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• random characters from different series/movies

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JVL
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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Product Placement
art blog(derogatory)
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trying on a metaphor

@theartofmadeline
todays bird

tannertan36

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
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Kiana Khansmith
Misplaced Lens Cap
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@eu-nicola
eu-nicola’s masterlist
important
• formula 1
• a knight of the seven kingdoms
• outer banks
• wednesday
• cobra kai
• random characters from different series/movies
i need to do something with him
More than one night - Dean Di Laurentis [part 2]
summary: A night with Dean was a mistake and you knew it the next day when you found out that he was messing with your sister but things didn't end there
tw and word counter: (5,0k) none
The morning was cool and the sun was just starting to peek over the campus buildings. Two days had passed since that night, since you let yourself get carried away again by Dean in that messy room on the second floor, and you hadn’t heard anything from him since.
Not a single message, not a casual glance on campus, absolutely nothing.
You knew how he was, so his silence didn’t surprise you.
In fact, you almost welcomed it, or at least that’s what you kept telling yourself as you adjusted the strings of your racket. You had gotten up before dawn, the clock read 6:45 when you arrived at the tennis courts in the sports complex. The place was almost empty, with only a few runners in the distance and the distant sound of a lawnmower.
You put on your headphones, turned up the volume on a chill playlist, and started warming up. Balls against the wall, footwork drills, forehands and backhands. The steady rhythm of tennis had always helped clear your mind. Every hit was a way to release the frustration.
You had missed two classes that morning: American Literature and Introduction to Psychology. It wasn’t the first time. In reality, tennis was taking up more hours than you should allow yourself in your first year, but classes felt… empty. Boring. You preferred to be here, sweating under the rising sun, feeling your muscles work and your mind go quiet for a while.
If you wanted to be the best, you had to train.
After almost an hour and a half of intense training, you sat down on one of the side benches, drinking water while trying to catch your breath. Sweat ran down the back of your neck and between your shoulder blades. You were wearing your favorite training outfit: a short white tennis skirt and a black sports top that clung to your skin.
You were taking out your phone to check the time when a message from your friend Mika arrived:
Mika: Where are you? I looked for you in Literature and you weren’t there. Everything okay?
You: Training. Time got away from me. Did something important happen?
Mika: Nah, just that the professor announced a group project. I’ll send you the details later.
You sighed and stood up to pack your things. The sun was already higher. You decided to take a long walk around campus before heading back to the dorm. You needed to clear your head a little more.
You walked along the tree-lined paths with your racket hanging from your shoulder and your hair still damp with sweat, tied in a high ponytail. The campus was starting to fill with students heading to their 9 a.m. classes.
And then you saw him.
Dean was sitting at a table surrounded by three guys from the hockey team, laughing at something one of his friends said. For a second, your steps faltered.
He hadn’t seen you yet. You could turn around, take another path, avoid him completely. It would be the smartest thing to do, but just as you were considering that option, Dean looked up and his eyes met yours.
His laughter faded slowly. The arrogant expression he usually wore disappeared for a moment, replaced by something more intense, more serious. He looked you up and down: the tennis skirt, your legs still glistening with sweat, the top clinging to your body.
For a second your stomach tightened, but you didn’t stop. You lowered your gaze and kept walking along the path, determined to avoid him. You were so focused on not looking at him that you didn’t see the guy coming in the opposite direction.
The collision was soft but enough. Your racket, water bottle, and bag fell to the ground.
“Shit, sorry,” he said immediately, bending down to help you pick everything up.
“No problem,” you replied quickly, also crouching down. “It was my fault, I was distracted.”
The guy handed you the racket and bottle with an embarrassed smile. He was tall, with short dark brown hair and brown eyes. He was wearing sports clothes: jogging pants and a university t-shirt.
“Still, sorry. I should’ve watched where I was going,” he insisted, scratching the back of his neck. “I’m Ethan, by the way.”
You smiled slightly. “No problem, really. I’m […].”
Dean, from his table, watched the entire scene in silence. His expression had changed. He wasn’t laughing with his friends anymore. His jaw was slightly tense and his eyes followed every movement you and Ethan made.
Ethan looked at your racket with interest.
“You just came from playing tennis?”
“Yeah, I just finished at the court.”
“You can tell you train seriously,” he commented, impressed. “Are you on the university team?”
“There’s no team here. I’m working to get into the top 100 ranking.”
Ethan raised his eyebrows, surprised.
“Wow, that’s pretty ambitious. Don’t you think it’s a really difficult goal?”
You shrugged with confidence.
“It might be, but I don’t care. I know I’m good and I train a lot. If I keep going like this, I’ll make it.”
Ethan nodded, looking at you with curiosity.
“And how do you manage with classes? Training at that level must take up a lot of time.”
“I don’t go to many, to be honest,” you admitted sincerely. “This first year I prioritized tennis. I know it’s not ideal, but…”
“I get it,” he said, smiling a little. “I’m on the track team, so I know what that balance is like. What are you studying?”
“Political Science.”
“Sounds interesting. Must be pretty demanding.”
“It is,” you replied with a small laugh. “But I like some things.”
There was a brief, comfortable silence. Ethan scratched the back of his neck, as if thinking about what to say.
“Well… I have to go,” you said, pointing toward the path to the dorm. “I still need to shower and see what I missed in classes today.”
“Of course. Hey…” he hesitated for a second, “if you want, someday we could train together. I run in the mornings and then do strength training. It might be nice to have company on the courts.”
You thought about it for just a moment. Ethan seemed nice and calm.
“Sounds good,” you accepted with a soft smile.
“Great,” he took out his phone. “Can I have your number? I’ll text you and we’ll coordinate.”
You exchanged numbers. You said goodbye with a friendly gesture and continued walking toward the dorm.
From one of the outdoor tables at the cafeteria, Dean had witnessed the entire interaction. His jaw was tense and his gaze stayed fixed on you as you walked away, not missing a single detail.
After exchanging numbers with Ethan, you felt a heavy stare on you. You turned your head slightly and Dean was looking at you. He was watching you intently, his expression serious, almost dark, and he didn’t look away even when your eyes met.
Your heart skipped a beat. Without thinking twice, you quickened your pace and walked faster toward the dorm, feeling his gaze piercing your back until you turned the corner.
You arrived at your room agitated. Mika wasn’t there, so you took the chance to shower peacefully. You let the hot water relax your tired muscles from training, trying not to think about anything.
When you got out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, you grabbed your phone that was on the bed. You had a new message.
Dean: Already replacing me so fast?
You read it and felt a knot in your stomach, but you didn’t reply. You left the phone face down on the desk and started getting ready: you put on comfortable clothes, dried your hair, and began choosing what to wear for the rest of the day.
You were still in the bathroom, finishing combing your hair, when you heard the door of the room open.
“Hello? Are you there?” It was Allie’s voice.
“Yeah, I’m in the bathroom,” you replied, trying to sound normal. “What’s up?”
“I wanted to ask if you’ve seen my black hoodie. I think I left it here last time I came over.”
“I haven’t seen it, but you can look for it if you want,” you said while applying cream to your face in front of the mirror.
Allie started rummaging through some things in the room while you kept talking about random stuff. You answered from the bathroom, trying to keep the conversation light.
Suddenly, there was a second of silence.
“Hey, and this playlist you have on? It’s good. Can you pass me your phone so I can see the name of the song?”
Before you could react, you heard her pick up your phone from the table.
Panic flooded you. You practically ran out of the bathroom wearing only an oversized t-shirt.
“Wait!” you said, too quickly. You approached and snatched the phone from her hands in a clumsy movement. “I… I’ll send it to you.”
Allie looked at you strangely, with a raised eyebrow.
“What’s wrong with you? I just wanted to see the song.”
“Nothing, nothing,” you stammered, forcing a smile while nervously unlocking the phone. “It’s just… I wanted to change the music. This playlist already bored me. Let me put on another one.”
Your heart was pounding. You knew Dean’s unread message was still on the notification screen. If Allie had seen it…
She looked at you for a few more seconds, clearly suspecting something weird was going on, but eventually shrugged.
“Alright, weirdo,” she said laughing. “But tell me what song was playing, I liked it.”
You sat on the bed, still holding the phone tightly, trying to hide the trembling. Guilt and nerves mixed in your chest while you changed the playlist as an excuse.
Allie kept looking for a while longer until she let out a small victorious cry.
“Here it is!” she said, pulling her gray hoodie from under your bed. “I knew I left it here. Thanks.”
“No problem,” you replied, still sitting on the bed gripping the phone.
Allie put on the sweatshirt and looked at you for a second, smiling.
“Well, I’m leaving. I have class in twenty minutes. See you later?”
“Yeah, sure,” you said, forcing a smile.
As soon as Allie closed the door behind her, you let out all the air you had been holding. You looked at your phone and, after hesitating for a few seconds, opened the conversation with Dean.
You typed with slightly shaky fingers:
You: Dean, I don’t want you to talk to me anymore. This has to stop. I’m going to block you.
You sent it and stared at the screen, heart beating hard.
Dean’s reply came less than a minute later:
Dean: Are you sure about that?
You stared at the message. Reading it over and over. You felt a lump in your throat and an uncomfortable warmth in your chest. You knew you should block him right then, but your fingers wouldn’t move. Instead, you left the conversation without replying and put the phone aside.
You sighed and decided to continue with your day. You finished getting ready, picked up your notes and books, trying to focus on what was coming: a class in Introduction to Political Science that you didn’t want to miss entirely.
A while later, Mika entered the room with her usual energy.
“Ready? We’re late,” she said, grabbing her backpack.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” you replied, putting your phone in your bag.
You left with Mika toward the classroom building, walking along the campus paths. She talked animatedly about Ryan and how things had progressed with him the other night at the party, but you could only nod and smile half-heartedly. Your mind was elsewhere.
Every time your phone vibrated in your bag, you felt a small jump in your stomach, but you didn’t take it out to check.
You arrived just in time for class. You sat next to Mika, opened your notebook, and tried to pay attention to what the professor was saying, although your head kept spinning.
The class ended without you fully realizing it. You left the classroom with Mika, chatting, when your phone vibrated with a campus notification.
It was a message from the dean’s office: they asked you to come to his office as soon as possible.
You felt a knot in your stomach. You knew exactly what it was about. You arrived at the dean’s office a few minutes later. The man, about fifty years old with a serious expression, received you sitting behind his desk.
“Sit down, please,” he said without preamble. “I’ve reviewed your attendance this semester. You’ve missed more than 40% of the classes in American Literature and Psychology, and you also have several absences in Political Science. Is there any problem we should know about?”
You tried to defend yourself as best you could.
“It’s just… I’m training. I try to catch up on the material on my own, but sometimes it’s hard to match the schedules.”
The dean looked at you with patience, but firmness.
“I understand that sports are important, and the university values that. However, you’re in your first year. If you keep missing classes like this, it’s going to become a serious problem. Your grades are already starting to suffer and we can’t make indefinite exceptions. I need you to increase your class attendance. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir. I understand,” you replied, lowering your gaze.
“Good. I expect to see improvement from now on. You may leave.”
You left the office with a mix of frustration and guilt. You knew he was right, but tennis was the only thing keeping you centered lately.
The rest of the day passed normally and quite calmly. You ate with Mika, made some progress on pending readings, and trained in the afternoon. At night you went to bed early, exhausted both physically and mentally.
The next day you were having breakfast in the dorm when your phone vibrated. It was a message from Ethan.
Ethan: Hey! How are you? I wanted to ask where you train so I can stop by someday and we can meet up.
You smiled slightly. It was a simple and nice message, so you replied after a few seconds:
You: Hi Ethan. I train at the sports complex courts, mostly early mornings around 7. I’m usually there for about two hours. When would work for you?
After replying to Ethan, you finished breakfast, grabbed your sports bag, and walked to the tennis courts. The morning air was still fresh and the campus was half asleep, quiet at that hour.
You arrived around seven fifteen, left your things on the usual bench, and started your routine: warm-up, footwork exercises, some baseline shots, and then serves.
The constant sound of the ball against the racket ended up calming you more than you expected. For a while, only your breathing, the movement of your feet, and the exact force of each shot existed.
You didn’t even look at your phone. You had left it on silent inside your bag.
While you were training, Dean kept sending messages.
Dean: Are you really going to block me?
Dean: I don’t believe you.
Dean: Answer me.
But none were read.
You were finishing a series of serves when you saw someone approaching from the side of the court. It was Ethan, dressed in sports clothes with a backpack over his shoulder. As soon as he saw you, he raised a hand with a relaxed smile.
“Hi,” he greeted as he got closer to the fence. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”
You wiped the sweat from your forehead with the back of your hand and smiled at him, a little surprised.
“Hi, Ethan. You’re not interrupting. Want to play?”
He let out a small laugh as he left his backpack on the bench.
“Sure, although I warn you my tennis level is pretty bad. But I can chase balls, that I’m good at.”
You laughed softly.
“Perfect, then you already have a job. Come on, I’ll explain.”
