Your work just happened to be ridding the streets from legally protected but emotionally corrupt Anti-Vigilante Task Force agents. 

They weren’t exactly hard to track and they weren’t subtle when they swept through a place. They always used black gear, textbook formations, masks on, and a false sense of “order.” You’d been tracking them for weeks, picking them off where you could, dismantling routes, breaking patterns. Not out of heroism, really. You just didn’t like being hunted.

And they were definitely hunting you.

You were an “Asset Gone Rogue.” At least, that’s what you were in their files.

In truth, you were a former SHIELD operative. When the organisation collapsed, you were offered a government contract. You refused. After all, you were done working for people, for agendas. People are corrupt. Agendas were worse. The only person you trusted was yourself. 

Because you refused, because apparently, if you weren’t loyal to them you were a threat, the CIA and FBI had labeled you as a high-risk individual, and you knew they monitored the hell out of you. 

You didn’t mind, and you had nothing to be scared about. You had been on your best behaviour. You had been living a normal life since 2014. At least, as normal as it could be. Aliens still invaded, people still disappeared, the president turned into a rage monster, and you could be taken hostage by your own void of a mind any time. But hey. Privileges, right?  At least you were still alive, and nobody was out to get you. 

Until Fisk became mayor. 

That’s when your profile got reactivated. Fisk saw many unaccounted for “assets” as a threat. So they slapped the label “vigilante” on you and processed your arrest warrant. 

The first night they tried to get you, they shot up your favourite bar. Two bartenders got caught in the crossfire.  

They were your friends. 

Layla gave you staff discounts and went to concerts with you. Darren had a roommate who works in a dispensary. He’d get them for cheap and you would all get high on a rooftop, chatting shit about life and how absurd the existence of your consciousness was. You’d told them that one day, when they had saved enough money to open up their own bar, they’d need a bouncer. Private security was important, and you promised to volunteer. 

Layla would laugh and ask, “You? C’mon. You’re not stopping nobody from coming in.”

Darren would say, “My cousin’s like 6’5. He can do the job.”

You’d laugh, because they didn’t really know your past. They didn’t know your skills and what you had done to survive. They didn’t know the blood on your hands. 

You’d take a drag out of the blunt. “Trust me, man. I’m scary as fuck.”

They’d laugh and say, “If you say so.”

But now they were six feet underground because they were caught in the crossfire meant for you.

And no, you had never intended to go back to the life of being judge, jury, and executioner. But your friends were fucking dead. So if they want a vigilante, they’ll get a vigilante.

Your only advice to them: be careful what you wish for. 

Because if there’s one thing you’re good at doing with your hands, it’s killing for sport. 

—

What you didn’t expect when you started to hunt them… was competition.

On the first night, you found the warehouse already ruined. Knives where there shouldn’t have been knives. Pencils where they shouldn’t be pencils. And glass where they shouldn’t be glass, all stuck in lethal ways on the bodies of Task Force. 

You crouched beside one, studying the entry wound left by what looked like a stapler. 

You smiled a little. “‘M not the only one, huh?”

—

The second time you tracked AVTF agents, you found them alive. 

It must be my lucky day, you thought to yourself, sliding your brass knuckles on. 

Before long, you were seeing red, clashing metal against bone. You had knocked out the breath out of their lungs. The dull, sickening rhythm of a fight that had already been decided, you knew the pendulum was swinging in your favour. 

One agent swung wide after you disarmed him. He was sloppy.

You stepped in.

Your knuckles cracked across his cheek with a sharp snap, his head whipping to the side before his body followed. He dropped hard, and he didn't move after that.

Another came at you from behind.

You didn’t turn.

You just shifted your weight and drove your elbow back into his ribs. You felt a crack; then pivoted and planted your fist straight into his jaw.

He folded.

You exhaled, rolling your shoulders like this was nothing more than a warm-up. Blood slicked your knuckles, dripping in lines down your fingers. You flexed once, admiring the work. 

The man with the broken ribs, unfortunately, was still alive. He reached for a gun, only to be stopped by a throwing knife sent the direction of his neck. In response, he let out a blood-curdling scream. 

You, however, was the one to take the knife off him, taking the pressure off the wound and letting him abruptly bleed out. You took the knife and sheathed it in one of your pockets. 

Shiny, you thought. It’s mine now.

“Messy,” you heard a voice say from the darkness. 

You tilted your head. Then, slowly, you turned.

The man you saw stood at the mouth of the alley like he’d always been there.

He was tall and lean, but the suit caught your attention first.

It was dark blue with silver accents. Sleek, almost seamless against his frame. Not tactical in the bulky, obvious way AVTF agents wore theirs. This was built for movement, not protection. A mask covered his face, but he was not concealing his identity. It was made evident when he took off his mask, presumably so you could get a better look at him. His hair was sandy blond or light brown, you couldn’t tell in the lighting. He had a scar on his cheek, but you kinda liked it. It suited him. 

What unsettled you, however, was how his eyes tracked you.

Your lips curled into a smile before you could stop it.

“Oh?” you said, almost amused. “You got notes?”

His eyes dropped to your hands. To the brass knuckles, slick with fresh blood, catching what little light filtered into the alley.

“You were in my line of fire,” he said bluntly.

You let out a huff of laughter, glancing around at the bodies scattered across the pavement before looking back at him. “I’m pretty sure I was in the middle of my kill.”

To emphasize it, you stepped back, stomping hard onto the wrist of the last agent trying to crawl away.

You felt bone crunch under your heel.

You didn’t even look down when you finished it, dropping a quick, brutal strike with your knuckles that silenced him.

You lifted your hand slightly, tilting it so he could see the blood coating the metal clearer. “You see something unfinished?”

His eyes followed the movement again, but ended up at your face. “They were mine.”

Before you could stop yourself, you stepped toward him. Close enough to test, not close enough to threaten.

“Well.” Your head tilted. “You should’ve come down here and gotten your hands dirty with me.”

“I don’t need to be close,” he replied.

“Mm.” You hummed, unconvinced, dragging your gaze back up to meet his. “Shame. You’re missing out.”

“And you probably compensate for your terrible aim with proximity,” he said, stepping forward. You could see the depth of his eyes now, the exact shade of it. And they were beautifully hazel, like universes were swimming in them.

“It’s more fun,” you shrugged. “I like it when I feel it.”

You saw the smallest shift at the corner of his mouth. A smile. 

“Oh,” you said with a cynical grin. “There it is. You do have a personality.”

The tension didn’t ease, but it changed. It was less of a standoff, more like respect being built in real time.

“Got a name?” you asked casually, like you weren’t standing in the middle of a massacre flirting with a stranger.

A fraction of a second passed before he answered. “Dex.”

It fit him.

You nodded once, like you approved. “Dex,” you repeated, tasting it.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “You?”

You clicked your tongue, shaking your head. “Tsk. Tsk.” You stepped a little closer. “I’m not that easy.”

Dex managed a real laugh. “I didn’t think you were.”

That sounded less like a dismissal, more like interest. It was the first time in a long time that Dex was interested in something he didn’t understand. 

—

You kept running into each other. 

Three days later, he had already finished circling the perimeter of a Task Force safe house you planned on infiltrating when you got there.

Two agents dropped before you even stepped into the scene, and you knew who it was immediately, and his methods were bound to flush them out of hiding. 

You barely had time to crack your knuckles before an agent rushed at you, thinking you were responsible.

You handled him up close. It was quick and brutal. Four more came up to you and you handled them, too. Dex handled the rest.

When it was over, you glanced at the bodies, then at him. “You stalking me?”

“You’re predictable,” he replied.

You smirked. “And yet, here I am. Still alive.”

“…For now,” he said. There was something almost playful in it.

A week later, you found yourself dockside on a shipping yard, falling into place with him. At this point, you’ve started actively looking for each other before fighting. 

This time, you moved without speaking, like you’d done this a hundred times before.

You drew them in. Dex picked them off.

At one point, you ducked just as a knife flew past your ear and dropped the man behind you.

You didn’t even look.

“Gotta be careful,” he called.

“Relax,” you shot back. “I trust you.”

Dex looked down, unsure of what to do with that information. “You shouldn’t,” he finally said. 

You grinned. “Too late.”

By the time it happened again, it was a pattern.

You’d show up. He’d already be there. Or vice versa.

You caught his eye across the street once, both of you watching the same target.

You tilted your head as you fell into step behind him. “You gonna share?”

“Depends,” he shrugged.

“On?”

“Whether you slow me down.”

You stepped closer, just enough to blur the line. “Or speed you up.”

That got you a sweet smile. “We’ll see.”

And somewhere between the blood, the banter, and the way neither of you ever missed when it mattered—

“The enemy of my enemy…,” you trailed off once while glancing at him, as another body hit the ground.

Dex eyes locked on to yours.

“…is useful,” he finished. Whether or not he meant it, is a different question altogether. 

After that meeting, you finally gave him your name.

—

Dex was already there on the rooftop of the insurance building when you arrived.

He was perched at the edge like he belonged to the skyline more than the ground, body angled forward, rifle steady. The city moved below him in noise and chaos, but up here, around him, there was only control.

“You’re late,” he said, not even turning. 

He learned your footsteps, you realised. How flattering.

You landed behind him, boots scraping against gravel, rolling your shoulder like you hadn’t just sprinted across half the block. “Just got back from a hot date.”

That got a pause. Was he… jealous?

“Really?”

You gave him a deadpan look he couldn’t see. “Yeah. With candlelight and classical music. Maybe a little murder after dessert.”

His head tilted just slightly.

You breathed out, waving it off as you stepped closer. “Of course not. I don’t have time for dates.” You huffed, almost amused. “My laundry, though? That needed folding.”

As if relieved, you saw his shoulder relax, just a little.

“Target’s moving,” he said.

You leaned beside him, peering over the ledge. Three agents in a tight formation. It was predictable.

“Mm,” you hummed. “You taking the shot, or do you want me to make it interesting?”

“I’ve got it.”

You stayed anyway, close enough to feel the intensity rolling off him. The way everything in him narrowed down to a single point. It was… fascinating. A different kind of violence than yours. 

His finger almost tightened on the trigger when you saw a light flickering across the street. On the opposite rooftop.

Your stomach dropped. This was a trap.

“Dex—”

The shot was fired through the air, and it was not his.

Your body moved before your brain caught up, instinct overriding logic. You lunged forward, slamming into him hard enough to knock his aim off just as the bullet tore through the space where his head had been, and into your shoulder. 

It felt like impact, like it slammed straight through you, stole the air from your lungs, hollowed you out from the inside.

Your breath hitched as your body folded into his, vision staggering at the edges.

“Shit!” Dex caught you before you dropped, one arm locking around you like a reflex. He looked to the opposite rooftop, and that coward of an agent had gone. They probably saw that they got you and took it as a win, leaving to safety and decided to take him down another day. 

Or maybe he was waiting for a cleaner shot.

“What did you do?” He demanded, almost a sneer.

You tried to laugh, but it came out thin and uneven. “You’re welcome?”

Blood was already soaking through your side, warm and slick, sticking fabric to skin. You could feel it spreading with every heartbeat.

Another shot rang out.

Oh, so that bastard was still there. 

Dex knew he had to go now. 

His grip tightened on you as he shifted, adjusted, fired,  like the world had narrowed down to a single correction.

A body dropped across the street.

“You’re hit,” he said, attention turning back to you. 

You huffed weakly. “Wow. Observant.”

Your knees buckled. This time, they didn’t recover. He held you up anyway.

“Why?” he asked.

You blinked, trying to focus on him through the blur creeping into your vision. “What?”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

You let your head tip slightly, a crooked, strained smile pulling at your lips. “Wow. No ‘thank you’? I’m hurt.”

“You are hurt.”

“Yeah,” you breathed, looking at your wound and thinking oh well. “At least I’ll get a cool scar from it.” Your hand reached up, fingers tracing the healed cut on his cheek gently, impossibly intimately, “like yours.”

His teeth tightened and his grip shifted, almost like he was anchoring you in place. Almost as if he was scared to lose you. 

What a foreign feeling, indeed.

“Stay with me,” he said.

You let out a small, shaky laugh. “That bad, huh?”

“Stay. With me.” You’ve never heard him sound so… serious.

Your fingers curled weakly into his jacket. “…Alright.”

For once, you didn’t fight him. You didn’t joke or deflect.

Your head dipped slightly forward, brushing closer to him as your strength started to slip in uneven waves. “You owe me,” you murmured.

“What?” He asked, as if he couldn’t believe where your priorities lay right now. 

You managed the ghost of a grin. “Saving your life. Obviously.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” he managed, exasperated.

You exhaled, breath catching halfway. “Yeah… well. I did.”

He adjusted you again, more carefully this time, like he was suddenly aware of every inch of you he was holding.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he said.

You tilted your head just enough to look at him, closer than you had ever been before.

His eyes weren’t steady anymore. 

“C-Careful,” you managed, voice fraying at the edges. “You’re s-starting to sound like you care.”

Dex tried not to look at you, not to panic. But then, he simply said, “I do.”

Your breath hitched, not from the pain this time.

“…Huh,” you whispered.

And for once, as you lost consciousness, head lolling back, you had nothing to say back.

—

You came back to the land of the living slowly.

You didn’t just wake up all at once. It started with fragments. From the faint hum of electricity, to the clean sheets beneath you. You weren’t at a hospital— there were no sirens, no shouting, no chaos, just… peace and quiet.

Your eyes open, just a little. You saw the ceiling first. It was clean. No cracks, no stains.

And it was definitely not your ceiling.

You shifted slightly, and pain flared sharp enough to drag a groan out of you. Your hand instinctively moved to your shoulder, fingers brushing over a clean, tight bandage, wrapped meticulously well.

Your eyes drifted, taking in the room. It was aggressively minimal. It had a bed, an armchair, and a tv. The kitchen, on the other side of the studio apartment, was spotless. Everything was placed with intention, like nothing existed here unless it served a purpose.

“You decorate like a serial killer,” you muttered, voice rough from disuse.

“You’re awake,” Dex said. He was standing by the window, half-turned toward you, like he’d been watching the city and listening for you at the same time.

You let your head fall back against the pillow. “Was hoping I died. This is disappointing.”

You could tell he was rolling his eyes, but he managed a chuckle. “Tragic.”

You could feel his attention on you as you turned your head slightly, meeting his eyeline. “…How long?”

“Eleven hours and forty-three minutes.”

“Mm.” You swallowed, throat dry. “You carry me all the way here?”

“Yes.”

A faint smirk tugged at your lips. “Didn’t know you cared that much.”

Dex shook his head, but he gave no indication of confirming or denying your theory. 

You pushed yourself up to your elbows, wincing as your body protested. You tapped the space on his bed. “Come here.”

He didn’t move. “Why?” he asked.

You tilted your head, studying him. “I just got shot for you. The least you can do is sit.”

He stopped in his tracks, as if thinking what to make of that request. But in the end, he sat on the edge of the bed, not too close, not too far.

You watched him for a second. “You’re weird,” you said.

“Mmhm,” he managed a laugh.

“At least you’re self-aware.”

You let silence befall you again, but this time it stretched softer.

You leaned back slightly, exhaling through the lingering ache. “You ever get tired of it?”

“Of what?”

“All of it.” You gestured vaguely. “Of this.”

“No,” he said, and it was resolute. 

You studied him, like you didn’t quite believe that. “I do,” you admitted quietly.

That earned his attention.

Your gaze drifted to the ceiling again, voice losing its edge. “When I left, I thought that was it. No more orders, no more handlers, no more… being pointed at things and told to make them disappear.”

Your teeth tightened slightly.

“I tried to be normal,” you continued. “Did the whole thing. I had a job, got friends, made a routine.” You managed a faint humorless smile. “Turns out I’m not built for normal.”

Dex didn’t interrupt. In fact, it surprised him just how much he liked listening to you. 

“They came after me anyway,” you said. “Didn’t matter that I walked away. To them, I don’t get to just… stop being what they made me.”

“And that is…?” Dex looked at you now.

“A killer,” you replied, sighing, “that’s all I’m good for.”

“Well,” Dex started, and for the first time, you could actually detect the sympathy in his tone, “that makes the two of us.”

You watched him from where you were half-propped against his pillows, arm slung carefully across your middle, bandage still tight around your shoulder. The pain had dulled from unbearable to manageable. It was annoying, but distant. What wasn’t distant was him. The way he sat there, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped, eyes not quite meeting yours.

That was new.

“I knew who you were,” Dex finally admitted, breaking the silence. It was as if this secret had been eating him alive. “Even before you told me your name.”

“That so?” you replied lightly, like it didn’t matter. Like your name hadn’t gotten people killed before. 

He nodded once, finally looking at you. “Your MO was familiar."

Your lips curved faintly. “Flattered.”

“I knew I read something about brass knuckles,” he continued. “Used by a close range combat specialist.”

You just watched him, eyes sharper now.

“I was a fed,” he added. “I read your files a few years ago.”

That made you smile properly.

“Yeah?” you said, amused. “How much did you remember?”

“You were on the FBI watchlist,” he said. “It said that you were ex-SHIELD with an impressively high body count. High adaptability. High lethality.” He paused. “It said that you were high risk and… that you were volatile.”

You let out a laugh, shaking your head slightly against the pillow. There was no bitterness in it. No anger, just acceptance. Like he’d told you your eye color.

Dex studied your face, like he was expecting more of a visceral reaction. 

“You’re not bothered?” he asked.

“Should I be?” you shot back lightly. “You already kept me alive. Bit late to get scared of me now.”

“I’m not scared of you.”

You smiled at that. 

The lights dimmed around you both as the sun set outside, the tension unwinding. You adjusted slightly, wincing as your shoulder protested, and he noticed immediately. His hand twitched as if he almost reached for you before stopping himself.

Your voice dipped, teasing again. “So you knew all along, and you still chose to work with me.”

Dex nodded as if it was never a question.

You raised an eyebrow. “That seems irresponsible for a federal agent.”

“I’m not a federal agent anymore,” he reminded, “and you are not as one dimensional as the files say you are.”

“Mm,” you hummed. “So what am I, then?”

He paused again.

You watched him carefully this time, vulnerability threading through every word.

“Am I a problem?” you asked. “A liability? ‘Enemy of my enemy’ and all that?”

His jaw tightened slightly. “No.”

You tilted your head. “No?”

“No,” he repeated, firmer now.

You let that sit between you for a second before pushing just a little further. “So what am I to you, Dex?”

He was thinking about it, you could tell. You saw it in the way his shoulders stiffened. The way his eyes now locked onto yours like he couldn’t look away even if he wanted to.

“A friend?” you offered. “Is that what this is?”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. 

Then he shook his head.“‘Friend’ feels too tame.”

Your eyebrows lifted, interest sparking. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said.

You shifted slightly, leaning just a fraction closer despite the pull in your shoulder. “So what, then?”

For once, he didn’t look like he was calculating. For once, he just… felt present. “You’re…” he started, then stopped, like even he didn’t have a good word for it.

Your lips twitched. “C’mon. You made it this far.”

“You’re the only one I can’t reduce to a target,” He let out a faint exhale, “and the only variable I don’t want to correct.”

Ah. Okay.

Your expression didn’t change much, but it felt like the lens behind your eyes had shifted. 

“I think…” you let a smile pull on your lips, “I like that answer better than ‘friend.’”

—

You didn’t go back to “normal” after that. It wasn’t an option anymore.

But you found something else, and it started the first night you cleared yourself to move properly again.

Dex watched the way you stretched, testing your muscles, the way you flexed your fingers like you were reacquainting yourself. 

That’s when you caught him staring.

“What?” you asked, a hint of a smirk pulling at your mouth.

“You’re still hurt,” he said.

You scoffed. “I got shot three days ago. Do I look like I have a healing factor?”

“You’re arrogant. One day, it’s going to kill you,” he pointed out, as if your death was something he was dreading. 

“You like that about me.” You grinned. The arrogance, you mean. 

He paused, thinking. “I like you.”

“Jesus, Dex,” you laughed under your breath. “You’re not supposed to admit that.”

“I don’t see the point in lying to you.”

So now, working together became less of an accident. You stopped pretending you ran into each other. Now, you wouldn’t go into a fight without knowing the other had your six.

—

And afterwards… After the bodies were dropped and blood was spilled, you didn’t walk your separate ways. Instead, you kept each other company. 

Which was new.

You’d sit on rooftops, legs dangling over the edge, boots tapping idly against concrete slick with drying blood.

The city stretched out below you.

You leaned back on your hands, breathing steadying after the fight. “You ever think about how weird this is?”

“Not really,” Dex said.

“You should. It’s weird.”

You were met with another bout of comfortable silence. Then, he said, “You talk more after fights.”

You smiled, glancing sideways at him. “Adrenaline. Makes me charming.”

“You’re already… that,” he said, like the word didn’t come naturally.

You blinked. “Is that a compliment?”

“It’s an observation.”

“Mmhm.”

Dex shifted closer. His hand moved, stopping just shy of yours.

You turned your head to realise how close he truly was.

Your eyes dropped to his mouth. He did the same.

Was he… leaning in?

Before you could meet him halfway, the church bells rang.

You flinched back on instinct, breath breaking as the moment broke clean in half. You dragged a hand through your hair, shaking your head slightly. “Timing’s shit.”

Dex didn’t look away. “…Yeah.”

—

Sometimes, you would sit on bridges.

You leaned against the railing, staring down into the dark. Dex stood beside you as you nudged his shoulders with yours. 

“You ever think about it?” you asked once, more fragile than usual.

About jumping, you meant, and he knew that. About ending it all. 

“Yes,” he said. It surprised him how easily he was admitting this to you. 

You glanced back at him. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

You nodded, turning back to the water. “Me too,” you sighed, wishing the void beneath you were a giant pile of comfortable pillows. “But not anymore.”

“I—“ he managed to choke up, looking at you. “Me, too.”

The words didn’t feel separate. They felt… tethered. Like a promise neither of you meant to make.

The wind rushed up from the dark below, cold enough to sting. Your fingers curled tighter around the railing as you turned your head.

He was already right there. 

You realised a terrifying truth: If you jumped, he would.

And worse, if he did, you wouldn’t hesitate to follow.

You took a deep breath and leaned in anyway.

Dex did the same, like he understood exactly what this meant. Like he knew what you were giving him.

Your breaths mixed, you lips barely a breath apart—

—and a violent blast of car horns tore through it.

You jumped back like the world had yanked you apart.

Reality crashed in as you turned away, swallowing hard, grip tightening on the railing like it was the only thing holding you in place now. 

Dex sighed, knowing that it was not the time, it was not the place. “Right…”

You tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear. “Yeah.”

—

Most nights, though, you’d take him to sit on a bench by the river, tucked away just enough that no one bothered you.

It had a plaque on it, one that you bought. One that said— in memory of beloved friends: Layla Gras and Darren Walsh.

You blew half your savings account paying for the goddamn bench. 

So after most nights of fighting Task Force, you’d make your way there and sit with your legs stretched out. Dex would follow, and you’d lean into him without thinking. 

You’d talk about nothing and everything. You’d talk about small things like the weather, but you’d also talk about deep shit. Real shit. Your days with SHIELD, and whatever he would offer from his past. You’d talk like this was a confessional booth, like you’ve sworn under oath in court— that’s how freely you divulge information about yourselves to each other. That’s how safe you felt around him. Ironic, considering his… professional reputation. 

Today, you were sat there after ambushing more Task Force agents than you were expecting. You had gotten bruised, so you were pressing your fingers against your side with a small wince. “I’m getting sloppy.”

“You still won,” he said immediately, “shoulda seen those guys.”

You scoffed. “That’s a very you way of measuring success.”

“It’s the only way that matters.”

“Mm,” you hummed, unconvinced, but you didn’t argue. Your hand drifted down absently, brushing against your belt. 

You froze for a second before pulling it free.

It was the knife you took from him on the first night you met.

You turned it in your hand. It was still in perfect condition, and of course it was. You’d taken care of it, maybe more than you needed to.

Your thumb traced the handle.

“Do you want it back?” you asked, holding it out slightly toward him.

Dex didn’t even look at it. “Keep it,” he said. 

You blinked once, then let out a chuckle, lowering the knife back into your lap.

“Wow,” you said lightly. “How very sentimental.”

“It’s practical.”

“Is it?” you tilted your head. “Because I’m pretty sure you just gave me your weapon as a keepsake.”

“It’s not a keepsake,” he replied, but there was a slight delay. “You should use it.”

You laughed under your breath, shaking your head. “God, you’re unbelievable.”

You flipped the knife once in your hand before catching it again it was almost as if you were imitating him. “You know,” you added, voice quieting, “most guys give flowers.”

“I don’t think you’d like flowers.”

You turned to him, an eyebrow raised. “Excuse you. I love flowers.”

He finally looked at you properly, eyes scanning your face.

“No,” he said after a second. “You’d forget to change the water.”

Your mouth dropped open slightly. “That is—” you pointed at him with the knife, offended but amused, “—so disrespectful of you to assume.”

“You forgot to eat yesterday.”

“That is different.”

“It’s not.”

“It is,” you insisted, though you were already smiling. “One is basic survival. The other is… decorative responsibility.”

“That’s worse.”

You scoffed, staying silent for a long time.

This peace… was nice. 

You looked out at the water, closing your eyes for a good five seconds before you opened them again. Then, you added, “I’d keep them alive if they mattered.”

Dex didn’t respond right away.

Your eyes dropped back to the knife, fingers tightening around it. “This matters,” you admitted shyly. 

You didn’t look at him when you said it.

Instead, you carefully slid the knife back into your belt, adjusting it into place like it had always belonged there.

When your hand pulled away, you placed it on the bench. 

Your fingers stayed there for a second… before you hooked your pointer finger around his. 

You did it so casually, like it didn't mean anything. But it meant everything.

You leaned back slightly against the bench, shoulder bumping his just enough to close the space between you.

He leaned into your touch.

You smiled to yourself, eyes drifting out over the water as you let your thumb brush absently against his pinky.

Dex’s vision shifted to you, then to the small plaque fixed into the bench beneath you. He leaned forward slightly, just enough to read it properly.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew there must be a reason you brought him here like… what? Seven or eight times now?

He just never thought to ask because he didn’t know when the right time to ask would be. But it might as well be now.

His fingers adjusted, holding on slightly firmer. “Tell me about Layla and Darren.”

—

An hour later, the city had rolled further into early morning than night.

You stood from the bench after you laid your heart bare, rolling your shoulders once like you were checking in with your body before moving again. You were sick of being a walking sob story, however good it felt just to talk. You needed to move.

Dex stood a second after you did. “I’ll walk you home,” he said.

It came out a little stiff. Not forced, but unfamiliar.

You glanced at him, a smile pulling at your lips. “Oh?” you teased lightly. “Is that what we’re doing now?”

He frowned slightly. “What?”

“You know,” you shrugged, stepping past him, hands sliding into your pockets as you started down the sidewalk, “chivalry. Social norms. Walking a girl home.”

“I’m making sure you get back safely.”

You glanced over your shoulder at him. “Dex, I jump off rooftops for fun.”

“And you could still get hurt.” he replied evenly, falling into step beside you.

You didn’t argue. 

The walk wasn’t long, but it stretched in that comfortable silence you’d both gotten used to. You walked shoulder to shoulder, naturally in sync. 

By the time you reached your building, you slowed to a stop just outside the entrance. You turned to face him, head tilting slightly. “You wanna come upstairs?” 

Dex didn’t hesitate. “Sure.”

“Wow,” you said, pushing the door open. “No internal conflict? No hesitation? I’m almost offended.”

“I trust you,” he said simply, following you inside.

Upstairs, your place was dark when you stepped in. You flicked the light on, yellow lights warming the otherwise dim apartment.

Dex’s eyes moved immediately, taking everything in.

It wasn’t what he expected.

It was… neat and intentional. Not sterile like his, but not cluttered either. There were actual decorations, like a plant by the window and books stacked alphabetically on your desk. 

“Don’t look so surprised,” you said, kicking your shoes off and placing your keys onto the counter.

“I’m not,” he replied.

“You are,” you shot back, glancing at him. “You thought I lived in a cave or something.”

“I thought it would be less… personal.”

You hummed, walking further in. “Yeah, well. I tried the whole ‘normal life’ thing, remember?”

His eyes lingered a second longer, until it shifted to the second door, which was left slightly ajar.

You noticed.

“Ah,” you said, already moving toward it. “That one’s less aesthetically pleasing.”

You pushed the door open fully.

The spare bedroom, the shape of a square, was stripped down to nothing but function. All there was in there was a foam mat covering most of the floor, worn in places. A duffel bag was placed in the corner. There were a few taped-up sections of the wall where impact marks had clearly been… frequent.

You stepped inside first, gesturing lazily. “This,” you said, “is where I train.”

Dex stepped inside, his eyes measuring distance, angles, exits, impact points.

He was interested.

He walked further in, like he was mapping it out in real time. “You spend a lot of time in here,” he said.

You leaned against the doorframe, arms loosely crossed. “Keeps me sharp.”

He nodded once, like that confirmed something he already suspected. Then he turned to you. “Train me.”

“Are you serious?” you asked, pushing off the frame.

“Yeah.” He didn’t waver. “I know for a hand-to-hand combat specialist, you’re not particularly strong.”

“Ouch,” you said immediately, a hand pressing dramatically to your chest.

“What I mean is,” Dex continued, stepping closer. “I’ve seen you fight. You go against people twice your size. You’re not relying on brute strength, but you’re agile.”

You tilted your head slightly.

“I want to know how you do it,” he finished. “Teach me.”

Huh. You weren’t expecting this. 

“Careful what you wish for,” you murmured, reaching up to shrug off your jacket. It slid from your shoulders, landing on the floor as you stepped onto the mat, rolling your wrists once like you were waking your body up again.

“C’mon, Dex,” you said, a hint of a challenge threading through your voice. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

—

Dex learned fast. That was the first thing you noticed.

The second was that he was not really trying to hurt you.

And that pissed you off.

His momentum slowed just slightly before impact. Then, he held back a counter that could’ve floored you but didn’t follow through. His grip was way too controlled.

You circled him lightly on the mat, breath steady despite the growing ache in your ribs.

“Again,” you said.

He moved.

You slipped under his strike, pivoted, redirected your palm and caught his wrist, your weight shifting just enough for him to hit the mat hard.

You stepped back, barely winded.

Dex stared up at the ceiling for a second before sitting up.

You could see it in his posture: restraint. 

You narrowed your eyes.

“Godammit, Dex,” you tsked, pacing a circle around him. “You’re really committing to the whole ‘gentleman’ thing tonight, huh?”

“I’m not—”

“You are,” you interrupted, stopping in front of him. “You’re pulling your punches.”

“I’m adjusting,” he corrected, standing again.

“For what?” you challenged, tilting your head. “My feelings?”

His teeth tightened, his chin pointing to your bruised side. “For your condition.”

You scoffed, stepping closer. “My condition can handle you.”

A familiar flicker shot through his eyes. 

“Or is it not that?” you added, voice lowering. “You worried you might actually hurt me, or…” You stepped in, close enough that you could feel his breath on your nose “…that you might not want to?”

Dex’s gaze locked onto yours, a darker want threading through it now.

“I’m not holding back,” he insisted.

“Liar.”

You moved before he could respond. This time, he didn’t hesitate.

He came at you faster, harder, and for a second, it almost looked like he meant it.

Good, you thought. The last thing you wanted was to be infantilised by the only man you might still have respect for. 

You ducked, redirected, used his momentum, your body turning with his.

That was when he realised that calling you agile was the understatement of the century. 

You weren’t overpowering him. You were using him. Every ounce of force he gave you became yours.

You twisted, hooked his leg, and sent him crashing down again.

This time, you followed him down.

Your knee pinned his arm before he could recover, your other leg sliding over his hips as you stabilized your position.

And suddenly, you were straddling his crotch.

Dex didn’t even try to move.

His chest rose under yours. His hands hovered blankly for a split second like he didn’t know where to put them… before settling against the mat.

Your hands pressed lightly against his shoulders, holding him there. You could feel the tension coiled on his muscles, beneath your palms.

And oh…

Oh.

You felt it.

Your lips parted slightly.

His pants were definitely more tight than they had been before, evident by how much it was actually pressing into your core.

“Wow…” you sighed, amused.

You shifted your hips, grinding into him ever so slightly, just enough to make the point undeniable.

His breath hitched, and his face, from his nose to his ears were getting red. You leaned down just slightly, close enough that your chest hovered over his.

“Fuck, Dex,” you whispered, teasing through it. “Does this get you off?”

His jaw clenched, and his eyes darted frantically. 

He was embarrassed. How adorable. 

When his hands finally moved, he grabbed your waist. It was firm, but not rough.

“Get off,” he said, but there was no real heat behind it.

You didn’t so much as flinch.

Instead, you smiled. “Make me.”

After a while, he moved.

Finally.

Dex didn’t shove you off gently this time. He fought, and you were pleased, even if lacking a hint of resistance. He did pivot, a torque of his shoulder, his grip locking at your wrist as he forced space between you.

You let him for half a second. Just long enough for him to think he’d reset the balance.

Then you twisted with him.

Your weight dropped, your hips shifting as you used his own pull to roll back in, forcing him to adjust, forcing him to react. The mat hit your knee, breath loud in both your ears now.

“Come on,” you taunted. “That all you got?”

That got something out of him.

The next movement was cleaner. He caught you off-guard, turned you, and in one controlled motion drove you into the wall.

His hand snaked around your upper chest, up to the throat line. He had caught you in a headlock, precise and controlled. His body pressed in, flush behind yours, close enough that you could feel the heat of him through the space he didn’t give you.

There was no room to turn properly. No easy escape angle. There was just his forearm locked under your, his other hand braced against the wall beside your head, keeping you exactly where he wanted you.

You let out a quiet laugh, breath slightly uneven.

“Took you long enough,” you said.

Dex didn’t loosen his grip. He leaned in and whispered closely, lips touching the shell of your ear. “Is this what you wanted, pretty girl?”

You would be lying if you said you didn’t like it.

But you also liked winning.

So, without warning, you sank your teeth into his bicep, hard enough to draw blood, to taste the tang of iron on your delicate tongue. 

Dex, and you swore you weren't expecting this, moaned. It was throaty and low and utterly angelic to your ears. 

It wasn’t long until he released you, more because he was surprised by his own bodily reaction than pain. 

You stumbled forward out of the hold, spinning on your heel to face him again, licking your lips like nothing had happened.

Oh. That was interesting. 

You looked at his arm again, watching the thin bead of blood you drew still sliding slowly down his skin.

“You okay?” you asked. It came off as gentler than you meant it to be, but there was still a hint of mischief between your eyes. 

Dex didn’t answer immediately.

He was staring at you like his internal system had just stopped compiling. Like the world had introduced a variable he hadn’t accounted for and now everything else was lagging behind trying to catch up. It was like his brain had stalled somewhere between what just happened and why did I like that so much.

You lifted his arm slightly. “C’mere,” you pawed at his wrist, bringing the scar closer to your lips. 

The bite was tiny, and there was only a little chance that it would leave a mark long-term. You would feel sorry if only he wasn’t so turned on.  

And then you did something so absurdly gentle in contrast to everything you were. You leaned in… and kitten-licked the blood from his skin.

“F-fuck,” he said in a gasp, looking down your tongue to your eyes. 

Oh, your eyes were locked on to his. He could barely keep it together.

The way you did it was teasing. Infuriatingly intimate in a way that didn’t match the violence still lingering in your skin. It’s as if you enjoyed drinking in his blood.

As you lapped up the scar at the source, he went very still.

Then his breath caught, his hardware short-circuiting.

A low, husky sound slipped out again before he could stop it.

Not pain, or anger. But pleasure. 

He exhaled through his nose, like he was trying to regain command of himself and failing in real time.

“W-what the hell are you doing?” he managed.

You wiped your thumb slowly over his wrist like nothing about this was unusual. Like you weren’t currently reprogramming his entire sense of restraint.

“M’ showing you how sorry I am,” you said mildly. “I didn't mean to hurt you.”

He couldn’t look away and how beautiful you looked, how innocently you were acting through all this. You were a freak, he decided. If that was what it took, he would go band for band. 

“That’s not what this looks like.”

You hummed, almost amused. “No?”

Dex didn’t answer.

He couldn’t, because he was still watching your mouth like it had become the only relevant object in the room.

Then you tilted your head slightly.

“Tell me to stop,” you said, dead serious. “And I’ll stop.”

Dex didn’t move for a second.

Not because he didn’t want to, but rather because he was trying very, very hard not to.

His eyes stayed on your mouth, on the faint trace of blood still there, and finally gave up pretending that you were anything short of an infuriatingly all-consuming obsession. 

When his restrained snapped, it didn’t snap clean.

It frayed. Then tore.

His hand came up fast and grabbed your chin, firm enough to stop your whatever teasing remark you were going to say mid-breath. It was fucking rough, and you could feel it in your cheeks. 

He didn’t hear you complaining, though. 

“Dex—”

That was all you got out before he kissed you, hard. This time, nothing could possibly interrupt you.

There was no easing in. It was clear that this was the result of pent up emotions he’d been holding back for months finally finding somewhere to go.

His other hand hit the wall beside your head as he pressed you back into it, trapping you. But it was not like you wanted to be anywhere else. 

You met him halfway.

Your hands found the collar of his shirt immediately,  fingers curling in like you were pulling him closer just to make a point out of it. 

His breath broke against your mouth for half a second, like even he couldn’t keep pace with how quickly this had escalated.

And then he kissed you again, like he was testing if you were real or just another thing his mind had invented under pressure.

You reminded him that you were tangible every time.

Running your tongue through his, gasping into his mouth. 

He had been dreaming about this for months. He had fantasised up multiple scenarios in his head, how it would lead to this and how he would do it. Not once did he think he would finally get a taste of your lips and have it taste like himself.

His grip shifted, one hand still braced against the wall, the other sliding to your waist, pulling you in like he was done pretending there was supposed to be space between you at all.

When he finally pulled back, it was only enough to breathe.

His forehead hovered close to yours, his voice rough around the edges in a way you’d never heard from him before. “Don’t you fucking dare stop.”

You looked up at him through half-lidded eyes and smiled through your lashes. A faint trace of red still lingered at the edge of your teeth as you bit his lower lip. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“F-fuck, baby,” he cursed through gritted teeth, lips finding you jawline, you neck, nipping and biting until he settled at your collarbone, where you made the most noise.

His fingers caught the edge of your top, hesitating for half a second, until you helped him undress yourself and him all the same. Clothes were just simply in the way, in his line of fire.

His hands were everywhere he could justify them being, at your waist, your back, your face, running down your breast all the way down between your legs. He was learning you in real time and refusing to stop long enough to overthink it.

And you weren’t any better.

Your hand trained the lines of his body, from his neck to his torso, but ended up trailing down his back. 

It wasn’t the first time you’d seen him shirtless, or the first time you saw the scar. It was the first time you felt it, though, all rough edges and raised skin. 

The first time you noticed it, you knew it was too precise to be anything but surgical, too severe to be anything but catastrophic. He had told you about it on his own free will; told you how his T8 and T9 vertebrae were shattered by Wilson Fisk, and how what put him back together wasn’t exactly medicine so much as an experiment. 

He said it like it didn’t matter.

You knew better. Bodies don’t forget that kind of thing, even when they’re forced to heal. And right now, baring his soul to you, he let you trace it with the pad of your fingers ever so gently.

Dex broke from your mouth just long enough to breathe, but even that didn’t create distance.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

You blinked up at him. “Like what?”

His grip tightened slightly at your waist. “Like you planned this.”

You smiled.

“Did you?” He demanded. He didn’t wanna stop it, he just needed to know.

“C’mon,” you laughed, tipping your head back. “A girl invited you up to her place. You thought we were gonna bake cookies or somethin’?”

That got a reaction out of him, almost like a laugh, but it died halfway into another kiss before it could become anything stable.

This was going to be fun. 

—

Dex woke up in your bed the next morning.

He was lying on his stomach across, one arm tucked under a pillow, the other loosely curled like he’d fallen asleep mid-thought and never bothered finishing it.

He noticed the soreness of his back in soft waves. There were scratches there, shallow and scattered. Dex exhaled slowly through his nose.

Right.

That had happened.

Then he felt you.

You were sitting next to him, cross-legged on the bed, close enough that your knee brushed his side when you shifted, casual enough that it didn’t feel like distance even existed as an option.

Dex turned his head and stopped when he realised you didn’t have any clothes on either. And everything he did to you last night was on full display. The sunlight streaming through the windows even shone on you like you were a piece of art in a museum. 

Beautiful, he thought.

Gentle evidence of love bites bloomed across your skin, marks he remembered leaving. It was… very intimate in hindsight.

You were looking down at him already, like you’d been watching him wake up for a while.

“Morning, sunshine,” you greeted.

Dex made an unassuming sound and pushed himself up on his forearms.

He looked at you for half a second before reaching for you.

