Hey all! Before you send a request my way, I’d appreciate it if you took a moment to read through this.
Characters I will write for include :
Bucky Barnes (the most popular character I write for)
Benjamin Poindexter
John Walker
Bob Reynolds
Yelena Belova
Sam Wilson
Carol Danvers
Agatha Harkness
Natasha Romanoff
Joaquin Torres
If the Marvel character you’re thinking about isn’t on this list, shoot me a message, and I’ll let you know if I’m open to it!
Pairings :
I write in x reader stories in 2nd person POV.
I do not write for ships unless the reader is part of the dynamic.
I will write throuple/poly relationships if the reader is involved (Sambucky x Reader, WinterAgent x Reader, SentryAgents x Reader, GhostWidow x Reader, etc. If you're unsure, just ask.)
All my readers are fem!readers, just because that’s what I know best. There are plenty of other very talented writers who write for male!reader or gn!reader, so show them some love!
I do not write parent!character x child!reader dynamic as the main plot. I write romantic or platonic dynamics.
NSFW content :
I love writing intimacy, but I do not do graphic smut.
I’m very comfortable writing sensual, emotional, and R-rated or suggestive stories. I like focusing on tension, steamy scenes and emotional connection rather than graphic details. (references for these type of stories: Siren and Unholy Trinity)
I won't write :
Incest
Anything that romanticises substance abuse (that’s a very personal boundary for me as someone who struggles with that myself).
Non-con (but I’ll write power dynamics and dub-con to a limited extent)
How to Request :
You’re more than welcome to send in requests through my Tumblr asks. Just know that while I read every message, I can't guarantee that every request will be written. I get a lot of asks, and I choose what to write based on what clicks with me creatively.
If you’d like a guarantee of having your request written...
I’m starting to be active on Ko-fi again, so any requests made through my Ko-fi will be prioritised and written within a month as long as they follow these guidelines as my way of saying thank you for the support and helping me keep this hobby sustainable.
buy me a ko-fi here!
At the end of the day, this is something I do for love, not profit. It’s free labour, and I’m writing because it brings me joy, and this community keeps that joy alive.
I may not always be able to respond to every comment or ask, but I love y'all, and I’m grateful for this fandom ❤️
Greek myth AU | Hunter!Dex x Demigod!Reader where Artemis sends Dex, a virgin hunter, to protect you, a daughter of Zeus.
TW violence, temporary transformation, daughter of Zeus!reader, blood/injury, temple sex.
Artemis usually does not bless male hunters.
With the exception of Orion and Hippolytus, she just doesn’t. And even those exceptions kinda backfired.
See, Artemis knows men are messy. Men boast. Men ruin things. Men wander into sacred groves, see one divine deer minding its business, and immediately go, hmm, what if I made this about myself? So Artemis, as a rule, keeps her hunters female, and she makes sure these men belong to the forest more than they belong to any man or kingdom or stupid mortal expectation.
And then there’s Dex.
Dex, whose aim is so perfect even Artemis has to stop and go, okay, fine, that is art.
He’s just that naturally talented. He’s capable of putting an arrow through a crow’s eye in total darkness and looking vaguely bored about the whole thing, like accuracy isn’t a miracle when he does it. It’s just muscle memory.
So in exchange for being her personal assassin, Artemis offers him eternity.
Immortal life in exchange for service. Be her assassin, her hunter. Kill where she points. Answer when she calls.
When Artemis wants someone kept alive, she sends Dex. When she wants someone dead, she sends Dex.
And Dex was if anything, grateful for the direction. He belonged to no throne, no lover, no mortal future. He belongs to the hunt.
And, obviously, as a virgin goddess, Artemis makes him swear celibacy.
Of course she looks at this disciplined and deeply repressed man with nothing in his eyes and thinks, perfect. Finally. One male follower who will not embarrass me over desire.
HAHA.
Anyway.
And then Zeus asks Artemis for a favour.
Because of course, Zeus has another child. This time, it’s a demigod daughter, storm-born and politically inconvenient as hell. Hera hates you on principle, which is frankly exhausting because you didn't ask Zeus to be your father. You didn’t ask to become the newest target in Olympus’ worst marital dispute.
Still, Hera wants you dead.
She has been sending minor deities and monsters after you for weeks. She even sent a murderous peacock once. Sometimes, she doesn’t even have to send anyone.
Local queens started hunting you because they think handing Zeus’ daughter over to Hera might earn them divine favour. Ambitious princes, bored warriors, random glory-hungry idiots who hear “spawn of Zeus” and immediately decide killing you would make them legends.
Congratulations! You are a person, a scandal, a political threat, and a trophy kill all at once!
Worse, you don’t even know how your inherited gifts work.
You are powerful, obviously. Storms gather when you are upset. Sometimes you cry and it rains for miles. Sometimes someone grabs your and lightning strikes. Sometimes you wake up from nightmares with thunder shaking the windows and no idea what you almost destroyed in your sleep.
You aren’t trained, safe, or in control.
So Zeus needs safe passage from Athens to his temple in Olympia, where you will be under his protection properly. The journey should be simple, except everyone between Athens and Olympia has apparently decided that murdering you is their personal side quest.
All Artemis has to do is send one of her hunters to escort you there alive, so she sends Dex.
After all, she has sent him to guard women before. Queens, priestesses, nymphs, maidens, any devout follower of Artemis in enough danger.
He has guarded beautiful women. Powerful women. Terrified women. Furious women. Women who wept. Women who tried to seduce him.
Dex has never once gotten distracted.
So when Artemis sends him to you. She doesn’t see why this should be different.
Except you are difficult.
You don’t trust him. You don’t want him walking behind you. You don’t want him walking in front of you either. You flinch when he moves too suddenly, then get angry at yourself. You tell him you don't need a guard while bleeding through your bandage and shaking so badly the clouds above you turn purple.
Dex only looks at your arm and says, “You need stitches.”
You hate him a little.
You hate that heat calm when everything in you is loud. You hate that he doesn’t seem impressed by your father or afraid of Hera or startled by the lightning that crawls over your fingers when you are scared. You hate that he looks at you and sees danger, yes, but not in the way everyone else does.
Everyone else looks at you like you are dangerous to them. Dex looks at you like danger has been done to you.
At first, you think he is only good at killing.
Which, to be fair, he is very good at killing.
The first monster finds you before you even make it out of Attica. Some long-limbed thing with a woman’s hair, lion claws, and Hera’s hatred shining through. You only hear it scream once before Dex’s arrow goes through its throat.
The next creature is pinned to an olive tree, clawing at the shaft in its neck, and Dex is already reaching for another arrow like this is casual.
You stare at him.
He says, “Keep walking.”
A demigod of Ares tries to drown you in a river and Dex drags him out by the hair, holds him under instead, and tells you to look away. A prince recognises you in a market and reaches for his sword, and Dex puts a knife through his arteries. A flock of bronze-beaked birds follows you for two days until Dex disappears before dawn and comes back with blood on his hands and feathers stuck to his cloak.
And okay.
Fine.
Maybe you start trusting him a little.
Maybe not completely. You’re not stupid. Trust is how girls in myths get turned into trees or cows. It’s how you happened. But you start sleeping when he takes watch. You start walking closer to him on narrow roads. You start noticing that he always positions himself between you and any temple marked with Hera’s name.
He notices everything.
He notices that you stop eating after attacks, so he starts handing you food before the shaking can settle into nausea. He notices that the sky turns cloudy when you’re upset. He notices that you don’t like washing blood from your hands in rivers because the water reminds you of the thing that tried to drown you. He notices that when people call you “Zeus’ daughter,” your face goes blank, but when someone simply calls you by your name, you smile a little.
And then he starts leaving dead monsters at the edge of your camp like cats bringing mice to their owners.
Seriously. It’s insane.
You wake up one morning to find a dead serpent-thing laid neatly by the tree line, head severed, body still twitching.
You stare at it. Then at Dex.
“Is that for me?”
Dex, cleaning his knife, says, “It was following us.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It cannot follow us anymore.”
“Dex.”
He looks at you, radiating the energy of a feral cat hoping you will appreciate the bird it left on your pillow.
You laugh a little, and Dex looks away so fast you almost miss the warmth at the tips of his ears.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Are you starting to find him… endearing?
Dex isn’t sweet in any normal way. He doesn’t bring you flowers or tell you daisies look nice in your hair.
He brings you corpses.
He kills the thing that scared you and lays it down like proof. Like, see? I took care of it. Nothing that wants you dead gets to stay alive near me.
And it works. You do feel safer because of him.
Dex, who starts watching the sky when thunder rolls because he has learned that your moods and the weather are basically in a long-term toxic relationship. Dex, who looks up the second clouds gather too quickly because he is checking on you.
Dex, who’s fine.
Dex, who’s definitely not distracted.
Dex, who’s catastrophically lying to himself.
One day, you wake up from a nightmare, lightning stealing the hearth of the camp, lighting the air blue-white for a second. Dex is next to you before you t fully conscious, one hand hovering near your shoulder, not touching because he has learned that touch can scare you worse when you wake up like this.
“It’s me,” he says. “You’re safe.”
You look at him through tears and say, “Hold me.”
Dex freezes.
Because what?
He knows how to shield you with his body. He knows how to cut a throat. He knows how to track monsters through rain, how to hear arrows before they fly, how to make death certain.
He doesn’t know how to hug you.
But you’re reaching for him, shaking, and Dex has never been good at denying you anything.
So he moves carefully and wraps his arms around you.
At first, he’s terrible at it.
He’s so stiff and awkward. Then you bury your face against his neck and let out a deep breath like you finally believed you were allowed to rest.
And Dex…
Oh.
Dex likes it.
He likes that your fingers clutch at his tunic. He likes that, for once, his body is not being used to kill or obey or endure.
It is keeping you warm.
He holds you tighter, just enough that you can feel it in the body language: I have you. I have you. I have you.
You fall asleep like that, storm quieting down into rain.
Dex doesn’t sleep.
He sits awake with you in his arms until dawn turns the sky gold, staring at the dying fire, having a mental crisis.
Because what is this?
What is this?
What is this ache in his chest? This panic when you cry? This satisfaction when you sleep because of him? This unreasonable hatred for anything that frightens you? This need to stand between you and the entire world, and not because Artemis ordered it?
Oh no.
Oh, fuck.
Is this love?
Is he in love?
Dex looks down at you sleeping against him, lashes damp, one hand still curled in his tunic like you chose him even unconscious.
The sky above the camp is clear for the first time in days.
And Dex, Artemis’ coldest weapon, thinks with absolute horror and wonder:
Yes.
Yes, I am.
Uhhh.
Well.
This is awkward.
Because Dex is celibate. Divinely celibate. Artemis-contract celibate. But it’s fine.
He doesn’t have to do anything about it. He can love you quietly. Professionally, even.
Except then he sees you bathing in the river one morning and immediately becomes very interested in the trees. The sky. His knife. Literally anything else. He looks away, enough to pretend this is still discipline and not the beginning of an identity crisis.
Then he saves you again from one of Hera’s ugly little errands. Dex kills it before it reaches you, and you are so relieved you grab his shoulder and kiss his cheek.
Dex forgets how to breathe.
So. Fine. Maybe this is becoming a problem.
But he has it under control.
Which is why he starts disobeying Artemis in tiny, completely reasonable ways. Artemis says move at dawn, but you are finally sleeping, so he lets you sleep in. Artemis says take the shortcut through the city, but cities make you nervous, so Dex takes the long road through the olive groves instead.
It was just strategy, obviously.
Then you fall asleep against his shoulder and murmur his name like you trust him even in dreams.
Dex stares into the fire.
Yeah.
He is so fucked.
Maybe even literally.
The day it happens is the day drakaina manages to corner you both in one of Hera’s abandoned temples.
Dex moves between you and the monster, but she pins him.
She pings him down against the altar steps, coils around his body, holds him there with his bow out of reach and blood at his mouth, and oh.
Oh, that is the wrong thing to do.
Because you are watching Dex on the floor, trapped, furious because he cannot get to you.
No.
The temple goes blinding white.
Lightning tears out of the sky so violently Hera’s own altar cracks down the middle. The drakaina screams, and you don’t stop. You drive a broken spear through its throat and let the storm pour through the hole in the ceiling until there is nothing left but blood, smoke, and the sound of Dex breathing hard behind you.
And when you turn, Dex is looking at you like he has finally seen you.
See, he knew you’d be powerful. He just never expected you to be able to control that power enough to save him.
You say, out of breath, “She tried to kill you.”
Dex gets up with blood on his mouth and anger still in his eyes.
Because how dare Hera? No, really, how dare she? How dare she look at you and make you pay for Zeus’ sins? How dare she send monsters after a girl who never asked to be born, never asked to be hunted? How dare she make you feel unwanted when Dex is standing right there?
It's too much for Dex’s heart to handle, so he kisses you.
Right there in Hera’s temple. Against. Hera’s altar.
His lips are hot and desperate and viciously devoted, his hands are on you like he has spent weeks holding himself back and now the leash has finally snapped.
“Dex,” you gasp, because you still have enough sense left to be horrified. “Your vow.”
“I know.”
“Artemis—”
“I know.”
But he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even hesitate. His mouth is at your skin, your throat, your shoulder, kissing you like he is trying to erase your fear.
“I want Hera to know she failed,” he says against your skin, peeling away cloth.
Oh.
Oh.
“I want her to look down and see you alive. I want her to hear you. I want every god in Olympus to know she sent death and all she did was give me another reason to worship you.”
Like??? Dex????
Sir????
Your vow????
But no, he still doesn’t fucking care. Not when you are shaking under his hands. Not when thunder is rolling over the broken roof. Not when your fingers are in his hair.
“You are not Zeus’ mistake,” he says, rough and wrecked. “You are not a curse. You are perfect.”
His hands are shaking, and his hands never shake.
Not with arrows. Not with knives. But with you?
Yeah.
“You are mine to protect,” he murmurs, like blasphemy.
Your breath hitched.
“And I am so tired,” he says, “of pretending that is only duty.”
He’s feral and this whole ordeal is mythologically catastrophic.
It’s the kind of decision bards will one day sing about in metaphor because “Artemis’ supposedly celibate hunter railed Zeus’ daughter on Hera’s altar out of spite” is apparently too much for polite society.
But that is exactly what happened.
Dex wants the temple to remember. He wants the rain, the marble, the dead monster, the split peacock carvings, all of it, to bear witness to the fact that Hera tried to make you a tragedy and Dex turned you into worship instead.
By morning, a goddess is waiting outside, but it’s not Hera.
It’s Artemis.
Dex steps out to meet her with your marks still on his skin and no apology in his eyes.
Artemis looks at him, disappointed. “You broke your vow.”
Dex says nothing.
“There is no exception,” she says. “Not for love. Not for pity. Not even if the person you broke it for is my sister.”
And Dex, because he’s ruined by the act of love and apparently determined to make every god in Greece furious before breakfast, says, with a smile, “She’s worth it.”
When you finally stumble outside, you find a beautiful white stag, antlers pale as bone, hide bright as moonmilk, and hazel eyes you would know anywhere.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
Artemis turned Dex into a stag.
For the crime of—checks notes—fucking you.
Like. Okay. Sure. Very normal goddess behaviour. He broke a vow after you saved his life, and Artemis went, hmm. Deer.
You shout so loud the sky cracks open.
Somewhere, Hera is probably cackling. Somewhere else, Artemis is probably standing under a tree being self-righteous about discipline and men disappointing her.
Stag-Dex only lowers his crowned head into your shaking hands like he’s saying, I would do it again.
Obviously, you drag him to Apollo’s temple, since he’s probably more normal about getting laid.
Because if Artemis is going to be dramatic, then fine. You can be dramatic too. You can drag your cursed deer-lover through the nearest village while crying, sparking lightning across the road, and absolutely terrifying every farmer, priest, and goat within a five-mile radius.
Apollo appears because of all the commotion. He takes one look at you. Then at the white stag.
“Did my twin sister do this?”
“Yes.” You wipe your face with the back of your hand. “He broke his celibacy vow on Hera’s altar.”
Apollo goes still and smiles.
Because Apollo is a god, yes. Radiant and prophetic, blah blah blah. But he's also Apollo, which means he is physically incapable of hearing the sentence my twin sister’s assassin broke got some on my stepmother’s altar for my demigod sister and not finding it at least a little bit funny.
Like, that’s peak family drama.
Apollo looks at stag-Dex with the distant, considering eyes of a god reviewing paperwork. “So,” he says. “Artemis has dismissed him.”
The stag huffs.
“And he is an archer, yes?”
You blink through your tears. “What?”
“A very good archer, if the stories are accurate,” Apollo continues, like this is now a professional department transfer.
Stag-Dex lowers his head like he would rather be killed again than have his résumé read aloud by Apollo.
Apollo’s mouth twitches up.
Because yes, he is amused. He hates Hera, likes annoying his twin sister, and loves sex. Like Artemis, he is also god of archery, so really, if she’s going to throw away a perfectly good impossible shot because he got emotionally attached and made one spectacularly horny decision, that sounds like her loss.
“Fine,” Apollo says, lifting one golden hand. “I’ll take him.”
“Take him?” You hiccuped. “Take him where?”
“Relax, sister. I’ll take him under my protection,” Apollo says. “Call it a transfer of patronage. At least until Artemis stops being dramatic, which may take several centuries, but oh well.”
Like.
Your eye twitches and you think, he cannot be serious. He's doing this because he thinks it's funny.
Except he is. Light spills from his palm, and suddenly Dex is human again.
He's shaking and reaching for you like being turned into a stag was less traumatic than being away from your hands.
You crash into him. Dex catches you. His arms lock around you, one hand in your hair, the other at your back, and you kiss him like you are trying to put him back together
Apollo watches for maybe three seconds.
Then he glances toward his altar. Then back at you two.
“If you’re going to do it on mine too,” he says, amused and absolutely shameless, “at least let me watch.”
Dex slowly lifts his head, still half-mad from the curse, and the fact that this unserious god (who he now answers to) is speaking at all.
He glares, and Apollo’s smile widens.
Oh, this was going to be an interesting patronage experience, indeed.
—
Note: I’m doing a Greek myth AU for Bucky tomorrow stay tuned guys 🫶🫶🫶
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I just want to let you know. Love your writings. You have the highest honor of I have notifications on for when you post stuff on my tumblr app. I only have 1 other person currently I get notifications for. So uh congrats I guess. Lol
thank you so much and you need to know this is a compliment of the highest degree! I sincerely wish you find more creators you love as much so we may have company 🫶
hello dear! I hope you’re doing good! I just needed to let you know that yesterday night I couldn’t sleep and found myself reading good eyes! thank you so much for writing that, it was so sweet!! leo is just the most adorable kid in the world 😭
l’ve been in a reading slump for quite some time but your story felt so refreshing to my anxious brain, and you know what’s the funniest thing? I don’t even know who dex is 😭 I know he’s in daredevil but just because I looked him up (I’m a little behind with marvel tv series 🥸) AND YOU MADE ME FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM??? now I need to read the rest of your dex stories 🙂↕️
you’re one of my favorite writers—actually, one of the first ones I stumbled upon when I started reading bucky fanfics—so thank you again, your writing is awesome 🩵
oh my god I need to give you a hug right now. This is so kind and I will be thinking about this message for weeks 🫶🫶🫶 May you never step on a Lego barefoot ever again🫶
Summary : Dex is jealous of your sex toys. What else is he jealous of?
