Welcome to my humble abode, and it seems you've come across the threshold of the little worlds I've conjured. I hope it's to your liking, enjoy!
ONE PIECE
portgas d. ace
↳ one shots
→ I'm Here (work in progress)
↳ fics
→ The Waltz of Four Left Feet (soon...)
sanji
↳ one shots
→ Sandwiches for Two (work in progress)
LOVE AND DEEPSPACE
rafayel
↳ drabbles
→ A Home with Rafayel
caleb
↳ headcannons
→ Spider!Caleb
↳ blurbs
→ Guess the winner takes it all, after all...
sylus
↳ one shots
→ sylus x non materialistic!reader (work in progress)
A DATE WITH DEATH
casper
5012
0204/atlas
DC COMICS/DCU
dick grayson
↳ one shots
→ she got away (work in progress)
[smallville] clark kent
↳ one shots
→ smallville!clark kent x spider!reader (work in progress)
Summary : Dex is finally home, but his son doesn’t understand why his very scary daddy is so clingy with Mommy.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : FLUFF!!! Dad!Dex, Mom!Reader, canon-typical danger referenced, assassination attempt referenced, parenting, you and Dex has a son called Leo, attachment issues, clingy! Dex, husband! Dex, fatherhood, domestic, North Star! Reader. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 2.9k
Requested by : anon
Notes : This can be read as a standalone fic, but it’s also connected to What Makes a Good Man. All you need to know is that this takes place between DDBA season 1 and season 2. You and Dex have been married since his FBI days, and you have a son named Leo, conceived during a conjugal visit. Enjoy!
Leo had never met his daddy before Dex broke out of prison.
At least not in any way that made sense to a four-year-old.
For most of Leo’s life, Daddy had been a name in your bedtime story. A photograph tucked inside a book. A man Leo knew through your sadness, your smiles, and the way you sometimes touched your wedding ring when you thought no one was looking.
Then, suddenly, one night after the assassination attempt on Fisk’s ball, Daddy was real.
Daddy was tall. Daddy had a missing tooth and very serious eyes. Daddy wore a baseball cap when he went outside and crouched whenever Leo spoke to him, like whatever Leo had to say mattered more than anything else in the world.
Leo loved him. That part was fine. Accepting him as a fixture in his life was easy peasy.
Children had a way of accepting miracles without asking them to explain themselves. Daddy was home, so Leo held his hand. Daddy could fix broken toys, so Leo brought him broken dinosaurs. Daddy listened very carefully to the difference between a stegosaurus and an ankylosaurus, so Leo decided Daddy was smart.
And Leo loved Daddy because they had one thing in common: they both loved you.
Leo loved that Daddy loved Mommy. That was not the problem.
Honestly, Leo thought it made perfect sense. Mommy was amazing. Mommy smelled like books and soap and the the cotton she wore to the library. Mommy knew where the plasters were, remembered which dinosaur was which, and always did the voices properly during bedtime stories. Mommy could tell when Leo was sad.
So, of course Daddy loved Mommy. Obviously.
Daddy loving Mommy was not confusing. But Daddy being attached to Mommy like a very large, very serious sticker was the confusing part.
Because since Daddy had come home, he had been very… clingy (he learned that word from your best friend, Uncle Jonathan). Leo noticed it immediately. Daddy stood too close to Mommy in the kitchen. Daddy followed Mommy down the hall when you went to get laundry. Daddy held on to Mommy’s waist whenever she walked past him, like he had to check she was still real. Daddy kissed Mommy’s forehead. Daddy kissed Mommy’s hand. Daddy kissed Mommy’s shoulder when she was making coffee, which made Mommy say, “Dex,” in that voice that meant you were pretending to be annoyed but were actually not annoyed at all.
And at night, Daddy was worse.
At night, when Leo was supposed to be asleep, Daddy slept in Mommy’s bed. Apparently it was also Daddy’s bed now, but Leo wasn’t ready to accept that.
And Daddy didn’t just sleep beside Mommy, but he was practically glued to Mommy!
Leo had seen it from the hallway more than once, when he was supposed to be asleep across the hall. You would be propped against the pillows, reading under the warm gold light of the bedside lamp, and Dex would be wrapped around your waist like he had been hired to keep you from floating away. His face would be half-buried against your chest, one arm heavy over your stomach, mouth pressing sleepy little kisses to your collarbone every few minutes.
You let him do it. You even smiled when he did, because you loved it.
Sometimes you put your fingers in his hair and scratched gently, and Daddy would go so stills that Leo knew he liked it very much.
Leo understood affection. Leo understood love.
Leo didn’t understand, though, why Daddy was allowed to sleep with Mommy every night when Leo had to sleep by himself.
Because Leo had a room. Mommy had a room. Rabbit had a place in the dollhouse. The dinosaurs had their chest. Mommy’s library books went in her tote bag, even when you sometimes forgot three of them on the kitchen table. Shoes went by the door.
Everything had a place.
Except Daddy, apparently. Daddy’s place was just wherever Mommy was. He didn’t even have his own room!
This bothered Leo for days.
Not in a jealous way. More in a sad, practical way. Everyone needed a place. So one afternoon, Leo marched into the guest bedroom that had slowly become your office, pointed at the pull-out sofa bed and your desk, and announced, “Daddy, this can be your room.”
Dex looked up from where he had been fixing the loose hinge on the door. “My room?”
Leo nodded, very seriously. “You need one.”
Dex glanced toward the hallway, where you were making tea in the kitchen, then back at Leo. He looked confused. “I… have a room.”
Leo frowned. “Where?”
Dex said it like it was obvious. “With your mom.”
Leo went completely still. His little face folded into pure confusion. “With Mommy?”
Dex’s mouth twitched. “Yes.”
Leo stared at him like Daddy had just explained the laws of the universe incorrectly.“But that’s Mommy’s room.”
“It’s our room.”
Leo blinked.
You appeared in the doorway with two mugs just in time to watch your son’s entire worldview collapse.
Leo looked at you. Then at Dex. Then back at you.
“Mommy shares her room?”
You bit your lip.
Dex, unhelpfully, looked deeply pleased with himself, smug despite the fact that his competition was literally his own son. “Yes,” he said. “With me.”
Leo’s mouth opened. For once in his tiny life, he had no argument ready. He didn’t even know people could share rooms!
One night, though, when the apartment had gone dark, Leo climbed out of bed with his blanket dragging behind him and tiptoed down the hall. His night-light had been on, but the corner near the wardrobe still looked too shadowy, and Rabbit had fallen off the bed twice, which is probably a bad sign.
Your bedroom door was half-open.
Inside, you were trying to read.
Keyword trying, because Dex was not helping.
He was curled around you beneath the blanket, his arm around your waist, his cheek pressed against your chest. Every time your eyes moved back to the page, his mouth brushed against your skin in a lazy little kiss, like he couldn’t help himself.
“Dex,” you murmured, the book still open in one hand. “You’re distracting me.”
His voice came muffled against your skin. “Hmm.”
“I am trying to read.”
“So read.”
You lowered the book.
Dex lifted his head just enough to look at you, and Leo saw that gentle thing happen to Daddy’s face again. The thing that only happened around Mommy. Leo decided this was very sweet.
Unfortunately, Leo was also a very rule-oriented kid, so he also found it very hypocritical.
“Mommy?”
Dex went still immediately.
You looked toward the door, your eyebrows furrowing. “What is it, sweetheart?”
Leo stood in the doorway in his pyjamas, clutching his blanket with both hands. “I’m scared of the dark. Can you come sleep with me?”
Your eyes changed from curious into sympathetic. It meant Leo already knew you were about to say something disappointing and feel bad about it later.
“Oh, baby,” you said. “You’re getting bigger now. You need to try sleeping by yourself, okay? Being independent is important.”
Leo stared at you. It was very close to his father’s death stare when his eyes moved, very slowly, To Dex.
Dex, who was still wrapped around your waist.
Dex, whose face was still half-buried against your akin.
Dex, who had made no attempt to move, explain himself, or pretend he was not clinging to you for dear life.
Leo frowned. “But Daddy’s bigger than me.”
You froze. Dex’s eyes finally opened properly.
Leo pointed at him, deeply offended by the hypocrisy happening in front of him. “He should be independent first!”
What followed in the next few seconds was terrible, perfect silence.
Then you made a laugh-like sound into your hand, trying to hide it but failing.
Dex lifted his head slowly. Leo stood his ground.
He had Dex’s stubborn little mouth. Dex’s serious eyes. Dex’s absolute confidence when he believed he was right.
And unfortunately, he was right.
“Leo,” you said carefully, trying very hard to remain a responsible parent. “Daddy is…”
You looked down at Dex. Your husband looked up at you, daring you to finish that sentence.
You couldn’t.
Because what were you supposed to say?
Daddy spent seven years missing Mommy?
Daddy has attachment issues?
Daddy is a six-foot fugitive who becomes emotionally unstable if Mommy is too far away?
Daddy is emotionally dependent but we’re working on it?
Leo blinked at you, waiting for an answer, but your husband beat you to it.
“I am independent,” Dex defended himself, clearing his throat.
Dex looked down at his own arm around your waist as if discovering it there for the first time, because at this point, it was muscle memory. Then, he looked back at Leo.
“I’m protecting her.”
You chuckled, and Dex shot you a look, almost a pout.
Leo didn’t look convinced. “From what?”
Dex opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
You bit your lip to stop a laugh
That was when Leo knew he had found weakness.
He stepped farther into the room, dragging his blanket behind him like a tiny judge entering court. “There’s no bad guys in here.”
Dex’s face went serious. “There could be.”
You smacked his shoulder lightly. “Don’t scare him.”
Dex rolled his eyes, because he knew his son “I couldn’t if I wanted to.”
Leo climbed onto the end of the bed without permission, still frowning at his father, which was funny, because it just looked like Dex and mini-Dex having the world's cutest standoff.
“If Daddy can sleep with Mommy because he’s scared of bad guys,” Leo said, “then I can sleep with Mommy because I’m scared of the dark.”
You stared at him. Dex stared at him.
Leo stared back, deeply satisfied with his own logic. It was, unfortunately, airtight.
Your resolve lasted maybe half a second. “Oh, sweetheart,” you sighed, already defeated. “Fine. I’ll come with you.”
Leo’s face lit up immediately.
You pulled the blanket back and started to climb out of bed. Dex, because he was your husband, moved at the same time. He was already sitting up, hair mussed, expression serious, one hand reaching for the edge of the blanket like it was obvious that he was coming, too.
Leo noticed, and his little smile vanished.
“No.”
You paused halfway out of bed, with one foot on the floor.
Dex looked at his son. “No?”
Leo tightened his grip around your hand and stood very straight, blanket dragging behind him like a tiny king issuing a royal decree. “Daddy can’t come.”
Dex blinked. You pressed your lips together.
“Why not?” Dex asked, and there was just enough offence in his voice to keep you amused.
Leo frowned at him, still deeply wounded by the audacity. “Because Daddy needs to practice by yourself.”
You turned your face away because if you looked at Dex, you were going to laugh.
Dex stared at Leo.
Leo stared back with the calm, righteous confidence of someone who had caught a grown man breaking his own rule.
“I can sleep by myself,” Dex said, eyebrows furrowing.
Leo’s eyes dropped very pointedly to your side of the bed, where Dex had been wrapped around you two seconds ago. “You don’t.”
You made a small, helpless sound.
Leo tugged your hand, already pulling you toward the door. “Come on, Mommy.”
You let him lead you, biting your lip so hard it hurt.
Dex stayed in bed, visibly offended, the blanket pooled around his waist, looking like an assassin who had just been grounded by his four-year-old. As a result, he scoffed.
It was small, but Leo heard it.
“Daddy,” Leo said, scandalised.
Dex stared at him. “What?”
“That was rude.”
Dex closed his eyes.
For a second, you thought he might actually argue. Dex liked arguing when he thought he was right, and Dex almost always thought he was right. But then he looked at you, and the annoyance in his face tamed into something much more helpless.
Leo saw it.
Daddy loved Mommy so much. Leo liked that Daddy loved Mommy.
He did.
It made the house feel cozy.
But rules were rules.
“It’s one night, baby,” you said softly.
Dex’s teeth clenched.
He didn’t like it, that much obvious.
But Leo was watching him with solemn expectation, and Dex had been trying very hard to be good at fatherhood. Good at breakfast. Good at bedtime. Good at not moving the dinosaur chest even though he clearly still wanted to. Good at letting Leo win small things because he was his son.
So Dex exhaled through his nose. “Fine.”
Leo brightened.
Dex pointed lightly at him. “But Mommy comes back after you fall asleep.”
Leo frowned. “No. Mommy sleeps in my bed.”
Dex’s expression went flat.
“All night?” Dex asked, very annoyed now.
Leo nodded. “All night.”
Dex looked at you like betrayal had entered the marriage.
You smiled sweetly. “It’s only fair.”
“Hmmm,” Dex sighed.
“Yes,” Leo said. “Because Daddy is learning.”
Dex looked deeply unimpressed. Still, he leaned across the bed and kissed your temple. His mouth lingered against your skin, warm and reluctant, his hand coming up to cup your cheek like he was already annoyed about missing you from two rooms away.
Leo sighed loudly. Dex looked at him.
“You kiss Mommy a lot,” Leo said.
You laughed for real then.
Dex’s mouth twitched. “I’m married to her.”
Leo considered that.
“Does married mean Daddy is always cuddling mommy?”
Dex shook his head, trying to wrap around why his son was so argumentative about you. Oh right. He was his son. “No.”
Leo looked at you. “I think yes.”
Dex opened his mouth, but you reached over and patted his cheek.
“Don’t argue with him,” you said, still smiling. “He’s already won.”
Dex looked offended, but he kissed your palm anyway.
Then he leaned down and rested one large hand on top of Leo’s head. “Be good,” he said, even though he knew Leo was already a very good kid.
Leo nodded. “Be brave.”
Dex breath hitched.
Leo repeated very seriously, “Be brave, Daddy.”
Dex looked at him for a long moment, and then his voice went smaller. “I’ll try.”
So you carried Leo back to his room, even though he was big enough to walk, because sometimes being scared of the dark meant you got carried. His room smelled like clean laundry, picture books, and plastic dinosaurs. The night-light cast amber stars over the walls, and the dinosaur chest sat at the foot of the bed, exactly where Leo wanted it.
You curled yourself around him in his little bed as best you could. It was too small for you, so your knees bent awkwardly and one foot stuck out from under the blanket, but Leo looked pleased.
Your arm went over his tummy.
“Mommy?” he whispered.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Daddy loves you a lot.”
Your hand moved slowly through his hair. “Yes,” you whispered. “He does.”
“He kisses you all the time.”
You smiled in the dark. “I noticed.”
“Is that because married?”
You were quiet for a second. Then you said, “Partly.”
Leo thought about that.
“Does Daddy get scared when you’re not there?”
Your hand paused only briefly, but he felt it. To avoid thinking too much, you kissed his forehead.
“Sometimes.”
“But he’s big.”
“Yes.”
“And he has to learn.”
You laughed into his hair. “Yes. Apparently he does.”
Leo nodded, satisfied.
For a while, there was only the hum of the apartment and the faint noise of New York outside the window. Leo’s eyes grew heavy. Your hand kept moving gently through his hair until sleep pulled him under.
At some point, you fell asleep, too.
You meant to wait until Leo was settled and then secretly go back to your room. You really did. But Leo was warm, the bed was soft enough, and the apartment was silent. Your eyes closed for just a second.
Before you knew it, pale morning light was slipping through the curtains.
Leo woke first.
For a moment, he only blinked at the light on the wall. Then he noticed you still curled awkwardly around him, asleep with one arm across his middle.
Then, he noticed your hand.
It had slipped over the edge of the bed sometime in the night and… someone was holding it.
Leo lifted his head.
Daddy was on the floor.
Dex was asleep beside Leo’s bed, back against the wall, one knee bent, one arm resting on the mattress. His fingers were tangled gently with yours. He must’ve come into his room sometime in the night, found your hand, and fell asleep.
He hadn’t climbed into the bed.
So, while he may have tried to stay in his own room, he had definitely not slept by himself.
Leo stared.
Dex looked different asleep. Still serious somehow, but softer around the mouth. His black T-shirt was wrinkled. His hair was messy. He looked uncomfortable on the floor, but he was holding Mommy’s hand like it was the only place his hand belonged.
Leo looked at you. Still asleep. He looked at Daddy again. Still asleep.
Then Leo slowly reached for Stegosaurus.
He lifted it close to his mouth so he could whisper without waking either of you.
“Daddy is not independent,” Leo told it.
Stegosaurus, wisely, didn’t argue.
Leo nodded to himself. Then, after a moment, he added very softly,
“But he’s learning.”
—end.
Dex taglist : @itsdynotdaddy @diabolicallydownbad @doesanyonereadthis @meicore @pixie2k5 @bibiishin @starlitflora @pearlstiare @glorybeat @stardustworlds @castawaybarnes @supervampireflame @not-the-teen-witch @billybonesxx @ultimatewolverine @treetrees-world-of-imagiation @bitch-spaghetti-o @lostinthes4uce @cotton-eee @weallhaveadestiny @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @moonbug333 @yujyujj @mattdexx @lostfallenangelsblog @bloomsberryfairy @flimsysquid @abbotfan @leonetta2014 @ficcharsimpsblog @odairtrqsh @ugh-whytho @riverjane-d (Let me know if I missed anyone. If you want to be added, please ask/messege! it gets lost in the comments sometimes!)
synopsis dex is a little (read: very) upset with what you wrote about him in your diary and it forces you both to put your relationship into perspective—if what you had now could even be called a relationship.
notes hi everyone! i'm back with more dex after a busy two weeks :)
tags hurt/comfort, romance, humor, arguments, dex is petty af, implied neurodivergent reader, questioning of ideal relationships, mutual fear of abandonment, canon typical violence, suggestive content (just making out), semi-reader focused, dex somehow getting ragebaited by matt again
wc 5.3k
series masterlist • previous part • next part
‘July 8th.
I’ve been getting more sun now that the days are longer. The weather has been warm and stuffy but it’s good for me, I think, since I’ve been doing better lately.
Or maybe it’s not just the weather. It’s Dex, too.
But I haven’t seen him lately. He tends to disappear a lot with his work and it’s really a toss-up if I’m going to hear from him. He never uses his phone unless it's for work, so I barely get any communication on that end.
If I don’t ask him for the exact day he’s coming back before he leaves then I’m out of luck.
It’s not like he’s obligated to tell me, anyway. We’re not dating. Even though sometimes it feels like we are.
But that would never happen. Not in a million years. Dex and I are worlds apart. A disaster waiting to happen.’
The page crumpled in his fist and he shoved it deep into the pocket of his pants.
A disaster waiting to happen. That’s how you described you and him, only a week before he kissed you. It’d been a month since then. He was saving the page for a time he was away from you, something to keep him going when you were apart. But now he wished he never even read it.
It was an anecdote meant for your eyes only, hidden away in the pages of a diary kept by where you rested your head at night.
Dex wasn’t kidding himself here. He was all too aware that your new relationship was nothing short of unconventional, but he was going the extra mile to try and prevent you from noticing it too.
Paying for your coffee at the diner so you wouldn’t spend your hard earned money. Picking up errands for you on his days off so you wouldn’t have to lift a finger. Tailing you at night to make sure you made it home safe and sound.
But no, apparently you had already formed your opinion about him before he even had the chance to kiss you. He ‘doesn’t communicate’ and ‘disappears a lot’. Worst of all, the thought of dating him was apparently repulsing in your own words.
“A disaster waiting to happen,” he cursed under his breath. You thought a relationship with him was outlandish. A ticking time bomb. That he was a ticking time bomb.
His stomach twisted into a tangled knot of frustration.
Dex punched your number into his phone manually. Your contact was saved, but something about dialing each number was soothing to him–under regular circumstances, at least. He had the time difference logged onto his clock so he knew it was morning in New York.
“Dex–you ‘kay?” your voice groggily filtered through on the other line. He had woken you up.
“Yeah. Are you busy tonight?” he cut straight to the point. “We should have dinner.”
“Oh,” your voice was light and silvery with delight, “I would love to. There’s this new Italian place that opened up, but if you just want to stick to something familiar we can go to–”
“I like Italian,” he said. “Let’s order in, though. Your place.”
Your excitement to speak to him almost changed his mind about his stubborn behavior. It occurred to him that he was reading too much into what you wrote. It’s not like you ever expected him to find it. Hell, you didn’t even know he was walking around a foreign city with a ripped page from your diary like it was a breakup text.
But this wasn’t the only time you alluded to your relationship concerns. Dex recalled you once telling him that your best friend and fiance had what you referred to as, ‘the real thing’.
Whatever the real thing was.
You weren’t like your best friend, he noticed. She seemed to live a little bit more of a traditional life than you did. Perhaps you modeled your vision of love based on the relationships of your loved ones. Picket fence, dating then marriage then kids.
Or maybe you didn’t want that at all. He never asked.
It made him think about his vision of the future. His future with you.
Sharing a space together where he could come home to you everyday instead of lingering on a nearby fire escape to watch the light in your apartment. Where all of his clothes would smell like your fabric softener, where your distinctly scented bath products lined his shower so he could borrow them just to live in you, where your side of the bed would spill into his.
A small bubble where you and him were both understood by one another, and for once it was fine that you weren’t understood by anyone else. A corner of the world where his life wouldn’t catch up to him, and you wouldn’t be the one taking the brunt of the consequences.
To him, that was it. The real thing.
But you didn’t write about any of that. You only emphasized what couldn't give you.
Dex was home the same day. His body was exhausted from the flight but he had slept enough on the plane to still make his dinner plans with you.
Knowing he was missing out on some much needed rest just to have dinner with you warmed your heart. You were still getting used to your new arrangement, all the same. The small dates, sometimes just a walk in the park or meeting him on the rooftop of your apartment just to stargaze (and you not so subtly revealing you thought he looked pretty dashing in his gear when he’d rush to meet you).
You’d been wishing for it. No matter how much you tried to deny it, pushing the idea of a relationship with him out of your head because you weren’t even sure if he was looking for one. He had his own demons, own struggles, and you just couldn’t ask him to take on yours part-time too.
But he’d handled them with grace so far in the short month you’ve been together. Dex never made you feel like your internal battles were a burden on his own. They were just there alongside his own. Mountains for you both to conquer, a silent promise that neither of you had to deal with it all alone anymore.
It wasn’t long before you began to question it. It was in your nature to assume too much of a good thing meant something bad would follow. You pushed it out of your mind for tonight.
Now here he was across from you in your apartment as you rambled about your week. He always listened so attentively, adding his own comment here and there. But this time he was silent. Just staring straight ahead at you over your now empty plates.
You swallowed hard, face feeling hot with slight embarrassment. “Sorry, am I talking your ear off?”
“No. You couldn’t bore me,” he said pointedly. “Not in a million years.”
You frowned. He had said it like a catchphrase, or some kind of inside joke you were privy to.
“Everything okay…?” you asked him, voice dripping with concern. “You’ve been gone for a while. You must be really tired. Maybe we should–”
“Yeah, well, I’m not obligated to tell you, am I?” he tilted his head.
Okay, something was definitely up. You cocked your eyebrow suspiciously.
“What’s your problem?” you tried again, now a little frustrated at his behavior.
He was emphasizing all of these words and phrases like they meant something to you. But you just felt like you were on a prank show waiting for the big joke to reveal itself. It was unnerving, especially coming from him when you hadn’t seen him in a week.
“I don’t have a problem. I’m just communicating how I feel to you,” he crossed his arms. “That’s what you want, right?”
“I guess. Isn’t that what everyone wants?” you asked nervously, hoping it was the right answer. It’d been a while since you felt like you were being cold called on in a university lecture.
“Maybe I shouldn’t just assume what everyone wants.” he scoffed, “that’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
The words made your blood run cold–because they were your own. You remembered writing them down while tucked into your bed at night before falling asleep one night. The thoughts were quickly scrawled into your diary before you dropped it into the bedside table drawer and closed it to keep it away from prying eyes.
And now the prying eyes in question were staring back at you like you had betrayed him in some way.
“Dex,” you asked calmly, folding your hands on the table. “Did you read my diary?”
He stood up suddenly, reaching into his pocket for something and then tossing it out onto the table between you. It was a crumpled parchment resembling the same paper bound into your diary. You unfolded it and skimmed it.
Then, you set it down with pursed lips. The man across from you, military trained, FBI seasoned, now a practiced contract killer for the government, was picking a fight with you over something you wrote in your private diary.
“I guess that answers my question,”
“What is this?” he motioned between you both as he spoke slowly and drawn out. “Just some kind of experiment to you? How long until one of us calls it quits?”
“No,”
“Until one of us gets hurt and things fall apart?”
“God, no,” you stood up exasperatedly. “You’re the one who went through my things, Dex!”
This was getting out of hand quickly. You thought he was tired from being on his feet for days and from his flight. You thought he just wanted a quiet night in with you. This wasn’t how you thought your evening was going to go at all.
It wasn’t him going through your room that bothered you, if you were being honest with yourself. Your hands trembled and the pit in your stomach wasn’t faring any better.
“You’re afraid,” he nodded in satisfaction as if confirming a suspicion he had about you all along.
“No, I’m–” you shifted your weight from one leg to the other. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“But you are,” his voice was dusky and low. “You’re afraid of me getting to know you.”
His jaw tightened as he broke eye contact with you to stare at the table between you. Everything was placed in doubles. Placemats for the dinner plates resting atop them. Half empty glasses and taper candles coupled together. And yet, the two of you couldn’t be more separate in this moment if you tried.
“That’s not the same thing,”
“It is. You know it is,” the knowing smile he cracked made your chest tighten painfully.
It’s not like you were ever dishonest with him about your life. What he saw was exactly who you were, with smiles never concealed and confessions rolling off your tongue in rambles or short outbursts. Anyone your age had a trail of past mistakes, small triumphs, and lost loved ones mosaiced into you.
But that didn’t mean you had nothing to hide. That didn’t mean you weren’t trying to hide things from him. It was almost comical how scared you were of being judged by the man across from you with a past so decorated by pain and bloodshed.
Still, here you were. Afraid he’d run if he looked at you a little too closely.
Terrified of being known by him.
The change in your relationship with Dex had hit you so hard and fast you had no idea how to deal with it. Waking up with the sensation of him lingering on your lips, his weight still heavy beside you, and the intimate moment shared between you that no grand declaration of feelings could have surpassed. It all sent your system into shock.
“We don’t have to talk about what this is. We can just be.”
Those words were out of your mouth before you even whispered a good morning to him. His eyelids were still heavy, blinking slowly at you in the blue light of sunrise. He didn’t nod, didn’t agree with any show of mirth. You received a soft hum of acknowledgment and that was that.
Dates that weren’t called dates followed. Moving between your place and his, showing up dressed a little nicer or using gentler voices. Always ending every meeting with a kiss. He’d grip your sleeve on your way out so that you’d turn around and kiss him, arms wrapping around his neck as he smiled against your mouth.
You were content. You could live with it, could do that forever really. And maybe he could too, if you didn’t just admit to him in so many words that you were scared of it.
The real thing. With him, because if this blew up in your face the way love always seemed to, you were sure it’d be your end. So you never asked him for any more than he gave.
But right now, he was asking you for more.
“I’ve been open with you about myself from the beginning,” your wavering voice betrayed the indifference you tried to convey. “I’m not exactly a closed book.”
“Leaving things out of the truth is still lying,”
You hated the smug way he said it. How dare he use your own words against you.
“I don’t know why you care so much about my past, anyway,”
You did.
“Then maybe you should ask yourself why you cared so much about mine.”
You have.
The answer lingered in the little space left between you when you’d share a bed, just to hear one another breathe. It was drowned out by the CD’s you’d put on when you visited his apartment, wondering if he knew the meaning of the songs you picked.
The words you shared with him that day were untruthful. You didn’t want to ‘just be’. You loved him. As plain as the words looked on paper or as foreign as they sounded when you said them to yourself. You wanted labels, you wanted commitment. And you wanted what came after, whatever that might be.
Without letting another second of the miserable silence he left you in pass, you went to your bedroom. You opened the closet door and reached up to the top shelf where you stored old belongings and pulled down a dusty shoebox.
It was shoved into his arms when you returned. He had reached for the cover but you stopped him.
“Wait,” you swallowed hard. “Not here.”
Not in front of me.
Never in all of your years on earth did you think you’d ever share your diaries with another human being. Not your best friend, not your mother–who was also your best friend at one point–and certainly not Dex.
It was where your most personal thoughts went, no matter how embarrassing or inappropriate. About your life, about your family and home, about difficult classmates or your coworkers at your crappy jobs. Channeling your streams of consciousness onto paper was the only time you were ever truly honest with yourself.