He kissed you. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to wake up and find you beside him and decide, without question, that this was what mornings were now.

You kissed him back, your hand sliding into his hair with an ease that felt like trust.

When he pulled back, it was only a little.

“Morning,” he said, raspy. 

“Ah.” You smiled faintly. “He speaks.”

Dex let out a breath again, more awake now, more aware of every point of contact between you and him.

He shifted fully upright this time, sitting back against the bed.

You just reached down to your bedside table drawer and showed him a small tub of aloe vera. You traced the scars on his back your nails left last night as if they were maps of constellations. 

You had nothing to be sorry about. He asked for it when he was chasing his high in you, feral and affectionate all the same as you were gasping for air and saying his name like a prayer.

He had said he wanted his spinal scar to have company. He wanted the marks to feel good for a change.

Eventually, though, his eyes drifted down to his arm. 

Last night, it started with one bite mark. This morning, he counted five. Three on his bicep, two on his forearm.

Again, he was the one who wanted it. 

You had been trapped between the mattress and his body, putting you in a similar headlock from behind as he pulled the most lewd noises out of your pretty little mouth. “Gonna bite your way out now, pretty girl?” He whispered then, while you drew another bead of blood. “Huh? You know you like it. You know I— hmph fuck! Take it. Take it, take it…” 

And the rest were mostly incoherent mumbles and muffled sinful mewls from both of you. 

If your neighbours didn’t hate you before for all the thudding, they would now for all the fucking.

Still, the small tub of aloe was a curious thing.

He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Don’t tell me you feel bad now.”

You shrugged. “I just want a clean slate for next time.”

Dex’s heart skipped half a beat.

“Next time?” he repeated, like he was wondering whether the phrase was hallucinated.

You leaned forward slightly, tugging him by the shoulder so he turned his back toward you.

“Yeah,” you said simply. “Turn.”

Dex didn’t argue as you scooted closer behind him, dipping your fingers in the herbal ointment. His hands rested loosely on his thighs the whole time, not resisting as the coolness hit his skin. You laid it on the scratch marks first, then on his surgical scar. Not to erase it. Just to make it hurt a little less. To acknowledge that it was part of him, even if it didn’t define him. 

When you were done, you gently guided him to face you again. “I knew you were kinky.”

Dex couldn’t help but laugh. 

“But I have a feeling,” you set the tub down, “that I was just barely scratching the surface.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Dex said honestly. “I’ve never done that before.”

You chuckled, biting your lower lip. “You are adorable, Poindexter.”

You let your hand come up, tracing along his jaw before settling against his cheek. Your thumb traced the scar there.

He swallowed, but not out of discomfort. 

Slowly, you leaned in.

The first kiss you pressed to the scar was featherlight, but you didn’t stop there.

Then you pressed another kiss, just beside it this time. It was warm, like he was worth being careful with.

His hand twitched at his side. He didn’t move it. But somewhere in the back of his mind, there was a quiet, insistent thought that convinced him, I don’t deserve this.

But he wanted it anyway.

Your lips brushed his cheek again, closer to the corner of his mouth this time, and his eyes shut briefly, like taking affection in was easier if he didn’t have to see it happening.

When you finally pulled back, it wasn’t far.

“I think it suits you,” you murmured.

He didn’t trust himself to answer that.

Your attention drifted down, fingers slipping from his face to his arm. You picked up his wrist gently, turning it just enough to see the marks you’d left behind.

This time, when you dipped your fingers into the aloe, your touch was careful. He watched you smooth it over the faint crescents of your bite.

Then, his eyes shifted to you, your bare skin, and the marks he’d left behind.

His brow furrowed slightly before he could stop it. “You’re okay, right?”

He asked it without thinking. It caught him off-guard. He wasn’t even aware he was capable of this kind of sympathy.

You glanced up, meeting his eyes.

“More than okay,” you told him. “I’d tell you if I wasn’t.”

He searched your face for a second, like he was trying to confirm it.

He lifted his hand.

His fingers brushed your skin, starting at your collarbone, tracing one of the marks he’d left. His touch was lighter than it had ever been, like he was afraid of pressing too hard, of leaving something worse behind.

You didn’t flinch, so he kept going.

Down to your shoulder, pausing at the bullet wound he’d stitched himself. His thumb hovered there for a second before grazing over it.

He thought about that night, about how much blood you lost and how utterly lifeless you looked in his arms. He thought he was going to lose you, and he was terrified. 

You didn’t see this, of course. You had the privilege of being out cold.

You didn’t see him break down, panicking for almost twelve hours straight, feeling like he wanted to claw his eyes out because he thought he was going to lose you. You didn’t see how nauseous he got when your heart beat skipped, or how shaky his hand had been when he stitched you up. You didn’t see him broken, tears streaming down as he folded his own body onto the kitchen floor, when he didn’t know if you would ever wake up again. 

So, if you wanted to, he would let you pretend this was just fun. You could pretend there were no strings attached. That last night, you two were just fucking like animals without the certainty of labels. 

But it will never be just sex to him. 

So when moved his hands on to the bruises on your body, to the cuts that the task force left for you, the only thing he could feel was blood-curdling rage.

But when he glanced at your face, he was down to earth again. Just like that.

His hand settled at your waist after that, his thumb rubbing soft circles on your hip. 

Your fingers found his again, idly tracing the lines of his hand.

“Don’t die on me.” He whispered, as if he was almost scared to say it, as if reliving the memory again and again, with no end in sight. It might be an abrupt thing to say in the moment. It might feel out of place. But right now, after being so close to you, he just needed to know. “Please.”

You didn’t answer right away. When you did, it was barely more than a whisper. “I won’t.”

Your thumb brushed lightly over his knuckles.

“You don’t either,” you insisted, looking into his eyes. Then you added, “I mean it.”

His fingers shifted under yours, turning just enough to lace with your hand properly this time.

It was almost impossible to reconcile this version of him— the lovesick man in front of you who would melt like putty in your arms —with the one stamped wanted, armed and dangerous. And yet… you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You leaned forward slightly, resting your forehead against his. As your breaths fell into sync, he wasn’t even sure where you ended and he began. 

After all, who knew the enemy of his enemy would turn out to be the only person who truly understood him?

Three squad cars were angled badly out front because patrol had arrived first. Now there were barricades, news vans sniffing at the edges, uniforms pushing civilians back, radios talking over each other, and a command post being built out of wobbly folding tables. 

Usually, this was the part where everyone got grim. People knew that one bad word, one twitch, one wrong movement could turn a lobby full of frightened people into a massacre.

And then you arrived carrying two coffees and three boxes of pastries.

“Okay,” you said, stepping under the tape and handing two boxes to the nearest tech like you had just walked into an inconvenient staff meeting, “I brought croissants! If this goes horribly, at least we’d all have had a decent last meal.”

Three people turned and nobody laughed.

You looked around at the armoured vehicles, the blocked street, the negotiator phone being unpacked, the SWAT team moving into position across the road, and sighed. “Tough crowd.”

Your supervisor shot you a look. “Agent.”

“I know, I know.” You tucked the pastry bag under your arm and started shrugging into your vest. “Hostages, firearms, massive public safety issue. I’m taking it very seriously. I’m also saying you all probably haven’t eaten since six.”

“That’s not relevant.”

“It will be when I start making decisions with low blood sugar.”

That got half a smile out of one of the younger agents.

Good.

That was why you did it.

You weren’t careless. You understood what was happening behind those doors. You knew there were women and children inside lying on marble, trying not to cry. You knew someone had a gun in their hand.

But panic did not need more panic, and fear did not calm fear.

“Where’s my line?” you asked, clipping your radio into place.

The commander pointed toward the opposite building. “Fifth floor. SWAT sniper position has the best view into the front lobby. You can set up with them if you need eyes while you’re on the phone.”

“I do need eyes,” you said, nodding at him.

“Suspect one’s name is Eddie Marlow. Twenty-nine with prior for armed robbery. No confirmed fatalities today, but a guard took a round to the shoulder, still moving as of two minutes ago.”

You nodded, taking that in as you looked back at the bank.

“Right,” you said, almost too calmly. “So, normal Thursday.”

“Agent.”

“What?” You took a sip of coffee. “It’s Thursday.”

You took one last look at the bank, grabbed the phone, then crossed the street with two tactical agents shadowing you toward the building opposite.

—

Dex was stationed across the street on the fifth floor of an empty office building, flat behind his rifle with the blinds cut just enough for a sightline.That was where he belonged: above from the noise, above the mess. His scope was steady, breathing steady.

He could hear command in his ear. Entry team holding. Negotiation line was being established. Sniper one in position?

Dex didn’t answer until he needed to. “In position.”

The room behind him was dim and mostly empty, littered with grey carpet, abandoned desks, and a tactical gear set. His spotter murmured updates into comms as someone on the ground, a junior agent probably, dropped something metal. Sirens pulsed red and blue against the ceiling.

Then the door opened.

Dex didn’t look away from the scope at first.

People came in and out all the time during operations. Sometimes it was commanders, other times it was spotters or techs with updates, maybe agents carrying folders. Dex ignored them, usually.

That’s when you said,  “Oh. Hi.”

He knew that voice. His eyes lifted from the scope.

You stood in the doorway with a vest half-zipped over your blouse, a negotiator phone tucked under one arm, and a pastry box balanced against your hip like you had wandered into the wrong brunch and decided to make the best of it.

Your eyes brightened. “Special Agent Poindexter.”

His spotter glanced over. In that moment, Dex forgot how to be normal about his own name. “You know me?” 

Your smile widened.  The New York office was big, but not that big. “Your reputation precedes you.”

His spotter looked down at his clipboard as if it became very interesting all of a sudden.

Dex knew you, too, though not personally.  But he had seen you around the office forever. In elevators, at the coffee machine, walking through glass-walled conference rooms with files against your chest. You were always moving, always talking, always being pulled into conversations because people liked you.

Agents smiled when you passed and techs forgave you for stealing pens. Your supervisors pretended to be annoyed but really, they loved you. Even Ray Nadeem had spoken highly of you, said that his wife liked having you over for tea and that his kid liked you because you brought sweets to brunch. Dex had wanted to talk to you after that. So many people admired you, he just needed to see for himself, right?

He had stood in the same hallway as you, watching you laugh with a clerk from crisis response and thinking that he could say something. Anything. Nice work with the Port thing. Ray mentioned you. Are you training the new HRT recruits?

But there had never really been a clear reason to talk to you. And without a reason, there was no script. Without a script, there was only the blank space where courage was supposed to go. So Dex had never said anything.

“Is this the best view?” you asked.

Dex nodded. “Yes.”

“Can I?”

He shifted, even though there was barely enough space for two, which meant when you lowered yourself beside him, your knee pressed against his thigh and your shoulder brushed his arm. 

“Sorry,” you murmured.

Dex looked at the place your knee touched his, then at you. “It’s fine.”

You leaned toward the cut in the blinds, careful not to touch the rifle. Your cheek came close to his shoulder, close enough that he caught a whiff of fragrant coffee on your breath, sugar on your fingers, and city air clinging to your uniform. Dex decided not to think too much about that.

“Talk me through it,” you said.

He looked back into the scope. “Suspect one in the green jacket is Eddie Marlow. Right hand dominant, pacing near the teller counter.”

“Is he scared?”

“Agitated,” Dex corrected.

“Mm.”

Dex glanced at you. “Suspect two,” he continued, “with the red cap. He had a shotgun and had been sitting behind the manager’s desk.”

Your face changed, only slightly. “And suspect three?”

“Not visible. He was last seen by the west wall with hostages.”

You leaned in closer, trying to see through the narrow slice of the lobby. Your shoulder pressed more firmly into his arm as hip bumped his side. “Sorry,” you said again, absentmindedly.

“You’re not,” he said.

“No,” you admitted. “But I keep doing it cause’ it sounds right.”

His spotter made a tiny laugh, and Dex ignored him.

Finally, you opened the pastry box. The smell of butter and sugar swirled into the dusty room, absurd and warm. You pulled out a croissant like there were not three armed men across the street. 

His spotter stared. “Are you eating?”

You took a bite as the pastry cracked softly between your teeth. “I’m preparing.”

A few crumbs fell onto your vest. One landed on his sleeve. Both of you looked down at it. “Oh,” you said.

Before he could move, you reached over and brushed it away with your thumb. It was a tiny touch, almost nothing but your knuckle grazing the inside of his wrist.

Still, Dex’s fingers tightened once against the rifle.

Your gaze dropped to his hand, then rose back to his face. Your smile changed, smaller now. 

“Sorry,” you said, quieter. This time, it almost sounded sincere.

Dex didn’t know why, but his mouth had gone dry. “It’s fine.”

You held the pastry box toward him. “Croissant?”

“No.”

“You sure? You look like a plain pastry kind of guy.”

Dex tilted his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Instead of answering, you only shrugged and took another bite. Dex noticed your vest was crooked because you had clearly zipped it in while walking. You looked entirely too kind for a sniper’s nest.

You settled closer again, eyes returning to the bank. “Eddie looks reasonable.”

“They’re criminals,” Dex scoffed, unimpressed. “When are they ever reasonable?” It was really just a line he repeated from his coworkers.

“Hey,” you joke-scolded, nudging his arm lightly with your shoulder. “We’re all people here.”

Dex didn’t look convinced. 

Downstairs, command crackled in your ears. “Negotiation line almost ready. Stand by.”

You exhaled once and set the half-eaten croissant carefully beside his gear bag like it belonged there. Then you wiped your fingers on a napkin and stood up, reached for the phone on the table in the middle of the room.

Before lifting the phone, you glanced at him. “ Poindexter?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to need your eyes.”

For one second, he understood why people liked you. You made people feel wanted, needed. Then, briefly, he thought about telling you he already knew your voice. He already heard your laugh. He knew he had wanted to speak to you for months and never managed it because wanting was not the same as knowing how. 

Instead, he lowered himself back to the scope. “You have them.”

You smiled at him one last time as you picked up the phone and the line clicked alive. 

Pressed the receiver to your ear, one hand braced on the table, you said, “Hi, Eddie, I’m Special Agent—”

“I’m not talking to feds!” The shout cracked down the line loud enough that even the spotter looked up.

You didn’t flinch. You didn’t pull the phone away from your ear. You didn’t take offense to being screamed at by a man with a gun and a room full of innocent civilians.

You only nodded, like Eddie could see you.

“Okay,” you said. “That’s okay.”

“I said I’m not talking to you!”

“I heard you.”

“Then shut up!”

Dex’s jaw tightened.

Across the street, through the scope, Eddie Marlow was pacing so hard he almost tripped over his own foot. He could take him out so easily, Dex thought, but that wasn’t why he was here. 

Because if he did, the other two suspects would probably open fire. There would probably be a bloodbath. That was why you were holding the phone, not him. 

You leaned against the table like this was a normal phone call. 

“You sound really upset,” you said thoughtfully.

“No shit!”

“Yeah,” you chuckled. “Fair.”

Dex blinked. His spotter stared at you for half a second, then remembered his job and murmured into comms, “Negotiator has contact. Suspect one highly agitated, still engaged.”

Eddie was breathing hard into the phone and you let him. 

You were… patient. It was tender. You were letting this man be loud and terrified, and you weren’t punishing him for it. Dex had never understood that kind of kindness.

“Eddie,” you said, after the worst of his breathing settled, “what did you have for breakfast?”

Dex looked up from the scope. The spotter mouthed, What?

On the phone, Eddie went silent. “What?” he finally snapped.

“What did you have for breakfast?”

“What the fuck does that matter?”

“It might not,” you said. “I’m just trying to figure out if you’ve eaten today.”

“I’m in the middle of a fucking robbery.”

“I know. But you’re also a person with a body, and bodies make stupid decisions when they’re hungry.”

Dex’s mouth parted slightly. Oh, you were charming.

He understood what you were doing with that stupid, sweet little question, that was really a thread to his humanity. Just to calm him down, get him to think about something else other than the crime he was committing. 

“I had coffee,” Eddie muttered.

“Okay. Just coffee?”

“Yeah.”

“No food?”

“I don’t know. A cigarette.”

You winced faintly. “Eddie.”

“What?”

“That is a terrible breakfast.”

For one bizarre second, Dex’s spotter made a strangled noise into his fist. Even Eddie went quiet, confused out of his panic. “You judging me right now?” He asked.

“A little,” you admitted.

Dex almost smiled.

Then Eddie’s voice cracked back into anger. “You think this is funny? You think I’m stupid?”

“No.”

“You think I’m some junkie idiot with a gun?”

“No, Eddie.”

“You don’t know me!”

“You’re right,” you said. “I don’t.”

That stopped him again. Then, you lowered your voice. “But I know you don’t really want to kill anyone, do you now?”

Through the scope, Dex saw that Eddie’s pacing has slowed down. It… worked.  “You don’t know what I want,” Eddie said, smaller this time.

“No,” you said. “But you fired into the ceiling.”

“It was a warning.”

“I know.”

“I had to.”

“Okay.”

“I had to make them listen.”

“I hear you.”

Dex’s throat tightened. I hear you.

It was such a simple thing, and yet it sounded so easy coming out of your mouth. It was as if you were giving him a blanket, as if you were lowering yourself beside him on the floor instead of standing over them with a clipboard and a gun.

He wondered, suddenly, what it would be like to have your voice turned on him like that. And not your jokes or bright comments you tossed across rooms full of coworkers. This voice. 

Dex wanted it so badly it almost made him angry.

The thought hit him hard enough that his finger twitched beside the rifle. He forced his eye back to the scope.

Eddie had stopped near the teller counter. His gun hung at his side now, loose in his hand.

“Green jacket has stopped pacing,” Dex said, “Weapon still in hand.”

The spotter relayed it immediately. “Suspect one stationary. Weapon lowered. Negotiator has him slowing down.”

You glanced at Dex and he held onto it like an idiot.

“Eddie,” you said, “the guard needs medical attention.”

“He’s fine.”

“Is he?”

“He’s moving.”

“That’s good,” you said. “Moving is good. But he’s bleeding, right?”

No answer.

“Eddie?”

“I didn’t shoot him.”

Your face changed into a compassionate frown. Dex hated how beautiful it looked on you.

“I know,” you said.

“He went for his gun. Rob panicked.”

The spotter’s head snapped down to his notes. “Second suspect possibly Rob. Pass to command.”

You didn’t react to the name. You didn’t make Eddie feel like he had made a mistake, or make him feel like he was snitching on his friends. You only said, “That must have scared you.”

Eddie laughed, but it came out ruined. “Scared me?”

“Yeah.”

All you got back was silence, longer his time. Dex watched Eddie through the scope and saw the second the your words got under his skin. His shoulders moved, head dipping. The gun lowered another inch.

You kept going, careful as hands over broken glass. “People make worse choices when they’re scared. That doesn’t mean you have to keep making them.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Okay,” you said. “Then breathe with me for a second.”

Eddie scoffed. “Fuck you, lady.”

“C’mon, man,” you said mildly. “Just… breathe.”

Dex’s eyes flicked to your mouth before he could stop himself.

You smiled faintly, not because it was funny, exactly, but because you were giving Eddie somewhere to put the panic, somewhere that was not a trigger. “Breathe in,” you said.

“I’m not doing that.”

“That’s okay. I’m doing it anyway.”

Then you did. Slow inhale. Slow exhale. Once. Twice.

On the other end of the line, Eddie cursed under his breath. But after a few seconds, his breathing started following yours. Dex heard it. Without realising it, Dex started to follow it too.

There was something hypnotic about your calm. The whole room had frozen around it. Even the radios seemed quieter, like the world was leaning into your warmth. Then, through the phone, you heard someone crying out inside the bank.

Eddie snapped away from the phone. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

Dex was back in the scope immediately. “Weapon coming up,” he said.

The spotter relayed fast. “Weapon rising. Suspect one agitated. Hold positions.”

Your hand lifted slightly, saying Wait.

Dex saw it and went still.

The shot was clean. Eddie was turned three-quarters away from the hostages, arm visible, head exposed. Dex knew exactly where the bullet would go. He knew what it would do. But your hand was up, so he waited.

“Eddie,” you said, firmer now.

No answer.

“Eddie, come back to me.”

The shouting on the other end cut off. 

Come back to me. Dex gripped the rifle harder.

“Eddie,” you repeated, softer. “Come back to me. Don’t follow the noise. Follow my voice.”

He heard ragged breath. Then Eddie, frustrated now, said, “She won’t stop crying.”

“They’re scared.”

“I didn’t want this.”

“I believe you.”

“I didn’t want it like this.”

“I know.”

And somehow, you made it sound true, even though you weren’t forgiving him. You were not excusing him. You were simply giving him one human corner to stand in before the whole day swallowed him.

Dex had seen people beg. He had seen people lie. He had seen people pray. He had never seen someone be talked back into themselves.

“Eddie,” you said, “I think you can still keep this from getting worse.”

“It’s already worse.”

“It is,” you said. “But worse has levels. We don’t have to go lower.”

Eddie breathed hard.

“The guard,” you continued. “If he dies in there, this gets so much harder for everyone.” You paused. “You included.”

Eddie made a sound that was almost a sob, except he swallowed it too fast. “I’m fucked anyway,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” you said, so gently it hurt. “But not as fucked as you could be.”

Dex’s spotter blinked at you, but you kept your eyes on the bank.

“You can make one good decision,” you said. “Just one. I’m not asking you to become a different person in the next thirty seconds. I’m asking you to help the guard.”

“If I open that door, they’ll shoot me.”

“No.”

“They will.”

“They won’t unless there’s an immediate threat.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Eddie. There are guns outside.”

Dex’s teeth tightened again.

“There are snipers,” you said, glancing at the nest.

Dex blinked. What the hell were you doing?

“But they are there because people need to live,” you continued. “Not because anyone is excited to kill you.”

Eddie said nothing. You looked at Dex, knowing he wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if you gave the command. 

“So,” you said, “put the gun down. Tell Rob to stay back and let the guard out slowly. You help me keep everyone calm, and I promise no one shoots unless there is an immediate threat.”

“You promise?”

Dex heard it, and Eddie almost sounded like a child.

“I promise,” you said. “But you have to help me keep that promise true.”

Across the street, Eddie turned toward the guard.

“He’s looking at the guard,” Dex said.

The spotter relayed, “Suspect one looking toward injured guard. Possible compliance. Medical team stage.”

“That’s it,” you whispered. “That’s good, Eddie. Stay with me.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to die!”

“You’re not going to die, this isn’t The Town,” you said, gentle and absurd, “It’s real life, not a Ben Affleck movie.”

Eddie let out a broken little laugh.

Dex closed his eyes for half a second. Jesus Christ. You were going to ruin him.

“Okay,” Eddie said shakily.

Your hand tightened around the phone. “Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll send him out.”

The spotter straightened his posture. “Possible hostage release. Guard extraction. All units hold.”

Dex went fully still behind the rifle.

“Calm,” you told Eddie. “Nice and calm.”

Through the scope, Eddie moved like his bones had turned to water. He bent toward the guard, said something Dex couldn’t make out, then flinched when the guard recoiled from him.

“He’s helping the guard stand,” Dex said. “Left hand on guard’s arm. No immediate threat.” The spotter repeated every word.

You nodded as if Eddie could see you. “You’re doing good.”

The door opened. Every rifle outside seemed to hold their breath. Dex tracked Eddie’s face in the crack of the doorway. He was pale, wet-eyed, terrified. A criminal, yes. But for the first time that day, he was not beyond reach, be you had put your hand into all that fear and pulled until what was left of his humanity surfaced.

“Send him out,” you whispered. “Then step back.”

The guard stumbled forward and medical moved in.

“Guard is clear,” Dex said, though his own voice sounded distant to him. “Medical has him.”

The spotter echoed, “Guard clear. No shots fired.”

You exhaled, and it was so small nobody else would have noticed. But Dex did.

“Eddie?” you said into the phone.

He let out a shaking breath. “Yeah?”

“You did the right thing.”

“I’m still going to prison.”

“Probably,” you said.

Eddie gave another broken laugh, almost crying now.

“But not for murder,” you said. “Not today.”

Dex looked at you then, like he couldn’t help it. You were standing in a dusty room, and down an armed man like kindness was not weakness, And Dex wanted to be spoken to that way.

He wanted your patience, your belief that there was something worth saving even in people who had done unforgivable things. Especially in people who had done unforgivable things.

Then you breathed in and kept going. “Okay,” you said. “Now I’m going to want some of the people out too.”

Eddie went quiet.

You gentled your voice even more. “Women and children first, okay?”

“I can’t just—”

“I know.”

“Rob’s going to lose his shit.”

“I know, Eddie.”

“And David, he’s—” Eddie stopped abruptly, like he had realised he had given you another name, before continuing, “I have to talk to them.”

“That’s okay,” you said, looking at the spotter to relay the third suspect’s name. “Talk to Rob. Talk to David.

“They think I’m folding.”

“You’re not folding,” you said. “You’re thinking. You’re making sure everybody, including them, makes it out of there alive”

Dex watched Eddie through the scope. The man had backed away from the doors, one hand over his mouth, gun at his thigh. He looked less like a criminal now and more like a man finally realising the size of the hole he had dug.

You leaned closer to the phone. “I’m going to let you go for five minutes,” you said. “Okay?”

Eddie’s breathing hitched, as if you were his one and only life support right now. “You’re hanging up?”

“Just for five minutes. You need to talk to them, and I need to talk to my people.”

“What if—”

“I’ll call back,” you said. “And you’re going to pick up.”

Eddie said nothing.

“Eddie.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re going to pick up.” It wasn’t even a question anymore. 

After a while, you heard a small and frightened, “Okay.”

“Good,” you whispered. “We’re counting on you.”

Dex felt it like a hand around his throat. We’re counting on you.

You gave that trust to Eddie like a burden and a gift at the same time.

On the other end of the line, Eddie exhaled shakily. “Five minutes,” he said.

“Five minutes,” you promised.

Then the line clicked dead. Then, you glanced at Dex over the phone, and he felt the look land directly under his skin.

“You still with me, Agent Poindexter?” you asked, sighing. 

Oh, so this did take a toll on you, however much you try to hide it.

Dex lowered his eye back to the scope because looking at you was becoming a distraction.

“Yeah,” he said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. Then, because he couldn’t help it, he repeated your tone, “I’m with you.”

—

Afterward, everyone kept calling it a success.

The guard had gotten out. Three hostages followed twenty minutes later, two women and a little boy with one shoe missing, shaking so hard the paramedics had to guide them by the elbows. Eddie had picked up every time you called. He had argued with Rob, shouted at David, disappeared from the phone twice and come back both times breathing like he had run through a wildfire.

But he came back. By the fourth call, his voice had started to sound empty. By the sixth, he was crying and pretending he wasn’t. By the end, the remaining hostages came out with their hands over their heads, Eddie was the one who told Rob to put the shotgun down.

It wasn’t perfect, but it ended without another shot fired. So people congratulated you.

Your supervisor clapped a hand on your shoulder. The commander called it “excellent work.” Someone from crisis response said, “That was textbook,” even though it hadn’t felt textbook. It felt like pressing your palm to a cracked dam and smiling while water pushed through your fingers. You smiled anyway.

You accepted the praise and filled in the early notes. You let people tell you how good you were, how calm you were, how you had saved lives.

And for a while, you let yourself believe them, because the only injured person— the guard— had been alive when they loaded him into the ambulance.

He had been breathing. So it counted. It had to count.

Four hours later, you heard a knock on your office door.

You were halfway through typing your report when your supervisor stepped in with sweat beading on her forehead.

Your hands went still over the keyboard. “No,” you said.

She didn’t answer fast enough then, and that’s how you knew the guard had died at the hospital.

Not from the bullet, exactly. That was what she told you, as if the distinction mattered. It was a mix of vascular complication and too much blood loss, which in your head translated to: too much damage already done by the time you had convinced Eddie to open the door.

Still, you nodded like a professional. 

“Okay,” you said.

Your supervisor watched you carefully. “Agent.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be.”

But you smiled anyway, because if you didn’t smile, you were going to cry, and a full grown woman was not supposed to cry for doing her job well. “I’m fine,” you repeated.

She didn’t believe you, but she left anyway.

For a while, you just sat there. The HRT floor was quieter at night, reduced to the hum of printers, distant phones, the occasional murmur from junior agents walking past with a folder tucked under one arm. Your office smelled faintly like cold coffee.

Your report blinked on the screen, trying to finish it up: Guard extracted at approximately…

You stared at the sentence until it blurred. You pressed the heels of your hands against them hard, like you could shove the tears back where they belonged. Like grief was just a reflex you could discipline out of yourself.

What a fucking joke. You didn’t even know the guy!

Then, a knock came at the door.

You inhaled quickly, wiped under one eye with the side of your thumb, and sat up in your chair. “Come in.”

To your surprise, Dex opened the door.

He was out of the tactical gear now, in his dark quarter zip with his badge clipped at his belt, hair slightly mussed like he had dragged his hand through it too many times. He stood in the doorway awkwardly, too tall for a room this small.

“Special Agent Poindexter,” you said, and your voice came out almost normal.

“I wanted to check on you,” he said. It was a lie. Or not a lie exactly. This was just an excuse to hear your voice again.

In truth, he had rehearsed the sentence and hated every version of it. He had walked past your office twice before gathering enough nerve to knock.

You tried to smile and it almost worked. “Oh,” you said. “I’m okay.”

Dex looked at you, seeing your smile trembled at the corner.

His eyes dropped to your hands, clenched too tightly together on top of your desk. He knew the anatomy of a smile. Yours was not real. 

“You’re not,” he said.

Your smile stayed on because it had nowhere else to go. “I…” you started. Fuck. What was the point in lying? He had been there. He had seen the injury. He deserved to know, too, if he didn’t already. “The guard didn’t make it.”

Dex froze. “Oh.”

You nodded once, a bit too quickly. “Complications or something, I don’t know. They said a lot of words and I retained absolutely none of them.”

Your laugh came out wrong. Dex hated it immediately. He hated the way you were trying to make the room easier for him. Even now, with your eyes threatening to spill with tears and your mouth trying not to shake, you were still smoothing your own hurt down so he else would not have to feel awkward around it.

You looked exactly like you had on the phone with Eddie towards the end of the call. 

Dex stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He was in the room with you, mission accomplished. What was he supposed to do now? “You got him out alive.”

You nodded. “And it still didn’t matter.”

Dex only looked down, unsure of what to say.

You shook your head, smiling harder now, which was worse than crying. “I know. We saved the hostages. We de-escalated the situation.” Your voice thinned. “All things considered, it was a good outcome”

Dex didn’t know what to do with his hands. He wanted to touch you, though he didn’t know if that was the right call.  Maybe he should put a hand on your shoulder. But he didn’t know if that would help. He didn’t know if he was allowed. He didn’t know how to comfort you without making it strange.

So he stood there uselessly, watching you try not to fall apart.

“Poindexter, I…,” you said, quieter, “I talked to him for hours.”

Dex swallowed. “Dex.”

You blinked at him. “What?”

“My name.” His voice came out rough. “Call me Dex.”

For some reason, that was the thing that broke your smile, just enough for the tears to gather properly.

“Dex,” you repeated.

His name in your voice was catastrophic. He had wanted you to say it all day. He had it in that warm, coaxing tone you had given Eddie through the phone. Now you said it like you were standing at the edge of crying. And he would have given anything to fix it.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted.

That surprised you, maybe because people usually tried to fill grief with more grief. But Dex only stood there, honest and stiff and visibly uncomfortable with his own helplessness.

“I don’t either,” you whispered, and your face fell for half a second. You turned it away immediately, pressing your fingers under your eyes. Your smile was still trying. Dex had never seen anything braver or more painful in his life.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Smile.”

For a second, you forgot you were an agent in her office, staring at a report waiting on the screen. There was only you, too full of grief to keep pretending it was professionalism.

The first tear slipped before you could stop it. You looked furious with yourself, so Dex did the only thing he could think of.

He pulled the chair from the corner of your office, sat down across from you, and stayed.

You looked down, laughing under your breath as another tear fell. “You’re accidentally very nice, Dex.”

He swallowed. It was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him. “I’m not trying to be accidental.”

You laughed again, and this time, it sounded a little less ruined as Dex sat there, listening to your voice tremble and come back to itself, pretending he had only come to check on you. Pretending he hadn’t come because he wanted to hear you again.

That night, after he walked you to your car, Dex didn’t go home right away.

He wandered back into the building instead, into your supervisor’s office. Dex knew where the recordings were kept. He knew the system, he knew the labels, he knew exactly how to make it look like nothing had been touched. The hostage negotiation tape was logged under case number, time, location.  His hand hovered over it for one second, before he copied it into his private drive.

At home, he sat on the edge of his bed with his headphones on in the dark and listened to your voice, steady and impossibly kind.

“Eddie,” your recording voice said, gentle as a hand against a fevered forehead. “Come back to me.”

Dex closed his eyes, jaw tightening. His hands curled over his knees. He knew it was wrong. He knew normal people didn’t steal recordings just to hear a woman speak kindly before bed. But then your voice came again. “Come back to me, Eddie.”

And in the dark, with his breathing gone shallow, Dex let himself change it in his mind: Come back to me, Dex.

For the first time in days, he slept well.

—

Dex kept finding reasons to talk to you. 

At first, they were almost believable: A clarification for the report. A detail about Marlow’s prosecution. A question about the hostage order, even though he had heard every word of it through comms and then, later, through the stolen tape in his apartment.

Then the excuses got worse. Apparently, he found one of your pens near the fifth-floor sniper position and returned it. He asked whether you wanted a copy of the incident timeline, then stood awkwardly in your doorway while you told him you already had three. He brought you a file that belonged to someone else entirely.

You looked at the name on the tab, then up at him. “Dex,” you said carefully. “This is for Agent Alvarez.”

He tried to look confused, which failed. “Right.”

“Different floor,” you smiled. He hated how much he liked that you were kind enough to pretend not to notice.

For two weeks, he learned the sound of your laugh. He learned that you clicked your pen when you were thinking. He learned that you always forgot your coffee until it went cold, then drank it anyway. He told himself it was harmless. It was most definitely not. 

Then one morning, he showed up at your office holding a paper bag.

You looked up from your desk tiredly, hair a little loose around your face. “Morning.”

Dex stepped inside and the bag crinkled in his hand. “I got you breakfast.”

You blinked. “Oh.”

He placed the bag on your desk like it might explode. “A croissant,” he said.

Your mouth into a small smile. “You remembered.”

Of course he remembered the crumbs on your sleeves and the sugar on your thumb. He remembered everything about that day. “Yeah,” he said.

You opened the bag and looked inside, then back at him. “Thank you, Dex.”

He nodded too quickly. “You’re welcome.”

He should have left. This was the normal time to leave. Instead, he stood there in the doorway, hands empty now, heartbeat hard in his throat.

You tilted your head. “Was there something else?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He paused, then turned back“Yes.”

Your eyebrows lifted, and Dex looked briefly furious with himself.

Then he said, all at once, “Do you want to have dinner with me?”

You went very still. He immediately wanted to die.

“Not professionally,” he added.

Your lips parted. Did he… make it worse?

“I mean, it can be professional if that makes it less—” he stopped himself now, sighing to himself, “No. I don’t want it to be professional. I’m asking you on a date.”

You stared at him. Dex stared back, rigid and  catastrophically earnest.

Then you looked down at the croissant, before looking back up at him. “Did you bring me a pastry as a bribe, Special Agent Poindexter?”

His face fell slightly, and you chuckled a little. “Dex,” you corrected gently.

His breath caught in itself.

You smiled properly then, almost merciful. “I’m just teasing.”

“I know that.”

“You don’t look like you know that.”

“I’m… processing.”

A sweetlaugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. There it was, the sound he had been trying to earn for two weeks. Dex’s shoulders loosened by a fraction.

You leaned back in your chair, still smiling, when you looked up at him through your lashes and said, “Okay.”

His face went blank. “Okay?”

“Yes, Dex. I’ll have dinner with you.”

For one second, he looked almost boyish and stunned. Little did you know, he had prepared for rejection, confusion, pity, maybe even HR involvement, but not you saying yes.

“Oh,” he said.

You bit back a smile. “That’s usually the desired outcome when you ask someone on a date.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I think so.”

You laughed again and reached for the croissant.

“Tonight?” he asked, a little too fast.

You raised an eyebrow.

He swallowed. “Or another night.”

“Tonight is good.”

He nodded once, then turned like he was going to leave before either of you could ruin it.

“Dex?”

He stopped immediately.

You held up the croissant. “Thank you for breakfast.”

His eyes lowered, barely. “You’re welcome.” Then he left your office with his heartbeat still pounding.

Behind him, you took one bite of the croissant and smiled into your coffee. Absolutely terrible at flirting. Very good pastry, though.

—

The date was cute, even though it had every right to be awkward. You were both still in work clothes, making it feel less like a date at first and more like two agents walking down the street after a long day, badges tucked away.

When you sat down at the restaurant, you noticed that Dex looked… nervous. “You look like you’re about to be interrogated,” you chuckled.

“I’m not.”

“Dex.”

“Am I?” He looked concerned for a second, because he knew you handled interrogations sometimes.

That made you laugh, and his shoulders loosened slightly, like he had survived the first round of af a boxing match.

When the waiter came, you ordered first. Dex closed his menu immediately. “I’ll have that too.”

You blinked at him. “You don’t even know what I ordered.”

“I heard.”

“You can order something else.”

“I want what you’re having.”

You looked at him for a second, then smiled into your water glass, thinking that’s either very sweet or very concerning.

And then, it got easier. It didn’t go smooth, exactly. Dex answered questions like he was afraid there was a correct version and he had missed the briefing. But he listened like every word out of your mouth belonged carved in a stone tablet.

You told him about terrible tea on the HRT floor. He told you about a sniper qualification day where a rookie threw up behind a barricade. You laughed so hard you had to press your napkin to your mouth, and Dex looked at you like he had just learned a new way to breathe.

By the time the food came, the candle between you had burned golden. You took one bite, hummed happily, and pointed your fork at him. “Okay. Can I tell you a secret?”

Dex stilled, a little more alert. “…Yes.”

You leaned forward over the table. “I went to Quantico a year after you.”

His eyebrows drew together. “You did?”

“Mhm,” you grinned. “Our shooting instructor mentioned you all the time.”

Dex froze.

You sat back, delighted. “Oh my God. You didn’t know how much he loved you?”

“No.”

“Dex.” You put your fork down. “You made my life a living hell.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“You were spiritually there”

His lips parted slightly, offended and confused. “How?”

You dropped your voice into a gruff instructor impression. “‘Poindexter could do this with his eyes closed.’ ‘Poindexter cleared this drill ten seconds faster.’ ‘Poindexter didn’t need three tries.’ Poindexter this, Poindexter that.” You pointed at him. “Fuck, man.”

Dex stared at you before  the corner of his mouth lifted. “You were bad at shooting?”

You gasped. Was that… a joke? “I was not bad at shooting.”

“Sounds like you were.”

“I was excellent,” you swallowed your food, “I was just not you.”

His smile got worse, almost smug.

“Our instructor once said, and I quote, ‘Poindexter could hit this target in a blackout with a concussion.’”

Dex looked down at his plate, but you saw the smile pull at his mouth anyway.

“He was exaggerating,” he said.

You raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, before laughing. And there it was again — that look on his face. He didn’t know how to hide his adoration fast enough.

“You made my target practice time a living hell,” you admitted. “Agent Benjamin Poindexter. Destroyer of confidence. Patron saint of aiming at moving targets, apparently.”

The restaurant noise blurred around the two of you. The cutlery, conversation, music from the speakers, all of it bled into the background.

“But then I saw you in New York,” you continued. “and thought, oh. That’s him.”

Dex’s throat moved. “And?”

“And,” you said, gentler now, “I thought you looked lonely.”

Dex glanced down at the table, fingers curling once near his glass. For a second, you worried you had gone too far, too honest.

Then he said, very quietly, “I noticed you too.”

You lowered your eyes a little, suddenly shy in a way you had not expected to be. “Yeah?”

Dex nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “Ray talked about you a lot after that Wall Street blackmail corruption case you both worked on together.”

Your face softened at the mention of him. “Ray’s lovely.”

Dex nodded.

“I get along with his wife better, actually,” you added, glancing back up. “Seema gave me a really good chole recipe and now we’re bonded forever.”

Dex looked faintly confused by that detail, but he listened anyway, like he was storing it somewhere important.

“She said I was doing the spices wrong,” you continued, your smile widening. “Which, to be fair, I was. That, and I handled the chickpea wrong, apparently.”

That got a small laugh out of him, eyes flicked from your mouth back to your eyes.

“I’ve… wanted to talk to you for a while,” he admitted.

Your smile faded into a furrow of your brows. “You have?”

Dex looked down at the table, at his untouched water glass, at the candle between you, anywhere that wasn’t your face. “I just never had reason.”

The words sat there, painfully honest. He didn’t even try to be charming in the way guys usually tried to be with you. Still, it was sincere enough that it made your heart ache.