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : switch!Dex, switch!reader, Dex is a little pathetic in this one, obsessive jealousy, stalking, possessive behavior, BDSM/kink dynamics, sex toys, collars/restraints, safeword use (Green/Red), emotional masochism(?), rough sex, dacryphilia, mentions of past sexual mistreatment from your exes, murder/violence references, blood/injury, emotional dependency, humiliation and praise kink, no anatomical detail as per usual, Dex being jealous of literally anything that has ever touched you. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 13.7k
Notes : I hope y’all don't mind that I wrote a one shot instead of the series! This is my first story in a while that was unrequested and just something that I wanted! Enjoy!
Dex had watched you long before he ever touched you. Not that you ever found out.
To you, Benjamin Poindexter had only been the strange but polite man who started appearing in your life “by chance”. You knew he probably lived around the area, because he happened to be walking down your road and held the door when your hands were full, who remembered how you had your coffee after hearing you order it once in a local cafe, who showed up in the elevator just as the doors were closing and asked if you got home safe last night like that was a normal thing for a near-stranger to worry about. Then, he claimed he was visiting a colleague who lived in your building.
You thought he was sweet in a weird way. A little stiff, a little serious, a little too focused when you spoke, like every word out of your mouth mattered to him religiously.
You had no idea how much of it had been arranged. You thought it was just a little series of coincidences. Dex knew better. Dex had learned your schedule first: work, grocery store, laundromat, home, repeat. Then he learned the smaller things from his shadowy window across from your apartment: you checked the lock twice before bed, you forgot to eat when you were busy, you kicked your shoes off the second you got inside.
He told himself he was protecting you. That was what he called it at first, because protection sounded more legal than obsession. He told himself the neighbourhood was unsafe, that you were too trusting, that someone had to watch you and your window and the dark corners of the street beneath your building because no one else would. He told himself a lot of things, and for a while, he almost believed them.
Then there was the box under your bed.
That fucking box.
At first, Dex didn’t know what it was. It was small and tucked away like a dirty little secret. Maybe it was something you only pulled out when you were alone. Maybe it was something you kept hidden where no one else could see. Except Dex saw everything. He had a good view after all, a couple of stories up.
One night, he saw you come home exhausted, hair messy and shoulders slumped, still in your work clothes with your face drawn in a frown, making his hands flex in the dark because he hated anything that wore you down. He was by his window, watching you with the same dead-eyed patience he would with a target. You were safe. You were home. He should have left it there.
Then you reached under the bed, pulled out the box, and opened it.
Oh.
Dex went completely still.
It was… oh, no.
You pulled out a toy. The first one was a turquoise dildo, stupid and fake and smooth, curved like it had any fucking right to be shaped for you. Dex hated it immediately. He hated the colour, hated the size, hated the shine in your hand. He fucking hated the way you looked at it like it was familiar, like it belonged in your bed, like it had earned the right to be near you. It had known you before he did.
Because no. No, no, no. No, no, no! You didn’t need that!
You didn’t need that stupid silicone. You didn’t need some fake, lifeless object inside you like it could ever understand the divinity it was touching, like it could ever deserve the warmth of your body, like it could ever know what to do with the adorable little sounds that slipped out of your mouth when you started giving in. Dex had one too. It was real and throbbing so painfully against his zipper that his vision almost blurred, but that only made the humiliation worse, because he was standing there in the dark wanting you while some stupid thing got to be held by your hand and plunged into your body without earning any of it.
He couldn’t even bring himself to touch himself. His hand twitched once toward his belt, and then stopped, fingers curling into a fist so tight his knuckles ached. It felt too insulting to you, somehow. To stand there outside your life and get himself off like a stranger when what he wanted was to be chosen, to be invited in. Touching himself would have felt like admitting defeat to the fucking fake piece of silicone, and Dex would rather splinter his hand open against glass than give that thing the satisfaction.
Then, another night, you took out something smaller. It was sleeker, more curved. Dex watched it sit in your palm, watched your thumb brush over it, watched your body settle back against the sheets like you already knew exactly what it was going to do for you. A vibrator, he realized, and the hatred came back so fast it was almost clean.
Of course. Of fucking course there was another one. Another stupid little object pretending it could take his place, not that he had a place at all.
Dex had hands. Dex had fingers that never missed. Dex had aim so perfect and patience like a sickness. He could hit a target without thinking; he could find the weak point in anything. If he had the right to touch you, if you let him get his hands on you properly, he would learn you so thoroughly there would be nowhere left for you to hide. He would make you understand that you had never needed anything from that box. You had only needed him to finally get close enough.
That toy was nothing. Plastic garbage. An object. And Dex was still jealous.
He hated, hated, hated it until the feeling sat under his skin like a fever. He hated that it touched you without wanting you. He hated that it got inside you without worshipping you. He hated that it could make your thighs part and your breathing change without even understanding what blessing had been given.
It had no mouth, no hands, no eyes, no mind. It couldn't watch the little twitch in your lips when you tried not to make noise. It couldn’t possibly hear the difference between a sigh and a groan. It couldn't know when to slow down, when to go harder, when to hold you still and make you take what you were pretending not to need.
Dex could. Dex would. If he had you underneath him just once, he would make sure you forgot that stupid thing had ever worked at all.
His fist curled against the brick wall beside him until his knuckles ached. He was hard and furious and breathing too quickly.
You didn’t know it yet, but you didn’t need that to get off. You needed him. It was only rational.
You needed his focus, his precise attention. You needed to be laid out beneath him and taken apart piece by piece until you understood that pleasure didn’t have to come from a lifeless object. It could come from him. It should come from him.
Then your body arched. Your mouth fell open, your fingers tightened, and the thoughts inside Dex went black.
He punched the brick wall once, hard enough to split the skin over his knuckles and damage the paint. Pain flashed hot through his hand, bright enough to cut through the jealousy for half a second, but not enough to make him look away. Nothing was enough to make him look away. Not when the toy disappeared between your thighs again, not when your head tipped back, then when your chest rose and fell beneath the thin fabric of your shirt. Dex watched with his teeth clenched and blood sliding down his fingers, consumed by a jealousy so vile it should have disgusted him.
The next day, when he thought it couldn’t possibly get worse, he was proven wrong.
The rose toy was worse.
The rose toy made him want to burn the whole world down, because what the fuck did you need that for when he had a mouth? Dex stared at it from his window with a hatred he usually reserved for threats, for guys who looked at you too long on the street, for anyone who stood too close to you in line. But this was not a person who he could threaten or scare away or hurt. It was stupid little thing that sat between your thighs and pretended to do what his tongue should have been doing.
His mouth watered. His eyes dragged over you through the window, over your parted legs and rumpled clothes and the rise and fall of your chest. He watched your chest shift with every uneven breath, watched the way your body trembled when the toy stayed right where you wanted it.
But when did you ever stop to think about what he wanted?
He wanted to put his mouth there. He wanted to drag his tongue over every inch of you. He wanted to learn what made you gasp, what made you mewl, what made you grab his body and hold him exactly where you needed him.
He wanted to master you, and that was the only word for it. Not have. Not fuck.
Dex wanted to know every weak spot, every angle, every sound, every ruined expression you made when pleasure got too big for your body and spilled out of you. He wanted to know how much you could take. He wanted to know how pretty you looked when you were overwhelmed. He wanted to know if you would say his name like a warning or a prayer.
The toy didn’t deserve any of that. It had never protected you, never watched your door, never memorized your footsteps on the stairs, never wanted to crawl inside you.
But it had touched you anyway.
By the time you were finished, the inside of Dex’s mouth was bleeding and his breathing had gone unnaturally calm. He watched you clean the toys and tuck them away, watched the box slide back beneath your bed like it hadn’t broken his heart into a million little pieces.
After that, he hated the box like it was alive.
By the time he actually got close to you, Dex had already hated that box for months. You never knew that when he carried your groceries upstairs, he already knew which cabinet you kept the mugs in. You never knew that when he asked if you slept well, he already knew which nights you had tossed and turned. You never knew that when he looked around your apartment for the first time, polite and almost shy, he knew exactly what was hidden under your bed.
Then you kissed him one night outside your door, giggling because he had gone so still, because he looked like he might actually die if you didn’t kiss him right then and there.
After that, he was yours. Or you were his. Dex didn’t really care which way you phrased it. It was the same thing.
By some miracle, he became your boyfriend.
He hated that word, and loved it all the same, because it sounded too tame for what you had done to him. Boyfriend sounded casual, temporary. As if it was something that could end.
Lover was a better title, he thought. It felt more whole and all-consuming. But then your friends had cringed the one time he said it, and Dex had gone so still afterward that you could almost hear him tearing himself apart over it.
He hated the idea that he had embarrassed you, hated even more that someone else had been there to see it, until you had to cup his face and tell him no, baby, you didn’t embarrass me. I thought it was sweet. Maybe, though, we should just say boyfriend with my friends, okay?
And because it was you asking, he said of course, baby.
Still, nowadays, he slept in your bed more than he did his own. He stood in your kitchen in the mornings. He learned the smell of your shampoo, learned the shape of your body under his hands instead of through glass and his own sick imagination. And when you finally let him touch you properly, Dex nearly lost his mind, because he was good at it.
Of course he was good at it. Dex had focus like a camera lens, and once that focus turned on you, there was no part of your body he didn’t want to understand.
His fingers pressed and curled and learned you with frightening speed, finding the places that made your mouth drop open, the places that made your hips lift, the places that made you grab his wrist like you wanted him to stop and keep going at the same time. His mouth was patient, devoted, mean when it needed to be. He held your thighs open like he had been waiting his whole life to prove a point, like every gasp he dragged out of you was a personal victory over the stupid little rose toy.
When your hands fisted in his hair, when your thighs shook around his head, when his name broke out of you, all breathless and helpless, Dex thought, yes. there. That was what you were supposed to sound like.
The first time he filled you up because he’d convince you to go on the pill, your whole face changed. Dex saw your eyes go wide, saw your lips part, saw your breath catch in your throat like you hadn't expected him to feel like that. For one strange second, he looked almost startled by his own satisfaction. Then he bent over you, mouth brushing your ear, and fucked you because he could, and he was grateful for it, gasping thank you, thank you, thank you over and over again, while his face was buried in the crook of your neck.
After that, you stopped using the box.
Dex noticed the dust beginning to collect on the lid. He noticed the charger cords stayed tangled and unplugged. Now, when you were needy, you reached for him.
And there was nothing he loved more than you pawing his shirt, his wrist, his belt, his mouth. You reached for him in the morning, half-asleep. You reached for him at night with that little impatient noise in your throat that made him coo before giving you exactly what you wanted.
Good.
That was how it should have always been.
Sometimes, when you were asleep, Dex would look at the bed frame and think about the box beneath it. He should have been satisfied, but he wasn’t, because it still existed.
And maybe, much later, you started noticing things too. You’d see the way Dex could flick a bottle cap across the room and land it in the trash without looking. The way his hands looked natural around the knives in your kitchen.
You knew something. You weren’t stupid.
By the time you realised he was Bullseye, it was too late. By then, you already loved him. By the time you realised there was something violently wrong with him, you didn’t care enough to leave.
And the box under your bed stayed untouched, even though Dex thought about it every day.
—
The day he finally did something about it, he came back home to your apartment after a good couple of hours of donning the Bullseye mask, being a good guy and killing at least half a dozen task force agents.
Usually, when Dex came home buzzing like that, you were there.
Usually, the second he stepped through your door with that electric stillness in his body, you would look up from the couch or the kitchen counter or the bed, take one look at his face, and your eyes would change from curious to knowing immediately. You wouldn’t ask what happened. You wouldn’t ask where he had been. You would just set down whatever was in your hands and say, “Come here, baby.”
And Dex would go to you like a starving little thing. You would let him bury his face in your neck, let him grip your hips too hard as you murmured sweet, filthy little things into his ear about how he could take it out on you, how you could handle him, how he didn’t have to hold it all in himself.
Sometimes you made him wait. Other times, you made him ask. Most of the time you let him fuck you against the nearest wall before either of you even made it to the bedroom, because you liked him like that, wrecked and keyed up and desperate enough to turn all that focus on to you.
But that day, you weren’t home. Earlier in the morning, you had kissed him on the cheek with your keys in your hand and said, far too sweetly, “Baby, I have overtime today.”
You’d said it like it was just a schedule change. As if you hadn’t just sentenced him to four or five extra hours all alone.
Dex had been fine then, and said okay, because a normal boyfriend would. He had watched you leave, watched the door shut behind you, watched the lock turn, and told himself he could wait. He had waited for worse things. He had discipline. He had control.
But now, control was suddenly a very stupid word.
He was still buzzing. His hands felt awake. Every little sound in the apartment was a little too overstimulating, and he needed something to distract him from it: the refrigerator humming, a pipe knocking behind the wall, traffic below, the faint settling creak of the floorboards under his boots.
He stood in the middle of your apartment and breathed.
For one insane second, Dex considered going to your workplace.
He could picture your startled little gasp when he appeared where he shouldn’t be. He’d drag you to a single-cubicle bathroom, crowd you against the sink and cover your mouth with his hand because you had laughed last time, whispering, “Dex, we shouldn’t,” while your fingers undid his belt. He remembered the first time he had done it, remembered your skirt shoved up, remembered you biting his shoulder to stay quiet, remembered how smug he had felt afterward when you had gone back to work with his handprint on your hips beneath your clothes.
He could do it again.
He almost did.
But then his eyes moved toward the bedroom. Toward the bed and the space underneath it.
That fucking box.
It was such a stupid thing to notice, such a small thing. A corner of it was barely visible in the shadow under the bed, tucked away like it had nothing to fear from him. Like it hadn’t sat there while you slept beside him, while you kissed him, while you reached for him, while you let him make you fall apart and then kept that little graveyard of old pleasures under the same bed.
Dex stared at it.
The focus in him that had been looking for you found the box instead.
Before he could think better about it, he went into your bedroom, dropped to one knee, shoved his hand under the bed, and dragged the box out hard enough that it scraped against the floor. The lid snapped open under his fingers, and the dildo was on top.
Smooth, curved, stupid, fake little thing, sitting there like a dare.
Dex picked it up, and the second it was in his hand, he felt disgusted. There. There was the problem. There was something he could actually put his hands on. This. This thing. This lifeless piece of silicone that had touched you and survived.
Not anymore.
Dex had gone to the kitchen without even realizing he’d moved, grabbed a knife he recently sharpened, and came back with his breathing shallow and even. He sat on the bedroom floor with the open box between his knees and cut into the dildo like he was gutting a fish. The silicone resisted for half a second before splitting, and that drag of the knife through something shaped to imitate what he had made heat crawl up the back of his neck.
It was satisfying, mutilating this stupidly lifeless object.
His hatred didn’t care about logic. His jealousy had never needed the thing to be alive. It had only needed the thing to have touched you. That was enough to make the destruction feel intimate, corrective, and necessary.
He cut it again. Then again. Then, the rampage took shape quickly after that.
The man who folded his shirts in your drawer and rinsed his mug after coffee and kissed your forehead when you slept in too late was gone. As far as these toys were concerned, he was Bullseye.
The blade dragged through silicone again. His hands twisted. The fake curve lost its shape. He ripped it open, ruined it, carved it into useless pieces while his breath came harder and harder through his nose and his thoughts went noisy and repetitive:
It touched you.
It touched you.
It touched you.
The smaller vibrator went next. He hated how sleek it was, how obviously designed to find something inside you that belonged to him now. He slammed it against the floor once, hard enough that the crack of plastic snapped through the room. The sound felt good, so he did it again. A piece broke off and skittered under the dresser. He grabbed the rest of it and brought it down until the casing split open and its mechanical guts spilled out like it had finally been exposed for what it was: A battery. A lie.
Dex’s hand was bleeding again by then. He didn’t know if it was from the agents, the knife, the plastic, or the way he kept hitting things too hard. He didn’t care, though.
He picked up the rose toy next.
He remembered seeing it between your thighs through the window. He remembered his mouth salivating like an animal. He remembered wanting to bite through his own hand because that stupid little thing had been sitting where his mouth should have been, making you shake, making you breathe like that, ruining you without considering worship.
Dex’s fingers closed around it.
“You didn’t need this,” he muttered.
His voice sounded strange in the empty apartment.
“You had me.”
Not then, some small sane part of him might have said. Not yet. You hadn’t had him then. You hadn’t even known he was watching.
Dex ignored that thought.
He drove the knife into the gummy outer piece and tore it open. The rose came apart under his hands, the casing cracked, the wired snapped, pieces dropping into the box with the others until the whole thing looked like a little crime scene made of plastic and his own deranged need to be the only thing you ever reached for again.
The rampage didn’t make him calm.
It made him worse.
Because once he started, he couldn’t stop at the toys. He snapped cords. He ripped the satin lining out of the old box because it had held them. He crushed a bottle of silicone cleaning liquid in his fist and watched it spill slick and useless across the floor, then cursed and cleaned that part immediately because it was your floor and he was desperately trying to convince himself that he was definitely not an animal.
By the time the box was ruined, Dex was breathing hard. The buzzing under his skin hadn’t disappeared, but it had direction now. His knuckles stung and his eyes stayed fixed on the mess in front of him with a focus so total it almost looked peaceful.
Then he gathered every broken piece.
He took the box outside behind the building, to the old metal bin near the alley where no one ever looked. He arranged the pieces, added kindling, added flame, and stood there watching as the fire caught.
The silicone melted slowly.
The dildo warped first, losing its already tattered shape, collapsing as the heat ate through it. Dex watched with his hands at his sides and felt something in his chest loosen by degrees. The vibrator casing blackened. The rose toy pieces curled and shrank into un ugly, unrecognizable puddle.
The smell was awful, chemical and bitter, crawling into the back of his throat.
Dex watched anyway. He needed to suffer through it to know he did it.
He watched until the pieces were ruined beyond saving. He watched until nothing in the bin looked like something you could have held, could have wanted, could have used.
Only then did he go back upstairs.
Dex laughed once under his breath, not because anything was funny, but because the sound had nowhere else to go. He washed his hands in your bathroom, scrubbing blood and soot from his knuckles, cleaning under his nails with the same discipline he used after a kill. Then he dried his hands on the towel you always insisted was decorative and stood in the bedroom again.
He stared at the empty space under the bed no. There was no taking all the damage back now, not that he wanted to. But… it just felt wrong.