And now, here you were being honest with Dex.
He wasted no time reading through them, piled up beside his bed in a neat stack so he could easily reach for the next one. Every diary was a volume of your life in a way. Entire years of childhood to adulthood compressed into small hundred-something paged books.
His own life could probably be summarized in footnotes. Dex was always moving from one place to the next. Orphanage to social work to the military and government jobs and coming home every day at the same time to the same empty apartment. It was rigid, it was comfortable.
But it was also all he knew. You, on the other hand, had lived a life. One so rich and different than his, at least it felt that way. Even with every struggle or troubling feeling, even with every awful occurrence you penned would be the ‘end of the world’, there was always another page that came after.
He read about the allergy you discovered while on a family vacation, and your middle school best friend who broke your heart when she moved away. The sibling you fought with growing up who you wish you were on better terms with now. The hobby you stopped practicing that made you realize not every skill is like riding a bike.
Every experience was just another piece of who you were now. When he looked at it that way, he couldn’t understand why you would be angry with him for wanting to read your diary. For wanting to know more about your life, and more importantly–his place in it.
Especially when he reached your current diary. The one he had torn a page from.
The date on the first page was marked for the past winter, only half a year ago. You were having issues with the heating in your apartment, becoming weary of your upstairs neighbors who only vacuumed their apartment at odd hours of the night, and how the cold made you feel a bit lonelier.
Halfway through, he reached the first mention of his name. The note he wrote to you on the plane was taped to the page. You had kept it like a receipt of your first encounter. He wondered if you cracked your diary open just to reread it in the days following.
‘If I see him again, I’m not going to miss my chance to say hello!’
It was the first time he saw you use actual punctuation in a while, a stark contrast to the bleakness of your earlier entries.
Then there was your entry about seeing him again, how it was a total miracle and coincidence as if he hadn’t been planning the moment carefully for two whole weeks. Then, you wrote a cheesy anecdote about how the jukebox fixing itself was some kind of divine message.
‘I think this is a sign. Things are about to change.’
And change they did. You wrote about how seeing him every single day had been a reason to get out of bed in the morning. He smiled when you admitted to dressing a little nicer, spending a bit more time on yourself. Wearing your hair in a style he commented on more, or colors that seemed to draw his attention.
‘It’s nice to feel like someone is waiting for me for once. I don’t want to mess this up.’
He never knew you felt that way. Of course he waited for you but it was because he had built a routine around it hoping you’d realize he wasn’t going anywhere. He’d even order your coffee a little sweeter some mornings so you’d associate him with something positive, completely unaware you were doing the same thing in your own way.
Dex had to reread the paragraph you spent complimenting his cooking the day he invited you over. You went as far as to say you wished you took leftovers.
‘It’s not just about the food. I haven’t had anyone cook for me since I moved out years ago. I forgot what it was like to be considered in that way. To have someone care about my needs enough to want to take a load off me.’
Your words should have validated him. After all, he spent the past month trying to take things off your plate so you’d depend on him. But all it really did was make him more self-aware of how he always weaponized a good deed to win your love. To earn his keep.
He shook that off before it could agitate him any further. He turned the page. Some ramblings about work and your commute being a little more pleasant in the springtime. How much you appreciated his help with wedding prep for your best friend. You were conflicted about the jeweler thinking you were dating him, but hoped he saved a dance for you at the wedding.
‘I’ve been thinking about him this entire week. He’s been gone for work and I can’t believe how much I actually miss meeting him in the mornings.’
The agitation didn’t stop gnawing at him just because he turned the page, though. It only got worse, memories of your argument swirling in his head. He relived how he had let you down, saw your crestfallen face in his head, and snapped the diary shut.
Yes, he messed up that time. But you’d forgiven him, right? That was months ago. By now, you might have even forgotten it entirely. He certainly hadn’t, though. He had done a lot since then to prove to you that he was reliable, that he was exactly who you thought he was. That he was the Dex you wrote about in your diary.
He opened the aforementioned book back up again to continue where he left off. You wrote about how he helped you build your cabinet you’d been putting off for weeks. Even more surprising, you had described that it had awakened something in you.
‘I thought I was going to pass out but the heat had nothing to do with it.’
The war in his head briefly calmed to allow room for amusement. Then he read about how dependable he was in your eyes and considered taking the entire page out for himself again. But he reminded himself of the argument that came from the first time he did it and held back with a clenched fist.
‘It’s just like me that the first friend I make in a while is a supervillain. Whatever the word ‘supervillain’ means these days.’
Then you just had to go and write a whole thinkpiece about vigilantes and your thoughts about Daredevil. He didn’t know how to describe the feeling that came over him reading that guy's name in your diary. It stuck out beside his. Didn’t belong there, in his opinion. Sure, he and Dex were on more or less neutral terms now; but he’s still not sure what business you could possibly have with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.
‘Sometimes I can’t tell when he’s just joking around. But right now, I really wish I knew.’
You were writing in reference to the message he left you on his knife. You’re cute. Just two words and he had you in the palm of his hand–at least, that’s how he saw it. But the words came from a place of honesty. It was a thought that echoed ceaselessly whenever you spoke to him through a smile as if you couldn’t contain your delight to have him as your conversation partner.
Of course you’d read it as a gesture of humor rather than confession. He kept that in his back pocket for later. Be more direct–if that was even possible.
The next page was torn out. His own doing. But there was still the page after it, which he hadn’t gotten the chance to read before you interrupted him that day.
He pulled the page out of his pocket and placed it back into the diary, connecting it to the missing piece of the puzzle.
‘July 8th.
I’ve been getting more sun now that the days are longer. The weather has been warm and stuffy but it’s good for me, I think, since I’ve been doing better lately.
Or maybe it’s not just the weather. It’s Dex, too.
But I haven’t seen him lately. He tends to disappear a lot with his work and it’s really a toss-up if he’s going to be there the next day. He never uses his phone unless it's for work, so I barely get any communication from him.
If I don’t ask him for the exact day he’s coming back before he leaves then I’m out of luck.
It’s not like he’s obligated to tell me, anyway. We’re not dating. Even though sometimes it feels like we are.
But that would never happen. Not in a million years. Dex and I are worlds apart. A disaster waiting to happen.’
Continued.
‘I can’t help wishing, though. Especially lately. It feels like we’ve become closer and I can’t ignore how that makes me feel anymore. But I just don’t know if he sees that kind of a relationship with me.
His job is so dangerous, too, and I think that makes him hold back from me at times. At the same time, he can’t seem to stay away, either. All of these mixed signals between us are driving me crazy.
How does he really feel about me?
Maybe it’s better not to know at all.’
It didn’t seem fair that you were going through just as much grief about this as he was. He wanted to keep being angry with you for holding back from him. But you let him read about your entire life, just because he asked.
No, not your entire life. Just pieces of it, fragments of things you only shared to the pages. What you showed to him outwardly was just as much a part of you. You only placed the missing pieces in his hands.
He didn’t call before he came over. The itch to see you was too urgent to ask for permission. If you were out, he’d wait for you to come home. If you were asleep, he’d wake you.
You were just coming home when he got to your door. Keys in hand, a convenience store bag hanging off your arm. When you saw him, your eyes widened for a spell, and then you chewed your lip as you remembered what transpired between you the night before.
“Do you want to come in?” you asked, taking notice that he hadn’t been here to return your diaries judging by his empty hands.
He accepted with a nod, and you shut the door behind him. He heard your uneven breaths, your lips parted as you mulled over what to say to him. But he spoke first.
“I read them. The diaries.”
“And?” you asked. Instead of the anger you were exuding last night, you seemed nervous. It was like a switch flipped. The veil was lifted. You weren’t deflecting it anymore–you were afraid.
“I used to have them too,” he said, then quickly corrected himself, “not diaries. My therapist kept tapes for me when I was a kid.”
“Tapes of your sessions?” you asked, and he watched your shoulders relax.
“Yeah. She let me talk to her about anything. Didn’t judge me. It was…helpful.”
“I didn’t know you were in therapy that long.” you admitted softly.
“There’s a lot you still don’t know,” he said bitterly. “About before you. But you can ask.”
Your gaze softened, lips pulling into a guilty frown. “Yeah?”
That only seemed to frustrate him more.
“Yes. I’m your–” his lips pursed.
Your breath hitched.
Silence stretched between you for a moment. And you understood.
“You were right,” you stepped towards him. “I left things out of the truth. About us–about how I feel about you.”
His eyebrows were still scrunched as you spoke. “What, you don’t want to just be?”
“Do you get thrills out of quoting me to myself, or do you just like hearing the sound of your voice?” you scoffed at him incredulously. “Use your own words.”
That smoothed him out, his frown melting to mild amusement instead. His eyes flitted to the spaces in your apartment he occupied. Shoes by the door, keys placed neatly where you’d thrown yours, and remnants of a shared meal on your table.
“Would be nice if you told me what you wanted. Instead of your diary,” he said in his usual low timbre.
You crossed your arms, apprehensive.
“I want you to tell me the wheres and whens. I hate not knowing when you’re going to come back. Or…if.”
He squinted at you. “What else?”
Of course he wasn’t going to let you get away with just that. He started this entire argument for a reason, after all.
“I want labels,” you forced the words out, no matter how tightly fear was gripping your heart. “I at least want to put a name on what this is.”
Dex’s smile was genuine instead of mocking, now, indicated by the soft lines forming beside his eyes. He had you right where he wanted you. He sealed the deal with a hand on your arm, sliding under your elbow to draw you closer. You let him guide your hand to his chest and the rhythmic beating of his heart grounded you.
“And what is this?” he tried.
Love. Plain and simple. But you still weren’t quite ready to give him that answer. Not yet.
“Something real,” you whispered, and then stammered to add, “and exclusive.”
If only you knew how obsessed he was with you.
If only you knew that he counted how many times his name alone appeared in your diary. Fifty three and four more counting his alias (more than a certain other vigilante’s, which counted for a lot). His lips twitched.
He leaned down to kiss you, your mouth against his an anchor in the troubled sea of his mind. Your intimacy was saved solely for him. Your lips on his skin, your touches through his hair, all for him alone. Maybe you were just as obsessed as he was.
That thought sent a burning heat through him that he only kindled further by tasting you, groaning into your mouth with every brush of your tongue against his and his fingers held your jaw tighter when your fingers tugged his hair.
Yeah. Definitely obsessed.
You were reading in bed that night beside him, laminated bookmark resting idly between your lips. It occurred to you that he never returned your diaries. The idea of him keeping them didn’t bother you as much as you thought it would. He was guarding your secrets in a way.
“Hey,” you bookmarked your book and set it down, watching him clean his pistol where he sat at the edge of the bed. “I never asked you what you wanted.”
His eyebrow cocked, pausing his fingers for a moment.
“In our relationship.”
The way his lips curved made you wonder if he questioned you just to hear you say it again. That he was yours.
“My lease is up soon,”
Your eyebrows shot up. You didn’t think he’d want to move that fast.
“I think you mean Tony’s lease is up soon,” you smirked.
He put his gun on the bedside table and looked at you, stern and slightly irked you were taking this as a joke. But it didn’t perturb you in the slightest, even as his face shoved into your neck.
“I’m being serious.” he spoke against your skin with a hint of vexation.
“How soon?” you questioned, your arm around him.
“Seven months,”
Not soon in your opinion. But you had a feeling the time would fly by anyway.
“Let’s talk about it then.” you said. A promise not to his request, but that you’d still be around by then. A demand that he’d still be around all the same.
‘August 11th
I got my current diary back from Dex. He taped the stolen page back in before he returned it. So many of the pages were dog-eared, too. Which bothered me until I realized he only did that on the entries he was mentioned in.
I wonder how many times he reread them.
Things are good between us now. Maybe I was a little right about us being a bit of a disaster. But it’s nothing we can’t work on together–I’m sure of it.
I’m ready for what comes next.’
a/n they’re so just for me by pinkpanthress. no fr they lowkey wanna eat each other. thank you for reading as always! feedback welcomed and appreciated.
Imperial Sharpshooter!Dex x Jedi Knight!Reader | Star Wars AU
TW Grief, mention of death, obsession, unhealthy attachment, stalking (?), mentions of spice/drug and alcohol use, suggestive sexual content, enemies(ish)-to-lovers, weapon kink.
You were one of the few Jedi who survived Order 66.
You didn’t survive because you were better, or because you were chosen. You didn’t survive because the Force had some grand plan for you. If anything, you thought it was cruel that you survived at all.
You survived because you were a coward. You got luck, and you ran.
That day, you found your Jedi apprentice dead in her quarters. She was only a teenager, and more importantly, she was your ward. She was a child who had been entrusted to you, and the last thing you ever got to do for her was cradle her body while the Jedi Temple burned around you.
You cut off her Padawan braids with shaking hands because you couldn’t leave all of her behind.
Then you ran and hid in the refresher of a cargo ship. You burned your robes in a trash compactor. You traded your lightsaber for passage twice and stole it back both times.
So, no. You didn’t really consider yourself a Jedi anymore.
Jedi didn’t drink cheap booze from chipped metal cups on deserted towns in imperial planets. Jedi didn’t sleep in filthy hostels under fake names. Jedi didn’t take spice just to stop dreaming about the people they failed to save.
And Jedi definitely didn’t sleep with strangers because they were angry and grieving.
Enter Dex.
You met him in a bar near some run-down hostel on an Outer Rim planet you barely remembered the name of. You were there because you were hunting the clone who killed your Padawan, but so far, you had nothing. No name, no trail, nothing.
Dex was sitting beside you at the bar, trying to flirt because you smiled at him kindly when you walked in.
And oh, he flirted badly.
Like, it was painfully terrible. He was doing that thing where he clearly wanted to be noticed but was pretending he didn’t care if you looked at him.
You noticed.
And not just because he was intense, not just because he looked at you like he was already one bad decision away from obsession.
And you liked him. You really did.
There was something about that singular focus of his that drew you in, that almost made you admire him against your better judgment. He was charming in a way that should have been off-putting, but it worked on you anyway. Still, that was not why you noticed.
You noticed because the Force was strong with him.
He was clearly untrained and unfocused, but the potential was there.
Dex was Force-sensitive. He just had no idea.
And really, that should have been your sign to walk away.
You didn’t.
So you slept with him that night, because one thing led to another, and honestly? Fuck the Jedi Code. Fuck the no-romantic-attachment rule. Fuck serenity. Fuck letting go.
Anyway, sleeping with Dex was not an attachment. Obviously.
It was just one night. One stupid, desperate night with a stranger who made you forget, for a few hours, that your entire life had been purged before your eyes.
You ended up against the wall of his dingy rented room, breath heaving as he drove into you, nail scratching and teeth biting.
He was good. For a little while, you forgot the braid in your pocket, forgot the dead, forgot that you were supposed to be grieving, running, hunting.
And then morning came. Dex was still asleep beside you.
Last night was fun, but you hadn’t been paying attention. You had been too tired and too desperate to forget.
And you hadn't looked closely enough.
Because that morning, curiosity took over. When you looked around his room, your heart dropped.
You saw the Imperial uniform. You saw the Empire-issued rifle half-hidden under his bed.
And immediately, you were like: Maker, what have I done?
Because he was not just some strange man from a bar. He was not just an awkward, intense, off-puttingly charming man who you had a one night stand with.
He was an Imperial sharpshooter.
Which meant he had probably hunted people like you. He killed people like you. Maybe even surviving Jedi. Maybe even children who had escaped the Temple just to be found later.
So you left before he woke up. No note. No goodbye. Nothing.
And the thing was, Dex didn’t know you were Jedi.
To be fair, Dex did not know what he was either.
He had no idea he was Force-sensitive. He had no word for it, and no ancient teachings to explain why he can’t seem to miss, even if he tried.
The Empire, arrogantly, thought they had just trained a very good sniper.
He was sad that he woke up without you, of course. He wanted to get to know you!
So, when he got back to base, he started digging, researching your name day and night.
Later, he found your name in classified Imperial files: a surviving Jedi Knight.
Oh.
He should have told his superiors. He should have told them where he saw you. He should have said, yes, I met her, she was here, she went this way. Blah blah blah.
He didn’t. Because, unfortunately for everyone involved, Dex was already obsessed with you.
So instead of reporting your last known whereabouts, he does the most Dex thing possible.
He starts sabotaging Imperial operations near your suspected locations to flush you out.
Insane behavior. But very Dex, right?
He started destroying supply lines and even discreetly killed officers who got too close to your trail. Then, he started causing just enough damage that innocent civilians needed help, because in his head, he knew you. He knew you wouldn’t be able to ignore the sound of a sister begging for help or a child crying because they lost their mother in the chaos.
And he was right.
You showed up.
You kept crossing paths with him, and every time, you ran before he could explain anything.
At first, you thought he was hunting you.
Which, y’know, fair.
He was Imperial. He was dangerous. You were probably his mission. You had looked into his record by then, and it was not exactly comforting.
But then you started noticing that the bodies he left behind were not rebels or civilians.
They were Imperial officers. They were always one of his own.
Huh. Strange.
And then one day, there was a knock on your door.
You opened it. And it was Dex.
He was dragging a dead clone trooper behind him.
You ignited your lightsaber and put it straight to his throat. And the sick bastard looked like he was into it.
He only said, “I just wanna talk.”
So you let him in, but you kept the lightsaber at his neck the whole time because you were traumatised, not stupid.
You said, “then talk.”
And Dex explained that the dead clone on your floor was the one who killed your Padawan. You checked, he was right— he had the designation number of CT-0212. It matched information based on the blaster you found near the body.
Because apparently, while he had been trying to find you, he had also figured out what you were really looking for. He knew you were hunting the clone responsible. He knew you hadn’t been able to find him.
So Dex found him for you, killed him, and dragged the body to your door like it was a gift.
Like: I know what you wanted, so I brought it to you. Now please love me?
And to be fair, what were you supposed to do with that? Throw him back into the street?
The Empire had probably already realised he had defected. He had nowhere to go. He had just handed you the one thing you had been chasing since the day your life at the temple ended.
So you let him stay.
And because the Maker apparently had a sick sense of humor, you eventually let Dex back into your bed, and for more than one night this time.
Which was its own kind of disaster, because one night had been easy to excuse. One night could be grief, loneliness, bad judgement, whatever.
But this that was waking up tangled in his arms and kissing him back when he kissed you.
Worse, you eventually fell in love with him, too.
Which was completely against everything you had once been taught.
The Masters would have been disappointed in you. The Jedi rules against attachment existed for a reason, didn’t they? Possessive attachment and romantic love could lead to fear, jealousy, and the dark side.
You were supposed to be detached.
But where had detachment gotten any of you?
The Temple was turned into ash. Your masters were dead. Your Padawan was dead. Every surviving person you had once called a companion was now a name on an Imperial execution list.
So what if you loved Dex?
What were the Jedi Council going to do about it?
Oh, right.
They were all dead.
Eventually, you told him the truth: that he was Force-sensitive.
And suddenly, his whole life made sense.
How he was able to make impossible shots and ridiculous ricochets. The way he always knew where a target would move before they moved. The way the galaxy seemed to bend to his will whenever he aimed.
And you, who were absolutely not a proper Jedi anymore, taught him what little you could.
Not the Temple teachings. Not the holy religious bullshit.
You taught him practical things. You taught how to listen to his surroundings, how to focus, how to feel the Force on purpose instead of reaching for it blindly.
And after that, the two of you became an absolute nightmare.
Because after that, you started killing Imperial soldiers and officers out of pure spite. Out of revenge.
And Dex didn’t stop you. In fact, he encouraged it. He helped you cover your blind spots. He put blaster bolts through anyone who looked at you wrong. He ran a tub for you after a long day and scrubbed the sweat off your skin and kissed the blood off your face. He would say he’s so proud of you for putting those scum down, as if he hadn’t been one of them once, too.
The other Masters would have hated it.
They would have said you were slipping, crawling toward the dark side one body at a time. They would’ve said you were careless for letting your grief turn into rage, rage into violence, violence into a line you would never come back from.
And maybe they would have been right.
But you had lost too much to care.
And now the man you loved was enabling you to take out your emotions however you liked.
So, really. How were you supposed to stop?
Also, Dex with a blaster? Horrifying. Beautiful. Give me that please.
Give that man a custom ricochet blaster and it is over. He’d be bouncing shots off cantina walls, pipes, doorframes, helmets, beskar armor, whatever. He wouldn't even need a clean line of sight. He’d just tilt his head, listen to the Force like you told him to, and suddenly three bounty hunters are down before anyone could process where the shot came from.
So yeah, the Empire accidentally created a Force-sensitive trick-shot assassin and then lost him forever because one traumatised Jedi smiled at him at a bar once.
Pathetic of them, honestly.
—
Prompted by this ask.
—
Note : starting a dex taglist, but I won’t be tagging people in small blurbs like this, just full length fics! Also, The Matt Murdock and Buck Cashman Star Wars AU blurbs are gonna be posted tomorrow. Gotta sleep now, it’s 3AM and I just finished marvel rivals placement matches lol.
plot: as dex's handler, it's your job to keep him on a leash: you tell him where to go, who to kill, who to save. if he gets out of line, you yank the leash... just make sure he can't slip free.
pairing: cia!benjamin poindexter x gn!handler!reader.
cw: brat tamer!reader and brat!dex, freak4freak, suggestive, murder, minor injuries, stalking (from both of you), not lovers not friends but a secret third thing (an owner and their pet), dex has a praise kink, dex also has a degradation kink, he's trying to ignore both, reader consistently compares him to a dog.
words: 6.3k.
a/n: based on this blurb. do you know how hard it was not to name this after closer by nine inch nails. I listened to these songs while writing this:
I. bullseye - aly & aj (dex's pov)
II. closer - nine inch nails
III. out of touch - daryl hall and john oates (what inspired this idea in the first place)
Dex doesn't need a fucking babysitter, so jot that down.
"And I know you don't," The lines around Mr. Charles' mouth deepen as he smiles at him. He's sitting on the edge of his desk, almost knee-to-knee with Dex who sits across from him, uncomfortable. "But it's necessary. Red tape to you, but necessary."
Necessary. Like Dr. Mercer, or his psych eval with Dr. Myman. Except someone would be watching him all the time, noting every little misstep for someone else's file on him. Dex has to remind himself that Mr. Charles has every file on him ever made and still hired him. He squirms in his chair. "How does it work?"
"Check-ins four times a week, with or without incident. You'll be given a phone with their contact in it. If that phone goes missing, you get a warning. If you go missing, you won't be for long. Your handler will provide status reports on you after every check-in or successful mission complete. You need a new gun? Your handler buys it for you. You need dinner? Your handler will Uber Eats you something. When you are on the clock, they will be up your ass. Figuratively. Outside of that, though? You're free to do whatever."
Dex squirms again at "up your ass". He reminds himself that he needs this. Structure, he means. Not you up his ass.
And so your introduction is brief, done in the hallway of the CIA before his first big mission, and you are the picture of professional. You hand him a phone, shake his hand, and tell him you're excited to work with him. The first moment alone, Dex gets a look at the lockscreen on this new phone and pauses.
It's a low-res shot of shortstop Derek Jeter mid-air, throwing back a baseball during the '98 championships. It jars him. He remembered watching that moment on TV when he was 14. He almost threw out his shoulder trying to replicate it.
He finds you in his contacts because you're the only one there, even if it throws him a bit.
You
Jeter?
Uber Eats
You're not a fan of the Yankees?
You
Better than the Mets.
Uber Eats
🤣
Dex doesn't like that you always know where he is.
It's hypocritical given his line of work, how much privacy he's invaded even for personal interest. But it makes sense. The hunter cannot allow themselves to become the hunted, and you hunt often.
There's no way to turn off location sharing on this phone, and he cannot remove the MDM installed in his settings unless he has the passcode. You see all his calls, all his web history, where he goes and when. It's been replaced twice now since he started working for you. Once by accident, once just to get a breather. He made sure the second time happened long after probation ended, specifically just to piss you off.
But you didn't get pissed off, not really. You'd just showed up on the rooftop he was watching sunsets on, took a sip from his beer, and handed him his new phone. This time, the lockscreen was the cover of Turnstiles by Billy Joel. It had a lot of his favorite songs on it. He still stuck to his CD player, but every once in a while, when he'd pick up a new album from the store, he'd find the same album loaded into his phone's music library within minutes. He listened to an album on it once when a storm woke him up and he couldn't find his headphones.
He forces himself to get used to your tracking, even though he knows he never will.
He's only been in the infirmary for three minutes, and you're there forty seconds after that. "What happened?" You ask, walking around the nurse diligently cleaning up the cut above Dex's eyebrow.
Dex grunts. "Just a scratch."
You stand there, scanning him over with your eyes. His mission had been a simple tailing, until his target caught sight of him and sprinted. After a chase, he'd suffered some minor cuts and bruises. A cut above the eye, a bullet graze on the thigh. You hover a hand over his leg where a salve is currently soothing the burn and Dex flinches away. You look up, hand still hovering. "How do you feel?"
"Sedative's already kicked in."
"I meant emotionally."
Dex blanks. You've never asked him that before. The psych evals were usually left up to the professionals, people other than you that monitored him on scales of threat. So long as he never tipped too far in the direction of "immediate elimination", he was right as rain as far as you should be concerned. "What? I don't know. I'm fine. The job got done, didn't it?"
You nod. "It did. Even though it went sideways, you kept your cool and we got our target. Zero spillover. I was impressed. You did good."
Dex huffs. He can't feel the pain in his face anymore, it's all just warm.
He feels you drop something in his lap and he jerks his head down fast, disrupting the nurse's work. There's a gift card in his lap for $500. The design on the front has a large, silver gift bow with a glitter backdrop. In neat, black cursive, the text at the bottom reads: "Happy Anniversary."
Dex is speechless.
"My gift to you for your first six months." You say, and he's shocked to see you a little giddy as you watch him pick it out of his lap. "Spend it on whatever you want. A movie, dinner, new knife. I won't be watching."
He reacts a little dumbly. "What?"
"For the next twenty-four hours—and only the next twenty-four hours—I'm letting you off your leash. Consider it your day off."
Dex pointedly ignores the leash comment. "Was this Mr. Charles' idea?"
"All mine." You both watch the nurse walk away when he's done. "He doesn't know I won't be monitoring you so don't do anything stupid."
Dex can't remember the last time he'd been given a gift. Maybe it was back in the FBI, when it was his birthday and the office insisted on getting him a cake and a card. That had been... many years ago. Nothing he'd ever received was as expensive as this. Nothing that was truly his to own, anyway. "How do I know you'll keep your word?"
You look up at the ceiling, sighing. "It'll be hard." You say. Your eyes flit back down to his. "I really enjoy watching you."
Something in Dex's stomach tightens. He feels a mix of things: disgust, frustration, discomfort, weakness. And underneath it all, after peeling back layers of stubborn, stuck-on paint: arousal, for lack of a better word. The kind he got when he zeroed in on a threat seconds before being targeted. The kind he got narrowly avoiding a bullet. The kind that stirred up in his gut a whole lot of complication. Fear, with the aftertaste of pleasure. The kind he only liked in the field, handling people he needed to put down.
This job was going to kill him. You were going to kill him.
Dex spends his day off watching you.
He makes the choice to follow you as soon as he gets out of the infirmary. He'd always wanted to do it: wanted to know where you lived, if you had loved ones. Family, friends. A partner. Kids that looked like you. It was hard to follow you properly when you always knew where he was, but you'd promised not to look this time.
It starts late at night. He finds that you don't live very far from where he does and he knows that's all by design. You live in a nice, rent-controlled apartment complex with well-tended gardens out front and poop bags for pet owners. He stakes you out across the street as you head on in. There's a security guard inside who greets you with a big smile on his face, and you stop to chat. He can't see what words you're saying through the glass, only that you make the guard laugh.
You're perfectly normal.
He thinks this all day as he watches you run errands, grab lunch, bask in the sun while waiting at a crosswalk. He waits for you to check your phone—to check on him, see what he's up to, break your promise—but you never do. Not even to check on your other agents. You've never told him about any other agents you handled, but you had to have more than just him, right?
You have no kids, not even a pet. No partner from what he could tell. That'd be normal, right? To call up your partner on your day off?
You don't make plans to hang out with anybody. You buy enough food for one person and head up to your apartment before sundown to start dinner. He finds a nearby building to continue watching you from, his arm perched on his knee as he holds the scope to his eye. You leave all your windows open. Almost like you wanted him to see inside.
He feels a chill when you finally do pick up your phone for the first time, and—
His pocket vibrates. He almost doesn't want to answer it.
You stand there in your kitchen, idly stirring pasta with your phone tucked between your ear and shoulder. Waiting. Knowing.
