One Silicone Cover Burger @doerofcrime - Tumblr Blog

❝fuck you, can I have this dance?❞

plot: as dex's handler, it's your job to keep him on a leash: you tell him where to go, who to kill, who to save. if he gets out of line, you yank the leash... just make sure he can't slip free. pairing: cia!benjamin poindexter x gn!handler!reader. cw: brat tamer!reader and brat!dex, freak4freak, suggestive, murder, minor injuries, stalking (from both of you), not lovers not friends but a secret third thing (an owner and their pet), dex has a praise kink, dex also has a degradation kink, he's trying to ignore both, reader consistently compares him to a dog. words: 6.3k.

a/n: based on this blurb. do you know how hard it was not to name this after closer by nine inch nails. I listened to these songs while writing this:

I. bullseye - aly & aj (dex's pov) II. closer - nine inch nails III. out of touch - daryl hall and john oates (what inspired this idea in the first place)

Dex doesn't need a fucking babysitter, so jot that down.

"And I know you don't," The lines around Mr. Charles' mouth deepen as he smiles at him. He's sitting on the edge of his desk, almost knee-to-knee with Dex who sits across from him, uncomfortable. "But it's necessary. Red tape to you, but necessary."

Necessary. Like Dr. Mercer, or his psych eval with Dr. Myman. Except someone would be watching him all the time, noting every little misstep for someone else's file on him. Dex has to remind himself that Mr. Charles has every file on him ever made and still hired him. He squirms in his chair. "How does it work?"

"Check-ins four times a week, with or without incident. You'll be given a phone with their contact in it. If that phone goes missing, you get a warning. If you go missing, you won't be for long. Your handler will provide status reports on you after every check-in or successful mission complete. You need a new gun? Your handler buys it for you. You need dinner? Your handler will Uber Eats you something. When you are on the clock, they will be up your ass. Figuratively. Outside of that, though? You're free to do whatever."

Dex squirms again at "up your ass". He reminds himself that he needs this. Structure, he means. Not you up his ass.

And so your introduction is brief, done in the hallway of the CIA before his first big mission, and you are the picture of professional. You hand him a phone, shake his hand, and tell him you're excited to work with him. The first moment alone, Dex gets a look at the lockscreen on this new phone and pauses.

It's a low-res shot of shortstop Derek Jeter mid-air, throwing back a baseball during the '98 championships. It jars him. He remembered watching that moment on TV when he was 14. He almost threw out his shoulder trying to replicate it.

He finds you in his contacts because you're the only one there, even if it throws him a bit.

You Jeter? Uber Eats You're not a fan of the Yankees? You Better than the Mets. Uber Eats 🤣

Dex doesn't like that you always know where he is.

It's hypocritical given his line of work, how much privacy he's invaded even for personal interest. But it makes sense. The hunter cannot allow themselves to become the hunted, and you hunt often.

There's no way to turn off location sharing on this phone, and he cannot remove the MDM installed in his settings unless he has the passcode. You see all his calls, all his web history, where he goes and when. It's been replaced twice now since he started working for you. Once by accident, once just to get a breather. He made sure the second time happened long after probation ended, specifically just to piss you off.

But you didn't get pissed off, not really. You'd just showed up on the rooftop he was watching sunsets on, took a sip from his beer, and handed him his new phone. This time, the lockscreen was the cover of Turnstiles by Billy Joel. It had a lot of his favorite songs on it. He still stuck to his CD player, but every once in a while, when he'd pick up a new album from the store, he'd find the same album loaded into his phone's music library within minutes. He listened to an album on it once when a storm woke him up and he couldn't find his headphones.

He forces himself to get used to your tracking, even though he knows he never will.

He's only been in the infirmary for three minutes, and you're there forty seconds after that. "What happened?" You ask, walking around the nurse diligently cleaning up the cut above Dex's eyebrow.

Dex grunts. "Just a scratch."

You stand there, scanning him over with your eyes. His mission had been a simple tailing, until his target caught sight of him and sprinted. After a chase, he'd suffered some minor cuts and bruises. A cut above the eye, a bullet graze on the thigh. You hover a hand over his leg where a salve is currently soothing the burn and Dex flinches away. You look up, hand still hovering. "How do you feel?"