Well.
Now he needed to replace the box, didn’t he?
That was what a boyfriend did after destroying his girlfriend’s private sex toy collection in a jealous, post-murder fugue state. He should replace it with something better.
There was a shop around the corner. Dex had passed it before with you and you had squeezed his hand and laughed under your breath when he looked away too quickly from the window display. It wasn’t because he was shy. Dex wasn’t shy with you anymore. He could put his mouth between your thighs and stay there until you were crying lightning and his name into the pillow, but there was something different about seeing all of it displayed in public: rows and rows of things made for people who didn’t have him.
He went anyway.
The little bell over the door chimed when he stepped inside. A woman behind the counter looked up. “Hi, let me know if you need help finding anything.”
Dex stared at her for half a second too long. “I’m fine.”
Spoiler: he wasn’t.
He walked past the first display and immediately regretted having eyes. Dildos, vibrators, and suction toys. Things in pastel colours and matte black. Things with little labels that promised intimacy from something battery-powered and dead.
No. Absolutely not. He wasn’t buying you anything phallic. He wasn’t buying you anything designed to replace a tongue. He wasn’t paying money for a thing that would sit in your drawer and pretend it could do what he did.
He ignored every masturbation item with the offended dignity of a man who had, less than an hour ago, cut your dildo into pieces because it had hurt his feelings.
He wouldn’t buy you any pretty little objects that promised to “hit the right spot,” because Dex’s fingers hit the right spot. Dex’s mouth hit the right spot. Dex knew your body now, and anything that claimed it could do the same made him want to start another fire.
He moved deeper into the store, and that was when he found the restraints.
He picked up a metal pair of padded cuffs with real locks and tested the weight in his palm, expression blank. Good and sturdy. Soft enough not to hurt you unless you wanted it to. He placed them in the basket.
Then silk ties. Black, then red, then a dark blue because he imagined that one against your wrists and had to stand very still for a moment. Rope came next, the kind that would look filthy wrapped around you but would not actually hurt you.
He found a blindfold and the thought of you wearing it made his mouth go dry. You, trusting him enough to give up sight. You, lying back and letting the world narrow down to what he was doing to you. That was good. That was right. That didn’t replace him. That made him necessary.
Into the basket.
A gag made him pause when he imagined your mouth around it and then imagined not being able to hear every little sound he worked so hard to drag out of you. He frowned at the display for a while, then chose one anyway because some nights, maybe, you would like being made quiet. Some nights, maybe, he would like the sight more than he hated losing the sounds.
Then he saw the collar.
It was not flashy, just black leather, with a small metal ring at the front. His hand closed around it as the leather bent slightly under his thumb. He pictured it at your throat. Pictured his fingers hooking under the ring to pull you close. Pictured you looking up at him with that half-angry, half-wanting expression you got when he was being too much and you liked it anyway.
Mine, he thought.
Not because he wanted to own you like an object, not exactly. Dex was too broken to make the distinction cleanly, but he knew this much: he wanted you choosing it. He wanted you holding your chin up while he fastened it around your neck. He wanted to see it on you and know you had let him put it there.
He put it in the basket.
By then, the sales assistant had started watching him with polite concern.
“Shopping for a gift?” she asked.
Dex looked down at the basket. “For my girlfriend.”
“That’s sweet,” she said, which was such a wild misunderstanding of the situation that Dex only stared at her.
“Yes,” he said finally.
Sweet. Sure.
He added a proper storage box too, black and lockable, because if he was replacing your box, he was replacing it correctly. He added massage oil after checking three labels and rejecting anything that smelled too artificial. He added a small bottle of specialised cleaner because you would complain if he didn’t, and because even in the middle of this deranged little shopping trip, Dex was still painfully, pathetically attentive to the boring practical details of loving you.
At checkout, the woman rang everything up without comment.
Dex kept his eyes forward.
He didn’t look at the wall of vibrators behind her. He didn’t look at the glossy pink boxes promising pleasure in ten different speeds, because if he looked too long, he might start thinking about the one currently melting behind your building, and if he thought about that too much, he might smile.
So he paid, took the bag, and left.
When he returned to your apartment, he arranged the new box carefully. Handcuffs tucked to the side. Rope coiled neatly. Silk ties folded. Blindfold, gag, cleaner. The collar went on top. Maybe he should’ve gotten a leash. Oh well. If you really liked it, he’ll bring you to the store and get you to choose.
Dex stared at it for a moment before he closed the lid and slid the box under the bed where the old one had been.
There.
Fixed.
Not really, of course. Not in any healthy or normal sense of the word.
But when had Dex ever been healthy or normal about you?
—
You came home tired that day
When you unlocked the door, Dex had been waiting in the kitchen, wearing one of the shirts he had slowly migrated into your drawer.
“Hi, baby,” you murmured, already smiling when you saw him.
Dex walked towards you immediately, too fast, probably. He kissed you before you could take off your coat, hands going to your waist, mouth lingering like he had been counting the hours since you left because he had. You laughed into the kiss and pushed at his chest.
“Missed me?”
“Yes,” he said, too honestly.
For a while, everything was fine. You changed out of your work clothes. Dex followed you around like a shadow, trying not to look too often at the bed. He made tea. You drank half of it. You complained about overtime, about your feet hurting, and Dex listened with a deadly seriousness most men reserved for hostage negotiations.
Then you went into the bedroom to put something away. You crouched by the bed to shove your bag out of the way, and that was when you saw the box.
A new box.
It was black, neat, expensive-looking, tucked exactly where the old one used to be.
You pulled it out slowly, already suspicious, because Dex didn’t misplace things. Dex arranged. Dex corrected. Dex replaced. When you opened the lid, you immediately saw the collar laid right on top like a dark little apology ribbon.
For a second, you said, “Oh, wow," because you genuinelyliked it.
It was gorgeous. The cuffs were padded and clearly not cheap. The silk restraints were soft. The rope was smooth, the kind that would not burn if handled properly. The collar was simple black leather, pretty in a way that made your stomach give one stupid little twist before. It was thoughtful. Dex had gone shopping with your body in mind. He had pictured your wrists. your throat, your mouth. The little sounds you made when you were overwhelmed and pretending you weren’t.
And then you remembered the empty space where your actual things should have been.
“Ummm…” You looked up. “Where’s my stuff?”
Dex stood in the doorway, too still. That was answer enough, really.
“What stuff?” he asked, badly.
You stared at him. “What?”
Because really, what the hell did he think he was gonna get away with like that?
“My old box, Dex. The one that was here. The one this is replacing.”
“You don’t use it anymore.”
You blinked. "That's not what I asked.”
Dex shifted his weight, and there was something almost innocent in the confusion on his face. Though not innocent like harmless. Dex was never harmless. He looked innocent like he genuinely couldn’t find the part of the situation where his logic had failed. You had stopped using the old toys. You had him now. He had bought you better things. Things for both of you. In his mind, he had done everything right. Why did it matter?
“You have me,” he said, like that settled it.
You stared at him for another beat. Then your tiredness warped into irritation. “Dex. Where. Is. My. Stuff.”
His eyes flicked away.
Your stomach sank. “Did you throw it out?”
“No.”
“Did you put it in the dumpster?”
“No.”
“Please tell me you didn’t donate it.”
Dex looked appalled, like that wasn’t his modus operandi. “Of course not.”
“Then where is it?”
He hesitated and Benjamin Poindexter did not hesitate unless the answer was somehow worse than every option you had given him.
“I destroyed and burned it.”
What. The. Fuck?
For a second, you genuinely couldn’t speak.
“I…” you looked empty. “You burned it.”
His mouth tightened. “You don’t use it anymore.”
“Oh my god.” You stood up with the collar still in your hand. “I know I don't use it anymore.”
“Then why—”
“Principle, Dex!”
He frowned, and that made you want to throw the collar at his head.
“Principle,” you repeated, louder. “It was mine. I bought it. You don’t get to decide something is useless and destroy it because you personally don’t like it.”
“You don’t need them,” he said again, and he was starting to feel like a broken fucking record.
“Principle!”
“You have me.”
“Principle, Dex!”
He looked genuinely distressed now, but not because he understood. Not because he had suddenly realized that taking your things from under your bed and burning them was unhinged. He looked distressed because you were upset, because the warmth had drained out of the room and he didn’t know how to get it back without lying about the one thing he couldn’t make himself regret.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. A pathetic last ditch effort, really.
You laughed once. “No, you’re not.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“I said,” he managed through gritted teeth, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry I’m mad.”
Dex went quiet. There it was.
You watched him realize you had him cornered. His face went tense, his eyes a little too dark, his mouth pressed into a hard line. Dex was sorry you looked hurt. He was sorry your voice sounded like that. He was sorry there was a chance you might pull away from him and mean it. But he wasn’t sorry the toys were gone. If he was honest, he was relieved they were gone. He was relieved they were ash. He was relieved they could never sit under your folds again.
“Say it,” you said.
His eyes lifted to yours. “Say what?”
“That you’re not sorry you burned them.”
His throat moved.
“Dex,” you scolded.
He looked away again.
You stepped closer. “Say it.”
“I’m not sorry they’re gone,” he said at last, honest and rough.
Your anger went hot and bright. “Of course you’re not.”
“You don’t need them,” he said, almost pleading now, like if he could just explain it properly, you would understand. “You don’t. You reach for me now. You wake me up when you want something. You pull my hand between your legs. You say my name. You don’t need something fake. You don’t need something that works like—” He stopped, breath hard through his nose. “You don’t need it.”
You stared at him, stunned all over again by the sheer deranged sincerity of it. “You hated it.”
His silence answered for him.
“You hated my toys.”
“They touched you,” he said, as if that explained anything.
“They were objects.”
“They touched you,” he said again, as if he repeating it enough would make you believe.
He said it like he was naming a crime. They touched you. That was the entire case. The entire verdict. In Dex’s head, the old box was not just a box. It was proof of a life before him. Proof that your body had known pleasure without him.
“You’re jealous of fucking objects,” you said, “Do you hear yourself?”
His mouth tightened.
“You are. Oh my god, you are so fucking jealous.”
“It was made to—” He cut himself off, eyes flashing, dark and humiliated. “You used it instead of me.”
You dragged one hand down your face. “I used it before I knew you.”
Dex swallowed then started, “Then what…”
“That still doesn’t mean you get to burn it!” you exclaimed, cutting him off.
Dex looked genuinely lost for a second, and that made the whole thing worse. He had walked himself straight into a psychosexual spiral and couldn't understand why the conclusion was not obvious to you. You belonged to yourself, yes, fine, he knew that was what he was supposed to think, and he did think that, but your pleasure had become his job, his purpose, his proof that you chose him. The old toys were obsolete. They made him imagine you alone, reaching under the bed instead of reaching for him, and even the thought made his brain go static with jealousy.
“I bought you better things,” he said, smaller now.
You looked down at the box again, then back at him.
“No,” you said. “You bought things that need you.”
He went still, because you were right.
“You bought cuffs because they need your hands. Rope because it needs you to tie it. A blindfold because it makes you important. A gag because you think would look pretty on me. A collar because—” You stopped, glancing at the leather in your hand. Dex’s eyes followed the movement immediately, hungry and ashamed. “Because you wanted to put this on me.”
His breathing changed.
“You replaced my box with yourself,” you said in deft realisation.
Dex looked at you like you had cracked open his skull and read the ugliest scroll inside it.
“I bought things for us,” he said, but his voice had gone rough.
“You bought things that couldn’t touch me unless you were there.”
His lips parted, closed. Opened again. “I wanted to be there.”
“I know.”
“I should be there.”
“Dex.”
“It should be me.”
Dex looked almost sick, eyes fixed on you, shoulders tight. He was jealous, yes, but the jealousy had gone molten now, mixing with want and shame and the awful fear that you might still want something that wasn’t him.
Your frustration gentles for half a second. Then you remembered how fucking expensive those toys were.
“Principle,” you snapped again, because you needed the word to land in his skull. “Dex, I’m not mad because I desperately needed a vibrator. I clearly don’t. I’m mad you destroyed it.”
“I replaced it.” He had the audacity, even now.
“You replaced it with what you wanted.”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“I do like it!” you shouted, then immediately hated yourself for giving him that.
Dex’s eyes flicked to the box.
His face went blank, trying not to startle you further. “I’m sorry.”
“But you don’t regret it.”
He swallowed.
You stepped closer again, and he let you.
He could be terrifying. He could be impossible. He could turn an argument about property into an existential crisis about a lifeless object touching you before him. But when you came close, when your anger had nowhere else to go but into his space, he stayed. He let you corner him. Let you press the collar flat against his chest and watch his whole body react.
“What did you think was going to happen?” you asked, voice low now. “Honestly?”
Dex’s eyes dropped to the collar.
“You thought I was going to come home, find out you burned my things, and what? Say thank you? Let you put this around my neck?”
He looked at the leather in your hand. Then at your face.
The want in him was so obvious it was almost embarrassing.
“You did,” you said because you knew. “You thought you were going to put this on me tonight.”
His breathing went uneven.
“You were going to be all sweet and insane about it, weren’t you? You were going to touch my throat and call me yours and pretend burning my stuff was just a little misunderstanding because the new box is prettier.”
Dex said nothing.
“No,” you said.
He looked up.
“You don’t get to do that,” you told him.
Disappointment flashed behind his eyes, then confusion. Then that needy, miserable focus again, like he didn;’t know where the scene was going anymore but he still wanted to follow you there.
You stepped forward until he backed into the doorframe.
“You don’t get to burn my things and reward yourself,” you said, pressing the collar higher against his chest, up toward his neck. “You don’t get to make this about what you want.”
Dex’s throat bobbed. “What are you doing?”
You smiled but it was slightly sadistic. “What do you think?”
His eyes dropped to the collar again. For one second, he genuinely didn't understand.
Then you lifted it to his throat, and he froze.
His brain went haywire so visibly you could almost see the wires sparking behind his eyes. He had thought about that collar on you. He had probably thought about it all afternoon. He had imagined his fingers hooking beneath the ring to pull you close. He had built the whole fantasy around possession moving outward from him to you, about you wearing the thing he chose, about you looking up at him and letting him see proof that he had replaced everything in your life before him.
But now your hands were at his neck. Now the leather was against his skin. Now your fingers were brushing the vulnerable place under his jaw, and the fantasy inverted so violently he looked like he was falling into an unpredictable void of your lust.
“Oh,” he breathed.
You paused with the buckle still loose.
Dex’s eyes had gone wide and dark, his mouth parted, all his vicious certainty suddenly gone. He looked overwhelmed by the speed of his own neediness. The collar was supposed to mean you were his, in that fucked-up symbolic language he had written in his head. But with you fastening it around him, with your furious hands at his throat, with your body pinning him in place without force, it meant he was yours.
Oh. He knew the difference now.
“Oh my god,” you murmured, studying his now half-lidded eyes. “You like this.”
His lashes fluttered once.
“Dex,” you said, squeezing his cheeks together with one hand. He swallowed against the leather as you buckled it with your other hand.
The tiny click sounded obscene in the otherwise quiet room.
His eyes closed for half a second, and his whole body seemed to shudder inward. When he opened his eyes again, he looked wrecked.
“Color?” you asked.
Oh.
“Green,” he managed. Because of course it was.
You pretended not to be pleased as you hooked two fingers through the ring. Dex stared at your hand. You tugged once.
It was barely anything, but he followed immediately.
The sight of it made your anger burn hotter and lower at the same time. Benjamin Poindexter, following one small pull at his throat like his body had decided before his pride could argue. All that violence, all that jealousy, all that insane possessive logic. And here he was, looking at you like punishment was the only language he fully understood.
You pulled him out of the bedroom by the collar, and into the living room, where the good chairs were.
He looked confused and turned on and miserable, which was exactly what you wanted him to be. He still didn’t fully understand the principle. Fine. You would make him understand by the end of the night.
“Strip.”
He obeyed fast.
You watched the fabric hit the floor and felt your mouth go dry despite yourself. He was all lean muscle and restrained violence, chest rising and falling. It should have been absurd. But it was also fucking unfair how good he looked, how the leather made him seem both more dangerous and more helpless, how his eyes stayed locked on you like he would do anything if you kept looking at him like that.
“Don’t look so eager,” you said.
His jaw flexed. “You put it on me.”
“You bought it.”
“For you.”
“Funny how that worked out.”
Dex’s eyes darkened.
You pushed him back into the chair by the window, the one you usually curled up in with a book. He sat because he wanted you to push him, because being handled by you was the closest thing to absolution he understood. You had the cuffs on your other hand, the ones he had imagined around your wrists, and his gaze followed them with naked hunger.
“Hands behind the chair.”
He hesitated, but because he did not want to. He hesitated because some stubborn, spiraling part of him was still stuck on the same loop, still fighting from inside his own head. He had done everything right. He had removed what you didn’t need. He had bought better things, and you were clearly using them now. Why were you still angry? Why did you still want the old ones? Why wasn’t this enough?
You leaned down, holding the collar ring between two fingers. “Dex.”
His eyes snapped to yours.
“I said hands behind the chair,” he snapped.
This time, he obeyed.
The cuffs clicked shut around his wrists one after the other. Dex tested them once, shoulders pulling tight, then went still, his chest rising hard beneath the collar. You stood in front of him with the key in your palm and watched his eyes move over you, your work clothes, your tired face, your angry mouth. He looked like being denied forgiveness was hurting him. He looked like it was making him harder to breathe.
You stepped closer, close enough that his knees bracketed your legs, close enough that he had to tilt his head back to keep looking at you. The collar put his throat on display. You could see every swallow, every uneven breath, every tiny betrayal of his body when you touched the ring again.
“I’m not letting you go,” you said.
His lips parted.
“Not until you promise me you’ll buy me new ones.”
Dex’s face changed immediately.
“No.”
You almost laughed. “Excuse me?”
“No.”
You smiled as if he had just fallen into your trap. “Then I guess you’re not going anywhere.”
“No. No, no, no.” The words started coming faster, tumbling out of him with a desperation that made his voice crack. “No, you don’t need them. You don’t need those. You have me. I’m here. I’m right here.”
You narrowed your eyes, but your anger snagged on the way he said it. He was not being smug now. He wasn’t calm, or even really arguing anymore. His wrists pulled once against the cuffs, metal clicking behind the chair, and he looked almost startled by his own helplessness before his eyes found yours again.
“Use me,” he said.
Your stomach tightened. “Dex.”
“Use me,” he repeated, rougher now, pleading. “You don’t need them. You don’t need it. Use me. I’ll do it. I’ll be good. I’ll be so good. Just don’t make me buy you something that replaces me.”
“No one said you were replaceable,” you frowned
“You want them back.”
“Because they were mine.”
“You want them back,” he said again, like he couldn’t hear the difference. “You want them back, but I’m right here.”
