#AVRILLAVIGNE : she's lost inside — 20s | bi • any pronouns • asian • multifandom • mostly marvel • occasionally nsfw 🔞 • read my carrd here before you follow 𖤐
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what would freak4freak reader do if Dex threatened to lock her up in a basement?
Dex Thinks He Can Lock You Up In His Basement “For Your Own Good.” He Didn’t Expect This.
WC 1.4k
TW freak4freak, established relationship, switch!dex, mentions of violence, confinement, restraint and gagging, humiliation and degradation kink, free use arrangement, and explicit sexual content. Fem! Reader. Reference pic at the end of the post!
Task force agents almost killed you, so Dex killed them all.
It was simple math, really.
You had gone out looking for trouble, because apparently you adored him for killing task force so much that you had decided to try killing them yourself just to feel closer to him. Dex found you standing in the middle of the aforementioned trouble, killed everyone that you hadn’t already, and cupped your face.
He checked your pulse with two fingers, ran his fingers and eyes over you to make sure you weren’t hurt.
“They almost killed you,” he said.
You smiled a little. “I’m fine, baby.”
“They almost killed you,” he repeated.
“Dex—”
“They almost killed you.”
And then he bent down a little, shoved his shoulder into your stomach, and hauled you up over him like you weighed nothing. His arm was locked over the backs of your thighs, the other braced against your hips, as if you were gonna wander into gunfire if he put you down for even a second. You kicked once, more out of principle than hope, and Dex only tightened his grip.
By the time you got home, he went straight for the fucking basement.
“Dex.”
He only huffed.
“Dex, put me down.”
His hand flexed against your thigh. “Pretty girl,” he murmured, voice feverish, like he was talking to himself more than you. “Can’t stay out of trouble for five minutes, can you?”
Your stomach dropped.
“I’m gonna keep you down here for a little while, okay?” he said, already reaching for the door. “Just while I clean up the mess. Then I’ll come back and make it nice. You’ll be safe.”
You went cold.
“Benjamin,”
He paused, because you using that name meant you were pissed pissed.
Then the lock clicked under his hand. He had made this safe room for you, when you were manic and erratic and borderline uncontrollable. It worked, but you hated it, even if it did save your life more times than once.
After all, free use was one thing. You had both agreed to that. Dex could have your body whenever he wanted, and you could have his, but your freedom was still yours, right?
“It’s for your own good,” he said.
Poor, stupid Dex.
He really should have remembered who he was in love with.
When he reached the bottom step and shifted his weight to unlock the inner door, you grabbed the heavy flashlight from the shelf beside you and swung it as hard as you could into the back of his head. Not enough to kill him, of course! You loved him. Just enough to knock him out.
When he woke up, he was upside down.
His ankles were tied to the ceiling, body tied to the support beam in the center of the basement. His shirt was halfway dragged open by gravity, blood still smeared over his skin, rope shoved between his teeth like a gag and tied tight enough to keep all his bad ideas trapped behind it.
You knelt beside him, a pretty skirt pooled around your thighs.
Dex stared at you, testing the ropes.
His eyes were wild.
He was scared, and not of the ropes. Dex could chew through pain and spit out the bones. No, he was scared because you had that sad look on your face. Apparently, he had fucked up badly enough that you had stopped fighting and started doing whatever the hell this was.
“You hurt my feelings,” you said.
The sound he made around the gag was wet and pathetic. Spit had already slicked the rope, leaking from the corner of his mouth, sliding wrong over his cheek because he was hanging upside down. He tried to say your name. You could hear it outside of the noise: Sorry. Baby. Please.
All those half-hearted apologies were useless behind the rope.
“I gotta punish you for wanting to lock me up in the basement again.” You frowned, reaching past his face and tapped the metal column he was tied to once to taunt him.
Dex swallowed around the gag, eyes locked on yours, then flexed his bound fingers.
Then, you looked up from where you were kneeling.
You could see that he was very clearly hard.
Of course he was fucking horrified and guilty and scared half to death, and still hard enough to strain obscenely against his pants. His length was trapped thick under the fabric, too obvious to ignore, the head pressing a dark wet spot where he had already started leaking.
You laughed under your breath. “Oh, Dex.”
His eyes squeezed shut.
You reached your hand up while still kneeling, sliding your palm over him anyway.
Dex groaned through the gag.
His hips jerked, hungry and humiliating. The ropes held him in place, but not enough to hide what he wanted.
Your hand rubbed higher over the shape through his trousers, palm dragging up until you felt him throb under the cloth. He made a strangled sound as drool gathered at his lip and dripped onto the concrete.
Messy, just as you liked him.
Dex was always so clean, so fucking orderly. Seeing him fall apart just tickles that sweet spot in your brain.
You shifted a bit, and your skirt swayed.
Dex looked straight up from under the hem, and he went so still it was almost funny.
The angle was filthy. His face was right there, upside down beside your thighs, and he could see exactly what you had been pretending he couldn’t: your panties were soaked clinging wet to you because apparently nearly dying, getting carried like a hostage, knocking out your boyfriend, tying him up, and scolding him over his hard on turned you on.
You noticed of course. “Fucking perv,” you breathed.
His length jumped under your palm as you widened your knees a little enough to be cruel.
Dex made a sound so needy it should have embarrassed him. Instead, he looked up your skirt with his mouth forced open around the rope, spit on his forehead, eyes lustful and glassy, twitching in your hand like the sight itself was going to finish him by itself.
You squeezed him through the fabric, and he arched as much as the ropes allowed, hips trying to fuck up into your fist through his pants. You finally stood up and leaned closer, your mouth hovering over the strain.
You kissed his clothed bulge, and he had a better view up your skirt now.
A gutted groan tore through the gag as your lips pressed a flutter of kisses over the wet spot at the head. Your palm held his thighs while your mouth dragged over the length, kissing little pecks here and there. He shivered. Big bad Dex, hanging upside down in his own basement, gagged and drooling while you made out with his arousal through his pants.
Your lips pressed harder over the head of him, and his hips kicked uselessly into your mouth. His eyes were glued under your skirt, like being denied made him fixate harder on the wet little mess between your legs.
You pulled back with a slick sound.
Dex whined.
“You don’t get to feel any more than that,” you said, sweet as rot. “You tried to lock me up.”
His eyes went devastated, but he twitched anyway. “Yeah,” you murmured, rubbing him again. “I know, baby. It’s awful when someone else decides what you’re allowed to have, isn’t it?”
His eyes darkened as fear sank deeper. Shame, too, perhaps, because he finally realised he had hurt you and would have gutted himself open if you asked sweetly enough.
You kissed him through his trousers again, because you weren’t merciful. You had never promised to be.
This time it was filthier. Your tongue dragged up the hard line of him while your fingers pressed into his hip, holding him still as you left a trail of damp in your wake. You mouthed at the clothed head, until his thighs strained against the ropes, until every breath came out muffled, until he looked split between begging and apologising and coming in his pants like a fucking loser.
Then you stopped.
Dex jerked forward, chasing your mouth.
The ropes didn't allow for much movement.
You laughed softly. “There. Lesson one.”
You stood over him, smoothing your skirt down.
His eyes were still glued down there, shameless.
You bent down and kissed his forehead, then the scar on his cheek.
“I’ll untie you later,” you whispered, sickening and loving all the same. “After you’ve learned not to lock me in the fucking basement.”
Dex made a broken sound.
You kissed the corner of his gagged mouth, tasting spit and rope, before you turned toward the stairs.
Behind you, Dex was silent, and not because he had learned his lesson.
Because the creep you called your boyfriend was still too busy watching the slick gathering under your skirt every step of the way.
—
Note: phew, this was done in under 30 minutes and I just needed to get it outta my system 🫠🫠🫠inspired by this Batman #147 variant cover by Jorge Jimenez! (Not saying reader is Punchline and Dex is Joker, this is just a pose reference for the story!)
Summary : Dex has to learn that you can have bad days, too.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : established relationship, hurt/comfort, sensory overload, overstimulation, emotional, traffic light system, safeword use, mentioned free use arrangement, aftercare?, soft ending, dark romance elements, obsessive Dex, protective Dex. DDBA! Dex I think. :)
Word Count : 6k
Requested by : Ko-fi request <3
Notes : Hey ya’ll! If you wanna be tagged, please send me a message! Comments get lost sometimes. Enjoy!
You hadn’t had the best day and it started with the coffee machine not working.
That was entirely your fault. You had cleaned it the night before, rinsed everything carefully, set it back in place, and then just… not set it up properly again. Usually, you would have found it funny. You would have sent Dex a picture of the dead display and made him promise to bring you coffee later.
Instead, you stood barefoot in the kitchen at seven in the morning, pressing the button over and over like one of the attempts might change the result, and felt tears sting your eyes.
Dex was asleep down the hall, face buried in your pillow, one arm stretched across your side of the bed as if he had gone looking for you in his sleep. You considered waking him, and you nearly did, standing in the bedroom doorway with your bag hanging off one shoulder, watching the rise and fall of his back, and thought about crawling under the covers again.
But he had been out all night.
He needed sleep, and you needed to leave.
So you found instant coffee in the back of the cupboard and made it too strong because you were already running late. You burned your tongue, while the clasp on your necklace got caught in your hair. Your tights had a ladder in them, a thin line running up the back of your calf that no one else would probably notice but that you could feel all day like a crack in glass.
You changed twice and hated both outfits.
The third one was acceptable until you got outside and realized the waistband sat weird when you walked. It pinched at one side and shifted at the other. You kept trying to fix it discreetly beneath your coat while waiting for the train, which only made it twist more.
Then the train was delayed.
You kinda wished it would’ve been canceled; it would at least have given you something to be angry about. It was delayed by six minutes, then nine, then twelve, with the announcement changing every time you looked up. The platform filled around you as a lady stood close enough behind you that her bag pressed against your back every time they moved. A man near the stairs was watching videos without headphones, and two women beside you were having an argument in furious whispers.
Your phone buzzed in your hand.
Dex. Coffee machine dead?
You stared at the message for too long.
Normally, you would have answered with something dry and funny immediately. Instead, you typed three different replies and deleted all of them because every version sounded irritated, and you were irritated, but not with him.
You sent a heart.
He replied with three.
That nearly made you cry again.
Work was not terrible enough to justify how terrible it felt.
Nobody screamed at you and nothing caught fire. You didn’t get fired or humiliated, but it was just a constant fucking drag.
An intern, a fresh graduate called Grace, stopped you before you had taken off your coat because they needed help with something they had known about since yesterday. Your computer decided to update while going to the double-booked meeting room, so everyone stood in the corridor pretending not to be annoyed while Brad from HR insisted he had reserved it first. When you finally got inside, the projector would not connect.
Then your manager, Amy said, “This should only take five minutes,” and it took forty-three.
At some point, your coworker Jack, put a hand on your shoulder from behind to get your attention.
You nearly snapped. They apologized. You apologized for reacting. Then you spent the next ten minutes thinking about whether your apology had sounded strange.
That was when you had to go to the bathroom and cry.
You sat in the last stall with the lid down, both feet planted on the floor, trying to breathe quietly so that no one would hear you. You hated crying at work and the bathroom lighting and the thin toilet paper scraping under your eyes. You hated that there was no single problem you could point to and say, there, that’s why I can’t do this today!
Your phone buzzed again.
Dex had sent you a message about going out because task force was spotted in droves on the other side of the city, and that he was going out to get them.
Then cried harder because you missed him, even though he lived with you and you had technically seen him that morning.
You washed your face, went back to your desk, and tried to finish the day.
At four, Dex texted that he would probably be home late.
You stared at that one until the words blurred.
It was reasonable and normal, by your standards. He worked strange hours and disappeared with even stranger explanations. You were used to eating without him. You were used to waking up with him suddenly in bed beside you, one hand finding your waist beneath the blanket.
But you had spent the whole day thinking about going home to him.
You didn’t even want to talk to him. You wanted to walk through the door and see him standing in the kitchen. You wanted him to take your bag without asking and tell you to change into a soft cotton shirt so as not to trigger your sensory issues. You wanted to sit between his knees on the sofa while he rubbed slow circles into your thighs.
Instead, you sent. Okay. Be safe.
He reacted with a heart.
You put your phone facedown and finished the last hour.
The train home was worse than the train in.
You had to stand while a wet umbrella kept brushing your ankle, even though you didn’t realise it had been raining. A man across the carriage kept coughing into his fist and then touching the pole. Every time the train stopped, more people got on and nobody got off.
By the time you reached your building, your shoulders ached from holding them up around your ears. You dropped your keys in the hallway, and the sound of them hitting the floor was so annoying that you just stood there staring at them for several seconds before bending down.
The apartment was dark when you opened the door.
You turned on the lamp instead of the main light and you took off your coat and immediately felt colder. You put it back on. Took it off again because the lining felt horrible against your skin. You stood in the living room holding it, suddenly unable to decide what to do with it even though there was a hook three feet away.
You dropped it on the floor.
Then you felt guilty because Dex liked things clean and in their place.
Fuck.
You sat down beside it and cried with one shoe still on and one shoe off, louder than you cried in the office bathroom. You cried because the apartment smelled faintly like Dex, but he wasn’t there. You cried because you had spent the whole day being reasonable, and now there was nobody in front of you to be reasonable for.
Afterward, you felt stupid and sticky-faced, which just made the sensations worse.
You picked up the coat and put your shoes away. You sent Dex a message asking when he would be home, then deleted it before sending because you didn’t want him distracted while he was out doing very dangerous Bullseye things.
You showered instead, and the water was too hot at first, but you didn’t fix it quickly enough, so your skin felt like it was boiling across your chest and shoulders. You washed your hair. Then the wet texture clung to your back and made you angry, so you wrapped them in one of Dex’s old shirts instead of a towel because it was softer.
You put on your sleep shorts and the gray shirt of his you always stole.
It smelled like the detergent you both used now, not specifically like him, which made you strangely sad.
You tried to eat.
There were pasta leftovers in the fridge. Dex had labelled the container DO NOT EAT in black marker, then added unless you are my girlfriend beneath it in smaller writing because you had told him one you liked one of those cheesy jokes, and Dex being Dex, listened and manufactured it into his life even though he got no real enjoyment out of it. You heated it up, took three bites, and put them back because the tomato sauce was chunky, and it felt weird on your tongue even though technically, there was nothing wrong with it. .
So you made tea and forgot the bag until it went bitter.
You turned on the television, then muted it because the voice of the newscaster irritated you. The silence irritated you too, so you turned it back on quietly with subtitles.
At some point, you checked the locks twice.
You knew Dex would not use the door when he came back. He would use the fire escape.
On most nights, the thought made you smile. Tonight, you wanted him to use his key like a normal person.
You wanted to hear it turn in the lock like a warning. You wanted him to call your name from the entrance so you had time to prepare for being touched.
But whatever. He probably didn't even bring his keys.
You climbed into bed with the lamp on.
Usually, you liked Dex coming home with that focus still in his eyes. You even loved the way he sometimes stood at the foot of the bed and looked at you as if he had followed you there. You liked the games he played to rile you up, because Dex knew exactly how to frighten you without making you unsafe. You liked restraints because he checked every knot, every buckle, every inch of space between your skin and whatever held you down.
You liked being helpless when it was Dex.
Usually.
But tonight, you just wanted him.
You wanted to press your face into his chest and let him complain that your wet hair was soaking his shirt. You wanted him to ask what happened, accept “nothing” as the answer, and hold you still.
The fire escape groaned outside the window.
Then the living room window slid open, and Dex climbed in with blood on his sleeve, still.
You were in that half-sleep state where your body had gone heavy but your mind was still floating somewhere above it, listening to the hum of the television you had left on in the living room and the old pipe knocking faintly in the wall. You were even still aware of your breathing, too shallow to be restful.
You knew what Dex was like after a long night. You knew the way adrenaline ran in his body like a live wire, making him hungry and a little fucking insane. Usually, you were more than happy to let him spend the rest of it on you.
That was the arrangement, after all.
The free use thing had happened over weeks of conversations, some serious, some filthy, some with you sitting cross-legged on the bed while Dex sat on the floor taking it all in like he was memorising a mission brief. What was okay, what was not. It was discussed and re-discussed, picked apart in daylight until even Dex’s paranoid brain had nothing left to gnaw on.
You had said it first half as a joke, grinning over your mug while Dex sat opposite you at the kitchen table looking like you had just handed him a loaded gun.
“What, you don’t like the idea?” you had teased.
His eyes had gone dark in a way that made your thighs press together beneath the table. “I like it too much.”
That had been the problem, Dex had always liked you too much, wanted you too much, so you made rules.
You told him what he could do if you were half-asleep, and what he could do if you were pretending to be asleep, which was different, because sometimes you liked lying there smug while Dex tried to kiss you patiently. You knew what he could do if he came home needy.
Most days, you loved Dex coming into the bedroom while you were still sleepy, his hands sliding under your shirt like he owned every inch of skin he found there. You loved the first drag of his mouth against your shoulder and the rough sound he made when you pressed back into him without opening your eyes. You loved pretending to be annoyed while he kissed down your spine and told you that he knew you were awake because your thighs were already sticky for him.
You loved being wanted like that, loved Dex murmuring filthy nonsense against your skin about how pretty you were, how good you were for him even when you were barely awake. You loved the way he could make free use feel less like being used and more like being worshipped.
Sometimes he was sweet about it, climbing into the bed clean and careful, gathering you back against his chest, and kissing you awake inch by inch like he had all the time in the world. He would slide one hand over your stomach and whisper your name until you made that cute complaining sound he loved, and then he would laugh like you were the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Sometimes he was not sweet, still shaking with adrenaline and put a hand over your mouth before you could say something naughty, only to kiss your temple immediately. Sometimes he pinned your wrists because you liked to fight him for show, and he liked pretending not to know you were letting him win. Sometimes he found you half-asleep and still managed to fuck you awake so thoroughly that by the time you could think again, your face was hot, your hair was a mess, and Dex was in your ear telling you how good you were for letting him have you.
You liked that.
But tonight, your body had already been handled by the entire fucking day. Your nerves had been touched and touched and touched until touch did not feel like touch anymore. It felt more like threat.
You knew that, but then Dex came home and your first thought was still I want him.
You then heard the movement of him walking around the apartment, and not like a direct line to the bathroom, or the kitchen. Not even to check the lock, which he always did even when he had just broken into his own home like a lunatic.
Instead, he was coming to you.
The bedroom door was half-open, and you kept your eyes closed.
You told yourself it was because you were too tired to move, but part of you liked the game. Part of you wanted to be found like this, buried in the middle of the bed in his shirt and your sleep shorts, pretending you hadn’t been waiting all night, helping you forget the day, forget the job, forget everything except getting his hands on the one thing in the world that belonged to him.
He stopped in the doorway, and before you knew it, the mattress dipped.
Dex was always careful at first, even when he was feral. He put a hand beside your hip, not touching yet. His breathing was slow, but not steady. You could hear the way he held himself back for the sake of a rule he wanted to break only because you had once told him breaking it in the right way turned you into putty.
His fingers touched your ankle beneath the blanket, almost testing.
Your body gave a tiny shiver.
Dex went still, before his hand slid higher, possessive enough to make heat flicker through the exhaustion. His palm travelled up the back of your calf, over the bend of your knee, over your thigh. You heard him exhale, and the sound was so hungry it made your stomach flip despite everything.