You call him again after he lets it go to voicemail, and he answers very flatly: "I thought today was my day off."
"You must be hungry."
He narrows his eyes. "What makes you say that?"
You spin, and he thinks you might make direct eye contact with him through the window, but you don't. You go to grab some wine glasses from your cabinet. "I imagine you've been busy since you're a free agent today."
Dex keeps his breathing light. "As a matter of fact, I have been. Thank you for the day off, officer."
You chuckle low, beginning to pour port into both glasses. "You're very welcome. You didn't answer my question."
Dex can see your play. Invite him in, let him sniff around, get used to your scent. Allow him some sense of satisfaction in the situation even though you've found him out. He kind of wants to take the bait. "That wasn't a question."
"I'm making dinner. Are you a fan of Italian?"
Dex hums. "Not a fan of sweet wine, though."
At that, you look up at him. Your eyes pierce through him with pinpoint accuracy. You bring a glass to your lips, sipping slowly. You hold the other glass up to the window in cheers.
And then? You pour it down the drain.
"Did you enjoy playing voyeur with me for once?" The change in your tone is immediate. It freezes over, and if Dex did not have the advantage right now, he would feel the urge to shrink on himself. But he does have the advantage. He has a gun he feels very comfortable with strapped to his thigh, and you will never be as quick as him. Except, if he killed you, they would know. He would not make it out alive, and these days, he kind of enjoys being alive. Feels a sense of purpose for the first time in a while. And he would never find out what about you tilts his world off its axis.
He says nothing. He keeps watching. His stomach turns.
You keep going, "You and I are partners, Dex. It's okay that you're curious. So long as you stay on the other side of this window. Understood?"
"So you get to control my life but I only get to see yours through a window? That doesn't seem fair, partner."
Your face shifts in his scope. You snarl, or smirk. "We are partners. I give the orders, you take them. Do you understand?"
Dex wants to challenge you further. He'd spent most of his adult life taking orders, and it had gotten him in messes almost too deep, always relying on someone else to dig him out. He did not enjoy relying on you... but something in your voice is tranquilizing him. Twisting his arm. He nods, and wonders if you can see it from this far away, this late at night.
You smile. Apparently you do. "Good boy. See you tomorrow."
You notice him a lot.
Your check-ins happen in public places: diners, coffee shops, parks by ponds. You pass off information over shared food and you always share food. You have a list of his allergies, his yucks and yums. You introduce him to new foods and adjust with his input. Most of the time, you get it really, really right. When you get it wrong, you send him home with something familiar.
He didn't yet feel comfortable with being known by you, studied. You never wrote anything down but he could always tell when you filed something away about him.
It took him much longer to get used to your praise.
You didn't look like the type, usually pretty cut and dry about his mission objectives and outcomes. But then he'd give you his report, sometimes in more excruciating detail just to see you sweat... and every time, your lip would twitch. You'd nod. "Good, Dex. Very good." He usually ended up sweating.
Today, you're sharing milkshakes on a warm summer afternoon. Dex has just shared his mission report, and you are writing down details in your journal. He waits patiently after he's done, trying to hide the anticipation. You look up after shutting your journal, lean forward, taking a long sip from your milkshake, and nod. No twitch in your lip. No "Good, Dex. Very good."
He frowns. "Well?"
You blink. "Well, what?"
"You gonna say somethin'?"
You don't look confused. You must know what he's talking about. That just frustrates him more. "You disobeyed me, Dex."
"Disobey". His expression tightens. He runs through the mission again in his mind: intercepting a shipment on the docks. Early morning, overcast. He arrived early. Stealth-took out a few monitors near the back of the docks, sniped his target from the warehouse loft. Retrieved the payload. Caught his ride out of there. Met up with you, all before lunch rush. "I completed my mission."
"You almost didn't."
"But I did."
"Poindexter." And this is how he learns that you'll only call him that when you're mad. "You almost didn't because you disobeyed a direct order from me. You were off by a minute and fifty-two seconds because you wanted to have a little fun with your target. You had a clear shot for his head but you went for his knee. Do you want to know what you could've been doing in that minute and fifty-two seconds, instead of pulling out the exposed bone from your target's leg? You could've been gone, so no one could see you leaving."
"I took care of that." Dex grits through his teeth, and he knows it's a weak excuse, but he's upset and he still killed the fucking guy so why weren't you pleased? You tuck your journal in your bag and set a twenty on the table, about to scoot out of the booth to leave, but Dex extends his right leg and rests it next to your hip. You still, looking down at his dirty boot out of the corner of your eye. Dex smiles, stirring the rest of his ice cream with his straw. "Come on, partner. Admit it: I did good."
"Do you want me to praise you?"
"I want you to be honest."
"Okay. I'm not replacing that knife you lost making up for your mistake. Consider it your punishment."
Dex clenches his jaw. "I'm not a child."
"Of course you're not. You should know better."
"Why don't you have any other agents?" Dex's question catches you off guard. He can see the flicker in your eyes, the discomfort before it's gone. "Most of the handlers have two or three. You only have me. Why is that?"
Dex watches as you breathe slow, collecting yourself. You look away. More people are starting to enter the diner: businessmen in suits still taking calls as they grab a table, two elderly women waddling slowly toward the back by the jukebox, a child and his father in fishing gear bringing in the scent of freshwater. Dex focuses on the dad's tackle box and the filet knife that hovers a few feet behind him. Just in case.
"What is your North Star?" Dex's eyes immediately snap back to you. "It's the one thing in your file we struggled with documenting. I've always been curious."
Dex hasn't said Julie's name in a while. "You first."
"I have very high standards." You hesitate, and then, as if against your better judgement, you continue. "You are the only one who meets them. Your turn."
Dex thinks about mentioning Julie and Dr. Mercer and Matt. His hopeful attempts at retribution, his crutches toward the light. But it's the one thing you don't know intimately about him, and he isn't about to give that up.
He removes his leg from your side of the booth and stands up, watching you watch him. He feels a wave of satisfaction when he sees the realization dawn on you. "Thank you, officer. That's all I needed to know."
Mr. Charles tells Dex that he is the organization's highest performing agent seven months in a row. Dex sends you dyed blue roses and a bottle of dry wine to your front door. On the card, it reads:
We make a great team.
Party at yours?
You return the bottle to his kitchen counter, half-empty to the exact ounce. On the back of his card, it reads:
No dogs allowed. Sorry :)
A rubber bullet whizzes past Dex's ear, implanting itself in a foam block five feet behind him. He takes a breath, then moves to aim his own gun at the agent across the way, striking them in the shoulder. They fall back with the force, and Dex resumes his crouching position behind the half-wall. He can hear the sounds of triggers going off all around the facility, but he keeps his ears trained on the ones right in front of him.
"You know," His partner starts, having resigned himself to the floor crisscross applesauce. "You're like the golden boy of the CIA right now."
Dex pinpoints where his next target is, and quickly takes a shot above the wall to his right. He hears a groan and a "Come on, man!" before the buzzer sounds, alerting everyone to another fallen agent. In his moment of reprieve, Dex glances at the agent beside him playing with his own gun like a paperweight. "What?"
Agent Banks motions in the direction of nothing in particular. "You can't tell me you don't know what people have been saying about you."
Dex's lips purse. He feels in his gut that someone is stalking closer from his left, but he can't jump the gun. "I make it my mission not to know."
"You've been on a winning streak since you got recruited. I know you're like, a sharpshooter, but I haven't seen a guy come close to you in years."
The stalker is closer now. The playground the CIA has locked its special agents in is a padded hellscape with nothing to bounce off of. If this were a real battlefield, Dex could ricochet a bullet off a telephone pole and hit this guy in the leg. Maybe the head if he timed it right—and then he reminds himself that there's no aiming for the head.
He crouches around the corner, shooting his stalker in the stomach. The buzzer sounds again.
"Not to mention your handler."
Dex pauses, slipping back into his safe zone. They'd need to move soon, lest the others figure out where they're camping and close in on them, but Dex cannot help his curiosity at the mention of you. He glances over at Banks, reloading his gun. "What do you mean?"
Banks laughs. "They chose you specifically. That doesn't just happen."
This was the first time Dex had heard of this. He knew you had no other agents to control, which is why you always had time to watch him. How long that had been the case and whether it was by choice was nothing he could gather in conversation with you, and he didn't like talking to anyone else anyway. The one time he'd tried asking Mr. Charles, he'd been teased about wanting to be "the favorite". Dex did not make that mistake again.
The chatterbox beside him seems to want to talk about it, so... maybe. "Yeah? How do you know that?"
"My handler." Banks says. "She says before you got recruited, your handler couldn't keep an agent for longer than a month or two."
Perhaps because you liked to watch them, prying into their lives more than professionally necessary. Like the freak you were. Dex hides a smile at that. "Why?"
"They were all great agents. I know some of 'em. Guess your handler just wasn't impressed until you came along."
Dex stills. He tries very hard not to let that get to his head.
Banks glances around, then pats him on the arm and motions for them to start moving to higher ground. They follow a path up some stairs, quickly slipping up and around the railing before the other agents could spot them. He knows twenty-four agents went in, and he'd personally taken out six so far. He'd heard the buzzer go off seven times for everyone else. "Why are you telling me this?"
"I don't know. Just curious about you, I guess. Joining our group of ragtag delinquents couldn't have been easy for you. But you're the best of the best." Dex is paying attention to the landscape of the second floor, but the tone in Banks' voice makes him slow down. He can hear his heartbeat in his chest. Banks is behind him. He doesn't know what's ahead of him. Banks has been behind him the whole time.
All of a sudden, two agents jump out of their hiding places in front of him, and Dex quickly rolls in between two large foam block walls before their bullets can hit him. He pants, gathering his wits about him. He can see his partner towering above the blocks, and the other agents don't bother to shoot him. It becomes very clear what this is.
Dex's nostrils flare. He forces himself to focus. He can't think about you right now, or the fact that you're definitely watching. He cannot think about how you'd chosen him.
He assesses the area. There are eleven—a bullet goes off downstairs, the buzzer following soon after—ten other agents left including himself and Banks. Two more definitely on this floor.
Dex crawls around the foam labyrinth, careful not to shake any structures and give away his position. He sneaks around until he's poised behind one agent's back and shoots. The buzzer rings out. A bullet flies past Dex but he's quicker, aiming for the other agent's torso. Another buzzer.
"Fuck this." He hears Banks round the corner, gun pointed at Dex. "I don't care if I lose."
But Dex is faster. He's always faster. Two bullets go off, but only one hits its target. Instead of the buzzer, a voice calls over the intercom: "Cease gunfire. Agent Poindexter, you are disqualified. Please return to the lobby."
It's a slow walk out of the room, agents watching from their hiding places as Dex shoulders his way out.
The first thing he hears is your voice. The first thing he registers is that you are pissed.
"—Poindexter was ambushed by his partner. He should not have been disqualified."
"The rules clearly state—"
"—and what do the rules say about ambushing your partner with the enemy? What kind of teamwork is that? Are these the standards we're holding our agents to now?"
He sees you standing outside the training room with all the other handlers, arguing with a higher-up who looks just about done with you. Said higher-up looks over your shoulder at Dex and narrows his eyes. "Agent—"
"I got it." Dex interrupts. He pulls off his bulletproof vest and helmet, dropping each piece of protective gear onto the floor.
You glance at him, and your expression is more distressed than he's ever seen on you. It shocks him but, even more, it angers him. He's angry at letting himself get carried away in the training, distracted by the bit of information he'd learned about you. If he didn't care, he would've caught on to the play long before he'd been cornered. Then he wouldn't have failed, and—
Dex squints at a woman ten feet away from you, leaning up against the door to the viewing room. He's not met many of the handlers here, but he knows who belongs to her. She looks smug.
There's a ringing in Dex's ears. He needs to get out of here.
As if you've synced up with him, he feels you grabbing at his arm, dragging him toward the elevator at the other end of the floor. You're muttering something under your breath and he knows better than to question you right now. He waits behind you, arms crossed over his chest, and looks behind to see the group of handlers resuming the training. He hopes someone puts a bullet in Banks' eye.
The elevator dings.
You both stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, as it takes you up.
You've stopped muttering. You're staring straight ahead at the reflective metal of the elevator interior. Dex watches you through it. "I won't let them dock points for that." You say, and Dex thinks "That's what you're worried about?"
"I don't care about a stupid training exercise."
"You were disqualified for attacking an ally, Dex. They could bring that up in your next evaluation. Argue that you're not suited for this work."
Dex gets flashbacks to the FBI, his whole department turning against him. He liked to think he'd moved past all of that, even if the memory makes him itch. "I'm the best agent they have. They wouldn't."
"They won't." You assert. Dex finally looks directly at you. Your arms are crossed like his, standing straight as a board. He finds it kind of cute.
"You wanna talk about it?"
"Talk about what?" Your response comes out more like a hiss.
"About that lady in there. The one who kept smirking at you."
Your nose twitches, kind of like a bunny. That is cute. "Finch. She's Banks' handler."
"She got something against you?" Dex says, and no attempt from him could make it sound less like a threat.
You shift your weight as you get closer to ground level. "...Banks used to be mine, way before you came along. He was an up and comer but he just..."
"Wasn't impressive?" And no attempt would be made on Dex's part to not sound so self-satisfied.
You watch him from your peripheral. He doesn't know what you're thinking, but you don't scold him, so it can't be bad. "He was fine."
Dex still has much to learn about you, but he knows the way you say "fine" belies all the contempt in the world. You were never pleased with just "fine". "Is that why you picked me?"
Now, you look at him. You're not unguarded but your eyes do pin him to the spot. "I read up on you, long before Mr. Charles decided to recruit you. When I got a hold of your file, I just... there was something about you that I couldn't shake. You were impeccable from an early age. Second to none. But you grew up and tried to live a simple life. Then Fisk came along and that changed. No matter who was pulling your strings, you were always just as dangerous of a weapon. And I kept thinking... how would it feel to hold that weapon in my hands? Point it in the right direction? How would it feel to control something... extraordinary?"
Dex should be insulted. You've objectified him, reduced him to a weapon, only a killing thing. You're interested in puppeteering him, and yet... beneath that, he feels a spark. Something volatile catching fire.
He takes a step toward you and you back away. He follows you until your back hits the elevator wall and he is placing the tip of a knife to your gut. When you feel the point, your eyelashes flutter. Dex smiles. "People have died trying to control me. What makes you think you're any different?"
You take in a breath, and Dex picks up on the shudder in it. "Everyone who has ever wanted to control you has been terrified of your potential. I don't want to stop you, I want to guide you. I think you are the best. But it's up to you." And Dex feels your hand close around his holding the knife, concealing it as the doors of the elevator finally open. Dex turns to see a group of agents all standing impatiently, stopped in their tracks when they see the compromising position he has you in.
You push him away, patting his chest. "Good talk."
Dex does not like you.
Well, his feelings fluctuate. Right now, he doesn't like you. He wants to punish you, too, because he's been exceptional lately and you have the nerve to be busy.
It turned out that sometimes you did do other work. When you weren't handling him, you would—on occasion—be sent out for reconnaissance because of your lack of other agents to manage. They were small missions with low risk. So simple, even Banks could do it.
So why wasn't he? Why did it have to be you?
You
Mission complete.
Freak
Nice. All clear?
You
All clear.
Freak
!!! 🥰 Good job.
You
Check-in?
Freak
Sorry, still busy.
Freak sent you $50.
Treat yourself. We'll catch up later.
You're not lying. He can see you from his vantage point at the bar across the street, typing away on your computer in the same cafe as your targets. You blend into the crowd of busy New Yorkers winding down the early evening with more work, earphones on playing nothing so you can take accurate notes on the conversation happening near you.
It's kind of amusing watching you at work. You play the part of an uninterested local, never looking up when a person of interest enters your sphere. You've been tailing them for a few days: three guys, all grimy mafia-looking types. The shop is just enough of a hole-in-the-wall to not make them stand out, but Dex can't imagine they're used to being subtle. Small fish, simple bait. Why couldn't Banks do this?
Dex is considering texting you something when you suddenly shut your laptop and grab your things, heading out of the shop. He watches you strut casually in the direction of where you live, and his eyes flicker down to his phone. He's typing out, "Still busy?" when he hears the bell over the coffee shop door ring again. Dex looks up.
The three men you'd been listening in on are walking in your direction.
He watches them for a while. Waits to see them walk down an alley, or hail a cab, or turn the opposite way you do. He watches them for so long, shaking his knee from his seat until he can't watch any longer. The text he meant to send you sits unsent on his phone.
You must know. You knew when he followed you, and he'd made an effort not to be seen. These buffoons wouldn't go unnoticed by you. You'd lead them elsewhere.
And he'd just make sure.
He follows at a considerable pace, heart pounding as he cuts through traffic, horns honking and hot exhaust whipping up into his face. He slips in between the evening crowds of office workers clocking out for the day. You're too far ahead to see outside of small glimpses, but he has zeroed in on the three men tailing you, all greasy ponytails and chest hair to the wind. An image of one of them touching you crosses his mind and he has to physically shake his head to get rid of it.
You've been tailing them for days. If you've had time to gather info on them, they've had time to gather info on you. It's not far-fetched to think they know where you live.
The pit in his stomach hardens when your complex comes into view, and he watches as you slip across the street and up the stairs, buzzing yourself in. The guard from before is there, and the closer he gets, the easier it is to see you cracking a joke like usually. Your stalkers tail behind at a further distance. Dex keeps himself on the other side of the street.
Even if they did manage to get into the lobby, the guard wouldn't let them get far. These guys couldn't be that stupid. If they knew someone was tailing them, they wouldn't draw attention to it. Maybe they'd wait for you another day, and by then, Dex would've taken care of them himself.
He watches one of them walk up to the buzzer, mouth moving in a sluggish way. He waits with baited breath. He can hear the faint buzz over the traffic, and he sees all three stooges rush the lobby in seconds.
He doesn't have time to text you.
Your furniture is nice. He practically sinks into your armchair, his tired muscles relaxing after the weight is taken off them. He spreads his legs and wipes his knife clean on his a dishtowel he'd stolen from your kitchen, flicking it back and forth between his fingers as he listens to you vocalize. You're singing along to "Out of Touch", no unbroken notes even as he put the last of your would-be assailants through the business end of his knives. He watches blood pour out of one's mouth as the shower comes to a stop.
Dex listens for the sound of you moving behind your bedroom door: the creak of your bathroom door opening, floorboards protesting as you move around. The smell of your body soap wafts out into the living room on a cloud of humidity, and Dex pauses to take it in. Milk and honey. He approves.
Your music comes to a stop, but you're still singing as you open your door, wrapped in a towel and nothing else. You pause in the doorway.
Dex watches you take in the three bodies felled on the floor of your living room, all telling stories of the abuse Dex had put them through. There's shock there. You don't bother to hide it this time. "Should be more careful walking home," He twirls his knife, a lazy smile on his face. "You never know what kind of bad men might follow you in."
When your eyes land on him, they narrow. "Poindexter," You start, and his eyes flash back at you. "I thought I made myself very clear the first time."
His head tilts. "You can't be serious." You lean against your door frame with a look of... disappointment? Dex's nostrils flare. "How about: 'Thank you, Dex.' 'You saved my life, Dex.' 'Next time I'm tailing a couple mafiosos, I'll make sure to look over my shoulder, Dex.'"
You pout. "Why would I need to look over my shoulder? You seem to have that covered."
A beat passes. Dex stands the next, trekking through the blood toward you. His frown is deep as he stabs his knife into the door frame by your head. You do not flinch. Your lip twitches up, though.
Dex leans down until he's breathing in your space, until his nose is bumping yours. You maintain eye contact with him the whole time. "You knew." And he doesn't ask because he knows he's right. You nod. "Were you testing me?"
"You're not on probation anymore, Dex. I've already decided to keep you." He does not acknowledge the hitch in his breath when you say that. "And I already know what you are."
"And what's that?" A mocking smile slithers onto his face.
"A loyal dog. And a good one. A very, very good one." He feels one of your fingers graze the scar under his eye and he lets you, anger and intrigue all stirred up inside him as you look at him. No fear, no uncertainty. Part of him wants to prove you wrong and watch the smugness drain out of you like bloodfall, like the men he'd killed to keep you safe.
But your hand slips into his hair, nails scratching along his scalp, and the bundle of nerves all there light up like Christmas day. His lids slip closed as you massage, rubbing the tension out of the base of his skull with such skill that the breathy little noise slipping out of him makes his ears tinge pink. You look pleased. "You're still in trouble, though. Coming in when I told you not to. What ever will I do with you?"
Dex's eyes roll to the back of his head when you tug on his hair a little, and his hands instantly go for your hips, forcing you back into your bedroom and down into bed. You squeal, towel falling open, and he's rushing in with his mouth on your neck before you can grip it closed. The friction of his thigh slipping between your legs sends you over the moon. Dex grins against your skin, wolfish.
Imagine watching your mother collapse in front of you, knowing she could be saved but being unable to help because of money.
I write this as I watch my mother deteriorate day by day, unable to stop what is happening to her.
Her condition has become very serious due to liver cirrhosis, and her platelet count has dropped to a dangerously low level.
We urgently need the N-Plate 250 mcg injection again. Doctors confirmed the esophageal varices procedure cannot be done without it, and any delay increases the risk.
Time is running out and her condition is worsening. Donate now
The injection costs over $500, which I cannot afford in these harsh circumstances.
If you cannot donate, one share may help save her life.
Friends, you are our only hope to save my mother. Please donate now and share this post widely. There is no time to lose. Every donation and every share can make a difference and help save a life.
No donations and we are still waiting. Every passing hour brings more fear and helplessness. I swear we are fighting to survive, but we cannot do it alone. If support stops, who will save us Please don't scroll past our plea in silence. Share our post and help if you can
For the past 3 days, we've received only €11 in donations. Please, my friends, donate if you can and don't leave us alone in this crisis. I am scared and terrified for my family. Every donation, no matter how small, can make a difference. Thank you for standing with us.
Please do not abandon us. Donations are our only hope for survival. Donate now and share this post widely. We are in desperate need of help, and every donation can save lives
Summary : You think someone has been following you. You were right.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x Antihero! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : reader is a thunderbolt/new avenger who has a prior relationship with Dex, morally grey characters, freak4freak. Sub!Dex and he has a praise kink. mutual obsession, stalking, mentions of violence, consensual but morally complex sexual dynamics, nudity. Ava and Yelena has a cameo! (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 6.7k
Requested by : Anon
Notes : It's my first time writing for Dex and of course it’s a Freak4Freak. The title is inspired by a line from the song Candy by Paolo Nutini. Enjoy!
The bar was alive, bathing you in violet lights while the bass was heavy enough to settle in your ribs. The sound of pool balls cut clean through the noise every few seconds. It smelled like cheap alcohol, citrus, and rusted metal.
You leaned over the table, lining up a shot you weren’t fully concentrating on, while Yelena paced slowly behind you like a critic waiting to tear you apart.
“If you miss this,” she said, voice dry, “I will revoke your right to hold that cue ever again.”
After all, it was you and Yelena against Ava, for lack of a fourth person. You just figured you’d take turns on a 2 v 1.
“Whatever,” you muttered, squinting down the line.
From the other side, Ava clicked her tongue softly, already unimpressed. “Just take the goddamn shot.”
You did.
The ball clipped the edge. It was close, but not enough, as it veered off uselessly.
Yelena made a satisfied sound. “Embarrassing.”
“Oh my god, shut up,” you laughed, straightening, heat in your face. “You’re both insufferable.”
“At least we are skilled,” Yelena shot back.
Ava smirked. “We?”
Girl’s night out with your new teammates had been fun. It had kept you distracted for months, and for a second, you had a taste of normalcy.
Only for a second, though.
“Okay, fine,” you said, grabbing your drink and leaning back against the table. “If we’re ranking insufferable, can we talk about the team?”
Yelena’s ears perked up immediately, like a puppy hearing the word snack. “Yes. We can always talk about this.”
“Thank you!” You exclaimed, rolling your shoulders from the strain last week’s mission gave you. A couple of rogue mercs in the Atlantic, but it was nothing you weren’t used to. “I have been dying to talk about how much John yapped during yesterday’s meeting.”
Ava snorted from the other side of the table, chalking her cue. “He does love the sound of his own voice.”
Yelena scoffed, crossing her arms. “At least he has a voice. Bucky just sulks in corners like a depressed statue.”
“And Bob—” Ava started.
“Oh, Bob is trying,” you said quickly, laughing. “We’re not dragging Bob.”
“Fine,” Ava allowed. “But Alexei...”
Yelena straightened immediately, eyes narrowing. “No. No one shit talks my papa.”
You raised a brow. “You do.”
Yelena waved her off. “It is different. When I do it, it comes from a place of love.”
You laughed again, shaking your head, warmth settling in your chest. The noise and banter grounded you. It kept things simple.
For a second, it almost felt like you could forget that feeling.
That sinking feeling like a silk ribbon pulling tight behind your ribs that someone was watching.
Your smile lingered a second too long as your eyes drifted, not enough for Ava or Yelena to notice, but enough that you were already scanning the perimeter. You clocked in every person, every door, every exit point.
Nothing.
It was early in the evening after all, maybe twelve other customers in the bar? If anyone was looking too long or out of place, it would be painfully obvious.
Still, you didn’t fully relax.
It wasn’t really a sight thing. It was the absence of feeling you couldn’t name. There was a gap in the noise, picked up by the kind of instinct you didn’t learn. You had survived long enough that the skill had carved itself into you subconsciously.
You adjusted your stance slightly, back no longer fully exposed to the room.
Ava was lining up her next shot. Yelena was mid-rant about John’s weird breakfast habits, hands moving as she talked.
Right. You must be imagining things.
Because if it was real, if someone was actually watching, you wouldn’t be the only one noticing it. Yelena and Ava were two of the best field agents you knew. They were stealth specialists, they would know, right?
You exhaled slowly, forcing your grip on the glass to loosen.
This was just stupid fucking paranoia. You chalked it up to a residual instinct you hadn’t shaken since before the team.
Besides, who the hell would be dumb enough to stalk three former assassins in a Soho bar?
No one, you concluded. At least, no one that wanted to live.
But still, your eyes flicked once more toward the mirror behind the bar.
And for the briefest moment, you could’ve sworn you weren’t alone in it.
—
By the time the three of you finally stepped out into the night, it was nearly two in the morning.
It had been a good night, and it turned out to be a loud one.
As it got later and more crowded, a handful of guys had circled in and out of the group. They were the only downside to the evening, as they were all too confident, too curious, too annoying. One had tried to lean over your shot like that would impress you. Another had slid a drink toward you without asking, already expecting a yes.
You hadn’t given either of them much more than a flat no before they could even try again.
Ava had noticed. Yelena had enjoyed it.
“‘You look like trouble,’” Yelena repeated now, her voice dripping with mockery as you all slowed on the sidewalk. “What does that even mean?”
“It means he thought he was being original,” you said, rubbing the back of your neck.
“It means he was idiot,” Yelena corrected.
Ava huffed a laugh. “The second one was worse.”
You groaned. “Don’t.”
“‘Can I buy you a drink?’” Ava mimicked, glancing at you. “While you were literally holding one.”
Yelena nodded, delighted. “And you just...” she made a dismissive flicking motion with her hand, “…’no.”
You shrugged, unable to help the small smile tugging at your mouth. “What was I supposed to say?”
“Anything more entertaining,” Ava said.
“I’m not here to entertain them,” you shot back.
“No,” Yelena agreed, eyeing you knowingly. “You are here to intimidate them.”
You snorted. “Please.”
Ava tilted her head slightly, studying you. “So what would work?”
You tilted your head. “What?”
“You shut them down so fast,” she pointed out, “there’s gotta be a reason.”
“They’re…” you shrugged as you passed a street lamp. You had to be very careful of what you say next. “…just not my type.”
Ava scoffed. There were a couple of men that seemed genuinely nice that you didn’t have a second look at. And she knew it wasn’t about looks, you weren’t that shallow. “And that is…?”
Yelena lit up immediately. “Oh, I know.”
You groaned, bracing for whatever over-the-top assumption she was gonna make. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” she insisted, stepping in front of you like she was presenting a case. “Girl like you?” She pointed vaguely. “You like… how you say… pet psychopath.”
You barked out a laugh. “A what?”
“Pet psychopath,” she repeated confidently. “Someone unhinged.” She crossed her arms. “I think you like reigning them in. You keep them on leash.”
Ava snorted. “I can see that, actually.”
You rolled your eyes hard, walking past her. “Sure.”
“Am I wrong?” Yelena pressed.
You didn’t answer, and didn’t want to.
They didn’t know much about your past love life. Not the full story, not even half of it, to realise her statement wouldn’t fit neatly into a joke.