The candle flickered between you, gold light catching along the sharp line of his cheekbone. For a second, Dex looked almost panicked by the silence, like he had accidentally handed you a confession and had no idea what you were going to do with it. So you reached across the table and touched your fingers lightly to his wrist.

“Well,” you said softly, “good thing you finally brought me a croissant.”

Dex looked at your fingers, then back at you. And this time, when he smiled, it was not an imitation of anything or anyone. 

—

You agreed to a second date. That was the easy part. The hard part was actually having one.

The next week turned into a mess before either of you could do anything about it. HRT got pulled into a fugitive barricade situation in Queens. Dex got sent out on a protection detail that lasted two days longer than expected. Your supervisor dumped three active threat assessments on your desk.

So the second date kept moving. Tuesday became Thursday. Thursday became Saturday. Saturday became, “I’m so sorry, Dex, I might actually die under this paperwork.”

Dex, who had appeared in your office doorway with his jacket still on, only looked at the files stacked across your desk and said, “That would be inconvenient.”

You stared at him before laughing so hard you dropped your pen.

After that, you started finding time to take your lunch together.  The first time, Dex showed up with two coffees and a paper bag from the place down the street.

“I was passing by,” he said.

“On the HRT floor?”

“Yes.”

You let him in, obviously. Then it kept happening.

Sometimes you ate in your office with the blinds half-closed and your shoes kicked off under the desk. Sometimes you found him in the break room already sitting at the corner table, pretending not to wait for you while leaving the chair beside him empty. Sometimes he brought you pizza because you had forgotten to eat again. Sometimes you brought him coffee because he drank his like punishment and you had made it your mission to introduce him to flavour.

So the second date never officially happened, but he knew your lunch order. Still, Dex kept appearing during your break, and you kept pulling the extra chair closer to your desk until eventually he was sitting beside you instead of across from you, both of you hunched over paper bags and plastic containers and case files like this was a normal blossoming relationship.

One afternoon, you were both sitting so close your chairs were practically conspiring. Dex had brought sandwiches and one pain au chocolate “in case,” which made you stare at him until his ears went faintly pink.

“You really know how to treat a girl, Dex.”

Dex looked down at his pastry. “I’m being practical.”

You laughed and bumped your shoulder into his.

He looked at you then, and the whole office seemed to shrink. You were close enough to see the little shift in his breathing, close enough to notice his pupils  drop to your mouth and shoot back up like he had been caught committing a federal offence.

“Oh,” you said, grinning. “That’s what’s happening.”

Dex went very still. “What?”

“You’re trying not to kiss me.”

“I’m not.”

“Dex.”

“I…” he trailed off. What was the point in lying anymore. “I’m trying not to do a lot of things.”

That startled a laugh out of you so badly you had to cover your mouth. And then he smiled.

You leaned closer, still laughing a little. “You can, you know.”

His face changed. All the awkwardness turned… stunned. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He leaned in like he was afraid you might disappear if he did it too quickly. One hand came up, careful against your cheek, and then his mouth was on yours, almost polite at first. It lasted maybe three seconds before you smiled into it, grabbed lightly at the front of his shirt, and kissed him properly.

Dex made a tiny sigh against your mouth.

The kiss went from sweet to a little desperate all at once, like both of you had been starving for weeks and then remembered you both kinda fell too much too quickly. His hand slid from your cheek to the side of your neck. Your chair squeaked as you shifted closer. His knee pressed between yours and you laughed into his mouth because the whole thing was ridiculous, hot, and happening in your office beside a half-eaten sandwich.

Dex pulled back just enough to breathe.

You both stared at each other, “Hi.”

He looked utterly ruined. “Hi.”

You laughed again, breathless, and his forehead dropped lightly against yours.

“This is not lunch,” he said.

“No,” you agreed, still holding his shirt. “It's not.”

—

The second date happened two months after the first.

By then, calling it a second date felt ridiculous. You had eaten lunch together a dozen times. He had kissed you in your office, in the stairwell, once against your car with his hand braced on the roof.

Dinner was a little awkward, still, because Dex would probably be a little awkward until the end of time, but sweet. He listened to you talk about your week like it was testimony under oath. He remembered tiny things you had said offhandedly weeks ago. So, when he took you home that night, it didn’t feel sudden.

He was sweet about it at first. His hands hovered before they touched, his mouth kept coming back to yours like he was checking he was still allowed, and every time, you sighed.

Then he got braver and messier.  His shirt was half-open, your hands were in his hair, and he had you pressed back against his pillows when he suddenly leaned close to your ear, voice serious, and said, “You like that, sweetheart? Tell me you’re mine. Tell me nobody else gets to make you feel this good.”

It might have been fine if it hadn’t come out of nowhere, weird and aggressive, zero to a hundred with absolutely no warning. Hell, your trousers weren’t even off yet. So what the fuck?

You went still. Dex went still too. There was a little pause before you slowly turned your head to look at him. “Dex.”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“What was that?”

His face fell. “Was it bad?”

“It was…” You pressed your lips together, trying not to laugh. “It was very committed.”

“Was it bad?” He insisted.

“I just…” you held back a chuckle, “Where did you learn that?”

Dex looked like he didn’t want to answer. He eventually did, though. “I… researched.”

You stared at him. He stared back, very embarrassed, and very clearly hoping the word researched would be enough of an explanation.

“You researched sex?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God,” you whispered. “Dex.”

“I wanted to be prepared.”

“That sounded like it came from a man named Stepbrother Number Four.”

His ears actually went red. You covered your mouth, but the laugh escaped anyway.

Dex looked wounded, almost confused. “I thought it was appropriate.”

“It was… something.”

“It worked in the video.”

You stopped laughing and raised your eyebrows. “Video?”

His teeth locked. He had said too much.

Little did you know, a week earlier, Dex had gone through your phone in the office while you were in the bathroom.  He had found your browser history, your saved tabs, your filthy little private collection. He sent them to himself and deleted all evidence of it, of course. He wasn’t an amateur.

And then he had watched six hours of porn, studying it like a psychopath. It was not pleasure or fun. It was Dex in the dark, dead serious, analysing the links you saved, what you watched, even if some of them might have been an accidental click. He was taking notes in his head, trying to become a sex symbol you would want.

Now he was above you, flushed and mortified, realising that pornography was apparently not a good idea to imitate.

“Dex,” you said carefully. “Is this your first time?”

His whole body went tense under your finger. “Yes,” he admitted, barely a breath.

Your heart folded in on itself. “Oh, baby.”

His face tightened like your kindness hurt. “I should have told you.”

“Yeah,” you whispered. “You should’ve.”

“I didn’t want you to change your mind.”

You reached up and cupped his cheek. “C’mere.”

He hesitated, so you said it softer. “Come here, Dex.”

He came down to you, like your voice had hooked into his ribs and pulled. You kissed him again, slower this time. Your hands smoothed over his shoulders until he stopped waiting to be corrected.

“No more lines,” you murmured against his mouth.

As you wished, he stopped performing. He stopped trying to be the man from whatever awful tab he had studied too seriously. He touched you like himself instead: careful, intense, a little overwhelmed, listening to every sound you made as if it mattered more than anything. And fuck, that was better.

His mouth against your skin, your fingers in his hair, his name leaving you in sighed until he started to understand that was what you liked.

Afterward, he lay beside you in the dark, warm one arm tucked carefully around your waist like he was still asking permission to exist in your vicinity.

You brushed your thumb over his wrist. “Good job, pornstar,” you teased.

Dex groaned into your shoulder, but struggled to hide his smile at the praise. “Please don’t.”

“You were so brave.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

He went silent, arm tightened just a little. “No,” he admitted with his lips against your skin. “I could never.”

It was quite the opposite, actually. 

He would tell you that for years after. Sometimes with his words, sometimes with his hands, sometimes with the way he looked at you like you were the only fixed point in a world constantly trying to move away from him.

But you were a federal agent who argued and calmed down very bad men for a living. Of all people, you should have known better. You should have known good things rarely ever lasted.

—

Ten Years Later...

You came home with blood on the heel of one shoe and a headache lodged so deep behind your eye it felt like someone had driven a nail into your skull.

You weren’t a federal agent anymore. You hadn't been one for a very long time. There were still people who talked about what happened ten years ago like it had just been one bad year. One scandal, one chapter the Bureau could close with a press conference and a few resignations.

If you closed your eyes, you could see everything clearly. 

It happened three years after your started dating. Wilson Fisk in a white suit. FBI agents on his payroll. Dex told you, in confidence, that he had killed the remaining Albanians on the motorcade. You told him that you needed to go on a break because of that. You put in your annual leave to visit family because your boyfriend had just confessed to using lethal force after the enemy surrendered. Apparently, that’s why and when his spiral started, because when you came back, Ray Nadeem had a bullet in his head. Daredevil was framed and hunted while your boyfriend wore the suit. The Bulletin. The church. Father Lantom, who you didn’t know of but learned of later.

After that, faith in anything became difficult. Faith in institutions, faith in badges, faith in men who said they were protecting people while selling their souls behind closed doors.

So you left and built your own private security company from spite, savings, and sheer exhaustion.

You did everything from executive protection to crisis negotiation. Threat assessment, asset recovery, and corporate extraction. All very nice words for work that often felt like pulling teeth. And the thing about running your own company was that the job didn’t stop when you clocked out. 

You still had payroll to approve and contracts to review. Clients to placate, insurance renewals, background checks, three missed calls from your operations manager, and junior associate who had accidentally offended la Russian client’s nephew. Just yesterday, you had a driver who quit over text as you received invoice from an arms consultant that made you genuinely consider crime in a more administrative capacity.

Sure, sometimes less-than-ethical people hired you. Triads, Russians, Italians, Irish. But at least, unlike the bureau, they never pretended to be saints. Monsters, you had learned, were never the real danger. It was hypocrites.

Tonight, you had spent fourteen hours in the back room of a private club, brokering a deal between a triad member and a client too rich to be as stupid as he was. Everyone had been polite. Everyone had been armed. You had spent the whole night dragging grown men away from their own worst impulses one careful sentence at a time.

No one died, and the client paid double. By your current standards, that was almost a success.

Still, by the time you got home, you were so tired your body felt like it was running on borrowed time. Your blouse clung damply to your back and your feet were screaming. Your phone had not stopped buzzing once, and you had started fantasising about throwing it into the river.

You unlocked your front door in the dark.

You stepped inside your apartment, dropped your keys into the ceramic bowl by the door, and kicked it shut behind you with one exhausted foot.

You stood barefoot in your own hallway and sighed. 

You had listened to the radio the whole way home, a force of habit, really. Its just today, you found out that your ex-boyfriend had broken out of prison and tried to shoot Fisk at some gala.

Wow. Shocker.

Honestly, you would rather shut all of it out and go to bed. Thinking about him, about the man you had loved more than anything in the world, would only break your heart all over again.

Then you saw the paper bag on the kitchen table with your favourite bakery’s logo stamped neatly on the front. Your favourite croissant was inside.

For one long second, you only stared at it and a Post-it stuck to the paper bag, written in a familiar, careful handwriting: You haven’t eaten today.

You stared at the croissant for a long time, long enough for your phone to buzz itself toward death inside your bag.

You didn’t touch the paper bag, and not because you thought it was poisoned. Dex didn’t need poison. If Dex wanted you dead, which he almost certainly did not, you would already have a knife in your throat. 

You were thinking more about how Dex had been inside your apartment. It wasn’t surprising, unfortunately. You exhaled, using the name you reserved only when you were mad at him. “Jesus Christ, Benjamin.”

You moved through your own home like you were clearing a client’s building. First the hall closet. Then the bathroom, bedroom, ensuite, guest room, and kitchen. You checked under the bed because you weren’t stupid, behind the shower curtain just in case, and the balcony because Dex had always been incapable of using a normal door when being unhinged would do.

Nothing. 

Still, you found the kitchen window open three inches. You stood in front of it for a second, staring at the gap before you shut it and locked it. Then, you checked the lock twice.

Then, because you were tired and petty, you went around the apartment and did every other lock too. You even checked the little latch on the tiny laundry room window that no full-grown man should have been able to fit through, although Dex had a history of doing things no full-grown man should be able to do anyway. 

Eventually, you took the croissant out of the bag, held it for one long second, then put it back.

“No,” you told the empty kitchen. “I have standards.”

You made it exactly five minutes before you came back, tore off one angry bite, and ate it standing over the sink because he had been right. You haven’t had a proper meal today.

What were you going to do now? Call the cops? And say what? Hello, officer, my ex-boyfriend broke out of prison, tried to kill the mayor, apparently swung by my apartment, broke in, and left me a croissant because he noticed I skipped dinner. Yes, that Benjamin Poindexter. No, I am not currently being held hostage. Yes, I own a private security company. No, I don’t need medical attention. Yes, this is going to jeopardise my brand and I’ll probably never get a client ever again. 

Ha!

You threw the Post-it into the kitchen drawer then you went to bed.

You slept badly. Once, half-asleep, you thought you heard your name in the hallway, and your hand slid under the pillow before you remembered you had put the knife in the bedside drawer because apparently some part of you still believed in “healthy boundaries.”

By morning, you were still exhausted. Your alarm went off at six-thirty. You slapped it silent, lay there for ten seconds, then dragged yourself upright with the suffering of a woman who had payroll, a prison break, and a quarterly review of her employees all waiting for her before breakfast.

The city outside your window was grey and wet. New York rain hit the glass in thin lines. Your head still hurt. Your phone had nine missed calls, four news alerts, and one message from Seema that simply said: Please tell me you’re alive.

You typed back: Unfortunately.

Then came the three firm knocks on your door and you froze in the middle of tying your robe.

You moved to the door, silent on the wood floor, and checked the peephole to see an empty hallway.

You undid the locks one by one, slow enough to make a point to nobody, and opened the door with the chain still on.

There was no one there. Only a coffee cup sitting neatly on your doorstep. Beside it, a burner phone.

You stared. The coffee was from your favourite place. Extra shot with, because you had once mentioned a decade ago that nutmeg tasted like dust and cinnamon was better.

On the cup, in careful black marker, were three words: Can we talk?

You stared at it for so long the neighbour’s door opened at the end of the hall.

Mrs. Banerjee from 4B peered out, hair wrapped in a scarf, eyes immediately dropping to the coffee, then to the burner phone, then back to you.

“Morning, love,” she said.

“Morning.”

She looked at the cup again. “Secret admirer?”

You looked down at the burner phone. The screen lit up to one message.

Unknown Number: Please.

You closed your eyes and Mrs. Banerjee made a small, interested noise. You picked up the coffee and the phone. “Ex-boyfriend.”. 

—

You really did think about turning in the burner phone. Or maybe you should call your lawyer. You could call your operations manager, who was a former private investigator. You could walk it straight to 15th precinct, drop it on Brett’s desk, and say, congratulations, you have one prison escapee’s attempt at courtship. You even considered crushing it under your heel and leaving the pieces in the hallway like a very clear, very mature message: Get the fucking hint.

But because you were an idiot, because apparently ten years of therapy, firearms training, and owning a private security company had not cured you of Benjamin Poindexter, you did not crush it.

You brought it inside and locked the door.

Then you sat at your kitchen table, took the back off the phone, and found the tracker chip in under twelve seconds. Of fucking course the burner phone he left like some pathetic little peace offering was also a locator. Of course Dex could not simply say can we talk without also making sure he knew where you were when you ignored him. You should have expected nothing less of him. 

You held the tiny chip between your fingers, looked at it under the kitchen light, and felt both rage and nostalgia twist behind your ribs. “Romance really is dead,” you muttered.

When you dropped the chip into a glass of water, the phone buzzed in your hand almost immediately.

Dex: Did you take it out?

You stared and sent nothing back, shoving it into your bedside junk drawer beneath batteries, old keys, a tape measure, and three expired pepper sprays.Over the next week, Dex kept finding ways to leave things for you.

On Monday, you found a paper bag with your favourite chocolate bar between an invoice and a threateningly glossy real estate flyer. You stared down at it in the lobby while Mr. Kowalski from 2A walked past with his pug. “Breakfast?” he asked.

“I think so,” you said.

On Tuesday, there was a carton of chocolate milk waiting on your window sill. Outside. Four floors up.

You opened the curtains and nearly had a stroke.The carton was balanced there neatly, like New York wind, gravity, and basic human decency didn’t exist. 

You opened the window, grabbed it, and looked down at the street and found no sign of a psychopath in a tactical black suit making eye contact from across traffic like this was a part of the healing process. You drank it anyway, because you were angry, not wasteful.

On Wednesday, you found a book on your balcony.

That one actually pissed you off, and not because it was on your balcony. You had accepted, against your will, that Dex was apparently treating your apartment like a very emotional obstacle course. It pissed you off because it was a first edition of the stupid out-of-print novel you had complained about not being able to find for years. You had mentioned it once, maybe twice, back when you were still together, curled into the corner of his couch with your feet under his thigh and your hair wet from his shower.

There was a note tucked inside the front cover: I saw it and thought of you.

You looked at the note. Then at the sky. Then back at the note. “Are you kidding me?”

You brought the book inside. You didn’t read it. You put it on the kitchen counter, facedown.

On Thursday, there was a pastry box on your office desk.

Your actual locked private security office with cameras, keycards, a receptionist, two former Marines on the morning shift, and a very expensive alarm system you had installed.

You walked in at eight-fifteen, stopped dead in the doorway, and stared at the little white box sitting beside your keyboard.

Your assistant, who had followed you in talking about insurance renewals, went quiet. “Is that yours?” she asked.

“No.”

“Do we need to evacuate?”

You opened the box. Inside was one pain au chocolat and a folded napkin. You unfolded it: You forgot lunch yesterday.

You sighed, “no.”

You spent the next hour reviewing security footage and getting progressively more furious because, of course, there was nothing useful. There was nothing more than a camera flicker and a ten-second blind spot. The side door alarm that had been disabled and re-enabled so quickly it looked like a system error.

By Friday, you were in a mood so bad people started physically moving out of your way when you walked down the hall.

You went home late, half hoping there would be nothing and you were right. For once, your hallway was empty. Your mailbox was empty. Your windowsills were empty. Your balcony was empty. You checked all of them twice anyway, because apparently this was your life now. Nothing.

You made actual dinner out of spite: rice, protein, vegetables. You ate it standing in your kitchen because sitting down felt too intimate. Then you showered, changed into sleep shorts and an old quantico T-shirt, and tried not to think about the fact that you were kind of disappointed by the lack of gifts.  Which was humiliating.

You were a grown woman. You ran extractions for millionaires and negotiated with armed mob bosses before breakfast. You were not going to have feelings because your escaped-convict ex-boyfriend skipped one day of stalking.

Then, at eleven at night, you heard tapping against your window.

No one was there when you opened it, but there was an envelope stuck to the outside of the glass.

You stared at it, then walked over, opened the window, and peeled it off. Inside was a note: Why are you mad at me?

You blinked and read it again.

For a second, you genuinely thought you were hallucinating. Then you looked down to your fire escape below your window to see a bouquet of daisies, the ones he used to buy from the deli down the street because you said you always like them.

“Oh my God,” you whispered to the empty apartment. “He actually thinks I’m playing hard to get.”

You picked up the flowers. And, because you were a very reasonable person, you leaned out the window into the damp New York night and shouted, “DEX!”

Somewhere below, in the dark, a car alarm chirped. A dog barked. Someone yelled, “People are sleeping, lady!”

You ignored them. You held up the flowers like evidence at trial. “‘WHY AM I MAD AT YOU?’ IS THIS A FUCKING JOKE?!”

Nothing, for a moment. Then your burner phone buzzed from the drawer. You stormed over, yanked it open so hard the batteries rattled, and dug the phone out from under three dead pens.

Dex: Are they the wrong flowers?

You stared and slowly  sat down on the kitchen floor, because if you didn’t, you were going to throw the phone through a wall.

Because surely, surely, you had misread that. Surely the man you once had thought of as the love of your life, had not just asked if you were mad after he killed your mutual friend seven years ago.

The phone buzzed again.

Dex: I can get different ones.

You closed your eyes. For a moment, you thought you could feel your soul physically leave your body, look down at the situation, and decide it wanted no part in this, because he kept acting as if the issue was floral. As if this whole thing could be solved by a better bouquet and not, for example, an apology, a therapist, a complete understanding of privacy, and maybe not breaking into your apartment.

“Fuck,” you muttered. 

Whatever, you thought. I don’t give two shits

You very much gave two shits. You gave several shits. You gave a whole municipal waste facility’s worth of shits. 

In truth, you cared so much it made you furious. You had spent seven years telling yourself Benjamin Poindexter was not your problem anymore. Seven years building a life from the ruins he left behind. And now he was back in your life!

The phone buzzed again 

Dex: Please talk to me.

You stared at the screen before you stood up. “No,” you said aloud.

You were not doing this through a burner phone. You were not typing out a long, literate paragraph about boundaries to a man who had apparently decided stalking was a valid love language. You were not texting your fugitive ex-boyfriend the basics of human decency. If he wanted to talk, he could talk face to face.

And because you knew Dex better than anyone should know a man like Dex, you knew exactly how to make that happen without sending a single message.

You went to your bedroom and changed, pulling on jeans, boots, a warm coat, and the black scarf with hidden pockets because practicality was important, even during emotional breakdowns. You hid a knife in your sleeve and a compact pistol at your back.

You walked back into the kitchen and looked at the burner phone on the floor.

Dex: Are you there?

You picked it up, turned it over once in your hand, then dropped it into the fruit bowl like it deserved to be punished among the bananas.

“I’m going for a walk,” you said to your empty apartment, before grabbing your keys and left.

—

Central Park at midnight was, objectively, a stupid place to go. You knew that. You literally charged people money to know that.

You had written entire security briefs for clients with more cash than survival instinct, and half the advice boiled down to: do not go into isolated places at night to meet emotionally unstable violent criminals.

Still, there you were, walking through the park under a wet black sky, boots clicking against the pavement, the city humming behind the trees like it was pretending not to watch.

Every instinct you had spent the last seven years wanted to look back: look at the tree line, benches, shadows. Check reflection in puddles and windows across the street. But you didn’t look, because looking meant admitting you cared whether he was there.

The path curved ahead of you, slick with rain and scattered leaves. A few lamps burned gold through the mist. The park was not empty, exactly, but it felt emptied out. You could hear footsteps and cyclists passing too fast. You kept walking. Past the fountain. Past the little bridge, until you reached the bench.

It had the same black metal arms, same damp wooden slats, same stupid plaque dedicated to someone’s grandfather who had loved chess and spring mornings.

You and Dex had found this bench years ago after a date went wrong because work interrupted dinner. He had been stiff beside you, still in his work shirt, tie loosened. You had shared cold fries out of a paper bag. You stole one from his carton and he let you.

After that, the bench became yours in the stupid unofficial way things became yours when you were in love. After late shifts and bad days, arguments you both pretended were not arguments. You kissed here stolen under orange lamplight, hand hovering near your lower back before finally touching. 

You sat down anyway. The bench was wet. “Perfect,” you muttered. 

You crossed one leg over the other and leaned back, looking straight ahead.

For one minute, nothing happened. Then two. Then three.

You almost laughed. Maybe this was it. Maybe you had finally overestimated him. Maybe Dex had left the flowers, sent the texts, and vanished into the night.

Maybe you had dragged yourself into Central Park at midnight for nothing. Maybe you were the unwell one.

Then, a sound came from the trees behind you, barely anything at all.

You didn’t turn around. 

From the darkness behind the nearest tree, Benjamin Poindexter stepped out of the shadows. He looked older, bigger, still beautiful in that awful, inconvenient way that made you want to throw something at the sky.

Dex stopped a few feet away from the bench. For once, he didn’t come closer.

The mist clung to his shoulders. The lamplight caught the scar on his cheekbone. Then, he said, “Hi.”

Your mouth felt dry. “Hi,” you said back. Stupid. Pathetic. Human.

Dex looked at the empty space beside you, then at your face. “Can I sit?”

You almost laughed. Now he wanted permission? “Sure,” you said, voice flat. “Why start respecting boundaries now?”

He flinched like you’d rub salt in a wound. He sat anyway, carefully, as if the bench belonged to you now and he was only borrowing the edge of it. His thigh was too close to yours, so scooted away.

Dex noticed. His eyes dropped to the wet space you’d put between you, then lifted again.

For a while, neither of you said anything. The park filled the silence: dew ticking through leaves, traffic muttering.

Dex’s hands rested between his knees, visible, like he knew you were checking and armed.

“How are you?” he asked.

Of all the things he could have asked. Of all the impossible, cruel, stupid things.

How dare he ask like  this was a coffee run. Like seven years had not happened. Like he had not crawled back into your life through windows and burner phones and pastry boxes, leaving little proofs of memory everywhere, every single one saying, I still know you, I still know you, I still know you.

You smiled and it was fake, Dex could tell. 

“Oh,” you said brightly. “Great. Coping. The last seven years have been very normal and relaxing for me.”

Dex looked down.

You kept going because if you stopped, worse thingswould come out.

“I built a company. Paid taxes. I learned how to read insurance contracts without wanting to walk into traffic. Got eight hours of sleep, never. Oh, and I developed a fun little stress headache that lives behind my right eye.” You looked back at the path. “You know. Girl stuff.”

“That must have been hard,” he said quietly.

Your eyes closed. Fuck off. That one repetition you knew Dr. Mercer gave him that you told him was cute once. You opened your eyes and rolled them instead. “Don’t sound sad on my behalf.”

“I am sad.”

“That’s the fucking bare minimum. Catch up”

He took that, and you almost wished he wouldn’t. You almost wished he would snap back like you had always expected him to. 

But seven years had changed parts of him. Dex, whose anger had been manipulated, had sat down on the prison floor and trained himself not to succumb again. Then he said, “I saw your apartment.”

You looked at him. “What about it?”

He hesitated, and you could see him trying to choose the right words, which was almost funny, considering he had broken into your home without needing words at all.

“It’s.. modest,” he said.

For a second, your brain refused to process it. Then you turned toward him fully. “I’m sorry?”

Dex’s eyes flickered. “That came out wrong.”

“You’re insulting my apartment?”

““I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Oh, please.” You laughed once. “Go on, Bullseye. Tell me what the fugitive home inspector thinks.”

His face changed at the moniker. “I meant,” he said carefully, “you always talked about more.”

Your throat tightened before you could stop it.

Dex looked past you toward the path, like maybe the memory was sitting there too.

“You said you wanted a house in the suburbs,” he said. “You said you wanted no less than five bedrooms and big windows. A kitchen with the blue tiles you liked. A bathroom with a copper bathtub that would’ve been hard to clean.”

You had been half-asleep when you told him that. Years ago, your legs in his lap, his thumb moving over your ankle bone, the TV murmuring some terrible late-night movie neither of you were watching. You had been talking nonsense because you were tired and happy and safe. 

You swallowed the memory down hard. “I can’t afford more,” you said.

Dex frowned. “You can.” You owned a private security firm. You should be able to. Dex had seen the numbers you were bringing in. 

“You don’t know anything about my life anymore,” you said, and your voice cracked just enough to make you furious. 

His eyes stayed on you.

“I can’t because I… I pay two mortgages,” you said, words coming out quieter than you meant them to.

Dex’s brow furrowed.

“One for my apartment.” Your hand curled against your knee. “One for Seema.”

He stopped breathing for half a second.

You kept your eyes on the wet path because if you looked at him, you would see exactly when he understood, and you didn’t want him to see that. 

“And I…I’m putting Sami through college, too,” you added, proud of the boy he had become. “He’s going to be a structural engineer.”

You thought of visiting Seema once in a while. You folded bills into drawers and pretended it was nothing. Seema pretending she didn’t notice. You were just two women building something survivable out of the wreckage men left behind.

Dex stared at his hands. “Oh.” 

You smiled without looking at him. It hurt. “Yeah,” you whispered.

He looked smaller, though not physically. Dex still took up too much space. But he was folding inwards, like he had finally stepped on a loose floorboard and realised there was a whole room underneath the house.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“No.”

“I would have—”

You turned to him then, anger saving you from the softer thing trying to crawl up your throat. “Don’t tell me what you would have done,” you said. “Don’t sit here and offer me imaginary help from prison like that does anything for anybody.”

Dex wanted to say the right things so desperately, you could tell. 

You held up a hand before he could speak, “Stop.”

He knew that voice, that tone. He had stolen it from evidence and slept to it in the dark.

You saw the moment it hit him, so you hardened again. “Why are you here?” you said. 

Dex looked at you for too long. “I wanted to see you.”

“Cut the shit,” You leaned closer, not because you wanted to be near him, you told yourself, but because you needed him to hear you. “Why are you here, Dex?”

Barely above a whisper, he said, “I wanted to see my girlfriend.”

For one second, you couldn't move. Girlfriend? 

You stared. “I’m not your girlfriend anymore.”

Dex looked genuinely confused, not pretending or  manipulating.

“We never broke up,” he said.

Your stomach turned. “Oh, fuck.”

“We didn’t.”

“We were on a break when you got arrested! I never visited you in prison, either, Dex!” you snapped. “Take the fucking hint.”

His face went sout first. Then his eyes changed, helplessness flashing there, quickly buried, but not quick enough. He was hurt, almost boyish in its disbelief, like it had never occurred to him that your absence was a hint at all.

“No, no,” he insisted, and you could almost see the story he made up in his head. “You didn’t visit because it wasn’t safe,” he said.

Your mouth opened slightly.

He kept going, voice gaining force desperately. “Because of the Bureau and your firm. Because if anyone saw you with me—”

“No.”

“I know why you didn’t visit,” he said “You had to protect yourself. I understood that.”

“No, Dex.”

“You needed time.”

You scoffed. “I needed more than time.”

“You were angry.”

“I was grieving.”

“You loved me.”

“Yes!” you snapped, and the word tore out of you so violently both of you went silent. It was the ugly, irredeemable truth. You swallowed, but it did nothing.

“Yes,” you repeated, smaller. “I loved you. I loved you so much I almost ruined my life because of it.”

His face broke open for half a second and You couldn’t look at him

“I sat outside that prison once, after you killed Nelson,” you said.

Dex let out a deep breath. 

You laughed under your breath, but it came out nearly ruined. “I drove there after work. I parked across the street. I was in my car for forty minutes like an insane person.”

“You came?” he whispered.

“I didn’t go in.” you said, finally looking at him. Your eyes burned so badly it made the lamps blur. “Because I knew if I walked inside, I was done. I knew if I saw you, if you looked at me, if you said my name in that voice, I would forgive things I had no business forgiving.”

Dex was breathing shallowly now.

Oh. 

He reached for you, too quickly, when he realized he was losing your attention. His fingers closed around your wrist and pulled, hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t,” he said.

For half a breath, you froze. Seven years ago, you might have let him. Seven years ago, you might have let him pull you close because he was hurting and Dex hurting had always made you stupid. You might have said his name. Might have touched his face. Might have coaxed him back to you gently, patiently, like he was one of your frightened men with a gun and a locked room full of hostages.

But you were not that girl anymore.  Your wrist turned, thumb pressing to a weak point. You twisted down, stepped in, and pivoted, making him release you.

His eyes flashed, more surprised than hurt. 

You caught his arm, moved behind his shoulder, and slid the knife from your sleeve with one clean motion, pressing the blade on the curve of his neck .

Dex went still, some part of him, some sick part of him, had been waiting seven years to be close enough for you to hurt him, if that was all you would ever give to him. 

Your mouth was near his ear. “Don’t,” you said, “grab me like that again.”

Dex swallowed. You felt it against the blade. His eyes were fixed forward, dark in the lamplight.

Even now, you could feel yourself trying to regulate the room. Keep him calm. Keep yourself calm. No sudden moves. Name the feeling. Give him a choice. Bring him back to his own.

You almost laughed. Once a hostage negotiator, always a hostage negotiator. Even when you were brokering arms deals most of the time now.

“I left you alone,” you said. “For seven years, I left you alone. That was the kindest thing I could do for both of us.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not.”

Your hand tightened around the knife. For a second, you couldn’t speak, because you knew what he meant. You had not given him closure. You had not given yourself closure either. You had simply walked out of the burning building and refused to look back in case he was still inside screaming.

He said your name, like he still had the right to use it. “You don’t want to kill me,” Dex said.

Your eyes burned so badly it made the park blur at the edges. You laughed once, but it came out broken. “Don’t be so sure.”

Dex didn’t flinch. He looked at the knife in your hand, then back at you, and his voice dropped.“If you wanted me dead,” he said, “I would already be dead.”

Fuck. Fuck.

Your heart broke again, and this time you almost heard it.

“Leave me alone,” you whispered. You stepped closer, teeth clenched, tears hot on your face. “Leave me alone, or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Then you flipped the knife in your hand, turned the butt of it toward him, and struck him hard under the temple to knock him out.

You stood over him for one second too long, breathing like an animal, waiting for yourself to regret it. You did, but you left anyway.

When Dex woke up, you were gone.

—

For the next couple of months, Dex actually left you alone. Which was good, right? You had to remind yourself that you did tell him to leave you alone or you’d kill him. It was a very clear instruction, a very reasonable boundary. It was very mature of him to respect it.

So why did it make you feel insane? 

You told yourself this was healthy. You told yourself that, actually, most women would be thrilled if their escaped-convict ex-boyfriend respected a boundary after years of moral devastation. But apparently, you were not most women. Apparently, you were a fucking idiot.

At work, people started noticing. One of your freelancer caught you staring at a blank wall for too long and said, carefully, “You okay, boss?”

“Hm?”

“You’ve been holding that folder upside down for five minutes.”

You looked down. Ah.

Seema called twice asking you to come over for dinner. Both times, you said no. “It’s not safe,” you told her.

Then Seema sighed, and that hurt worse than yelling. “You always say that when you are punishing yourself.”

You hung up after promising to call again. You didn’t call, even though you kept the checks going.

Then one morning, every phone in your office buzzed at once. That was never good. Apparently, many of your clients wanted extra protection against an “unknown threat.

You wondered why until your assistant handed you a newspaper with the headline: THREE ANTI-VIGILANTE TASK FORCE AGENTS FOUND DEAD IN BROOKLYN.

Your whole body went cold.

You read the article, and that was all the confirmation you needed. You knew what Dex’s violence looked like. You knew he did this. 

Your assistant said your name again. You looked up, and whatever was on your face made her stop talking.

“Cancel my morning calls,” you said as you phone buzzed.

Brett Mahoney: Do not get involved.

You almost laughed.

You knew then, that he had not left you alone because he stopped loving you. He had left you alone because he was trying to be good. And something, or someone, had just reminded him he wasn’t.

—

You started following Dex on his little crusade. It didn’t take you long to find him, really. You had once loved him too thoroughly to be normal about him now.

You knew which rooftops he would choose because they gave him height and had three clean exits. You knew he hated wet alleys unless they led to fire escapes. You knew he would never use the obvious door. You knew the little rituals he had during work. 

So yes. Fine. You started stalking Benjamin Poindexter.

Fuck. How pathetic. You were a grown woman. You ran a firm. And now, apparently, you had a new hobby: following your fugitive ex through New York like a ghost with a concealed carry permit.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

You told yourself it was professional. AVTF had been leaning on your clients hard, forcing them into hiding, turning protection details into extraction jobs, calling it public safety while they raided apartments without warrants and threatened families in parking garages. They were dickheads, so yeah, you had no sympathy for them.

You followed the bodies, the rumours, the gaps in camera footage, the silence in neighbourhoods that had been loud twenty minutes before. And the more you followed him, the more you felt him following you back. 

You noticed a shadow on a rooftop opposite your office, a reflection in the window of a closed deli. The certainty that when you walked home at night, something in the dark was following you.

You knew Dex had clocked you the first night and, instead of losing you, instead of warning you off, the sick bastard started letting you get closer, though not enough that you could grab him, never enough that you could put a bullet in him if you finally developed common sense. But enough.

Apparently, even when you kept saying you wanted him gone, your body didn’t get the memos 

And Dex… Dex wasn’t any better.

Dex was worse. Dex was leaving you openings like love notes. He would stop too long on rooftops. He let you see the edge of his shoulder before he vanished. He let a camera catch half his face, just enough for you to know he was thinking of you.

Once, you found a dead AVTF agent slumped in an abandoned office with a heart shot into the wall beside him. 

Fuck. 

Eventually, you stalked his home. Well. Home was generous.

Dex didn’t have a home so much as he had a room to return to when the city stopped needing him bloody for five consecutive minutes.

It was a third-floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen, rented under a name so fake it was almost insulting. Tony? Where did he get that, huh? 

He had no doormats or plants. He had no personal mail.   You found it in four days. You told yourself that was because you were good at your job.

You watched the building from across the street with coffee going cold in your hand. Like a creep, like him. 

The first night, he didn’t come home until 3:12 a.m.You saw him slip through the alley, hood up, shoulders tense, blood dark on one sleeve. He paused before unlocking the side entrance.

Dex knew you were there and the bastard still turned his head slightly, just enough for the streetlamp to catch the side of his cheek, the bruising near his mouth. Then he went inside.

You sat there with your hands curled around the steering wheel and hated him for being alive.

After that, you came back, but every night. You had clients to protect and employees to encourage into filling out paperwork properly. 

Obviously. 

—

One night, you followed him to the docks.

You told yourself it was reconnaissance. You told yourself it was work. You told yourself a lot of very reasonable, very professional things while walking into a half-rotted maintenance building with a pistol at your back and your heart trying to climb out of your throat.

But by then, you had stopped pretending you weren’t actively choosing him.

The building sat by the water like a body left to die, with rusted metal, wet concrete, and black windows. Task Force had picked it because they thought isolation made them clever.

It didn’t. Instead, it made them predictable.

You slipped through the side entrance and knew immediately something was wrong when you smelled blood, oil, and gunpowder in excess.

Your stomach turned. Not him, a terrified part of you thought before you could stop it. Please, not him.

When you were fully in, he had already been through the first two. One agent was at the bottom of the stairs. Another near the service corridor. A third was dragging himself across the floor, one hand pressed to his side, the other reaching for his radio.

He saw you, a stranger, and desperately rasped, “Help me.”

You looked at the badge on his vest; AVTF.

Then you looked toward the room ahead, where another gunshot went off so loud the whole building seemed to echo around it.

Your blood went cold. Dex.

You stepped over the agent, who was begging for you to save his life. “No.”

You ran instead, because you knew, somewhere in that building, Dex could be hurt. Dex could be cornered. Dex could die.

And the thought was so unbearable it stripped every lie out of you.

No. No. No. Not him. Not after a decade of caring about him. Not after you spent all that time hating him just to realise that hate was probably just you punishing yourself.

You reached the room and saw him. Dex was backed near the far wall, one hand braced against a pipe, blood at his mouth, shoulders heaving. His eyes were dark and wild, and still, somehow, he found you the second you entered.

For half a second, nothing stopped.

The agents. The prison. The motorcade killing of surrendering men. Ray. Fisk. The suit. None of that mattered anymore. Not really. 

Then you saw the agent next to him, lifting his gun, Finger tightening to the trigger.

Dex didn’t see. He was distracted. He was watching you. Dex was watching you like you were the only thing in the room that mattered.

But you saw the gun, the angle. You saw the split second before the world took him from you.

No.

There was a sawn-off shotgun on the floor beside a dead man’s hand.

You picked it up before morality could catch up. The blast tore the room open.

The agent dropped. Your hands moved on instinct efficiently. You loaded in another shotshell. Another shot. The second agent went down before he could turn his weapon. Then the third.

Then nothing but smoke and ringing silence and your own breath coming out broken and a little too loudly.

Dex turned toward you slowly with blood on his cheek, mouth parted, his eyes locked on yours.

You had saved him, yes. You had crossed a line for him, yes. But Dex didn’t look surprised, not even a little.

He looked at you like he had always known, like he was waiting for you to come out of the dark and choose him. Like he had loved every version of you: the woman with pastries in a federal sniper nest, the woman with a knife under his jaw in Central Park, and now this woman, holding a shotgun because the idea of him dying had made her forget every boundary she had ever built.

Your throat closed. You wanted to scream at him. You wanted to kiss the blood off his mouth. You wanted to hit him for making you care this much. You wanted to fall apart against him and have him hold you like no time had passed at all.

You hated him. Or maybe you loved him so badly it felt like a heart attack.

Dex’s eyes dropped to the shotgun in your hands, then rose back to your face, so in love with you it was almost frightening.

You swallowed hard. “I don’t actually want you dead,” you admitted. 

Oh. Oh, fuck.

Then the shotgun slipped from your hands. It hit the floor with a dull clatter, and it made you flinch for the first time in years. 

Dex said your name, but you didn’t answer.

Your knees gave out before you decided to kneel. One moment you were standing there with smoke in your lungs and blood ringing in your ears, and the next you were on the concrete, palms braced against the floor.

Fuck. Fuck! What did you do? What the fuck did you do?

The agents were dead because you had killed them. You didn't even try negotiating or de-escalating. You didn’t even try buying time.