You grabbed his face, fingers firm on his jaw, and kissed him before he could say it again. It was supposed to shut him up. It did, for maybe half a second. Then Dex made a sound into your mouth, needy and broken, and started kissing you back like he was trying to climb out of his own skin. His hands flexed uselessly behind the chair. The collar pressed into your fingers when you tugged him closer, and his whole body followed the pull so immediately that heat between you legs through your anger.
You kissed him again. And again. And again, until his breathing was wrecked and his mouth was swollen and his begs had turned into a whine against your lips.
“No,” he whispered when you pulled away. “No, baby, please. Don’t make me. Don’t make me buy those. Use me. Please use me.”
“You don’t get to beg your way out of consequences.”
“I’m not,” he said, even though he absolutely was. “I’m giving you something better.”
“You are giving me a headache.”
“I’m giving you me.”
It shouldn’t have made your heart jump. It shouldn;t have made you look down at him, collared and cuffed and half out of his mind, and think that maybe the worst part was not that Dex was insane. It was that he was insane in ways that made you want to love him more
You stepped back.
Dex’s eyes followed you immediately.
“You want me to use you?” you asked.
“Yes.”
“You want to be useful?”
“Yes.”
“Then watch.”
His face changed into a flicker of confusion first, then anticipation, then frustration when you turned away from him and started unbuttoning your shirt.
Dex went silent so abruptly it almost made you smile. His eyes were locked on your fingers, on each button sliding free, on the thin strip of skin appearing beneath the fabric.
You stripped in front of him because you were angry and petty and tired of him thinking his jealousy got to be the only thing in the room. Your shirt fell to the floor. Then your trousers. Your bra. Your underwear. Dex watched every inch of you like it hurt him not to touch, his wrists straining once behind the chair before he forced himself still.
Dex’s mouth opened, as if he was getting exactly what he wanted, but then you walked to the couch and picked up one of the decorative pillows, the cotton one you usually shoved behind your back when you watched TV.
Dex’s eyes shifted again as realization crept in.
“No,” he said.
You arched a brow.
His breathing changed. “No.”
“Oh?” You held the pillow in between your legs, watching his eyes go dark and frantic. “You don’t like this?”
“Don’t.”
“You were jealous of plastic, baby. Surely you’re not jealous of a pillow too.”
Dex made a sound that was almost a growl and almost a whine. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t make it sound stupid.”
“It is stupid.” You sank down to the floor in front of him, grinding down on the cushion keeping your eyes on him. “You burned my toys because you were jealous of objects. You’re sitting there in a collar you bought for me because you couldn’t handle a vibrator existing under my bed. And now you’re looking at this pillow like you’re going to kill it.”
His face twisted.
You had meant it to be teasing. Cruel, yes, but controlled. A punishment, a lesson, proof of how ridiculous he was being. But when you settled over the pillow and shifted your hips once, Dex’s reaction was so immediate and visceral that the room seemed to tilt around it.
He didn’t look angry anymore.
He looked distressed.
His wrists jerked against the cuffs, the chair creaking under the force, and his breath punched out of him like he had been hit. You saw his brain do the horrible thing it always did, watched him turn a pillow into another rival, another thing touching you, another thing getting what he wanted while he sat there forced to watch.
“Dex,” you said, but you moved again without thinking.
His whole body flinched.
“No,” he choked. “No, no, no, no, please.”
You froze.
He was staring at you, eyes wet now, breath coming too fast. He wanted to obey. He wanted to be punished. He wanted to be good. But he also could not bear the sight of you taking pleasure from anything that wasn’t him, even in play, even as a punishment.
“Baby,” you said carefully, uncertain now.
Dex shook his head, almost violently. “Red.”
Oh.
Just like that, you stopped.
Neither of you had ever used that safeword before, but you were glad he did.
You were off the pillow almost immediately, scrambling to him.
“Oh,” you whispered. “Oh, fuck, baby, I’m sorry.”
Dex’s gaze snapped to you.
You dropped in front of him, hands going to his face first because you needed him looking at you. His skin was hot under your palms. His eyes were wet, not fully crying yet but close enough. He looked wrecked, and not playfully desperate like usual, not turned on in that cocky way he got when he thought he had pushed you into giving him what he wanted. The sight of you using anything else, even a pillow, even as a punishment, had wrecked him.
“You hate it,” you said softly, almost to yourself. “You actually hate seeing that.”
He nodded pathetically. “Mmmhmm.”
“You said you hated the toys,” you murmured, thumb brushing over his cheek. “I thought you were being insane. I mean, you are being insane, but I didn’t realize it was hurting you like this.”
Dex looked away, ashamed, furious, overwhelmed by being understood too clearly. You leaned in and wrapped your arms around him carefully, pressing your face into his neck. For a second, he didn't move. Then his whole body sagged into you as much as the cuffs allowed, breath trembling against your shoulder, face turning blindly toward your warmth.
“We’re done,” you said. “I’m taking these off.”
You reached behind his neck for the collar first, but the moment your fingers found the buckle, Dex jerked his head to the side.
“Dex.”
“Green,” he said quickly.
You froze.
His voice was rough and wet, the word scraping out of him like he had dragged it up from somewhere raw. “Green.”
“You just said…”
“I know, I know, but—” He swallowed hard, throat shifting against the collar. “Green as long as you use me.”
Your breath caught.
Dex looked at you then, fully, and the tears finally slipped over. His face twisted with it, like he hated himself for crying but couldn’t stop. “Not the pillow. Me. Use me. Please. I don’t want to stop if it’s me.”
“Dex.”
“I need this,” he said, and it came out so naked that it hurt. “I need to know I’m better than a piece of plastic.”
Fuck.
“Oh, baby.” You cupped his face again, thumbs catching the tears before they could reach his mouth. “I know you are. Of course you are.”
“Then why are you still mad?”
The question came out small, almost confused. Because there it was again: the part of him that truly did not understand. The part of him that had made a perfect little equation in his head and couldn't see where it failed. If he was better, why did you care? If you had him, why did the burned things matter?
You sighed, pressing your forehead to his. “Because they were mine.”
Dex shut his eyes.
You felt him breathe, shaky and uneven.
“I’m yours, too.” he whispered.
Your whole body went still.
Fuck fuck fuck. You were going to fold again, were you?
Dex opened his eyes. Damp lashes, ruined mouth, collar snug against his throat. He looked up at you like that was the only answer he had, the only thing he knew how to offer in return. I’m yours, that could balance the scales. Like giving himself over completely should make up for taking the box from you.
You should have argued. Instead, you kissed him.
“Yes,” you whispered against his mouth. “You are.”
Dex made a broken sound, and then he was kissing you back as much as the cuffs allowed, desperate and clumsy, trying to lean into you with his wrists still locked behind the chair. His mouth tasted like salt and need. You kissed him slowly at first, grounding him, giving him something real to focus on that was not the pillow, not the old toys, not the psychosexual spiral eating itself alive inside his head.
“Color,” you murmured.
“Green,” he said instantly.
“Not because you think I’ll be mad if you say red.”
“Green,” he repeated, steadier this time. Your hand slid down to the collar ring, and his breath hitched.
You kissed him until his begging started to lose shape.
It wasn’t really words anymore, just broken little sounds against your mouth, the scrape of his breath, the helpless pull of his wrists against the cuffs every time you shifted in his lap. Dex kept trying to follow you, kept trying to give you more than his body was allowed to give.
Your hand slipped between you, hiking in his thighs, meaning to wrap around him, to give him pleasure with your fingers.
Dex jerked so hard the cuffs clicked behind the chair.
“No,” he gasped into your mouth.
You froze immediately. “Color?”
“Green,” he said, frantic. “So fucking green, green, I just— not like that. Please, baby, not like that.”
You pulled back enough to look at him. His eyes were wet, pupils blown black, his lips swollen from kissing. The collar sat snug around his throat, rising and falling with every shaky breath.
“Then what do you want?”
Dex swallowed, and the motion pressed against the leather. “Use me.”
Your breath caught.
He looked ashamed of how badly he needed it and too desperate to hide. “Please. I don’t want your hand. I don’t want anything else. I want you on me. I want you to take it from me. I want you to ride me. I want to be what you use.”
“Oh,” you whispered.
His whole face changed at that, like the understanding alone almost broke him.
You climbed into his lap slowly, one knee on either side of his thighs, watching him fight himself not to move. He was already hard beneath you, hot and straining, his body tense with the effort of staying still while you settled over him. His hands flexed uselessly behind the chair. He wanted to touch you so badly it looked like pain.
You took the ring of the collar between two fingers and pulled his face up to yours.
“You sure want me to take what I need from you?”
“Yes,” he breathed, almost frantic now. “Yes, baby. Please. I can do it. I can be good. I can be so good for you.”
Oh.
Then you sank down onto him, so slowly that both of you stopped breathing.
Dex’s head fell back against the chair, mouth open, the sound that left him too raw to be pretty. You felt him stretch you open inch by inch, felt the heat and weight of him filling you so completely that your own voice broke before you could stop it. You had to stop halfway down, fingers tightening around the collar ring, forehead dropping toward his as your body adjusted to his stretch.
“Fuck,” you whispered.
Dex’s eyes opened at once, glassy and wild. “Say it.”
You blinked, barely able to think. “What?”
His voice cracked. “Say I’m better.”
Your heat clenched around him. “Dex.”
“Please,” he begged. “Please, b-baby. Tell me. Tell me I’m better than it.”
You should have scolded him. You should have told him again that this wasn't the point, that you were still angry, that he did not get to turn this into another deranged little competition. But then you sank the rest of the way down, taking him fully, and Dex made a sound so broken and grateful that your whole body went hot.
“You’re better,” you breathed.
He shuddered beneath you, hard enough to make the chair creak. “Again.”
You moved your hips once, slow and deep, and his entire body strained against the cuffs. “You’re way fucking better.”
Dex’s eyes fluttered, his breathing turning ragged. “Again. Please. Again, baby, tell me again.”
So you did.
You started riding him properly, lifting yourself up and sinking back down, bouncing on his length until neither of you could pretend this wasn’t affecting your train of thought. The cuffs rattled behind the chair every time he fought the urge to grab your hips. His thighs flexed under yours, his chest rising too fast, his throat exposed beneath the collar every time you tugged the ring and made him look at you.
“You’re better,” you said, breathless, riding him harder. “You’re better than it.”
Dex groaned, loud and wrecked. “Yes. Yes, fuck, yes.”
“You’re better than the stupid, the vibrator, the rose toy.”
His face fell with pleasure and humiliation, eyes wet, mouth open like every word was going straight through him.
“Better than the box,” you panted. “Better than anything under my bed.”
“Anything,” he echoed, desperate. “Anything. Say anything.”
“You’re so needy,” you whispered, but you were not much better. You were moving faster now, chasing the way he filled you, the way he looked under you, collared and cuffed and entirely yours. “You’re so fucking jealous, baby.”
You grabbed his jaw and kissed him, barely a kiss at all with the way both of you were breathing. Dex tried to follow your mouth when you pulled back.
“Look at you,” you murmured. “You just want me to choose you, dont’cha?”
His eyes locked on yours.
You rode him harder, your voice breaking as the pleasure started making your thoughts blur. “You’re better than anything. Better than anything I could buy. Better than anything I could touch.”
Dex looked like he was going to fall apart beneath you.
“Again,” he begged. “Please, again.”
“You’re better than anything,” you gasped, fingers tight in the collar. “Or anyone.”
Dex stopped thrusting his hips up so abruptly you yelped into a halt.
You barely had time to catch your breath before his eyes opened and darkened.
“Anyone?”
Your stomach dropped.
It was one word. One stupid word you had said without thinking because you were dizzy and full of him, because Dex had begged you to tell him he was better and you had.
Oh. Fuck.
“Dex,” you said carefully. “No.”
His muscles flexed. “No?”
“No. We can’t do this.”
He stared at you, still in his lap, warm and shaking from the way you had been riding him. Still close enough to feel how badly he wanted to move, how hard he was holding himself back by force alone.
“Dex,” you tried again, softer this time.
His eyes did not move from your face. “Uncuff me.”
It should have scared you, how fast he switched.
One second, he was pliant beneath you, desperate to be used. The next, his voice had gone flat and enraged, eyes narrowing like a predator.
But it was still Dex. Your Dex. He would never hurt you.
“Color?” you asked.
“Green,” he said immediately. Then, rougher and impatient, “Uncuff me.”
Your hands were not steady when you reached for the keys, then behind him, squirming because he was still inside you, and his size wasn’t making it easy for you to jostle around like that.
The cuffs clicked open, and for a second, he only trailed his hands up your thighs he was so gentle, rubbing circles on your sweat-slicked skin.
“I know you had someone before me,” he said.
He knew, because Dex was jealous, not delusional.
He knew you had a life before him, knew there had been men before him, had even heard your friend’s tiny voice over the phone once saying, I met your crazy ex today? while you laughed awkwardly and changed the subject too quickly. He had stood in your kitchen with his hand frozen around a mug, filing that away in some dark corner of his mind.
But knowing was one thing. Hearing you say “anyone” while he was still inside you and your hand was tight in the collar he still wore for you, was another thing entirely.
Your face went hot. “Obviously.”
“How many?”
“Dex.”
“How many?”
You swallowed. “I’m not talking about my exes while we’re having sex.”
His hand went up to the collar ring, not to pull it off. To press your fingers there. To make sure you were holding it right.
“How many?” he asked again, and this time his voice was demanding.
You tried to climb off him. “Baby, no. You don’t want this.”
Dex moved so fast you barely registered it.
One second you were above him, the next he had you up and over his shoulder, your breath punched out of you in a shocked little yelp. The room tilted. Your hands grabbed at his back, his waist, anything. Then he was putting you down on the couch, bending you over the arm with one hand between your shoulder blades, still wearing the collar.
“Eyes forward,” he said.
Your thighs clenched at the sound of his voice. “Dex—”
“Eyes forward.”
You hated that you listened. You that your body shivered.
He pressed in behind you, close enough that he made your knees weak all over again. One hand slid over your hip, shaking with restraint, almost tender before it turned possessive. The other covered kept your ass up for him to line up. “Tell me how many.”
You exhaled hard. “Three.”
Dex went silent.
Then, softly, terribly, he echoed it, “Three.”
“Before you,” you snapped, trying to sound angry even though your voice was already ruined. “Before I even knew you like this. Before us. Dex, this is stupid.”
He laughed once. It sounded broken. “Names.”
“No.”
“Full names.”
“No, I’m not giving you their full names so you can go insane and hunt them down.”
His breath hitched behind you.
Oh.
That was not the wrong thing to say. That was the worst thing to say. Because now he had pictured it. Now some awful part of him had lit up at the thought, and you felt his body go harder against yours, felt the way his grip tightened like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin.
“Fine,” he said, trying so hard to compromise. “First names.”
“You don’t want those either.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t,” you whined, “You think you do because you’re jealous and insane and horny and trying to hurt your own feelings.”
His forehead dropped between your shoulder blades.
For one second, he just breathed there, shaking. When he spoke again, his voice was wet.
“First names,” he whispered. “And what was wrong with them.”
He knew it would hurt. Dex wasn’t confused about that. He was not so far gone that he thought hearing their names would make him feel better. He knew it would put pictures in his head he would never be able to scrape out. He knew he would imagine their hands, their mouths, their stupid little claims on you. He knew every detail you gave him would become a weapon turned inward first, he wanted you to press this emotional knife into his ribs just to see if the pain proved how much he loved you.
But that was exactly why he needed it.
Dex didn’t know how to be reassured gently. Soft comfort slid off him too easily. He needed the wound opened first. Needed to be shown the ugliest picture and survive it. It was emotional masochism dressed up as jealousy, and the sickest part was that he knew. He wanted you to hurt him with the truth so your praise would feel earned when it came after.
“Tell me,” he said again, voice breaking at the edges.
“Dex…”
“I need to know,” he said, and the desperation in it cut through you. “I need to know what they did wrong. I need to know I’m better. I need you to say it while I’m fuckin’ deep inside you, while you’re fuckin’ clenching me, baby please.”
You closed your eyes.
His mouth pressed to your back. It was almost a kiss. Almost an apology. Then he pushed into you again, and the sound that tore out of you was so loud it made your own face burn.
Dex groaned behind you, ugly and wrecked. “Tell me.”
You gripped the couch cushion, because fuck it. What the fuck did you owe them anyway?
“Finn.”
His hips snapped forward harder.
You cried out, body jolting against the couch.
Dex groaned like the name had hurt him exactly the way he wanted it to. “What was wrong with him?”
“His nails,” you gasped, already struggling to keep your voice steady. “College boyfriend. His nails were always too long and when he fingered, it hurt. I took it, but then he blamed me when I bled.”
Dex’s hand slid over your stomach, pulling you back into him, his breath breaking against your skin.
“Careless,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“I’m not careless.”
“No,” you said quickly. “No, baby, you’re not.”
“Say I’m better.”
“You’re better.”
He thrust harder, and your answer broke apart into a moan.
“Say it properly.”
“You’re better than Finn,” you choked out. “You’re so much better than him.”
Dex shuddered and you felt it in his chest, in his grip, in the way his mouth dragged wetly over your back.
He was crying, you realised, when you felt hotlittle drops against your spine while he kept fucking you like jealousy had turned him feral. Dominant and ruined at once, giving orders while crying because he had asked for the knife and now wanted you to twist it.
“Next,” he said.
“Dex,” you moaned, shaking your head. “Please.”
“Say red and I’ll —fuck! — stop. Until then…” His fingers tightened around your hip. “Next.”
You tried to breathe. You tried to remember why this was a bad idea. You remember that you didn’t want your stupid dickhead exes in the room with you while Dex was behind you, collared, crying, and pounding into you like every name was a target he needed to hit.
“Matteo,” you managed.
Dex’s rhythm stumbled for half a second, then came back harder.
You sobbed his name.
“What was wrong with him?”
“You don’t want this one,” you managed to hiccup.
“Yes, I do.”
“No, baby. You really don’t.”
He laughed, but it wasn’t amused. He moaned again as he managed, “Tell me.”
“He was a creep,” you finally said, the words scraping out of you. “From my old job. He shared p-private pictures. With his friends.”
Dex stopped breathing, his forehead hit your back again.
“Oh,” he whispered.
It was horrible.
You felt the tears fall faster now, sliding down your skin while his hand trembled on your waist. For all his violence, this was the part that broke him. Someone had treated you like something to pass around. Someone had treated you like you were anything less than sacred.
“Dex,” you warned softly, because you could feel him thinking.
Dex made a small, broken sound, then moved again, harder, like he could fuck the memory out of your body. You gasped, eyes rolling back.
“He didn’t deserve to look at you,” Dex said, voice shaking.
“No,” you breathed.
“He didn’t deserve anything from you.”
“No.”
His tears kept falling, pathetic and hot against your spine, even as his body stayed rough behind yours. He had asked for this. He had wanted the wound. Now he was bleeding into it.
“Tell me I’m better,” he begged.