Ethan entered the court and you started training together. At first it was a bit clumsy, but he learned quickly and didn’t take it too seriously when he missed a shot. He ran for the balls, returned some pretty decent ones, and between exercises, conversation started flowing naturally.
“You play incredibly,” Ethan commented after a while, resting his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “Seriously. You can tell you’ve been doing this for years.”
You adjusted the tension of your racket strings before answering.
“Yeah, I basically grew up on a court. And you? Just track?”
“Mainly. Although I like trying new things. And honestly… this is way more fun than I expected.”
You smiled faintly before taking a ball from the cart.
“Then I’m officially making you my training partner.”
Ethan let out a soft laugh, but then seemed to remember something.
“Hey… I wanted to ask you something.” He looked at you with some hesitation. “Is Allie your sister?”
You nodded while adjusting your racket grip.
“Yeah. Why?”
He frowned slightly, clearly surprised.
“I don’t know… it’s just that you don’t look alike at all. Not physically or in personality.”
You couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“Yeah, people tell us that pretty often.”
You spun the ball between your fingers before continuing.
“We have different mothers. And besides… I think my mom influenced me a lot more in how I turned out. I spent more time with her than with my dad, so I guess that’s a big part of the difference.”
Ethan nodded slowly, as if that finally made sense.
“Now I get it. I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”
“I know,” you replied with a small smile. “Trust me, it would be weird if someone knew us and didn’t ask that question.”
The conversation continued flowing naturally after that. Ethan was calm, effortlessly funny, and respected silences without making them awkward.
The following days passed in a routine you tried to keep stable. You didn’t talk to Dean again, no messages, no calls, not even glances. You had left his last conversation on read and, although you hadn’t blocked him yet, you promised yourself you wouldn’t fall into the same thing again.
In the mornings you trained with Ethan.
At first they only coincided a couple of times a week, but little by little it became a habit. He almost always showed up with coffee for both of you. He wasn’t exactly a tennis prodigy, but he had energy, patience, and a natural ease that made everything feel lighter.
He picked up balls, helped you with resistance drills, and between breaks you talked about anything: training, annoying professors, bad movies you ended up watching anyway, or embarrassing college stories.
“You play better every day,” Ethan commented one morning while you walked around the court picking up balls. “It’s scary to face you now.”
You let out a soft laugh while drying the sweat from your neck with the towel.
“And you’re leaving fewer balls in the net every time. I’m proud.”
“That’s practically a love declaration coming from you.”
You threw a ball at his chest and Ethan pretended to have been shot.
The ease with which you talked was starting to please you more than you wanted to admit. With Ethan you didn’t feel pressure. There were no weird games, tense silences, or that constant feeling of waiting for everything to explode.
With Dean it was always different because, even if you didn’t talk, you kept running into him everywhere.
The first time your eyes met after that night, you felt your stomach drop. Dean watched you fixedly, without looking away, as if he was waiting for you to be the one to break the silence. But you lowered your gaze and kept walking, as if it didn’t affect you, as if you didn’t perfectly remember his hands on your waist or the way he had said your name that night.
And that seemed to irritate him even more.
Dean Di Laurentis was used to getting attention without effort. Girls sought him out, smiled at him, found excuses to talk to him. You, on the other hand, acted as if he didn’t exist.
You noticed it in the way he clenched his jaw every time he saw you with Ethan. Especially when Ethan made you laugh.
One morning, you were sitting on the grass near the courts while Ethan talked about one of his track teammates. He had just said something ridiculous and you let out a loud laugh right when you saw Dean crossing the sports complex with some friends.
Your eyes met for just a second and Dean slowed his steps slightly. His gaze dropped to Ethan’s hand, which was resting too close to your leg, and something dark crossed his expression before he continued walking.
You felt an uncomfortable pressure in your chest, and the worst part was realizing that you weren’t indifferent either because later, when leaving a class, you saw Dean leaning against a wall in the humanities building talking to a blonde girl. She was laughing too loudly and had a hand on his arm.
Dean didn’t even seem interested in the conversation and yet, something inside you immediately tensed up. So you looked away before he noticed you had seen him, annoyed with yourself for feeling that absurd pang of jealousy.
You had no right.
Not after deciding to keep your distance, but still, every time you saw him with someone else, you felt an unpleasant twinge in your chest and it seemed like Dean felt exactly the same about you.
One afternoon, while you were walking toward the dorm with Mika, Dean appeared coming the opposite way with two friends. As he passed by you, his shoulder barely brushed yours.
The contact was minimal, but enough for the air to catch in your lungs. You felt his familiar perfume and all the memories came rushing back. You kept walking without looking at him. Dean didn’t say anything either, although you noticed how he slightly turned his head to watch you walk away.
You didn’t want anyone to know what had happened between you two. Not Mika, and especially not Allie. That’s why you kept ignoring him even when it was harder than you were willing to admit.
One morning, a few days later, your phone vibrated on the desk while you were trying to concentrate on some notes you had been staring at for too long without really reading.
You frowned when you saw the sender.
Dean’s Office Secretary.
Your stomach immediately sank.
“Great…” you muttered.
You didn’t even need to open the message to know it wasn’t good, and yet you did.
“You are requested to appear at the dean’s office at 10:30 a.m.”
You sighed deeply and leaned your head back because you had tried to improve, you really had.
You had started attending more classes, turned in some overdue assignments, and had even stopped making excuses to miss. But the previous weeks had been a disaster, and the accumulated absences were still there, impossible to erase.
At the appointed time, you walked to the administrative building with an unpleasant feeling lodged in your chest.
When you arrived, the secretary told you to go in. The dean was sitting behind his desk reviewing some documents and looked up when you entered.
“We meet again.”
It wasn’t exactly a warm welcome.
“Yeah, it seems so.”
You sat down in front of him while trying not to fidget with the sleeves of your sweatshirt.
“Your attendance has improved slightly,” he continued, “but it’s still below acceptable.”
Your heart started racing.
“I understand.”
“That’s why we’ve decided to take more concrete measures.”
There it was. You mentally prepared yourself to hear something about mandatory tutoring, extra assignments, or cleaning facilities. Anything but that.
“During the next few weeks you will perform support tasks for the university hockey team.”
“What?”
“You will help with training sessions, events, organization of sports equipment, and any task the coach deems necessary.”
You looked at him as if he had just spoken in another language.
“I… I don’t want to do that.”
The dean raised an eyebrow.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean…” you corrected yourself quickly. “Isn’t there another option? I can do extra work. Help in the library. Organize files. Anything.”
Anything, because there was a huge problem with that idea. A problem of almost six-foot-four, with an arrogant smile and eyes impossible to ignore.
Dean.
The dean shook his head.
“It’s not negotiable.”
Your hope died instantly.
“The team needs additional support for several important events. This will be your responsibility for the next few weeks.”
“But…”
“And if you don’t comply, the academic consequences will be considerably more severe.”
You stared at the desk for a few seconds. You were trapped. Completely trapped.
“Understood,” you finally murmured.
“Good. You may leave.”
You left the office with slightly weak legs. The fresh outside air hit your face, but it didn’t help much. You kept walking aimlessly around campus while trying to process what had just happened, because you knew exactly what it meant.
You were going to see Dean. A lot. Actually, way too much. Dean was always there and now you were going to be there too.
Until that moment you had managed to keep some distance, ignored his messages, avoided looking for him, done everything possible to convince yourself that what happened between you two had been a mistake. A huge one, that should never have been repeated, but now… now you had nowhere to hide.
And that terrified you because one part of you was still angry and felt used, but there was another part, a much harder one to control, the one that remembered exactly how his voice sounded when he spoke only to you, the way he looked at you when he thought no one was watching, the ease with which he managed to tear down all your defenses. And you hated admitting it, you really hated it.
But you had missed him, even if you tried to convince yourself otherwise, even if you knew it was a terrible idea, even if Allie existed.
You had missed him.
You stopped in the middle of the path that crossed the campus. Students walked around you without paying attention. You took a deep breath.
“This is going to be a disaster.”
Because you knew Dean and you knew yourself, and you knew perfectly well that neither of you were good at keeping your distance, especially when you were forced to spend time together.
The next day you got up very early, much earlier than usual. The sun was barely rising when you arrived at the sports complex. The coach was already waiting for you on the ice rink.
“You’re punctual. I like that,” he said, handing you a list of tasks. “Today you’re going to help me get everything ready before the guys arrive. Place the water bottles, organize the cones and stretching bars, and check that the protective equipment is ready.”
You nodded and got to work. The place was silent, only the hum of the lights and the distant sound of the machine keeping the ice in perfect condition could be heard. For the moment, you were calm. There was no one else. Just you, the coach, and the cold seeping through your sweatshirt.
You followed his instructions carefully: you arranged the bottles, prepared the trays with sports drinks, and placed the equipment. You tried to focus only on the work, but deep down you knew it was only a matter of time before Dean appeared.
And then he arrived.
The locker room door opened and Dean entered the rink with his bag over his shoulder, wearing training pants and a fitted thermal t-shirt that highlighted his shoulders and arms. His blond hair was still a little messy, as if he had just woken up.
His eyes found you almost immediately. For a second, both of you just stared at each other. Neither said anything. You quickly lowered your gaze to the bottles you were arranging, but you felt him still watching you as he approached the bench.
“Di Laurentis,” the coach called. “Come here for a moment.”
Dean approached unhurriedly, but his gaze kept returning to you every few seconds.
“This is […],” the coach said, pointing at you. “She’s going to help us for the next few weeks with organization and support tasks. She has to fulfill an academic requirement, so treat her well and make her job easier. Understood?”
Dean looked at you directly. His expression was unreadable, but there was an intense gleam in his eyes.
“Understood, Coach,” he replied in a calm voice, almost too calm.
The coach continued explaining some more things about what he would need from you during training, but you could barely concentrate. You felt Dean’s presence just a few meters away, watching you from time to time.
When the coach stepped away for a moment to take a call, Dean moved a little closer and lowered his voice so only you could hear him.
“So now you’re going to be here every day?” he asked, with that half-arrogant smile you knew so well.
You didn’t answer. You just looked at him for a second and went back to what you were doing, pretending his presence didn’t affect you.
But both of you knew it did.
Everyone stay calm (or don’t because I’m not), new Dex set pics have dropped 😮💨😍
ALSO, this guy is all of us 💀😂
Jealous - John Logan
summary: Logan is jealous of seeing you with someone else
tw and word counter: (3,0k) smut, jealousy, sex without protection (use protection please)
The music was booming throughout Garrett and Dean's house. The party was at its peak, with the living room full of people laughing, dancing, and talking loudly.
You had just arrived, and the looks didn't go unnoticed. Your Wonder Woman costume was much sexier than usual: the red and gold corset hugged your figure perfectly, highlighting your waist and enhancing your chest. The blue shorts with white stars, the high boots, and the golden tiara completed the look. You felt powerful and attractive.
You knew he would be there and it didn't take long to find him.
Logan was standing next to the kitchen island, talking with Dean and some other guys from the hockey team, with a beer in his hand. As always, he looked ridiculously handsome.
His eyes met yours. Logan raised his eyebrows, clearly surprised. He looked you up and down without hiding it, and for a second you felt your heart race. Then he smiled.
“Wow… Wonder Woman,” he said, walking over with a smile. “You look incredible.”
He gave you a warm, strong hug, the kind of hug friends or siblings give, but for you it meant so much more. When he pulled away, he kept his hands on your waist for a moment.
“Seriously, that costume looks really good on you. Since when have you been hiding that body?” he teased, laughing.
You knew it was just a joke. For Logan, you had always been just his friend. The girl he could talk to about everything, the one who listened when things weren’t going well or when the team lost an important game.
And even though it hurt, you had accepted your place. Being close to him, even if only as a friend, was better than nothing.
“Come on, I’ll get you something to drink,” he said, naturally taking your hand and leading you to the kitchen. “What do you want?”
You accepted with a smile and followed him. Logan made you a strong drink with vodka and cranberry juice, just the way you liked it. When he handed it to you, his hand returned almost immediately to your waist, resting there casually while you talked.
You stayed chatting for a while about the party, the team’s last game, and random things. Logan didn’t remove his hand from your waist. His fingers moved occasionally, as if he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, but that constant contact made your pulse race.
Suddenly, a familiar voice pulled you out of the conversation.
“There you are!” Mia, your friend, exclaimed, appearing with a huge smile. “Come on, let’s dance! You can’t stay here all night.”
Mia took your hand and started pulling you toward the living room where the music was louder. You looked at Logan with an apologetic smile.
“I’ll leave this with you,” you said, handing him your almost full glass.
Logan took it, but for a second his hand lingered on your waist, as if he didn’t want to let you go yet. He finally released you.
You walked away with Mia, and as soon as you reached the center of the room, you started dancing. The music was catchy and you moved with confidence, feeling how the costume accentuated your curves with every movement.
Not even five minutes had passed when a tall, blond guy approached you. He had an easy smile and good moves. Without saying much, he started dancing in front of you, getting closer little by little. You followed his rhythm, laughing and enjoying the moment.
From your position, you could clearly see the kitchen. And there was Logan, leaning against the island, holding your glass and staring at you.