You had picked up a gun and blown three men apart because he had been about to shoot Dex.

“Oh my god,” you whispered, sounding thin and very much unlike the person you had convinced yourself to be. 

Your eyes dropped to the shotgun on the floor, then up to your bare hands. Your… fingerprints were on it. Shit! 

Your DNA and your hair maybe, your shoe prints in the blood and river grime. You had stupidly dragged your goddamn life into this room because you had followed a man you swore you hated into a trap and saved him as if he was still yours to save.

You had jeopardised everyone; your employees, the contracts and the clients. Seema and Sami and their mortgage payments and tuition fees.  If you went down, they went down with you.

Your breath hitched so hard it hurt. “No,” you said, but it came out like a sob. “No, no, no.”

Dex moved toward you, boots scraping concrete, his body dropping down beside yours. You jerked back on instinct. “Don’t,” you choked out, though you didn’t know what you were telling him not to do.

Dex stopped for half a second, but he reached for you anyway, carefully this time.

His arms came around you from the side, one hand sitting between your shoulder blades, the other wrapping around your back like he could hold your life together by force if you just asked him to.

“It’s okay,” he said, even though it was the wrong thing to say. Nothing was okay, but in the end it was still Dex’s voice.

“It’s okay,” he said again. “I’ve got you.”

You made a sound, and you would have been embarrassed by it if you had any semblance of self preservation. 

“Dex,” you gasped.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t- my fingerprints, I touched it, I touched the gun, I…. ” Your words tripped over each other, useless and frantic. “They’ll find me. They’ll know. My firm finished. Seema won’t… I-I—Sami’s tuition, Dex, I pay his tuition, I can’t— fuck! M-my employees, they’ll lose their jobs, I,… everything is tied to me, everything…”

“I know,” he said.

“You clearly fucking don’t!”

“Listen to me,” he said again, hand pressed against your back. 

You shook your head, because listening meant being in the room. Listening meant admitting this had happened. It was basically a fucking confession. 

Dex moved ever closer, until his chest was against your shoulder, his lips by your temple. “Nobody has to know,” he said.

Your breathing stopped abruptly, looking at him through the blur of your own tears.

His face was bruised, blood at the corner of his mouth, eyes so focused on you that it made you want to collapse all over again.

“Nobody has to know,” he repeated. “I’m going to help.”

You were terrified. You were relieved. 

Dex knew what to do. Dex knew what to do with bodies, right? He can make this all go away, right? Right?

You needed him. Needed.

You turned into his chest, hands grabbing at the front of his jacket, fists twisting in the fabric, clinging to him with a desperation you had not shown to anyone in years. Your forehead hit his chest and then, before you knew it, you were letting out full-bodies sobs into his tactical suit. 

Dex’s arms tightened around you immediately. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”

You buried your face harder against him, shaking so badly you swore your teeth were gonna fall off. “I need you,” you said into his chest, barely audible.

Dex froze for a second, his hand sliding up to the back of your head, holding you there. “I know,” he whispered.

You clutched him harder. “I need you.”

—

Your body had been buzzing with too much adrenaline, your vision swam in and out of existence, and you barely remembered what happened. When you came back to yourself, you were in Dex’s bed.

His studio was small, nothing but one dim lamp in the corner, one chair, and one table. It should have felt temporary, but the sheets smelled like him,and that alone made you feel comfortable enough to ignore everything he had done in the past decade. 

You were wearing his old FBI shirt, fabric hanging too loose on your shoulders, logo cracked from years of washing, like a cruel relic from a life neither of you got to keep. Your own clothes were gone: coat, jeans, scarf, and everything that had touched that you, or that warehouse. 

The shotgun was gone, too, and you were willing to bet the same for the bodies. All of it had been taken care of by the one man you had spent seven years trying not to need.

Maybe he burned the clothes and sunk the agents. Maybe he sunk the shotgun, too. There was horror, but you felt sick, shameful relief all the same.

He stood near the sink with his shoulders slightly hunched, blood still drying near his mouth. He had washed his hands too many times; you could tell from the red and raw skin around his knuckles, as if even he could not scrub tonight off completely. When he turned the tap off, the apartment went quiet again.

You stared at him, and he stared back, and suddenly seven years were in the room with you. Seven years of pretending he was just another ex. Seven years of saying you hated him because hating him was easier than admitting that some nights you still reached across the bed in your sleep and woke up furious that he was not there to hold you. 

You started shaking again. What the fuck were you doing here?

Your whole body felt like it was stuck on vibrate, teeth clenching, hands curled uselessly in the hem of his shirt. You hated yourself, because even after the hard-earned distance you tried to keep, you tried to earn, piece by piece, it was Dex’s room you fell apart in.

Dex walked toward you carefully, as if he had learned the hard way what not to do.  He wasn’t going to let himself be taken over by sudden movement, so he just sat on the edge of the mattress, waiting for your next move.

You should have told him to stay away. You should have said thank you and left. You should have put your feet on the floor, gone home, burned his shirt and called this what it was: A mistake, or a relapse. It was just a catastrophic, near career-ending lapse in judgement.

Instead, a little sob came out of you. And that was all it took for his arms to come around your body.

You were so angry at how badly you needed that touch that you grabbed him, by way of both hands in the front of his shirt, fists twisting in the fabric, dragging him close like you were drowning and he was the only source of oxygen left in the world. 

You cried into him. It was a heartbroken chest-breaking sob that you couldn’t swallow down. You cried because you had killed three men that hadn’t even been looking at you. You cried because you had wanted Dex to live so badly you have compromised the safety of everyone else in your life.

He held you tighter, hand finding the back of your head like muscle memory, fingers sinking into your hair with a familiarity that hurt so much you might as well have been stabbed.

“Come back to me,” he whispered.

You hated him for saying your line, but you hated more that it fucking helped. So you pressed your face deeper into the crook of his neck, breathing him in like a pathetic kitten that had been abandoned on the side of the road starving for years. 

You missed your Dex, and not the one you had made into a monster, and not Bullseye. You missed this one.

“You shouldn’t have helped me,” you said, but it barely came out as a cohesive.

His mouth planted a kiss on your hair.

“I-I shouldn’t have needed you.”

Dex said your name so kindly it didn’t even sound like him.

You pulled back enough to look at his red-rimmed eyes. You had seen men beg before. You had heard confessions, threats, and prayers. You had talked far more dangerous killers into handcuffs and frightened boys away from ledges.  But nobody had ever looked at you the way Dex looked at you now.

“But I did,” you whispered, then kept going because you had already bled too much to pretend you were fine.

“I needed you to make it go away. I needed you to know what to do. I needed you to hold me, and I hate that after everything, I still knew you would.”

Dex didn’t look away. “We have always needed each other,” he said.

You wanted to slap him for that, because he was right. Even when you stayed away from the prison,some shameful, locked-up part of you had always known that if the world suddenly wanted to swallow you whole, it was Dex you would look for in the belly of the beast.

Because he was yours. And love, real love, did not follow reason. It didn’t care what made sense or what was deserved. It barely had to read case files or prison records or moral philosophy. It just… endured.

You touched his face with shaking fingers. His eyes closed instantly. You brushed the dried blood away with your thumb.

You leaned in first. Maybe you meant only to press your forehead to his, or you had only meant to sync his breath to his.

But when you felt his breath on yours, you couldn’t help but kiss him.

Dex made a surprised little sound, caught off-guard. 

Soon enough, his hand tightened in your hair and he kissed you back. It was desperate and clumsy with relief, his mouth opening against yours as he couldn’t believe you were letting him have you like this again. 

You grabbed at him harder, morals be damned.

He shifted closer immediately, angling his body toward yours with one knee pressing into the mattress. His hand slid to your waist through the old shirt. 

He was careful, even when you could tell he was losing control. Fuuuuck.

Dex, who had broken into your apartment, tracked you, killed for you, covered up a triple homicide for you, still needed to know that you wanted him as much as he wanted you. 

At this point, his lips were split. You tasted blood and yet didn’t pull away. You kissed him until the room blurred into a void.  And when you pulled back, you only did it because you had to breathe. Still you didn’t pull back far.

“I… I don’t know what I’m doing,” you whispered.

He had no answer to that. 

You were doing this against your better judgement, against every red flag that had been waved to warn you. But in the end, you were doing it anyway. 

“You’re a fucking criminal,” you said, as if thinking out loud. Dex saw it exactly for what it was: you, trying to talk yourself out of this, and failing miserably. Still, you continued, “you were the one who told me once that they’re never reasonable.”

In that moment, you saw the memory pass through him.  He remembered it as vividly as you: that first proper meeting on the fifth floor of an abandoned building. You were both much younger then, much more naive in what the world would eventually offer to the two of you. 

His hand slid up to the side of your neck, finding your artery and pressing his palms there. 

“We’re all people here,” he said.

Oh. 

You were just a person. You were just human.

You could not be reduced to a principle or a badge anymore, not when you were willingly staying in the bed of the horrible man you loved, wearing his shirt, unable to regret what you had done to keep him alive. And maybe because you were human, it wasn’t your fault that you could not resist him. 

So, this time, when you kissed him again, you kissed him with a genuine smile.

—end. 

Note: these are the five songs I listened to over and over again while writing this!

Dex taglist: @itsdynotdaddy @diabolicallydownbad @doesanyonereadthis @meicore @pixie2k5 @bibiishin @starlitflora @pearlstiare @glorybeat @stardustworlds @castawaybarnes @supervampireflame @not-the-teen-witch @billybonesxx @ultimatewolverine @treetrees-world-of-imagiation @bitch-spaghetti-o @lostinthes4uce @cotton-eee @weallhaveadestiny @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @moonbug333 @yujyujj @mattdexx @lostfallenangelsblog @bloomsberryfairy @flimsysquid @abbotfan @leonetta2014 @ficcharsimpsblog @odairtrqsh @ugh-whytho @noonenuts @akiyhara @genya1617 @itzrachel04 @avidreader73 @quicksilver21 @lmg-stilinski24 @magnificentlymoltenpatron @natalia42069 @eaumyth @hxdxs @cemeterystardust @alligatortears87 @outpostsworld @scarlet48 @lunarbandwidth @star-yawnznn @smorgasbrods

He isn’t sure why. He can’t exactly place it, but it’s just…there you are. Running right into him like that. Asking if he’s okay when you look like his shoulder bone might have fucking concussed you.

He reaches down, picks up your phone, and offers it to you.

“I’m fine.” He says, softer than he means to, and you open your other eye.

“Are you made of concrete or something?” You huff a laugh, accept your phone, and slide it into your pocket. He’s staring too hard. He needs to break the gaze but it feels impossible and wrong to even try.

“Not that I know of.”

A feeling like desperate need claws its way up his throat when you smile again. When you laugh at his words like you really hear them. He doesn’t know exactly what it is he needs, but it’s overwhelming to the point of near-pain.

“I’m sorry about that.” You say again, and you mean it. “If I left a bruise, don’t sue me.” You glance down, notice the badge clipped to his belt. “Or…arrest me.”

He can’t remember how to speak. How to breathe right. But he needs to act…normal. He can’t just yank you to him in the middle of the street, bury his nose in your neck and inhale your perfume. Not like he wants to.

The world is narrowed down to a pinpoint. The crowded, chaotic streets of the city are gone. The honking of taxis, the bustle of people trying to get to their destinations, the towering buildings, it’s all gone. It’s just you, and your smile, and your eyes looking up at him.

His smile twitches a little before it finally forms on his lips, lopsided and genuine. You relax at the sight of it.

“Don’t have my cuffs on me, so I guess you’re safe.” And you smile at the joke, and it’s perfect.

He’ll buy you coffee. He’ll talk to you. He’ll make you smile more.

Your phone dings, and you curse as you glance down at it. “Shit. I gotta go.” You murmur, shooting one more apologetic glance up at him. “Sorry again. Really.”

“It’s…okay.” But it’s not. You can’t leave. You can’t walk away from him he just found you he’s not done-

But you’re gone, and your sudden absence shudders his breath and makes his chest feel too tight. No. No, you need to be here. With him. He just found you. You can’t leave.

He doesn’t move for a good few seconds, frozen in place as the noise and chaos crashes back in, crippling and horrible.

The bell to the coffee shop dings. There. That’s where you are. Where you’re going. Not gone. Not too far for him to find again.

He waits sixty seconds, counts his breaths, and follows.

-

“Yikes, what happened to you?”

You’re rubbing your forehead. You’re hurt. His shoulder hurt you. The dull ache in the spot where you slammed against him feels like a connection. A tether holding you to him.

“Too embarrassing.” You grumble, but he can hear a hint of humor and familiarity in your voice. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Well now I have to know.” You smile at the blond man. Nelson. The lawyer. Dex knows about him. Are you with him, somehow? Is Nelson trying to take you away from him?

You huff a laugh, and plop down unceremoniously into the opposite chair, still rubbing your forehead. “I was trying to respond to your millionth text, and I just absolutely slammed into this smoking hot FBI guy.”

“FBI?” Nelson repeats, but you said hot. You called him hot. He’s so distracted by that that he barely hears your next words, dripping with sarcasm as you pull one foot up onto the chair and wrap your arms around your knee.

“Yeah, and then I told him all about my extra curricular activities, and my home address.”

“Your jokes aren’t as funny as you think they are, you know.”

“Neither are yours, and we’re still friends.” You accept the cup of coffee Nelson slides your way, and Dex’s heart stutters again as you smile over the rim of the mug.

“So, speaking of which…”

“I knew it. I knew it. You never just wanna hang out and get coffee.”

“We hang out and get coffee all the time.”

“The ratio is off, lately. You ask for favors more since you went into that corporate law job. Now your pro-bono work always goes through me and all my incredible skills like some dirty little secret.”

Pro-bono work. Secrets. What do you do? You’re kind. You’re good. He can feel it. Sense it like second nature. But the questions and lack of answers are making him grip his own mug a little tighter, making it difficult for him to lean back in the shadows and hide like he’s supposed to.

Nelson looks sheepish, but you give a good natured wave of your hand. A silent ‘go on’ gesture that Dex can’t help but find painfully charming.

“I have a case. This guy…” Nelson slides a file towards you, “didn’t do it. Works for a big company, going down for financial crimes that he didn’t commit. They’re trying to cover their tracks, and a little bit of proof might keep him from missing his kids’ elementary school graduation.” You raise an eyebrow, and Nelson smiles a little. “And middle school. And high school. And…college. The point is they’re gonna try to put him away for a long time, and he didn’t do it.”

You squint, and slide the file closer to yourself. “Financial crimes?”

“Just saying, a little bit of…evidence towards his innocence will really help.”

“Hm.”

“And it shouldn’t be a problem for the best hacker in New York.”

You raise an eyebrow again.

“Okay, the east coast.”

Your eyebrow climbs higher.

“America?”

You grin, and Dex twitches with the need to be closer to you. To see that grin directed at him.

“You’re gonna have to start paying me soon.”

“And if I do, it becomes illegal.”

You tilt your head back again, puff out a dramatic sigh, and curl your fingers around the file.

“I want one of your mom’s sandwiches, at two am. The one with the provolone that I like.”

Nelson grins, wide. “Done and done.”

And then, you tilt your head back towards Nelson. “Does this have anything to do with Fisk?”

Fisk. Fisk? That asshole? That annoying detail he’s about to be stuck on?

“Wilson Fisk?”

“No, the other one. The other crime boss who just got out of prison and has a bone to pick with you.”

Nelson rolls his eyes. “Still not funny.”

“Foggy.”

He hesitates, and frowns. “No. But don’t…just stay away from that, okay? We’ll figure it out. You getting involved, especially with your tendency to…piss people like that off…”

“I haven’t been caught.”

“You will be, if you keep up that little Robin Hood act you have going on. There’s only so much legal counsel I can give you. This is extra legal council. I should be charging you for this.”

“Those companies don’t notice any money missing. You know who does? Mr. Stevenson next door, who can pay off his damn bills and not have to work an extra six hours a day to afford medication for his bad leg.” Your tone is sharp. Defensive.

So you’re a criminal. A good one. Because stealing from the rich and giving to people who need it… that’s good. His own moral compass might be a little off-kilter, but he knows that much.

Then again, you could be a serial killer and he would probably still feel this way, but oh well.

Foggy frowns, like this is a conversation you’ve had many times before, and gives you a familiar little nod, like he knows arguing won’t get him too far. “Just…don’t get involved, okay? Stay away from it. This is more dangerous than you think.”

“Vague.” You grumble, but you’re sliding the file into your bag. “Sandwich with the provolone, three am.”

“You said two.”

You stand, finish your coffee, and smile. “This one’s gonna take a while.”

-

Watching you work is…fascinating.

It’s a slow process, Dex realizes quickly. You don’t click at your keyboard and bust through firewalls like in movies. You lay on your couch, bite your nails, and seem to work through problems one by one. It takes a while. It frustrates you. It makes you smile to yourself when you solve one of those problems.

You get your sandwich. You talk to Nelson for a while. Update him. Get back to work.

The sun is going to rise, soon. You’re still working. His eyes are starting to hurt from watching you through this telescope, but he can’t make himself look away.

When you move to the kitchen, you slide on the hardwood in your socks. You play music. You tap your fingers on your keyboard to the beat.

He watches every second. Every single twitch of your eye. Every frown when you can’t figure something out. Every bright little spark when you do figure it out.

Perfect. You’re perfect. And when you finally do fall asleep, computer resting on your stomach and eyes dropping closed like they’re weighed down by anvils, he wants more than anything to make his way into that dingy little apartment and carry you to your bed in the adjacent room. To slide his fingers through your hair, feel you smile, and listen to your heartbeat until he’s positive that nothing will ever be able to take you away from him.

But for now, he watches. He stays, long after you’ve fallen asleep, and he watches.

-

It takes planning. It takes hours of working himself up to it. Of watching you from afar, plotting every scenario out bit by bit and talking himself out of it a thousand times.

You consume his thoughts like a poison. He follows you to your work. Back to your apartment. Watches every interaction you have with everyone else and wishes it was him you were looking at until he stops fucking sleeping with the need to have you near him.

So, when the torture becomes too much, he follows you to a bar, and he sits in the corner, and he watches you laugh with your friends. Watches and watches and craves to be closer to the light that seems to emanate from your very being.

And he gets up at just the right time, and allows you to bump into him as you start walking back towards the group you came with.

Not a single drop of his drink spills on him - he’s still a little too organized to allow that to happen if he can help it - but he makes it look like it does. He catches your waist as you stumble with an ‘oomph’, and just like that you’re close to him. You’re touching him. He’s touching you. You’re here. With him.

“Oh, fuck. Sorry. Sorry.” You’re not drunk, barely even buzzed, but he knows you well enough now to know that you’re just a little clumsy, and this place is just loud enough for this to work.

Your eyes turn up to his, and you nearly stumble back.

Practiced smile. Fingers curling against your back a little because he just can’t help it. “We’ve gotta stop bumping into each other like this.” He’s practiced that line in the mirror, and it works. You laugh.

You laugh. At his joke. At his line that he’s practiced for this specific scenario. It worked.

“I know you.” You grin, wide, and then flinch a little, but you’re still laughing. “Have I said I’m sorry yet?”

“You did.” He has to let you go. He would rather die, but he can’t be holding you like this. You don’t know him yet. Not yet. “Never got your name, though.”

“I never got yours. Figured you hated me for dislocating your shoulder.”

“Dex.”

“Dex.” You repeat, and his blood hums in his veins at the sound. “Nice to meet you, Dex.”

“Nice to meet you…public hazard.” Lame joke. Bad joke. He just can’t string a fucking thought together when you’re near him and-

You snort. His heart bursts into flames.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Fuck. It’s too soon. Way too soon. You’re gonna say no, and leave, and he’s-

“Yeah.” You set your drink down. “Yeah, I do.”

-

“So…hobbies?” You take a bite of your pizza, heels clicking against the pavement, and he can’t stop looking at you.

“Not really.”

“Hm.” You don’t seem bothered by it. By his lack of interesting traits. He’s not lying to you. He doesn’t have to. You’re meant to be together, after all. He doesn’t have to lie about himself. Right? “Okay. Any special skills then, Special Agent?”

Actually, yeah. “I have one.”

You perk up, raise an eyebrow. “Really?”

He grins, real and genuine, and pulls a quarter out of his back pocket. “Think you’re ready for it?”

“More than.” You’re excited. Really, truly excited. It’s fucking adorable.

“Nah.” He flips the coin over his fingers, feigns pocketing it again. “Don’t think you are.”

“Aw, come on. Please?”

Butterflies swarm in his chest. A smile curls on his lips. He nods towards the darkened street before you. “Pick somethin’.”

You frown, cock your head to the side, and purse your lips when he doesn’t budge to give you any more information. “Okay….street sign. That one right there.”

“Letter.”

“What?”

“Pick a letter.”

Your brow furrows a little more, and your lips twitch in a smile. “T.”

The throws the quarter out, and the sound of metal on metal sings through the air.

There’s a dent in the T. It’s so small, so subtle, that you have to move over to the sign to inspect it.

“Holy shit.”

Do you like it? Are you impressed? He has to stop himself from grabbing your shoulder and demanding to know.

“Can you do it again?”

Yes. Yes of course he can. He’ll do anything. Anything to make you look at him with those wide eyes and that big grin.

You name five more things, he hits them all perfectly, and he doesn’t want to stop. He wants to keep impressing you. Keep hearing your startled noises of approval.

But you make it back to your apartment, and he has to force himself to let you leave. To not follow you upstairs and learn every inch of your skin until it’s locked into his memory forever.

Instead, he asks you to dinner, and you agree. You smile, and you agree.

-

He kisses you for the first time on your second date. Dinner and ice cream.

He’s walked you to your door, like he did the last time, and you’re standing there in your dress with that smile of yours and your eyes looking expectantly into his and he doesn’t know how to do this right. Sure, there have been women in the past. He’s kissed girls. Slept with them when the time was right, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and never really…felt anything. Never wanted anything like this. Fuck, he feels more excitement just looking at you than he did with every hookup he’s ever had.

He has to do it. Make it romantic. Make it perfect. He’s looked up the right way to do this. Studied romantic movies like it was some kind of assignment with life-or-death consequences.

Reach up, brush your hair behind your ear, drink in your shy smile, lean closer so his breath ghosts over your lips-

“You have ice cream on your nose.”

He freezes, fingers still cupping your jaw, and pulls back.

“What?”

You giggle, oblivious to how much his mind is spinning, and reach up to swipe it off with your thumb.

“Shit.” He mumbles, shaking his head and stepping back. “Shit. I’m sorry. I-“

You tilt your head to the side, curious and confused and beautiful as you seem to realize that he’s actually freaking out a little. Because it’s not perfect. It was supposed to be perfect because that’s the only way he gets to keep good things. Order. Focus. But he fucked it up and now you’re-

“Woah, hey. Hey.” You reach up, and turn his face towards yours. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry, it was cute. Just…try again.”

Try again. Yeah, he…he can try again. It can still be good. Still be perfect.

So he does. He leans down, and when his lips brush yours his breath comes out as a shaky exhale.

And then your mouth is on his, warm and soft and everything he’s ever wanted. Electricity shoots down his spine, through his blood, and some tether of control within him snaps. He presses closer, the hand on your cheek moving to the back of your head to keep you in place, and kisses you like he’s trying to devour you with a passion he didn’t know he possessed.

You gasp against his lips, arms coming up to wrap around his neck as you meet him with just as much enthusiasm. Just as much hunger. And this…this is perfect. This is rough and desperate and perfect. This didn’t need to go according to plan. This is so much better than the plan.

When you finally break apart, he’s out of breath and more than a little pleased to see that you are, too.

“Wow.” You whisper, and he grins as his nose ducks back down to brush against yours.

“Yeah.” He breathes, unable to think of another response. Any other word to describe this feeling. “Wow.”

-

When you see the caller id, you can’t help but smile at the screen.

“Geez, you look so weird with the cartoon heart eyes.” Foggy’s voice breaks you out of your little trance, and you snort as you answer the phone, confirming that Dex is off work and headed back to his apartment. You feel a twinge of excitement, cheesy as it is, at the idea of seeing him soon. You try not to flag down the bartender too quickly, lest the mockery get any worse.

“FBI guy?” Foggy raises an eyebrow, and you smile again.

“His name is Dex.” Foggy’s eyebrows rise even higher. You flush. “I dunno, I like him. A lot, actually.”

“He’s in the FBI. You’re a pretty notorious hacker.”

“So we don’t talk about work.” You take a sip of your drink. “Plus, he’s not gonna turn me in. I’m too good in bed.”

“But he knows?”

“Of course he knows.” You raise your eyebrows, leaning forward like you’re explaining something imperative. “One you start having sex with someone, it’s important that you confess all of your crimes to each other.”

Foggy laughs, and shakes his head. “You’re insane.” And then, curious and caring as ever, “so what’s he like, if he’s got you risking federal prison?”

Your smile returns, cheeks heating a little, and you shrug. “Cute. Nice. A little weird. Well, actually a lot weird, but…I like it.” You think about the precise way Dex loads the dishwasher. How he carefully makes the bed every morning. How he makes an odd joke every now and then, and then looks absolutely panicked until you laugh, and that panic will always melt into an expression of relief and adoration.

Sometimes his emotions are a little…intense. He can get frustrated, and sometimes he doesn’t seem like he knows how to handle it. But you help. You always do. You tell him to breathe and help him work through whatever’s bothering him, and it works. He always listens. Always tries, even if it takes a moment.

You just…work. Something about you, and something about him, and all the weirdness in between…it works.

When you get back to his place tonight, he’s holding a bouquet of flowers and looking genuinely nervous.

“I don’t get this.” He admits before you even drop your keys onto the counter, frowning down at the colorful petals. “They’re just gonna die in a couple of days.”

“Then why did you get them?”

He cocks his head to the side, but you can see a tinge of pink on his cheeks. “They did it in the movie we watched last night. You smiled.”

You smile now. Wide. “You know, you’re kinda cute, Poindexter.”

Something like vulnerability sparks in his eyes. “Do you not like the flowers?”

You snort, and move forward to slide your hands up over his shoulders, feeling the crisp fabric of his white button-down against your palms. “I like them. You did good. Really good.”

He smiles at that, like those words are the best thing he’s ever heard, and you pull him down to kiss you.

Your conversation with Foggy flashes through your mind. You forgot to tell him that one thing. That one major reason why you like Dex. Why you’re with him.

You get him. And he gets you.

You just…work.

-

The newspaper sits on the counter, Dex’s picture stamped right on the front page. FBI investigates one of their own.

You try not to talk about work with him. After all, you’re technically a criminal and he’s in law enforcement. But you knew about the investigation. It’s unjust, Dex says, and you believe him because…well, of course you do. It’s Dex. He saved lives that night, and the few coworkers of his that you’ve met since you’ve been dating have confirmed it.

And then the suspension came.

“It’s bullshit. It’s fucking bullshit.” In what feels like only a few words, his voice morphs from a frustrated growl into something as sharp and loud as the crack of a whip. His hand moves faster than you can even register, and in a split second there’s a kitchen knife sticking out of a photo on the wall. Right in the forehead of the person you recognize as his boss.

“Shit, I keep forgetting how spooky that is.” You breathe, and Dex’s eyes whip back to yours.

“Breathe, Poindexter.” You raise your hands in surrender, and step ever-so-carefully forward, like one wrong move might frighten him off.

“Don’t.” He snaps, fingers curling on the counter, but his eyes don’t leave you. He’s breathing too heavily. Too raggedly.

You reach up, and turn his face down to yours. Gentle, but firm. “You gotta breathe. Tell me three things you can see.”

He freezes, eyes scanning your face like he’s trying to tell if you’re kidding or not, before he speaks. “Your eyes.” He finally says, voice softening a little with each word. “Your nose…your mouth.”

Okay, it’s usually supposed to be things around the room, but this works too.

“Three things you can feel?”

He blinks, eyes still fixed on you, and raises one hand to your cheek. “Your skin.” He leans closer, helplessly. His hand moves up to your hair, curling a lock of it around his finger. “Your hair…” his free hand drops to your waist, bunching in the fabric of your borrowed t-shirt. “Your shirt.”

“Your shirt, technically.”

He grunts, and buries his nose in your temple.

“Three things you can hear.”

“Your voice.” You hum in response, and he presses closer. “Your heartbeat. Your breathing.”

You nod, and reach up to wrap your arms around his broad shoulders. He holds you a little more tightly. “Your breathing is better, see?”

He nods, and pulls back to kiss you. It’s slow, hard and desperate, like he’s trying to memorize the feeling. You pull him closer, and he makes a soft noise against your lips before he lifts you up and carries you over to the counter.

“Do you feel better?” You ask against his lips, feeling his fingers push the hem of your shirt up so he can trace them over your skin.

“I’m still being framed.” He murmurs, pulling back to trail his lips over the line of your jaw. “It’s still bullshit.”

“I know.”

“You make it better.” His hands move up, higher, warming the bare skin of your back. “You make everything better.”

“Hell of a compliment.”

“I mean it.”

“Me too.”

You kiss him again, feel him press his body closer to yours until your fingers are moving up to fumble with the buttons of his dress shirt and his are sliding your t-shirt up over your head. Moving down to skate over the hem of your underwear.

“Bedroom?” You breathe, and he shakes his head, lips never leaving your body for a second as he lowers himself to his knees right there before the counter.

“Here.” He rasps, teeth scraping against the sensitive skin of your inner thigh, and pulls you to the edge of the counter in one sharp movement that has you locking your fingers in his cropped hair. “Please.”

“That’s my line, I think.” You’re breathless, his lips are trailing higher.

“No, it’s not.” His blue eyes are on yours, filled with something so much like worship that it halts your breath in your lungs. “It’s mine.”

-

“One more.”

The word is warm and sweet in your ear, a low hum paired with wandering hands and a soft, languid kiss to your jaw.

You snort, and you can feel him grin against your ear.

“I think one more will kill me.” You murmur, feigning misery, and his hand slides down over your hip, teasing. “Seriously, how do you have so much stamina?”

“Mm, it’s just you.” He murmurs, and trails his fingers over your stomach. “I can go all night.”

“We have gone all night.”

It’s been hours since he snapped in the kitchen, and your brain has become too mushy to even remember when the two of you migrated into his room. The problem with Dex’s…ability, is that he really never misses. He can take you apart almost embarrassingly quickly, immediately finding every spot and movement that has you seeing stars. And, with his obsessive personality, he has a tendency to try to one up himself. A lot. To see how many times he can make you fall apart until your legs are shaking and you’re spending the next day aching in all the best ways.

Which is why you’re pretty sure, even as his fingers find the apex of your thighs once more and he swallows your gasp with a smile against your lips, that he’s going to kill you. Death by too-many-orgasms has to be a thing, right?

“Dex…” you breathe, arching beneath him as your hands fly up to grasp at his muscled biceps.

“One more.” He repeats, the words a quiet rasp. “You can do it. Just give me one more. Please.”

How the fuck are you ever supposed to say no to him?

You kiss him, and he groans as he presses his body closer to yours.

One more turns into three more.

-

You can’t get a hold of Foggy. Or Karen.

Their names aren’t on the list of people who died at the Bulletin, so that’s something. Still, the chances of either of them being in the building during the attack are pretty damn high. And you don’t blame them for not answering. If they really were there, they must be fucking traumatized.

You would absolutely love it if one of them could pick up the damn phone, though.

Dex shows up around midnight, and you’ve already pulled on your jeans. Already grabbed your keys in preparation to run out the door and start banging on apartment doors. Hell, you might even go to the church Matt’s been hiding out in since he got back. Self-appointed recluse or not, you want answers. Before the news makes the information public, this time. There’s only so much information that hacking can give you, and if the cops and news outlets are currently scanning through the cameras for information of their own, it’s going to take a lot longer for you to find anything out than it will if your friends would just fucking talk to you.

“Hey, where are you going? What’s wrong?” Hands are on your shoulders, moving up to your cheeks, and you wonder if you look fucking insane with worry and confusion right now.

What the hell are you supposed to tell him? Oh yeah, Daredevil is my friend Matt. You know the one who died and kinda sorta came back? Have I mentioned him? Well apparently he’s gone fucking berserk and tried to kill Karen, but I’m absolutely fucking positive that it wasn’t him, which means that someone is out there murdering people in his old suit-

“I’ve…gotta go.” You say weakly, lamely, and start to pull back.

His hands tighten on you. Fast.

“Where? Where do you have to go?” He’s holding you surprisingly firmly, large arms locked around your body and making a frown curl your lips.

“Dex, let me go.” You can’t tell him. Of course you can’t. You have to figure this out on your own.

He doesn’t. In fact, he holds you even more tightly. “You can’t leave. You can’t leave me.”

“I’m-huh?” You turn to him, now, and blink in surprise at what you find. His eyes are dark. He looks like he’s sweating. Shit, he might be shaking. “Dex, what’s going on?”

“I need you here, okay?” He’s breathing a little strangely, hand smoothing up over your back with something like desperation. “I…you need to be here.”

You frown, and reach up to brush your fingers over his cheek. He closes his eyes, and leans into your touch.

“Okay. Hey, it’s okay.” He wasn’t able to help tonight. That’s it. He’s just been suspended. All of the order and structure he relies so heavily on is gone. You didn’t realize just how much it must be affecting him, and you feel like a shitty girlfriend for not immediately seeing just how off he is. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

He ducks down, fingers curling against your cheek and lips hovering over your own. “Tell me you need me.”

“Dex-“ you start, but his fingers slide into your hair and he backs you against the wall. It’s not aggressive, not quite, but it’s firm. Determined. Almost overwhelming in its desperation.

“Say it. Please.”

You frown, but reach up to wrap your arms around his neck. “I need you.”

He groans, and kisses you so hard your knees give out. He catches you, all-but scooping you into his arms as he traces his tongue over your lip and slides his arms around your waist.

You have to go find Foggy and Karen and Matt. You have to make sure they’re okay, and the four of you need to come up with some kind of game plan. Or, they do, and they’ll probably need your help because you just had to learn Matt’s secret. Just had to get mugged that night and recognize his voice. Just had to check security cameras and figure everything out and confront him about it.

So, with your particular skill set, and the information you have, they’ll probably need you, as outside of all this as you like to keep yourself. But Dex needs you more right now, and that matters more. You’ll get to the bottom of this mystery another time, when your boyfriend’s trembling hands aren’t pulling at your clothes and his lips aren’t trailing over your throat as he whispers your name like a prayer over and over again.

“What’s wrong?” You ask again, breathless and worried as he lifts you against the wall, as he wraps your thighs around his waist and curls his fingers against your skin hard enough that you worry it might bruise. You hope it does.

“You make it quiet.” He murmurs between kisses, tugging at your clothes until your shirt slides up over your head, discarded on the floor in a second. Messy. Disordered in a way that isn’t like him. “You make it all quiet. I need it to be quiet. Please.” His voice is shaking. Desperate.

You’re not quite sure what he means, but you nod anyway.

The moment you do, his body is pressing impossibly closer to yours. His lips are moving down your neck, kisses so rough and starved that you can feel his teeth scraping over your skin. His hands are tight on your body, hips rocking forward and making you gasp, and you can still hear the shakiness in his quickened breaths as he moves back up to kiss you so hard your head knocks lightly against the wall.

Your fingers move to the buttons of his shirt. His breaths are getting quicker. His grip is getting tighter.

“D-Dex.” You’re so breathless yourself that you can barely get his name out, but he doesn’t stop kissing you. Doesn’t slow his desperate movements until you finally reach up to pull his face away from yours.

His pupils are blown. His gaze is starved. He’s still shaking.

“Hey, stay with me.” You card your fingers through his hair, and kiss him slowly. Warmly. He doesn’t need rough and desperate right now. He needs reassurance. Grounding. Love.

He releases a shuddering breath, kisses you back, and nods as he rests his forehead against yours. “I’m here. I’m good.”

You nod, and as he carries you into the bedroom and lies you back on the mattress, you can see in his eyes that he’s telling the truth. He’s here. He’s with you.

He peels the rest of your clothing off slowly, trailing his mouth over newly exposed skin, and you do the same for him, barely able to keep your lips and hands off of him for a second.

It’s slow, and loving, and painfully intimate. He murmurs your name against your ear as he moves with you, and you drag your nails over his muscled back as you tell him how good it feels until he falls apart with a groan that almost sounds like a sob.

He holds you after, presses his lips to your forehead and trails his fingers over your body like he’s trying to memorize the feeling of you.

“Do you think I’m a good man?” His voice is low, quiet and vulnerable as he slides calloused fingers through your hair.

You look up, surprised by the question, and he holds you a little more tightly like he’s worried you’ll bolt.

“Of course.” You frown, reaching up to brush your own fingers over his cheek. He turns his face into your palm, kissing it once, and you turn his eyes back to yours. “You’re a good man, Benjamin Poindexter.”

He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, something raw and pained and full of hope, and tucks you closer to him like you’re the most precious thing in the world. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” You kiss his shoulder, and let your eyes fall closed. “You’re gonna be okay.”

And for a moment, as he breathes something like a sigh of relief into your hair, you think he believes you.

-

“I need you to listen to me, and listen carefully.”

“Oh, now the zombie hiding in the basement is making demands. It’s good to see you too, Matt. I’ve been great, how about-“

“The man in the daredevil suit is Special Agent Benjamin Poindexter.”

That shuts you up, right the fuck away. “Very funny.”

“I’m not joking. He’s working for Fisk. He’s killing for him, and framing me.”

You feel cold. “No, he’s not. He wouldn’t do that.”

Matt’s expression is intense, his words are low and pointed. Urgent. This is his stupid fucking Daredevil voice. “He would. And he is. Fisk has him convinced that doing this will keep you with him. You have the means and the skill to prove me right. I need you to do that, as soon as possible. You need to get as far away from him as you-“

“Stop.” You snap, holding up a hand you know he won’t see. He’ll feel it though, or whatever. “Stop, Matt. You have the wrong guy.”

“You know that’s not true, and we don’t have time for you to come to terms with it. You are in danger, and you need to-“

“It’s not him.” Your ears are ringing. Your voice sounds desperate. Angry, even. “He’s…he’s a little intense. He’s a little weird, sure. But he wouldn’t…he wouldn’t do that.”

Matt’s jaw tightens. He shakes his head.

“You look into it the way you know how. You know. You’ll see it.” Matt reaches to grab your shoulder, and you flinch back. He looks pained, like he’s genuinely worried and didn’t call you here after all this time to falsely accuse the man you love of mass fucking murder. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been here for you enough. For Foggy and Karen. But I’m here now. I can protect you now. And you need to stay away from him.”

You pull back, and shake your head again. “I…no. You have the wrong guy, Matt. He’s…you’re wrong. We’ll find who’s doing this, but it’s not Dex.”

“We can keep you safe. You can hide-“

“No.”

“Please. He’s unpredictable. He’s dangerous. He could kill you if he knows you know.”

“I don’t know. I know you’re…you’re wrong.” He is wrong. He has to be wrong. “I’ll find out who it is, okay? But it’s not Dex. Just…it’s not Dex.”

And yet…

No. No. It’s not possible. There’s no way.

Matt spends the next ten minutes trying to convince you, and you block all of it out. You refuse to listen. You tell him you’ll go home, and you’ll avoid Dex until you can find the proper evidence.

You lie. And as you walk out of the church into the suddenly too-bright, too-loud city, you wonder if… if he could…

Fuck. You need to get to your computer. You need to prove him wrong.

-

He killed Ray tonight.

It doesn’t bother him. That kind of thing never has. What bothered him was Nadeem talking about you.

“He’s lying. He’s using you. He’s using her.” Dex’s hands had tightened reflexively on his gun. “You think he’s gonna keep her safe? You think this is how she stays in your life? Whatever he told you, he’ll hurt her the second it’s convenient for him, and he’ll take you out too.”

“You need to stop talking about her, Ray.” Dex’s voice is low. Quiet.

“When she finds out, you think she’s gonna stay with you? You think Fisk is gonna make her stay with you? How does this plan of yours work, exactly?”

Yes. Of course. Whether Fisk needs to make it happen or not, you’ll stay with him. And it will be okay, because you love him. Sure, you’ll be upset, but he can make that better. He will make it better. All of it. Everything he does is to keep you happy. Keep you by his side. But for now, you don’t have to know anything. You can just be with him, and love him.

If you learn a little too much, learn about the darkness that lives inside of him, about the things he’s done, Fisk will do what he needs to do, what he promised, and make sure you stay. Simple as that.

And you’ll still love him, right? Right. You’re meant to be together.

The shot lands perfectly between his former friend’s eyes. And, once it’s all said and done, he goes home to you.

-

You’re on the couch when he walks through the door. You’re chewing on your nails. You’re staring at your computer screen.

So perfect. So beautiful. All his. Just like he’s all yours.

Like he has a hundred times before, he moves over to gently move the laptop out of your hands, leaning you back against the cushions with a smile that surely holds all of the affection that feels like it’s about to overwhelm him.