So you let them have it. Let them speculate, let them laugh. It was easier that way.
As you reached an intersection, you stopped.
“I’m heading home,” you said after a moment, checking the time out of habit. Sure, you lived part-time in the tower now, but you still kept your apartment. Rent control, you’d say. That, and just in case shit hits the fan with the team. “Got some paperwork to finish. I’ll be back for briefing tomorrow.”
Yelena made an exaggerated, offended sound. “Again with paperwork.”
You chuckled but said nothing.
Ava narrowed her eyes on you. “If you are lying and just want to avoid us, we’ll know.”
“Noted,” you said, already stepping back.
Yelena crossed her arms, muttering something under her breath before sighing dramatically. “Fine. Go. Be boring.”
You smiled faintly. “Night,” you said as you waved, watching the disappear into little dots in the distance, heading for the safety of the watchtower.
—
You walked on autopilot, familiar turns and cracked sidewalks guiding you home. And still, even now, the feeling was there. You were either experiencing a psychotic break or someone was following you just beyond the edges of perception, and based on experience, you knew that neither thing was preferable to the other.
You scanned your surroundings, checking darkened windows, reflections, and passing figures.
Nothing.
You exhaled, rolling your shoulders. You were an Avenger. You’d handled worse than a vague, creeping sense of being watched, worse than a few idiots at a bar.
When you got to your door, you didn’t have to look to open it like muscle memory. The click of the lock echoed louder than it should have as you turned the key in the door.
This place has always been your apartment, ever since you moved to New York. No one else’s.
Yet he had stayed over, he slept over, he left traces of himself behind like a stubborn echo. He was the only one you ever let in your oh-so-sacred personal space.
You shoved the door open and stepped inside, shedding your coat. The noise of the city outside leaked through the cracked windows, and for a moment, everything felt… familiar.
Still, you looked over to see the couch he’d sprawled across. To your right was the imperceptible dent he had left on the wall where he’d leaned too hard one night. To your left was one of his shoes you never bothered to throw away.
You dropped your bag by the entrance, kicking off your own shoes.
Again, you’d told people, often, that you kept this apartment because of rent control. Truthfully, it was the excuse that stuck, but you knew better.
It had never been about the money. It was the memories, the spaces he had inhabited, however briefly. The way the apartment had felt alive when he was there, chaotic in the worst possible way, and you still couldn’t shake that feeling off.
You dropped onto the couch, letting the silence settle. You were safe here. You should feel safe here.
But even as you sank into the cushions, that thread of unease from earlier hadn’t gone away. You shook your head. Not real. Not real!
“Fuck,” you whispered out loud, before reaching for the stack of bills on the counter. If you said you were going to do paperwork, you were gonna do paperwork.
You were not a liar.
…Anymore.
—
You had peace for exactly thirty-two minutes. Thirty-two whole, perfect minutes where you could pretend that nothing from the past could touch you.
And then came the knock.
It was insistent. Every muscle in your body tensed before your brain even caught up. That rhythm was familiar, though your brain refused to supply who it was.
Whoever it was kept knocking, and they were knocking right out of your apartment door— which meant they either had the ability to pick the lock or they live in the building.
Was it Yelena or Ava? Did you accidentally take their access card in your bag? Was it your lovely old neighbor Mr. Finch? Did he want to borrow a bit of sugar again?
Still, you walked over. Your fingers hovering over the doorknob. A part of you screamed not to, that this was a trap, that this was your instinct telling you that whoever was on the other side of that door, was the one behind your uneasy feeling all night.
But you opened it anyway.
And standing there, bruised and a little bloodied, was Dex.
He had that sheepish, boyish grin tugging at the edges of his lips. Blood streaked across his cheek, fabric torn in places. He wasn’t injured enough to be dying, and certainly not enough to warrant your panic, but enough to make your stomach drop.
“No. Absolutely not,” you said, slamming the door with more force than necessary.
You should’ve known. You should have known if anyone were to stalk you, it would be him.
You could hear him chuckle on the other side, infuriatingly familiar. You pressed your back against the door, forcing your shoulders to relax, telling yourself you were an Avenger. You could handle this. You could.
Five minutes later, there was a second knock. This time at your window, the one opening onto the fire escape.
It was an annoying little tap tap tap, and he just wouldn’t stop.
You should tell him to fuck off. You should tell him that this was insane, that whatever part of him was out there bleeding, emotionally or physically, was not your problem.
You groaned, dragging your hand down your face, muttering, “Get lost, Dex.”
But he was there, balancing effortlessly on the fire escape like he’d done a thousand times before, body backlit by the moonlight. His grin was infuriatingly boyish, arrogant in a way that made your heart beat quicker. “Kicking me out of my own apartment?” he asked, muffled through the glass.
You pinched the bridge of your nose. “It was never yours. You just… slept over.”
His eyes looked to the side, smirking. “Huh. That’s why you still keep my old clothes in the drawer?”
“Fuck. off,” you said, drawing the curtains shut. Even as you did it, your chest felt tight, your stomach twisting, because you knew. You knew you’d never really stopped letting him in.
Your hand hesitated over the fabric of the curtains.
A part of you knew you shouldn’t. A part of you was angry at yourself for even considering it. And yet, you knew you wanted it. You wanted him.
You knew he could just break in, that he didn’t need your permission to go in. But he wanted it. He wanted your approval, he craved it, he fed off it.
Cussing yourself, you opened the curtains and window again and gave him exactly what he wanted, cold air rising into your heated space.
Almost surprised, he stepped inside. Your chest tightened as you let him in. You hated how your body betrayed you, how your mind scrambled for rationality while your instincts leaned forward, wanting to be close to him.
“This is a bad idea,” you said, more to yourself than to him.
“Is it?” he asked, just close enough that you could feel his breath on your neck.
You didn’t answer. And in that charged silence, in the small space of your apartment, you could feel him watching you. It should be sinister. It should be uncomfortable. But instead, your twisted mind thought it was flattering.
As you forced yourself to look at him, it became obvious that the cuts weren’t just superficial. Bruises darkened under his shirt, his hands trembled slightly as he ran them along his sides, and the faint hitch in his breath told you he’d been pushing himself a bit too far and wouldn’t admit it.
“Jesus…” you breathed, stepping closer, eyes wide. “What happened to you?”
He gave a faint shrug, almost casual, and the ghost of that old, nervous grin touched his lips. “Killed a couple of AVTF agents,” he said lightly. “Some of them fought back.”
You blinked, heart lurching. He said it like it was nothing, like it was a joke.
“You’re… in worse condition than I thought,” you said, voice tight, and you guided him to the couch before he could protest. He sat, one arm slung over the backrest.
You knelt in front of him, already tearing open the first strip of gauze from the first aid kit you kept under your coffee table, lifting his shirt up halfway. “Fuck, Dex… you can’t seem to get outta trouble. Killing task force? Come on, I…” Your voice broke off. You didn’t even know what you were trying to say anymore. Protect? Scold? Save?
“You would’ve done the same,” he interrupted, shrugging again, that lazy, self-assured tilt of his head. “Just because you’re part of this reformed antihero bullshit… doesn’t mean you’ve changed.”
A tight ache squeezed your chest.
No, you haven’t. Not really. You were more aware of that than anyone else.
He just smiled at that, like he knew exactly what you were thinking and thrived on it.
You tore another strip of gauze, dabbing at the blood along his side. “Yeah, but you’re doing it in broad daylight,” you said quietly, voice tinged with frustration and disbelief. “I would’ve done them in on the down low.”
There it was, the truth. You hated how much you recognized a piece of yourself in what he’d done.
“That’s my girl,” he said, voice soft but certain, and the possessive smile returned. “You were so good. You would’ve made it seem like a freak accident.”
You rolled your eyes, pressing a little harder than necessary against the gauze at his side. “Don’t start,” you warned.
He hissed faintly at the pressure, but the grin didn’t leave his face. If anything, the pain just made him more present. “You let me in,” he said simply, watching you like that answered everything.
You didn’t look up. “You would’ve broken in.”
“Yeah,” he admitted, tilting his head. “But this is nicer.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was your breathing and the city noise bleeding through the window. Then you leaned back slightly, tossing the bloodied gauze aside.
“Agents, Dex,” you said, voice flat. You finally met his eyes. “In the middle of the street? Really subtle. Real low profile.”
“They were sloppy,” he shrugged. “And annoying.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It is to me.”
You finally looked up at him then with a sharp glare. “The point is you’re making noise. And when you make noise, people look. And when people look, they start connecting dots. And when they connect dots—”
“They find me?” he cut in. “Or they find you?”
Your jaw tightened. “You know I don’t care if they find me. You know I can take care of myself.”
His smile flickered dangerously. “You can pretend all you want— with the Avengers, paperwork, with girls' night outs— but you still think like this.” He tapped a finger lightly against your temple, and it felt so tender. He was always tender with you. “Like me.”
You grabbed his wrist, a little too fast, a little too tightly.
For a second, neither of you moved.
Then his eyes dropped to your grip, then back up to your face, interest settling in.
“See?” he murmured. “There she is.”
You shoved his hand away, standing abruptly. “Shut up.”
But you didn’t step back. You didn’t even put distance between you.
“You’re mad,” he said, pushing himself up despite the injury. “But not for the reasons you think.”
“I’m mad because you’re reckless,” you snapped. “Because you’re stupid enough to think you can just, what? Walk back in here like nothing’s changed?”
“Something hasn't,” he countered, almost joyfully in how much of you has stayed the same.
Your breath hitched. It was barely noticeable, but he caught it.
He stepped closer.
You should’ve moved. You knew you should’ve. Every trained, survival-built instinct you had told you to create space, to regain control, to shut this down before it spiraled.
Instead, you stayed rooted.
“Those agents,” you said quickly, forcing the conversation back into a safer, tactical topic. “Fisk’s getting sloppy if that’s who he’s sending after you.”
That earned a scoff.
“He should’ve adapted by now,” you went on. “Instead, he’s sending uniforms into open streets like it’s gonna end clean.”
Dex smirked. “It didn’t.”
“No, it didn’t,” you agreed, meeting his eyes. “And now you’ve got even more heat on you. Congratulations.”
He didn’t look bothered. If anything, he looked amused.
“Maybe I don’t mind the heat,” he said.
“Yeah?” you shot back. “Because it’s not just you who gets burned.”
That landed in his heart as hard as a plane crash in the middle of a forest. But then his expression shifted again, softer, but in that calculated way he had, like he was choosing exactly which version of himself to show you.
“Maybe I don’t have to be on my own,” he said.
There it was.
You exhaled slowly, already shaking your head before he could even finish the thought. “No.”
“You didn’t even let me pitch it.”
“I know the pitch,” you said flatly. Of course you did. You’d helped write it.
The whole Bonnie-and-Clyde fantasy. You used to breathe it in like a drug you just can’t quit. You used to kiss the shell of his ear, biting his earlobe as you mapped out the idea of the two of you against the world, leaving nothing behind but wreckage of rotting bodies. His hands would roam on your body just the way you liked it, both of you half-drunk on adrenaline and the promise of violence dressed up as devotion.
Back then, it felt inevitable, like there was no version of you that didn’t end up there with him, in the dark, laughing at the fallout.
But you should know better by now.
Clinging back into that fantasy would not only be a disservice to your progress, but also to your friends.
It would be a disservice to Yelena, who was trying to shed her inner child assassin. It would be a disservice to Ava, who was trying to pay back all the things she’s done in search for a cure. To Alexei, who was finally becoming the hero he claimed he was.To Bucky, who was atoning for sins his mind wasn’t even responsible for. To John, who was trying to be a more present father, and to Bob who was simply trying to get clean.
You were trying, too. Maybe not as obviously, but you were. You were dragging yourself, piece by piece, away from that edge.
There was no balance here. No safe middle ground.
If you slipped back into that life, even a little, you wouldn’t just visit it. You’d sink.
If you started killing for sport again, Anti-Vigilante Task Force or otherwise, you can't be sure you’d even want to come back. Not if you were doing it with him.
Your voice came out quieter this time, but steadier for it. “I don’t want that anymore.”
After all that inner turmoil you had, he had the audacity to wink. “Sure.”
You wanted to slap him.
Before you could respond, he reached out quickly, fingers brushing your wrist, then sliding up just enough to feel your familiar pulse. He tilted his head, studying you again like a puzzle he already knew how to solve.
“You miss me,” he said simply.
Your stomach twisted. “No.”
“Yeah,” he breathed. “You do.”
You stepped into his space before you could stop yourself, grabbing the front of his shirt and pushing him against the wall. “Don’t put words in my mouth,” you snapped.
The impact knocked a breath out of him, but the look on his face?
He looked thrilled, as if your anger, your control, was exactly what he’d been starving for.
“I should put you in the fucking Raft,” you snapped, breathing uneven, your forehead nearly pressing against his. “Get a cell warmed up just for you.”
Dex didn’t flinch. He didn’t even pretend to take it seriously.
Instead, his lips curled crookedly. “Then who’d watch over you?” he murmured, eyes drifting down to your lips before looking back in your eyes. “Who’d take care of you?”
Your grip faltered, just slightly. What? What did he mean by that?
“Who’d be killing the task force for you?” he added, softer now, like it was intimate. Like it was a secret meant only for you.
Your stomach dropped. There were no right words for what you were feeling. Guilt, maybe, for feeling good about it at all.
“…y-you did that for me?” you asked, the words smaller than you meant them to be.
His expression didn’t change. If anything, it softened, just a fraction. In his eyes was the same dangerous devotion threading through everything he did for you.
“I know you’d want to,” he said, looking up at you with wide eyes. “So I did it for you.” He paused, only for a decor. “To prove I’m one of the good guys now.” His eyes flicked over your face, searching, craving. “Like you.”
Your lungs felt twisted in your chest. You did. You wanted to. You’ve argued with Val countless of times, but she said the same thing: it wasn’t good for optics.
“Jesus, Dex…” you breathed, shaking your head, frustration and a little bit of admiration boiling up under your skin. “You’re so… ugh— you’re just so fucking—”
Dex breathed in, those hazel eyes that you adored so much darting anxiously, as if waiting for a final verdict, a final judgement that would make or break his heart.
But that was the problem. You didn’t have a word for him.
There was no clean, clinical label that could contain what he was to you, what he had always been. Obsession felt too shallow, addiction felt too passive, and even love felt too tame.
“Jesus, baby…” you exhaled, not really meaning to call him that again, your grip tightening in his shirt instead of letting go. “You’re so—”
You’re so… wrong? Sick? Familiar?
You made a frustrated sound, that sounded like it belonged somewhere between a laugh and a curse, and before you could stop yourself, before you could talk yourself out of it…
You kissed him.
It wasn’t gentle or careful by any means. It wasn’t anything you could chalk off as a mistake.
You pushed up onto your toes, dragging him down into it, your mouth crashing into his like you were trying to shut him up, erase him, consume him.
Maybe all three at once.
For a split second, he froze. Not out of hesitation, but out of shock. It was as if he hadn't even expected you to give in first.
It didn’t take long for him to break, though, to melt into you.
His body gave way under your hands, tension unraveling so fast it was almost unsettling. A tiny, almost adorable, wrecked sound slipped from him. His hands came up like instinct, like muscle memory, settling at your waist, splayed over your skin, under your shirt. He did so gently, as if he needed permission even now.
The world knew him as unhinged, uncontrollable, but with you? He folded every time.
Your fingers tightened in his shirt as the kiss deepened, messy and heated, all teeth and tongue and frustration. You could feel the way he leaned into you, not taking, but responding, chasing whatever you gave him like it was oxygen.
And you hated it, because it meant you knew exactly what you were doing to him. It meant you liked it.
You pulled back just enough to breathe, your lips barely leaving his, your forehead brushing his as your chest rose and fell too fast.
“This is—” you started, voice cracked. “This is exactly why I shouldn’t have opened that window.”
“But you did,” he whispered, already leaning in again, chasing you without even realizing it.
Your stomach twisted because he was right.
You could lock doors, build distance, join teams, attempt to rewrite your life into a clean slate, but the second he was there, bleeding on your fire escape, looking at you like you were the only thing tethering him to the world, you opened it. Every fucking time.
Your hand slid from his collar to his jaw, tracing his raised scar with feather-light touch. “Dex,” you muttered, searching his face like you might finally see something that would make this easier. “You killed them and —what? You call that a favor?”
“If it keeps you safe,” he said simply without a shred of hesitation.
Your chest tightened, air clawing its way up your throat. “I never asked you to do that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
You let out a shaky breath, your grip loosening for half a second, just long enough to feel that familiar pull. That old gravity that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the parts of you you pretended didn’t exist anymore.
He had never created that darkness. He had just matched it.
“I hate that you think like that,” you said, quieter now.
His eyes softened. “You don’t,” he said. “You just don’t get it yet.”
He made this so unbearable, so inescapable. He saw every ugly, buried instinct you’d tried to outrun, every thought you’d trained yourself to suppress, every violent, intoxicating urge you’d dressed up as restraint.
And instead of being repulsed, like any sane man at the bar would, he loved it.
“Dex…” you started, but there was no argument left in you.
His thumb brushed lightly against your wrist, right over your pulse, like he was feeling it race. “You miss me,” he said again.
You should’ve denied it. You should’ve stepped back, shut this down, reminded yourself of everything you’d built without him.
Instead, you leaned in again.
The second kiss wasn’t explosive.
It was worse because it was slower. It was deeper. It wasn’t as careless.
And he broke for it completely.
That same wrecked sigh left him again, his forehead pressing against yours as his hands tightened slightly at your waist just anchoring himself there like you were the only solid object left on earth. Like he’d finally gotten something he’d been starving for.
And the most fucked up part, was that finally, so had you.
No one else ever met you here. No one else had ever met you in the dark, in the contradiction, where wanting something didn’t make it right, but didn’t make it any less real either.
You exhaled against his lips, barely a whisper. “This is a bad idea.”
“Yeah,” he breathed back.
Neither of you let go, though.
Before you knew it, space between you collapsed again like it was never meant to exist.
You didn’t remember deciding to move, you just did. Your hands fisted further into his shirt, dragging him with you as you stumbled back toward your bedroom like gravity has shattered and he was the only thing pulling you down.
Dex followed without resistance, like a lost puppy.
There was something almost reverent in the way he let himself be guided, even now, unsteady from blood loss, from exhaustion, from you, but still so focused. Like every nerve in his body was tuned to find you, waiting, anticipating.
You shoved him down onto the bed harder than necessary.
The mattress dipped under his weight, and for a split second he just looked up at you. His breathing was uneven, pupils blown wide, lips parted like he’s waiting for a command.
“Look at you,” you muttered, more to yourself than him, chest rising and falling too fast. “You’re so easy.”
His throat bobbed, a fragile look flickering across his face, and it definitely didn’t belong to the man who laughs while bullets fly.
“Yeah?” he breathed.
You climbed over him before he could say anything else, pressing him back into the mattress, your hand sliding up his chest, over the bruises, the bandages you placed.
He hissed at the contact, but didn't dare pull away. If anything, he leaned into it.
“Stay still,” you murmured, but your voice has no real authority left in it.
“I am,” he said quickly, like he needed you to know, like he needed to get it right, to not fuck up this time.
Your fingers caught under the hem of what’s left of his shirt, dragging it up, exposing more of him. He was marked and bruised, and wrecked.
And he still came here. For you.
“You’re a mess,” you whisper.
A small, breathless laugh left him. “You like me like that.”
You said nothing, because you did.
Your nails pressed lightly into his skin as your hands moved over him, mapping his body. You already knew him too well. He responded immediately, back arching just slightly, breath catching, like every touch landed deeper than it should.
“Say it,” he started to beg, almost hesitant. “Please.”
“What?”
“That I’m…” he trailed off, swallowing, suddenly shy. “That I did good.”
There it was, that need.
“Dex…” you breathed, shaking your head. You shouldn’t give it to him, but you wanted to.
“You did good,” you said, unbuckling his belt and undoing his trousers. “So good for me, baby.”
And he fell apart. You could feel it in the way his hands tighten at your sides, in the way his breath choked out, in the way his head tipped back against the mattress like he’s overwhelmed by something as simple as your approval.
“Yeah?” he whispered, desperately tugging up your shirt like a cat pawing at his meal. He didn’t stop until your skin was bare, naked, and so… exposed.
“Yeah,” you repeated, your voice lower now, closer, your lips brushing just barely against his jaw as you climbed on to him. “You’re so eager to please, it’s pathetic.”
He let out a broken little sound and didn't even try to hide it.
Your nails dragged down his abdomen as you pressed closer, and he gasped, unfiltered. His fingers clutched at you like he was grounding himself, like he needed physical contact as he toyed with the band of your sweats.
“You want it off, sweetheart?” you murmured against his ear.
“Yes,” he breathed, and it came out too fast, too honest. “Yeah, whatever you want— just—”
He cut himself off with a sharp inhale as your hands tighten again, your nails leaving faint, angry trails down his skin.
“Use your words, baby,” you whispered.
“Yes.”
The room felt too small for the way everything had been building. It was tight, too hot, too full of everything you’ve both been holding back for way too long.
It was messy and desperate in a way that had little to do with the physical and everything to do with the fact that neither of you knew how to want the other halfway.
—
By the time you both came undone, by the time you chased each other’s high, it was already too late to come back down. He lit up all your senses at once, your hands gripping, his breath breaking, your nails dragging down his back as he clung to you like you’re the only thing keeping him from falling apart. And maybe you were.
And after your legs gave out, you collapsed against him, your forehead pressed to his shoulder, both of you breathing like you’ve just survived it all. Or ruined it. Or both.
His hand came up, resting against your back as you curled into him.
You reached and kissed the corner of his lips, tasting the blood and sweat on his skin. “I’ve missed you.”
All of his neurons lit up in happy colour, like a Christmas tree. It hit him all at once, like a switch flipped behind his eyes. You felt it in the way his breath hitched, in the way his fingers tightened just slightly where they rested against your waists
“You mean that?” he asked.
You hummed, brushing your mouth against his again, not quite a kiss this time, letting him feel it without giving him enough. “I said it, didn’t I?”
A disbelieving smile tugged at his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes, not fully. Those stayed locked on you, dark and hungry and searching, like he was trying to figure out if this was real or just another thing he made up about you in his head.
You traced your thumb along his collarbone, watching him break for it in real time.
“So…” you whispered, lips brushing just beneath his ear, “how long have you been watching me?”
Dex’s hand flexed once against your side.
You pulled back just enough to look at him. “A month, two?”
His eyes had gone darker, but there was not an ounce of guilt or regret there. It was the absolute conviction of possession.
“How long?” you pressed, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look you in the eyes.
“…A while.”
You let out a breathy laugh, like you weren’t sure if you should be impressed or concerned.
He was fucked up. You were fucked up. It made a kind of sense.
“Yeah?” Your head tilted, studying him. “Is that where my neighbor went?”
He held his eyes on you.
You tilted your head, struggling to remember what the scumbag looked like from memory. “You know, the insurance creep. The one who wouldn’t shut up about taking me out to dinner?”
Dex said nothing, which was answer enough.
You should’ve been horrified. You knew that. You should’ve been disgusted and angry because he did something in your name that you didn’t do anymore.
Instead, your fingers slid up into his hair.
“Of course you did,” you said, almost amused.
Dex watched you carefully now, like he was waiting for the moment you’d turn on him.
“You liked him?” he asked.
The idea alone made you want to lurch.
“Please,” you scoffed, shifting closer, your knee pressing into his thigh without thinking. “He made a living denying people the help they needed and bragged about it to anyone who would listen.” Your nails dragged lightly against his scalp. “I was two drinks away from breaking his fingers myself.”
Your grip tightened slightly in his hair, claiming.
Dex watched you like he was bracing for impact, like this was the moment you’d push him away. Instead, your thumb brushed over his lower lip, dragging it down just a little before letting it snap back.
“You really thought he had a shot?” you asked quietly.
His teeth tightened. “He thought he did.”
You leaned closer, your lips ghosting over his again, just barely there. “Mm,” you hummed. “That’s cute.”
Dex’s breath hitched.
“He talked too much,” you added, your voice dropping, your mouth brushing the corner of his lips again.
Your fingers slid from his hair to his throat, resting there, feeling the rapid pulse beneath your palm.
Dex didn’t move away. He even tilted into it. “I didn’t like how he was looking at you.”
Your fingers curled slightly against the sheets.
“They never just look at you," he said with absolution in his eyes. Oh, so there were more? “They think things.”
“And you don’t?” you shot back.
For a second, something flickered across his face, almost self-aware. Then it was gone.
“I’m allowed,” he said, resolute.
Fuck, he was impossible.
Your fingers slid back into his hair, tugging just enough to tilt his head so you could kiss him properly this time.
He melted into it immediately, like he’d been waiting for permission, like he’d been starving and you’d finally decided to feed him. His hands tightened at your waist, pulling you closer now as you slid your legs further in between his, not holding back as much.
You pulled back just enough to speak against his lips.
“He didn’t deserve to look at me like that,” you mumbled.
Dex’s eyes darkened. “No.”
Your thumb brushed his cheek affectionately.
“But you do,” you added.
He relaxed, like his entire body had to catch up with what you just said.
“Yeah?” he asked, as if for permission.
You smiled faintly, leaning in until your noses were almost touching. “Yeah.”
Your hand slid from his face down to his chest, pressing him back into the mattress just slightly. It wasn’t forceful at all, but enough to remind him where he was. Who he was with. Who he belonged to.
“You always have,” you whispered.
Dex exhaled like you’d just undone him completely.
After all the sins you’d committed, all the lines you’d crossed and never once thought to step back from, you knew there was a special place in hell for both of you.
But if you were going to burn for it, you hoped it wasn’t cold or empty.
You hoped it came with a bed that never cooled, sheets that would still straighten even after it was twisted beyond saving, and restraints strong enough for him. You hoped that place wouldn’t try to fix you, wouldn’t try to separate you, and you hoped that it would let you drown in every wrong thing that ever felt right.
Because if this was damnation, if this was the price of loving him exactly as he was, you didn’t want salvation. You just wanted him.
And maybe, that was the most unforgivable sin of all.
I am Sharif Al-Amoudi, writing to you with a heavy and weary heart due to the difficult situation we are going through. My child needs treatment, and I am injured and have no income. I need your help through donations and
I write to you with a heavy heart 💔 My children and I are going through very difficult times, and no one is asking about us. My son needs treatment and medication, and he needs milk, diapers, and urgent care. Please don't leave us alone in these difficult circumstances. 😔
This is my new campaign link after the old one stopped working due to the bank account being closed. I hope you can help me with this account. We need your help to treat my child, Ahmed. Please help!
Ahmed is suffering greatly. His condition is worsening because I can't afford his surgery; I keep postponing it. Every post I ignore means an extra hour of pain. Please donate; your help could save his life.
My son Ahmed suffers from two holes in his heart and damage to his optic nerve. He needs medical care and surgery. We are stranded in Egypt in a very difficult situation and have no income. We need your help and donations to treat my son Ahmed. Please share this post and donate, even a small amount. Please.
My children are holding on to a small hope your help now could save them from a harsh fate. Every contribution, no matter the size makes a real difference in their lives
Hello, I'm Sharif Al-Amoudi from Gaza. I'm married and have twins, Hussam and Ahmed, who are five months old. They were born after four atte
Bridgerton/Regency AU | Dex x fem!Reader where Lord Benjamin Poindexter duels every man who flirts with you and leaves a trail of dead suitors in your wake.
TW: implied stalking, suggestive sexual themes, parental verbal abuse, duels/murder, obsessive jealousy, dark romance, but daddy, I love him! vibes
Lord Benjamin Poindexter, Duke of Arrowhead, is a violent man.
And somehow, somehow, you are the problem because you like it.
You are the daughter of a viscount. Unfortunately, you are also a romantic to the point of self-destruction. You want a love match, the kind poets lose sleep over. Your father, unfortunately, wants you married to Lord Daniels, a man thirty years your senior with fine manners, excellent prospects, and the emotional texture of damp bread.
Worse, Lord Daniels looks at you as though you are already his property. Not a woman with thoughts, wants, or a heart of your own, but rather just a pretty vessel meant to warm his bed, bear his heir, and behave while doing it.
And god forbid you have hobbies! He treats your love of plants like a defect, like a girlish little habit he intends to prune out of you after the wedding.
So when you try to make your father understand that you cannot marry Lord Daniels, he does not listen. He calls you a selfish bitch.
You get into a screaming match with him after that. You tell him he is selling you off. He tells you that you are ruining your own future.
By the time you start crying, you’re running out of the house.
You are not running forever, of course. You are not foolish enough to think you could survive alone outside your father’s house, let alone in the wild.