"Sedative's already kicked in."

"I meant emotionally."

Dex blanks. You've never asked him that before. The psych evals were usually left up to the professionals, people other than you that monitored him on scales of threat. So long as he never tipped too far in the direction of "immediate elimination", he was right as rain as far as you should be concerned. "What? I don't know. I'm fine. The job got done, didn't it?"

You nod. "It did. Even though it went sideways, you kept your cool and we got our target. Zero spillover. I was impressed. You did good."

Dex huffs. He can't feel the pain in his face anymore, it's all just warm.

He feels you drop something in his lap and he jerks his head down fast, disrupting the nurse's work. There's a gift card in his lap for $500. The design on the front has a large, silver gift bow with a glitter backdrop. In neat, black cursive, the text at the bottom reads: "Happy Anniversary."

Dex is speechless.

"My gift to you for your first six months." You say, and he's shocked to see you a little giddy as you watch him pick it out of his lap. "Spend it on whatever you want. A movie, dinner, new knife. I won't be watching."

He reacts a little dumbly. "What?"

"For the next twenty-four hours—and only the next twenty-four hours—I'm letting you off your leash. Consider it your day off."

Dex pointedly ignores the leash comment. "Was this Mr. Charles' idea?"

"All mine." You both watch the nurse walk away when he's done. "He doesn't know I won't be monitoring you so don't do anything stupid."

Dex can't remember the last time he'd been given a gift. Maybe it was back in the FBI, when it was his birthday and the office insisted on getting him a cake and a card. That had been... many years ago. Nothing he'd ever received was as expensive as this. Nothing that was truly his to own, anyway. "How do I know you'll keep your word?"

You look up at the ceiling, sighing. "It'll be hard." You say. Your eyes flit back down to his. "I really enjoy watching you."

Something in Dex's stomach tightens. He feels a mix of things: disgust, frustration, discomfort, weakness. And underneath it all, after peeling back layers of stubborn, stuck-on paint: arousal, for lack of a better word. The kind he got when he zeroed in on a threat seconds before being targeted. The kind he got narrowly avoiding a bullet. The kind that stirred up in his gut a whole lot of complication. Fear, with the aftertaste of pleasure. The kind he only liked in the field, handling people he needed to put down.

This job was going to kill him. You were going to kill him.

Dex spends his day off watching you.

He makes the choice to follow you as soon as he gets out of the infirmary. He'd always wanted to do it: wanted to know where you lived, if you had loved ones. Family, friends. A partner. Kids that looked like you. It was hard to follow you properly when you always knew where he was, but you'd promised not to look this time.

It starts late at night. He finds that you don't live very far from where he does and he knows that's all by design. You live in a nice, rent-controlled apartment complex with well-tended gardens out front and poop bags for pet owners. He stakes you out across the street as you head on in. There's a security guard inside who greets you with a big smile on his face, and you stop to chat. He can't see what words you're saying through the glass, only that you make the guard laugh.

You're perfectly normal.

He thinks this all day as he watches you run errands, grab lunch, bask in the sun while waiting at a crosswalk. He waits for you to check your phone—to check on him, see what he's up to, break your promise—but you never do. Not even to check on your other agents. You've never told him about any other agents you handled, but you had to have more than just him, right?

You have no kids, not even a pet. No partner from what he could tell. That'd be normal, right? To call up your partner on your day off?

You don't make plans to hang out with anybody. You buy enough food for one person and head up to your apartment before sundown to start dinner. He finds a nearby building to continue watching you from, his arm perched on his knee as he holds the scope to his eye. You leave all your windows open. Almost like you wanted him to see inside.

He feels a chill when you finally do pick up your phone for the first time, and—

His pocket vibrates. He almost doesn't want to answer it.

You stand there in your kitchen, idly stirring pasta with your phone tucked between your ear and shoulder. Waiting. Knowing.

You call him again after he lets it go to voicemail, and he answers very flatly: "I thought today was my day off."

"You must be hungry."

He narrows his eyes. "What makes you say that?"

You spin, and he thinks you might make direct eye contact with him through the window, but you don't. You go to grab some wine glasses from your cabinet. "I imagine you've been busy since you're a free agent today."