“What’re you doing?” He presses his lips to your nose, your cheek, your jaw.

You’re tense. Something’s bothering you. He can fix that.

“Looking something up.” You murmur, soft and hesitant. “Or…I should be. I can’t…make myself do it.”

He can see in his peripheral that your screen is blank. You’re still tense, and when he kisses you he can taste the faintest tinge of iron from where you were biting your lip.

You’re wearing his t-shirt. He moves to slide his hands under it, reveling in the softness of your skin, and presses another kiss to the shell of your ear. You relax, like you just can’t help yourself, and he smiles as he settles a little more comfortably atop you.

“Hm, you know you’re not supposed to tell me about any of your hacking stuff.” He jokes, but you don’t smile like you usually would. Don’t tease him back. “Might incriminate yourself a little too much. And you know there’s only one way I wanna see you in cuffs.”

You do smile now, though there’s something in your eyes that he can’t place. He wants to ask, but you kiss him and he forgets everything that isn’t you.

“Or, you know. Put me in cuffs.” And you hum, and smile a little more.

He peels your clothing off nice and slow, trailing his lips down to follow every movement. It’s warm, and safe, and soft and gentle in all the ways the rest of the world is not. You gasp his name, look into his eyes even as yours threaten to flutter closed, and he loves you so much it hurts. So intensely that he worries it might swallow him whole. He wants it to.

When it’s over, and he’s pressing his lips over your cheeks and nose again, heavy breaths matching your own, he tastes the saltiness of tears on your skin and pauses.

His brow furrows, and he pulls back.

You reach up, and smooth your thumb over his cheek. “You’re a good man.” You whisper, and you sound like you’re talking to yourself, but he melts anyway.

“I love you.” He breathes, and drags you closer so he can kiss you again. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” You murmur, and there’s never been so much of this strange emotion in your voice before. He can’t quite place it.

But you’re overwhelmed by your love for him, too. That’s all.

That’s all.

-

The worst part of it all is that you know you’re going to find it before you even bring yourself to open your computer.

And yet, it still feels like a punch to the fucking gut.

“Hello, Karen. It’s nice to see you again.”

You would recognize that voice anywhere.

It took you five minutes to get into the security cameras. Of the Bulletin. Of the church.

It took five more minutes for you to find all of the other evidence. The therapy sessions. The people he’s killed. The people he’s manipulated. Threatened. His lack of empathy. His obsessive behavior. His enjoyment of killing. Fuck, you even figure out that he was stalking you before you ever ran into him at that bar. You like to say, in your cockiest moments, that everything can be found online. Everything is documented even when people think it isn’t. You just have to look.

You didn’t look. In ten minutes, you found it all. In an hour, you’ve found too much for any excuse to ever work. For anything other than the truth to make sense.

And then, with perfect timing like the universe is making some sort of sick joke, Foggy Nelson tells you to come down to the old gym. He shows you Nadeem’s video, and you have to drag a trash can over so you can puke your guts up as the world drops from beneath your feet.

You cry silently. Curl in on yourself against the boxing ring while Foggy and Karen watch you, expressions filled with sympathy and guilt. Because they weren’t here. They didn’t check in on you. They let this get this far and it blindsided you because you were too wrapped up in stupid domestic bliss to even hang out with your friends like you should have.

Foggy’s hand comes down on your shoulder, comforting and kind. “Can you do it?”

You don’t look up from the phone screen even as you take it from his hand.

You nod.

-

“What are you-“

You aren’t supposed to be here. You aren’t supposed to be here. You aren’t-

Matt is gonna kill you, if Dex doesn’t do it first. And yet, you know without a shadow of a doubt that he won’t hurt you. Everyone else, maybe, but not you.

That doesn’t make him any less dangerous.

You grab his arm, and pull him outside with you, into the alley. It will be on camera. It will be obvious that you know, when Fisk sees it. But it doesn’t matter. None of that will matter soon, anyway.

His brow is furrowed, that look of frustration when he doesn’t have control of the situation tightening his features. After all, you did just show up to his work unannounced and drag him outside.

He reaches for you, and you step back.

“What the hell are you doing?” He asks, something in his face cracking a little. “Come here. Please.”

“Tell me it’s not true. Please, tell me it’s not true.”

Panic. Immediate, sharp panic. He knows. He knows you know. “Come here.”

“Dex.”

“It’s not true.” He says immediately, lies immediately, and reaches for you again. You back up again. “It’s not true. None of it’s true. Just-“

You pull out your phone, and play the video. Ray Nadeem’s confession. His eyes widen, and you already knew but the confirmation from him is fucking shattering.

“In three hours, it’s going out to every phone in the immediate area. To the cops. To the public. Everywhere. And if you kill me, it still goes out.” Your voice is tight, shaking. “You’re not gonna stop it.”

Dex tries to grab you now, not the phone, you, desperate. You jump back into the street. Into the public. Away from the dark alley and into the light of day.

“Don’t touch me. Do not fucking touch me.”

“Don’t do this.” He sounds dangerous now. You should probably be afraid of him. You’re going to fucking cry again and it hurts so bad you can’t think. You’ve never felt more stupid in your life. “Don’t you dare do this. Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me. You promised.” His hand catches your sleeve, and you rip it back.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Don’t leave me. Baby, don’t do this. You love me. I love you. We can-“

“What is this, fucking Barney?!” You snap, horror and shock making your voice shaky and shrill. “You’ve been murdering people.”

You’re fully in the street, now. You’re still shaking. He’s still approaching.

“If you come any closer, I’ll scream.” You mean it. He looks like he’s about to risk it. Like he’s moments away from covering your mouth and dragging you back into the alley. Into the shadows with him.

You turn, and walk away.

You hear him scream from a block away. It’s loud. Primal, even. It turns heads.

You keep walking.

-

He goes to prison that night. Matt defeats Fisk. You see it all on the news, from where you’re curled on the couch with tears drying on your cheeks.

He tried to kill Fisk at his wedding. Broke into the party in Matt’s Daredevil costume. It’s on the news. It’s on film.

He says your name before he starts killing people. Tells Fisk and Vanessa that the two of you wish them a world of happiness. You watch the clip. Newspapers call. You watch the clip again. You shut out the world.

It takes some time for you to leave your couch. Even longer to leave your apartment.

But time heals all wounds, even if they have to scab over and reopen a few too many times.

You meet Matt, Foggy and Karen at Josie’s on a Tuesday. They don’t mention it. You do. You apologize, and Foggy hugs you so tightly that your ribs creak.

And you heal. Slowly, surely, you heal.

Or at least, that’s what you tell yourself.

-

It’s a nice, normal Friday night.

Cherry’s retirement party is fun. You’re having fun. You’re laughing with Matt and Karen, listening to the laughter and jokes around you, teasing each other about Foggy’s attempts at hitting on Keirsten, and not thinking about Dex. Because you never think about Dex.

You don’t think about the way he made breakfast in the morning. Always so careful and precise. Always plating it perfectly like the act was a science, watching you when you ate it like he was either trying to figure out just how much you liked it or just…watching you. So much of him looking at you felt like he was basking in your mere presence.

Or the way he would leave on his way to work. Always the same pattern. The same habits. Wake you up with a kiss, get dressed, make breakfast, kiss you again on the way out the door.

The way he would smile at you like you hung the moon in the sky. The way he would hold you when you watched a movie on the couch. The way…

Warm lips against your temple. Your forehead. Your cheeks.

You hum, and feel Dex smile as his arm slides more tightly around you. “Morning.”

“S’the middle of the night.” You complain weakly, turning in his arms to hide your face in the warm skin of his chest.

“Five forty-five.” He murmurs, hand already coming up to slide through your hair. “Gotta get ready for work.”

“Play hooky.” You mumble, nuzzling closer, dreading the moment his warmth leaves the bed.

“Would if I could.” He means it, and you can tell, so you keep trying.

“You’re reinstated and promoted now…” you press a kiss to his collarbone, warm and slow and as tempting as you can make it. “Their apology should come in the form of as many days off as you want. Or going into work after dawn.”

His body relaxes a little. His hold on you tightens, like he’s thinking about it.

And then he sighs, and pulls back to press his lips against your forehead.

“I can’t.” He sounds so genuinely remorseful that you just might be falling in love with him all over again. Still, you plaster an exaggerated little pout on your face as you sit up.

“Goody two shoes.” You accuse, and if you were more awake you might think his laugh sounds a little…different. But he sits up with you, and kisses your neck, and wraps his arms around you again and any doubt or confusion flutters out of your mind as you melt into-

“Hey, you okay?”

Your eyes whip up, reflected in Matt’s glasses. You swallow. Smile. “Hm?”

“Your…” he lowers his voice, leans a little closer, “your heart is racing.”

Karen is looking at you, too closely, too kindly. You smile wider.

“I’m fine.” And you are. You’re fine. You’re absolutely, totally fine.

Ten minutes later, everything goes to shit.

Foggy goes outside. Matt hears something wrong. Karen follows You stay in the bar.

A gunshot outside. The bang of a flash grenade. The screams of panicked patrons.

You’re frozen for a moment, smoke and shock filling your lungs and fogging your mind. Gunshots. Screaming. The heavy sound of footsteps and-

“Hey, baby.”

A low, familiar growl of a voice, barely raised enough to be heard over the commotion but cutting through it all like a knife and zeroing your attention on the approaching figure.

Speaking of knives, you hear one whir through the air just before your wrist is slammed back against the wall, a blade attaching your sleeve to the surface with perfect precision. You reach up in a panic to remove it, only for another knife to slam your other arm back against the same wall. Neither blade comes close enough to even nick your skin, but you’re still completely trapped against the old wooden surface, eyes wide as Benjamin Poindexter stalks over to you like he has all the time in the world.

He’s wearing a mask, but you’d recognize his eyes anywhere. You’ve never seen them so fucking crazed.

“I missed you.” His hand is on your waist, large and gloved and firm even as you try to kick him away from you. He grunts, and halts your movements with a knee pressed between yours.

And then he rips off his mask, and kisses you. Hard. Rough. Tongue forcing its way past your lips and arm locking tight around your hip as his body presses against yours like it’s drawn there by a gravitational pull. It’s been so long, and you are most certainly in shock, but you can’t help the soft noise that pulls its way from your throat at the feeling. The way your toes curl a little at the rough sound he makes in response.

He reaches up, and pulls one of the knives out of your sleeve before throwing it towards Daredevil so quickly you almost miss it. He doesn’t even look. He keeps his gaze right on you.

The knife is deflected. Of course it is, because it’s fucking Matt, but Dex looks down at you, grins, and presses his lips to your cheek before pulling his mask back down just in time to be knocked to the ground.

The battle happens all around you, too quick for you to keep track of, and it takes you a good fifteen seconds to register that you need to get the fuck out of here.

The knife attaching your sleeve to the wall is in the wood so deep that you can’t get it out. You grunt in frustration, and finally rip your sleeve to free yourself. You think, vaguely, that you liked this jacket, before the sound of glass shattering makes you flinch and stumble back towards the door.

Your ears are ringing. You can’t think. You make it out into the street just in time to fall to your knees beside the body of your friend, nearly get trampled by people screaming and running and Karen is crying and you can’t think.

And Foggy Nelson dies on the sidewalk.

And, a few horrible moments of silence later, you hear a thud behind you.

And you don’t scream. You don’t cry. You still don’t even speak. Your clothes are stained with blood, and you can still taste the mint of Dex’s toothpaste on your tongue. Foggy dies, and Dex’s body just hit the pavement behind you.

You crawl to him in a haze of screams and the ringing of a thousand bells in your ears, and you can hear Karen sobbing behind you.

You think you might throw up. Or pass out. Or die right here next to Foggy Nelson and Benjamin Poindexter.

Dead. He’s dead. Oh God, Foggy isn’t breathing and now…and now Dex…he’s-

Blue eyes shoot open, wide and pained and crazed, and a gloved hand grabs your wrist. You didn’t even realize that you were touching him, hands shaking as they move over his body like you can fix it. Like you should even want to. Your palms sting. Knees, too. You think you scraped them on the pavement when you crawled over here.

“What did you do?” You ask, numb and confused and horrified, and Dex groans and presses his injured face into the pavement like the sound of your voice is the sweetest relief. His hand tightens on your wrist, relaxes, doesn’t let you go. “Dex, what did you do?”

-

ONE YEAR LATER

There is a deep, prominent scar on his cheek. He’s even larger than you remember. His eyes are different, like he’s allowed the illusion of control and sanity to shatter.

You’re here for Foggy. You haven’t seen Matt or Karen in almost a year. You are not here for Benjamin Poindexter.

But you’re here. Maybe you shouldn’t be, but you owe it to Foggy. To the other people this man has killed.

So many people. So many deaths. So many, because of you. And now Foggy, for reasons you still can’t understand.

The sentencing comes. The gavel is banged. You can’t hide your flinch at the sound. Dex’s eyes move right over to you, and lock in.

He smiles, eyes filled with a sick sort of love, and your fingers dig into your palms until your nails bite into the skin hard enough to draw blood.

They take him away, and he doesn’t stop smiling at you.

-

“He refuses to speak unless you’re in the room.”

Your fingers curl painfully tightly against your coffee cup. Your eyes fly up to Matt’s face.

“No.”

“I need information. We need information. He’ll be cuffed the entire time. He won’t touch you.”

“I’m not worried about that. I don’t want to speak to him.”

“They moved him to gen pop.”

You try to hide the way your heart pounds at the implication. You fail. And it’s Matt, so there’s no use pretending.

“Is…did they…” Gen pop. They’ll fucking kill him in there. Good, right? Someone like that shouldn’t be walking the Earth. He killed Foggy. He killed so many people.

“They will. He won’t last a week. Which means Fisk wants him dead.” Matt’s hand rests on the table before you, and he leans closer, adamant. “We need to know why. And then he can rot in prison until-“

“I want him out of gen pop.” You hate yourself so, so much for saying it that you feel like you’re going to be sick. “I want you to get him back in protective custody.”

Matt looks like you just slapped him across the face. You don’t blame him.

But he agrees. So you go. God help you, you go.

-

“Hi, baby.” His grin is fucking manic. His eyes are starved as they rake over you like he’s filing away every inch.

You glare, and sit down across from him. He leans forward, almost jerking in your direction, like he momentarily forgot about the cuffs in his desperation to touch you. Well, he’s not going to get to. Never again.

“You killed Foggy Nelson.”

“Your hair is longer.”

“You killed Foggy.”

“Do you think about it? The way it felt when I touched you again?”

“Shut up.”

“I’ve thought about it every minute. You tasted just like I remember.” His tongue darts out, smile lopsided as he traces it over his lip, eyes raking over you again so intensely that ice trickles down your spine in a way you really wish was unpleasant. “I wonder what else tastes just like I remember.”

You slap him, the sound cracking through the room, and his head whips to the side. His smile doesn’t fall.

“Do it again.”

“Fuck you.”

“Get me out of these cuffs, baby, and I will.”

“If you think I’ll ever, ever let you touch me again, you’re more fucked in the head than I thought.”

His smile cracks. Falls a little. His eyes darken. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Why did you kill Foggy Nelson?”

“You still love me.”

“No. I don’t.”

“You’re lying.” He’s still looking at you, intensely enough that you have to fight the urge to squirm. “Say it.”

“Fuck. You.”

His head rolls back, like those two words were a confession on their own. “Fuck, I missed your voice.”

“You said you’d speak if I came here. Answer me.”

“Do you remember our three month anniversary?” He asks, unbothered, and you want to throw something at him. Cuffs or not, the asshole would probably catch it. “Chinese food on the couch. The first time I told you I loved you.” Pain twists in your chest at the memory, and Dex leans forward when he sees it, another horrible smile curling on his lips. “I took my time with you that night. I had you making these noises, do you remember? These high pitched, sweet little begging sounds.” His fingers tap absentmindedly against the arms of his metal chair, and your face bursts into flames. “Think about them every night, but you know it doesn’t compare to the real thing.”

“You’re trying to get in my head.”

“I’m already in your head. Just like you’re in mine. We’re connected, forever.”

“Did you kill Foggy to punish me?”

He frowns, eye twitching a little when you refuse to give in. “No. But you shouldn’t have left me.”

“So what? Are you gonna kill me if you get out? Are you gonna kill me now?”

He looks genuinely pissed that you would even suggest something like that, jaw clenched and fingers flexing on the metal table again. “When I get out of here, I’m not going to hurt you.” The intensity of his gaze makes your blood feel cold. “But you’re not leaving me again. Ever.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“I do. I already have.”

“Fuck this.” You push yourself to your feet, the metal chair scraping against the floor like a gunshot. Like the shot that killed Foggy. Fired by the man in front of you. “Fuck you.”

That gets to him. “You’re not leaving. We’re not done.”

“We’re done.” You lean over the table, eyes hard as they look into his. His hands are already struggling against the cuffs locking him to the chair. “We’re done, Dex.”

“I haven’t seen you in a year. You can’t walk out like this.”

“And you’re not gonna see me for another eleven life sentences.”

His voice is a low, violent growl. “Don’t say that.”

And, because you’re a fucking idiot, you do exactly what you told yourself you wouldn’t do.

They confiscated your phone when you came in here. They didn’t confiscate your watch.

One button. One stupid thing you set up in anticipation for this meeting. That you promised you wouldn’t use. And yet, reckless fool that you are, you knew you would.

The security camera light flickers off.

Dex notices immediately, and the hunger that burns in his eyes and curls on his lips lights something aflame in your stomach that you don’t want to think about. Not right now.

You lean both arms on either armrest of his chair. His hands jerk against the cuffs, still trying to reach for you.

You lean closer. You don’t break eye contact. His mouth moves up to chase yours, and you pull back just enough to pull a frustrated grunt from his throat.

“If you ever, come anywhere even close to the people I love again…” you whisper, leaning in so your lips are close enough to his ear that he moans and tilts his head to the side, like he’s silently begging you to rip his throat out with your teeth. “I will kill you myself. Do you understand me, baby?”

For a moment, the thrill of it all makes you forget just how stupid you were for this. Just how dangerous this man is.

And then, as if to remind you himself, you hear a pop. A sharp, pained intake of breath.

Your eyes drop down to Dex’s right hand, just in time to see him slide it out of the cuff.

The crazy motherfucker dislocated his own thumb.

You jerk back, but Dex is faster. Of course he’s fucking faster. His arm locks around your middle, yanking you down onto his lap hard enough to pull an ‘oomph’ from your chest, and his breath is hot on your neck as you squirm against him.

“Shhh, shh.” His rough voice is too soft. You turned off the cameras. You’re a fucking idiot. Something hotter and more intense than panic shoots through your veins, and your breath catches in your throat. “I’ve got you.”

“That’s the problem.” You gasp, but his hand comes up to the back of your head, fisting in your hair and pulling you back so he can look at you.

“I did it for you.” He whispers, reverent. “I bought my freedom with it. For you.”

And then he kisses you, rough and hard, and your attempts to shove him off are met with nothing but a low and hungry growl.

There’s a moment, brief but painfully there, where the feeling of sparks lighting down through your blood is too overwhelming. Where his lips moving against yours is too familiar. Where you kiss him back, and his groan is nothing short of victorious as he wraps his arm more tightly around you.

And then the door opens, and he doesn’t let go. You sink your teeth into his lip, and bite down hard enough to draw blood. He moans shamelessly, but holds you tighter.

It takes two guards to get you out of his vice-like grip. His lip is bleeding. You can taste the iron of his blood. He’s smiling. Wide.

It’s only when the guards start pulling you toward the door that his smile falls, like he hadn’t expected that. Like he hadn’t even considered that you would be leaving again.

“No. Don’t take her. Stop it.” He snaps, as two more guards force his hand back into the cuff. “Don’t take her from me again. Stop it!”

They close the door behind you, and you wipe his blood from your lip with the back of your shaking hand as his scream echoes through the prison.

-

“You didn’t do it. You didn’t help him.”

Matt turns to you, and you can feel the surprise emanating from his very being at the sound of your voice. Here. At this fancy gala to celebrate the esteemed mayor.

“What are you doing here?” He asks. Deflection. And then, concern. “Have you slept?”

No. No, you haven’t. But you’re not going to tell him that. That ever since you went to that prison your thoughts have been more consumed by him than ever. That every beat of your heart has been chanting Dex, Dex, Dex and it’s getting more and more difficult to tell yourself that it’s because you want answers.

And you have them, now. Because you couldn’t help it. You couldn’t ignore it anymore.

“I did it for you.”

“It’s not exactly an invitation you can refuse.” Your dress is uncomfortable. Your heels hurt your feet. You can feel eyes on you from all around the fucking room and you’re going to crawl out of your skin. “And yes. I’ve slept.” You don’t care that he knows that you’re lying.

“I-“ he’s going to come up with an excuse, an apology, but Dex is probably already dead. You’ll probably be dead soon, too. So what’s the fucking point? What’s the point of being subtle? Of trying to be careful, anymore? You weren’t careful when you looked into all of this. You didn’t cover your tracks, and you know. You know it all. And they know you know. You’ll be in the ground in a week at best.

“It was Vanessa. She was in charge of his businesses. She did it.” You don’t even lower your voice. You’re exhausted, and you’re hurting, and you’re angry, and who fucking cares anymore?

Matt grabs for your arm, already beginning to steer you away from watching eyes and listening ears. You pull back, whirl to face him. “Stop. They know I know. They know what I do. That’s why I’m here. They’re probably gonna kill me too, tonight.”

For a moment, you think Matt Murdock might actually be speechless. You just keep talking.

“It’s fine. It’s a long time coming, right?” You run a hand through your hair, and your smile is a pained and humorless thing. “Do you know how many people have been killed, just from me loving him? Because he loved me too, and they used it to manipulate him?”

And Matt is still looking worried, still bothered that people might hear you. But who fucking cares?

“But it’s fine, right? At least the ‘weapon of mass destruction’ who did it is rotting in a prison morgue now. He didn’t deserve help. I didn’t deserve to ask for it. Not for him.”

Matt’s hand is on your arm. You want to cry, but you’ve cried all night and the tears won’t come anymore. You’ve cried so many tears for him. Maybe that makes you a monster, too.

“Keep it down.” Matt says, hand tightening on your arm, but you ignore him.

“I know everything, too. Do you know how many pills he was on in that prison, when she got to him? The inside of his body was a fucking pharmacy. I saw the signature. He couldn’t even hold the pen right.”

Matt Murdock’s jaw twitches. He looks right at you, through his glasses, and you can feel his unseeing gaze on your face. “He still did it.”

He’s right. He did. But-

“You don’t know him. He…he doesn’t think like other people. They got to him. They did this.” Matt opens his mouth, and you raise a hand. “I’m not an idiot. He did it too, okay? He did it. But…” and your exhausted eyes rise to the dance floor, and it all makes sense.

Fisk took everything from you. From so many people. Foggy is dead. Dex is dead. And they’re dancing and smiling like this is the happiest day of their fucking lives. They don’t care. Sure, you don’t care. You’re numb. You’re hurting and confused enough that you don’t care what happens to you, but them… these people did all of this, and they’re happy about it.

“They did this.” You murmur, just to yourself, and start to move forward.

Matt catches you, hard. Fast. In one smooth move, he twirls you onto the dance floor, deflecting your momentum and still trying to fucking cover for you.

“You’re delirious.” He says, voice low and grip tight. “You’re acting irrationally. Don’t-“

But you’ve made it close enough. Just close enough to hear what Buck says to Fisk, quiet and serious but very much audible over the din.

“Benjamin Poindexter killed three guards and escaped prison.”

The world narrows. The floor tilts beneath your feet. Matt holds you upright, and you barely register what he’s saying over the rapid beat of your heart.

Dex. Dex. DexDexDex-

“We have to get you out of here.” Matt’s voice by your ear, his feet already beginning to move you away. You blink, too shocked and…relieved to even force your own feet to move. “He’ll be coming for you.”

Alive. Alive. DexDexDexDex-

You may not have Matt’s senses, but you swear you hear the click of the gun at the same time his head whips up to face the balcony.

“Not me.” You whisper, eyes on the dark shape above you. The dark, achingly familiar shape of a man who should be dead.

And the gunshot launches the party into chaos.

Matt. Matt just jumped in front of the fucking bullet and you’re trying to get to him but you’re being dragged away by the crowd, nearly carried off in the commotion and panic as people rush to the door. You almost fall at one point, stumbling in your heels and nearly getting trampled before you’re saved by the arm of some kind civilian, and by the time you make it back into the ballroom to where the paramedics are crowding around your friend you can’t see the shape on the balcony anymore.

You reach towards Matt, and something on your wrist catches your eye. A small etching of marker on your skin that definitely wasn’t there before.

A bullseye.

-

Hours later, you climb the stairs to your apartment, aching and tired and knowing damn well what you’re going to find.

You spent every free minute tracing the bullseye on your skin with the tip of your finger, sitting in the hospital waiting room and listening to the beat of your own heart.

Alive. Alive. Dex. Alive. Dex. Dex. Dex.

The power is still out. You’re exhausted. There’s still blood on your dress.

Matt begged you not to go home, but he would find you anyway. Anywhere.

There’s a bullseye painted on the door of your apartment. Small, but noticeable. Right above the handle.

You drop your keys on the counter. Loud. No use in trying to hide.

“You moved.”

“Yeah.” You say, voice steadier than it should be. “My boyfriend ended up being a serial killer.”

“I don’t really fall under that definition.”

You hum, casual, and move to the dingy fridge in the open kitchen. Pull out a bottle of wine.

“You look tired.”

“You’re missing a tooth.” You pop the cork with your teeth. Take a swig right from the bottle. “You gonna kill me now?”

“Stop saying that.” It’s still dark, you still can’t see much more than his silhouette, but the words sound like they’re gritted out through his teeth. “I love you.”

“I trusted you.” You grit your own words out, fingers tightening on the bottle.

“You still can.”

You take another swig, and lean against the counter. “Now that’s funny. Didn’t know they taught comedy classes in prison.”

“I thought about you every day. Every minute.” His boots thud against the hardwood, and you turn before he can reach you.

“Funny. I thought about Foggy.”

“That sounds hard. Really-“

“Shut the fuck up.” And now, you have to stall. You have to find your phone, and dial Matt’s number. Or reach one of the panic buttons you installed that will call him. With the power out, there’s a pretty good chance neither of those things will work anyway. “Get out.”

“You don’t really want me to.” It sounds like a plea, beneath the roughness of his words. “You still love me.”

You pull out your phone. It flies out of your hand in a second. Shatters against the wall. You jump back.

“Was that a fucking knife?”

“Bottle cap. I don’t wanna cut you.”

“But you’ll shoot at me.” Well, not at you, but you know mentioning it will bother him.

“I would never in a million fucking years-“

“You. Killed. Foggy.”

“And we’ll work past it, baby. We can work past it.” And there he is, turning you in his arms and walking you back until your lower back hits the counter. His breath is warm, ghosting over your lips, and you hate how your body responds to it.

“You’re delusional.”

“You want me. Say it. Please.” Too close. Too close. His hand is wrapping around the wine bottle, pulling it from your grasp and raising it to his own lips. The moonlight spilling in through the window illuminates the lines of his face, so agonizingly familiar. So beautiful.

You reach up like a woman possessed, and brush your fingers over the scar on his cheek. He groans, and leans into your touch.

In a blink, your other hand whips up, and you press the blade of a kitchen knife to his throat.

He smiles, and you wonder if he’s always been this crazy. He leans forward, letting the blade dig into his skin to brush his lips over yours again, and now you genuinely wonder if he would let you do it.

“I should kill you.”

“I’d let you.” He murmurs, a truly sick confirmation, and your hand is trembling and you hate yourself for it. “But you won’t.”

“I don’t have Daredevil’s moral code.”

“No.” His mouth closes over yours, just enough to feel his teeth scrape against your bottom lip. “You love me.”

“I don’t.” But your voice catches on the word, and your hand shakes more, and he’s bleeding and he doesn’t seem to care.

You pull the knife away, and his fingers curl around yours on the handle, guiding your hand to lower it onto the counter beside you.

“You asked Murdock to get me out of gen pop.” He hums, still so close that you can feel his heartbeat against your own. “Didn’t work, but I appreciate the thought.” The confirmation. “Helped me get back to you.”

“I didn’t want you to get back to me.”

“Liar, liar.” He murmurs, teasing and soft, and kisses you again. These kisses are nothing like the last couple of times, so rough and nearly violent with their desperation. No, these kisses are brief and soft, gentle presses of his lips against yours between words like he can’t help himself.

“I thought you were dead.” You don’t mean to say it. You don’t mean to acknowledge it. “Matt left you to die.”

“And you mourned me.” Another kiss. Slower this time. More lingering. You need to pull away from him. You need to shove him the fuck off of you. This is so wrong. So fucked up. He has killed so many people. Lied so many times. He’s fucking batshit insane. “I saw you. You were about to confront Fisk. For me.”

“I don’t know what I was gonna do.” You breathe, and your eyes are already falling closed. Your body is giving in to him like it doesn’t belong to you. Your heart is still beating heavy in your throat.

Dex. Dex. Dex. Dex.

This time, you lean up and press your lips to his. Wrap your arms around his neck. Tangle your fingers in his hair and devour him. He makes a noise that’s almost akin to a whimper against your mouth, his own hands flying up to your face to angle your head so he can kiss you fucking breathless.

You bite at his lip. Pull at his hair like you’re trying to punish him for how much you want this. How much you missed him. How fucking good this feels.

He moans, lifts you onto the counter and presses his body up against yours like he can’t get close enough. Cradles the back of your head and all but sobs into your mouth when you whimper and kiss him hard enough that his teeth click against yours.

You hear a soft, metallic noise, and feel cool metal on your thigh as Dex slices through the fabric of your bloodstained dress to allow himself more room to press his large body between your legs, the prison guard uniform digging into your burning skin and making you arch against him.

You slide your hand over his neck, thumb digging into the thin cut beneath his chin. His moan vibrates through your entire body, and you smear the blood over his throat as you angle his head to pull him closer to you.

His hand slams into the cupboard by your head like he’s trying to brace himself, the fingers of his free hand gripping your hair so tightly you see stars, blunt teeth digging into your lip like a silent and desperate plea for more.

“Say my name.” He whispers, rough, and you don’t. You fucking moan his name, a sound you’ve never heard from yourself before ripping its way from your chest and making him shake as he releases you to rip his gloves off like separation between your skin is physically burning him.

He doesn’t leave you for long, warm fingers sliding up your thigh and trailing sparks in their wake until you’re trembling against him. Until you’re gripping the back of his head and yanking him down to kiss you again. His fingers slide higher. Higher. Until they’re curling in the waistband of your underwear and every kiss comes on a swallowed and ragged breath.

You nod your consent, fingers curling even more tightly against his scalp, and he kisses you again. You hear the click of the knife, feel the flat end of the blade slide up your thigh again, and can’t find the words to complain as he slices your underwear from your body.

When his long, skilled fingers reach the apex of your thighs, and he feels just how desperate you are for him, the noise that rips from his throat sounds like the most fucked up prayer that’s ever been uttered.

“Fuck.” He pulls back, presses his nose against your temple, and when his fingers immediately find the spot that has you fucking whining you hear a breathless chuckle against your ear.

“Never miss.” He whispers, cocky and infuriating and agonizingly intimate in the dark apartment, and you’re going to fucking kill him.

Kill. Kill.

All those people. Father Lantom. Nadeem. Foggy.

Clarity rips back into you like a fucking car crash. Like a bolt of lightning. It freezes your burning blood, rises to your throat, and makes you shove him so hard his back hits the wall across from you with a dull thud.

You’re just as breathless as him, and his eyes are on fire as they look into yours. As they rake over you, slow and hungry, and he doesn’t even try to catch his breath even as he realizes why you pushed him away.

“Why?” He asks, but he knows. He knows and he’s goading you and you need to make yourself-

“I hate you.” It is the least convincing sentence you have ever uttered. You’re still breathless, still flushed with need, still spread out on your kitchen counter with his name lingering on your kiss-swollen lips.

Slowly, without looking away from you, he raises his fingers to his mouth, and your next breath catches on a whimper at the sight.

He moves forward at the sound, and your foot flies up to stop him, heel digging into his chest.

Something flashes in his eyes. Something you can’t place. You don’t know what’s in your own expression, but you see him scan it. Watch the breath shudder out of his chest as his hand rises up to trail lovingly over your calf.

And then, scarred and beautiful and illuminated by moonlight, he drops to his knees.

Benjamin Poindexter looks up at you like he’s worshipping at your fucking altar, and refuses to look away from you as his lips press against the skin below your knee.

“Stop it.” You try. You really do.

He shakes his head, and blunt nails drag down over your thigh as he moves closer. Kisses higher. Keeps his eyes locked on yours as he guides your heel over his shoulder.

“Dex.” It’s supposed to be a warning. It comes out as a plea.

And then he’s right where you need him, on his knees before you with your hands gripping at his hair and his fingers digging into your thighs to keep you in place, and it feels so good that your eyes are watering with something between pleasure and emotion so intense it’s going to drown you.

Your hand leaves his hair, flying up to scramble for purchase on the creaky old cupboard behind your head as Dex doubles his efforts like he’s desperate to pull more noises from you. He moans into you, gripping you more tightly as your heel digs into his back, and your hand leaves the cupboard to slap over your mouth as a near-wail of pleasure echoes off the walls. It doesn’t do much. Doesn’t muffle your helpless noises nearly enough, and before long Dex is sliding his large hand up your body to pull your palm away from your mouth, fingers tangling with yours as his too-skilled tongue turns your blood to lava in your veins.

You fall apart in minutes, shattering with a sharp gasp of his name as your thighs tremble and your nails dig into his scalp. He pulls back like it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, resting his head against your thigh and staring up at you with a breathless smile on his lips and you want to hate him so badly it hurts.

But you pull yourself off of the counter, slide onto his lap and kiss him hard as you fumble blindly with the belt of his stupid fucking prison guard uniform, and before you know it he’s rolled you onto your back and you’re ripping his shirt open as he hikes your ruined dress up over your hips and-

“Tell me you want this.” He rasps, low against your ear, and when you nod emphatically he grabs your chin and turns your face towards his. “Tell me.”

“I want this.” It’s a sick, horrible confession, but it’s true. “I want you.”

He groans, like it’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever heard, and his first thrust hits home and your moan is loud enough to wake the neighbors.

“I love you.” He breathes against your lips, as you scramble at him like a wild fucking animal, desperate for more. “I love you.”

You won’t say it back. You can’t say it back. This is already fucked up beyond belief.

He holds you like he’s trying to touch every inch of you at once, lips trailing down your jaw until every near-whimper is vibrating against your ear. You can’t stop touching him, either. You yank at his open button-up shirt so hard you hear it rip, until he moves to help you pull it the rest of the way off of him, bracing himself against the floor beside your head and rolling his hips into yours until you’re sobbing his name on every breath.

When you break for a second time, your nails are dragging thin red marks down the skin of his back. He doesn’t stop. He keeps going, keeps relentlessly hitting that spot inside you until the pleasure builds up all over again and it is fucking unbearable.

“Dex.” You manage to gasp, mindless, head rolling back against the floor as he bites at your shoulder and speeds up his movements until you’re practically sobbing.

“One more.” He growls, low and rough and just as wrecked as you are. “Give me one more.”

The third time, he’s right there with you, pressing his nose into the hollow of your throat with a groan of your name that burrows its way into your very bloodstream. Locks itself in your soul and becomes just as much a part of you as the color of your eyes and the bones beneath your skin.

It takes a long time for you to come back to earth. Longer for Dex to pull himself away from you, just enough to roll onto his back and tug you into his side.

“I love you.” You whisper, like a shameful confession, and he shudders like the sound of it is a drug and he’s more than happy to relapse.

He pulls you closer. You rest your cheek against the sweat-damp skin of his chest. Try to even out your breathing as he cards his fingers through your hair.

You have to go. You have to get out of here. Fisk is gonna be coming for you soon.

He grunts, and you make a soft noise as he sits up and gathers you into his arms, drags himself to his feet and carries you into your bedroom.

Everything is so different, now. Dex is a killer. A monster. Your life has been flipped upside down and shaken like a damn snowglobe. You’re probably going to be assassinated soon.

And yet, as Dex helps you out of your ruined dress, skating his fingers and lips over the newly exposed skin, and reaches into your dresser drawer, it’s all so familiar that you ache.

He digs to the bottom, and his grin is triumphant as he pulls an old FBI t-shirt out. His T-shirt. The one you couldn’t bring yourself to throw away.

He slides it over your head, presses a kiss to your cheek, and smiles a little wider when you relax.

And then, when he’s cleaned you up and pulled you into the rest of your pajamas, he smooths out the sheets behind you like a ritual before he lays you down atop them, sliding his body over yours and kissing you until you melt into your cheap comforter.

You make love again. You don’t think either of you even mean to. It isn’t as desperate as the first time, not nearly as mindless and rough, but his kisses deepen and he slides his scarred hand down your back until he’s shifting you beneath him, murmuring a quiet plea against your throat as his fingers tug at the waistband of your shorts that you respond to with another emphatic nod. And then he’s sliding them off, and you’re unbuttoning his pants again, and his tongue is tracing silent sonnets over your skin until you’re writhing against him.

He doesn’t tease, but he still seems to savor every second. He nudges your knees apart with his own, and pushes into you with a groan of your name. He moves with you like the tide, builds you until the wave crests and whispers praises against your ear as it crashes through you. You kiss him, tell him how good it all feels, and he tells you he loves you until he’s hoarse with it.

When it’s over, and you’re lying together in the rumpled sheets and he’s breathing shakily against your forehead and holding you like you might vanish at any moment, you finally speak again.

“We’re not back together.” You mumble, and he hums like you just told him the sky is purple but he couldn’t care less. Like it’s such a ridiculous lie that he may as well indulge it for now.

You frown, but you don’t double down. There’s no point, really. You know him. You know he’s not letting you go anywhere.

“How do I fix it?” He finally asks, and your brow furrows as you sit up a little to look at him.

“What?”

“How do I make you forgive me? For Fog-“

Your hand flies up to cover his mouth as if of its own accord. The movement surprises even you.

“Don’t say his name.” You snap, pain curling in your stomach. Guilt, too. But not enough. You’re lying naked in bed with the man who killed one of your best friends, and you don’t feel guilty enough, and you hate yourself for it. “You still don’t get to say his name.”

He looks at you. Nods. You pull your hand back, and he chases your lips with his own.

He kisses you. You kiss him back. You keep trying to hate yourself for it.

“What do I do?” He asks again, and he looks so earnest that you want to die.

You don’t know what crosses your face. What expression is in your eyes, but his own melt into a look of pure desperation.

It takes you a while to speak, and even when you do, the words spill unpracticed and quiet from your lips.

“He was good.” You whisper, and grief tugs at your stomach with enough force to nearly cripple you. “Foggy was so…good.”

“You said I was good, once.” Dex murmurs, brow twitching a little in that way it does when he’s trying to understand something.

“I did.” You reach up, hesitate, and give in. Your fingers trace over the scar on his cheek. “I think…I think you can be. You can be good.”

He melts. He turns his cheek into your palm, looks at you like you are both heaven and earth and everything in between. “I’ll be anything you want. I’ll do anything for you.”

Your heart crumples, and you see it. You shouldn’t, and you’re fucked up for it, but you see it. You see how he thinks. How he is. How he’s been manipulated and hurt and how he’s hurt others and you still fucking love him.

“I want to kill Fisk.” You whisper, like it hurts, and he reaches up to curl a lock of your hair around his finger like you just admitted nothing more intense than liking sugar in your coffee. “I want them both dead. And I don’t want it…I don’t want it for the right reasons, I think.”

“Why do you want it?”

“Revenge.” You whisper. “The greater good, yeah, but revenge. They killed Foggy. They hurt you. I want them to die for it.”

“Hm.” He slides his hand up your back, palm flat and warm, and turns his nose into your cheek. “If I help you kill them…it balances the scales.”

You frown. “It-“

“A good deed, to make up for the bad. Right?” He presses a kiss to your ear, and your eyes fall closed. “It balances out. You’ll forgive me.”

“I can’t forgive you.” You can’t. You shouldn’t. You won’t.

Even if you understand how his mind works. How he was tricked and manipulated and taken advantage of. Even if you understand him.

You pull back, look into his eyes, and the look on his face breaks something inside of you. The desperate hope. The need.

“We’re probably gonna have to move tomorrow. Fisk definitely wants me dead.” You murmur, and brush your lips over his.

He smiles. “We’ll move.” We. You and him.

“If we do this, you don’t do it for me. I’m not making you do anything.”

“I do everything for you.” He says, matter-of-fact, and closes the distance enough to peck you on the lips. “But okay. Let’s kill ‘em all.”

-

“Such a sweet boy.” The old woman across the hall is absolutely enamored with Dex, or should you say ‘Tony’. Sometimes you think he’s enjoying it a little too much. Especially now, as he crouches down to slide a fried egg into her cat’s bowl. “And what are you two up to?”