He wasn’t taking his eyes off you.
He watched you dance with the blond guy, his jaw slightly tense and a serious expression you rarely saw on him. His eyes traveled down your body as you moved, stopping on your legs, your waist, and how the corset hugged your figure.
And you… liked it.
You liked it a lot that he was looking at you like that. So instead of moving away from the blond guy, you kept dancing with more energy, moving your hips to the rhythm while occasionally making eye contact with Logan.
You continued dancing with the blond guy, enjoying his attention and especially Logan’s intense gaze from the kitchen. For a few minutes you felt powerful and desired, but then everything changed.
Out of the corner of your eye, you saw that Logan was no longer alone. A brunette girl dressed in a short police costume had approached him. She was laughing at something he said and had her hand resting flirtatiously on his chest. Logan was smiling at her, that easy, charming smile that hurt you so much when it wasn’t directed at you. He even put an arm around her waist while talking close to her ear.
Your stomach twisted.
Suddenly, all the fun disappeared. The warmth you felt just seconds ago turned into a cold pang of disappointment. You looked down and stopped dancing.
“I’ll be right back,” you told the guy with a forced smile.
You quickly moved through the crowd, feeling a lump form in your throat. You grabbed the first glass you saw on a table, took a long sip, and kept walking toward a quieter area of the house, near the stairs.
You hadn’t gone far when you felt a hand on your arm.
“Hey, are you okay?” the guy asked, having followed you. His expression was concerned.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” you replied, trying to sound convincing. “I just… needed some air for a moment.”
He stepped closer, looking at you with interest. You didn’t say anything else. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe the disappointment, or maybe the desire to forget that Logan would never see you the way you wanted… but when he leaned in, you didn’t stop him.
His lips met yours. The kiss started soft but quickly became more intense. You placed a hand on his chest and he pulled you closer by the waist.
Suddenly, the guy was yanked backward.
“What the fuck?” he growled.
Logan was there. He had pushed the blond guy hard enough to pull him away from you. His expression was dark, jaw tight and eyes narrowed.
“Get lost,” Logan told him in a low, sharp voice. “Now.”
The blond guy looked confused and annoyed, but upon recognizing John Logan, one of the hockey team captains, he decided not to cause trouble. He raised his hands and walked away muttering under his breath.
You stood frozen, heart pounding, staring at Logan who was now standing in front of you.
Logan looked at you, still with that expression, and before he could say anything, you exploded:
“What the hell is wrong with you, Logan?” you snapped, furious. “Who do you think you are, coming over here pushing people and pulling them away from me?”
You didn’t wait for his answer. You turned around and started walking through the crowd, your heart beating hard from anger and humiliation. You went up the stairs without looking back. You tried the first door in the hallway: it was locked. The second one opened. You looked inside, saw the room was empty and dimly lit, and walked in, closing the door behind you.
Or at least you tried.
Logan was faster and stuck his foot in before you could close it completely. He entered behind you and closed the door.
“Why did you do that?” he asked, clearly upset.
You turned to face him, still angry.
“Why? Because you have no right to interfere with what I do! Who do you think you are to push a guy away from me just because you feel like it?”
Logan took a step toward you, jaw clenched.
“I don’t like seeing you kissing just anyone.”
You let out a bitter laugh.
“How ironic! Downstairs I saw you looking very comfortable with that police girl. You had her hand on your chest and you were hugging her like it was nothing. And now you come here telling me this?”
“That has nothing to do with it,” he replied sharply.
“It has everything to do with it!” you exclaimed, raising your voice.
Logan frowned.
“Why?”
You stayed silent, breathing heavily, and looked away.
“Why?” he repeated, taking another step closer.
You remained silent, your heart pounding in your throat.
Logan moved even closer until he was right in front of you. His voice dropped, more serious and deep:
“Tell me why.”
You closed your eyes for a second, feeling like you couldn’t keep it in any longer. The words came out almost in a whisper:
“Because I love you, Logan…” you confessed, your voice trembling. “Because I hate seeing you with other women, touching them, smiling at them… when I want you for myself. Because I’ve been in love with you for over a year and you only see me as your friend.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Logan stared at you, as if your words had hit him hard. His expression changed completely.
Suddenly, something shifted in his face. Without saying a word, he closed the last distance between you, took your face in his hands, and kissed you.
It was a quick, intense, and desperate kiss. As if he had been holding back for a long time and couldn’t anymore.
You were completely surprised, eyes open for a second, but you closed them almost immediately and kissed him back. You placed your hands on his chest and let yourself go, the kiss growing deeper. His lips were warm and firm, and he kissed with an urgency you never imagined.
When you finally pulled apart for air, Logan rested his forehead against yours, breathing heavily.
“I’ve been a complete idiot,” he murmured in a husky voice. “I’ve wanted you for a long time, but I was so stupid I didn’t even realize it. I thought you were just my friend… until I saw you kissing that guy downstairs. I almost died of jealousy. I couldn’t stand seeing you with someone else.”
His words hit you straight in the chest. A mix of relief, surprise, and happiness washed over you. You let out a soft, almost incredulous laugh as you looked into his eyes.
“Really?” you asked, laughing.
Logan nodded, with a crooked smile that melted you.
“Yeah… really.”
Without thinking twice, you were the one who kissed him this time. You stood on your tiptoes, wrapped your arms around his neck, and kissed him with everything you had held back for over a year.
Logan responded immediately, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you tighter against his body.
The kiss became more and more urgent. Logan’s hands roamed your back anxiously, sliding down to your waist and pressing you against him. You matched his intensity, pulling at his black t-shirt to take it off. Logan helped you, lifting his arms, and the garment fell to the floor.
Your hands explored his chest and hockey-toned shoulders while he searched for the clasp of your corset. With fingers slightly clumsy from desire, he unhooked it and let it fall. Then he unzipped your blue shorts, sliding them down your legs along with your underwear.
When you were completely naked in front of him, Logan pulled back a little to look at you. His eyes traveled over your body with a mix of desire and awe. He swallowed hard and murmured in a husky voice:
“Fuck… I don’t understand how I was stupid enough not to do this before. You’re perfect.”
His words made you blush and smile at the same time. Logan didn’t give you time to respond. He lifted you easily, holding you by the thighs. Instinctively, you wrapped your legs around his waist as he walked toward the bed and gently laid you down on the mattress.
He positioned himself on top of you, resting his forearms on either side of your head. His body was warm and heavy in the best way. He kissed you again, this time slower but with much more hunger. His lips moved down your neck, leaving hot kisses while one of his hands roamed your waist, your hip, and up to your breast.
“I’ve wanted this for so long…” he whispered against your skin before kissing you on the mouth again.
Logan kissed you slowly, as if he wanted to savor every second. His lips moved down your neck while his hand caressed your body gently: tracing your waist, moving up your ribs until he took one of your breasts with care. His thumb brushed your nipple, making you sigh.
He positioned himself between your legs carefully, still wearing his jeans. You could feel his erection pressing against you through the fabric, but he kept going slow, kissing your collarbone and moving down to take your other nipple into his mouth.
“Logan…” you whispered, arching your back.
He looked up, his eyes dark with desire.
“I want to take my time,” he murmured against your skin. “I don’t want to rush with you.”
But you no longer wanted calm. You had wanted him for over a year, imagining this moment. You tangled your fingers in his hair and tugged gently so he would look at you.
“I don’t want you to go slow,” you said breathlessly. “I want more. I want you… all of you.”
Something changed in his expression. A crooked smile appeared on his lips and his eyes darkened even more.
He stood up for a moment to remove his jeans and underwear. When he returned on top of you, completely naked, you felt his hot skin against yours. His erection pressed against your entrance, hard and warm.
Logan kissed you deeply as he guided his cock with one hand, rubbing the head against your wetness. He entered slowly at first, inch by inch, stretching you carefully. You let out a moan against his mouth when he filled you completely.
“Fuck…” he growled, closing his eyes for a second. “This is… the best feeling in the world.”
He began to move with slow, deep thrusts, pulling out almost completely before sliding back in. Every time he pushed forward, a moan escaped your lips. Your hands roamed his back, feeling his muscles tense with every movement.
But you wanted more.
You dug your nails into his back and lifted your hips to meet his thrusts.
“Harder, Logan…” you begged.
He let out a low grunt and increased the pace. His thrusts became faster and deeper, hitting a spot inside you that made you see stars. The sound of skin slapping filled the room along with your moans.
Logan lowered his head and kissed your neck, biting gently while he kept fucking you hard. You could only moan his name. Every thrust made you tremble.
You felt your body tightening more and more around him.
At one point, you placed your hands on his chest and pushed him gently. Logan understood immediately and fell onto his back, taking you with him. You straddled him, positioning yourself on top. Without wasting a second, you sank down onto him in one smooth motion, drawing a deep groan from him.
You started moving eagerly, riding him with a steady rhythm. Logan’s hands gripped your hips, helping you move faster, watching you with dark, hungry eyes while your breasts bounced with every thrust.
“Just like that… exactly like that,” he growled through gritted teeth. “You’re incredible.”
The room filled with your moans, the sound of skin colliding, and your heavy breathing. Logan moved one hand up to caress your breast while the other held your hip firmly, guiding your movements when you started to tire.
You were close. Very close. And by the way he clenched his jaw and looked at you, he was too.
Your movements became faster and more desperate. Logan held your hips tightly, thrusting up to meet you with every downward motion. The pleasure grew almost unbearable, tensing every muscle in your body.
“Logan…” you moaned, digging your nails into his chest.
“That’s it, baby. Let go,” he growled, his voice rough and broken. “I want to feel you.”
With a few more deep thrusts, the orgasm hit you hard. Your body clenched tightly around him as you moaned his name, trembling on top of him. The sensation was so intense that for a few seconds you lost track of everything.
Logan didn’t last much longer. With a guttural moan he gave you several hard thrusts from below, holding you firmly against him as he came inside you. His body shuddered beneath yours, jaw tight and eyes closed in pleasure.
You both stayed still for several long seconds, trying to catch your breath. Slowly, you collapsed onto his chest. Logan wrapped his arms around you immediately, holding you close while you were still connected.
The silence in the room was broken only by your heavy breathing. Logan gently stroked your back, running his hand up and down tenderly. He kissed your forehead, your temple, and then your lips with great care.
“I’m never letting you go again,” he murmured against your hair, his voice still husky but full of emotion. “I was an idiot for not realizing what I felt sooner… but now that I have you, I’m not letting you go. I love you too much to lose you again.”
You lifted your head to look at him. His blue eyes watched you with a sincerity you had never seen before.
“Really?” you asked softly.
Logan smiled gently and caressed your cheek with his thumb.
“Yes. I love you. I’ve wanted you for longer than I want to admit, I was just too stupid to see it. But not anymore. You’re mine now… and I’m yours.”
He kissed you again, this time slow and deep, sealing his words. Then he adjusted you more comfortably on his chest, holding you tightly while his fingers continued tracing your back with affection.
For the first time in a long time, everything felt right. You were exactly where you wanted to be.
More than one night - Dean Di Laurentis
summary: A night with Dean was a mistake and you knew it the next day when you found out that he was messing with your sister but things didn't end there
tw and word counter: (4,4k) smut, sex without protection (use protection bro), oral sex, idk what more
Meeting Dean Di Laurentis was, without a doubt, the worst thing that could have happened to you in your life.
That was what you kept repeating to yourself as you sat on the edge of your bed, with the lights off and only the glow of the streetlamp coming through the window. You had your knees hugged to your chest, as if that could protect you from the guilt eating you up inside.
Only three days had passed since that night when you let Dean kiss you against the wall in the dark hallway of the fraternity. Three days since his big hands slipped under your dress, since he whispered in your ear how fucking sexy you were while he pulled down your panties. Exactly three cursed days since you moaned his name like an idiot while he fucked you against that same wall, hard, fast, and merciless.
And the worst part… you didn’t even know who he was at the time. You only knew he was hot, that he had a beautiful smile, and that he smelled like beer and expensive cologne. He had looked at you like he wanted to devour you alive, and you, after one too many drinks and an entire semester of emotional drought, let yourself go.
You didn’t ask for his full name until the next day.
Dean Di Laurentis.
And that’s when everything went to shit because Allie, your older sister, had mentioned that name several times in the past few weeks. “Dean is such an idiot, but so much fun,” “Dean’s driving me crazy,” “Last night Dean did…” She didn’t give you many details, but enough for you to know they were hooking up. It wasn’t anything serious, according to her. Just “casual and fun sex.” But she was your sister and you had slept with him. The regret burned in your stomach.
You got up from the bed and walked barefoot to the mirror in your room. You had dark circles under your eyes, you had slept terribly. Every time you closed your eyes you saw Dean’s face above you, that arrogant smile while he thrust deep inside you. You hated yourself for remembering it in such detail, but you hated yourself even more for feeling heat between your legs at the thought.
“You’re a piece of shit,” you whispered to yourself, staring at your reflection in the mirror.
After crying for half an hour that night, you decided enough was enough. You weren’t going to stay locked in your room any longer, replaying the memory of that man on loop. Tonight you were going out, you were going to have fun, shed all that guilt, and forget about him even if it was just for a few hours.