You just need space from your family.
So you run into the woods behind the estate, skirts damp, gloves dirtied, face hot with rage, needing only to be alone for a little while.
And that is where you meet Lord Poindexter.
Every woman in Mayfair knows of him but none of them truly knows him. Your mother once said he was “a fine match, of course,” then immediately followed it with, “Though there is something rather severe about him.”
Severe is one word. Dangerous is better.
He is hunting alone when he finds you, rifle in hand, coat across his shoulders. He frightens you, a little.
But then he lowers the rifle the moment he sees your tears. “My lady.”
“Your Grace.”
His eyes move over you, like he is cataloguing every sign of distress and deciding who must be punished for it.
You should curtsy and leave. Instead, you talk.
You tell him about Lord Daniels. About your father. About marriage without love. You tell him you would rather disappear into the woods than be handed over to a man who thinks your hobby is an inconvenience.
“I think I would like to marry a man who knows the difference between a daisy and a dahlia,” you say, bitterly.
That earns you another almost-smile. “Daisies,” he says.
“What?”
“You like daisies?”
You blink, thrown by the gentle edge of the question.
“Yes,” you say. “My favourite, in fact. They are not grand, but they survive almost anywhere. People overlook them because they are common, but I think that is rather unfair.”
Dex looks at you. He looks and looks and looks.
“My lady,” he says finally, “I do not think Lord Daniels deserves you.”
Your breath catches in the cold air. “You hardly know me, Your Grace.”
His eyes do not move away from yours. “Not yet.”
Hello?
What the hell do you mean, Lord Poindexter?
Because what is that? Who says that in the woods to a crying viscount’s daughter he has known for less than an hour? A madman, maybe. A loaded pistol in human form.
He escorts you to the threshold of your home, kisses your gloved fingers before he leaves, and you spend the whole night staring at your ceiling and thinking about him like an idiot.
The next morning, Lord Daniels is dead because he had been challenged to a duel.
Apparently, he has been shot through the heart at dawn by Lord Poindexter.
Oh, Lady Whistledown is frothing at the mouth.
The entire ton becomes rabid, because even the scribe doesn’t know why the Duke of Arrowhead challenged him to a duel. Some say Daniels owed him money. Some say Daniels insulted him at cards. Some say there was an argument over hunting rights. The men insist it must have been something respectable and masculine, because God forbid a duke shoot another lord over a girl he met weeping in the woods the day before.
But you know Dex loaded that pistol for you.
By afternoon tea, Lord Poindexter comes calling, telling your father that he would like to court his daughter.
He brought the biggest bouquet of daisies you had ever seen.
Your father grinds his teeth and hesitates, because Lord Poindexter has just killed your intended.
But also…
He is a duke.
A rich duke.
A handsome duke.
A rich, handsome duke who has come calling with flowers for your mother’s daughter, who, as your mother very gently reminds your father, has not exactly been cooperative with any of the men your father has presented to her.
So eventually, he is allowed into the drawing room.
Your father looks like he is swallowing a knife. Your mother looks like she is watching a scandal unfold in real time.
And Dex looks only at you. He gives you the daisies like the dead man between you is merely an unfortunate scheduling matter.
From there, it snowballs.
Lord Benjamin Poindexter becomes devoted to you in a way that makes every ballroom feel like a crime scene waiting to happen.
He appears at social events he would once have avoided. He stands at the edge of every room in black gloves, watching you like the rest of the ton is background noise. He asks you to dance, and people are speechless, because the Duke of Arrowhead famously does not dance at balls.
Except now he does.
With you, and only you.
He is not charming with anyone else, though. Other ladies still try to speak to him (again, handsome, rich, duke). They flutter their lashes and smile and ask about his estate, his hunting, his views on town.
He gives them nothing.
Then you walk up and mention that your new fern cutting is struggling, and suddenly this man is leaning in like you have declared war on France.
“What kind of fern?”
“Maidenhair.”
“How much light does it need?”
And you talk and talk and talk, and the other ladies stare because this is not the Duke of Arrowhead they know. This man remembers the layout of your greenhouse, even when he claims he has never been there. He remembers the variety of your roses. He knows the shade your orchids prefer.
He remembers everything.
And God help every Lord who even attempts to talk to you.
A lord compliments your figure too boldly?
Duel, shot through the head.
A viscount laughs about Lord Daniels and your “unfortunate effect on men”?
Duel, shot in the bowels and bled to death.
A gentleman grips your waist too hard at a ball, and you come crying to Dex because you feel ruined?
Duel. Shot through the liver at dawn so he feels the pain as the light drains from his eyes.
There are dead lords behind you now. Injured lords. Ruined lords. Men leaving London for their “health.” Men avoiding your side of the ballroom as though you are cursed.
And maybe you should be horrified.
But there is a terrible and satisfying feeling curling inside you every time Dex’s eyes tunnel across a room because another man has made a pathetic attempt to court you.
You feel… flattered.
Your mother is like, “He cannot continue challenging every gentleman who causes you discomfort.”
Your father is like, “He is making you impossible to marry.”
And you are like…
Is he?
Or is he making me impossible to marry to anyone but him?
Because Dex is not stupid.
He knows what this does. Every duel ties your name tighter to his. Society begins to understand your honour as his territory, your reputation as his concern.
He wants the whole ton to know that touching you, wanting you, and embarrassing you comes with consequences.
Yes, he wants you ruined if ruined means no one else can have you. And the night Dex actually ruins you, it happens at Lord Ashcombe’s ball.
Ashcombe has been secretly admiring you all season like a man too stupid to notice the bodies piling up behind him. He asks for a dance with you and says it would be rude to refuse the host.
And you know Dex is watching.
Usually, you would say no. But today, you were feeling particularly brave and you wanted to test the limits of Dex’s affections. So you say yes.
Dex becomes murderously jealous almost immediately.
Dex watches Ashcombe’s hand settle at your waist and crushes the wine glass in his hands. You smile and pretend not to hear the shatter.
The moment the dance ends, Dex pulls you out to the garden and corners you there.
The wisteria hangs heavy overhead, purple and soft and romantic in the most damning way. The music from the ballroom is muffled behind glass. Your heart is still racing from the dance, from the thrill of knowing you provoked him and he came exactly as you knew he would.
“What was that?” He demanded.
And you pout, because apparently you have lost all sense of self-preservation. “Perhaps I am tired of waiting for a proposal.”
His jaw tightens. “You think I will not ask?”
“You have not even asked my father for my hand.”
And oh.
Oh, that wounded him. “I will.”
See, you don’t understand that yet. Dex is not delaying because he doubts his love for you. He is delaying because he is who he is. Because in his head, before he asks your father and puts the ring on your finger, he must clear the field.
He must eliminate every man who wants you and every lord who thinks he still has a chance.
And yes, that is deranged, but he enjoys hunting his romantic rivals for sport. He loves the fact that he gets to prove, again and again, that wanting you is dangerous unless you are him.
But then you ask with sad lashes, “How do I know you’re not lying, Your Grace?”
And Dex goes very still.
Then he kisses you.
His hands are on you at once, crushing your silk dress, dragging you closer. He kisses you like he is furious you ever doubted him. Like your mouth is the only argument he needs.
You should stop him.
You could.
You do not.
Instead, you kiss him back and sigh a triumphant yes, knowing no other man will have you now.
Eventually his hands bunches up your skirts and rips your undergarments. You gave a breathless little panic gasp, knowing no lady should let a man touch her like this before marriage.
Dex turns you carefully, presses you forward until he bends you over the garden wall, one gloved hand braced beside yours, the other holding you at the waist like he is both keeping you steady and making a claim.
“You want to know,” he murmurs, voice rough against your ear, “what husbands and wives do?”
Your breath catches.
“I need to hear you say it, Your Grace,” he says. Dex’s mouth brushes the shell of your ear, and you know that is not your title yet. You do not have a duchy. But it is the title you will take if he marries you.
When, you remind yourself, not if.
“Y-yes, Your Grace,” you managed.
“That’s my good girl,” he breathes, gloved hand tightening at your waist.
So Dex fucks you there beneath the wisteria, with the ballroom glowing behind the windows and your fingers trembling against old stone. He takes you, letting you adjust to his size as he ruins you completely and makes you understand exactly what he means to give to you once you are his wife.
He talks to you through it in that low voice, telling you this is what he will give you on your wedding night, and every night after, telling you he would not ruin you if he did not intend to keep you, telling you no other man will ever know you like this because no other man will live long enough to try.
You hate that it works.
You hate that every possessive word goes through you like fire. You hate that you believe him most when he is like this.
And when you fall apart for him, he holds you and kisses your temple through it, ever so gentle.
He destroys your reputation with the tenderness of a man arranging flowers.
By the time it is over, your legs are unsteady, your mouth is swollen, your skirts are a scandal, and Dex is still pressed close behind you.
Then, you turn your head and see Lord Ashcombe at the edge of the path.
He looks pale and absolutely destroyed by what he has walked in on.
You glanced at Dex in a panic, but he is just casually buckling up his trousers and smiling.
That's when you realised that Dex wanted you two to get caught.
He knew Ashcombe slipped into this part of the garden to smoke, that’s why he dragged you here, of all places! This was a trap. This was the hunting for sport he loved so much.
This was Dex proving his love in the most deranged way possible: by ruining you just enough to make Ashcombe understand he had already lost.
Dex adjusts your skirts while challenging him to a duel for your honour.
By dawn, Ashcombe is dead.
By noon, Dex comes calling again with more daisies.
Your mother sits down very slowly. Your father says no when Dex asks for your hand.
Dex only raised an eyebrow like it was a minor obstacle.
So he leaves and comes back with a deed. He has bought you the largest greenhouse in the country.
A scandalous duke with dead men in his wake gives you a kingdom of flowers and expects your father to keep saying no?
Please.
Your father’s protests are running thin. Your reputation is half-shredded. Your mother is exhausted. The ton already speaks of you as though you are his. Men no longer ask for your hand because they enjoy having all their organs where they are.
So finally, your father agrees.
Dex proposes in the garden with daisies everywhere, because of course he does. Because the man is unwell and romantic and terrifying and yours.
He kneels in the dirt like a duke who has never cared less about being a duke.
And you say yes with your whole stupid romantic heart.
Lady Whistledown writes of speculation like the ink has been laced with laudanum. Your mother cries. Your father looks like he’s biting through bullets. The remaining eligible men of London quietly celebrate surviving the season.
And Dex looks at you at the altar like every dead lord was simply the road he took to reach you.
You wanted a love match?
Congratulations.
You got a love match with a body count.
—
note: reminder! This is a hear me out, so no taglist. Also, eventual full fic of this, yay or nay? (Might take me a year at this point lol)
Gaza today is broken in ways that are hard to describe. Everything has changed, and the homes that were once full of life are now just memories. Tents are everywhere, as if we are living through an ending that never ends.
Many people write about us with beautiful words, and express our pain through poetry and music, but the truth is, that doesn’t ease what we are going through. We don’t just need words, we need real support to keep going.
Every day we try to hold on, but the exhaustion keeps growing, and the fear never leaves us, especially with my father’s illness and his constant need for treatment.
Please donate to my family . If you are able to help, please don’t let this be just something you read and move on from.
Thank you to everyone who truly cares and tries to help.
📌🛑📌 Fundraiser vetted (#167 by el-shab-hussein & nabulsi), But we created a new GoFundMe page because GoFundMe suspended the beneficiary’s account on the platform, which put us in a very difficult situation.
Summary : Benjamin Poindexter finds his North Star in a sweet librarian who probably should’ve run. Still, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x Librarian! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : North star! Reader, fluff (?), angst, hurt/comfort, obsessive love, unhealthy attachment, codependency, possessive behavior, stalking, morally grey reader, explicit sexual content (no anatomical detail as per usual), sex, orgasm denial, oral sex implied, voyeurism/exhibitionism themes, breeding kink, blip mentioned, conjugal visit, institutional abuse, canon-typical violence, murder, hostage situation, grief, food, pregnancy, towards the end you and Dex are mentioned to have a child called Leo. Dex isn’t the most traditional father in any sense but he eventually does love him for very specific reasons I won’t spoil. Starts two years before Daredevil season 3 and ends during DDBA season 1 (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 22k (whoopsie)
Requested by : A mix of these requests: X X X ( @faszomiskivan )
Notes : This story spans about nine years, so buckle up! Reader basically takes on Julie’s North Star role in canon, and yes, this story does explain how we get there. Enjoy!
FBI Special Agent Benjamin Poindexter didn’t know what to do with pretty.
He understood attraction in the detached, observational way he understood most things. He understood what people found objectively attractive was symmetry, pleasing aesthetics. He would observe little changes in a room when someone “beautiful” entered it. He went through it like a list: people looked longer, their voices gentled, posture adjusted without realising it. Dex knew how to recognise attractiveness because other people gave themselves away around it, because the world was always telling on itself if you paid close enough attention. But pretty was different when it was you.
Pretty was not supposed to make him forget the next thing he meant to say. Pretty was not supposed to sit under his skin like a fever. Pretty was not supposed to be you a school librarian in a pastel cardigan, with a pencil tucked through your hair and ink on your fingers, kneeling between two shelves while a little boy cried into your blouse because another child had laughed at him for reading too slowly.
Dex was at the school for an FBI community safety outreach visit. Nothing serious, nothing field-critical. It was just one of those public-facing assignments meant to make parents feel reassured and administrators feel prepared. He was supposed to stand beside the principal, nod at the right times, talk about emergency response based on a script made by the Bureau, and leave.
Instead, at the end of the day, he stood near the library doors and watched you lower your voice to soothe a child.
“Hey,” you said softly. “Don’t make yourself smaller because someone else was mean to you.”
Dex went still. The principal kept talking beside him. Something about lockdown protocols, fire exits, parent pick-up procedures, and perhaps thanking him for the visit. Dex didn’t hear any of it. He watched the little boy rub his face with his sleeve, watched you reach into your cardigan pocket and produce a tissue because of course you had one ready, because of course you had walked through life expecting the world to hurt these precious little things and had prepared yourself to help.
“Reading slowly just means you get to spend more time with the words,” you told the boy. “That’s not a bad thing.”
The boy sniffled, and you smiled at him.
Dex felt that smile land in his cold heart, somewhere it had no business being.
It would have been easier if you were only beautiful. That would have been manageable. Uncomfortable, maybe, but manageable. Beauty was a fact. Beauty could be observed, catalogued, eventually put away. You were beautiful in a way that seemed unaware of itself, unpolished and terribly human. The cardigan sleeves falling too far over your hands, the loose strand of hair stuck to your cheek, the worn soles of your cheap flats, you smiling so easily for children who probably forgot to thank you for it.
Dex thought you were gorgeous with an alarmed resentment, as if his own body had betrayed him by noticing before his mind had given permission. Then you looked up at him.
Your eyes met his across the library, and for half a second, Dex forgot what face he was supposed to be wearing. You smiled politely, like he was just another adult in the building, not a man with a gun under his jacket teaching staff how to react in case of a school shooting.
“Hi,” you said. “Sorry, do you need the library?”
The principal brightened. “This is our librarian.”
You gave Dex your name. He repeated it silently once. Then again. Then a third time, because it felt like something he should store somewhere safe, somewhere no one else could touch.
“Special Agent Poindexter,” he said, holding out his hand.
You shook it, and your hand was warm. Dex noticed that there was a tiny paper cut near your thumb.
You were still smiling at him. Not because he was FBI, and not because he was handsome, though he was. You smiled because you were kind.
Fuck. That’s inconvenient.
Pretty made him look, but good made him stay.
That first visit should have been the last. Dex knew that. There was no operational reason for him to return personally. The school’s safety review was a basic one. The principal had his notes, but the follow-up could have been handled by email. A junior agent could have dropped off the printed materials. Anyone could have gone.
But Dex went. That second time, he poked his head to the library, and said hi. You said hi back, right after you told two boys that no, the beanbags were not for wrestling, and yes, you were very impressed by the creativity of the attempt.
Dex couldn’t stop thinking about it for a week.
The third time, he told himself it was because the library’s rear exit needed another assessment. It was technically true. The lock was old, the corridor outside had basically no surveillance, and the staff entrance was too far from the main office. He made it seem like a legitimate concern, when really, it was a neat little justification. Dex was excellent at finding those.
You were reshelving books when he appeared in the doorway, balanced on the tips of your toes as you reached for the top shelf. The hem of your blouse lifted slightly at your waist. It was nothing indecent. Barely anything at all.
Still, his mind went briefly blank.
He cleared his throat.
You startled, turned, and smiled. “Agent Poindexter.”
Dex liked the sound of it from you. That was inconvenient too.
“Sorry,” you added, stepping down. “Am I in the way?”
“No.”
“Good. Because if you were about to tell me my fiction section is a security risk, I might cry.”
His mouth twitched before he decided to let it. “I’ll leave fiction alone.”
“Very generous of the DOJ.” That’s when he realised you were teasing him.
Dex looked at you and thought, you have no idea what a dangerous thing that was.
After that, the visits became a pattern.
Not obvious, because Dex was never sloppy when he could help it. He didn’t go every day. He didn’t stand outside the library staring like some lovesick idiot with no self-control. He knew how to make repeated contact look procedural.
His supervisor barely looked up from the file the fourth time it happened. “Poindexter, you handled the school outreach last week, right?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve got some updated compliance questions. I can send Nadeem.”
Dex immediately shook his head. “I’ll take it.”
His supervisor paused, but Dex kept his face still. “I’m already familiar with the layout,” he said, and what a good excuse that was.
The whole truth was that he had thought about you every day since the first visit. You came to him through triggers. When he saw children’s drawings in a hallway. A cardigan on a mannequin The smell of old paper. A mug with painted stars on it in a café window, because you had one on your desk.
You were good, and you were pretty, and that combination felt less like attraction and more like orientation. As if Dex had spent his whole life moving without a fixed point and then walked into a school library and found one.
So, yes, he came back to the school. And, yes, eventually, he followed you home.
The first time, he told himself it was because you were the last staff member to leave again and the car park lighting was poor, so he had to make sure you were safe. It had rained earlier, leaving the pavement slick and black. You walked out with a tote bag over one shoulder and an armful of books pressed to your chest, juggling your keys between your fingers.
Dex sat in his car and watched until you pulled out of the lot. Then he followed. He learned the route to your apartment in fourteen minutes. He cleared that you lived in a building with a front door that did not latch unless pulled hard, that the hallway light on your floor flickered, that your window faced the street and your curtains were thin enough to turn your silhouette suggestive when you moved past them with nothing on.
He hated your building immediately. The lock was bad. The street was worse. Your neighbours were careless. The man in 2B smoked on the front steps and watched women walk past like a fucking creep. The laundry room was in the basement. The side gate did not close properly.
Dex catalogued every vulnerability, then sat in his car for twenty-three minutes after your lights went out and told himself this was a reasonable concern.
He was trained to notice risk, and you just had so much of it. You were too open, too trusting, too underpaid to live somewhere safe enough.
He found out about the money without needing to try very hard.
He figured out your exact job title, your district, and salary ranges within twenty minutes. He knew what you could afford, what you probably couldn’t, what your grocery budget looked like if your car needed work or if the school asked you to buy supplies out of pocket again. And you did, apparently. He saw the receipts in your hand one afternoon when you came out of a discount store with construction paper, glue sticks, tissues, and children’s stickers paid for with your own money.
That bothered him more than it should have. It enraged him. Not because you were helpless. Dex didn’t think that. You were competent in the way good people often were, holding ten pieces of a room together while everyone else assumed the room simply stayed whole on its own. But you were tired and stretched thin. You loved your job, the children, the library with its peeling posters and overhandled paperbacks, but love didn’t pay rent.
I could, he thought. Dex could pay your rent without noticing. He could buy groceries without checking his account. He could fix the lock. Replace the car. Put you somewhere safe and close. That’s… a good reason to ask you out, right?
If he ever had the courage.
By the fifth visit, you laughed when you saw him. “Again?”
Dex stopped in the library doorway, because he insisted to the bureau that some of the teachers were security risks. “Again.”
“Should I be worried about the state of our emergency preparedness?”
“No.”
“Should I be worried about you?” That caught him off-guard. Your tone was teasing, but your eyes were warm and curious.
Should I be worried about you?
Yes, he thought. Probably.
Instead, he said, “No.”
You narrowed your eyes in mock suspicion. “I don’t know. Five visits to the school. Either we are extremely unsafe, or you really like laminated evacuation maps.”
Dex looked at the map beside your door. “It’s a good map.”
You burst out laughing.
Dex loved the sound immediately and started to memorise it so he could copy it when you made a joke. More than that, he wanted to be responsible for it. He wanted to know what your laugh sounded like in his car. In his kitchen. Against his mouth.
The thought came so suddenly that his teeth clenched.
You noticed. Your smile softened, and Dex had the devastating impression that you thought you had embarrassed him. “I’m sorry,” you said. “I didn’t mean to make fun of you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Okay.” You tilted your head. “Good.”
Good. The word followed him home.
So did you, though not physically. Not yet. But your image, your voice, the way you said his name after he told you to call him Dex, the way you remembered he took tea plain after seeing him drink it once in the staff room. The way you handed him a paper cup and said, “I made too much,” as if generosity was just something that spilled out of you naturally.
And then there were the guys around you.
He had watched a math teacher who lingered at your desk too long after school, making you laugh over some stupid story about a parent email. A divorced father at pick-up who asked whether you ever took private tutoring work and then smiled in a way Dex didn’t like. A man you met for coffee one Friday evening, two neighbourhoods over, at a café with steamed windows and terrible parking.
Dex hadn’t meant to follow you there. That was a lie.
He had followed you there because you had worn lipstick, the kind you probably put on in your rearview mirror after work, thinking no one would notice.
The date was unremarkable. The man was unremarkable. He wore a blue shirt, laughed too loudly, and checked his phone while you were talking. Dex watched from across the street with his hands still on the steering wheel and felt jealousy move through him.
The man was wrong for you.
He was careless, dull, and too impressed with himself. He made you pay for your own tea. That alone felt like a crime.
You left to do some off-the-clock work, and your date stayed. Dex waited until the man left to use the bathroom, then walked into the café and passed close enough to his table to see the phone he had left face-up beside his plate. He saw a message from someone named Laura lit the screen with a heart attached.
Dex smiled. That was useful.
The next morning, he sent an anonymous message to Laura. The following week, you didn’t see blue-shirt again.
You looked a little sad about it on Monday. Dex hated that. Then he hated the man more for making you sad. Then he told himself it was better this way.
It became easier to scare off your dates after that. All it took was an inconvenient scheduling conflict, a resurfaced truth, a gentle nudge. One man had an outstanding warrant for unpaid fines. One was married. One was simply easy to scare with the right look from the right federal agent in a parking lot.
By the sixth visit to the school, there was no reason good enough to fool anyone but himself.
A “Penultimate walkthrough,” he called it, before the final walkthrough next week.
The principal seemed pleased, though you looked amused. “Penultimate?” you asked when Dex appeared outside the library.
“Yes.”
“Should I be honoured?”
“You should feel secure.”
“I do. The biography section has never been safer.”
He looked at you, and you smiled like you were proud of yourself. Dex couldn’t help but copy that smile back. Your expression changed when you saw it, going still for one second, like you liked him, too.
That day, he walked through the library with you while you pointed out doors and windows and places the children liked to hide during reading hour. This corner was where the overwhelmed ones went. That shelf had the books no one returned on time because they loved them too much. The lamp near the beanbag was too warm if left on all day, but you kept it anyway because the kids said it made the corner feel cozy.
“This is where they go when they need silence,” you said, gesturing toward a little space tucked behind a low shelf. A lamp. A basket of soft toys. Books with soft edges. A handmade sign that read: take a breath.
Dex looked at it.
You had made a place for children to be afraid safely. Of course you had.
“You did this?” he asked.
You shrugged, suddenly shy. “It’s not much.”
Dex looked at you. “It is.”
You met his eyes, and for a moment, the library noise faded behind you.
After that, he wanted to give you things. He wanted to give you better shoes. Better locks. A safer car. A warmer apartment. Groceries you did not buy with mental arithmetic running behind your eyes. A kitchen where your tea sat beside his coffee because it belonged there. A bed you didn’t have to assemble yourself. A life where you did not walk to your car alone. He wanted your life folded into his so completely that you never again had to stand unprotected in the world.
It was raining the day he finally asked.
The sky had turned the school windows grey, and the car park outside shone black under the streetlights. Most of the staff had already left. The corridors had emptied, and you were the last one in the library again.
Dex had lingered through a conversation with the principal he barely needed to have after the final walkthrough. He had checked the same exit twice. He had waited near the lobby until your light was the only one still glowing down the hall.
Then you came out with a tote bag sliding down your shoulder and a cardboard box of donated books pressed against your hip. Your umbrella refused to open, and you stared at it like it had stabbed you.
“Need help?”
You startled, then relaxed when you saw him. “Dex.” You laughed, breathless and embarrassed. “Do you just appear whenever I’m losing a fight?”
“Your umbrella is inside out,” he pointed out, before taking the box from you.
You tried to hold on. “I can carry that.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you take it?”
“Because it’s raining.”
You looked at him for a second, then smiled, soft and helpless and too fond for his sanity.
“Okay,” you said, as if letting him carry a box was nothing. As if it didn’t make a dark and pleased thought settle low in his chest.
He walked you to your car and put the books in the back seat. He noted the old jumper on the passenger side, the stack of overdue returns, the half-empty water bottle, the evidence of your life that was still not his.
You stood beside him under the broken umbrella, rain misting your hair.
You were gorgeous, he thought.
It struck him then in the stupidest way. No analysis or clinical separation. Just so pretty it made him feel young and strange and almost angry with himself.
“What?” you asked, smiling like you could tell he was staring.
Dex could’ve said nothing. He could have smiled, stepped back, wished you a good night, returned to his car, and come up with another reason to see you next week.
Instead, he looked at you and thought of your whole life together. Then he said it. “Have dinner with me.”
Your smile faded into surprise. The rain tapped against the broken umbrella between you. You blinked once. It wasn’t really a question, was it? “With you?”
“Yes.”
“As in…”
“A date.”
Your cheeks warmed. Dex watched the colour rise and tilted his head.
“Oh,” you said softly. Then, after a second, you smiled. “Okay.”
Just like that, he got what he wanted.
—
The first date was dinner at your favourite restaurant, though you couldn’t recall ever telling Dex that.
You paused outside the little place with the handwritten menu in the window, your hand tucked into the crook of his arm. “Oh,” you said, surprised. “I love this place.”
Dex looked down at you, calm as anything. “Do you?”
You laughed. “I come here all the time.”
“I didn’t know that.”
The lie was smooth, but Dex said it with such calm that you accepted it because you wanted to. So you smiled up at him and said, “Then we have similar taste.”
His eyes held on your face. “Maybe we do.”
“Maybe we belong together then,” you joked.
Dex’s brain went to a catastrophic halt.
You didn’t see it from the outside, not really. His face barely changed. Maybe his eyes went a little too still. Maybe his fingers pressed once, carefully, against your hand where it rested on his sleeve.
But inside him, his heart lit up white-hot. Belong together.
You had said it so lightly. Dex heard it like a verdict. Like the universe had leaned down and put a hand on his shoulder and said, yes, that one.
He opened the restaurant door for you and followed you inside with your words still burning through him.
You had no idea he had chosen this restaurant because he had followed you there three weeks before, parked across the street while you sat by the window with two friends and laughed over a bowl of pasta. You had no idea he had watched you order the same thing twice. You had no idea he knew which seat you liked, which dessert you split with your friend and pretended not to want more of, which route you took home afterward, how tightly you held your coat closed when the wind picked up.
But yeah, dinner was great.
The second date was coffee because you were trying to take things slower.
He was already there when you arrived, sitting by the window with your drink waiting in front of the empty chair. Your exact order, right size, right syrup. He claimed similar taste innocently again.
You should have been alarmed. Instead, you chuckled and sat down.
Coffee turned into a walk. The walk turned into him standing beside your car, close enough that your shoulder brushed his sleeve. He looked at your mouth once, then back at your eyes. “Can I kiss you?”
You didn’t even answer. You just stood on your tip toes and kissed him, carefully at first. But his hand came to cup your face, so you made a hum into his mouth and felt him unravel.
When he pulled back, his eyes were dark. You smiled, dazed.
The third date was dinner at his apartment.
He cooked for you, because apparently Dex did everything like it was a mission and feeding you was no exception. His apartment was neat and perfectly arranged, but then you were there with your jacket on the back of his chair and your laugh in his kitchen, and he kept looking at those little disruptions were worth you being here.
The food was good, so you smiled and pushed a little harder. “You’re very good at taking care of me.”