Dex keeps his breathing light. "As a matter of fact, I have been. Thank you for the day off, officer."

You chuckle low, beginning to pour port into both glasses. "You're very welcome. You didn't answer my question."

Dex can see your play. Invite him in, let him sniff around, get used to your scent. Allow him some sense of satisfaction in the situation even though you've found him out. He kind of wants to take the bait. "That wasn't a question."

"I'm making dinner. Are you a fan of Italian?"

Dex hums. "Not a fan of sweet wine, though."

At that, you look up at him. Your eyes pierce through him with pinpoint accuracy. You bring a glass to your lips, sipping slowly. You hold the other glass up to the window in cheers.

And then? You pour it down the drain.

"Did you enjoy playing voyeur with me for once?" The change in your tone is immediate. It freezes over, and if Dex did not have the advantage right now, he would feel the urge to shrink on himself. But he does have the advantage. He has a gun he feels very comfortable with strapped to his thigh, and you will never be as quick as him. Except, if he killed you, they would know. He would not make it out alive, and these days, he kind of enjoys being alive. Feels a sense of purpose for the first time in a while. And he would never find out what about you tilts his world off its axis.

He says nothing. He keeps watching. His stomach turns.

You keep going, "You and I are partners, Dex. It's okay that you're curious. So long as you stay on the other side of this window. Understood?"

"So you get to control my life but I only get to see yours through a window? That doesn't seem fair, partner."

Your face shifts in his scope. You snarl, or smirk. "We are partners. I give the orders, you take them. Do you understand?"

Dex wants to challenge you further. He'd spent most of his adult life taking orders, and it had gotten him in messes almost too deep, always relying on someone else to dig him out. He did not enjoy relying on you... but something in your voice is tranquilizing him. Twisting his arm. He nods, and wonders if you can see it from this far away, this late at night.

You smile. Apparently you do. "Good boy. See you tomorrow."

You notice him a lot.

Your check-ins happen in public places: diners, coffee shops, parks by ponds. You pass off information over shared food and you always share food. You have a list of his allergies, his yucks and yums. You introduce him to new foods and adjust with his input. Most of the time, you get it really, really right. When you get it wrong, you send him home with something familiar.

He didn't yet feel comfortable with being known by you, studied. You never wrote anything down but he could always tell when you filed something away about him.

It took him much longer to get used to your praise.

You didn't look like the type, usually pretty cut and dry about his mission objectives and outcomes. But then he'd give you his report, sometimes in more excruciating detail just to see you sweat... and every time, your lip would twitch. You'd nod. "Good, Dex. Very good." He usually ended up sweating.

Today, you're sharing milkshakes on a warm summer afternoon. Dex has just shared his mission report, and you are writing down details in your journal. He waits patiently after he's done, trying to hide the anticipation. You look up after shutting your journal, lean forward, taking a long sip from your milkshake, and nod. No twitch in your lip. No "Good, Dex. Very good."

He frowns. "Well?"

You blink. "Well, what?"

"You gonna say somethin'?"

You don't look confused. You must know what he's talking about. That just frustrates him more. "You disobeyed me, Dex."

"Disobey". His expression tightens. He runs through the mission again in his mind: intercepting a shipment on the docks. Early morning, overcast. He arrived early. Stealth-took out a few monitors near the back of the docks, sniped his target from the warehouse loft. Retrieved the payload. Caught his ride out of there. Met up with you, all before lunch rush. "I completed my mission."

"You almost didn't."

"But I did."

"Poindexter." And this is how he learns that you'll only call him that when you're mad. "You almost didn't because you disobeyed a direct order from me. You were off by a minute and fifty-two seconds because you wanted to have a little fun with your target. You had a clear shot for his head but you went for his knee. Do you want to know what you could've been doing in that minute and fifty-two seconds, instead of pulling out the exposed bone from your target's leg? You could've been gone, so no one could see you leaving."

"I took care of that." Dex grits through his teeth, and he knows it's a weak excuse, but he's upset and he still killed the fucking guy so why weren't you pleased? You tuck your journal in your bag and set a twenty on the table, about to scoot out of the booth to leave, but Dex extends his right leg and rests it next to your hip. You still, looking down at his dirty boot out of the corner of your eye. Dex smiles, stirring the rest of his ice cream with his straw. "Come on, partner. Admit it: I did good."