Mika, your best friend and roommate, had come back from shopping and was sitting on the floor of the room surrounded by clothes and makeup, as if they were preparing for war.
“Oh girl, I’m finding him tonight for sure,” Mika said as she tried on a tight black top in front of the mirror. “His name is Ryan, he plays on the hockey team. I saw him Wednesday at the library and he looked at me like he wanted to eat me. He’s not getting away tonight.”
You laughed softly while applying mascara, trying to sound as normal as possible.
“Then go get him. You look hot as hell in that top, seriously. If he doesn’t hit on you tonight, he’s gay.”
Mika burst out laughing and looked at you through the mirror.
“And you… what? Isn’t there anyone you’re interested in? Because you’ve been acting weird lately. Are you sure there’s no guy running through that head of yours?”
You stayed silent for a second, the mascara brush suspended in the air.
“No,” you answered, trying to make your voice sound firm. “Not right now. I want to focus on my studies this first year, you know? I don’t want distractions.”
Lie. It was a half-lie. Yes, you wanted to focus on your studies, that part was true, but then Dean appeared and since that night, focusing was the last thing you were doing. Your mind was full of him, of his mouth, of his hands, and how he had whispered “good girl” while you came.
Mika raised an eyebrow, unconvinced.
“Hmm… well, if you say so. But if you change your mind, there are several of Ryan’s friends who are really hot too.”
“I’m good like this,” you said, forcing a smile as you put on your earrings. “Tonight I just want to dance, have a drink, and disconnect.”
What you didn’t tell Mika was that deep down, you were scared. Scared of seeing Dean at the party again, but you didn’t want that to matter, so you pushed him out of your mind and finished getting dressed: a short black dress, tight at the waist and ass. You looked good. Sexy. All those training hours had paid off.
After giving yourself one last look in the mirror, you grabbed your small purse and left the dorm with Mika. She was euphoric, practically jumping as you went down the building stairs.
“Tonight is going to be epic!” she exclaimed, grabbing your arm. “I feel like something good is going to happen. Ryan’s going to be there and I plan to eye-fuck him until he comes talk to me.”
Her energy was contagious, or at least you tried to let it be. You laughed and played along as you walked across campus toward the fraternity, where the music could already be heard from several blocks away.
When you arrived, the place was packed.
Colored lights, people crowding the entrance, the smell of spilled beer and cheap perfume mixing in the air. Mika squeezed your arm excitedly.
“See you later! If you see Ryan, let me know,” she said, and before you could respond she had already disappeared into the crowd, moving with that confidence you always admired.
And suddenly you were alone.
You made your way to the makeshift kitchen where they were serving drinks. You grabbed a plastic cup with vodka and cranberry juice and took a long sip. The alcohol burned your throat a little, but you welcomed it. You wanted to feel something stronger than that constant guilt.
For the next half hour you tried to distract yourself. You talked with a couple of girls from your literature class, laughed with a sophomore who told you a bad joke about the hockey team, and even danced for a while on the edge of the makeshift dance floor in the main room. You drank another cup, and then another.
Maybe you were drinking too much, you knew it, but every time Dean’s memory appeared in your head, you took another sip to drown it.
Until you saw him.
He was on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall. He wore a tight black t-shirt that highlighted his shoulders and tattooed arms. His blond hair was a little messy, as if someone had run their hands through it recently. And he was smiling.
Your heart raced so hard you felt dizzy. The cup trembled slightly in your hand, but then it got worse. Allie appeared beside him. Your older sister, with her perfectly wavy hair and radiant smile, approached him and said something in his ear.
Dean tilted his head toward her, laughing, and casually wrapped an arm around her waist.
That made your stomach churn. He wasn’t your boyfriend, he wasn’t even anything, you’d only had one night. One stupid, drunk night with no promises, but seeing them together, seeing him touch her with the same confidence he had touched you… it hurt.
You grabbed another cup from the table without thinking twice and slipped through the crowd, moving quickly toward the hallway that led to the back of the house. Your heart was pounding in your ears. You just wanted to disappear, for no one to see you, for him not to see you, but Dean saw you.
For a second, your eyes met across the crowd. His expression changed, his arrogant smile disappeared, and something darker, more intense crossed his face. He took a step forward, as if he were going to follow you, but you were faster. You slipped into a large group of people, lowered your head, and kept walking until you managed to lose yourself in another part of the house. You leaned your back against a wall in a quieter corner, breathing hard.
A few minutes passed, or maybe twenty, you no longer knew, when you finally worked up the courage to return to the main area. The alcohol was already weighing on your legs and head, and then you saw them again. Dean and Allie were in the middle of the makeshift dance floor. The song was slow and sensual. He had his hands on her waist, moving with that natural grace he had. Allie laughed, wrapped her arms around his neck, and said something close to his mouth. Dean smiled, but his eyes… his eyes scanned the room for a second, as if looking for something, or someone.
You felt jealousy. Absurd, hot, ugly jealousy that squeezed your chest. You knew you had no right. You knew Allie had met him first, but that didn’t stop your mind from betraying you, remembering how those same hands had held your hips, how that same mouth had kissed your neck while he thrust inside you.
“It’s just the alcohol,” you repeated quietly, closing your eyes for a second. “Just the alcohol messing with your head.”
You left the half-full cup on a nearby table. You were already feeling bad. Your stomach was upset, your head was heavy, and there was a knot in your throat that wouldn’t go away.
You needed air. You needed to get out of there.
You went up the fraternity stairs almost running, dodging couples kissing against the walls and people going up with cups in their hands. At the end of the second-floor hallway, you tried the first door you found. It was open.
You entered quickly and closed it behind you.
It was just some random room. Probably one of the fraternity guys’. There was an unmade bed, clothes thrown on the floor, a poster on the wall, and the typical smell of a guy who lives alone. You didn’t care, you just wanted to breathe.
You sat on the edge of the bed, hands on your knees, trying to calm your breathing. You closed your eyes.
“Just a minute…” you murmured. “One minute and I’ll go down, find Mika, and we’ll go home.”
You were starting to feel the alcohol weighing on you more than you thought. Your head was spinning gently.
Suddenly, the door opened.
You lifted your head sharply and there he was.
Dean, filling the doorway with that impossible-to-ignore presence. He closed the door behind him calmly, without asking permission, and you stood up from the bed so fast you almost fell.
“What are you doing here?” you blurted out, your voice higher than you would have liked.
Dean raised his eyebrows, amused.
“I wanted to see if you were okay. I saw you go upstairs almost running. You looked… I don’t know, like you were about to throw up or set the house on fire.”
He leaned against the door with his arms crossed, looking at you with that crooked smile that drove you crazy.
You nervously pulled your dress down, as if that could make you look more dignified.
“I’m fine,” you said quickly. “I should probably leave. Mika’s probably looking for me. You know how she gets when she’s excited…”
You took a step toward the door, but Dean didn’t move an inch.
“Why are you running away from me?” he asked directly, his voice low and too soft for how arrogant he usually was.
“I’m not running away,” you answered almost by reflex.
“Yes, you are.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
You stopped in front of him, crossing your arms to mirror his posture, trying to look confident.
“See? I’m not running. I’m here. to you. Totally normal.”
Dean let out a low laugh, the kind that vibrated in his chest. He took a step forward. You took one back.
“Dean…” you warned.
“What?” he said innocently, but kept advancing slowly. “I just want to talk.”
“Then you should go talk to my sister,” you snapped, unable to hold back.
He paused for a second. Then his smile grew bigger, almost dangerous.
“Are you jealous?”
You laughed. A forced laugh, too high-pitched and clearly fake.
“Jealous?” you said, trying to sound amused.
“Please, Dean. It’s impossible for me to be jealous. I’ve known you for… three days? I don’t even know if you have a middle name. You don’t matter to me. Not at all. Zero. Nothing.”
Dean kept coming closer. You kept backing up until your back hit the wall.
“Interesting…” he murmured, placing one hand on the wall beside your head. “You know exactly how many days it’s been since we met.”
You froze. You felt your face heat up.
“I… that… it’s just because…” you stammered, searching for some smart excuse that wouldn’t come. “It was a weird week and… and you… you have a very easy face to remember and… shit.”
Dean chuckled softly, clearly enjoying seeing you nervous. He was so close you could smell his cologne mixed with the faint scent of beer.
“You’re terrible at lying,” he whispered.
“I’m not lying,” you mumbled. “I really don’t care about you. You can go dance with Allie, do whatever you do, I… I’m perfectly fine. Super focused on my studies and…”
Dean didn’t let you finish. He kissed you. Hard and sure. With the same hunger you remembered from that first night. One big hand gripped your waist while the other rested on the wall. His mouth was warm, demanding, and tasted slightly of beer and mint.
For a second your treacherous body responded. Your hands rose to his chest, unsure whether to push him away or pull him closer.
When he pulled back just a few centimeters, he had that arrogant smile again.
“Still don’t care?” he asked against your lips, his voice hoarse.
Dean was still so close you could feel his warm breath against your lips. Your heart was beating so hard you thought he could hear it too.
“This is wrong…” you whispered, your voice trembling. “Allie is my sister, Dean. I can’t do this to her.”
He pulled back just a few centimeters, looking into your eyes. His hand was still on your waist, his thumb slowly caressing the fabric of your dress.
“Nothing’s going on with Allie,” he said in a low, confident voice. “What she and I have is… casual. Nothing serious. She knows it and I know it.”
You knew he was lying. Or at least hiding part of the truth. You had seen how Allie talked about him, how she smiled when she mentioned his name. But in that moment, with Dean looking at you like that, with his body pressing you against the wall, you wanted to believe him with all your strength.
You wanted to believe him so badly it hurt.
“We shouldn’t…” you tried one last time, but your voice no longer held any conviction.
Dean didn’t respond with words. He lowered his head and kissed you again, deeper this time, slower. His tongue brushed yours and a treacherous moan escaped you. His hands moved down to the hem of your dress and began slowly sliding it up your thighs.
You didn’t stop him. You let him lift it. You let his rough fingers graze the sensitive skin of your legs, your hips, until he pulled the dress completely over your head and tossed it to the floor without caring where it landed.
You stood in front of him wearing only your black bra and matching panties. Dean stepped back a little to look at you, and the way his eyes darkened made you feel both exposed and powerful at the same time.
“Fuck…” he murmured, almost to himself. “You’re so fucking sexy.”
He kissed you again, this time with more urgency. His big hands roamed your back, unhooked your bra with ease, and let it fall. His palms covered your breasts, squeezing them just right, brushing your nipples with his thumbs until they hardened under his touch.
You moaned against his mouth.
The guilt was still there, throbbing in the back of your mind, but it wasn’t strong enough to stop him. Not now. Not when your body was burning for him.
Dean suddenly grabbed you by the thighs and lifted you as if you weighed nothing.
Instinctively, you wrapped your legs around his waist. He kept kissing you as he carried you to the unmade bed, gently dropped you onto the mattress, and positioned himself on top of you, supporting his weight on his forearms.
His mouth moved down your neck, kissing, sucking, gently biting. He went lower, until he reached your breasts. He took one into his mouth, sucking hard while his hand caressed the other. You arched your back, moaning his name without being able to help it.
“Dean…”
He looked up, that arrogant but dark smile appearing on his lips.
“Still think this is wrong?” he asked, sliding one hand down your stomach and slipping it inside your panties.
His fingers found your wetness and he let out a growl of approval.
“So wet…” he whispered against your skin. “And you say we shouldn’t.”
Two of his fingers caressed you slowly, tracing circles over your clit before sliding inside you. You gasped, digging your nails into his shoulders over his t-shirt.
The guilt was still there, burning inside you, but the pleasure was stronger. Every time you tried to think about Allie, Dean pushed his fingers deeper, curling them exactly where you felt it most, and your mind went blank.
He kissed you again, swallowing your moans while he fucked you with his fingers, slow but firm. His thumb kept stimulating your clit in perfect circles. You were soaked, the obscene sound of his fingers sliding in and out filled the room along with your ragged breathing.
“Dean… please…” you begged, not even knowing exactly what you were asking for.
He pulled his fingers out, quickly slid your panties down, and knelt between your legs. He looked up at you with that hungry expression.
“I want to taste you,” he said hoarsely.
And before you could respond, he lowered his head and ran his hot, flat tongue along your entire entrance.
Dean licked slowly and deeply, tracing every fold with deliberate precision. He ran his flat tongue from bottom to top, stopping at your clit to suck it gently, then harder, alternating between sucking and licking in quick circles. Two of his fingers returned inside you, curling upward, searching for that spot that made you see stars.
“God… Dean,” you moaned, arching your back on the bed.
It was too good. Too intense. Every lick, every movement of his fingers made you tremble. You gripped the sheets tightly, your hips moving on their own against his mouth, you didn’t want him to stop. Ever.
You wanted to stay there forever, with his head between your legs and that expert mouth devouring you.
But it wasn’t enough. You needed more. You needed to feel him inside you, filling you completely. Dean seemed to read your desperation. He looked up without removing his mouth from you, his blue eyes darkened with desire and arrogance.