Dex went still, and you could’ve sworn his ears went pink.
After dinner, you kissed him on the couch. That was all it was supposed to be: A kiss.
Yes, maybe Dex made it feel a little too deep. Maybe it was too hungry. Maybe it was a little reckless, considering this was only the third date and you weren't the kind of woman who did things like this. You didn’t tumble into a man’s bed after three dates and let your body make decisions your brain would have to defend in the morning.
Your brain was trying, to be fair. The little voices there had formed a whole committee meeting about it.
This is too fast. This is insane. You have work tomorrow. You barely know him.
Unfortunately, Dex was kissing you, open-mouthed and desperate, his hands tight on your waist, breathing against you like every second of restraint physically hurt him, and your body didn’t seem particularly interested in attending the discussion.
You climbed into his lap because there was nowhere else you wanted to be.
Dex let out a breathy moan when you settled over him, his head tipping back against the couch. His shirt was still on, but you had already pulled half the buttons open, enough to get your hands on skin, enough to feel his chest rise under your palms every time your mouth found his again.
Your skirt was hiked high around your thighs, his fingers trembling at the hem of it.
Dex, who could easily take what he wanted, sat beneath you with his hands on your thighs and waited for you to tell him he was allowed.
You kissed him harder for it.
His mouth opened under yours immediately, wet and so eager that you felt your stomach twist. You threaded your fingers into his hair and tugged once, just to steady yourself, just to feel him closer.
Dex sighed into your mouth.
“Oh,” you whispered, breathless.
His eyes opened, fixed on you. You smiled because you understood then that Benjamin Poindexter liked being told what to do.
He wanted to be good for you. He wanted to earn every sound you made.
You shifted in his lap, and his whole body reacted. His fingers slid higher under your skirt, then stopped again.
“Dex,” you breathed.
His throat worked. “Tell me.”
You leaned down, your lips brushing his as you spoke. “Touch me.”
He obeyed so fast it made you gasp.
Your panties were pulled to the side with clumsy, shaking urgency, his pants shoved down just enough because neither of you had the patience anymore. It was filthy how desperate it was. There was no time for the bedroom, no careful undressing, no pretending this was slower than it was. It was you in his lap, his open shirt under your hands, your skirt bunched around your waist, both of you panting into each other’s mouths like you had been struck by fucking lightning.
He was so intense you expected him to take over. Because he could’ve flipped you under him. He could have pinned you to the couch and made you forget every thought you had ever had. He had the body, he had muscles, he had the skills.
Instead, he looked at you like he needed permission to breathe. “Like that?” he breathed.
You nodded, nails dragging over his chest nodding frantically. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t.
Dex listened like obedience was devotion, like your pleasure was a commandment, like the only thing in the world that mattered was keeping you exactly like this: skirt up, mouth open, shaking in his lap while he looked up at you like you were holy.
You knew this was too quick. You never had one night stands. Even three dates was way too quick, by your standards.
But his hands were on your waist, his shirt was open, his breathing was breaking, and when you whispered, “Fuck, baby,” he shuddered so hard beneath you that all your remaining common sense died on the couch.
Afterward, you stayed folded against him, both of you warm and breathless, your face tucked into his neck.
Dex’s hand moved slowly up your back, careful now.
You lifted your head enough to look at him. His hair was wrecked. His mouth was red. His eyes were softer than you had ever seen them, though there was still a frightening stillness underneath, satisfied and hungry and already too attached.
You touched his cheek. “I should probably go home.”
Dex went still.
He looked at you from beneath those dark lashes, still flushed, still breathing hard, still beautiful enough to make bad decisions feel like fate. “Stay the night,” he said, trying not to say please.
You swallowed. “I have work tomorrow.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“My things are at home.”
“You can wear something of mine.”
“I need my toothbrush.”
“I have a spare.”
A laugh slipped out of you, helpless and fond. Of course he did.
Dex’s mouth barely moved, and it was always a smile.
He looked at you like he needed you to say yes and hated that you could tell. Like letting you leave after this would physically hurt. Like you had crawled into his lap and accidentally turned yourself into the centre of his orbit.
You should go home. Your sensible little inner committee was banging on the table now.
But Dex looked at you like he was unaware he had puppy dog eyes, and you couldn’t say no to that, right?
So you kissed him once. “M’kay, baby,” you said.
Dex held you tighter then, giving an upbeat little whine as he peppered kisses on your collarbone.
Little did you know, there was no going back now.
—
The next day, Dex picked you up from work, even though you hadn’t asked him to.
He had driven you that morning as promised, his hands on your waist while he kissed you goodbye like he was trying not to follow you into the school library.
You had spent the whole day after that with his shirt on, but it was terribly oversized on you. Still, you managed to make it look intentional under your blazer, tucked and adjusted just enough that no one could tell. You had pinned your hair neatly, put your librarian face on, and acted very normal. Very professional of you, honestly.
Then the final bell rang, the library emptied, and by the time you stepped out of the front entrance with your bag over your shoulder, Dex was already there, waiting by his car with a suit jacket on and badge hidden.
You stopped mid-step. “Oh,” you said, lighting up. Beside you, Jonathan stopped too.
Jonathan, the music teacher. Nice Jonathan. Harmless Jonathan. Jonathan who lived two streets away from you and always carried a canvas tote bag with an embarrassing number of reusable water bottles inside it. He had been walking with you because you didn’t have your car with you and he offered to drive you home because you were both headed in the same direction.
Dex’s grip tightened around his keys.
You were still wearing his shirt, and this man wanted to take you home? Cute.
“Dex?” you called, surprised.
Dex barely spared Johnathan a glance. He came to you instead, handsome in that frightening l way, his attention fixed you that it made the other man feel like background noise.
“What are you doing here?” you asked.
“Picking you up.”
You blinked, then laughed softly. “Why?”
Because you were wearing my shirt. Because I spent all day knowing you were out of sight. Because I don’t like it when you’re not with me.
“Your car’s not here,” he said, and that was reasonable enough, right?
“Oh.” You glanced back. “Jonathan was going to offer me a ride. He lives a few blocks away, so—”
“No.” The word came out flat.
You tilted your head, confused. You tried to recover, sweet thing that you were, turning half toward the man beside you. “Dex, this is Jonathan. He’s the music teacher. Jonathan, this is—”
Dex opened the passenger door. “You’re coming with me.”
Jonathan stopped with his polite smile halfway formed.
You looked at Dex for a second, and your sensible little inner voice probably tried to say something about how this was strange.
Then Dex looked at you, and you melted, because fuck! Some foolish, lovesick part of you found that endearing. He came all this way for me?
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jonathan,” you said gently.
Dex shut the passenger door after you climbed in and stood there for one extra second, hand still on the handle, the word burning through him. What did that mean?
He got into the car.
The drive started silent. You settled beside him, and Dex saw you cozy up one the corner of his eye and had to tighten both hands on the wheel.
“Tomorrow?” he asked finally.
You looked over. “Hm?”
“You said you’d see him tomorrow.”
A little smile pulled at your mouth. You leaned across the console and kissed his cheek, like you thought jealousy was cute when it came from him.
“We work together, Dex.”
Oh. Okay. Okay. That’s fine, right?
Normal boyfriends were fine with that, right?
Still.
Then, asked if you wanted to come over to his place again because he couldn’t help himself. Because having you in the passenger seat made it feel obscene to let you leave again. Because you were already dressed in his things and smelled faintly like his apartment and he couldn’t understand why the day had to end anywhere else.
You looked down at yourself and laughed. “Dex, I am literally wearing your clothes. I need to go to mine.”
He kept his expression calm, but his fingers went still on the wheel.
You noticed enough to furrow your brows. “I’ve got work stuff to do,” you said. “I’ll call soon, okay?”
He nodded. He could do that. He could be normal. He could drive you to your car and let you go back to your apartment with its bad lock and pathetic hallway light and no trace of him except the marks he had left under your clothes. He could.
He pulled up beside your car outside your building and watched you unbuckle your seatbelt. You said your goodbyes and were halfway out when he blurted out, “I love you.”
You stopped.
Fuck. Fuck!
He had not planned it like that. Not in the car, and definitely not with you leaving. But there it was.
You turned back to him slowly.
For a second, you bit your lip in shock.
It was quick. Too quick to say that. You’ve been going on dates for what? Two weeks?
You supposed he’d been around the school for two months now with the outreach program. But even that didn’t really make sense, right?
So now, your inner committee was no longer holding a meeting. It was pounding on the table, screaming that this was insane, that love wasn’t supposed to arrive between a third date and a school pick-up, that normal people didn’t do this.
But Dex was looking at you like you hung the stars for him.
So leaned back into the car and kissed him. Gently first, then deeper, because his hand found your jaw like he had been waiting for permission to touch you again since the school gates.
“I love you, too,” you whispered.
Oh. Oh.
You left before you could take it back.
Dex watched you wave from your door, hands resting on the wheel, mouth curved in a small, helpless smile he couldn’t seem to stop.
She loves me.
The thought repeated all the way home.
She loves me. She loves me. She loves me.
By the time he reached his apartment, he was still smiling.
Then he opened the door, and the smile vanished immediately because you were not there.
The apartment was exactly the same as it had been that morning, clean and perfectly ordered, but suddenly none of that mattered. The couch was empty. The kitchen was empty. The bed was empty. All those neat, controlled rooms had become useless because you weren’t inside them.
Dex stood in the doorway with his keys in his hand and felt his stomach in him turn over.
You loved him, so why were you not here?
The question sat in his head with terrible simplicity.
You loved him. He loved you. He could take care of you. He had the space, the money, the locks, the discipline. Your apartment was unsafe. Your building was bad. Your neighbours were careless. Jonathan from music lived too close. The world kept touching you and taking from you and making you tired.
Here was safer. Here, it made sense. Here, he could see you.
The thought came fully formed before he knew to stop it.
He could go get you.
He could get in the car. Drive to your apartment. Knock. Tell you that you should change your mind. Tell you the city was unsafe. Tell you your lock was bad. Tell you to pack a bag. Tell you you belonged in his apartment. Tell you until you believed him.
If you said no, he could still bring you back.
He was stronger than you. Faster than you. He was trained. He knew exactly how to move you without hurting too badly. He could overpower you, get you inside his apartment, lock the door, hide the keys, take your phone just for a while. He’d you keep warm. Feed you. Talk to you until the panic passed. He’d do that just until you understood. Because you would understand.
You loved him, so eventually you would understand that this was not cruelty, right? This was not punishment. This was him seeing the truth faster than you did. This was him making the hard decision because someone had to. This was him saving you from all the places that were not him.
It took him an embarrassingly long time to realise that was kidnapping.
Actually, legally, literally kidnapping.
Kidnapping. False imprisonment. Coercion. Felony. It was bad.
“Oh,” he whispered. Then, after a beat, “Shit.”
His breath went wrong. The heat in him snapped into panic so quickly he nearly staggered. He saw himself then, not as a man in love, not as someone protecting his girlfriend, but as exactly the kind of thing you would need protecting from.
No.
No, no, no.
He backed away from the door like it had opened onto a cliff.
He loved you. He loved you. He wasn’t going to make you afraid of him. He wasn’t going to put his hands on you. He wasn’t going to lock you inside his life and pretend that was the same thing as being chosen.
Even if some awful part of him wanted to. Especially because some awful part of him wanted to.
Dex went to the drawer with shaking hands and pulled out the tapes.
Dr. Eileen Mercer’s voice filled the apartment through a soft crackle of static. “Your internal compass isn’t broken, Dex. It just works better with a North Star to guide you.”
Dex sank onto the couch.
North Star.
That was what you were.
Of course you were. You, with your kind heart and your gentle voice and your stupidly good heart. You, making safe corners for children.
He had simply made the catastrophic mistake of falling in love with the star. Which complicated things.
Because you were supposed to guide him, not belong to him. You were supposed to be fixed above him, untouchable enough to follow. Not in his apartment. Not in his bed. Not wearing his shirt and saying I love you in his car like you had any idea what those words would do to a man like him.
Dex pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes and forced himself to breathe while the tape kept playing through the static.
The apartment was still wrong without you. His hands still shook. The need to leave and get you didn’t disappear just because he had named it correctly. The desire sat there, dark and patient, waiting for him to mistake it for devotion again. But he stayed where he was.
He stayed on the couch with his teeth clenched so hard it ached, listening to the tape like it was the only thing holding him in place.
He loved you. That had to mean something better than possession. It had to.
So Dex sat in the empty apartment and tried, breath by breath, to become the kind of man who could love his North Star without building a sky small enough to trap her.
—
Dex barely made it through the week by hearing your voice through the phone.
You were busy with the school, chaperoning a trip, dealing with children and permission slips and packed lunches and museum gift shops, so he did the good thing, the normal thing. He didn’t show up. He didn’t follow the bus route. He didn’t appear outside your apartment just because he knew you would be exhausted.
Well. Maybe he just did it once, but he didn’t even stop! He just took a quick peek around the block to make sure you got home safe.
After that, he took it one day at a time.
At night, he lay in bed with the phone pressed to his ear and listened to you talk when you called. You told him about the children, the chaos, the little girl who tried to correct the tour guide, the boy who cried because his sandwich got crushed in his bag.
He hated that he couldn't tell if you were warm enough. Hated that you sounded exhausted and he wasn’t there to put a blanket over your shoulders or press his mouth to your temple or make the world stop asking things of you for five minutes. But he behaved.
When you said, “I’m so tired, baby,” he closed his eyes like the world wrapped a hand around his throat.
When you said, “I miss you,” he pressed his fist against his mouth until the feeling passed enough for him to answer normally.
“I miss you too.” An understatement so violent it almost made him laugh.
Then you came back to regular life, and started spending more time with him.
And naturally, you started spending more nights at his place.
It was easy. His apartment was closer to the school. His shower was better. His fridge always had food you liked. Your tea was already in his cupboard. Your toothbrush was still in his bathroom from that first night, and the spare charger by his bed somehow became yours without either of you discussing it.
One night a week became two. Two nights a week became most of the week.
Your laundry ended up in his machine. Your favourite cardigan stayed folded in his bedroom. Your substitute teaching papers got graded at his kitchen table while he made dinner. Your commute became easier because he drove you when he could, and when he couldn’t, he made sure your car had petrol, the tyres were checked, and the weird noise under the hood had been fixed before it became a problem.
It was dangerous, how much easier he made your life.
Dangerous because you were a school librarian on a school librarian salary, and Dex had big boy FBI paychecks and paid for groceries without mentally rearranging the rest of the month around it.
You tried to argue about that once. He looked genuinely offended.
“I should help,” you said.
“You do.”
“I mean with bills.”
“You buy supplies for children who are not yours because no one else will. Let me pay for dinner.”
That shut you up, not because it was fair. But because it was kind. Or because it sounded kind. Or because, with Dex, the difference had started to blur.
Your car made a noise; he had it checked. Your shoes wore thin; a new pair appeared by the door. You mentioned once that you were out of your favourite cereal, and the next morning there were two boxes in his cupboard.
By five months, you were barely at your own apartment.
You still paid rent. You still had mail there. Technically, you still lived there. But most nights, you went home to Dex.
Then one night, while you sat at his kitchen table grading reading logs and wearing one of his shirts under your cardigan, Dex said, “You should move in.”
You looked up. “What?”
“You should move in here.”
He said it so calmly. Like he was pointing out the weather. Like he had not been waiting weeks to say it. Like he had not already measured the space in his closet, looked up your lease date, and made sure there was room for your books.
You felt your inner committee rise from the dead.
Babe. What the fuck. Five months. Are you actually considering this? What’s wrong with you? Huh?
So you pushed back, but not very well.
“Dex,” you said, looking around his apartment. “We’ve been dating for five months.”
“I know.”
“Moving in would be very quick.”
“I know.”
But would it? You were at his kitchen table in one of his shirts, your papers stacked on his coffee table, your mug in his sink, your shoes by his door. Half your life was already there.
Suddenly, Dex leaned down and kissed you before you could keep arguing.
He did it because he had seen men do it in movies when they wanted to calm the woman they loved.
That was how affection started with him, really. He imitated touch. He put a hand on your waist because that was what boyfriends did. He rubbed circles over your hip because that was what loving partners did.
But then you melted under his hands and sighed into his mouth. Your fingers curled lightly into the front of his shirt.
And Dex thought, oh. So that was what it was supposed to feel like.
So after the first time, it no longer felt like pretending. It was no longer fake, no longer a costume he wore to convince you he could be normal.
He liked this. He liked the warmth beneath his palms. Liked the trusting weight of you leaning into him. Liked that touching you made him feel whole. His thumbs kept moving in slow circles at your hips, more because he wanted to than because he remembered he was supposed to.
“I love you,” he murmured.
You closed your eyes like the words had done exactly what he hoped they would. “Dex…”
“You love me too.”
You laughed softly. “That is a terrible argument.”
“It’s my best one.”
Unfortunately, it was.
You hummed, but you were smiling now, and Dex felt his whole chest go warm.
He kissed you again, a little braver this time, still rubbing those gentle circles into your hips like he had finally found a love language that made sense in his hands.
You sighed, and he smiled against your mouth. It surprised him, even after five months, how much he wanted to be good at this.
“Okay,” you whispered.
Dex went very still.
You opened your eyes and looked up at him, soft and doomed and already half his. “Okay, baby. I’ll move in.”
—
People got weird when you told them you had moved in with Dex.
Your friends did that careful-smile thing. Your mother went quiet on the phone before saying, “Already?” like the word had three question marks and a police report attached. One coworker just blinked at you over her mug and said, “Wow. That’s… fast.”
You kept giving the same answers. My lease was ending. His place is closer. It makes sense financially. He takes care of me.
Jonathan was the most obvious about it.
You told him in the staff room, after he was complaining about one of his classes committing recorder-based psychological warfare. “I moved in with Dex,” you said, trying to sound casual.
Slowly, he turned around. “Your fed boyfriend?”
“He has a name.”
“Agent Intense?”
“Dex.”
“Right. Your fed boyfriend.” He stared at you. “That’s so fast.”
You sighed. Here we go again. “My lease was ending.”
“You’ve known him for six months.”
“If you count his school outreach, seven actually.”
“That’s not better.”
You crossed your arms, already defensive. “He’s not bad.”
“I didn’t say bad,” he shrugged, “I think more like… creepy.”
“Jonathan.”
“What? He once looked at me like I was trying to steal you because I offered you a ride home.”
“He’s just protective, that’s all,” you huffed.
“I’m gay.”
“I know that.”
“Does he?”
“He does now,” you said.
“Does he care?”
You opened your mouth and closed it. Because no, Dex didn’t care when you told him. Johnathan was still just another person standing between you and him, platonic or romantic or whatever. Jonathan could have been gay, married, celibate, and allergic to women, and Dex still would have watched him with that flat suspicion the second he stood too close to you.
Jonathan pointed his teaspoon at you. “Exactly.”
Your phone buzzed before you could answer.
Dex: Did you eat lunch?
You smiled and held up the phone like evidence. “See? He’s sweet.”
Jonathan looked at the message, then at you. “Sure,” he said carefully. “Sweet.”
You texted back yes, baby, and when Dex replied within seconds, Jonathan sighed. You ignored him.
After all, Dex cared. That was all.
—
The people who thought the move-in was quick were in for a treat, because one month after you moved into Dex’s apartment, he asked you to marry him in the back seat of his car.
See, you had shown up because summer holidays had made you stupid with missing him. You were bored. You had no school, no library chaos, no children asking where the glitter glue went. Just too much free time and the embarrassing realization that you had become the kind of woman who missed her boyfriend at eleven-thirty in the morning like an addict running out of nicotine patches.
So you brought him lunch and went to his workplace. That was a normal girlfriend thing, right? Except the lunch did not get opened.
Dex had barely gotten the car door shut before you were kissing him, and he had barely made it through the first breath of your mouth before his hand slid under your thigh and dragged you into his lap in the back seat.
“Dex,” you laughed into his mouth.
He made a low and lewd sound into his mouth. Then his hands were on you again, pushing your skirt up around your hips with a little too much force, a little too much need, until the seam gave with an unmistakable rip of fabric.
Dex stared at the torn fabric in his hand with the horrified focus of a man who had committed a federal offence against cotton blend. “I’ll buy you another one.”
“That is not the point,” you chuckled.
“I’ll buy you five.”
You should have been annoyed. But his eyes were black with want, and there was something so obscenely flattering about Benjamin Poindexter accidentally ruining your clothes because he needed you too badly to be careful. So you tightened your fist in his tie and pulled. “Later,” you whispered.
Dex obeyed, because liked it when you pulled him by it. He liked the pressure, the direction, the filthy little reminder that he was still half-dressed for work while you were undoing him in the back of his own car. His mouth opened under yours, hands clamped on your hips like he was trying not to lose the last piece of his mind.
Your inner committee, exhausted from the moving-in situation and still technically on unpaid leave, attempted to return to service.
Babe. This is his workplace. This is a federal garage.
Babe, your skirt is ripped.
Babe, we cannot keep replacing clothes every time this man gets horny and emotional.
Then Dex kissed down your throat and the committee immediately lost quorum.
By the time you were done and either of you remembered he had to go back inside, the windows were fogged at the edges. His hair was ruined from your hands. His tie was loose and crooked. His shirt was open at the collar, your lipstick low enough on his skin that he would need to button all the way up and pray no one noticed. His mouth was swollen.
You sat in his lap, skirt torn and shoved badly back into place, one hand still looped lazily around his tie. “You have to go back in,” you whispered.
His forehead rested against yours. “I know.”
“You look…”
His eyes lifted to yours.
You smiled. “Compromised.”
Dex’s mouth twitched. His thumbs moved on your thighs, circling through the thin fabric of your ruined skirt.
You tugged his tie gently. “I should let you go.”
His hands tightened, only barely.
“Marry me,” he said suddenly, as if he would die if he let you leave without saying it first.
For a second, you just stared at him. Somewhere inside your head, your inner committee walked back into the room, saw the situation, and immediately considered retiring.
Babe, no. Babe, absolutely not. Babe, stand up for yourself!
“What?” you managed to choke out.
“Marry me,” Dex calmly, like the idea had been sitting in him for weeks, waiting for the right opening, and apparently the right opening was you flushed and breathless in his back seat.
“Dex.”
“I love you.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Your inner committee sighed so hard the lights flickered.
“I love you,” he said again, quieter. “You love me. We already live together. It gives you legal protection. If something happens to me, you’re taken care of. If something happens to you, they call me first.”
“You are making a case,” you realised, though you shouldn't have been surprised.
He just shrugged. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t get married.”
There it was, the simple Dex logic of it: I love you. You love me. Why wouldn’t we?
It was reasonable if you ignored the fact that he was clearly halfway to losing his mind and had probably been planning this long before he said it out loud. And underneath that, there was the thing he did not say. Because sure, the practical reasons were true. But underneath all that, there was the darker, sweeter logic he kept tucked behind his teeth. If you were only his girlfriend, you could change your mind. You could wake up one morning, decide he was too much, pack a bag, and walk out before he had time to kiss you and remind you how gentle he could be when he was trying. A girlfriend could leave in one terrible conversation. A wife had to take steps.
And Dex loved steps. You’d have to go through lawyers, papers, and waiting periods. A marriage would buy him time, and time meant he could come to you, he could hold your face, and remind you that you loved him as much as he loved you. He would never hurt. But if the law could slow you down long enough for him to convince you that leaving was a mistake, Dex couldn’t help loving that, too.
He didn’t say that, though. He only looked at you with his hair mussed and his mouth ruined and said, “It makes sense.”
Your inner committee made one last brave attempt: Babe. Please. We JUST moved in.
But you banged the gavel at the head of your imaginary table and pouted. But look at him! He’s so hot!
In the real world, Dex was looking at you like you were already his wife, like the ring was only a formality. Then he kissed you, tenderly this time.
“I love you,” he murmured against your mouth.
The committee dropped their clipboard. Fine, you win, they seemed to say, Whatever you say, handsome.
You laughed weakly into the kiss, and Dex pulled back just enough to look at you.
“What?”
You touched his face, thumb brushing over his cheekbone, and felt him lean into it like affection was still new enough to surprise him.
“Yes,” you whispered, hand tightening in his tie. “Yes, baby. I’ll marry you.”
For a second, he looked almost scared by how happy it made him. Then his arms locked around your waist and pulled you close, his face turning into your neck, breath hot and uneven against your skin.
“But you really do have to go back inside,” you whispered with a chuckle.
Dex lifted his head. He looked ruined, happy, and possessive in a way that should have made you run but somehow only made you kiss him again. “I have ten more minutes.”
You giggled and pulled him in by the tie.
Your inner committee walked directly into the sea, never to be seen again.
—
Dex let you pick the rings.
The engagement ring first, because he said you were the one wearing it, so you should love it. Then the wedding bands, including his, even though he tried to act like he didn’t care what his looked like. That lasted until you slid a simple band onto his finger in the shop and watched his whole face go still, almost overwhelmed.
A month later, you married him at the courthouse.
It was too soon for anyone around you to feel truly comfortable about it. Your family came anyway. Your friends came anyway. Even Jonathan, looking like he had accepted his role as the last remaining voice of reason, and still failing anyway. On Dex’s side, there was a couple of coworkers standing near the back in neat suits, polite and reserved, present more like witnesses than family.
Dex had no parents, no siblings, no cousins, no childhood friends with embarrassing stories. No one who could say they had known him when he was young. No one who could reassure your parents he was a good person through and through. Just coworkers, Ray congratulating him as the rest of his coworkers stood on the courthouse hallway while your side filled the room with nervous affection and badly hidden concern.
You saw the way your mother looked at him. The way your friends glanced at one another when they realised there was no one on his side who really belonged to him. It made them uneasy, and because you loved him, you rushed to explain it in your head before anyone even asked. His parents were dead. He grew up alone. It was complicated. He didn't have people the way other people had people.
You said little pieces of that aloud, as if it explained half of it away. Maybe to you, it did. Maybe that was a teeny part of the reason you kept choosing him. Dex had no one, and then he had you. But it was also tender, in its own damaged way. He stood across the room in his suit, eyes finding you every few seconds as if checking that you were still real, still walking toward him eventually. He looked alone until he looked at you.
The problem was not that Dex didn't love you. Anyone with eyes could see that he clearly did. That was half the horror, really.
He loved you devoutly, too much for such a small courthouse. His attention followed you like a sniper scope. When someone hugged you, his eyes moved there. When Jonathan made you laugh, his face soured. When you looked at him, though, everything in him relaxed so completely that even your worried friends had to see it.
The ceremony itself was almost absurdly short, just a few legal words. A few signatures. Then came the ring that he slid on to your finger with a reverence that made your throat ache. His thumb lingered over the band once it was in place, brushing the metal like proof, like possession he was trying very hard to make gentle.
Your family saw it. Your friends saw it. Ray probably saw it too. But no one said anything anymore. They had tried to warn you. They had tried to tell you it was fast, intense, worrying. They had tried to point out all the red flags. But standing there, with Dex looking at your ring like the world had finally given him permission to keep the one good thing he had found, you knew why none of their warnings had worked.
Because you knew they were not entirely wrong. You just loved him anyway.
When Dex kissed you, it was gentle enough to make your mother cry. His hand came to your cheek, and his mouth touched yours like he was afraid of doing it wrong in front of everyone. But you felt the restraint beneath it, the hunger and devotion. The way he kissed you softly because that was what you deserved, even when every dark part of him wanted to hold on harder and bruise and mark his territory.
—
Two years later, Dex was in prison.
Jonathan tried not to say I told you so. To his credit, he really did try. He stood in your apartment after everything went public, arms folded too tightly, mouth pressed into a line while the news tore the FBI corruption apart in digestible pieces. Even family and friends looked at you like this was the ending they had feared from the start.
But you knew better.
Not because Dex was innocent. He wasn’t. You loved him too much to lie about that. He had done terrible things. There were parts of him that had always been hungry for direction, always been too easy for the wrong man to use.
And Fisk had used him perfectly.He had found every fracture in Dex and pressed his thumb into it. The instability, the need to be useful. The desperate, obsessive love Dex had for you.
Fisk kept you in a basement beneath one of his shell properties and let the world mourn you.
That was the cruelty of it: Fisk did not need you dead. Dead was final. Dead meant there was nothing left to use. But alive, hidden in a cold and windowless place? That made you useful. That made you leverage. Fisk could keep your body locked away while giving Dex a grief designed to break him.
So Fisk staged your death. He built the lie piece by piece. He staged an accident, a fire. The reports say that the body burned beyond recognition was yours, and even had an urn with someone else’s ashes in it with your paperwork attached just in case people started asking questions.
Dex believed it, because why wouldn’t he? Fisk made sure every piece fit. Even Matt believed it for a while. Everyone did.
