Hi! I am Adi and im a new writer to tumblr! This is a post containing the masterlist to all of my writing.
Please excuse any typos or grammatical mistakes as English is not my first language.
I am not sure how frequently I can update, but I will try my best. 💌
DISCLAIMER: I do not feel comfortable with writing NSFW stuff. I only write hurt/comfort, fluff and angst. I also do not use AI in my writing and strictly prohibit others from putting my work into any kind of AI system.
Do not repost or plagiarise.
(divider by @saradika)
Masterlist ♡
Or
You can also find what I write under the adi writes tag!
it is deeply unfortunate how common ai has become in the writing space on here, and truly on any website to do with fan fiction. please for the love of god, if you are going to write something, let it come from the heart. even if it's "shitty," or the grammar isn't the best, or it's not exactly how you want it to be, write it anyway.
i promise you will improve in your technique as time goes on, but using an ai to "clean up" your writing inherently makes whatever work you just put in null and void. i don't post on here, but i am a writer, so this isn't me bashing anyone, it is simply a gentle yet tempered suggestion. i can't stop people from using something that has become grossly accessible in less than two years, but i can implore people to not engage with it.
anyway, that's all. happy reading and happy writing! mwah
dex who holds your face and looks at you like you're the whole world, thumbing your tears away when you cry and try so hard to communicate whats wrong. dex who's always patient, loving, and never gets mad at you for taking a long time to express your feelings.
summary: prison was never going to stop Dex from finding you again.
who: Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter/Bullseye x Female!Murdock Reader
word count: 2.9k (i got carried away)
warnings: soulmate au, mentions of blood, injuries, break-in, imprisonment, emotional tension, and obsessive themes. If I have missed any please let me know!
divider by: @uzmacchiato
Glitch Series Masterlist
Next Chapter: I Can See You
“Wherever you stray, I follow…” — Willow by Taylor Swift
It was the uncomfortable pain in your shoulder that woke you from your restful sleep.
A pain that was no longer sharp, not like it was that night, but one that still lingers as a pinching, persistent ache that settles deep in your shoulder on cold and wet nights like tonight.
Rolling onto your back, you lie there for a moment, staring at the ceiling and breathing through the pain as you gently massage three fingers against the ache, hoping it will pass and you won’t have to leave the coziness of your warm bed.
Feeling the rough scar beneath your fingers, you lie there trying to ignore the memories of how you got it, but when the sirens pass your apartment building, you find yourself slipping back into your memories of that day.
The day your life changed forever.
You, Foggy, and Karen had just left Josie’s Bar to check on Cafaro when the loud crack of a gunshot filled the air and pain hits you from behind. It rips through your right shoulder, taking your breath away before you fully understand what’s happened, as the force of it sends you stumbling forward.
But what made you stiffen was the blood splatter on Karen’s face as you realised that the bullet had exited your shoulder and hit Foggy, who had collapsed onto the ground as people around you screamed in horror, and for a few seconds you froze in pain and panic before adrenaline kicked in and you were moving before your mind caught up.
Yelling for someone to call an ambulance, you press your hands firmly against Foggy’s wound, willing your powers to stop healing you and to heal Foggy.
To keep him breathing, and to keep him stable. To keep him with you.
You were so lost in your panic that you didn’t even notice when Karen put her hands against your shoulder until she pressed down hard enough to make you gasp in pain as she tried to keep as much of your blood where it should be.
“Stay with me.” Her voice broke as each word filled with more panic. “Both of you, please.”
But you don’t answer. You can’t.
Not when you're forcing everything you have into Foggy. Not when you can hear your brother fighting on the roof of Josie’s Bar, knowing that he’s listening to Foggy’s heartbeat, to your blood dripping onto the street.
With your body begging to heal the hole in your shoulder, your vision blurs as you push through the pain, putting everything you have into Foggy. You hadn’t even realised that you'd been repeating the same things over and over.
“Keep breathing. Just keep breathing. Stay with me.”
But the strain keeps building, becoming sharper with each passing moment, when a heavy impact lands behind you three. Your breath catches as your powers flicker for just a moment as you silently pray that you won’t lose them both tonight. Not Foggy and Matt.
Not your brothers.
Breathing deeply, you steady your hands, channel your powers, and check that Foggy is still breathing as the paramedics that have just arrived rush to help before you turn your head and let out a sigh of relief.
Not Matt.
You slouch into Karen's waiting arms, your pain finally catching up with you as you fully turn to look at Benjamin Poindexter on the ground, barely conscious, and as you make eye contact, it happens.
The pleasant burning feeling on your left collarbone. The sign you've been waiting nearly your whole life for.
The sign that you have met your soulmate.
And yours has just shot you.
Breathing deeply, you push the memory out of your mind, reminding yourself that you’re in your apartment tucked away in your warm bed and not bleeding in the arms of your friend.
But the ache is still there, still pinching, and you realise that no amount of gentle rubbing is going to relieve it tonight. Sighing you toss your covers back, slide your feet into your soft slippers to make your way to your kitchen, where you last put the pain relief balm.
Slowly you push yourself to stand, your aching shoulder throbbing in protest as you put on your fluffy robe, fingers brushing against the scar, and take a deep breath.
Checking your clock that reads 1:44 AM, you tighten the robe and step into the hallway.
The apartment is pitch black except as you make your way towards the kitchen, you don’t bother turning on any lights, using the moonlight to help lead you to the balm left on the center island.
Opening it, you gently massage the soothing gel onto your scar, letting out a sigh of relief as you feel it take effect. Placing the lid back on the tin and tucking it into your robe's pocket, you turn back towards the bedroom when the sound of fabrics moving against each other comes from the darkness of the living room.
Slowly you grab a knife from the wooden block and move carefully towards the sound, slippers gently slapping against the wooden floors. Keeping your breathing as quiet as possible, you slowly crept around the corner and quickly flicked the lamp on, flinching at the brightness and nearly dropping the knife when you saw who was sitting on the sofa.