“Want something more, baby?” he murmured against your pussy, the vibration of his voice sending another wave of pleasure through you.
You nodded, breathing hard.
“Please…”
He sucked your clit harder for a second, making you gasp loudly, before speaking again:
“Then ask properly. I want to hear you beg.”
Shame and arousal mixed in your chest. You knew he was playing with you, enjoying the power he had in that moment, and although part of you wanted to resist, your body was on fire.
“Dean…” you begged, your voice broken. “Please… I need you inside me. I can’t take it anymore.”
He smiled against your skin and kept licking, slower now, torturing you.
“Is that all? You can do better.”
You closed your eyes, biting your lip.
“Please, Dean…” you begged with more intensity, your voice cracking. “Fuck me. I need you to fuck me. I want you inside me right now… please.”
Something changed in his expression. His eyes lit up with pure satisfaction. He loved hearing you beg. He loved having you like this: naked, desperate, and pleading for him.
“Good girl,” he growled.
He stood up quickly, pulled his t-shirt over his head, and shoved down his pants along with his boxers. His cock sprang free, thick, hard, and with the tip already glistening. He positioned himself between your legs, gripping your thighs and spreading you wider for him.
“I can’t deny you anything when you look at me like that,” he admitted hoarsely, almost as if it annoyed him how much he wanted you.
He leaned over you, bracing one forearm beside your head, and kissed you deeply as he guided his cock to your entrance. He rubbed the swollen head against your soaked pussy several times, teasing you, until he finally thrust.
He entered you with one deep stroke.
You both moaned at the same time. He was big, hot, and stretched you in the most delicious way. Dean stayed still for a second, letting you adjust, his forehead pressed to yours.
“Fuck… you’re so tight,” he growled against your mouth.
He started moving. First slowly, pulling out almost completely before sinking back in to the hilt. Then he picked up the pace, fucking you harder, deeper. The sound of skin slapping skin filled the room along with your moans and his low grunts.
You wrapped your legs around his waist, digging your heels into his back, asking for more without words. Dean gripped your hips tightly, thrusting with precise, powerful strokes that made the bed creak.
Every time he bottomed out, he hit that perfect spot inside you.
“Just like that… right there,” you moaned, almost breathless.
The guilt was still present, but it no longer mattered. In that moment, only Dean existed: his scent, his weight on top of you, his cock fucking you mercilessly, his mouth biting your neck and whispering in your ear how good you felt.
“Is this what you wanted?” he asked between thrusts, his voice rough. “You wanted me to fuck you while your sister is downstairs?”
His words hit you like a whip. You blushed violently, but your pussy clenched around him.
Dean let out a laugh.
“You like it dirty, don’t you?”
You couldn’t respond. You just moaned louder as he sped up, fucking you harder, faster, as if he wanted to mark you.
Dean kept fucking you but suddenly pulled out. You let out a whimper of protest at the empty feeling. He sat on the edge of the bed and called you.
“Come here,” he said, pulling you toward him.
You climbed on top, straddling him. Dean guided you as you slowly lowered yourself onto his cock, filling you completely in this new position. You placed your hands on his chest and started moving. First slowly, enjoying how deep he felt, then faster, bouncing on him.
Dean had his hands on your hips, guiding you, his gaze traveling from your breasts to your eyes.
“You’re fucking insane…” he murmured, almost with frustration. “I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since that first night.”
You picked up the pace, moving your hips in circles. Dean let out a low moan and squeezed your ass hard, helping you slam down harder. You were exhausted, sweaty, your legs shaking, but you couldn’t stop.
“Dean… I’m going to come…” you warned, almost breathless.
“Do it,” he ordered, looking at you intently. “Come on my cock.”
The orgasm hit you hard. Your whole body tensed, squeezing him inside you as you moaned his name. Dean followed shortly after, growling against your neck as he came inside you, holding you tightly against his body.
You both stayed still, breathing heavily, skin sticky and hearts pounding.
Several minutes passed. You were still sitting on top of him, head resting on his shoulder, trying to catch your breath. Reality began to crash down on you like a heavy weight. The guilt returned stronger now that the pleasure was fading.
Dean slowly caressed your back with one hand. Suddenly he spoke, his voice low but firm:
“You’re not going to run away from me.”
You lifted your head to look at him. He was watching you with that characteristic intensity, with no trace of doubt.
“This… whatever this is,” he continued, “doesn’t end here. You’re not going to run from me at parties again, you’re not going to ignore my messages, and you’re not going to pretend you don’t want me as much as I want you.”
You were tired. Physically and emotionally exhausted. Your legs were shaking, you had his cum dripping down your thighs, and the image of Allie laughing downstairs at the party wouldn’t leave your mind.
You knew you should tell him this was a mistake. That they had to stop but you had no strength left. You just looked at him, breathing slowly, and finally nodded weakly.
“…Okay,” you whispered, almost voiceless.
Dean smiled, satisfied. He kissed you on the lips, softer this time, and pulled you against his chest.
“Good girl,” he murmured against your hair.
You stayed there, wrapped in his arms, knowing this only complicated everything… but too tired to keep fighting whatever this was.
Simon locked in and the rest is history. That tongue is a problem. GAT DAMN.
Bertie Carvel and Suranne Jones as Simon and Gemma Foster. Doctor Foster 02x03.
Confession: I hated the colouring in the last set I did so, ooopsie poopsie, I went back and redid them. Forgive me.
the most striking color - daredevil born again fanfic [part 3]
summary: your whole life had been difficult, and it got even worse when you were put into an orphanage, but when you ran away and met Matt, your life took a complete 180
word counter and tw: (2,8k) i think there’s non tw
You didn’t know at what point you fell asleep, and that was already strange in itself.
Normally the process was conscious, you got into bed, made the effort, listened to the city, waited. Sleep came or didn’t come, but there was always a clear boundary between being awake and not being so, a transition you could locate even vaguely.
Not tonight. Tonight sleep simply took you, without warning, like water that rises slowly until you’re already inside and can’t remember having entered.
Maybe it was the accumulated exhaustion, or maybe it was the thing with Gerald. Maybe it was something more. Maybe it was the universe being, for once, merciful, giving you a few hours before what was coming.
You didn’t know that then. You thought it afterward.
You woke up suddenly at 2 in the morning, your eyes wide open, your body already sitting up, and your heart already racing before your mind had time to understand why. The room was dark and the city outside sounded different, it took you a second to identify what was different.
The rain.
It was raining hard. The rain struck the window with an almost deliberate regularity, as if it were knocking. You sat on the bed trying to get your heart to calm down, but it didn’t seem to want to.
That was what didn’t make sense. You hadn’t had a nightmare, you couldn’t remember any dream, there was no noise in the apartment to justify that state of immediate and complete alertness but your body knew something your mind was still processing, that ancient instinct you’d spent years sharpening without meaning to, one that was rarely wrong.
Something bad had happened. You didn’t think it as a possibility; you felt it as a certainty. You looked toward the bedroom door, but there were no sounds, only silence in the apartment.
You left the room barefoot. The hallway was dark, but that wasn’t unusual, you never left lights on. You crossed it almost from memory, your hand grazing the wall out of habit more than necessity. You reached the living room and turned on the light.
And a thunderclap exploded.
It was a sharp crack that made the windows shudder, and at the same time it killed the building’s entire power. The apartment went completely dark, but it wasn’t a normal darkness. It was strange, heavier and closer around you, as if it had flooded every corner too quickly. You stood still, and then your mind began doing what it always did.
The shadows at the edges of the living room seemed to move, even though you knew they weren’t. The kitchen doorway looked different every time you glanced at it, and the corner by the window, that specific corner, felt occupied in a way that was impossible to explain.
You knew nothing was there. You knew it. But that didn’t seem to matter to your mind, and you also knew you’d spent too many years sleeping in places where darkness really did hide things. The body doesn’t unlearn that so easily.
You left the apartment, grabbed your keys on reflex, nothing else. No shoes, no jacket, no phone. The door clicked shut behind you and the sound went through your chest in an absurd way. The landing was dark too, but at least it was open. You went down quickly. The building lobby was lit by the old emergency light on the ceiling, that greenish, vaguely sad light that made everything look unreal. It flickered when you walked in, then held steady, humming softly.
You sat on the bench by the mailboxes and breathed deeply. The rain hammered the glass of the entrance hard, but from there it sounded different. Just rain. The thunder had been just thunder. The darkness was only a power outage. Nothing more. You tried to repeat this to yourself while your heart kept beating too fast, because there was something that wouldn’t settle inside you, that horrible, quiet feeling that had been there for hours, lodged in the center of your chest.
Something bad had happened.
You closed your eyes for a second and opened them when someone knocked on the front door. The fright made you step back before you could think, but the figure on the other side of the glass was small, drenched, and clearly harmless. A woman in her mid-forties, soaked through and with the look of someone having the worst night of their life. You recognized her immediately. She lived on the fourth floor; you sometimes ran into each other in the elevator. You got up quickly and opened the door. The rain came in with her in an icy gust that wet your bare feet.
“Oh god,” the woman said, shaking the water from her shoulders. “Thank you, thank you, what a night.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes…” She came inside, leaving a trail of water on the lobby floor. “I left my keys at my boyfriend’s and he lives far, I wasn’t going back out in this weather.” She shook her head with resignation. Then she looked at you. “And what are you doing down here at this hour?”
“Waiting for my brother,” you said.
The woman nodded with the immediate understanding of someone who needed no further details.
“That’s sweet,” she said, with genuine warmth and no condescension. Then she rummaged through her soaked bag, found something, a spare key, you guessed, and headed toward the stairs. “Good night, honey. I hope he’s not long.”
“Good night.”
Her footsteps went up and faded into the landing. You were alone again.
The lobby was uncomfortable for waiting. Not because it was unpleasant, but because it was a place of passage. The bench was hard, the light hummed, and the clock behind the front desk seemed to move too slowly. You waited anyway, without knowing quite what you were waiting for, maybe for the power to come back.
But you weren’t one of those people who waited. So you stood up, looked at the street behind the glass where the rain kept falling hard, slanted by the wind under the yellow glow of the streetlights, and opened the door anyway. The cold hit you immediately, and so did the water, and within seconds your hair was plastered to your face and your shirt soaked against your skin. Your bare feet touched the icy water pooled on the pavement and the cold shot straight up your legs, but you didn’t care. You stood there, under the storm, watching an almost empty street.
You started walking without direction. And that was the most frightening part, because you always knew where you were going. Always. Even in the worst years, when surviving meant memorizing streets, learning which corners to avoid and where you could sleep without being thrown out before dawn, you’d always had a map in your head. But not now. Now you just walked.
With the icy water rising past your ankles every time you crossed a flooded intersection, and the shirt clinging to your skin like an uncomfortable second layer. The feeling in your chest was worse. Something was wrong. Not “maybe.” Not “could be.” It was wrong, and you couldn’t breathe around it.
You turned one corner and then another. You recognized the streets, the closed storefronts, the neon lights warped in the wet asphalt, but you weren’t really thinking about the route. You only moved forward because standing still would have meant hearing too clearly what your mind had been trying to tell you for hours.
You’d been walking for several minutes when you heard the noise. Voices, then something breaking, then silence. That abrupt, ugly silence that makes the whole body tense before the mind can understand why.
You stopped in front of the alley. You should have kept walking. You knew it right away. But four years living with Matt Murdock had ruined you for certain things. You no longer knew how to look away. You could no longer pretend you hadn’t heard.
There were three men and a woman. She was against the wall with her shoulders rigid and her breathing visible even from where you stood. The men surrounded her too closely, too comfortable in that quiet violence of people who believe they have complete control of a situation. None of them had seen you yet, so you could still leave.
“Hey.”
All three turned at once and the fear shot through you instantly, fast and cold, because it was only then you understood how stupid that decision had been.
One of them started walking toward you. The kind of man who had already decided he could break you without effort. Your body reacted before your mind. Matt had taught you some things. Not to fight like him, but to move, or rather, not to freeze when someone advanced with bad intentions.
The man tried to grab your arm and you dodged on reflex. You moved to one side, breathing fast, your heart slamming against your ribs so hard it hurt. Another man blocked your way; the third was still with the woman, shouting something you couldn’t make out over the rain. Everything became confused too quickly.
Your feet slipped on the wet asphalt and you fell. Your back hit the ground with a dry violence that knocked the air from your lungs, pain exploded for a second through your whole body, and the world seemed to tilt.
And then the sky split open. That lightning struck close, too close, and the noise didn’t sound like thunder so much as if the air itself had exploded above you. A brutal crack that made the walls of the alley vibrate and passed through your entire body. Everything went white, and in that fraction of a second something found you. Not in a way you could explain afterward, you weren’t even sure you wanted to try, but you felt the darkness of the alley looking back at you. Not darkness as the absence of light, but darkness as something alive, something ancient, something that had been waiting.
There you are.