So when Dex found it, he carried the urn like it was alive. He thought he figured out that Fisk was manipulating him, which was correct. He thought that Fisk had killed you, which was false.
He put the ashes in the passenger seat. He drove to the hotel with one hand on the wheel and the other reaching over sometimes, hovering near the metal like it might feel lonely. He talked to it in that broken voice of his, the one he would have been humiliated for anyone living to hear. He told the urn things. He apologised. He told you he loved you.
Then Dex’s spine broke.
And you were found by the cops shortly after, alive. Bruised, starved, shaking under a blanket in the basement Fisk had buried you in, still asking for Dex before your voice had fully come back.
So when they told you he went into surgery under guard, he had fought your way into that hospital room on the only ground no one could deny: you were his wife, his next of kin, his legal family. You should be allowed in, and you eventually got what you wanted.
During recovery, he looked wrong under hospital lights. The tubes and monitors and bandages made him look less like the terrifying thing the news kept replaying. Guards stood by the door. His wrists were shackled to the bed rails, his ankles too. You scoffed at that but couldn’t do anything about it, really.
When his eyes opened, he came back fighting. His hands jerked against the restraints, chains snapping taut with a hard metal sound that made one of the guards shift forward.
“Don’t,” you said quickly. “Dex, don’t.”
His head turned and saw you. Suddenly, thoughts halted to a stop.
You had seen Dex angry. Jealous. Focused. You had seen him desperate in your bed and gentle in your kitchen. You had seen him worshipful, frightening, almost boyish with love.
You had never seen him look like that. Like he was staring at a ghost and trying to decide whether believing in it would kill him.
His mouth parted, but sound came out.
You stepped closer, hands trembling. “Hi, baby.”
Dex’s breath broke. “You’re alive.”
Your chest caved in. “yeah.”
“No.” His voice cracked in disbelief. “No, I saw— Fisk said—”
“I know.”
“You’re alive,” he said again, louder now, almost frantic. “You’re alive. You’re alive.”
“I’m here.”
The chains snapped tight again when he tried to reach for you. Pain tore across his nerves, but he barely seemed to feel it. His eyes stayed locked on yours,wild and terrified, like if he looked away, you would vanish and the whole nightmare would become true again.
“I thought you were dead,” he whispered.
“I know, baby.”
You moved to him before anyone could stop you. Your fingers found his hand where the shackle allowed, careful around the bruised skin. His grip closed around yours instantly, weak but desperate, like even broken he could not help trying to hold on.
Your wedding ring caught the light. It was a reminder that he was still yours, you were still his, and whatever was left of him seemed to collapse under the proof.
“You’re alive.”
—
Dex was incarcerated after he healed enough to be moved.
Not rehabilitated. Not treated. Incarcerated.
They put him in solitary confinement like that could contain him. Like isolation would ever make him better. Like locking him away from voices and faces and human contact would somehow fix a man whose worst injuries had always come from being left alone too long with his own head.
You hated it. So for three years, you fought to get your husband moved somewhere that might actually help him.
Three years of forms, lawyers, psychiatric evaluations, and rejected petitions. Three years of people looking at Benjamin Poindexter and seeing only what he had done, three years of people looking at you, Mrs. Poindexter, as if you were insane because you still loved him. Three years of explaining, again and again, that solitary confinement was not treatment. And Dex had always been dangerous when he was quiet.
Your old school library job no longer paid enough to carry the life Fisk had torn apart, so you took a better job at a public library. It's a better salary, but longer hours. More responsibility. You now had to think about staff rotas, community programmes, council meetings, difficult patrons, funding cuts, late nights under fluorescent lights while you built displays and answered emails with your wedding ring flashing every time your hands crossed the keyboard.
Every other day, you went to the prison.
Sometimes straight from work, your blazer wrinkled, your tote bag full of library paperwork, your lipstick faded from too many cups of coffee. Sometimes on your days off, when you could pretend the visit was the centre of the day instead of an activity squeezed between legal calls and grocery shopping and a life you had never wanted to live without him in it.
Dex always noticed when you were tired before you said it. He noticed when your shoes were new. He noticed when you had cut your hair, even slightly. He noticed when you had skipped lunch and lied about it. Even in prison uniform, even under the dead light of the visiting room, Dex was still your husband in all the ways that made people uncomfortable and all the ways that kept you coming back.
You told him about your days. You told him about the elderly man who came into the library every Wednesday to read the newspaper and complain about the chairs. The little girl who asked for “a book with a dragon but not a mean dragon because mean dragons have bad vibes.” The teenager who pretended not to care about poetry and then checked out three collections when his friends were not looking. You told him about staff meetings, leaky ceilings, broken printers, new shelving systems.
There were visits where he barely spoke. But even then, his eyes stayed on you. Even then, his fingers moved toward yours. Even then, when you said, “Baby,” parts of him came back to the surface.
You kept fighting because he needed help.
Then one afternoon, after three years of pushing against walls that did not move, one finally gave. The blip, after all, freed some space up. Though you really shouldn't celebrate such a tragedy, it was hard to ignore the fact that this time, it worked in your favor. That day, you carried the news into the visiting room.
His eyes moved over your face, your hands, the folder tucked beneath your arm. “What’s that?” he asked.
You smiled, biting your lip, “I have good news.”
You reached across the table. This time, they let you hold his hand. It was a small mercy. His fingers closed around yours immediately, like he could feel the tremor in you and wanted to steady it without frightening it away.
“A facility we applied to reviewed your case,” you said. “It’s looking good. The transfer is pending final approval.”
Dex didn’t move. You kept going before fear could steal the words from you.
“It’s a secure psychiatric institution. It’s not freedom, I know that. But it’s not solitary. You’d have doctors, actual treatment, scheduled therapy, medication reviews. You wouldn’t be in shackles.”
His face remained controlled, but you knew him too well. You saw the tiny shift in his breathing.
“It’s going to be better,” you whispered. “Okay? Not perfect. Not easy. But better. You won’t be alone in a box, and we get longer visitation hours, okay?”
Dex was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded once. “That’s good.”
Your laugh came out broken, because part of you still found that endearing. “That’s good? That’s all you have?”
His mouth almost softened, guilty at the thought of offending you. “It’s very good,” he amended.
You squeezed his hand, and for one rare second, the visiting room didn’t feel quite so much like a cage. It felt like a door opening somewhere far away.Then Dex looked up again. “But I hope my request gets approved before I get moved.”
“Request?” You blinked. “For what?”
He held your gaze with the seriousness of a man discussing nothing more important than bills. “A conjugal visit.”
For a moment, your mind simply stopped. “What?”
“A conjugal visit,” he repeated, as if you might not have heard him the first time.
You stared at him. Of course he had thought of that.
In three years of legal petitions, medical reviews, prison visits, and fighting to have him treated like a person instead of a weapon, you had somehow not allowed yourself to think about that part. About being his wife in that way still. About how long it had been since he had touched you without guards and tables and rules between you.Dex had, though.
“Dex,” you said softly, rubbing slow circles on his hand.
“What?”
“You are in solitary confinement.”
“I know.”
“You’re probably not getting approved for a conjugal visit.”
“Probably not.”
His expression didn't change, but he squeezed your hand and your stomach turned over despite yourself. You leaned forward as much as the table allowed. The guard near the door shifted, but you ignored him. You kissed the edge of Dex’s mouth, brief and soft, but still enough to make his breath catch.
“Let’s focus on this, yeah?” you whispered.
His eyes stayed on yours. For a second, the hunger in him quieted, almost obedient. He nodded once. “Okay.”
Your hand stayed in his until the guard told you time was up. Dex didn’t let go until he had to.
—
He got approved. Somehow, Benjamin Poindexter got approved for a conjugal visit.
You read the notice three times in your kitchen, work bag sliding off your shoulder, lanyard still around your neck, your shoes aching from a long day on your feet. The letter was painfully plain and administrative. But it was approved nonetheless.
You stared at it until the paper blurred. “What the fuck?” you whispered.
Because there was no way. There was no reasonable, lawful way that your husband, a convicted killer, a high-risk prisoner, had been granted that kind of access.
You knew then that Dex had done something. Nothing obvious enough to get the request pulled. He might have threatened a guard. Maybe Dex had mentioned a name, a detail, some small piece of information he shouldn’t have known and let them do the rest.
You should have been horrified. Mostly, though, you pressed the paper to your mouth and laughed once, breathless and disbelieving, because all you could think was: That’s how badly he wanted me. That’s how much he loves me.
—
When the day came, you waited in the room alone.
You had done the paperwork, gone through twenty locked doors to get here. You came knowing you had a couple of hours with your husband. And forthe first time in three years, there would be no table between you, no visitor chair bolted too far from his. No guards close enough to hear every word. No one telling you not to lean too far across the table when all you wanted was to touch his face.
A couple of hours was not enough.
You smoothed your hands over your blouse, then over your skirt, then clasped them together in your lap to make yourself stop fidgeting. You had dressed too carefully without really thinking about it. You had a white blouse, a nice skirt, because Dex liked seeing you in skirts. You were wearing the cardigan you were wearing when you met him.
You stared at your wedding ring until Dex stepped inside. For a second, neither of you moved.
He looked different. That was your first thought, blunt and stupid and immediate. He looked different, because of course he did. Years had happened. Prison had happened. Surgery had happened. His hair was shorter. His jaw looked sharper. But he was also bigger.
You noticed from your previous visits, of course, but seeing him a bit closer now, it was evident. His shoulders filled out the plain prison shirt. His arms looked stronger than they had in the hospital, muscle sitting heavy under institutional fabric, like all the recovery and physical therapy and whatever routines they let him have had made him sturdier.
You blinked before you could stop yourself. What were they feeding him?
Dex’s eyes found your face first, gaze locked onto you. For one fragile second he did not look like a prisoner at all.
He looked like Dex. Your Dex. Your husband, seeing you after being forced to miss you for too long.
“Hi,” you whispered.
His mouth parted slightly. When the door closed behind him, the lock turned, and whatever restraint he had used to walk in there like a normal person vanished.
You barely got to stand before his hands were on your face and yours were on his chest, and the first kiss was so clumsy it almost made you laugh. Your noses bumped. His mouth missed yours by half an inch and caught the corner instead. You made a tiny sound, half sob and half laugh, and Dex froze like he had done something wrong.
“No,” you said quickly, already smiling through the sting in your eyes. “No, come here.”
You took his face in both hands and kissed him properly, softly at first. Then again. And again.
These were little, ridiculous kisses. The kind you had imagined giving him in every prison visit where a guard stood too close. You kissed his mouth, the corner of it, his cheek. You kissed the line beside his nose, the skin under his eye, the edge of his mouth again.
Dex stood there and let you love him, as if he couldn’t believe you still did at all.
His hands stayed at your waist, almost uncertain, like after all this time he still didn’t fully trust that he was allowed to hold you without someone telling him to stop. But the longer you kissed him, the more his fingers settled. The more his body leaned into yours. The more the tension in his shoulders slowly started to melt.
“I missed you,” you said between kisses.
Dex’s eyes closed. “I missed you, too.”
“I missed you so much.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” You kissed his cheek again, because apparently now that you had started you couldn't stop. “I missed you in the kitchen. I missed you in our bed. I missed you when I had to fix the shelf myself because you would have been so annoying about doing it better.”
His mouth twitched. “You fixed a shelf?” he asked.
“I tried to.”
His eyes opened with attentive focus you had missed so badly. “What happened?”
“It’s currently leaning.”
Dex stared at you, then he laughed. It wasn’t loudly, or freely. It was small, rough, and almost startled, like his body had forgotten how to make the sound and needed you to remind it.
You broke a little. “Oh,” you whispered, smiling like an idiot. “There you are.”
His expression changed before he leaned in and kissed you again, not clumsy this time. A kiss that said yes, here, I’m here, I came back up when you called.
His arms moved around you properly then, and fuck, he was solid.
You had expected him to feel fragile, because part of you still remembered the hospital bed, the shackles, the bruised skin around his wrists after surgery. But this Dex was heavy and strong under your hands. When your palms slid over his shoulders, you felt muscle there making your stomach drop and go hot at the same time.
Still, he stayed sweet for a little while.
You had both expected the hunger. But before that, there was Dex touching your hair like he had thought about the texture of it more than once. There was you smoothing your thumb over his cheekbone, relearning him up close. There was him pressing his face into the side of your neck and breathing in once like he had been living on memory for years and memory had never been enough.
“I missed how you smell,” he said, voice muffled against your skin.
You laughed. “That’s creepy,” you said, but smiled into his hair anyway.
Your fingers drifted to the back of his neck, then lower, over the ridge of his shoulder. You felt him shiver when your touch found the edge of the scar beneath his shirt. You paused, but he shook his head against you. “It’s okay.”
So you kept touching him gently. Through the fabric first, then at the collar where your fingers could slip just beneath. The scar was there, and Dex’s breathing changed when you traced it. Not with pain, exactly. It felt more… intimate.
“My baby,” you whispered before you could stop yourself.
His hand flexed at your hip. This time, when his mouth opened under yours, the sweetness warmed.His body crowded yours a little more. His hands moved from your waist to your back, then down again.
“You got…” You swallowed, then laughed softly because there was no graceful way to say it. “You got big.”
Dex blinked. For half a second, he looked genuinely confused. Then his eyes dropped to where your hands were spread over his chest. “Big?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I had physical therapy.”
“That is a criminal understatement.”
His mouth twitched again as you dragged your palms over his shoulders, shameless now, because you had earned this. You had earned the right to be stupid about your husband’s arms after three years of prison visits and legal calls and sleeping alone.
“You’re very…” You squeezed his bicep lightly. “Recovered.”
Dex looked at you. “You’re flirting with me.”
You shrugged, but didn’t deny it.
The sound he made was almost an arrogant chuckle.
He kissed you again, and this time there was no mistaking the heat under it. Then, his hands settled on your blouse.
Not grabbing yet, but touching the fabric at your waist, thumbs moving slowly over the buttons as if he had only just realised there was something between his hands and your skin.
You were still smiling when his eyes dropped.
Suddenly, his eyes were fixed on the small gap where one button had loosened, where the fabric had shifted just enough to reveal a flash of black lace underneath.
Dex recognised it at the same time you remembered. “Is that…”
Your face burned hot as you nodded.
It was the black teddy he had bought you for your first wedding anniversary.It was sheer lace at the cups, delicate straps, a low satin-trimmed neckline. Dex remembered the first time you tried it on. You stood at the foot of your bed, pretending not to be shy, while he sat there ruined, looking at you like his brain had briefly stopped receiving oxygen. And now, you had worn it here.
Dex’s thumb brushed the edge of your blouse, right where black lace disappeared beneath it. His eyes darkened. “You wore my anniversary gift under your blouse,” he said.
Your stomach flipped. “When you say it like that—”
“How should I say it?” He demanded, and it was a little mean. But that always did turn you on.
“I don’t know,” you whispered. “Less like you’re about to lose your mind.”
Dex looked back up at you, too focused, too hungry. “I am.”
Oh.
Your hands tightened in his shirt.
The room felt smaller after that, less like a prison facility and more like the bedroom he remembered, the one with your knees pressed into the mattress and his hands shaking at your waist because he hadn’t known a piece of lace could make wanting feel that violent.
His grip settled firmer on your hips. “You have no idea,” he murmured, mouth brushing your ear. “What you do to me.”
Your eyes fluttered shut. There he was. Your husband, touch-starved, breathing against your neck like he had waited years to find out if he could still make you tremble.
You smiled, kind and doomed all the same. “Show me.”
Oh, he had a list.
Dex was undressed before you could blink, all broad shoulders and blown pupils, moving with a focused urgency that made the sterile little room feel suddenly too small to hold him. The white walls, the bolted table, the narrow bed, the chemical-clean smell of the sheets, and none of it stood a chance against the way he looked at you.
He had been counting down to this for years. Every prison visit, every supervised touch, every night alone in a cell had led into this exact moment.
His hands were already on your blouse, quick but not careless, tearing through buttons, ripping them off with a precision that would have been funny if his breathing had not been so rough. The black teddy appeared inch by inch beneath the fabric, lace and satin and memory, and Dex looked ruined.
First on the list: his mouth between your legs.
You understood that the second he dropped to his knees. Dex had barely gotten the teddy off before his hands were already under your skirt, gripping your thighs.
Then his mouth was on you, and every thought in your head broke apart.
“Oh,” you gasped, one hand flying to his hair, the other twisting in the clean white sheet beneath you.
Dex made a sound against you that was almost a groan, almost a laugh. His hands tightened on your thighs, holding you open for him, keeping you there like he was afraid you might disappear if he let go. He was not gentle, like he used to be. He was focused, hungry, and touch-starved enough that every reaction you gave him seemed to make him worse.
“Fuck,” he breathed against you, voice rough and ruined. “You taste so fucking sweet.”
Your whole body went hot. “Dex—”
He didn’t let you finish. His mouth returned to you, and the room became nothing but the wet heat of him, the harsh sound of his breathing, the narrow bed creaking under the way your hips moved despite yourself. The sterile little room had no right to hold something this filthy.
He was still so good, it was unfair.
Dex had always been terrifying when he focused. When he learned something, he learned it completely. And you realised, breathless and shaking, that he remembered everything. Every place that made you gasp. Every rhythm that made your hand tighten in his hair. Every tiny, helpless sound you tried to swallow and failed.
You tried to move back once, overwhelmed, but his hands slid under you and dragged you closer with a low, possessive sound that made your stomach twist.
“No,” he murmured. “Stay.”
So you stayed while he buried himself there like he could spend hours between your thighs if time were not an issue. You stayed while his fingers dug into your skin, while his mouth made you forget the guards outside, the transfer, the years, the ugly world that had kept him from you. You stayed while he took you apart with the kind of devotion that felt less like softness and more like obsession given a mouth.
At some point, you said his name too loudly, and Dex groaned like that was the point.
Of course he wanted them to hear. Of course he wanted the men outside that locked door to know that whatever they thought they had taken from him was still his. You were still his.
When you finally broke, Dex did not stop right away.
He held you through it palms spread over your thighs, breathing you in like the end of the world had tasted sweet and he couldn’t make himself pull away.
Only when you tugged weakly at his hair did he lift his head.
Dex looked up at you like he had just crossed the first thing off a list and still had every intention of finishing the rest.
Number two on the list should have been obvious when he suddenly looked shy.
“Can I ask you something?” he murmured.
Your breath was still uneven. “Dex.”
His mouth pressed briefly to the inside of your knee, like he needed one more second to gather himself. “I want your mouth.”
Oh.
Your stomach flipped so hard you almost laughed. Who were you to deny this man anything?
You slid off the bed and onto your knees in front of him, and Dex went very still.
His hand came to your cheek, careful at first, thumb brushing your skin like he needed to touch you gently before letting himself want. His breathing changed when you looked up at him. His pupils were blown wide enough to make him look almost feverish.
“Baby,” he said, voice rough.
You smiled before giving him what he asked for.
Dex’s hand stayed in your hair, not forcing, not taking. His head tipped back. His throat worked. His eyes squeezed shut and opened again because he seemed to hate missing even one second of you.
He was big in every way you remembered and worse because you had missed him.
Too much, almost. Overwhelming enough to make your eyes water, enough to make your hands press at his thighs when you needed a second, and Dex stopped immediately each time.
His hand softened in your hair. “Too much?” he rasped.
You shook your head, breathless, stubborn, and a little ruined yourself.
Dex looked like that might kill him. Then you kept going, and he fell apart beautifully.
He moaned your name like a warning, like a plea. His hand stayed on your cheek against your cheek, his thumb brushing away the wetness at the corner of your eye with such tenderness that the gesture felt obscene in context.
“You’re perfect,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Fuck, you’re perfect.”
You felt him getting close, and you wanted nothing more than feeling him down your throat, but he pulled back, stopping himself so abruptly you almost protested.
Dex stared down at you, chest heaving, eyes wild, mouth parted like he had just survived something.
You blinked up at him.
He gave a rough little laugh, almost pained. “No,” he said, voice hoarse. “Not yet.”
You smiled slowly. “Not yet?”
His gaze darkened again. He reached down, thumb brushing your lower lip, still shaking from the effort of denying himself.
“I have two more things on the list,” he reminded you, making your thighs pressed together.
Dex helped you back onto your feet with hands that weren’t quite steady, then kissed you so deeply you tasted the restraint he had forced himself to keep.
“Bed,” he murmured against your mouth.
Number three on the list was taking you from behind, of course.
He turned you toward the bed with hands that were still shaking his mouth at your shoulder, your neck, the back of your ear.
He moved slowly at first, because even like this, rough and ruined and half-mad with missing you, Dex was still Dex. He still listened to every breath, every shift of your body, every little sound that told him whether you were overwhelmed or wanting more. The stretch of him made your hands fist in the sheet, your body tensing around the sheer shock of having him again after so long without. His mouth pressed to your shoulder. “Breathe,” he rasped. “I’ve got you.”
He took his time even though you could feel restraint burning through him. The way he cursed softly against your skin when you finally relaxed into him, when your body remembered him properly and pulled him closer.
“Fuck,” he breathed, voice breaking. “You’re so—”
He cut himself off with his mouth against your shoulder, like the words were too much, like saying them would make him less controlled than he already was.
Then he started moving. God, he hadn’t forgotten you, so of course you were loud almost immediately.
The first sound broke out of you before you could stop it, your whole face burning. Dex’s hand tightened at your hip, and the next lewd mewl came worse. He made a low sound behind you, smug and satisfied in a way that made heat crawl up your spine.
You bit down on your own wrist, trying to muffle yourself.
His hand slid up your body and gently pulled your arm away. “No,” he said, voice rough. “I waited three years to hear you.”
Your whole body went hot. “Dex—”
“Let me hear you.”
And then he made sure you did.
He got rougher, hungrier. His body covered yours, his mouth dragging over your neck while his hands held you exactly where he wanted you. The bed creaked under you. The sheet twisted beneath your fists. Your voice filled the room because he kept pulling it out of you, again and again.
At some point, there was a knock on the dorm but unfortunately Dex did not have enough self control to stop.
You looked over your shoulder, cheek pressed flush into the sheets.
The little window opened and a guard looked in. They were worried, you realised. You had been so fucking loud.
The humiliation should have swallowed you whole. Instead, your stomach flipped.
“You okay?” the guard called.
You could barely speak. “Hmmph, Y-yes!” you managed.
Dex’s hand slid over your stomach, keeping you pressed back against him.
The guard moved away when he realised what he was seeing, face red.
The second the shadow disappeared, Dex’s mouth was at your ear. “You liked that.”
You shivered.
“You liked him checking,” he murmured, darker now. “Liked him hearing what I do to you.”
You should have denied it, but you could not bring yourself to lie, Dex made a rough, broken sound against your neck and moved again, deeper into the heat, rougher now because he was jealous, because some stranger had seen even a glimpse of your face like that and Dex couldn’t stand it. He kissed your shoulder hard and held you like he could erase the guard’s eyes from the room by making you forget anything existed except him.
“Mine,” he breathed.
You answered with his name, exactly how he wanted it.
Number four on the list started with him denying you an orgasm.
That was how you knew prison had changed him.The old Dex, the one who melted when you praised him, the one who went doe-eyed and obedient under your hands, had been buried under three of whatever this was.
Dex flipped you over before you could come undone.
Your gasp broke against his mouth as your back hit the narrow mattress, the white sheet twisted beneath you, your body sore in the best, most aching way. You were already too close and he knew it. Of course he knew it. He knew your body like he had studied it for a test he refused to fail.
“Not yet,” he murmured.
You made a helpless little sound, half protest, half plea. Dex’s hand slid up your waist, and he was inside you again in no time.
Oh. you realised, he wanted to look at you when you came. That was all. So sweet. So cute.
But then you felt him twitch, and you realised that he was close before he did. Or maybe he knew, and he was just too far gone to care about anything else.
“Dex—” Your voice caught. “Dex, I’m not— fuck, I’m not on birth control.”
He didn’t stop completely. His whole body stuttered above yours, rhythm faltering, breath punching out of him like you had hit him in the chest.
“Hmph—fuck.” His forehead dropped against yours. “I know.”
Your eyes snapped open. “You know?”
His hand slid over your stomach, possessive, and the sound that left him was almost pained.
“I know,” he said again, rougher. “I know, baby.”
The words should have sobered you, but you loved him, and you loved that he was still above you, still shaking, still so close you could feel every tremor of restraint tearing through him.
“Dex,” you gasped.
“I thought about it,” he said, voice low and wrecked. “Every night.”
Your body went hot. His hand pressed a little firmer over your stomach, not forcing, just holding there like the thought had been living in him for years.
“You in our apartment,” he murmured, words breaking between breathless little sounds. “My wife, wearing my old shirts. Sleeping alone. Fighting for me. Sitting across from lawyers and doctors while I sit in a– hmmphh— a fuckin’ box.”
“Baby—”
“And all I could think was… fuck—all I could think was I should have left you something.”
Your breath caught so hard it almost hurt.
A baby, he meant.
A living tether. Something that would tie you to him in a way no prison door, no court order, no transfer file could undo. And sure, if you were going to leave him, you would have done it already. No court in the world would blame you for divorcing a killer. No friend, no family member, no sane person would call you cruel for walking away.
But you stayed. And fuck, somehow, staying was still not enough for Dex. He needed proof that some part of him could still belong to you permanently.
In his mind, twisted and tender as it was, this was not a trap. It was a gift.
His eyes locked on yours, blown dark and terrifyingly attentive even through the haze.
His mouth was against yours, then your jaw, then your throat, never settling anywhere long enough to be gentle. He kept touching you like he could not decide what he needed more: your face, your waist, your hips, the heat of your body.
“You feel that?” he rasped, voice wrecked as you squeezed him a little. “How bad you want it?”
You did want it, but you could barely answer. Every breath came out wrong, caught somewhere between a moan and his name. Your thoughts had gone useless, scattered apart by the obscene tenderness of his palm resting low and possessive like he was already imagining the seed taking root there.
“Dex—” you sighed, trying to bury your face in his ned
“No, baby.” His mouth brushed your ear, rough and hot, as he pulled your hair back gently to look into your eyes. “Don’t get… shit— shy now. Not after that. N-not after the sounds you’ve been making ‘f me.”
Your face burned, but your hands only tightened on him.
His voice dropped lower, filthier, the words breaking between harsh breaths. “My pretty girl wants something from me, huh?”
Your whole body went hot.
Dex’s palm pressed a little firmer over your stomach. “S-she wants me to leave her with something.” His breath hitched, and for a second his voice almost failed him. “Wants to walk out of here carrying more than m-my… hmm— fingerprints.”
You made a helpless sound.
“There it is,” he murmured. “You like that, fuck! You like thinking about it.”
“Dex-please—”
“Yeah?” His mouth found yours, messy and desperate, before he pulled back just enough to look at you. His pupils were blown wide, his face flushed, his control hanging by a thread he was clearly ready to let snap. “My pretty girl wants my baby, huh?”
Your breath caught so hard it hurt.
Dex saw it the way your body answered before your mouth could.
His face changed, hunger folding into something sickly sweet, almost tender in the worst possible way. “Fuck,” he whispered. “You do.”
Your eyes stung.
You hated and loved how well he knew you all the same.
“Wants something of mine when they t-take me back,” he breathed, mouth dragging along your cheek. “Something they c-can’t put in a cell. Something that— hnghhh — still has me in it.”
You were shaking now, overwhelmed and aching and so far gone that language felt like a thing happening on another planet. Dex was talking to you like he knew exactly where every dark little want lived under your skin, like he had spent three years locked away with nothing but the memory of you and all the ways he wanted to make himself permanent.
“Say it,” he murmured.
You couldn’t, not properly. Dex’s eyes darkened further.
“C-can’t even talk,” he whispered. “That’s okay. I know you.” His thumb moved slowly over your skin. “I know what my wife wants.”
Your breath broke.
His forehead pressed to yours, and for one second, under all that hunger, he was shaking with the effort to hold himself back.
“But you gotta tell me,” he said, voice raw. “Tell me no and I’ll stop.”
The restraint from him was phenomenal. Your hands slid up to his face, holding him there, forcing him to look at you while you gave him the answer.
“D-don’t you fucking dare stop,” you whispered.
“Yeah?” he asked, like he needed it again, like one yes was not enough to survive on.
“Yes–Fuck! Yes, baby.”
His mouth crashed back to yours, swallowing the rest of your answer, and the room disappeared into heat and the terrible intimacy of choosing this with him. His hand stayed over your stomach the whole time, almost reverent, like the fantasy had become real the second you let him have it.
He kept talking against your mouth, the words coming apart as badly as he was.