“Pretty girl,” he whispered.
Your face warmed.
Stupid body. Stupid, fucking traitorous body.
He leaned over you, and his mouth brushed the back of your shoulder where his shirt had slipped wide at the collar. He started with one kiss, quickly followed by another. It became open-mouthed and filthy, like he was trying to be gentle and got overwhelmed. His hand found your waist beneath the shirt, fingers spreading against your skin.
For one second, it worked.
Your violent, devoted, half-mad Dex came home through windows and touched you like you were the only object of desire in the universe, who could make you feel filthy and adored at the same time, who could make being half-asleep feel like the dirtiest kind of safety.
His mouth moved to your neck, hand tightened at your waist.
“Missed you,” he breathed, rough against your skin. “Been thinking about you all night.”
Your thighs pressed together beneath the blanket before you could stop them.
Dex noticed and made a small sound against your throat, almost broken with relief, and shifted closer until his body was against your back. His hand slid over your hip, tugging you back into him.
For one second, you really wanted it.
Your body remembered him before it remembered itself. It remembered all the other nights he had come home ruined and desperate and crawled into bed like your body was the only place he knew where to put the violence. It remembered waking up already breathless to his greedy hands, his mouth saying filthy, adoring things against your skin until you went undone beneath him.
For one second, you wanted to be that girl again.
Dex’s hand tightened on your hip, and your breath broke in a way that sounded enough like pleasure to confuse both of you. He pressed his face into your neck and inhaled like he was trying to crawl inside your veins.
“Color?” he asked, it was rough, but still good of him.
You meant to say yellow.
The word was right there, sitting behind your tongue. Yellow meant slow down, meant you wanted him, but you needed him kinder. It would mean this was good, but also too much. But Dex’s mouth was on your throat, and his hand was warm under your shirt, and you had missed him so badly all day that admitting you needed less felt like losing him for a stupid reason.
So you said, “Green.”
Dex exhaled against your skin. “Yeah?” he murmured.
You nodded, eyes still closed.
You should have said yellow again then. You should have corrected yourself because there was still a good amount of space to do it, while his hand was only at your waist and his mouth was only at your neck, but your mind was gone and your body had betrayed you with that little shiver, and Dex had never been the best at reading the small things. He was more a flashing lights kinda guy.
Feelings had to be handed to him with both hands. It had had to be said plainly, right in front of his face, with no riddles and no hoping he would guess. Dex, through no fault of his own other than his upbringing, didn’t always know the difference between you trembling because you were turned on and you trembling because your nerves were fraying apart unless you told him.
He caught your hip and flipped you onto your back in one rough movement, fast enough that the mattress jolted under you and your breath left in a startled little sound. Dex was above you immediately, one knee between your thighs, one hand braced beside your head, his eyes blown wide with whatever the night had left in him. There was blood at the edge of his collar, and a smear of it near his wrist. His hair was damp from the rain, falling over his forehead in a way that made him look more unhinged at the same time.
“Missed you,” he said, voice wrecked.
Your stomach flipped.
Fuck, he was beautiful like this. Even terrifying, he was beautiful, and you had built so much of your wanting around those two things. Dex looked down at you like he wanted to ruin you and worship whatever was left.
His hand slid to your chin, possessive.
Your thighs pressed together on instincts held apart by his leg between them.
“Mmm ,” he whispered. “My pretty girl.”
Heat curled in you, slick and stupid, even as your skin prickled at the edges. Your bad day had not killed the part of you that loved being grabbed by him, turned by him, handled by him. You loved Dex rough because Dex rough still meant Dex focused, Dex obsessed, Dex so fucking hungry for you that the rest of the world could plunge itself into a void and he wouldn’t give two shits.
His mouth was on yours before you could think. The kiss was hard enough to make your head press back into the pillow. His hand stayed at your chin, holding you there while he took your mouth in a way that made your body go loose for him out of habit. You kissed him back, finger catching the front of his shirt, and when you pulled, Dex made a groan against your lips Then his hand went to the hem of your shirt.
His shirt, technically. He dragged it up your body impatiently, and the cool air hit your skin. You lifted your arms for him before you remembered you were tired.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
Your face went hot.
He threw the shirt behind him.
Usually, you would have laughed and he would have said something deadpan and filthy enough to shut you up. Tonight, the loss of the shirt made you feel exposed too quickly, like your body had not agreed to be perceived that much even if your mind wanted to.
But then Dex kissed down your throat, and you forgot for a second.
His hands were everywhere, greedy at your waist, your ribs, your thighs, reminding himself you were real, coaxing himself out of whatever horror he had done.
You arched under him, and that was honest too.
Your back lifted as your hands found his shoulders. He caught both your wrists in one hand and pressed them above your head, pinning them there against the pillow.
His eyes lifted to yours, fever-bright. “Yeah?”
You swallowed, and this time, no color came out.
Dex took it for yes because it did feel like a yes to you. Usually, you liked being held down. Tonight, you were too tired to know the difference.
Dex reached for the drawer beside the bed.
Your heart jumped, not in fear at first, but in anticipation.
You knew that drawer and what was in it. The rope came out in his hand.
Your breath caught.
“Still green?” he asked.
Say yellow.
Say yellow.
Say yellow.
You looked up at him, at the way his chest rose and fell. You thought about the whole day: the train, office, light, the way you had cried on the hallway floor because your coat had fallen.
You thought, I can take it.
So you said, “Green.”
Dex looked relieved and hungry and dangerously grateful, like he had been waiting all night for permission to stop being human in exactly the way you usually loved.
He tied your wrists to the headboard, roughly, because he was Dex.
He checked the space between rope and skin automatically, two fingers, always. Your wrists went up as the expensive silken rope was bound to the bedframe.
Your body went liquid for one dizzy second.
You loved the helplessness that made your brain melt in a good way. It was a dirty drop of the heart, knowing you couldn’t reach for him now unless he let you. You loved how Dex looked at you when you were restrained, like your trust was the most intimate thing you had ever given him.
“Look at you,” he whispered.
You looked at him looking at you, and for a moment, it was perfect.
Then the rope shifted just slightly. The knot didn’t tighten or hurt. Still, it felt wrong.
The texture scraped your skin in a way it never had before. You could feel every fiber, every point of contact. Your skin pressing against the rope seemed to get louder than everything else in the room somehow, louder than Dex’s breathing, louder than your own heartbeat.
Your fingers flexed, and the rope moved again.
Your stomach dropped.
No.
You tried to breathe through it.
You tried to get the good feeling back. You tried to look at Dex, at his face, at the hunger you usually loved so much. You tried to remind your body that this was chosen and safe and that Dex had checked. That you had said green twice. That you loved this. You loved this. You loved this!
But the rope kept touching you and it felt like pure, crawling wrongness. The feeling started at your wrists and travelled up your arms until your shoulders froze and your chest went tight. The knot might as well have been around your throat for how quickly your breathing changed.
Dex lowered his mouth to your chest, still murmuring something against your skin,filthy and half-mad.
You barely heard it as your eyes filled.
At first, you did not even know you were crying. Then a tear slipped sideways into your hair, then another.
Dex felt you go still, and this time, he noticed immediately.
His head lifted. “Hey,” he said.
You blinked hard, but the tears came faster.
Dex froze above you, that predatory stance gone now.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, panic filling the back of his eyes, unable to read your thoughts.
You couldn’t answer.
His eyes moved over your face, your mouth, your chest, your wrists. He looked almost frantic trying to identify the injury. Was it blood? Bruises, pulled shoulder? Dex was good at identifying wounds.
Emotions made him useless unless you labelled them for him, but this was blatant enough that even Dex understood something was wrong.
“Baby,” he said, voice suddenly stripped bare. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Your breath caught as the rope brushed your wrist again when you moved.
You made a horrible little sound, unable to speak.
Dex’s eyes snapped to your hands.
“What?” he said, reaching up but not touching yet. “The rope?”
You nodded once, almost ashamed.
He nodded grimly. “What about the rope?”
“I-It feels wrong,” you choked.
Dex went white.
Your fingers flexed again, and the texture dragged at your skin, and suddenly you couldn't bear it for one more second. Not even half of one. Your whole body reacted around the rejection, and the word whispered out of you before you had decided to say it. “Red.”
Dex moved instantly.
His hand went to his belt and to his weapons, and for one horrifying second your body thought knife and almost spiralled further under, but Dex was not looking at you like that anymore.
He pulled the blade free with the same face he wore disarming a bomb.
“Don’t move,” he said, practical.
He didn’t untie the rope, because untying took time.
Dex cut it, a clean slice through the first binding, then the second. The rope fell away from your wrists in loose pieces, useless on the pillow, and Dex threw the knife across the room like he couldn’t stand to have it near you a second longer.
Your arms dropped free, and he was already backing away.
Dex had stopped being a man and become an emergency response. His shoulder hit the dresser, hands lifted, palms open.
You were crying, that was all he saw.
Because of me, he thought.
“I’m away,” he said, a little too loudly and too quickly. “I’m away. I’m not touching you.”
His voice was flat. Dex had never been truly calm a day in his life, so was just forcing panic into a box in his mind that was labeled “procedure.”
You tried to say his name, but it came out broken, and it made him worse.
“I’ll go,” he said. “I can go. I should go. You need space. You need me out. I’ll go to the living room. No, not the living room, that’s not far enough. I’ll go downstairs. Outside. I can wait outside. I won’t come back until you tell me. I won’t touch you, I won’t—”
“Dex—”
“I hurt you.”
You wiped at the tears from your eyes now. “Y-you didn’t.”
He wasn’t listening.
His eyes kept dropping to your wrists. His mouth had gone pale and his hands were still up, still shaking slightly like he didn’t trust them anywhere near you.
You said red and you’re crying, was all he could think of.
“I hurt you.” he said, words coming faster now. “I scared you. I tied you down and you cried. I had a knife in my hand. I shouldn’t have had the knife, I knew I was—”
“Dex.”
“I’ll go.”
You tried to get back up, but even the sheets were starting to crawl as you were getting more and more overwhelmed. “N-No.”
“I need to go.”
“Dex,” it came out breathy.
“I need to not be near you right now.”
“Nuh-uh. Dex—”
“I can’t be the reason you’re looking at me like that.”
You were crying harder now because he was spiralling, and you were spiralling, and the two of you were dragging each other down in opposite directions. Dex kept retreating. You kept trying to pull him back with a voice that was too fragile to reach him.
He turned toward the door, and you finally snapped.
“I need you!”
He froze.
The shout tore out of you raw, loud enough to hurt your throat. Dex stopped like you had fired a warning shot.
You shoved yourself upright, blanket slipping around your waist, cheeks wet, chest heaving.
“Stop,” you sobbed. “Don’t you dare fucking leave while I’m-I’m l-like this.”
His face fell, panic still prevalent. “I’m trying not to make it worse.”
You choked on a breath. “You are making it worse!”
Dex went still.
You pointed at the floor like you could physically pin him there with the gesture. “You are standing over there looking at me like you’re a monster and you keep talking about leaving and I can’t— I can’t do this too, okay? I can’t comfort you while you’re trying to punish yourself. I need you.”
He looked devastated, and maybe that meant he was finally listening.
“I just—” Your voice broke, and the next words came out almost screamed, because gentleness wasn’t cutting it anymore. “I just need you to hold me, you fucking idiot!”
Dex stared at you, looking completely lost.
Every terrible conclusion he had been building in his head had slammed into that sentence like a shield and shattered at his feet.
“You want me to hold you?” he asked, barely audible.
“Yes,” you cried. “Jesus Christ, yes.”
His hands lowered by an inch.
“But I scared you.”
“Because I was already scared of everything,” you managed through gritted teeth.
“You said red.”
“And you stopped!”
You could see it finally go through to him. His eyes flicked to the cut rope, then to your wrists, then back to your face. He was still terrified of himself, but he stopped backing away.
“I need you clean,” you said, voice shaking. “Then I need you here.”
He moved immediately.
Thank God.
Giving him an instruction helped him. Dex disappeared into the bathroom with stiff purpose, and you heard water slam on. As he scrubbed his hands too hard. You heard him almost losing it over the sink and forcing himself not to because you had not asked for that.
When he came back, the blood was gone.
His shirt was gone too, replaced with the white sleeveless one you liked, because it made him look less like he had crawled out of an alley and more like the man who lived here. Your man, who slept with one hand searching for you.
He stopped by the bed, still afraid to presume after what happened.
You opened your arms.
He climbed onto the bed slowly, gave you every second to change your mind, and only closed his arms around you when you grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him in.
Then he was truly in, and you folded into him.
You cried into his chest with both fists clenched in his shirt, and Dex held you like he was learning how to touch you all over again.
“Tighter,” you sobbed.
His arms tightened.
“More.”
He held you properly then, careful but not distant. His chin tucked over your head, one hand spread between your shoulder blades, the other on your back, keeping you against him without trapping you. You could feel his heartbeat racing under your cheek, and still, yours was worse.
For a while, neither of you said anything.
Words had been too much all day. Everything had been too much all day. So this was good.
Dex pressed his mouth to your hair.
“I just had a bad day,” you whispered into his chest.
His arms tightened again.
You felt him inhale. “All day?” he asked.
You nodded.
His hand flexed against your back.
He wanted to ask, you could feel it. He wanted names, causes, targets, so he could follow them home and put them through a wall for making you feel like this. But for once, he held it in.
You cried harder, because he was warm and clean and finally close enough. “I meant to say yellow,” you whispered.
His chest stopped moving for a second.
“I know,” you added, before he could spiral again. “I know I said green. I know. I just wanted to be okay. I wanted it to be like usual.”
Dex didn’t speak for a long moment.
Then he held you a little closer and pressed his cheek to the top of your head. “Okay,” he said roughly.
It sounded like he was swallowing glass.
You pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was serious, jaw tight, laying in bed with the woman he loved crying all over his shirt, trying to work out how to shoot a bad day.
And then, with absolute sincerity, he asked, “Do you want me to kill anyone?”
You stared at him.
He meant it.
Fuck.
It was so shocking, so cathartic, that a sudden laugh burst out of you, half-strangled against his chest. You tried to stop it, but the look on his face only made it worse. He frowned slightly, earnest, still holding you like he would rather die than move wrong.
“I’m serious,” he said.
You laughed harder. “Dex.”
“What?”
“You can’t kill someone because I had a bad day.”
His brow furrowed. “Why not?”
“Oh my God.”
“If there’s a person responsible—”
“There isn’t.”
“There’s usually a person responsible.”
“There was Brad from HR.”
You blinked at him. “How do you know about Brad from HR?”
“You texted me about him once.”
“That was, like, six months ago.”
“I remember things.”
Despite yourself, you laughed again.
You buried your face against him again, laughing and crying at the same time until you could barely breathe. Dex still looked confused, but his arms settled securely around you. He understood this much, at least, when you pressed closer instead of pushing him away.
“I don’t need you to kill anyone,” you murmured once the laughter faded.
“Okay.”
“I just need you to hold me.”
His mouth pressed to your hair again. “That I can do,” he said.
And he did, held you until your breathing slowed, until the room stopped feeling like it was on fire.
After a while, very quietly, he added, “I would, though.”
You huffed a tired laugh into his shirt. “I know, honey.”
His arms tightened carefully around you.
“Just checking,” he said.
And because it was him, because he meant it with his whole heart, because the day had been awful and you were safe now, you laughed one last tiny laugh into the dark.
what would freak4freak reader do if Dex threatened to lock her up in a basement?
Dex Thinks He Can Lock You Up In His Basement “For Your Own Good.” He Didn’t Expect This.
WC 1.4k
TW freak4freak, established relationship, switch!dex, mentions of violence, confinement, restraint and gagging, humiliation and degradation kink, free use arrangement, and explicit sexual content. Fem! Reader. Reference pic at the end of the post!
Task force agents almost killed you, so Dex killed them all.
It was simple math, really.
You had gone out looking for trouble, because apparently you adored him for killing task force so much that you had decided to try killing them yourself just to feel closer to him. Dex found you standing in the middle of the aforementioned trouble, killed everyone that you hadn’t already, and cupped your face.
He checked your pulse with two fingers, ran his fingers and eyes over you to make sure you weren’t hurt.
“They almost killed you,” he said.
You smiled a little. “I’m fine, baby.”
“They almost killed you,” he repeated.
“Dex—”
“They almost killed you.”
And then he bent down a little, shoved his shoulder into your stomach, and hauled you up over him like you weighed nothing. His arm was locked over the backs of your thighs, the other braced against your hips, as if you were gonna wander into gunfire if he put you down for even a second. You kicked once, more out of principle than hope, and Dex only tightened his grip.
By the time you got home, he went straight for the fucking basement.
“Dex.”
He only huffed.
“Dex, put me down.”
His hand flexed against your thigh. “Pretty girl,” he murmured, voice feverish, like he was talking to himself more than you. “Can’t stay out of trouble for five minutes, can you?”
Your stomach dropped.
“I’m gonna keep you down here for a little while, okay?” he said, already reaching for the door. “Just while I clean up the mess. Then I’ll come back and make it nice. You’ll be safe.”
You went cold.
“Benjamin,”
He paused, because you using that name meant you were pissed pissed.
Then the lock clicked under his hand. He had made this safe room for you, when you were manic and erratic and borderline uncontrollable. It worked, but you hated it, even if it did save your life more times than once.
After all, free use was one thing. You had both agreed to that. Dex could have your body whenever he wanted, and you could have his, but your freedom was still yours, right?
“It’s for your own good,” he said.
Poor, stupid Dex.
He really should have remembered who he was in love with.
When he reached the bottom step and shifted his weight to unlock the inner door, you grabbed the heavy flashlight from the shelf beside you and swung it as hard as you could into the back of his head. Not enough to kill him, of course! You loved him. Just enough to knock him out.
When he woke up, he was upside down.
His ankles were tied to the ceiling, body tied to the support beam in the center of the basement. His shirt was halfway dragged open by gravity, blood still smeared over his skin, rope shoved between his teeth like a gag and tied tight enough to keep all his bad ideas trapped behind it.
You knelt beside him, a pretty skirt pooled around your thighs.
Dex stared at you, testing the ropes.
His eyes were wild.
He was scared, and not of the ropes. Dex could chew through pain and spit out the bones. No, he was scared because you had that sad look on your face. Apparently, he had fucked up badly enough that you had stopped fighting and started doing whatever the hell this was.
“You hurt my feelings,” you said.
The sound he made around the gag was wet and pathetic. Spit had already slicked the rope, leaking from the corner of his mouth, sliding wrong over his cheek because he was hanging upside down. He tried to say your name. You could hear it outside of the noise: Sorry. Baby. Please.
All those half-hearted apologies were useless behind the rope.
“I gotta punish you for wanting to lock me up in the basement again.” You frowned, reaching past his face and tapped the metal column he was tied to once to taunt him.
Dex swallowed around the gag, eyes locked on yours, then flexed his bound fingers.
Then, you looked up from where you were kneeling.
You could see that he was very clearly hard.
Of course he was fucking horrified and guilty and scared half to death, and still hard enough to strain obscenely against his pants. His length was trapped thick under the fabric, too obvious to ignore, the head pressing a dark wet spot where he had already started leaking.