"Do you want me to praise you?"

"I want you to be honest."

"Okay. I'm not replacing that knife you lost making up for your mistake. Consider it your punishment."

Dex clenches his jaw. "I'm not a child."

"Of course you're not. You should know better."

"Why don't you have any other agents?" Dex's question catches you off guard. He can see the flicker in your eyes, the discomfort before it's gone. "Most of the handlers have two or three. You only have me. Why is that?"

Dex watches as you breathe slow, collecting yourself. You look away. More people are starting to enter the diner: businessmen in suits still taking calls as they grab a table, two elderly women waddling slowly toward the back by the jukebox, a child and his father in fishing gear bringing in the scent of freshwater. Dex focuses on the dad's tackle box and the filet knife that hovers a few feet behind him. Just in case.

"What is your North Star?" Dex's eyes immediately snap back to you. "It's the one thing in your file we struggled with documenting. I've always been curious."

Dex hasn't said Julie's name in a while. "You first."

"I have very high standards." You hesitate, and then, as if against your better judgement, you continue. "You are the only one who meets them. Your turn."

Dex thinks about mentioning Julie and Dr. Mercer and Matt. His hopeful attempts at retribution, his crutches toward the light. But it's the one thing you don't know intimately about him, and he isn't about to give that up.

He removes his leg from your side of the booth and stands up, watching you watch him. He feels a wave of satisfaction when he sees the realization dawn on you. "Thank you, officer. That's all I needed to know."

Mr. Charles tells Dex that he is the organization's highest performing agent seven months in a row. Dex sends you dyed blue roses and a bottle of dry wine to your front door. On the card, it reads:

We make a great team. Party at yours?

You return the bottle to his kitchen counter, half-empty to the exact ounce. On the back of his card, it reads:

No dogs allowed. Sorry :)

A rubber bullet whizzes past Dex's ear, implanting itself in a foam block five feet behind him. He takes a breath, then moves to aim his own gun at the agent across the way, striking them in the shoulder. They fall back with the force, and Dex resumes his crouching position behind the half-wall. He can hear the sounds of triggers going off all around the facility, but he keeps his ears trained on the ones right in front of him.

"You know," His partner starts, having resigned himself to the floor crisscross applesauce. "You're like the golden boy of the CIA right now."

Dex pinpoints where his next target is, and quickly takes a shot above the wall to his right. He hears a groan and a "Come on, man!" before the buzzer sounds, alerting everyone to another fallen agent. In his moment of reprieve, Dex glances at the agent beside him playing with his own gun like a paperweight. "What?"

Agent Banks motions in the direction of nothing in particular. "You can't tell me you don't know what people have been saying about you."

Dex's lips purse. He feels in his gut that someone is stalking closer from his left, but he can't jump the gun. "I make it my mission not to know."

"You've been on a winning streak since you got recruited. I know you're like, a sharpshooter, but I haven't seen a guy come close to you in years."

The stalker is closer now. The playground the CIA has locked its special agents in is a padded hellscape with nothing to bounce off of. If this were a real battlefield, Dex could ricochet a bullet off a telephone pole and hit this guy in the leg. Maybe the head if he timed it right—and then he reminds himself that there's no aiming for the head.

He crouches around the corner, shooting his stalker in the stomach. The buzzer sounds again.

"Not to mention your handler."

Dex pauses, slipping back into his safe zone. They'd need to move soon, lest the others figure out where they're camping and close in on them, but Dex cannot help his curiosity at the mention of you. He glances over at Banks, reloading his gun. "What do you mean?"

Banks laughs. "They chose you specifically. That doesn't just happen."

This was the first time Dex had heard of this. He knew you had no other agents to control, which is why you always had time to watch him. How long that had been the case and whether it was by choice was nothing he could gather in conversation with you, and he didn't like talking to anyone else anyway. The one time he'd tried asking Mr. Charles, he'd been teased about wanting to be "the favorite". Dex did not make that mistake again.

The chatterbox beside him seems to want to talk about it, so... maybe. "Yeah? How do you know that?"

"My handler." Banks says. "She says before you got recruited, your handler couldn't keep an agent for longer than a month or two."

Perhaps because you liked to watch them, prying into their lives more than professionally necessary. Like the freak you were. Dex hides a smile at that. "Why?"

"They were all great agents. I know some of 'em. Guess your handler just wasn't impressed until you came along."

Dex stills. He tries very hard not to let that get to his head.

Banks glances around, then pats him on the arm and motions for them to start moving to higher ground. They follow a path up some stairs, quickly slipping up and around the railing before the other agents could spot them. He knows twenty-four agents went in, and he'd personally taken out six so far. He'd heard the buzzer go off seven times for everyone else. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I don't know. Just curious about you, I guess. Joining our group of ragtag delinquents couldn't have been easy for you. But you're the best of the best." Dex is paying attention to the landscape of the second floor, but the tone in Banks' voice makes him slow down. He can hear his heartbeat in his chest. Banks is behind him. He doesn't know what's ahead of him. Banks has been behind him the whole time.

All of a sudden, two agents jump out of their hiding places in front of him, and Dex quickly rolls in between two large foam block walls before their bullets can hit him. He pants, gathering his wits about him. He can see his partner towering above the blocks, and the other agents don't bother to shoot him. It becomes very clear what this is.

Dex's nostrils flare. He forces himself to focus. He can't think about you right now, or the fact that you're definitely watching. He cannot think about how you'd chosen him.

He assesses the area. There are eleven—a bullet goes off downstairs, the buzzer following soon after—ten other agents left including himself and Banks. Two more definitely on this floor.

Dex crawls around the foam labyrinth, careful not to shake any structures and give away his position. He sneaks around until he's poised behind one agent's back and shoots. The buzzer rings out. A bullet flies past Dex but he's quicker, aiming for the other agent's torso. Another buzzer.

"Fuck this." He hears Banks round the corner, gun pointed at Dex. "I don't care if I lose."

But Dex is faster. He's always faster. Two bullets go off, but only one hits its target. Instead of the buzzer, a voice calls over the intercom: "Cease gunfire. Agent Poindexter, you are disqualified. Please return to the lobby."

It's a slow walk out of the room, agents watching from their hiding places as Dex shoulders his way out.

The first thing he hears is your voice. The first thing he registers is that you are pissed.

"—Poindexter was ambushed by his partner. He should not have been disqualified."

"The rules clearly state—"

"—and what do the rules say about ambushing your partner with the enemy? What kind of teamwork is that? Are these the standards we're holding our agents to now?"

He sees you standing outside the training room with all the other handlers, arguing with a higher-up who looks just about done with you. Said higher-up looks over your shoulder at Dex and narrows his eyes. "Agent—"

"I got it." Dex interrupts. He pulls off his bulletproof vest and helmet, dropping each piece of protective gear onto the floor.

You glance at him, and your expression is more distressed than he's ever seen on you. It shocks him but, even more, it angers him. He's angry at letting himself get carried away in the training, distracted by the bit of information he'd learned about you. If he didn't care, he would've caught on to the play long before he'd been cornered. Then he wouldn't have failed, and—

Dex squints at a woman ten feet away from you, leaning up against the door to the viewing room. He's not met many of the handlers here, but he knows who belongs to her. She looks smug.

There's a ringing in Dex's ears. He needs to get out of here.

As if you've synced up with him, he feels you grabbing at his arm, dragging him toward the elevator at the other end of the floor. You're muttering something under your breath and he knows better than to question you right now. He waits behind you, arms crossed over his chest, and looks behind to see the group of handlers resuming the training. He hopes someone puts a bullet in Banks' eye.

The elevator dings.

You both stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, as it takes you up.

You've stopped muttering. You're staring straight ahead at the reflective metal of the elevator interior. Dex watches you through it. "I won't let them dock points for that." You say, and Dex thinks "That's what you're worried about?"

"I don't care about a stupid training exercise."

"You were disqualified for attacking an ally, Dex. They could bring that up in your next evaluation. Argue that you're not suited for this work."

Dex gets flashbacks to the FBI, his whole department turning against him. He liked to think he'd moved past all of that, even if the memory makes him itch. "I'm the best agent they have. They wouldn't."

"They won't." You assert. Dex finally looks directly at you. Your arms are crossed like his, standing straight as a board. He finds it kind of cute.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" Your response comes out more like a hiss.

"About that lady in there. The one who kept smirking at you."

Your nose twitches, kind of like a bunny. That is cute. "Finch. She's Banks' handler."

"She got something against you?" Dex says, and no attempt from him could make it sound less like a threat.

You shift your weight as you get closer to ground level. "...Banks used to be mine, way before you came along. He was an up and comer but he just..."

"Wasn't impressive?" And no attempt would be made on Dex's part to not sound so self-satisfied.

You watch him from your peripheral. He doesn't know what you're thinking, but you don't scold him, so it can't be bad. "He was fine."

Dex still has much to learn about you, but he knows the way you say "fine" belies all the contempt in the world. You were never pleased with just "fine". "Is that why you picked me?"

Now, you look at him. You're not unguarded but your eyes do pin him to the spot. "I read up on you, long before Mr. Charles decided to recruit you. When I got a hold of your file, I just... there was something about you that I couldn't shake. You were impeccable from an early age. Second to none. But you grew up and tried to live a simple life. Then Fisk came along and that changed. No matter who was pulling your strings, you were always just as dangerous of a weapon. And I kept thinking... how would it feel to hold that weapon in my hands? Point it in the right direction? How would it feel to control something... extraordinary?"

Dex should be insulted. You've objectified him, reduced him to a weapon, only a killing thing. You're interested in puppeteering him, and yet... beneath that, he feels a spark. Something volatile catching fire.

He takes a step toward you and you back away. He follows you until your back hits the elevator wall and he is placing the tip of a knife to your gut. When you feel the point, your eyelashes flutter. Dex smiles. "People have died trying to control me. What makes you think you're any different?"

You take in a breath, and Dex picks up on the shudder in it. "Everyone who has ever wanted to control you has been terrified of your potential. I don't want to stop you, I want to guide you. I think you are the best. But it's up to you." And Dex feels your hand close around his holding the knife, concealing it as the doors of the elevator finally open. Dex turns to see a group of agents all standing impatiently, stopped in their tracks when they see the compromising position he has you in.

You push him away, patting his chest. "Good talk."

Dex does not like you.

Well, his feelings fluctuate. Right now, he doesn't like you. He wants to punish you, too, because he's been exceptional lately and you have the nerve to be busy.

It turned out that sometimes you did do other work. When you weren't handling him, you would—on occasion—be sent out for reconnaissance because of your lack of other agents to manage. They were small missions with low risk. So simple, even Banks could do it.

So why wasn't he? Why did it have to be you?

You Mission complete. Freak Nice. All clear? You All clear. Freak !!! 🥰 Good job. You Check-in? Freak Sorry, still busy. Freak sent you $50. Treat yourself. We'll catch up later.

You're not lying. He can see you from his vantage point at the bar across the street, typing away on your computer in the same cafe as your targets. You blend into the crowd of busy New Yorkers winding down the early evening with more work, earphones on playing nothing so you can take accurate notes on the conversation happening near you.

It's kind of amusing watching you at work. You play the part of an uninterested local, never looking up when a person of interest enters your sphere. You've been tailing them for a few days: three guys, all grimy mafia-looking types. The shop is just enough of a hole-in-the-wall to not make them stand out, but Dex can't imagine they're used to being subtle. Small fish, simple bait. Why couldn't Banks do this?

Dex is considering texting you something when you suddenly shut your laptop and grab your things, heading out of the shop. He watches you strut casually in the direction of where you live, and his eyes flicker down to his phone. He's typing out, "Still busy?" when he hears the bell over the coffee shop door ring again. Dex looks up.

The three men you'd been listening in on are walking in your direction.

He watches them for a while. Waits to see them walk down an alley, or hail a cab, or turn the opposite way you do. He watches them for so long, shaking his knee from his seat until he can't watch any longer. The text he meant to send you sits unsent on his phone.

You must know. You knew when he followed you, and he'd made an effort not to be seen. These buffoons wouldn't go unnoticed by you. You'd lead them elsewhere.

And he'd just make sure.

He follows at a considerable pace, heart pounding as he cuts through traffic, horns honking and hot exhaust whipping up into his face. He slips in between the evening crowds of office workers clocking out for the day. You're too far ahead to see outside of small glimpses, but he has zeroed in on the three men tailing you, all greasy ponytails and chest hair to the wind. An image of one of them touching you crosses his mind and he has to physically shake his head to get rid of it.

You've been tailing them for days. If you've had time to gather info on them, they've had time to gather info on you. It's not far-fetched to think they know where you live.

The pit in his stomach hardens when your complex comes into view, and he watches as you slip across the street and up the stairs, buzzing yourself in. The guard from before is there, and the closer he gets, the easier it is to see you cracking a joke like usually. Your stalkers tail behind at a further distance. Dex keeps himself on the other side of the street.

Even if they did manage to get into the lobby, the guard wouldn't let them get far. These guys couldn't be that stupid. If they knew someone was tailing them, they wouldn't draw attention to it. Maybe they'd wait for you another day, and by then, Dex would've taken care of them himself.

He watches one of them walk up to the buzzer, mouth moving in a sluggish way. He waits with baited breath. He can hear the faint buzz over the traffic, and he sees all three stooges rush the lobby in seconds.

He doesn't have time to text you.

Your furniture is nice. He practically sinks into your armchair, his tired muscles relaxing after the weight is taken off them. He spreads his legs and wipes his knife clean on his a dishtowel he'd stolen from your kitchen, flicking it back and forth between his fingers as he listens to you vocalize. You're singing along to "Out of Touch", no unbroken notes even as he put the last of your would-be assailants through the business end of his knives. He watches blood pour out of one's mouth as the shower comes to a stop.

Dex listens for the sound of you moving behind your bedroom door: the creak of your bathroom door opening, floorboards protesting as you move around. The smell of your body soap wafts out into the living room on a cloud of humidity, and Dex pauses to take it in. Milk and honey. He approves.

Your music comes to a stop, but you're still singing as you open your door, wrapped in a towel and nothing else. You pause in the doorway.

Dex watches you take in the three bodies felled on the floor of your living room, all telling stories of the abuse Dex had put them through. There's shock there. You don't bother to hide it this time. "Should be more careful walking home," He twirls his knife, a lazy smile on his face. "You never know what kind of bad men might follow you in."

When your eyes land on him, they narrow. "Poindexter," You start, and his eyes flash back at you. "I thought I made myself very clear the first time."

His head tilts. "You can't be serious." You lean against your door frame with a look of... disappointment? Dex's nostrils flare. "How about: 'Thank you, Dex.' 'You saved my life, Dex.' 'Next time I'm tailing a couple mafiosos, I'll make sure to look over my shoulder, Dex.'"

You pout. "Why would I need to look over my shoulder? You seem to have that covered."

A beat passes. Dex stands the next, trekking through the blood toward you. His frown is deep as he stabs his knife into the door frame by your head. You do not flinch. Your lip twitches up, though.

Dex leans down until he's breathing in your space, until his nose is bumping yours. You maintain eye contact with him the whole time. "You knew." And he doesn't ask because he knows he's right. You nod. "Were you testing me?"

"You're not on probation anymore, Dex. I've already decided to keep you." He does not acknowledge the hitch in his breath when you say that. "And I already know what you are."

"And what's that?" A mocking smile slithers onto his face.

"A loyal dog. And a good one. A very, very good one." He feels one of your fingers graze the scar under his eye and he lets you, anger and intrigue all stirred up inside him as you look at him. No fear, no uncertainty. Part of him wants to prove you wrong and watch the smugness drain out of you like bloodfall, like the men he'd killed to keep you safe.

But your hand slips into his hair, nails scratching along his scalp, and the bundle of nerves all there light up like Christmas day. His lids slip closed as you massage, rubbing the tension out of the base of his skull with such skill that the breathy little noise slipping out of him makes his ears tinge pink. You look pleased. "You're still in trouble, though. Coming in when I told you not to. What ever will I do with you?"

Dex's eyes roll to the back of his head when you tug on his hair a little, and his hands instantly go for your hips, forcing you back into your bedroom and down into bed. You squeal, towel falling open, and he's rushing in with his mouth on your neck before you can grip it closed. The friction of his thigh slipping between your legs sends you over the moon. Dex grins against your skin, wolfish.

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