back, grabbing your breasts until you breathed in roughly through your nose, bit your lip, and they laughed at you. Rummaging around your body like grabbing harder would make a gun appear, and each time they touched you, your hope for Dex to come back died by inches. Let down roughly and painfully.

“That’s enough!” Jim was saying, the best of men that he was. Tried his best to move over and push them away with his shoulders, but he was elbowed in the head for his trouble.

One of the tracksuits lifted the hem of your Goodwill shirt and found your words by the light of his phone flashlight, centered under the Mustang logo on your breast. He whooped. “Hello Karen! It’s nice to see you again!” He said, with the wrong cadence and the wrong face and the wrong voice – all of it so fucking wrong that you tried to kick him reflexively.

Again, a glance at the door. It stayed closed. ‘Be there. Come on, Dex. Be there. Please.’

When a head was stuck up your shirt, the man laughing playfully as if this was all a game so that he could lick right over your words in a fucking horrendous act of goddamn sacrilege, you came within seconds of spitting in their faces. Jusufi saved them from that, with a word, with but a hand gesture, he called them off. Left you panting against the machines with Jim and Lea, knock-kneed and sweaty from terror.

“Gentlemen,” No word more ironic right then. “Now is not the time for such behavior.” Those around him held their breath, watching like rabid dogs. “Perhaps… later. But for now, we have business.”

Lea glanced at you then, you saw out of the corner of your eye, because she knew what that meant. Jim couldn’t turn his head to do the same. Brandon just stared sullenly at the floor, a teenager’s response to the threat of death, apparently.

It was hard to see with the lights cut, but a few more men entered through the back – your heart racing each time you heard the creak of its hinge, your words pinching as they tried to pull themselves inside of you, perhaps for safety, perhaps from the stink of your fear – but it was always more tracksuits. The work area was crowded with the smell of cologne and the sight of crushed velvet, and tension. So much tension.

Each time sirens sounded, all of you as a group, like a pack of dogs watching a cat walk by, would swivel your heads to the front window expectantly – in the dimming light out there, emergency vehicles passed by without stopping –  half-on the sidewalk, rushing to this crisis or that, helping others when you too needed assistance. The city sounded like it was in chaos each time the back door opened, car alarms, shouting, and the growing smell of smoke.

One of the men circled to the front of the store, aimlessly, and leaned over the counter like he was trying to catch the end of a baseball game, not keep watch during a hostage situation. “Got a blackout like we hoped, boss.”

A blackout.

At the very least in the neighborhood, but maybe spreading as far as the entire isle of Manhattan – it had happened before – no one scoffed at the idea anymore. 2019 proved to everyone that it could happen, and if the city was without cell service and internet and lights and electricity, you were all truly helpless. Jim and Lea glanced at each other, at Brandon, at you. At the back wall by the employee bathroom. They understood as you did the gravity of it, how exposed the city was to predators in this dark.

Mr. Jusufi was walking through the store, picking up odds and ends and holding them up for inspection like they were foreign to him, he an alien entity and you four the inhabitants of a planet he’d landed on. A bottle of bleach that he set down on the machines, rubber gloves that he tossed to the side, a pair of razor sharp shears. He turned, tapping the last item in his palm. “I am owed money, yes? For years, you have enjoyed our patronage and our safety, but now you don’t pay what you owe. Can you explain?”

Jim had shuffled to press himself between his wife and child, and his face blanched at Jusufi’s obvious irritation. “We tried to explain, we can’t make the payments right now, Vic. But please, we can pay later. This doesn’t have to go bad.”

“Go bad.” Said Jusufi thoughtfully. “I wonder what you mean by the phrase. I wonder what fear motivates you?”

Lea jutted in, stepping half in front of her husband, hands clenching and unclenching – fist to open palm to fist to open palm – over and over again. Two men lurched at her movement but aborted it just as quickly, settling back on their elbows; one held a baseball bat, the other a rifle, their hands clublike and clumsy on each. Everyone was sweating, too many tempers made even more dangerous with the July heat wave. “We’re all friends, Vic. It’s just a money problem.” Her voice high, cracked like an egg shell, unable to be repaired. “We can make this right.”

“Make this right.” Mused the tall man, his accent growing thicker, soft syllables that pillowed how angry he was. “You can call your bank then, yes? Perhaps… there is money hiding from me there.” 

“But that would wipe us out!”

The crime boss shrugged, like it was nothing to him, and motioned casually for one of the men in gray to help move Jim into the little office; he liked to hide from Lea in there when he forgot to take the garbage out at home, but here he glanced back at her, maybe wondering if he’d ever see her again. “You should pay on time then.”

Jim was struggling, fear crawling through the open maw of his mouth just as it cried itself out of the corners of Lea’s eyes, her back hunching as emotion started to overtake her. The air was evacuating the room at a fantastic rate until it was hard to breathe – Jim thrashing, Lea pressing into the machines at your back, Brandon gone pale and bloodless – and the rope in your chest uncoiling to grab you tight and squeeze. God, Brandon, he didn’t deserve this, more than anyone. He was so young. So fucking young.

“The power outage!” You called impulsively as they were about to close the office door, because you were afraid the sound of that decisive click would mean the path of all your lives would jump tracks to something much worse. Jusufi paused with his hand on the jamb, looking at you over his shoulder. “You said there was a blackout. He—he can’t call the bank that way. There’s no service.”

And you were breathing so hard from nerves, from fear threading through all of your muscles till it wasn’t a fight or flight response anymore, it was a paralytic response. Overwhelmed, frozen in place as Jusufi turned fully. He smiled too kindly, for a man in control of a situation like this.

Advanced on you with shears still in hand, all the way across the room until the sharp, metal point of them pressed into your shoulder just hard enough to sting, so sharp they gleamed even in the dark. “You are a smart girl, zogu, but we are smarter.” You’d fought an expression of pain, but when the shears shoved harder against your skin until it popped like a balloon,  you couldn’t help it – couldn’t help the hard jerk away or the scrunched face or the intake of breath. “We have satellite phone. The bank has other branches. They will answer.”

He left you there, bleeding shallowly from the shoulder, as the door clicked shut behind him with finality. Would Jim come out alive? By the look on Lea’s face, she wasn’t sure.

It was the damn click of the door, that did it for you. No one was coming to save you. Dex wouldn’t be there.

Even with your heart pumping, hands shaking, skin gone clammy with anxiety. Even when panic dripped down the bond as blood dripped down into your armpit, and your words felt like earthquakes had spread through them. Even with the rope of the bond twisted around your midsection the wrong way and pulled corset tight; with the arrow lodged inside twisting painfully and the anxious bird of hope full shrill and frantic. There was no one there, on the other side. He wasn’t—he wasn’t going to come.

God, you’d come within a hair’s breadth of telling Dex to fuck off and now you wondered if you’d make it out of this alive to say anything at all to him ever again. And he… he’d—

‘Some other time then.’ But the words sounded like finality, the same as a buzzer sounding, a book slammed closed. If you died there in the back of Zhang’s Dry Cleaning, it would be without him, and it would be both of your faults that he wasn’t there with you. It hurt, tenderly, worse than any anger or anything else, to think that he’d feel the pain of your death with no warning.

You’d never gotten around to googling what it felt like, to lose a soulmate. But his words would go gray, then white. On his arm, a man like Dex would see it happening immediately, a phantom limb cauterized improperly at the joint so that it still felt like burning. He’d—he’d hurt, maybe. He’d mourn? You. He’d mourn you. Stop being stupid, of course he fucking would. But he wouldn’t be here in time.

The three of you sat with your backs against The Hallway, a row of industrial dryers facing inward to a good five feet of space, then opposed by a row of industrial washers with their backs pressed to the outer wall. Metal coils pressed uncomfortably into your back as you sat, silent, sad, wondering if you had any right to hope at least for someone else to come save you. The police, at fucking minimum. Around you, Albanians settled against various walls, investigated wash bins and The Hallway, watched you all as if you were ticking bombs.

Brandon sat between you and Lea, sitting so close his knee pressed to your thigh, skin sticking with sweat. And Lea kept looking at you. At the back wall by the employee bathroom. At you.

At the back wall. By the employee bathroom.

Lea’s eyes, insistent.

It took you an embarrassingly long time to remember the phone on the back wall. A fucking phone. Vintage and sickly yellow to match the peeling paint of the trim back there. Too old to be internet based because the Zhangs hadn’t wanted to spend the money on upgrading it when it was rarely used. Too old to be affected by the blackout.

Old enough to maybe work, you realized, resisting the urge to lean around the corner of The Hallway to stare at it like a dog staring at a bone. You had to school your face into nothingness then, seize any expression of hope, had to worked at it when Dex could do it  so easily. A way to get help, if one of you could reach it. Fuck. One of you had to reach it.

***

Fifteen minutes earlier…

The disturbance turned out to be an argument between some Italians and, interestingly, a few low-level Albanians, though Vic himself and most of their enforcers weren’t there. To the side sat a group of Russians, who mostly seemed content to observe and take notes, just like Dex was from his perch above the group. Though he would have preferred to absolutely waste those assholes and salt the dusty ground with their blood, they were discussing something useful. 

Meetings, with Vanessa. Crime families coming together somewhere to discuss tithes, business dealings, earnings – all things that he could use to wipe her from the face of the earth. Wilson too. Dex shifted in place, watching a pebble skitter away from his foot towards the edge of the roof, and almost hoped it would fall and give him away. Tension sat heavy between his shoulder blades, and this restraint itched angrily, demanded violence. And he could get it so easily. Just drop down and fucking take them.

But at least for a little, usefulness was outweighing tedium. Dex only raised an eyebrow as several Italians returned from a fifteen minute fuck-off, looking like fleshbags he would enjoy eliminating. With some time to calm himself, the crash of the waves in his ears had faded some, and with it the desire to be good for her. The fight grew rotten under his skin and made him want to pull at his leash, commit unspeakable crimes, inhuman things, and laugh; wanted her to know, truly, who she argued with, and kissed, and stitched up, and defied. Fuck, he had gotten bitter, quick.

Swarthy, dark haired, and wearing so much cologne that he could smell it from his position above them, the Italians let the heels of their leather loafers drag in the dirt, cocky. Made a show of dusting their hands like they’d completed some integral work and wanted everyone to know about. “Is it ready?” This was Rosalie Carbone, who stood in her platform pumps among all those men like she owned them all. She probably did.

 “Thirty seconds, signora.” Said one of the brutes, and notably, both the Albanians and the Russians shifted uneasily, in their own ways looking for exits. “All locations coordinated.”

“Are you sure this safe?” One of the Russians called from their group, twenty feet away, standing around one of the heavy cement pillars as if it was a piece of Mother Russia to defend.

Rosalie was shaking her head, and she fished through her big, black purse until she could come up with a powder compact and a lipstick. Applied it while talking. “You’re asking this now? Si, si! They are all safe. And they will do what we need them to do.” 

And as if on time, there was an explosion across the power complex – not an enormous one, but an incredibly well placed one. Lights began to fail around them, radiating outward like ripples in a pond, and a dusty cloud drifted to hover at the perimeter of the complex, where they were all stationed. Power company employees were yelling across the compound, a few screaming as the scent of fire permeated the wind, and from his vantage point, Dex could see them scurrying like ants around the main buildings, seemingly without any awareness of the culprits sitting pretty just a few feet away.

Mirror-perfect, smaller pops echoed across the nearby burrows.

“Give the order to move in five. Get the fuckin’ chopper ready.” Rosalie was saying, closing her purse with a snap and rubbing her lips together absently, but Dex was barely listening anymore. His words… that rope in his chest, her. Something was wrong. “And where is Vic? I got my ass all the way out here, but he couldn’t bother?”

This Dex didn’t hear. Didn’t hear it because he was already across the rooftop, already scaling the flimsy metal ladder down the side of the building, already breathing hard. He let his bitterness, his stubbornness, fall with each step. His boots made loud clanging noises on the rungs, having eschewed any stealth for speed, and someone yelled out from that illicit group. She never felt like this, she never did. 

Drums pounded in his chest, through his body, in time with the shaky shivering of the words sitting flush with the muscles of his forearm. Shit, the way it all felt wrong. He could taste panic on his tongue that wasn’t his own, felt a rhythm of terror that disrupted his own heart beat to make it hers. That rope, it was slithering around his wrist, his forearm, his bicep to grip tight, with teeth that pierced him with an emotion he didn’t often meet with: fear.

God fucking damnit. 

***

Time passed. And passed. Maybe it was but fifteen minutes, but it could have been fifteen hours for all you knew. And then stopped stock still when emergency lights didn’t just go past, they stayed outside the store. 

Everyone held their breath, listening to the siren, watching the red and blue lights bounce on the linoleum floor. “Go, look.” It was the man with the gold chain and the gold tooth, who’d come into the store with the envelope weeks ago. He motioned for someone else to see what was happening, and that man drew a gun, held it down at his side so it would be hidden by the counter.

Silence solidified into cement around everyone, even the Albanians; you felt a drop of sweat slide down your face, but dared not wipe it away, any movement perilous and risky. The slightest provocation might set the entire situation off like a tinderbox because – everyone knew what sirens meant. Police. First responders. Discovery. A standoff. 

Violence, blood, screaming, death, because cornered dogs were the most dangerous ones. And even though you could cry you wanted rescue so badly, you couldn’t help but be afraid of what might happen on the way to that endpoint.

Though you had wished for it, your heart still sank, impossibly so, at the thought of someone else saving you. At not looking up to his face in the door. God, it was irrational, it was ridiculous, it was two parts of you at odds with each other. Take what you can get, don’t complain. And honestly was it not dumb to have thought he’d come for you in the first place? The man was known to kill, and kill only. Not save. Best to pin your hopes on the police, best to not even blink as you waited. Best to ignore the frantic trembling of your words, and to know you were on your own.

The tracksuit hadn’t come back yet, still watching. Ticking from the wall clock grew louder as you all waited, heads turned in concert, profiles sharp and enunciated in the dark by the lights, and fuck it all if you didn’t feel close to passing out. Just breathe, take one breath at a time, and try not to hyperventilate. Try to be calm, don’t lose your head, think of other things, pleasant things. Good things.

‘Don’t walk into traffic. Don’t go anywhere without streetlights at night. Close and lock your windows. I think I got them all. You can go.’ That moment on the street with him, when the ticking sound meant your heart and not the draining of what little time you might have left. What a good moment that had been, what warmth had suffused you as you teased him –now quickly dried up.

“Here for the car accident, vëllezër në krahë. We are good, but we must be quiet.” Your thoughts interrupted by the man with the gold tooth, though the pronouncement didn’t calm anyone down. Even if it was just an ambulance outside for now, the police would arrive, eventually. The risk of someone noticing hostages and guns and known criminals at the back of a laundromat intensified. At this he turned to the three of you and held a finger over his lips like he was talking to children. “Very, very quiet or there will be trouble, yes?”

Brandon nodded shakily for the three of you, his face too angry to be safe. The older man, satisfied, started to turn away when with all the ill-placed sarcasm of an angry kid, Brandon went, “Yeah, sure, fuckwad.” 

“Brandon!” Lea next to him, the opposite of quiet, and you were yelling for them to stop because suddenly the kid was hoisted by his armpits up into the room and backhanded to the ground. His legs must have been dead from sitting in one position for so long, and he collapsed, elbow cracking into the hard floor.

The two of you struggled to crawl over to him, and Lea reached her son first, running her bound hands over his face and trying to use her t-shirt to stem the flow of his sudden angry tears. Grabbing for his hands to hold them in your own, his eyes glanced at you when you hissed, the wound in your shoulder sharper than you’d realized. Bleeding had slowed to a trickle, at least, until a hand planted itself on your arm and a finger prodded the puncture wound, hard.

It was the crooked finger, that terrible man, and then his face was too close to yours for much comfort, sour beer breath washing over you and settling heavily in your hair. His hand drifted, grazing the side of your breast, enjoying how you cringed away from him, as the others hooted. Said things in Albanian you were glad to not understand. “Too much noise, little girl. You do not want someone else making this worse for all of you again, do you?”

Someone else? The bond fluttered against your ribs, wing-like.

“She’s not part of this.” Lea had gathered Brandon’s head in her lap, and was trying to pull both of you back to the line of machines. “She just works here. Let her go, and she won’t say anything, will you? Will you?”

You nodded hard, agreeing with her though you were sure this was a useless request, and as predicted, the man just laughed, his hand trailing down your back until he could casually rest it just above your buttocks, uncomfortably possessive. “It does not work like that, does it? She sees us, she’s in it.” 

Accordingly, the office door swung open, hit the wall with a bang as the scent of blood permeated the back work area. The taste of pennies that got in your mouth and clung to your teeth like a film, wrinkled your nose. Vic walked out, his sleeves blotted as if with red ink to the elbow, a few splatters along his chest and jaw. Jim trailed behind looking… not good. But alive. 

Alive, yes, but with a broken nose, a head that bled from multiple points. His zip ties were gone, but he cradled one arm like it was broken, and that same wrist bulged uncomfortably. T-shirt and apron were both bloody, and when he smiled weakly, as if to comfort his wife and child, his lip split again. Began to weep sluggishly with blood down his chin.

“Is it… is it done?” Brandon asked for Lea, aware that if it was, his family’s future was gone even when they might live. No money for bills, no food, no hope of affording college, vanished into the pocket of a man who didn’t even bother to acknowledge his existence. 

Vic had a hand to your boss’ shoulder, companionably, but here he shook the other man into answering. “I couldn’t get them to authorize the transfer.”

Jim could barely speak around his swollen mouth, but his words still sent dread through each and every one of you; a glacial iceberg that splintered into so many pieces it sent pinpricks throughout your entire body. You glanced at Lea, at Brandon, at Mr. Jusufi, at the men surrounding you. What would happen if no one could pay? If no one came? The hand on your ass continued to paint the future for you in increasingly violent, unhappy oils. Colors that left you more than just dead, but a drawn-out end that made your stomach turn.

Jusufi was shaking his head pityingly. “I wish,” Hand held to his heart, what an affectation. “That I could say, my friend! Let us celebrate! But I still have no money.” After a moment of silence, in which nothing but the sound of the jaws of life, out there on the street, could be heard. “I am sorry to have to do it this way. But you made it hard on yourselves, when you sent your dog with your message.” 

Dog with a message? 

***

Across town…

“Where are the Albanians.” Though the statement was not yelled, there was no profanity, no violence, everyone in the room stiffened. That tone of voice boded ill for anyone who even glanced at Wilson Fisk, let alone disappointed him. To the side, Rosalie Carbon shifted uneasily and sent thanks to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost that she had done her part. “Where is Jusufi?” And this time it was yelled, the roar of rock crumbling down a mountainside.

Fisk sat at a long wooden table, his back to the wall and his crown claiming the head seat. Before him sat a beautifully plated dinner of salmon, wild rice, wilted spinach but it was cold and untouched. Around the table gathered business partners, valued contacts that he intended to make use of and make money with for the time being, all of them glancing at the one empty seat – held there for a man who had dared to not be in attendance. 

“Wilson,” Only Vanessa was eating, at his right-hand side, her fork scraping gently on the China of the plate. “Please, I am sure that there is a perfectly good reason for his absence.” 

Except the Albanians were running the very weapons they all intended to make that fucking money off of. It was the Albanians with the goddamn stock they intended to push through Red Hook, over and over again until money flowed like wine and power sat heavy on his fucking tongue so—

--so, not even Vanessa’s analgesic attempts to sway his temper were going to work if everything was motherfucking at risk. 

Wilson, blinked, looking around the room with its shadowy corners and murky occupants, and saw how they all weren’t looking back at him. How they looked at their plates or at each other, communicating silently around him like he was a problem child to be dealt with. Already, his temper was frayed by this speedbump in the road when he should have been on a racetrack. Already his breath was coming in deep, snorting bursts, while the fork in his hand bent slightly – molded into the shape of his grip.

Consciously, he reset his hand on the fork and knew that Vanessa noted the now wavering tang of the utensil. Took a deliberate bite of his food, and everyone around the table followed suit, little robots tuned to his moods. “Is anyone able to tell me why the Albanians are not here?”

They couldn’t even meet his eyes, instead studying the delicate gray pattern of enamel on the white plates – whimsical, curling wisps impressing wind in a snowstorm on the viewer. They’d been ordered custom, for Vanessa. But it was Buck, from the back of the room, who spoke. His face lit by a phone screen that cast his features too heavily for normality, and revealed the shadow of a gun under his coat. “It seems to be a… dispute, shall we say. With a valued business partner. That dry cleaner on the Upper East Side.”

So not something important. 

Not something absolutely essential to the running of a months-long weapons racket. Not something that should have outweighed him, or this goddamn meeting. His face crunched like a soda can in a crushing machine, teeth bared and eyebrows come together so tightly that it was all he could do to stay in his seat, refrain from exerting his rage in one primal scream and perhaps several splintered faces. Even Vanessa sat still, solemn, to his side, and Wilson forced himself to settle back into his chair, conscious quiet. Run a hand over the shape of his head, readjust the cuff links with their little black enamel shapes against his wrists. “Let us discuss, then, if anyone else would like to take on this neglected responsibility. Buck?”

“Sir?” His man at arms, standing at attention like the weapon he was. 

“Once Jusufi has sufficiently recovered from this dispute, have Pilgrim pay them a visit.”

Everyone in the room knew of the blood and brimstone man of religion that he had employed, and one by one, they surreptitiously began to send texts, warnings. Batten the hatches down, stay indoors, follow the letter of all agreements meticulously. Those digital red flags flying through time and space, while Buck just frowned, shifted to put his own phone away and settle into parade rest. “Sir, I would be happy to go myself—”

“No. You may supervise.” Heavily put, a boulder crashing down and destroying everything in its path. Again, Vanessa tried to temper him but, he brushed her hand aside and knew he’d pay for that gesture later, when it was turned against him in their bedroom. She would come to understand though, he knew, she was his soulmate, after all. “But Pilgrim is a dog. And it is time he learned to bark upon command.” 

***

What dog with a message? 

You thought the words as Lea asked them out loud, pleading that they had sent no message, had no dog, done no such thing. Why would they do that, after all? When their relationship with Jusufi was so long and so friendly over just a little back pay?

“Twelve of my men he killed.” Mr. Jusufi was saying, raising one hand to smooth it over his head, satin with sweat. A habit he’d picked up from Fisk. “Twelve good men, dead as they worked.” And as he spoke, an uncomfortable suspicion rose to grip your throat with dread, a jawbreaker to choke on until you could barely swallow. “Bullseye.” He told you all definitively, the word shattering like glass against the floor.

“Shit.” Barely intelligible, mingled with a rusty, harsh sob of realization. Bit down hard on the rest till your lip bled in concert with Jim’s. It was your fault. All of this.

Your fucking fault.

He—he must have known from watching you at work that the Albanians were around, knew even when you didn’t. And he’d… he’d killed them. Dex had done that. For you, for whatever his reasons were. But the point was, your presence on the chess board had brought about a poisoned pawn without you even knowing. And now more people were all paying the price for your miserable life and the mess you were in. In a way, it was Foggy, all over again.

You had gotten him killed, hadn’t you? By virtue of those words under your fucking breast, Dex was there to kill him. Maybe he’d never have been at Josie’s Bar if it wasn’t for you, right? Almost two years later, that same meeting, that same connection, that thick, harsh chain hooked into you was going to drag Jim, and Lea, and Brandon to their deaths.

Both of your bosses were looking at you curiously, your reaction more than just confused protest. You stared at them, alternating between their eyes, and willed them to see the sorrow, the regret on your face, the way an apology wrote itself on your tongue and tried to come out. At Brandon, who had his eyes narrowed as he watched you, watched this whole mess; he looked uncomfortably like he was putting the pieces together, like he was figuring something out that should have been impossible, and it sent a new, different sensation through your bond – dread of discovery.

There was a finger in your face suddenly, a crooked one, attached to a large, sweaty palm that gripped your chin and forced you to face the man groping you, his smile large and ugly. “Little Mirek’ s baby is scared, is she not?” He was saying with that heavy accent, and the others were laughing candidly, even Jusufi smiled.

“The Slav picked one out, did he?” Said a man from the corner of the room, and God it was never a good sign when someone had a title. A nickname in capitals. Never. And the phrase, ‘picked one out?’ If you could have run screaming, you would have.

Jusufi seemed tired of observing at that point, walked closer so that each footstep sent shockwaves through the air, electrified that little shop ignored by the world. He was the power here, he made the decisions, and he decided to haul Lea up by her zip ties until she stood trembling next to her husband. “Let us try two account signees on the phone, no? Just in case.”  He started to walk away, leading Lea along but stopped halfway to look over his shoulder indulgently. “Shok, another time for that? I need you.”

The Slav let go of you, rather unceremoniously, and took Lea’s other arm as you stumbled as far backward as you could, falling to your knees next to Brandon. The kid lay still on the ground, like any movement would pain him, and it slipped a little dagger up there between your ribs to see that. To see him, so young, so scared, so changed forever by this. He was a good kid, just like your Vick had been.  Damn, Vick could have been such a good man, if it weren’t for Michael, or for you. And Brandon still had that chance, didn’t he? If anyone had to make it out of this, in the end, it needed to be him. 

No matter the price.

He looked faintly dazed, a bruise forming at his temple, but he still gripped your hands and pulled you close to him when you offered them. Took comfort from you that one might get from an older sister. Looking down at him with his eyes closed and dark lashes fanned out over his cheeks, this alone finally sent tears crawling down your face. 

Outside, you could all hear more cops arriving, police yelling out instructions, voices booming through a megaphone, but no one cared. The store was dark, the Albanians felt complacent and invisible; they only relaxed back into disregard for the two of you. Zip tied and surrounded, with two other hostages kept in another room – it wasn’t hard to see why. What could you possibly do? They lounged atop chairs and equipment, sat with legs akimbo on the ground, and one of them was engaging a padded mannequin in a boxing match by the back door, the cloth cover having already split to reveal the foam padding beneath. This was your chance, wasn’t it?

“I have to go to the bathroom.” You said suddenly, loudly, and struggled to your feet and brushed Brandon’s hands away like they meant nothing. Like you weren’t doing this for him. Half the room leapt up with you, and the other half stared dumbly in your direction.

“No.” One of the men who stood up tried to face you down. He was younger than many of the others, looked too pretty to be involved with such brutes, and it showed when he couldn’t immediately cow you back down to the floor. “Sit down.” With a pointed finger to direct a wayward pet.

“Really, I just have to go to the bathroom. It’s just over there.” Brandon was watching the men carefully from your feet. There was no way to tell him anything, of course, but you hoped he suspected. That fucking yellow phone better work. “I’ll be quiet. I promise. I just really need to go.”

Surreality, as you stared at your fucking kidnappers and pleaded for the chance to go to the bathroom. Everything was… too intense. Not real looking, a film set that you could escape if you just pushed hard enough on the right wall. Too much green paint, too many chemical smells, too many ticks of the clock, sharpening each detail relentlessly. Brandon’s worry became palpable at your feet when he curled a hand around your ankle, and spidery fingers ghosted over your words under your shirt, touching you in a way you hadn’t felt since the argument. Everything hinged on this moment, and then the next moment, and the next. “Please—”

“I said no.”

“Where the fuck she gonna go?” This was another man, who’d been quiet so far and carried one of the rifles. He had heavy brows and an easy face that belied his participation in this whole nightmare, and when he overrode the younger man, it did not go unnoticed by the others. Conspicuously, the loud cutting sounds from outside stopped abruptly – salvation offered to others while you made your own. “Cut ‘er free so I don’t have to listen to her complain about pissing all over herself.” 

But the younger man didn’t cut you free, just pushed you forcefully towards the back corner of the store, watching angrily as you disappeared around the far side of The Hallway. A switchblade in one hand, his face told you to be glad he hadn’t used it yet. “Fuckin’ hurry up.”

The air felt cool, dark between those rows of washers and dryers, a specific contrast to the congregation just a few feet away. Nerves spiked through your fingers so that they shook – well, nerves or blood loss – and you could barely grasp the brass handle to open it; had to twist with your whole body. The door creaked faintly as you went through it, the yellow phone staring at you accusatorily, creaked again as you pulled it just shy of closed, so that only a sliver of light illuminated you standing there in that bathroom.

Flicked on the overhead light with limp fingers to reveal the old porcelain toilet and wood paneling, the way the linoleum was darker here because it hadn’t discolored from the sun. You looked tired, sad, frightened in the speckled mirror – lost. Blood stained your shirt, and your hair was half out of its ponytail so that most draped limply around your face. Sweat glistened on your forehead and you knew that you positively stank from the stress and nerves set to simmer in the summer heat.

Little ropey veins grasped you under the skin and strangled you within, still because Dex wasn’t there, and you were afraid you’d never see him again. For one long moment, you indulged in resting your forehead against the mirror, breathing deeply, tried to think of what you’d need to do. But you could only think about Dex. 

About wanting to kiss him again, wanting to hold him. You’d never hugged, how would he feel in your arms? Never held hands, taken a drive, watched trash television. Been on a real date. Pressed your lips to the scar on his cheek. Feel him drift his hand absently across your back as he walked by.

“Get a grip.” You muttered, forehead still to the mirror, staring at the tilted reflection of your own face there and watching your lips form the words. “Fucking do this.” 

If you inched the door open slowly enough, it didn’t creak.

You held your breath as you did so, waiting every other moment for the telltale pounding of angry footsteps on the floor, but it was still just low comments and shit talking several feet away.

A little further open, and you winced at the smallest noise, hinges protesting the outward rotation; let your eyes fall shut and leaned into the door jamb for strength. Any rational person wouldn’t be doing this, would be following orders and being a good hostage, trying to buy favor with compliance. Goddamn though, the idea of compliance sat poisonous within, a bezoar that prompted you towards another fate.

No one came to investigate, so you slipped halfway into the little false hallway and slowly reached up to the telephone – barely at the level of the top of the washers but still a risk. Twisted your wrists together so the skin rubbed uncomfortably while your shoulder argued loudly at the movement and the bond flickered to heat like a gas stove, a warning. The receiver buzzed faintly in your hands, and you didn’t dare breathe as you passed it through into the bathroom with you lest you hit the door with it and make a noise. There was no intricacy of thought, just frantic will to get back into the bathroom with the phone in your hands.

Only the yellow spiral cord left a trail to tell on you, closed in the door as you turned it in your grip to use it, nearly dropped it because your hands had long curdled blue, now burgeoning purple. But oh thank Jesus, there was a dial tone. There was a dial tone! And then – FUCK.

FUCK. You could have cried all over again. The goddamn numbers were on the cradle mounted to the wall, not on the receiver, why didn’t you think of that you dumb fucking shit. FUCK. THINK.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, with sweat that dripped down your neck, you pushed the door open again. Lifted your hands, receiver and all, tried to press the buttons. It was painstaking work, to do so without hitting the wall but you were unwilling to not try when you’d come so far. Dex wouldn’t have given up. Dex would have kept going, he would have fought his way out – except Dex wasn’t here, wouldn’t be here. And this was your way of fighting the fuck out. 

Do it.

“Man, I’m tired of this shit. Let’s go eat.” Came one voice, drifting over the machines in the dark. You could barely see the numbers, but at least it meant that they could barely see you in return. 9. Press 9.

Your palms were getting too sweaty, and the phone slipped a little, but you clamped down with your fingers so hard you were afraid the old canary plastic would crack. “Shut the fuck up. Boss should be done soon.” Press 1. 

Press 1 again. 

Damn, you had it, scrambled back into the bathroom and hoped your tennis shoes didn’t squeak too loudly on the floor. It was ringing. Ringing, blessedly into your ear and then your brain like the most beautiful hymn – hope, it sang, repeating the tone over and over again as you sagged against the far wall. Leaned haphazardly on the ceramic sink to ease the ache of your body, your head.

But then it kept ringing. And ringing. And ringing. The longer it went on, the more your skin prickled with dread before finally, ruthlessly, “We’re sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please try again.” 

Mouth opened in a silent scream until there was no more air in your lungs, pouring frustration into the world without caring if it would ever rebound back to you. Fought the urge to bang the receiver against the wall and cry. Motherfucker. Shit. Soon they’d come looking for you, and you didn’t have time to screw around. Try again. Just one more time. Try. Again.

It felt even harder this time, laborious, one of Hercules’ great tasks except you were a mere mortal thrown in with the Nemean lion instead. Hit the hook mechanism to hang up – press with trembling fingers 9, then 1, then – fuck not 2. Hang up again. 9-1-1. That was it – 9-1-1.

“—taking a long ass time.” Another accented voice from across the room but you were ducking back into the bathroom and this time drawing the door closed behind you with more urgency than care. Slid down until you crouched on the floor and looked breathlessly at the receiver in your hands, waiting.

More ringing, endless ringing, twining the cord around your fingers restlessly. A moment of stillness as the world went quiet and breathless around you with the end of the ringing and please don’t be the error message, please don’t fucking be the error message—

“911. What’s your emergency?”

Your breath came out in a harsh rush, near soft, guttural sobbing that jerked out of your gut and made almost no sound. Scrambled with the receiver to hold it better to your mouth, awkward because your fingers were going numb, your hands throbbing. Crouched down lower, head below the level of the sink like that alone would make you invisible. “Oh thank god, please help us.” You whispered harshly into the phone, speaking so fast the words nearly became one.  “There are men out there who are—”

“Ma’am, take a breath, please calm down.” 

And you had to fight the urge to tell the unfamiliar voice to shut the fuck up, that you didn’t have time for calm, you needed help. “Please, there are men out there holding us hostage. They took my bosses into the office and their son is here. He’s only a teenager, please come fast.”

“What’s your location please?” 

“Zhang’s Dry Cleaners.” And you rattled off the address, all in one breath, feeling like you were at the very edge of flight, perched on a mountain top with the only other option a fall like none you’d ever had before. You could hear typing sounds, the murmuring of other operators, the way the woman on the other end held her breath too. “Please,” You couldn’t keep hold of any patience. “We’re in the back. We have no power, and Jim is hurt real bad. Please.”

“And how many assailants are there?”

This did make you pause for a moment, as all the shapes in the darkness blended together into one, many-limbed monster in your mind. But they were just men, and you struggled to think through the faces. Nine, ten—“Maybe 12? I don’t know. The lights are out.”

“Are they armed?”

Nodded emphatically though the operator was how many blocks away. “Most of them. All of them. I don’t know.”

You waited for her to do whatever she needed to do, eyeing the cracks in the old flooring, and tried not to feel desperately that the words there on your ribs were cracking too. Slowly crumbling without the hope of Dex being there, like a statue laid to rest on the sea floor for hundreds of years. Was your heart still beating so fast? Was your breath still unsteady? You couldn’t tell. Perhaps the fear had become less something inside of you and more something apart of you.

“Can you stay on the line with me? It looks like there was a car accident in the intersection nearby and officers are already in the area. They will arrive soon.”

Oh God, sickly sweet relief surged through you, like the feeling that flooded your mouth right before you vomited; it was happening, you were doing it. Brandon had a chance. Fuck. You leaned your forehead against the wall, the paneling scratchy with age and tried to think. “No, no I’m in the bathroom. They’ll come looking for me soon. I have to hang up.” Thought through what would need to happen to keep up the ruse – the sound of the toilet flushing, running water, wet hands. “No, I can’t. I have to—I have to go back out.”

The operator was still typing, the idea that help was on the way growing great and certain in your thoughts. Help was coming. It would happen. The city was still in chaos, and you were still alone, on one end of the bond with your words just dangling in the breeze, and help was coming. But you were not still undiscovered.

“Done already?”

***

Concurrently…

A goddamn blackout. 

Dex only remembered hearing of the last one distantly – 2019 a haze of drugs; scratchy, prison-issued sweats; mood stabilizers; and back rehabilitation so grueling he’d begged to die, multiple times. ‘But your words.’ He did remember the attendants saying each time. ‘Don’t you want to live for them?’ Knowing full well he’d never be released. 

And Dex would reply without fail, ‘Fuck those words.’ Lips heavy and indelicate.

That had been a manhole explosion. This was not – it was complete chaos.

Traffic lights were down, cars crashed, people overheated in crowded subways cars held unnaturally still beneath the earth. Firefighting crews had their hands full pulling people out of elevators that had stopped between floors; police were overrun with calls of burglaries and violence; and the AVTF force was running dragnets in the name of public safety, inevitably causing more chaos. In true New York City fashion, a number of opportunistic criminals were using the distraction to make off with the city’s wealth. There was the Hood, fighting a group of neighborhood men and one chancla-carrying grandmother two blocks back; Leap-Frog used above ground subway cars to traverse the city with a bag of cash on his back; and most ridiculously of all, Stilt-Man was using his – well – stilts, to break into second story windows and take what he could.

Normally Dex might have scoffed and enjoyed any of these individual shows just for the hell of it, but this was not normally. 

The damn soulmate bond was wringing him out like a wet cloth, and his body had settled into a state of perpetual panic that would haunt him for years to come. ‘Get to her. Get to her. Gettoher.’ 

His brain overcome with images of his girl dead, his girl bloody, his girl in pieces at his feet, his girl frozen in a walk-in with her mouth ripping open to scream beneath a layer of plastic. If he closed his eyes even for a moment, he saw her there – floating above him just as he’d imagined her before, yet now she didn’t reach for him. Now she was but a blank and lifeless corpse.

Anxiety, his old friend, sparkled frenetically like firecrackers inside of him – dangerous and unsteady. The wild nightmarish thoughts were getting worse the longer it took him to make it through the city, and each rippling, trembling beat of the bond in his forearm, in his chest, brought a new horror.

Beat. She was picked up by the AVTF.

Beat. She’d been hit by a car.

Beat. She lay stabbed in an alley.

And he wasn’t there. 

With that thought tumbling headfirst through him, he nearly wrenched a door handle off all the way, so out of control it was shameful. 

And the city seemed to be working against him as much as the chain of their bond attempted to drag him faster. Everywhere he turned was someone to avoid, a route to backtrack around, a path blocked. Cars were no use in the gridlock; the first motorcycle he stole ran out of gas in minutes; and not a single person was apparently stupid enough to ride a bike he could steal in this heat wave. Dex resorted to pushing through backrooms and kitchens on his way, shortcuts that kept him off the street and not competing with New York’s finest. Bars, stock rooms, loading docks – empty or not – he didn’t care. If he couldn’t go around, he’d go through.

Until someone grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him to a harsh stop.

Dex blinked, found himself in the kitchen of a small hotel, with no concept of how he’d come to be there, only the certainty that he had to go. Around him stood sous chefs and runners and steaming pans of dying food that would soon be thrown in the trash, all poised motionless as if frozen. Single-minded in the extreme, he turned a blistering glare onto the man holding him, teeth snarling under his mask, and bullet-fast had the man in a choke hold. Was prepared to drench the floor in blood if it got the others to move out of his fucking way.

Except they didn’t, just stood there staring at him until the back of his neck prickled and her fear clenched his stomach into a tight, little ball.

Another person, a dishwasher, slowly lifted one hand to point further into the kitchen. ‘See,’ that finger said, ‘you’re not the only one here.’

Dex looked, face souring even more to see that he’d interrupted a simple stick up – three robbers with guns holding the kitchen up and demanding empty pockets in exchange for lives. They were young, stupid men with revolvers and trash bags, sweating among the still hot stoves, desperate and dangerous; they too stared at him, surprise and shock slackening their faces. Because there he was, in combat gear plastered to his body by sweat, armed to the teeth, transiting the city looking like death himself come to collect souls. 

“Please.” The dishwasher, finger shaking. “Help us.”

Help them. Could they not see that he didn’t help people? That he had to be somewhere?

Dex exited the kitchen into the desired back-alley moments later, body swimming in a flood of chemical worry, no thought just sensation. The sous chef would live with a broken hand that would hamper his knife skills for life; the dishwasher would need to go to emergency for the crack on their head; one of the robbers lay dead on the floor, his head bisected by a kitchen knife. A second slumped bleeding out, femoral artery severed in the right thigh.

The third one? The third one stood afraid, unarmed, and surrounded by chefs hefting heavy pans in anticipation – Dex’s version of revenge for the delay. His body and will were bent upon a single, solitary target, and if he missed that target because of them, he’d return and take only the most savage of pleasure in dismantling each person there, joint by joint. 

If she died, there wasn’t a person on this fucking planet who would survive him. 

***

The door still only revealed you just a little, a tiny crack. But the crack was no longer empty – an eye peered at you, dull and dark, while a crooked finger snaked its way into the gap.

Panic overtook reason, and you cried out, wordless, trapped like a lab rat in a tiny cage. Threw the phone receiver at Mirek the Slav while he wrenched the door open and took the impact directly in the face. He yelled out, scrabbling at his nose and forehead, gathering the cord until he could rip it bodily out of the wall. If you ever thought your words had alerted you to danger, had ever been a conduit for anxiety and fear before, you knew now that this moment was actual panic. Fear for your fucking life, a flashing white river of shock and terror that flushed through every inch of that rope until it swelled too big for your chest. Threatened to rip you open and escape.

‘Run, run, run, runrunrurn.’ Even when the man’s hand was grabbing you, your path blocked, and even when your first thought, third thought, fifth thought, was Dex.

Mirek would not be pushed back, though you tried, and he held the limp umbilical cord of the phone like a garrote – wrapped it around your neck by sheer force of will and dragged you out of the little employee bathroom that had seemed like such a safe island before. The force sent you tripping on your own feet, hitting the floor hard while the cord tightened at your throat. He held one of your arms, so firmly that when you went down it ripped the zip ties open, wrists taking the brunt of the impact. 

Men called him from the office space, saying things that were violent and eager, sharks scenting bloodshed – but all you could hear was him. This stranger, his harsh inhales, the rustle of his clothing, his body trying to overwhelm you. In a show of unexpected strength, you were lifted back to your feet, and staggered off balance as he dragged you down into The Hallway. Secreted between washers and dryers and backstock cleaning supplies so no one could see what he wanted to do to you.

A machine hit your back with a thud, knocking into your head, your spine, as it sunk the fear of violation deeper into your stomach. The phone cord was pulling tighter, his big hands red with effort, skin striping white where the line dug into him in return. His forearms strained, a vein began to beat in his forehead, his need to strangle you appearing like arousal on his face.

Forever, it was going to go on forever until you died, Brandon listening to the whole thing. An endless moment of death as you climbed step by unsteady step to unconsciousness even as you picked at his hands and grasped and flailed, limbs hitting the machine behind you with loud bangs. Vision was going, buzzing in and out as your lungs ached and the arrow banged frantically up and down between your ribs. You didn’t want this face to the be the last thing you ever saw – you didn’t want Brandon left alone with them – you didn’t want Dex to feel this – 

In a singular stroke of luck, your fingers picked at Mirek’s thumb and with what limited strength you had left, yanked it outward, kicking and kicking and kicking until your foot hit something sensitive and soft. The world rioted and spun around you as he left you to drop, only barely able to stop yourself from fully falling, braced up on your knees, hands trembling. You felt hot and unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with the summer heat but instead with how your brain was still screaming for air, and coughed as you heaved in huge breaths. Several of the others were coming around the far corner of the hallway, by the bathroom, yelling so loudly there was no way Jusufi could be unaware of what happened.

They drew guns, but you had already stumbled unsteadily to the other Hallway outlet, towards the front of the store. Brandon, Brandon, he had crawled closer to the front as well and you levered him up with your body weight as best you could while two tracksuits rushed you both.

And thank god for Brandon, because he kicked at them, grabbed that bottle from the top of the dryer – that Jusufi had put there – ripped open the cap and flung it at them while you had to source more strength to stand. They yelped, clawing their eyes, slipping in the puddle and causing more chaos amongst the underlings. Drool was flooding your mouth with the scent of bleach, hands tingling as blood slowly returned to the extremities, and you were dragging the telephone cord, still wrapped around your neck, behind you. When you latched onto Lea’s beloved son again, his hands were slippery from the mess, but you just had to get him out, and held on harder. He had to get out.

Everything felt pudding-like, soft, as vasovagal responses surged out of control – everything weak except your goddamn will. 

The two of you fair dragged each other towards the front counter, a limping horse trying to escape the slaughter though lamed. If the door to the office banged open once more, you didn’t pay attention; if more tracksuits strode across the back room with cocksure grins and long, loose strides, you didn’t see. If they had no fear that you’d get out, you couldn’t pay attention to it. It was okay, after all. You wouldn’t get out, you knew, and that would be okay, an acceptable casualty.

Getting to the motorized clothing rack felt like a miracle in and of itself. Outside in the dark, the street was lit with emergency lights, and details surfaced out of the inky night. You could more clearly see police cars, a slowly swelling capsule of attention on the sidewalk as officers advancing on the front of the store with hands on their service weapons, tow trucks winching destroyed cars onto their beds. So close—so fucking close, goddamnit--

Something hit the back of your head hard. 

The butt of a gun or maybe a fucking baseball bat. And you went down, knees hitting the floor, then your cheek bounced off the concrete underneath the linoleum. At least you had the wherewithal to fall forward, at least you had the will to push Brandon as you went. Momentum spinning him into the counter bodily, then over it. Bones in your face ached, god fucking everything ached, but you didn’t care because that was the sound of the bell – chiming – above the door. Nothing could have been sweeter, no triumph greater because you’d done it. 

You fucking did it. 

That kid was not fully grown, his life shouldn’t be determined by this shitshow, and he was out because of you. Because you sheltered a small pearl of care for him in your heart, for that teenager who reminded you of your brother. 

Reality called though, as if from a distance, slowly drawing you back in. Your lip split open and stinging, head pounding like a fucking bomb went off. White flashes of pain and brief moments of empty darkness. Little drops of sweat – no, blood, dripped down the back of your neck, along the line of your shoulder, to pool on the floor. But you lay there for a moment, of all things, relieved.

When you rolled over, there stood the Slav, holding one of the rifles loosely at his side like this was totally normal, like he wasn’t worried, like the police outside were no threat. A looming creature of unshakable horror who let his eyes trail over you and desire you. Looked at the phone cord around your neck, your legs starting to pepper with bruises between his feet, the blood on your shoulder, the dazed look on your face, and wanted to fuck you like that.

Looked at the way your shirt had rucked up to reveal your words – the most terrible thing of them all. He shouldn’t look at them – he should never fucking look at them.

The rest of the men stood frozen towards the back of the store, relaxing to see this disgusting display of dominance. ‘E kam, djema. Kurva nuk po del.’ This Mirek said with a laugh.

Maybe something was really wrong with you, because your hearing was going in and out even though you could see him still talking to them, even though the clock was chiming over and over in your brain, things were slowly tilting sideways. Your gaze drifted, unsteady, loose change, until it landed on his hand, holding the rifle. Loosely holding the rifle. Not paying attention to how loosely he was holding the rifle.

He kept talking. You kept staring at it.

He kept talking. 

A stranger’s hand – your hand – snapped up and latched onto the barrel of the rifle, clamped down with fingers that found power only in sheer desperation, and jerked it out of his grasp. Swung the weapon awkwardly like a club, just will and the momentum of its weight – your eyes tried to track the rifle’s progress but couldn’t, and only knew it slammed into his knee when he howled. Mirek stumbled to the side, comically awkward as his face turned brilliant red, teeth yellow and sharp, yelling. Yelling as more sounds filtered in, orders from far away, only audible because they were issued through a bullhorn.

Something about coming out with hands up? That didn’t make any sense, to your brain that shook like cured jello, and you swung the gun at him again, clipped him in the hip.

Perhaps they enjoyed the spectacle of a man named The Slav bumbling around because a woman hit him, but the others stopped dead to watch – in shock, in amusement, in uncertainty, because cops with guns were gathering outside – you didn’t know. Only knew that you took the opportunity to roll to your side, then painfully to your knees. Had to use the gun like a crutch to stand, feeling weak and broken. 

The rotation of the world pulsed fast then slow, fast and slow, torturing you. A sense of momentum shifted beneath your feet, knowledge, an out of body certainty that someone was coming. Not the police, but someone. Hot and jerky with no concept of time, and couldn’t quite understand, precisely, why, you were suddenly so sure. Because no one else seemed aware, or maybe seemed to care. No one else could feel the ground shifting and threatening to crack open as they approached.

Hm. Maybe you’d hit your head harder than previously thought.

No time to ponder that because the tracksuit brigade were no longer quite so amused, and had started creeping close; small, hesitant steps and hands held out as if to grab you and muzzle you. That they hadn’t shot you yet seemed a poor omen, you realized haphazardly, realized that they wanted you alive. As a hostage? Or to suffer? Probably both. All you had to you was the rifle, which you swung like a drunkard, tear tracks drying on your face, aware that here your luck had run out. Your path ended. 

They’d rip the weapon from you, and those hands would be back. Those hands that felt sweaty sticky on your words, your face. There would be no leaving quickly and painlessly, and your soulmate, he’d feel it even if he never—

--until the back door started to open. Men still advanced on you but you couldn’t help staring at that damn back door swinging open, hinges creaking. It wasn’t more Albanians coming through it. 

Dex? Dark leather, was it Dex?

But it wasn’t Dex either. It was Daredevil.

*** zogu, bird vëllezër në krahë, brothers in arms Shok, friend E kam, djema. Kurva nuk po del, I got it boys. The bitch isn’t going out.

chapter 1: killshot chapter 2: stem the flow + spiders chapter 3: white feather hawk tail deer hunter chapter 4: doubt chapter 5: reflections chapter 6: r u mine? (e) chapter 7: dangerous (e) chapter 8: pixelated kisses chapter 9: jaws (e) chapter 10: exit music (for a film)

Notes: If I'm laughing, it's because I'm really fucking nervous about this chapter. Hear ye hear ye, welcome to the stage, Retaliatory Masturbation!

Once Dex gets home, things start; also on July 20, 2027 -- if you're keen to skip. I truly have no concept of how this happened or why there is so much of it, I only know that it's here now.

Who doesn't think it's totally reasonable to manipulate your soulmate with masturbation? I personally think it's fine. I promise they will do more than touch themselves in future chapters this is just… where we are right now. Matt's also high key freaked out still, and John Pilgrim is starting to sniff around a lot more. This will… escalate, but right now we are at the beginning of the end of our first major plot point.

"Why gnaw you so your nether lip?" Is Desdemona's line from Act 5, Scene 2, and "So I will turn her virtue into pitch," is Iago's line from Act 2, Scene 3 -- both of Shakespeare's Othello, one of my favorites. Probably because I watched Stage Beauty too much as a teenager.

Did I intend to use a second Sleep Token song? No. But here we are now. And also they're a great concert so.

Next chapter will be a lot of action, which I'm fairly poor at illustrating but I'll try my best.

As always, I cannot wait to hear what you think!

and i’m not here to be the saviour you long for only the one you don’t  are you watching me, with eyes of a predator as you move towards the door? show me those pretty white jaws, show me where the delicate stops show me what you’ve lost, and why you’re always taking it slow show me what wounds you’ve got, show me love - Sleep Token. “Jaws” Jaws – Single, 2018.

July 7, 2027 – and still

“Dex?”

Confusion burgeoning like a headache behind your eyes because there he was, standing in the fluorescent light of the hallway again. The polite, bewildered smile on your face became a real one – lips no longer closed, a little hopeful, a little foolish and touch drunk – besotted even. Maybe he wanted another kiss for the road? His lips were still swollen and red from drinking you down. Maybe your knight would give you another favor before he went off to battle. Maybe you’d end up in your bed together after all.

But… no. That wasn’t right.

Fingernails scratching down a chalkboard, footsteps in an empty hallway, the creak of a stair behind you in an old house – the sensation of wrongness had moved into the space between you. Some ugly emotion he held inside helped it move in, too, lifted the heavy boxes. The tightness, the meanness, was far more pronounced, and he looked determined somehow. Self-flagellated into doing whatever it was he was doing right then and there. The sudden change was pronounced, startled you.

Cold fingers of searching, prying, were beginning to crawl up your legs, your back, handspan by handspan. Even though his hair was still mussed, and there were little marks on his neck from your nails, and he smelled of you – the man you had just made out with was gone, chipped away so someone else could stand there, wearing his clothes and his skin.

Dex’s eyes flicked back into the depths of your apartment, catching on the windows he could see and checking the blinds again like that mattered to this stranger-version of himself. Zeroed in on you with no more soft traces but rather the hard cut edge of a knife. It was a familiar feeling, that of his gaze cutting you open each place it touched along, but this time, he did not trace the little imaginary drops of blood from those little imaginary cuts. Disregarded them like it meant nothing as suspicion broke through on his face.

The fuck was he suspicious for? 

“Dex?” One hand on the door jamb, leaning crookedly into the hall. “Are you okay?” Your voice was concerned, tender, and hearing that seemed to make him sterner still. Words shifted restlessly like an animal under your breastbone, struggling to find a safe place to sleep.

He didn’t step closer, no intimacy, nothing given. “I’m going to ask you again. There’s nothing else you want to tell me?” And the implicit reading was that this was your last chance to give him what he wanted; his tone was disappointed, pressuring, and it reminded you violently of your time with Michael, almost sent you spiraling back to that part of your life.

Your throat was tightening with nausea but still, you tried to step further into the hallway, closer to him. That man with your words, he left no room for you there. “Tell you what? I don’t understand.”

“Nothing to confess?” Dex’s head tilted up imperiously, saying the words like he was a fucking priest above you and not a killer who’d offered to take someone else’s life if you wanted it.

Alarm, distress, a slow spike of fear piercing your gut – they began to swell the coffer of your emotions, tilt you away from calm rationality. “Confess? What the fuck?” 

Your brain raced through each thing you’d talked about on this not-date that was looking to end worse and worse by the second. Everything was the truth, nothing was left out; you’d told him about Steve Carson for god’s sake, and you hadn’t skipped over Michael much as you might have wanted to. That fear in you, it was of being flawed and found wanting.

Was this that fear knocking on your door? Demanding safety come to an end without regard for you?

“I almost let it go. Almost let myself be lenient,” He was saying, leaning in with a conspiratorial grin that carried as much humor as a broken bottle of glass. “But I won’t risk being manipulated again.” 

“Manipulated?” High and uncertain, while your words fluttered like that bird in your chest cavity, anxious, warning of an attack. Of all the things he could accuse you of— Reached out to him, hand open and skin wanting, but Dex stopped you. His fingers took hold of your own, ring pressed between you like an accusation with those hard little sapphires, unforgiving.

Not painful, not yet. Dex took in a breath through lips that mocked a smile now. “Hydra girlfriend indicted in federal court.” He recited the title of a news article you’d read many times over, like he wasn’t wrapping an iron chain around your neck and choking you. “Case dismissed against Hydra lover, Feds explore new charges.” You’d read that one too, had nightmares about it. 

He mocked you now, smiling again, and it was the exact smile reporters had given you when they plastered your face over the town newspapers, a traitor. “Did you think I wouldn’t look you up?”

Your brain helpfully supplied an image of his face, sitting on the couch, looking mean and hard underneath the veneer of a man on a date. The way he’d questioned you, the little expressions you hadn’t been able to interpret. Everything tainted by this bullshit again. AGAIN. Againagainagain. No matter how many times you climbed out of that blood and shit and mud, it took what you valued and smashed it.

The soft touches, the reverence, the kisses, all fucking dashed to the ground like porcelain figures you’d just held close.

“That’s what you were asking? This whole time?” Laughed incredulously, sadly even though you felt leaden. “That’s what you wanted to know? About my shit past and you—you couldn’t even bring yourself to be an adult and say the fucking words to me?” The worst part was that you would have fucking told him – you would have, in time – but here was this exertion of control, trying to force you. 

Bitterly, you remembered how you had refused to read the articles about him before the trial, during the trial, after the trial. How you wanted him to be the one to tell you anything you needed to know. The grace you had offered in that small way. That he couldn’t do the same for you tasted of hard salt, betrayal.

Dex’s face shuttered entirely when you yanked your hand out of his. He looked insufferable, for all the world like he’d given you a chance to prostrate yourself at his feet and ask forgiveness – a test that you failed. A killer, holier than thou. One of his big hands shifted to his belt and for a moment your heart stopped because there could easily be a knife there; it could easily pierce you. That fear too, reminded you of life in DC, with Michael. “I needed to know this. I needed to know what kind of person you are. I have a job to do, and you’re putting it at risk.”

“Fuck you.” And your mouth was opening in a horrified, indignant snarl. “I’m not a pile of trash you can just pick through. I’m supposed to mean something. To you.”

At this, Dex’s hands eyes narrowed, but he had nothing to say to it. 

“You’re supposed to talk to me. Are—are you really serious? What job? Killing people because you feel like it? Be so fucking for real right now.”

“I have a right to know everything about you.” 

“You have a right to fucking ask me.” The finality with which this was said dropped like a stone in a lake, little ripples of hurt spooling out of you. Down the hallway, one of your neighbors – Mack? – opened his door, felt the tension destroying you both, and closed the door again promptly. “Not dig up it behind my back like I’m a piece of shit criminal.”

“That remains to be seen.” 

You drew back as if slapped, face going pale, heart racing. Inside was an ugly, ugly, ugly mix of deceit, and self-righteous fury, arousal, and guilt because this man hurting you had just had his hands on your breast, your body. It felt wrong, the uncomfortable swell of a parasite leaching you dry – those words on you, on him – they were parasites, weren’t they? Left there by aliens, not natural, not normal. You at your most bitter.

Jesus Christ, did he not listen to you, at all? Just wait – I’m bad at this – go slow – let me pull myself closer instead of yanking me in – he got none of that? None? Couldn’t help the way your voice wavered, just a bit. “You’re one to judge. If we’re involved, you’re supposed to trust me.” 

But Dex wasn’t listening. He took a step forward finally, and like you were fighters facing each other in battle, it pushed you a step back into your apartment. “Always digging through my shit but you won’t tell me anything, you know that? Picking me apart when you’re hiding a secret like Hydra?”

He stepped forward again. A sword fight, where your footwork must match his and you stepped again back into your apartment. Except he was a master of combat, armed with a blade sharp enough to kill at a glance, and you found yourself a novice facing him with a splintered shield. This was exploding – exploding in your face in a toxic gunpowder mix of  foolishness and stupid hope that there was someone made for you. That hope long since thought dead, rising only to detonate in your face. 

Your breath was coming out shuddery and the bond was rattling so hard inside of your chest you thought it might break a bone, and God you just wanted to cry. Cry in the shower just like you had with Michael. 

Dex was no better.

“I don’t owe you shit. Not on your schedule. I tell you what I want, when I want.” Couldn’t he have just accepted that you needed time to rest in his arms instead of trying to tie you down all the way?

If anything, Dex shut down more. Impressive in how entirely impassive he became, a statue of someone from another life. He wasn’t Achilles, he wasn’t Tantalus, he was Zeus, cruel and overbearing; and you were Sisyphus, your shoulder calloused over from the pressure of that boulder against it while he watched, punishing you. “Do you think Wilson Fisk has never worked with Hydra?” He hissed at you through closed teeth. It took you a moment to realize, to remember, that he had tried to kill Fisk, a lifetime ago. “I needed to know.” 

“Dex—”

“I’m supposed to wait for you to decide if I’m worthy of knowing who you are?” You’d thought he wasn’t like this, but it seemed here the cruelty was the point of it – to you even if he couldn’t see that. Bent forward at the waist, condescending. “But my name has never been attached to Hydra. So the question is, are you worthy of knowing me?”

And his voice was rough not from passion but from anger, stone grinding on stone. That boulder you toiled against, pushing it – he crushed you with it.

You closed the door in his face. Hard. That was one of your greatest fears, held aloft to the light by the hunter who never missed. That you weren’t, in fact, worthy anymore.

__ __ __ 

“I’m supposed to wait for you to decide I’m worthy of knowing who you are?” Dex found himself slinging the sharpest verbal blade he could find at that moment, staring down at his girl while her eyes filled with unshed tears but her body filled with anger. And fuck, if she didn’t stop looking at him like that – like they were magnetized to the point of pain – he was going to lose his hold on the self-righteous anger blistering his back. “But my name has never been attached to Hydra. So, the question is, are you worthy of knowing me?”

He wasn’t surprised that she slammed the door in his face.

Brought his fist down on the wood once, twice, because the anger was too much to control and his body was tensely wound until every single thing made him feel ready to snap. Manipulating him. How dare she try to manipulate him and keep this to herself. This was precisely what he had been afraid of, thinking of his own self being filled up like a wine skin by someone else, because what if they were the wrong person? What if they were a bad person.

On his own he was already bad enough.

Dex barely had room for himself inside anymore – his thoughts, his emotions, his principles. The worst of it was that he’d almost let it go.

Walked out of her apartment thinking the taste of her mouth was enough, that he didn’t need to have this too. It could wait awhile longer. But the doubt, the way he wanted, not needed her, was too much – the risk that she was the one person who could disembowel him completely at the command of some disgusting dictator too high.

Stopped in the stairwell with the hot, hard white lights casting his shadow ahead of him, turned reluctantly to go back to her. There was an explanation, surely, and she’d give it to him because he asked. Because he was her soulmate, because this was important to him. And this was his reward for that self-sacrifice? 

The fact that she stood there, pretending that she could hide something like Hydra from him was insanity. Any soulmate would deserve to know something like that, but he in particular did because of the cosmic debt he owed New York City. Owed Matt Murdock.

In her studio, separated only by a few inches of charged, stormy space and a door he could have forced open at any moment – there were sniffs, soft gasps. Cries. She was crying. Dex sucked in air sharply on his side of the door, nostrils flaring, because it was like a knife to his chest. A baseball bat to the back of his head. A blade to his forearm, cutting into the words she’d put there until he was ready to cut them out of himself. To hurt her, to hurt himself – he couldn’t say which was better or worse, only that he knew it would be to do both.

So fucking close and it was ruined. 

His back pained him each day, low grade hum or sharp stabbing agony, but this was worse. They ached – they physically ached like this soulmate shit was screaming at him to stop fucking it up. Dex let his forehead hit against the door, and the crying stopped – those little sounds that hit him as readily as his own aim. But he still imagined he could smell the salt of her tears and taste it on his tongue.

The worst thing was the guilt that began to seep into his gut as he finally left her place. How rich to feel guilt when he was right, the aggrieved party. His girl should have told him, shouldn’t have kept it from him. He had a right to be angry with her. 

‘And if she’s angry with me, that’s her fucking problem.’ He counseled himself, going down the stairs to the lobby of her building. Her boundary was him trying to find something out for himself? His was lying. His was withholding.

Sooner or later, she’d realize the error of her ways, and for once it wouldn’t be him asking for salvation. Forgiveness. For once, he would stand back and cast judgement. 

The walk back to his apartment, a good half hour of slipping between shadows and taking hidden pathways, did little to quell the riot of emotion he felt. The night air felt damp and wet on him, like a rag draped for too long around his neck; buzzing, yellowing lights from bodegas tagged his progress across the city, and a stray dog followed him at a distance for several blocks. If he left bodies behind on the path he took, that was of little concern. Blood on his hands felt normal, natural, comfortable. And if someone didn’t like it, they could send Daredevil after him.

Fuck. Perfectly performed adulthood – was that so hard? Could he not have someone who could give him that instead of this shit?

Two wannabe robbers stood at the back entrance to a 7/11, preparing for a break-in that would never happen – Dex took them quickly. Not to help others but because he craved violence then like a drug addict craved the high. Couldn’t she understand that he could give perfectly performed adulthood to her if she’d just give the fuck in? He would work himself to fucking death to give that to her and all she had to do was share every part of herself.

The second man died with blood bubbling at his lips, his words gleaming on the side of his neck, and Dex sneered. None of the tension was dissipating, was sticking rather – clinging to him like pollen until he could barely keep himself still because all he could think about was his words on her ribs and the way she kept him out. His brain felt like tv static, rustling constantly in his ears until he could hear nothing else. “Fucking women.” Dex said sourly, to the dead man at his feet, and obliterated the stranger’s words with another hidden knife from his belt.

That, at least, felt good.

Mrs. Smithers was sweeping in front of her door, never mind that it was well past dark – waiting for him, most likely. The old bitch was nosier than he liked, now that he knew her better. She normally tried to greet him and chat for a few moments, tried to do so this time in fact, but she held her tongue to see his face; stalking, staccato steps an additional warning. As he unlocked his door and shut it with more force than strictly necessary, he spied her looking after him with a concerned expression. No Tony tonight, Mrs. Smithers – just Dex. 

Just Bullseye.

Dex forced himself to divest of his weapons because they had done nothing wrong, they took care of him as he needed. His hands shook as he sheathed the knives in the rolling holder in his closet, locked his gun in the safe – it took him three tries to punch the pin in right, he was so wired. Paced his place, fire at his heels, until the fibers of his muscles threatened to snap they were stretched so thin, and collapsed into the armchair by his television. Uncharacteristically ungainly.

Tried to breathe, but it failed because of this stupid – this stupid fucking soulmate bond. Just when he thought that drip drop drowning might be gone forever, here was it was again.

Suffocating him.

The cord of connection in his body – not cord, tube – twisted and shifted uncomfortably within like it was too tangled to fill him anymore with her, or to give him air to breathe. The friction of that thing inside of him – rasping along his ribs, abrading the sides of his chest cavity, wearing thin the walls of his heart and lungs – tried to reduce him down to nothingness. Left nowhere to escape. Just left behind heat,  and the feel of her leg against his palm, the taste of her mouth, the softness of her breast.

Dex groaned, let his head fall back on the chair, because how weak could he truly be? 

His mind? Wanted an apology, knowledge, penance at his feet. But now he knew what her desire felt like from across the city. He knew what sounds she might make, knew what she looked like in orgasm. Now as his body reminded him of how sitting in that chair at night and thinking of her usually felt – that knowledge haunted him. All his body wanted was release, base creature that it was.

Bared his teeth at the empty room, what could vaguely pass for a smile as a thought formed.

He could feel her, along the bond, couldn’t he? And she must feel him. Each time she touched herself at night now, it traveled to him and left him wanting, distracted. Plagued him with desires unfulfilled. Dex looked down, where his member had been hardening with each plateau of unexpressed adrenaline and energy, the pressure of his pants more uncomfortable as his thoughts wandered down this unhappy road. Retaliation?

If he couldn’t stop thinking about her, then she could damn well fucking think about him.

Dex unbuckled his belt and opened his pants roughly, hissing at the first touch of his hand against his cock. He felt swollen and needy even in his own palm, and someday he’d feel her palm with his spit in it against his skin. Pushed his pants down to pull himself out and let his chin drop down against his own chest so he could watch. “Fuck, fuck.”

Began to stroke himself impatiently, not interested in gentle pleasure or care. Just release, and agonizing her with thoughts of him when all he could see before him was her face, glazed blue and incandescent under those club lights.

__ __ __

You sat on your little couch, the blinds drawn, the lights out, the steam from the shower filtering through the apartment. Eyes dry and blinking from crying under the spray and yet—

You could feel it. Pleasure wanting in your body that you shouldn’t be feeling. Desire that shouldn’t be sitting behind your clit, heady and angry, desperate for attention. You’d just… you’d just had a fight with your soulmate and that beating bird in your chest was fighting for freedom, claws and beak, to fly to him and beg for forgiveness. Force him to beg for forgiveness. You shouldn’t be imagining the defined muscles of his chest, the gap in his teeth, his sharp smile, his hands.

But you weren’t truly alone, were you? Dex was leashed to you – if one of you went over the edge of the cliff – both of you would go, eventually. And invading through that bond was desire, as if you’d been cast from the waves upon its shore. Sudden, stronger than anything had ever felt before by  pure intention. 

Dex.

This wasn’t just an intrusive emotion that would diffuse if you tried hard enough. It was targeted, precise, relentless. Unyielding until you realized you were clenching your thighs together rhythmically like that might stop it, only flogged it on. Ugly little things claiming to be guilt and shame clawed at your ankles – they were not new companions, simply reinvigorated – but in your stomach sat a beast called yearning. Appetite. Need.

Feeling it made you angrier, made everything sharper because how dare he pull some shit like this. How dare he be angry at you, treat you like that. Fuck that man. Fuck this soulmate shit.

‘It’s just Dex.’ You told yourself again, but your hand was slipping behind the waistband of your sleep shorts. Wanted so much to resent it and him for this but goddamn, it felt so good. Between the lips of your sex was slick want that encouraged you to delve deeper, encouraged you to enjoy the shivery thirst of your body.

__ __ __ 

Dex gripped his own cock roughly, let the anger channel into his hands the force with which he touched himself. Didn’t deserve nor want softness. He was already leaking glossy, milky precum that made him suck an angry breath in when he spread it over himself with his thumb. The sharp zipper of his jeans pressed uncomfortably against his balls but that made it better, the pain, made him shift in the chair and push up into his own palm.

Stroking, hard and fast, Dex cursed because there – just there, he could feel her. Feel her joining him at the bottom of this depraved pit as he fucked his own hand to thoughts of her. She could have denied it, couldn’t she? But she was there with him. Freak, meet freak.

She wanted to push him away? He’d give her so much she could never run far enough. He’d bite into her between her legs and gorge himself. He’d suffocate himself to show her his tongue, his teeth, his mouth were the best she might ever find, and she should give him whatever he wanted to have it. The taste of her cum would shatter in his mouth and shatter him, and she’d realize what it felt like to miss him. To reach for him instead of be reached for. 

    __ __ __

You pushed two fingers down inside of yourself, bending your wrist for a better angle, and then gritted your teeth to add a third. Not because the stretch of three fingers was too much but because it felt so fucking good and this was so inappropriate. So wrong. 

So wrong but you fucked yourself on your own hand, hearing the squelching noises, feeling your cheeks heat in the darkness. Like the soulmate match had migrated downward, it felt like a desperate wish for Dex’s cock inside your pussy, pushing you on – made you ache for him even when you were still fucking pissed off. “Oh God,” you were breathing out to no god in particular because he wasn’t there. No one to hear you, just pleasure that was threatening to burst and destroy you in the process.

Dex, God, Dex if he was there with you… He’d sit on the coffee table, his legs spread wide. Knees notched between your own so that you were spread wider. And he’d sit with his elbows on his thighs and he’d tell you that you owed him this. That he deserved it for what you’d done. That he wanted it and so it was his. 

You hitched one leg up onto the couch, opening yourself further, and the Dex in your imagination smiled, teeth white and sharp.

                                                        __ __ __

He lifted three of his fingers up to his mouth and wet them on his tongue, sucking the taste of his own precum off before bringing them back to his cock. The slick wetness nearly sent him over the edge even when it was just a pale imitation of what her cunt would feel like around him. Tight pressure, twisting near the head, he gripped himself and stroking just to the point of release, stopped. Ran his fingers over the sensitive head again, teased himself, tortured himself. Tortured her.

They were both so goddamn flawed. He could see clearly the muscles in her calf flexing as she came that night on her bed, he could taste her on his tongue, he could hold his pleasure over the fire of his anger. This was the tack he could besiege her with until she gave in and admitted she was wrong, gave him what he wanted. Give up? It wasn’t something he knew how to do. Lightning was beginning to streak from his balls through his cock, each stroke of his own rough palm was near too much – soon stopping at the peak wouldn’t be enough to keep him from cresting.

She’d be cresting too though, his girl, his bird. He was driving her on, the tendrils of her pleasure growing stronger through the anger and betrayal they were both sick with – his idea come to fruition. She’d be laying on her bed with her hand buried deep and she’d be unable to do anything but come shuddering as she thought of him. His cock, inside of her; his hands, on her; his mouth, biting down; his hands holding on.

Spread her legs for him. Look over her shoulder from her hands and knees at him. Grip his hands to beg for mercy. Sit above him, between her legs, and demand more. She’d—

                                                                                    __ __ __

“Yes,” you were hissing, not able to stop, rubbing your clit with two fingers and trying not to slide wholesale off the couch. Sweat gathering on your neck and at the backs of your knees, muscles tensed, pussy clenching around nothing. “Yes, fuck, thank you.” 

To no one but the Dex in your imagination. He’d moved from the coffee table to the floor, kneeling between your legs, closer than ever but so far away. So removed. Watched you with dark, bronze eyes as pleasure magnified and rebounded through the rope, robbing you of breath it was tied to you so tightly. Your free hand clutched at your own breast, pressed to your chest to feel your own heartbeat and the achy, upset jerking of your words.

“Fuck you,” you told his smug, imaginary face because he still wanted more, faster, quicker, harder than you were willing to give him. Pushed you and pushed you to just tell him because he wanted it, not because you were ready or he trusted you to offer it up.

But Dex wasn’t actually there, and you tried to confine yourself to just the thought of what could be while you worked your clit in rough circles and whimpered, rough and half-aborted. Each pass of your fingers over your sex sent slow quakes of pleasure down your spine that picked up speed the longer they went on. Drove you to an orgasm that felt both wrong and unavoidable. Wet, dirty pleasure and you were just—just there—

__ __ __

Ruby and dark indigo and domination and submission all blending within him to focus on his cock, on the pressure he could feel building within his body. His fingers tightened and pressed down on the vulnerable underside of his member and the pressure ratcheted, Dex biting down on sounds that would doom him if he let them go freely. In his nose was the phantom scent of her perfume, and now that he knew the smell of her skin, layered it underneath like progressively whisper thin silk sheets he could writhe against.

Wet and sloppy, she was driving him to his end a complete mess without even being in the room. Just one flash of her body dancing, just one more memory of those sounds she made into his mouth that very night, and he was orgasming – cumming until his hand spasmed on his own member. Until the pleasure was blue-white heat, knife-edged and near pain, groaning raggedly as his own cum dripped thick down his hand. Until he couldn’t clench his eyes any tighter or feel any more.

Until he sat in his chair with spend cooling on skin and remembered dazedly how optimistically he’d thought it would be her touch on him soon. Laughed, deep and bitter and low as he wiped the mess on his pants. His girl – her crest, her orgasm, it was happening. It was approaching, gathering pressure that would fill her up until she asked him to release it for her. Him, and only him. 

He’d done that.

Perhaps it was but a small retaliation, a small, toxic exertion of control that Dex needed to feel so he wouldn’t go insane. From across Hell’s Kitchen, he did this to her and that thought was his bullet, it had the 10-ring, hadn’t it? Right through the middle. His hunt successful as her pleasure bled through him, pooled in his belly, soaked through the pain in his back. 

                                                                                                                     __ __ __

You cumming. You spasming. You biting down on your tongue because waves of pleasure were shotgunning through your body at the thought of Dex taking you, riding him. At the idea of what his cock would feel like hitting that soft spongey place inside or jutting hard into you as far as he could go. The release of pleasure was so desperate that you felt yourself spasm, the fabric of your underwear dampening further. 

Orgasm wrung itself from you until you could take no more – desperately rubbing against your sex until nothing but overwrought sensation would come of it – no deuxième petit mort that night. From deep in the bond, the heartbeat of another person’s body, another person’s orgasm, throbbed, picked at you. Another person’s? Dex’s. Him in your words and latched onto your breast via that rope in the way you wanted him connected in person.

Was it so ludicrous to be crying and angry and betrayed and horny all at the same time? Perhaps emotions were all the same, like one sample under a microscope that shifted depending on your focus. Crying to want with the simple turn of a gauge and back again. But the act of masturbation still left you feeling gross and sleazy, base – lesser after an argument like that. Maybe, maybe he had just needed release after a tense evening, but there was the possibility that Dex had inflicted that on you. Add it to the list of things to be pissed off about.

A glass of water that you thirsted for but could only sip, and things cooled in your mind and body. Satiated. Dex had fucked up. You had fucked up. This whole situation was fucked up. But there was no way out of it, was there? Not unless one of you died, and that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. No solution to the emotion you felt when you saw him, emotion that would have disgusted Karen, Matt, Kirsten, Marci because of how soft and tender it was. It didn’t disgust you of course, just lifted old chains of fear and told you to break them when your hand shook.

You were leaning against your fridge, glass in hand, listening to the soft, ambient noises of people living around you. There had to be something beyond this fight, something for both of you individually and for you together. It couldn’t just be sex and anger, there must be understanding.

Dex might be broken, but the pieces were still good. You might not be worthy, but you were still worth something. 

***

July 8, 2027

Perhaps it was a little too on the nose to go to a church the morning after frantically masturbating to the thought of your soulmate after a fight, but go you did.

What a sentence.

Clinton Church held a wealth of emotion for you, but you imagined it held more for the people you used to know, like Matt and Karen and Foggy. Matt had spoken of a Father Lantom several times, always wistfully, sadly; and the last time you set foot on the property was for Foggy’s funeral. Watched his body be carried out in a procession to the cemetery, saw Matt draw away from Karen till he stood on an island of his own making, lingered among the mourners feeling like you had a red ‘A’ stitched on your shirt.

On a Thursday morning, the church was quiet and in it dwelled a presence that softened the riot of emotion throughout your bond. You found the hard certainty of the wooden pews comforting, tired of pacing around your own studio that you knew too well, and unwilling to sit exposed to the world on a bench on the street. Not that you were particularly religious, if your, well, language was any indication; or that you expected knowledge, salvation, from the church, you just wanted a little bit of peace. Dex was leaving you with very little of it, after all.

He knew about your past, or at least he thought he did. He thought you might even have worked for Hydra, as if that was a possibility. They were literal Nazis – did he not have a better opinion of you? Or did he just assume anyone who was matched with him would be of such low caliber?  Your anger had worn into tiredness overnight, orgasm notwithstanding.

Exhausted, you were so exhausted of people not trusting you to be honest with them when the chips were down. Of people not waiting for you to put those chips down and trying to force your hand. Of people pushing 100 miles per hour on a road marked for 25. So many jobs lost out on after a google search, because of Michael and that bullshit. So many interviews aborted halfway through, so many coworkers saying nasty things until you had to leave, so many places that told you off, incensed that you’d dare to even consider them a possible place of employment. It was a long, hard road back into even basic anonymity after the Triseklion, and the helicarriers, and the dumping of Hydra’s secrets on the internet.

All he had to do was wait. You would have said something.

“Want some company?” 

You snapped your head to the side to see a tall man standing at the end of the pew, holding a long black coat over one arm. He looked familiar, wearing dark gray slacks with a matching waistcoat over a white shirt; held a black, stiff brimmed hat and a crinkled photo in one hand. The preacher always sitting and reading the newspaper on that bench, bemusedly excusing your overwrought language. Your eyes skated over the busted nose, and politely didn’t bring it up. “Do you live in my neighborhood? I think I’ve seen you around.” 

The man shrugged and held out a hand to indicate the spot next to you, sat down when you nodded in agreement. He sighed heavily, speaking slowly. “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” A pause, like he was waiting for your response, but there was none. “You here for peace?”

Got it in one. 

But that was something not to be admitted to a stranger because they’d want to get involved in the finding of it, therefore making said peace more elusive. “Quiet. Time to think.” With a small chuckle as you braided your fingers together in your lap. “Sorry, I’m – I’m not Catholic. If that’s weird—”

But the man was setting his coat and hat aside and smiling some, eyes heavy lidded. The photo he held in his lap, and from the side you could see it was primarily of two boys, plainly dressed but smiling in bright summer sunshine. “I’m not Catholic either. I’m the Mennonite. But I find that churches of all creeds bring me calm in the eye of the storm. You can call me John.” 

The Mennonite. That was weird. Religious people could sometimes be weird, yeah, just in a different way from weird non-religious people like you. Again, the previous night you had furiously pleasured yourself to thoughts of your word match after he accused you of being a criminal during a fight. So truly, you were no one to judge.

“I like your cuff links.” You told him, indicating with a finger the small silver crosses that closed his sleeve at each wrist. “They suit you.”

“I thank you.” The two of you sat in silence for a long time, long enough that other parishioners came and went, a mix of soft footsteps, whispers, and heavy boots. John closed his eyes and tucked his chin, clearly praying, rotating a gold wedding ring on his left hand. You’d seen Dex do that, rotate your ring on his finger, and tried not to draw any comparisons. This man looked tired, as tired as you felt and you thought – hoped – he would get the answers he wanted, just as you hoped for a happiness one day without all that ugliness destroying you, symbiote-like. “What’s bothering you, if I may ask?”

You shrugged, and nudged your purse over on the floor with your foot so you could cross your ankles better. There was the small voice of a young kid several rows back, being shushed by a parent, the rustling of restless childhood. Oh, to be wiped clean of all your knowledge and mistakes and be a kid again. “Just a lot of fu—a lot of mess, John. I don’t know.”

“Friends disappearing?” He suggested, and when your eyebrows shot up in surprise, the tail end of the sentence came around the corner to remind you that not everything was connected. “When you most need them?”

But still, a frown tugged at your forehead as you nodded pensively. You’d thrown on jean shorts that morning, a light shirt, anticipating a hot day in the store, but now your thighs were sticking with sweat to the wooden pews. Winced when you moved them for the first time in awhile. “I guess. Some of them just… poof. Up in smoke, you know? And I worry about them. Like are they okay? I don’t know.” 

“And you don’t know what happened?”

“I wish I did.” Karen again, on that street. Perhaps you were wrong. Perhaps you imagined it, imagined her. Perhaps you had, indeed, chased a stranger down the street. But honestly? You didn’t think so, even weeks later. 

John was watching you with a particularly interested expression his face which, again, was odd. A small, chiming bell of warning slipped through you, the bond wrapping rope-like around your wrist; you could feel those phantom touches trying to pull your hand towards your purse, the intent to grab something. Dex’s knife? Shook it off and rubbed at the skin there with your opposite hand absently, pushing the feeling away.

That was a wild overreaction, the man was a priest. A preacher. Pastor. Honestly, you weren’t sure but— it was possible that he just took great pleasure in providing counsel to others – you were in a church after all. At your glance, he crossed his arms in front of his chest – not folding his hands in at the elbows like normal but gripping his own biceps, left hand to right bicep and vice versa. Dex did that sometimes, too, and the similarity struck you as somehow dangerous. The photo fluttered down to the bench next to him, and John tracked its progress until he knew it was safe. “Go on.”

It seemed that he wished to hear more about whatever friend problem you had going on – namely Karen and Matt, but buddy, was that the least of your worries right then. Poor guy.

“Really, I don’t know. It’s just— I had a fight with my—” At this you hesitated, because some religions, some sects, didn’t accept soulmate bonds. To them, they were an abomination brought about by sin and deceit, meant to be ignored at best and carved from the body at worse. There was no telling if John was from someplace like that, after all. “A guy, that I’m seeing. He doesn’t get that I’ve been hurt before. And it makes me… too cautious. Normal things take me time, and he wants to go faster than normal.”

“Sounds unfortunate.” There was a distinct, small disconnect there in the back of his face, like this wasn’t the problem he’d searched for.

“All I want is trust, not control. But I don’t think he’s ever learned that lesson. I don’t think it’s something his brain computes. I—I don’t know.” The kid was whining, behind you his mother trying to shush him; the priest was welcoming someone into the nave; a man was muttering Hail Marys a little too loudly from the front of the pews. “And another thing—”

You swiveled abruptly to face John here, and he looked comically surprised in the way that all men did when a woman was emphatically sharing unexpectedly. He watched you speak with your hands like he suspected the possibility of you hitting him for a moment. “There’s weird stuff going on with my mom. Like my family is out of state and this detective was even calling me about them. And I hate it. I—I never want to think about it again but I just know that I’m gonna get dragged screaming back in, you know? You know?”

He nodded like it was an attempt to placate you, or like he vehemently understood – it was hard to tell. “I do hate it when that happens.”

“Yeah, me too.” At this you sighed and fell back against the seat again. If only you could say this shit to Dex. But wasn’t that the way – that people who put no pressure on you always had the key to Pandora’s box. “What about you?”

John shook his head lightly, picked up his photo and kept it in his lap. If you looked closely, you could see a woman standing in the background of the photo, also smiling but trying to be unobtrusive. “Bad job, is all. Looking for a storm to bring me to salvation.”

Your phone sat on your thigh, face up, and with a new notification, the time appeared to tell you to get off your ass and go to work. Winced apologetically at the priest who looked over at the noise as you switched it to silent. If you were quick, you might even have time for an iced coffee on the way. If you weren’t quick, you could get some for everyone and still be forgiven. “What do you want?” John was saying as you stood up, looking over as you gathered your things. “From your boyfriend?”

Boyfriend – it felt strange to hear someone call Dex that.

“Well,” And the question sat on your tongue for a long moment, leaning hard into the pew with your hip. “I don’t know. An apology, for one. ‘Please, I won’t do it again.’ Understanding. And then… I guess… I just want him back? I think?” There was a small, wistful smile that called your confidante  to give you one in return, and that seemed to surprise him. “I was just getting to the good part.”

John stood to give you room to pass, held your arm like a gentleman when you threatened to unbalance on the way. You glanced at the time again, but still stopped in the aisle to look back at him – a tall, solemn, Mennonite who missed his wife and kids, if you guessed right. A tall solemn Mennonite who had kindly taken an interest in your problems, however superficially. “What about you John? What do you want?”

He glanced downward, and played with his cross cufflinks absently. They seemed to weigh on him more than anything else, and perhaps instead of seeking absolution in churches, he needed some time out of them. Finding himself, or quitting his job, or something; looking for freedom in the secular world to compliment his religion beliefs, make them stronger. “I think a new job.” He told you with a hair of amusement. “And to go home to my boys.” 

“I certainly hope you get that then.” Saluted the stranger nee acquaintance as your phone began to vibrate again, a call from a Frederick area code. “I’ll see you around.”

***

July 10, 2027

Dex waited for the group of Albanians he was interested in to round the corner – they retreated to their territory near Red Hook fairly consistently on Saturdays, and that consistency was about to betray them. Of late, his preferred targets were Anti-Vigilante Task Force agents because he knew, with perpetually sadistic grin, that their deaths would piss off one Wilson Fisk. Excuse him, Mayor Wilson Fisk. Not because the men’s lives meant anything to the mayor, but because it meant more vacancies he had to fill to keep his private army swelled. More corrupt cops and lately, civilian recruits, deputized with signing bonus and all if they were willing to wear the uniform.

But recently he had noticed an uptick in his old friends the Albanians hanging around Zhang’s Dry Cleaners. The owners were innocuous enough from his observations, but they’d likely gotten wrapped in a protection racket and could no longer pay the bill anymore. Concerning, considering his soulmate worked there.

Even if she was mad at him and he at her, he’d rather she be safe. Being safe, of course, meant he had to send them a message, because soulmates were supposed to take care of each other. That was his duty. He didn’t offer his service to people easily, and he’d served it to her that night, told her she could use him like that. The thought that she might one day use him, that way or others, slipped thirst through him the way you might slip a penknife through an envelope to open it. Had to stuff it away in a dark pocket for a far away future.

His shoulder ached, an alternative tempo to his back’s usual complaining, but he enjoyed the work and so put up with it. Used it as an outlet for all the frustration the last few days had bestowed upon him. If he was fighting with his girl, then he’d fight with everyone else too.

There was a squadron of them, gathering around two big box trucks ubiquitous to criminals and creepy men who claimed to have puppies for little kids. Huge black boxes of cargo were stacked to the ceiling in each, closed with thick black straps and latch locks; two men each to a box, hefting them with red faces and puffing breaths as they unloaded their merchandise into the crappy warehouse, uncaring if anyone saw because: if the warehouse was crappy, the neighborhood was shitty. Levels.

Three stood to the side, arms folded with sweat darkening the backs of their shirts; they’d forgone the jacket part of the gray sweat suits and shifted restlessly because polyester pant legs didn’t breathe well and were sticking to their legs in the summer heat. The sun hadn’t fully set but it was darkening, and they didn’t pay attention to his soft steps on top of one of the trucks; two of those men went down with blades in their windpipes; as they clutched at their bubbling necks, he sat down on the edge of the truck and swung his legs over the side.

The third man looked up to see him posed there, and started yelling something in that soft, slurring language of theirs, surprise and anger coloring it. He took out a gun as Dex ticked a hand in sarcastic greeting and then landed on the ground heavily. “Too late.”  Before the man could fall to the ground, he plucked the gun from deadening hands to use. No sense turning down free ammunition.

Five lost their lives running out of the front of the warehouse directly at him, the dumbfucks. Headshot, headshot, headshot. Three to the stomach. Headshot. Brains splattered the legs of his pants as he advanced, blood pooled like overflow rainwater in the little courtyard, lapped at the metal of a dropped semi-automatic. Little ripples across the puddles as bodies twitched from death spasms and the final electrical impulses their mushed brains could produce.

“Fucking Bullseye!” One of the four remaining men was yelling, which was a poor choice since they were trying to flank him from behind and this gave away their position. 

Dex stalked further out towards the warehouse entrance, turned on his heel and hefted the semi out of the blood. It was a heavy, long, and powerful, but the weight of it was pulling at his stitches, so he tossed it to the side and leaned down to scavenge a smaller handgun from one of the dead men. From the man with three stomach wounds, who was still yelling and crying but would soon be dead, really. Two in gray tracksuits had weapons held high, were sliding their backs along the sides of the box trucks to take his full attention.

But two more were coming from farther to the side, trying to duck behind trash cans and black SUVs for more cover. A shot jerked into the concrete by his foot, and Dex did them the favor of turning to look at them so they could see directly into the eyes of the man who would kill them. Another shot grazed his thigh, non-threatening but a pain in the goddamn ass. The one who shot at him died immediately, bullet to first one eye, then the second as he fell, gun skittering on the ground and briefly going off. The rest of the man’s compatriots scattered, their plan falling to pieces at the fear of friendly fire.

The two by the box trucks were belly crawling, and Dex used his high ground to aim at their spines and paralyze them where they were. Not like that couldn’t be overcome, he mused with acrimonious resentment to the beat of his back. As those two reimagined their world views, he tracked down the third and final Albanian still left – attempting to find adequate cover on his way back to the SUVs. Dropping the magazine of his weapon, Dex launched it with enough force to stun the man, then fitted a blade to his hand to follow that with, watching for it to pierce all the way through his neck.

At least these assholes were useful to him, being weapon runners. Inside the warehouse, Dex threw open a number of the black boxes, discarding the straps like trash to find several guns he preferred – but the real cash was in knives. Shit was expensive these days, wasn’t it? Why waste an opportunity to restock himself for free? He loaded a bag with preferred pieces and lifted it to his whole shoulder, and if he stepped on the last two living Albanians on his way out, it mattered not. They’d bleed out soon enough.

***

July 11, 2027

If Matt had a watch, he would have checked it.

Karen had reluctantly shared the address with him, warned him to leave that woman alone. So he sat across the street, seething quietly while she just… sat there. Technically, it meant he was doing as Karen asked.

Through the vantage point of his strange vision, there wasn’t really much to see, which was fairly disappointing  because he wanted an excuse, he really did. Just legs folded underneath her, holding a half-full glass of soda on ice that constantly threatened to tip over, pretending to watch television on the couch. A single lamp lit the space of her studio in a bare, unhappy glow, cast her face in shadow but illuminated the sorry slant of her shoulders. It had gone on for over an hour, and Matt was growing tired of watching Dex’s soulmate when he could be working on the Northern Star.

She was waiting for him – that much was obvious, but the sorry son of a bitch wasn’t showing up. Served her right.

He’d chosen a building across the street and to the side, the worn black paint of his suit blending him into the tar beach on the roof, and it was so dark out that he’d discarded his helmet to take advantage of the cool night breeze. Matt could hear the actors on her screen speaking, but the volume was turned so low even he had trouble distinguishing the words; the low thrum of electricity from her plugged in fridge, the coffee maker; the heft of her breath because she was struggling to be calm, each intake sounding too wet. A buzzing noise, a cellphone signaling a notification, and she jerked upright into a position of tension – starred at the jittering screen on her coffee table.

Picked it up hesitantly, and when the message wasn’t what she hoped – when it stabbed her right through – she dropped it on the couch.

But that wasn’t all he could hear. The next rooftop over was no longer empty.

Bullseye. He held a phone in his hands, Matt could hear the quiet pulsing of its battery, his face illuminated briefly in white-blue light that harshened everything about him. He’d sent the text. He’d hurt his match with whatever he’d said, and Matt couldn’t bring himself to feel any pity for her.

That piece of shit came to that roof with the familiarity of a lover, like he’d done this many times before. With boots that were whisper quiet; the hiss of synthetic fabric rubbing against itself as a body folded into a desired position; the soft thunk of a knee coming to rest on the ground; the clink of a scope extending. Matt smelled gun powder, cheap soap from the back wall of a bodega, and perfume.

Vanilla and woodsmoke, that was it. A scent he knew well – her perfume, that he remembered from weeks together, sitting side by side in the courtroom. 

Matt waited to hear the cynical glide of a knife blade emerging from its sheath, but no such thing happened. Waited further for the sound of a gun cocking, but it never came. Poindexter was unmoving, kneeling there. The man he hated with such ferocity so focused on that damn woman, held her in the view of his scope so tightly it could have been a choking hand, that he left himself vulnerable to attack.

The two of them lingered separately before Daredevil like a pair of actors on the same stage, performing the same play but at two different points. If she was looking for an opening dialogue, Poindexter spoke soliloquy.‘Why gnaw you so your nether lip?’ She might be asking, but he would say, not in response, ‘So I will turn her virtue into pitch.’ And honestly, Matt was fairly impressed with himself for having the wherewithal to think of an example like that. Undergrad was a long fucking time ago, after all.

Poindexter adjusted his scope, that clinking sound again, but never removed it from her, fixated. Unable to tell what scene she was on unless the play was ripped in half and they were shoved together again. Matt cast an eye, metaphorically of course, at her and saw she was just as helpless. She’d set aside her drink and held some kind of coin, rubbing the cheap metal between her fingers. He could hear her heart beating, too fast and hare-like. And there underneath that was something else. Different.

A thrum, the sound of a deep, rushing river or distant waves against rock cliffs. Heard as if already sunk below the surface, the kind of water that could kill a man, that locals warned against swimming in. Not rhythmic, not steady, drowning.

For a moment – a frightening, sudden moment – he was in that water. Could hear it, icy and unforgiving, settling over his head. Feel bubbles drifting without direction and the water tumbling him so he had no idea which way was up. Matt jerked, hit the wall hard with his back and reached blindly for his mask. Grasped it roughly and scrambled to put it back on so he wasn’t totally defenseless, so he had a shield.

Breathed deeply and there it was – the white noise of the city, right where he’d left it. The squeaking wheel of a shopping cart being pushed a block away, a car horn being leaned on incessantly, sirens in the distance. New York City, not water, that filled his lungs and his belly.

But it was still there, pulsing. Matt examined it carefully because he didn’t want to get sucked in again. Except it echoed, rebounded, came from two sources now that he had figured out how to pay proper attention to it. In his hands, he held two threads only to find that they were one, connected. The sound also came from Poindexter.

Their match. Soulmate bond. The words they said to each other as Foggy lay dying at their feet. That was the sound.

He’d… never heard a bond before. 

Never suspected it might ever be possible, never tried before. Most of all, Matt would never have suspected it would sound so angry, impulsive, torturous. Not agonizing just for them either, for him too, because the notion that Benjamin Motherfucking Poindexter had someone still poisoned him slowly. Those chemicals seeping into him until his skin was paper thin with rot and the ugliness tried to dissolve him wholesale. It was turning him into a person Father Lantom would be ashamed of, but the thought of Father Lantom only spurred him on further. 

Matt retreated from his vantage point quietly, sinking into the deep threshold of the darkness till his hands found the cold iron of the scaling ladder attached to the side of the building. Across from him, Poindexter finally moved, elbows scraping on the parapet like he yearned to get closer; and across from him, she stood up from the couch and must have walked into the bathroom, closed the door. He could hear the sound of her shower turning on, scent the generic smell of her face wash.

Clearly, the separation was distracting the man, wearing him down. If Matt attacked now, the fight would get bloody, savage. And he would be bothering that woman, going directly against Karen’s wishes, which honestly held more weight. 

If he attacked with you no plan, they would just be two fighters with no strength of will to find any other path, just to gut each other. But if he waited for this hell to take its toll, he’d face a broken man. A man he could more easily smite, and Poindexter’s desperate cry of pain from that day in the walk-in freezer drifted across his brain. The relentless, careless anger of the man as he’d attacked Wilson Fisk and Vanessa Mariana in their penthouse. That was a villain he could more easily dismantle. Destroy.

And if doing so drove a knife into that woman’s back at the same time, so be it.

***

July 20, 2027

Dex was avoiding you. Well, not avoiding you in exactly the same way as before, but definitely being a shit in a similar way as before. 

7/10/2027 12:13 pm EST i don’t want to not talk 7/10/2027 12:14 pm EST do you not understand why I’m upset? DX 7/11/2027 12:02 am EST Ask yourself that question.

The first time you’d ever texted him first, and it went unanswered for almost twelve hours. That was a response in and of itself, for a man as deliberate as Dex.

He remained apart. Aloof and not communicating, to tell you how deeply unhappy he was with you. Texts had stopped, your windows and blinds stayed open when you left them up, your mail that for weeks had been neatly arranged by size in a pile in your mailbox every day was thrashed again, everything. Perhaps if this was but a small disagreement, he might have been obnoxiously in your face, clinging to you; but this was serious. This was more. Almost two weeks of nothing, and the need for him was becoming embarrassing. Fucking hell, it wasn’t like you were a drug addict or something, but you couldn’t stop thinking about him. About his skin, his mouth, his anger, his betrayal.

And it was embarrassing, checking your phone so many times a day hoping each vibration on the alteration desk was him, finally texting you. Staring at a corner because you thought you saw dishwater blonde hair or an imposing figure in all black. You thought that might have been him how many times? And could never be sure. How about when you turned with a smile on your face in the store, hearing heavy work boots, only to come face to face with a poor construction worker who needed a tux done for his son’s wedding? Humiliating.

Dex waited for you to give in, to apologize and prostrate yourself at his feet. Beg for his forgiveness and spill some of your darkest moments to him solely because he wanted it. As if that would ever happen.

There were only two ways he chose to communicate with you at all anymore, if you could call it communication. You could certainly call it fucking deranged, though. Vindictive.

First was the light. The little, uneven glint – not a flashlight or a phone – but a reflection off of glass as cars drove by. Small and unobtrusive except that it kept happening, over and over again, and caught your attention. It appeared most evenings, for an hour or so, and it kept catching your eye, at just the right height to flicker in the corner of your vision when you sat on the couch or at your table. Across the street, on the roof of that building, it had to be Dex. You’d just begin to concentrate on a seam or a stitch, and a car would drive by, and the light would distract you because it said, ‘I’m watching you.’ Glint. ‘I’m waiting for you to give in.’ Glint. Each time, the soulmate bond would winch a little tighter at your chest, giving him away further.

That wasn’t even the worst of it.

Because eventually the light would stop, on those nights. He put away whatever scope or spyglass or whatever that shit was, and you had peace. For about half an hour.

And then the pleasure would start. The teasing. The tormenting. Dex, telling you that he was touching himself, pleasuring himself, and he wanted to drag you along with him; make you think about what you could have if you just did as he wanted. You’d sit there, red-faced, irritated, aroused, and stubborn on your couch, refusing to give in again. Every single fucking night.

Every single fucking night, there was the tell-tale weight of want for a man between your legs and thighs that kept clenching together like that would stop this whole thing. Like letting a sex toy fill you and then not moving, nothing but dissatisfaction. He wanted you to think about his body, his cock, the way he kept staring at your bed during the date, wanted you tempted. Wanted you to rationalize, as you felt his orgasm swell across the echo of the bond, and think, ‘Hm, maybe just tell him.’

I wasn’t like you didn’t enjoy masturbation as much as the next person, and it wasn’t that he was probably thinking about you as he did it. Like fuck, you were guilty of thinking about him how many times at this point? But it was that he tried to game you into it, like he could buy his way out of your anger with intercourse and sexual satisfaction when you deserved understanding, apology, care.

That stupid light was back again, crooking its finger and pulling your attention across the street like a witch lured in a child. Powerless to resist, you glanced up, saw it again as another car with brights drove by, and couldn’t help but think, ‘He must be staring me right in the eye.’ Frowned at that spot across the street, turned your attention back to the alteration job at your table. A rehearsal dinner dress that needed boning, and hemming, and taking in and was definitely more interesting than that stupid light.

It lit up again. Frustrated, you stopped to take a drink of the cold beer sitting on a coaster where you couldn’t knock it over with fabric. Hint of grapefruit in whatever you’d picked out turned out to be code for unbearably sour, but you drank it anyway because it was too hot to waste the money you’d spent on the 4-pack. 

“Maybe you should go do that stupid job you’re so fucking worried about if you’re not gonna nut up and apologize.” You told the dress, like it was somehow at fault. Pricked your thumb and sucked it into your mouth to keep blood off of the fabric. At least that light over there meant he hadn’t left for wherever it was he lived and his demented plan to orgasm you into doing what he wanted. The ass.

Another car, another predictable glint. “Jesus Christ, this is fucked.” You had on safety goggles to sew around the spiral steel boning and pulled them off, tossed them down in a fit.

Soon, you’d feel it. Through that traitorous soulmate bond that didn’t care how it brought you together, as long as it did so. When you might absently press your flat fingers against the seam of your pants, pressure to your clit, then jerk away like it stung because how dare you give him the satisfaction. When all your thoughts were routed through your sex to Dex and his body, and you sat on your hands to stop yourself from doing anything. Stewed angrily and thought about what a dick he was. And it would end with you lying in bed, wet, restless, irritated beyond belief. Again.

You glared at him, hoped he fucking saw it. Tossed the dress to follow the glasses because you could pick it up the following night. Busied yourself wiping up all the little bits of boning that had scattered on the table and floor when you cut it to the right length, and saw the light again and realized – that means he’s still over there, doesn’t it? It meant that you could get the jump on him.

And an incredibly, terribly stupid decision was born.

“I’m going to hell.” You told your empty studio, dragging your chair to sit squarely in front of the open window that he must be looking through. In that triangle of space between the table, couch, and coffee table, he would have no option but to look at you; and drained your beer as you sat down there purposefully. A spear of moonlight cut each of your thighs in half lengthwise, and you slowly spread them open until it pointed directly to your sex alone. “I’m going to hell.”

Your toes curled around the legs of the chair as the light glinted again and confirmed for you, at least in your mind, that you still had an audience. Hooked one arm behind the chair, behind your back, and slipped your other hand slowly down your abdomen, past the words breathing under your breast to the waistband of your shorts, then your underwear. Two could play this incredibly fucked up game.

The sensation then of someone peering at you through an open mail slot, like you were being perceived during a private moment; eyes in the dark, following you down the street; of being exposed while still fully clothed. His hands intangible skimmed up your calves, gripped your hips, pressed into that tight space between your shoulder blades, sunk into your hair. You bit down on a shiver of anticipation that wasn’t entirely yours, as the arrow lodged in your ribs started to tug you across the street.

After days of withholding when you wanted it so badly, the touch of your fingers against the lips of your sex sent your head lolling back again, coated in slick and want, your clit throbbing for once to your own heartbeat. You slid two fingers into the folds of your sex until they were wet past the knuckle – your pointer finger and thumb on your right hand – and that choice was awkward to do but deliberate. Those were the two fingers he’d tasted when he demanded your ring, back in the courtroom. 

And you lifted your head leisurely just so you could bring those same two fingers to your own lips, follow the same path his mouth had taken. Dex would see that, he would notice that because he always noticed those little things. And as you hoped, there was a sharp pulse under your words, an escalation of the want you felt in your sex because he was being swept along in your wake. You were the wave, dragging him out in the undertow this time, letting him flail against the sensation of your body. The taste of your own desire was musky, a little salty, not unpleasant, and if you dragged your spit wet fingers down your chin and then your neck, that was because you wanted to. 

Because the spit cooling against your skin felt good in the nighttime heat and sent a shiver down your spine, not because it would backhand him with want.

“Dex.” You said out loud, knowing he’d see your lips moving, knowing that as you dropped your head to watch your hand’s path back down to your waistband, he’d follow your line of sight too. Your discretion, your desire, your fingers.

In your mind, you imagined taking that ropey soulmate bond and peeling it open. Everything you felt, every small sensation, every brush of your fingertips, every flutter of your muscles reaching for him – it all dripped down onto that bond. He couldn’t see your breasts, your sex, your hands – but he could feel the need for them. Like water in a rain barrel, it would collect in Dex, sitting there, right across the street, until he overflowed.

Between two fingers, your clit was sobbing relief, and none of this would last long anyway. It was sharp, needy pleasure, and your pussy grasped tighter to chase an orgasm. Holding onto nothing, so tight it was almost painful. Your eyes were fluttering as you kept rubbing, quick up and down movements, but still you kept tracking that light across the street. Your face was crumpling into panting and yearning, your lips opening and closing like pleas might fall from them even with no one to hear you. 

So close, already. Because those thoughts of Dex were hard to resist. A devil that haunted your dreams with a bloody mouth and arm restraints. There he stood in your mind’s eye with his lip curled and his stupid expectations and his raised eyebrow and his hands – watching you like this show was his due. Like you owed him an orgasm, and your fingers rubbed harder, soft wet noises obscene in the quiet apartment. 

The light blinked again, and you orgasm was just in reach – you could feel the muscles in your body stiffening, your hand losing rhythm. Your eyes closed, back arching, that blooming warmth of pleasure beginning to suffuse your sex and then – 

‘Going slow is killing me.’ He had told you, his voice low and his hands tight and his body big against you. Die on this.

Then you pulled your hand from your body, ruthlessly, panting in your seat. Wiped your fingers on your thigh, sat up straight as the orgasm died a slow, agonizing death. Angry and unfulfilled against but at least it was on your terms as you unhooked your feet from the chair and stood up unsteadily. You leaned halfway out the open window, breathing in deep the scent of the city at night – heavy with the promise of rain soon, thunderstorms, smug satisfaction, and freedom.

Not so much a challenge but remonstrance. A big fat middle finger to him while you waited for him to be an adult and talk to you. Not while he waited for you to be an adult and talk to him, never that. The light had disappeared from the opposing rooftop, the space where Dex had been dark when cars passed by. Perhaps he’d take this as a memo that you were an equal combatant here, not to fucked with. Perhaps he come up, knock on your window, say, ‘Let’s talk.’ Be normal, which honestly was a joke to even think because neither of you were fucking normal.

You flicked your tv on to see it playing Sleepless in Seattle, kept the volume low, and collapsed down to wait and see. Wait and see if Dex would appear because as mad as you were at him, you didn’t want this stalemate to last forever. Brought both legs up onto the seat and bundled your big blanket into a pillow you could use against the arm of the couch. It didn’t surprise you to fall asleep alone, only jerking awake in the morning to the sounds of trash pick-up on the street below, and dreams of resting your face against a broad back. 

It did surprise you, when you woke, to see that your windows were closed.

***

July 22, 2027

You were being cooked alive by the sun, an unsuspecting egg in a frying pan, done till crispy as sweat ran down the backs of your legs and made you yearn even for those dusty old fans in the dry cleaners. In your purse was the crumpled receipt from the city for permit renewal fees, having dropped Jim’s check off in a stale office across town, and in your hand was a half-drunk iced coffee, having judiciously stopped to pick it up on your way back. One of those enormous, oddly shaped intersections was several feet ahead, but you barely glanced at it as you gave into the impulse to check your phone again. 

No texts. A little over twenty-four hours past your little display, and communication was still non-existent. After a moment, the new contact form clicked open for that familiar number ending in 9284, the cursor blinking on the First Name space.

It was time to stop being juvenile and just a name his phone number appropriately, and maybe that would lead to you (or both of you) getting your shit together. But name it what? Dex and Bullseye both seemed risky. He’d hate Ben or Benjamin. Online it was trendy to name your soulmate’s contact in your phone with their words to you, but you didn’t much like seeing, ‘Hello Karen. It’s nice to see you again,’ over and over again.

Just put down Dex, jeeze. Sipping your drink and starting to type it in as the crosswalk started ticking down from ten at your approach. D-E-

A hand grabbed your elbow and yanked you backwards onto the sidewalk before you could go a step farther, sent your phone flying. A palm large enough to manhandle you at the bicep, a grip you knew well enough would scrape your words raw with wanting. You yanked out of that hand and scrambled for your phone, but it’s twin reached out and caught the thing mid-air. Somehow smug and irritating before you’d even seen his face. 

“There are other people still crossing the street Dex, for Chrissake—” Huffing indignantly, and said with no small amount of exasperation because a number of other pedestrians entered even after you were stopped. Could he stop overreacting about goddamn crosswalks, please.

When you turned on him, Dex held the phone out silently, and his fingers closed down on yours for a moment when you took it back, like it was really your hand he wanted. Stood there looking destructively attractive in a loose white t-shirt with a logo on it you didn’t recognize, laundered and worn like he’d had it for a long, long time. From under the hem, a brown belt just peeked out, the buckle gold but scratched and worn down, so that it matched the shade of his hair in the sun just so.

It was the most casual you’d ever seen him before, and God it did things for you. Abruptly, you cleared your throat and dropped your phone into your pocket, trying to hide how your cheeks heated the moment you looked at his face, remembered what you did that night. ‘Be normal!’ Your brain screamed. “What are you wearing?”

Dex’s forearms, corded with muscle, flexed as you glanced at them, and as he put his hands into his pockets, there were your words on display. Burnished black ink, soot dark and polished so they caught the light. He waited to answer until you looked him in the eye, a tiny exertion of control that set your irritation on a match head and lit it. Raised an eyebrow while the line in his cheek deepened. “Goodwill shirt. Is that problem?”

“No.” You tilted your head back a little like you were looking down at him and also like you were definitely not wearing a t-shirt you’d gotten at Goodwill. Yours was black and had what you were reasonably assured was a Ford Mustang logo on the breast, so whatever.

A wry tick of his lip to indicate that he could see right through you. “Good. Because I have a problem with you wandering around trying to get run over.” Saying that like he cared, like he wasn’t being so ridiculously overprotective. Saying that like it wouldn’t make the bond between you flex its fragile, skeletal fingers in anticipation or your heart wouldn’t skip a beat.

“Run over? There were other people fucking crossing. You need help.” 

“It’s dangerous.” Dex was insisting, moving closer like he wanted to touch you, and you wanted to let him.

You scoffed, pretending to be unaffected when in reality the shade of a nearby building hit the scar on his cheek at just the right angle to hide it, and you had the impulse to trace your fingers there to make sure you could still feel it in place like hand stitches on a seam. People were stepping onto the sidewalk all around you, the timing on the crosswalk letting people move horizontally instead of vertically, and Dex herded you to the side, where there was less traffic. The constant direction felt like overstep, in a long line of oversteps. Not conscientious consideration but overbearing management, whether he intended that or not.

“So? It’s always been dangerous.” 

“Yes, but now you have me.” He had a pair of ancient looking headphones around his neck, the cord leading down to some music player in his pocket. He had dark eyes lit in gold highlights of fire and violence and possession. He had words that struck your every nerve, words that both offered himself to you and took you for himself. “To look out for you.”

The combination of all that he had: eyes and scar and belt and words and goddamn blue jeans that made him look even taller somehow arrowed right at your breastbone. Stuck there where it could lodge until you bled out.

What were you supposed to say to that? Be sarcastic and risk wounding him too deep with a knife too sharp. Agree and look weak in the face of this détente that neither of you were willing to give up. ‘Push your face into his neck and tell him you understand and that yes he’s yours and you’re his,’ The voice of those soulmate words, unhelpful, insistent, wanting, and loud. So loud that instead you turned on your heel and changed your approach.

Streetlights were signaling to cross in your direction again, and miracle upon miracles, you weren’t run over the moment you stepped onto the blacktop. Weird. “Aren’t you mad at me? I’m not sure why you’d bother watching out for me right now.” 

Dex kept up easily, following you like a hound pacing a fox it intended to corner. When you glanced at him over your coffee, he was smoothing over his face from you while something flickered back there behind the polite mask that dropped down. The polite mask instead of the real him hurt, somehow. And you tasted of his hurt along the length of the word match, an hors d’oeuvre before the wash of anger he felt too. That Dex was hiding it meant it was growing beyond his complete control, unstable.

“Just because I’m angry doesn’t mean you can put yourself in danger.” He bit out as you both stepped up on to the opposite sidewalk, rough voice in his rough throat to match your behavior. You were still walking down the street with him, but this time his hand did hurt when it grabbed you, fingers too tight on your shoulder, frustration shining through that mask which was already cracking. “Will you stop fucking walking away from me?”

The steady weight of his strength at your shoulder, it seeped into you like the roots of a tree trying to keep you in place. And for a moment, you did stay still, with his hand on you. But reality reared its ugly head – you had to do the work of figuring out where you wanted this to go, what you wanted to say. 

Your drink was almost gone, all melted ice, and the paper straw was disintegrating, so you tossed it into the nearby trash for something to do when you spoke to him. “Can put yourself in danger.” 

Dex said nothing, perilously close to recrimination.

“That’s the thing. I can do whatever I want, whether you say I can or not.” Your back felt so stiff, tender, like it would bruise if he but put a fingertip to it. Your voice a broken record player, repeating the same bleeding phrase again and again. “If I do something because you told me to or asked me to, it’s because it’s my choice. And it was my choice to keep all that shit to myself for a little while longer.”

That rope had dropped out of you, pooled at both your feet and his, waiting for someone to pick it up. People were beginning to skirt conspicuously around the two of you, aware that some shit was truly going down. Like in the hallway that night, he was turning into a stranger again, empty and removed, cutting you off from what he felt. Only the casual posture of his hand in his pocket betrayed him – turned to a fist.

“If you want to be involved,” And at this you flicked your hand back and forth between the two of you, “Involved people don’t go behind each other’s backs like that. And I realize I’m spewing shit right now which isn’t fair, but,” Just his lips tightened, and his jaw flexed, both movements almost imperceptible when you drew in a wet breath that cut open how you were trying to avoid crying. “But I’m hurt and I haven’t seen you in so long and I don’t react well to this shit. And I want to listen but I—I—” 

From your pocket, your phone chimed, and you cursed to dig it out with hands that were suddenly clumsy under Dex’s watch. It was from Lea, wondering where you were and had the check cashed okay? “God, I have to get back to work.” 

Dex’s face was cold, and he wasn’t moving closer, wasn’t trying to speak. More of the bond slithered to the ground, like he’d dropped it. “I’ll leave you to it then.” And he was backing away, turning and presenting his back to you for the first time but it didn’t scream trust like you might have hoped. It screamed of a nasty, ugly mess roiling between you, threatening to overwhelm everything.

“No, no don’t just leave me to it. Fucking apologize. Fucking explain shit to me and listen to me.” He was already several feet away but you still called after him, sounding more wounded than you ever wanted to again, not caring if others heard. The neckline of his shirt was stretched and loose with age, and it dipped low on his back; revealed the very edge of something red and vertical along the length of his spine. It was raised so much you could still see the shape of it between his shoulder blades before it was swallowed by the looseness of the cotton jersey. “If you can’t do that, then I’m not sure what else to say right now.”

That scar, it was irritated, sensitive, in pain – it was him. His voice carried over his shoulder as he started to walk away, and the sound of it pierced you through like a bolt to the chest, a prey animal left behind and bleeding in the forest to suffer alone till death. “Some other time then.” In the same tone as one might say, ‘Good bye.’ He’d looked over his shoulder at you in the courthouse, but he didn’t look back here.

The store was only a few blocks down, and you managed to wipe most of the distress from your face with rough palms by the time you pushed the door open. Hid how you were shredded into pieces from guilt and anger and principles when Lea – sitting at the front counter – smiled to see you. She looked worn down, too much held in since that strange visit from the man with the envelope, and at least you could see some brightness reflected there on her face. At least someone was happy to see you. “Take over for me, will you?”

And that was how much of the afternoon went, after that. Mostly silent, completely hot, business ebbing and rushing to the chime of the bell above the door. At one point Lois came in with a dress she wanted to get cleaned before a date, took one look at your face, and patted your shoulder with a frown. 

“I told you he isn’t shit.” She said, fluttering her fingers for emphasis, and for a brief moment it almost looked like she had six of them on each hand. God, the heat was getting to you – you wiped sweat from your forehead with the back of your hand, and yeah no, her hands were fucking normal, get a grip. “Dump him.” 

“Thank you for your sparkling input, Lois.” You intoned, watching her toss her receipt at the trash can and miss badly.

“Running gel?” It was held out like a magic elixir to solve all your problems. A gooey, sun warmed, gross elixir.

“No. Thanks.”

Outside, as evening fell, the sun refused to do the same – stubbornly staying put in the sky while the subway filled with people going home for the evening or, alternatively, were going out. Probably with their soulmates. Happy, uncomplicated relationships that were held just out of your reach, weren’t they? Fucking aliens. Fucking Dex man. Fucking you. There were still hours to go before closing time, and your fingers were tracing uneven concentric circles on the counter as you tried to figure out how to apologize and get an apology.

Hours till you could go home and watch Dirty Dancing over some ice cream and pretend like you weren’t waiting for Dex to climb up your fire escape. 

Daydreams of being lifted into Patrick Swayze’s arms stopped abruptly by a loud bang from outside the store. Electronics seemed to surge for a moment with staticky, overloaded noise – the radio crackling angrily, clothing rack grinding uncomfortably, lights buzzing too hot –  then going abruptly silent. Stores across the street flickered into darkness at the same time, and then the traffic lights failed without warning.

Tires screeched, loud and frightening, never the harbinger of anything good. You snatched your phone and pressed yourself to the glass at the front of the store to see two cars had very nearly come to collision at the nearby intersection, both drivers staring at each other. But the small favor dissipated when a third car came careening past the stopped traffic from behind and hit hard, swerving into both of them in the intersection with a deafening crunch that shook the door by your side.

Your breath had fogged up the little patch in front of you, and you wiped it with your palm to see better. “Lea? Jim?” Called to the back, voice as loud as you could get it. When you went to call 9-1-1, your signal was dead, not even SOS service available. “I think someone hit a telephone pole or an electrical box or something. Do you have any service back there?”

Silence for a moment, then an arrested shuffling. The sound of the back door creaking open and shutting. “Come back here.” Jim, sounded strangely out of breath. “Let me see.”

Just the sound of your shoes squeaking on the floor, the soft tap of your fingers trying the on/off switch for the motorized clothing rack just to see. And then, “Oh. Shit.”

Because Lea and Jim were there, ruffled, panting. Lea’s nose was bleeding, Jim had a hand to his head, and worst of all, Brandon stood with one arm wrenched behind his back, looking miserable and angry. And standing around them were a group of men, all wearing gray track suits. The same man from the alleyway, with the same crooked finger, and it moved weirdly in just the same way when he tried to summon you again. “Little girl, come here.” 

Notes: I hope the wait was worth it for the not-date date! And the fluff! And our first Matt/Karen scene! Also, see above for the playlist link on Spotify! Apologies that it's on Spotify, but I think I can't share a playlist on Apple Music without sharing my gov't name.

Re: a few points on Dex:

the FBI file we briefly see on Dex in S3 of Daredevil does not have any information regarding a college degree, so I have written him to have not gone to college. It does not mean he isn't insanely intelligent, simply that he was wanted by the agency so badly, they waved the typical requirements one needs to enter the FBI and recruited him once they knew of his skill. Perhaps he was saving money for college at the suicide hotline office when this happened. Fun fact, I speak French, and briefly contemplated applying to the FBI after college because the field office near me could use that language skill.

I also think he's probably not a virgin, although you could certainly write it like that if you wanted. I'm sure he suffered a ton of ribbing about having sex, if the Army is anything like a firehouse is, and saw that this was a way to signal/perform normality, so that's how I wrote it. In my brain, he feels desire but needs that romantic connection to actually want it, which he has here.

These are just my opinions, of course! There are multiple ways to skin a cat, and multiple ways to write a Dex. Next chapter, we get some freak4freak action here, and also shit starts going to utter hell =).

Okay, now that this is posted, I'm going to go cut off like 9 inches of hair. Can't wait to hear your opinions/thoughts!

EDIT: cut off 15 inches. And it’s still halfway down the back.

pixelated kisses got me goin’ insane replicate this moment from a million miles away waiting for the signal, baby, never make a sound if you never hear from me, all the satellites are down Joji. “PIXELATED KISSES.” PIXELATED KISSES – Single. 2025.

July 7, 2027

Daniel 9: 49 am

“We’ve got to finalize the event slate for the rest of the fiscal year.” Daniel slunk into Mayor Fisk’s office first thing, but his words were far more confident than his body language. He was a make sure it gets done kind of guy, sure, but he did have a bad habit of stalling on things, and tried to mask it with certainty. He held an iPad in one hand and a bagel with schmear in the other.

Buck was sitting on the arm of the couch in the mayor’s office, disregarding the expensive upholstery, and he took the bagel without complaint but with some confusion. Rather like feeding a dog, Daniel supposed. A dog that he both wanted to be friends with and that scared the pants off of him. Fisk, for his part, just watched the exchange impassively, hands steepled on this desk.

When Buck took a bite, Daniel thought maybe sometime he’d try and get the guy to eat street meat, just for kicks.

“Agreed.” Fisk was watching Buck eat, and Daniel wondered if perhaps he should offer to run and get some for the mayor. “Revised budget proposals were due to Finance two days ago, but you told them I wasn’t ready to finalize monetary attributions.” Stated pointedly to be not just a mere observation but also a criticism.

A flush slowly climbed its way up his cheeks, like ivy on fencing that slowly wore down the structure underneath, and Daniel felt himself wilting under the strong stare, keenly aware that Buck was also watching him closely. Perhaps he should have spent more time paying attention to what he needed to be doing and the mayor’s moods than the vintage sports paraphernalia market. Shrugged to cover the mistake. “Sorry boss, I didn’t want to say anything out of turn until I heard from you.”

Mayor Fisk’s eyebrows raised slowly, but he gestured to the seat across from him and folded his hands across his chest expectantly. “Surely for the most part, we can simply use last year’s schedule and then extrapolate from there. This office needs to get things done without micromanaging, you understand.”

From behind Daniel, Buck coughed discreetly and got up from the couch, moving to sit next to a window farther down in the room and pull out his phone as he ate. A semblance of privacy that did nothing to dissuade from how dangerous the man was, observant, and ready to do anything the mayor wanted. 

“Sure, sure, I get it. But maybe, I could suggest some additional events.” Daniel sat down hastily and fussed with his tie briefly. “To entice the donors. Never too early to think about funding for your next campaign, boss.”

To his great relief, it did seem like made a deal of sense to Mayor Fisk, who nodded thoughtfully, and straightened in his own seat. “And further funding for the Red Hook project, of course.” 

Well, no not really. The project didn’t seem to be polling well among the voting public because it still didn’t seem to be a function of positive use for the average joe. But instead of saying that, and risking his job and apartment, Daniel just nodded in agreement. He held the iPad out for the bigger man to take, a calendar of proposed events on the screen – and pointed to the highlighted ones. “Particularly for this half of the fiscal year, I suggest that we add a ball for Veteran’s Day in November. Get the BB Report to cover it, and show everyone that your support for our nation’s soldiers is evergreen. Not just a campaign promise.”

Buck snorted softly from the other side of the room but said nothing. It was common knowledge that veterans knew broken promises very well.

Mayor Fisk shot an unhappy glance at his bodyguard though it didn’t seem to contain as much vitriol as when it was pointed at him. Daniel coughed and spent several minutes going over additional Easter festivities and ethnic holidays in the spring and summer quarters, as if anyone was listening to him. At some point during his talking points, Sheila entered with a barrage of paperwork in her arms, sweating faintly. 

Great, this was just what he needed – someone else who didn’t like him making this shit difficult.

She rounded the mayor’s desk without asking and placed her burdens down, listened patiently until finally, there was nothing more that Daniel could think to say that would make it seem like he’d been doing his job. “These are all useful ideas, but I think that this plan could be refined to better target the exact voting population with a lower approval rating for the office. Spreading the budget thin for people who already like Mayor Fisk isn’t the wisest move.”

Silence. 

“And yet the budget is already due, so respectfully, it only matters if Mayor Fisk approves of these additions. I’m on a deadline, you know.” Said like he wasn’t being a complete ass about it.

“But where would the funding for these events come from? The budget has to be approved by the governor and she won’t sign off on just anything. We have to be able to justify our revenue sources. And the voters will see it—”

She kept going, cutting him off each time he tried to interject, and the words circling his flinched each time she laid out another criticism of his plan. Finally, he spoke over her, “I’m the Deputy Mayor of New York City for Communications, and events that reach the public are communications. Respectfully, if I disagree with your opinion, I think it’s my expertise that we should be relying on.”

Expertise. He was lucky Buck didn’t laugh again.

They both turned to Fisk himself, who was running his fingers around the words that circled his own wrist, thinking of Vanessa when he should be thinking about the office. She’d spent much of the summer so far worrying about the danger of the prisoner who had escaped – Poindexter, and it was affecting her husband, slowly but surely. Edging him towards recklessness. 

Daniel glanced errantly at the twin wanted and missing posters that were tacked to a corkboard in the corner, where Fisk could just see them out of the corner of his eye. ‘Or thinking about Daredevil and Karen Page.’Either could be ruinous if left to rage unrestricted.

A knock on the door, heavy handed and authoritarian before a group of AVTF officers entered, Conor Powell leading the group. “Sir.” A flinty nod that took in the rest of them without much consideration. “It’s time to leave for the meeting with the Albanians. My men are here to escort you.”  The rest of them shifted awkwardly in place, the rub of their gear making loud noises in the quiet office.

“If I may,” Buck again, who stood up and left the rest of the bagel by the windowsill. Paced the room to stand between Daniel and Sheila. “It would do no harm to approve the plan as it is, and then simply cancel things that no longer serve the office before money needs to be spent on logistics.” The office’s events calendar was released months in advance – they all knew how bad it would look if things kept getting cancelled. And yet… it was a solution.

The tension slid down a couple of notches as Mayor Fisk clearly agreed, a side finally winning even if it was neither of them. His face smoothed out as he prepared to leave, and took a moment to look through the readied documents on the iPad’s glassy surface. Glanced back at Daniel with a finger casually dangling over the tech. “Veteran’s Day, yes. I agree with Daniel here. Sheila, make sure the Governor knows the additional funding will be provided through donors who want to make a difference in my city.”

A pause, because they were all hung on each word the man said. “Make sure Urich covers the event. And Vanessa will need a new dress. If we want to attract funding for Red Hook, we have to make sure this office is represented appropriately.”

Goddamn Vanessa again. Not like Daniel didn’t like her, but it was getting tiresome, wasn’t it? The mayor’s office would slip away from Wilson Fisk if he wasn’t careful.

The man in question stood up, smoothing his hand down his black suit jacket and holding the iPad out for someone to take, not caring who reached out. His voice drawled with unexpressed authority as he left the room with a parting, “And Daniel, the Poindexter trial tapes?”

Daniel tried to suppress a sigh, rubbed the back of his neck; at least this one wasn’t his fault. “The police department and court clerks are still stalling me, boss. Data virus this time.” 

Fisk nodded pensively, halfway out the door. “Remarkable.” Paused in exactly the right spot to cause a pile-up of AVTF officers who had intended to follow him out. “Their tenacity is remarkable, but I am the mayor here. See that it’s done.”

Buck waited until the mayor had disappeared from view, trailed by an overeager line of men in all black. Clearly in the mood to solve problems, he tilted his head at Daniel the way a cat watched a caged canary. “Perhaps the dry cleaner with the seamstress. The one the Albanians like.” Turned on his feel to follow the others.

Sure, he’d see that it was done.

***

Marci 1:26 pm

The phone rang. Again. 

Marci ignored it, sitting in her office at Hogarth, Chao, & Benowitz, and felt that her secretary was being paid to take care of whatever it was. She was neck deep in arraignment paperwork for the CEO of a hedge fund that was being charged with racketeering, embezzlement, fraud – whatever financial crime you could name, it was probably on his arrest warrant. Of course, he swore he was innocent, and it was her job to make sure he stayed out of jail.

Her head was killing her, and heat from the summer sun set her office to swelter no matter what she did. Stopped to dig out the Advil in her purse and pop few in her mouth, washed them down with the warm bottle of water that had come with lunch. Even in bright sunlight, the blue of her computer screen was aggravating the dry eye that had started plaguing her since she’d been making up so many billable hours in a bid to make partner at the end of the year. Did she remember to bring her eye drops? Goddmannit, if they were – 

“Ms. Stahl?” It was her secretary, Carolyn, standing in the doorway with an apologetic look on her face and a sweating cup of iced coffee in her hand. The iced coffee was placed gingerly at the edge of the desk, and then the apology came tumbling out a second later. “I’m sorry, Ms. Stahl, but I’m afraid you’ll have to pick up line 2. This isn’t something that I can necessarily handle. He’s been calling all morning.”

Whoever it was had, indeed, been calling all morning and making quite an enemy of Marci Stahl in doing so.

She nodded, resigned and plunked her head forehead first on her desk as Carolyn retreated to the mercy of her own office chair outside. Picked up the phone and pretended like everything was totally going to work out okay. “This is Stahl.”

The voice on the phone was guarded, responded after a moment of hesitation that set Marci’s skin prickling in warning of trouble to come. “Marci Stahl?”

“Yes, as I said.” 

Whoever it was ignored her attitude and cleared their throat. “Great. Ms. Stahl, this is Detective Rivermore with the Frederick Police Department. Do you have a moment to talk?”

Marci sat up slowly, disjointed, like her head was on a string being lofted before the rest of her body. The office seemed immediately devoid of noise from average daily interactions, papers shuffling, coffee being poured, phones ringing. Caution climbed from the surface of her desk up her fingers and into her body because it was never good when a detective knew your name. “A moment. You certainly have my attention. What seems to be the problem?”

Detective Rivermore sighed into the phone and she could hear the creak of an office chair shifting crankily. He’d had a rough morning himself, like avoidance of minor inconvenience and hard work was a flu everyone was catching. “I’m actually calling about your aunt… A missing person’s report has been filed by staff at Jensen House here in Frederick and we’re working to put the pieces together.”

Heart plummeting, Marci stood up and smoothed her free hand through her hair, wandered as close to the office window behind her as she could. Below, she could see people scurrying along like ants, easy as you please, and hoped their lives were uncomplicated as they looked. In turn dreaded the turmoil an investigation would drum up for her life; not because she didn’t want her aunt to be found – Vick didn’t deserve to miss his mother – but because the finding one way or another would surely destroy whatever limited peace her cousin had found. “Aunt Jenna? Have you talked to her daughter?”

“Uh, no, not yet. I wanted to get some background from relatives before we made that phone call. Jensen House tells us there’s some bad blood between the two of them and that’s why she isn’t a primary family contact for her brother’s care?”

Marci laughed dryly, closing her eyes and anticipating the dread her cousin would feel when all this made its way to that little studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. This explained why Jensen House had been reaching out to her. “You could say that.”  

She circled the desk, bringing the spiralized phone cord with her as it twisted round her waist, picked up the iced coffee and took a sip as the detective assumed a suspicious tone of voice. That did not sit well with her – she knew what someone would think when first learning her cousin’s history – and she did not appreciate them judging before they learned the actual consequences of what had played out. 

Dave Rivermore was taking notes at his desk, typing one handed when he needed but preferring the old-fashioned method of pen and paper. “First, can you tell me why it wasn’t Jenna’s daughter filing the report? It’s… strange that staff at a psychiatric facility had to do this.”

“You know that Vick is mentally and physically disabled and that’s why he lives in a full-time care home?” At the detective’s affirmative throat clearing, Marci continued. “Well, Jenna holds that her daughter is the one responsible for the way Vick… is. He suffered some bad injuries in a… workplace accident and it’s led to some fairly severe consequences. He can’t live alone any further, and Jenna maintains that she isn’t physically able to take care of him. Naturally, there were a lot of things said that would drive any daughter out of the home.”

“And is she?”

“Is she what?” Marci knew what the fuck he was implying about her cousin, she just drove him like cattle towards what she wanted, controlling the conversation.

“Able to take care of him?”

Oh. 

Oh, Marci liked this detective. He was a clever little man, wasn’t he? Dodged right out of the paddock as she was about to push him in like a willful steer. Rivermore was smarter than the average bear, it seemed. She huffed and knew he heard it over the phone. “Yes, she could.” A pause. “In my opinion at least.”

Across state and county lines, Rivermore nodded and tried not to sound amused by the disdain he could hear in the stranger’s voice. “And your cousin, is she responsible like Jenna insists?”

Another sip of the coffee, setting it down to twirl the cord around one finger and try to think optimistically. Aunt Jenna would be found, this would all blow over, everything would go back to the way it was. She was probably in Atlantic City eating saltwater taffy and drinking too many rum and cokes, right? “No, definitely not. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Jenna couldn’t accept that. She’s got a weird religious thing going on these days.”

Carolyn popped her head around the door, looking even more apologetic, blanched when she saw the phone call was ongoing. Mimed fairly comedically that Marci’s 1:30 appointment was waiting in the hallway, then disappeared again. Papers on the desk allowed themselves to be sorted by Marci’s roving fingers into appropriate stacks – one for the person waiting in the hall, another for that dickweed at the hedge fund, another of discovery documentation for a third client. Straightened them into perfect piles as if controlling the small things would make the big bad things feel better.

Detective Rivermore had conveniently paused through the organization spree, the sound of a pencil scratching faintly through the receiver. “And have you or your cousin had any contact with your aunt in the last week or so?” 

“I certainly have not. Jensen has been calling me, but that’s it; I had hoped that Jenna would be back by now.” She bent down to pick her purse up off the floor and ruffle through it for a powder compact, tucked into a side pocket. “And I doubt she has. I would have heard about it.”

 “And if something did happen to your aunt, who would be the beneficiary for any life insurance policies?”

Marci was dotting her face with a flat powder puff, closing the case and tossing the whole thing back into her purse. She nudged her bag back under her desk and tried to shrug herself back into the skin of a competent lawyer. “I assume Vick would be, to pay for his ongoing care.”

“Alright.” Another chair creak, and a shuffling sound; Detective Rivermore’s voice was a little muffled then, and Marci had to assume he’d tucked the phone into his neck for use of both his hands. “Well, thank you for your time, Ms. Stahl, I won’t keep you any longer. We’ll reach out if there’s are anymore questions.” He rattled off his contact information then, which she jotted down on an hourly invoice with a hastily grabbed pencil. 

“And please, don’t give your cousin a head’s up that we’re calling. Understand?”

Marci clapped her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and leaned over her desk, “Carolyn, send him in.” As an awkward man appeared in the doorway, she found herself nodding like the detective could see her. Motioned for the client to sit and turned her back to him but only briefly – the phone cord had reached its limit and she had to unwind herself while still looking professional. “I understand. I… hope that Jenna shows up. For Vick’s sake.”

The call ended with a few pleasantries, and Marci sat back down at her desk, smoothed her suit jacket down and smiled at the man sitting across from her. Late forties or early fifties, someone the firm had assigned to her that she’d never met before. He was cute, in a tweedy professor sort of way, she supposed. When he opened his mouth, she interrupted him with one finger and an apologetic glance. “Sorry, just one more moment. I just need to send a quick text…” 

She’d picked up her cell phone, but the stranger’s deep voice stopped her. “It’s no inconvenience. I know I’m running early.” Looked up at him for a long, slow moment, then set the phone down and smiled.

***

John Pilgrim 3:15 pm

School was going to start soon. John hoped he was home for that – be a shame if he missed it.

He stood on the appropriate street corner in Hell’s Kitchen, leaning against a telephone pole and blending in as best he could, being a 6’0 ft tall pastor. His straight brimmed hat shielded most of his face from the sun, but he could feel sweat dripping down his back from the overwhelming warmth of summer. Although it was nothing compared to a summer wearing black wool in the South, that didn’t mean it was easy nor pleasant. In his big hands, he held a tourist map hot-spotting all of the most grisly and public vigilante activity in the area. He was targeting a specific corner for surveillance, and this was supposed to be a cover. 

‘A poor cover,’ he thought pessimistically, but the man in Wilson Fisk’s office who was always eating had insisted he should use it; Fisk had agreed, and since he had John’s sons, John used the map.

Someone in the store behind him was playing good, down home country blues over the sound system, and John thought longingly of home. Following Page’s friend, the seamstress, was a bust so far and John had been dispatched to follow a different trail. There was rumored strange activity reported around Josie’s Bar, comings and goings that didn’t make sense unless a vigilante was involved. And he was supposed to catch the proprietress herself at there since she kept making noises about renovations. Surely Josie could give him something. 

People usually had information to tell him, when faced with brass knuckles.

A week in, with nothing to show for his time, and the post was growing tiresome. Meant that soon he’d give up this tack and go back to the beginning. ‘Information at all costs except secrecy.’ Fisk had said. ‘We cannot let Murdock and Page know we are exploring alternative… avenues.’

Perhaps John might even take a trip to Frederick, root out some leverage that he could use against the seamstress. There were rumblings among Cashman’s associates that her family was in trouble. He could use that when questioning her if he really needed it. As much as these activities left a vinegar sour taste in his mouth, he also needed his sons safe, and that meant appeasing Fisk, getting information, secretly.

“Hey man.”

John turned his head slowly, letting his gaze wander the street again looking for Josie Varon, before turning it onto the man standing a few feet away. Tall but lanky, plain shirt and dirty jeans, with work boots on. Calloused hands but a face too soft to really know what he was doing. The guy was no more than a kid and should have minded his own business.

“Hey, man.” More forcefully this time, and John met his eyes squarely. “I’ve seen you around here for days now. What’s your business in our neighborhood?”

Pilgrim smiled like he was still a Southern gentleman, tipped his hat, brandished his rumpled map. “Jus’ sight seeing, is all.”

The stranger’s eyes narrowed. He shifted so his hand rested under the edge of his shirt, at the waistband of his jeans, presenting himself as a potential threat. “For five days in the same damn spot?”

A police car cruised by, no sirens, two officers who were surveying the streets; their eyes passed over the two of them briefly but still caught the details. A woman with a teacher’s badge from a preschool walked by, skirting the possible confrontation, but John saw her cocking her ear to catch what was happening. Across the street and down a ways, the man sitting in front of the shoe store had turned his head in their direction. Tiny pinpricks of attention that he became more and more aware of, threats to his ability to execute work successfully.

“Ah, damn.” John muttered, folding the map carefully and placing it into one of his pockets. This was why he didn’t do information gathering – because he stuck out like a sore thumb no matter what.

“We don’t take kindly to outsiders who watch our kids, preacher.” Said with an incredibly threatening tone of voice; the kid’s free hand raised a phone and there was a soft click as he took a photo. Of John. Shit. “You should leave.”

So that’s what this was about. 

The children who walked to and from the preschool each day at the same time. John shook his head and held his hands up, pacifying. “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” The other man didn’t react, didn’t recognize the scripture, was a sinner.  “I’m jus’ not from ‘round here. Trying to see the sights.”

“I’ll bet you are.” The kid advanced and threw his arm aggressively over John’s shoulders, eyes hard and protective. The scent of cologne and sweat and dirt filled John’s nostrils – a construction worker then. With a firm grip, the kid tugged him out further onto the sidewalk where the number of people watching out of the corner of their eyes had grown. “Everybody listen up! This here stranger likes to watch our kids.”

Murmurs began to circulate, more people coming out of shops, a pair of AVTF officers across the street stopping, caught by the spectacle. John’s neck was beginning to itch with sweat and nerve – absolute secrecy was the order; the order determined the mission, and the mission couldn’t be threatened. He needed to fix this. Still going on, the kid started tugging him down the street, hand clamped on his shoulder, grip unyielding. “So you see him around? You let me know. But for now, why don’t I escort our new friend somewhere else, huh?”

At least it was a relief to leave, so he could turn his back on the gawkers and hide his face under his hat brim. A block out of view and around the corner, and the kid’s grip on his shoulder didn’t relent – John let it stay that way. There were still too many people around until he was tugged into a small, deserted loading dock between two stores. The overhang of the buildings cast it in shadow, and trash littered the ground, smelled of piss. Lord, he hated New York City.

This was where he solved this inconvenient problem.

There was no other course of action, really – since his face was seen, since this child had called attention to him, taken a photo of him. The kid tried to fight back, of course, but John was in no mood to drag this out. Nor would it have ever worked against a man like him, in preachers’ clothes that disguised his danger. Just give in. One solid punch cracked into his nose, and at least the kid could feel good about that as John smiled in return. Manhandled the situation until he had the kid in a chokehold, with one hand braced to the side of the younger man’s head.

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” There was blood dripping down his lip, he breathed heavily, and the black wool of his coat was too tight across his shoulders. The man – the kid – thrashed but could go nowhere.

“Please, have mercy.” The words were distorted and gasped, but the younger man repeated them over and over again. Kept going until John increased the pressure so that he could no longer speak, arm banded across the throat, cross cufflinks pressing into soft, sweating skin. For a moment there were just the scuffling noises of the kid’s shoes scraping the pavement, the heavy breathing, the creak of John’s bones. 

He breathed through his nose until it was done, and laid the body down on the cement carefully. His fingers closed wide open eyes and glanced the cross indentations he’d pressed on the boy’s neck before standing up. Hesitated, then bent down to find that damn phone.

***

Matt and Karen 6:39 pm

Matthew Murdock stared at the zip hoodie laying on his bed and sighed. It was so hot out and he was sweating, and the feel of hoodie on his body, rubbing against a damp t-shirt, was sure to put him in a bad mood. This was one of the downsides of going into hiding that no one ever talked about in the movies – having to wear hot disguises when the weather insisted on emulating a resort spa sauna. Downstairs, the back door creaked open and Karen walked through the still moderately destroyed Josie’s Bar space; she’d had coffee somewhere – probably at the bodega by the Bowling Green metro station, judging by the cat hair he could smell on her clothing – and she was carrying a brown paper bag that crinkled when she hefted it up the stairs. The food inside smelled incredible. Scorci’s.

‘Maybe I can get her to go out and talk with Cherry.’ He wondered selfishly, and then discarded the thought just as quickly – Catholic guilt was a powerful thing. Better not add to his reputation as a terrible soulmate and boyfriend with heat-induced laziness; Karen didn’t deserve that. 

She came in while he was shrugging into the jacket, skimming his fingers over the dresser’s surface until they caught on his sunglasses. “Where are you off to?” The paper bag got set down on the little card table they used for dining judging by the soft squeak; when she opened it, the scent of lamb ravioli and marinara sauce drifted out – it had to be for him. Underneath, a plainer, peppery dish, aglio e oglio, for her. “It’s almost dinner time. I stopped on my way back.”

Matt had the glasses halfway to his face, but he set them down again and wound his arms around her from behind. Felt his soulmate within his body just as strongly as he sensed her outside of it. It was this sense of weightlessness, freedom, that diffused through him with each touch of her skin – freedom from the scents, sounds, sensations of an overwhelming world until just she existed and he could breathe. The physical world had lashed him with too many tethers and she’d cut him free from all but one. Karen relaxed, letting her head fall back onto his shoulder, taking comfort from him, refuge after a long hot day.

“Cherry texted. He thinks he might have a lead on someone who can give us information on a person who can get us the name of the man running Red Hook logistics. Shipping manifests. Information.” Under his hands, her ribs expanded slowly with deep breaths; Karen also described their bond as a type of freedom, but instead of flight, to her it was more akin to breakneck running. Adrenaline as you raced down a steep hill, just a hair’s breadth from stumbling and falling.

He had once found the freedom… crushing, uncomfortable. The lack of control, the overabundance of her connection added to all the others, the senselessness of it all a threat. Karen had rid him of all those tethers but her own, the one he needed so he could enjoy that independence without losing all grip on the world people lived in. Now, it was all he could do to submerge himself in her.

She was laughing at him, turning so she could push her nose into his neck. Smiling.  “That’s quite a hot tip. A guy who knows a guy, who knows a guy.”

Matt frowned, his sense of smell caught like a fish on the hook by someone down the street with gun oil on their hands – probably an AVTF officer, and it would all be fine if they just laid low for awhile. He extricated himself from his word match and pulled out the latest burner phone to text Cherry for a different date and time. Gratefully peeled off the hoodie, busied himself setting out two glasses of ice water while she rummaged for cutlery. Better safe than sorry, even if he did want that information badly.

The gun oil brought him abruptly to a question he had been avoiding for awhile now; as his phone chimed with a response from Cherry, Matt reached out to take Karen’s wrist in his hand. Ran his fingers over her pulse like any good lover should; it ran a beat too fast for his liking, had been doing so for almost two weeks and that bothered him. Really, everything about this situation bothered him, rankled continuously that his soulmate had to live in conditions like this because of Wilson Goddamn Fisk – but this was different. 

New. 

Karen was plating up dinner even when she didn’t have to; put most of the ravioli on his plate but reserved a few for herself, and then forked a few of her noodles out for him. They liked to share – well, Matt liked to share. Liked knowing that even with something as small as this, he could give her what was his, and she would give him what was hers. It satisfied some primal part of their bond they didn’t often discuss, the urge to provide for each other.

“Karen,” He’d sat down heavily, and used her wrist to draw her closer. She tugged her seat up to the table and their knees touched, gentle kisses. “Is everything alright? You’ve been tense for awhile.”

She stiffened, and learned back in her chair but Matt could tell that the game was up, so to speak. Karen lived with the frustrating reality of a soulmate who could smell the perfume of the person she stood next to on the subway, and who could hear when she dropped her keys a block and a half away from the apartment. Would probably know when she was upset. Or hungry. Or horny. Or wanted a pastrami on rye. As a result, she and Matt had developed a system where he let her be something, whatever that something was, and she decided if she told him about it. 

After awhile, if it was still bothering her, Matt took on the onerous chore of figuring out how to broach the topic. This was a pretty gentle approach, she had to give him credit for that at least; shrugging while twisting to pick up her fork and take a bite of pasta. “I… think I was recognized late last month.” 

Matt went still, tilting his head as he automatically swept as far out as his senses could go; the odds that her confession would bring immediate discovery were slim, but they were never zero, were they? He listened to her story with half an ear, the tale of seeing a waving form in a sundress crossing the street without regard for traffic and dodging down a side street to sit behind a grouping of trash cans, trying not to hyperventilate. He shook his head, frustrated that even the bare security they’d accrued was compromised. “And you think it’s—” 

“Yes. I know it was.” 

Thinning his lips, Matt tapped his fingers haphazardly against the tabletop, too anxious to get a good rhythm; the faster he went, the more upset he was. The news of Poindexter escaping prison loomed large in his mind because somehow Foggy’s old friend and that freak were connected. The danger his soulmate was in skyrocketed, the winds his bond soared on turned choppy. 

“I think she’s trustworthy. That maybe I should… text her and—” Karen was worrying her lip, biting down with her sharp, white teeth and tapping her chin with a finger anxiously.

“No!” The word came out much more forcefully than he meant it to, and Karen drew back, her brow furrowing. She didn’t like it when he made pronouncements for both of them like that, but it couldn’t be helped. Still, he softened and leaned closer in, placed his hands on her thighs. “No. There’s something odd going on. Frankly, I used to think it was nothing more than someone with a stupid crush. Not relevant. But we can’t take any risks.”

“What are you talking about?” Their bond was tugging them closer and closer, trying to soothe the hurt, and he wished she’d just touch him instead of question him.

“With Poindexter. I think she might have been obsessed with him. Her heartrate always sped up when he walked by her. Fidgeted all day in court. And she went over to him at that water fountain, Karen. Why would she do that unless there was something going on?” He was leaning all of his intent into what he was saying, trying to impress upon his soulmate the danger of the situation. “When she didn’t show up to sentencing, I thought the matter done. Clearly,” And here, Matt sucked in a breath the same way he did in court before he made an impactful statement. “I was wrong. We can’t trust her.” 

Karen didn’t sigh, but she let all the air out of her lungs heavily, susurration. She did touch him then, her thumb stroking the back of his hand as if to preemptively soothe him, and Matt began to sense, just a little, that he’d missed something. Blinked slowly and let her fall into a wince. “Oh Matt, you have to know it wasn’t my secret to tell.”

His eyes narrowed, and he regretted not putting his glasses on. Like he was missing a small emotional shield that would have come in handy. “What do you mean?”

She hesitated, but now her soulmate would dig until he found the answer or hit rock, now she had to say it. Answered him with all the eagerness of a prisoner facing execution, words coming out so slowly. “It’s their words, Matt. That night at Josie’s with… with Foggy. It’s when they met.”

The realization took a moment to break upon him, and then hit with the force of a sledgehammer so that he himself wanted to break. In a flash, Matt was across the room, shakes overtaking his control. His hands were running through his hair, he was sweating through his thin t-shirt, he wanted to shriek. Felt that this must be a heart attack, felt that he was so angry, his own body turned rebellious and out of control.

Fire and bile rose in him, burned with a terrible smell that stung his nostrils like those chemicals had, spilling from the industrial truck all those years ago. Motherfucker. Mother fucker. That piece of shit didn’t deserve a soulmate when Foggy was fucking dead. Jesus, what the hell was this goddamn world coming to? Where was the fairness? Why? Why? 

Why?

His thoughts were fractured and frantic, too intense to really keep them whole. And then realized that he wasscreaming those thoughts, hoarse, crying them out. Sucking in huge gulps of air and quickly approaching the deep chasm of a panic attack; his bonds and senses in a wild revolution of anger and grief. “Why? Why Karen? Why him?”

“Matt, please, we have to be quiet, Matt—” Karen was hovering at his side, hands out, and she smelled sad. Sad and guilty. 

It was one of the few times in his life that Matthew Murdock contemplated murder. 

If he had to lose Foggy Nelson, his best friend in the whole world, his brother – then fucking Benjamin Poindexter could lose his goddamn soulmate. Could watch her bleed out at his feet. Could watch him kill her and be powerless to stop it. Matt – Daredevil – thought of hands at the neck of the woman he’d once known as of a friend; how her bones would sound breaking; about how many blows his baton could bring down on her until she stopped breathing. How many—

And then Karen’s hands were gripping him, on his cheeks, and she was crying a little, and it brought him back at least twenty feet closer to earth. Flooded him with hurt rationality. “You knew.” He said, voice strangled. “You knew and you went to see her and you texted her and you were friends with her and you knew this whole time.” 

Karen was gripping his face so hard that her nails were close to breaking the skin, little red crescents left in their wake. “She didn’t choose this Matt! Jesus Christ, she didn’t ask for this. She was terrified.” Trying to make him listen to her when she was speaking insanity.

“You knew!” Another yell, another heaving, wet breath.

“I’m supposed to blame her for something that wasn’t her fault?”

Enraged, irate, Matt pushed Karen’s hands away and stepped back. He had too much emotion jostling within him to be able to touch her gently, the way she deserved. His voice took on that soft, patronizing tone that meant he was nowhere close to feeling calm. “No. No, no you’re supposed to not make fucking sweetheart friends and keep in touch with a woman who’s matched to the psychopath who killed Foggy. You’re supposed to-“

“Desert her because of stupid little words that just came out of nowhere? Is that what you– is that what I was supposed to do?” Fully crying now, her face red and her blue eyes lightning sharp. Karen rapped her knuckles on the top of the dresser every few words for emphasis. She could see that he was beginning to disassociate out of the argument, just as he had disassociated out of their relationship after Foggy and hated it. “Don’t leave me for somewhere else again Matt, what was I supposed to do? Tell me.”

In her mind, she could picture that little table in the Irish pub, and the desperation on that woman’s face.

“You’re supposed to be on my side!” There was silence for a moment, even the street traffic below going soft and still to make room for his feelings, for the way he too, was crying. “You’re supposed to be on... on Foggy’s side.” 

It felt like there was a gulf between them, stretching wide and deep and wine-dark; the feeling of flight, of fleet footed running, had evaporated until all that was left was the conflict, and a tentative desire to still take comfort in each other. Karen sat heavily on the bed, right in the spot where the springs creaked, and put her face in her hands. Matt slowly collapsed at the foot of the bed, not close but also not outside on the streets looking for the target of his anger. On the table, their dinner was getting cold, the food dying and ice melting; next door someone in the shoe store was playing classic jazz on their cell phone, and it felt mocking; behind the building, a neighborhood kid was opening a candy wrapper and watching a video online of another street vendor being hauled in by the AVTF. 

Next to him, Karen was a mess of salt tears and sniffling. “I swear to god, Matt.” And her voice was thick like from a cold. “I would have told you if I could. If I thought she was dangerous. She’s not.”

“You don’t know that.” The venom had left Matt’s voice, but it was just a reprieve. It was the knowledge that Karen had explicitly done what she thought was right. He desired then above all else to be different from others – from Fisk, from Poindexter, from anyone who punished instead of understood – kept him from punishing her more. “You don’t know that. Bullseye could be out there right now because of that woman seeing you. You know that, right? We’re in danger. You’re in danger.” 

And his voice was breaking because the implication was that Foggy had been in danger and look what happened to him. Look at what Poindexter had done to him.

Karen was quiet for a moment, she’d moved to cup her red face in her hands, and then to grab at the necklace she always wore, he could hear the rubbing sound of her fingertips against the metal. He knew she must understand what had him so frightened, right then. Minutes went by, and then she moved closer to him hesitantly, the fabric of her clothes rucking up the bedsheets with their friction. “You’re right. He could be out there today. Tomorrow. At any time.” Suddenly her hand was snaking out to grab his thigh, pull them together mid-air, mid-run, whatever she preferred. “But you have to trust me when I tell you, I don’t think so. Trust me, Matt.”

This wouldn’t be the end of it.

They both knew that. The argument would pick up again and again, heated discussions and outrage, explanations that would feel like too much and not enough, possibilities and threats that would dog them until something finally happened. This was but a brief interim, an intermission in the middle of the film so they could eat and have some normalcy before huge topics dominated what little space they had anymore. And Matt had to let that happen; he wasn’t okay – his chest was tight, his skin too loose and vulnerable, his mind too wild. But he had to let it happen. 

Karen was his soulmate, she carried his words, ‘Miss Page, my name is Matt Murdock. This is my associate, Foggy Nelson. Do you mind if we sit down?’ all down her back in braille. She’d suffered for him, so much already. He’d take it all up with her again, but for now – their dinner was getting cold, and his soulmate hadn’t eaten yet. 

***

Only a few streets away…

It was 8:37 pm. and you sat on your couch, bouncing your legs so fast the cushion fair vibrated. Nerves carved themselves into your spine after a long day of sweat, and irritated customers, and fingers too jittery to sew a seam straight. You’d cleaned each night until your place was immaculate. Every surface shining, every item placed totally straight wherever it was, every scrap of laundry done and put away. A candle burned on the coffee table, and you had turned on and then off low music four separate times. Because this was not a date, and you didn’t need music to set the mood.

It was 8:40 pm, and you stood up and walked two circuits around the living area, only to stop and wipe down the kitchen counters for the third time. Two wine glasses sat out next to a bottle of red, because it felt rude not have something when someone came over – but you drew the line at food. Feeding the man was a whole other level. If there was a take and bake pizza in the oven, that’s because it was for you.

Not for Dex. Boundaries.

8:43 pm and you fidgeted with the hem of your shirt, tucked your hair behind your ear. Rubbed more lotion into your elbows and knees and neck, because you liked being showered and shaved and sweet smelling. Youliked it – whether anyone else liked it was irrelevant. Because this wasn’t a date.

At 8:47 pm, there was a knock on the door. Even though you were expecting it, it still scared the hell out of you – sending adrenaline coursing through your body and a hand to your throat. You were wiping under a little glass jar of matchbooks that lived on your bookshelf, and it clattered out of your grip. Another knock, four impacts, and you stopped to look into your bathroom mirror one last time, threw back your shoulders. “Let’s do this.”

The bond flickered and snapped against your ribs, flaring to life as you undid the locks on your door, and pulled it open, anticipation like a revving car engine in your gut. “I wasn’t sure what time you’d—"

Stopped.

“Officer Powell.”

The man in question raised an eyebrow, looking at you with your legs exposed to the thigh and your soft, barely there lipstick and your faint perfume. Then both eyebrows went up, and this unholy delight came over his face because he could tell he was fucking something up; he wore his tactical uniform sans helmet, those douchey sunglasses men always liked pushed up on his head, and his hand sat comfortable on his service weapon. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.” 

God, the man’s attitude made you feel slimy, the way he took in each part of you that had been prepared for this thing, this not-date with Dex, like it was for him instead. Your lip curled before you could control it, pulling the door closer and blocking him from seeing any further. “What do you want, Officer Powell? I don’t understand why you’re here.” 

Powell puffed himself up, and his hand jerked on his weapon. Tried to step further into your apartment, but you stood your ground and blocked him. Took perverse pleasure in seeing frustration leak across his face. “I’m on the Karen Page case. I know you two were close and I thought you might be willing to answer some questions.”

What bullshit.

“I… was interviewed by Detective Mahoney. Months ago.” Again, you had to move over so he couldn’t wedge his way into the apartment. Worry slowly flushed through your nervous system, making the bare skin on your legs prickle – he couldn’t catch Dex arriving to see you, he simply couldn’t. One or both of them would end up dead, and the thought of Dex’s chill, limp body on your kitchen floor spooked you more deeply than you would ever admit. A ghost you never wanted to encounter. “I can’t imagine there’s more to say.” 

He seemed to sense the effect he was having on you, and puffed up his chest, settled cock-eyed onto one hip like this was but a casual conversation and not very clearly life or death. “Well,” Scrunched his face into an amalgamation of something that was supposed to look friendly. “I thought I’d just check in. See if anything’s changed and you’ve heard from Ms. Page.”

You swallowed heavily, shook your head – would rather eat a razor blade than tell this pig anything. Hand tightening on the door frame till your nails hurt from how hard they pressed into the wood. “Nope. I haven’t seen her.”

There was a long, drawn-out moment of silence as the man in uniform stared at you, eyes narrowed, like he was trying to sort through the disparate parts of your soul. But he was no Dex, and it was simply uncomfortable and incompetent – an apprentice trying to look at a puzzle only a master could solve. “You uh,” Powel grimaced and leaned. “You got anyone in there?”

“No.” He was trying to see around you again, the sound of the oven and the scent of a lit candle filtering out to him. “Is there anything else I can help you with, officer?” Oh, what you’d give for just an ounce of Karen’s pissed off attitude when dealing with him.

“Expecting anyone? This a date?” Powell was suddenly in your space, too close to you, and his breath smelled like beer – sour and yeasty. The heat of him standing over you felt sickly and flu-like, sweaty. Your words sizzled against your ribs, warning you to watch your step as if you couldn’t have figured that out on your own; the rope twining through all your joints like it could physically manipulate your body to get you away from him. “I could stay and wait for the fella. Give ‘im a shovel talk.”

At this you couldn’t control your reaction, brow furrowing and mouth dropping open just a touch in confusion and vague disgust because… what the fuck? Why would that be something you’d even remotely consider asking him? The impression it left you with was of an uncle at a family reunion, saying something too familiar and inappropriate to a young niece because hey, why not? Curdled your stomach. “Uh, no. I’m good. Uh, I—yeah. I need to go finish dinner. Good night, officer.” 

WWKPD? What would Karen Page do – she’d shut the door on him and wait for departure. The last you saw of his face was the frustration turning into emotional, slighted anger, and you understood that he waited there listening as you set each lock with particular force. Heart beating in your chest, because for all you knew, the man could call in his buddies and break the door down just for pissing him off.

You listened, frozen, hand poised above the door chain, eyes locked on the floor. From the hallway was a quiet that didn’t speak of silence but of watchfulness, uncomfortable and then… and then… and then… it drug on forever. Finally, the chirp of a radio, Powell’s non-committal murmur in response; the heavy tread of his tactical boots as he went down the hallway and then down the stairs – the echo of the stairwell giving his placement away.

“Fuuuuuckkkk.” You drawled, wilting entirely and slowly thunking your forehead on the door, leaning against it limply. “What a creep. I hate him.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

You’d heard nothing behind you – nothing – but that voice spoke as if directly into your ear, goosebumps rising along your neck and the backs of your arms. Stiffened, heart in your throat as you turned, and suddenly the words under your breast weren’t hot with worry. No, they were vibrating with awareness, sizzling with the sudden knowledge that your soulmate was close, so close, so near. Don’t just run, run to him.

Dex stood just inside your living area, leaning against the open window, legs crossed casually and arms folded across his chest. Framed by darkness, lit by the low lamp and the candle, his face looked almost sinister, not a guest but an animal who wanted to eat. A relief carved into stone that was never weathered soft by rain and wind. He wore tactical pants, gloves shoved into one of the pockets, a dark blue shirt tucked in at the waist. There was a gun holster strapped to his thigh, just like when you met, showing you exactly how that thigh might fit against your body. He was also smirking, again.

Close lipped and crookedly, his eyes trailing up your legs from bare feet to knees to thighs. Gaze lingering on the exact line of skin where your shorts started before continuing upwards. He must have counted each individual, delicate bone in your hands, it took him so long to move up from them – the look in his eyes heating like a campfire flame in the night. Up the wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck. Before skating over your jaw to finally meet your eyes directly.

He pushed himself up from the windowsill languidly, maintained eye contact as he slowly walked across your small studio. No hint of hesitation like he’d already memorized the layout, chin tucked so his eyes were half-hooded. That serpent allure coming to bear because he was enjoying your attention, scales shining in the low light so the pattern would trap your eye. Coiled muscle and intent advancing until the closeness of his body far outmatched anything from moments earlier. Overbearingly broad in a way that made you feel prostrate at his feet even when standing, ready to impale yourself on whatever he might offer.

No touching, no skin to skin contact, just enough room for your breath and his to dissolve into each other between you. And his head was over yours, lips just turned up, as fingers of him crawled down the bond and inside of you, pleasantly invasive, intimate. A dangerous man, who could slowly unpick all your stitches and shut himself inside of you if he wanted. 

Straightening against the door, you notched your chin up at Dex and waited for him to speak. If it left the length of your throat vulnerable to his dedicated study, his desire to hold you there, there was nothing you could do about that. He tilted his head casually, gesturing back to the hallway, bird of prey like. “You want me to take care of it?”

Casual-like. Easy. Like he was offering to loan you $5, not to kill a man for harassing you. It struck you then, how much power he was affording you with that simple question. The strength of his back and the sureness of his hands that he would put into your service if you but asked. A man the city feared desperately and he offered you his usefulness, offered you his labor to be aimed at your pleasure – and willingly so. Were you the only person he’d ever done that for? God, you hoped so, hoped Julie had never gotten that from him.

But you shook your head softly, the back of your head sliding back and forth against the surface of the door because Dex was that close, afforded you that little room. He tracked the movement, and his arms slowly unfolded themselves, the action careful so that when he tucked his thumbs into his belt loops he still – maddeningly – didn’t touch you.

“You said you’d be at my front door.” You whispered to him, wetting your lips and Dex watched just that little movement like he could bathe in it. “That wasn’t my front door.” 

And his smirk was deepening into an actual smile, cheek hitched up and creased with the movement, the gap in his teeth revealed. Devastating, a hint of the person he could be, if you just kept looking at him like that and saying things in that voice and letting him stay. “There was someone already there.” And he was near whispering too, throaty and rough, out of practice.

“Not anymore.”

Dex raised his eyebrow, let his eyes fall back down your body like a wash of silk before coming back up. He took a careful step back and placed one hand on the lock, the other on your arm at the elbow, before carefully moving you to the side. His grip was too firm, like someone who didn’t know what softness felt like and was trying to mimic it, but you enjoyed that about it. Him. The rough edges that meant he wouldn’t balk at your own.

The metal of the locks clinked as he undid each one in turn, deft fingers making short work of it. Let the chain fall and opened the door without saying anything. Kept eye contact as he stepped into the hallway of your apartment building, the shadows shifting over his features so that his face seemed to transform before your eyes into someone else. Someone even sharper, less tethered to the earth, just to you.

You pushed the door closed on him with two fingers, knowing that in the morning the idea of him binding himself to you like you were an anchor weight to keep him in place or a diving bell he could survive in might frighten you. But instead of diving for the escape of the open window, you stood at the closed door again, shifting on bare, cold feet and waited for him.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Slow and methodical like darts thudding together at the center of a dartboard, knuckles rapping hard. You could have never opened it, you could have ignored it, let the door stay closed in his face like a message, like any rational person would do when facing a killer. But you… Didn’t make him wait. And when you opened that door again, he didn’t take a step forward until you moved to the side and made a path for him back into your space, made you feel in control. The path he took collapsed behind him as he stood by your couch and the door closed again and sealed the two of you into your apartment as if some underground oasis for two.

“Sit,” You told him, because the oven was beeping and you didn’t know what else to say, what else to expect.

But Dex didn’t sit down, he stood in place and rotated as you moved so he could watch you continuously. Took a spot on the couch only when you put a plate down on the coffee table for him. “Making me dinner. I—”

“Didn’t expect this. I know.” With a half-smile you couldn’t rein in. You’d sat at one end of the couch, but Dex had strategically chosen the middle so that there would be no escaping him, and he was looking at you with those dark, honeyed, inscrutable eyes because there was something underneath, something you couldn’t parse yet. The hard edge of the gun in his thigh holster kept pressing into your foot, reminding you periodically of the kind of person he was.

“Right.” And despite that sharp edge, his voice came out too soft for you to not feel your reticence falter a little bit, for a small note of sadness to shoot through you then – because. Because, because, because – he looked like no one had ever done this for him before, like he was trying to resist telling you that you’d hung his moon. 

“Well,” Really, it was just pizza. You were tucking your legs up underneath you, back to the arm of the couch, knees holding your plate, and trying to speak primly like none of this really mattered. “I made myself dinner. You just happen to be here.”

Dex’s eyes flitted conspicuously to the lit candle. To the empty laundry basket. The glasses and wine bottle untouched on the counter. Drew you by the leash of your bond to notice the same things, so you knew that he knew that you were lying. He waited until you started eating before doing so himself, and damn the man if he didn’t watch you even while chewing. And it felt not like the sucker punch of obsession but soft taps of affection each place his glance touched you.

The two of you sat eating slowly for several minutes, skirting each other’s eyes and making affably bland conversation; about your job (you were grateful for it), the weather (he liked the summer, actually), what you were reading (Jane Eyre and Dungeon Crawler Carl), sports (he mentioned baseball hesitantly, curiously listened to you talk the Knicks). But even that slowly faded until you were just two people sitting next to each other, wondering about each other, desperately curious about each other, incredibly aware of this physical closeness of your bodies. It felt so awkward because it was hard to get to the small, inconsequential things when so many terribly huge, consequential topics that still hovered between you.

“So,” Clearing your throat, taking another bite. What were you supposed to ask now– what’s your favorite scary movie? They never showed this part on television. “You said you hadn’t ever been involved with someone before.” Because what would most betray your train of thought when sitting close in low light, you dumbass.

Was it your imagination, or did a small breeze of embarrassment drift across his face? Light the tips of his ears just a little red as he shook his head. “No, none.” He’d finished his first piece of pizza quickly and was reaching for the second, long fingers that you absolutely shouldn’t stare at. “No girlfriends, no secret wives, nothing.”

“Why? Surely…” And when he waited for you to finish, you studiously avoided him, leaning down to pick up a napkin that had fallen to the floor because this actually was so fucking embarrassing for you, not him. Better than letting him see how handsome he was in your eyes, how curious you were. On the coffee table was your phone, and it buzzed conspicuously with a text from Lois that looked like it was in all caps and said something about date night. You flipped it over before he could do more than glance at it. But Dex was a smart man, and he had quick eyes, and the amusement that flicked into his face said he’d done more than glance. It tempered the dismal nature of his answer if only a little. “Lyndhurst only accepted boys, kids. Even when aging out, it wasn’t a place to bring a date.” He said the name like it would bite him, like you knew what Lyndhurst was and would understand. “Then I went into the Army, and then the FBI. No time for a relationship. No patience for it.” And then two prison convictions, but at least that didn’t need to be spelled out.

Impulsively, because you couldn’t contain the intrusive thoughts that made you wonder about such things and were only encouraged by the recent nights in bed when you came around your own fingers while thinking about him, “Does that mean that you’ve never… um…” And then a moment later he was three steps ahead of you, knowing what you were stumbling over and that shit-eating grin was back because he wasn’t going to help you. If you were a cat, curiosity was slowly drowning you in the tub. “That you’re a… um… oh God, fuck.” 

Because he was ass, that last word in your train of thought made him laugh, louder than you’d heard before. And here you could see his tongue tracing the edges of his upper teeth, the grin was so big – made him look shark-like and vicious but in that way of someone who should be modeling in a magazine; not sitting with an average person like you on the couch on a Wednesday night. The fucker. “Go on.”

You had to steel yourself to say it because this moment was going to haunt you from the annals of humiliation for the rest of your life. When you lay in bed years from now, feeling secondhand embarrassment for yourself, this was the moment you’d think about. “That you’re a virgin. Are you, Dex?”

Very deliberately, he put his plate aside and put one hand on your calf. Kept eye contact with each tempered movement because if there was hesitation on your face, he wanted to know whether you tied it back beneath the bond or told him so. And his fingers slid back and forth, up to your knee, down to your ankle; glanced the back of your thigh each time he reached the top. Heat and the soft scrape of his skin on you, and that tether between you felt like his hands too, draped all over your body until it was just shy of suffocation. Again, his touch was not gentleness but intent, until his fingerprints were falling through your flesh to etch into your bones. “What do you think?”

Oh God, the man could fuck, couldn’t he? You were doomed.

Scrambling off the couch and nearly dumping pizza on the floor in your haste, you stood up to grab your phone and napkin off the table like they’d protect you against the all-consuming dragon on your couch. Who picked up his pizza and finished it in two bites like he wanted to finish you. “That’s not slow. That’s not slow.” You were breathing a little too hard to play off anything unaffected, and sat heavily in a chair at your IKEA table. With one finger pointing at him, “That’s not slow.” 

Somewhere out in the city below was a loud noise – a car accident or a gun shot – and you thought perhaps someone could save you from your flaming red cheeks by driving straight into your building or perhaps shooting you somewhere innocuous like the thigh or something. Only if you were lucky though.

“A few one-night stands.” Dex said finally, taking pity on you. “Not very many.” Like that mitigated the way his touch had sent lightning bolts straight to your core or made you feel pursued in a way you definitely shouldn’t enjoy. You thought sex with him would be much like that sensation of being an animal pierced through with the killing spear, except it wasn’t just heart’s blood falling anymore, it was slick need too. “It made me seem normal, to the others in my company.” 

Ha. An incredulous huff. Ha ha ha ha, because that one small sentence killed every ounce of desire, body stilled, and your smile was fading and lips closing because you were biting down on the impulse to say, ‘And you aren’t normal, are you?’ And if you did say that, he’d have to reply with some acknowledgement that he’d been born wrong or different, like a new species watching to see if he’d be accepted by the dominant group, and it would feel terrible. Or that life had broken him beyond repair and it was impossible to fix all those shattered pieces, and that too would be terrible. It would feel fucking terrible, othering him like that.

The rope in your chest uncoiled, unwrapping from each letter of the words on your ribs to reach out to him, hold him with phantom fingers. You wondered if he felt them skimming his cheek bone, his shoulder, his hand. The pressure he must have felt to try and make himself seem like everyone else, immense, even with something so personal. It was no wonder he’d given the hell up and wanted to make himself anew, for himself alone. Was willing to do anything for a chance at that. Like Achilles trying to dip himself in the River Styx to emerge from the water new-made and perfect. And here these aliens had gone and held him as he went in, somehow, without his knowing, and now you were there. His heels, vulnerable to arrows and attack, maybe even forcing him to feel he should want things with you that he didn’t.

He saw the knowledge blooming under your skin, looked away.

“Well, I mean, you know you never need do anything with me that you don’t want to, right? You’d never… I would never want that.” Don’t feel like you have to fuck me out of pity, would have been the blunter way to put it, but perhaps bluntness was not the smartest tack. And that sentiment had to be said, the words vomited out. It had to be, if you wanted to sleep that night. Important.

Dex looked vaguely like you’d shot him – just a lightning quick moment of lancing pain that you could see as if his skin had been flayed open just for your view and then closed again, whipstitched back together but quick. He shrugged, laying an arm along the back of the couch, and if his shoulder bothered him it didn’t show. Let you catch him tracing over your shape with his eyes so you’d know that desire wasn’t a problem; they caught on your hand when it pressed, habitually, to the words under your breast. A flare you shot up into the sky to finally tell him something he’d been desperate to know.

“And you? Tell me.” 

“If I’ve had sex?” God help you, why did your voice go up so high at the end of that? 

“If you’ve been involved. Relationships.” The way he met your eyes changed then, infinitesimally. Too small to really know what it meant, except that the intensity of him skyrocketed, and you brushed it off. “Boyfriends.” 

“Oh thank god.” You had a piece of pizza left, and spent several moments picking bits of pepperoni off of it instead of answering him. Winced self-consciously. “I think all of us have done things we’re not proud of in college, right?”

Dex was shrugging again, and the look on his face was just a little tighter, a little meaner, a little more searching. He turned his face to stare into the wavering light of the candle, bit the inside of his cheek because you could just see the indent shadowed there in his skin. Something else was crawling down the bond, slowly, not singing heat of desire but chill veins that you couldn’t quite understand. “You’ll have to tell me.”

Right. If you rewarded yourself with a little treat from your pizza with each boyfriend you told him about, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Yeah, this would be completely fine and you could be honest with him, even if all you could bear to say was the minimum. “Well, there was Steve Carson in sixth grade. I asked him out and he turned me down in front of everyone and then we secretly dated like two months later. And by dated, I mean we held hands about three times after school.” Pepperoni piece.

An olive to keep you going. “In high school, I went with this guy named Dwayne Edwards, and then the day before senior prom he dumped me because a cheerleader said they were going to win the prom king and queen titles if they went together. So, yeah.” Piece of sausage half the length of your thumb.

Dex was listening like this was a distinctly foreign language to him, but didn’t say anything, so you kept going. “In college… I don’t know. You date people right?” Waited for him to nod, but he didn’t. “And it’s like, whatever. But I guess I had a steady boyfriend junior year – that was Carl Newman.” Green bell pepper slice that still crunched when you ate it. “He moved to New Mexico.”

If you were avoiding eye contact suddenly, pulling up a piece of cheese and tilting your head back to eat it, you hoped he didn’t notice. He did. “I guess after that was Michael? I—We dated for some time. And then, yeah, he was gone. And after that, it was hard to try anymore. No one I saw more than once or twice. So embarrassing.” And yeah, wrap that pepperoni around that piece of sausage and really reward yourself.

It felt suspiciously like Dex knew your tells, knew your wavering meant you were skipping over the parts that hurt like stones on a lake surface. His jaw had tightened some, and he’d produced a coin from somewhere, flipping it back and forth across his fingers, thinking. There was that creeping, wriggling sensation again, deep in the bond till it burrowed into your ribs searching – sent a shiver along your shoulders and arms till goosebumps rose up in its path.

“There’s nothing else?” 

“Nope. That’s all of them.” Shortly after that were the Words, invading Earth with their alternately lauded and doomed matches, and then you just gave up looking. You were frowning, trying to study the micro-expression of his face, but now Dex knew you were looking. Now he was hiding it all away and smoothing out everything but a vague tilt of his lips.

What followed was a period of companionable silence, as Dex was interested in studying every aspect of your apartment, and you were interested in studying him. Sometimes silence was more revealing, you thought, watching him keep looking at your bed over and over again. That was when his eyes weren’t narrowed and reading the titles of the books on your shelves or studying the photos on your wall – glossing over any of you with Foggy in the same frame. The purse hung on a hook by the door, scarves on subsequent ones. The opening to your bathroom where make-up sat scattered in plain view. And you, you were content to study him.

He was running his hand through his hair, and it was reminding you that only some minutes ago, you were talking about sex. Thought about carding your fingers through it, down his neck to trace the muscles in his shoulders, developed from how quickly he could launch projectiles. Thought about how if you straddled him, there on the couch, your legs would be spread wide. Damn soulmate bonds.

If you stretched your leg out straight and pointed your foot, your toes just grazed his leg at the calf. Nudged him again even though his whole body had gone rigid watching you purposefully make physical contact with him. “I never said thank you, for the present.” Nudged him a third time. “I keep it on my bedside table.”

Dex’s eyes shot to you then, intense, molten. That meanness hadn’t disappeared but it was overshadowed by heat, and you kind of liked it that way. Were rough edges really rough if you wanted to feel them on your skin? The way your whole body felt soaked in him and the way he watched you said no, there wouldn’t be any pity necessary if – when – the time came for physical intimacy, would there? He stood up then, dropping the coin on your table, stalking over to said bedside.

Stared down at the things you kept there, all innocuous and average with the exception of his sharp, sharp knife. You would have watched the muscles in his broad back shift as he picked it up in his large hands, except he still angled it away from you. Dex turned and looked to your purse pointedly, footsteps echoing as he strode over to where it was hanging by the door, pulled it open, and tucked the knife inside. “I didn’t give that to you for decoration.”

“Why did you give it to me then?”

 With words beating a sharp tempo against your breast, you watched him cross the room again, long legs, dark eyes, and an intangible force that yanked on your leash and encouraged you to stand up and meet him in the middle. But you stayed seated, and Dex moved close enough to reach down and pick up your free hand. He held it aloft for a long time in the strong scaffolding of his own fingers, examined your knuckles, your delicate bones there. “The city can be a dangerous place. To stab someone if you need to.” How quickly, like this, he could break your fingers but never would.

With his back to all the lights, Dex’s face was almost completely shadowed, each feature shaded in menacing relief but painted by a master hand. His eyes glittered as he lifted your hand up further while bending his head down and placed his lips against the meat of your palm, below your thumb. And motherfucker, he kept eye contact too, dragging his lips to touch down upon the unsteady pulse in your wrist; when he spoke, you could feel the words slipping out against your skin there. “Don’t soulmates exchange gifts?”

“Oh, yea—yeah. Of course.” You felt hot, sweaty, in a way that had nothing to do with the fact that it was July, stood up restlessly. “Plate?” Cleared your throat awkwardly and stepped around him to pick his up from the table because you were both done.

Walking into the kitchen area only took you a few scant steps, but he dogged them the whole way. Followed you like a hound trailing behind their owner. Stood behind you while you rinsed them off in the sink and decided to wash them later, too close for friends or acquaintances, too close for people who were still getting to know each other, too close for a soulmate match who’d barely touched, not close enough for lovers.

Turning from the sink, your hand was taken again – absconded with by a much bigger, stronger, warmer hand. Calloused palms and fingers that gripped firmly while their owner looked you dead in the eyes and that rope connecting you thinned to twine and then silken cord because you were so close. Already, the tips of your breasts brushed his chest but he wanted closer. Stretched your arm out with his so that the scar from your once broken arm pressed precisely against your words on him, soft inner forearm to soft inner forearm.

And the movement levered you closer to him, until you were close enough for lovers, Dex was breathing harder now, and there was no emotion in him but want. He watched you swallow like he longed to take your neck in his mouth. “Going slow is killing me.”

And then you were kissing.

Dex was kissing you, he was taking, he was all rough violence of the mouth with teeth that bit your lip and a tongue that invaded. His lips were firm against your own, and he was breathing you in. Tasted like marinara sauce and like a man made specifically to fit against you in every way. Groaning, and the noise penetrated you in a way that was obscene, made you gasp in a way that caused him to shiver in return. Pressed against you, his body felt hot with blood that seemed to pulse in time with your own, his legs bracketing yours so there was nowhere to go.

Not to be outdone, you invaded him too, ran your tongue along his teeth and felt the gap there. Stroked the inside of his mouth so you could take in all the textures of his tongue and lips and cheek. Ran your free hand up his arm and held onto his shoulder until your nails were pricking his skin and the muscles there were flexing erratically. Your breasts pressed hard into his chest, and both of your hips were insistent against each other. God it was so good, a kiss you hadn’t had in – well, ever, because he was taking control again, and his free hand was wandering under the hem of your loose shirt.

The touch of his fingertips on your abdomen, seeking, seeking. Climbing higher because Dex was looking for something in particular, something he’d been searching a long time for. Too distracted by the act of being consumed alive, you only realized how high up his hand was when for the first time, his fingers grazed your words. His words, on your body.

“Fuck,” You said directly into his mouth, and he was smiling a little into yours because now he had them. Now he had you, now his palm was pressing down to cover every letter like he intended to absorb them back into his body – holy palmer’s kiss transmuted into something different, still worship. Your ring on his finger seared you, sharp on your ribs. An arm slung around his neck, somehow pulling him closer, slick need gathering between your legs, the wet sounds your mouths made together obscene. Now you whined because it wasn’t pleasure or pain, it was simple energy that filled you to restless need, pushed you to the brink of laying down and letting go even if you said you wanted slow, even if your rational brain thought this was too much too soon. 

Rational brain be damned, hind brain wanted. Because you were bending back, pliant against him, over the edge of the sink and he was pulling away just enough to bite your lower lip harder and drink in that little pained breath, press his advantage to bend you further and map every part of your mouth with his tongue while the energy buzzed like static noise in you, constant, and knew he felt the same. 

One of your hands hastily untucked his shirt, touched the skin of his abdomen, and Dex laughed lowly, darkly against you, nothing but yearning. Fuck, your bed was right over there and you two were standing in the kitchen like a pair of idiots. Your skimmed your hand up higher to feel the scar under his pec, sending a jolt through him, and your bed was right there. Right there, and you didn’t even have to wait to be naked for sex, did you? He could just take you on the bed, on your knees, hard and fast and let tenderness be for later.

Dex had finally relinquished your mouth, was biting along the edge of your jaw while his hand moved higher to cup one breast, body burning like with fever. Against your thighs was the hard shape of his member, thought he’d welcome the hastiness.

“Dex,” It came out whisper-intimate, “Dex,” This time a little louder, and his hand paused on your body while he kept biting to your ear lobe. “Dex, wait,” ‘The bed’s over there,’ you wanted to tell him, ‘Why are we doing this in the kitchen?’

But he was already freezing against you, lips stopped and hand suddenly hovering, not touching. Stopped because to him this was you asking for space, and you had just told him that he shouldn’t do anything he didn’t want to. Shouldn’t he ensure you had the same dignity? The conversation was fresh in his mind, meaningful.  Dex pulled away further – not pulling away – but just making room, and this time there was no insidious drip of rejection along the bond between you. Only heat that was now tempered with patience.

Cooler heads were beginning to prevail, and you leaned back on your elbow, perched on the counter. Dex’s hands let go of you, and he stepped back, the loss of both of you tangible to the other. His lips were swollen, wet, sensual and yours must have been the same. You laughed a little, incredulous, “I promise this is not how I thought tonight would go. I haven’t even asked you about your shoulder, Jesus.” 

His damn tongue was pressed against the gap in his teeth, torturing you. “It’s fine. How did you think this would go?”

“Oh, you know,” Flapped your hand between the two of you. “Less of… this. Less of this.” 

Your little wall clock was ticking, and you honestly couldn’t have said what time it was if there was a gun to your head. Kissing for three minutes or six hours, you couldn’t say. But Dex was glancing at it, and at you, and from the corner of his eye, at your bed. The night was grave and endless outside, and in your apartment, your sputtering candle was losing the fight. He sighed, deep and satisfied. “I should go.”

Or things might start picking up speed again. “Right.”

Dex waited for you to walk around him to the door, still not even once presenting you with his back. Instead, you felt his eyes trace the line of your spine while your hand held onto passing furniture like your legs would give out in the ensuing five feet. “You… have a place to go, right?” Those thoughts from the dry cleaners hadn’t ever left, wondering if he cycled through places to hide but couldn’t call home.

“Yeah.” And his hand was on the doorknob of your front door, and the rope was stretching taut between you like a rubber band, hoping to snap back. “You asking for a tour?”

“Just curious.” Dex opened the front door, just an inch; you felt the divide between you – shorts and a t-shirt and bare feet with a mouth turned raspberry red from friction – him in all dark colors and armed with combat boots and the lingering ghost of your perfume on him – didn’t like it at all. “Maybe –”

And he was sharpening again, turning into the vigilante preparing to leave your place. Hardening into someone you knew less and knew more. “Maybe one more?” That didn’t stop you from being a fool and asking for a favor from that same vigilante.

“One more?”

“Before you leave.” That was your voice saying it, gentle, curious, without even a single drop of wine to encourage you. Dex stood very still, all sniper patience while you placed one hand on his bicep, the other on his cheek. His face held a wealth of emotion, suffocated, held within, as your fingertips pressed into the line of his scar there, drawing him down. “A little one.” And then you pressed your lips to his softly.

Close-mouthed and by comparison chaste, but God help you he was looking down at you with eyes wide open when yours closed, and he was still watching when you pulled away. That was important, that one, wasn’t it? Because he wasn’t taking – you were giving. You needed the power of coming closer on your own. Dex stayed in position when you pulled away, neck was still bent slightly, head tilted as he watched your lips shape the words, “I think this means we’re involved now.”

Those words – they slipped out and fed him like the first meal after a lifetime of malnourishment. And though they might frighten you in the morning, right then, they were your equivalent of steps on the moon. A giant leap; a map to follow that only he had possession of; a place next to you, for him, that would grow given time. “Finally.” He responded, and his mouth slipped into a half-smile when you tried not to laugh.

“Good night.”

And then the not-date was over because he left, slipping out the door. You stood there for several long moments, thinking. How much speed did you want to pick up? The words wanted it all, wanted one person left at the end, melted from two and reforged into something new. You would have to expose every knot and bump and scar – could you?

But Dex had bumps and knots and scars too in his life. How much blood would those hands of his accumulate in just one night like this one? A lot, and the enormity of what he’d need to expose to you grew. And yet they’d cradled you with all the gentleness he knew how to give, when so little had ever been given to him. If he could… if he could do that for you, you could do so for him. It would just take time.

Work and real life still faced you the next morning, a shower needed to be had, dishes to be done. You gathered your pajamas, pulled out whatever skincare you might bother to do, tried not to think about anything inappropriate until you could go to bed. Steam was building in your little bathroom when you heard it again.

Knock. Knock. Knock.