Benjamin Poindexter was supposed to be imprisoned and serving multiple life sentences. Not casually sitting on your new sofa.
Blood darkening the side of his shirt as one of his hands pressed tightly against it, though a slow trickle of blood slips through his fingers. His head lifts the second the light turns on, and for a moment he doesn’t move; he just stares at you with a look in his eyes that you can’t quite place.
For a few seconds, neither of you speak. You just look at him, cataloguing everything that has changed since you last saw him. He’s bigger and bulkier than before, as if he had nothing to do in prison except gain more muscles. You ignore how it makes your heart stutter.
Dex’s eyes flicker briefly towards the knife clutched in your hand, and a smirk appears on his face as he looks you in the eyes. “Are you going to use that?” he asks quietly.
“Why are you here?” Your voice comes out stronger than you expected. “What do you want?”
Soulmate or not, this is still the man who shot you.
Dex’s eyes lower briefly to the blood staining his side. His hand still tightly clutching the wound. “I needed help.”
Then his eyes lift back to yours. “And I wanted to see you.”
Something tightens in your chest because part of you understands exactly what he means.
For a moment you stay where you are, knife still low at your side, eyes flickering once again towards the blood dripping from his hand and staining your sofa.
“You’re staining my sofa,” you say, placing the knife on the shelf, hands more steady than you feel.
Dex tilts his head, eyebrows twitching in confusion. “What?”
“My sofa is brand new, and you’re ruining it.”
“Oh,” he says, finally noticing his blood soaking the cushions. “So I am.”
You exhale slowly, feeling the last bit of adrenaline leave your body. When your brother told you this morning he was going to see Dex in prison, this wasn’t how you expected your night to go.
“Let me see it,” you say.
Dex stills at your words, his hand moving to his ribs, his eyes slightly hopeful.
“Your injury,” you sharply say, face flushing red. “Not that.”
His eyes stay on you for a second before he slowly moves his hands away from his body. Blood immediately gushes through the tear in his shirt, a stab wound from what you could see and probably a few hours old.
You swear softly under your breath. “You should be at a hospital, especially with those face wounds as well.”
“No.” His answer was quick but certain. “Just you, only you.”
You don’t bother arguing as you step closer, removing your robe and setting it below you on the coffee table. He looks worse up close, pale even in the light of your warm lightbulb, and the left side of his face was bruised.
But his eyes never left you, slowly roaming up and down, taking in your light blue PJs, and smirking at your fluffy cow slippers.
“What?” you ask, reaching for the box of medical supplies you kept in the ottoman. Usually you would have used your powers, but tonight you were too tired and drained from helping out at the back-alley clinic your boss ran.
“Fluffy cow slippers?” His amusement was clear in his voice.
“Shut up,” you say, putting all your supplies on the table beside you. “They were a gift from Karen, and they’re very comfortable.”
Dex snorted. “Sure.”
“Are you armed?” you ask, pulling on gloves and sliding to your knees.
“Yes.” He said, spreading his legs to give you more room.
“… Are you planning on using it?” You ask, facing your supplies.
“No.” His answer was quick and certain again. “Not on you, never on you.”
Again. You couldn’t help but think.
“You’re nervous,” Dex says quietly, still watching you, and you begin to wonder if he’s even blinked.
You snort at that. “You broke into my apartment in the middle of the night and are now bleeding all over my sofa.”
“You’re still helping me.” He says like this means something.
You refuse to answer that as you reach for his shirt because deep down it does.
“Lean forwards.” You say quietly.
Dex obeys immediately and you lift his shirt. The movement exposing his defined muscles, and a few inches above the wound in black letters was your name. Unblemished, like he had done everything to protect it.
You freeze slightly at the sight of it, feeling the rush of emotions that happened every time you thought about him. Shaking the feelings away, you grabbed the disinfectant and soaked a gauze.
Silence settled between you as you dabbed at the wound, soaking up as much blood as you could before grabbing a fresh gauze.
“You didn’t come to see me,” he whispered breaking the silence, his eyes leaving you and going towards his blood-soaked hand.
“Don’t,” you say quietly, pressing the alcohol-soaked gauze harder against the wound than intended.
Dex barely reacts as his eyes move back to you. “Don’t what?”
“Talk like this changes anything.” You whisper, grabbing a new gauze to wipe away the remaining blood.
And for the first time since you walked into the living room, something shifts in his expression. Not anger, not hatred, but something you didn’t expect to see on him.
Hurt.
“I was in prison,” Dex continues quietly. “You knew, but you never came.”
You still at his words because what was there to say? For months you’ve refused to talk about what happened that night, focusing on your family and pushing every thought or feeling about him away.
For months you’ve kept your bond with him to yourself despite how much you wanted to cry and rant to someone about it without being judged or scorned.
You force yourself to keep working, fingers steady despite the sudden tightness in your chest. “Yes,” you say evenly. “I knew.”
The quiet is heavy as it fills the room before you clear your throat, reaching for the needle and thread in the kit. “You need stitches.”
“Sit up properly if you can,” you instruct, pulling all the necessary items closer to you.
Dex watches you for a second longer before pushing himself upright from the cushions, his jaw as he straightens himself up.
“Take the shirt off.” You say, preparing everything that you needed to stitch him up.
Dex drops the blood-soaked fabric onto the table behind you, exposing the full extent of the wound. The weapon grazed more than it pierced, but it still tore enough flesh to make a mess of his side.
Wiping the surrounding area with a fresh gauze, you gently rubbed some numbing cream around the wound and threaded the needle while waiting for it to dry.
“This is going to hurt.” You say, leaning closer towards him.
Dex goes still at your words, his attention once again focused fully on you.
You try to ignore his eyes on you, focusing completely on stitching the wound perfectly and not on how close he was now that you’re kneeling between his legs and leaning against him to get better access to the wound.
“You should’ve had this cleaned hours ago,” you mutter nearly halfway done.
“I was busy.” He answers as his hand gently brushes against your shoulder.
“With?” You ask, eyes still not leaving the wound but not shrugging his hand away.
His eyes scan your face. “Finding you.”
Your hand slips slightly. Not enough to hurt him, but enough for him to notice.
“You already knew where I lived.”
“I wanted to see you.”
There’s that sentence again. So honest, like there was nothing else more important.
Silence settles between you again, broken only by the quiet rattle of paper as you open fresh gauzes and the sound of rain against the windows. Focusing once again on your task, you quickly lose yourself in what is familiar.
Then Dex quietly says, “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
You tie off the last stitch before grabbing more gauze and soaking it in antiseptic alcohol. “Most prisoners send a letter.”
“I didn't think you’d like letters from me.”
You couldn’t stop your quiet snort.
“Did you think about me?” he says quietly after a while. Hand tightening on your shoulder like the answer to this question could hurt him more than his wound.
You press the gauze against the stitches, cleaning them and the surrounding area. “You were all over the news, quite hard to miss.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He says cupping your face and forcing you to look at him.
His face is blank, but his eyes are looking at you like he’s already decided you belong in his life.
And maybe you did. But it causes that familiar complicated feeling to twist in your chest.
“You shot me,” you say softly before you can stop yourself. “I waited years for you, and you shot me.”
Your confession settles heavily between you, and for the second time that night, Dex looks away.
“I know.” He says his face filled with something you couldn’t place—guilt, maybe.
The apartment smells faintly of antiseptic, rain, and blood. Outside the storm gets stronger.
Inside the living room, neither of you move.
“You’ll live,” you say, taking off your gloves.
Dex looks down at the neat line of stitches crossing his side before his gaze drifts back to you. “I know.”
Standing up, you move all the soiled items aside so that you can toss them in the kitchen bin. “You should go before the numbing wears off.”
Moving back to the table, you pack up the remaining medical items, making a mental note to restock and place them back in the ottoman.
Leaning down to grab your robe, your breath catches as Dex reaches out his hand, gently grabbing your wrist, his thumb gently pressing against your pulse.
“You’re shaking,” he says quietly.
“I’m tired.” You say, making no move to pull away.
“You’re drained.” He states.
You almost deny it. But what would be the point? He noticed everything else about you tonight.
“I’ve had a long night,” you remind him.
“And you still helped me.” He states like this means something.
Before you could reply, Dex’s gaze drops to your shoulder. To the scar barely hidden by your shirt. His expression shifts into the same look as earlier.
“I didn’t mean to hit you,” he says honestly. “You moved in front of him so quickly I didn’t have time to stop.”
You look away at his admission, part of you wanting to believe him while the other part wants to shoot him to make it even.
Rain hits the windows harder as you begin to feel it again, that persistent and wanting pull between you becoming tighter the longer he stays.
“You need to leave,” you say quietly.
Dex looks at you for a long second. “Why didn’t you come to see me?”
The question hit you like a punch to the gut. Months of knowing exactly who he was to you, and you’d done nothing.
No visits. No letters. Nothing except pretend the name on your skin didn’t exist.
“I was in prison,” Dex continues quietly. “You knew where I was.”
You couldn’t force yourself to hold his gaze. Not when you knew what he was really asking. Why didn’t you come? Why didn’t you choose me?
But you can’t answer that. Not honestly. Not when the truth was that every day you wanted to see him, to betray your friends and your family just to get a day with him.
“You need to leave.” You say, instead of spilling the truth, pulling your wrist out of his grip.
For a second, you think he might argue. His stare fixed so intensely on you that you almost cave and spill the truth.
Then he stands, pulling his shirt back over his head, and makes his way towards the window. Pushing it open wider, as storm blows cold air and rain into the living room as he tosses one leg out before he pauses and turns to look back at you again.
“I’m going to see you again.” He states.
Then he disappears into the night, and you’re left standing alone in your living room.
Your fingers slowly brush his name on your skin, and you can’t stop the feeling of wanting to see him again.
A/N: This is my first one-shot written so feedback is welcome!
drafting this rn!! nervous about this one because it’s my first time writing for him but, if you’d like to be tagged on this, please feel free to reply! 🙂↕️🖤🩶🦇🌝
Summary : Dex was doing just fine being the only prisoner in Enhanced Supervision Housing until they put you in the cell next door.
Pairing : DDBA!Benjamin Poindexter x mutant!reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : hurt/comfort! Meet cute at Rikers, prison isolation, mutant!reader, thermokinetic!reader (controls temperature, pyrokinesis and cryokinesis), restraint jacket/straitjacket, institutional neglect, arson and murder mention, Foggy’s death mentioned, blood, injury, prison break, guard death, violence, through-the-wall romance, hurt/comfort, first kiss, Set in DDBA S1, including part of the episode 8, where Dex uses his tooth to break out of prison. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 6.3k
Notes : Need more mutant! reader in this fandom. The title is inspired by Impossible by Nothing but Thieves. Enjoy!
Dex had spent five months alone in Rikers’ brand-new Enhanced Supervision Housing after killing Foggy Nelson.
Of course, the city had decided that Benjamin Poindexter was not a man you put in general population, or solitary, or protective custody, or any other place built for your run-of-the-mill violent offenders. Apparently, if a person could kill his way out of most situations with a paperclip, a loose screw, or the edge of a dinner tray, the state had to start getting creative.
So they made a new building just for him and called it Enhanced Supervision Housing. ESH for short.
It was funny. As if calling what he could do an enhancement instead of a talent meant anything when they still fed him through a slot, restrained his hands before opening the door, and had three men with rifles posted behind reinforced glass every time he was escorted anywhere.
There were eight cells in ESH. Eight beautiful little boxes built with reinforced doors, observation panels, pressure sensors, thermal cameras, anti-ligature fixtures, shatterproof windows, and enough cameras to make privacy feel like a fairy tale told to a child.