“You’re better than him,” you said quickly, before he could ask, before he could spiral too far away from you. “You’re better, Dex. You don’t make me feel like I’m just here to be shown off. You make me feel wanted.”
He sobbed against your back.
“Again.”
“You’re better than Matteo.”
Harder.
“You’re better than him.”
Harder.
“You’re better because you actually care if I want it,” you gasped, barely able to speak now. “Because you ask. Because you listen. Because even when you’re like this, even when you’re out of your fucking mind, you still need me to want it, too.”
Dex’s whole body jerked.
“Next,” he choked.
You shook your head, cheek pressed to the couch cushion, eyes wet now too. “Dex, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I hate this.”
“Say red, then.”
You couldn’t bring yourself to. Because he was right. You might pretend to hate this, but fuck, you were sick.
Sick enough for this to get you off.
You managed a pathetic little, “g-green.”
His breath hitched, satisfied. “Thought so.”
He liked it, too. He liked it like self-punishment. Liked it because it hurt.
“Last one,” he whispered.
You swallowed around a moan. “Colin.”
Dex’s hips snapped into you so hard you cried out.
The hand on your hip slid up to your chest, holding you back against him as he bent over you, making the most pathetic sound you had ever heard from him.
“What—hnghhh— was wrong with Colin?”
“He was possessive,” you said, barely coherent. “But not like you.”
Dex went rigid. “Like w-what, then?”
“Shit,” you gasped. “He was controlling. Mean. He wanted to own me, but he didn’t love me. Not like you. He didn’t want to be good for me. He j-just wanted to win.”
Dex was sobbing now.
You could hear it. Feel it. His mouth was pressed to your shoulder, his breath hitching, tears smearing over your skin while his body kept driving into yours with desperate, punishing force. He had you pinned beneath him, yes. He was the one moving you, the one holding you, the one demanding answers. But the collar was still around his throat, and you now managed to trail your hand up and grab the ring. You held the fucking collar and tugged, and he was surprised he didn’t come then and there as he gasped, breaking a little more.
“I’m not him,” he said.
“No.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, t-too.”
“I’d never—” His voice cracked. “I’d never make you feel like that.”
“I know, baby.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re better than Colin.”
His rhythm faltered. “Tell me why.”
“Because you’re mine,” you moaned. “Because you— fuck!— want to be mine. Because you don’t just want to have me, you want me to choose you. You want t-to be useful. You want to be good— hmphh— to me.”
Dex sobbed so hard his hips stuttered.
“Yes,” he gasped. “Yes, fuck, yes.”
“You’re better than all of them.”
“Again.”
“You’re better than Finn.”
He groaned.
“Better than Matteo.”
His grip tightened.
“Better than Colin.”
He started breaking, cracks building through him in these beautiful little fractures. Your pleasure was already rising too fast, your thighs trembling, your voice gone thin and helpless beneath him.
“Dex!” you cried.
“I know,” he whispered, frantic and wet. “I know, baby. I know. I’ve got you. Tell me again.”
“You’re better,” you sobbed. “You’re better than anyone. Anything, Dex, anyone.”
He came with your hand fisted in his collar.
The pull of it dragged a sound out of him that was almost a sob and almost your name, his whole body folding over yours as he spilled into you, shaking so hard you felt it everywhere. You could hear the broken relief in his voice as he kept whispering yours, yours, yours like he could make himself believe it if he said it enough.
That was what tipped you over, when your orgasm hit so hard your whole body seized beneath him.
You cried out into the couch, fingers yanking the collar ring without meaning to, and Dex choked behind you, shuddering again like the pull had gone straight through him. Pleasure tore through you in waves, hot and blinding, your legs trembling, your voice breaking on his name until it didn’t even sound like a word anymore.
Dex held you through it, crying into your back like he was the one who had been ruined.
When it finally ebbed, he stayed folded over you, his mouth pressed between your shoulder blades, breath ragged. Your hand was still caught in the ring of the collar.
For a long moment, neither of you moved.
The couch was too small for both of you, but Dex made it work because Dex always made himself fit wherever you needed him.
His body was still trembling in little aftershocks, but the violent edge had burned out of him. What remained was his mouth against your shoulder, his hand spread over your stomach, his thumb moving in slow, soothing circles like he was trying to apologize through touch before words.
You could feel the little ring of the collar cool against your skin when his head dipped and nuzzled into the space between your neck and shoulder.
Fifteen minutes later, he wasn’t crying anymore. His lashes were damp, his breathing uneven, but he had settled down.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though he still wasn’t sure for what.
You were too boneless to answer properly. Your whole body felt heavy and melted into the cushions, your skin still humming everywhere he had touched you. You only reached back, clumsy and tired, and found his hand.
Only then did you realise that it was red from how hard he was pulling at the handcuffs. Because despite the fuzzy liner, it was still metal underneath.
Dex threaded his fingers through yours immediately. That was answer enough for him.
He kissed your shoulder again. Then the back of your neck. Then your cheek when you turned your head just slightly.
These were small, careful kisses. Sweet, almost shy.
His voice stayed low when he spoke again. “I’ll be good.”
You closed your eyes.
The jealousy had calmed, but he still needed to be chosen.
Dex held you like service. Like worship. Like if he could keep you warm enough and safe enough, maybe it would balance out everything else he was.
His hand slid over your side, checking without asking. He smoothed your skin gently over your hip and your thigh. His mouth touched the back of your shoulder, and his breath relaxed when you relaxed into him instead of pulling away.
You should have been angry.
You were angry, maybe, somewhere far away. Obviously, there were things to say later. Things about boundaries and consequences and the fact that Benjamin Poindexter could not solve every insecurity by turning it into sex so absolute it felt like a salvation.
But right now, Dex was curled around you like a guard dog who had been allowed into bed after making a big mistake, and you couldn’t bring yourself to bring it up.
His big arms were careful around your body, face pressed to your skin. The collar still snug at his throat because he had not asked you to take it off, because maybe he liked the reminder that even when he got like that, he was still yours.
Your fingers brushed the ring lazily.
Dex melted immediately.
“Oh, what the hell,” you mumbled with a hazy smile, mostly into the couch cushion. “I don’t need those toys anyway.”
Dex tried not to look smug, but you felt it.
You knew what that little hitch of breath meant, the way his mouth pressed to your shoulder and stayed there, hiding whatever painfully pleased expression had crossed his face.
You didn't have the strength to scold him for it.
He kissed your shoulder again, grateful this time.
Still, you knew you had just signed a death warrant for Finn, Matteo, and Collin.
You hadn’t given Dex their full names, but Dex had heard enough. He could find people with less. He had found you, hadn’t he?
You knew they were as good as dead. And if Dex could destroy and burn your old toys with that much passion, you couldn’t imagine what he would do to living men who had actually hurt you. Whatever came for them would not be quick or merciful. You knew that.
You shouldn’t want that.
On principle, you shouldn’t want that.
On the principle that you were better than them, that you were obviously morally superior, that you should not want three men dead just because they had once made you feel small, even if they deserved it.
But then Dex nuzzled closer in his devotion. His lips brushed your shoulder, and even half-conscious, he murmured your name like a prayer. His hand slipped over your stomach, protective now, his thumb moving in small circles like he was still trying to soothe you from your last.
You looked down at him and thought, I hope you make them beg.
ngl now I kinda need a fic where Leo asks for a sibling (girl dad Dex🙏🏻🙏🏻)
This ask is referring to this story!
I’ll probably do a longer explanation for this another time because I’m getting so many girl dad! Dex! But I can’t see reader wanting to get pregnant until things are more stable, so maybe after DDBA season 2, or even season 3, whatever that would look like.
But if Leo ever asked for a little sister, Dex would take that very seriously.
Leo says, very sweetly, on his fifth or sixth birthday, that all he wants is a baby sister. Dex looks at you like your son has just handed him a mission from a divine hand.
And obviously, Mommy and Daddy get to work while Leo is at school.
Then, what if, nine months later, you have another boy?
Dex loves him, of course. That’s his baby. His son. Leo’s little brother. He’s obsessed the second he sees him. But also, that was not what Leo asked for, so Dex is already leaning over your hospital bed, brushing your sweaty hair back from your face, kissing your forehead like he’s the most devoted husband on earth, and going, “We’ll try again.”
And you, exhausted and sore and still stupidly in love with him, just blink up at him like, okay. Sure. Whatever you say, handsome.
Because pregnancy with Dex actually there this time?
Both wonderful and dangerous for your self-control.
Dex was hovering and fussing. Dex was acting like your body being swollen and tired and needy was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Dex touching your stomach like it belonged to him, l smiling every time the baby kicked, and seeing Leo experience the wonder of you growing life? Priceless.
And every time you complained about being tired or sore, he’d look so smug, like, yeah, baby, I know. I did that. And then of course he’d be super attentive.
And you hated how much you loved it.
You loved him being so focused on you. You loved him being more possessive than normal (if that was even possible). You loved the way he treated every pregnancy like proof that you were his wife, his home, his entire world.
Summary : Dex loves being a father, but one child-free weekend is all it takes to remind you he’s always going to be your embarrassingly needy husband first.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her) | you and Dex have a son called Leo
Warnings/tags : dad/husband!Dex x mom/wife!reader, fluff-ish! explicit sexual content (no anatomical detail as per usual), service switch!Dex dirty talk, possessive behaviour, tracker mention, praise kink, light power dynamics, hair-pulling/scratching, overstimulation, implied all-day sex. A character called Jonathan is mentioned to be your best friend. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 4k
Requested by : anon
Notes : Please bear with me, I’ll try to get through all the comments for this series ASAP, feel free to send more ideas in the meantime. Enjoy!
Could be read as a one-shot, but you can read more stories in this universe here!
Dex loved Leo.
He loved his son so much it made him twice as dangerous and three times more paranoid. He checked the windows multiple times at night. He could identify three different kinds of “Daddy!” from across the apartment and tell you whether it meant hungry, sleepy, bored, or trying to climb something he should not be climbing.
He loved Leo.
He also missed you.
Not in the sweet, sentimental way, though there was plenty of that, too. But he was satisfied in that department. After all, he now spent most of his evenings cuddling up to you and Leo, being a father, being a family.
No, he missed you in the way that made his teeth grind when you walked past him in one of his old shirts that had gotten too tight for him. He missed you in the way his hand would find your hip in the kitchen, fingers digging in for half a second before Leo came barrelling in with a toy dinosaur and a very urgent question about whether sharks had friends.
You had a sex life. It was just… hidden, as it should be with a child in the house. It had become a series of quickies instead of what Dex called “proper” sex.
Sometimes, it was a hand over your mouth in the ensuite bathroom when Leo had his one-hour naps. Sometimes, it was Dex on his knees between your thighs during Leo’s nursery hours, one eye still half on the clock because pick-up was at three. Sometimes, you were bent over on the mattress with the TV just to hide the sound, Dex pressed against your back, breathing hot against your ear as you whispered, “we have to be quiet, baby.” After all, it was two AM and Leo was fast asleep.
He hated it.
Well, not the sex. Never the sex.
He hated having to hold back. He hated having you biting your own wrist because you couldn’t make noise. He hated stopping when you were both still coming down from a high because the nursery called to say Leo had eaten half a crayon. He hated pretending he didn’t want to drag you back to bed every single time you smiled at him over your coffee.
So when Jonathan finally moved in with his boyfriend and mentioned, casually, that the second bedroom was finally set up, Dex said, “Leo could sleep over there.”
“Oh, baby,” you said, nearly melted. “You’d let him do that?”
Dex blinked.
You looked at him like this was growth. Like this was him learning to trust the world, one sleepover at a time.
“You trust him,” you said, smiling, folding one of Leo’s tiny shirts, looking at him like he had just taken some huge emotional step forward. Like he was healing. Like this was about trust and healthy boundaries and letting your son spend time with people who loved him.
Dex stared at you for one long second. Then he said, “Yes.”
Which was not technically a lie.
He did trust Jonathan because you trusted Jonathan.
That was how Dex’s world worked. He didn’t really believe in people. He believed in you. If you said Johnathan was safe, then Johnathan was safe enough. With precautions.
After all, already had a tracker in Leo’s shoe.
Just in case.
But you didn’t need to know that right then, because you were smiling at him like he was becoming a better man, and Dex didn’t have the heart to tell you that his intents were significantly less noble.
You bit your lip. “That’s really good, Dex.”
Dex nodded once, solemnly, like his motives were not currently dragging themselves through every filthy thought he had been forcing down for months.
You asked Jonathan if he could take Leo for one night.
Then Dex, with absolutely no shame, asked for two.
Jonathan squinted at him and said yes, as if saying I know what you’re doing but I just can’t prove it yet.
“Two?” you asked later, amused.
Dex adjusted Leo’s overnight bag like the placement of his pajamas was a matter of national security. “He likes Jonathan.”
That was how Leo ended up being picked up by Uncle Jonathan on a Friday night. You kissed Leo goodbye at the door and told him to be good. Dex crouched down, fixed the strap on his bag, and said, very seriously, “Call Mommy if you need anything.”
Leo nodded. “Okay, Daddy.”
“And don’t open the door when Uncle Jonathan’s not there.”
“I know.”
“And if there’s an emergency—”
“Dex,” you said gently.
Dex stopped.
Leo hugged him around the neck. “I’ll be okay, Daddy.”
For one second your heart ached because he really was trying. He really did love him. He really was letting him go.
Then the door shut, and the apartment was quiet.
You turned to Dex with a kind smile. “I’m proud of you.”
Dex lifted his eyes to you, sheepish and loaded all at once, though the former didn’t last very long.
And that was when you realized.
Oh.
Oh.
That was not the look of a man reflecting on his progress as a father. That was the look of a man who had just successfully cleared the house.
“Dex,” you said slowly.
He stepped toward you.
You tilted your head “You did not send our son to my best friend’s place just so you could—”
“Yes.”
Your mouth fell open. “Benjamin.”
“You trust Jonathan,” he said, calm and absolutely shameless, even though you only called him that when you were annoyed. “Leo is safe.”
You folded your arms. “And?”
Dex’s eyes dropped to your mouth. “And I miss my wife.”
That shut you up. Because fuck, when said it like that...
It wasn’t charming or teasing. It wasn’t even fully dirty at first. Just honest and hungry in a way that made your stomach turn over.
“Dex…” you whined a little as his arms wrapped around you.
“I’m sorry,” Dex said, the apology coming out almost muffled against the side of your neck. His hands were gripping, careful at first, like he was trying to prove he could behave even while every part of him clearly had no intention of doing so.
Fuck.
“Mmm. I’m sorry, baby,” he murmured again, mouth brushing the sensitive place beneath your ear. “I just wanted time alone with you.”
You were supposed to stay mad.
Really, you were.
Because he had let you stand there, proud of him, all wide-eyed with affection, while he stood in front of you pretending this was some great parental milestone and not a tactical operation.
“You are unbelievable,” you said, but your voice had already lost too much of its edge.
Dex noticed and used this time to slide under the hem of your shirt, palms warm against your waist, thumbs pressing into skin like he had been thinking about doing it all day. Maybe all week. Maybe for months.
“We have sex,” you managed, even as your head tipped back before you could stop it.
Dex kissed down your throat, devastatingly patient. “Not like this.”
Your breath caught.
He lifted his head just enough to look at you, and the expression on his face was too soft to be smug and too hungry to be innocent. His eyes moved over you like he was remembering every version of you he had ever had.
“Not like before,” he said. “Not like the old apartment.”
Your mouth went dry.
“The old apartment?” you repeated, weakly, because apparently your body had decided to betray every principle you thought had.
Dex’s fingers flexed against your ribs, trailing the line of your bra, pawing and unhooking it at the back.
“Yeah,” he said, and there was a little smile in his voice now, like he knew exactly what he was doing to you. “When I could have you wherever I wanted.”
“Dex.”
“The couch,” he said, kissing the corner of your mouth. “The kitchen counter, the hallway, that stupid little table you kept saying we were going to break.”
You swallowed. “We did break it.”
Dex’s smile finally fully formed on his mouth. “Yeah.”
You should have pushed him away. You should have told him that this was not the point, that he could not just send Leo away for two nights and then look at you like that and expect you to forget you were annoyed.
But his hands were under your shirt now, and his mouth was on your jawline, and his body was crowding yours back against the door like he had been waiting forever to stop pretending he was a reasonable man.
“You used to make so much noise for me,” he murmured.
Your stomach flipped. “Benjamin.”
“I know,” he said immediately, smaller this time. One hand came up to cup your face, thumb brushing your cheek with a tenderness that made the heat tummy pool low. “I know. I’m sorry.”
And he was.
He was sorry. He knew he had been selfish. He knew this had been more about him than he had let on. But he also looked at you like he had missed you so badly it had been eating him alive .
“I love being his dad,” Dex said, forehead pressing to yours. “I do. I love him. I love him so much I don’t know what to do with it half the time.”
“I know,” you whispered.
His eyes shut for a second. “But I miss you,” he said. “I miss this. I miss not having to stop. I miss not having to listen for footsteps. I miss having you without half my brain waiting for Leo to wake up.”
Your anger dipped so fast it was almost embarrassing.
Because you knew Dex loved Leo completely. He loved being a father in the only way Dex could love anything, which meant his entire nervous system had become a weapon.
But he loved you first. He had loved you before the nursery bags and bedtime stories and little shoes by the door. He had loved you before this spine was inhuman, before Fisk took you. He loved you in that old apartment, on every surface, in every second for the rest of his life.
And he missed his wife. Not Leo’s mommy. No, he got her every day. And though he loved you now more than anything in the world, he missed bratty, whiny, car-sex-in-the-FBI-garage you.
“You could have just told me that,” you pouted.
Dex opened his eyes. “Would you have said yes to two nights?”
You stared at him and sighed, though your lips twitched before you could stop them. “Unbelievable.”
“I know.”
“You put a tracker on him, didn’t you?”
Dex went very still, and you sighed.
“It’s a very small tracker,” he managed.
“Oh my God.”
You wanted to be mad again. You really did. You wanted to lecture him about boundaries and normal parenting and how other fathers managed sleepovers without turning them into covert security operations.
But then he kissed you again, sweet and apologetic, and your hands slid up his chest anyway.
Why were you mad again?
Something about growth. Something about trust. Something about your husband being a paranoid, tactical, emotionally stunted man who loved your son so much it scared him and wanted you so much he had apparently planned an entire weekend around it.
“You’re still in trouble,” you whispered against his mouth.
Dex nodded. “Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to just fuck your way out of this.”
His hand slid around your waist, pulling you closer.
“No?” he asked, unconvinced.
“Hmm,” you said, already breathless.
Dex kissed the corner of your mouth, then your cheek. Then, he nipped at your lower lips.
“Okay,” he murmured. “Then I’ll make it up to you.”
—
Five minutes later, you were on the kitchen counter, thighs trembling around Dex’s shoulders, one hand braced behind you and the other twisted helplessly in his hair.
He had gone to his knees like worship.
He was not even pretending like he was anything other than starved for you. His hands gripped your hips hard enough to keep you exactly where he wanted you, dragging you closer every time your body tried to squirm away from the intensity.
“Dex,” you mewled, and your voice cracked on his name.
Your hand flew to your mouth out of habit. Out of pure, pathetic muscle memory.
The second you did it, Dex stopped.
Not fully, but just enough to make you feel the loss, enough for his mouth to hover against your core while he made the most wrecked, desperate sound you had ever heard from him.
A whine, you realized, frustrated and almost hurt.
His fingers closed around your wrist, gentle but firm, pulling your hand away from your lips, pinning them to the marble.
“No,” he breathed, voice ruined. “Baby, don’t do that.”
You stared down at him, already dizzy, already too far gone for this conversation.
“The neighbours,” you whispered.
Dex’s eyes lifted to yours, deeply devoted, “they won’t hear.”
You blinked. “What?”
He kissed the inside of your thigh, tender enough to make you shiver.
“They won’t.”
Your brain struggled through the haze of his tongue lapping you, like kitten licks for now. It would be adorable if it wasn’t somewhere so fucking obscene. “Dex. What does that mean?”
“I soundproofed the shared walls.”
For one second, everything stopped. From your breath to your thoughts to your ability to pretend you were still even remotely in control.
“You what?”
“Last week,” he said, as calmly as if he had changed a lightbulb. “When you were at work.”
You stared at him. And the bastard looked up and looked proud.
“Oh my god,” you whispered. “You had a whole fucking game plan.”
His hands tightened around your thighs. “Hmm.”
“So you could hear me?”
His eyes shifted, almost wicked. That was the wrong question. Or maybe it was exactly the right one.
Dex’s mouth parted slightly, his breath warm against you, and suddenly he looked less like your husband and more like a man who had been surviving on scraps for months and had finally been given permission to feast.
“So I wouldn’t have to stop,” he said.
Your whole body went weak.
Fuck, it worked.
“You’re insane,” you said, but it came out like praise.
Dex smiled against you.“I know.”
“You’re actually insane.”
“I know.”
You opened your mouth to argue. But then he pressed his tongue flat against you and the argument died immediately.
Your fingers tightened in his hair, head tipping back. The first real sound that left you was small, shaky, almost embarrassed.
Dex groaned like it hurt him.
“Mm, there,” he murmured, dragging the word against your skin. “That’s it.”
You tried to look down at him, but the sight nearly undid you.
Dex on his knees in your kitchen, sleeves pushed up, hands spread possessively over your thighs, face flushed with hunger and triumph. He looked focused, like the entire world had narrowed to you, your body, your voice, and the way you fell apart when he refused to let you hide from him.
You made another sound, louder this time.
His eyes shut.
“Fuck,” he breathed, almost reverent. “I missed that.”
The heat in your face burned worse than anything else.
“Dex—”
“No,” he said, and his hand slid up to your waist, holding you steady when you nearly slipped against the counter from all the slick mess you were making. “Don’t get shy now, baby.”
You shuddered.
He kissed you down there again, slower, meaner, sweeter somehow, like he was proving a point.
Fuck, he was right.
You’d forgotten how loud you used to be.
You’d forgotten the old apartment, the nice one Dex used to have before you, the thin curtains, the table, the way Dex used to fuck you in every surface and like he needed to mark the whole place with proof that you loved him. You’d what it felt like to have nowhere to be quiet for.
You broke on a gasp, and this time you didn’t cover your mouth.
Dex looked up at you like you had given him something holy. “That’s my girl.”
And then he kept going.
After that, Dex got worse.
Because once you stopped covering your mouth, once you let him hear you, he lost whatever restraint he had been pretending to have.
After you came on his mouth on the counter, he wasted no time bending you over.
When you yelped, he only smiled.
“That’s it,” he said, voice rough. “Don’t hide from me.”
“Dex—”
“Missed this,” he said, stretching in you as you let out a lewd whine. “Missed you being needy for me.”
There were rules, of course.
Leo’s room was out of bounds, obviously. It was a no brainer. The couch was out too, because Leo played there too much, built pillow forts there, watched cartoons there, fell asleep there with sticky fingers and his dinosaur blanket.
Most everything else was fair game.
The whole weekend became heat and orders and laughter that kept turning into gasps. You were on top of him half the time, because he asked you to. You scratched your nails down his back hard enough that his breath caught and his eyes went unfocused for half a second.
Then he laughed, pleased with himself. Clearly, it didn’t take much for you to get back into form.
“Oh,” he murmured, almost smiling as he tried to edge himself in you yet again. “T-there she is.”
“Shut up.”
“No.” His hands found your hips. “Fuck, I missed you mean.”
He got worse when you pulled his hair. Worse when you told him what to do. Worse when you got impatient and shoved at his shoulder, because Dex, terrifyingly, liked being handled by you. He liked being told where to go. He liked being praised when he listened. Still, he would switch the roles in a heartbeat if that was what you wanted.
“Come on, baby,” he murmured later, voice ruined against your ear, fingers deep in you. “You can give me one more.”
“Dex, I…”
“You used to be so good at this, huh? Going again when I tell you to.” His mouth brushed nipped at your jaw. “I know you still are.”
Your whole body went hot. “You’re disgusting.”
“I know.”
“Filthy.”
“I know.”
And that was the thing. He kept saying it so shamelessly, knowing he had nothing else to hide behind. Fuck, he looked so conceited once he realise he’d pulled this off.
By Saturday night, you were wrecked and giddy and half-feral, wearing his shirt badly and telling him he was the most deranged husband alive.
Dex only kissed your shoulder and said, “But I’m yours.”
As if that explained the way he melted when you praised him, then got worse when you pulled him closer and told him not to be so gentle.
By Sunday morning, the apartment was ruined in invisible ways.
There was no evidence left, because everything had to be spotless before Leo came home. The sheets were changed. The counters were wiped and bleached. The hallway was clear and the bathroom was scrubbed. So really, nothing was out of place except the ache in your thighs, the scratches on his back, and the marks you both left on each other's bodies.
But hey. Mission accomplished, right?
Dex laid beside you, one hand on your waist, looking pleased with himself.
“You’re smug,” you mumbled.
“I’m happy.” He smiled into your shoulder.
You closed your eyes, exhausted, sore, and deeply annoyed by how peaceful you felt.
Then you thought to yourself, traitorously: Leo was gonna have sleepovers once a month.
—
Leo came running in that afternoon, bag bouncing against his little back, dinosaur clutched under one arm.
“Mommy!”
You crouched just enough to catch him, kissing the top of his head as he barreled into you. “Hi, baby. Did you have fun?”
He nodded quickly, already halfway through his report before you had even finished hugging him. “I had pancakes and Mark has a biiiig plant and I slept in the blue room and I wasn’t scared.”
“That sounds amazing,” you said, smoothing his hair back.
Leo pulled away just enough to look at you properly. Not at your clothes or at anything obvious. He just looked at your face, with that strange little focus he got.
His brows pinched together. Maybe it was his superhuman precognition, knowing your legs would hurt when you got up. Maybe you just looked a bit… drained.
“Mommy’s tired.”
You went very still. Behind you, Dex froze, too.
Jonathan, still standing by the door with Leo’s overnight bag in one hand, looked between all three of you and raised an eyebrow.
You smiled too quickly. “A little bit, sweetheart.”
Leo turned to Dex with the full seriousness of a child delivering medical advice. “Daddy, we should let Mommy rest today.”
“Good idea, Leo.” Dex’s mouth curved up, but he recovered quickly, pressing a kiss to Leo’s temple like he was not the entire reason Mommy needed rest in the first place.
Jonathan looked at Dex. Then at you. He raised his hands and stepped back with a sigh like, I knew it.
I can imagine after Dex returns home, he’s getting progressively more relentless because there’s nothing more he wants to do than to press reader against the mattress, but she won’t let him since Leo’s in the house. So the moment Leo’s away at a sleepover or at his Johnathan’s place, Dex is ON HER.
Since you’re taking requests, could I request that? However, feel free to decline!!
I love this request!!! Will be posting it shortly 🫶🫶🫶🫶
what if the reason Dex saves Matt in DDBA S2 episode 1 is because Daredevil is his son’s favourite superhero😭
Dex’s Son Has a Favourite Superhero. It’s Daredevil.
TW/Tags jealousy, implied violence, you and Dex have a son called Leo, Husband! Dex x Wife! Reader (lmk if you I missed anything)
WC 711
Could be read as a one-shot, but you can read more stories in this universe here!
The reason Dex saves Matt in Cherry’s apartment isn't because he cares about Matt.
It’s because Leo once told him Daredevil was his favourite superhero.
And Leo obviously doesn’t know the history. He doesn’t know what Daredevil means to Dex, and he uneasily doesn’t wanna tell him he once wore the suit either because that’s just way too long and complicated to explain.
Leo is four. Leo just thinks Daredevil is cool. Leo says Daredevil has horns, just like a Carnotaurus.
Unfortunately, that’s enough to completely rewrite Dex’s priorities.
Because now Daredevil can’t die. Not because Dex likes him. But because Leo would be sad.
And then you make it worse because when Dex brings it up, clearly already weird and jealous about it, you just shrug like, “Matt’s got valid points. The work he’s doing is good, even though he doesn’t finish the job.”
Which is true.
Annoying, but true.
Obviously he lacks the conviction to actually kill his enemies, and Dex does point that out. But still. Matt is trying to help people.
And Dex takes this in the worst possible way because he’s Dex.
Because in Dex’s head, it’s not just, Leo likes Daredevil.
It becomes, Leo likes Daredevil because Daredevil is good.
Then it becomes, You think Matt is good.
Then it becomes, You think Matt is better than me.
Because what if Matt’s the kind of good man you wanted, and Dex is just the thing you ended up loving by accident?
Then suddenly Dex is standing there, completely silent, spiralling himself into a void of emotional fucking ruin because his son’s favourite superhero and your (mildly) approving comment have turned into a delusional proof that you secretly wish you’d married someone else.
And the worst part is Dex can’t even be angry about Leo liking him. Leo doesn’t know. Leo’s innocent. Leo just has his tiny little moral compass and his tiny little superhero opinions, and Dex would rather pull his own teeth out than make Leo feel bad for loving something.
So all that jealousy has nowhere to go. It just sits in him. Maybe he kills a couple of task force agents while spiraling like, see? I can beat up bad guys, too. Even better, I can make sure they don’t stand up again, unlike stupid Matt and his stupid suit and his stupid no-kill rule.
When he comes home, he just sits on the bed staring at nothing because we won’t punish Leo for admiring Daredevil, and he won’t punish you for admitting Matt has a point, so he just turns it inward and starts quietly convincing himself that of course this was always going to happen. Of course you’d eventually realise Matt is the better man. Of course Leo would look at Daredevil and see a hero, then look at Dex and see whatever Dex is.
It’s a full jealous husband/dad spiral.
So you have to spend the entire night convincing him that no, baby, of course not, you do not prefer Matt Murdock over him.
It’s one AM and Dex just refuses to sleep because he can’t. You kiss the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t want Matt.”
Another kiss, this time to his cheek.
“I don’t love Matt.”
You press your lips to his temple.
“I didn’t marry Matt.”
Then, a small kiss to his brow.
“I didn’t have a son with Matt.”
That one finally gets to him, because his hands finally come up to your waist like he finally accepts your declaration of love.
“And Leo liking Daredevil doesn’t mean he loves you less,” you say. “It doesn’t mean I love you less, baby.”
Dex looks at you then, and eventually he does understand.
He’s not the biggest fan of it, but he understands.
Leo loves Daredevil. You don’t want Leo hurt. Dex doesn’t want Leo hurt. Therefore Daredevil stays alive.
That is literally the whole equation. His priorities are:
You.
Leo.
Things that make you or Leo happy.
Things that keep you or Leo from being sad.
Everyone else can die or fuck off into nothingness and he literally wouldn’t care.
And fortunately (or unfortunately) for Matt, he’s been promoted to category three by a four-year-old with a Carnotaurus lunchbox.
(I think it would be funny if Dex asks Leo to help by giving crayons and letting him very carefully colour parts of the knife for Matt. Obviously, he can’t see it but will feel the waxy crayon. So he’ll show the knife to Karen who’s just like what the fuck.)
I’ve got a Bucky Blurb and Bucky fic in the works for (hopefully) this weekend! Also working on a new avengers! Bucky x mermaid!reader and a dex x reader with ex!Bucky, but a teeny bit stuck with those 😅
Does what happens in ddba S2 happen in this? Does the reader know that he's bullseye? Would he kill Vanessa if the story had continued?
Could reader and dex and leo escape somewhere nice and live their lives peacefully?
do you think dex and reader will have kids again?
I only ask because dex strikes me as such a girl dad!
This ask is referring to this story!
Omg!! Okay so yes, you definitely know Dex is Bullseye.
Between being given the moniker during his sentence, his sentencing in season one and all the work you’ve done trying to prove that yes, Dex has done horrific things (including killing Foggy) but he also didn’t act alone, there’s no way you don’t know. You know exactly who your husband is.
I do think the events of DDBA season 2 still happen in this universe, but Dex’s motivations are slightly modified.
Dex sees Matt as the closest thing to an ally. I definitely think he wants Matt to protect his family if he ever dies because he’s probably one of the only people who can. and Matt’s like ??? You moved back in with your wife? You have a son?
Most people knew that Dex was married, but not everyone knew of Leo. I’d like to think you took a witness protection-adjacent plea with the government to keep Leo off the books with, considering how many enemies your husband had made. Maybe even the visits you had with Dex while he was in prison/the mental institution were kept a secret. Part of this plea would probably also mean that you and Leo would have to use your maiden name in official documents, and Dex secretly hates this. He still calls him Leo Poindexter, and honestly, you prefer it that way).
In this version of the story, when Dex kills anti-vigilante task force, it isn’t just because they’re corrupt. It’s because they’ve started targeting superpowered people, and Leo is a mutant.
So for Dex, that immediately becomes personal.
And yes, I still think he would kill Vanessa if the story continued. Vanessa knows you and Leo exist. Vanessa leveraged your existence against him. That means she has to die.
To Dex, that’s not just revenge. That’s balance. That’s finishing what needs to be finished. That’s setting an example for his son that you don’t leave threats alive just because they think they’re powerful enough to get away with it.
And honestly, I don’t think Dex would mind dying after that.
If Vanessa was dead, and no one else truly knew about Leo (the only people left who knew he existed were now people who would never hurt him), he’d consider that job done. He’d die happy thinking he protected his family.
But of course, Dex doesn’t die. Maybe Karen doesn’t kill him when Matt tells her of Leo (this would be an interesting perspective, to see Karen trying to wrap her head around the fact that Dex could love anyone at all, let alone a child / or @riverjane-d also mentioned in a comment an interesting possibility where you are the one to stop Karen from shooting Dex instead of Matt!)
I think post-season 2, Dex would take the government contract with Mr. Charles because he wants a paycheck enough to move you and Leo somewhere quiet. The suburbs, maybe. Somewhere with space, land, and enough room to set up a proper security system so he can keep watch while he’s gone.
I don’t know about living peacefully, though. Maybe he could go into domestic bliss for 3-6 months at a time, but eventually Dex will find a threat that needs to be solving, and he has no problem polishing his knives for this.
And yes, I do think Dex and you could have another kid.
Honestly, Dex would give you another baby the second you asked. That, or Leo says he feels lonely and wants a sibling, and Daddy immediately decides that something must be done about it.
So while Leo is at school, Dex gets to work with you. For the good of the family, obviously.
And if it’s a girl, he’s done for. She’d be a tiny version of you. A little girl with your eyes and your kindness and your attitude, and Dex would love her just as much as he loves Leo.
Do you think having a child makes Dex a better person? (Love What Makes a good man btw!)
Dex’s Very Own Three-Body Problem
TW/tags protective father! Dex, discussions of violence and murder, you and Dex have a son called Leo, Husband! Dex x Wife! Reader (lmk if you I missed anything)
WC 1k
Part of What Makes a Good Man? (I think it could still be read as a one shot, but a couple of references would be missed)
Okay so I’d like to compare the relationship between you, Dex, and your son Leo to a three-body problem.
The three-body problem is the challenge of calculating the movement of three celestial objects that are interacting with one another through gravity. While predicting the orbit of two bodies (like the Earth and the Moon) is relatively straightforward, adding a third mass makes the system entirely unpredictable or chaotic. As a result, this system has no exact, closed-form mathematical solution.
For a long time, you and Dex have always just been two celestial bodies: you, his North Star, and Dex, the planet in your orbit.
You were his moral centre, the light he kept dragging himself toward even when every other part of him wanted to disappear. When Dex didn’t know how to be gentle, he looked at you. When he didn’t know what normal looked like, he copied you. When he wanted to be good, he reminded himself of you.
For you, Dex really tried, though it manifested itself in all sorts of colorful ways.
But when Leo was born, he changed the trajectory. Enter the Three-Body Problem.
Leo, who had been conceived during a conjugal visit. Leo, who had begun as Dex’s desperate attempt to leave a permanent piece of himself with you, to tether himself to your life from behind prison bars. Leo, who had been the only gift Dex could give you while he was locked away in a mental institution.
At first, Dex didn’t really know how to care about him.
Leo had been nothing more than an idea then. A connection, a thread tying Dex obsessively to you when everything else had been taken from him.
But then Dex met him.
And Leo had the same eyes. Same frown. Same strange little need for order. Except Leo was good.
That was what made Dex attached. That was what made him love him. Because Leo wasn’t just his son. Leo was a proof of concept. Leo was a toddler, who looked exactly like him, with a moral compass. He was a projection of what Dex hoped to be.
So yeah, Leo was Dex’s mirror planet, and he had joined the orbit, too.
Leo had his own gravity.
And Leo’s gravity didn’t pull Dex toward restraint. It pulled him toward protection.
With you, Dex had to try, because you could stop him.
You could say his name. You could hold his hand. You could look at him like, No, Dex. Not this.
You weren’t helpless. You could talk him down. You could make him want to restrain himself because he wanted to stay worthy of you.
But Leo is a child.
Leo couldn’t talk his father down. Leo couldn’t possibly understand what Dex was capable of. Leo couldn’t stand there and tell his father where the moral line is.
So Dex drew the line himself.
If someone threatens Leo, they're dead.
That’s it. No warning. No mercy. No debate.
Because loving Leo gave Dex a whole new reason to be dangerous.
Yes, Dex would kill for you. Of course he would. But with you, there was always the question of whether you would forgive him. Whether you would be scared. Whether he had gone too far.
With Leo, the question became much simpler.
Did it keep his son safe?
If the answer was yes, then Dex thinks it was a good thing that he had added another number to his body count.
Leo made Dex gentler inside the house. He learned bedtime stories. He learned toast shapes. He knelt down when Leo cried. He learns how to be kinder simply by interacting with this tiny version of himself.
But outside the house, having a son made him more paranoid and ruthless.
Dex has plans for everything: If someone followed you home from nursery. If the AVTF comes knocking again. If anyone realized Leo is a mutant.
There was no scenario where Dex would wait calmly and hoped the world was kind to Leo.
Leo was different. And Dex knew what people would do to someone who was different. And he would do abhorrent things to make sure nothing ever happened to him.
For you, Dex tried to be gentle. For Leo, Dex became a protector. Those are two completely different trajectories. That’s the three-body problem.
For you, Dex had to be good. For Leo, Dex had to be dangerous. And somehow, both came from love. You are still his North Star. You still make him want to be better.
But Leo’s gravity pulled him in a different direction. Leo gives him an independent reason to kill, a reason that didn’t need your permission first.
And you weren’t immune to their gravity either.
Over time, because of Dex’s gravity your idea of “good” had shifted more than you wanted to admit. You had been married to Dex for nine years, so of course that changed you. Of course loving a man like him moved the line. You had already learned to excuse things you shouldn’t have excused long before Leo was even born.
But now Leo was here. And your orbit was completely thrown off.
Because when Dex hurt people for himself, you could still tell yourself to save him. When Dex hurt people for you, you could still try to pull him back.
But when Dex killed for Leo, though? You understood why.
You told yourself it was different because it was for your son. You looked away from horrible things Dex was doing to agents because Leo was safe. You kissed blood off Dex’s skin when he came home from a day of hunting because your baby was asleep in the next room and no one took him.
And because Dex will always see you as good, no matter how malleable your morals have become, your forgiveness changed his idea of goodness. If you understand why he did it, maybe it was understandable. If you still him after, maybe he was right. If you loved him anyway, maybe he was doing the right thing by protecting his family.
You pulled Dex toward the light. Leo pulled Dex towards his most paranoid, fearful thoughts of losing his son. Dex pulled you into understanding that both could exist at the time.
So no, Leo doesn’t necessarily make Dex a better man.
Leo makes him a father.
And for a man like Bullseye, that just made him even more dangerous.
-
Note : guys. I love you all. Tysm for giving this series so much love!!! I usually get 1-2 new reqs overnight but I woke up with like 10+ and most of them are about this series! I usually get a fair amount of comments as well but this is a bit more than usual. It will take time to get through, so just know that every comment/message I get means the world and is very much appreciated. Feel free to send more ideas in! Thoughts about the series that aren’t necessarily requests are also welcome!!! Again, love you all!!!!!! ❤️
Summary : You and Dex find out your son has powers.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : FLUFF!!! Angst, too. Violence, Dad!Dex, Mom!Reader, parenting, you and Dex has a son called Leo, and Leo is mentioned to be a mutant, husband! Dex, fatherhood, domestic, North Star! Reader. Implied murder. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 4.5k
Requested by : anon
Notes : This little series has been getting so much love, thank you so much guys! Please bear with me, I’ll try to get through all the asks and comments when possible, feel free to send more ideas in the meantime. Enjoy!
Could be read as a one-shot, but you can read more stories in this universe here!
Leo had always known things a few seconds too… early.
It was almost supernatural.
You always thought, he’s only four, and kids were just intuitive, right?
But no, Leo is a mutant.
You didn’t even know that yet. But that was what he was.
Your son had the X-gene.
Neither you or Dex knew the word for that. After all, there had been no test. No doctor. No explanation from someone in a white coat.
But something in your son’s blood had bloomed. Something new and strange had opened inside him with the insistence of a flower growing through the cracks in the concrete.
It wasn’t obvious. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for you to deny.
Leo didn’t glow. He couldn’t lift furniture. He didn’t shatter windows when he cried or make toys float over his bed. There was nothing obvious enough for a neighbour to notice through the curtains. Nothing you could point to and say, Yes. There. He has superpowers!
It was subtler than that, but no less strong.
Leo could feel danger coming before it arrived.
He couldn’t see the future, exactly. He didn’t get disturbing visions. But he could feel a shift in probability, a little wrongness in the air, a bad feeling in his tummy that made his small body know before the world caught up.
He knew a mug was going to fall before it fell. He held on to the seatbelt a little tighter before the car swerved. He could tell when a table was going to break because he could sense a crack in wood before it gave. He even knew whether to trust a person because he could sense their intent.
Again, Leo’s only a child, so he didn’t have language for it yet.
He would just come to you again and again, small hand tugging at your cardigan, face pinched with worry, and say, “Mommy, my tummy feels wrong.”
And because he was your baby, you would dote immediately.
“Oh, sweetheart,” you would murmur, crouching in front of him. “Do you need water?”
Most of the time, you gave him a drink. You kissed his forehead. You told him he was okay.
Then something would happen.
A plate would fall. A phone would ring. A car would speed past the curb. It would always be something small and ordinary, but something would go wrong exactly where Leo had been staring, and you would laugh it off because what else were you supposed to do?
Just coincidence, you told yourself.
It had been happening for a long time, really.
Long before Dex ever came home, long before he broke out of prison. Long before he met his son. Back when Dex was still locked away in that mental facility and Leo was just a baby in your arms, red-cheeked and furious at the world in the way babies were.
You remembered one afternoon when Leo was 11 months old. He started screaming so suddenly, so violently, that you nearly dropped the laundry basket. He had been calm a second before. Then he was red-faced and inconsolable, tiny fists clenched, crying like the air was terribly wrong.
You tried everything: Milk. Rocking. His blanket. A lullaby.
Nothing worked.
Then you smelled smoke.
Oh. You had left the oven on.
You rushed into the kitchen with Leo wailing against your chest, heart in your throat, and turned it off before anything worse could happen.
Afterward, when the windows were open and the smoke had cleared, Leo became quiet almost instantly. He pressed his face pressed into your neck, breath hitching, like whatever had scared him was gone now.
You stood there in the kitchen, shaking a little, and told yourself what any exhausted mother would have told herself.
It was just a coincidence.
So no, you didn’t notice. But now Dex was back, and it didn’t take your husband long to clock it.
The first time he truly noticed, you were walking home from nursery with Leo’s little hand in yours and Dex half a step behind you, black baseball cap pulled low over his face. He wore it every time he came with you in public, as if tucking his face into it could make Benjamin Poindexter less recognisable. It kinda did, because people in New York didn’t often look twice.
It shouldn’t have been romantic or normal, because your husband was a convicted felon and you were technically harbouring him and breaking a court order, but there was something tender about him standing outside nursery with his cap low and Leo’s spare jumper tucked under one arm, scanning every window and parked car while you reached up to straighten his collar.
“Stop looking like you’re about to kill someone,” you whispered, but it was fond.
Dex’s eyes moved to you from beneath the brim. “I’m watching the exits.”
“He’s gonna be okay, baby.”
He relaxed when you said it.
Then Leo came running out of the nursery doors yelling, “Daddy!” with his backpack bouncing against his shoulders, and whatever warning you had been about to give Dex vanished under the warmth in your chest.
Dex always crouched when Leo reached him. Always. Like he refused to let his son climb toward him. Leo threw himself into Dex’s arms with absolute faith, and Dex caught him with both hands. One at his back, one at the back of his head. Even months later, Dex was so careful every time, like he still couldn’t believe something so precious wanted him as a father.
That afternoon, at the crossing, the light turned green and you stepped forward.
Leo’s fingers tightened suddenly around your hand. “Mommy, wait.”
You glanced down, smiling. “Baby, the light’s green.”
“No.” His voice changed, and that made you stop. “Wait.”
Two seconds later, a cyclist shot around the corner too fast, cutting across the curb so close the wind slapped your coat against your legs.
You jerked back, heart leaping into your throat.
“Oh, sweetheart,” you breathed, crouching in front of Leo and smoothing a hand over his hair. “Good eyes.”
Good eyes.
That's all it was, right?
Good ears. Good instincts. Good little Leo, who had always been careful, always sensitive, always oddly aware of the world around him. You kissed his forehead, and convinced yourself that was all it had been.
Dex knew better.
Dex stood behind you, very still.
What just happened?
Because even Dex hadn’t heard the cyclist.
And Dex was usually very aware of his surroundings. He noticed the smallest shifts before anyone else did because survival had made him almost mechanical in his awareness.
But this time, there had been nothing.
No sound because the person wasn’t pedalling nor braking. No shadow because the sun wasn’t in the right place for that. There was nothing Leo could have seen. Nothing Leo could have heard. There was nothing Leo could possibly react to.
And still, Leo had grabbed you and told you to wait.
Dex stared at his son and felt awe settle in his chest.
See, because Dex never missed, he knew exactly what it looked like when someone had a superhuman amount of precognition.
And that was the day he began to suspect Leo had that.
Still, Dex said nothing yet and started watching.
Not coldly, and Leo never felt studied. Dex would have cut his own hands off before making his son feel like a human experiment. But you noticed the way Dex’s attention narrows, the way his eyes followed Leo when he suddenly looked up from colouring.
Leo told you not to put a cup near the books right before your elbow knocked it down. Leo told Dex to move right before the picture frame in the hall slipped from its hook and smashed exactly where he had been standing. Leo refused to walk down one street after going to the dentist, planting both feet on the pavement with stubborn, tearful certainty until you sighed and took the long way home. Five minutes later, sirens were wailing in that direction and a sinkhole had opened.
Once, Leo grabbed your leg while you were drinking tea.
“Not that mug,” he said.
You looked down. “Why?”
“It’s too hot.”
“I know, baby. It has tea in it.”
Leo frowned, frustrated in that helpless way children got when adults misunderstood the only words they had. “Put it down, mommy.”
You did.
The handle cracked off when you set the mug down.
Tea spilled across the counter. You jumped back with a startled laugh that came out too high and too thin. Dex, standing by the sink, didn’t move at all.
Leo simply went back to colouring, pleased with himself.
“Well,” you said, grabbing a towel with hands that were shaking. “That mug was old.”
Dex said your name.
“Yeah?” You titled your head up to see your husband with his eyebrows raised.
“You saw that.”
“I saw a mug break.”
“Leo knew.”
“Leo guesses things.”
“He’s not guessing,” Dex insisted.
“He’s intuitive, Dex!” you snapped, more frightened than angry. Dex looked at you, then past you. “That’s all.”
Leo was on the living room rug, making two dinosaurs march across the carpet, completely unaware that his parents were whispering about the possibility that he didn’t work like normal people did.
Dex lowered his voice. “He’s enhanced.”
“No,” you said immediately, stepping closer. Your hand found his chest, like you could hold the words inside him before they became real. “No, sweetheart. He’s just… good with people. He’s always been like that.”
Dex didn’t answer. That was worse.
You kissed his cheek, almost desperate. “He’s just Leo.”
And Dex let you believe it, but not because he believed it too.
It’s because in some fucked up way, he was afraid of what that meant. Afraid you would look at Dex and think he had given you this: A powered son. A hunted son.
So he swallowed the argument for you. Because he couldn’t risk scaring his North Star away.
He only looked at Leo.
Leo with Dex’s eyes and your kindness. Leo who liked apples sliced thin. Leo who cried and expected comfort to come. Leo who used whatever lived inside him to keep cups from breaking and you from stepping into danger.
Dex’s hand settled at your waist.
“He’s just our baby,” you whispered again.
Dex pressed his mouth to your temple, eyes still on his son.
“I know,” he said.
And that was exactly why he was terrified.
Dex started testing it with games, but it was never cruel, and it would always make his son giggle.
He would hide a coin in one hand. “Which one?”
Leo pointed before he even looked up, smiling. “That one, Daddy.”
Correct.
He would place a cup too close to the counter’s edge, and Leo, who hadn’t been looking before, would look up from his crayons, stumble over, and push it in. Two seconds later, your hand knocked the exact spot that would’ve tipped it over.
Correct again.
A toy car behind your heel.
“Mommy, wait.”
A loose nail on the floorboard where Dex was standing.
“Daddy, move.”
Then Dex started realising that Leo didn't react to everything.
A stranger would drop coffee at the park, and Leo kept eating his biscuit. Another child tripped at nursery, and Leo only looked up after the crying started.
But with you and Dex, he always knew.
So Dex started hypothesising, in the sweetest way, that love anchored his juvenile powers, because he simply couldn’t control it yet. He couldn’t predict lottery numbers or huge world events. For now, he just got little flashes around the people he was attached to. His brain simply marked mommy and daddy as important and started warning them when something would go wrong.
Still, you continued to be in denial until you simply couldn’t deny it anymore.
It happened on a rainy afternoon. The apartment smelled faintly of damp coats, crayons, and the books you had brought home from work to repair. Leo was at the kitchen table colouring a stegosaurus blue. Dex was by the windows, checking the lock again, because he just had to.
You were reaching for the heavy glass mixing bowl on the top shelf when Leo’s head snapped up.
“Mommy, no.”
You paused, hand lifted. “What?”
His crayon rolled from his fingers. “No. Don’t.”
You smiled tiredly. “It’s okay, baby. I can reach.”
“No!”
And because Dex realised what his son was saying, he moved at the same time Leo shouted.
The shelf gave way without warning.
One moment it was holding. The next, wood cracked, glass slid, and Dex’s arm locked around your waist, dragging you back so hard your feet left the floor. The bowl hit the counter exactly where your face had been and exploded into glittering fragments.
For one long second, the kitchen went silent.
Rain tapped against the window. Glass ticked softly as it settled across the counter. Leo stared at the mess with both hands over his mouth, eyes enormous and wet.
Then he started to sob.
Not because of the noise, but because he had known and you hadn’t believed him. But daddy did, though.
You stood in Dex’s arms, heart hammering, your body still trying to catch up to the fact that you would have been hurt if Leo hadn’t screamed and Dex hadn’t reacted to said screaming.
You turned slowly and looked at your son.
Your baby. Then you looked back at Dex.
He was pale. “No,” you whispered, but it was already weaker than before.
Dex said nothing.Your fingers twisted in his shirt.
“No, okay. Okay.” Your voice cracked. “Maybe you have a point.”
Dex closed his eyes for half a second, bracing for impact, for you to break down. But you… didn’t.
You stayed there, calculating your next steps instead.
Then Leo cried, “Mommy,” and both of you moved toward him.
Dex reached him first. Leo launched himself into Dex’s arms and buried his face in his shoulder, sobbing so hard his little body shook.
“I’m sorry,” Leo cried.
Dex’s face changed completely.
“No,” he said at once, rough and steady. “No, you did good.”
Leo shook his head.
“You told Mommy,” Dex said, one hand firm at the back of his head. “You protected her.”
Leo had saved you, Dex thought.
Leo had saved the woman Dex had built his whole life around. His North Star. The proof that he could be loved and a guiding light for his compass.
That night, Leo slept between you.
Dex didn’t sleep at all.
You knew because whenever you opened your eyes, his were fixed on the bedroom door. One arm was stretched across both of you, his hand resting lightly over Leo’s back.
You reached across Leo and touched Dex’s wrist.
“Baby,” you whispered.
His eyes moved to you.
“For now, we keep his powers out of sight,” he insisted.
You should have argued. You almost did. But then Leo whimpered in his sleep, and both of you went still until he settled.
And it was fine for a short while.
Then, two weeks later, someone knocked on the door of your apartment.
You were in the living room, still in your work clothes from the library, folding Leo’s tiny jumpers on the sofa. Leo sat on the rug with his dinosaurs lined up in a careful parade. Dex was in the kitchen, cutting garlic for dinner.
The knock came again.
You stood automatically. “I’ll get it.”
Leo’s head snapped up and the colour drained from his face. “Mommy, don’t.”
You stopped.
He scrambled to his feet, knocking over two dinosaurs. His lower lip trembled before the tears came. “Bad people, mommy.”
Dex looked up from the kitchen, and the air went cold.
“Leo,” Dex said, voice low. “Come here.”
Leo ran to you instead, sobbing into your skirt. “They’re bad. They’re bad people.”
Dex walked across the room without making a sound and looked through the peephole.
You watched his face empty.
“How many?” you whispered.
“Four.”
Your mouth went dry. “Who is it?”
Dex stepped back from the door. “Two from Department of Damage Control. Two Anti-Vigilante Task Force.”
For a second, you could not think.
But then, the realisation hit you.
They knew.
They knew about Leo.
The Department of Damage Control and the Anti-Vigilante Task Force didn’t send four agents to knock politely on a librarian’s door by mistake. They were not here for Dex, because they didn’t even know he was here. If they had been here for your husband, there would have been sirens, guns, a perimeter, orders shouted through a bullhorn.
No.
They had come for your son.
The knock came again, harder this time.
“Ma’am?” a voice called from outside. “We need to speak with you about your child.”
Dex’s eyes went dark.
You crouched in front of Leo, both hands on his little shoulders. He was crying so hard he could barely breathe.
“Baby,” you said, forcing your voice to stay gentle. “Did something happen at nursery?”
Leo’s face crumpled. “I don’t know.”
Dex crouched beside you, controlled and terrifyingly soft.
“Leo,” he said. “Did you tell anyone something was going to happen before it happened?”
Leo nodded miserably.
Your stomach sank.
“Miss Clara,” he whispered. “She was standing on a chair for the picture wall. I told her get down.”
You pressed a hand to your mouth.
Dex’s eyes didn’t leave Leo. “And did she?”
Leo nodded, tears running down his cheeks. “The chair broke. But she got down first. She didn’t fall. I helped.”
Oh.
Of course he had. Of course your sweet boy had saved his nursery teacher and thought that was only good. He didn’t know his kindness could become evidence of his otherness. He didn’t know a frightened adult could call a number and report a superpowered individual. He didn’t know that saving someone at school could put uniforms at your door by dinner.
Miss Clara was his favourite teacher.
Leo talked about her all the time. Miss Clara said this. Miss Clara liked that. Miss Clara thought his drawing was good. Miss Clara let him be line leader on Thursdays.
So when he said her name, your stomach dropped before you even understood why.
“Leo,” you asked carefully, “was this the first time you told Miss Clara about… knowing things?”
Leo frowned like he was trying to remember.
“Ummm.” He looked up, all innocent. “I told her the green marker was going to run out and then it did.”
Your hand tightened around your mug. “And?”
“And I told her not to put the scissors there because Mis was gonna knock them off.”
You went very still, but Leo kept talking.
“And then the desk fell but not on anyone because I told Miss Clara to move it first.”
Shit.
Shit.
That was enough.
A marker running dry could be a lucky guess. Scissors falling could be a coincidence. But a desk? A desk falling exactly when your four-year-old said it would?
That was enough for Clara to notice. Enough for her to remember every strange little thing Leo had said before an accident happened. Enough for her to see the pattern you were trying to hide.
This wasn’t a slip-up.
This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Fuck,” you whispered, low enough for Leo not to hear.
Dex looked at you.
“She must have said something,” you breathed. “She must have called someone.”
Another pound on the door. “Open the door, ma’am.”
Dex stood.
For one heartbeat, he looked down at Leo, and the father came through the monster.
Leo looked up at him. “Daddy?”
Dex crouched again and touched the side of Leo’s face with two careful fingers. “You did good,” he said, then pointed at the doors.
“Did they come because I told.”
“No.” Dex’s voice was steady enough for a child to hold onto. “They came because they’re bad people.”
Leo hiccupped, still trembling.
He looked at you, and the certainty in his eyes told you everything before he said it. “Take him to the bedroom and hide. Don’t come out until I say so.”
He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to.
They had come for your child. They had come because Miss Clara had called, and the call center had put something in a report. Someone had typed Leo’s name into a system, because somewhere in some government database your four-year-old had become a liability.
Dex wouldn't let them leave with that knowledge intact.
You carried Leo down the hall and locked the bedroom door behind you.
Then the second lock.
Then you dragged the dresser in front of it with shaking hands while Leo sobbed into his plush rabbit.
“It’s okay,” you whispered, even though your voice was thin. “It’s okay, baby. Look. Bunny’s here. And Mr. Stegosaurus. Remember? He protects the bed.”
Leo sniffled, curled against your lap on the rug while you gathered every plushie you could reach and built them into a little wall around him.
Rabbit. Dinosaur. Bear. The ugly blue thing Uncle Jonathan bought him that no one could identify but Leo loved anyway.
“There,” you said, trying to smile. “Everybody’s here.”
Outside, the voices rose.
Then came the first violent sound: metal through air.
Something hit the wall hard enough that you flinched. Leo did too, but only for a second.
You pulled him closer, one hand over his ear, your own breath shaking in your chest.
“Don’t listen,” you whispered. “Look at me, sweetheart. Look at Mommy.”
But Leo’s crying had started to quiet, though.
That was… strange.
The more loud, violent, and frantic the sounds outside became, the less panicked Leo seemed. The agents shouted. Something crashed. You felt your own terror climbing up your throat, hot and choking, but Leo’s little body slowly stopped shaking.
He lifted his wet face from your cardigan. “Mommy.”
“I’m here.”
“Mommy, Daddy’s okay,” he said with absolute certainty, as if saying the sky was blue or two and two is four.
Your hand froze in his hair as you heard another slicing sound.
Your stomach turned.
Leo touched your cheek with his small, damp fingers. “Daddy’s okay,” he said again. “Don’t be scared.”
You stared at him.
He was… reassuring you?
Your four-year-old son, surrounded by plushies on your bedroom floor while violence unfolded beyond the door, was trying to soothe you because he could feel something you couldn’t.
Because he knew that Dex would make it back to you.
You took in a shaky breath, and it broke halfway down. “Okay,” you whispered.
Leo nodded, serious and tear-streaked. “Daddy wins.”
Your laugh came out small and wrecked, almost a sob. “Yeah,” you breathed, pressing your forehead to his. “Daddy wins.”
So you held him tighter through the last of the shouting, through the silence that came after, through your own heart hammering so hard you thought it might split your ribs.
Two hours later, Dex knocked on the door and told you it was safe.
When you got out, Dex was in the hallway with damp sleeves, wet hair at his temples, and a freshly changed shirt. The room smelled of lemon cleaner and disinfectant. There were little dents and knife marks on the wall, but otherwise, it was as if the agents were never here at all.
Leo, however, had slept through the last hour. You had never seen him that exhausted before. Not even after nursery. Not even after tantrums. Not even after crying himself sick from a nightmare.
He had gone heavy in your arms, his little body giving out like he had burned through all its energy. You kept one hand on his back, feeling the uneven rise and fall of his breathing, and wondered if he got so tired because he had been reaching for Dex the whole time.
Checking on him. Feeling for him. Actively using whatever powers inside him to make sure Daddy was still there, still safe, still winning.
This was Dex’s gift to him, you realised. Not innocence, not really, because the world had known too much. Dex would and had killed for him, and after that, he would clean the floor. He even lined Leo’s dinosaurs neatly beside the sofa, the way he liked it. The knives were back back in the block. There was nothing for your baby to wake up and see.
Dex had taken all of it on his shoulders instead.
You stood in the doorway, still shaking, and looked past him into the apartment that looked like safety, if you did not think too hard about what safety had cost.
Your apartment was not far from the Hudson, so you knew their bodies had sunk to the bottom by now.
You looked up to see your husband gently smiling at you.
He was pleased with himself, you realised.
Not in a gleeful way. Not like he had enjoyed the mess for its own sake.
But he was satisfied that he was able to protect his family.
And in the brutal logic of his mind, killing the people who came for his child had made him feel like a good person. To be fair, that was not entirely false.
For once, his violence had a reason that was a righteous reason that he chose for himself. It hadn’t been because someone ordered him to, or punishment, or survival. It had been fatherhood. It had been protection.
“They’re gone,” he said, and you believed him.
Your knees weakened, and Dex caught you before you could fall. His arms closed around your waist, careful and firm, and you pressed your forehead to his clean shirt.
You kissed him. Softly at first, then harder when his hands tightened at your waist. Dex made a broken sound against your mouth, like you had given him permission to come home after becoming the worst part of himself for you.
When you pulled away, his forehead rested against yours. “M’ glad he’s asleep.”
You could only nod and look at your son. Sleeping through a quadruple homicide? That’s Benjamin Poindexter’s son, alright.
That was the frightening intimacy of loving your husband. Not that Dex would kill for you. You had always known that.
It was that, tonight, you truly understood why it made him feel righteous. Why it made him feel useful. Why it made him feel good.
From the bedroom, Leo sighed in his sleep.
Both of you turned, and together, you went back to him.
Leo was curled in the middle of your bed, rabbit tucked beneath his chin, face peaceful. Dex crouched beside him and brushed one careful finger over his hair.
You climbed into bed on one side of your son. Dex followed on the other. Leo rolled toward him instinctively, and Dex’s whole posture softened.
He wrapped one arm around Leo and reached for you with the other.
For once, he looked peaceful. After all, he had already made a decision: Tomorrow, he would start hunting every fucking agent in New York.
Because as long as they lived, you and your son would never truly be safe.
And Dex couldn’t sleep inside a world where that was true.
I just know bestie Jonathan from what makes a good man is so so so tired , but can he blame us?? Has he seen dex??
Your Best Friend Is Not Blind
TW suggestive humour, explicit innuendo, obsessive love, Jonathan is your best friend from this story! (I think it could still be read as a one shot)
WC 556
See, before Dex, I'd like to think you and Jonathan used to go out together and try to pull guys together at bars. Like, you'd wingman each other, because you both liked men but never the same men (Thank GOD).
Jonathan’s type was normal-hot, well-adjusted, a stable job, and a good credit score. After all, you both worked in a school, and while you both loved it, Johnathan was a teacher and teachers were severely underpaid.
Jonathan knew your type was always a little on the unhinged side, to be fair.
But never this unhinged.
When Dex happened, Jonathan was like, okay. Fine. Your taste has always been questionable, but usually the men are not this fucking hot. So what were you supposed to do? Be strong? Be sensible? Have morals? In this economy?
And then you actually started dating Dex and Jonathan tried to warn you because, babe, that man was getting territorial over your very gay, very platonic best friend.
Johnathan was concerned. But also… Dex was so, so, so fucking hot. Like smoking fucking hot. Offensively hot to the point that Jonathan was a teeny tiny bit angry because why does a man that unstable get to look like THAT?
And then you made it worse, because you told Johnathan things.
You’d show up to his apartment to help him grade papers, glowing like you had seen heaven and then you'd dreamily tell Jonathan how good Dex was in bed. Dex is so focused. Dex pays attention to everything. Dex is so attentive to your pleasure. Dex is so eager to please. Dex never ever misses your spot. blah blah blah Dex this! Dex that!
And Johnathan would just sit there, gripping his coffee, trying to be a supportive best friend while internally screaming because oh my FUCKING GOD.
He would never admit it. Never. He’d rather chew glass. But there was a little bit of jealousy there.
Obviously he'd snap out of it because by all accounts Dex was probably a sociopath and Jonathan had a feeling he was probably a stalker, too. But a flicker of it would exist because you were sitting there describing this deranged, gorgeous man absolutely making your standards unattainably high forever, and Johnathan was only human.
Like sorry, but hearing “he’s obsessed with me, built like a greek god, and really fucking good in bed” would make anyone a little bitter. So all he could say was, “I’m happy for you,” while wishing he could bleach his brain and have a taste at the same time (Not seriously. The crazy part kinda scares him too much).
So yeah, Johnathan gets it. He HATES that he can see the appeal.
And then you had the audacity to have an “I can fix him” complex on top of it. Except it was never really “I can fix him.” It was more like, “I can be the only person he listens to while he gets progressively worse!” and unfortunately, that was your love language.
Johnathan knew after you moved in together that you were COOKED. Gone. Finished. You were not escaping that man. The red flags were waving and you were using them as bedsheets because he called you pretty girl once.
Jonathan hated that, even now, his first thought was still: yeah, okay. I don't even blame you.
-
Note: holy shit guys I never realised Johnathan would be so popular, I love it 🫠
How does Uncle Johnathan react when visiting reader and Leo, and seeing prison escaping Dex in the living room eating cereal?
Your Best Friend Finds Out that You’re Harboring Your Fugitive Husband
TW you and Dex have a son called Leo, Jonathan is your best friend. You’re breaking court orders, discussion of violence “for love,” domestic fluff. Husband! Dex x Wife! Reader
WC 1.8k
Could be read as a one shot (I believe), but it’s an extension of this storyline!
Johnathan let himself in with a bottle of wine under one arm and a relationship crisis in the other.
His boyfriend, Mark, had asked him to move in.
Johnathan has just gotten back from a work trip. He was jet-lagged and half asleep when Mark called him and said his lease was expiring, and therefore, they should talk about moving in together.
They had been together for two years, and somehow the question had made Johnathan spiral so badly in the airport bathroom that an old man had asked if he needed help in the cubicle.
So he came to your apartment, because you were his best friend. You were the one he called when he needed sense talked into him, even if your personal romantic history was not exactly a shining example of healthy pacing. Miss moved-in-with-an-FBI-agent-after-five-months. Miss married-a-man-with-a-red-flag-for-eyes. Miss “I know he’s complicated” like complicated meant he forgot birthdays and not murder. Not to mention, you were the literal Mrs. Poindexter.
Johnathan knocked weakly, not waiting for an answer before inserting the spare key into your door.
You’d given him that years ago. After Dex went to prison, Johnathan used it for emergency groceries, babysitting, late-night check-ins, and the days you stopped answering texts. You were going through a hard time, but he had never told you to divorce Dex, even when he wanted to. Partly because he knew it would only make you defend him harder.
Mostly because he knew you loved Dex too much.
Which made it especially unfair that, after seven years of being your support system, Johnathan walked into your living room and found him sitting barefoot on your couch in sweatpants, eating granola from one of Leo’s plastic bowls.
For a few seconds, nobody moved.
Leo was on the rug with his toys, the television hummed softly. Morning light fell across the coffee table, reflecting on the spoon Dex had paused halfway to his mouth. Dex looked bigger than Johnathan remembered, but still definitely Dex. He was watching the room like he knew how everything in it could be used as a weapon.
Then Dex blinked.
“Oh,” he said, like this was normal. “Hello, Johnathan.”
The wine slipped out of Johnathan’s hand and hit the rug with a dull thud. Thankfully, it didn’t break.
You came rushing out of the kitchen, guilt already all over your face. “I can explain.”
Johnathan pointed at the couch. “Is that your prison-escaping husband eating cereal in your living room?”
Dex glanced down. “Granola.”
“Leo looked up very seriously. “Daddy likes the honey one.”
Johnathan stared at Leo, then at you, then at Dex. “How long?”
You hesitated, so Dex answered for you. “A little under two months.”
“Oh, perfect.” Johnathan laughed once, high and hysterical. “A totally normal amount of time to hide your infamous murderer husband in your apartment.”
Leo considered this. “What is infamous?” As if that was the part of the sentence he should be fixating on.
Johnathan dragged both hands down his face, but did not answer your child. “Does your mother know?”
“No.”
“What happens when she finds out?”
Dex shrugged. “We told Leo not to tell anyone.”
Leo sat up proudly. “I ain’t no snitch.”
The room went silent. Even Dex looked confused.
You blinked at your son. “Where did you learn that word?”
Leo shrugged, pushing a triceratops across the rug. “Grandma’s TV shows.”
Johnathan closed his eyes. “So either Empire or The Wire.”
Dex frowned. “Your mother lets him watch The Wire?”
“It’s just on in the background sometimes,” you said weakly.
Dex looked at Leo with grave concern. “Don’t say that at school.”
Johnathan lowered his hands. “That’s your concern?”
“It’s the most immediate one,” Dex furrowed his eyebrows.
For one second, Johnathan looked like he might actually leave the apartment, walk down the stairs, change his name, and start over in another country. You made him sit before his knees gave out. You brought him water. Leo climbed onto the couch beside him and patted his sleeve with sticky little fingers.
“It’s okay, Uncle Johnathan,” Leo said. “Daddy lives here now.”
Johnathan looked at him. “He just attempted to assassinate the mayor.” Leo nodded as if he understood his concerns (he didn’t).
“It wasn’t successful,” you said quickly.
Johnathan turned to you. “You hear yourself, right?”
Dex set his bowl down carefully, looking more annoyed than anything that the stupid lawyer blocked his perfect shot.“The target survived.”
Johnathan pointed at him. “He’s not helping!”
Dex went quiet, though not because he looked sorry. Dex had never really been sorry in a way Johnathan would trust.
Years ago, Dex had hated him. Johnathan had known it immediately. He was too close to you, too familiar with your space, too good at making you laugh. Dex didn’t even give a shit that he was physically incapable of being romantically attracted to you, he just hated that he had your attention. And trust me, Dex has tried to get you “friend-break up” with him before, to no avail.
Then, after a year of marriage, Dex had apparently decided Johnathan wasn’t competition anymore, but rather, part of your ecosystem. The same way your handbag, your favourite mug, and your headphones were part of your ecosystem.
Your accessory, Dex had once called him.
Johnathan had been offended until he realised that, in Dex’s mind, it was the closest he got to a peace treaty.
Now that same man was sitting in your living room, wanted and barefoot, acting like no time had passed.
Johnathan shut his eyes. “I came here for advice about my boyfriend.”
You tilted your head. “What's wrong with Mark?”
“Nothing,” he said, exhausted. “He’s just my very normal boyfriend, who’s never escaped prison or been wanted by the government.”
Dex looked down at the bowl again, not caring that the granola had become incriminating.
“He asked me to move in,” Johnathan admitted. “And I love him, but I panicked and hung up. It feels like if I say yes, everything’s gonna change.”
Dex tilted his head. “How long have you been together?”
“Two years,” Johnathan said, surprised he was even curious at all.
Dex frowned. “And you don’t live together?”
“No.”
Dex looked at you. “We moved before that.”
Johnathan snapped his fingers. “Exactly. You two are not the blueprint. Who even moves in after six months?”
“Five months and eight days,” Dex said, because the difference mattered to him.
You covered your face, knowing Johnathan hated that.
Dex leaned forward, elbows on his knees, focus narrowing on Johnathan in that unsettling way of his. He was trying to be… helpful? “Do you love him?” Dex asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Yes.”
“Does he make you feel safe?”
Johnathan looked down at his glass. “Yes. He does.”
Dex nodded once. “Then move in.”
“It’s not that simple.” Johnathan laughed weakly. “What if it changes things?”
“It will,” Dex said. “That’s what happens.”
You could tell he had inadvertently scared your best friend with his unfortunate wording.
You squeezed Johnathan’s shoulder. “I think he means building a life with someone is supposed to change you.”
Dex glanced at you, as if you had given the perfect translation. “Yes.”
Then Leo looked up from the rug. “Uncle Johnathan? If Mark was in danger, would you save him?”
Johnathan relaxed despite everything. “Of course I would.”
Dex watched him. “What if saving him required hurting someone?”
The room chilled, but Dex was serious. Completely serious. In his mind, love had consequences. Love was not abstract. It was action, sacrifice, and violence. If you loved someone, you’d put your body between them and harm. If that wasn’t enough, you put someone else’s body in the ground.
Johnathan looked from Dex to Leo, who was waiting with innocent curiosity.
“I don’t know,” Johnathan said carefully. “Maybe. If Mark was really in danger, then… maybe. I don’t know what I’d do until it happened.”
Leo frowned like the answer was obvious. “Mommy would.”
You choked. “Leo.”
Johnathan’s mouth flattened, despite everything, that was probably true. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”
Dex looked at you, and for a second, there was pride in his face. As if saying, that’s my girl.
Johnathan stared at the three of you. “I feel like I’ve entered a very illegal family therapy session.”
You stood abruptly. “Okay. That’s enough advice from Dex.”
Johnathan let out a thin, exhausted laugh. “I need one of your melatonin pills.”
You gave him one. Then you made him drink water and promised he wasn’t allowed to make any major life decisions until he had slept.
Still, the apartment settled around him in a way that made no sense. Leo’s toys clicked on the floor. The dishwasher hummed. Dex picked up his bowl again but didn’t eat, his attention flicking constantly back to you and Leo.
Jonathan's eyebrows furrowed.
Dex was still terrifying. He still felt wrong in ways Johnathan didn’t have the energy to unpack.
But… you had always been different around him.
You now moved through the apartment like he had turned the lights back on inside you. Over the last seven years, he had seen you grieving, tired, guilty, and afraid, but now you were finally…. present, in the way he had not seen in years. When Leo climbed into your lap, you laughed into his hair. When Dex put his arm on your thighs, you smiled.
“Fine,” Johnathan rubbed at his face. “I’m not telling anyone.”
Your eyes lifted, lips pressed into a smile. “Thank you.”
“Only for Leo,” he said, because he needed it to sound firm. “Not for you. Not for him. For Leo.”
Leo beamed. “Thank you, Uncle Johnathan.”
Johnathan pointed at you. “Your mother is going to kill you.”
Dex snorted, “she can try.”
You and Johnathan both looked at him, but you just ignored the comment and smoothed down your trousers. “And please don’t tell Mark, either.”
“Please,” He laughed weakly. “Mark wouldn’t believe me anyway. What am I supposed to say? Sorry I’m weird tonight, babe, I asked my best friend for cohabitation advice and found out that Bullseye has moved back in again?”
You chuckled, relieved.
Dex went quiet, though. Then, after a moment, he said, “You should move in with him, if he makes you feel safe.”
Johnathan wanted to reject the advice on principle. But the words sat there, simple and irritatingly useful.
If he makes you safe.
He looked at the three of you, this unconventional little family curled into the middle of a disaster, and reached blindly for his water.
He still thought it was insane. He still thought it was dangerous. He still thought he needed to scream into a pillow.
But he also thought you looked the happiest you had looked in years.
So who was he to judge?
—
Note: Send me more of this little family, please!!!❤️