You laughed under your breath. “Oh, Dex.”
His eyes squeezed shut.
You reached your hand up while still kneeling, sliding your palm over him anyway.
Dex groaned through the gag.
His hips jerked, hungry and humiliating. The ropes held him in place, but not enough to hide what he wanted.
Your hand rubbed higher over the shape through his trousers, palm dragging up until you felt him throb under the cloth. He made a strangled sound as drool gathered at his lip and dripped onto the concrete.
Messy, just as you liked him.
Dex was always so clean, so fucking orderly. Seeing him fall apart just tickles that sweet spot in your brain.
You shifted a bit, and your skirt swayed.
Dex looked straight up from under the hem, and he went so still it was almost funny.
The angle was filthy. His face was right there, upside down beside your thighs, and he could see exactly what you had been pretending he couldn’t: your panties were soaked clinging wet to you because apparently nearly dying, getting carried like a hostage, knocking out your boyfriend, tying him up, and scolding him over his hard on turned you on.
You noticed of course. “Fucking perv,” you breathed.
His length jumped under your palm as you widened your knees a little enough to be cruel.
Dex made a sound so needy it should have embarrassed him. Instead, he looked up your skirt with his mouth forced open around the rope, spit on his forehead, eyes lustful and glassy, twitching in your hand like the sight itself was going to finish him by itself.
You squeezed him through the fabric, and he arched as much as the ropes allowed, hips trying to fuck up into your fist through his pants. You finally stood up and leaned closer, your mouth hovering over the strain.
You kissed his clothed bulge, and he had a better view up your skirt now.
A gutted groan tore through the gag as your lips pressed a flutter of kisses over the wet spot at the head. Your palm held his thighs while your mouth dragged over the length, kissing little pecks here and there. He shivered. Big bad Dex, hanging upside down in his own basement, gagged and drooling while you made out with his arousal through his pants.
Your lips pressed harder over the head of him, and his hips kicked uselessly into your mouth. His eyes were glued under your skirt, like being denied made him fixate harder on the wet little mess between your legs.
You pulled back with a slick sound.
Dex whined.
“You don’t get to feel any more than that,” you said, sweet as rot. “You tried to lock me up.”
His eyes went devastated, but he twitched anyway. “Yeah,” you murmured, rubbing him again. “I know, baby. It’s awful when someone else decides what you’re allowed to have, isn’t it?”
His eyes darkened as fear sank deeper. Shame, too, perhaps, because he finally realised he had hurt you and would have gutted himself open if you asked sweetly enough.
You kissed him through his trousers again, because you weren’t merciful. You had never promised to be.
This time it was filthier. Your tongue dragged up the hard line of him while your fingers pressed into his hip, holding him still as you left a trail of damp in your wake. You mouthed at the clothed head, until his thighs strained against the ropes, until every breath came out muffled, until he looked split between begging and apologising and coming in his pants like a fucking loser.
Then you stopped.
Dex jerked forward, chasing your mouth.
The ropes didn't allow for much movement.
You laughed softly. “There. Lesson one.”
You stood over him, smoothing your skirt down.
His eyes were still glued down there, shameless.
You bent down and kissed his forehead, then the scar on his cheek.
“I’ll untie you later,” you whispered, sickening and loving all the same. “After you’ve learned not to lock me in the fucking basement.”
Dex made a broken sound.
You kissed the corner of his gagged mouth, tasting spit and rope, before you turned toward the stairs.
Behind you, Dex was silent, and not because he had learned his lesson.
Because the creep you called your boyfriend was still too busy watching the slick gathering under your skirt every step of the way.
—
Note: phew, this was done in under 30 minutes and I just needed to get it outta my system 🫠🫠🫠inspired by this Batman #147 variant cover by Jorge Jimenez! (Not saying reader is Punchline and Dex is Joker, this is just a pose reference for the story!)
Summary : Dex has to learn that you can have bad days, too.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : established relationship, hurt/comfort, sensory overload, overstimulation, emotional, traffic light system, safeword use, mentioned free use arrangement, aftercare?, soft ending, dark romance elements, obsessive Dex, protective Dex. DDBA! Dex I think. :)
Word Count : 6k
Requested by : Ko-fi request <3
Notes : Hey ya’ll! If you wanna be tagged, please send me a message! Comments get lost sometimes. Enjoy!
You hadn’t had the best day and it started with the coffee machine not working.
That was entirely your fault. You had cleaned it the night before, rinsed everything carefully, set it back in place, and then just… not set it up properly again. Usually, you would have found it funny. You would have sent Dex a picture of the dead display and made him promise to bring you coffee later.
Instead, you stood barefoot in the kitchen at seven in the morning, pressing the button over and over like one of the attempts might change the result, and felt tears sting your eyes.
Dex was asleep down the hall, face buried in your pillow, one arm stretched across your side of the bed as if he had gone looking for you in his sleep. You considered waking him, and you nearly did, standing in the bedroom doorway with your bag hanging off one shoulder, watching the rise and fall of his back, and thought about crawling under the covers again.
But he had been out all night.
He needed sleep, and you needed to leave.
So you found instant coffee in the back of the cupboard and made it too strong because you were already running late. You burned your tongue, while the clasp on your necklace got caught in your hair. Your tights had a ladder in them, a thin line running up the back of your calf that no one else would probably notice but that you could feel all day like a crack in glass.
You changed twice and hated both outfits.
The third one was acceptable until you got outside and realized the waistband sat weird when you walked. It pinched at one side and shifted at the other. You kept trying to fix it discreetly beneath your coat while waiting for the train, which only made it twist more.
Then the train was delayed.
You kinda wished it would’ve been canceled; it would at least have given you something to be angry about. It was delayed by six minutes, then nine, then twelve, with the announcement changing every time you looked up. The platform filled around you as a lady stood close enough behind you that her bag pressed against your back every time they moved. A man near the stairs was watching videos without headphones, and two women beside you were having an argument in furious whispers.
Your phone buzzed in your hand.
Dex. Coffee machine dead?
You stared at the message for too long.
Normally, you would have answered with something dry and funny immediately. Instead, you typed three different replies and deleted all of them because every version sounded irritated, and you were irritated, but not with him.
You sent a heart.
He replied with three.
That nearly made you cry again.
Work was not terrible enough to justify how terrible it felt.
Nobody screamed at you and nothing caught fire. You didn’t get fired or humiliated, but it was just a constant fucking drag.
An intern, a fresh graduate called Grace, stopped you before you had taken off your coat because they needed help with something they had known about since yesterday. Your computer decided to update while going to the double-booked meeting room, so everyone stood in the corridor pretending not to be annoyed while Brad from HR insisted he had reserved it first. When you finally got inside, the projector would not connect.
Then your manager, Amy said, “This should only take five minutes,” and it took forty-three.
At some point, your coworker Jack, put a hand on your shoulder from behind to get your attention.
You nearly snapped. They apologized. You apologized for reacting. Then you spent the next ten minutes thinking about whether your apology had sounded strange.
That was when you had to go to the bathroom and cry.
You sat in the last stall with the lid down, both feet planted on the floor, trying to breathe quietly so that no one would hear you. You hated crying at work and the bathroom lighting and the thin toilet paper scraping under your eyes. You hated that there was no single problem you could point to and say, there, that’s why I can’t do this today!
Your phone buzzed again.
Dex had sent you a message about going out because task force was spotted in droves on the other side of the city, and that he was going out to get them.
Then cried harder because you missed him, even though he lived with you and you had technically seen him that morning.
You washed your face, went back to your desk, and tried to finish the day.
At four, Dex texted that he would probably be home late.
You stared at that one until the words blurred.
It was reasonable and normal, by your standards. He worked strange hours and disappeared with even stranger explanations. You were used to eating without him. You were used to waking up with him suddenly in bed beside you, one hand finding your waist beneath the blanket.
But you had spent the whole day thinking about going home to him.
You didn’t even want to talk to him. You wanted to walk through the door and see him standing in the kitchen. You wanted him to take your bag without asking and tell you to change into a soft cotton shirt so as not to trigger your sensory issues. You wanted to sit between his knees on the sofa while he rubbed slow circles into your thighs.
Instead, you sent. Okay. Be safe.
He reacted with a heart.
You put your phone facedown and finished the last hour.
The train home was worse than the train in.
You had to stand while a wet umbrella kept brushing your ankle, even though you didn’t realise it had been raining. A man across the carriage kept coughing into his fist and then touching the pole. Every time the train stopped, more people got on and nobody got off.
By the time you reached your building, your shoulders ached from holding them up around your ears. You dropped your keys in the hallway, and the sound of them hitting the floor was so annoying that you just stood there staring at them for several seconds before bending down.
The apartment was dark when you opened the door.
You turned on the lamp instead of the main light and you took off your coat and immediately felt colder. You put it back on. Took it off again because the lining felt horrible against your skin. You stood in the living room holding it, suddenly unable to decide what to do with it even though there was a hook three feet away.
You dropped it on the floor.
Then you felt guilty because Dex liked things clean and in their place.
Fuck.
You sat down beside it and cried with one shoe still on and one shoe off, louder than you cried in the office bathroom. You cried because the apartment smelled faintly like Dex, but he wasn’t there. You cried because you had spent the whole day being reasonable, and now there was nobody in front of you to be reasonable for.
Afterward, you felt stupid and sticky-faced, which just made the sensations worse.
You picked up the coat and put your shoes away. You sent Dex a message asking when he would be home, then deleted it before sending because you didn’t want him distracted while he was out doing very dangerous Bullseye things.
You showered instead, and the water was too hot at first, but you didn’t fix it quickly enough, so your skin felt like it was boiling across your chest and shoulders. You washed your hair. Then the wet texture clung to your back and made you angry, so you wrapped them in one of Dex’s old shirts instead of a towel because it was softer.
You put on your sleep shorts and the gray shirt of his you always stole.
It smelled like the detergent you both used now, not specifically like him, which made you strangely sad.
You tried to eat.
There were pasta leftovers in the fridge. Dex had labelled the container DO NOT EAT in black marker, then added unless you are my girlfriend beneath it in smaller writing because you had told him one you liked one of those cheesy jokes, and Dex being Dex, listened and manufactured it into his life even though he got no real enjoyment out of it. You heated it up, took three bites, and put them back because the tomato sauce was chunky, and it felt weird on your tongue even though technically, there was nothing wrong with it. .
So you made tea and forgot the bag until it went bitter.
You turned on the television, then muted it because the voice of the newscaster irritated you. The silence irritated you too, so you turned it back on quietly with subtitles.
At some point, you checked the locks twice.
You knew Dex would not use the door when he came back. He would use the fire escape.
On most nights, the thought made you smile. Tonight, you wanted him to use his key like a normal person.
You wanted to hear it turn in the lock like a warning. You wanted him to call your name from the entrance so you had time to prepare for being touched.
But whatever. He probably didn't even bring his keys.
You climbed into bed with the lamp on.
Usually, you liked Dex coming home with that focus still in his eyes. You even loved the way he sometimes stood at the foot of the bed and looked at you as if he had followed you there. You liked the games he played to rile you up, because Dex knew exactly how to frighten you without making you unsafe. You liked restraints because he checked every knot, every buckle, every inch of space between your skin and whatever held you down.
You liked being helpless when it was Dex.
Usually.
But tonight, you just wanted him.
You wanted to press your face into his chest and let him complain that your wet hair was soaking his shirt. You wanted him to ask what happened, accept “nothing” as the answer, and hold you still.
The fire escape groaned outside the window.
Then the living room window slid open, and Dex climbed in with blood on his sleeve, still.
You were in that half-sleep state where your body had gone heavy but your mind was still floating somewhere above it, listening to the hum of the television you had left on in the living room and the old pipe knocking faintly in the wall. You were even still aware of your breathing, too shallow to be restful.
You knew what Dex was like after a long night. You knew the way adrenaline ran in his body like a live wire, making him hungry and a little fucking insane. Usually, you were more than happy to let him spend the rest of it on you.
That was the arrangement, after all.
The free use thing had happened over weeks of conversations, some serious, some filthy, some with you sitting cross-legged on the bed while Dex sat on the floor taking it all in like he was memorising a mission brief. What was okay, what was not. It was discussed and re-discussed, picked apart in daylight until even Dex’s paranoid brain had nothing left to gnaw on.
You had said it first half as a joke, grinning over your mug while Dex sat opposite you at the kitchen table looking like you had just handed him a loaded gun.
“What, you don’t like the idea?” you had teased.
His eyes had gone dark in a way that made your thighs press together beneath the table. “I like it too much.”
That had been the problem, Dex had always liked you too much, wanted you too much, so you made rules.
You told him what he could do if you were half-asleep, and what he could do if you were pretending to be asleep, which was different, because sometimes you liked lying there smug while Dex tried to kiss you patiently. You knew what he could do if he came home needy.
Most days, you loved Dex coming into the bedroom while you were still sleepy, his hands sliding under your shirt like he owned every inch of skin he found there. You loved the first drag of his mouth against your shoulder and the rough sound he made when you pressed back into him without opening your eyes. You loved pretending to be annoyed while he kissed down your spine and told you that he knew you were awake because your thighs were already sticky for him.
You loved being wanted like that, loved Dex murmuring filthy nonsense against your skin about how pretty you were, how good you were for him even when you were barely awake. You loved the way he could make free use feel less like being used and more like being worshipped.
Sometimes he was sweet about it, climbing into the bed clean and careful, gathering you back against his chest, and kissing you awake inch by inch like he had all the time in the world. He would slide one hand over your stomach and whisper your name until you made that cute complaining sound he loved, and then he would laugh like you were the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Sometimes he was not sweet, still shaking with adrenaline and put a hand over your mouth before you could say something naughty, only to kiss your temple immediately. Sometimes he pinned your wrists because you liked to fight him for show, and he liked pretending not to know you were letting him win. Sometimes he found you half-asleep and still managed to fuck you awake so thoroughly that by the time you could think again, your face was hot, your hair was a mess, and Dex was in your ear telling you how good you were for letting him have you.
You liked that.
But tonight, your body had already been handled by the entire fucking day. Your nerves had been touched and touched and touched until touch did not feel like touch anymore. It felt more like threat.
You knew that, but then Dex came home and your first thought was still I want him.
You then heard the movement of him walking around the apartment, and not like a direct line to the bathroom, or the kitchen. Not even to check the lock, which he always did even when he had just broken into his own home like a lunatic.
Instead, he was coming to you.
The bedroom door was half-open, and you kept your eyes closed.
You told yourself it was because you were too tired to move, but part of you liked the game. Part of you wanted to be found like this, buried in the middle of the bed in his shirt and your sleep shorts, pretending you hadn’t been waiting all night, helping you forget the day, forget the job, forget everything except getting his hands on the one thing in the world that belonged to him.
He stopped in the doorway, and before you knew it, the mattress dipped.
Dex was always careful at first, even when he was feral. He put a hand beside your hip, not touching yet. His breathing was slow, but not steady. You could hear the way he held himself back for the sake of a rule he wanted to break only because you had once told him breaking it in the right way turned you into putty.
His fingers touched your ankle beneath the blanket, almost testing.
Your body gave a tiny shiver.
Dex went still, before his hand slid higher, possessive enough to make heat flicker through the exhaustion. His palm travelled up the back of your calf, over the bend of your knee, over your thigh. You heard him exhale, and the sound was so hungry it made your stomach flip despite everything.
“Pretty girl,” he whispered.
Your face warmed.
Stupid body. Stupid, fucking traitorous body.
He leaned over you, and his mouth brushed the back of your shoulder where his shirt had slipped wide at the collar. He started with one kiss, quickly followed by another. It became open-mouthed and filthy, like he was trying to be gentle and got overwhelmed. His hand found your waist beneath the shirt, fingers spreading against your skin.
For one second, it worked.
Your violent, devoted, half-mad Dex came home through windows and touched you like you were the only object of desire in the universe, who could make you feel filthy and adored at the same time, who could make being half-asleep feel like the dirtiest kind of safety.
His mouth moved to your neck, hand tightened at your waist.
“Missed you,” he breathed, rough against your skin. “Been thinking about you all night.”
Your thighs pressed together beneath the blanket before you could stop them.
Dex noticed and made a small sound against your throat, almost broken with relief, and shifted closer until his body was against your back. His hand slid over your hip, tugging you back into him.
For one second, you really wanted it.
Your body remembered him before it remembered itself. It remembered all the other nights he had come home ruined and desperate and crawled into bed like your body was the only place he knew where to put the violence. It remembered waking up already breathless to his greedy hands, his mouth saying filthy, adoring things against your skin until you went undone beneath him.
For one second, you wanted to be that girl again.
Dex’s hand tightened on your hip, and your breath broke in a way that sounded enough like pleasure to confuse both of you. He pressed his face into your neck and inhaled like he was trying to crawl inside your veins.
“Color?” he asked, it was rough, but still good of him.
You meant to say yellow.
The word was right there, sitting behind your tongue. Yellow meant slow down, meant you wanted him, but you needed him kinder. It would mean this was good, but also too much. But Dex’s mouth was on your throat, and his hand was warm under your shirt, and you had missed him so badly all day that admitting you needed less felt like losing him for a stupid reason.
So you said, “Green.”
Dex exhaled against your skin. “Yeah?” he murmured.
You nodded, eyes still closed.
You should have said yellow again then. You should have corrected yourself because there was still a good amount of space to do it, while his hand was only at your waist and his mouth was only at your neck, but your mind was gone and your body had betrayed you with that little shiver, and Dex had never been the best at reading the small things. He was more a flashing lights kinda guy.
Feelings had to be handed to him with both hands. It had had to be said plainly, right in front of his face, with no riddles and no hoping he would guess. Dex, through no fault of his own other than his upbringing, didn’t always know the difference between you trembling because you were turned on and you trembling because your nerves were fraying apart unless you told him.
He caught your hip and flipped you onto your back in one rough movement, fast enough that the mattress jolted under you and your breath left in a startled little sound. Dex was above you immediately, one knee between your thighs, one hand braced beside your head, his eyes blown wide with whatever the night had left in him. There was blood at the edge of his collar, and a smear of it near his wrist. His hair was damp from the rain, falling over his forehead in a way that made him look more unhinged at the same time.
“Missed you,” he said, voice wrecked.
Your stomach flipped.
Fuck, he was beautiful like this. Even terrifying, he was beautiful, and you had built so much of your wanting around those two things. Dex looked down at you like he wanted to ruin you and worship whatever was left.
His hand slid to your chin, possessive.
Your thighs pressed together on instincts held apart by his leg between them.
“Mmm ,” he whispered. “My pretty girl.”
Heat curled in you, slick and stupid, even as your skin prickled at the edges. Your bad day had not killed the part of you that loved being grabbed by him, turned by him, handled by him. You loved Dex rough because Dex rough still meant Dex focused, Dex obsessed, Dex so fucking hungry for you that the rest of the world could plunge itself into a void and he wouldn’t give two shits.
His mouth was on yours before you could think. The kiss was hard enough to make your head press back into the pillow. His hand stayed at your chin, holding you there while he took your mouth in a way that made your body go loose for him out of habit. You kissed him back, finger catching the front of his shirt, and when you pulled, Dex made a groan against your lips Then his hand went to the hem of your shirt.
His shirt, technically. He dragged it up your body impatiently, and the cool air hit your skin. You lifted your arms for him before you remembered you were tired.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
Your face went hot.
He threw the shirt behind him.
Usually, you would have laughed and he would have said something deadpan and filthy enough to shut you up. Tonight, the loss of the shirt made you feel exposed too quickly, like your body had not agreed to be perceived that much even if your mind wanted to.
But then Dex kissed down your throat, and you forgot for a second.
His hands were everywhere, greedy at your waist, your ribs, your thighs, reminding himself you were real, coaxing himself out of whatever horror he had done.
You arched under him, and that was honest too.
Your back lifted as your hands found his shoulders. He caught both your wrists in one hand and pressed them above your head, pinning them there against the pillow.
His eyes lifted to yours, fever-bright. “Yeah?”
You swallowed, and this time, no color came out.
Dex took it for yes because it did feel like a yes to you. Usually, you liked being held down. Tonight, you were too tired to know the difference.
Dex reached for the drawer beside the bed.
Your heart jumped, not in fear at first, but in anticipation.
You knew that drawer and what was in it. The rope came out in his hand.
Your breath caught.
“Still green?” he asked.
Say yellow.
Say yellow.
Say yellow.
You looked up at him, at the way his chest rose and fell. You thought about the whole day: the train, office, light, the way you had cried on the hallway floor because your coat had fallen.
You thought, I can take it.
So you said, “Green.”
Dex looked relieved and hungry and dangerously grateful, like he had been waiting all night for permission to stop being human in exactly the way you usually loved.
He tied your wrists to the headboard, roughly, because he was Dex.
He checked the space between rope and skin automatically, two fingers, always. Your wrists went up as the expensive silken rope was bound to the bedframe.
Your body went liquid for one dizzy second.
You loved the helplessness that made your brain melt in a good way. It was a dirty drop of the heart, knowing you couldn’t reach for him now unless he let you. You loved how Dex looked at you when you were restrained, like your trust was the most intimate thing you had ever given him.
“Look at you,” he whispered.
You looked at him looking at you, and for a moment, it was perfect.
Then the rope shifted just slightly. The knot didn’t tighten or hurt. Still, it felt wrong.
The texture scraped your skin in a way it never had before. You could feel every fiber, every point of contact. Your skin pressing against the rope seemed to get louder than everything else in the room somehow, louder than Dex’s breathing, louder than your own heartbeat.
Your fingers flexed, and the rope moved again.
Your stomach dropped.
No.
You tried to breathe through it.
You tried to get the good feeling back. You tried to look at Dex, at his face, at the hunger you usually loved so much. You tried to remind your body that this was chosen and safe and that Dex had checked. That you had said green twice. That you loved this. You loved this. You loved this!
But the rope kept touching you and it felt like pure, crawling wrongness. The feeling started at your wrists and travelled up your arms until your shoulders froze and your chest went tight. The knot might as well have been around your throat for how quickly your breathing changed.
Dex lowered his mouth to your chest, still murmuring something against your skin,filthy and half-mad.
You barely heard it as your eyes filled.
At first, you did not even know you were crying. Then a tear slipped sideways into your hair, then another.
Dex felt you go still, and this time, he noticed immediately.
His head lifted. “Hey,” he said.
You blinked hard, but the tears came faster.
Dex froze above you, that predatory stance gone now.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, panic filling the back of his eyes, unable to read your thoughts.
You couldn’t answer.
His eyes moved over your face, your mouth, your chest, your wrists. He looked almost frantic trying to identify the injury. Was it blood? Bruises, pulled shoulder? Dex was good at identifying wounds.
Emotions made him useless unless you labelled them for him, but this was blatant enough that even Dex understood something was wrong.
“Baby,” he said, voice suddenly stripped bare. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Your breath caught as the rope brushed your wrist again when you moved.
You made a horrible little sound, unable to speak.
Dex’s eyes snapped to your hands.
“What?” he said, reaching up but not touching yet. “The rope?”
You nodded once, almost ashamed.
He nodded grimly. “What about the rope?”
“I-It feels wrong,” you choked.
Dex went white.
Your fingers flexed again, and the texture dragged at your skin, and suddenly you couldn't bear it for one more second. Not even half of one. Your whole body reacted around the rejection, and the word whispered out of you before you had decided to say it. “Red.”
Dex moved instantly.
His hand went to his belt and to his weapons, and for one horrifying second your body thought knife and almost spiralled further under, but Dex was not looking at you like that anymore.
He pulled the blade free with the same face he wore disarming a bomb.
“Don’t move,” he said, practical.
He didn’t untie the rope, because untying took time.
Dex cut it, a clean slice through the first binding, then the second. The rope fell away from your wrists in loose pieces, useless on the pillow, and Dex threw the knife across the room like he couldn’t stand to have it near you a second longer.
Your arms dropped free, and he was already backing away.
Dex had stopped being a man and become an emergency response. His shoulder hit the dresser, hands lifted, palms open.
You were crying, that was all he saw.
Because of me, he thought.
“I’m away,” he said, a little too loudly and too quickly. “I’m away. I’m not touching you.”
His voice was flat. Dex had never been truly calm a day in his life, so was just forcing panic into a box in his mind that was labeled “procedure.”
You tried to say his name, but it came out broken, and it made him worse.
“I’ll go,” he said. “I can go. I should go. You need space. You need me out. I’ll go to the living room. No, not the living room, that’s not far enough. I’ll go downstairs. Outside. I can wait outside. I won’t come back until you tell me. I won’t touch you, I won’t—”
“Dex—”
“I hurt you.”
You wiped at the tears from your eyes now. “Y-you didn’t.”
He wasn’t listening.
His eyes kept dropping to your wrists. His mouth had gone pale and his hands were still up, still shaking slightly like he didn’t trust them anywhere near you.
You said red and you’re crying, was all he could think of.
“I hurt you.” he said, words coming faster now. “I scared you. I tied you down and you cried. I had a knife in my hand. I shouldn’t have had the knife, I knew I was—”
“Dex.”
“I’ll go.”
You tried to get back up, but even the sheets were starting to crawl as you were getting more and more overwhelmed. “N-No.”
“I need to go.”
“Dex,” it came out breathy.
“I need to not be near you right now.”
“Nuh-uh. Dex—”
“I can’t be the reason you’re looking at me like that.”
You were crying harder now because he was spiralling, and you were spiralling, and the two of you were dragging each other down in opposite directions. Dex kept retreating. You kept trying to pull him back with a voice that was too fragile to reach him.
He turned toward the door, and you finally snapped.
“I need you!”
He froze.
The shout tore out of you raw, loud enough to hurt your throat. Dex stopped like you had fired a warning shot.
You shoved yourself upright, blanket slipping around your waist, cheeks wet, chest heaving.
“Stop,” you sobbed. “Don’t you dare fucking leave while I’m-I’m l-like this.”
His face fell, panic still prevalent. “I’m trying not to make it worse.”
You choked on a breath. “You are making it worse!”
Dex went still.
You pointed at the floor like you could physically pin him there with the gesture. “You are standing over there looking at me like you’re a monster and you keep talking about leaving and I can’t— I can’t do this too, okay? I can’t comfort you while you’re trying to punish yourself. I need you.”
He looked devastated, and maybe that meant he was finally listening.
“I just—” Your voice broke, and the next words came out almost screamed, because gentleness wasn’t cutting it anymore. “I just need you to hold me, you fucking idiot!”
Dex stared at you, looking completely lost.
Every terrible conclusion he had been building in his head had slammed into that sentence like a shield and shattered at his feet.
“You want me to hold you?” he asked, barely audible.
“Yes,” you cried. “Jesus Christ, yes.”
His hands lowered by an inch.
“But I scared you.”
“Because I was already scared of everything,” you managed through gritted teeth.
“You said red.”
“And you stopped!”
You could see it finally go through to him. His eyes flicked to the cut rope, then to your wrists, then back to your face. He was still terrified of himself, but he stopped backing away.
“I need you clean,” you said, voice shaking. “Then I need you here.”
He moved immediately.
Thank God.
Giving him an instruction helped him. Dex disappeared into the bathroom with stiff purpose, and you heard water slam on. As he scrubbed his hands too hard. You heard him almost losing it over the sink and forcing himself not to because you had not asked for that.
When he came back, the blood was gone.
His shirt was gone too, replaced with the white sleeveless one you liked, because it made him look less like he had crawled out of an alley and more like the man who lived here. Your man, who slept with one hand searching for you.
He stopped by the bed, still afraid to presume after what happened.
You opened your arms.
He climbed onto the bed slowly, gave you every second to change your mind, and only closed his arms around you when you grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him in.
Then he was truly in, and you folded into him.
You cried into his chest with both fists clenched in his shirt, and Dex held you like he was learning how to touch you all over again.
“Tighter,” you sobbed.
His arms tightened.
“More.”
He held you properly then, careful but not distant. His chin tucked over your head, one hand spread between your shoulder blades, the other on your back, keeping you against him without trapping you. You could feel his heartbeat racing under your cheek, and still, yours was worse.
For a while, neither of you said anything.
Words had been too much all day. Everything had been too much all day. So this was good.
Dex pressed his mouth to your hair.
“I just had a bad day,” you whispered into his chest.
His arms tightened again.
You felt him inhale. “All day?” he asked.
You nodded.
His hand flexed against your back.
He wanted to ask, you could feel it. He wanted names, causes, targets, so he could follow them home and put them through a wall for making you feel like this. But for once, he held it in.
You cried harder, because he was warm and clean and finally close enough. “I meant to say yellow,” you whispered.
His chest stopped moving for a second.
“I know,” you added, before he could spiral again. “I know I said green. I know. I just wanted to be okay. I wanted it to be like usual.”
Dex didn’t speak for a long moment.
Then he held you a little closer and pressed his cheek to the top of your head. “Okay,” he said roughly.
It sounded like he was swallowing glass.
You pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was serious, jaw tight, laying in bed with the woman he loved crying all over his shirt, trying to work out how to shoot a bad day.
And then, with absolute sincerity, he asked, “Do you want me to kill anyone?”
You stared at him.
He meant it.
Fuck.
It was so shocking, so cathartic, that a sudden laugh burst out of you, half-strangled against his chest. You tried to stop it, but the look on his face only made it worse. He frowned slightly, earnest, still holding you like he would rather die than move wrong.
“I’m serious,” he said.
You laughed harder. “Dex.”
“What?”
“You can’t kill someone because I had a bad day.”
His brow furrowed. “Why not?”
“Oh my God.”
“If there’s a person responsible—”
“There isn’t.”
“There’s usually a person responsible.”
“There was Brad from HR.”
You blinked at him. “How do you know about Brad from HR?”
“You texted me about him once.”
“That was, like, six months ago.”
“I remember things.”
Despite yourself, you laughed again.
You buried your face against him again, laughing and crying at the same time until you could barely breathe. Dex still looked confused, but his arms settled securely around you. He understood this much, at least, when you pressed closer instead of pushing him away.
“I don’t need you to kill anyone,” you murmured once the laughter faded.
“Okay.”
“I just need you to hold me.”
His mouth pressed to your hair again. “That I can do,” he said.
And he did, held you until your breathing slowed, until the room stopped feeling like it was on fire.
After a while, very quietly, he added, “I would, though.”
You huffed a tired laugh into his shirt. “I know, honey.”
His arms tightened carefully around you.
“Just checking,” he said.
And because it was him, because he meant it with his whole heart, because the day had been awful and you were safe now, you laughed one last tiny laugh into the dark.
Buck checked his watch as he hurried down the hall to your office. The Mayor had tasked him with giving you firearm training and he needed to try to catch you before you left for a meeting outside the building.
He slowed as he noticed your office door was open and your light was on. Good, she's still here.
He knocked on the open door. "Excuse me, darling."
You looked over at him briefly and smiled, then resumed typing. "Hi, sweetheart. Sorry, I have a meeting in an hour with the head of BronxWorks and I'm —"
Buck shook his head. "Actually, you don't. The mayor has cleared your schedule for the rest of the afternoon."
He had been relieved when you had agreed to join your father's enterprise — as he had told you earlier that morning, he felt like he could better protect you if you were aware of and involved in your father's business dealings.
However, he also knew that being part of the Mayor's non-mayoral business came with certain hazards, so when he had returned from speaking with you he and Mayor Fisk had discussed possible safety measures, including acquiring a weapon for you and teaching you how to use it.
You stopped typing and looked back over at him, your eyebrows furrowing. "What? Why?"
"Given… recent events, he wishes for you to learn how to properly arm and protect yourself."
You sighed. "Does it have to be now? I have so much that I need to do here."
Buck shrugged. "It's either that or I go tell the Mayor that you decided to go with the option of having a Task Force member designated as your personal security instead. I believe he said something about assigning Powell personally to the task…"
He paused as he waited for you to make your decision. Buck knew Powell made you uncomfortable — he himself had caught the man leering at you on more than one occasion — so he was pretty certain that you would wind up accepting firearm training.
You made a face, then sighed. "Okay, fine. Let's go."
Buck waited as you shut your computer down and grabbed your purse, then he and you headed to the parking garage.
Buck unlocked the car he had reserved and opened the passenger door for you.
"Thank you, sweetheart," you said as you got in.
Buck smiled. You couldn't have been that annoyed at having your afternoon disrupted if you were still using your preferred term of endearment for him. "You're welcome, love."
He shut the door and went around to the driver's side to get in.
"So which firing range are we going to?" you asked as Buck fastened his seatbelt and started the car.
Buck shook his head. "Your father has arranged for private instruction at the Red Hook port facility. Given the protests a few nights ago, he doesn't wish to stoke further dissent by having his daughter spotted taking firearm training."
You nodded. "Ah, yeah, okay, that makes sense."
Buck pulled out of the parking garage and onto the street, then headed towards Brooklyn, glancing over at you as you sighed and looked out the window. "Everything alright?"
You looked back over at him and shrugged. "Just thinking."
Buck reached over and took your hand in his. "I know it's been a difficult few days, love."
You sighed again and shook your head. "At least I slept a little better last night. I wouldn't want to accidentally shoot myself or someone else because I can't focus on what I'm doing."
Buck squeezed your hand in reassurance. "If I didn't feel comfortable with your competence in handling a firearm at the moment, I would have insisted that your training wait until another day. I would never let anything happen to you, my darling. Your safety is paramount."
You smiled softly. "Your safety is important to me too."
You both were silent for the rest of the short drive to Red Hook, your hand in Buck's a comfort. With everything that had been going on — the vigilante trials, the security incident at Red Hook, locating the first mate of the Northern Star, and now the death of your stepmother — the two of you had hardly seen each other over the past couple of weeks, much less spent any significant amount of time together, and Buck had missed you. At least it seems like we should both be home this evening.
He turned into the port and parked.
You looked up at the building as you both got out of the car. "I don't think I've been here since the ribbon-cutting after the renovation," you said. "I guess I'm still in the mindset of 'port dangerous, avoid if possible'."
Buck chuckled and held the door open for you. "After you, darling."
He walked in behind you then led you to the area he had set up as a makeshift firing range.
You looked around. "Will the instructor be here soon?"
Buck shook his head. "My apologies, love, I thought you understood. I'll be training you."
Your eyebrows raised. "You'll be — oh. Okay then."
Buck eyed you curiously. "Is that a problem?"
You shook your head. "Oh no, no, that's fine. I guess I just assumed when you said private instruction that Dad had gotten the head of the NYPD's Firearms Licensing department or someone like that to teach me."
You waved a hand at him. "Ready when you are."
"Okay then." Buck nodded then guided you over to the table of various handguns he'd had sent over. "First task is to choose your armament. I took the liberty of selecting a few that I think might suit you."
"So do I just pick one based on vibes?" you asked as you looked at each gun. "They all look the same to me."
Buck huffed out a laugh. "There's subtle nuances between them that can make a rather large difference in your aim. You don't want a firearm that's too unwieldy — it should feel balanced in your hand."
He picked up the gun he had felt most would suit you and turned the safety off before handing it to you. "Here, try this one."
You took it. "It's lighter than I expected."
Buck nodded. "This one is highly recommend for concealed carry. Hold it up, get a feel for it."
You turned towards the target and pointed the gun at it, gripping it with both hands as if clasped in prayer. "Yeah, this one feels okay."
Buck shook his head. "Second step is learning how to properly hold a firearm. That gun shouldn't have much kickback, but you don't want to injure yourself should you ever have to use it."
He stepped behind you, trailing his fingers down your arms to your hands in order to adjust your grip. "You want your hands a bit closer together."
You took a deep breath. "Like this?"
"Mmm." Buck nodded. "Just like that, darling. Very good."
"What's next?"
"Next is aim."
"Which is point and shoot, right?"
Buck chuckled. "Not quite. Look down the barrel at the target, aim, then fire."
You bit your lip. "Could you show me first? Like, as an example?"
Buck nodded. "Certainly, love."
He let go of your arms and pulled his own gun out of its holster, then stepped up to the firing line he had marked on the floor. "Watch closely."
He raised his gun, aimed, then fired, hitting the figure on the target right in the middle of the head.
He reholstered his gun. "Now, your turn."
You looked at the target. "If I hit it, do I get a prize?"
Buck chuckled. Nothing wrong with a little positive reinforcement. "Sure, darling, why not?"
You raised the gun, looked down the barrel, and fired at the target, hitting it almost dead center. "Hmm, sight must be off."
Buck stared at the target for a few moments in bewilderment, then huffed out a laugh and shook his head. "You naughty little minx. You already knew how to shoot, didn't you?"
You put the safety on and turned back towards him, shrugging sheepishly. "Vanessa took me to the firing range while my dad was in prison, said a girl needed to learn how to protect herself. I don't guess she ever told him, unless he forgot."
Buck nodded. "Well played, darling. Well played."
You walked back over to the table and set the gun back in its case. "Haven't shot a gun in a while, figured I could probably at least use a refresher course."
You wrapped your arms around Buck's waist. "Besides, I thought it'd be nice to spend the afternoon together. I've missed you."
Buck gave you a soft kiss as he wrapped his arms around you as well. "I've missed you too, my love."
You hummed. "Now, I believe I was promised a prize?"
Buck chuckled. "You were. Did you have something in particular in mind?"
You bit your lip. "Pick up something for dinner, then go home to cuddle?"
Buck nodded, a soft smile on his face. "That sounds suitable."
You let go of him and took his hand in yours. "Good, then let's go."
Later that night, as you lay naked and sleeping in his arms, Buck's mind drifted to the engagement ring that was currently hidden in an empty bullet box in his gun safe in your bedroom. He had originally planned on whisking you away to Niagara Falls over the weekend to propose, but with your stepmother's death and the Mayor needing both of you closer to home, proposing would have to wait.
woaahh thank uuu for the tag xixixi @aquaticmercy 💕
i think this is the closest i can make and it's quite accurate actually likeeee i do look like this once or twice a month or whenever i'm in the mood to fully dress up mwuehehe 😆 and i love all black style 🖤
no pressure tags : @sharkisrinon (and whoever else wants to join) 🤗✨
Summary : Dex can’t seem to bring himself to tell you that you killed your attacker.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : hurt/comfort, attempted assault by another character, strangulation/choking, graphic violence to the person who assaulted reader, blood and gore, self-defence escalating into overkill, panic attack, memory loss, non-sexual nudity and bathing, gaslighting, lying, possessive/protective Dex, unhealthy but sincere devotion. (I pictured FBI!Dex in this but honestly I could see DDBA!Dex too).
Word Count : 5k
Requested by : Ko-fi request <3
Notes : I listened to Run Rabbit by Mollie Elizabeth by writing this, hence the title. Enjoy!
You did everything Dex told you to do.
You took the safest route home, even though it added twelve minutes to the walk. You stayed beneath the streetlights and kept away from the mouth of every dark alley. Your phone was fully charged, your location was shared with him, and your keys were already threaded between your fingers before you even left the busy part of the avenue.
You even noticed the man following you early.
He had been behind you for three blocks, never close enough to prove anything, but he always crossed when you crossed and slowed whenever you slowed. You knew better than to look directly at him. After all, Dex had told you not to let someone know you were frightened until you had decided what to do with that fear.
So you stepped into the late-night pharmacy and wandered beneath the fluorescent lights for several minutes. You pretended to compare shampoos while watching the convex security mirror above the aisle.
The man waited outside.
Your stomach sank.
You pulled out your phone and called Dex. It rang once before going to voicemail, which meant he was either working or already packing his things and moving towards you. You left the line open anyway, slipping your phone into your coat pocket as you stepped back onto the pavement.
“I’m on Stanton,” you said, quiet as you could, knowing the microphone would catch it. “I’m going on the safe route, and there’s a man following me.”
You headed towards the twenty-four-hour diner two streets away. At least there were lights, cameras, and most importantly, people there.
You almost reached it, but the man caught you when you passed the narrow service road behind an apartment building. One moment his footsteps were behind you; the next, his hand gripped around the back of your coat and dragged you hard enough that the thicker collar choked into your throat.
Your keys fell from your fingers, and all you could manage was a pathetic little scream before he could cover your mouth.
His palm immediately struck your lips and teeth, crushing the sound back into your skull as he hauled you into the darkness of some random New York alley. Your heel scraped uselessly across the pavement as you bit down until you tasted blood that wasn’t yours. It worked! He swore, jerking his hand away.
Immediately, you drove your elbow backwards.
Dex had shown you where to aim for, and you were trying to retrieve it from the rolodex of information in your mind, not quite the ribs, but lower in the soft tissue.
The man grunted, but he didn’t let go. His arm locked around your throat instead, squeezing until firework-white sparks burst across your vision.
“You stupid fucking—”
You stamped on his foot before he could finish his sentence and threw your weight forwards, turning beneath his arm, exactly as Dex had taught you.
Eventually, his hold broke.
You stumbled free and ran, but the man recovered faster than you initially expected. His hand found its way and tangled his fingers in your hair, snapping your head backwards so violently that your neck burned.
He slammed you face-first against the brick wall.
Oh. Fuck.
A burst of pain exploded through your cheek, teeth unintentionally biting into the inside of your mouth. Warm, fresh blood flooded on your tongue, thick and metallic, while his body pinned you against the wall.
The panic bells ringing in your head turned everything white-hot. “S-stop!”
He didn’t.
No. No. You were better than this.
You reached behind blindly, clawing for his eyes, his throat, anything you could find. Your nails found skin, raking down as he cursed and drove you against the brick again.
Maybe your nose broke, you couldn’t really tell.
His hand slid beneath your coat, and that’s when your vision went red. Rage flared hot inside you, burning through every thought in your head. You threw your skull backwards and felt his cartilage collapse beneath it.
His grip loosened, howling in pain.
You spun and shoved him with both hands.
He stumbled off the curb at the edge of the service road. His ankle twisted beneath him, and he went down hard. The man managed to catch himself on one palm before his shoulder struck the pavement.
You could have run.
The diner was less than a hundred yards away. You could see its red sign glowing at the end of the road, bright as a fresh exit wound.
That was when the man looked up at you.
A sick, satisfied feeling churned in your stomach as red poured from his nose and over his mouth.
And… he was smiling.
Oh.
He still believed he was going to win.
He pushed himself onto one knee. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Your hand found the loose brick beside the wall, and it was heavier than you expected. Its edges bit into your palm as you lifted it with both hands.
When the man saw it, his smile vanished in an instant.
You brought the brick down across his temple.
The sound that came off it was shockingly small. It sounded like a damp knock, followed by the scrape of his body collapsing onto the road.
He rolled onto his back, blinking rapidly. One side of his face had already begun to swell around the ripped skin as a blotch of blood ran into his ear and disappeared beneath his head.
You stood over him, panting.
He was still conscious. “Wait.”
You could’ve stopped. You could’ve shown mercy.
Instead, you struck him again.
This time, the brick split the skin above his eyebrow. Blood sprayed across your coat and speckled your face in warm droplets.
He raised one arm to protect himself.
Huh. Cute.
You hit that too.
His arm gave beneath the brick with a muffled crunch. His forearm bent where it shouldn’t have been bent, and he screamed, the sound travelling through the empty service road.
You dropped the brick.
For half a second, the sight of his ruined arm nearly pulled you back into your logical self.
Then, his good hand closed around your ankle.
You shrieked and kicked him in the face. Your heel connected with his mouth as teeth snapped together. One of them even skipped across the pavement and vanished beneath a parked car.
He released you, but you fell on top of him.
Your knees struck the ground on either side of his hips, and your hands seized the front of his jacket. His blood made the material slippery beneath your fingers.
Before you could think any better of it, you dragged his head upwards, then slammed it against the curb.
The back of his skull struck concrete with a thick, hollow crack.
His eyes rolled, and it horrified you how much you liked it, seeing the man who wanted to touch you fucking bleed out.
So you did it again.
Blood spread beneath his hair.
Again.
The hard crack now sounded wetter as the skin split and bone began to cave in. His body jerked beneath you, heels scraping against the pavement, but there was no strength left in it.
He made a noise through his broken mouth. You didn’t know whether it was a plea or merely air left escaping.
“You followed me!” you sobbed. “You fucking touched me!”
You brought his head down again.
The edge of the curb disappeared beneath blood. It ran between your fingers, coating your palms each time you pulled him upwards.
“I did everything right.”
Again.
“I—”
Again.
“Have—”
Again.
“A—”
Again.
“Fucking—”
Again.
“Boyfriend—”
Again.
“You—”
Again.
“Asshole—”
Again.
“He’ll fucking kill you!”
The last word broke somewhere in your throat, ragged. You were crying now, maybe. You couldn’t really tell. Your face was wet, your hands were red, and the whole world had shrunk down to the most-likely-dead man in your grip and the curb beneath him and the memory of his hand on you where it never should have been.
The back of his skull was now the shape of the concrete underneath.
You felt the structure collapse beneath your hands where there should have been resistance. It didn’t feel dramatic or righteous. All you could think was how it felt gooey in the wrong places.
You pulled him up again anyway.
“I told you,” you sobbed, or screamed, or whispered. You couldn’t tell anymore. “I told you to stop.”
But his eyes were open and empty, staring past you at nothing, and when you tried to lift him one more time, your hands slipped in all the blood and he dropped back against the curb with a sound that made your stomach sink
That was when the anger went out.
All at once, as if someone had blown out a candle inside your chest.
You stared down at your hands and the red beneath your nails. You saw a dark smear across your wrist where he had grabbed you. “I did everything right,” you said again, smaller this time.
His face had lost all expression. Blood bubbled faintly at his lips before spilling down his cheek.
He was dead.
You knew he was dead.
You screamed as you struck him again, though you no longer knew whether you were furious or terrified.
You remembered Dex telling you never to stop until you were safe.
Make sure they cannot get back up.
You had done everything he told you to do.
The man’s head struck the concrete one final time and didn’t bounce.
You released him.
His ruined skull settled crookedly against the ground. The road beneath him shone black-red beneath the distant streetlights, and blood soaked through your tights at the knees and dripped from your hands in heavy threads.
The dead man’s head no longer looked human.
Your stomach heaved.
You tried to stand, but your legs folded beneath you. The world tilted violently, the brick walls stretching upwards as though the road had dropped away beneath your body.
Footsteps thundered behind you, but you couldn’t turn around.
Your vision narrowed until the alley became a tunnel.
Then a hand touched your face, but this time, the touch was gentle.
His thumb swept carefully beneath your eye, avoiding the swelling along your cheekbone, as an arm curved around your waist before you could collapse fully onto the body.
“There you are,” Dex whispered.
His voice sounded distant beneath the rushing in your ears.
You tried to tell him what you had done, but your lips would not let you.
Dex’s palm cradled the back of your head, carefully nudging your nose back into place. He pulled you into him, turning your face away from the ruin on the pavement.
“My smart girl,” he murmured, stroking your hair with bloodless fingers. “You remembered everything.”
The praise sank through your heart as he felt his lips press against your temple.
“You saved yourself.”
Eventually, dazed and overwhelmed by the adrenaline crash, your eyes closed.
The last thing you felt was Dex’s thumb moving across your cheek, wiping away a tear.
—
Dex knew you.
He knew you were nothing like him.
That much had been obvious almost from the beginning, though he hadn’t understood it properly. Dex’s first instinct had always been violence. Whenever a problem appeared, his mind found that the bloodiest way was often the fastest way to solve it. Even inconveniences made his skin crawl, from a jammed drawer, a car alarm that would not stop, to a man looking at you for half a second too long across a restaurant.
You were different.
You were gentle in ways Dex had once found impractical.
You apologised to furniture when you bumped into it. You cupped moths in your hands and carried them outside. You left sugar water out for bees in summer and lowered your voice around frightened dogs. You once stopped walking entirely because there was a snail on the pavement after rain, and you refused to let anyone step on it until Dex moved it safely into the grass with a leaf.
He had stood there watching you then, half-annoyed, half-fascinated.
“It’s just a snail,” he had said.
You had looked up at him like he had spouted bullshit from his mouth. “It’s alive.”
From then on, he realized alive mattered to you.
Even small alive. Even when it was inconvenient .
Dex hadn’t been raised with that as a natural instinct. As a boy, he had thrown stones at birds because he found that he liked the little burst of movement. He hadn’t thought of it as cruelty then. It was just aim, maybe boredom.
Then you bought a bird feeder for your apartment.
You hung it outside the kitchen window with such bright delight that Dex hadn’t even known what to say. You filled it every morning, scattering seed with your bed hair falling over your face, then stood there with your coffee while sparrows and blue tits flickered down. You loved them. You loved their stupid little hopping, their bright feathers.
You loved listening to birdsong most of all.
You whistled back sometimes without realising it while you watered plants or folded laundry. At night, when you were deep enough asleep that your body forgot to be self-conscious, you made the same small breathy sounds in your dreams, sweet enough that Dex would lie awake beside you and listen as he calmed down.
So instead of throwing rocks at it like he used to, he learned how to imitate their songs.
At first, only because you smiled when he whistled them. Then, he did it because you looked at him like he had performed a miracle when a robin landed on the feeder while Dex stood still by the window, unknowingly calling them closer.
Without realising, he had learned to mimic their distinctive calls.
He even stopped exterminating annoying bugs because of you.
You were afraid of spiders, yes, but when one of them showed up in the nightstand and you screamed, hiding behind him like a shield, you would make this horrified and pleading sound because he reached for a shoe instead of a cup. To you, being afraid of the little thing didn’t mean it deserved to die.
“Dex, no. Outside. Alive.”
So for you, he learned to trap spiders beneath glasses and slide envelopes carefully underneath them. He learned to carry them to the windowsill instead of crushing them.
Eventually, he learned not to flick beetles off the balcony, because you worried about whether the fall would hurt them. He learned to scoop flies out of half-open windows with hands while you hovered behind him whispering, “Careful, careful,” like he was defusing a bomb.
He learned to pretend he cared whether tiny, ugly things lived.
Eventually, he cared because you cared, and caring about what you cared about was the closest thing to general empathy Dex had ever understood.
And that was why Dex knew that you could not wake up knowing what you had done.
Because you had not even wanted him to kill spiders.
How the hell were you supposed to survive knowing you had killed a man?
Dex had known that the moment you went limp in his arms, your bloodied hands curled weakly against his shirt, your body giving up its adrenaline high only after it was finally safe to stop fighting. You had passed out before he could praise you properly, even before he could look you in the eye and tell you that you had done exactly what he taught you to do.
You had saved yourself.
Dex was proud of you in a way he knew he couldn’t show when you woke up.
Especially not with the body in the trunk of his car and your clothes stuffed into a sealed black bag hidden in the closet. His own clothes in there too, soaked with blood where he had held you, smeared bleach where he had poured it over the concrete.
He would deal with it later, when you were properly asleep, because the body could wait and you could not.
So Dex got you, half-passed out and half mumbling nonsense, home. Perhaps it was simply your mind coping on a traumatic memory.
He stripped you carefully, cutting fabric where it stuck, easing sleeves down your arms, peeling everything off your skin piece by piece until there was nothing left between you and him. His clothes came off too, though nothing was ever sexual about that, but because his soaked shirt was evidence, too.
He washed you in the shower while you leaned against him, barely conscious, your forehead pressed to his shoulder, your knees buckling every time the warm water hit another bruise. He did this all while murmuring sweet nonsense into your ear, words he knew your body understood even when your mind was tuned out. “You did so good, baby. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
He washed you until water at your feet ran pink, then red, then thin and clear.
Your hands took the longest as he held each finger between his own, washing beneath the nails, over the knuckles, around the raw places where the brick and pavement had scraped you open. You whimpered once, so quietly he almost missed it, and he kissed your wet temple before continuing.
He had to make them clean because you would look at your hands first.
When it was done, he carried you to bed and lay down naked beside you, pulling you onto his chest before the cold could bite.
The skin to skin was its own kind of intimacy, no barrier, but his body around yours.
By 2 a.m., he had not slept. He had tried, once or twice, mostly for the performance, because if you woke up and found him sitting upright in the dark watching you breathe, you would know something was wrong.
So he lay with you until dawn, and every time your breathing hitched, Dex tightened his hold. Every time you made a frightened sound, he kissed your head and whispered until you settled. He kept one eye on the bedroom door, one ear tuned to the street.
But mostly he watched you.
You looked smaller when you slept after fear, lashes clumping from old tears. Your mouth was swollen and a bruise was blooming along your cheekbone where the man had slammed you against brick, and Dex had to look away from it more than once because all he felt was red-hot rage.
But it wasn’t like he could do anything. The man was already dead.
You woke up sometime around 3 a.m.
Dex felt it when you choked on a breath, curled against him, cheek on his chest, one leg tangled with his. Your fingers twitched against his ribs, and he knew some part of you had surfaced too quickly.
Your eyes opened.
Almost immediately, panic tore through you.
You jerked upright so fast the sheet slipped from your chest.
Your hands flew up in front of your face, fingers spread, as though blood might still be dripping from them. They were clean, but you stared anyway.
You turned them over, looking at your palms, backs, nails, and wrist.
You seemed shocked to find them… clean.
Dex sat up behind you. “Baby.”
You flinched at his voice, and that knee-jerk reaction hurt more than he expected.
You twisted towards him, naked and shaking, eyes wide with a terror that had no full memory attached to it yet.
Dex could see your mind reaching and clawing through fog, finding only flashes of memories. Maybe you remembered a streetlight, maybe a hand on your throat.
Your lips parted, but no sound came out.
Dex reached for you.
You scrambled back half an inch, and he frowned immediately.
He tried to make himself look harmless, like there was nothing hidden near the closet, nothing dead cooling in the back of his car.
“There you are,” he murmured.
Your face fell, but the sob didn’t come out. It got trapped in your chest, making your whole body shake. You looked down at yourself then, at your bare skin, at his bare skin, at the tangled sheets, and your confusion quickly became fear.
Dex moved carefully, scooting closer until his thigh touched yours.
“You were cold,” he said, pulling the duvet back up around you before you could ask. “ I had to get you warm.”
Your eyes darted around the room.
The bedroom looked normal. That made it worse.
There was no proof of anything, no blood, no alley, no proof of anything but your body remembering what your mind could not grasp.
Dex placed one hand over your knee.
You stared at it.
He expected you to pull away, but instead your breath hitched and your whole body tilted towards him, helplessly, like a compass finding north. He gathered you before you could think better of it.
You collapsed into his lap.
Dex wrapped both arms around you and pulled you against his bare chest again, tucking your face beneath his chin. You were shaking so hard it passed into him. You pressed your hands flat to his shoulders, then curled, then opened again, like you could not stand the idea of grasping flesh too tightly.
“There,” he whispered. “That’s it. Come here, baby.”
Your breath hitched against his throat, and he felt the first wet tear hit his skin.
Then you were crying without sound, which was worse than sobbing. Violent tears shook you from the inside while your body stayed stiff with shock.
Dex rocked you slowly, enough to give your panic a rhythm to follow.
“You’re home,” he murmured into your hair. “You’re with me. No one’s gonna touch you.”
Your fingers dug into him. “I—I…,” you whispered, not quite coming out with words yet
Dex closed his eyes for half a second. “It’s okay, baby.”
Your eyes darted in a panic. “I don’t know what happened.”
He tried shushing you. “You don’t have to know all of it right now.”
“I-I don’t know, Dex.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
Your breathing grew shallow, almost choking. You tried to pull back and look at your hands again, but Dex caught them between your bodies, folding them against his chest where you could feel his heartbeat beneath your palms.
Focus there.
You did.
“I-I remember him,” you managed to say.
Dex stroked the back of your head. “Okay.”
“I remember walking. I took the right way.”
“You did.”
“I did what you said.”
“You did everything right.”
The sentence seemed to be a trigger, ripping a sob out of you.
Dex held you tighter.
“I-I did everything right,” you repeated, smaller now. “I promise.”
“I know.”
“I went inside. I waited. I called you.”
“You were so smart.”
Your face pressed harder into his neck.
“So smart,” he whispered again. “My girl, you did so well.”
You shook your head, frantic, because praise did not fit beside the images cutting through you.
You didn’t remember much, but you saw flashes of blood and concrete behind your eyelids.
Your breathing stopped.
His hand slid up the back of your neck and held you close. “No,” he murmured, soft as velvet. “Stay with me.”
“I saw—”
“You saw too much.”
“I… did something.”
“You protected yourself.”
“No, I—”
“You protected yourself,” he repeated, more insistent this time.
Your fingers twisted against his chest.
Dex let his voice warm up, like honey in warm water. “You were scared and hurt and you did what you had to do.”
He felt you take the information in, but your panic continued circling it like vultures on corpses.
Dex kissed the top of your head, then your temple, then the bruised corner of your brow. “You’re okay,” he breathed. “I promise.”
You made a wounded noise, and he knew exactly what he was doing.
The kindness was not accidental, it was architecture. He was building a room inside your memory, where the bloodier parts could be locked outside until you forgot where you held the key.
“Where is he?”
Oh. So you vaguely knew there was a he now.
“He’s in the hospital.” He lied easily.
Dex knew this was how it would happen. One lie was enough to sound like mercy, and you would hold on to it because you trusted him more than you trusted your own shattered memory. He was making you need his version of the truth because he truly believed it was the only one that would save you.
You froze in his arms, and Dex held you through it.
“The hospital?” you whispered.
“Mm.”
Your hands clutched him harder. “He looked...”
“I know what it looked like.”
You pulled back just enough to see his face.
Dex hated it, and not because he couldn’t lie to your face. He could, he had, and would again if it meant it would preserve and protect your sense of self. Instead, he hated it because you looked so desperate for him to make the world kinder than really it was, and he loved you so much it nearly made him crueler.
He cupped your cheeks.
“Head wounds bleed badly,” he said. “You know that, sweetheart.”
Your eyes blazed into his, and he knew he made a mistake then. You didn’t remember that part.
“H-head wounds?” You breathed out in disbelief, unable to claw the memory now.
“He was breathing when I got there,” Dex lied again.
A strangled sob left you, but it didn’t sound like relief yet. For now, it was only the body realising it had been offered a way out.
“Head wounds a-are dangerous.”
“I know.”
You hiccuped. “I thought— I remember—”
“Pieces,” Dex murmured. “You remember pieces.”
“But I saw blood.”
“There was blood.”
“On me?”
“Yes.”
Your face fell, Dex pulling you back in before the horror could.
“That’s why I cleaned you up,” he whispered, and that part, at least, was not a lie. His thumb moved slowly along your cheek, careful in a way Dex was rarely careful with anything that wasn’t you. “That’s why we ended up like this. You were shaking so hard, and I couldn’t get you warm. I tried. I swear I tried.”
His mouth brushed your temple, barely a kiss.
“I kept trying to move,” he murmured. “I kept thinking I should get you a shirt, but every time I pulled away, you reached for me again like you thought I was leaving, and I couldn’t—” His voice snagged, just slightly. “I couldn’t make myself do it. Not when you looked at me like that.”
You stared at him, still heavy-limbed, your thoughts coming back to you in pieces. It sounded embarrassingly believable, because there was a warmth in your chest that remembered him. Your hands had always found him before the rest of you caught up.
“I did?” you asked quietly.
“Yes.”
Your eyes narrowed, weakly suspicious. “You’re lying.”
Dex leaned down and kissed your forehead, lingering there like the answer mattered more than the accusation.
“About you needing me?” His voice dropped. “Never.”
You cried harder then, finally making messy little sobs that broke against his chest while Dex rocked you, He ran his hands up and down your back, whispering into your hair. He called you precious until the word stopped sounding like a word at all.
You shook your head.
Dex closed his eyes and held you tighter.
“You’re my girl,” he whispered. “Nothing about you changed.”
His gaze drifted once, towards the closet.
The black bag waited.
Behind the wall, beyond the apartment, beneath the ordinary morning, the dead man waited too.
Later, he would get rid of the body. Later, he would burn what needed burning. For now, you were shaking in his lap, believing him because you needed to.
“Dex,” you whispered.
“I’m here.”
“You promise?”
He knew what you were asking.
You promise I didn’t? You promise I’m still me? You promise whatever I don’t remember isn’t real?
Dex pressed his lips to your temple and held them there. “I promise you’re safe.”
It was not the answer you wanted, but it was the one he gave.
You sagged against him after that, emptied by tears, your body surrendering. Dex eased both of you down until he was lying on his back and you were draped over him, skin to skin beneath the sheet. Your cheek rested over his heart, hand curled weakly near his ribs.
He kept touching your scalp, your spine, and the back of your neck in gently repetitive strokes until your breathing evened out.
Eventually, sleep took you again. Poor girl, still so tired after murdering an evil man.
Every few minutes, you twitched. Every time, Dex whispered you back down.
My precious girl, he would praise. You did so well.
At last, your body grew heavy over his, your fingers stopped moving. Your mouth grew pliant against his chest.
Dex waited for five minutes, then ten, then twenty.
Only when he was certain you were properly asleep did he turn his head towards the closet again.
He had things that needed doing.
But you stirred faintly against him before he could move, and Dex froze. Your brow pinched, your hand tightening on his skin, some nightmare threatening to pull you under.
He settled back immediately.
Not yet.
The dead could wait a little longer.
Dex brushed his mouth over your hair and smiled.“My sweet girl,” he whispered.
His hand covered yours, pressing your clean palm flat over his heart.
“You did everything right.”
He adored you for last night, even if he could never let you know exactly what you had done.
He adored the shaking, furious thing you had become when there had been no one left to save you. He adored the fact that some part of you had remembered him, remembered every warning, every lesson, every instruction, just in case.
He adored that you had survived. More than that, in some terrible private corner of himself, he adored that you had survived violently.
He adored that for a split second, you had become him.
But he knew you best, and he knew you weren’t made for that.
So he would take that truth to the grave, and you would wake up tomorrow with the love of your life beside you.
You would wake up believing you had done only enough to live.
And Dex loved you enough to make that true.
—end.
NOTE : I genuinely love seeing all your requests in my asks, but I do get a lot and I physically can’t write every single one. I usually write the ones that catch my eye, and it’s probably every 1 in 5.
That’s why I have Ko-fi! If you request there, it’s pretty much guaranteed I’ll write it within a month of responding as a token of appreciation (keep this post in mind for July and August 2026). If I’m uncomfortable with the request or don’t think I can do it justice, I’ll let you know and we can brainstorm something else.
Please remember I run this blog for free, so any support means a lot, only if you’re able to give it! Love y’all and thank you for reading!!! <3
Summary : Dex can’t seem to bring himself to tell you that you killed your attacker.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : hurt/comfort, attempted assault by another character, strangulation/choking, graphic violence to the person who assaulted reader, blood and gore, self-defence escalating into overkill, panic attack, memory loss, non-sexual nudity and bathing, gaslighting, lying, possessive/protective Dex, unhealthy but sincere devotion. (I pictured FBI!Dex in this but honestly I could see DDBA!Dex too).
Word Count : 5k
Requested by : Ko-fi request <3
Notes : I listened to Run Rabbit by Mollie Elizabeth by writing this, hence the title. Enjoy!
You did everything Dex told you to do.
You took the safest route home, even though it added twelve minutes to the walk. You stayed beneath the streetlights and kept away from the mouth of every dark alley. Your phone was fully charged, your location was shared with him, and your keys were already threaded between your fingers before you even left the busy part of the avenue.
You even noticed the man following you early.
He had been behind you for three blocks, never close enough to prove anything, but he always crossed when you crossed and slowed whenever you slowed. You knew better than to look directly at him. After all, Dex had told you not to let someone know you were frightened until you had decided what to do with that fear.
So you stepped into the late-night pharmacy and wandered beneath the fluorescent lights for several minutes. You pretended to compare shampoos while watching the convex security mirror above the aisle.
The man waited outside.
Your stomach sank.
You pulled out your phone and called Dex. It rang once before going to voicemail, which meant he was either working or already packing his things and moving towards you. You left the line open anyway, slipping your phone into your coat pocket as you stepped back onto the pavement.
“I’m on Stanton,” you said, quiet as you could, knowing the microphone would catch it. “I’m going on the safe route, and there’s a man following me.”
You headed towards the twenty-four-hour diner two streets away. At least there were lights, cameras, and most importantly, people there.
You almost reached it, but the man caught you when you passed the narrow service road behind an apartment building. One moment his footsteps were behind you; the next, his hand gripped around the back of your coat and dragged you hard enough that the thicker collar choked into your throat.
Your keys fell from your fingers, and all you could manage was a pathetic little scream before he could cover your mouth.
His palm immediately struck your lips and teeth, crushing the sound back into your skull as he hauled you into the darkness of some random New York alley. Your heel scraped uselessly across the pavement as you bit down until you tasted blood that wasn’t yours. It worked! He swore, jerking his hand away.
Immediately, you drove your elbow backwards.
Dex had shown you where to aim for, and you were trying to retrieve it from the rolodex of information in your mind, not quite the ribs, but lower in the soft tissue.
The man grunted, but he didn’t let go. His arm locked around your throat instead, squeezing until firework-white sparks burst across your vision.
“You stupid fucking—”
You stamped on his foot before he could finish his sentence and threw your weight forwards, turning beneath his arm, exactly as Dex had taught you.
Eventually, his hold broke.
You stumbled free and ran, but the man recovered faster than you initially expected. His hand found its way and tangled his fingers in your hair, snapping your head backwards so violently that your neck burned.
He slammed you face-first against the brick wall.
Oh. Fuck.
A burst of pain exploded through your cheek, teeth unintentionally biting into the inside of your mouth. Warm, fresh blood flooded on your tongue, thick and metallic, while his body pinned you against the wall.
The panic bells ringing in your head turned everything white-hot. “S-stop!”
He didn’t.
No. No. You were better than this.
You reached behind blindly, clawing for his eyes, his throat, anything you could find. Your nails found skin, raking down as he cursed and drove you against the brick again.
Maybe your nose broke, you couldn’t really tell.
His hand slid beneath your coat, and that’s when your vision went red. Rage flared hot inside you, burning through every thought in your head. You threw your skull backwards and felt his cartilage collapse beneath it.
His grip loosened, howling in pain.
You spun and shoved him with both hands.
He stumbled off the curb at the edge of the service road. His ankle twisted beneath him, and he went down hard. The man managed to catch himself on one palm before his shoulder struck the pavement.
You could have run.
The diner was less than a hundred yards away. You could see its red sign glowing at the end of the road, bright as a fresh exit wound.
That was when the man looked up at you.
A sick, satisfied feeling churned in your stomach as red poured from his nose and over his mouth.
And… he was smiling.
Oh.
He still believed he was going to win.
He pushed himself onto one knee. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Your hand found the loose brick beside the wall, and it was heavier than you expected. Its edges bit into your palm as you lifted it with both hands.
When the man saw it, his smile vanished in an instant.
You brought the brick down across his temple.
The sound that came off it was shockingly small. It sounded like a damp knock, followed by the scrape of his body collapsing onto the road.
He rolled onto his back, blinking rapidly. One side of his face had already begun to swell around the ripped skin as a blotch of blood ran into his ear and disappeared beneath his head.
You stood over him, panting.
He was still conscious. “Wait.”
You could’ve stopped. You could’ve shown mercy.
Instead, you struck him again.
This time, the brick split the skin above his eyebrow. Blood sprayed across your coat and speckled your face in warm droplets.
He raised one arm to protect himself.
Huh. Cute.
You hit that too.
His arm gave beneath the brick with a muffled crunch. His forearm bent where it shouldn’t have been bent, and he screamed, the sound travelling through the empty service road.
You dropped the brick.
For half a second, the sight of his ruined arm nearly pulled you back into your logical self.
Then, his good hand closed around your ankle.
You shrieked and kicked him in the face. Your heel connected with his mouth as teeth snapped together. One of them even skipped across the pavement and vanished beneath a parked car.
He released you, but you fell on top of him.
Your knees struck the ground on either side of his hips, and your hands seized the front of his jacket. His blood made the material slippery beneath your fingers.
Before you could think any better of it, you dragged his head upwards, then slammed it against the curb.
The back of his skull struck concrete with a thick, hollow crack.
His eyes rolled, and it horrified you how much you liked it, seeing the man who wanted to touch you fucking bleed out.
So you did it again.
Blood spread beneath his hair.
Again.
The hard crack now sounded wetter as the skin split and bone began to cave in. His body jerked beneath you, heels scraping against the pavement, but there was no strength left in it.
He made a noise through his broken mouth. You didn’t know whether it was a plea or merely air left escaping.
“You followed me!” you sobbed. “You fucking touched me!”
You brought his head down again.
The edge of the curb disappeared beneath blood. It ran between your fingers, coating your palms each time you pulled him upwards.
“I did everything right.”
Again.
“I—”
Again.
“Have—”
Again.
“A—”
Again.
“Fucking—”
Again.
“Boyfriend—”
Again.
“You—”
Again.
“Asshole—”
Again.
“He’ll fucking kill you!”
The last word broke somewhere in your throat, ragged. You were crying now, maybe. You couldn’t really tell. Your face was wet, your hands were red, and the whole world had shrunk down to the most-likely-dead man in your grip and the curb beneath him and the memory of his hand on you where it never should have been.
The back of his skull was now the shape of the concrete underneath.
You felt the structure collapse beneath your hands where there should have been resistance. It didn’t feel dramatic or righteous. All you could think was how it felt gooey in the wrong places.
You pulled him up again anyway.
“I told you,” you sobbed, or screamed, or whispered. You couldn’t tell anymore. “I told you to stop.”
But his eyes were open and empty, staring past you at nothing, and when you tried to lift him one more time, your hands slipped in all the blood and he dropped back against the curb with a sound that made your stomach sink
That was when the anger went out.
All at once, as if someone had blown out a candle inside your chest.
You stared down at your hands and the red beneath your nails. You saw a dark smear across your wrist where he had grabbed you. “I did everything right,” you said again, smaller this time.
His face had lost all expression. Blood bubbled faintly at his lips before spilling down his cheek.
He was dead.
You knew he was dead.
You screamed as you struck him again, though you no longer knew whether you were furious or terrified.
You remembered Dex telling you never to stop until you were safe.
Make sure they cannot get back up.
You had done everything he told you to do.
The man’s head struck the concrete one final time and didn’t bounce.
You released him.
His ruined skull settled crookedly against the ground. The road beneath him shone black-red beneath the distant streetlights, and blood soaked through your tights at the knees and dripped from your hands in heavy threads.
The dead man’s head no longer looked human.
Your stomach heaved.
You tried to stand, but your legs folded beneath you. The world tilted violently, the brick walls stretching upwards as though the road had dropped away beneath your body.
Footsteps thundered behind you, but you couldn’t turn around.
Your vision narrowed until the alley became a tunnel.
Then a hand touched your face, but this time, the touch was gentle.
His thumb swept carefully beneath your eye, avoiding the swelling along your cheekbone, as an arm curved around your waist before you could collapse fully onto the body.
“There you are,” Dex whispered.
His voice sounded distant beneath the rushing in your ears.
You tried to tell him what you had done, but your lips would not let you.
Dex’s palm cradled the back of your head, carefully nudging your nose back into place. He pulled you into him, turning your face away from the ruin on the pavement.
“My smart girl,” he murmured, stroking your hair with bloodless fingers. “You remembered everything.”
The praise sank through your heart as he felt his lips press against your temple.
“You saved yourself.”
Eventually, dazed and overwhelmed by the adrenaline crash, your eyes closed.
The last thing you felt was Dex’s thumb moving across your cheek, wiping away a tear.
—
Dex knew you.
He knew you were nothing like him.
That much had been obvious almost from the beginning, though he hadn’t understood it properly. Dex’s first instinct had always been violence. Whenever a problem appeared, his mind found that the bloodiest way was often the fastest way to solve it. Even inconveniences made his skin crawl, from a jammed drawer, a car alarm that would not stop, to a man looking at you for half a second too long across a restaurant.
You were different.
You were gentle in ways Dex had once found impractical.
You apologised to furniture when you bumped into it. You cupped moths in your hands and carried them outside. You left sugar water out for bees in summer and lowered your voice around frightened dogs. You once stopped walking entirely because there was a snail on the pavement after rain, and you refused to let anyone step on it until Dex moved it safely into the grass with a leaf.
He had stood there watching you then, half-annoyed, half-fascinated.
“It’s just a snail,” he had said.
You had looked up at him like he had spouted bullshit from his mouth. “It’s alive.”
From then on, he realized alive mattered to you.
Even small alive. Even when it was inconvenient .
Dex hadn’t been raised with that as a natural instinct. As a boy, he had thrown stones at birds because he found that he liked the little burst of movement. He hadn’t thought of it as cruelty then. It was just aim, maybe boredom.
Then you bought a bird feeder for your apartment.
You hung it outside the kitchen window with such bright delight that Dex hadn’t even known what to say. You filled it every morning, scattering seed with your bed hair falling over your face, then stood there with your coffee while sparrows and blue tits flickered down. You loved them. You loved their stupid little hopping, their bright feathers.
You loved listening to birdsong most of all.
You whistled back sometimes without realising it while you watered plants or folded laundry. At night, when you were deep enough asleep that your body forgot to be self-conscious, you made the same small breathy sounds in your dreams, sweet enough that Dex would lie awake beside you and listen as he calmed down.
So instead of throwing rocks at it like he used to, he learned how to imitate their songs.
At first, only because you smiled when he whistled them. Then, he did it because you looked at him like he had performed a miracle when a robin landed on the feeder while Dex stood still by the window, unknowingly calling them closer.
Without realising, he had learned to mimic their distinctive calls.
He even stopped exterminating annoying bugs because of you.
You were afraid of spiders, yes, but when one of them showed up in the nightstand and you screamed, hiding behind him like a shield, you would make this horrified and pleading sound because he reached for a shoe instead of a cup. To you, being afraid of the little thing didn’t mean it deserved to die.
“Dex, no. Outside. Alive.”
So for you, he learned to trap spiders beneath glasses and slide envelopes carefully underneath them. He learned to carry them to the windowsill instead of crushing them.
Eventually, he learned not to flick beetles off the balcony, because you worried about whether the fall would hurt them. He learned to scoop flies out of half-open windows with hands while you hovered behind him whispering, “Careful, careful,” like he was defusing a bomb.
He learned to pretend he cared whether tiny, ugly things lived.
Eventually, he cared because you cared, and caring about what you cared about was the closest thing to general empathy Dex had ever understood.
And that was why Dex knew that you could not wake up knowing what you had done.
Because you had not even wanted him to kill spiders.
How the hell were you supposed to survive knowing you had killed a man?
Dex had known that the moment you went limp in his arms, your bloodied hands curled weakly against his shirt, your body giving up its adrenaline high only after it was finally safe to stop fighting. You had passed out before he could praise you properly, even before he could look you in the eye and tell you that you had done exactly what he taught you to do.
You had saved yourself.
Dex was proud of you in a way he knew he couldn’t show when you woke up.
Especially not with the body in the trunk of his car and your clothes stuffed into a sealed black bag hidden in the closet. His own clothes in there too, soaked with blood where he had held you, smeared bleach where he had poured it over the concrete.
He would deal with it later, when you were properly asleep, because the body could wait and you could not.
So Dex got you, half-passed out and half mumbling nonsense, home. Perhaps it was simply your mind coping on a traumatic memory.
He stripped you carefully, cutting fabric where it stuck, easing sleeves down your arms, peeling everything off your skin piece by piece until there was nothing left between you and him. His clothes came off too, though nothing was ever sexual about that, but because his soaked shirt was evidence, too.
He washed you in the shower while you leaned against him, barely conscious, your forehead pressed to his shoulder, your knees buckling every time the warm water hit another bruise. He did this all while murmuring sweet nonsense into your ear, words he knew your body understood even when your mind was tuned out. “You did so good, baby. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
He washed you until water at your feet ran pink, then red, then thin and clear.
Your hands took the longest as he held each finger between his own, washing beneath the nails, over the knuckles, around the raw places where the brick and pavement had scraped you open. You whimpered once, so quietly he almost missed it, and he kissed your wet temple before continuing.
He had to make them clean because you would look at your hands first.
When it was done, he carried you to bed and lay down naked beside you, pulling you onto his chest before the cold could bite.
The skin to skin was its own kind of intimacy, no barrier, but his body around yours.
By 2 a.m., he had not slept. He had tried, once or twice, mostly for the performance, because if you woke up and found him sitting upright in the dark watching you breathe, you would know something was wrong.
So he lay with you until dawn, and every time your breathing hitched, Dex tightened his hold. Every time you made a frightened sound, he kissed your head and whispered until you settled. He kept one eye on the bedroom door, one ear tuned to the street.