The sensation passed through you like a voice without sound, and then the pain came, not from the fall, this was different, it started in the center of your chest and exploded outward like liquid fire running through your veins. You arched on the wet asphalt, trying to breathe, trying to understand what was happening, but your body no longer responded fully. You opened your mouth and no sound came out. Your palms pressed against the ground and beneath them you felt something beating, as if the alley had a heartbeat.
The shadows moved toward you and you heard the men fall back. One stumbled, another cursed, the fear in their voices immediate. Then you opened your eyes and saw them. The shadows of the entire alley had pulled away from the walls. They rose from the asphalt like thick smoke, circling slowly around you, alive in an impossible way. They had no definite shape and yet they seemed to observe. To wait.
They were protecting you.
You sat up slowly, trembling. The water kept falling on your face, mixing with something warm that you only understood afterward were tears. The men were already backing toward the mouth of the alley; one of them looked at you once, and in his expression you saw something you had never seen directed at you before.
Terror.
Then they disappeared into the rain. The woman was still against the wall, staring at you with enormous eyes, barely breathing. And that hurt more than it should have, because for a second you wondered if she was afraid of you too.
The shadows kept moving around your feet like black water.
“Are you alright?” you asked.
Your voice came out normal. The woman nodded slowly, not taking her eyes off you.
“Go home,” you said.
She obeyed immediately. And once again you were alone.
You looked at your hands. Normal. Just rain, a scrape on your right palm, and trembling fingers. Nothing more. You turned slowly and started walking back home.
When you arrived, the apartment was exactly as you’d left it. You stopped in the middle of the living room. There was no one, Matt should already have been there. That should have triggered something, but your body had a limit, and you had reached yours somewhere between the alley and the walk home.
You sat on the sofa. Just a moment, you told yourself. Just until your heart finished deciding what speed it wanted to go. But that moment stretched, and somewhere between one second and the next, you were gone.
The next day, the first thing you heard was Karen’s voice. You couldn’t really make out what she was saying, but you could hear the tone, she always used it with you, because most of the time she was worried about you. You knew it too well. Then came Matt’s hand on your face, warm and barely trembling.
“Hey,” he said.
The word came out low. Too low.
“Hey, wake up.”
You opened your eyes and the first thing you saw was the living room ceiling. You realized the power had come back, and that Matt was kneeling in front of the sofa, holding your shoulders with both hands, so close you could hear his uneven breathing. His jaw was tight, his mouth barely pressed together, and although his dark glasses hid his eyes, you didn’t need to see them to know how he was.
Karen stood behind him with her arms crossed over her chest, but too rigid to fake normalcy, she was very shaken.
You blinked slowly, trying to let the light and normalcy stop burning your eyes.
“What…?” you murmured.
Matt let out a breath that came dangerously close to breaking before he controlled it.
“You’re cold,” he said quickly. “God, you’re freezing. What happened? How long have you been here?”
You tried to sit up a little.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you go out? You’re soaked, your feet are a mess, and you weren’t responding…”
“Matt.”
Your own voice sounded distant, as if you still weren’t fully back.
“I’m fine.”
He let out a short laugh completely devoid of humor.
“No. You’re not.”
The quiet steadiness Matt usually had was almost entirely gone, replaced by something different now.
“You’ve been unconscious for God knows how long,” he continued. “Karen thought you weren’t breathing when we got here.”
That made you turn your head toward her. Karen looked away for just a second before sighing.
“We called you several times,” she said more quietly. “You didn’t react. Matt had to check your pulse because you were so cold that…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to. You felt something tighten in your chest, guilt, maybe.
“What time is it?” you asked.
“Eleven in the morning,” Karen answered.
Eleven.
The dizziness came the moment you tried to sit up properly. The room tilted for a second and then Matt’s hands steadied on your arms.
“Slowly,” he said at once.
Too quick, too attentive, as if the mere sight of you swaying was enough to spike his pulse.
“I’m fine,” you repeated, though this time even you didn’t fully believe it.
Matt was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice came out even lower.
“You scared me.”
You weren’t used to hearing that from him, and you hated hearing it now. You never wanted to scare him or be a burden to him. Never. You were about to say something when Karen spoke suddenly.
“What is that?”
This time her voice did carry tension.
“What is that dark stain?” she asked.
You got off the sofa slowly, Matt’s hand still on your arm, and looked. The wood around the sofa was dark, the shadow surrounded exactly the place where you had been lying, following the outline of your body with an impossible precision. And it wasn’t a simple absence of light: it seemed to absorb it. As if the floor had been stained by something living.
The whole room went silent. Matt was the first to react, you felt him tense beside you.
“That wasn’t there before,” he said immediately.
Karen stepped closer, slowly, not taking her eyes off the stain.
“That’s not normal.”
You crouched down slowly, ignoring the ache of exhaustion in your legs, and touched the darkness with your fingertips. Your pulse responded at once and the sensation passed through your chest like an echo. You stood back up slowly, looked at both of them, and for the first time since the alley, real fear arrived, because now you would have to say it out loud, and once you did, nothing would ever feel normal again.
“You’re not going to believe me,” you said quietly.
I have a lot to study, when I’m calmer I’ll write something better
the most striking color - daredevil born again fanfic [part 2]
summary: your whole life had been difficult, and it got even worse when you were put into an orphanage, but when you ran away and met Matt, your life took a complete 180
word counter and tw: (2,9k) i think there’s non tw
The kitchen clock read 2:47 a.m. and you had been awake since eleven.
It was nothing new.
You had a system, although Matt never fully knew about it, or maybe he did and chose not to mention it, with him it was always hard to tell the difference. You would go to bed at a reasonable hour, turn off the light, and make an honest effort to sleep. For a while it worked, or something close to it: your body would relax, your breathing would even out, and the city outside the window would fade into tolerable background noise.
And then the moment would come when your mind, with the silent efficiency of years of practice, would start calculating.
How long has he been gone? Which direction did he head? Was there anything in the news tonight that might explain why he was taking longer than usual?
After that, sleep was a lost cause.
So you had migrated to the couch with the blanket from the backrest, a glass of water that was already lukewarm, and the book you’d been trying to finish for three weeks with little success. The pages turned, the words entered through your eyes and left somewhere before registering. Your real attention was elsewhere, split between the text and the specific sound you were listening for: the lock, the door, the footsteps you would recognize among a thousand because you had memorized them without meaning to over four years.
2:47.
You turned the page without having read the previous one.
At 3:12 you heard the key.
You didn’t move. That was also part of the system: not jumping up, not going to the door, not doing anything that would force him to manage your worry on top of everything else he was already handling. Matt had a well-developed and slightly frustrating instinct to downplay things when he sensed someone was scared for him. He’d brush off cuts, shrug at bruises, and use that calm tone that was supposed to be reassuring but in practice made you want to throw something at him.
So you waited.
The door opened. It closed. Footsteps, you knew them, yes, but tonight they had a different weight, something slightly asymmetrical that meant he was favoring his left side more carefully than usual. You set the book down on the cushion and turned.
Matt was standing in the doorway to the living room, still wearing his suit, mask in hand. He had a cut on his right cheekbone that had bled, stopped, and bled again, and the way he held his left arm against his side was exactly what his footsteps had told you.
“You were awake,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“I was reading,” you replied.
The lie was so mediocre it almost made you laugh.
Matt tilted his head slightly, and you recognized that invisible expression he used when he decided not to argue something he already knew he’d lose.
“Sit down,” you said, standing up.
The first-aid kit lived under the bathroom sink, in a state of organization that was entirely yours because Matt was perfectly capable of treating his own wounds and perfectly incapable of restocking what he used. When you returned to the living room, he was sitting on the couch, suit half off, torso exposed, showing exactly what you had suspected: bruises on his left ribs, two smaller cuts than the one on his face that still needed attention, and a long scratch on his shoulder that had stained the suit.
You didn’t say anything yet. You knelt in front of him with the kit open and started with the cheekbone.
Matt stayed still. He always did when you did this, as if with you he didn’t need to maintain the full architecture.
“It wasn’t that bad,” he said at some point between the antiseptic and the bandage.
“Mhm,” you replied.
“Seriously. The arm is just a hit. The ribs are fine.”
“Two of them are cracked.”
“You don’t know that.”
You carefully placed a hand on his bandaged side.
“I know how you breathe when your ribs hurt, Matt.”
Silence.
“You should sleep,” he said. There was something soft in his voice now. Guilt, maybe. Or sadness.
“I’ll sleep later.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“How intelligent”
That earned you a small smile. Just a tired curve of his mouth. And God, sometimes you hated how much you loved him because it meant that no matter how many times he came home hurt, no matter how many times you swore you were tired of this, one smile like that was enough for something inside you to soften again immediately.
“You always do this,” he said finally. His voice was quiet, without real reproach, but with something more complicated underneath. “You wait up for me. Every night, you wait.”
You finished cleaning the scratch on his shoulder and looked at him, his profile, the familiar line of his tense jaw, the dark glasses he had put on at some point almost out of habit.
“Yes,” you said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“It costs you sleep.”
“Matt”
“I just don’t want you to…”
“Matt,” you repeated, and something in your tone stopped him.
You closed the first-aid kit with a clean click and sat down next to him on the couch, the blanket still wrapped around your shoulders.
“You’ve been telling me some version of the same thing for four years. That I don’t have to worry, that you can handle it alone, that you’re fine, that it’s not that bad.”
He didn’t answer. You took his hand before thinking too much about it.
“Listen to me,” you said slowly. “I’m going to keep doing it. Every night you go out, I’m going to stay awake waiting for you to come back. Not because I don’t trust you or because I think you can’t take care of yourself, but because I love you, Matt. And when you love someone, you don’t turn that off like it’s a convenient switch.”
He stayed motionless. You could feel his pulse under your fingers, slow but strong.
“That’s what family does,” you continued more gently. “They worry. They stay. Even when they’re scared”
Matt took a deep breath, and for a second he looked incredibly young. Not physically, but in that specific way some wounded people have of still being surprised every time someone loves them without conditions.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he said, almost in a whisper.
It hurt to hear that more than it should have, because no one should talk about love as if it were something you had to earn by bleeding.
You squeezed his hand gently.
“You don’t have to deserve me.”
And the silence that followed was no longer uncomfortable.
It was warm.
Matt eventually leaned toward you just enough to rest his forehead on your shoulder, exhausted, defeated by fatigue and perhaps also by the relief of not having to pretend for five minutes.
You closed your eyes for a moment and let his weight rest there.
“Now I really am going to sleep,” you said, standing up a few minutes later, the blanket still wrapped around your shoulders.
“Don’t look at me like that. I can’t see you but I know you’re looking at me like that.”
Something in his expression shifted, not quite a smile, but close. Close enough. You leaned in and kissed his cheek. He didn’t say anything, but something in his shoulders dropped an inch.
“Sleep too,” you said from the hallway.
“Yeah.”
“Matt.”
“I said yeah.”
You closed the door to your room and this time, with the familiar sound of him moving around the apartment on the other side of the wall, with the physical certainty that he was there and he was whole, you fell asleep in less than ten minutes.
When you woke up the next day, the apartment was silent. It was 9:47.
Matt had been gone for hours. That was normal. He got up earlier than any reasonable person and left while you were still asleep. Some mornings he left something in the kitchen: toast, fruit, once an attempt at an omelette that you had eaten anyway without comment. Other mornings there was nothing, and that was fine too because you knew where the cereal was.
Today there was a banana on the counter. You made breakfast slowly and without hurry. No classes, no shift, no one waiting for you at any specific time. The day stretched out in front of you with that slightly uncomfortable openness you weren’t sure was freedom or simply lack of structure.
You probably should do something about that. Study, work, one or both at the same time. Matt had never said it, that was important, he had never pressured or suggested, but you thought about it yourself, regularly. “At some point you’re going to have to decide what to do with all this.”
At some point. Not necessarily today.
Today you ate cereal standing by the counter, drinking Matt’s coffee that was still warm, staring blankly at the wall opposite.
The phone had been charging since the night before and the screen was full of notifications that were neither urgent nor interesting: two emails that weren’t for you, a notification from an app you didn’t remember installing, three messages from a group where no one had said anything relevant in days.
You opened them without any particular order, already sitting on the couch with your legs tucked under you.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing interesting.
You checked the news out of inertia more than real curiosity: Hell’s Kitchen, politics, something about traffic on the bridge, Daredevil seen in the financial district the night before. You read that last one twice even though it added nothing you didn’t already know.
You closed the app, opened Instagram, closed it, opened your messages again and closed them too.
Karen’s message arrived while you still had the phone face-down on the cushion.
“Could you do me a favor? I bought something yesterday and I can’t go pick it up. It’s at the store on Holland Street. Is it far for you?”
“Not at all, I’m heading there now,” you wrote.
At least it was something.
Your sneakers were where they always were, by the door. You slipped them on without untying the laces. You grabbed your keys, jacket, and phone, stepped out into the hallway, and the door clicked shut behind you.
Outside, the sun slipped between the still-low buildings, bouncing off windows, barely warming the concrete. The air smelled of fresh coffee, exhaust, and toasted bread from some place open since early morning. You knew it all. Every corner, every smell, every variation of the noise depending on the hour.
The store was where Karen had said. You went in, gave the name, waited while the guy at the counter disappeared into the storeroom, then came back out with a medium-sized bag that weighed more than it looked and started the walk home.
You were thinking about small, scattered things. Whether Karen had bought something else useless just because she thought it was pretty. Whether Matt had eaten lunch or was still surviving on coffee and cereal bars. Whether it was worth cooking tonight or ordering Chinese again.
And then you saw him. You froze instantly and the bag slipped from your fingers, hitting the ground.
It wasn’t a conscious decision. There was no formed thought, just that sudden emptiness in your chest, that brutal pull in your stomach, something primitive waking up inside you before you even understood why. Your body recognized him first: the broad shoulders, that heavy posture, the particular way his arms hung at his sides.
Gerald Pruitt.
He was across the street, talking to someone by the entrance of a building. Half-turned. Head slightly tilted forward as he listened. Clearly he hadn’t seen you. You knew it immediately and still needed to check again. And again. And again. He hadn’t turned. He hadn’t reacted. He wasn’t looking at you, but you were looking at him, and in that instant something inside you shattered, as if the years between that street and Saint Agnes had vanished in the blink of an eye.
Your heart slammed against your ribs and your body remembered before your mind did. It remembered the constant fear, the narrow hallways, the way you learned to measure a man’s mood by the sound of his footsteps. It remembered being fifteen and sleeping with one eye open, the hunger and the shame, the unbearable feeling of belonging to no one except fear.
And yet, for one horrible second, you were that skinny, tired girl again, always looking over your shoulder.
The bag.
You remembered the bag.
You crouched quickly to pick it up, fingers clumsy and trembling slightly. When you stood up, you were already moving. Not walking, running, or something close enough that people on the sidewalk stepped aside slightly, confused. You didn’t look back. You didn’t want to look back. The only thing that existed was the direction home, the remaining distance, the number of corners you had to turn.
People moved out of your way, confused, not understanding what could be chasing someone in broad daylight, but you understood. Fear didn’t need to be rational to feel real. Terror had never needed permission to return.
Your heart was beating so hard you could feel it in your ears.
One corner, then another.
The bag banged against your leg with every stride and you didn’t care. For a moment you were escaping through the second-floor window again with a backpack too light to hold an entire life. Again with scraped hands, shaking legs, and fear stuck to your skin like dirt that could never be washed off.
The difference was that now you had something to lose.
That was the worst part.
Three more corners and you finally reached your building. You ran up the stairs without waiting for the elevator, key in hand before you reached the landing, door opened and closed behind you in one continuous motion.
You dropped the bag on the floor and waited for your heart to slow down. That took a while.
That night you didn’t know how long you had been sitting on the couch when you heard the key.
You hadn’t called Matt. You had thought about it and then left the phone on the cushion without dialing because it was daytime and he was working and what had happened wasn’t an emergency, not really. You had just seen a man on the street and run home like you were fifteen again.
But Matt came home anyway, earlier than usual. When he opened the door and found you on the couch with your sneakers still on and Karen’s bag on the floor where you had dropped it, something in his expression changed immediately, that complete and slightly supernatural attention of his that read the air of a room better than any sighted person you had ever known.
He didn’t say anything yet. He set down his briefcase and approached. You stood up and hugged him before he could sit down, hands clutching his jacket and face against his shoulder, and said against the fabric:
“I saw Gerald.”
Matt didn’t tense up. Or maybe he did, but in a specific way, not from surprise but from something colder, which you also recognized.
His arms wrapped around your shoulders.
“Where?” he asked, voice quiet.
“Holland Street. He was across the street. He didn’t see me. I saw him.”
A second of silence.
“Are you sure he didn’t see you?”
“Positive.”
He nodded slowly. One hand rose to your head with that calm, deliberate gesture of his.
“Hey,” he said. “Look at me.”
You pulled back enough. He was wearing his dark glasses, tie loosened, hair slightly tousled from the day. He oriented you toward him with his hands on your shoulders with that precision that never stopped feeling like something close to a miracle.
“Breathe,” he said. It wasn’t an order but something softer. “Breathe.”
You breathed, or tried to breathe more consciously. It wasn’t the same, but close enough.
“He’s not going to hurt you,” Matt said slowly, with that calm conviction that didn’t need volume to carry weight. “He’s not going to get near you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe me?”
You looked at him. The firm line of his jaw, the stillness in his expression, the way his hands on your shoulders were a physical anchor and not just a gesture.
“Yes,” you said, and it was true.
It was completely true. That was what you had with Matt after all this time, not the naivety of believing the world couldn’t hurt you, but something more solid and more useful: the certainty that if it tried, he would be there.
You rested your forehead on his shoulder again, calmer this time.
Matt didn’t let go.
“Good,” he said softly, almost to himself.
I read everything you all told me, and the story is definitely going to be with Dex
the most striking color - daredevil born again fanfic
[part 1]
summary: your whole life had been difficult, and it got even worse when you were put into an orphanage, but when you ran away and met Matt, your life took a complete 180
word counter and tw: (2,2k) abuse
You were eight years old the first time you learned that the world owed you nothing.
Or maybe you learned it earlier, when your mother closed the door of Saint Agnes Orphanage without looking you in the eyes, with a small suitcase and three changes of clothes that were already too short for you. But at eight was when you really understood it, when the understanding settled somewhere beneath your ribs and decided to stay there forever.
Saint Agnes smelled of chlorine and boiled food. The beds creaked and in winter the cold seeped through the poorly sealed windows. The nuns weren’t cruel, at least not all of them, but they weren’t warm either. They fed you, taught you, sent you to bed. The rest was your problem.
You learned not to cry where they could see you and to save food. You learned the names of everyone who could hurt you before learning those who couldn’t.
By the time you turned twelve, you already knew exactly what place you occupied in the order of things: none in particular. You were a number on a list of state funds, a bed that could be vacated without anyone having to reorganize their routine too much. It wasn’t bitterness, or at least you didn’t call it that.
At fifteen, the map already included things no girl should have to chart.
The director of the orphanage was named Gerald Pruitt and he had big hands and a smile that never reached his eyes. He had arrived three years earlier, with impeccable references and a speech about vocation and service that the older nuns listened to with shining eyes. You saw him enter for the first time and something in your stomach tightened like a cable.
You weren’t wrong.
You didn’t want to detail what happened because your head didn’t even know it. You filed it away in some drawer in the back, locked it, and threw the key quite far. What did matter was that one March night, with sixteen dollars stolen from the administration office and a backpack with the only things worth taking, you opened the second-floor window and didn’t look back.
Hell’s Kitchen welcomed you the way it welcomes everyone: without questions and without promises.
The first few weeks were the hardest.
Not because of the hunger, although the hunger was constant, a physical presence that almost became company over time. But because of the noise. Saint Agnes, with all its coldness, was predictable. The city wasn’t. The city was layers and layers of sound and movement and people who brushed against you without seeing you, and you had to learn to read it quickly or fall behind.
You slept where you could. Under fire escapes, in the gap between two dumpsters behind a Korean restaurant on Forty-Ninth Street whose cook threw out the leftovers at eleven at night with a regularity you learned to take advantage of. There were others like you and you established with them the kind of tacit truce that doesn’t need words: I don’t rob you, you don’t rob me, and if someone comes with bad intentions we warn each other.
It wasn’t friendship but it was the closest thing for you.
What was completely yours was a corner in the alley behind the Hell’s Kitchen public library where they sometimes left boxes of discarded books before recycling them. You read everything that fell into your hands. Not for culture or escapism, although there was some of that, but because reading kept you sharp. It reminded you that you had an interior, that there was something inside that the cold and the hunger and Gerald Pruitt and your mother hadn’t managed to empty completely.
You were fifteen and had been on the street for three weeks when you saw him for the first time.
You didn’t recognize him, of course. Back then Matthew Murdock was simply a blind man with a red cane who walked through Hell’s Kitchen. You had noticed him before but that particular night it was raining, and you were in the doorway of a closed hardware store trying to keep your backpack from getting completely soaked, and he stopped.
Not right in front of you, a few meters away, as if he had detected something in the air.
“How long have you been out here?” he asked, without turning completely, his voice calm as if he were asking the time.
You didn’t answer. You had a very clear system regarding adults who talked to you on the street at night.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, and there was something in his tone that was different from the similar phrases you had heard before.
Less urgency, less need to convince you, as if he was simply putting a fact on the table and what you did with it was completely your decision.
You studied him. Wrinkled suit, briefcase, loosened tie. Tired, but not the kind of tiredness that comes from alcohol or something worse. Real tiredness, from work.
“My name is Matt,” he added, and waited.
You weighed your options with the speed of someone who has been making quick decisions for months, and said: “I don’t have a name that matters to you.”
He did something unexpected: he smiled, with something that strangely resembled respect.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Are you hungry?”
And that was, although you didn’t know it yet, the first question of a completely different life.
Four years later, and you still sometimes woke up in the darkness with your heart racing, expecting the cold of the asphalt under your back, the dampness of soaked clothes, the dull noise of the city that doesn’t sleep and doesn’t see you. It took you exactly three seconds to remember where you were.
Three seconds, and then you breathed.
Matt’s apartment wasn’t big but it had something Saint Agnes never had and the street never could: a specific quality of silence, the kind of silence that isn’t absence but presence, that says here there’s someone who knows you exist even when there’s no one in the next room. You learned to distinguish it in the first month, at sixteen you still didn’t have a name for it.
Now you did. It was called home.
Matt Murdock was, as you discovered over time and with a certain amount of exasperation, a walking contradiction.
He was the most stubbornly good man you had ever known in your life and at the same time had an almost superhuman capacity to get into trouble. Literally superhuman, it turned out, although that came later. First he was the lawyer who bought you a sandwich in the rain and then took you to his apartment with the same calm energy he did everything, as if picking you up from the doorway of a hardware store was simply what was right to do on a Tuesday night.
He didn’t ask for your story right away. That was the first thing that won you over.
He gave you space, a small room he used to use as storage, clean sheets and the freedom not to talk. He cooked, left plates on the table without making a ceremony out of it. He got you clothes and enrolled you in a school without asking if you wanted to go, but also without asking which one you preferred.
Small decisions that gave you back something you didn’t know had been taken from you: the feeling that your opinion existed.
Then it took you six months to tell him about Pruitt, months of weighing words and stopping mid-sentence. Of waiting for rejection.
Matt listened without interrupting you, and when you finished, when there was nothing left but the horrible exhaustion that comes after telling the truth, he asked calmly: “Do you want me to do something about it?”
“What could you do?” you said, because you still didn’t know everything Matt was capable of.
“I’m a lawyer,” he replied, simply.
He didn’t smile, but something in his expression suggested that the question had more than one possible answer. Months later, when Gerald Pruitt appeared in local headlines accused of a list of charges long enough to guarantee him the rest of his life behind bars, you didn’t ask how much Matt had had to do with it. He didn’t mention it either.
That won you over too.
You believed it was at that moment when you started to love him. The devastating feeling of realizing that someone could see you whole and still decide to stay.
The adoption papers arrived when you were sixteen and a half. It was a Saturday morning. Matt left them next to your coffee cup trying to act casual, but you knew too well the tension in his shoulders. He was terrified, not of signing but of you saying no.
That broke your heart a little because after all that time he still didn’t understand that it was already too late for you to stop being his.
“You don’t have to….” he started.
And there was something fragile hidden beneath the words. Something carefully contained as if he was already preparing to accept any answer even if it could destroy him.
“Yes,” you said.
Matt stayed still.
“You haven’t even read them.”
“I don’t need to read them.”
Because a last name was only a formality for something that had been happening for years. Because Matt was already the person you looked for first when you were afraid, the voice that calmed your head, the sound of footsteps that made you feel safe.
Because home already meant him, so you signed the papers with the pen he had left nearby.
That night they made pasta and while eating you found yourself looking at the scene with a strange pressure in your chest.
Because you were happy and that still scared you.
With Matt came the others, as if loving him inevitably meant ending up surrounded by people capable of building a home around themselves.
Foggy entered your life like light through an open window: without asking permission and making everything warmer. From the beginning he treated you as if you had always been there, as if you were part of the group even before knowing him.
Karen was different.
Karen understood you too quickly.
There was something in her, in the careful way she observed things, in how she held pain without letting it harden her completely, that made you trust before you wanted to. With Karen you could sit in silence and still feel accompanied.
Over time you stopped thinking only about surviving. You started thinking about the future. About small things at first: what you were going to eat the next day, if you could afford to sleep a little more, if there was something like stability waiting for you. Then came other stranger, more fragile ideas. The possibility of staying, the possibility of belonging somewhere.
At nineteen you already knew about Daredevil. Of course you knew. Matt came home too injured, too tired, smelling of blood, rain and broken cement. He tried to hide it, but you had spent too many years learning to recognize people who carried the world on their backs even if they pretended they could hold it without breaking.
The night he finally confessed it to you he seemed more scared than the day he gave you the adoption papers, as if that could change the way you saw him. But the truth was you had known for months. Maybe longer. Maybe a part of you had understood it from the first time you saw how he reacted to others’ suffering, as if he were physically incapable of ignoring it.