How good you were. How much he had missed you. How he had thought about you every night. How he wanted to leave something behind. How you would be going home with him in a way no guard could take from you.
You clung to him through it, nails catching on his shoulders, then his back, then the scar along his spine. Dex shuddered when you touched it, a broken sound leaving him before he buried his face against your neck and held you closer, closer, closer, like he could press three lost years into the space between your bodies and make them disappear.
When he finally came with you, he did it with your name on his mouth and his eyes fixed on yours, like he needed you to see every second of what he was giving you.
His forehead dropped to yours afterward, both of you breathing too hard.
For a while, neither of you spoke. The guards outside were silent. The room was wrecked in small damning ways: twisted sheets, scattered clothes, your blouse half on the floor, the black lace halfway off the bed.
Dex kissed your cheek. Then your jaw. Then the corner of your mouth.“I missed you,” he whispered, and this time it sounded almost broken.
You closed your eyes and held him there. “I missed you, too.”
—
The knock came fifteen minutes later, and you hated it. “Poindexter,” a guard called, “Time.”
Dex was still against you, face buried in your neck, one arm locked around your waist like pretending not to hear it might make the door stay shut. For a second, neither of you moved. His breathing was still uneven against your skin, and your fingers were still in his hair, and the narrow bed beneath you looked absolutely ruined.
Another knock. You touched the back of his neck. “Baby.”
“I know.”
He didn’t sound like he knew. He sounded like leaving you there might kill him.
You both moved in a rush after that, half-dressed and breathless, trying to put yourselves back together before the guards came in. The sheet was twisted. Your skirt was crooked. Your blouse was missing buttons because Dex had been too impatient, so you had to clutch the fabric closed with both hands while smiling like an idiot anyway.
Then the guards stepped in. One of them looked at the bed, then at you, then at Dex. His face went carefully blank.
“Hands,” he said.
You stepped forward before Dex could turn around.
The guard sighed. “Ma’am—”
“One second,” you said.
Dex bent instantly, like he had been waiting for permission. You kissed him once. Then again. Then to his nose, because one kiss was not enough and never would be.
“I love you,” you whispered.
He looked like he might cry. “I love you, too”
Then they cuffed him.
You hated the sound of metal around his wrists. It meant the world taking him back. At the door, Dex looked over his shoulder, and you stood there still holding your blouse together, still smiling, still ruined.
The guard muttered, “Filthy animals,” as they disappeared into the hall.
Then you heard Dex chuckle, low and rough and proud. Like being filthy with you was the best thing anyone had ever called him.
You stood there for a second, and then you laughed under your breath, too.
Because you loved it. You loved being disgusting with him. Loved that the room looked wrecked. Loved that the guards knew. Loved that Dex would carry that insult back to his cell like a compliment, and that you would go home with the same stupid, shameless pride in your chest.
Filthy animals.
Yeah. You smiled to yourself, still holding your blouse together. Maybe you were.
—
You were pregnant.
You found out before the transfer, while Dex was still in prison, still waiting to be moved to the secure psychiatric facility you had spent three years fighting for. For three days, you carried the secret around yourself like a forcefield. You went to work, answered emails, helped patrons at the public library. You smiled politely at everyone while your whole body felt like it had become a locked room with a miracle inside.
When you told Dex, he knew something was different before you even sat down. His eyes went to your face, then your hands, then the way you kept pressing your palm nervously against your stomach. “What happened?”
You laughed once, shaky and soft. “Nothing bad.”
Dex didn’t relax, so you reached across the table and took his hand as much as the cuffs allowed. His fingers closed around yours immediately. “I’m pregnant.” For a second, it was like the whole visiting room lost sound. Then his eyes dropped to your stomach. “What?”
You smiled through the tears already coming. “I’m pregnant, baby.”
The chair scraped back before the guard could stop him.
Dex moved toward you on instinct, cuffed hands reaching for your face, not violent, not thinking, just desperate to touch. The chain between his wrists caught on the edge of the table, but he barely seemed to feel it. His palms found your cheeks, and then he was kissing you across the table like the whole room had disappeared.
“Poindexter,” the guard snapped.
Dex didn't hear him. Or he did, and for one dangerous second, he didn’t care.
You kissed him back, crying into his mouth, fingers gripping the front of his prison shirt because this was your husband, your baby’s father, and he was making this broken sound against your lips.
Another guard came over. “Back. Now.”
They had to pull you apart. Actually pull you apart.
They had one hand on Dex’s shoulder, another on his arm, dragging him back while his cuffed hands strained toward you and yours reached for him across the table. His eyes stayed locked on your face the whole time amazed and almost frightened by the size of what he felt.
The transfer happened not long after.
The institution was better than solitary. You reminded yourself of that every day. He had doctors now. Treatments, structure. He was not locked alone in a box anymore.
But he still was not free. He wasn’t there when your stomach first started to show, but the institution had better visitation rules than the prison, and the first time you came in visibly pregnant, Dex was allowed to touch you. His hand settled over the curve of your stomach so carefully it made your throat ache, like he was afraid the smallest wrong movement might cost him the privilege.
He wasn’t there when the baby kicked for the first time either, but later, during one of those visits, the baby kicked beneath Dex’s palm. Dex went completely still, eyes dropping to your stomach.
Still, he wasn’t there for the smaller, lonelier things. He wasn’t beside you in the maternity shop when you cried because nothing fit right and you wanted him there so badly it hurt. He should have been there making some too-serious comment about proper shoes, back support, and whether the changing room bench was structurally safe enough for you to sit on.
But even then, you told him everything. Every appointment. Every craving. Every scan. Every tiny development you could turn into words and carry to him.
Then Leonard was born. Leo, for short, named for his father.
Dex wasn’t allowed to be there.
That hurt him in a way he didn’t know how to hide. You didn’t know this, but one of the nurses told you he had become erratic after the call came through that you were in labour. Not violent, but frantic, pacing, asking the same questions over and over, trying to negotiate with people who had no authority to give him what he wanted. By the end of it, they had to force a couple pills down his throat so he could just calm down.
So when you finally called, exhausted and crying, with your son against your chest, the silence on the other end felt too careful.
“He’s here,” you whispered. “He’s here, baby.”
Dex didn’t answer right away. For a moment, all you could hear was his breathing, thin and controlled, like he was holding himself together by force. Then, very carefully, he asked, "Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes.”
You could almost picture him sitting there, hand curled too tightly around the phone, trying to make himself calm enough to deserve hearing this.
“Tell me,” he said.
You told him Leo had blonde hair. You looked down at the baby curled against you, tiny and furious, with pale hair against his head and features that already made your chest ache because there was no denying whose child he was.
“He looks like you,” you whispered.
Dex didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice sounded stripped bare.
“He does?”
“Yeah, baby.” You smiled through tears, touching Leo’s tiny cheek. “He looks like his father.”
Still, after weeks, then months, then years of hearing about Leo through you, Dex began to know him in fragments.
Children were not allowed inside the institution, so Leo had never met his father. Dex knew him through the stories you told him in visitation rooms, through the photographs you were allowed to bring, through the change in your voice whenever you said his name. You gave him a picture of Leo asleep with one fist tucked under his cheek. Leo with blond hair and your eyes. Leo scowling at the camera in a way that looked so much like Dex it made him go silent the first time he saw it.
But he didn’t love Leo properly yet. How could he? He had never held him. Never felt the weight of him against his chest. Never smelled his skin, never rocked him through a cry, never watched him fall asleep in his arms. Leo was still partly an idea to him, a child made real through your love before Dex could reach him with his own.
But he loved Leo, in a way, because you loved him.
That was easier. You loved that baby, so Leo mattered. Your face relaxed when you spoke about him, so Dex learned to relax around the sound of his name too. And somewhere in the darkest, neediest part of him, he thought he owed Leo his life because he made you stay.
Leo was Dex’s gift to you, because he didn’t want you to be alone.
So Dex loved Leo in the only way he knew how at first: because Leo was yours, because Leo was his, because Leo looked like him, and because Leo kept a piece of him in your life while the rest of him was locked away. He loved him for your sake, before he knew how to love him for his own.
—
Leo was three years old when Vanessa Fisk made Dex kill Foggy Nelson.
He was three, serious-eyed, stubborn in the exact way that made your mother sigh and say, “That’s probably his father,” under her breath. Leo had Dex’s watchful stare, Dex’s unnerving ability to go quiet when he was thinking too hard. But he was still a toddler, so the quiet never lasted long. One minute he would be silently studying the wheels of a toy truck like he was investigating a crime scene, and the next he would be shrieking because his banana had “broken wrong.”
He loved dinosaurs, but only “scary ones.” He refused to wear socks that had seams in the wrong place. He called the moon “the night light” and cried once because you explained he couldn’t take it home. He had Dex’s face in miniature and your habit of talking to himself while concentrating, which meant you spent most mornings watching your tiny blond child line up toy animals on the floor and whisper, “No, no, you go there. No, you not listening.”
You were a good mother. You packed snacks. You remembered nursery forms. You cut grapes in half. You kept emergency wipes in every bag you owned. You sang the same bedtime song three times if Leo asked, even when your throat hurt and your body felt hollow from work and worry and loving a man the world had never stopped punishing.
Dex knew all of that through you. Leo liked peas this week. Leo hated peas this week. Leo asked why cats had no eyebrows. Leo threw a shoe at the wall because bedtime was, apparently, “a bad idea.” Leo had asked about Daddy again.
You and Leo had become the one fragile architecture that kept Dex going. Vanessa understood that because Vanessa Fisk understood devotion, even when it was ugly.
So when she found out about you and Leo, it was over.
She came to Dex with ammo in her metaphorical gun.
This was no way to live, she told him, taking away the meds. Was this what he wanted? To hear about his son in secondhand stories? To let you raise a child alone while other men opened doors for you, helped carry groceries, taught Leo to kick a ball, to ride a bike, to be brave? Raising a child was hard, wasn’t it? You were young. Lonely. Exhausted. Beautiful. How long before someone else started looking less like help and more like a replacement?
Didn’t he want to be a husband? A father? Didn’t he want to come home?
Then, she gave him a photo of you at home, hair tied back, Leo on your hip. How… did she get this photo?
Then she gave him structure: Kill Foggy first. Then he could go to you and Leo.
That was the order of how it went. It was a task, a reward, a way back to the only life he still cared about. And Dex had always been most dangerous when someone took his pain and turned it into a sequence.
So he killed Foggy Nelson. And afterward, when they dragged him back into court, you wanted to see him.
Not because you excused murder. Not because Foggy didn’t matter. But because you were his wife, and you knew that Dex didn’t kill like that out of nowhere.
He wouldn’t simply go on a rampage. He didn’t wake up one day and decide he would burn every bridge that led to you. He loved you too much for that. So you came to the conclusion that someone must've reached into the most frightened part of him, and aimed him again.
You knew that, but the court didn’t care. This time, the court issued an order. It was for your son’s sake, they said. An injunction, no contact. You and Leo were not to be in the same room as Benjamin Poindexter. Not in court, not in visitation, not anywhere a judge could prevent it.
You stood very still when they told you this.
Leo was at home with your mother, probably refusing lunch because the sandwich had been cut into triangles instead of squares.
You didn’t cry. Not when the injunction was read. Not even when Dex was sentenced for the second time. You just listened. Then you got to work.
Because crying would come later, probably in the shower, probably with one hand over your mouth so Leo wouldn’t hear. But right then, there were lawyers to call, motions to file, and records to request. You knew your husband. You knew what manipulation looked like when he was the one pointed like a weapon.
And after court, you went back to Leo. He was sitting on the living room floor in dinosaur pyjamas even though it was the afternoon, blond hair sticking up at the back, one sock on and one sock missing for reasons nobody could explain. He looked up when you came in, toy stegosaurus clutched in one hand.
“Mama,” he said seriously, “Nana said no more crackers.”
You knelt in front of him, your knees cracking with the exhaustion of the day. “Your grandma is probably right.”
Leo frowned like you had betrayed him on a legal level. “I need snacks.”
“You had a snack.”
“I need more snacks.”
“You need dinner.”
He considered that, then lifted the stegosaurus. “Dino needs crackers.”
“Dino can have pretend crackers.”
Leo stared at you with Dex’s eyes. For one awful second, you almost laughed and almost cried at the same time. Instead, you reached out and smoothed his hair down. It sprang back up immediately.
“Daddy has that face too,” you whispered.
Leo blinked. “Daddy?”
You had never lied to him. You told him Daddy was away. Daddy loved him. Daddy couldn’t come home yet. All true, and yet, none of it was enough.
“Yeah,” you said softly. “Daddy.”
Leo looked down at his dinosaur, then back at you. “Daddy like dinos?”
You smiled even though your throat hurt. “I think Daddy would like whatever you like.”
Leo nodded, satisfied by that, and shoved the stegosaurus into your lap. “Then Daddy like this one. He bite.”
You held the toy carefully, like it was evidence. “Yeah,” you whispered. “He bite.”
Leo climbed into your lap after that, all knees and elbows, and you wrapped both arms around him. He smelled like shampoo and the strawberry yoghurt he had somehow gotten on his sleeve. He pressed his face into your shoulder for exactly four seconds before wriggling away again because three-year-olds loved affection on their own schedule.
You let him go. You watched him return to his line of dinosaurs, babbling to himself, head bent in concentration.
You opened your notes app and started another list: Lawyer. Injunction appeal. Facility records. Contact restrictions. Dex’s medication logs. Visitor records.
You could be heartbroken later. Right now, you were Leo’s mother. Dex’s wife. And someone had used your family to turn your husband into a weapon again.
And you were going to find out why.
—
A year later, you were watching the news while Leo played on the carpet.
Not watching, really. You were letting it sit on in the background while you moved through the living room with half your attention split into a dozen places at once. Leo’s sippy cup was on the coffee table. His toy dinosaurs were arranged in a careful little line near your foot. A postcard Johnathan had sent from the Bahamas with his boyfriend on the fridge. There was a basket of laundry on the chair you had been meaning to fold since yesterday, and your laptop sat open on the sofa beside you, full of documents, court filings, old visitor logs, psychiatric reports, and all the research you had been collecting like ammunition.
You had been working for weeks. You had names, dates, transfer notices, facility records, connections that were too neat to be coincidence. You had followed the clues until your stomach turned. Dex was going to be moved into general population, and it was not an administrative error. It was not random. It had the Fisks’ fingerprints all over it, even if she was careful enough never to leave them where a normal person could see.
After all, it hadn’t taken you long to find out about the Red Hook charter. That part had been almost laughably easy. Child’s play, really.
The public library had a stack of old municipal records tucked away in the back, half-forgotten beneath outdated notices and donation forms. Someone had slapped a label on the box years ago — NEEDS TO BE SHREDDED — and then, by some miracle of underfunded bureaucracy, no one ever had.
So you had done the one thing you could think of and sent Matt Murdock an anonymous tip. You didn't give a signature or explanation. It was just enough information to make him look where he needed to look. It was just enough to prove to him that Dex was not acting on his own.
Matt went to see him that morning. You knew because you still had someone inside the prison willing to tell you what the official channels never would. A friend, barely. A contact, more accurately.
Then, that night, the news broke: Benjamin Poindexter had escaped from prison and attempted to assassinate the mayor.
Your husband’s name was on every channel again. Your husband’s face was dragged back into the world as a threat, a headline, a monster with a body count and no context anyone cared to say out loud.
You stood frozen in the middle of your living room, remote in hand, while the news anchor spoke over footage you could barely process. On the carpet, Leo lifted his plastic stegosaurus and made it bite the sofa cushion.
“Rawr,” he said seriously.
You looked down at him and how completely unaware he was that his father had just broken out of prison and tried to kill a man.
Leo was too busy frowning at the stegosaurus with Dex’s whole face in miniature, pale brows pulled together, mouth pressed into a stern little line. “No,” he told the dinosaur, pushing its plastic nose away from the triceratops. “No bully.”
The stegosaurus apparently disagreed, because Leo made it chomp again. Then he gasped, offended by his own storyline. “No. Bully bad.” He picked up the stegosaurus, turned it toward the triceratops, and shook it gently. “You say sorry.”
You stared at him.
Leo bumped the stegosaurus’s head carefully against the triceratops. “Sowwy,” he said in a deeper voice.
Then he made the triceratops pat the stegosaurus on the head. “Okay. Be kind now.”
Your chest tightened so hard you had to sit down.
Leo looked up. “Mama?”
“I’m okay,” you said too quickly.
He stared at you with your own eyes, unconvinced.
You turned the volume down, but not off. You couldn’t make yourself turn it off. You sat there with Leo at your feet and the whole city falling apart on-screen, trying to understand the sequence. Matt’s visit. The transfer. The Fisks. Dex escaping. The mayor. None of it random. None of it was out of nowhere, and you probably were the one to set this into motion the second you gave the anonymous tip.
“Mama,” Leo said again, holding up a toy. “Dino hungry.”
“Dino is always hungry,” you whispered.
“Need snack.”
“Okay,” you said, because your voice was already too close to breaking and arguing with a four-year-old about a plastic dinosaur felt like the one thing you could actually survive. “Let me check what we have.”
You stood and crossed into the kitchen, still listening to the news. The fridge light came on cold and white across your face. You stared into it without really seeing anything: half a punnet of strawberries, Leo’s yoghurt, and Leftover pasta. A little container of cut grapes.
The news anchor said Dex’s name again. Your hand tightened around the fridge door.
You reached for Leo’s yoghurt, then stopped because he had asked for a snack for the dinosaur, not himself, and for one absurd second that distinction mattered enough to make you laugh under your breath.
Then you realised that Leo was… silent. He wasn’t babbling. He wasn’t talking to his toys. Is he okay?
Worried, you looked back into the living room.
Leo was standing in the middle of the carpet, one dinosaur clutched in his hand, his small body frozen in a way that made the back of your neck prickle.
He was waving at the window.
No. Not the window. The fire escape.
Beyond the glass, half-hidden in the dark metal lines of the fire escape, was his father.
Oh.
Little did you know, Dex had already been there for fifteen minutes.
Fifteen whole minutes of being half-hidden in the dark, one hand braced against the cold metal railing while he looked into the life he had only known through your stories. At first, he watched you, moving through the living room with the television flickering against your face, beautiful and alive, one hand absently touching your wedding ring while you tried to hold the world together through the sheer refusal to give up on him.
But when his eyes found Leo, Dex forgot how to breathe.
He knew what his son looked like from photographs. He knew he had blond hair, serious eyes, and that little frown you always said was his. But seeing Leo in person was different. It was jarring, how much he actually looked like him. Leo was now a real person to Dex, sitting cross-legged on the carpet in dinosaur pyjamas, scolding a plastic stegosaurus for biting another toy.
Dex watched Leo make the dinosaur apologise. He watched Leo say that bullying was bad. He watched his son choose kindness with no one guiding him toward it.
Oh. Leo looked like him, but he was good in a way Dex had never been able to be without help. Dex had always needed a North Star, someone outside him to point toward right when his own internal compass spun uselessly in the dark. He would always need you that way, always look to you when the world blurred at the edges and everything started to feel lost.
But Leo did not need a North Star. Leo had one inside him. Leo had a functioning moral compass in a tiny body with Dex’s face and your kindness. Dex’s focus, but not his emptiness. Dex’s intensity, but not his fracture. Dex, if someone had loved him correctly from the start.
And that was when Dex understood that he loved him. And not in the distant, complicated love he had forced himself to. Not just because Leo was yours, or because Leo was his, or because Leo had kept you tethered to him while the rest of the world tried to take him away.
Now, he loved Leo because Leo was a good version of him. Because protecting Leo suddenly felt a lot like self-preservation. Like if Dex could keep this child safe, if he could make sure the world never reached into Leo and broke the compass before it had a chance to grow, then maybe some part of himself could be saved too.
Then Leo noticed him.
Dex saw the exact second it happened. Leo’s head turned, eyes lifting past the kitchen table, past the window, to the dark shape crouched on the fire escape.
For one breathless second, Dex couldn't move. He had been caught. Not by the police. Not by guards. Not by Daredevil. By a four-year-old boy.
Leo didn’t scream. He didn’t cry. Of course not. He was your son, too. He was brave, like you.
He only blinked, then lifted one small hand and waved.
Because Dex didn't want to scare him, because he did not know how fathers were supposed to wave at sons they had never held, Dex lifted his hand and waved back.
That was when you noticed.
And fuck, he couldn’t wait to be in your arms again.
The second you got the window open, Dex came through it, one hand catching the frame, the other already reaching for you. The sniper rifle was still strapped across his back, cold against the warmth of your apartment.
You barely had time to say his name before his hands were on you.
He pulled you into him so quickly your feet left the floor, spinning you half across the living room with a strength that startled a laugh out of you before it broke into a sob. His arms locked around your waist, your hands flew to his shoulders, and then his mouth was on yours. The kiss was clumsy in the way only grief and longing could be clumsy. He kissed you like every locked door, every court order, every year stolen from you both had narrowed into this one second.
He tasted like blood and rain.His lip was split. One of his teeth was missing. There were stitches along his forehead and dirt at the edge of his chin, but he was here. Your husband was in your living room with his body against yours and his hands on your back like he was trying to convince himself you were not another trick his mind played against him.
“I missed you,” you breathed against his mouth.
Dex made a broken sound and kissed you again. “I missed you.”
“No, baby,” you whispered, laughing and crying at the same time as you pressed kisses to his mouth, his cheek, the corner of his cheekbones, the scar you’ve yet to trace there. “I missed you. I missed you so much.”
His forehead dropped to yours. For a second, he just held you there, eyes closed, breathing you in like he had forgotten the world. His fingers moved at your waist, not quite gripping, not quite letting go, that old helpless need in him trying so hard to be gentle and failing only because there was too much feeling in one body.
Then a small voice behind you said, “Mama?”
It went through him all at once, the way a person remembered fire after touching a flame. His hands stayed on you, but his whole body locked up, breath caught, eyes opening with a kind of fear you had never seen in him.
Because no, Benjamin Poindexter had no defence against a four-year-old boy in dinosaur pyjamas.
Slowly, you turned in his arms to see Leo stood in the middle of the carpet with one sock missing and his stegosaurus tucked under one arm. His round little face was serious, sleepy, and curious. He looked much like Dex, it made your chest hurt, but he was smaller, untouched by every cruel thing that had made his father into a weapon.
“Mama,” Leo asked, pointing the dinosaur toward Dex, “who’s this?”
Dex’s breath hitched, you felt it under your palm.
For a moment, you couldn’t answer. You had imagined this introduction a hundred different ways over the years. Maybe in a supervised visitation room. Or through a phone call. Maybe one day in some future where paperwork finally gave way and Leo was old enough to understand more than he should have to. You had not imagined Dex standing in your apartment with a rifle on his back, blood at his mouth, wanted by half the city, looking down at his son like the universe had placed his missing pieces in a boy that looked like a mirror.
You swallowed.“Leo,” you said softly, voice shaking. “This is Daddy.”
Dex inhaled like the word had gone straight through him.
Leo blinked up at him. “Hi daddy,” he repeated, testing the shape of it.
Dex was still trying to keep himself held together with force and habit and whatever discipline had survived. But a foreign emotion moved across him as you felt your own eyes fill again.
“Hi, Leo,” he whispered. His voice was wrecked.
Leo studied him with the grave suspicion of a child encountering an adult who looked both interesting and badly assembled. His eyes moved over Dex’s face. Then his little brows pulled together.
“Your teeth is missing,” Leo said.
You made a small sound, half laugh, half sob.
Dex blinked at him. “What?”
Leo took one step closer, stegosaurus still tucked under his arm like backup. “Your teeth is missing. Are you okay?”
And that was what broke him.
Not the years he had lost. Not even the word Daddy, though that had nearly taken his knees out. It was the concern in his son’s voice, the immediate, unprompted softness. The way Leo saw something wrong and, instead of flinching from him, asked if he was okay.
Dex lowered himself slowly to one knee, as if sudden movement might shatter the moment.
The rifle shifted against his back, so violently out of place beside your son’s little bare foot on the carpet. Dex seemed to realise it too. His hand moved as if to take it off, then stopped, uncertain, afraid to do anything too fast with Leo so close.
“I’m okay,” Dex said carefully.
Leo looked unconvinced. “Mama has plasters.”
Dex looked up at you.Your hand went to your mouth, and you cried properly then, because Leo had no idea what he was offering. No idea that his father had come through the window carrying a weapon and a history no child should have to understand. No idea that asking about a missing tooth and suggesting a plaster was the kindest thing anyone had said to Dex all year.
Dex looked back at him, and saw a person. A tiny person with Dex’s hair and Dex’s nose and Dex’s mouth, but he was human, in the way he never was. He was kind.
Leo was everything Dex had wanted to be and never knew how. Leo was a good version of him.
For the first time in Dex’s life, he looked at someone smaller than him and thought, with stunned humility, that he might have something to learn.
From his son, his better self.
Leo tilted his head. “You want Dino?”
Dex looked at the stegosaurus like it was sacred.
Then he held out both hands, slowly, carefully, letting Leo decide.
Leo stepped closer and placed the dinosaur into his palms.
Dex took it as if it weighed more than the rifle on his back. As if this battered little plastic toy had more power to undo him than any weapon ever made.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Leo nodded, satisfied by the manners, then moved closer. His small hand lifted and patted Dex’s cheek, not quite where the scar was, gentle in the imprecise way of toddlers trying their best.
Dex’s eyes snapped to yours. There was panic there. Wonder. A silent, helpless question: What do I do?
You sank down beside them, one hand on Leo’s back, the other reaching for Dex’s face. “You’re doing okay,” you whispered.
Leo patted him again, then leaned forward and, with the sudden trust only children could offer, pressed himself into Dex’s chest.
Dex stopped breathing. Then, slowly, so slowly it made your heart ache, his arms came around your son.
Leo fit against him like he had always belonged there, his same-colored hair tucked beneath Dex’s chin. Dex held him as if the whole room might punish him for wanting it too much, as if any wrong movement would prove he didn;t deserve this.
You watched his hand spread carefully over Leo’s back. The same hand that had hurt people. The same hand that had held weapons. That same hand that now shook from the effort of touching his son gently enough.
Leo looked up from Dex’s chest. “Are you cold?”
Dex swallowed. “A little.”
Leo considered that, then turned to you. “Mama, Daddy need blanket.”
You laughed through tears. “Yeah,” you whispered. “Maybe he does.”
Dex closed his eyes.
His face bent toward Leo’s hair, and for a second he didn’t quite kiss him, He only breathed there, close enough to smell the child he had made and never held. Shampoo. Crackers. Life. His son smelled like life.
When Dex opened his eyes again, they were wet. He looked at you over Leo’s head, and the room seemed to fold around the three of you.
“I missed everything,” he whispered.
You moved closer, pressing your forehead to his shoulder, one hand covering his where it rested on Leo’s back. “You’re here now.”
It was not enough, you both knew that. It was nowhere near enough.
But Leo wriggled in Dex’s arms and said, “Daddy, Dino hungry,” with the complete seriousness of a child who had accepted this new adult into his world and immediately assigned him responsibilities.
Dex looked down at him. Then at the dinosaur. Then back at you, for instruction. You tilted your chin like, go on.
“What does Dino eat?” he managed.
Leo gasped, scandalised that his own father didn’t know. “Crackers.”
Dex looked at you, and you nodded, so he also nodded, “Okay.”
Dex knew now that he was meant to love Leo because Leo was his second chance in miniature.
And Leo had no idea his father would burn the world to keep him safe. Because in the end, that's what makes him a good man, right?
—end.
Extra note : I keep getting distracted from my Dex x reader / ex!Bucky fic, but I promise it’s on its way. In the meantime, my immediate thought after writing this is a sequel where Reader and Dex finds out Leo has powers (is a mutant) and that’s why Dex starts killing anti-vigilante task force. Because he wants to protect his son. (No promises, but let me know if anyone’s interested!)
Dex taglist : @itsdynotdaddy @diabolicallydownbad @doesanyonereadthis @meicore @pixie2k5 @bibiishin @starlitflora @pearlstiare @glorybeat @stardustworlds @castawaybarnes @supervampireflame @not-the-teen-witch @billybonesxx @ultimatewolverine @treetrees-world-of-imagiation @bitch-spaghetti-o @lostinthes4uce @cotton-eee @weallhaveadestiny @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @moonbug333 @yujyujj @mattdexx @lostfallenangelsblog @bloomsberryfairy @flimsysquid @abbotfan @leonetta2014 @ficcharsimpsblog @odairtrqsh (Let me know if I missed anyone. If you want to be added, please ask/messege! it gets lost in the comments sometimes!)
i think we should be ridiculing them more for this. you don't get to try and go all "queer website" when your staff likes to go on nuking sprees targeting the trans fem users
MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE