Warnings and a brief synopsis: SMUT, you suck his dick EEEEEE, leans more toward sub! Dex cause he’s so WHINY but not 100%, stalking (but this isn’t a super dark fic, however general discretion is definitely advised) actually super fluffy and loving but kind of fucked up! My bad! Dex realizes you’re literally just as much of a freak weirdo as he is! Abandonment issues (obviously), sort of switch!Dex if you really think about it, confrontation and minor breakdowns but all is resolved <3
Part 2 where he fucks ur brains out?
You’ve known for seven months, eighteen days and seventy two hours that you are not alone. Not in the mundane daily activities of your life, and you’re not even certain that you’re alone when you’re asleep. Two steps ahead, a quiet and intense set of eyes, like observing your reality is an admirable routine.
It starts at 6:00 AM when your alarm blares and with sleep still in your eyes, you stare mindlessly and half lucid at the popcorn ceiling with a yearning to stay in bed just ten more minutes. To not have to deal with customers who are going to complain about you not filling their drinks fast enough, or their food being cold when you are clearly just the server.
But then you roll yourself off of the creaking mattress, and your big college graduation shirt hangs off of your familiar body, worn in places and torn in others. You just won’t let go of it.
He knows how warm you are underneath.
And you slip on fuzzy slippers as soon as your feet are about to hit the cold linoleum, you need a new pair.
He knew the scruff of them against the floor before he ever stayed over for the first time.
Then through your living room window with half broken blinds, while you grab something quick from the pantry to take for lunch where you probably won’t have time to eat it anyway, and start coffee on the Keurig. You always pick the same three mugs throughout the week. And the same K cups, at that.
He already knew your favorites.
And still, at 7:30 am when you pull out of your driveway in a 2007 bucket that he’s changing the oil for next weekend - watching, not necessarily waiting - but learning.
And yeah, you know that the shadow is your boyfriend of seven months, eighteen days, and seventy two hours.
It should be horrifying, right?
It should be uncomfortable to the fullest, most exposed extent. It should make you feel a dread that rots in your insides and comes out in broken sobs - it should scare you to the bone marrow.
And the fact that it doesn’t, that it hasn’t, that it probably never will, is the scariest and most concerning part for you to accept. To truly acknowledge at all.
Because in all honesty, Dex is devoted to you in a way you’ve never known here on this physical earth. He knows the basics, knew them before you even said them out loud, of course.
Your favorite color? Favorite food? Movie, television show, favorite type of fabric to buy your sweaters in because the wrong kind makes you itch? Too fucking easy. He couldn’t fathom why no one else had ever taken the time to get to know you like this.
And then the intricacies - god, down to the most insignificant, trivial tick of the corner of your mouth has taught him what you like and don’t like. A sound you make through your nose can tell him how you’re feeling, like you’re an open paged book and he’s memorized every single paragraph to most infinitesimal detail.
And he does it with little to no effort. Like this ability to know a person is engrained in him, trained in him.
You know about the dark parts of Ben, the ruins and the slaughter and the unrelenting cycle of not being good enough that his mind feeds through the cogs of his brain. That he’ll lose everyone he loves, and it’ll be his fault. At the heart of it, though, he was just dealt an unfair hand. It should’ve never happened to him, any of it.
And maybe that’s why it’s never bothered you. Because the need to be adored, devoured, consumed for your every movement, your every expression, - yeah, that’s why you go to therapy. And truthfully, it might not ever work in this specific category - loving Benjamin.
Because a lot of things never made sense to you before him. All this love wrapped tight inside of you, no one to give it to who didn’t absolutely demolish it, throw it away and act like none of it mattered even if you made sacrifices that stripped everything away from you, your skin and bones. He loved you in a way that split you open and had the most vulnerable parts of you spilling out, and he’d lap it up like it’s what made him strong.
Like it’s what made him whole.
You can cradle his face with an open, gentle palm and he acts like you’re a god, like you’ve exonerated him from any bad he’s ever done and any evil he’s been subjected to. Like you’ve saved him and nothing ever mattered before you and nothing will matter after you because you’re it for him.
You promised you’d wait at his apartment while he was out, that you’d lock the door and do nothing but relax. The fridge has stuff you eat daily, and honestly - you don’t know how he doesn’t realize that it’s impossible for you to not notice that he knows things about you that he only had to have seen while watching you from his car and peering through your window blinds from a yard away with his binoculars.
But he’s so in love it hurts, how could he notice anything else? Taking care of you is what matters. Right now it’s the only thing that matters.
His apartment is neat. It’s not a love letter to himself, more so a confession to how badly things plague him. The need for everything to have a certain spot, the cleanliness. Even the lack of stuff that makes it feel lived in, it never felt like a home until you were in it.
He thinks about that often. He comes home and fuck, everything smells like you. He can feel your warmth in the air where you’ve just walked, where you’ve just lied down. It’s a reminder that you’re real. That you’re here. With him, of all people you could choose and love.
He knows it’s wrong, to do what he does, to follow you around like a lost puppy - but he likes to think of himself as more of a guard dog. The world is cruel, is terrifying - the things that it does to people like you. Beautiful, a heart that aches with goodness, a voice so tender it could make a grown man cry.
It’s fucking insane. And you know that, but it doesn’t actually matter when you’re in this deep, when you’re this in love in mind, body, and spirit.
It’s all consuming. Rationale is forgotten, doesn’t exist.
However, his couch is really comfortable, and your blanket from your own apartment is fluffy and big and swallows you whole and - the rain outside is pattering against the window with just enough force to lull you to sleep while you started mindlessly scrolling on your phone - tv on for the extra company, another voice so you didn’t feel so alone while he’s out.
Falling asleep, don’t worry the door is locked. I love you Ben
Sent two hours ago, and he’s still staring at it periodically. Even when he pulls up to his building and checks his surroundings, when he’s walking upstairs and stares down both hallways of his floor, and then unlocking the door gently so that the noise doesn’t rouse you - locking it back with tentative fingers.
Every time he hears you say it, every time he sees it in writing it stuns him. Deep, behind his navel, knocking at his ribcage - it makes him feel like a real person again. If you can love him, what can’t he do? It makes him feel like he’s floating.
And he’s home, home cause you’re in it, and really you wouldn’t even know that there’s a person underneath the mass of fluff that’s on the sofa, but he knows it’s you. He feels your warmth from all the way over here, your presence.
He slips his shoes off and places them in their designated area, slides his black jacket from broad, strong shoulders and hangs it on the rack behind the door.
His big socked feet are quiet as a mouse against his floor, he wants to soak this up. Seeing you in such a peaceful state, and being right here with you and it not be a terrible and dirty thing that he’s doing. Cause you’re his girlfriend, in his apartment, and boyfriends come home and admire their partners sleeping. It’s normalcy. He never thought he’d find anything close to it.
You feel his weight dip the couch, but you’re still in a dream like state - so a soft hum reverberates in your throat as acknowledgment. Until you feel a warm, calloused hand cover the side of your face, a thumb softly stroking your cheek that isn’t squished against the arm of the sofa.
You lean into it, nuzzle against his palm and it’s then that your eyes flutter open. He’s a blurry image of dirty blonde hair and big, curious hazel eyes and a white dress shirt that’s hugging his body a bit unfairly. And then you blink again, and he’s perfectly tangible. You smell a peppery cologne and something sweet, almost smells like your perfume.
“Benji,” you yawn before leaning in to kiss his wrist. “you’re home. You look so beautiful.”
You pretend not to notice the shudder that ripples through him, the way his lips twitch and a sweet smile starts to spread across his face. His eyes crinkle at the corners when he does, but there’s still a hesitancy because he’s still worried about scaring you off with his excitement towards you.
A simple fucking nickname anda compliment has him hooked, heart racing. How could he ever admit that?
There’s an intense blush beginning to burn his face cause you say it like it doesn’t destroy him to hear it. Like it doesn’t get blood pumping through him at an alarming rate.
“I uh - fuck you threw me off with that,” he laughs, and you chuckle back, starting to stroke his bicep over his shirt. He swallows hard, and you’re getting severely distracted. He just got home.
You act like complimenting him is the most casual thing in the world, cause it is to you.
“Good nap? You go anywhere?” His voice is curious despite the shake, and he’s getting distracted too because you’re still clinging to his thick forearm and holding it against your chest. He feels a thousand nerve endings firing at once.
You let go and his heart drops to his stomach for a split second like he’s done something horrible - till you’re opening your arms, lifting your abnormally heavy blanket and silently inviting him to climb on top of you. In the safety of your fortress.
One heartbeat is all he waits, then he’s maneuvering his tall, bulky body to lay on you. He knows you like the weight, but he’s still careful, slotting his torso between your thighs and arms on either side of your waist while his cheek finds comfort on the plush of your chest.
Your fingers find his scalp and you’ve disarmed him completely. You feel his muscles relax, melt into you. He’s so hot to the touch, so whole and complete. He’s almost forgets that he asked you a question, a really important one at that.
And like the symbiotic being you two have become, you practically read his mind.
“You know I didn’t go anywhere honey.”
His head rises and falls with your breaths, and you feel his heartbeat against your sternum. It’s starting to thud, and you’re not sure if it’s from the proximity, which never ceases to be intensely flattering for you, or because of your statement. It was blasé enough to not be obvious.
“I wouldn’t know, was out all day.”
It’s cute, because if you didn’t know it would be so convincing. And you know, you know that the lie is to protect himself. And to protect you from himself. From the truth about his obsessiveness, his inability to be fucking normal about anything for even a second.
His inability to have you out of his sight, because how else do you cope when anything, everything good has been taken from you? When the world has shown you nothing but selfishness and leaving and forgetting and confirming the fact that he’s just unlovable.
You sit with this for a second, toying with the golden strands on his head, feeling the softness wisp through your fingertips. Your legs lift and they’re wrapping themselves around his torso, a cage, a sanctuary. He hums, so deeply you feel it vibrate against your chest.
“Thought the tracker on my phone was one of the best on the market?”
God, maybe you’re evil for it. But you need to get this out of the way. You sound so innocent when you say it too, like it hasn’t caused him to completely stop breathing for a solid ten seconds. Like his body hasn’t tensed ten fold, and his heart hasn’t started pounding inside of him.
It feels like the world stops. Or maybe it’s been turned on its axis and he’s falling off it finally. At first he thinks his sick mind and his trained ears have failed him, you couldn’t possibly have said what he thinks you said, right?
There’s no way. He is smart, careful, more careful than he’s ever been because you’re the most important person in his life.
He starts shaking, it starts from his hands like a tremor in his bones and spreads to his body like a wildfire in dry brush. You’re starting to shake with it, hands still steady in his hair, scratching his nape gently. You feel his Adams’s apple bob against you when he swallows, hard.
“W-what’d you just say?” He’s out of breath, like he’s run a marathon with no water and no break. Your heart starts to ache like an open wound for him, the fear he must be feeling.
“Let’s sit up, Dex, hmm?” You say it gently, like you’ll ruin him if you raise your voice any louder, if you let even a hint of annoyance bleed into your tone.
He’s weak in the arms, the knees, the torso. You move to scooch upwards and then he’s moving, freed from the cage of your legs and he instantly turns away, runs a big hand through his hair and over his face and starts anxiously rocking himself with his elbows on his knees. It’s just slight, the beginnings of what you know to be a massive panic attack.
“I don’t know - I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
You feel sick when he stands up, starts pacing back and forth back and forth back and forth. You can’t imagine, fully, what it’s like to be in his head right now. What it must mean for him that you know, expecting the absolute worst. A catastrophe, his world ending, a person he would just have to let you go cause he would never harm you in any realm or reality that exists. He’d have to take it. To bear it.
God, it feels like his body is on fire, and you’re just watching patiently, waiting for him to tell any semblance of truth.
His face and neck are so red, you hear the hiccups of a breath not being caught - and then with each pace and glance of his pretty face you get, you see the wet streams cascading down his cheeks, the furrow of his eyebrows, the pulse in his throat.
You can’t let him be alone in his head.
“Ben, I’m not leaving,”
He inhales deeply, exhales, finally. But the panic in his body is still there - wrecking him, unfolding him. He still can’t look at you. He feels too guilty. In fact, he turns his back to your completely, clutching at the back of his neck.
“come here, please? Just come to me, baby.”
You could kill him, you really could, and he’d let it happen. He’d help you shove the knife right through his scarred chest, no questions asked, and he’d know with certainty that was his salvation of the gentlest kind.
But your voice is so soft, you sound so worried. He’s so confused, so hurt by so much at once - like reality has punched him square in the jaw, and when he turns around, you don’t think you’ve ever seen someone so sad. So defeated.
You could cry, really. You didn’t know someone could still be so stunning when they’re falling apart. And you have this aching, gnawing urge to make it all better.
He moves like a dog who’s been hit his whole life, like he doesn’t know why you’re being so gentle, so kind. It’s confusing him in a way that he’s never been confused before - and usually his emotions are reoccurring, deep and visceral wounds that have been there since he was a little boy and have just gotten ripped open again and again.
So this is new, and it’s got him trembling fiercely.
His long legs are unsteady when they saunter towards you, like he’s just now learning how to walk.
But then he’s right in front of you, big and tall and wilting like a sunflower when it’s overcast, and he doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know what else to do, so he drops to his knees with a heavy clunk against the hard wood floor. Cause if anything holy exists, you’re it. And he’ll do whatever he needs in order to be saved.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.” His voice is shattered, tears getting caught in his throat, words clipped by hiccups yet again. His face has contorted to a pained expression that makes your lungs feel tight.
You reach out, and his brain is pure static. You’re holding him by his hot, tear soaked cheeks, pulling his head up so his glassy red eyes can meet yours. His pink bottom lip is trembling, and you make a sound close to a cry but softer than a whimper - cause it breaks your heart, badly.
“Shhh, shh, don’t cry baby,” you wipe his face with your palm, move his sweat soaked blonde hair from his forehead. You scoot to the edge of the couch so that he’s right between your legs, peering up at you like he’d let you do something horrible to him.
“I’m here, I haven’t left. I’ve known the whole time and I’m here, don’t you understand? I know why you do it, Ben,”
He’s hanging on to every word with rapt attention, and your voice alone has soothed the onslaught of tears - now he’s just observing like he always does, trying to understand. You feel his fingers picking at the legs of his sweatpants that you’re wearing, a nervous tic. Then he’s gripping your calves to steady himself.
You place a flat palm against his solid chest. It’s like he’s connected to earth again.
“No one’s ever protected me like this, like you have. What we have, it’s so different. You feel it, right? Just wish you would’ve told me sooner, but I’m not mad, Dex. Everytime I’m at work and feel your eyes on me - cause I know that they’re there, I feel it like it’s pulling at my ribs, and I know I’m safe. Do you get it?”
You keep your hand there, worried that his heartbeat hasn’t gone down - but the softening of his expression, the surrender, it soothes your ache. He looks dizzy, but calmer. He places a hand on top of yours, firm and tight and presses it harder against him like he wants it inside his skin.
“Sometimes I don’t think you’re real. How? How? How did you find me? Please stay, please. I love you. I love you.”
It’s said quietly, desperately like despite the fact that it’s only the two of you in the room, someone might hear. He’s getting flushed and frantic again, and you don’t know what else to do to show him.
You lean down, just a little cause that’s the only proximity you need with his height on his knees, and press your lips to his wet, swollen mouth.
A broken sound echoes in his throat, and you swallow it whole. Consume it like it never even happened, and then you cup the back of his neck, start working the top lip and then the bottom, till your warm tongue finds his as it’s peeking out to greet yours.
He tastes salty and desperate and sweet and real and you wish you could bottle it up and keep it forever. His nose rubs against yours with the movements.
Normally you’d take more time, kiss every bit of scarred skin like it’s to be worshipped and suck bruises over his carotid artery but you don’t have time. You need him to know, you need him to feel the way you want him.
“I love you, Dex. I love you too.”
He’s got both hands on your thighs now, still and unmoving for all intensive purposes but his fingertips are pressing into you like he’s scared you’ll just dissipate in front of him.
He’s lost, lost in the way you’re kissing him like you haven’t in years, lost in the way that you’re massaging the back of his head while you do it, and he’s making noises that are so petulant. It’s like he physically can’t help it, the hard exterior wasting away at your feet. He kills people, literally murders them, and yet he’s a mess in the arms of the person he loves. He’s nothing but flesh and bone and a soul lit on fire.
“Stand up for me.” You ask, and though your demeanor is urgent, your tone is soft. He complies with a wobble, till he’s towering over you again and staring down with kiss bitten lips and big, imploring eyes.
You follow suit, doing your best to pretend like you’re not already intoxicated by desire and love and all the other things that have dopamine receptors firing in your brain, telling you that you need him inside and all over - placing your hands on his sturdy shoulders, gripping the tense, thick muscle there and resisting the urge to nibble, to pry, to cover in bruises that you’d suck into his skin with your mouth.
You guide him with an urgent touch to the couch where you were just sat.
If he didn’t want to, you wouldn’t be able to push him on the couch cushion of course. He’s got a solid build, an intimidating build that’s been made this way for battle and combat and brawling and eliminating.
But he does it anyways, for you. Let’s his knees buckle and his backside hit the softness because his need for you is like a wild animal trying to claw its way out. Vicious, starving.
You’re enraptured in the worst way, too. Being able to take care of him, to have him in this way despite all the confessions and painful realizations of the night. He’s just a man when you go to crawl on top of his thick lap, with unsteady hands that hesitate before they touch you, shaking at the side of his face thick thighs like he’ll break you in half with his fingertips if he makes another move.
But your weight is so comforting in top of him, it’s a reminder that you haven’t run away, told him he’s disgusting, a freak of a human being, unworthy of anything let alone love and touch like this.
“You can touch me, please, I’m yours. I’m yours, Dex.”
He whimpers when his mouth reconnects with yours, uses his hands to hold your waist firm against him, until his strong arms are pressing you flush to his trembling body and he can feel the outline of your hardened nipples through your shirt and the warmth of your sex between his thighs.
It’s like a dream. He can’t fathom it, not viscerally.
And he tries not get greedy, really, but you’re starting to grind yourself against his lap - spurred by the hardening, thick length that’s suffocating in his dress pants and pressing against your crotch. And your mouths are still going at it, smacking together in a symphony of lewd and loud noises in the quiet room. Not even the incoming storm could quiet the noises you’re making.
“Let me take care of you,” you plead, breaking free from his tongue and finally kissing across his handsome face, his high cheeks and his aching temples, then his neck. He cranes his chin upwards, giving you access with breathy pants.
“need this shirt off.” You mumble, moving his collar to try and get his collarbones with your tongue. He helps you, deft and nimble fingers starting to hastily undo the buttons, shakily but expertly. Each sliver of skin revealed is such a reward, it has your pupils dilating and you don’t notice that you’re slack jawed like he is, too.
Once it’s done he sits forward to slip it off his shoulders, struggling just a little because of the position - you’re afraid he’s gonna rip the garment all together, but with your help it’s slipping from his wrists finally and being tossed to the floor.
You can’t hide your expression, the awe and the desire and the inability to grasp that it’s all yours to touch. He sees it, feels it, smells it on you. It makes him feel like a wild animal, completely feral.
Now he’s tugging at the hem of your shirt, with a look that says hey, not fair. You pull it off and toss it along with the steadily growing pile of clothes - and it’s his turn to be in awe, to look at you like he’s never seen a woman naked in his life. Your tits are perfect, nipples hard and swollen and he can’t help but to cup the fat in his big palms and lean in to nip at the flesh.
You yelp, but it’s followed by a whimper and pushing your chest towards his face and mouth further. You can feel the light blonde scruff that decorates his face, barely there but it’s scratching the surface of your skin deliciously.
He sucks bruises, too hard for submission, but too sweetly for complete dominance. He revels in the fact that no one will see these but him, your little secret. A shared moment of intimacy that exists between only you two. It makes his stomach fill with heat.
And then he’s taking your nipples into his mouth while you’re pawing at his abdomen, admiring the taut tension of muscle there, and over his firm chest and then down bulging biceps and - he feels too good already.
He’s lost in how pretty the hardened buds look covered in his spit, gleaming in the setting sun that bleeds through his curtains, or how you’re mewling against him, not even realizing he can feel you pulsing against him - a live wire.
“Dex, pleaseeee.” Your whine is a song, sweet and high and satisfying and mind boggling. You’re begging for nothing specific, but he knows the feeling. Knows exactly what it is you need. It makes his balls tense with the urge to fill you completely. But he needs retribution, he has to be patient.
He’s sucking harshly, haphazardly because he doesn’t know what else to do. It’s all his body can generate, this visceral desperation that’s seeping out of him in perspiration and precum in his pants and glistening tears in his eyes.
He moves from one breast to the other, till you’re covered in hickeys and saliva and sin. You’re grabbing at his locks, pawing at his back, scraping red stripes over scars and freckles.
His eyes are closed, so he doesn’t see it but he feels it when you reach between the warmth of your bodies to paw at his dick. To grip the hardened shaft where its slanted to the right and threatening to burst from his waistband. It’s tight and rough through the fabric, and he has to press his forehead against your sternum to steady himself when you rub him up and down. He can’t get a breath in.
“Ohhh, baby, baby.” He slurs, gripping your waist like a vice.
“I need to feel you,” you mewl back, thankful for the tremble in his voice, Stunned by his pining, and the way he’s shaking like a leaf. “will you let me?”
You ask so sweetly, like you don’t know the answer.
He huffs a ragged breath, grits his teeth cause he’s fighting some invisible force. Doesn’t even know what it is, really. Is it his inability to let go of the fact that you know? To accept that, truly, you want him like he wants you despite what he’s done?
You kiss his temple, the top of his head.
“Fuck, yeah. Yes. Course’ you can.” He rasps. He doesn’t give in often. Ever. Unless it’s a total and complete mental deterioration.
How different it feels to surrender to this. To you. To the truth.
He doesn’t, however, foresee you letting go of him completely - he feels his pupils dilate and the adrenaline thrumming through him rise all the way to the top of his head. It’s the absence of your touch, your warmth - but then you’re slinking down to your knees.
This is your surrender.
He grips the couch cushions in a way that’s genuinely concerning for the couch in question. It’s rough, his nails nearly rip the fabric from the force cause you’re rubbing up and down his thighs and you start to lean in towards his aching manhood. He can feel your breath hot against him, even through two layers of fabric and he starts involuntarily bucking his hips.
It’s more so to relieve the throbbing, you have eyes so you can clearly see him twitching over and over again like he’s so hard it hurts. You peer up at him, and he’s really a sight for sore eyes.
It’s devastating.
He’s blushed everywhere, alabaster face and neck, ears and broad chest. His taut abdomen is tensed with anticipation and the arousal and the yearning for you. Every muscle is coated with a thin layer of sweat, like he can’t bear it. He’s huffing, strong jaw slack and pretty white teeth shining behind downward curled lips.
You make quick work of his slacks, knuckles against his navel when you undo the buttons, then dragging down the bulge underneath when you’re unzipping them.
He chokes on his own spit a little, swallows it when you look up at him with concern.
“Y’okay Dex? Still want it?”
You’re so genuine, and your voice is so fucking sweet, he can’t handle it. He’s already tearing up again, nodding fervently, cupping your face like it’s antique china. His touch is so hot, searing.
“Yes, yes - please don’t stop.” He couldn’t sound more wrecked, more fucked, more lost. His voice doesn’t even sound like his anymore. It’s so low, so husky and strained.
You tug at his pants and you can’t get them off, so he lifts his hips for you so that you can drag them off, down his long legs and off his feet. The black material of his briefs cling to him unfairly, halfway off already cause his pants got stuck on them- it’s too good to be true. He’s so gorgeous it makes your stomach hurt.
He’s so scarred, but so fragile under your touch. You kiss his thighs, on top of them, feeling the tendons move and writhe underneath. Then you’re spreading his knees apart, kissing between them.
This causes him to almost break and just beg you as pathetically as possible. His cock twitches fiercely, starts from his balls where they ache to release, jerks his whole shaft in the process. Pearlescent beads of his pre arousal seep through the fabric where his tip is protruding against it.
You take one look at him, in those intense and watery eyes, and you start peeling his underwear off. You can’t make him wait anymore, it’s making you feel too guilty. And between your own thighs pressure has built like a dam, making you slick and hot and thoroughly bothered. A heartbeat in your clit.
He hisses when his manhood touches the cold air, when the material drags against his sensitive tip as you take them off. His cock slaps against his tensed abdomen, leaves a sticky spot just below his bellybutton on the soft trail of light hair there.
You don’t tease anymore, you wrap your hands around the hot, thick base and immediately move to mouth at his frenulum on the underside of his head.
“Oh fuuuuck.” He groans from his chest, toes curled and the soles of his feet pressed into his living room rug. His head lolls back and all he can focus on is the warm wetness of your mouth. The plushness of your lips when they encompass him, the feeling of the roof of your mouth and then the back of your spongy throat.
He finally brings his hands to your hair, doesn’t pull or tug - just places them there and feels your head bob while you start to suck him off.
“Mmmm.” You hum around him, and choked noises keep leaving him, like he’s trying to breathe properly and his own drool is getting caught again.
It’s already messy, your spit coats him and gleams in the light, the sounds make him ache even more and he can tell that any ounce of precum that he’s surely leaking is being caught by your swirling tongue.
“O-oohhh, so good, baby it’s so good.” He cries through a shudder that ripples through him.
Two hands pump him while your mouth works. It’s hard work, but it’s so rewarding - you’ve got a big man right here shuttering like you’re doing something inhuman to him. And he’s massaging your scalp like he’s not a minute from coming undone, and the sounds.
God, you never knew he could be this vocal. It makes your body feel like it’s on overdrive, and he’s not lost to the way your eyebrows are furrowed and you’re still moaning around him.
The fact that sucking him off makes you horny is making him spiral.
You leave his cock with a pop, make direct eye contact while you kiss the underside of his shaft, tracing the veins with your tongue, dipping even lower to lick at his balls and he really shutters then.
“M’not gonna last, mmm, can’t. Can’t.” He pants.
You take him back into your mouth, focusing on the tip this time to let him know you don’t care if he finishes quickly. That this is about him. That you want to take care of him, show him how much he’s loved.
It’s soft and wet and tastes like him in your mouth. Your spit bubbles around him, your lips a suction that’s mapping the ridges and shape and flavor of him. Wha makes him tick, what’s making him the whiny mess that he’s become right now.
“Cum for me Dex, please, please.”
You say it between sucks, between laps and throating, and who is he to deny you? Such a request asked to sweetly? So desperately?
His whole body tenses, the breath stolen from him as quick as it came - head falling against the back of the couch and eyes rolling to the back of his head.
He’s writhing, and you can feel the throb against your tongue as he releases in long ropes - and you swallow it all with no pause whatsoever.
You whimper around him with encouraging sounds, milking him dry and working him through his intense orgasm while he tries to clamp his thighs shut and fist the couch and then tug your head off of him cause it’s starting to become overstimulating.
He’s grunting like it hurts now, still not back to reality cause the release is rushing through him like an amped up form of adrenaline. He’s got sweat beading against his forehead, threatening to drip and his stomach and chest heaves long, deep breaths to try and regain control.
You let him go from your mouth, a mess and a vision that he wants to keep engrained in the hollows of his mind forever. He cups the back of your neck, eyes low and dark and vying for you.
“C’mere, kiss me.” It’s not a demand but he needs it. You’re on your feet, knees imprinted with the shape of the carpet and he pulls you by your soft hips onto his bare lap before his mouth is on you.
This is about the only time, other than his usual extracurriculars, where the mess doesn’t bother him. He tastes himself on your tongue, tastes sweat and the sweetness of your lip balm that’s somehow lingered and it only fuels his awe, his adoration, his hunger.
He’s all tongue and teeth and starvation when he kisses you this time. He works the top and the bottom with erratic movements, but you know the pattern all the same. You lean into him, mold yourself against his warmth.
But something shifts, it’s small, unspoken.
You cup his face, strong jaw and stubble and raised scar against your palm. You slow him down purposely, hanging onto his bottom lip with your teeth, stroking the lines by his mouth with your thumb.
And then you’re kissing his face. That same scar, the dimple in his chin, the lines creased into his forehead, his nose. All of it. He closes his eyes, absorbing it like it may never happen again even though you know it’s just the beginning.
“I love you, so much Dex.” You almost whisper it, kissing his ears and the side of his neck before you’re wrapping your arms around his shoulders and hiding in the crook of him.
He sucks in a breath, hugs you back like disconnecting would mean death. He rubs slow circles wit his wide palm, his voice muffled against your skin.
“I love you I love you I love you.”
You don’t know how long you both stay like this. Entranced, at peace with each other. Anchors, or magnets, or both. He’s got so many emotions inside of him, swimming around in circles with no place to go except out.
It’s while he’s holding you like this, pressed to his naked lap, that he realizes something important. Urgent because he feels you shift against his soft cock, and yeah the moment is so sweet it’s making him all fuzzy in the head but -
summary: a woman grapples with the aftermath of her lover's sudden departure and imprisonment.as she tries to rebuild her life with the help of a therapist and a safe new romantic interest, she experiences increasingly disturbing signs.
warnings: psychological trauma/ptsd, toxic relationship /codependency, stalking/obsessive behavior, violence (descriptions of destroyed property, blood), murder references (off-screen), emotional distress/grief, possessive behavior, dissociative episodes/paranoia, emotional pain and suffering, benjamin poindexter.
The end of the world doesn't come with thunder, or with flashes in the sky. You learned that the worst way possible—the kind that isn't taught, only carved into the flesh.
The end of the world came with a note. Three words. And a silence that settled in like a permanent guest, one that never packed its bags. "Protect yourself." That's what he wrote. As if you were the most fragile creature in the universe, a piece of blown glass teetering on the edge of a fall, and he, at the same time, the only hand capable of catching you and the hard floor waiting below. As if the phrase could contain a stifled "I love you," a hopeless "I'm sorry," and a final "goodbye"—all condensed into a single line of paper that buckled under its own weight.
You woke up alone the next day. You remember this with a clarity that hurts. The sheet beside you still held his warmth, a trace of life that the body is slow to forget. The pillow still held the exact hollow of his neck, the soft indentation his head had sculpted night after night. You reached out without thinking, groping the emptiness, and for one full second—one of those that lasts an eternity—you believed he was in the bathroom. Or in the kitchen making coffee. Or in any room that wasn't the world without him. But the bathroom was empty, the towels still folded. The kitchen was empty, his usual mug in the dish rack. The entire apartment was empty in a way that hurt like an extracted tooth, the socket throbbing even after the root had been pulled.
You read the note seven times before understanding anything. By the seventh, the words were already dancing blurry before your eyes. By the eighth, you were already on the cold kitchen floor, clutching the paper with both hands like someone clinging to a float moments before drowning. And the crying came—not that beautiful, silent movie crying, but the ugly kind, the desperate kind, the kind that tears at your throat and runs down your face in snot and drool, the kind that comes from such a deep place in your chest that it feels like you're vomiting your own soul, piece by piece.
The first days were a shapeless blur, the kind memory refuses to organize in sequence. A blur of not eating, not sleeping, not getting out of bed. Time lost its meaning. The kitchen clock kept ticking the seconds, but you no longer heard its voice. You called him 47 times. You stored each one of those calls in a dark corner of your memory, like stones weighing down your pocket that you refuse to throw away. Every call went straight to voicemail, straight to that auditory limbo where words go to die unanswered. His voice, recorded at some random moment when he was still there, said with cruel naturalness: "you know what to do." You always waited for the beep. The beep always came. And you spoke, even knowing—deep down, very deep down, you knew—that no one on the other end was listening.
"Come back. Please. Come back. I won't ask anything. Just come back."
You left messages that got shorter and shorter, more and more desperate, the words tripping over each other, your voice faltering at the ends of sentences. Until the 23rd day, you stopped. And it wasn't because you had given up on him. It was because your voice no longer came out. Because you had cried so much, so deeply and for so long, that your vocal cords simply… refused to continue. As if your body had finally said enough before your soul had.
It was your neighbor from 301 who found you. Dona. A bulky woman with faded purple hair and a heart so large it seemed not to fit inside her chest—it overflowed through her small eyes and the deep voice that echoed in the hallway. She broke down the door when you didn't answer for three days. Three days in which the milk in the fridge soured, the plants on the windowsill wilted, and silence became the only living thing in the apartment. She found you curled up in his gray t-shirt—the one you wore to sleep, the one that no longer smelled of him except through a stubbornness of the sense of smell, a barely-there scent you rubbed against your face trying to resurrect a perfume already dead for weeks. Your eyes were open, and in place of your gaze there were two holes, fixed on the white wall that seemed to grow more distant by the second.
"Girl," she said. She sat beside you on the bed without asking permission, without ceremony, the way someone who has seen it all in this life and still chose to keep having compassion. She held your face with thick, calloused hands—hands that had cleaned other people's houses her whole life, that had raised a child alone, that had learned early that the world doesn't go easy on anyone. "Girl, what did he do to you?"
You didn't answer.
Not because you didn't want to. The desire was there, somewhere behind your breastbone, wanting to escape. But you no longer knew how to separate. You could no longer distinguish where his love ended and the destruction began. The two things had become so tangled inside you that they seemed like a single organism—a beautiful plant whose roots, deep down, were poisonous. You looked at Dona with dry, burning eyes, your mouth slightly open, and for the first time in 23 days there were no tears left to fall. Only emptiness. And silence. And the gray t-shirt you pressed against your chest as if he could still fit inside it.
The news came three weeks later.
Three weeks of silence. Three weeks of a ghostly routine where you learned to exist mechanically—get up, lie down, stare at the ceiling, forget to eat until hunger became a distant pang. You were on the sofa at that moment. The same sofa where he held you while you watched movies that neither of you paid attention to, because he was too busy kissing your neck, leaving a warm trail down your spine, murmuring things in your ear that you would never repeat out loud. The same sunken foam in the center, from the weight of two bodies that insisted on occupying the same space. The same smell of good mold and spilled coffee in the upholstery. Everything there. Everything the same. Except he wasn't.
The newscast said his name.
Benjamin Poindexter. The name you learned to say in the morning, still with a sleepy voice, brushing your lips against his nape. The name you wrote on bar napkins, on the edges of books, on the fogged-up glass of the shower stall. The name you whispered in cheap hotels and on stormy nights, when fear came knocking at your door and he said "relax, I'm here." The name that now came from the mouth of a news anchor with the same intonation as any other headline. As if it weren't the center of your entire world.
"Former FBI agent Benjamin Poindexter was sentenced today to life imprisonment on multiple counts of homicide…"
The rest was static.
Not literally—the television kept buzzing, the anchor kept talking, the colorful graphics kept rising and falling on the screen. But the sound of the entire world went silent in that second. As if someone had pulled the plug on reality. You could only see his face on the screen. Those pale blue eyes—the eyes that looked at you with such absolute devotion that sometimes it hurt to hold his gaze, as if he were, at every moment, apologizing for being too human. Now they weren't looking at you. Now they were fixed somewhere behind the camera, still, empty, two spheres of ice that no longer reflected anything. As if he had already given up on everything. As if the only thing that mattered—and you knew, with a cold tightness in your chest, that this thing was you—was no longer there, no longer available to be the reason he kept breathing.
The images changed. They showed him being led away by two police officers in black, long rhythmic strides, handcuffs tightening around the wrists that once held you with so much force and so much delicacy that they seemed to harbor an impossible contradiction. Head down. The white shirt open at the chest—and you saw it.
Oh, God. You saw it.
The marks. The scars. Every line of irregular tissue, every patch of skin that hadn't regenerated properly. The intimate map of his suffering, which you had learned by heart at your fingertips. You kissed each one before sleeping. It was a silent, almost religious ritual—your lips tracing those paths of pain to say, without words, I see. I know. I stay. And that place near his shoulder, where you rested your forehead when you could no longer look into his eyes. When it was too much. When love was so great that it overflowed and became a kind of agony. You rested your forehead there, and he knew. He always knew. His hand would go up to your hair and he wouldn't say anything. He would just wait. Because he knew that silence, sometimes, was the only language you could speak.
Everything there. Everything the same. Only now he was no longer yours. He would never be again. He was property of the state. A number. A file. A 3x4 photo with a little placard on his chest. The man who taught you what it meant to be loved to the marrow was now a convict, and you watched this sitting on the two-seater sofa, in the living room that still had his towel hanging on the line, his shaving cream in the shower, his last toothbrush in the cup next to yours.
You don't remember screaming.
But Dona said you did. Said you made a sound so loud and so shrill that she dropped the pan on the fire and ran up the stairs, thinking someone was dying. Said it was the kind of scream that doesn't come from the throat of a whole person. Only from someone who has already been shattered on the floor for weeks and finally found a voice for the fall.
And maybe someone was dying, yes. Maybe you died a little that day. A little there, on the two-seater sofa, watching the face of the man you loved disappear behind a steel door that would never open for you again. Or maybe you didn't die just a little. Maybe death came in slices, and that one was the biggest—a cut so deep that you would never look at a pair of blue eyes again without feeling a chill in your stomach. You were never able to decide. You preferred not to decide. You preferred to leave the question open, like a window that never fully closes, no matter how much wind and dust get in.
They didn't let you visit.
That was the first rule. The first boundary that no one needed to explain with many words. His lawyer—a woman named Agnes, thin as a hanger and cold as the glass eye she wore in place of her right one—received you in her office downtown. The office smelled of old documents and disinfectant. There was a dead plant in the corner and a 2003 calendar still hanging on the wall. The kind of place where hope comes in to rot. Agnes didn't offer coffee. Didn't ask you to sit. She opened the blue file on the table, adjusted her glasses on the tip of her nose, and said, with the same intonation as someone reading a grocery list:
"He doesn't want to see you."
You blinked. Thought you had misheard. That the words, somehow, had gotten scrambled on the way from her mouth to your ears. But Agnes repeated, slowly, as if speaking to a slow child or someone who had just suffered a concussion:
"He said, and I quote: 'Tell her I died. It's easier that way.'"
The office seemed to shrink. The walls came closer. The ceiling dropped a few inches. You stood still in the middle of the stained carpet, feeling the entire world spin around an invisible axis—and that axis was that sentence. Tell her I died. As if dying were a simple thing. As if you could receive news of someone's death with the same lightness as receiving a telegram. As if the love you had built together—in that bed, on that sofa, in that tiny kitchen where he taught you to make tomato sauce from scratch and you burned your hand and he kissed each finger—could be undone with a sentence spoken by a glass-eyed woman in an office that smelled of mold.
"Easier for whom?" you asked.
Your voice came out strange. Thin. Distant. As if it weren't yours. As if someone had taken control of your body and asked for you, because you, deep down, no longer had the strength to form words.
Agnes raised an eyebrow. The only one that worked. The one on the side of her good eye. The glass eye kept staring at you—motionless, shiny, accusatory. As if it saw things you were trying to hide. As if it knew about all the nights you lied to yourself, all the times you looked away and pretended not to see the dark stains on his soul.
"For both of you," she replied.
And that was it.
There was no crying in that office. No outburst, no plea for reconsideration, no knees on the floor begging for a second chance. You just looked at Agnes for a few more seconds—long enough to memorize the merciless gleam of that glass eye, to understand that there was no heart to be moved in there—and then you turned. Opened the door. Left.
The hallway was long and poorly lit. Your footsteps echoed on the linoleum. You clutched your purse against your chest as if it could protect you from something, but it couldn't. Nothing could. You went down the stairs because the elevator was broken (of course it was) and reached the street on a cloudy autumn day, with dry leaves piling up on the sidewalks and a cold wind cutting across your face.
And you never asked again.
Never called Agnes again. Never sent letters. Never tried to contact any lawyer, any prison official, any remote contact of someone who might reach him. You simply… stopped. Like a heart that gave up beating. Like a clock that decided it was too late to keep marking the hours.
Because deep down, in the darkest and most honest place in your chest, you knew he was right. Not about having died—because he hadn't died, he was alive, somewhere behind concrete walls and steel bars, sleeping on a thin mattress, eating bland food, counting the days of a sentence that would never end. But about the rest. About the "easier." About the "never again." About the impossibility of the two of you existing in the same world without destroying each other.
You never asked again, but you also never loved anyone the same way. The years passed—and they passed, because time is cruel and doesn't stop for anyone, not even for those who are grieving—and you met other people. Other mouths. Other hands. Other gazes. But none of them had that terrible devotion, that way he had of looking at you as if you were the last water in the desert. And no goodbye hurt as much as that non-goodbye. The one that had no last kiss. The one that had no last fight. The one that had no coffin, no flowers, no body present. The one that had only a three-word note, a glass eye, and the phrase "tell her I died," repeating in your head like a song no one asked to hear, but that never, never, never stopped playing.
The following months were an exercise in survival that didn't look like survival. It didn't have that shine of overcoming stories, didn't have the inspirational soundtrack of weekend movies. It looked like punishment. A punishment with no declared crime, no judge, no sentence read aloud—just the relentless routine of continuing to exist when everything inside you begged to stop.
You started seeing a psychologist because Dona threatened to institutionalize you. Literally. She showed up at your door on a rainy Tuesday with a folder in her hand and the most serious eyes you had ever seen in your life. "Either you go willingly, girl, or I'll drag you there; don't make me do it, because I raised three children alone and I still have the arm strength." You went. Out of fear. Out of exhaustion. Because, deep down, a tiny, still-alive part of you knew she was right.
Dr. Elaine wore tortoiseshell glasses—thick ones, sort of vintage—and had a way of tilting her head to the side when you spoke, as if each of your words was a piece of a puzzle she was trying to assemble with infinite care. Her office smelled of chamomile and had a deep armchair that felt like a hug disguised as furniture. She would look at you over her glasses sometimes, and that look alone made you want to tell her everything. Everything, really. The things you had never said out loud. The things you barely admitted to yourself when you were alone in the dark, with the hum of the refrigerator as your only company.
And you told her. Almost everything.
You told her about the note. About the silence. About the 47 calls and his voice on the voicemail. About the neighbor, about the newscast, about the blue eyes on the television screen. About the glass-eyed lawyer and the cruel phrase that had pierced you like a blank bullet—one that hurts because it seems fake, but isn't. About the nights you woke up sweating, his name on your lips, and the empty side of the bed seemed larger than the whole world.
But some things you didn't tell.
You didn't tell about the patterns he drew on your wrist while you watched TV. Concentric circles. Very slow. Very methodical. As if he were tracing escape maps on your skin. You never asked what that meant. You were afraid of the answer. You still are.
You didn't tell about the whispers in the dark. The things he said after you had already pretended to be asleep. Scattered sentences, almost inaudible, that he probably thought you couldn't hear. "I can't lose you. I wouldn't survive." "You're the only certain thing in my life." "If I ever do something bad, promise you won't hate me?" You never answered any of those whispers. You pretended to sleep. You stored each word in a little locked box at the back of your memory and hoped time would undo them. Time undid nothing.
You didn't tell how he held you. It wasn't a normal hug. It was more as if he were trying to fuse you into his own body. As if you were the only thing keeping him from shattering into a thousand irrecoverable pieces. His arms would encircle you with a force bordering on desperation, and sometimes you would feel his face buried in your hair, his breath trembling, and you knew—knew without needing words—that he was crying. He never cried in front of you. But behind you, while hugging you from behind, he allowed himself to. And you pretended not to notice, because you knew that for him shame was worse than sadness.
Some things, you decided, are too sacred to be spoken aloud. Even to a professional. Even in a room that smells of chamomile and has an armchair that feels like a hug. Some things belong only to silence. To the silence and to the pillow that still holds the shape of his head.
"He's in prison forever," Dr. Elaine said one session, jotting something down in her notebook. The pen scratched against the paper with a dry, definitive sound. "And you're trapped too. Trapped in a version of him that only exists in your head now. But he's no longer that person. He'll never be. People change, especially in extreme situations. The man you loved… he doesn't exist anymore, if he ever really existed that way. You need to accept that what you had… it's over."
Over. The word echoed through the office, bounced off the beige walls, hit the ceiling and came back. Over. As if it were that simple. As if extinguishing a love were the same as turning off a light. Flipping a switch and done, all dark, move on.
You nodded. Made the mechanical motion of yes, yes, of course, you understand, you're processing, you'll work on it. You paid for the session. Took your card out of your wallet with fingers that didn't tremble—because you had learned not to tremble; Dr. Elaine called it "functional dissociation," you called it survival. You crossed the waiting room, went down the elevator, walked out to the parking lot. Your car started. The radio played a song the two of you used to listen to together. You changed the station. Then changed it again. Then turned it off.
You went home.
Opened the door. Put away your purse. Took off your shoes. Washed your face. Brushed your teeth. Did everything a functional person does before sleeping. And that night—like every night since he left, like every night that would come after, like every night you would spend for the rest of your life without him—you slept hugging his pillow.
The pillow no longer smelled of him. That had been lost months ago, in some distracted wash, on some day when you were so dazed with pain that you didn't even realize you were erasing the last traces. The pillow now smelled of you. Of cheap soap. Of drugstore shampoo. Of poorly slept nights and dried tears. But the shape was still there. The indentation his head had sculpted into the filling. The exact depression, the precise curve that matched the back of his neck, the way he turned his face to kiss you before turning off the light.
You would hug the pillow and close your eyes. Breathe deeply. And for a moment—a brief, stolen moment, a small offense against reality—you would pretend his arm was still there. Pressed against your waist. Heavy and warm and present. You would pretend his breath was stirring your hair at the nape. That he was going to pull you a little closer, groan softly against your shoulder and murmur "I love you" in that dragging voice of someone already almost asleep.
You pretended. Because it was all that was left. And what was left was so little that you needed to protect every crumb, every fragment of illusion, as if they were the last embers of a fire that had once warmed the whole house.
The pillow didn't hug back. But you had already forgotten what it was like to be truly hugged. And maybe, deep down, you preferred it that way. Because if you remembered—if you remembered exactly how it was—then you really wouldn't be able to go on.
The psychologist insisted on a meeting.
It wasn't a request. It was a calculated move, the kind professionals use when they think a patient is stuck in a well too deep to climb out of alone. Dr. Elaine pushed a yellow piece of paper toward you—from one of those sticky note pads she used for quick reminders, always with a faded flower in the corner—and leaned back in her chair with an air of someone who had already decided the answer before you even opened your mouth.
"He's a friend of my nephew's," she said, as if talking about the weather or the exchange rate. "Very polite. Works in credit analysis. Normal. Safe. Nothing special." She paused, adjusted her tortoiseshell glasses, and added with a gentleness that hurt: "Just coffee. So you can see there are still other people in the world. People who won't destroy you."
People who won't destroy you. The phrase floated in the air of the room, accusatory. As if she knew—and she did know, you had told her almost everything—that destruction was your last love's native language. As if she were offering you an instruction manual for a life without craters.
You almost said no. The word was on the tip of your tongue, heavy and familiar, an old friend who had slept on your couch for months and refused to pack its bags. No was comfortable. No was safe. No was known territory where you knew exactly where the floor gave way and where you could step firmly. But something—maybe the exhaustion, maybe the way Dr. Elaine tilted her head with that infinite patience of someone who has seen worse cases, maybe a leftover of stupid hope that refused to die no matter how hard you tried to strangle it—made you reach out.
The yellow paper had small, careful handwriting. The name was Lucas. 34 years old. Likes hiking and specialty coffee. Has a dog named Toby. It looked like a pet adoption form. You almost smiled. Almost.
You went.
And you went for him. Not for Lucas. For Ben. Because a part of you—the part that still woke up in the middle of the night with your heart racing, thinking you felt the weight of his arm on your waist, thinking you heard his breath in the dark—wanted to prove to yourself that you could do it. That you weren't permanently broken. That he hadn't managed to destroy you completely, despite all evidence to the contrary. That you still existed outside his universe, outside the gravitational orbit of that blue-eyed, scar-shouldered man.
The café was a fancy place you would never have chosen on your own. Designer lamps hanging from the ceiling like cold jewels. Low music, the kind no one pays attention to but misses when it stops. You ordered a latte and spent five minutes adjusting the handle of the cup, spinning the saucer, fidgeting with the napkin—because you didn't know what to do with your hands. The hands he used to hold. The hands he kissed, one finger at a time, while you waited for the movie to start.
Lucas arrived late. Nine minutes. You counted because you counted everything now; time was something that needed to be measured in small, controllable portions, otherwise it slipped through the cracks. His excuse came with a tight smile: "Traffic, you know how it is." He was shorter than you imagined. Not much, but enough for you to notice. Perfectly combed brown hair, not a strand out of place. A close, almost surgical shave. The friendly, generic smile of someone who fits into any life insurance ad. He didn't have Ben's crooked smile. The one that went up a little more on one side, as if he knew a secret you hadn't discovered yet.
He asked about your job. You answered with rehearsed phrases, the same ones you used in interviews and family gatherings. He told a story about Toby burying a bone in the yard and unearthing a head of lettuce. You laughed at the right moment, at the right volume, for the right length of time. It was an impeccable performance. It deserved applause.
He asked for the check—and asked for it before you had finished your latte, which you mentally noted as a point against him—and asked if you wanted to do this again. You said yes because that's what you do. Because Dr. Elaine would be proud. Because maybe, if you pretended enough, that strange feeling of wearing someone else's clothes would eventually go away. Because maybe, if you repeated the motion enough times, eventually the gesture would become natural.
But throughout the meeting—one hour and forty-three minutes, you counted, noted on your phone, memorized—your eyes wandered three times to the café door. It wasn't intentional. It happened like a nervous tic, a conditioned reflex. You looked at the door expecting… what? Expecting whom? He wasn't going to walk in. He couldn't walk in. He was behind concrete walls, steel bars, miles away and a lifetime apart.
Twice you looked out the window, through the glass fogged by humidity. Once you looked at a man in a dark jacket sitting in the back, in the farthest corner, near the bathroom. He had his back to you, his face hidden by a dark cap, and something about the inclination of his shoulders—the way he held his cup with both hands, as if trying to extract heat from a liquid that must have been cold for a long time—made your heart stop for a second.
When you looked again, he was gone. The empty table. The chair slightly displaced. An almost full cup abandoned, as if whoever had been there had left in a hurry. As if he had been seen.
You didn't tell Lucas this. He paid the check—nine minutes late and still insisted on paying, textbook chivalry—and walked you to the door. He lightly touched your shoulder when saying goodbye. A dry, secure, absolutely normal touch. You felt the same as you would if a stranger brushed against you on the subway: nothing.
You didn't tell Dr. Elaine in the next session. She asked how it had gone, and you said "fine," and she tilted her head in that way that meant she wasn't believing you but wasn't going to push. She jotted something down. You paid. Left.
You didn't tell her that on the way back to your car, crossing the empty mall parking lot, you felt a chill on the back of your neck. It wasn't cold. It was that old, familiar shiver, coated in nostalgia and fear. The same one you felt when Ben was watching you from the bedroom door, leaning against the frame, arms crossed, while you put on mascara in front of the mirror. He would stand there in silence, just looking. And when you asked "what?" he would give that crooked smile and say "nothing, just looking." But it wasn't nothing. It was never nothing.
You turned around. The parking lot was dark, the garage lights flickering with the frequency of something that had needed maintenance for years. No one. Just the empty street and the headlights of a car parked too far away for you to see the driver. A black sedan. Tinted windows. The engine running, a thin cloud of exhaust rising in the cold air. You stood there staring for too long. The car didn't move. Neither did you.
Eventually, you got into your car, locked the doors—a habit you only acquired after he left, after the world became a place where any shadow could be a threat—and drove home.
You didn't tell her that when you entered your apartment that night, the first thing you noticed was the smell. Not an identifiable smell, not perfume or cologne or soap. It was the absence of smell. A vacuum. Something that had been there and then wasn't. You put your purse on the counter, turned on the kitchen light, hung up your coat. Did everything mechanically, on autopilot, while a silent alarm sounded somewhere deep in your consciousness.
Then you went into the bedroom.
Your pillowcase had been changed.
You froze. Not immediately—first you thought you had changed it and forgotten, that the pain and exhaustion and sleeping pills had erased the memory. But you didn't have pillowcases like that one. This one was Egyptian cotton, a white so pure it seemed bluish, with a tiny lace detail in the corner. Just like the one that had disappeared three months ago. The one he used. The one he had taken with him in that worn-out backpack, on that last morning, along with his toothbrush and phone charger. The pillowcase you had bought on a work trip, very expensive, and he liked it so much you said "take it, it's yours." He took it. It disappeared. You thought you would never see it again.
It was there. On your pillow. Perfectly stretched, the creases from the packaging still visible, smelling of baby fabric softener. Someone had entered your apartment. Someone had entered your bedroom. Someone had changed your pillowcase while you were having coffee with a credit analyst who had a dog named Toby.
You started to shake.
It wasn't a light tremor, the kind that passes with a sip of water. It was a deep shaking, coming from your bones, shaking your whole body in successive waves as if you were having a silent seizure. Your legs buckled without warning. You sat down on the bedroom floor—you didn't choose to sit, you simply fell—and stayed there, curled up against the foot of the bed, your arms wrapped around your knees, staring at the strange-familiar pillowcase on your strange-familiar pillow as if it were a snake about to strike.
Twenty minutes. You sat on the cold bedroom floor for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes trying to convince yourself that you hadn't seen what you saw. That it was a different pillowcase, that you were confused, that your memory was playing tricks. Twenty minutes trying to quiet the sound of your heartbeat—because it was so loud it seemed to fill the entire apartment, each beat a question: was he here? was he here? was he here?
You didn't tell anyone.
You didn't tell Lucas. You didn't tell Dr. Elaine. In the next session, you talked about other things, smaller things, things that fit in the office. You didn't tell Dona. Who would get desperate and probably call the police, and what would you tell the police? Someone changed my pillowcase?
You didn't tell because you didn't want to hear what any sensible person would say: you're paranoid. you're making things up. you need more medication. you're projecting onto him something he couldn't have done because he's in prison, he's in PRISON, you saw it on TV, you saw the handcuffs, you saw the cell, how could he get into your apartment?
You didn't tell because, deep down, in the deepest and darkest and most honest place, you knew the answer. You didn't know how. You didn't know when. You didn't know by what impossible, miraculous, terrifying means he had done it. But you knew it was him. You knew it as surely as you knew your own name. As surely as you knew the sky is blue and fire burns and hearts break.
And you didn't tell because, if you told, you would have to admit something else. Something you could barely face alone, in the dark, hugging the pillowcase he had returned:
You didn't want him to stop.
The signs only got worse.
The following week, a pair of black underwear disappeared from your drawer. You didn't notice the same day—it took forty-eight hours to register, because you had already given up looking for meaning in small losses, in objects that vanished without explanation, in the empty spaces that opened in your routine like tiny black holes. But the black underwear was different. You knew which one it was as soon as you noticed the empty space between the blue fabric and the red. It was that one. The one he liked. The one he always took off you with his teeth, laughing against your skin, his lips brushing your stomach as he said, in an accusatory yet loving tone, that you wore it just to provoke him.
And he was right. You did.
You searched the entire apartment three times. Opened drawers, looked under the bed, emptied the laundry basket, checked the washing machine, the dryer, the clothesline. Nothing. The black underwear was nowhere to be found. As if the floor had swallowed it. As if someone had taken it.
The following Tuesday, it appeared on top of your dresser.
Folded. Perfectly folded, the corners aligned, the fabric stretched with a care that hurt from familiarity. You knew that fold. He had that habit—he who didn't know how to fold a shirt properly, but learned to fold your underwear with the precision of a goldsmith, because he said each piece of yours was too precious to be wrinkled. In the middle of the underwear, a crease. A deep indentation, as if someone had pressed the fabric against their face while sleeping. As if they had breathed deeply there, trying to extract your scent from fabric that no longer smelled of you after so many washes.
You leaned your hand against the wall to keep from falling. The kitchen spun. The world spun. You stood there for a long minute, your forehead cold against the plaster, eyes closed, trying to convince yourself there was a rational explanation. There wasn't. You knew there wasn't.
You bought a camera. Went to an electronics store downtown, paid in cash to leave no trace on your card—as if you were doing something wrong, as if the victim were the criminal. A small, discreet camera, the kind that connects to your phone. You hid it on the living room shelf, pointed at the bed, adjusting the angle three, four, five times until you were sure it captured the bedroom door and the window and the whole bed. Then you turned it on, tested it, confirmed it was recording, and went to sleep.
The next morning, the memory card was blank.
Not erased—blank. As if it had been formatted. As if someone had taken the original card, recorded over it, and returned a blank card in its place. The same card. The same brand. But not a single frame recorded. You spent an hour trying to recover the files with internet programs, your eyes burning with exhaustion and frustration, your hands trembling on the mouse. Nothing. Zero. As if those hours of recording had never existed.
And that's when the fear changed its nature. Because it wasn't just someone entering. It was someone intelligent. Someone who knew what they were doing. Someone who didn't just enter your apartment—someone who entered and had time, had calm, had the coldness to mess with your devices, erase your evidence, reorganize your things. Someone who didn't get caught by surprise. Someone who already expected the camera. Someone who, somehow, knew you were going to put it there before you even knew.
You changed the lock. The first was a common locksmith, the kind from the hardware store. Three days later, the black underwear appeared on your nightstand. Not on the dresser. On the nightstand. On your side. As if someone had placed it there for you to find as soon as you woke up. This time you didn't even feel fear. You felt coldness. An iciness that traveled down your spine and settled in your stomach. You picked up the phone, called a 24-hour locksmith, and had them change the lock again.
The next day, the locksmith came. A bald man with a gray mustache and calloused hands. He examined the old lock, the two you had just installed, and said: "Miss, this is the most expensive one there is. Five-bolt lock, European cylinder, no one opens this without the key. No one." He knocked on the door with his knuckles, as if presenting a quality product. "You can rest easy. This is invasion-proof."
You paid. Thanked him. Locked the door behind him. Unlocked it. Locked it again. Unlocked it. Locked it. Stood there leaning against the door for a minute, listening to the silence, the beating of your own heart, the refrigerator humming in the kitchen.
The next morning, all your sleep shirts were in place. Drawer open, drawer closed, everything seemingly normal. But you were no longer the same person who woke up without examining every inch of the bedroom. You looked at everything now. Every detail. Every object out of place. Every shadow that shouldn't be there. And that's how you saw it.
One of them—the gray one, the old one, the one you wore when he was still here—was wet on the pillow. Not with water. No. The texture was different. The almost imperceptible viscosity. The smell. Oh, God, the smell. It was tears. And sweat. And something else, something you refused to name, something for which your brain created euphemisms while your heart already knew the truth. Someone had lain on your pillow. Someone had pressed your shirt against their face. Someone had cried there. In your bed. In your place. Perhaps for hours.
You sat on the bedroom floor again. You weren't shaking anymore. You weren't crying. You just sat, leaning against the wall, the damp shirt in your lap, your fingers lightly running over the wet fabric. And stayed there. For a long time.
You told Dr. Elaine. You needed to. You couldn't carry that feeling of going crazy alone anymore. You arrived at her office that afternoon with deep dark circles, unwashed hair, the sweatpants you had worn for four days straight. You sat in the deep armchair, wrapped your hands in your lap, and told her. The underwear. The camera. The lock. The wet shirt. You told it all out loud, the words coming out jumbled, rushed, as if you needed to vomit them up before they suffocated you.
Dr. Elaine listened in silence. Jotted something in her notebook—the pen moving quickly, surely, as if she already knew the diagnosis before you finished speaking. She grimaced when you mentioned the wet shirt. Not from shock. From clinical concern. The kind of concern you see in doctors when they examine a test that came back wrong.
"Listen," she said, after a pause that lasted too long. "I know it feels real. I know it feels as real as you and me here right now. But we need to consider the possibility that this is happening inside you, not outside." She tilted her head, her tortoiseshell glasses slipping slightly down her nose. "Dissociative episodes are common in severe post-traumatic stress. Small memory lapses, objects that disappear and reappear, the feeling of being watched… the brain plays these tricks when it can't process the pain."
She increased your medication dosage. One and a half pills now, instead of one. "It will help with the nights," she said. "Continuous sleep reduces these episodes." You took the prescription. Stuck it in your purse. Bought the medication at the corner pharmacy. Took it that night, the next, the one after. The extra pill left you dizzy, heavy, as if you were walking through a vat of honey. But the noises continued.
The footsteps in the hallway in the middle of the night. Always in the middle of the night. Always around 3:17 AM—you started looking at the clock, noting the times in a notebook, trying to find a pattern. 3:17. 3:22. 3:09. Slow, measured footsteps, as if someone were walking barefoot on the living room parquet, stopping near your bedroom door, waiting, breathing, and then continuing. You never heard the door open. Never heard anyone enter. Just the footsteps. And the silence that followed.
The feeling of being watched at the grocery store. You choosing bananas, feeling a weight on the back of your neck, turning around too quickly—and no one. Just the girl restocking tomato cans, just the security guard yawning at the door, just the security cameras in the corners, blinking red lights like mechanical eyes. Once you thought you saw a silhouette behind the cereal shelf. When you went around, there was no one. But the floor was wet. A small puddle, as if someone had spilled water and run away.
The hairs on your arm standing up when you walked past dark alleys. The electric sensation on your skin, the hair on your neck bristling, your heart racing for no apparent reason. You avoided alleys now. Avoided poorly lit streets. Avoided going out after eight in the evening. Your life had shrunk to fit within a five-hundred-meter perimeter around your apartment—the grocery store, the pharmacy, the bus stop. And even there, inside that tiny circle, the feeling of not being alone never completely left.
You didn't tell Dr. Elaine that one night, you woke up to the weight of a body on the bed. Not a whole body—if it had been, you would have screamed, jumped up, called the police. It was just the weight. The depression in the mattress beside you, on his side, the side you hadn't occupied since he left. The mattress sinking slowly and silently, as if someone had lain down with absolute care, the care of someone who didn't want to wake you. And the heat. The heat of someone who had been there and left before you opened your eyes. A residual heat, like embers after the fire is gone.
You opened your eyes suddenly, your heart in your throat, your body already tensed in a defensive position you didn't even know you had learned. No one. The empty room. The curtain swaying gently—but the window was closed. You had checked before sleeping, and checked again, and checked once more, until the whole neighborhood must have known you had a thing about windows. The curtain had no reason to sway. But it swayed.
You didn't tell Dr. Elaine that that night, lying in the dark, your heart still racing and your body still waiting for a touch that didn't come, you whispered into the silence of the room:
"Ben?"
Just that. A name. Three letters you hadn't spoken aloud in months—not since that last call to his voicemail, not since your voice stopped working and you learned to keep his name locked in a cabinet inside you.
And you heard it.
For a second—just one second, so fast you could swear it was your imagination—someone held their breath. That unmistakable sound of someone who had been holding the air and failed for an instant. A startle. A surprise. As if he hadn't expected you to speak. As if he hadn't expected you to know.
Then silence. A silence so complete you could hear your own heartbeat, the blood circulating in your temples, the little hum that always exists at the bottom of your hearing and that you only notice when everything else stops. You lay there, eyes open in the dark, waiting. One minute. Five. Fifteen. Your heart gradually slowed, like an engine shutting down after a long journey.
No one held their breath again. No one spoke. No one appeared.
But you knew. Just as you knew your father's name and your birth date and how to ride a bike, you knew you weren't alone in that room. Or you hadn't been. Or you still weren't, somewhere beyond your ability to see. The weight on the side of the mattress had already disappeared, the heat had already cooled, the curtain had stopped swaying. But the air was different. Denser. Heavier. Like before a storm.
You didn't sleep the rest of the night. You sat up in bed, your back against the headboard, your eyes fixed on the bedroom door, waiting. You didn't know if you were waiting for him to appear. You didn't know if you were waiting for him to leave. You didn't know if you were waiting for someone—the police, a burglar, God, death. You just waited. And the silence waited with you. Complicit. Patient. Watching.
From outside. Or from inside. You no longer knew the difference.
The night of the second date started like any other. The routine had become a survival mechanism: wake up, take your meds, work, eat the bare minimum, wait for night, sleep poorly, repeat. But that night was different, and you knew it even before you opened the closet.
You put on the blue dress. The one he bought for your birthday, two years ago. You remembered the exact moment: a gift box wrapped in silver paper, a red bow so perfect it seemed fake, and his crooked smile as you opened it. "Try it on," he had said, and you went to the bathroom and put it on, and when you came back he was there, standing in the middle of the room, his pale blue eyes so transparent you could see to the bottom of his soul. He didn't say anything. He just looked. Two years later, that look still burned in your memory like a sunburn.
You hadn't worn the dress since he was arrested. It stayed at the back of the closet, behind the winter clothes you no longer wore, like an artifact from another life. But something about that night—maybe Dr. Elaine's voice in your head, repeating the words "you need to move on" like a secular mantra; maybe the sudden desperate desire to feel beautiful, to inhabit your own body without feeling the weight of an absence; maybe a secret, almost obscene way of provoking the ghost you swore was following you—made you put it on.
The dress still fit. Snug as a glove, the cold fabric against your skin, the blue so dark it bordered on black in the dim light of the bedroom. You looked at yourself in the closet mirror and, for a second, didn't recognize yourself. Or recognized yourself too much. It was the same woman from two years ago. The same eyes, the same mouth, the same hair. Only more tired. Deeper. As if life had dug holes inside you and forgotten to mention.
Lucas arrived on time. By then, his punctuality had become predictable—a boring virtue, the kind you didn't know whether to thank or resent. He picked you up at your building door, got out of the car to open the door for you, and when you approached, he stopped.
"You look beautiful," he said.
And it was polite. Normal. Safe. The right words in the right tone, the friendly smile, the gaze that didn't linger too long anywhere. It wasn't the first time someone had called you beautiful, but it hurt the same way—because it wasn't the right voice. It wasn't the right way. It wasn't Ben's hoarse whisper, the way he had of saying "beautiful" as if it were a discovery, as if he looked at you and saw something no one else saw, something he himself couldn't name but that made him smile that crooked smile and pull you close, his face buried in your hair, his warm breath against the back of your neck. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen a lot of beautiful things, shit."
You got in the car. Buckled your seatbelt. Smiled. The automatic smile, the one you kept in your purse like an extra lipstick, for social emergencies.
The restaurant was fancy. Cloth napkins, waiters in vests, real candles on the tables. You ordered shrimp risotto and ate without tasting it—the shrimp could have been rubbery, the rice could have been too salty, the cheese could have been burnt, you wouldn't have known. The food went down like sand, washed down by gulp after gulp of red wine that you also didn't taste. Beside you, Lucas talked about his work, about the exchange rate, about Toby who had eaten a new shoe. You laughed at the right moments, nodded at the right times, asked follow-up questions that demonstrated interest. It was an impeccable performance. No one in that restaurant would guess that, inside, you were empty.
And all the while, all the while, you felt it.
It wasn't a thought. It wasn't a memory. It was a physical sensation, settled just below the skin, a constant tingling at the back of your neck and on your arms. A presence. A shadow. A weight in the air that made the hairs on your arm stand on end, bristled like those of an animal scenting a predator before seeing it. You felt eyes where there was no face. You felt intention where there was no gesture. You felt someone—and you knew who—watching you from somewhere beyond the light, beyond the movement, beyond the solid reality that everyone in there seemed to inhabit without question.
You looked at the restaurant door three times. The first, an elderly couple saying goodbye; the second, a waitress balancing a tray; the third, no one, just the dark glass and the street. You looked at the street twice. The first, a taxi passing too fast; the second, a woman crossing hurriedly, her coat open to the wind. You looked at the man alone at the bar counter once. He had his back to you, a dark jacket, broad shoulders, short hair. Your heart leaped into your throat. Your whole body tensed, alert, ready for flight or encounter—you didn't know which. When you looked again, he was gone. The empty chair. A half-finished glass of wine. A crumpled napkin. As if he had left in a hurry. As if he had been seen.
"Everything okay?" Lucas asked.
His hand touched yours for a second. The touch was light, dry, careful. Polite. Normal. Safe. His hand didn't have the calluses you expected. Didn't have the scars you ran your fingers over while he slept, learning the maps of another person's pain. Didn't have the contained strength you felt when Ben held your hand under the table, fingers intertwined, his thumb drawing slow circles on your palm. It was just a hand. Polite. Normal. Safe. And you wanted it to be another.
"Fine," you lied. The lie came out smooth, rehearsed, like all the others. "Just a little tired."
Lucas accepted the answer. Of course he did. He wasn't the type to push, to notice the gaps between the lines, to tilt his head and say "lie, tell me" in that thick accent that made you feel like the only person in the world. Lucas was polite. Normal. Safe. And completely incapable of seeing that you were falling apart inside.
He asked for the check. Paid without looking at the amounts. Offered to take you home, and you accepted because his car was warm and the leather seats were soft and you didn't want to wait for the bus at that dark stop where the lights kept flickering. On the way, the car smelled of fabric softener and cold coffee—a smell so different from what you were used to, Ben's smell that was cheap soap and gunpowder, sweat and something indefinable you had never been able to name and that was probably just him, just the unique chemical composition of his body soaked into his clothes, the sheets, your skin.
The radio was playing some random song. One of those generic romantic songs you didn't pay attention to, but Lucas's fingers drummed on the steering wheel in rhythm, and you noticed he had clean, well-trimmed nails, and that irritated you more than it should have. Ben never had clean nails. He had dirt under some, dried blood on others, small cuts he didn't even notice. You would spend hours caring for his hands, filing, moisturizing, kissing each knuckle like a small shoreline of a foreign country.
You ran your fingers over your own wrist, drawing circles without realizing it. Automatic. Mechanical. Patterns that weren't yours. Concentric circles, slow and methodical, exactly the way he did it. You stopped when you realized. Your arm was marked with red, the friction of your own skin creating a familiar heat.
"You're shaking," Lucas noticed. The car had stopped at a red light, and in the red light streaming through the windshield, he looked at you with genuine concern. Polite. Normal. Safe. How annoying.
"It's cold," you said.
It wasn't. The car's heater was on, and you were sweating beneath the blue dress. But Lucas accepted the answer as he accepted everything: without questioning, without digging, without trying to understand what was really happening behind your eyes. He turned the warm air up a little more, a kind and completely useless gesture, and you felt a sudden urge to laugh. Not from happiness. That bitter laugh that rises in the throat when things are so absurd that no other reaction remains.
The car stopped in front of your building. Lucas turned off the engine. The silence that settled was heavy, full of expectations you didn't have.
"Can I come up?" he asked.
The question came in a careful tone, without pressure, the door open for a polite no. He was a good boy. Handsome. Stable. Liked dogs and specialty coffee and probably returned his shopping cart at the supermarket. His mother must have been proud. Dr. Elaine must have been radiant.
You looked at him. The perfectly combed hair. The close shave. The brown eyes with no mystery, no abyss, no scar on his soul that needed to be kissed before sleeping. He wasn't Ben. Would never be Ben. But maybe—and this "maybe" hurt like a broken bone—maybe that was a good thing.
"No," you said.
The word came out faster than you expected, and there was an immediate relief in your chest, as if your whole body had exhaled after holding its breath for hours. Lucas blinked, processed, and then smiled the understanding smile of someone used to hearing no. Polite. Normal. Safe even in rejection.
"No problem," he said. "Another time."
You knew there wouldn't be another time. He probably knew too, from the tone of your voice, from the way you opened the car door before he even finished his sentence. You got out, thanked him, closed the door. The car stayed there for a moment—Lucas waiting for you to enter the building, like a gentleman—and then drove away, its headlights disappearing around the curve, taking with them the smell of fabric softener and cold coffee.
You stood on the sidewalk for a while you didn't measure. The cold night wind bit your bare arms, the blue dress protected nothing, but you didn't feel cold. You felt something else. An electricity in the air. A tingling at the base of your spine. The absolute, irrational, non-negotiable certainty that you were not alone on that street.
There was no one in sight. The building lights were on on the lower floors, off on the upper ones. The iron gate creaked as you pushed it. The stairwell was dark—the hallway bulb had burned out weeks ago, and the superintendent never changed it. You climbed the steps in the dark, your left hand sliding along the railing, your right hand gripping your purse strap as if it were a weapon.
Somewhere upstairs, a door closed. Not yours. Someone else's. But it was late for visitors, and Dona must have been snoring for hours, and the other neighbors you didn't even know. You stopped on the landing, breathless not from exertion, and listened. Silence. The silence of the night, the silence you had learned to recognize in all its variations—the silence of an empty apartment, the silence of a lurking predator, the silence of someone holding their breath.
You climbed the rest of the stairs at a faster pace. Fumbled the key into the lock with trembling hands—the expensive lock that no one opened without the key—and entered. Locked it. Locked it again. Put on the chain. Rested your forehead against the cold wooden door and closed your eyes.
The apartment was empty. The furniture in place. The curtains drawn. The domestic silence of an ordinary Wednesday. You dropped your purse on the floor, kicked off your shoes in the foyer, and walked to the bedroom.
You put on his gray t-shirt. The one that had been wet last time. The one you had washed four times in a row, and still the smell hadn't come out—or maybe you just wanted to believe it hadn't. Lay down on the bed. Pulled up the blanket. Closed your eyes.
Outside, on the street, a car with its engine running waited for hours. You didn't hear it. Or pretended you didn't. By that point, you had given up distinguishing one thing from the other.
The traffic light broke.
It was the first thing wrong that night—but you would only realize that later, when the pieces fit together into a mosaic of terror you didn't yet know you were assembling. You stood at the intersection for five minutes. Five full minutes, your feet cold inside your shoes, your purse heavy on your shoulder, the blue dress—the same one, the cursed one, the one you swore you would never wear again—sticking to your skin beneath your coat. The light was stuck on red, flickering irregularly in a way that wasn't normal, as if someone had opened the fuse box of the world and jumbled the wires just for fun.
In the distance, a siren. Closer, a dog barking—the caramel-colored stray from the corner, who barked at everything and nothing, but that night the bark had a different tone. A warning. An alert. Animals know before we do. They always have.
And the silence. That heavy, sticky silence that wasn't the normal silence of the city. It was the silence of a city holding its breath. A city that knew, in some instinctive and collective way, that something was waiting for you at home. Or someone.
"Weird," Lucas murmured at the wheel, his fingers tapping nervously—a tic you hadn't noticed before. "I've never seen that light like that. Must have been a lightning strike at the control center or something."
You didn't answer. Not because you were being rude—you had already been rude enough to Lucas that night, politely refusing each of his attempts to get closer, each outstretched hand, each "want to talk about it?" You didn't answer because you couldn't. Your mouth was dry. The words had locked themselves inside your throat, little prisoners behind a fence of fear. Because you already knew. You didn't know what—there was no way to know—but you knew something was terribly wrong. Your whole body knew. Muscles tense, ready for a flight you didn't know where to. Breathing short, wheezy, as if you had run a marathon without moving from the spot. Cold hands, tingling fingers, your heart beating somewhere deep in your throat.
It was the same feeling you had before a storm. That weight in the air. That smell of ozone and wet earth. That sense that the world was about to change, and that you had no control over the direction of the change.
Lucas stopped the car in front of your building. Turned off the engine and turned to you with that lost puppy expression he wore every time you said no—which was every time, because you had never said yes. "Want me to come up?" he asked, with polite hope in his brown eyes. The hope of someone who still hasn't learned that certain doors don't open for everyone. "Just to make sure you got in okay. It's very dark, the doorman isn't there… and you seem…" He hesitated, choosing his words with the care of someone who didn't want to scare you. "You seem tense. I don't want you to be alone like this."
"Not necessary," you said. Too fast. So fast that the two words merged into one—notnecessary—and the tone was drier than you intended. You saw his face wilt a little and felt a pang of guilt, but guilt was a luxury you couldn't afford at that moment. "Thank you. It was… it was good."
The lie came easily. So easily that it almost scared you. It was good. It hadn't been good. It hadn't been anything. It had been a two-hour performance where you played a normal woman going out with a normal man, and in the end you had received a note left by a ghost and discovered that the dress you were wearing had been folded on your bed while you ate shrimp risotto without tasting it. But Lucas didn't know that. Lucas didn't know anything. Lucas was a polite, normal, safe man who deserved someone whole and not the shards you called a heart.
You got out of the car. The door closed with a dull thud. You walked to the building's entrance, each step a Herculean effort, as if the ground were turning into quicksand beneath your feet. Felt Lucas's eyes on your back until you went in—polite, normal, safe, watching only to make sure you were okay, not with the devouring hunger of someone who watches because they need to see you to continue existing.
The building door closed with a click. The silence of the lobby wrapped around you like a heavy, damp blanket. The lobby was empty. The fluorescent lights flickered with the same irregular frequency as the traffic light outside, as if the whole city were having an epileptic fit. You clutched your purse against your chest and walked to the elevator. Pressed the button. Nothing. Pressed it again. Nothing. Of course it was broken. Of course. Because nothing that night was going to be easy.
You took the stairs.
Four floors. Counted each step as you climbed, an old habit, a way to keep your mind occupied so you wouldn't think about the noise behind you. One, two, three, four. Because there was noise. Light footsteps, almost inaudible, on the edge of your perception. Someone climbing behind you, keeping the same distance, the same pace. When you sped up, the footsteps sped up. When you slowed down, the footsteps slowed down. You didn't look back. Didn't look because you were afraid of what you'd see. Didn't look because you were afraid of seeing nothing. Didn't look because, deep down, a part of you already knew who it was and was tired of pretending it didn't.
You reached the apartment door. Your heart hammering so hard you felt your temples pulsing. Took three deep breaths. The three breaths Dr. Elaine had taught for moments of anxiety—inhale through the nose, hold, exhale through the mouth. It never worked. It never would. Anxiety wasn't air. Anxiety was a living thing that lived inside your chest and fed on your fear.
You put the key in the lock.
The door opened before you turned the key.
It was unlocked.
The world stopped. Not metaphorically—the world actually stopped. The sound of the street disappeared. The hum of the fluorescent lights ceased. The dog's bark downstairs fell silent. Everything hung suspended in an absolute vacuum, as if the universe had pressed pause just to see what you would do.
You never forgot to lock the door. Never. Even on bad days, on days you could barely get out of bed, on days you went without eating, without showering, without answering messages—you locked the door. Twice. It was a ritual. A prayer. A silent promise you made to yourself every night: you are still here. you are still trying. you haven't given up protecting yourself yet. The key always turned twice. Always.
The door was open.
And you went in.
The apartment was destroyed.
It took you a second to process. Maybe two. Maybe an entire eternity compressed into a blink. The human brain wasn't made to understand chaos all at once—it needs time, needs layers, needs permission to believe what it's seeing. The door creaked behind you as you stood in the doorway, your fingers still gripping the handle, your purse slipping from your shoulder and falling to the floor with a dull thud. You didn't move to pick it up. Didn't move for anything.
It wasn't mess. It wasn't the kind of disarray of someone rummaging through your drawers looking for money or jewelry. There was no method there. No search. There was violence. Pure, raw violence, from someone who wasn't looking for anything except a place to drain what no longer fit inside their chest. Anger. Real anger. The anger of someone who had waited too long. Who had counted every day, every hour, every minute. Who had dreamed every night of this moment—not the moment of destroying the apartment, but the moment of coming back to it, of finding you in it—and now, finally, after 847 nights, after concrete walls, steel bars, orange uniforms, and meals served on plastic trays, now that the moment had arrived, the anger no longer fit inside the body. It had to get out. Overflow. Break something.
The sofa—the same sofa where he held you while you watched movies neither of you paid attention to—was torn. Not just torn. Shredded. The fabric ripped into strips, the foam torn out in chunks, the springs exposed like the ribs of an animal that had died long ago. The stuffing was scattered across the floor like dirty snow, like the entrails of something that had once been soft and warm and was now unrecognizable, irreparable, dead. You looked at the sofa and felt a pang in your chest—not for the sofa, it was never about the sofa, but for everything that happened on that sofa. The cold nights when he wrapped you in a blanket and said "stay here, don't let me sleep alone." The silly arguments about what movie to watch, which always ended the same way—him giving in, laughing, pulling you onto his lap. The last night. The last time he sat there before writing the note and disappearing. The sofa had witnessed everything. Now it was on the floor, shattered, as if he were trying to kill the memories too.
The pictures had been ripped from the walls. The shattered glass covered the floor like a dangerous frost, reflecting the flickering streetlight in a thousand small sharp pieces. Your photos—the ones on your shelf, the ones he never liked because they had other people in them—all had broken glass, all had the faces of other people scratched out. Coworkers. Cousins. That college friend who hugged you too tight. All scratched out with meticulous fury, as if he had used the tip of a knife to scribble over their eyes, their mouths, their smiles that weren't his. Only your face remained intact. Only yours. As if he had separated each photo, broken the glass with a dry blow, scratched out the others with surgical care, and then—only then—returned the frame to the floor. A curation of hatred. A declaration of ownership written in broken glass.
The kitchen table was overturned. The chairs were broken—not tipped over, broken, legs ripped off, backs split in half. The plates covered the floor in colorful fragments, the silverware scattered as if someone had been looking for a specific knife. And found it. You saw the knife later—a serrated one, a bread knife, embedded in the kitchen wall up to the handle. As if he had thrown it and hit the target on the first try. As if throwing knives was just one more thing he knew how to do and you had never discovered.
The curtains had been torn from the window. The metal rod was bent, hanging to one side like a broken arm. The window glass was cracked—not broken, cracked. A perfect spiderweb in the lower right corner, right in the middle of a smaller, round hole, as if someone had punched it and the glass had held up better than the wall.
Because the wall didn't hold up.
There was a hole in the wall. Not just any hole. A hole the size of a fist—his right fist, you knew, because you knew every bone, every knuckle, every scar on that hand. The plaster wall was blown inward, the crumbled coating on the floor, and inside the hole, mixed with the white dust, there were red marks. Blood. His blood, probably. Or not. You didn't want to think about the "or not."
A lot of blood. On the wall. On the floor. In a trail from the living room door to the back, near the cracked window, where the blood formed a larger puddle. A dark puddle, almost black in the dim light, reflecting the streetlight like a dirty mirror. And inside the puddle, no—beside the puddle, because he was too careful, too meticulous, too crazy to sit in his own blood—he was there.
Ben. Dex. The man who taught you to make tomato sauce and to feel fear in the dark. The man who killed with the same hand that caressed your hair. The man who should have been behind bars, behind steel doors, behind a life sentence that meant forever, that meant never again, that meant you were free.
He was sitting on the floor. Leaning against the cracked wall—the same wall he himself had punched, the bloody fist hole a few centimeters above his head, like an inverted halo. His legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed. His hands resting on his knees, palms down, his long pale fingers resting in a stillness that bordered on supernatural. Calm. Strangely calm. As if he were waiting for the bus. Or waiting for death. Or waiting for you—and maybe, to him, all three were the same.
He was thinner. Much thinner. The white shirt—the same one from the newscast, you noticed with a knot in your stomach, the same one from the conviction, the one that appeared in the photos that circulated around the world, his face plastered on every news portal as if he were a monster, and maybe he was, maybe he always had been—that shirt hung on his body like a tent, his once-broad shoulders now looked sharp, his collarbones jutted out from beneath the thin fabric like the wings of a broken bird. The face you kissed every night, that you knew better than your own, was now too angular, too sharp, as if the bones were trying to escape the skin. The cheekbones you used to kiss playfully, saying he looked like a Scandinavian model, now cast dramatic shadows over his hollow cheeks. His under-eye circles were so dark they looked like bruises—purple, purplish-black, almost invisible in the dim light. His unshaven beard was thick, unkempt, grown without care for weeks, maybe months, and barely hid the new scars. Small cuts on his chin. A red line on his jaw. A scratch on his right cheekbone, recent enough to still be scabbed over. His hair was longer. Much longer. Fell over his forehead in a way that almost hid his eyes—but you saw his eyes. You always saw his eyes.
Those pale blue eyes. The eyes that looked at you as if you were the only real thing in the universe. The eyes you saw on television, empty, fixed somewhere behind the camera, as if he had already given up on everything. Now they were different. Deeper. Hollowed out from within, like two caves where light entered but found no exit. More tired—not the tiredness of a bad night's sleep, but the tiredness of years, the tiredness of someone who had carried the weight of an entire life on their back and discovered that the weight doesn't lessen, you just get used to it. And hungrier. A hunger you recognized because it was the same as yours. The hunger of someone who had gone too long without touching, without being touched, without feeling another person's skin against theirs. He was looking at you like a man in the desert looks at water. As if you were the only thing that could quench his thirst. And the light was blinding him—you could see in his eyes that it hurt, that looking at you after so long in the dark was like looking directly into the sun. But he didn't look away. He never looked away.
His shirt was open at the chest. You didn't know if he had opened it or if it had been torn—the lower buttons were still there, but the top ones… gone. The fabric opened in a cleft from his neck to the middle of his chest, exposing the marks you knew so well. The old scars, the ones you kissed before sleeping, the ones you traced with your fingertips while he slept. That place near his shoulder where you rested your forehead when you could no longer look into his eyes. The scar on his chest, close to his sternum, that he said was from "surgery" and you never asked if it was true. All still there. All waiting for you.
But there were new ones too.
Small recent cuts, some still with stitches—makeshift stitches, poorly done, that he must have given himself, sitting in some cold cell, with a smuggled needle and a hand trembling with anxiety. A dirty bandage on his left arm, the tape already peeling at the edges, stained with a yellow that could be antiseptic or could be pus. A dark mark on his ribcage—under his arm, where the skin is thinner and more vulnerable—that could be dried blood or could be a new tattoo, something done hastily, with improvised ink and a pain he probably no longer felt. You couldn't distinguish. Couldn't distinguish anything, because the whole world had been reduced to that man sitting on the floor of your destroyed apartment, covered in blood that wasn't only his, looking at you as if you were salvation itself.
And his face. Oh, his face.
It was dirty with blood. Not his blood—you knew that instantly, with a chill down your spine that started at the top of your head and descended slowly, vertebra by vertebra, like ice water dripping down your spine. His blood was different. You knew his blood—had seen it on various occasions, in small domestic accidents, in the slipped knife while chopping onions, in the scraped knee from a silly fall. His blood was bright red, almost shiny, like stamp ink. That blood on his cheek, his chin, his temple—that blood was darker. Thicker. From somewhere else. From someone else.
And the way he didn't do anything to clean it. The way he let the blood dry on his face like a mask, like a crown, like a trophy he wasn't willing to let go of. That told you everything you needed to know. The meeting. The coffee. Lucas with his perfectly combed hair and his life-insurance-ad smile. His car parked on the street, engine running, the polite hand that touched yours for a second at the restaurant table. You didn't know. There was no way to know. No way to know that while you laughed at Lucas's unfunny jokes, while you cut your shrimp risotto into microscopic pieces to avoid eating, while you wore the blue dress that Ben had bought and that wasn't for him, none of those gestures had gone unnoticed. None.
The blood on his face was a silent confession. A declaration of love written on someone whose last name you didn't even remember. You felt a tremor start in your hands and spread, like an underground earthquake, like the ground slowly splitting open. It wasn't fear. Or it was. Or it was something so mixed together you no longer knew how to separate. Love and fear had become the same substance inside you, like two rivers that meet and never part again.
His eyes met yours.
And something in his face changed.
The rigidity. The artificial calm. The posture of someone sitting on the floor of a destroyed apartment as if it were a throne. All fell away for a second. Just one second. The length of a breath. The time it takes to blink. And beneath, deep down, you saw it.
Saw the despair. Saw the fear. Not the fear of being caught—he had already been caught, already been convicted, already been through everything a man could go through. It was an older, more primal fear. The fear that you would look at him and feel disgust. The fear that you would call the police. The fear that you would say that word he couldn't stand to hear, the word that could kill him more than any bullet, more than any sentence, more than any cell: "Leave."
You saw the man who spent 847 nights locked in a concrete cell, counting the days with nail scratches on the wall, repeating your name like a prayer that went unanswered, drawing invisible patterns on his own wrist because yours wasn't there for him to draw on. Saw the man who broke a window with his own fist—the same fist that made the hole in your wall—to escape. Who crossed states by hitchhiking, on foot, inside trucks that smelled of diesel and sweat, hidden in compartments not made for human bodies. Who killed—you didn't want to think about how many, not now, maybe never—just to get here. Just to see you. Just to come home.
And beneath all the despair, behind all the fear, buried under layers and layers of blood and guilt and madness, you saw something else. Something more frightening than the hole in the wall. More frightening than the shredded sofa. More frightening than another person's blood on the face of the man you loved.
Relief.
He was relieved. Because you were there. Because you had come back. Because you hadn't run when you saw the open door, when you saw the chaos, when you saw him sitting on the floor like a deposed king waiting for the verdict. Because you were wearing the blue dress he bought. That dress. The birthday dress. The dress he had carefully chosen, imagined you in night after night before buying it, could barely wrap because his hands trembled so much. You were wearing it. And that meant something. That meant you hadn't forgotten. That meant part of you, no matter how buried, was still his.
His breath—which you hadn't realized was held, hadn't realized was waiting, which you only now noticed his chest hadn't been moving for an eternity—came out in a slow, trembling sigh, almost a stifled sob. His shoulders, tight as piano strings about to snap, dropped a centimeter. His jaw, which had been so clenched you could see the muscles jumping, loosened slightly. A millimeter. Enough.
He raised one hand.
The right hand. The one he used to draw patterns on your wrist on nights when neither of you could sleep. The one he used to hold yours when you crossed the street, as if you were a child and he the only guardian capable of protecting you from traffic. The same hand that, you knew, had squeezed triggers. Squeezed necks. Opened doors that shouldn't be opened. His fingers were clean, you noticed. Strangely clean. As if he had washed them before waiting for you. Scrubbed with soap, removed every trace of blood from under his nails, rinsed until the skin was red and raw. As if the blood on his face didn't matter—that was an accessory, a declaration, a signature. But his hands—the hands that were going to touch you, the hands that were going to find your face, the hands that were going to ask, in the language only the two of you understood, that you stay—those needed to be clean. Pure. Worthy of you.
His fingers moved. A small gesture. Almost shy. A wave. The same wave he made when he came home late at night and you were on the sofa, awake waiting, and he would come on tiptoe and wave as if afraid to scare you. As if he wasn't sure he could still approach. As if he had rehearsed this moment a thousand times in prison—lying on the hard bed, the thin blanket warming nothing, eyes fixed on the cracked concrete ceiling—and now that the moment had come, now that you were really there, in front of him, wearing the blue dress he bought, all the words he had rehearsed had disappeared. Evaporated. Left only that small, almost pathetic gesture, a wave from someone who no longer knew what to do with his own hands.
His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. His voice, when it came out, was different. Deeper. Hoarser. As if he hadn't used his voice in a long time—or as if he had used it too much. Screamed too much. Called for you too much. Waited too much. There was a tremor in it, a fragility he hated, that he tried to hide by swallowing hard, but you heard it. You always heard it. You heard the holes in his voice, the fractures, the places where pain escaped the edges like water through a dam about to break.
"Darling..."
The word came out soft. Almost a whisper. Almost a question. As if he wasn't sure he could still call you that. As if he was afraid you would say "no, this is over, you lost the right, you lost me, go away, disappear, leave me alone." And beneath the word, you heard the echo of all the nights he must have said your name in the dark of the cell. To the walls. To the thin mattress. To the other inmates who must have thought he was crazy. And maybe he was. Maybe he always had been. But he was your crazy. The only one who loved you in a way that hurt.
His eyes glistened. Not with tears—Benjamin Poindexter didn't cry, he had told you once, on a night you woke up with him trembling beside you, his arms so tight you could barely breathe, and when you asked what had happened, he said: "People like us don't have that luxury." You never asked what he meant by "people like us." You were afraid of the answer. Still are. But his eyes glistened with something else, something that hurt just the same, that squeezed your chest the same way, that pulled the air from your lungs as if someone had opened a window at the bottom of the ocean.
His hand moved again. This time slower. More careful. As if every millimeter of air between you was a minefield. His fingers found your chin—the touch, when it happened, was so light you almost didn't feel it. A butterfly landing. A feather descending. The contrast with the violence around was so absurd, so insane, that you felt a laugh rise in your throat and held it in with force. Different from before. Before, he held you with force, with desperation, as if you were going to slip through his fingers at any moment, as if he needed to apply constant pressure to be sure you were still there. Now he touched you as if you were made of glass. As if you were the most precious and fragile thing in the universe. As if he was afraid of breaking you with a rougher movement, afraid you would shatter into a thousand pieces and he would spend the rest of his life trying to put you back together, cutting his fingers on each shard.
His thumb traced a circle on your jaw.
Automatic. Instinctive. Like breathing. The same circle. The same pattern. The same gesture he made every night before sleeping, when you had already closed your eyes and he thought you weren't watching. The same drawing he made on your wrist, your palm, the back of your neck. Concentric circles. You never asked what they meant. You were afraid the answer would be something you didn't want to hear. Or maybe you knew. Maybe you'd known from the beginning that those circles were him trying to map you, possess you, turn you into sacred territory that no one else could occupy.
Your body responded before your mind.
A betrayal. A truth. A piece of you that no longer obeyed your brain, that acted on pure animal instinct, on muscle memory, on the habit of so many nights of love and fear mixed together. Your eyes closed for a second. Your head tilted against his hand, heavy, surrendered. His skin was warm—warmer than it should be, fever-warm, the warmth of a whole life burning from within. And a sound escaped your throat. A small, painful moan, not entirely human. A sound that was both relief and despair.
He heard it.
And something in his face broke.
The control. The facade. The posture of a man who had just destroyed an apartment and sat among the rubble like a king. All fell. Not for a second this time. It truly fell. Like a house of cards finally finding the right breath. For a moment—a single, brief, luminous moment—he wasn't the elite sharpshooter. Wasn't the convicted murderer. Wasn't the fugitive who had just crossed the country with blood on his hands. He was just Ben. The Ben who pulled you closer in the middle of the night, when you were already asleep, as if even unconscious he needed to be sure you hadn't left. The Ben who whispered things in your hair, things you never repeated to anyone, things he probably didn't even remember saying because they came out of him like confessions from a sleepwalker. The Ben who was afraid to fall asleep first because he needed to be sure you wouldn't run away while he was vulnerable.
His hand trembled against your face.
His thumb stopped mid-circle. The other fingers, the ones resting on your jaw, vibrated like violin strings after snapping. The tremor traveled up his arm, through his shoulder, shaking his thin body for a second. He held his breath—you saw his chest stop—and then let it all out in one jet, as if he had held the whole world inside his lungs and could finally let go.
His blue eyes wandered over your face, slowly, as if he were re‑memorizing every detail. As if afraid of forgetting. His nose—you noticed his nose was now slightly crooked, as if it had been broken and hadn't healed right. The line of his lips—chapped, dry, the lower lip split in the middle. The new scar on his eyebrow. All the marks that prison time had left on him, all the stories he wouldn't tell, all the pieces of him that had been broken and hastily mended, without anesthesia, without care.
His thumb resumed the movement. One circle. Another. Another. A rhythm. A prayer. A thread connecting this moment to all the past nights, to all the promises tattooed on skin and in silence.
His mouth almost touched yours. Close enough for you to feel the promise of a kiss, the ghost of a kiss, the warmth of a kiss that didn't happen but vibrated in the space between your mouths like a stretched string.
His eyes met yours. And he smiled.
The smile was small. Crooked. Disturbingly familiar. The same smile he used before kissing you, before pulling you into the dark, before doing all the things you kept in your memory like a photo album you would never open again but also never throw away. But there was something different now. Something broken and lit at the same time. Like an exposed wire, sparking, smoking, but still conducting electricity. Like a house on fire but still habitable, walls in flames and the sofa still soft, windows bursting and the bed still warm. Like someone who had gone to the bottom of the well and come back, but brought the bottom of the well with him—stuck to his shoes, under his nails, at the back of his throat.
The smile widened. Showed teeth. His eye gleamed—not the wet gleam from before, but a dry, electric gleam, a little bit crazy. There was joy there. A dark, dangerous joy that you hadn't seen since before the prison, since before the note, since before the end of the world. The joy of someone who survived something they shouldn't have. Who escaped a cell that was meant to be permanent. Who came back from hell in jeans and a white shirt open at the chest, dirty with blood, thin as a thread, but alive. Alive.
His free hand—the left, the one resting on his knee—rose slowly. His fingers found your hair. Buried themselves in it. Pulled a little, not hard, like an owner. With the familiarity of someone who had done this a thousand times. With the certainty of someone who knows that hair, that smell, that temperature still belong to him. It was a possessive gesture, but it was also a request. Let me stay. Let me touch. Let me be yours again, the same way you've always been mine.
His thumb stopped mid-circle. The fingers in your hair tightened a little more. The blue eyes, those eyes that looked at you with devotion and despair and hunger and love and madness, fixed on yours like two nails. The smile was a crack in his face, an open wound, a wide-open door to a place you knew well because you had lived there for a long time.
"Guess who's back from jail?"
a/n: the ending is purposefully ambiguous and chilling. i honestly thought about another path, but i stayed firm in my choice to keep the meme. because deep down, that's exactly what he would do. he destroyed her apartment. he's covered in blood. he killed her lover on the way. he spent 847 nights locked in a cell counting the days to come back to her. and the first thing he does when he sees the woman he loves again? acts like a sitcom character coming back from vacation. is it scary? yes. but it's also him. it's that thread of madness and twisted humor that was always there, buried beneath all the devotion and violence and sick love.
also... LOOK AT HIS FACE. that face of someone who escaped from hell in ripped jeans and an open shirt, thin as a thread, dark circles like bruises, dried blood on his face that isn't his. and honestly? he regrets nothing. just that it took so long.
and i didn't understand why i couldn't use the gif tool correctly, but i hope you can see the credits. i don't want to offend anyone.
It took you some time to notice that because you, like everyone you had kissed before Dex, closed your eyes when kissing someone.
It wasn't until one time, when you opened your eyes to slowly pull away, that you noticed it. There he was, staring right back at you, with his eyes and lips on yours.
In a way, it made sense. Dex was an observant person. Only that sometimes, instead of looking for objects he could use as weapons in the case of a potential attack, he observed you. as he so often did.
Dex had learned how you liked placing candles around the kitchen after you cooked something with a strong smell. Dex had learned to read your reactions when he made breakfast. If you didn't smile a specific way, he knew the dish lacked salt, even if you told him it was perfect.
To him, watching is loving.
So naturally, he kisses you with his eyes open. He watches as you melt into him, watches how your eyelids shut tight when his hand sneaks under your shirt—that's how he learns when to touch you.
Kissing you with his eyes open also means that he can reassure himself that you're not running away. You're right there where he can see you. You can't leave him while he's watching you, can you?
Dex can only imagine what he would do if he lost sight of you.
✧ aimee's note i don't have original thoughts, and this actually was inspired by this absolutely delicious artwork.
Yes. Yup. You are very well-adjusted and there is nothing weird or obsessive about your love for Dex. You have a normal, non-toxic, non-codependent relationship with him and your friends are not deeply concerned.
They really don’t even know the half of it. Really, they think you broke up with him the first time he went to prison and just haven’t gotten over him since and that’s for the best, because if they knew how desperately and painfully you love Dex, they might call a Bullseye sighting in. Which doesn’t work for you, because that would mean that Dex is gone and when he is gone, you feel that a piece of you has been violently taken--in your defense, that is how he would go.
You are staring at his back, the raised scar along his spine and the other occasional wounds you are scratching across. There are sporadic bite marks along his torso, his biceps and forearms. You really can’t help yourself. He’s just so cute that you can't help bite him, can't help but want to squeeze him and shake him and your arm is beginning to cramp.
Dex must be asleep, you’ve been scratching his back for at least thirty minutes now, so you let your hand fall from his back, flipping over and lightly pressing your back against his.
you feel his back begin to rumble against yours, at first you thought he was sleep talking—new, but whatever, he was cute no matter what. Then you comprehended that it was coherent speech and worse, what he was saying, “Do you want your alarm to not go off or not be able to use your laptop tomorrow?” You couldn’t fucking believe this motherfucker, who used his status as being closest to the wall plugs, thus your phone and work laptop as leverage against you, “Fine.”
You rolled back over and began to begrudgingly scratch his back.
There were red flags, you absentmindedly thought as Dex hummed in contentment, as if he hadn’t threatened you to get what he wanted. Your friends thought the way he stood sentinel behind you was terrifying, that he was more conjured golem than man. How could you explain to them that his preternatural stillness wasn’t what you found concerning, but how eager to please he was.
Yes—how could you explain that you had once, passively, mentioned how the trash would need to be taken out soon, how much you hated doing such a small task and then when you came home, it had been replaced.
Dex didn’t live with you, but he had a spare key. How could you possibly explain to anyone that it was that which unnerved you?
How to explain that when you had inevitably moved in and asked Dex, please, maybe, stop stress-vacuuming in the middle of the night you had expected an argument, had expected to beg him to please for the love of fucking god stop vacuuming at 3am.
Sure, you were definitely jaded by the string of ex-boyfriends who would’ve literally killed themselves before something you asked the first time, but there was undercurrent of something in his actions that caused you to go past vague unease and right off the ledge into terror.
How to fucking explain that? Huh? That it was being taken care of that was the most difficult adjustment?
How to explain that his ease in which he changed his coping mechanism for you was the most terrifying thing he had ever done? This was the same man who you would later know had killed men with office supplies, who you had watched take a discarded cap and shoot right through a man’s eye, this is the man that you knew had killed AVTF agents with straws and lobsters.
When you lived separately, you had ordered a new cabinet and it had taken you three hours and multiple fits of rage crying before you even debated on asking Dex for help. You had expected to need to beg, to plead, to bargain with him, probably threaten him as your patience waned. You had been pacing, still crying and in your fit, hadn’t realized how much Dex had been trying to get in contact with you—thirteen missed calls, five voicemails, twenty-five text messages that you had accidentally ignored.
You stilled when your front door knob began to jiggle, then after a few failed attempts the key had been inserted and Dex stepped in, looking just as panicked as you thought you might've. His hand was shaking, his eyes were rimmed red—he looked positively desperate.
“Why haven’t you been answering me?”
You gestured towards the cabinet. “I’ve been trying to build it, but..” You looked at the disorganized mess in front of you—haphazard, every semblance of order from when you had pulled it out of the packaging had been lost.
Dex had crowded you, had pulled you against him while looking at you like you might flee from him before he squeezed, “I thought you were leaving me.” That was when the first cracks had really began to show, but you, so upset over the cabinet had just resumed crying but into his shoulder while apologizing, that it wasn’t him it was the stupid cabinet.
He had looked down at you, brows furrowed and lower lip trembling because he used to be so openly pathetic, “Why didn’t you ask me?” and you had only stared stupidly at him, because it didn’t occur to you that might’ve wanted to help you. It had never once crossed your mind that that Dex would be more upset that you hadn’t asked because wasn’t he useful to you? Why weren’t you relying on him?
So he built the cabinet. You had sat beside him with your legs to your chest and watched him work and every time he made progress he looked towards you with those big fucking puppy dog eyes and you had felt so lucky.
Basically, whatever was wrong with you, was ten times more wrong in Dex and made you look considerably more well-adjusted in comparison and it was ten years too late to back out now.
You listen to the sounds of Hell’s Kitchen, distant shouting, laughing and the sounds of cars running. There’s a far honk that triggers a few more, a little excessive, but what do you know? You listen to the scratch of your nails against Dex’s back, occasionally pausing to rub the pad of your index finger against the raised edges of his spinal scar.
“Bebé?”
“Hm?”
“Just testing if you’re sleeping yet.”
“Why? Got plans?” You pinch the skin near his armpit. “No, my fucking arm is tired.” You waited another ten minutes, “Schnookums?”
“What did you call me?”
“Schnookums.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Okay, well, what about babygirl?”
“I’m not remotely a babygirl.”
“If not babygirl, why babygirl shaped?” Dex shifted, your hand slid down to the fabric beneath, still warm. Dex turned over to face you, eyes narrowed--the only person who might've dared to call him something so ridiculous.
“Grown men are the opposite of babygirl shaped.” But there is just enough moonlight seeping through the curtains for you to tell that the tips of his ears are red.
You looked past him, contemplative. Your expression too serious for the jovial nature of your conversation.
“Hm. Princess?” Dex shook his head, “Pookie?” He physically cringed, “Tough crowd. Okay, Dillo?” His lip curled, “I wasn’t a fan of that either.”
A minute of silence, “Dexcito?” he inched closer, “Not bad.” that was all you needed to spurn you forward, “Dexy.”
“Dexcito is better.” You hated how easily he picked up the pronunciation. ‘All about precision’ he would tell you about how easily he picked up languages—what the fuck ever.
Theres just something about imagining DDBA! Dex as “Tony” and you eating in the park, on a bench on a nice sunny day and he’s like … ur sub looks good etc after taking a bite of his. You kindly offer ur sub up imagining its a small one but NAH that man CHOMPS and is all like a kid with his boyish smile, nodding and giving a small thumbs up. And then ur like damn okay that wasn’t the bite I had in mind but cool, then he’s like ooo wait look over there that cloud looks funny, just tryna distract u and it works cus then he takes another huge ass chomp cus he can’t bring it to himself to admit u just got good taste and may consider teasing u in the future to ordering double of what u usually get for the both of them (and is smitten over you obvi)
it was at night when u got home one time and was met with the sight of him just.. in ur room… organising ur clothes drawer.
you basically jumped at the sight: "What the fuck— dex! are you trying to give me a heart attack?" u huffed, hand on ur heart and clearly still recovering from the scare of a massive man (who was still suited as bullseye) in ur room at 11pm. he just looks at u with the expression of an unimpressed cat as if he’d done nothing wrong!
"your room is messy." he says. vaguely gesturing to the pile of clothes in a basket placed in the corner.
another time, you could be watching a movie, haven’t checked ur phone in a bit when u hear the sound of a window sliding open from ur bedroom. dex walking out with a bit of a concerned expression before relaxing at the sight of you, "you weren’t responding to my texts." standing by the TV as he squinted at you skeptically… as if he wasn’t literally standing next to the reason why.
"..i’m watching a movie, babe. i didn’t see the messages," sighing softly as you patted the couch, dex immediately moving to plop down next to you like an overgrown puppy.
another time, you were sleeping— trying to sleep. tossing and turning with grumbles and complaints and as if the universe was finally on ur side you heard ur bedroom door being opened gently, "mhmmn.. dex..?" u mumbled, rubbing ur eyes and rolling onto ur back. dex grunting softly in response as u heard him kick his boots off, settling beside you on the bed as he shifted you onto a more comfy position.
"baby… you can’t just keep breaking into my home."
"…yes i can." he grumbled, before he kissed ur neck gently and snuggling you tightly.
Dex has a mole on the left side of his face. It's not directly below his eye, rather set high on his cheek closer to his hairline, just at the top of his prominent cheekbone. You adore it.
The first time you really noticed it, you were out with him on a coffee date. After accidentally running into him quite literally during rush hour on a Monday, you just managed to salvage both of your dignities by only spilling a few small drops of your drink on him. Between you spewing out apologies and him taking the situation in stride — which you were eternally grateful for — you managed to convince him to exchange numbers so you could buy him a coffee sometime as a real apology. (The fact that you found him really handsome might have played a part in your insistence too, but he didn't have to know that.) A few days of casual text messages later, you entered one of your favourite cafés in the area with Dex by your side. You did not want to call it a date, not when neither of you ventured into that territory yet, but with the way you two seemed to just click and how easily the conversation flowed, you started treating it as one in your head. There was no harm in giving it a different name rather than calling it an apology coffee, you justified yourself.
Finding an empty table at a somewhat secluded part of the café gave you the perfect view of him. Dex sat with his back turned to the big windows behind him, and while it provided him with the opportunity to watch the entrance and other customers, you could admire him freely without any interruptions. In the early afternoon hour, the Sun was just beginning to shine through the panes of glass, bathing Dex in an almost ethereal glow. That was when you noticed the little dot on his left cheek, when he turned his face to take a sip of his coffee and the sunshine hit his profile just right. He looked nothing less than gorgeous in the light, his blondish hair almost golden and hazel eyes turning into a warm color akin to honey.
You're not sure why out of all of his features, the little mole was what captivated you the most. Maybe it was because it gave a sort of softness to the otherwise harsh lines of his face, even though sometimes it also had the opposite effect when the lighting caught his profile in an angle and put emphasis on his strong cheekbone. Whatever the reason was, you couldn't help but stare at it every time you got to meet him in person.
As your relationship progressed with time, so did the physical contact between you. Shy, almost cautious touches turned into gentle hugs, which then changed into holding hands when you were together. Soon, this led you to break the unsaid boundary and peck his cheeks in greeting, and that quickly turned into a thing you did routinely. It wasn't long before you ended up giving him a real kiss, and there was no going back after that.
Still, you developed a habit during this process; you often planted kisses on his face, as a greeting, as a thank you, as just a casual display of affection. You were very specific about it too: you always aimed for the little dot on his left cheek. Dex seemed almost bashful about the attention you regularly gave to his face. Whenever you stared at that one spot a little too long, caressed his cheek, or complimented the mark, he more often than not ducked his head and avoided eye contact. It was easy to see the red creeping onto his ears and face because of his pale skin, and it made you smile every time. His reactions were terribly endearing and they just made you want to tease him until he turned scarlet all over.
Stalker Dex! shyly offering to help u take ur heavy shopping up to your apartment so he can get a taste of what’s it’s like to walk through your front door.
dex couldn’t help the wide grin from spreading as he opened the notification and pressed play, tugging his headphones up onto his ears. his old pair weren’t compatible with his phone, but he hated the idea of playing your messages out loud, so he’d had to buy a new set just for this.
they were too bulky, the pads too spongy, and they were nowhere near as reliable as the set he used with his tapes. but it was worth it to hear your voice.
you rambled more often than not, distracted as you spoke by something you saw or thought about as you tried to get the original message across to him. usually you had your hands full, or you were driving when you’d send them, unable to text and not liking to call in case he was busy. your voice would drift sometimes before coming back or he’d hear you swear as the parking spot you wanted got taken; each small piece of you was tucked away neatly inside his chest as he listened to the messages sent only for him.
“i’m sorry, dex, i think i have to rain check on our date tonight,” your voice played in his ears, tired and apologetic. “today has been… long, to say the least. i think i just need to eat, shower, and then sleep for like twelve hours uninterrupted.”
he knew you must be waiting at a traffic light when you hummed to the radio for a beat, something slow and sad. it was too quiet for him to pick up, but he’d figure it out and add it to the playlist he’d made of songs you liked.
“how about saturday night if you’re not busy? let me know, ‘kay? if i don’t reply tonight it’s because im knocked the fuck out,” you snorted. “is this how bears feel in winter when they hibernate? wait, do they actually sleep the whole time or is that a myth? i need to google that later… ok, anyway, text me when you’re not busy, i’m sorry again for cancelling, i know that you were looking forward to showing me that restaurant.”
the voice note ended and dex saved it as he did with all of them. in truth, he didn’t care about the restaurant. he’d never been before, but after stalking your social media he’d found a post that you’d liked that talked about men who wanted a committed relationship would be proactive in making date plans and take you to their favourite spots. so he’d done exactly that.
> Don’t worry about the restaurant, it’ll be there for another day. How are you though?
> Also yes, bears sleep but it’s light, not a ‘real’ hibernation. It’s called torpor.
< omg that’s so cute!! well i’m going into torpor tonight 😭
> You didn’t answer. Are you ok? You said you had a bad day.
< not bad, just long and exhausting
< but i’m ok, thank u baby
dex felt a shiver run down his back at the nickname, his grip on his phone tightening momentarily as he looked at his screen with heart eyes.
> Good, I’m glad
he hesitated, his thumbs hovering over the screen. you’d been on several dates by now and he’d been itching to ask you to be his girlfriend since before the first one, needing you to be official, to be able to say he was yours, but you were skittish. he’d heard you talk to your friends on your bugged phone about how he seemed too good to be true, and about how quickly he moved felt like too much sometimes and made you want to run and he couldn’t have that.
so he was patient, even if it felt like it was killing him.
still, the message he wanted to send didn’t feel like too much too soon in his opinion, and he knew you’d tell him if he was overstepping. he wanted to progress the relationship and he hoped this could be his chance.
> Why don’t I come pick you up and I can cook for you tonight?
> My shower has excellent water pressure and my towels are very soft :)
> You could stay over too, if you’d like.
he stopped and waited for your reply, hoping the smiley face softened his eagerness to a more casual invitation, especially with three extra texts in a row, but when nothing came after thirty seconds he continued. anxiety began to buzz loudly in his ears as his thumb hovered over the screen.
> I can sleep on the couch if you don’t want to share a space yet.
> Or I could drive you back home again later.
> We can get your favourite pizza from Rafferty’s.
three dots appeared on his screen and his hand stilled immediately. he held his breath as they disappeared and the screen stayed bare for a minute.
a voice note appeared and he clicked play, his chest loosening at the sound of your laughter. tired giggles huffed into the mic as he heard you try to juggle your bag and keys in the background.
“dex, slow down, jeez, at least try to take a breath,” you teased, your voice so deeply fond. “i mean, if you’re promising rafferty’s then how can i say no?”
he heard your door open, the way it caught before you pushed your shoulder into it. he needed to fix that, the screws needed tightening at the top so it hung right and didn’t scrape.
“however… i am tired and my bed is calling my name,” he heard the amusement in your voice but still he froze, smile dropping at the prospect of you saying no. “so i think you’ll have to sweeten the deal a little. rafferty’s and a shoulder rub,” you declared after a brief pause, your voice growing fainter as you walked away from your phone to put your bags down. he could picture you calling across your apartment to where you’d left it on the kitchen counter, shucking off your sneakers and hanging up your coat before returning, your voice clearer, smug, “what do you say to that?”
> I say you’ve got a deal and you should get better at bargaining.
> Be there in 20.
< 😘
you had a small overnight bag packed by time dex arrived and he ducked down to kiss you and take it from your hands in one move. you blinked slowly, like your eyelids were heavy, as you looked at him with a sleepy smile and he tucked you close under his other arm. it wasn’t even eight o’clock but you looked a second away from falling asleep already.
he kept your hands linked as he drove you back to his place, his eyes involuntarily flickering over to you at every chance he got. you’d tilted your head back, eyes closed and breathing slow as you drifted close to sleep during the short drive, but every time he rubbed his thumb over your knuckles your smile would twitch and you’d squeeze his hand back.
“come on, sleepy bear, let’s get food ordered already,” dex said as he shut off the engine. he walked around to your side of the car as you got out and held out his broad hand for you to take. you were dead on your feet by time you entered his apartment, following blindly as he sat you on his couch. he called in the order and brushed his knuckles over your cheek as he reeled off your usual, smiling as you leant into the touch.
it wasn’t like you weren’t tactile usually, but you were more aware of yourself. that skittishness kept you just out of arm’s reach sometimes and already one step ahead ready to deny his casual touches when they became ‘too much’, like you were scared of falling too fast and admitting you liked it. like you didn’t want to get used to them in case he stopped.
what you didn’t realise yet was dex would never stop, but he could show you that; he could prove himself to you, would be happy to do so eventually.
you yawned finally, wide and jaw-cracking, your hand moving belatedly to cover it. he was glad he’d switched to ordering food instead of cooking, giving him the chance to be near you instead of trapped in the kitchen watching as you nodded off on his couch alone.
“come here,” he said and sat next to you, pulling at your furthest shoulder to angle your back to him.
“this better be a damn good massage,” you said as you leant into his hands, sighing at their warmth bleeding through your thin shirt.
he’d not fully noticed when he’d picked you up, too distracted by your welcoming smile and tangled fingers, but you were already in your pyjamas; an old, loose band shirt and a pair of soft patterned sleep shorts. the realisation made him huff a laugh under his breath, warmth growing in his chest knowing you were comfortable enough to do so with him. it made him feel good, like he was closer to being your boyfriend than you realised.
there was an intimacy to the choice, whether purposeful or not. dex felt prideful; you hadn’t thought he had any untoward intentions with his invitation, you’d known he’d just wanted to spend a little more time together. you chose to let him see you dressed down and exhausted, to let him care for you.
he couldn’t resist bending low to kiss the nape of your neck, soaking up your choked gasp and shiver at the unexpected touch.
“you’re so tense,” he commented unhelpfully as you subconsciously tilted your head to give him more room to explore your neck. he slipped his lips up the delicate skin but didn’t kiss you again, instead just breathing you in as he squeezed your shoulders. “they’re running my girl ragged, huh? you deserve a break, sweetheart. need to stop working so hard.”
you hummed, nodding even as you didn’t fully register what he was saying.
“i’ll look after you, hm? you can stay here and i’ll do everything, you don’t gotta lift a finger,” he promised as he sat back again, his hands drifting down your back to squeeze at your waist.
“dex,” you whimpered. “can you— can we—“
“yeah?”
“can we do this in your bed? wanna lay down,” you whined tiredly. one of your hands slipped over his at your hip and interlinked. “y’re so good at this.”
his head tucked forward again as he let out a slow, controlled breath; his lips sealed closed as his nose tucked into the curve of your shoulder. he nodded lightly.
“of course, sweetheart.” he guided you up to stand, keeping his hands firmly on your hips still as he followed closely behind, half leading and half following as you headed to his bedroom.
he let go of you reluctantly to turn on his side lamp, the light softer than the overhead. you needed no encouragement once free from his grip to flop onto his bed face first with a groan, shuffling up until you reached his pillows. uncharacteristically, you greedily huffed in the sent of his aftershave and sweat embedded in his sheets in front of him, smiling and nuzzling without an ounce of shyness.
“smell so good,” you mumbled with your eyes closed.
dex felt his cock twitch and his smile widen to show too many teeth as he watched you make yourself at home in his bed, surrounding yourself with his scent and letting out little tired, happy sighs. he took a moment longer to burn the image into the back of his eyelids, wishing he had his camera at hand, before kneeling onto the bed and crawling up to straddle your thighs and ass.
he started up the massage again and at your first breathy moan of satisfaction, he couldn’t help but chuckle.
“i know how bad a tense back and shoulders can be,” he said quietly. your sleepy brain conjured up the scar you’d seen at the base of his neck, leading down under his collar. you’d felt its thick, bumpy texture once when you’d heavily kissed outside your door after a really good date. your mind drifted at the memory, and what little focus you could conjure went towards remembering how close you’d been to inviting him in that night and how disappointed your friends had been at the lack of gossip for you to share the next day in the group chat.
sleepily, almost distantly, you thought about having sex with him tonight. how devoted you knew he’d be, enthusiastic even with you in your old, ratty pyjama set and with pizza on the way. hardly a romantic scene, but dex would make you forget it all.
you pushed into his hands as the fantasy developed. he’d probably do all the work, you thought with a dreamy sigh, the vision becoming clearer with each thought even as you drifted closer to sleep. dex wouldn’t let you lift a finger, providing orgasm after orgasm with you spread out on his sheets until he’d deemed you satisfied enough.
dex noticed your smile had turned a little smug and wondered what you were thinking about as he dug his thumbs in firmly along your spine, letting his palms cup along the back of your ribs and apply a gentler pressure in comparison. your hips shifted subtly under his, thighs clenching between his own, and he had to stop himself from grinding down against your plush ass. he so desperately wanted you feel you, to make you feel good, but he already knew this would have you feeling bashful and awkward in the morning and he didn’t want to push his luck and push you away.
he dragged one hand up and cupped the back of your neck with one hand and squeezed lightly, gasping and biting his cheek until it bled at the little squeak you involuntarily let out.
he gave himself a moment to calm down before moving back to your shoulders and upper arms. after a few minutes he noticed your breathing had slowed and your hips had stilled. he tilted his head over slightly to see you drooling just a little onto his pillow, but instead of finding it gross, he licked his lips.
he checked his watch. he’d ordered the pizza twenty three minutes ago and they usually took around thirty eight to arrive; that gave him plenty of time.
slowly, carefully, he loosened his belt and pulled it from his trousers, placing it behind him on the bed. he undid the button and zipper on his pants next, before shimmying them down along with his boxers just enough to pull out his cock.
he held it as it throbbed in one hand while the other clenched into a fist. his breaths were shaky and he stared down at your sleeping form with excitement and love.
“baby?” he cooed the same nickname you used for him. no response. “you awake?”
you snuffled into his pillow and he took that as permission, angling his hips lower and resting forward onto one hand over your shoulder.
his cock rested at the crease of your ass and he bit back a whimper, the soft cotton of your sleep pants teasing his sensitive head pleasantly before he’d even properly thrusted forward.
once again he wished for his camera, but he knew he’d never forget this image, this memory. he’d go to his grave remembering you laid beneath him like this.
he started gently, soft, short thrusts against your ass that pushed the worn cotton tighter against your pussy. when you didn’t wake from the stimulation - damn, you really weren’t kidding when you said you needed a deep sleep - he spread his knees a little wider to get easier access and humped a little harder, weak moans catching in the back of his throat.
he used the hand not holding him above you to jerk his cock on the pull back, aiming it to push against the outline of your pussy, tapping it as if to tease, though unsure of if it was himself or you he wanted to torture with the fleeting pleasure.
his cock leaked pre freely and he bit his lip at the prospect of cleaning up, already regretting the mess but unable to stop after feeling your heat against his skin.
he pushed his weeping head harder against the thin material of your sleep shorts, watching it dip slightly against your pussy before meeting resistance and slipping up to slip between your ass cheeks. there was a noticeable damp spot and his mouth watered as he stared down and rubbed his cock over it. maybe he’d get the chance to suckle on the stain of your mixed pre tomorrow while you were in the shower, he could taste your salty-sweet arousal secondhand and satisfy his curiosity, calm his urge to taste from the source for another day…
he thought back to the soft sounds you’d made under his hands, the shift of your thighs as you’d gotten worked up beneath him, just too tired to act on it. you were letting out soft breathy sounds now, quieter though, cut off or only half formed in your sleep, and not enough to curb his greed as he tried to quieten his own noises to catch yours.
would you let him eat you out next time? let him lay you out naked, asleep and ready for his tongue, his fingers, his cock—
he groaned too loud, panting hot breaths into your crown as his hips stuttered at the thought of being inside you like this. christ, fucking you would be something special, but being trusted to fuck you while you were unconscious and vulnerable?
he clamped his hand around the base of his cock as it pulsed. he was so close to cumming, but he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of that mess as easily as he could blame a little bit of pre at your crotch as being your own arousal from an innocent massage.
on one shaky arm, he pushed up onto his knees and unbuttoned his shirt. with heavy eyes, he gazed down at you, his cock inches away from where it wanted to be. with his shirt in hand he finally jerked himself off, barely needing more than two strokes before he was cumming into his shirt with a grimace. he’d throw it out later, for now he’d clean up, get into something more comfortable to excuse the lack of shirt, and then wake you when your food arrived in - he checked his watch - presumably seven minutes.
if you wanted to, he’d even let you eat the pizza in bed. after what you just gave him, it was the least he could do.
⌗ SUMMARY. Bullseye shows up bleeding in Matt Murdock’s arms. You have a clinic, a locked door, and a terrible habit of letting wounded things crawl into your hands.
WARNINGS ⊱ canon adjacent, wounded dex, mentions of blood, minor injury details and treatment, doctor/patient setup, emotional dependency, jealousy (dex is a jealous bitch), possessiveness, morally messy dynamics, matt murdock cameo, platonic matt, set after the events of episode 5 of DDBA S2, references to foggy’s and vanessa’s death, suicidal ideation/passive death wish from dex (canon😭), MDNI, explicit sexual content, praise, possessive language, riding, groping, tit play, unprotected pnv, creampie, soft aftercare, needy!dex, dex being a feral wounded dog of a man, no use of y/n.
KIE’S NOTES ⊱ I’ve been writing this on and off since episode 5 aired, and this is by far one of the hardest things I’ve ever written. Dex is such a complex character to write for holy fuck 😭 there are so many analogies to stray dog, like he just wants to be a good boy, you’ll see
⟡ READ ON AO3 ♰ DAREDEVIL MASTERLIST
A wounded dog will decide who counts as safe long before anyone else understands why it bites.
You learned that before medical school, before emergency rotations and back-alley sutures that made men in masks limp to you and bleed all over your tile at 3 AM. You learned it at eleven, crouched near an alley behind your old apartment, palm full of deli turkey your mother told you was for lunch, watching a stray with a torn ear bare his teeth at every adult who tried to corner him. Animal control had come with poles. A neighbor had come with a towel. Your mother came with her worried mouth pressed thin and her hands hovering near your shoulders, ready to snatch you back if the dog lunged. The dog had lunged at everyone except you. He had stared at you with yellow-brown eyes, ribs moving under filthy fur, every part of him made of pain and suspicion, and he had taken the turkey from your hand so gently that you cried on the spot. Full ugly tears, snot and all, as if tenderness from a ruined thing was the saddest miracle in the world.
Benjamin Poindexter reminds you of that dog every time he appears at your door.
Which is insane, clinically. Dex is a man. Dex is a killer. Dex is precise, lethal, too calm in ways that make the hairs on the back of your neck lift even when he is sitting on your exam stool with his shirt off and three cracked ribs under your palm. Dex looked at you with blood in his teeth and asked if you keep the good suture scissors in the second drawer or if you hide them from your 'less charming clients,' and he smiled when you stared at him too long. He is six feet of bad decisions and worse coping mechanisms, and yet the first thing your mind gives you when you think of Dex is that stray dog taking turkey from your fingers.
That knock at this time is unexpected. Matt.
Matt knocks like a man who hates needing help. Two firm taps, a pause, one more. Spiderman kncoks like he's not allowed to come in. Jessica once kicked the door and yelled your name until you opened. Dex, on his own, never knocks at all. He appears. He waits. Sometimes he bleeds on the mat. Sometimes he makes a small, polite comment about your hallway light going out.
You are across the room before the kettle finishes screaming. Your clinic is technically a closed flower shop with a fake lease and a drain installed under the center table, which makes you look deranged. Until someone comes in with a knife wound and then everyone suddenly appreciates plumbing. The place smells like antiseptic, old brick damp from rain, black tea, and the faint copper ghost that never fully leaves, because blood is part of everything. You unlock the deadbolt, undo the chain, tug the door open, and Matt Murdock nearly falls into you with Bullseye hanging off him like a corpse.
For one bright, stupid second, all your thoughts empty out into his name.
Dex.
His face is a mess. Blood has dried under one nostril and smeared across his mouth in a dark shine. His lower lip is split. One eye is swollen enough that it changes his whole expression, turning him younger in the ugliest way, all that sharpness buried under bruising and exhaustion. His suit is torn at the side, tactical fabric shredded into strips. When Matt adjusts his grip, Dex makes a sound so small you feel it under your bones.
Matt's mouth tightens. Blood mats his dark hair near his temple. Only consolation is that he looks a little better than Dex. "He needs help."
You stare at Dex. Dex stares back, or tries to. His good eye drags over your face with the slow, stunned relief of a man who expected darkness and got a porch light. The part of you with a medical license starts counting injuries in a list that stacks too fast. Facial trauma. Rib involvement. Possible abdominal injury. Scalp laceration. Possible pneumothorax. The part of you that has made the mistake of caring about him too much, looks at his lashes stuck together with rain and blood and wants to put his head in your lap.
With a gentleness reserved for skittish animals, you reach for his jaw, two fingers under his chin to angle his face toward the light. "Dex, can you hear me?"
Blood shines over his teeth, as his mouth twitches. "Hey, Doc."
Matt shifts him higher with a grunt, muscles in his forearms cording from the effort. Dex makes another small sound, angrier this time, as if the pain is just now surfacing. "He took the worst of it. I did what I could, but he kept telling me to leave him."
"Balanced the scales," Dex mumbles, head tipping back against Matt's shoulder. Rainwater slides from his hair down the side of his neck. "You had a city to save."
"Ma — you should come in." You catch yourself at the last second. It rises right up, soft from habit, and catches at the back of your teeth as Dex's good eye opens again.
He smiles at you through the blood. Barely. A broken curve of recognition, jealous even while half-dead, which is so Dex that something in you aches. "I know who he is, doc. You can call him Matt."
You close your eyes, breathe through your nose once, a fond sigh, which also is deeply annoying. "Of course you do."
Dex's smile widens enough to make the split in his lip bleed again. "Smart boy."
No. Nope.
"Table. Keep his neck aligned." You tell Matt, stepping back and sweeping one arm toward the center of the room. "If either of you tracked glass in here, I'm making you both sweep before sunrise." You add, not wanting to sound too soft.
Matt obeys with a silence that says he has learned, through years of being injured in your presence, that arguing only rises blood pressure. Dex tries to help. That is the horrible part. His fingers grip the edge of the exam table once Matt lowers him, knuckles white, body shaking with the effort of being useful. His legs drag a fraction of a second behind the rest of him. Your mind sees it, circles it, hates it. You pull trauma shears from the tray and cut through what remains of the suit before any panic can bloom large enough to slow your hands.
"Eyes on me," you tell Dex, softer than you mean to. "You do exactly what I say for the next hour. That's the deal."
His lashes flutter, and his ruined mouth quirks. "I'm always good for you."
Matt turns his head slightly, lips tugging on a frown half formed.
You feel it. Dex feels it too. They are both bleeding and somehow still measuring each other. Matt's face gives almost nothing away, but you have known him long enough to read the pauses, even the slight angle of his chin. He hears Dex's pulse change around you. He hears your answer. He hears the rotten little truth of it, warm and embarrassing under all the antiseptic.
You press two fingers to Dex's carotid and pretend the pulse under your skin is purely clinical. "That depends on your definition of good."
"Flexible," Dex breathes.
"Try alive."
"That's less flexible."
When you shoot him a look, he settles. It happens so fast Matt's brow pulls in, and despite the blood running down the side of his own face, despite the exhaustion in every line of him, you see him file it away. Dex does that for you. Dex, who would rather spit teeth than accept help from almost anyone, quiets under your hand like you found a switch under his skin.
You hate how much that means to you.
The shears bite up the side of Dex's suit. Rain-wet fabric peels away from him, exposing bruises already darkening over his ribs, long shallow cuts crossing his abdomen, a deeper gash near his left flank with slow, steady bleeding. You talk while you work, partly for him, partly for Matt, mostly for your own sanity. "Breath sounds normal. No deep lacerations. Two tiny blessings. Dex, if you lie about pain severity, I will find out and I will be extremely annoying about it."
His good eye trails over your face. "You already are."
"Funny. You get one joke per liter of blood loss."
Matt huffs through his nose, almost a laugh, then winces. You point at the chair by the wall without looking up. "Sit."
"I can take care of myself."
The room goes quiet enough for the kettle to click off in the corner.
You turn your head slowly, gloved fingers still pressed to Dex's side. Matt is standing near the exam table, one shoulder lower than the other, blood sliding past his ear, jaw set in that martyr shape you have wanted to smack off his face for years. "Sit down, Matthew."
Dex makes a low sound, a grunt, or an attemp at it. "Matthew."
Matt's eyes go over Dex, jaw clenching and unclenching. "This is a bad time."
"For you, maybe," Dex says, and then coughs hard enough that the joke breaks.
You lean over him fast, one hand at his shoulder, the other bracing his ribs. "Small breaths. Look at me." His eye finds yours again, frantic for a second. He would kill anyone else for witnessing this, but not now. Your voice drops even further. "That's it. You can hate me after."
He breathes the way you tell him to. Obedient.
When Matt sits, some ridiculous, childish part of you wants to clap. Another part wants to cry. You do neither, since your hands are full of a man who has decided your voice is a leash he can tolerate.
The first twenty minutes disappear into work. Blood pressure readings, pupils, pulses, lung sounds again, neuro checks, wound depth, rib stability. You listen to Dex's chest and feel him try to keep still under the stethoscope, sweat shining at his hairline while his fingers curl over the table edge. When you clean his lip, he keeps his eyes on you as if the room might vanish if he looks away. When you probe near the gash at his side, his breathing goes jagged, but he bites down on the inside of his cheek instead of jerking away.
"Hey." You catch his face in your hand before he can sink his teeth deeper. "Open."
He opens his mouth, shaking while he does it.
You can feel Matt's head turn again. You ignore it, cheeks heating as you slide gauze between Dex's teeth to keep him from chewing himself bloody. "Better. Bite this if you need to. No hero teeth."
Dex's gaze moves over you, half-lidded, feverish, words coming out mumbled over the piece of gauze. "Do you treat all your patients like dogs?"
You secure a dressing against his side and let the pressure hold under your palm. "Only my favourite strays."
His eye softens like he cannot control himself. It is small. A tiny failure of the mask. A starved thing hearing a bowl set down.
Matt hears that too. You can tell from his silence, from the careful stillness in his chair. When you finish with Dex, you cross the room with a suture kit for the cut at his temple. Matt turns his face towards you before your knees touch the edge of the chair. He smells like rain, blood, city smoke, and that faint soap he uses which you have always found unfairly comforting. You have stitched Matt under worse circumstances. You have dug glass out of his shoulder while he spit blood into your sink. You have fed him soup with one hand while keeping pressure on his dressing with another. That comfort is old. It sits between you now.
Dex watches it like it is a blade aimed at him.
You dab antiseptic at Matt's temple. "This is shallow. You are lucky."
Matt's mouth curves in that tired, self-punishing way. "People keep telling me that."
"Maybe try believing them once in a while."
Ignoring that, he dips his chin towards Dex. "How bad is he?"
You glance back at Dex. He has his head turned toward the ceiling now, but his eye is still angled in your direction. Watching. Always listening. "Bad enough that moving him tonight would be stupid. He's stable enough. But I need imaging he will never agree to. Possible rib fractures, soft tissue trauma, no obvious neuro deficit from what I can assess here, but I want repeat checks every hour. He needs observation."
"He wanted me to leave him," Matt says quietly, like his voice won't carry in the small room.
Dex speaks from the table, voice rough around the gauze and dried blood. "You should've. Still think you should."
You thread the needle through Matt's skin with more force than strictly needed, anger showing up in a different place. Matt says nothing, but his mouth pinches.
"No one dies in my clinic unless I say so," you call over your shoulder.
Dex exhales, a soft sigh followed by a start of a complaint. "You really —"
"Please lie down and stop talking."
Matt's hand closes around your wrist after you finish the last stitch. He does it carefully, fingers warm, thumb pressing once against your radius as if he is asking permission through touch. Comfort. Familiar, heavy with years of people trying to survive horrible nights. "Fisk is still moving," he says. "Karen..." His voice thins for half a breath. "Karen may kill him if I bring him anywhere near her."
Dex smiles at the ceiling. "Smart woman."
You look from Matt to Dex, then down at the blood-speckled gauze piled near your knee. "You want to leave him here."
"I think he is safer here than anywhere else tonight." Matt's mouth tightens, next words dragging through his teeth. "I think everyone else is safer too."
Your laugh comes out dry and humorless. "So I get custody of the homicidal puppy while you go deal with the rest of the apocalypse."
Dex turns his head toward you. Even wrecked, even pale, even with gauze stuffed in his mouth and bruises swallowing half his face, the look he gives you has teeth in it. Offended by the word puppy. Pleased by the word custody. Matt catches every ugly shade of it.
"He listens to you," Matt says.
"He has limited hobbies."
Dex murmurs, "You."
The word drops into the room with a wet little thud. One syllable dragged over broken lips, and still it finds some secret place under your ribs and presses. You hate him a little for that. You hate Matt a little for hearing it. You hate yourself most of all for wanting to go back to the table and touch Dex's hair until his eyes close.
Matt rises slowly. You stand with him, suddenly aware of how small the clinic is with three people and so many things no one should say. He reaches for the cowl, then stops. "Call me if he gets worse. If he loses consciousness, if he starts vomiting, if he says anything about numbness or weakness."
"I went to med school, Matt."
His mouth tilts, a small smile, the first real one from him tonight.
You can feel Dex watching you, clear enough to hurt. Pain pulls his face tight, yet jealousy sits in him like a second pulse, stubborn and alive. He has killed for balance tonight. He has decided dying would be neat, fair. Still, your hand on Matt's wrist bothers him. Your voice saying Matt's name bothers him. The fact that you can tease the Devil of Hell's Kitchen into sitting down while Dex lies cut open on your table bothers him so much that he has dragged himself back from the edge purely to be petty about it.
Trying to ignore him, you walk Matt to the door and keep your voice low. "You owe me."
"I do."
"No, you really do. This is beyond the usual owe me. This is pay my fake flower shop's electric bill for six months owe me."
His hand finds the doorframe. "Send the amount."
You blink at him, at his audacity. "I was making a point."
"I heard the point." His face softens toward yours, bruised and tired, but warmth nonetheless. "Thank you."
You almost touch his arm. You stop yourself, which is silly, since Matt would sense the hesitation anyway and Dex would read the shape of it from across the room. "Go. Try to keep your skull intact."
Before the door closes, Matt turns his head toward Dex. "If you hurt her, I will hear it."
Dex laughs once, and the sound turns into a wince. "If I hurt her, you can have what's left."
The clinic holds the echo of Matt's footsteps after he leaves. Rain ticks against the front window. Dex's breath is slow but uneven, the gauze in his mouth damp with blood and spit. You stand with your hand on the lock and try to make sense of this situation. A murderer on your table. A city outside eating itself alive. A man who wants to die looking at you like he would crawl back through hell if you asked him to stay.
You lock the door.
Dex watches the motion, tracking you. "You're awfully close."
You cross to the sink and strip off your gloves. The snap of latex feels too loud. "You were actively bleeding out fifteen minutes ago. Pick a smarter topic."
"Answer."
Water runs pink down the drain. Your hands shake only after the gloves are off. "Matt and I have history."
Dex's jaw works around the gauze. "So do we."
"You show up here, bleed on my furniture, say alarming things, refuse hospital transfer, and once asked if I had a membership program after your fifth visit." You shut the water off and look at him. His face makes you angry. But only a little. That hungry stare from a man who has no right to demand any part of you after deciding twenty minutes ago that death sounded fine. Yet under it is the dog with the torn ear. The animal watching every hand, every doorway, every flick of attention, trying to figure out who belongs to him, who might leave, who might choose some other dog with a clean fur.
You walk back to the table and take the gauze gently from his mouth. "You are exhausting."
Dex's throat move with effort, swallowing, saliva wetting his mouth. "Do you look at him like this?"
The question is quieter than the others. Worse. It has no blade in it. Only a man lying open under fluorescent light, too hurt to hide the wound he actually cares about.
Your fingers hover near his cheek. You let them settle at his jaw, light enough that he can turn away if he wants. He does no such thing. He leans into the touch so fast it ruins you.
"Dex."
His lashes lower, tickling your palm when he seeks the warmth.
"I am going to clean you up, give you fluids, keep you awake for neuro checks, and cuff you to the bed in the back room so you avoid doing some noble-suicidal assassin bullshit the second I blink." Your thumb moves once along the unmarred edge of his jaw. His skin is cold. "After that, you can interrogate me about Matt Murdock until I regret saving your life."
A sad smile curves his lips. "You already regret it."
"No." The word comes out so soft. "I really, really do not."
The clinic's back room used to serve as a supply closet, then you stopped having supplies. Now it holds a narrow bed bolted to the wall, clean sheets, a cabinet of emergency meds, and a chain you bought after a masked idiot with a concussion tried to wander into traffic with three fresh staples in his scalp.
Dex sees the cuff and laughs until pain takes the laugh away from him. You roll your eyes while helping him shift down onto the mattress, every inch a negotiation with his battered ribs.
"You chain all your favourite patients?" He asks once his uninjured ankle is secured with a padded restraint and the chain runs through the bedframe.
You tug the blanket over his waist. "Only the flight risks."
"Matt ever get the chain?"
Your hands pause, which already gives him a lot without meaning to.
Dex smiles without opening his eyes. "Interesting."
You secure the IV line, check the dressing at his side, and sit on the small chair beside the bed with your back against the cabinet. "Go to sleep, Dex."
"Can't."
"Then lie still and pretend. You're talented."
His fingers slide over the edge of the mattress until they find your sleeve. He grips the soft cotton near your wrist, clumsy but careful. He has enough strength left to hurt you if he wanted. He holds the fabric instead.
You let him.
Near dawn, after the third neuro check, after he has told you the year, the president, your clinic address, and the exact number of tiles in the ceiling section above him like an asshole, his voice comes out thin and drugged by exhaustion rather than meds. "I did it."
You sit up straighter. Hearing him talk through pain is something you don't want to go through, but have to. "Did what?"
"Balanced it. Vanessa for Foggy."
A chill moves through you so slowly it feels like a hand closing around your heart. Foggy. Matt's grief. Karen's rage. Dex's worst crime. The city's endless appetite for payment. You look at him and see, for one horrible second, a man lying at the bottom of a ledger with a red line drawn under his own name. "And now?"
Dex's fingers tighten in your sleeve, holding you closer. "Now I'm tired."
You reach up and press your hand over his. He looks at the place where your skin covers his knuckles. His expression is too human for the man the papers called Bullseye, and you hate every person who helped turn him into a weapon, including Dex himself. He leans toward the comfort like he never learned how to ask.
"Then be tired here," you whisper. "I can handle tired."
He studies you for a long moment. "Can you handle me?"
You should say something clinical. Something careful. Something with the kind of boundaries you teach medical students when they come through your legitimate daytime job, wide-eyed and terrified of liability. But, you tell the truth. "I keep opening the door, don't I?"
Dex's eye closes. His fingers stay wrapped in your sleeve until sleep finally drags him under.
By late morning, the rain has stopped. The city has that scrubbed-clean look it gets after a night of lying through its teeth. Pale sunlight presses through the frosted glass in the back room, turning the sheets gold where Dex's hand rests on top of them. You wake in the chair with your neck bent at an angle that will punish you for days, hair coming loose from its clip. For one muzzy second, you forget the night. Then the chain gives a soft metallic scrape, and you remember every part of it at once.
Dex is awake.
He is lying still, which is encouraging. Too still, which is irritating. His good eye follows you as you straighten. He looks better, at least in the way people look better when they are still severely injured but no longer actively trying to bleed into the afterlife. Less gray. More focused. The swelling around his eye has deepened purple. His mouth is still split and tender. Stubble darkens his jaw. His bare chest is bandaged in three places, bruises blooming under the tape like ugly weather.
"You stayed," he says.
Your back cracks when you shift, a grunt escaping you. "I live here during disasters now, apparently."
His gaze drops to your wrinkled shirt, the blanket you must have pulled over yourself at some point. "You slept in a chair."
"I have made worse choices." Liking him was one.
His mouth moves like he wants to smile, but the split in his lip stops him. "Name one."
"You, repeatedly." Apparently early morning you has no filter.
That pleases him far more than it should. He watches you stand, and when you come over to check his pupils, he tilts his face up before you ask. Trying to be good again. It is awful to your chest, that easy offering. Dex, who fights everyone, lets you put your fingers under his jaw and angle him towards the light, eyes tracking your face more than the penlight.
"Headache?" you ask.
"Not really."
"Nausea?"
"No."
"Vision changes?"
"Ugly curtains."
"Those are original to the building, and they have seen too much to be insulted by you."
Ignoring that, he looks toward the ankle cuff. "Am I still a flight risk?"
"You murdered someone last night, tried to die at least twice by my count, and keep making jealous comments about a blind lawyer. So, Id say yes."
Dex's eye comes back to you. Slower now. "You're bringing him up."
The audacity if this stupid, beautiful, injured man. "You were going to."
"I was waiting."
"That must have been hard for you."
His fingers flex against the sheet, head dipping once towards his ankle. "Take it off."
You fold your arms, and his gaze moves briefly over your chest before he makes himself look back at your face. The tiny effort, the discipline of it, should not be as intimate as it is. "Tell me why."
"So I can leave if I want."
"Wrong answer."
The old Dex sits up under the wounded one for a second, teeth showing in spirit, even if his mouth is too sore for the full shape. He exhales, irritated. "So I can stop feeling like you expect me to run."
That one is a better answer. He sees that getting to you, which is annoying. Your mouth softening by degrees, fingers loosening against your arms, he sees all of it. You crouch near the bed and unlock the cuff with the key on your necklace. His eyes follow it, the little brass thing sliding from between your breasts, then the lock, then your hand closing around his ankle to ease the padding away from skin.
The chain falls with a dull clink.
Half of you, the pessimistic half, expects him to lunge. But he just lies there and looks at you with wonder in his eyes, as if you have handed him a weapon and he has chosen, for this one morning, to set it down.
"If you run, I will find you and sedate you in public," you say.
"You promise?"
"Dex."
With effort, his hand lifts. The tremor is subtle, visible only because you have spent too many nights learning his tells. He reaches for your wrist and stops halfway, waiting.
You wouldn't have thought more about this if he'd just reached. The waiting is what burrows under your ribs.
When you give him your wrist, his fingers close around it with almost no pressure, thumb restinh over your pulse like he wants to feel proof you are still here, flesh and warmth, no trick. "Does he get this?"
He should feel your pulse jump under his thumb, as you sigh and look at him. "Matt gets stitches. Lectures. Soup if he looks starved."
Dex studies your face, eyes tracking every one of your features, scanning. "And me?"
"You get the chain."
He huffs out something close to a laugh, with whatever energy that's left in him.
"You get me missing sleep, changing your dressings while you say upsetting things. You get me pretending I don't worry when you vanish for weeks and then show up with half your side open like a wounded dog dragging itself under a porch."
His hand tightens around the hold, eyes darkening. They are fixed on you with concentration, feeling more like a touch than his actual hands.
Dex has always looked at targets with focus. You have seen him do it through security footage Matt once brought you, body still, gaze calm, all the world narrowed into distance and outcome. This is different. Messier. He looks at you like he wants to crawl into the space behind your ribs and sleep there where no one can reach him.
"Do you want him?" The question comes out blunt. Too wounded. Subtlety has been stripped from him. What remains is one battered man, waiting to hear if he has already lost something he never properly held.
You sit on the edge of the mattress, careful near his ribs. The warmth of his body seeps into yours. "Matt is my friend."
"He touches you like he has rights."
"He touches me like he trusts me."
Dex's eyes looks pained, his jaw tightening. When you lean closer, his gaze drops to your mouth. Your eyes cleanly capture that small betrayal. His thumb strokes once over your pulse, helplessly possessive. You could still walk away. Probably change his dressing, make tea, text Matt an update, maybe contact someone with imaging access who asks fewer questions than the hospital would. Your brain produces tasks in a neat row. Your body knocks the row over like dominoes.
"He doesn't get this look," you sigh. Hazel eye lifts to yours, stripped clean. You almost laugh at yourself for what you're about to say, too honest for this setting. "No one else gets this look."
His breathing changes. Shallow for a second, then controlled since his ribs hurt. He has to choose restraint with every inhale. It makes the want on his face worse. A man who can hit a target precisely even in motion, is trying to keep still under your hand. The effort has sweat gathering at his temples. His hand closed around your wrist tugs you towards him, wordless, but you don't think words are needed.
"You have bruised ribs, multiple lacerations, and an ego wound the size of Manhattan," you say, but lean towards him anyway.
"Your bedside manner was better last night."
"Last night you were closer to death."
His mouth curves faintly, the split lip threatening to open with themotion. "I'm improving. Reward me."
The nerve of him. The absurd, devastating nerve of him, lying in your bed bandaged to hell, asking for you like he has any right, like he has every right. He has learned the existence of a spot in you where affection, fear and desire knot together, and has decided to press his thumb there. This is medically stupid, ethically worse, emotionally catastrophic.
But his hand on your wrist makes you feel chosen by a creature who has bitten everyone else, torn ear flashing before your eyes once more.
You bend down and kiss him. You mean to make it careful. A little thing. A test. Dex makes a sound into your mouth, and the kiss opens wider before you can organize your thoughts. His lips are split, so you keep the pressure light, but he chases you anyway, hungry in a ruined, restrained way that sends a wave of heat through your skin. His hand rises to the back of your neck. You expect him to pull your closer, but he just holds you there, that being somehow worse. His palm is warm, fingers trembling slightly against your hairline, whole body focusing on the point where your mouth meets his.
You pull back first, breathing hard, sharing oxygen. "Pain?"
His eyes open slowly, hazel swallowed by black. "Yes."
"From the kiss?"
"No."
"Dex."
"Everything hurts," he says, voice rough, like he's holding on by a thread. "That felt better."
The thread is thin. Your forehead lowers to his temple for one second. Just one. But it's enough to smell antiseptic on his skin, blood in his mouth, rain still caught somewhere in his hair. Enough to feel him exhale like the thread has finally snapped.
"This stays slow," you whisper against his mouth. "You tell me if I need to stop."
His thumb moves along your jaw, soft, so soft. "I'll behave."
That word is so gentle, that he has no practice giving, and you kiss him again before you can lose your nerve. Dex kisses like survival has always been a contact sport. Even injured, even careful, his mouth has a desperate steadiness to it, as if he is memorizing the limits of what he can take from you without breaking the spell. His hand slides from your neck to your waist, then stops. Waiting again.
You place his hand over your hip.
A sound leaves him, too soft to be a groan, too hungry to be a sigh, and his fingers dig into the flesh of your hips. Your thighs press together, his eye tracking the movement with a precision that makes your skin prickle. "Doc," he murmurs against your mouth.
"Mm?"
"You're shaking."
"So are you."
"I have an excuse."
A laugh from your mouth, but it comes out breathy and uneven, not nearly as cool as you need it to be. "Shut up."
You don't have a comeback, no sharp thing to say. You're letting Ben Poindexter slide his hand up under your shirt. There's an awful tenderness in being wanted by someone who rarely wants anything without destroying it. So, no. No sharp comeback.
His palm spreads over your waist, careful of his taped fingers, of the bruises on his own knuckles, careful with you in a way that feels learned from watching rather than experience. His thumb brushes the lower curve of your breast through your bra, and your breath goes thin.
His gaze locks on that reaction. "Can I?"
When you nod, his hand moves higher, cupping you with an aching slowness that makes your hips shift on the mattress. Dex's eyelid lowers, mouth parting slightly as if the feel of you under his palm is enough to daze him more than his injuries. He squeezes once, gentle at first, then firmer when your fingers curl into the sheet.
"Tell me," he says.
"Half-dead, but still you demand."
He ignores your words. "Tell me what you like."
The command, irritating from any other mouth, only drags heat through every inch of you now. You cover his hand with yours and guide him, showing him the pressure, the spot, how your nipple tightens when his thumb rubs over it through cotton. His attention is unbearable. "Like that," you breathe. "A little harder. Yeah, like that."
"He ever hear you sound like that?"
You kiss him harder, stealing those words from his mouth. He absorbs it with a shudder, hand tightening around your breast while his other reaches for your thigh.
The position is so awkward, you help him a little to sit up. Two bodies learning each other in the small space of a spare room cot.
Jealousy is still there, you can feel it threaded through every question, but now it has heat behind it, a wounded need that makes him cling and challenge at once. You swing one leg over his hips before he can try to move too much, settling carefully over his thighs, your palms braced on either side of his shoulders so none of your weight hits his ribs.
For once, Bullseye looks struck.
You look down at him, at the swelling, the bruises, the blood cleaned from his mouth, the bandages you placed over skin you are now aching to touch.
A man who tried to die last night is now staring at you like your thighs around him might be a reason to reconsider.
"This okay?" you ask, voice soft, not to startle him.
Dex swallows as he nuzzles closer, as if it was even possible. "Better than okay."
"Hands stay where they won't pull stitches."
A faint smile, soft enough to pull your heartstrings, looks up at you as if you have given him an order he would follow through fire. "Yes, doctor."
Your fingers tighten in the sheet beside his hip at his words. His thumb keeps moving on the bare strip of your stomach like he has found a place warm enough to keep him, palm heavy with feverish want and restraint that looks painful on him.
When you reach for your shirt, his hand tightens at your thigh. "Slow… let me see."
You almost laugh at the nerve of him. When the shirt drags up your ribs, his eyes follow every inch as if the fabric itself has offended him by hiding you this long. You pull it over your head and toss it to your back. Your bra is plain, worn from too many overnight shifts, and the fact that he looks at it like lace from some altar makes heat crawl over your cheeks. "Say something," you murmur, fingers hovering near the clasp.
Dex's mouth parts, then closes again. The split along the lower one shines where he has worried it open with every kiss. "I'm trying to think like a man with blood left in his head."
"That bad?"
His thumb brushes under the curve of your breast, barely grazing the band of your bra. "Worse."
You unhook it before the embarrassment can make you hesitate. The straps slip down your arms, and Dex goes still. Your breasts fall free, nipples already tight from his earlier touch, and the look on his face makes you feel naked in a deeper place than skin. He reaches up with both hands, then winces at the pull across his ribs. His frustration flashes sharp in his jaw.
"Let me come to you," you offer.
He gives a tiny shake of his head, annoyed at himself. "I hate this."
"You hate being cared for."
"I hate having hands and not able to use them."
That almost makes you smile. You shift closer, one hand cupping the back of his head, other hand cupping your breast and guiding him towards it. "Then use your mouth."
Dex groans like that instruction broke him. His lips close around your nipple, careful for all of two seconds before the pull turns needy. His tongue works over you, slow at first, then firmer when your hips shift against his. He makes a sound into your skin, less like hunger, more comfort, like he has found some impossible warmth in you and intends to live there now.
One of his hands finds your waist. The other slides around to your ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh he can reach. He cannot pull you hard without hurting himself, so he holds you in place and sucks like he needs the taste of you to steady him.
"Dex," you breathe, your hand tightening in his hair. His eye lifts without his mouth leaving you. "That's... yeah. Keep doing that."
He answers by drawing you deeper into his mouth, cheeks hollowing with a careful pull that sends a wet, aching spark down between your legs. The sound you make embarrasses you, and he hears it. Feels it. His hand slides lower, greedy over the curve of your ass. When you rock against him, his cock presses thick and hard under the loose pants you put on him hours earlier.
He releases your nipple with a soft sound, mouth shining. "Take these off me."
"Demanding, are we?"
His gaze drags up to meet yours. "Please. I need you closer, and these are in my way."
That is worse than anything filthy he could have said. Your fingers go to his waistband, tugging carefully, your focus split between wanting him and watching the tight pinch around his mouth whenever his ribs object. He helps as much as he can, lifting his hips an inch, hissing through his teeth. His cock slips free against his stomach, hard, already wet at the tip.
You stare for half a second too long. Even when he's injured, Dex notices everything. "Still want to scold me?"
"Constantly," you say, hating the softness in it, and wrap your hand around him.
His laugh turns into a groan, head dropping back against the wall while your thumb spreads the wetness at his tip down his shaft. He is warm in your hand, heavy, alive. The thought makes your throat ache, so you lean in and kiss him instead, messy and careful at once, your bare chest pressed near his bandages, your fingers stroking him until his hips twitch. "Stop moving," you whisper against his mouth.
"I barely moved."
"You moved enough." Your fingers don't stop their graze on his cock.
"I missed you." His voice comes apart on the last word. "Grant me a little mercy."
You rise onto your knees instead of answering the smarter way, tugging at your pants with one impatient hand while the other stays braced near his shoulder. The fabric catches at your knees, and for one stupid second you almost laugh. This is so ungraceful, far from the kind of fantasy you would have let yourself have about him. Dex does not laugh. His gaze follows the slow drag of your pants down your thighs like he is watching something holy and obscene at once. By the time you kick them off near the foot of the cot, your underwear is damp enough to cling, and his fingers flex against your hips like he is fighting the urge to help. "Those too."
"You're very annoying for a man who can barely sit upright, you know?"
"Please." There's just desperation.
You push your underwear down just enough at first, suddenly shy under his gaze, then give up and pull them off completely. Your slick coats your fingers when you touch yourself, and Dex's mouth parts like the sight has taken the last good thought from his head.
He watches entranced while you drag that wetness over his cock, making the slide easier, making a filthy shine of both of you. His hands flex against your hips, then still when you lower yourself over him.
The first stretch steals the words from both of you. You sink slowly, one hand braced on the wall over his shoulder, the other gripping his upper arm where the muscle tenses under your palm. Dex looks wrecked before you are even halfway down. His mouth hangs open, eyes fixed on your face, then dropping to where his cock disappears into you, then come back up as if he needs to see you take him more than he needs air. "Too much?" he asks.
Lowering anothet inch, you shake your head, thighs already trembling from the angle. "Just — just let me take my time."
"I'm yours," he says. "Take all of it."
The words do terrible things to you. You sink the rest of the way, cunt closing around him in hot, slick pulses.
Dex's hands clamp down on your ass with a force that almost breaks through his weakness. His forehead falls against your sternum. He breathes there, mouth brushing your skin, then he turns his face and sucks one breast back between his lips while you start to ride him.
The cot creaks under. Your thighs burn almost immediately, cramped from sleep in the chair and the span of his hips beneath yours. Still, you lift and sink, taking him deeper each time.
Dex tries to stay still. You feel the fight in him. His palms keep sliding under your ass, helping you rise, helping you drop, giving you just enough strength to keep moving without letting his ribs tear at him.
Then he thrusts up like he can't stop himself. A sharp little cry leaves you, pleasure striking so deep your knees almost give. Dex makes a pained sound in the same second, and your hand flies to his shoulder "Do that again and I swear I'll chain you back to the bed."
His face is tight, sweat shining at his temple. "I can take this."
"You are actively proving the opposite."
"Please." He says it into your breast, lips brushing the skin as he speaks, hands still cupping your ass. "Let me help. Sitting still while you do everything hurts worse."
Your scolding dies half-formed. If there's a tease, you could've gone through with it. But there's only need. Nodding your head against him, you let his hands guide you again.
He lifts as much as he can with his arms, careful of his side, and you ride the motion, cunt sliding down his cock with a wet sound that makes both of you shudder. His mouth finds your nipple again, sucking harder, and you feel him everywhere, under your skin, in your thighs, between your ribs. "I'm close," you tell him.
His hand leaves your ass, searching between your bodies. But when he twists wrong, pain catches him. You grab his wrist and press it back to your hip. "No. I'll do it."
"I want to make you cum."
"You are." You touch your clit with slick fingers and circle it the way you need, riding him in short, deep rolls. "Just stay with me. That's what I need."
His head drops back against the wall, watching your hand move, watching his cock fill you, then watches your face break open around pleasure. "Look at me. P-please. Let me see you."
When your eyes find his, your orgasm hits you you hard enough to turn your thighs useless, cunt clenching around him in tight, wet pulls.
Dex curses softly, hands locking on your ass as he spills inside you, hot and endless, body going rigid beneath yours while he tries to keep from thrusting. You keep your mouth against his, breathing into him until the shaking eases.
He says something too low for you to catch.
"What?"
His eye opens, glassy and spent. "Mine."
Your fingers slide along his jaw, careful around the bruising. "You don't get to say that unless you stay alive."
"I'll stay alive." The answer comes fast, hoarse, almost angry with how badly he means it.
Before you can respond, he catches the wrist of the hand you used on your clit and brings your fingers to his mouth. His lips close around them, sucking you off your own skin with a slow hunger that makes you clench again around his softening cock.
Like he cannot bear another second apart, he pulls you down and kisses you, your taste on his tongue, his hand weak but certain at the back of your neck. His pulse slams under your palm where it's holding onto his neck. Alive. Alive. Alive.
Getting off him is slow and messy. His cum slides down your thigh while you stand naked beside the cot.
Dex watches with a dazed, almost helpless look that follows you even when you grab a warm cloth. You sit beside him and clean his cock first, gentle around oversensitive skin, and he inhales like this care is harder to take than the sex. "I can do that," he mutters.
"You are injured. Shut up." You continue your path down his thighs.
"You like telling me what to do."
"I like keeping you alive." You check the bandage at his side next, still naked, still dripping, fingers clinical even while his gaze keeps dropping to the mess he left between your thighs. "Looks okay. Nothing opened."
When you clean yourself, he watches your hand move between your thighs with a frown that is almost offended. "That should be me."
"You can do that when you aren't fighting for your life."
His eye lifts to yours, begging, exhausted. "Next time?"
"Next time." Next time means he's planning on staying.
Your phone buzzes, the sound cutting through the moment. One small vibration against the metal cabinet, and Dex already knows. His eye shifts before yours does, tired and sharp at the same time, like the rest of him is sinking under but that sharp little blade in him still knows how to lift its head. "Matt," he says.
Offering him a bottle of water, you pick up your phone. Sure enough it is Matt.
"Tell him I didn't vanish." The bottle is unopened at his hands.
Sighing, you grab it from him, uncap and press it to his lips. Dex looks at you stunned, almost offended that you're holding a bottle to his mouth. "Drink."
Whatever response that was about to spill from his lips is interrupted by another buzz of your phone, currently on the cot beside him.
Dex's eyes drop to the screen. Bruised, naked under the too-thin blanket, barely keeping himself awake, and still he finds the one thing in the room pulling your attention away from him. "Persistent," he rasps.
"You're one to talk." The bottle stays at his mouth until he takes one grudging swallow, then another. His throat works, lashes lowering for a second.
The phone buzzes again.
Dex's mouth leaves the bottle. "Just — just reply him."
You pick up the phone with a sigh, and type back a response.
Still here. Stable.
Dex's eye tracks every letter. "That's all?"
"You want a performance review?"
His almost-smile tugs at the torn corner of his mouth. "Five stars. Charming. Didn't vanish."
You set the phone facedown beside his hip and lift the bottle again. "One more sip."
He groans, but drinks. This time he doesn't look offended. When a drop slips from the corner of his mouth, you wipe it with your thumb before thinking better of it. Dex catches your wrist before you can pull back. His grip has almost no strength left, but he holds you like letting go is the worst thing that could happen. "I behaved."
Just two words, like that wounded dog setting its head down because it has run out of places, but has finally found home. Your eyes sting so fast it's embarrassing. You settle your palm against his cheek. "Yes, you did."
Matt's reply comes through, unseen and ignored.
Dex's eyes close as he nuzzles deeper into your palm, your wrist still trapped in his loose hold. And all you can think is, stay.
MY MASTERLIST
EXTRAS. you can tell i almost gave up in the end. also… my man is so puppy dog. prove me wrong…
tags: fluff, obsession, toxic relationship dynamics, emotional dependency, dex is not good but he tries for you, written with fbi!dex in mind
———
Dex is very competent. This is something he takes pride in, and he sees it as one of the primary ways he brings value to your life and makes himself important to you. He does not need you to cook and clean and organize his life for him. He remembers all of your appointments and plans. He notices if you’ve forgotten to take your meds or if you’ve skipped a meal, and he will correct these problems with his usual swift efficiency.
He drives. Always. He’s a bit of a control freak when it comes to cars and gets anxious if you ever manage to relegate him to the passenger seat. You pull up to his apartment and he’s opening your car door, walking you around to the passenger side, and climbing behind the wheel himself. It probably goes without saying but he’s an excellent driver, it’s like he can telepathically predict the movement of every other car around him and he operates vehicles like they’re an extension of his own body. Smooth and frictionless.
If you’re going out without him (which he, uh. doesn’t love) he prefers to drop you off and pick you up. It minimizes the time you spend away from him and gives him an excuse to know exactly where you are and exactly when he’ll see you again. It also gives him an excuse to be texting and calling you asking when you want him to come pick you up. Are you sure you don’t want him to come early? It’s late and you sound kind of tired. No, he doesn’t mind at all, ha ha, just let him come get you and you can come back to his place and curl up under the blankets with him and read until bed. Please. :)
Bed time for him is no later than 11 pm, by the way. If he’s waking up at 7 he wants a solid 8 hours of sleep, and he wants you under the blankets with him. If you’re late getting into bed with him he’ll sort of hover around you until you get the hint.
When you’re sleeping together he will always be touching you in some way. Even if you’re not cuddled up against each other he wants a hand on your waist, his forehead tucked into your shoulder, feet touching under the sheets, just something. And you cannot escape it. If you roll over in your sleep he’s following you across the bed, and if you move away from him on purpose he will look at you with those sad wet puppy eyes. It genuinely hurts his feelings.
Just go ahead and sign up for a Life360 account with him. Or any other location sharing app. It will greatly ease his anxiety and he would just find another way to keep tabs on you anyway. Sometimes he keeps the app open next to him while he’s preoccupied with other things, just glancing at your location on the map every so often, even if he already knows where you are.
You’ll have to establish strong boundaries around your private life, because he feels like you should have absolutely no secrets from him. Like, what do you mean he can’t read your diary? Why did you leave the room to take that call with your friend? You’re texting her about a breakup she’s going through and he wants to be over your shoulder reading all of it. No sense of privacy.
Please note that this does not apply to him lmao, there are many things about himself and his past that he would prefer you don’t know about. He worries that you would think less of him or leave him if you found out about some of the more violent things he’s done. He desperately wants you to think highly of him, but at the same time he wants someone to see every ugly part of him and love him anyway. He doesn’t know how to manage these two feelings in the beginning, and will probably try to hide those uglier parts of himself until he inevitably makes a mistake and ends up confessing everything to you at once. If you stay with him anyway and assure him that it hasn’t scared you off, it will be a huge trust-building moment for him.
Clingy. So clingy. He’s always touching you in some way. A hand on your leg while you’re sitting on the couch. A foot pressed up against yours under the table while you’re at a restaurant. A hand on your back while you’re walking. You tease him about his “separation anxiety”, but you both know it’s true. You go to the bathroom to wash your face and he’s sitting on the tub, watching. He wants to be involved in anything you’re doing, chopping onions in the kitchen, going to the gym, reading quietly on the couch. Anything.
He would be the only significant relationship in your life if he could. He doesn’t like your friends, although he tries to be courteous with them for you. Seeing your attention directed at anyone else makes him anxious and insecure, and he can get moody if he thinks you’re doing too much of it (his threshold for “too much” is very low). Dex doesn’t have friends. You are the only person who really means anything to him, and he feels like he should be the same for you. The two of you against the world.
His fear of abandonment is easily triggered and his mood can flip on a dime. He can get really ugly when his mood takes a turn for the worst, accusing you of not loving him, saying that you’re going to leave him like everyone else has, crying, yelling. He can be manipulative and tends to resort to guilt-tripping. Bringing up how lonely he was before you, how much he needs you, how awful he feels when you do whatever behavior he’s spiraling about this time. He cries a lot. You will need to have strong boundaries and frank conversations about all of this to stand up for yourself.
He is a very self-centered person, by which I mean his own needs are front-and-center of his mind at all times. Dex has not had healthy relationships, romantic, platonic, or familial. For most of his life, if he wasn’t looking out for himself, no one was. Learning to care for another person genuinely and not just for what they can do for him will be a learning experience and a big hurdle in your relationship.
He seems very kind and generous at the beginning of your relationship, but he’s motivated primarily by fear that you’ll leave him or find him unworthy. He’s trying to do what he thinks a partner should and what he thinks you want him to do, but at its core it’s self-serving behavior. He doesn’t know how to care for another person earnestly. He wants to, and he’s trying very hard, but it will take time and patience.
He does not like having his photo taken. The first time you pull out your phone and ask him to take a picture with you, he’s visibly uncomfortable and unsure of what to do with himself, although he does try for your sake. The next week, when he’s at your place and sees the photo printed and stuck to your fridge with a kitschy magnet, he changes his mind. He’ll let you take as many pictures as you want, even if he still looks like he’s grimacing in half of them.
He starts keeping photos of you too, many of them taken without your knowledge. His favorites are the ones of you doing totally mundane things. You, curled up under his sheets. Folding socks on the floor. Brushing your teeth in your bathroom mirror. Sipping on a coffee with your friends while you didn’t know he was watching you through the window. He looks at them when you’re away.
Dex is awkward. His usual behavior is a mask he puts on to try to meet whatever standard is expected of him at the moment. The more time he spends with you, the more you start to see behind the mask. He can be stilted. He makes odd remarks and observations. He has a strange sense of humor. Embarrassment strikes him when he first realizes he’s slipped up, but when you respond with a smile and acceptance it feels like a weight off of his shoulders. He can let down the burden of performing around you.
He can also have a mean sense of humor. He often comes out with things that are shocking or graphic. Someone cuts him off in traffic and he says “this guy should be shot on sight.” The barista is a little short with you and he mimes throwing a quarter through her head when she’s not looking. You’re pretty sure he’s joking. He wants you to laugh and joke with him, for the two of you to be mischievous and playful together. If you can match his humor, he feels even closer to you, like the two of you share a language that no one else is in on.
If you give him a compliment he will remember it forever. You tell him he looks good after a haircut and he’s making sure you see him after every cut from now on. You say he looks good in that quarter-zip and he’s wearing it twice as often. You think black looks best on him? He wears black every day now. He won’t buy a cologne unless you approve of it first.
Dex has never been preoccupied with his looks. At least, not beyond looking professional and appropriate for whatever environment he’s in. He knows he’s good looking, but hearing it never really mattered to him until you were the one saying it. He loves hearing you call him handsome and pretty. He just wants you to look at him and enjoy what you see.
He needs a lot of validation and he’ll ask for it if he’s feeling especially insecure. “Are you mad at me?” “You still like having me around, right?” No matter how many times you reassure him, he can’t quite bring himself to believe it.
Dex loves being loved by you. He loves to hear you say it. Notices every way you show it, no matter how small. Keeps every note you write him, every sweet text, every gift you give him, no matter how insignificant. They’re all proof that you care about him. You’re the only person who ever has.
Once he gets a taste of affection from you he is both starved for it and terrified of it. You made him realize what was missing in his life, how empty and miserable he was without love and touch. The thought of losing it, of losing you, makes him feel like he can’t breathe. The slightest sense that you’re pulling away from him has him clinging even more desperately. He cannot lose you. He doesn’t know if he would survive it.
He gets attached fast. Very fast. One date together and his every thought is consumed by you. A week in and he’s sure you’re the one. He’ll rush into relationship milestones like saying “I love you,” clearing out a drawer in his dresser for you, asking you to move in with him. If you want to take things slower, you’ll have to be very gentle and reassuring when you bring it up, because if he feels like you’re rejecting any part of him he will start to spiral.
He loves it when you get possessive over him. Loves it even more when you show your love for him in strange ways. You text him one evening “I miss you. I want to crawl inside your rib cage and live there,” and he spends the rest of the week thinking about it. Screenshots it and looks at it when you’re apart.
He does not judge you for any of your odd habits or behaviors. In his mind it truly is the two of you against the world. If you fidget a lot, have a weird sense of humor, a strange hobby, an unusual laugh, he takes it all in without any hesitation. He wants to learn every secret and hidden part of you, especially the things you might be embarrassed of or try to keep from others. He wants to know you fully, in a way that no one else does.
He will go through your phone and your diary and anything else you keep private information in. Especially if he feels like you don’t want him seeing it. What are you hiding from him? ___Why would you hide it from him? He needs to know all of it. He does not respect your privacy in the least. If you catch him and bring it up he’ll just get better at hiding it.
Dex doesn’t really have hobbies, but he would love to incorporate you into his routine. You want to start working out? He’ll write up a plan for you and show you how it’s done. Teaching you proper form at the gym, or spotting for you if you already know. Going on runs together, pacing you, pushing you to do your best. He loves doing the most mundane things together like meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking side by side and eating the meals you prepared together. His routine is the foundation of his life and he would deeply appreciate your efforts to fit into it and accommodate it.
Dex is very intelligent. You start picking his brain about the things he’s knowledgeable of, advice about the skills he’s mastered, and it fills him with pride. He’s got experience with the military and the FBI, he stays up to date on current events, he’s obsessive about his fitness and nutrition, and he was a straight A student. He’s got a razor-sharp mind and plenty of expertise, and he loves feeling useful to you and like you see him as someone worthy of respect.
He likes it a little too much when you hurt him. Playfully biting him, squeezing him a little too hard, swatting at him when he’s bothering you, kissing him with too much force. He’s vibrating with the intensity of the feelings it digs up in him. He wants you to do it harder and more often but he’s not sure how to bring it up, so he’ll find ways to bait you into it, like wrapping an arm around your neck to tempt you into sinking your teeth into the muscle. He’ll offer to teach you self-defense so he has an excuse to tell you to hit him. He just wants to be sure you’re doing it right, you know? That you’ve got the technique and the force down. He hopes you don’t notice that he’s just a little too into it.
He doesn’t really get empathy. He tries for you, though. God, does he try. The experience of empathy is a very logical process for him, trying to map out your feelings and reactions in his mind. It can come across as mechanical and detached, but he really is trying to understand you and make you feel better. It will take a lot of trial and error, and you’ll have to be patient with him and offer lots of gentle feedback to help him improve.
He struggles with insomnia. Sometimes the medication helps, sometimes it doesn’t. He lies awake and focuses on your peaceful face, the rise and fall of your chest, the warmth of your body next to him. Sometimes, when you wake up, he’s already awake and watching you. He doesn’t try to hide it.
He tends to make excessive eye-contact with you. On top of his general lack of social skills, it’s just his fixation on you and his need to know your every thought and emotion. He’s constantly trying to gauge your feelings towards him and whether or not he’s done something wrong.
He will watch your favorites shows and movies and read your favorite books to better understand you. Especially if you’re the type to annotate your books. It’s like a window into your mind. (He never marks up his books it does trigger his issue with obsessive neatness to see you do it, but he’ll tolerate it for the sake of reading what you have to say)
He gets emotional when you shower him in affection. You press kisses all over his face, his forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks and chin. Soft and adoring. His eyes are stinging with tears before you’re even done. He didn’t know how starved he was for gentle touch until you gave it to him, and now he craves it. He won’t ask for it with words but he’ll stare at you with big, wet eyes until you get the hint. Nudging your shoulder with his nose. Brushing your fingers with his. He melts when you finally give him what he needs.
Being with you is exhilarating, comforting, destabilizing, and terrifying all at once for him. He’s never been the most important person in someone’s life before. He’s never had someone he could build a life with, and for most of his life he didn’t think it was even in the cards for him. He needs you like he needs air in his lungs and that’s a lot of power for someone to have over him. He struggles to believe that you mean it when you say you love him, that you’re in it for the long haul, that you trust him and want him even with all of his flaws. He desperately wants all of it to be true, but everyone he’s ever cared about has left him. He knows he’s not an easy person to be with. He just hopes you think he’s worth the effort.
let the light in | benjamin poindexter x gn!reader
a drabble for @ivyfantasize . ask and you shall receive <3
1.2k
Dex comes home and the first thing he wants is you.
tags: drabble, fluff, domestic life, Dex on a healing arc, reader and Dex are disgustingly in love
——————
Friday evenings in New York are a bustle of noise and energy. Cabs rumbling down busy streets, the yellow light of the street lamps casting their warm haze over every moving body that crosses beneath them. The noise and the light filter gently through your apartment window, mingling with the soft sound of your music as you scrape onions into a sizzling pan. Over the popping and crackling of the oil, you hear the latch of your front door click and open, and a smile tugs at your mouth before you even see the familiar shape brushing through the doorway.
Even a year into your relationship, Dex still looks at you like he’s relieved to find you here, inside of the apartment you share together, waiting for him. His eyes find yours immediately and he locks the door neatly behind him before moving straight to you.
“Baby,” you greet him from the stove. He slides into place behind you, hands coming up to rest on your hips as you nuzzle into his cheek.
“Missed you,” he says, his breath warm against your neck.
“Missed you, too,” you answer.
Your Dex is a man of habit. He loves his routines, his rituals, and this familiar dance is one of them. The soft snick of the latch is your cue to begin. When Dex enters the apartment the first thing he wants is the heat of your body under his palms. Your scent in his nose. Your gentle affirmation to remind him that you’re here, you love him, you still want him.
In a few minutes he’ll peel away from you long enough to shed his jacket and his badge. His jeans and button-up will be replaced with sweats and a t-shirt, and the two of you will find a way to pass the evening as you curl into each other on the couch.
For now, he watches as you stir garlic into your simmering pan. The fragrance blooms rich and savory.
“I was thinking about you all day,” he says. His chest rumbles pleasantly against your back as he speaks.
“Oh, really?” you say. “You got a crush on me or something?”
He huffs and you feel his mouth curl into a smile against your skin. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I got a crush on you.”
You curl your fingers into his hair. “I was thinking about you, too.”
For all you’ve done to prove otherwise, there’s still a part of Dex that can’t believe you mean it when you say you’ll be here forever. That you love him more than anything and that your love won’t dry up and disappear one day. Over and over again, he wants to hear you say it. Over and over, you get to tell him.
“I thought about you on my commute, when that guy showed up on the train again.”
“The one with his cat in a backpack?” Dex asks.
“Yeah,” you say wryly. “That one.”
“Should be illegal,” Dex says as you pour a can of tomato sauce into the pan. “It’s animal cruelty or something.”
The first time you two had seen him last month, you joked that you were going to do the same with Dex. Tuck him into your bag and carry him everywhere with you. He said he was more of a guard dog than a scruffy orange cat. You said he was more like a lap dog with separation anxiety. The flash of mischief in his eyes was your only warning before he barked, a perfect imitation of a yappy little dog a grandmother might own, and you shh’d him furiously as both the man and the cat shot you disapproving looks.
With your sauce simmering on the stove, you turn to face Dex and take him into your arms properly.
“I thought about you on my lunch break,” you say, swaying gently with the rhythm of your music, Dex’s body moving stiffly with yours. “When I opened my lunch bag and found a protein bar I definitely didn’t pack myself.”
Dex gives you a lopsided smile. “You never pack enough to eat.”
“I didn’t realize you were inspecting my lunches in the morning,” you say, and to that he almost looks guilty. Dex’s monitoring habits are a hurdle you two have long since crossed. He wants to know when you’re leaving, where you’re going, who you’ll be with. If you remembered your medication, if you drank enough water, and apparently, if you’ve packed enough food for the day. You allow his micromanaging — within reason. And when it becomes too much, you let him know in gentle words and he takes a deep breath and gives you the space you ask for. Even if he has to remind himself that you still love him.
“I just want to be sure you’re all right,” he says quietly.
You take his face into your hands. The faintest remnants of his body wash remain, the scent clear and crisp. His jaw is prickly with barely-there stubble under your palms, and you imagine sitting him down in the bathroom and swiping a razor over the soft skin in the morning. He likes it when you take care of him. You’re the first who’s done it.
“I thought about you coming home,” you say, faces close enough that your breaths intermingle. “Thought about making dinner with you. Holding you. I was waiting for it all day.”
The hands at your waist tighten and Dex’s throat bobs as he swallows down his emotion. The silence hangs for a moment as you give him time to speak.
“I’m always waiting for you,” he says at last. “I feel like I was waiting my whole life for you.”
And now it’s your turn to blink at the emotion that stings behind your eyes. So often Dex says things like this, confessions so sweet and genuine it makes you ache with affection. His love and his loyalty are not bestowed freely, and to be the one he chooses to give them to is a rare and precious gift. Others have rejected it. Exploited and abused it. You guard it like the treasure it is, tending to it and nurturing it as often as it needs. With time, you’ve seen how it grows.
You press your mouth to his slow and deep. And again. And again.
The blare of a timer interrupts the two of you, and Dex reaches past your body to turn it off. He stares at it as if it’s offended him, and you laugh and press one more kiss to his cheek.
“Grab the plates?” you ask. “I’ll stir the pasta in. I’m starving.”
He leaves you with a lingering hand on your waist and you hear him digging in the cabinets as the last pieces of your meal come together. Tomorrow you both will be free from work. You’ll make coffee, wander the grocery store, and find an excuse to spend the rest of the day doing nothing in each other’s presence.
Tonight you’ll sit with him at the table and watch him eat the food you made for him. You’ll drink from the cup he cleaned for you. You’ll settle into the rhythm of your evening together with his constant presence beside you.
You’ll crawl under the blankets and tell him that you love him, and he’ll nose into your shoulder until you tell him again. As many times as he wants, you’ll tell.
tags: violence, death, harassment (not from dex), toxic relationship dynamics, obsession, reader is a bit of a freak, dex being soggy and pathetic
————————
“If I knew you’d look so good in that quarter-zip, I would have brought you out here ages ago.”
Dex flusters at your compliment, a pink stain rising to his cheeks. Your reward from him is a shy smile, small and lopsided. His fingers tug at the zipper of the aforementioned quarter-zip, a simple black thing that hugs his chest and the broad line of his shoulders.
“Thank you,” he says. Months of dating still haven’t acclimated him to the warmth of your attention, and his bashfulness is still as charming as it was in the beginning. You lean back on your elbows, grass tickling your skin, and let the sun warm you with its fading light. This park has been a favorite escape of yours. Just outside the city and tucked up against the riverbank, it’s offered you a quiet refuge for as long as you’ve lived here, and now you’ve shared this little piece of yourself with Dex. A quiet place for both of you to enjoy — together.
“You look pretty,” Dex says, and you know before you even turn to him that he’s been staring at you this whole time. “The sun is on your face. You — you’re glowing.”
“Thank you, baby,” you say, twining your fingers with his. You turn your attention to the river and the sun dipping below the skyline of the city beyond. By the bank, a man walks with his dog. The air is cool and quiet until the bright ring of a phone cuts through the silence.
Dex tugs his hand away from yours and seizes the phone from his pocket, eyebrows scrunching as he glares at the screen.
“Shit,” he says. “It’s work.” His thumb hesitates over the answer button.
“It’s ok, Agent Poindexter. I’ll wait here while you do your FBI thing.” You give him a reassuring smile and he returns it, squeezing your hand one last time before climbing to his feet. The low tone of his voice fades as he moves out of earshot, and you’re left alone in the grass.
Minutes pass, and a glance over your shoulder reveals Dex with arms crossed and shoulders tight as he speaks into the phone. Something stressful has come up, or a last-minute call into work, perhaps. You climb to your feet and wander closer to the bank. Whatever it is, you’re sure to get the run down when he’s finished.
You hear it before you see it — gravel crunching under heavy feet from beyond the crop of trees to your left. A man emerges from the tree line, walking along the path that hugs the bank. He catches you assessing him, eyes locking with yours, and a weight settles deep in your gut. The man is moving towards you.
“Out here alone?” he asks.
You offer a tight-lipped smile. “No,” you say. “I’m just waiting for my boyfriend.”
“Don’t see no boyfriend,” the man says. He stops at a too-close distance, and you cross your arms over your chest, turning your body away from his.
“He’ll be here in a minute,” you say shortly. “I’m just waiting for him.”
The man takes another step toward you. You take a step back.
“So you can’t talk to nobody?” he says. “Or are you just too pretty to talk to me?”
You turn to walk away from him, to find Dex yourself, but the man steps in front of you in one smooth motion, cutting off your path of escape.
“Hey, nothing wrong here,” he says, advancing into your space again. “I’m just trying to get your number.”
He’s too close, and moving closer. He raises a hand like he’s going to grab at you, and you take a sharp breath, you’re going to yell —
Thunk. The man freezes. His mouth parts stupidly and his hand — the hand that was reaching for you — moves, trembling, to his temple, where a pen has lodged into his skull. His fingers fumble around it, as if in disbelief, as if he doesn’t understand what’s just happened, and in your shock you haven’t quite grasped it either. Blood sprays down his pale face. He collapses into the soft grass.
His mouth opens and closes, opens and closes, breaths short and ragged. His body twitches once, twice, muscles locking up in a violent spasm, and then he stills. Eyes open. Afraid. Dark blood and clear fluid pool around that soft, green grass, and the man’s chest does not rise again.
He’s dead. You watched him die. Your heartbeat is a pounding thud in your ears, and you turn, dazed, to the man you know is waiting there.
Behind you, Dex stands like a wild animal. His wide eyes are not on the body, but on you. You stare at each other in taut silence. For one delirious moment, you think you could laugh. Dex — your Dex — launched a pen like a bullet through that man’s skull. Dex killed him. Killed him, and in his eyes, you see fear. He raises his hands slowly. Placatingly. Like one sudden movement will spook you and send you running to the road. He says your name.
“The body,” you blurt out. “The river. Put it in the river.”
All at once, your senses come back to you. You’re in the park. A public park. You glance frantically around for anyone nearby, anyone who could have seen it happen. The man with the dog. The walking paths. Did anyone see? Are there cameras here? You rush to the body and the bright patch of red soaking the dirt. Dex is still staring at you as you crouch beside it.
“Now, Dex,” you snap, voice low and hoarse. He’s just looking at you. Just standing there and looking at you with fear in his face.
“Yeah,” he rasps. “Yeah. Ok. The river.”
The two of you haul the body down to the riverbank, behind the crop of trees, over stones and brush out of sight from the path. You dump it clumsily into the water and it sinks into the murky depths, disappearing in the current as if it was never there at all. In days or weeks it will float back up to surface, bloated with gas and rot. But by then the two of will be long gone. You scrub your hands in river water until they’re pink and stinging and clean of his blood.
Beside you, the pen rests on a mossy rock. Dark blood clings to its bottom half, wrenched free from its victim with a wet squelch. Federal Bureau of Investigation, it reads, letters engraved into the silver. You offer it to Dex, who has said nothing since the two of you began the disposal. That animal-panic is still in his eyes, and his eyes are still trained on you.
“Throw it,” you say softly. “As far as you can.” He takes the pen from your fingers and hurls it into the water.
——
The sky is dark on the drive back into the city. Dex’s hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel, and when the car finally rolls to a stop, you look up to see that he’s brought you back to his apartment. The entryway is dark and quiet when he lets you in, and the sterile world of his home feels almost like a different reality from the dark waters you’ve just left behind. You move like a ghost to his room, on legs that seem to carry you with a will of their own. Your bag thugs to the ground and your jacket follows it, before a dark silhouette blots out the light cast from the open door.
Dex stands in the doorway. He is a shadow illuminated by the hall light behind him, his face hazy and obscured. He says your name again, strained.
“I couldn’t let him hurt you. He was - he reached for you, he was scaring you, and I couldn’t let him touch you.” His fingers flex and open, a nervous tick. The room is cold silent. Not even the rush of traffic outside.
“I know, Dex,” you reply. The silence drags only for a moment as Dex realizes you’re not going to say anything else. He takes a step toward you, out of the harsh backlight of the hallway and into the dimly lit room.
“I was protecting you,” he says. “I’ll always, always protect you. Nothing else matters. You’re the only thing that matters, you’re the only person I love, your the only person who loves - who loves me, and I can’t - I had to -“ his breaths become shakey, rapid. He stops an arms-length away as if he’s afraid to come closer. In the space between you he raises a hand, palm up in request of your own. He wants you to touch him. To slot your fingers between his and tell him that everything will be all right. You don’t offer it to him.
“I know, Dex,” you say again. “I’m not mad. I just . . . I just want to sleep. I want to shower and go to bed.”
His hand falls to his side and his face crumples for a moment, desperate and close to tears. “Ok,” he says. “I can do that. We can shower.” He follows you to the bathroom and starts the shower as you strip in silence. The small space is tighter still with two bodies huddled inside of it, steam clinging to the tiles and water just hot enough to make you squirm. You don’t bother asking him to lower it. Dex’s eyes follow every move you make.
The familiar scent of his laundry detergent wraps around you as you curl into his sheets, and before you can shy away his body is sliding into bed behind yours. His chest is firm against your back. His arm snakes around your waist and presses you flush against him. Legs tangling, fingers curling into the worn fabric of your sleep shirt. You feel his breath stall against the bare skin of your neck, as if he’s going to speak.
“Don’t,” you say softly. “I don’t want to talk. Not right now. We can do it in the morning.”
Calloused hands clutch at the fat of your waist. He presses himself further, further into you.
“Ok,” he rasps. “In the morning.”
You fall asleep in the vise of his arms.
——
You wake with his limbs twisted up in yours. Bodies tangled in a sweaty knot, his breath warm against your neck. You are one half-turn away from slipping off the mattress, as if you shifted away from him in sleep and he chased you to the edge. His breath catches and you know he’s woken up, too. Dex always wakes when you do. A sixth sense that you used to joke about. You shift in his arms and he jolts up to rest on his elbow, his other hand worrying the sleeve of your shirt.
Somewhere in the river there’s a body, cold and bloodless. You swing your legs over the bed and Dex follows close behind. He’s a shadow at your back as you slink into the bathroom to splash your face with cool water. His anxiety is a dark cloud in the room, buzzing, clawing energy that surrounds you even without looking at his reflection in the mirror as you squeeze toothpaste onto a brush. He’s waiting for you to say something. But speaking about it makes it real, makes the man hovering behind you into someone you no longer know as well as you thought you did. A hidden facet of him has been revealed to you. Soon you will have to decide what you’ll do about it.
You make it into the kitchen before he cracks.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” he asks, weakly. “Are you mad at me?”
You force yourself to meet his stare. A fitful and sleepless night has carved lines under his eyes and made his skin blotchy red. He looks young and fearful. He looks like he could be sick.
“I’m not mad,” you answer. “I’m just . . . thinking.”
Dex sniffles. “I did it for you,” he says, voice wobbly. “To protect you. I would do anything for you. Anything. I need you so much it—it hurts.” He shuffles towards you with his palms up and open. You realize, not for the first time, that Dex is big. Tall. Broad shouldered. Intimidating.
But he’d never felt intimidating to you. Shouldn’t it have been obvious? Dex is a sniper with the FBI. He’s paid to kill. And he’s already confessed to you, between tears and wracking sobs, the truth of his violent childhood and the source of the shame that permeates his every waking moment. Of course he was capable of this. Of course. What were you thinking? That he was better? Changed? That he wouldn’t hurt anyone anymore — that he wouldn’t hurt you?
No. No, Dex would never. He loves you. He’s fiercely protective of you. He’s never, ever made you feel unsafe, not until . . . until now. Until last night.
The length of your silence must have been a few breaths too long, because Dex presses on, tears rolling down his red cheeks.
“I’m not good,” he says. “I’m not good like you are. I want to be, fuck, I’m trying to be, but I don’t care what I have to do to keep you safe.” He’s shuffled into your space again, his body a furnace next to yours. His fingers grip the fabric of your t-shirt.
“Please, please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Just please don’t leave me.”
It strikes you then. The truth of what Dex is feeling. All of the nerves, all of the shaking, the crying . . . Dex isn’t afraid of being caught. He’s not worried about the police or even shaken by the fact that not 10 hours ago, he took a human life. Dex is afraid that you’re going to leave him.
. . . Would you? You think of the body in the grass. Gasping. Twitching. He didn’t have to die. Dex could have scared him, or fought him, or just taken you away, but he put a pen through the man’s skull without a moment of hesitation, and apparently, without any remorse. It’s not the first time he’s done it. It may not be the last. What happens the next time he sees someone harassing you? What happens if he meets any of the people who’ve wronged you, the former friends, the exes? He’s violent. He’s dangerous. He’s . . .
He’s crying into your shoulder. Pitiful, gasping sobs that shake his big body as it’s folded over to curl into your warmth. A wet patch clings to your skin, tears and snot soaking the cotton of your shirt. When your hands rise to cup his face and lift his head to look at you, the movement is all muscle memory. Comforting him is second nature now, engrained in you like instinct. This is Dex. This is your baby.
“Oh, honey,” you coo. “It’s ok. Shhh, it’s ok. I’m not going anywhere.” You wipe the tears from his eyes, even as they’re immediately replaced by more.
He chokes on a sob, an attempt to gather himself enough to speak. “Y-yeah? Really?”
“I promise, baby. You know I would never leave you.”
Dex sighs then, a long exhale of relief, and takes the first full breath you’ve heard from him yet. “Thank you,” he says, sniffling. “Thank you, thank you,” each thanks punctuated with a kiss pressed to your face. He continues down your neck, mouth hungry over your skin, like he could swallow you whole. A wet trail follows the path of his lips. You run your fingers through his sweat-damp hair. Let him take what he needs.
No one saw. No one knows what happened. And when the news eventually reaches you — “did you hear? A body was found in the river” — you’re not going to watch Dex go to prison over the life of some creep. It was a mistake; one that no one needs to know about. He wants to be good. He’s trying. He just needs patience and love, and you’ll give it to him. The rest will sort itself out.
When he’s cried himself dry, you lead him to the table, sit him down in a chair and set a glass of cold water in front of him. You’ll make breakfast, go out on a run together. Get him back into his routine. Get him stable again. He takes a long sip of water, his breath evening out at last.
“I love you,” he says, eyes wide and rimmed with red.
“I love you, too,” you say and press a kiss into his hair. “So, so much.”
Dex has a life to get back to and a future with so much left to learn.
walk with me on this one . . . DDBA!Dex has erectile dysfunction. for sure. at least a little bit. that man was on so many medications, they had him on enough benzos to drop an elephant for 8 years and then Vanessa Fisk cuts him off cold turkey, he’s suicidal, depressed, and anxious. sometimes he just can’t get it up ok?
this does not bother him so much because it gives him an excuse to finger you until you come and then curl up against you and fall asleep without worrying about performing himself. he’s inexperienced and a little insecure about it, and I headcanon him to be on the ace spectrum, so he’s more than happy to just give you three orgasms and hear you tell him how good he makes you feel. he honestly does not need you to return the favor. he just wants to be useful to you.
however. when he is in the mood to come, or when you’re in the mood to make him come, it’s a very intimate experience that almost overwhelms him. you never pressure him to perform when he can’t or doesn’t want to. you never make him feel inadequate or disappointing when he struggles to get hard. you work him up slowly, gently, letting him take as much time as he needs and showering him in praise and affection. you kiss the tears off his cheeks when he finally does tip over that edge.
can't help but think about shaving dex's stubble during the shower and he can't help but get a shameless erection at you touching him :((
(18+)
omg :( taking a steamy shower with dex and offering to help him shave. turning his head to different angles while you work on shaving his stubble, so focused and completely oblivious to the battle he's fighting. every loving touch that shows you actually care is sending heat straight to his dick, every graze of your fingertips against his jaw only makes him throb harder. you're just being so gentle with him, and it turns him on so so much :(
it's only until you take a break to wash off the razor under the shower stream that you look down and notice the painfully hard boner he's sporting, cock sitting flushed against his abs, globs of pre dribbling down his shaft every now and then. "dex–" a suprised, but knowing smile grows on your face, and you're only more amused when you see his ears are a pretty pink at the tips. "m'sorry, baby, you were just– touching me... and-" he shakes his head in embarrassment, unable to come up with a good explanation as to why his cock is literally twitching from just you shaving him.
"it's okay" you shush, him hand snaking down between the two of your wet, bare bodies to close around his member, pulling a whine from him. "i'll take care of this, okay? how's that sound?" you coo, getting him to nod and bringing his head to rest on your shoulder, eyes closed in bliss, and also overwhelming love. "god– thank y'you baby" "love you" "always helping me..." he's whispering little praises and pressing reverent kisses to your shoulder as you jerk him off slowly, caring for him like no one has before.
he cums all over your tummy with a soft moan, hips bucking into your fist as he spurts the last drops of his warm, sticky release out. he lets you clean him up under the hot shower, he's in awe of just how much you love him, and just how much he loves you <3