You didn’t like it. God, how you didn’t like it. You didn’t like the bruises hidden under sleeves or the bandaged ribs. You didn’t like staying awake listening to the clock ticking slowly while imagining all the possible ways he might not come home. There were nights when you cleaned his wounds with your hands shaking with rage because he kept giving himself to a city that never seemed to stop asking for parts of him.
But even then you understood. Because Matt had done for Hell’s Kitchen the same thing he had done for you. He had seen something broken and decided to stay anyway and loving Matt meant accepting that he would always run toward the pain if he believed he could spare someone else the blow.
That’s why some nights you waited for him awake on the couch, pretending to read while fear slowly chewed you up inside and when you finally heard his steps in the hallway, when the door opened and he came in alive even if battered, you felt that enormous and silent relief that almost hurt.
Then you helped him sit down, cleaned the blood from his knuckles and told him he was an idiot. Matt smiled tiredly, as if that was the closest definition he had ever had of being loved.
Because it was.
And maybe that’s what a family was in the end. Not the people who shared your blood or those who gave you origin, but those who found you broken and still made space for you in their lives as if there had never been any other option.
Please tell me if you like it and if you want the story with Matt or with Dex
a bad man - benjamin poindexter [part 2]
summary: you hated him and you hated what he had done but that didn't even stop you from doing what you wanted deep down
word counter and tw: (2,4k) a little bit of smut, age-gap, cheating (maybe)
A week later, you never set foot in that place again.
During those seven days, you stood firm in your decision. You told Matt you were overwhelmed with university exams and had to prepare presentations. Your brother looked at you with that worried expression he always had lately, but he eventually accepted it.
You felt such immense relief that you almost got dizzy. You weren’t going back. You weren’t going to see him. You weren’t going to give him the chance to break you again.
And yet… the nights were hell.
You would wake up sweating, breathing hard, your panties soaked, remembering with painful clarity the weight of his body, his hand on your throat, that hoarse voice mocking you while you came. You hated yourself for it. You’d get up, shower with nearly scalding water, and repeat to yourself in a low voice, “It was a mistake. A disgusting mistake. It’s not going to happen again. He’s a monster.”
During the day, you functioned almost normally. You went to university, replied to messages, smiled when you had to. But there were moments when his bruised face would appear in your mind and you’d feel a treacherous heat sliding down your belly. Then you’d clench your teeth and force yourself to think about all the terrible things he had done.
It worked… most of the time.
Matt barely talked about him. He only mentioned practical things, and every time you heard his name you felt a knot in your stomach. A mix of disgust, guilt, and something much darker that you refused to name.
A week and a half later, one night after coming for the third time while thinking about him, you made a decision.
Enough was enough.
You couldn’t keep going like this, hating yourself, masturbating with guilt, and waking up drenched with his name on your lips. You had to get him out of your system somehow. And the most logical, “normal” way was to replace him.
Lucas.
Lucas had been after you since you started university. Blond, perfect smile, good guy, the kind who always offered to carry your books or buy you coffee after class. He was studying law like you, stable, with no apparent trauma, no blood on his hands.
Exactly the opposite of Dex.
So when he texted you for the umpteenth time inviting you out, you replied. “Tomorrow at 8. You choose the place.”
The date was… well, you supposed it was good. You didn’t have much experience with dating. Lucas took you to an Italian restaurant, talked about his studies, his dog, how much he liked running on Sundays. You laughed when you were supposed to, nodded at the right moments, and let him hold your hand on the way back. He was sweet. Attentive.
And terribly dull.
While he told you about his latest mock divorce case in class, your mind drifted elsewhere, to a dimly lit room, to a blood-stained smile, to a hand squeezing your throat while he fucked you like he wanted to break you. You compared them without meaning to. Lucas’s soft voice against Dex’s hoarse, mocking one. Lucas’s careful hands against the brutal, bruised hands that had left marks on your hips.
At the end of the night, he kissed you at the door of your apartment. It was a tender, almost shy kiss.
You closed your eyes and tried to feel something, anything, but felt nothing. Still, you said yes to a second date.
Several weeks later, almost a month had passed since you had officially started dating Lucas.
To your surprise, things were… going well. Better than you expected. You had managed to push Dex into a dark corner of your mind and leave him there most of the time. You slept better, laughed more, and Lucas was exactly what you had needed.
That night they were celebrating their first month together.
Lucas had booked a nice restaurant with dim lighting, candles, and a terrace overlooking the city. He placed a hand on your lower back as you entered and smiled at you in that sweet way you were starting to recognize.
The dinner was fantastic.
They talked, laughed, and shared a tiramisu for dessert. Lucas looked at you the whole time as if he couldn’t believe you were there with him. He told funny faculty anecdotes, asked questions about you, and when they finished the wine, he took your hand across the table and said softly.
“You know I’m crazy about you, right? This month has been incredible. I want us to keep going like this.”
You smiled at him. You really smiled, leaned across the table, and kissed him gently, a warm, tender kiss that he returned carefully. He tasted like red wine and something safe. Stable.
“I’m having a really good time too,” you replied, and in that moment you almost believed it.
When they left the restaurant, Lucas put an arm around your shoulders and they walked slowly down the street. The night air was pleasant. He talked about a trip he wanted to take together the next long weekend. You nodded, laughing at his silly jokes.
For a while you felt… normal. Like you could have this. A healthy relationship. A good guy who hadn’t killed anyone. Someone who didn’t make you hate yourself.
But then it happened.
While they waited for a taxi on the corner, a car drove by quickly and the wind carried a familiar scent, metal, sweat, and something dark. Just for a second. It probably wasn’t even the same smell, just your mind playing tricks on you, but it was enough.
Suddenly you saw him again, the bruised torso, his smile, that disturbing gaze fixed on you, and you tensed without realizing it.
“Everything okay?” Lucas asked, noticing the change. “You got weird all of a sudden.”
“Yeah, yeah,” you answered quickly, forcing a smile. “I just got a little dizzy from the wine. Nothing serious.”
Lucas hugged you tighter and kissed your temple.
“Let’s go home then. I’ll make you some tea and tuck you in.”
You nodded and leaned on him as you walked. He was perfect and everything you were supposed to want, but during the entire taxi ride you couldn’t stop thinking about how different his arm around your shoulders felt compared to Dex’s hand. How soft Lucas’s kiss was compared to the hungry violence of that split mouth.
When you got to your apartment and Lucas started kissing you against the door, slow and loving, you closed your eyes tightly and tried to focus on him. On his soft hands, on his sweet voice whispering how much he wanted you.
It worked… halfway.
You slept with him that night. It was nice and tender. You came, and when Lucas fell asleep holding you, you stayed staring at the ceiling with a lump in your throat. “This is what you deserve.”
But a part of you couldn’t help wondering what Dex was doing at that moment. If he still thought about you. And the worst part was that, for the first time in weeks, you felt that familiar tingle between your legs just imagining him.
Three days after that night, you and Lucas went out to dinner for his father’s birthday. After singing “Happy Birthday,” you decided to leave because you had an exam the next day, so he insisted on walking you back to your apartment. The street was quite dark, one of those areas where the streetlights flickered and there were few people out at that hour.
You were holding his hand, listening to him talk about his weekend plans, when everything changed suddenly.
A blurry movement. You didn’t even see it coming.
A figure dressed entirely emerged from the shadows. Bullseye’s suit. The mask with the target on the forehead. The gloves. Everything.
Lucas barely had time to turn his head.
“What the fu…”
A dry, precise, brutal blow to the jaw. Lucas collapsed like a sack, unconscious before he hit the ground. Not even a scream. Just a body falling heavily onto the sidewalk.
You froze for two seconds. Fear quickly turned into pure fury.
“What the fuck did you do?!” you screamed, running toward Lucas and kneeling beside him.
He was breathing. He was alive, just knocked out. But that didn’t calm the rage burning inside you.
Dex stood under the orange glow of the streetlight, imposing. The suit fit him like a second skin, outlining every muscle, every line of his body. The mask only let his eyes show. There was something wild and lethal about him dressed like that. And your body, the traitor, reacted before your mind did.
You felt an intense heat in your belly. Your legs trembled.
You hated yourself for it.
“Get up,” Dex ordered in that hoarse, calm voice he used. “He’s fine. He’s just going to sleep for a while.”
You stood up slowly, breathing hard, fists clenched.
“Are you crazy? What the hell are you doing here dressed like that? Were you following us?” You took a step toward him, furious, even though a part of you was painfully aware of how imposing and attractive he looked in that suit. “You could have killed him!”
Dex tilted his head slightly, watching you like a predator. He took a slow step toward you, and although you wanted to back away, you held your ground.
“I was nearby,” he answered simply. “I saw you with him. Laughing. Holding his hand. Letting him touch you.” His voice dropped lower, darker. “I didn’t like it.”
You let out an incredulous, rage-filled laugh.
“You didn’t like it? You have no right over me! And now you show up dressed like a psychopath to knock out my boyfriend like he’s your property!”
You said “boyfriend” on purpose, wanting it to sting.
Dex took another step. Now he was very close. The suit contrasted brutally with the night. You could smell him, that metallic scent mixed with leather and something dangerously masculine. Your breathing quickened, fury and desire fought violently inside you.
“Boyfriend,” he repeated with mockery, almost spitting the word. “That bore doesn’t get you wet like I do. Not even close.”
You tried to hit him. Your hand flew toward his chest, but he caught it effortlessly in the air, closing his gloved fingers around your wrist. He didn’t squeeze hard, but enough for you to feel his power.
“Let me go,” you growled, though your voice came out more breathless than you wanted.
Dex lowered his face until his mask almost brushed your forehead. You could see his eyes through the slit. They burned.
“Tell me you didn’t get wet when you saw me appear,” he whispered. “Tell me it doesn’t turn you on seeing me like this… knowing exactly what I’m capable of.”
You bit your lip hard. You were furious. You were scared. And yes, damn it, you were wet. The suit, the way he moved, the danger he radiated… everything hit you right where you didn’t want it to.
“I hate you,” you whispered with a trembling voice.
“I know,” he replied, and that crooked smile widened. “But you’re still going to think about me when that idiot touches you tonight.”
He released your wrist slowly, almost like a caress, and took a step back. He looked at Lucas’s unconscious body on the ground with indifference.
“Tell him you were mugged. Or whatever you want. I’m done here… for now.”
He turned around and started walking toward the shadows, disappearing into the darkness as quickly as he had appeared.
You stayed paralyzed for a few seconds, watching Bullseye’s figure melt into the shadows. Your heart was pounding and you felt a treacherous heat between your legs that only increased your fury.
Lucas was still unconscious on the ground.
“Shit…” you muttered.
You quickly knelt beside him and checked his face. He already had a bruise starting to swell on his jaw, but he was breathing normally. You shook his shoulders gently until he started to react.
“Lucas… Lucas, wake up.”
He groaned in pain and opened his eyes, confused. He brought a hand to his jaw and blinked several times, disoriented.
“What… what happened?” he asked in a thick voice.
“We were mugged,” you answered without hesitation, trying to make your voice sound scared and convincing. “A guy came out of nowhere and hit you. I… I froze. I’m so sorry.”
Lucas sat up with difficulty, still dazed. He looked around, but the street was already empty.
“Did he do anything to you? Are you okay?” he asked worriedly, trying to focus on you.
“I’m fine, just scared,” you lied, helping him up. “Come on, I’ll take you to the ER to get that jaw checked.”
During the entire taxi ride, Lucas complained about the pain and kept repeating the same thing. “I didn’t see anything… he appeared out of nowhere.” You nodded, squeezed his hand, and pretended to be as shocked as he was. Inside, you were boiling.
When the doctors confirmed it was just a hard hit and gave him painkillers, you accompanied Lucas to his apartment.
He insisted you stay with him, but you told him you preferred to go home, that you needed to process what had happened.
As soon as you closed the door of your apartment, the entire facade collapsed. You leaned against the wood and slid down until you were sitting on the floor. Your hands were shaking.
You were furious with Dex. Furious because he had appeared, because he had hit Lucas mercilessly, because he kept inserting himself into your life as if he had the right. But you were also furious with yourself because, despite everything, when you saw him in that suit your body had reacted in a visceral, almost instinctive way.
You ran your hands over your face, ashamed.
Lucas was good. He was everything you should want. And yet, the moment Dex appeared, all your supposed progress of weeks went to hell in seconds.
You stood up and paced back and forth across the living room. The decision formed with every step, clear and dangerous. “This can’t continue like this.”
You couldn’t keep pretending with Lucas while your head and body were obsessed with the man who had killed someone in your family. You couldn’t keep running. You had to see him again and confront him. Yell at him. Hit him and, probably, fall again. But you could no longer deny it. Dex had you trapped in a sick way and you needed to resolve it.
This motherfucker shows up and I feel myself go into heat
I’m going insaneeeee, it’s over for meeeeee, he looks so damn goooood
wilson bethel as benjamin ' dex ' poindexter / bullseye , daredevil : born again . s2 : e8 the southern cross .
bullseye | daredevil: born again 2.08