But mostly he watched you.
You looked smaller when you slept after fear, lashes clumping from old tears. Your mouth was swollen and a bruise was blooming along your cheekbone where the man had slammed you against brick, and Dex had to look away from it more than once because all he felt was red-hot rage.
But it wasn’t like he could do anything. The man was already dead.
You woke up sometime around 3 a.m.
Dex felt it when you choked on a breath, curled against him, cheek on his chest, one leg tangled with his. Your fingers twitched against his ribs, and he knew some part of you had surfaced too quickly.
Your eyes opened.
Almost immediately, panic tore through you.
You jerked upright so fast the sheet slipped from your chest.
Your hands flew up in front of your face, fingers spread, as though blood might still be dripping from them. They were clean, but you stared anyway.
You turned them over, looking at your palms, backs, nails, and wrist.
You seemed shocked to find them… clean.
Dex sat up behind you. “Baby.”
You flinched at his voice, and that knee-jerk reaction hurt more than he expected.
You twisted towards him, naked and shaking, eyes wide with a terror that had no full memory attached to it yet.
Dex could see your mind reaching and clawing through fog, finding only flashes of memories. Maybe you remembered a streetlight, maybe a hand on your throat.
Your lips parted, but no sound came out.
Dex reached for you.
You scrambled back half an inch, and he frowned immediately.
He tried to make himself look harmless, like there was nothing hidden near the closet, nothing dead cooling in the back of his car.
“There you are,” he murmured.
Your face fell, but the sob didn’t come out. It got trapped in your chest, making your whole body shake. You looked down at yourself then, at your bare skin, at his bare skin, at the tangled sheets, and your confusion quickly became fear.
Dex moved carefully, scooting closer until his thigh touched yours.
“You were cold,” he said, pulling the duvet back up around you before you could ask. “ I had to get you warm.”
Your eyes darted around the room.
The bedroom looked normal. That made it worse.
There was no proof of anything, no blood, no alley, no proof of anything but your body remembering what your mind could not grasp.
Dex placed one hand over your knee.
You stared at it.
He expected you to pull away, but instead your breath hitched and your whole body tilted towards him, helplessly, like a compass finding north. He gathered you before you could think better of it.
You collapsed into his lap.
Dex wrapped both arms around you and pulled you against his bare chest again, tucking your face beneath his chin. You were shaking so hard it passed into him. You pressed your hands flat to his shoulders, then curled, then opened again, like you could not stand the idea of grasping flesh too tightly.
“There,” he whispered. “That’s it. Come here, baby.”
Your breath hitched against his throat, and he felt the first wet tear hit his skin.
Then you were crying without sound, which was worse than sobbing. Violent tears shook you from the inside while your body stayed stiff with shock.
Dex rocked you slowly, enough to give your panic a rhythm to follow.
“You’re home,” he murmured into your hair. “You’re with me. No one’s gonna touch you.”
Your fingers dug into him. “I—I…,” you whispered, not quite coming out with words yet
Dex closed his eyes for half a second. “It’s okay, baby.”
Your eyes darted in a panic. “I don’t know what happened.”
He tried shushing you. “You don’t have to know all of it right now.”
“I-I don’t know, Dex.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
Your breathing grew shallow, almost choking. You tried to pull back and look at your hands again, but Dex caught them between your bodies, folding them against his chest where you could feel his heartbeat beneath your palms.
Focus there.
You did.
“I-I remember him,” you managed to say.
Dex stroked the back of your head. “Okay.”
“I remember walking. I took the right way.”
“You did.”
“I did what you said.”
“You did everything right.”
The sentence seemed to be a trigger, ripping a sob out of you.
Dex held you tighter.
“I-I did everything right,” you repeated, smaller now. “I promise.”
“I know.”
“I went inside. I waited. I called you.”
“You were so smart.”
Your face pressed harder into his neck.
“So smart,” he whispered again. “My girl, you did so well.”
You shook your head, frantic, because praise did not fit beside the images cutting through you.
You didn’t remember much, but you saw flashes of blood and concrete behind your eyelids.
Your breathing stopped.
His hand slid up the back of your neck and held you close. “No,” he murmured, soft as velvet. “Stay with me.”
“I saw—”
“You saw too much.”
“I… did something.”
“You protected yourself.”
“No, I—”
“You protected yourself,” he repeated, more insistent this time.
Your fingers twisted against his chest.
Dex let his voice warm up, like honey in warm water. “You were scared and hurt and you did what you had to do.”
He felt you take the information in, but your panic continued circling it like vultures on corpses.
Dex kissed the top of your head, then your temple, then the bruised corner of your brow. “You’re okay,” he breathed. “I promise.”
You made a wounded noise, and he knew exactly what he was doing.
The kindness was not accidental, it was architecture. He was building a room inside your memory, where the bloodier parts could be locked outside until you forgot where you held the key.
“Where is he?”
Oh. So you vaguely knew there was a he now.
“He’s in the hospital.” He lied easily.
Dex knew this was how it would happen. One lie was enough to sound like mercy, and you would hold on to it because you trusted him more than you trusted your own shattered memory. He was making you need his version of the truth because he truly believed it was the only one that would save you.
You froze in his arms, and Dex held you through it.
“The hospital?” you whispered.
“Mm.”
Your hands clutched him harder. “He looked...”
“I know what it looked like.”
You pulled back just enough to see his face.
Dex hated it, and not because he couldn’t lie to your face. He could, he had, and would again if it meant it would preserve and protect your sense of self. Instead, he hated it because you looked so desperate for him to make the world kinder than really it was, and he loved you so much it nearly made him crueler.
He cupped your cheeks.
“Head wounds bleed badly,” he said. “You know that, sweetheart.”
Your eyes blazed into his, and he knew he made a mistake then. You didn’t remember that part.
“H-head wounds?” You breathed out in disbelief, unable to claw the memory now.
“He was breathing when I got there,” Dex lied again.
A strangled sob left you, but it didn’t sound like relief yet. For now, it was only the body realising it had been offered a way out.
“Head wounds a-are dangerous.”
“I know.”
You hiccuped. “I thought— I remember—”
“Pieces,” Dex murmured. “You remember pieces.”
“But I saw blood.”
“There was blood.”
“On me?”
“Yes.”
Your face fell, Dex pulling you back in before the horror could.
“That’s why I cleaned you up,” he whispered, and that part, at least, was not a lie. His thumb moved slowly along your cheek, careful in a way Dex was rarely careful with anything that wasn’t you. “That’s why we ended up like this. You were shaking so hard, and I couldn’t get you warm. I tried. I swear I tried.”
His mouth brushed your temple, barely a kiss.
“I kept trying to move,” he murmured. “I kept thinking I should get you a shirt, but every time I pulled away, you reached for me again like you thought I was leaving, and I couldn’t—” His voice snagged, just slightly. “I couldn’t make myself do it. Not when you looked at me like that.”
You stared at him, still heavy-limbed, your thoughts coming back to you in pieces. It sounded embarrassingly believable, because there was a warmth in your chest that remembered him. Your hands had always found him before the rest of you caught up.
“I did?” you asked quietly.
“Yes.”
Your eyes narrowed, weakly suspicious. “You’re lying.”
Dex leaned down and kissed your forehead, lingering there like the answer mattered more than the accusation.
“About you needing me?” His voice dropped. “Never.”
You cried harder then, finally making messy little sobs that broke against his chest while Dex rocked you, He ran his hands up and down your back, whispering into your hair. He called you precious until the word stopped sounding like a word at all.
You shook your head.
Dex closed his eyes and held you tighter.
“You’re my girl,” he whispered. “Nothing about you changed.”
His gaze drifted once, towards the closet.
The black bag waited.
Behind the wall, beyond the apartment, beneath the ordinary morning, the dead man waited too.
Later, he would get rid of the body. Later, he would burn what needed burning. For now, you were shaking in his lap, believing him because you needed to.
“Dex,” you whispered.
“I’m here.”
“You promise?”
He knew what you were asking.
You promise I didn’t? You promise I’m still me? You promise whatever I don’t remember isn’t real?
Dex pressed his lips to your temple and held them there. “I promise you’re safe.”
It was not the answer you wanted, but it was the one he gave.
You sagged against him after that, emptied by tears, your body surrendering. Dex eased both of you down until he was lying on his back and you were draped over him, skin to skin beneath the sheet. Your cheek rested over his heart, hand curled weakly near his ribs.
He kept touching your scalp, your spine, and the back of your neck in gently repetitive strokes until your breathing evened out.
Eventually, sleep took you again. Poor girl, still so tired after murdering an evil man.
Every few minutes, you twitched. Every time, Dex whispered you back down.
My precious girl, he would praise. You did so well.
At last, your body grew heavy over his, your fingers stopped moving. Your mouth grew pliant against his chest.
Dex waited for five minutes, then ten, then twenty.
Only when he was certain you were properly asleep did he turn his head towards the closet again.
He had things that needed doing.
But you stirred faintly against him before he could move, and Dex froze. Your brow pinched, your hand tightening on his skin, some nightmare threatening to pull you under.
He settled back immediately.
Not yet.
The dead could wait a little longer.
Dex brushed his mouth over your hair and smiled.“My sweet girl,” he whispered.
His hand covered yours, pressing your clean palm flat over his heart.
“You did everything right.”
He adored you for last night, even if he could never let you know exactly what you had done.
He adored the shaking, furious thing you had become when there had been no one left to save you. He adored the fact that some part of you had remembered him, remembered every warning, every lesson, every instruction, just in case.
He adored that you had survived. More than that, in some terrible private corner of himself, he adored that you had survived violently.
He adored that for a split second, you had become him.
But he knew you best, and he knew you weren’t made for that.
So he would take that truth to the grave, and you would wake up tomorrow with the love of your life beside you.
You would wake up believing you had done only enough to live.
And Dex loved you enough to make that true.
—end.
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"I already told you, you need to input the population info first, then the stats for each individual borough," you muttered to yourself as you read an email from Starla, one of the analysts that worked on your team. "That's why your numbers are off."
You had just gotten back in the office after taking the previous two days off to mourn Vanessa and was trying to follow up on tasks that had been relegated to others in your department.
You replied to Starla as such and were contemplating going get another cup of coffee when your phone lit up with a text from Sheila.
The Mayor would like to see you, it read.
You sighed. You hadn't spoken to your father since the repast — you had returned home to deal with your own personal business while he had continued to field sympathy and prepare to settle Vanessa's estate, but apparently whatever it was he needed to speak with you about was important enough to summon you.
You picked your phone up. I'll be right there, you texted back, then got up and headed out of your office and to the elevator.
You rode up to the floor your father's office was on, then walked down the hall.
You knocked on his door then opened it, pausing when you noticed that the chair in front of your father's desk was already occupied. "You wanted to see me, sir?"
"Ah, yes," your father said. "District Attorney Hochberg and I were just finishing up, weren't we?"
"Oh, er, yes, of course," the DA replied before standing. "Miss Fisk, always a pleasure to see you."
"Mmhmm."
"I'll see you at the trial?"
You nodded. Karen Page had been captured and taken into custody at the protest in front of City Hall a few nights ago and was being brought to court later that day. "Of course."
You waited until he had left before taking a seat in the chair in front of your father's desk.
"District Attorney Hochberg is a interesting fellow, isn't he?" your father said.
In all honesty, you hated the man. "He's a very… skilled litigator."
Your father harrumphed. "He makes my skin crawl."
You chuckled. At least he technically agreed with you.
"Lawyers," your father continued. "You know, they… use words to twist the truth, don't they?"
You thought back to your father's unjust trial so many years ago. "I think I know what you mean."
Your father nodded. "I imagine you do."
You paused. "I've been meaning to check in with you. How are you, Dad?"
"I don't know. I haven't been asked that." Your father sighed. "I always accepted love as a prison. Not the love between a father and his child, of course, but the kind of love a man has for a woman. I just… never expected to be in it alone."
You nodded. You could never fathom losing Buck the way your father had lost Vanessa. "Condolences are meaningless. Thoughts and prayers do nothing. No one tells you the truth in times like this, which is…"
You sighed. "This is going to hurt. Losing Vanessa for me is not the same as losing her is for you, so we don't know when or even if it's going to end for both of us."
"No." Your father paused. "Well… I uh, I appreciate your words."
He opened his desk drawer. "The reason I wanted to see you was, well…"
He took something out of the drawer and set it on his desk, then pushed it towards you.
Your blood ran cold as you recognized the twin to Vanessa's diamond-and-ruby earring that was still in your purse. "Dad, I am so sorry," you began. "I, uh—"
Your father shook his head. "You don't have to apologize, she would've wanted you to have them. It's just curious, the things we do on impulse — isn't it?"
You chuckled softly to yourself. "I would've liked to have thought I'd have more control over myself than that — or at least have taken both of them so it wouldn't be as noticeable."
"Ah, but you didn't." Your father folded his hands together in front of him. "I know you've always thought of the work I do as… unsavory, but I would hope that since you've been home you might would have changed your opinion and would reconsider joining the family business."
Your eyebrows raised in surprise. "You do?"
"Purely behind-the-scenes," your father clarified. "An… administrative role, so to speak. At least until you became comfortable enough to be more hands-on."
You thought for a moment. You couldn't help but feel proud that your father trusted you enough to ask you to reconsider joining his empire, and besides, you were dating and even living with his most trusted associate…
You took a deep breath. "Can I think about it for a bit? I'd like to talk to Buck before I make a decision."
Your father nodded. "Yes, of course."
You picked up Vanessa's earring and stood. "If that was all, I have some things I need to get back to."
You turned to leave, slipping the earring into your pants pocket.
Your father said your name. "One other thing."
You turned back around. "Yeah, Dad?"
"No matter your decision…" Your father smiled softly at you. "Buck is a good man. Hold on to him."
You smiled back at him, your heart warming. "I will."
You left your father's office and headed back to yours, then grabbed your phone. Are you at City Hall? you texted to Buck. I need to talk to you about something important.
Your phone buzzed with a reply. I'm not at the moment, but will be within 10 minutes.
You looked at the time. Meet me at the fountain?
Okay. See you there.
You grabbed your purse out of your desk drawer and scrawled a note on the whiteboard attached to your office door. Taking an early lunch, back at 12:15 pm.
You texted Sheila to let her know as well then left the office, walking across City Park to the Tony Stark Memorial Fountain before taking a seat to wait for Buck.
While you waited, you weighed your options. If you rejected your father's offer, you could continue to claim plausable deniability as to what exactly he was involved in. If you accepted, however, you felt like you'd be able to figure out how best to protect both him and Buck if things ever went south again.
You smiled as you noticed Buck walking up to you. "Hi, sweetheart."
Buck smiled back at you then gave you a soft, slow kiss. "Hello, my darling."
He sat next to you. "What is it you wish to speak to me about? Everything okay?"
You nodded. "Yeah, I just…"
You paused, trying to figure out how best to word things just in case anyone nearby happened to be listening. "My dad asked me to join his… other administration."
Buck nodded. "And are you considering it?"
"Actually, kinda, but I wanted to talk to you first—" Your eyes narrowed at the nonplussed look on Buck's face. "Wait a minute, you knew. You knew he was going to ask me and you didn't say anything!"
Buck winced. "Your father asked me my opinion on the matter and if I thought you might be open to the idea, but he also specifically forbade me from mentioning the possibility to you because he wanted to speak to you himself."
Yeah, okay, that makes sense, you thought, your irritation immediately evaporating.
You let out a fake huff of annoyance. "Stop being reasonable when I'm trying to be mad at you," you grumbled.
Buck chuckled. "My apologies, darling. Would you like me to vex you further? I can steal your lunch out of the staff refrigerator or leave the toilet seat up at home."
Your lips quirked up in a smile. "Nah, that's okay. So how would you feel if I joined the family business? I'm assuming you told my dad you'd be okay with it?"
Buck nodded. "I did, although I would think that he would have asked you even if I had tried to discourage him. You're a brilliant woman with a head for business and I think you could make your father's enterprise grow even more exponentially."
He bit his lip. "And honestly I feel like I can better protect you if you're fully aware of your father's business dealings."
You nodded. "And you don't want to betray his trust by involving me without his knowledge."
"Exactly." Buck put an arm around you and pressed a kiss to your forehead. "It's entirely your decision, of course, but I do appreciate you asking me about my feelings on the matter — even if I already knew about it."
"Of course. This doesn't just affect me, it affects you as well." You took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. "I love you."
Buck squeezed your hand back. "I love you too."
He stood. "Are you expected back in the office any time soon? Because the food truck I passed on my way here smells amazing."
You shook your head. "You're in luck — I happen to be on an early lunch break and don't have to be back for another 45 minutes."
Buck grinned. "Well then, what do you say, darling?"
You stood as well and squeezed his hand once again. "I say let's go get in line."
You pulled your phone out of your pocket to text your father as you and Buck walked back towards City Hall together.
Summary : You fall for Dex, a faerie hunter. Little did you know, he has already decided you belong to him.
Pairing : Faerie Prince! Benjamin Poindexter x Human Princess! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Faerie au, fantasy au, dark romance, obsessive/possessive behaviour, stalking, shapeshifting, hidden identity, predatory courtship, manipulation by way of fae bargaining and loopholes, attempted assault by another character, murder, blood, explicit sexual content (afab reader with no explicit anatomical description), masturbation, fingering, oral sex, praise/degradation, implied captivity, food, north star! Reader. Reader is described to be a "spinster" and I picture her to be in her mid20-mid30s with the king and queen to be in their 60s, but open to interpretation, of course! (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 13.3k
Requested by : anon
Notes : The Title is Inspired by the song “Call Me Little Sunshine” by Ghost. Enjoy!
Being a princess was, in practice, spectacularly dull. Storybooks had neglected to mention that.
According to the bards, princesses spent their days dancing through rose gardens, befriending woodland creatures, and waiting elegantly by castle windows until the perfect knight arrived on a white horse.
The reality was considerably less glamorous, because reality included embroidery, war planning lessons, standing perfectly still while yet another seamstress held yet another gown against your shoulders and declared that ivory “brought out your breeding.”
The reality often was being escorted absolutely everywhere because, according to your father, kingdoms had a habit of declaring war over unmarried princesses.
You lived in the tallest tower of the royal palace, and not because you were imprisoned, but because it was traditional.
Your father insisted generations of royal sons and daughters had lived there before their weddings. The tower overlooked the capital, the forests beyond the walls, and, on particularly clear evenings, the silver mist that marked the border of the fae realm.
You were forbidden from going anywhere near it. So, naturally, it was the most interesting thing you could see from your window.
Sometimes, a raven came to sit with you on the sill.
He was a sleek, handsome thing with feathers black enough to reflect blue beneath the sunlight and eyes that seemed far too clever for an ordinary bird. He never startled when you moved too suddenly or tried to touch him. He simply watched you, head tilted, while you complained about your lessons, your father, and the latest dreadful man being considered for your hand.
The raven was your only friend.
You had started leaving scraps of breakfast for him, though he never really ate them. Most days, he seemed content merely to listen. Occasionally, he would tap his beak against the window sill or make a croaking sound at exactly the right moment, as though offering an opinion.