“Takin’ the missus to lunch.” He answers smoothly, sliding his arm around your waist and pressing a kiss to the side of your head. You smile brightly, and endure a few more minutes of cooing and fawning before making your way down the hall. He keeps his arm around you the whole time, humming absentmindedly as you make your way out into the street.

“You have got to stop telling her we’re married.” You chastise, and he doesn’t let you go even as he flips a coin behind him into a homeless man’s cup.

“I didn’t.”

“You just called me ‘the missus’.”

He’s smiling, a little too proud of himself. “Could mean anything.”

You still insist that you’re not back together. He still allows you to, but he seems to find it more amusing than bothersome. Which, you suppose, is understandable. After all, you woke up in his arms just this morning, like you do every morning. And, like you do most nights, you spent the majority of the evening moaning his name.

But fuck, he’s like a drug to you. You tried so, so hard to hate him. To pretend like he was a monster. Maybe he is, but maybe you are too.

Because whatever Benjamin Poindexter is made of, it calls out to something intrinsic within you. He knows it, and he’s just waiting for you to admit it.

You don’t know if the spring in his step and the smile on his face is from your activities last night or anticipation of what’s about to happen, but you would say it’s safe to blame both as he holds the door of the diner open for you with an exaggerated chivalry. And, because it’s him and he’s an asshole, he makes you yelp as you walk ahead of him with a playful swat to your ass.

You glare. He smiles, and leads you to the counter.

“You two ready to order?”

The woman behind the counter looks tired. Dex smiles like he’s been practicing how to, sweet and with his eyes crinkled in the corners. Sometimes, when you look at him, scarred and huge and absolutely fucking bonkers, you wonder how much he’s changed since you bumped into him on the street all that time ago. How much you’ve changed.

“My wife and I will have a…banana milkshake, then.” He grins at you, and it is so annoyingly hard not to smile back. “Does that sound good, sweetheart?”

You snort. “Sounds perfect, darling.”

His fingers come up, catching your chin and turning your head to him so he can press a soft, smiling kiss to your lips.

“Cute. I’ll be right back with that.” The woman says blandly, disappearing behind the counter as Dex pulls back.

“Menace.” You accuse, and he pats your cheek before he pulls out his phone.

He makes the worst, least convincing phone call you’ve ever heard. So unconvincing, in fact, that you almost giggle as he says “oh shit, he’s got a gun” in the most monotone voice you’ve ever heard. His eyes don’t leave you for a second. They rarely do. Like when you’re near, he’s locked in on a target.

Then again, hasn’t it always been that way?

You did the research. You did the tracking. All you have to do now is wait.

Dex unwraps two straws, carefully places them both in the milkshake, and leans down to take a sip.

You smile at him, roll your eyes, and lean down to the other straw.

You swear, in moments like this, that his eyes could be little cartoon hearts. He doesn’t stop smiling. Doesn’t look away. And shit, if you don’t feel like baby bluebirds could be tweeting around your own head. Like you’re the only two people in the whole world. Cue the cheesy, romantic music. Cue the world vanishing around you until it’s just you and him in this diner, smiling like idiots and sharing a milkshake.

You glance down at your phone. Watch him finish the milkshake. “Forty five seconds.”

He grunts, calm and relaxed, and starts pulling on his gloves. Pulls a toothpick out of the cup beside you.

“Aren’t you gonna tell me to take cover?” You hum, and the corner of his mouth rises even higher.

“No one’s gonna touch you.” You believe him, and you like that he acknowledges that you know what you’re doing.

“Everybody get on the ground!”

You throw your hands in the air, view blocked by Dex’s large frame, and shriek like a dramatic damsel in a movie.

His shoulders shake once. A silent laugh.

“Too much?” You ask, just as they shout again and come closer.

A toothpick finds its home in the ATVF officer’s eye, and all hell breaks loose.

You climb onto your chair, just in time for Dex to push you over the counter. You land with a roll, and in a second he’s on top of you, hands over your head and body covering yours.

“That was a really great milkshake.” He mumbles almost conversationally as the bullets slow, and you reach up to pull his mask the rest of the way down for him before he climbs off of you and snatches up a handful of silverware.

You manage to get to your feet just in time to watch three officers fall with forks sticking out of their eyes. Unfortunately, it’s also just in time for another man to grab you and press the barrel of a gun to your temple.

“Stand down!” He shouts, right by your ear, and digs the barrel in harder. Deeper.

Dex turns, and tilts his head.

“Ow.” You pat the arm wrapped around your throat. “Wrong move, dude.”

He screams as a fork impales the back of his hand, and you feel two more whir past you before they find their homes in his face. Not kill shots. Not yet. When you turn, he’s moaning on the ground with cutlery sticking out of his cheek and eye.

You tuck yourself into a booth as the rest of the men go down, bullets and weapons finally coming to a stop. Heavy bootsteps land beside you, and Dex pulls his mask off as the man in front of you trembles and clings to a tiny dog in his lap.

“Dogs in restaurants are unsanitary.” He says, genuinely perplexed but not quite annoyed.

“P-Please don’t kill me.” The man whimpers. Dex smiles in that unnerving way he has, and you smile too as you grab a bottle of ketchup off of the table.

“Don’t worry.” He takes your hand, stands you up with him, and throws a final pair of forks behind him to slam home into the retreating form of the man who just held the gun to your head. “We’re the good guys.”

You draw a bullseye on the door. He kisses the side of your head as you make your way out of the diner, stepping carefully over shattered glass with the sound of sirens wailing down the street.

-

ONE YEAR EARLIER

“This is no way to live, Benjamin.”

Vanessa Fisk sits across from him. He tries to focus on her. On anything. His mind has been scrambled since he was checked into this place. The cocktail of pills they have him taking every day makes it hard to think.

But you’re still there. You. You. You.

He lies in his bed at night, stares at the ceiling and blinks like his eyes are weighed down by anvils, and if he focuses hard enough he can almost feel your head on his chest. Almost feel your soft hair against his nose. Maybe your fingers tracing over his skin, soothing and warm.

Your voice, lips barely brushing his own. “You’re a good man, Dex…”

And he’ll reach up, searching for you, wanting to pull you to him and feel your body against his. Wanting you so badly that the pain is overwhelming.

And there’s nothing there. And the room is cold.

“I miss you.” He’ll murmur to the darkness, tongue heavier than his eyelids. And he won’t hear anything back.

Now, Vanessa Fisk pushes something towards him. A picture.

Of you.

His near-useless hand paws at the table, something like desperation surging through him as he grasps for it. They won’t let him have any pictures of you here. They call you one of his ‘victims’. He hasn’t seen your face in so long.

“She misses you.” And a part of him knows Vanessa is manipulating him. Even through the drugs, and the longing, he knows it.

And yet, she pushes the picture toward him a little more, and there you are.

You. You. You.

You, at that bar he found you at. The second time you met. You’re with Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdock, and Karen Page. You’re smiling, but not with your eyes. He knows what it looks like when you smile with your eyes.

You look sad. His eye twitches with the urge to fix it. The urge to touch you.

His fingers curl against the picture.

“I know what it is to love someone so much that being separated feels like…” Vanessa’s voice is gentle. Kind. Vulnerable, even. Dex can’t stop looking at the picture of you. That vulnerability in her voice is reaching him, matching with his own. “Like a hollowness in your soul.”

He makes a soft noise. It sounds desperate, even to his own ears.

His fingers curl a little more against the picture. Brushing over your cheek. Missing the feeling of your skin against his.

“They talk to her about you.”

His eyes, still slowed by the pills, move up to her face.

“They tell her that you were evil. Horrible. She is trying to convince herself that it’s true.” Vanessa leans forward, earnest. “If you want her, you cannot let that happen.”

His eyes fall helplessly back to the picture of you.

Vanessa slides a contract his way. He doesn’t look at it. His trembling fingers trace the printed line of your cheek.

“You can have her again. I only need one…favor. But you will have your freedom, and she will have hers.”

You. You. You.

Vanessa’s manicured finger taps the picture. Taps the face of Foggy Nelson. “I need you to kill him, and one of his clients.”

Dex looks up, a muddled question in his eyes. Foggy is your friend. You like Foggy. Foggy-

“They are poisoning her mind.” Vanessa repeats. “I do not want to see you lose the woman you love, Benjamin. I am offering you a mutually beneficial opportunity.”

You are so beautiful it hurts to look at you. His shaking hand holds the pen. Hesitates. He tries to form a clear and straightforward thought.

“With your freedom, you can get back to her.”

Back to you.

He signs the contract.

-

One good deed, and it’s all better. And you forgive him.

Not like you haven’t already. Even if you won’t admit it, he knows you have. He can see it on your face. Feel it in your quickened breaths at night when he’s got you laid out on the sheets, or on the couch, or against the wall…

And when you eat breakfast together, and he’s staring at you and you’re grinning right back at him, and the sounds of the chaos and the city and the world around him fade and everything is just you. You. You. You.

You’re out at the bodega down the street, grabbing more bandages and water. You’ll be back in ten minutes, tops.

You’re gonna be mad at him. He hates that.

But Matt Murdock showed up four minutes ago, and now the apartment is an absolute fucking wreck, and the lady down the hall is screaming and terrified because Dex had to use her as a human shield for a minute there, and you’re gonna come home to that wreck and worry but…

One good deed. He can do it now. Earn your forgiveness. Earn his redemption. If he doesn’t move now, he might lose his chance. And then what? What’s the point of living if it’s in a world absent of your love? Despite everything, he can’t help but fear a day when you decide that you can’t forgive him. That his sins were simply too much. Where you deprive him of the love you offer now because you just can’t seem to help it, where you stop smiling at him and letting him touch you completely.

No, he has to go now. Killing Fisk solidifies your forgiveness. Allows him to keep you. Keeps the world balanced right.

So he leaves. He leaves the apartment for the last time, and prays to whatever God might exist that you’ll forgive him.

- 

He throws the snowglobe. Plans the trajectory against Wilson Fisks’s swing. Watches the shard pierce Vanessa Fisk’s temple.

It was easy. Almost too easy.

But the bullet. That’s the problem. That landed home, and it hit all the wrong places.

He’s going to bleed out. You’re going to be upset.

But he did it. One good deed. He didn’t kill Fisk, but he killed Vanessa. At least, at the very least, he took that pain away. She ordered the hit on Foggy. Your friend. She made you hurt. She just made him the weapon. And now, she’s going to die.

-

“Mrs. Smithers, please shut up.”

She’s screaming, and crying, and you should probably be comforting her. ‘Tony’ just held a gun to her head, after all. And yet, you have bigger things to worry about.

Two minutes, and they’ll be here. Cops have been called. AVTF is on the way, guns blazing and you have seconds to find him and your heart is hammering in your chest in that familiar staccato beat.

Dex. Dex. DexDexDex.

There. The church. The fucking church, of all places.

Vanessa Fisk, mortally wounded. Daredevil and Bullseye at the boxing match. Dex Dex DexDexDex.

You smash your computer against the counter, cracking it in half, and bolt.

You take the fire escape, and begin scrambling down just as you hear them bursting into the hall.

And you pray, with every last shred of your desperate heart, that you’re not too late.

-

He’s bleeding out. He knows it. Seen it enough times to know he doesn’t have long, and Murdock isn’t gonna stick around to help him.

He misses you. He wishes you were here.

The dizziness of blood loss is a little frustrating, but Murdock is busy calling him a piece of shit. Fair. He shot his best friend, after all. If you’re still mad about that, it makes sense that he would be too.

“One last good deed.” He hums, propped up against the wall as blood leaks between his fingers, pooling onto the floor beneath him. “N’then she forgives me.”

“Asshole.” A whole conversation in the pews a minute ago, Dex’s whole speech about how he’s making it better and earning forgiveness and getting his mind back, and that’s all the guy can say. He thought lawyers were supposed to be more eloquent.

“Take care of her when I’m gone.” You. You. You. He sees Daredevil tense. He’s pissed at you, sure, but he cares about you. So Dex smiles, tired, and tilts his head back against the wall, confident in his next words. “Yeah, you will.” And if he ever touches you, Dex will return as a ghost and put a pencil through his eye. But hey, just something to worry about in the afterlife.

Murdock stutters some sort of apology. Has a whole little crisis about whether or not he can save him. He’s so stressed it’s almost funny, but he’s not gonna save Dex. He did it. He earned forgiveness. It’s time for judgement day.

The room pulses. The sounds of ATVF bootsteps echo above. His eyes close, and you’ll be okay. You forgave him. You didn’t admit it aloud, but he doesn’t need that. Never did.

Judgement day ticks ever-closer.

“Dex!”

His eyes open, and it’s too bright in the dark room. He’s too tired, but…

There you are. In the church and illuminated by low light like an angel. He smiles, bloody and exhausted and more than a little out of it. “Hey, baby.”

“Wake up. Dex, wake up.” You sound so panicked. So scared. For him. You love him. You. You. You….

“Dex! Fuck, please wake up. C’mon.” You’re pulling at him, trying to drag him across the floor and failing miserably, and he wishes you would just stay. Just admit that this is hopeless and let him hold you close. Admit that you love him, and that you need him, and let him feel your breath and smell your hair in his last few minutes on this earth.

“Fuck. Why are you so heavy?! Where’s Matt?” You’re trying to get your hands under his shoulders. It’s a little funny, but it hurts like a bitch when you jostle his bullet wound, so he grabs you and spins you down in front of him.

“In the wind.” He reaches up, fingers sliding over your cheek and smearing it with red. Fucking beautiful. They write poems about this shit. About women so lovely they steal souls and start wars. “You gotta go, too.”

“Fat fucking chance.” You press your forehead to his, unbothered by the blood, and cradle his own face in your hands. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you. I love you. Do you hear me? I love you.”

Oh, that’s the best thing he’s ever heard. It’s the first time you’ve said it since that night on your kitchen floor, when you were still lying beneath him and still catching your breath and still all his after so much time. Back then, you whispered it like some horrible confession. Sweet music to his ears.

“My girl.” He’s fading. He’s fading fast. You hold him more tightly, smearing his own blood on his face as he does the same to you, the matching stains like a tether. Like a claim. “North Star….”

“Dex. Dex. Stop. Wake up. Don’t leave me don't you dare leave me-“

The sound of your voice is swallowed by the tide, and he doesn’t close his eyes, refuses to look away from you, but his vision begins to blur.

And then, from deep under the water, he hears it.

The door creaking open. Your panicked voice as your head whips to the side, dislodging his bloody hand from your cheek.

“Matt?! Matt! Help him! Please-“

…

-

You’re by his bedside. You have been for hours.

Karen is not happy with you. Neither is Matt. Soledad is stitching up Dex’s wound, pulling the bullet out, and he keeps waking up.

Not only does he keep waking up, he keeps jolting awake from the pain. Keeps squeezing your hand so tightly you wonder if he’ll break bone. Keeps finding your face in the haze of sleep and agony, and grinning like a lunatic when your eyes meet.

And then he’s healed. Somewhat. For now. And you’re fighting exhaustion of your own in the chair you’ve pulled up to the cot he’s asleep in.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Karen sounds pissed. You get it. But Dex is pale and his breathing is ragged and slow and you can’t let go of his hand.

“Hey, Karen.” The casual tone of your voice is insulting. You know it. You think you’ve been spending too much time with Dex.

“Him?” Matt isn’t here. Not now. You see sweat on Dex’s brow. Look down to make sure that his bandages are still in place. Every time his breathing slows even a little, your ears ring and your vision narrows.

“Yeah.” You don’t look away from him. You’re still covered in his blood. “Cute, right?” A lame joke, like he’s some boy you just met at the bar, rather than…well, fucking Bullseye.

“We’ve been trying to find you. We thought he kidnapped you.”

Your thumb trails its way over bruised knuckles again. “Well…I mean, he kinda did.” However things ended up that night after the party, you’re pretty confident that he wasn’t going to let you leave. Not without him.

“Are you sleeping with him?” You’re getting a little tired of the twenty questions.

“I’m in love with him.” You answer simply, and hear her suck in a horrified breath.

“He killed Foggy.”

“I know.” Dex stirs, just barely, like he might be reacting to your admission even in sleep. You squeeze his hand, and when you reach up to brush your thumb over his cheek he turns his face into your palm. “And I still love him. Isn’t that fucked up?”

-

He wakes cuffed to the cot. They’re worried about what he might do. Honestly, you’re surprised they didn’t cuff you too.

He winces as his eyes open, and smiles when they land on you. His low rasp of a voice is even more gravelly, hoarse with sleep and pain.

“Hey, baby.”

He always says that in the most fucked up situations. It always makes your heart beat a little faster.

He sits up, slowly, and pulls at the cuffs on the bed.

“Do your staples hurt?” You ask, eyes falling down to the bandages. 

He grunts in acknowledgment. “C’mere.”

You do, slowly, and it’s only then that he seems to notice the gun.

“You gonna shoot me?” He asks, smile widening a little as he tilts his head to the side.

“I might.” You reach down, slip a paper clip into the cuff on his right wrist, and hear it pop free. He makes a soft noise, rolling his wrist once before sliding his hand up your back as you sink down to straddle his lap.

He leans in to kiss you. You press the barrel against his forehead and push him back. He smiles even wider.

“You disappeared.” You hum, and he pushes his forehead a little more into the gun. “You tried to get yourself killed.”

“Balancing the scales.”

“You got shot. You almost died. I watched you die.”

“You love me.” He breathes it like the memory is a fucking treasure - a shot of heroin straight to the system. His hand tightens on your back, pulling you more firmly onto his lap.

“I still hate you. For Foggy.” It’s a lie, but it should be true. He hums, and you slide the gun around to his temple.

“You love me.” He repeats, and brushes his nose against yours.

“I do.” You admit, soft, and he kisses you. Hard. Slow. His fingers slide up into your hair, curling into a fist behind your head as he completely ignores the firearm digging into his skull.

You pull back, and push it in harder.

“Listen to me, Poindexter.” You murmur, low and dark as your own hand slides up to his hair, pulling his head back and making him groan as he looks at you with a blissed-out grin on his scarred face. “Never do that shit again. You don’t get to leave me. Not now, not ever.”

Words he’s said to you before, albeit in different forms, back when you told yourself you hated him.

“Never.” He agrees, and his eyes fall closed like he would die happy if you pulled the trigger right now. He opens them after a moment, and leans up to bump his nose against yours again. “Wanna put that down?”

“I could shoot you.” You don’t know why you’re saying it. You’re smiling too.

“No bullets.” He hums, pleased. “And it’s not loaded.”

You laugh, and wonder just how crazy you’ve become. “The FBI trained you too well.”

He uses his free arm to tug you a little closer, until there’s no more space between your bodies, and you drop the unloaded gun in favor of wrapping your arms around him again.

“Not the FBI. I know you.” He kisses you again, in that slow and determined way, and slides the palm of his hand up beneath your shirt. “Uncuff me.”

You smile, and shake your head. Push him back down and chase his lips with your own.

He hums, nips playfully at your lip, and tugs on the other handcuff until it rattles.

“You’re injured.” You murmur, muffled by his kiss, and he tangles his fingers in your hair again.

“Feels better.”

“Liar.”

He grunts, and rocks his hips against yours. “This feels better. Let me touch you.”

“You are touching me.”

“Let me touch you more.”

You reach down between you, as wrong and stupid as it is, and unbuckle his belt.

He makes a very pleased noise, and moves his free hand down to unbutton your jeans.

“Uncuff me.” He growls again, demanding, as you shuffle out of your pants and move to pull his down.

“No.”

He pulls you back down to him by the back of your neck, traces his tongue over your ear. “Don’t wanna do this with one hand.”

“I could cuff your other hand.”

He grunts, and the next roll of his hips is harder. More punishing. You gasp, control slipping a little more than you want to admit, and he pulls at the hem of your blood-stained shirt.

“Off.”

You comply, and he leans back to look you over like you’re the most incredible thing he’s ever seen. You love how he looks at you like that. You love him so much it hurts.

“Your staples.” You murmur, as he drags himself back up to a sitting position, pulling you more firmly onto his lap until you can feel the very prominent evidence of his desire against you.

“Doesn’t hurt.”

It’s getting harder to breathe. Harder to focus as he moves his hand down to slide your underwear over your legs. You maneuver to help him, and his own breath catches in his throat.

“Liar, liar.” It comes out as a whisper, soft and teasing as you press a soft kiss to his lips, and his own lips curl into a smile.

“I want it to hurt.” He noses at your jaw. Down to the hollow of your throat. “Reminds me I’m alive.”

You kiss him, hard, because he is alive and he’s here with you and you suddenly need him so badly it hurts. When you finally sink down onto his lap, bodies joining and breath shaking with the feeling of becoming one, he buries a groan into your hair, hips stuttering as you begin to rock against him. Your thighs burn already at the angle, and he meets your movements with his own as he crushes you to him. It must hurt, and you want to tell him so, but when you open your mouth he groans low against your neck and finds that spot that has your toes curling and hands flying up to find purchase on his shoulders.

You slide your hands over his cheeks, pull his face back so you can kiss him breathless, and pleasure begins to build almost alarmingly fast in your core. You almost lost him. You love him. He’s kissing you like you’re the only oxygen he’s ever wanted to breathe and dragging his rough palm up over your bare back as he meets your movements with his own. The cuff rattles against the chair, but despite his restricted movement and injuries he’s still using his one arm to move you in his lap, angling your body to hit that spot in your core that has you gasping desperately against his lips.

One particularly rough thrust has him hissing in pain, and the reminder of exactly why he’s hurting like this possesses you in the strangest way as you slide your hand down to grip his throat, forcing his gaze to your own.

And there’s so much power in it. In watching this large, scarred, deadly man stare at you like he’s in awe of your existence. The sight of it alone has you falling apart, moaning his name as your body spasms against his. He clings to you, and your hand squeezes around his throat as he pushes his forehead against yours like he’s drinking in the sight of you, too.

“Mine.” You whisper, and he falls over the edge so violently you wonder if he might pass out, hand dropping down to grip your thigh tight enough to bruise.

You sit there for a while, tracing your fingers down the scar on his back as he catches his breath with his forehead pressed against your shoulder.

“I have to re-cuff you.” You murmur eventually, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. He uses his free arm to grip you tighter.

“No. Don’t move.”

“If they walk in here and see you uncuffed and inside me, they’ll probably cuff me too.” You hum, and feel him smile as his teeth dig playfully into your collarbone. You turn your head, lips brushing his ear in a conspiratorial whisper. “They think I’m crazy.”

He laughs, broad shoulders shaking as he pulls back to kiss you.

“Love you.” His fingers trace up your body, trailing slowly over your heated skin.

“Love you too, psycho.” You kiss his cheek. “No more suicide missions, or it’s both cuffs.”

Something sparks in his eyes. “Promise?”

“Both cuffs, and no touching.”

He frowns, and kisses you again like he’s trying to prove that he’s allowed to touch you now. “No more suicide missions.”

-

When Matt comes an hour or so later, you’re fully dressed and back in your chair at Dex’s bedside, one eye closed in concentration as you aim a knife at a bullseye you drew on the wall.

You throw it, and it bounces off the wooden surface and clatters to the ground.

“Flick your wrist.” Dex says, but his eyes are on you, hungry and dark. He’s tried to teach you how to aim weapons a few times before, and the lessons have more often than not been cut short by whatever seems to ignite in him like a bonfire at the sight of you holding a knife. It helps now that he’s in cuffs, but despite your activities earlier he looks damn close to trying to break out of them.

You pick up the knife, and try again. It sticks a little outside of the center, but it sticks. You turn to grin at Dex. He grins back, and the expression is downright feral.

“Uncuff me.”

“Bad boy. You’re gonna get me in trouble.”

Any response he may have, inappropriate or demanding or whatever it may be, is interrupted as the door swings open and Matt walks in. Angry. Silent.

He uncuffs Dex roughly. Sits across from him and doesn’t even acknowledge you. Rude, but fair. You can still understand why he and Karen are so pissed at you, even if you find it a little difficult to care.

“Let’s get one thing straight. I hate you for Foggy. And Father Lantom. And Agent Nadeem.” Dex’s eyes are right on you as he rolls his wrists, stretching the no-doubt stiff muscles and seemingly oblivious to how off-putting it must be that he won’t even spare a glance toward the man telling him how much he hates him. “And I even hate you for what you did to her. Whatever you did that broke her mind.”

“Woah, hey. I’m of completely sound mind.” You snap, defensive. Matt doesn’t turn around.

“Your shirt is on inside out.”

You look down, flush, and look back up in time to see Dex smirk.

“Dick.” You grumble, because he definitely knew, and he definitely didn’t tell you on purpose. You frown at Matt again. “I didn’t uncuff him.”

“Not all the way.” Dex supplies, and you glare so hard his smirk turns into a manic grin.

“Shut up.”

“Stop. Both of you stop.” Matt snaps, annoyingly serious Daredevil voice and all, and it takes a significant amount of effort to swallow your response and sit back in your chair.

He talks about forgiveness. About how he needs it for his own sake, and not for Dex’s or even yours.

But you saw Matt’s face, when you found him at the gala. When he tried to pull you out of there before you got yourself hurt in your anger and grief. And in the church, when he pulled you and Dex to safety as you begged the near-unconscious man to stay with you. To live because despite it all you couldn’t fucking lose him.

He’s angry. He’s hurting. But he cares about you. And you care about him, too. Your love for Dex doesn’t make those years of friendship just go away.

And then, the ultimate question. Aimed directly at Dex. “So, do you wanna do one good thing in a life full of shit?”

Benjamin Poindexter turns to you. You smile at him, an entire conversation passing between the two of you in the span of a second before he rolls his shoulders and turns to Matt.

“What do you need me to do?”

-

The whistle echoes through the vast expanse of the room. Three floors up. Directly and strategically across from the courthouse.

Four ATVF officers whirl, guns raised, and…

And then lowered out of pure confusion.

A woman stands in the doorway, in casual clothes, with her eyes wide and her hands raised in shocked and horrified surrender.

“I-I was just looking for the bathroom.”

Shit. A civilian. They’re gonna have to figure out what to do with her, now. There’s no way she didn’t see the fake Bullseye across the room, and if she tells anyone-

“Wait, please don’t shoot! I know what you do, right? You’re the good guys? You find vigilantes and…you know…” she curls her fingers into the shape of a pistol, aiming at the closest officer’s head, and pretends to fire in demonstration.

Exactly where the woman ‘shot’ him, a knife appears, jutting out right between a pair of wide eyes.

He goes down.

She jumps, surprised, and inspects her hand with alarm like smoke might start coming out of her fingers.

And then, she aims again, almost experimentally, at the second officer. The moment she ‘fires’, another knife flies through the air and hits home.

Just as the shock begins to wear off, spurring the startled men into action, she lowers her other hand into the same shape, and ‘shoots’ the final two men in rapid succession before they can even think to lift their guns.

And then, when all that’s left is the ‘fake Bullseye’, who is still standing there frozen and confused, she laughs.

The sound of heavy bootsteps echoes through the room.

“That was even more fun the third time.” She says, tone bright and amused as she tilts her head back towards the source of the sound.

Bullseye, the real one, appears behind her, and his low chuckle is the most frightening sound the other man has ever fucking heard.

The new Bullseye fires his gun, and screams as his hand is impaled by a knife. He goes down, crumpling to his knees and cradling the bleeding appendage, and his counterpart walks casually forward with the mysterious woman behind him.

He’s only in pain for a few seconds, just long enough to be pushed to the ground, and just long enough to see the glimpse of another knife before it finds its home in his eye.

-

“Holy shit.”

“Hm?” The click of the rifle. The subtle shift of his shoulders as he adjusts his shot. So careful and calculated, and yet you can feel him locked in on every word. Every blink. Every movement.

Even with another target in sight, he is always focused on you.

“Matt just told everyone he’s Daredevil.”

Dex hums, cocking his head to the side. “And?”

“And he’s probably gonna go to prison for it.”

Dex loads the sniper, the shell of the bullet clattering onto the floor. “Prison’s not so bad.”

“Says the guy who broke out of it.”

“For you.” He turns, and you can see his eyes crinkle in the corners even if you can’t see him smile behind the mask. “For romance.”

You hum, and pop your headphone back into your ear, eyes moving back to the monitor as you sit cross-legged atop the table beside the gun. “You’re a fucking psychooo~” you sing, under your breath, and feel him catch your chin between his gloved fingers before you have time to look back up. He tilts your chin towards him, and you feel the warmth of his lips beneath the rough fabric of his mask as he pulls you into a kiss.

He moves back to the gun with the grace of a cat, satisfied, and you do your best not to worry too much about Matt Murdock. Your friend. Daredevil, who has just outed himself to the entire world and sealed his own fate.

The shot is fired and thus your location is given up. It’s time to go.

You hesitate. You sit by the computer, and you watch the screen after it goes blank.

A gloved hand comes up, a warm chest against your back as that same familiar hand guides yours away from your lips.

“What’re you up to?”

Dex’s couch, so long ago. Your eyes locked on a screen. Warm fingers curling around your own. You must have been biting your nails again. It must be late. You barely even heard him come in.

“Tech company. Innocent employee. Spreadsheets.” You tilt your head back, sleepy, and catch his lips with your own. “Not supposed to talk about it though, remember?”

“Criminal.” He kisses you again, but he’s smiling.

“Not technically.” You kiss him back, pulling him closer, catching his hand to guide him around the couch and over to you. “You gonna tattle, Special Agent Poindexter?”

“Never.”

“Time to go.” That same voice is lower now. Raspier. Still just as achingly familiar. So much has changed, and everything is so different, and he’s still so incredibly yours.

“Matt…” the word is released on a breath, and that breath feels too heavy. Too weighed down by memories. Matt. Foggy. Karen. So many memories. So much loss.

“Can’t do anything for him now, baby.” His nose against your temple, his arm around your waist. He took his mask off, at some point. “But if they catch us up here, it’s gonna be a lot worse for him.”

You turn, still frowning, still worried, and reach up to brush your fingers over the deep scar on his cheek. He tilts his head into the touch, like he always does, and smiles.

That smile, sweet and scarred and as familiar as the palm of your own hand, will always feel more like home than any place in the world.

And that’s how it was always gonna go, wasn’t it? Since the day you ran into him in front of that coffee shop, the night he kissed you for the first time, the moment you saw the bullseye etched on the door of your apartment…

It was always him. It was always going to be him. The trajectory of your life changed before you even knew it was happening, jolting in a different direction like a ricocheted bullet, and always still pointed home.

Home, to him.

You smile back, and meet his eyes.

“Where are we going?”

-

Benjamin Poindexter rolls a coin over his knuckles, glances out the window of the airplane towards the earth thousands of feet below, and smiles.

The flight attendant speaks to the man in the seat beside yours, welcomes him into the ‘Million Milers Club’ or whatever, and he does his best not to glare at the noise. The man is beaming - annoying -  but you would tell him that it’s rude to glare if you were awake.

Speaking of which, your head is snuggled up to his shoulder, breath soft and even and both arms wrapped around his bicep like he’s some kind of teddy bear, rather than a dangerous assassin.

Then again, you’re almost just as unhinged as he is these days.

He hums, content, and turns his nose into your hair, inhaling deeply and feeling you sigh and shift a little closer.

“You two seem happy.” The too-friendly guy in the seat beside you is smiling, and Dex resists the urge to wrap his arms around you and pull you onto his lap, hiding you from the world because you’re his only his no one else-

He’s gotta reel that under control a little more. That possessiveness. But, well, you’re his. And he’s yours. Two sides of the same coin. Soulmates in every way.

And he knows that you do seem happy. You always do, because you are. You walked onto this plane together in an almost sickening display of blissful love. He lifted your bag into the overhead bin for you, pulled you into the seat after, wrapped his arms around you and basked in your laughter as he shamelessly pressed kisses to your neck and shoulder. You’d leaned back, grinned at him like you were the only two people on the plane, in the world, and slid your hand into his own.

No one suspected that you’d helped him kill people only a few hours before. That you washed the blood off of each other before you came to the airport.

He raises his eyebrows. Too-friendly Guy keeps going. “You headed to your honeymoon?”

The corner of his mouth quirks up. He rests his chin on top of your head. He has a ring in his pocket, and when you land in the next country, and he gets the very first opportunity that comes his way, he already plans to drop to his knee and beg you to marry him.

But for now, he nods, and fixes the stranger with a practiced smile.

“Yeah.” He hums, feeling you shift comfortably against him, sighing contentedly against his shoulder. Perfect. His. “It’s long overdue.”

The man looks the two of you over, and seems to be about to say something else, but you shift again and Dex’s attention suddenly couldn’t be any less focused on him.

Honeymoon. Yeah, you’ll have a thousand honeymoons. A thousand lifetimes of happiness and togetherness and love so intense it’s taken lives, saved lives, shattered governments, and so much more.

A/N: if anyone saw my post about my trick or tease series, yes—this title and this trope were originally meant for steve rogers. but I wanted dex to be part of it as well + the stalker dynamic suits him better, for obvious reasons ofc lol. ngl, this time I unsettled myself a little but that’s exactly what I was going for with his character. hope you’ll enjoy 🤍 trick or tease masterlist

Benjamin Poindexter wanders through the city without any particular destination in mind. The caution that has kept him alive during the first weeks after his escape now faded into the kind of resignation that started wearing him down after too many nights spent hungry and cold. He still avoids police officers when he spots them on the street and keeps his head lowered whenever he passes security cameras, but survival no longer feels like an objective he is actively pursuing. It feels more like a habit his body has not yet forgotten.

Days in the city are no different from the ones in prison: they all just end up blurring into one another. He wakes wherever he happened to fall asleep the night before, gathers the few things he has managed to keep, and disappears back into the endless flow of people moving through the busy streets. Sometimes he follows crowded avenues lined with storefronts and restaurants. Other times he finds himself in quieter neighborhoods where the sidewalks are cracked and the aging buildings weathered—a reflection of his own exhaustion.

It rarely matters where he goes. Every street eventually begins to resemble the next.

People brush past him constantly without sparing him a second glance. They have places to be, friends waiting for them somewhere. They are too busy looking at their phones and thinking about their own problems to notice the gaunt, unshaven man standing a few feet away. Even when their eyes distractedly land on him, there is no recognition. He is just another stranger occupying space.

Dex has spent his entire life studying human beings, as therapists taught him how to mimic emotional responses and superiors evaluated every aspect of his behavior. Observation has always been easier than participation, because people just make more sense when watched from a safe distance.

That didn’t really change. Nowadays he just watches them from bus stops and park benches, from the corners of coffee shops and train stations. Couples walking hand in hand while discussing what they should make for dinner; coworkers complaining about their bosses during lunch breaks; friends gathering outside bars and spending hours chatting and giggling...

The conversations are rarely important, because there is something far more interesting about them that catches his attention.

The ease.

The casual certainty with which they move through one another’s lives.

No hesitation. No calculation. No fear that a wrong word might cause everything to collapse.

They belong somewhere.

Everyone belongs somewhere except him.

There was a time when Dex convinced himself that structure could replace belonging with the help of therapy sessions and missions. Structure could free him.

Every hour of his life was accounted for by somebody else. Every success was measured, every failure documented. He spent so many years molding himself into whatever other people needed him to be that somewhere along the way he lost track of who Benjamin really was underneath all of it.

And now? Well, that same freedom feels too similar to being abandoned.

At night, when the city grows quieter and the streets empty, the loneliness becomes impossible to ignore. It follows him into abandoned buildings and dark street corners like a mourning ghost. It settles beside him in bus stations and laundromats and every other place he occasionally uses to escape the cold like a silent companion.

It’s in those moments that Dex finds himself wondering what would happen if he simply disappeared.

Not in the dramatic sense, like a shootout or an arrest.

Just... if he stopped moving altogether. If he died somewhere beneath an overpass or in one of the countless empty alleys he drifts through.

How long would it take before anyone noticed?

Longer than it should, probably.

Eventually some commuter would find him on their way to work and call 911. A local reporter would spend thirty seconds talking about the unidentified body discovered downtown before moving on to the weather forecast and traffic updates. By the next morning, nobody would remember the segment had aired.

Maybe somebody at the FBI would hear about it. An old colleague would recognize the name and mention it over coffee. There would be a moment of surprise, a few awkward jokes, a shake of the head.

The prison guards who kept him locked in solitary would probably celebrate. The administrators who spent years trying to keep him contained would finally get to close the file for good. One less monster on the loose.

And that would be it.

No funeral worth attending, no grieving family. Just a life reduced to paperwork and a body bag.

That thought clings onto the edges of his mind more than he likes to admit, because he knows the same thing would happen to countless other people around him. Every day he passes individuals carrying loneliness so obvious it might as well be written across their faces. Like the blonde woman who spends her entire lunch break sitting alone in the park, staring emptily at the ducks in the lake. Or the elderly man who goes grocery shopping every day just to talk to cashiers for a few minutes, because there is nobody waiting for him at home. And the exhausted employee at the bank who smiles politely at customers despite looking as though she has not slept properly in weeks.

Everyone is far lonelier than they pretend to be.

They hide it beneath routines and obligations and practiced smiles, but Dex sees it as clear as day.

Perhaps that’s why he notices you.

At first you are simply another face among thousands. Another stranger crossing his path who should have disappeared from his memory the moment you walked away.

Instead he finds himself lingering.

The first time he spotted you was outside the grocery store close by one afternoon, standing in the rain while helping an elderly man load bags into the trunk of his car. He remembers watching you crouch beside a stray cat behind a café two days later. And then seeing you again one evening while you came back from work looking exhausted enough to collapse, only to stop and smile at a little girl who waved at you from across the street.

And yet there are moments, between your kind smiles offered so freely, that are fleeting enough to disappear with a simple fluttering of lashes. Moments when your expression slips.

That fascinates him the most, because it reminds him of all the people who spend their lives pretending they are happy with what they have.

It reminds him of himself.

Most people look at you and see a nice, pretty woman going on with her day.

Dex looks at you and sees pain strategically buried beneath kindness.

The temperature has dropped well below freezing by the time evening settles over the city.

Dex has spent most of the day walking in an attempt to keep warm, but exhaustion catches up to him soon. The wind has grown sharper as the sun disappeared, slicing through layers of clothing that were never designed for nights like this. Every exposed inch of skin burns, his fingers having long since gone numb.

He eventually finds shelter in the recessed entrance of a shuttered storefront. It isn’t much, but it protects him from the worst of the wind. Lowering himself onto the cold concrete, he draws his knees toward his chest.

The city is still alive around him.

Cars pass, people hurry home. A group of friends laugh as they disappear into a restaurant across the street.

Some glance in his direction before quickly looking away. Most don’t bother looking at all, and he can’t even blame them.

See, most people have perfected the art of ignoring things that make them uncomfortable. They avert their eyes from anyone who serves as an unpleasant reminder of how quickly a life can unravel.

That’s when he sees you.

Stepping out of the grocery store with two paper bags pressed against your side, you adjust your grip halfway down the block, shifting the weight of them against your hip before continuing on.

Dex squints, trying to keep hold of the sight.

Well, it looks like you but the sight feels more like his mind offering him a gentle memory than accepting it as reality. You’re not here, you’re somewhere warm, a place that makes sense for someone as beautiful as you.

But when he blinks, the shape is still there. The same pace in your walk, the same slight forward lean, as if you’re only trying to get home without lingering in this horrible weather.

No, no, it can’t be you. And yet the image doesn’t disappear. His mind keeps it there, softening the edges, refusing to let it go.

You turn slightly as you walk, and the angle breaks whatever fragile certainty had been forming.

Still, he watches until you disappear between buildings, until the next gust of wind reminds him of the cold seeping cruelly into his bones.

At some point his eyes flutter close, tired in a way that has nothing to do with physical exhaustion.

Tired of moving.

Tired of hiding.

Tired of waking up every morning only to repeat the exact same meaningless cycle.

The thought that he might not survive the night this time arrives with surprising indifference.

Maybe that was really a trick of his mind then, Dex thinks distantly. A pleasant feeling to hold onto as everything stops altogether, a last thing to look at that doesn’t hurt.

Until the sound of approaching footsteps abruptly pulls him from the sweet memory.

They are too slow to belong to someone just walking by.

Dex’s eyes snap open.

You are in front of him, still in your work clothes. Looking as pretty and composed as ever. His ears burn in shame at the contrast.

You hesitate when you notice him looking at you, as though debating whether approaching him would be intrusive.

It lasts only a moment, though, before you make up your mind and walk over with a tiny, determined wrinkle between your brows.

Dex follows you cautiously with his eyes, slowly straightening up. People don’t approach him anymore, especially carrying a stack of folded blankets and a cup releasing visible wisps of steam into the freezing air.

“You looked like you needed it.” You offer quietly.

The explanation is so simple that for a moment he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Not you are dangerous. Not I am calling the police. Not I know who you are.

Just cold. And that’s enough to deserve your concern.

His eyes fall on the blankets after you place them beside him. They look new, like something purchased deliberately rather than discarded.

Nobody has bought something for him in a very long time.

When Dex finally reaches for the cup, his fingers brush yours accidentally. The contact lasts less than a second, but he shivers anyway, electricity pumping through his veins.

You don’t recoil, nor grimace. Instead, you smile at him—a genuine, warm curve of your lips that transforms your entire face. And Dex allows himself to shamelessly bask in the sight. Not only because he thinks you’re possibly the prettiest woman he has ever seen, but because he can’t remember the last time somebody looked at him with something even close to kindness.

He has been pitied, feared… used. But this? Kindness offered so freely, without expectation and obligation? It knocks the breath out of his lungs.

By the time he realizes he should say something, you’re already standing.

“I hope things get better for you.” You give him another small smile, adjusting the strap of your bag.

The words are painfully ordinary, something many people probably say every day without giving them much weight. Just leisure pleasantries. Yet after you disappear into the crowd, Dex finds himself replaying them over and over again, your soft voice a pleasant touch that quiets his chaotic mind for the first time in weeks.

He sits there for what feels like an endless amount of time after you’ve gone, shakily cradling the cup between his hands while the coffee gradually cools. The blankets remain folded beside him, the cold just as bitter as before, but the possibility of this being his last night on Earth is now a distant memory.

Out of the hundreds of people who walked past him that night, you were the only one who stopped. The only one who seemed to notice that he existed, and was not any less deserving of compassion just because of what his life had become.

The only one who looked at him and saw a person instead of a problem.

When Dex eventually rises to his feet and starts absently following the route you took through the city, he tells himself it’s simple curiosity. Why someone like you would concern yourself with someone like him.

The explanation sounds reasonable enough in his head, enough that he almost manages to ignore the fact that he is still thinking of your smile as he stares up at your silhouette moving through your apartment.

If somebody told you five months ago that your life was about to improve, you probably would have laughed in their face and walked away.

There is only so much disappointment a person can absorb before they stop expecting good things altogether, and somewhere along the way you have crossed that threshold without even noticing.

The thing is, your life hasn’t changed all that much since then.

Your landlord is still useless. Your paycheck still disappears almost as soon as it arrives. You still spend most evenings alone in an apartment that feels a little too quiet and a little too small. However, over the past few months a handful of odd little incidents have begun accumulating in the back of your mind.

One evening you spent nearly half an hour searching for your keys after becoming absolutely convinced you had left them on the kitchen table before work. By the time you found them sitting inside your handbag, exactly where they should have been, you laughed at yourself for being so forgetful. Exhaustion does strange things to memory, after all.

A couple of weeks later you came home to discover that the smoke detector that had been tormenting you with intermittent chirping for days had finally fallen silent. You fully intended to replace the battery yourself, but somehow the problem solved itself before you got around to it. You remember standing on a chair and frowning at the device for a solid minute, trying unsuccessfully to figure out whether the battery compartment looked different than before.

Then there was the leak beneath your bathroom sink.

That one bothered you more than the others because you knew for a fact that it was getting worse. Every few days you had to shove another towel beneath the cabinet to soak up the water, constantly reminding yourself with gritted teeth that you would deal with it properly when you had enough money. Then one evening you came home from work and discovered the leak just... stopped. The better part of the next hour saw you crouched on the bathroom floor inspecting pipes you barely understood before eventually convincing yourself that perhaps the problem had never been as serious as you thought.

Long story short, life carried on.

You continued waking up too early and going to bed too late. Work consumed you, money remained tight. Most days you were so tired that once you got home you refused to make dinner and just collapsed in your bed with the same clothes, grimacing in the morning at the idea of having to change the sheets again.

Occasionally, however, more strange things started to happen.

Like that package that disappeared from the building lobby and mysteriously reappeared outside your apartment two days later, looking like it had been opened and then taped back together. The bedroom window that refused to close properly for nearly a year suddenly functioned perfectly. The lost pair of baby blue panties that you had worn to a disastrous date with a colleague who apparently resigned the morning after, only to disappear into thin air. The man who spent months making you dread every shift with his lewd stares and inappropriate requests found behind a dumpster with his face unrecognizable and his tongue cut off.

None of it made sense, but you weren’t that worried.

If anything, the incidents feel morbidly helpful, which is probably why you never examine them too closely. They simply make difficult days a little more bearable, and so you accept them for what they appear to be: coincidences.

That explanation satisfies you right up until the moment you unlock your apartment door one rainy evening in May.

The day has been particularly draining, even by your standards. Your feet ache, your shoulders are tense, up to the point that halfway up the stairs you briefly consider sitting down and just falling asleep there for the night. By the time you finally reach your floor, all you can think about is taking a shower and collapsing onto the couch until the sound of your alarm wakes you the next morning.

You are already reaching for the light switch when you sense something different in the air.

You stand on the entryway for a moment longer than necessary, your hand resting on the doorknob as your eyes jump from the blanket on the back of the couch to the dishes left to dry beside the sink. The apartment looks normal, nothing broken nor missing.

But something still feels off.

Perhaps you are more tired than you thought.

You shake your head with a sigh, locking the front door before making your way to the couch to remove your shoes. Your arms are already halfway up for a big stretch, when your eyes accidentally fall on the book on the coffee table, and your body freezes.

You clearly remember throwing it carelessly the night before, annoyed that it was late and you couldn’t keep reading, or else you would have been a zombie in the morning. Now it’s placed in the middle of the coffee table, right beside the decorative vinyl tray where you use to store any knick knack that doesn’t really have a place in your small apartment.

Even that is carefully arranged: the remote control on the right side, your partially burned candle on the other, and right in the middle, the kitsch party favor you got from your colleague’s wedding last year.

With a slow turn, you look at the kitchen, still dark. Even from here you can see that one of the cabinets—the one where you keep your stash of snacks—is not completely closed. 

And then… the smell.

At first it’s faint enough to dismiss as something carried in from the hallway when you opened the door, but the longer you focus on it the more certain you are that it’s coming from the inside. Your apartment has always smelled of the jasmine candle you occasionally burn in the evenings, with traces of whatever shower gel happens to be sitting in your shower at the time. 

This scent is musky. A presence still clinging stubbornly to the air long after it has left. 

But you live alone...

From the moment you were old enough to go out alone, you started to imagine what you would do if you ever found yourself in danger, because every woman does at some point, and you had prepared yourself in all the ways that seemed sensible at the time. By now, walking home with your keys threaded between your fingers whenever a street is too dark and empty has turned into a habit you follow unconsciously.

That’s why you always believed that if the moment ever came, fear would sharpen rather than paralyze you, and you would at least be able to defend yourself long enough to get away.

Nobody tells you that the body doesn’t always choose between fighting and fleeing. Sometimes, the mind is simply trapped somewhere between disbelief and terror while precious seconds slip away.

There is no warning in the traditional sense, no footsteps or violence. Only the unbearable certainty that you are no longer alone in your own home.

One arm locks around your middle with a controlled firmness that prevents you from stumbling, while a cloth settles over your mouth before a scream can fully form. The terror manifests in your eyes widening, in panic turning your blood into ice as you struggle against someone that feels impossibly solid. 

A strange, sweet chemical smell fills your lungs before you can turn away. You try to fight, to twist and push and reach for anything that might help you break free. To hold your breath, at least… but even that becomes increasingly difficult as your body starts to quickly lose its reliability, strength draining out of your limbs in a way that feels unnatural and deeply wrong.

A warm breath brushes briefly against your neck—the touch so light you might later convince yourself you imagined it. And as darkness hugs your pliant body, you can’t help but notice the way the arm around your waist is supporting your weight rather than restraining it.

You try to force your eyes open when something tenderly brushes the apple of your cheek, lingering there for longer than it should.

Your lips part slightly—or you think they do—but the attempt to speak dissolves as you succumb to the void once again. It’s the worst feeling ever: your brain being awake, screaming at you to open your eyes and run, while your joints are heavy, lying vulnerable at the mercy of a stranger.

But you keep slipping in and out of consciousness in a room you don’t recognize and a presence you can’t fully see.

The voice is always there, low and close and impossibly calm, because the person speaking knows they have all the time in the world and no fear of being interrupted. 

“You don’t have to fight it.” You hear the first time, composed.

“I didn’t want it to be like this.” He murmurs at some point, his voice now on the brink of misery. 

There are other phrases too, ones that barely hold together when you try to catch them: something about you being safe now, something about not being alone anymore. But they never fully resolve into clarity before dissolving again.

“Pretty,” he says that a lot, as if he is thinking out loud rather than speaking to you directly. “So pretty and so sweet, my angel.”

Sometimes it’s a slow, controlled touch that caresses your forehead and then moves to your hair, as though he is making sure you are still there, still real and present in the way he imagined all along.

Your body reacts sluggishly, sinking further into whatever is holding you up.

“You’re going to be alright, I’ll make sure of it.” He whispers against your knuckles.

The last thing you register is not fear in its sharpest form, but the confusing contradiction of being held with such reverence while your mind insists that nothing about this should feel safe.

When you finally manage to pull yourself out of the heavy fog weighing down your mind, you immediately become aware of how your mouth feels like sandpaper. The simple act of swallowing is painful, your tongue sticking to the roof of your mouth uncomfortably. Every part of your body aches, the disorientation reminding you of that meagre time off you are allowed once a year that you promptly spend sleeping for days.

The sunlight filtering through the curtains definitely doesn’t help.

The rays spill across the room in warm golden strips, forcing you to squint against the brightness. Your head throbs in protest, and when you shift slightly against the mattress, a wave of dizziness rolls through you hard enough to make your stomach turn.

Another thing that you notice with furrowed brows is that this room is too quiet to be your apartment—no matter where you settle, the loud chaos of traffic and the sound of sirens blaring somewhere in the distance are always following you.

There is also a faint smell of vanilla lingering in the air, mixed with the scent of coffee that has long since gone cold. But nothing about your surroundings feels threatening. If anything, the room is painfully ordinary in its muted colors and minimal furniture.

Yet an uncomfortable feeling weighs behind your ribs.

A feeling that grows stronger the longer you lie there.

Your mattress isn’t this soft. Your sheets aren’t made of silk.

You force your eyes open completely. Staring upward, you blink lazily.

Your ceiling is full of cracks and dark spots. This one is clean and smooth.

And your bedroom window isn’t supposed to be there. You don’t even own curtains—you can’t because of some stupid policy your creepy landlord put in place.

You push yourself upright then, but the room tilts at once. A sharp wave of nausea crashes through your chest again, forcing you to grab the edge of the mattress while dark spots dance across your vision.

The movement is enough for you to acknowledge the man sitting on the armchair near the window.

A book is resting open in his lap, although judging by the way his eyes are already fixed on you, it wasn’t doing a good job at holding his attention.

The first thing that draws you in is his handsome face and broad shoulders. The second is his stare. It’s not the same as that of men watching women on the subway or across bars. Neither that of customers occasionally studying you when they think you’re too distracted to notice.

He looks at you like he’s been dying for this moment to happen.

A mug sits abandoned on the small table beside him, and despite his oddly tense posture, his voice comes out surprisingly gentle.

“There you are.” Relief spreads across his face so openly that it catches you completely off guard.

“Easy,” he takes a small step toward the bed, carefully placing the book near the mug. He frowns. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

You don’t even realize you have been slowly shuffling away until he says that.

You stop immediately. Behind you, your shoulders bump against the headboard.

There is nowhere else to go.

His eyes flick briefly toward the distance between you and the edge of the mattress, the wrinkle between his eyebrows deepening for a fleeting moment before returning to your face.

“I was starting to think you’d sleep through another day.”

You continue staring at him, convinced for a moment that you must have misheard.

Another day.

Your thoughts feel like they are desperately trying to push through mud, because every attempt to make sense of this bizzare situation only seems to leave you more confused than before.

“You need to drink some water.”

There is a bottle on the nightstand beside the bed, and next to it a glass, a packet of crackers and a folded hand towel. The arrangement is uncomfortably scrupulous, too symmetric to have been the result of some mindless afterthought.

The man reaches for the bottle, and your eyes follow his large hands as he unscrews the cap and starts pouring water into the clean glass.

“Take slow sips, your throat’s probably going to hurt. You’ve been out for almost forty-eight hours.”

The room tilts again.

Forty-eight hours.

Your gaze snaps back to his face.

“What?” The word comes out rough and barely audible.

His expression immediately changes. A faint smile pulls at the corners of his mouth, small enough that for a moment you are certain it must have been your mind tricking you.

“Here, drink it.” He completely ignores your question, handing you the half-full glass that you unconsciously take with trembling fingers.

“You had me worried for a while.”

You had him worried.

As though he has any right to be worried about you.

As though this stranger belongs anywhere near you.

It’s in that moment that the memory crashes into your mind like a wrecking ball smashing concrete.

Your apartment.

The smell that didn’t belong.

The certainty that somebody had been inside your home.

The feeling of arms wrapping around you from behind.

The overwhelming heaviness that followed.

Darkness.

Your pulse spikes so violently that it hurts your chest.

The glass slips from your numb fingers and lands on the mattress between you, messily spilling water on the sheets. For the first time since waking up, genuine fear breaks through the haze still clouding your thoughts.

You try to move away from him instinctively, but your body is still uncooperative. The effort is clumsy, leaving you dizzy as you brace a hand against the mattress to stop yourself from falling sideways.

The moment he notices the change in your breathing, his features harden for a mere second. Until then he looked elated to see you awake after spending the last two days drilling a hole through the floor of this damn apartment with his feet. But whatever he sees in your expression sweeps that relief away at once.

His eyes dart across your face, taking in every ragged breath and every failed attempt to back away. 

“Oh.”

The sound leaves him softly, almost regretful.

It’s the expression of somebody realizing they have made a mistake.

“Sweetheart.” The pet name sounds horribly familiar despite the fact that you have never seen this man before in your life.

“I know,” he slowly takes the glass and places it back on the nightstand. “I know this isn’t ideal.”

Not ideal. Of course, waking up in an unfamiliar room after being drugged and abducted is a rather unfortunate inconvenience. Surely not the worst experience of your life.

He takes a step forward before apparently thinking better of it. The hesitation lasts only a second, but it’s enough to suggest that he is trying to not overwhelm you and failing miserably.

For a man who somehow managed to break into your apartment, transport you somewhere else without being noticed, and keep you unconscious for two days, he suddenly looks too uncertain of himself.

“You’ve been asleep longer than I expected,” he continues carefully, as if you are some injured animal to coax out its hiding place. “I’m not going to lie, I was starting to worry. I checked your pulse every two hours, but you were breathing fine and your temperature stayed normal. I knew you were alright. Maybe you just needed to sleep a little bit more to properly gain back your energy.”

Does he really think that’s what you are worried about? Can’t he see the pure terror written across your face? Is he ignoring it voluntarily?

And the fact that he knows how often he checked your pulse, that he apparently spent two days probably watching you breath, touching you to take your body temperature while you lay unconscious, only reinforces the dreadful realization that this unknown man has devoted an unhealthy amount of attention to you.

When your breathing grows even more uneven, his expression tightens.

“Hey, don’t do that.” There is genuine concern in his voice. “You’ve got to slow down a little for me.”

The request is absurd enough that you almost burst out laughing.

Instead, it feels like the walls are gradually pressing down on you.

Dex recognizes it immediately. Something about the way he watches you suggests familiarity, as though he knows what it feels like when your own body turns against you.

Without asking permission, he frantically crouches beside the bed and reaches for your hand, carefully pressing it against the center of his chest.

The gesture is so unexpected that your eyes go wide.

His heartbeat is steady beneath your palm, your fingers weakly twitching in the fabric of his shirt.

“Just focus on my heartbeat,” he says softly. “You don’t have to talk to me, you don’t even have to look at me if you don’t want to. But you need to calm down. Try to match my breathing, okay?”

For the first time since waking up, he stops talking entirely and simply demonstrates, drawing in a slow breath before letting it out again, the movement measured and controlled. He repeats it again, and then a third time, never taking his alarmed eyes off you.

Little by little, against your own better judgment and under his patient movements, your breathing begins to follow the rhythm he sets.

You are still trapped. Still want to throw up from the residual drug mixed with fear. Still sitting too close to the man who kidnapped you. But the sharp edges dull enough to not make you feel like you are drowning. 

The visible satisfaction that spreads across his face is unsettling.

“Good. That’s good,” he murmurs, his thumb brushing lightly across your knuckles. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

“Bit late for that, isn’t it?” You mumble before you can stop yourself.

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, before his quiet, startled laugh fills the small room. He briefly looks down, shaking his head as if conceding the point.

“Yeah,” he hums, far from defensive. “Maybe it is.”

His lips briefly press in a thin line pensively. “I’m sorry it happened like this.”

You don’t believe, even for a second, that this man is sorry for what he did. What he seems sorry about is the fact that you’re afraid, and that’s disturbing enough to make your skin crawl.

“I promise I’m not going to hurt you.” He adds quickly.

There’s a softness in his expression that would almost pass for affection if the situation itself weren’t so wrong. Yes, he’s not looking at you like he’s enjoying your fear, but that makes it worse in a way you can’t quite explain. Anger, sadism would have been more logical. But this quiet conviction that nothing bad is happening—not in his version of events—leaves you speechless.

The moment his hand squeezes yours, you flinch, having completely forgotten that he’s still keeping your palm pressed to his chest. His thumb starts moving again over your knuckles in a repetitive, absent motion.

“Who are you?” You manage out feebly.

Your throat is still raw, the words coming out rougher than you intend. The moment you speak, he’s already reaching for the nightstand, this time pressing the bottle of water into your free hand.

“You should drink this first.” He repeats. “Please.”

The water is cold enough that it makes your throat ache on the way down. Only when you look back at him do you realize he hasn’t stopped watching you, his lips slightly parted as he takes in the way your throat bobs with every eager gulp.

“Who are you?” You repeat, pushing down the urge to hide from his intense eyes.

Your question seems to be bouncing off the walls of his mind as he ruminates over it... Like he’s deciding which version of the answer would bring less trouble.

“My name is Benjamin.” He says eventually.

The name sits there between you, formal and unfamiliar in a way that doesn’t fit him at all. Then he exhales lightly, reluctant.

“Dex,” he adds with strain. “People call me Dex.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

You are sitting in a room with a man you don’t know, having a conversation that shouldn’t be happening at all, and yet your body hasn’t fully caught up to the fact that you should be screaming, trying to kick him away and claw your way out of this prison.

The thing is, you’ve never been good with confrontation. You avoid conflict when you can, letting things go too easily and apologizing when you dare to speak up for yourself. It has never felt like a flaw before as much as a way of keeping life manageable. And look where it has led you... right to your condemnation.

Your eyes flick briefly around the room without meaning to. It’s not large, but everything in it feels intentional. There’s no obvious sign of chaos, nothing that suggests the filth and improvisation of an insane gesture. 

Dex is still observing you, his hazel eyes completely soaking in your presence.

“We’ve met before.”

Your lips part uselessly, confused.

“Back in November,” he clears his throat awkwardly, readjusting his weight slightly. “The grocery store two blocks from your place. The one with the broken automatic doors that always stuck open halfway.”

Cold night. A man sitting too still against the wall. You debating for ten minutes whether it was a good decision to go back.

“But—but it was months ago...” You squeak out, recoiling. “You remember that?”

His face brightens, pleased that you do.

“Of course!” He nods. “You were still wearing your work clothes and had two bags with you because you’d stopped for groceries.” He swallows, eyes emptily staring at some random spot on your shirt as if he was reliving the moment.

“You walked right past me at first.”

Your throat tightens at his quiet comment. 

“But then you came back,” he finally looks up, his expression open again. “You brought blankets, coffee... You didn’t have to do that, but you did anyway.”

You allow your eyes to study him, trying to reconcile the man in front of you with the one he’s describing. He looks different now—cleaner, more put together, but there’s something underneath that practiced calm that feels like the same person from that alley… the same empty eyes. 

“You are kind to everyone,” he comments shyly. “Even when they walk right over you.”

The air changes with his expression.

“You think I didn’t notice?” He scoffs lightly at your clear surprise, his head momentarily tipping forward. “You hated your job. You came home exhausted every day, and yet you still kept going back. And your friends…” His mouth twists.

“Half of them only remember you exist when they need something. The others stopped calling altogether. You’re always the one reaching out first, always the one asking how they’re doing, always the one trying to keep those friendships alive. Then your birthday comes around and suddenly everyone’s busy. You spend holidays staring at your phone waiting for messages that never come, and they still expect you to be there whenever it’s convenient for them.”

A lonely tear trails down your cheek and his gaze holds yours for a moment longer than you can comfortably handle.

“I saw you cry.” His words are nothing short of a whisper but they hit you like a punch in the guts.

“In bed. In the shower. In the kitchen.” He swallows. “You were always so sad.” He whispers.

“I know what it’s like,” he adds after a pause. “Being alone.”

His free hand tentatively lifts, until it cups your cheek. The touch is far too careful, it makes you feel like an ethereal creature being worshipped rather than a woman kidnapped to satisfy some sick fantasy.

“But you’re not alone anymore.”

Your breath catches at the inevitability coloring his voice.

“Dex—”

“You’ve got me now.” He smiles, and for the first time you notice a missing tooth.

You don’t even realize you’ve stopped breathing properly until he is standing up, the bed dipping slightly under his weight.

Your first instinct is to back away, but it’s useless. The mattress gives under you in every direction, your body betraying you by freezing under his big frame.

“Hey,” he mumbles. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”

The words make no sense coming out of his mouth, in your situation, in anything you understand, yet they don’t sound like a lie to him. That’s what makes it worse. He believes them. Completely.

You try to speak again, but all it comes out is a broken whimper, tangled in breath and panic, earning a small sound of frustration from Dex. The situation keeps slipping out of his control.

“I didn’t mean for it to go this way,” there’s a faint edge of strain in his voice now, actively struggling with your fear. “I just—I couldn’t keep watching you living like that anymore.”

The moment he moves closer, your muscles lock as the space between you starts to disappear. You try to shift away fruitlessly, already suffocating in the warmth that radiates off his body.

To your absolute horror, he doesn’t stop in front of your distress.

Each small movement forward strengthens the grip around your lungs—the oxygen around you is not enough.

Your fingers curl into the blanket beneath you without you meaning them to.

“I couldn’t leave you there.” 

His hand comes down near your hip, close enough that it brushes your covered skin, but still not touching you. You stiffen at the proximity alone.

Then the bed dips more as he lowers himself further, causing you to press harder into the headboard until the metal is digging uncomfortably into your bones. Your ears are ringing, your heartbeat so fast you feel like you are going to pass out, yet you are forced to live every second of it as Dex fully settles between your thighs.

His presence looms over you, before leaning in slowly. You flinch hard, an involuntary movement of your torso that causes the headboard to hit the wall with a deafening clank.

But Dex doesn’t stop, not until his head is resting on your chest.

Right over your heartbeat.

The contact sucks the fight out of you at once. Even your breathing stalls for a painful second before restarting in short, uneven pulls out of your control.

He doesn’t speak anymore.

He just stays there, still, listening.

“You’re really worked up,” he murmurs to himself. There’s something almost analytical in his voice. “I can fix that.”

Your fingers twitch into the sheets, until you finally gather enough strength to lift your arms and push at his shoulders, your neck desperately straining back to keep the contact to the bare minimum. It barely registers, your hands trembling as they make contact with a wall of steel. The effort leaves your limbs weak and unsteady, though, falling back against the mattress dejectedly.

“I’m not hurting you,” he recovers immediately, the words sounding more like he’s trying to convince himself. “I swear I’m not.”

You force your throat to work, and when your voice finally comes out, it’s in a thin, pathetic whimper.

“Get off me.”

Everything comes to a halt. Dex lifts his head from your chest with terrifying calm, just enough to face you. For a moment he doesn’t respond at all, his eyes just fixed on you, unblinking and so clear you can almost see the way he replays your words over and over again.

“Oh.”

He shifts back gradually, pulling his weight away from you as he settles on his knees. His hands go flat on his own thighs, open and visible, like he is deliberately trying to remove any sense of threat.

The movement is controlled, but there is a stiffness to his joints now, clearly responding to something he did not account for.

“I didn’t—” He begins, then stops mid-sentence, his jaw tightening slightly. “Okay. I won’t do that.”

He remains sitting close, his posture unnaturally still.

“I thought it would help,” he mumbles after a moment, his attention dropping briefly to the sad space between your bodies before returning to your face. “When people are overwhelmed like that… physical contact usually helps them settle.”

Again that detached tone.

You swallow thickly, genuinely scared at the speed your heart races inside your ribcage.

His eyes jump from your blown pupils to your heaving chest, then back up again.

“You’re still afraid.”

A pause follows in which you simply stare at him with tears threatening to spill.

“I don’t want you to be scared of me.”

Is Dex repeating that an attempt to convince you, or himself?

His breathing changes before he even finishes speaking, the rhythm of it losing its steadiness as if the thread keeping it all together just snapped under the inconvenience that is your reaction.

His hands keep lifting from his thighs before settling again, the small, restless movements never quite resolving into anything concrete.

“I have a job now,” he blurts out, eyes locked with yours, wide and intense. “A real one. I get paid regularly and I’ve saved money. I can take care of things—of you.”

Dex leans forward as words collide into themselves.

“You don’t have to go back to that life,” he swallows. “I can make it better. I—I already know how, I’ve planned it all! I got us a place out of the city, somewhere quiet where—where there is no traffic and no perverts scaring you at night.” His jaw clenches, knuckles turning white briefly as his hands close into two fists. 

“You talked about it, I remember, you wrote it down in your journal,” you wince. He even read your journal? “About—about the cottage in the middle of nowhere, and the garden with a place for the birds to rest and eat, and—and a porch where you can sit with your tea in the morning. No nosy neighbors and no greedy landlords.”

His voice keeps rising and shaking around the edges.

“I can keep you safe,” he whispers like a secret, his nose merely a few inches from yours. “You don’t have to worry about anything anymore. I’ve been handling things already, you just didn’t see it happening.”

That last part slips out before he seems to catch it, and Dex’s mouth snaps shut.

“No!” You flinch at the sudden rise in volume, witnessing first-hand how regret washes over his features.

“Sorry, sorry! I mean,” he exhales sharply, tone dropping again. “I mean I’ve been trying to make it right. For you.”

The lump in your throat is suffocating you.

“But I—I never asked for any of this. I don’t even know you.” You manage eventually, even if the sentence breaks apart halfway through, collapsing into tears before you can swallow them down. “Please just let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear, I won’t—just, please... please.”

Your hands come up to your face but they do a poor job at hiding your despair, because your body folds forward as the sobs take over, loud and agonizing.

Dex simply lets his body sit back on his heels, watching you cry with an unreadable expression.

After a long stretch of silence, it appears slowly—a faint curve of his lips that successfully slips past the control he had been so careful to piece together for you.

“What do you want?” You sob out, increasingly unsettled by his calm demeanor. 

“I just want you.” He answers without hesitation.

Dex leans forward again, then stops himself mid-motion, catching his own impulse and forcing it back down. His hands hover for a second over your shoulders before returning to his sides.

“We’re going to be okay,” he hurries out. “You know that you were stuck. You want something different.”

“But I didn’t mean—”

“We can go,” his words tighten again with urgency. “Anywhere you want. Anything you want, I’ll make it happen.”

His voice lowers.

“Just...” His voice quivers faintly. “Don’t leave me.”

Your body is still shaking with every hiccup, but the words don’t bounce off you the way they should. They settle like a boulder on your chest, pressing against the exhaustion, the slow collapse of a life you were pretending was fine.

And before you can fully comprehend the mess you got yourself into because of a stupid good deed you decided to do on a whim, you flinch again as Dex moves, decisively enough that there’s no time to escape.

He pulls you into a hug, your body instantly going rigid as his muscled arms wrap around your waist. Whimpering, you lift your hands to push at his chest, but his hold tightens in response, your palms now forced flat between you two.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” His voice is low against the side of your head. “Don’t cry, please, angel. You’re breaking my heart.”

He starts to rock slightly, the motion unhurried and consistent, but your crying doesn’t subdue right away.

When he lowers you back onto the pillows, your body tightens again at the change in position, but he follows the movement instead of pushing it. He stays close, his hands still wrapped around your body but careful to not press his weight into you the way he did before.

“I don’t want you to shake like that around me.” He mumbles in your ear after a while, stripped of the earlier urgency. “Why won’t you believe me? I said I’m not going to hurt you.”

You swallow at the hurt pouring from his voice, but you turn your head away anyway in a last, futile attempt to set a boundary. 

“I just…” He cuts himself off, his next breath shaky. “I didn’t know how else to make you stop running in your head like that. You were—you were going to break yourself apart.” His arms squeeze once.

“But you don’t have to do that anymore,” he adds happily. “Not with me here.”

You don’t remember the last time someone stayed this close to you without an ulterior motive. Even friends and ex-boyfriends who touched you in the past did it like contact had an expiration date you were supposed to respect.

Most days you try to ignore it, because it’s work, home, work again, and then fill the spaces in between with loud music and books so you don’t notice how quiet everything is when no one is there to witness your life unfolding. You’re used to eating alone, shopping alone, coming back to an empty apartment without expecting anything different. 

But here, with someone actually holding you with such devoted desperation, something lodged deep inside you gives up before your mind can stop it. Your shoulders drop first, only now giving you the time to properly register the sharp sting caused by your constant rigidity. Your hands, which have been tense against his chest, loosen without your consent, fingers uncurling slowly instead of pushing.

Dex is still above you, braced between your legs and still surprisingly careful as he clings onto your body. Your arms move next. At first it’s only a mere jerk that you have the chance to stop, but then they are hovering over his back. And when they finally settle around his shoulders, his muscles lock in shock for a long moment.

Keeping still throughout it all, he is scared the faintest movement could drag you back into that dark conviction that paints him as the bad guy. Which should probably be the sensible thing to believe, because this is wrong—you are betraying your own sense of safety by embracing the same man who forcefully carved a place into your life and took control of it.

But you stay there anyway, even when Dex slowly lifts his head from where it has been tucked against your chest. The movement is timid as his hands remain exactly where they are: one gripping your side, the other resting between your shoulder blades.

For a few seconds neither of you speaks.

His face is close enough now that you can make out details you hadn’t noticed before, too blinded by panic. Like the faint shadows beneath his eyes, and the scar on his right cheek. The hesitation that keeps flickering in his hazel eyes.

From the way his gaze keeps dropping to your mouth before returning to your eyes, you know what is about to happen.

You should turn your head.

You should push him away and hold onto whatever common sense you have left.

Instead, you remain perfectly still.

When he finally leans forward, it’s so tentative that you almost don’t register it at first. His nose brushes yours, the small contact making his breath hitch.

For a moment it genuinely feels like he’s giving you one final opportunity to stop him. But you don’t.

The kiss lasts barely a second before he’s already pulling back again, watching you with an intensity that makes your stomach twist.

You don’t know what to make of any of this.

The fear is still there, intertwined with confusion. Nothing about the situation has become less alarming, yet beneath all of it sits a quieter realization that is much harder to confront.

You can’t remember the last time someone looked at you as though your existence alone mattered to them.

You truly are pathetic.

Dex studies your face frantically, searching for a reaction. When you don’t immediately recoil, some of the tension visibly leaves his shoulders.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, sounding embarrassed. “Haven’t done this in a long time.”

After the stalking and the break-in, you somehow expected him to be smoother than this. Certainly not to apologize for his kissing techniques.

Taking your silence as encouragement, he locks your mouths more forcefully than before. It’s eager, clumsy in the way his tongue pushes between your parted lips as the hand on your hip quickly flies behind your head to keep you nice and still for him.

“Wait—” You gasp when his big hands are suddenly everywhere. They squeeze your asscheeks, play with your covered breasts and palm your thighs as he keeps pressing wet kisses down your throat. 

A loud whine falls from your lips, and it feels downright mortifying, your body completely on fire under his desperate touch. Dex muffles a growl against the swell of your tits once his hand sinks into your ruined panties, basking in the sharp tang that invades his nostrils and that he only had the chance to smell from stolen underwear.

With his other hand, he lowers your tank top, leaving the fabric hanging hopelessly from your torso to admire your beautiful tits.

It’s nothing that Dex hasn’t seen before—he did have to install cameras inside your apartment to make sure that fucking asshole of your landlord wouldn’t break in while you were gone.

These creeps never learn their lesson…

Fortunately you wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. Not when you are finally with Dex, while he is somewhere in the depth of some big lake on the other side of the state. 

Your first orgasm of the night hits you with two of his fingers slowly fucking inside your pussy, and his lips delicately suckling your clit.

Your hands were desperately clutching his shoulders, his groan deep and animalistic around your nipple when your nails sank into the fabric of his t-shirt, causing a pleasant sting to travel down his back. 

“Yes, sweetheart. Mark me, ‘m all yours.”

When Dex finally looked at you with a pretty blush across his cheeks, mumbling that he needs to taste you.

You fought him at first, frantically shaking your head and squeezing your shaky thighs close to keep his mouth as far as possible from your core. But again, you must be so pathetic to cave in for a pair of glossy hazel eyes looking up at you as if you just told him to keep his disgusting hands to himself and let you go. 

Dex panted, chin gently propped on your belly. “Please, please my angel. Just a little taste, I promise.”

Now, a shiver runs down your back at the primal sound clawing out of his chest when he finally gets his mouth on your slick folds.

Your eyes turn wet, breathy whimpers reluctantly falling from your parted lips when you come, wave after wave of electrifying pleasure running through your veins as Dex watches mesmerized, tongue still working on your pussy and his free hand on your hip to help you hump his face. 

“That’s it. That was a strong one, hm lovely?” You flinch in shame at the sight of your wetness shining on his smirk, but Dex is already discarding his pants and boxers, blanketing your body with his as he drags his hard cock between your sensitive folds.

He moans in your mouth, ignoring the way your palms keep pushing at his shoulders.

“Dex.” You wail, overstimulated.

“Yes, angel. Say my name, wanna hear you scream it. Wanna show everyone how good I make my pretty girl feel, and then I’m gonna cut their fucking ears off.” He groans against your lips, completely missing your flinch.

“You’re beautiful everywhere. Pretty face, pretty lips, pretty tits, pretty pussy…” He blabbers, eyes squeezed shut as the tip of his length slips inside.

A loud moan claws out of your throat. “Stop talking.” You mewl, the stimulation causing your hips to buck uncontrollably as another climax draws impossibly close again.

Your face is on fire, not used to praises, much less coming from a man.

“Can’t, sweetheart.” His answer is strained, the control he spent months building just for you slipping miserably once the realization of finally having you on his cock, naked and moaning, fully hits him.

“You’re my good girl now.” His hips gain speed, the stretch burning a little until he finally finds that spongy spot that makes your eyes roll back. “Taking me so well, look at you.”

“Dex.” He shudders helplessly when you call for him. Never has his name sounded so sweet.

His head tips back all of a sudden. “Fuck, are you coming, my love?” He growls out, indulging in the way your pussy clamps desperately around him. 

Your climax is stronger and messier, slick steadily pouring out around his length as your back arches and you find yourself shamelessly moaning and convulsing, trapped in an endless circle of bliss with his cock abusing your sweet spot and the trimmed hair at the base rubbing your puffy clit raw.

“Gonna fill you up, baby.” He mumbles urgently, surging down to suck on the skin of your neck. “Shit, shit—” Dex grunts, his balls tight as thick ropes of cum stuff you full. 

You are now lying pliant on the mattress, his body still looming over yours as his cock weakly twitches inside you.

For a brief moment, a dangerous thought flashes across your tired mind.

He is spent and trembling, mumbling incoherently into your breasts... would it really be that hard to push him away? He is a broad, muscled man, but Dex would never expect it. Not after you surrendered so viscerally to his touch. You could shove him off and make a run to the door. Or reach for the glass on the nightstand and smash it against his temple hard enough to buy yourself a few precious minutes.

Instead, when his mouth frantically finds yours with a low whine, you allow Dex to steal the oxygen from your lungs as your hands slowly cradle his cheeks. 

Maybe it’s the beginning of something terrible. Maybe one day you’ll regret not even trying. But as this broken man holds you like letting go would kill him, you find that you can’t bring yourself to care.

— ⟢ END NOTES: thank you so much for reading 🤍 my masterlist → winteryn's masterlist

He only knew how to aim, how to follow through, how to kill. So he told himself that if he pointed all of that in the right direction, it would count. It had to count. 

Bad people existed. That much was obvious. And if bad people were gone, then… that had to count for something, right?

The Anti-Vigilante Task Force were easy enough to categorize as bad. They hunted vigilantes, tried to shut down the kind of people Dex had convinced himself were doing something close to good. And vigilantes were good. They had to be. 

So if he removed the ones hunting them, if he cut those threads before they tightened around someone else’s throat, then that meant he was helping. It meant he was balancing something, somewhere, even if no one was there to see it. Even if no one thanked him. Even if the city didn’t change at all.

That was how he justified it. The only problem was that no one paid him for being good.

His rent didn’t care about intention. His bills didn’t pause because he was trying. The notice on his counter sat there, the very proof that the world moved even as he was laying down the foundations of whatever moral framework he was trying to build. Dex had been ignoring it for days, like it might disappear if he didn’t acknowledge it. 

He was staring at it when his phone buzzed.

The sound was unsettling, mostly because Dex knew that people only messaged him for one of two reasons nowadays: to threaten him (best possible outcome, he could handle it) or to give him a job. When he looked at the notification, he knew it was going to be the latter. 

The text came from an unknown sender. It was encrypted, of course. Dex picked it up slowly, thumb hovering for just a second. He frowned. He really shouldn’t. This was the part of his life he was supposed to be moving away from. He opened it anyway. 

The file loaded quickly. As he suspected, it was an anonymous contract labeled high priority, with a bounty of… oh. 

2.5 million dollars.

Dex leaned back slightly, exhaling through his nose as that figure settled into place. It was much more than rent or bills. This kind of money would give him… breathing room. It would fund his good deeds for years. It would help his progress, right?

His eyes moved down to the target profile: a Former Red Room Widow. 

Objective: extract intel regarding active Red Room operatives. 

Secondary objective: termination upon completion.

Dex’s knuckles shifted slightly as he kept reading, attention narrowing the deeper he went. This wasn't a surface-level hit, like the usual contracts pushed into his number. He usually got the odd job of eliminating a business man’s biggest competitor (he never took those anymore) or a mother giving most of her life savings to him to kill her abusive husband (he did those ones more often than not), but this wasn’t it. Whoever had put this together knew what they were doing. They layered intel, cross-referenced sightings, stitched fragments of reports into something coherent enough to act on.

And then there was the ledger. Not labeled that way, but Dex knew what he was looking at.

Target Activity Log (Condensed): Kiev — 12 confirmed targets, political dissidents turned assets. Execution, no witnesses. Istanbul — Arms broker extraction turned termination. 7 additional casualties during exfiltration. Lagos — Undercover infiltration of rival weapons trafficking ring. Operation successful. Entire network eliminated. Collateral: high. Madripoor — Unverified mission overlap with Yelena Belova. Outcome classified. Buenos Aires — Diplomatic attaché poisoning. Death delayed 48 hours to avoid suspicion. Moscow — Internal Red Room purge survivor. Multiple handlers eliminated. 

Dex’s thumb paused against the screen as he read through it again. The pattern was obvious to him in a way it wouldn’t be to anyone else. This wasn’t chaos. This wasn’t someone losing control. On the contrary, this was someone who was terrifyingly in control.

This target was a dangerous killer, and Dex didn't arrive at the conclusion lightly.

He liked patterns, needed them. They made the world more predictable to the point where he could sort through without it splintering into noise. And this file was full of patterns.

He scrolled back up, then down again, slower this time, eyes catching on the details most people would skip over: the timings, the methods. 

The target made clean exits where possible and didn’t care much about collateral. Every action fed into the next like it had been mapped out long before the target ever stepped into the room.

Dex’s jaw tightened slightly as he read through the Kiev entry again. Twelve victims. It was not a firefight. It was twelve decisions. Twelve moments where the target could have stopped and didn’t. Istanbul, seven more added during exfiltration. They were not part of the objective, but handled anyway. 

He understood that, and that meant he also understood what it took to do it.

You didn’t rack up a body count like that by accident. You didn’t walk away from operations like Madripoor, with entire networks wiped out and “high collateral” written off like a footnote, unless something in you had already accepted the outcome before it happened.

Dex leaned back slightly, phone still in his hand, thumb hovering but unmoving now.

People liked to pretend there was a line. A moment where someone chose to be good or bad and stuck to it. But that wasn’t how it worked. It was smaller than that. It was in the repetition. And this file read like repetition, over and over. It might happen in different cities and to different victims, but it always had the same result.

Dex couldn’t find signs of deviation or hesitation. There was no indication that the target ever stopped to question it.

His eyes flicked back to the ledger, this time reading the latest additions, entries that hadn’t had time to settle into history yet.

Recent Activity: Prague — Corporate intermediary tied to OXE shell accounts. Interrogation lasted 18 minutes. Target terminated. Two security casualties. No witnesses. DODC Supermax Prison — Perimeter sweep. Three armed contacts neutralized before engagement escalated. Surveillance equipment disabled. Exit undetected. New York — Intelligence courier intercepted en route to New Avengers safehouse. Package recovered. Courier terminated. Civilian exposure: none.

Right. 

The target was still active. 

“Yeah,” Dex muttered, more to himself than anything else.

That was what tipped it for him.

Because even now, even with everything he’d done, Dex felt the resistance. The part of him that tried, however poorly, to redirect what he was into a force for good.  The file didn’t show that.

It showed someone who had been made into a weapon and never really tried to put it down. That meant the target wasn’t in the same place he was. This target wasn’t trying to balance the scales like he was. 

And that made this person not a good person in a way he could act on.

His eyes looked to the image of the target, like he was trying to reconcile the almost fragile and delicate-looking features with everything he’d just read. It didn’t match. It never did. Faces rarely carried the weight of what they’d done. But the file didn’t lie. The patterns didn’t lie.

Dex exhaled slowly, and decided this person was bad.

Not because of one mission. Not because of one mistake. But because of all of it stacked together.

And at this point, in order to preserve what precious progress he had made, he’d rather kill a killer for rent than his landlord. That would be inconvenient.

His thumb moved, tapping the file open fully, letting the image expand across the screen.

And for the first time, Dex really looked at you.

—

Dex expected you to be harder to find.

Most people with a body count like yours didn’t settle. They didn’t usually stay anywhere long enough to be known, didn’t leave behind anything that could be traced twice in the same way. He expected burner phones, rotating safehouses, and multiple fake ids that dissolved the second they were used.

But you hadn’t done that.

You were… easy. He found your address almost immediately. He found your number, your card details, and your passport quite quickly. 

It took him a couple of hours to accept that it wasn’t an error in the data. Financial records were always messy, layered under shells and proxies, but not impossible. He followed the money the same way he followed anything else— patiently, methodically, letting the inconsistencies stand out instead of forcing them to make sense too quickly. One payment turned into a trail, then into repetition.

But still, he found nothing out of the ordinary. You were just a regular person living in New York, paying rent on time. Unlike him this month. 

He stared at the screen longer than he needed today. The more he followed it, the clearer it became that this wasn’t temporary, wasn’t a waypoint or a cover that would disappear in a week. You weren’t passing through. You weren’t hiding. You were living here.

The rest of the records only reinforced it. He found your utility bills, with groceries spaced out in a way that suggested routine. He found nothing excessive, nothing careless. It was almost jarring, how normal it looked on paper, for someone with a history soaked in blood.

Next, Dex visited your building and expected that to be where the illusion broke, maybe an indication that this was all a front.

There wasn’t anything.

It was just a building. Unremarkable, forgettable in the way most of the city was. There were no visible security upgrades, no controlled access beyond the standard high rise. There was nothing that suggested someone with your file should be walking in and out of it every day.

He watched long enough to be sure. You came and went at predictable times, no visible countersurveillance, no adjustments to your movements that suggested you thought you were being watched. You carried your own groceries up the steps. You held the door open for someone once, an older man who thanked you without hesitation, like you were just another tenant, just another face he recognized in passing.

Dex didn’t like that it didn’t fit the rest of you. So he kept digging, because if there was going to be a crack, it would be in the routine and… you had one.

It took him three days to map it out in full, not because it was complicated, but because it wasn’t. You woke early. You jogged through Central Park along the same route almost every morning at the same pace, like it was muscle memory. You didn’t scan constantly, didn’t treat every passerby like a potential threat. You just ran.

After that, you hadcoffee at the same place every time, the same order. 

Dex watched all of it from a distance, writing it down in his little notebook. He told himself it was for this job, that he needed to remember things accurately if he was going to finish the job. 

By the fourth day, he knew watching wasn’t enough. It never had been. Patterns only got you so far before they started turning into assumptions, and assumptions got people wrong. 

The problem was, he didn’t have a plan for that. He wasn’t a spy. He didn’t build relationships, didn’t ease his way into proximity. 

But standing across the street, watching you disappear into the crown like you’d done every morning that week, he understood one thing clearly enough: He didn’t know how he was going to do this. He just knew he had to get closer.

—

The next day, he “accidentally” ran into you on that jogging trail in Central Park.

He already knew the exact time your foot would hit the gravel. All he had to do was figure which way you were going: was it the route you’d take when you wanted to clear your head, or the one you’d take when you wanted a challenge?

He waited outside your apartment today and…. You were taking the hard route.

He followed, and his plan of taking you until you got to the cafè, where he would sit next to you, would’ve been perfect until… Dex timed it wrong.

He knew he did the second he adjusted his pace to match yours and felt the rhythm slip. He was too fast for a clean pass, too close for it to look incidental. 

This wasn’t what he was good at. There was no distance. Only proximity and the vague, uncomfortable awareness that if you were anything like the file said you were, you’d clock him immediately.

You didn’t. You just kept running.

He tried to correct it, cutting slightly across your path like he meant to pass you, like he belonged in your space. The movement was off by half a second, just enough to turn clumsy. His shoulder clipped yours, momentum carrying him forward a step too far. You caught before you could trip and looked at him like, what the hell, man?

“—shit, sorry,” Dex said quickly, breathing unevenly. He turned back, forcing himself to meet your eyes. “I didn’t… are you okay?”

Up close, everything went a little sideways.

He’d seen your photo. But a still image didn’t account for the way you actually were when you looked at him. You were focused, yes, but there was no immediate suspicion or recalculation behind your eyes. He could tell you were doing a quick assessment and—

“You’re fine,” you huffed, brushing it off like it really had been nothing.

Dex blinked once, recalibrating, trying to drag himself back to the whole point of this endeavour: Intel. 

Simple, right? 

Except now you were standing there, waiting just long enough that it demanded a response.

Right. Say something. Anything.

“Uh… there’s a coffee place just up ahead,” he heard himself say, the words coming out before he could fully filter them. “I can make it up to you. Buy you one or something.”

There was a lull of silence where even he registered what he’d just done.

That wasn’t part of any plan. That was stupid.

Dex forced himself not to react to it outwardly, even as his chest tightened in irritation. This wasn’t how he should’ve handled a target like you. He shouldn’t’ve improvised like this. What was he thinking, basically asking you out like some idiot who didn’t know what he was doing?

But you were still just looking at him.

And up close, all he could think about was how… disarming you were.

That was the word his brain landed on, unhelpfully. You made him lower their guard without realizing he was doing it. 

Dex swallowed, keeping his expression neutral, like this was intentional, like this was just another step in a plan he actually had control over.

This is for intel, he told himself, firmly. Just intel via proximity. That’s all this is.

You tilted your head slightly, considering him in a way that made him feel, for a split second, like he was the one being assessed.

“Coffee?” you repeated. 

“Yeah,” he said, a little more steady now. “Least I can do.”

“For what?” you managed an amused chuckle, and Dex could’ve sworn that hearing you make that noise lit up the world around him. “bumping into me? Is this a line?”

“I just…” he stammered, and bit the inside of his cheek. “I’ve seen you around.”

I’ve seen you around??? He mentally slapped himself. What kind of fucking stupid explanation is that? What does that have to do with anything?

Surprisingly, though, all you did was tilt your head and said, “Okay.”

Oh?

Dex forced himself to nod once, like he’d expected it, like this hadn’t just gone completely off-script.

“Okay,” he echoed, turning slightly to fall into step beside you as you started moving again.

He kept his focus forward, matching your pace, already running through what he needed to ask, what he could realistically get without pushing too hard, how to steer the conversation where he needed it to go.

And still, somewhere in the back of his mind, something felt off. Dex ignored it, because this was a job. You were a target.

And this was just the easiest way to get what he needed. Nothing more.

—

The café was small, tucked between a bookstore and a laundromat.

On the way there, you exchanged your names— he said he was “Tony,” and you, surprisingly, had given him your real name. You were easy to talk to, and you talked about the weather, the park, the surprisingly little snow last winter.

When you got to the café, Dex was relieved to see that it wasn’t too crowded, just a couple of people on laptops, a murmur of conversation, the hiss of the espresso machine every so often. Fewer variables, Fewer eyes.

You ordered first: iced latte, like you’d done it a hundred times. He followed with an Americano, mostly because he panicked and it sounded normal enough.

Now he sat across from you, fingers loosely wrapped around the glass cup, watching the condensation bead along the outside of your glass as you stirred your drink with your straw. You looked… relaxed.

You took a sip, then glanced at him over the rim, and there was mischief in your expression. A second later, you let out a giggle, tapping the straw lightly against the lid.

“So,” you said, dragging the word out just a little. “Why does Bullseye want to take me out to coffee?”

Dex choked.

It wasn’t subtle. The coffee went down the wrong way, and he had to turn his head slightly, coughing into his fist. For a split second, he thought he might actually spit it out all over you, which—thank fuck—the café being mostly empty made slightly less of a disaster.

His eyes snapped back to you.

“…You knew?” he asked.

You blinked at him like that was the stupidest question you’d heard all day, then shrugged, taking another sip like this was a casual conversation. “Of course,” you said. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know me.”

There was no accusation in it. You said it as if it was a fact.

Dex just stared at you. His brain tried to catch up, running through possibilities, angles, trying to figure out where this had gone wrong. Had you clocked him earlier? On the run? Before that? Had he missed an obvious tell?

You didn’t look alarmed. You didn’t look like you were about to bolt or reach for a weapon. If anything, you looked… curious.

“Oh,” he said, because that was all that came out at first.

Great. Perfect. Real smooth.

He forced himself to take another sip of his coffee, buying a second to gather his thoughts, to shove everything back into place where it belonged.

She’s a target. This is a job.

“Yeah,” he added, steadier now, nodding once like this hadn’t just blindsided him. “I mean—yeah. I just…” His teeth tightened for half a second before he settled on the first thing that felt even remotely usable. “I’m a fan of your work.”

You didn’t react immediately. You watched him over your drink, eyes narrowing slightly.

Dex held your eyes, forcing himself not to overcorrect, to let it breathe. Let it land.

“Right,” you said finally. You didn’t sound entirely convinced, but you let it go.

The silence stretched, but not too uncomfortably. It was just charged. You knew there was no chance of going back to a civilian conversation as you leaned back slightly, exhaling.

“Alright. No, we’re not doing this version,” you decided, more to yourself than him. Then you straightened again, meeting his eyes properly. “Can we start over?”

Dex blinked, thrown just enough to answer honestly. “I… yeah.”

You nodded once, resetting playfully. 

“Hi. You already know my name, so I’m skipping that part,” you said, gesturing vaguely with your cup. “I’m a former Red Room Widow. I live in New York now.”

You said it like a random woman introducing themself as an accountant.

Dex opened his mouth, then closed it to filter through the responses. “Hi,” he tried again, because apparently that was all he had today.

You waited.

“Hi,” he repeated, then dragged a hand down his face, exhaling through his nose. “I’m Dex. Not—” he made a vague, frustrated gesture, “not Tony, I don’t…”

Your lips twitched. “I got that.”

“Right. Yeah.” He nodded once, a bit too quickly. Then, as if he was forcing the words out his throat. “I’m… a good guy.”

The second it left his mouth, he knew how weird it sounded. You blinked at him. Then, to his surprise, you chuckled, and it was not unkind.

“Hi, Dex Not Tony,” you said, teasing him. “That’s a strong introduction.”

His mouth pressed into a thin line, but his shoulder reluctantly eased a fraction. “It’s… yeah,” he muttered. “Workshopping it.”

That earned him a small huff of laughter, and just like that, the tension changed. It was not gone completely, but it loosened enough to breathe around.

“Mm,” you hummed, tapping your straw against the rim of the glass. “Maybe workshop faster.”

That earned you the smallest exhale that might’ve been a laugh.

“So,” you went on, glancing at his drink. “Americano?” 

He looked down at it like he’d forgotten it existed. “Mmm.”

“Do you actually like that,” you took a sip of your own drink, “or did you panic-order?”

Dex hesitated, but decided against lying. “Panic-order.”

You grinned. “Thought so.”

“Yours?” he asked, nodding toward your cup.

“Iced latte. Always.”

He nodded once, filing it away without thinking. “Predictable,” he said.

“Consistent,” you corrected.

“Same thing.”

“Not even a little.” Your smile tugged a little wider, and for a second, it made your whole face look gentle in a way that didn’t match anything he’d read.

The conversation after that was not awkward, even as it came in uneven starts. You both drifted out half-finished sentences, small corrections, circling around what you weren’t saying more than what you were. But eventually, it found a rhythm. 

You talked about nothing, mostly. The weather again, somehow. The park. The café. You made an offhand comment about the coffee being great here but the pastries were better two blocks over, and Dex filed that away without meaning to. He asked a question that sounded almost normal, and you answered it like it was. 

For some reason, he could not bring himself to ask about intel. Still, neither of you got up as time stretched right before your eyes. 

“Okay,” you said after a moment, glancing at your drink, then back at him. “For the record, this is the weirdest coffee I’ve had in a while.”

“Same,” he said.

“And I’ve had coffee in worse places.”

“Same.”

You narrowed your eyes slightly, amused. “You’re just copying me now.”

There was that pause again. This time, neither of you rushed to fill it. 

You checked your phone briefly, then sighed, like you didn’t actually want to say what came next. “I should probably…” you started, gesturing vaguely toward the door. “…go.”

Dex nodded immediately. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

You stood, grabbing your jacket, then hesitated just slightly. You looked at him, like you were weighing your options, then reached into your pocket and pulled out your phone. “Give me your number.”

Dex tilted his head. “…What?”

You held it out, unfazed. “In case you decide to bump into me again,” you said. “Might as well schedule it next time.”

He stared at you for a second, like he was trying to find an explanation, a reason not to… 

Then he took the phone.

“Right,” he nodded. “Yeah.”

He put it in and handed it back. After all, he had convinced himself that it was just so he could get the intel he was supposed to do today.

“See you around, Dex Not Tony.” 

“Yeah,” he said, quieter now. “See you.”

You turned, heading for the door. The bell chimed again as you left.

Dex stayed where he was for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the space you’d just occupied, the echo of your laugh still sitting somewhere in the back of his mind.

Something about that had gone very, very wrong. Or very right

—

That night, Dex had trouble sleeping.

The apartment was too quiet, the city noise bleeding faintly through the windows, the weight of the day sitting wrong in his chest. He laid there for a while, staring at the ceiling, replaying the conversation in fragments: your voice, your eyes, the way none of it lined up with the file. Eventually, he gave up trying to sleep at all. 

He sat up, reached for the notebook on his nightstand, and flipped it open. The logs he had on you were already there: Times, routes, and observations.

He stared at it for a moment, pen hovering. Then he added a new line, pressing just slightly harder than necessary: 

Likes iced lattes

—

Two days later, Dex’s phone buzzed.

He didn’t get messages he wanted to open. He didn’t need another contract— he got his hands full as is. So for a second, he just stared at it from across the room, letting it vibrate once. Unknown number.

His jaw tightened before he picked it up and unlocked it.

There was a photo of a newspaper, slightly crumpled, held down by what looked like your hand. The headline was clear enough:

THREE ANTI-VIGANTE TASK FORCE AGENTS FOUND DEAD IN ALLEY

Below it, you had texted: 

is this you?

Dex stared at the screen, figuring out exactly who it was. He read it again, trying to wrap his mind around this. His thumb hovered over the keyboard.

You knew. Or you suspected. Or you were testing him. All three were problems.

Dex exhaled slowly through his nose and typed.

Dex: no. Why would you think that?

He was lying, but then again, he was the one who’s supposed to do the interrogation here. It would be stupid to give anything away. 

He hit send before he could overthink it. Three dots appeared almost immediately.

You: just thought I’d ask

Dex frowned. That was it? No pushback? No follow-up? Did you not think he was interesting enough? 

Dex: You just ask people that? “hey did you kill three people”?

There was a pause this time. Dex found himself watching the screen, shoulders slightly tense without realizing it.

You: not usually, but you don’t usually “accidentally” run into me either so

Dex’s grip on the phone tightened just a fraction.

Right. You weren’t letting that go. Dex: I said I’ve seen you around.

He only had to wait a few seconds 

You: sure

He could hear the tone in it. That same almost-amused voice from the café. Not hostile, but curious. Dex leaned back against the wall, phone still in his hand, mind already thinking about what you knew, what you were pretending not to know.

You sent another message before he could respond.

You: also for the record, if it was you, I know you’d say no anyway

Dex managed a smile.

Dex: Probably.

You texted back just as quickly

You: so I’m choosing to believe you 🙂 You: congrats

He huffed, a dry laugh catching in his throat. This was… strange.

You weren’t pushing. You weren’t backing off either. You were just… there, talking to him like this was normal.

Dex stared at the screen for a moment longer, then typed again. 

Dex: Why’d you actually text me?

The typing bubble came and went once. Then, it stayed.

You: because I wanted to You: ??? You: do I need a better reason than that

Dex frowned slightly. That answer didn’t fit neatly anywhere that his brain could  categorize, 

Dex: People usually have reasons.

This time your reply took longer. Long enough that Dex caught himself rereading the earlier messages, analyzing tone, punctuation, timing, looking for something he might’ve missed.

You: okay, fine You: I was bored You: and you’re interesting You: better?

Dex froze.

Interesting. Was that what you thought of him?

Dex: You don’t seem like you get bored.

He could almost picture you rolling your eyes 

You: wow. you are a fan

He stared at the screen for a second, then forced himself to snap back into place. 

You were a target, he had to remind himself. Nothing more. He needed intel to pay rent, and he could only get that after he eliminated you, so… 

Dex: if you’re bored, we could go on another date

He hit send and immediately had what did you just do moment. This wasn’t part of the job. This wasn’t… date wasn’t the word he should’ve used. 

The typing bubble popped up, disappeared, and came back within three seconds. 

You: is that what that was the first time? a date??

Dex blinked.

“…No,” he muttered under his breath, already typing.

No. It was—

He stopped. What was it?

Dex: maybe?

That was all he could send. Oh, he was never playing spy after this job was done. Not ever again.

You: right You: with a guy who “sees me around”  You: very normal

Dex pressed his lips together.

Dex: Do you want to go or not?

During the wait, Dex felt something unfamiliar settle in his stomach. It was something he could only describe as butterflies. 

You: yeah sure 

His grip on the phone loosened slightly.

You: same place? or are you gonna “accidentally” run into me again?

Dex huffed.

Dex: how about the pastry place you were talking about? 

Oh so now he was paying attention to your recommendations?

You: okay. Friday?

The only thing he had on his calendar was killing task force, and that could wait, so… 

Dex: Friday works.

He tapped on his phone screen, anxiously waiting for confirmation.

You: cool You: try not to kill anyone before then. It ruins the vibe

Dex stared at that one for a second.

Dex: No promises.

There was no reply after that.

That night, in his notebook, he wrote another thing about you:

Initiates contact.

—

The second date felt different before it even started.

You were standing at the counter of the bakery when he saw you, pointing at something in the display case, smiling at the cashier like this was the easiest thing in the world. “Hey, Dex.” 

You ended up at a small table by the window, a couple of plates between you. A flaky and golden croissant, a banana-flavoured donut-like dessert dusted in powdered sugar (his choice), a molten-in-the-middle pain au chocolate, and one with custard that looked like it might fall apart if you breathed too hard near it.

Adorably, he knew you had picked too many things. Dex didn’t comment on it, but he noticed then, how you pointed without overthinking, how you changed your mind halfway through, how you added one more at the last second “just in case.”

It felt indulgent in a small, contained way. Like this was the only thing you let yourself have. 

The plate between you looked excessive now, but you nudged it toward him anyway.

“Try that one,” you said, already reaching for another.

Dex picked it up without arguing. It was… good, but he didn’t say that out loud.

You watched his face anyway, like you were waiting for the reaction.

“It’s fine,” he said.

You snorted. “Liar.”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t pretend it’s just fine,” you rolled your eyes, though you had said it with your mouth full, so it sounded more like downt pwetend it's jusft fwine.

“I’m not pretending.”

“You are.”

He hesitated, then let you win this one. “It is good,” he admitted begrudgingly.

“There it is.”

The conversation slipped into place easily after that. It was not smooth, but it didn’t catch as often. You didn’t circle each other as much. You just… talked.

You even went on for a good fifteen minutes about watching a squirrel in the park yesterday. You said something about how it would grab something, run halfway up the tree, stop, look around like it forgot what it was doing, then go back down and start over. You went on saying, it did this, like, five times, I think it lost the nut at some point but just committed to the bit.

Dex was surprised a former Red Room operative would even concern herself with things as trivial as a little rodent. He was even more surprised that he let you go on and on about it. It was as if he liked listening to you, no matter what you said. 

You reached for the sweeter pastry next, taking a bite, and Dex’s eyes automatically tracking the movement. A small smear of custard caught at the corner of your lip.

You didn’t notice. You kept talking, mid-sentence about the squirrel again, something about it being “committed to chaos, like hoarding random park objects were its hobby,” and—

Dex raised his hand before he could stop it.  “Hold on,” he said, almost a whisper.

You paused. “what…”

His thumb brushied lightly at the corner of your mouth, wiping the custard away, before licking the liquid off on his own tongue. The contact was brief and altogether too gentle for a man like him. For a second, neither of you moved.

His hand dropped back to the table. “You had…” he gestured vaguely. “Custard.”

“Oh.” You blinked once, then let out a small, surprised laugh. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” Dex looked down at his hands. That felt… Unfamiliar.

He didn’t know when the last time he’d done something like that was. He didn’t know when the last time he’d wanted to.

There was this strange warmth sitting in his chest now, almost weightless. He didn’t even have a name for it.

And while he wasn’t sure he liked that, he definitely didn’t hate it.

You were the one to break the silence, coughing awkwardly like you couldn’t stand another second of silence. 

“Ummm speaking of hobbies?” you echoed, wiping your mouth just in case. “You… don’t strike me as a hobbies person.”

“I had some,” he said, easing back into the chair. Thank fuck you could carry the conversation for the both of them, because his brain had just fully stalled. 

“Past tense is concerning.” You leaned forward just a little. “What, like, knitting?”

“No.”

“Scrapbooking?”

“No.”

“Be honest,” you taunted, “I can see it.”

He almost smiled, and looked down when he said it. “Baseball.”

You paused, then nodded, like that made perfect sense.

“Yeah, I can see that,” you said, then added casually, “I used to do ballet.”

Dex blinked. He looked at you differently now. like he was trying to fit that into everything else he knew. “Oh,” he managed to say.

You shrugged. “Standard Red Room stuff.”

Dex’s posture shifted slightly, attention narrowing. 

Oh, this was it. This was what he came for. This was the thread he needed. This was the confirmation that you had been trained in HQ, right? If you had survived it, then there were doors inside you that led back to places he couldn’t access any other way. 

These were not guesses, not patterns he had to infer from distance, but direct proximity to the Red Room itself, to its methods, its remnants, its current reach. He just needed to keep you talking, keep you close, long enough to pull it apart piece by piece. So he asked, “What does that mean?”

You froze, as if a flash of memories ran through the back of your eyes. Then shook your head once. “Mm—nope.”

“What?”

“Not here,” you said lightly, but there was an immovable conviction underneath it now. “I’m not getting into that here.”

Dex watched you as held his hazel eyes. Then, just as quickly, you leaned forward, resting your chin lightly against your hand, expression shifting back from dark to a lighter tone. “Come by my place on Saturday,” you said, like it had just occurred to you. “We’ll call it our third date.”

Dex blinked. “What?”

You shrugged, completely unfazed. “If you’re really curious,” you added, a small tilt to your head. “There’s… fewer people.”

He stared at you, his eyes empty and calculating at the saw time, fingers anxiously tapping the underside of the table. This was… this was not in the plan. This was not one of his controlled outcomes. This was not…

“Okay,” he said anyway. The answer seemed to have left his mouth before he fully processed it.

“Okay,” you echoed.

And somewhere between the pastries, coffee, and conversation, he realized, a little too late… 

This doesn’t feel like a job.

—

Dex had expected a decoy. A secondary location, maybe a shell apartment. He was expecting something stripped down and impersonal, designed to be burned the second it was compromised.

Not this. Not the exact place he had already mapped out in his notebook.

So yeah, you had given him your real address.

For just a second, he wondered if this was the play. If you knew how much he knew. If this was some test he hadn’t caught onto yet.

The building was exactly what he expected. It was a high-end high rise. The doorman glanced at him once, then nodded like he’d already been cleared.

“You’re expected,” he said simply.

Dex didn’t respond, already moving past him. The elevator took him straight up.

By the time he reached your door, he had an uneasy feeling in his chest. Was this… a trap? 

He knocked, and the door opened almost immediately.

“Hi,” you said.

Dex opened his mouth to respond, but you interrupted his train of thoughts by pressing a quick kiss to his cheek, right at the scar.

Dex froze. By the time you pulled back, his brain still hadn’t caught up.

You smiled like nothing had happened, stepping aside to let him in. “Come in.”

He couldn’t find words to say, because apparently, his brain was on pause now.

Still, Dex stayed half a step behind you as you pushed the door open, his eyes already scanning past your shoulder and realised…

The place was… expensive.

Not in a loud, gaudy way. You had no gold fixtures or ridiculous statement pieces. It was intentional. It had floor-to-ceiling windows stretching across the far wall with a view that swallowed half the city. It had two bedrooms, if he researched it right.

“How…” he started, then cut himself off. What he meant to say was, how can you afford this? But decided against it. 

You didn’t seem to notice. “Make yourself comfortable,” you said, already shrugging off your jacket and tossing it onto a chair like it wasn’t worth more than half the furniture in his apartment. “I just need the bathroom. I’ll be quick.”

And just like that, you disappeared.

Dex stood there for a second longer than necessary, processing everything. 

You lived here. And not as a cover, not temporarily. There were no signs of rotation, no packed bags, no readiness to leave at a moment’s notice.

“That’s stupid,” he muttered under his breath. Or reckless. Or you were just arrogant to a fault. Maybe you just didn’t think anyone could touch you.

Dex stood still for a second, listening to the water running. He heard the slightly delayed pipes and realised you weren’t rushing. Good.

His eyes tracked the room the way they always did, scanning for inconsistencies. He didn’t try to look for what was there, but what didn’t belong. Because people like you didn’t leave things out.

Which meant if anything existed, it would be hidden. His gaze slowed down and shifted… There. A section of the wall paneling near the shelving was barely misaligned. It was not enough for anyone else to clock, but Dex didn’t miss patterns like that.

He stepped closer, fingers brushing lightly over the seam. There must be a pressure point. Eventually the panel gave just enough of a click to confirm it. Dex didn’t hesitate before easing it open.

Inside was a compact hidden compartment.

The first thing he saw was a keycard, worn at the edges. The insignia was barely visible, but he didn’t need it to be clear. He knew what it was the second he saw it: Hydra.

“Of course,” he muttered under his breath.

Red Room had a historical overlap with Hydra. Old, but not irrelevant.

It surely was a small enough thing that you wouldn’t miss it, right?

He pocketed it and moved on to the only other thing hidden in the panel: Documents. It wasn’t exactly a full archive, but it was enough.

He flipped through them, scanning fast. Inside were names of Red Room operatives. The dead ones were labeled. He assumed the ones who didn’t have a red Xs on their files were still active. 

You had annotated them too, with locations, partial intel, and movement patterns.

This was the kind of access people killed for.

His thumb moved, grabbing his phone. He flipped through quickly, taking a picture of each page, each note, each annotation. He made sure, of course, that it was legible.

This was high-level access, closer than anything he’d gotten from a distance. This… This was the job.

Then he heard the sound of water shutting off.

Shit. Dex froze. Then, he moved. He closed the folder immediately, sliding it back in.

Everything went back exactly as it was, the panel sealed until the seam disappeared into the wall again like it had never existed. By the time you stepped back into the room, he was already on the couch.

“Sorry,” you said, drying your hands casually, completely unbothered. “That took longer than I thought.”

Dex looked up at you. There was a split second, where something in his expression didn’t line up. The. it was gone.

“You’re fine,” he said evenly.

You nodded, like that settled it, and stepped closer. You dropped down onto the couch beside him, close enough that your shoulder brushed his, as if this was normal. As if he wasn’t here to dismantle you piece by piece. He didn’t even realise that you had a bottle of wine and two glasses on your hand. 

You leaned back slightly, turning your head toward him, “…So,” you said, more direct. “What do you want to know?”

—

It can’t be this easy right? Dex thought. 

Turns out, it was. 

Which was weird, because people like you didn’t just… hand things over. So either this was the cleanest setup he’d ever walked into, or you really didn’t think he was a threat. Neither option sat right with him. 

His fingers flexed slightly against his knee as he watched you pour two glasses of red. You handed one to him, and Dex took it quickly. “Thanks,” he said, smaller than usual.

He didn’t even usually drink anymore. He turned the stem slightly between his fingers, watching the liquid catch the light. For a brief second, his mind did what it always did: it ran through possibilities. 

It might be a sedative. It could be poison. He could handle most of that, maybe. And if he couldn’t…  Well.

He huffed quietly to himself. What the hell.

Dex took a sip. It burned a little on the way down. Not unusual, just normal wine. 

The first sign that it wasn’t poison was that you were drinking it, too. The second sign was that you didn’t react; you didn’t watch him like you were waiting for something to happen. You just leaned back into the couch and tucked your leg under yourself.

It was cute, Dex thought. You looked like a bird, nesting. He liked it.

Then, he took a deep breath and started asking questions. At first, it was light, like where did you grow up? Where were you trained?

You answered, and you sounded detached for the first couple of sentences. It was as if you were testing the limits and throwing pieces out to see what stuck.

But when the alcohol kicked in and your cheeks turned rosy pink, you spoke more candidly. About the Red Room. About being taken. About being trained.

Even Dex, who was starting to feel more bubbly, didn’t interrupt.

At first, he listened like he always did. He filtered, sorted, and pulled out what mattered. But somewhere along the way, that changed. Because you started giving less intel and more… context.

“You don’t really realize it when you’re in it,” you said, staring into your glass like the answer might be somewhere at the bottom. “It just feels normal. Like this is what life is supposed to be. You don’t question it because there’s nothing else to compare it to.”

Dex’s grip tightened slightly, and you kept going.

“They don’t just train you. They… build you. Strip everything out first. Then put back only what they need.” You gave him a small laugh.“Honestly? It’s basically a cult. You have no idea what it’s like to be manipulated like that.”

Dex looked down, and exhaled slowly through his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

You glanced at him then, and your eyes shifted. You were not shocked at all, but you recognised it as well as you would recognise kin. “Oh,” you looked down. “Right.”

Dex poured himself another glass without thinking. You kept talking, but slower now. It was less like you were explaining, more like you were… unloading. Like you didn’t have anywhere else to put it.

That’s when it clicked: This must not be a trap or a strategy, he concluded, because the reason you were telling him all of this on a third date was… because, like him, you had no one else.

You might have neighbors, maybe even actual friends. But surely, you had no one else who could possibly understand you the way he did, because who else could you possibly know in this line of work? 

That was why you decided that he was the safest place to put it.

Dex stared at the rim of his glass for a second too long. That was stupid of you. And dangerous. And—

“…And you?” you said suddenly, nudging his knee lightly with yours. “C’mon.”

He blinked, pulled back into the moment.

“If we’re trauma dumping,” you added, a crooked smile pulling at your mouth, “we might as well commit. This is probably our only chance to say it out like.” You took another sip, then shrugged. “Doesn’t exactly look like either of us go to therapy.”

Dex huffed. “Yeah,” he muttered. His brain caught up half a second later.

He shouldn’t, though, right? He shouldn’t tell you anything about him that could possibly be compromising but… The booze was getting to him. 

And, besides, what harm could trauma dumping to you be? The job ends one way: with you dead after he got all the intel. So did it really matter what you knew about him?

Dex leaned back slightly, exhaling a little. 

And then, before he could stop himself, the extra bit of liquid courage bypassed his brain, and he told you everything. 

The words came out flat at first. But the more he drank, the less he cared about what he gave away and what he did not. 

You didn’t interrupt him. You just listened. And that, more than anything, kept him talking. 

At some point, the wine started to blur the edges for you, too. Your shoulders leaned closer. Your knee stayed pressed against his. Your laughter came easier as he cynically explained being in prison, and because you felt bad when you did, you gasped and covered your mouth. 

Dex didn’t seem to mind. He even smiled, the corner of his mouth warping the pronounced scar on his cheek. At one point, you tilted your head slightly, watching him with an understanding that hadn’t been there before.

“God,” you said, almost to yourself. “We’re so fucked up.”

Then, unexpectedly, you giggled. Dex, for once, cannot help but chuckle himself. 

“Yeah.” He took another sip, “You more than me,” he added, almost immediately.

Your head snapped toward him immediately. “Excuse me?”

A faint smirk pulled at his mouth. “Y’know,” he said, “Child soldier and all.”

You stared at him for a second, before letting out a disbelieving laugh. “Really?” you shot back, leaning closer, eyes narrowing in mock offense. “I’m more fucked up?”

He lifted a shoulder slightly in a shrug.

You pointed at him with your glass. “Your boss broke your spine and you lived.”

Dex managed to roll his eyes. 

“You got thrown off a roof and you lived,” you continued, leaning in further now, your voice picking up energy. “Sounds like you’re pretty far from normal.”

Dex huffed again. “Didn’t say I was normal.”

“Mm,” you hummed, satisfied. You sipped again. 

The space between you closed without either of you noticing when it happened. Your knee pressed against his. Your shoulder brushed his arm. Neither of you moved away.

The wine kept going. Half a glass. Then another.Words came easier after that, less filtered, less controlled.

You interrupted each other more. You laughed more. You even talked over the ends of sentences like it didn’t matter who finished them. At some point, you were both smiling for no reason.

Dex didn’t realize when the room started to feel warmer. He didn’t realize when your voice started to blur slightly at the edges. He didn’t even realize when he stopped thinking about the job entirely. He just knew, at this point, that you were close. Really close.

And you looked… Pretty.

That was a stupid word. It was too simple. It didn’t cover the gnawing claws that were starting to take over his heart.  

But it was the only word his brain gave him. You were smiling at something (he didn’t even remember what) and it made you look… harmless. 

Dex felt a warmth shift in his chest. As unfamiliar as it was, he didn’t pull away from it. For a second, you looked at him, too.

Dex swallowed the last of the wine, mostly because it was the only distraction that could possibly take up all the space you had started to occupy in his mind.

The room had dimmed at the edges in that deceptive way alcohol always did. The lights seemed warmer. 

Dex didn’t usually get to this point. He knew that with uncomfortable clarity. He also knew he should stop.

You were sitting too close, closer than before, closer than necessary, your shoulder pressed lightly into his as if neither of you had noticed the distance shrinking over time.

Your voice had gone gentler, words starting to come in slower waves instead of quick exchanges. There was less explanation, more confession disguised as conversation. And he was doing the same, even if he wouldn’t have admitted it out loud.

Parts of him he usually kept locked down were just… loosening, one by one, without permission.

You laughed at something he said, he didn’t even remember what it was, and the sound stuck in his head longer than it should have. 

“You’re smiling,” you observed suddenly, tilting your head slightly like it was a fossil discovery.

“I’m not,” he said automatically.

You hummed, unconvinced. “You are.”

He should’ve corrected you. Instead, his eyes drifted without meaning to, down to your mouth when you spoke again. The way your words drooped at the edges when you were tired, or tipsy, or both. For the love of god, he could not get over you the way you kept licking your lip absentmindedly, like you weren’t even aware of it.

It made something in his brain go pop.

You noticed. “…What?” you asked, pouting adorably.

Dex didn’t answer right away. Because, really, there was no tactical reason for him to be looking at you like this. There was no intel angle. No extraction logic. No job framework he could hide behind.

It was just you. And him. And the space between you that didn’t feel like space anymore.

He leaned in before he could reassemble himself. He hadn’t planned on doing it. It wasn’t even a decision he consciously made, really. 

It was, for lack of better word, gravity. As if he was a meteor falling into your orbit. 

For a while, you didn’t move away. 

Your breath caught in your throat, but you stayed there, watching him come closer instead of stopping it. Your eyes flicked down once, like you were considering it too.

Dex stopped just short of you. He wanted, no needed— to know you wanted it, too. 

Still, he was close enough that he could feel your breath now. Close enough that if either of you moved even a fraction—

That would be it. The line would be crossed.

You lifted your hand slowly, but you were not pushing him away. You weren’t pulling him closer, either. Your palm was hovering for a moment against his chest like you were testing whether this was real.

Dex didn’t move. Neither did you.

You exhaled. It was a small, almost reluctant sound. “…Dex,” you murmured, and his name sounded different like that. His eyes flicked to yours again.

Too close. This was way too close.

Your eyes dropped again to his mouth again, and stayed there. For a second, he could clearly see that fraction of hesitation where neither of you could pretend anymore that you weren’t thinking the same thing.

Dex leaned in that final inch… but you didn’t meet him halfway. Gently, your hand pressed into his chest.

“Mm,” you murmured softly, almost like you were trying to convince yourself this was wrong. Then you pushed him back.

“No,” you said, breath hitching slightly, but your smile was still there, playful, light. “It’s only our third date.”

Dex blinked, still a little too close, like he hadn’t fully processed the words.

You laughed under your breath, giving him a small shove to create space.

“Besides,” you added, eyes flicking down to his mouth for just a second before meeting his again, “I want you to kiss me when you’re sober.”

Oh.

He leaned back this time, letting out a deep breath. There was only one way he could describe how he felt, and that was disappointment. 

Oh, well. What else can he do?

“Yeah,” he managed to say. “Okay.”

Still, he didn’t move far, and neither did you.

And of course, his thoughts, intrusive as they always are, decided to ruin the only tender moment he had in years.  

You have enough. Kill her. 

Honestly, he had more than enough intel on the Red Room. Even the old Hydra keycard was a welcome addition to his anonymous employer’s request. It would most definitely make up for anything else they could have possibly wanted. 

What are you waiting for? Kill her. 

It was definitely more than what that had bargained for. So yeah, he could do it now. 

He had clocked many sharp objects he could throw at you— from your vase to a cheese knife you left out on the island kitchen. He didn’t even need a gun. 

Kill her.

And no, you wouldn’t even see it coming. His fingers flexed slightly against his leg.

Kill her.

But then he made the mistake of looking at you. And from there on out, all he could think was… 

I want another date.

No. He shouldn’t want that, right?

Kill her.

He didn’t want that either. 

But… he needed the money, and you had a body count higher than the Empire State Building. Killing you would make sense right? It would help balance the scales, right?

Right? 

Would it still make sense, even after you laid your heart and soul to him? Would it still make sense, even after he realised you were brought up as an enslaved child soldier? 

Kill her. 

No, he told himself, Not yet.

I want just one more date. 

And to Dex, that was reason enough not to kill you. Yet. 

—

Dex didn’t go to rest when he got home.

The second the door shut behind him, he frowned, burying his head in his hands before pulling himself together. He had called forth the part of him that knew what to do, what this was, what it had to be.

He pulled the notebook out before he’d even taken his jacket off.

He sat down, pen moving across paper. It started the way it always did: Structured and efficient. Intel, in detail.

He wrote of the interior of your apartment; top floor, two-bedroom, open sightlines, minimal obstruction points. Entry points limited. Windows large but not easily accessible from exterior. Security: building-controlled, doorman compliant, prior clearance confirmed.

He flipped the page. He wrote about the hidden compartment: wall panel, right side of shelving unit. Pressure point activation. Contents: Hydra-era keycard, confirmed overlap with Red Room operations. Documents: active survivor list, partial intel, movement logs. Photographic evidence captured.

Another page. This was where he started writing about your routine vulnerabilities, your Behavioral patterns. Trust threshold: high. Counter-surveillance: minimal to non-existent. Open, disarming, prone to disclosure under informal conditions.

His handwriting stayed tight. 

2.5 million dollars would only come after you were dead. That would fund his makeshift crusade for years to come. It was important work he was doing, balancing the scales. 

Dex paused, just for a second. Then he kept going.

Timeline: Saturday meeting. Entry granted without resistance. Physical proximity established quickly. Target displays—

His pen slowed to a stop. It hovered there, a warmth blooming in his chest. Dex frowned slightly, staring at the page like it had changed on him.

Then, almost absentmindedly, he wrote… she kissed me on the cheek, right on the scar.

The pen froze again.

That wasn’t— He exhaled, teeth clenching. —this wasn’t important. 

But still, he crossed nothing out. He just moved on.

Target displays lowered threat perception in close proximity. Conversational drift toward—

His handwriting had changed. Not messy, just less rigid.

… her past. She smells like vanilla. not perfume. Most likely clean laundry and sugar from baking.

Dex blinked. He looked at the lines then at the rest of the page.

What the fuck.

He flipped to the next page like that would fix it.