Dex had seen the brochure when one of the guards had left paperwork too close to his cell during intake, and Dex had read it upside down through a reflection in the polished floor.
It was made for “high-risk enhanced detainees” with “special containment protocols” and “behavioural isolation.”
Cute.
The problem was, there were no other enhanced detainees. After all, not every day did somebody with a weird little gift or near-superhuman talent get arrested in New York. Not every day did someone land in Rikers with enough justification of being locked in a concrete aquarium, and half of them were in the supermax across the country, and the other half was in The Raft.
So it was just Dex.
Eight cells, seven empty. A whole hallway built for monsters, and only one monster inside it.
It was isolating, sure. But it was fine. There were worse places to be in the world. Maybe. Meh.
Rikers still had a rhythm. Even the ESH had one, if you were trapped long enough to learn it. He learned that the lights dimmed but never went fully off and guards passed every twelve minutes unless the night shift was bored, then every nine. The vents clicked twice before the air shifted temperature. Camera four made the smallest electric whine when it adjusted focus. Guard Velasquez dragged his left foot when he was tired and guard Miller breathed through his mouth and smelled like cheap coffee.
Dex knew all of it, and it helped with the silence creeping in sometimes.
The silence was the worst part, probably, not the restraints. Not even the meals so bland they felt punitive on a spiritual level.
This type of silence made his thoughts louder and made the walls seem closer at night, when he lay on the thin mattress with his hands folded over his stomach, staring at the ceiling like the ceiling might someday blink first.
Sometimes he thought about Foggy Nelson, but not in the way people probably wanted him to. He didn’t feel guilty; he did what he thought he had to do. He thought about that chapter in his life like a splinter under skin– impossible to forget without digging too deep and making it worse.
Sometimes he thought about Fisk. Sometimes he thought about his spine. Sometimes he thought about how easy it would be, if someone made one mistake.
Just one.
If someone would just accidentally give him the wrong set of cuffs. If a new guard would just be standing too close to the bars with his badge clipped to the wrong side of his belt.
But no one had made a mistake. Yet.
Then, in the middle of June, in the middle of the night, the hallway suddenly erupted.
The far door opened with a metallic groan, then another. Buzz. door one. Buzz. door two. Buzz. door three.
Eventually, boots flooded the corridor, and Dex counted twenty guards. Maybe more.
He could hear the metallic clangs of rifles and the plastic bounce of shields as static popping over radios. A guard whispered., “Keep moving,” like whatever they were escorting might change its mind if they hesitated.
Dex sat up.
The lights snapped brighter overhead, white and ugly, turning his cell blind at the edges.
He didn't move to the door. He stayed on the bed, head tilted slightly, listening.
There was a slightly smaller set footsteps beneath all the others.
This one must be the prisoner. It dragged, but not fighting. Perhaps this person was sedated? No. There was a little bit of struggle. Maybe they weren’t sedated enough. Whoever it was kept resisting the pace without ever fully stopping.
Metal clinked as someone cursed under their breath.
Then came a sound like fabric straining, and he could tell it was heavy fabric. Then, he heard thick restraints being adjusted. Not ordinary cuffs, and definitely not a chain.
Dex tilted his head. Interesting.
The procession stopped in front of the cell next to his.
The guards shifted around the door, blocking his view through the narrow panel in his own cell. He caught pieces of you, though nothing whole. He could see a bit of your hair, and the corner of something white and reinforced strapped across your torso. Your rikers-issued shoes were planted firmly against the floor, like you were refusing to be placed anywhere by anyone.
One of the guards knocked twice on Dex’s door with his baton. “Got a neighbor now, Poindexter.”
Dex looked at him.
The guard smiled like he’d said something funny, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. In fact, none of them looked relaxed.
Tonight, they were not afraid of Dex. They were afraid of you.
The door to Cell Two opened and they moved you inside.
You didn't scream, threaten, or beg, even if you were half-awake.
Weird, Dex thought, people usually did one of the three when they arrived in a place like this.
You were shoved past the threshold in silence, and the guards backed out fast. The door shut with a brutal final sound, locks engaging one after another, heavy and layered and unnecessarily dramatic. A guard gave an all-clear over the radio. Another laughed once, shakily, then stopped abruptly when nobody joined in.
Dex stayed very still as the guards filed out, one by one, until the hallway swallowed their footsteps one by one.
Eight cells, two occupied.
For the first time in five months, Dex was not alone.
He waited for you to make a sound, but he couldn't hear any noise, not even crying from the next cell. You weren’t pacing, like he did on the first night, and you barely even rattled whatever restraints they put on you. Most notable, you didn’t even attempt to make contact through the wall.
Dex stared at the wall between his cell and yours: solid concrete, thick enough that he shouldn't have been able to feel anything through it.
He did, though he didn’t know how to explain it. The only measurable metric was that somehow the room had felt cooler than it had been an hour ago.
He lay back down eventually.
From the other side of the wall, you still said nothing, no sound at all except the occasional shift of fabric and once, very quietly, an exhale through your teeth.
Dex almost smiled. That’s when he saw the window.
At first, he thought the glass had caught the overhead light strangely. ESH windows were narrow, reinforced slits. You could see a suggestion of the sky if you stood at the right angle, but mostly you saw the garden roses and your own reflection staring back like a bad idea.
Tonight, the glass was… clouding.
What?
Dex sat up again.
A thin white film crept across the corner of the window, delicate and pretty. Tiny veins of frost branching outward in lacy patterns, spreading over reinforced glass that had no reason to be cold.
Why was his window frosting up in the middle of summer?
—
For the first couple of days, Dex assumed you were asleep. Or unconscious. Or dead.
It was hard to tell with the wall between you and him. Still, the guards checked on you often enough that he knew you must technically be alive, but they did it through the panel, never through the door unless there were at least six of them and one of them had the long black shock baton they liked pretending it was not a weapon.
Dex had seen criminals arrive angry. During his time in the bureau, he had seen them arrive screaming, pleading, spitting, promising lawsuits, promising revenge, promising innocence. He had seen prisoners break under silence in twelve hours and start telling the ceiling their childhood nicknames.
You did none of that. In fact, you barely moved.
That was the strangest part, not the frost, not even the straitjacket, which was still interesting in a funny way to him, because they had Dex’s hands restrained any time they opened his door like he was going to start flicking femurs through skulls, but you must be special. After all, you had arrived wrapped up like a badly behaved present.
By the second day, he started actively listening for you.
It was pathetic, maybe, but there were very few things to do in Enhanced Supervision Housing besides become intimately familiar with the sound of your own breathing and develop opinions about fluorescent lights, so a new person on the other side of the wall was not nothing.
You shifted sometimes, when he heard a small scrape of fabric against concrete. He could hear the faint clink from whatever additional restraints they had attached to the jacket. Once, your head hit the wall with a dull little thud, and Dex turned his face toward the sound before he could stop himself.
Then… nothing. Nothing but a drag of breath through your nose.
The guards did not like you either, that became obvious pretty quickly.
They liked Dex, in a way. Obviously, they didn’t like him as a person, they were not stupid. But they understood him. They had made a little mental box for him: former FBI agent turned murderer. They had rules: keep your distance, keep his hands restrained, do not let him near anything that he could throw.
You, they did not understand.
They approached your cell like prey approaching a sleeping animal in the wrong enclosure.
On the third morning, one of them brought your breakfast and stood too close to the slot.
Dex heard a soft crackle before the guard even reacted. Then the man swore and stumbled back. “What the fuck—”
“Don’t put your hand in,” another guard snapped.
“I didn’t put my hand in!”
“Then stop whining.”
“She froze my fucking fingers, man!”
Dex sat on his mattress, elbows on his knees, staring at the wall. Interesting.
Your cell stayed silent and the breakfast tray was shoved in with much less dignity after that.
Nobody asked if you were hungry. Nobody asked if you were hurt. Nobody asked if you needed the jacket loosened, even though Dex could hear the shallow and held in breath, clearly struggling for air half the time. It was as if the straps cut across your ribs and you were trying not to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing it bothered you.
By the fourth day, Dex had decided you were either extremely disciplined or extremely broken. Possibly both.
He had also decided that the silence was annoying. This was unfair, because he had hated the silence before you arrived, and now that the silence had another person inside it, he hated it more.
He tried not to care, but that only lasted until evening.
A guard walked past and muttered, “Crazy bitch still hasn’t said a word.”
Dex’s head lifted.
The guard kept walking, probably feeling very brave because there were reinforced doors and rifles between him and the consequences of being stupid.
Dex watched him go. He didn’t say anything, and neither did you.
The night after that, the frost came back, but not just on Dex’s window this time. They were crawling up the walls.
It crept from the seam where the concrete met the floor, thin and white under the dimmed lights. At first, he thought it was moisture, a product of bad ventilation and Rikers being Rikers. Then the frost branched, crawling in little veins across the wall between your cells.
Dex got up and walked over, putting two fingers against the concrete. It was painfully cold.
On the other side of the wall, you breathed out, and frost thickened under his fingers.
Dex almost knocked. That felt ridiculous.
What was he going to do? Tap his knuckles against reinforced concrete and ask the stranger in the murder-prison next door if she was making the building colder because she was sad?
No. So he went back to bed, but did not sleep.
By day five, the guards had stopped pretending this was normal.
Maintenance came in wearing insulated gloves, and even gave Dex a thicker orange jumpsuit, even though he never minded the cold. They took temperature readings in the hallway, checked the vents, checked the windows. They argued about condensation. One of them said it was probably a system fault, and then immediately shut up when a thin line of ice crawled over his boot.
Dex enjoyed that a lot, actually. It was the first entertainment he’d had in months.
By the fifth night, Dex woke up to snow.
At first, he thought it was dust falling from the ceiling. But then a single cold snowflake landed on his cheek.
Dex blinked.
For a moment, he lay very still, staring up at the ceiling where tiny white flakes drifted down from nowhere. Another landed on his chest. Then another. Soon there were dozens, small, delicate, almost shy.
Dex sat up slowly.
The floor was beginning to powder white. His blanket had caught a fine layer of it. The air was cold enough now that his breath was visible.
He looked toward the wall, and for the first time in five days, he spoke to you. “You doing this, neighbor?”
Nothing but silence.
Dex waited.
The hallway outside was quiet, which meant either the guards had not noticed yet or they were all standing very still pretending they had not noticed yet. Dex watched snow gather on the toes of his prison-issued socks.
Then, from the other side of the wall, there was the faintest shift.
And then your voice, rough from disuse. You sounded almost… bored. “...mmhm.”
Dex’s mouth curved up. Ah. She speaks.
He leaned back against the wall, feeling the cold bite through the cotton of his shirt. “Should I be concerned?”
Then, barely louder than before, you said, “Probably.”
Dex laughed once under his breath.
His own sound surprised him, because it sounded wrong in the cell. Too human then he had ever been.
The snow kept drifting down. It should have made him uneasy. It should have made him think about containment failures and emergency protocols and what the guards might do if the whole unit iced over. Instead, Dex sat there with his shoulder pressed to the wall between you, watching winter collect in his lap.
“Good to know,” he said.
You didn’t answer. But a few seconds later, the snow slowed down.
—
After that, Dex learned how to read you. It was not subtle, once he understood what he was looking at.
When you were sad, you were cold so it made sense that in the first month, it snowed almost every day.
You barely spoke during those days, you barely even moved.
The guards asked questions through your door and received nothing but silence. The nurses came by with clipboards, asking if you had eaten, if you were injured, if you needed medical attention, if you understood where you were. You gave them nothing.
Sometimes, actual ice sealed your food slot shut. Snow collected in the corners of Dex’s cell.
His blanket went damp and cold and his breath fogged when he sat up. Even the guards stopped making jokes when they passed Cell Two because nobody wanted to laugh in a place that had started to feel like a morgue.
Dex sat with his back to the wall and listened. That was all there was to do: listen and wait for proof that you were still in there.
Then, eventually, the cold would begin to cease.
The frost on his window would sweat and snow would melt into silver lines down the concrete. The air would warm by a degree, then another, like your body was remembering that it was summer.
And then, and only then, you would speak. “Neighbor?”
His eyes opened in the dark. “What?”
You inhaled, as if you had been thinking about this for days. “Do you think they’d let me have a hairbrush?”
Dex stared at the ceiling. “No.”
You were quiet for the rest of the night, but the cells suddenly became as warm as a hug, as if someone had reminded you that human connections were possible.
Then, the next day, you called out again. “Poindexter, right?”
“Mm,” he replied.
You paused, as if considering whether or not the question was stupid, but said it anyway. “Do you think pigeons know they’re ugly?”
Dex blinked. “I don’t think pigeons care.”
“Good for them.”
Then, a few hours later, after hearing a prison guard during dinner time call you this, you said, “Dex.”
The name came too naturally from your mouth for someone who had never said it before.
He turned his head toward the wall. “What?”
“I have an itch.”
He waited. You said nothing else.
“Okay.” he finally said.
“I’m in a restraint jacket.”
“I figured.”
“It’s under my shoulder blade.”
“That sounds inconvenient.”
“It is,” you sounded very, very annoyed.
The room heated so fast it made the steel bars creak.
Dex smiled into the dark.
You were quiet a moment longer, then said, “They keep calling it that.”
“What?”
“A restraint jacket.”
“That’s what it is.”
“No,” you said. “It’s a straitjacket.They just call it a “fireproof restraint jacket” because that sounds nicer with the taxpayers, and straitjacket makes me sound like I’m supposed to be in a basement eating wallpaper.”
Fireproof, huh?
Dex found your comparison amusing and laughed under his breath. “You’d prefer that?”
The wall warmed. You heard him. He knew you did, because the warmth stayed.
“At least it’s not an inhibitor collar,” you muttered finally.
Dex went still. “They have those?”
“Not anymore,” you said, though Dex didn’t ask for any clarifications that day.
For a while he stared out quietly.
After a moment, you asked, “Are you in one?”
“An inhibitor collar?”
“A straitjacket, genius.”
“No.”
The temperature dropped, but only in a small enough increment. “You’re not in a straitjacket?”
“No.”
“That is so fucked up.”
Dex closed his eyes. “Is it?”
“Yes,” you scoffed, “What makes you so special?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is discrimination.”
Dex, who couldn’t miss if he wanted to, looked around to see nothing in his cell that he could throw or ricochet with. And if he was imagining you right, your hands must be the main conduit to your power. You didn’t need an object to break out if your hands were free. “I don’t think that’s what that is.”
“It is to me.”
After that, you told him your name. You said it at two in the morning, half-muffled through concrete, like it had slipped out by accident.
Dex repeated it once.
The heat that bloomed through the wall felt almost shy.
After that, Dex started sleeping with his shoulder closer to your side of the cell, though he told himself it meant nothing: The bed was narrow and the room was small, that’s all. There were only so many places to put a body inside a box. But every night, somehow, he ended up turning toward you, listening for your breathing through concrete like it was the only sound in Rikers that mattered.
And when you went quiet for a bit too long, Dex would listen in, panic blooming, and it would not calm until you shifted or sighed or muttered something ridiculous about prison oatmeal, and then he could breathe again like an idiot.
That was when he understood the other half of you.
When you were in a good enough mood, your powers weren’t icy anymore. You’d run hot.
The first time it really hit him, Dex woke up sweating with his shirt clinging to his back. The window was fogged over and the snow had vanished completely, and the whole cell felt damp and tropical, like a greenhouse in Rikers.
And you were talking. God, you were talking.
You were talking your ass off, giving him whole floods of thought, fast and impossible to hold still.
“Do you think they built this place because of you specifically,” you asked once you realised your rambles had shook him awake, voice bright through the wall, “or do you think someone made a budget request years ago and then got really excited when you gave them a reason?”
Dex looked to the wall. You didn’t wait for an answer.
“Because eight cells is very ambitious. Someone must’ve sat in a meeting going, no, trust me, we are going to have so many enhanced criminals. And then it was just you for like, half a year.”
Dex sat up, and the air was even warmer.
On the other side of the wall, you shifted in the jacket, fabric rasping hard against concrete.
“Also, do you think enhanced is offensive? I can’t decide. It feels offensive. Like I didn’t ask to be labelled like a skincare serum.”
Dex’s mouth twitched up a little. “You done?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“I also think the eggs are powdered.”
“They are.”
“I knew it.”
Then you laughed, and it was a half-controlled laugh this time, wild around the edges. The temperature in Dex’s cell jumped so fast it felt like someone had opened an oven door.
Dex now knew how your powers worked: when you were kinda sad, things frosted over. When you could barely move, it snowed.
Good mood meant warmth. Full manic meant tropical.
It was ridiculous and fascinating all the same. Sometimes, the whole unit went damp and sticky, other times the reinforced windows fogged over, the walls sweating like the building was nervous.
Eventually, it got warmer and warmer, and you would be pacing, five steps one way, five steps back, talking out of your ass like language had become a pressure valve.
You talked about everything. The guards’ schedules, the ceiling tiles, how ugly prison socks were, whether corporations should be burned down in alphabetical order or by severity of moral failure.
Dex listened to all of it.
He learned of who you were without ever seeing your face. He knew when you were smiling because the wall warmed before your voice changed. He knew when you were pretending not to cry because the frost came fast, like you were trying to hide it and failed anyway. He knew the difference between your tired silence, your angry silence, your sad silence, your plotting silence. So he knew you.
And you knew him, too, in ways no one alive had earned before. You knew when his guards had pissed him off before he said anything. You knew when his spine hurt from the way he breathed through his teeth. Once, when he had gone too silent, you knocked your forehead lightly against the wall and said, “Dex, don’t go wherever your mind just went.” He had stared at the concrete for a long time after that, because nobody had ever come looking for him inside his own head before.
That's why, when you talked, he listened.
Some of it was nonsense. Some of it was clever. Some of it was both. You talked like someone sprinting downhill with no interest in stopping, fast and too amused by terrible things. You even told him what you did: apparently you burned down a warehouse and office of a company called Meridian Dynamics. They made suppression tech: Inhibitor collars, cuffs, injectables, sold to prisons and private security. Apparently, you planned to burn the building down during a very important board meeting, which resulted in your two counts of arson and twenty four counts of murder.
And, inevitably, you started talking about escape.
“I’m getting out,” you told Dex one night.
He was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, sweat dampening his collar. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You can’t burn through reinforced doors.”
“I could if I had my hands.”
Dex looked down at his own, free, for now. He was still dangerous. His hands had always been the part of him people watched first, the part they feared, the part they restrained before opening any door.
He understood, suddenly, the cruelty of having your body treated like a weapon even when you were just sitting there, breathing.
You shifted in the jacket, and the fabric rasped like it hurt.
“Obviously,” you said, trying for lightness and missing by inches, “I don’t have them.”
Dex stared at the wall. For once, he did not know what to say.
You laughed, but it came out thin. “I can feel them. That’s the worst part. They’re right there. I just can’t use them.”
The heat dimmed.
“That why you keep talking about chewing through your jacket?”
You shrugged, though it hurt. “Maybe.”
“You’ll break your teeth.”
“You care about my teeth?”
“I care about not listening to you complain.”
“You care.”
He should have denied it, but he didn’t.
Dex had spent his entire life understanding attachment as a liability, something people could weaponize until he became useful or pathetic or both. But with you on the other side of the wall, this attachment didn’t feel temporary. It was clear in the way he measured his nights by whether you spoke. He had an ache of wanting to see your face and being terrified that if he did, it would only make this feeling worse.
The silence stretched, warmer than it should have been. Then you said, very quietly, “I don’t think I could actually chew through it.”
“No,” Dex said. “Probably not.”
“I still might try.”
“Don’t.”
That made you laugh for real. The wall warmed beneath his palm. For a moment, it was almost gentle.
One night, after hours of heat and pacing and a long speech about how prison architecture lacked imagination, you went suddenly quiet.
Dex waited.
The wall was warm against his shoulder. Then you whispered, “Dex?”
“What?”
“Do you think I’m going to be like this forever?”
Dex looked at the concrete between you, at the damp shine where the heat had melted old frost.
“No,” he answered.
It was the closest thing to a promise he could make through a wall. He wanted to say more, but everything else felt too fake.
He didn’t know why, but he had the urge to tell you that you were not an object or a containment problem. He wanted to tell you that if the world had built eight cells for monsters, then fine, let the world call him one, because he had found you in the next cage over and suddenly the world didn’t feel so lonely anymore.
Instead, Dex pressed his palm flat to the wall.
A second later, warmth bloomed under his hand. Not enough to burn, but enough to meet him.
—
Dex getting moved to general population should have made him think about the Fisks.
It should have made him think about the obvious thing first, which was that Vanessa Fisk wanted him dead.
Being moved to genpop was not a transfer. To him, a former FBI agent in a room full of convicts who has also pissed people off by working for the Kingpin, it was a death sentence. Genpop was a fancy term for a room full of men, any one of them purchasable, any one of them stupid or desperate enough to try him with a sharpened toothbrush, a melted piece of plastic, a hand around his throat in the showers.
But when the guards dragged him out of ESH when you were asleep in your cell, that was not what Dex thought about.
He thought, with a sudden, sick clarity, that you were going to be alone.
You would be alone like he had been alone for five months, rotting in a hallway built for people the world didn’t know how to categorize.
Alone with no one but the guards who would never understood your moods.
So he called Matt and offered him a lifeline: tell him who hired him to kill Foggy Nelson in exchange for freedom.
Of course he didn’t think Matt would forgive him. But Matt had believed in the law. And mercy too, whether he wanted it or not. Dex needed both, and hated needing both, and hated more that he was not even asking just for himself.
Need sat wrong in his head. It had always felt like weakness or an exposed artery, as if anyone could just hook a finger into and pull. Needing Matt Murdock was bad enough. Needing Matt Murdock for you was humiliating in a way that Dex didn’t have vocabulary for, because it meant there was something in the world he could not take, kill, steal, or aim to fix.
See, he wanted an appeal for you, too. He had this whole speech of how in another life, Matt would defend him. About isn’t that what good men do? Defend their worst enemies? About I’m bargaining for our life here, counsellor.
Our life. Not mine. Ours.
“Oh,” Matt said. “That’s what this is.”
Dex said nothing.
“So fell in love in prison?” Matt said sarcastically. “Sweetheart, what do you want me to do? Want me to get a couple of murderers out of prison, want me to get an appeal?”
Dex didn’t answer, because answering would have made it sound too… juvenile.
Love was not a strong enough word for a woman he had only known through a concrete wall and had fallen for anyway. It was not right for experiencing snow in a prison cell, or feeling heat through the wall, or your voice talking nonsense at three in the morning. It was not right for the way he had started sleeping closer to your side of the room.
Matt saw enough of it anyway, and maybe that’s why he had a glimmer of sympathy. Maybe it was disgust. Maybe he thought again of Foggy, and before he knew it, Matt was slamming his head on the metal table.
Dex barely had time to register it before pain flared through his mouth and his head snapped hard enough against the metal that the room flashed white, blood filling his mouth.
Then, he felt something small and hard come loose against his tongue.
A tooth.
A projectile.
“Thank you, counsellor,” he smiled.
The guards pulled Dex back, and he let them haul him away, head bowed, blood dripping down his lip, the tooth hidden carefully.
Killing the doctor and the guard was child’s play after that. Navigating the prison with the dead guard’s badge was even easier.
He would break out and kill Fisk in his black and white ball. But for now, he had something else to do in this hell hole.
He wouldn’t escape without you.
Dex moved through Rikers with blood still drying at the corner of his mouth.
When he reached ESH, he killed the two stationed guards with medical tools stolen from the infirmary.
And when he got in, the hallway was frozen.
Ice crawled over the floor in white veins. Frost had swallowed the observation glass. Snow had gathered in the corners like the building had been abandoned for winter. Your food tray sat untouched outside the slot because the mechanism had sealed shut.
Dex stopped outside Cell Two and looked through the narrow panel.
This was the first time that Dex ever really saw you.
He had seen flashes between guards, maybe a reflection from one of the guard’s shields during training drills.
You were curled on the floor in the fireproof straitjacket, knees drawn up as much as the restraints allowed, cheek resting against the concrete. Your hair was messy. Your lips were discolored from the cold, frost clinging to your lashes like a lifeline, delicate as glitter, cruel as evidence.
You looked… smaller than he had imagined, but no less beautiful.
He had built you in his head as strong as weather, a voice bright enough to make lights flicker. But through the glass, you were just a girl in a white straitjacket, cold and alone and trying not to disappear.
Dex pressed his bloody hand to the door.
He looked at the jacket and the lock and and thought of every hand that had put you in there and every person who had looked at you like you were a weapon before you were a human being.
He broke the door open with the stolen keycard first.
When the door gave out, the cold rushed out around him.
You stirred, eyes opening slowly.
For one second, you only stared at him like he couldn’t possibly be real. Like maybe the cold had finally started making things up for you.
Then the frost nearest his feet began to melt.
“Dex?”
You looked confused. As if it was a guess.
That's when you realised… you had never really seen him, either.
He nodded, stepping inside.
Snow fell between you, unnatural and absurd beneath the fluorescent lights. Your eyes moved over his face to the blood on his mouth and the stitches on his forehead. You knew him, finally, after months of knowing him only as a voice through concrete.
Your voice sounded broken. “Is that what you look like?”
Dex almost smiled, thrilled that you looked anything but disappointed. “Yeah.”
You blinked at him, dazed and trying very hard to make your mouth curve up like this was funny. Like you had not been left alone, and that loneliness without him had turned the building into a snowy wasteland.
He crouched in front of you.
For the first time, there was no wall between you.
Dex reached for the straps.
You flinched, but not because you were afraid of him, but because the last person who reached for the jacket had touched you like you were an object, and you had burned him by accident, and then they had hurt you for it.
Dex saw all of that cross your faces so he stopped.
His hands hovered over the buckles.
“I’m taking it off,” he said, “that’s all.”
You looked at him, considering your choices. Then, just a little, you nodded.
Dex broke the first strap, the fabric strained under his grip before giving in with a harsh snap. The sound echoed through the frozen cell. Your breath caught, and his eyes flicked back to yours immediately, checking if you were okay.
You were.
So he broke the next one.
Then the next.
Each strap breaking felt personal, and each piece tearing loose felt like he was taking something back from everyone who had decided your hands were too dangerous to belong to yourself.
When the last strap snapped, the jacket loosened.
Then your arms slipped free. You did so slowly, like you had forgotten they were ever yours.
Your hands trembled in your lap.
Dex looked at them.
So did you.
You had not seen them for months.
The snow thinned at first, then eventually, it stopped, the last few flakes drifting down and melting before they touched the floor. Warmth bloomed from you in a fragile little wave.
This time, it wasn’t manic heat. Instead it was warmth, like spring breaking after a cold winter.
You lifted one hand carefully, almost shyly, and the first thing you did was touch the scar on Dex’s face.
He went perfectly still.
You brushed the blood at the corner of his mouth with your thumb, your eyes furrowing.
“You came back,” you whispered, which, to Dex translated to: I thought you left me forever.
Dex leaned into your touch before he could stop himself. “Yeah.”
There were alarms somewhere in the distance, but ESH was far away, out of security. It would take them a while to get here. And by the time they did, it would’ve been too late.
Dex didn’t move. Neither did you.
Then your fingers curled lightly against his chin, and before he could think better of it, Dex bent forward and kissed you.
It was small, nothing but a brush of his mouth against yours, warm and bloody from the missing teeth.
You froze for half a second before you kissed him back.
You were sweet and a little clumsy, because your arms were stiff and your hands were shaking and neither of you had any business being tender in a prison cell full of evidence of your sadness and isolation.
When he pulled back, you stared at him.
The frost on the walls ran down in thin silver lines.
Then you smiled, sheepish and dazed, like you were embarrassed by your own warming heart.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” you admitted.
Dex looked at you and he had no answer.
The ruined straitjacket was still in his hands, your fingertips still against his face, and the warmth of your lips lingering on his mouth.
Outside, the prison began to panic. Inside, you smiled at him like he had brought summer with him.
And Dex, who had spent five months alone in a place built for monsters, thought there was no better reason to become one again.
—end.
Extra note: I reread this before posting and realised I may have accidentally written reader as bipolar-coded, which is very me😭😭😭 I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around a decade ago, and it’s manageable now, but this fic ended up feeling way more personal than I expected. This is the first time I’ve ever written mood disorder x mood disorder so I hope I did alright. So please be kind with this one. She’s special to me 🫶
Please send in an ask or message if you want to be added to the dex general / series specific taglist! Comments get lost sometimes! Let me know if I missed anyone!
personally, i don’t get when there’s an ‘x reader’ fic, but they give reader a name because “we don’t use y/n around here”. i thought the whole point of x reader fanfictions was to have y/n because it’s x READER not a random person
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