Every morning followed the same rhythm of breakfast before lessons, before war planning, before a walk in the palace gardens with no fewer than six guards pretending they weren’t following you, before fencing, before dinner.
Occasionally, your routine was interrupted by another prospective husband. Sometimes it was a prince, other times it would be a duke or a marquess. Once, it was an unfortunate count who spent twenty uninterrupted minutes explaining taxation while trying to court you.
Your father always watched these meetings with hopeful eyes.“What do you think of Prince Alistair?”
“He called me ‘adequate.’”
“He meant well.”
“He compared me to wheat,” you rolled your eyes.
He could only sigh. “Wheat is valuable.”
“I don’t want to marry a man who thinks my greatest quality is being agriculturally useful.”
Your father sighed, and it was the weary sigh of a king rapidly discovering that raising a stubborn daughter was considerably harder than negotiating peace treaties between entire territories. “You cannot refuse everyone.”
“I haven’t refused everyone,” you corrected, which was technically true.
“You’ve refused twelve.”
You held up a finger with a sly smile. “Twelve so far.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are one day going to become queen.”
“I know.”
“You need a husband.”
“I know,” you slumped to your seat, though the corset was now digging into your spine.
“A suitable one.”
“I know.”
“So what exactly are you waiting for?”
You glanced past him, beyond the castle walls, toward the ancient forest shimmering on the horizon.
“I don’t know,” you admitted. “But I feel like if I marry any of them…” You paused. “I’ll be settling.”
Your father smiled sadly, mistaking your hesitation for youthful nerves. “You’ll understand soon enough.”
You smiled back because it was easier than arguing.
The truth was, you already understood.
You simply wanted more than a political alliance and polite conversation over dinner. You wanted someone who made your heart race.
Someone worthy of becoming the subject of stories.
You looked out and simply wondered, if any human prospect was ever going to be remarkable.
—
You had never escaped six armed guards before, but today, you found out that it was surprisingly easy.
They were watching for assassins, kidnappers, enemy soldiers, perhaps even a dragon if the kingdom had been having a particularly difficult week. They were not watching for their princess to lift her skirts, squeeze through a gap in the palace hedge, and run directly into the trees.
By the time anyone shouted your name, you were already gone.
Why did she even do this? Your father would probably ask, but there was really only one answer: boredom.
You were bored of the same rooms, the same lessons, the same walks through the gardens. You were bored of waking each morning already knowing exactly how the day would end.
The raven had visited your windowsill that morning, but he stayed only long enough to tilt his clever little head at you, and then flew back toward the forest.
You had watched him disappear beyond the palace walls and thought, with a miserable pit in your stomach, if only I could be that free.
Perched beside you in the tower one moment, exploring the forest the next.
So you decided to do something about it and ran.
The forest began as ordinary woodland,
but grew stranger the farther west you went. The trees became older, their roots rising through the earth like sleeping serpents, and silver mist gathered between the trunks even beneath a clear sky.
That mist marked the border: Your kingdom ended on this side, and the fae realm began on the other.
You were not stupid enough to cross it.
You were still catching your breath by a rock when you heard something crying in the undergrowth.
The sound drew you deeper into the woods long before you saw its source.
It was not a cry of pain so much as a weary exhale, the sort a creature made after running farther than its body wished to carry it. The forest seemed reluctant to reveal where it came from, as ancient oaks stood shoulder to shoulder like old kings in round tables, their branches weaving together until only ribbons of sunlight reached the moss below. Blue-white motes drifted lazily through the shade, vanishing whenever you tried to follow them with your eyes
The doe lay only a few paces away, as though she had collapsed the instant she reached the safety of your kingdom. She was a beautiful hind with a pale face and enormous dark eyes that blinked sleepily rather than fearfully. The white arrow with black feathers rested against her flank, though when you looked closer your brow furrowed.
There was no blood or torn flesh.
The arrowhead shimmered with threads of pale gold that flowed over the deer’s body like sunlight through water. Wherever the light touched, the muscles beneath her coat relaxed. Her breathing remained calm.
“Oh.” You crouched beside her. “You aren’t hurt, are you, my love?”
The doe lazily lifted her head and nosed your shoulder before letting it fall again into the grass with contented resignation, determined to finish its nap.
You laughed nervously under your breath. “What have they done to you?”
“The Sleep of Rowan.”
The voice came from somewhere inside the silver mist, beautiful enough that it almost seemed to belong to the forest itself.
You looked up.
He stood where the mist was thickest, and somehow the trees seemed arranged around him rather than the other way around. His leathers were the deep blue of the ocean down by the south border, embroidered so finely with bronze thread that every movement caught the light like autumn leaves stirred by the wind.
A longbow rested loosely in one hand, carved from white wood that glimmered with faint silver runes. His hair was slightly tousled, sometimes dark brown and other times it was slightly golden. He was… Fair Folk.
There was no mistaking it.
He had pointed ears peeking through his hair, a strong jaw softened only by expressive lips that looked almost permanently on the verge of a knowing smile. His amber eyes were startlingly bright, flecked with molten gold, his fingers were glowing blue at the tips.
Then there was the scar, crossing one cheek in a narrow line, and one on top of the eye.
It should not have been there. Whatever had given him that one must have been vicious.
You knew now, that any sensible person would walk in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, you had never been particularly sensible.
“Sleep of Rowan?” you blinked.
He inclined his head toward the doe. “The arrow contains no iron.” His voice carried no arrogance, only certainty. “It numbs the body before it strikes. By the time the arrow lands, the creature feels only warmth. They grow sleepy.”
The doe punctuated his explanation by yawning.
Your heart immediately melted. “Oh, sweetheart.”
The fae watched you smile at the animal. His expression changed so subtly you almost missed it.
Interest, maybe. Recognition, perhaps.
You looked from the doe to the bow resting in his hand. “You mean to kill her?”
“When the forest gives permission.”
You blinked.
He nodded toward the ancient trees surrounding you, fingertips brushing across the carved wood of his bow.
“We never hunt mothers with young,” he continued. “Never more than the Court requires. Every hide is worn and every antler is carved. Every bone shall be returned to the old groves before the first snowfall.”
He spoke not like a man explaining himself, but someone with rules and guidelines so ingrained into his bones it might as well be prayer.
“We borrow a life,” he said quietly. “We are expected to return honour in its place.”
You looked down at the sleeping doe as she twitched once in her dreams.
“Then…” Your fingers drifted automatically to the white patch between her ears, stroking it with infinite care. “…couldn’t you borrow another?”
The fae regarded you with an expression you couldn’t begin to understand.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve already proved you could catch her.”
His brow lifted.
“You did.” You gestured toward the shimmering arrow. “She’s asleep.”
“She is.”
“So you’ve won.”
A tiny smile threatened the corner of his mouth. “I have.”
You looked back at the doe. “Please let her go.” The words escaped so quietly they were almost carried away by the breeze. “Please.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he looked only at you, but not at your dress or the small golden circlet resting in your hair, but into your eyes and then to the way your hand never stopped stroking the sleeping animal.
The silence stretched so much you began to wonder whether you had insulted him.
Then, without a word, he reached for the arrow. The runes dimmed beneath his fingers, the arrow dissolving into the afternoon air like scattered pollen.
The doe stirred, blinked twice, and climbed to her feet.
She stood for a moment, swaying gently as though waking from the deepest sleep she’d ever known. Then she nudged her nose against your shoulder in what could only be gratitude before disappearing into the trees with three graceful bounds.
Only then did you turn back. “You just… let her go.”
“Yes.”
“Because I asked?”
He smiled. “You asked kindly.”
“That can’t possibly be enough reason.”
“It appears to have been.”
“I’ve just ruined your hunt,” you managed a nervous laugh, “and you’re not angry?”
His eyes held yours. “No.”
“Why?”
He considered the question far longer than it deserved. “Because I preferred watching you.”
Unexpectedly, heat crept up into your cheeks.
There was nothing crude or flirtatious in the way he said it. It sounded like a fact.
He looked at you the way scholars looked at miracles and priests looked at altars: with complete attention, as though every movement you made deserved remembering.
“You have leaves in your hair,” he observed.
You huffed, taking one. “I escaped six guards.”
“I know,” he stepped ever so closer. “They’re still looking for you.”
“How do you know that?” You raised an eyebrow, taking a cautious step back.
His smile deepened ever so slightly. “They’re remarkably loud.”
“I suppose they are.” You sighed. “They worry too much.”
His expression remained pleasantly calm. “They are guarding a princess.”
You sighed, and he merely tilted his head.
After a moment’s silence, you simply asked, “Do… you have a name?”
“Dex.”
“Dex?”
“It will suffice.” You nodded.
“Very well, Dex.”
A brightness flickered across his face at the sound of the name in your voice. Approval, perhaps. Or satisfaction.
He rested the bow across his shoulder with effortless grace. “And you, Princess,” You didn’t even notice that he had done it again. “have convinced me to let my dinner wander off. The least you can do is point me towards the blackberry bushes.”
He knew the forest better than any living creature. Yet somehow, you found yourself leading him through it anyway.
And Dex, Crown Prince of the Wyld Fae, followed without the slightest complaint.
Because, according to every sacred law of the hunt he had ever been taught, once you found something worth following, you did not let it out of your sight.
—
The blackberry bushes grew wild along the riverbank, their thorny branches weighed down with fruit so dark they looked blue beneath the fading light. Dex moved through them selecting one berry from dozens as though there was an art to it. He plucked a particularly lavish one between two fingers and held it toward your mouth.
You stared at the blackberry, then at him. “I’m not stupid.”
Dex managed an infuriating smirk. “It appears you are.”
“Excuse me?”
His mouth pulled into a chuckle. “You think I’m trying to enchant you with fruit that grew in your own kingdom.”
You simply crossed your arms “I am smarter than eating or drinking anything offered by the Fair Folk.”
“The roots are in human soil,” he said, pointing to the roots of the tree. “Made of human rain and human sunlight. You will not be bound to me.”
Ah. Right.
Still, you narrowed your eyes. “No secret marriage?”
Dex looked more amused by your paranoia, as if enjoying toying with it. “No.”
“No hundred-year sleep?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“No waking up in your palace wearing a crown?”
Dex’s eyes dipped briefly to your mouth before returning to your eyes. “Not from the blackberry.”
You should have been more concerned by the distinction. Instead, you leaned forward and took the fruit from his fingers.
It was sweet enough to make you hum, wild and far richer than anything cultivated in the palace gardens. Dex watched you eat it with a satisfaction so singular it was almost ridiculous, as though convincing you to accept one perfectly harmless berry had been the greatest victory of his life.
After that, you talked, mostly about nothing. Then about everything.
You told him about the tower and how the wind made noise through the stones during winter. You complained about your governess, your embroidery lessons, and the latest nobleman your father intended to parade before you like an expensive horse. Dex listened with his full attention, asking questions in places where most people would have nodded politely and waited for you to stop speaking.
He told you about the forest in return, about flowers that only opened beneath eclipses and streams that remembered every person who crossed them. He showed you which mushrooms laughed when stepped on and warned you never to follow lanterns that moved. When you asked whether every fae hunter was as strange as he was, he told you that he was considered perfectly reasonable by the standards of his court.
You didn’t believe him.
The evening came around you while you wandered along the river, eating blackberries you picked yourself and talking until the light turned gold, then rose, then a deep violet between the trees. Dex stayed close. Sometimes, his hand hovered near your waist when you stepped over roots.
By the time the first stars appeared, you had almost forgotten you had escaped the palace at all.
That was until, the distant toll of the evening bell carried through the woods. You stopped beside the river. Dex stopped with you.
“I have to go.” The warmth left his eyes so quickly, and in its place was something coldly neutral. Still, you kept talking. “My father will be very furious.”
“Oh,”
It was all he could say.
You looked at him for a long moment, taking in the burnished gold hidden in his dark hair “I like you, Dex,” you said.
He went completely still.
It pleased you, strangely, to know you could surprise him. “Are all fae this kind?”
A glint passed through his mischievous eyes. “Is that what you think I am?”
“My mother says your kind are manipulative,” you said, “She says every gift is a trap and every kindness hides a bargain. She doesn’t trust your kind. Should I?”
Dex glanced toward the silver mist in the distance, then back at you. His frown had gone softer, though no less intent. “I suppose you will have to make up your own mind.”
You considered him as the fae hunter who had released a doe because you asked, as the stranger who had followed you through the forest, listened to every complaint, and fed you nothing that could bind you.
Before you could lose your nerve, you stepped closer and rose onto your toes and pressed a light kiss to the scar on his cheek.
When you drew back, he looked almost dazed, one hand lifting slowly toward the place your lips had touched. For a creature so graceful, so composed, and so clearly dangerous, he appeared wonderfully unprepared for affection.
“Goodnight, Dex.”
You began walking backward toward the palace path.
He remained by the river, watching you leave with that singular concentration.
“Will you be here again?” he asked.
You only smiled. You knew better than to give a promise to a fae.
But you thought the answer was obvious.
—
By the time you slipped back into the palace, dusk had swallowed the gardens.
Your father stopped you only long enough to ask where you had been. You could tell he was furious under his skin, having sent half his kingsguard on a fruitless search party.
You lied with the ease expected of royalty, telling him you've been reading in the reclusive west tower all afternoon. After all, you have been trained to lie to foreign dignitaries from birth.
“You are the Crown Princess,” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You should have told us if you wanted to be one. You cannot simply disappear.”
“I won’t do it again,” you said, fully intending to do it again.
Once safely inside your tower, you dismissed your ladies, locked the door, and collapsed onto your bed with a sigh.
The ceiling stared back, and so did your thoughts.
You, of course, thought about Dex.
You smiled before you could stop yourself.
You knew the fae hunter was a terrible idea. But he was beautiful enough that every story your mother had ever told suddenly felt painfully believable.
You rolled onto your side, hugging one of the embroidered pillows to your chest. It was only harmless fun, right?
You weren’t making bargains. You weren’t wandering into Faerie. You weren’t accepting enchanted feasts beneath silver trees.
You knew the rules.
You couldn’t eat his food, but surely…
Surely you could have some fun with him.
That wasn’t forbidden.
…Probably.
You buried your face in the pillow with a groan. “This is how princesses end up cursed.”
Suddenly, you heard a gentle tap against the window, followed by another a few seconds later.
You turned immediately, your smile widening as familiar black feathers came into view. “There you are.”
The raven hopped onto the stone sill as it had done a thousand times before, folding his wings neatly against himself before fixing you with that strangely thoughtful stare of his.
You opened the window, and he stepped inside as though he’d always belonged there.
He gave one little chirp.
You laughed under your breath, pretending to be able to talk to him, because you always seemed to pretend he knew everything on your mind. “I know.”
He hopped a little closer.
“He’s a bad idea.”
The raven blinked.
“A very bad idea.”
He seemed to furrow his amber eyes, which was ridiculous to even imagine, right.
“…But he’s awfully gorgeous.”
The bird made a small little croak.
“I know.”
You smiled helplessly, as he nuzzled to your fingers.
Your heart melted immediately. “Oh, you.”
You gathered him carefully against your chest, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. His feathers were warm beneath your cheek, damp with the scent of leaves and evening air.
“You’re still my favourite,” you half-promised. “Even if Dex is very pretty.”
The raven settled into your arm, satisfied.
You held him while looking toward the distant forest, completely unaware that he had arrived much later than usual.
—
You had not slept properly in three nights.
Every time you closed your eyes, you saw Dex was waiting beneath the trees. Sometimes he stood beside the river with evening light caught in his hair. Other times he was close enough that you could see every tiny fleck in his eyes and the faint silver edge of the scar you had kissed. Once, in a dream so vivid you woke with your heart racing, he had simply watched you from the other side of the mist while you tried to find the path back to him.
By the third night, lying awake and pressing your face into a pillow had begun to feel undignified.
So you abandoned your bed, pulled a cloak over your nightdress and crept down to the oldest part of the royal library with a candle cupped between both hands.
The palace was unnervingly still at that hour, thanks to the portraits watching you pass through dark corridors, and every floorboard that determined to announce that the crown princess was wandering barefoot toward a locked collection of forbidden books because she could not stop thinking about a beautiful stranger.
The books concerning the Fair Folk were kept beneath the main library, behind an iron gate whose hinges had bled rust into the surrounding stone. Your mother kept the key in her study, hidden beneath a false-bottomed drawer so obvious that you suspected she had never once considered you might look.
The lower level library smelled of old leather, damp parchment and extinguished fires. Shelves climbed toward the vaulted ceiling, crowded with books no one had touched in decades. Some of them were even bound shut with iron clasps. Others had charms stitched into their covers or warnings written across their spines in three different languages.
You found the passage about the Wyld Court in a green leather volume, frail with age.
Several dried anemones had been pressed between its pages. Their white petals had yellowed around the edges, and one crumbled beneath your thumb when you turned to the chapter on the Hunt.
The first few pages were almost reassuring.
Human stories called the Wyld savage because they hunted often, but the account insisted this was ignorance rather than truth.
The Wyld do not kill for purely sport. Their hunters study the land before taking anything from her, sometimes watching a herd through an entire season to understand which lives could be spared without leaving young unprotected or weakening the group before winter. They never hunt during birthing months. They never took more than the court required. Every part is used and every hunt ends with a rite beneath the oldest trees.
You smiled.
You remembered Dex's voice when he explained why he wasn’t ashamed to hunt. He had simply believed it should be done with his ancient ritual.
The next section described how Wyld hunters selected their quarry.
They never choose impulsively.
A hunter watches first. They learn where the animal drank, where it sleeps, which trail it favours and how it behaves when startled. They study the rhythm of its body, the sounds it makes when content, the direction it turns when frightened and the places it instinctively returns to when it believes itself safe.
You shift the candle closer.
It was practical, of course. A skilled hunter had to know what he followed.
Dex had been like that with the doe, you supposed.
The book continued.
Once the quarry has been selected, the hunter begins appearing along its path, never close enough to alarm it, and never so often that it flees the territory entirely. They learn of its world before stepping inside it, careful not to disturb the habits they wish to understand.
That sounded…. strangely gentle.
You imagined Dex moving through the forest without snapping a twig, following the doe from somewhere beyond the trees.
A note in the margin had been written in a shakier hand than the rest:
The Wyld considers attention an act of reverence.
You traced the words.
“Mmm,” you whispered, though there was no one there to agree with you.
He had seemed to have undivided attention.
Dex had listened to you with the same concentration gave the forest.
You had assumed he was simply considerate.
The book described a hunter’s patience in borderline devotional language.
The hunter does not chase too early. He lets the quarry become accustomed to his presence, appearing at familiar places until their presence no longer causes alarm. If it looks toward them instead of away, that is considered progress. If it remains nearby willingly, it is a sign that the pursuit has entered its next stage.
Your mouth curled up. The doe, freed, hadn’t remained near Dex.
You had, but surely it must be different. You were not prey.
You barely entertained the intrusive thought before returning to the page.
The Wyld believes pursuit should be quiet. A careless hunter frightens away what they hope to bring close. A patient one learns how to make his presence welcome. They leave signs along familiar paths, small objects chosen with care that the quarry would recognise they have not appeared by accident. They remove thorns and stones from frequently used trails. They frighten away other predators before they are ever seen.
You pressed your thighs together beneath the table without thinking.
It was not fear that you felt. It was the memory of Dex following you beside the river, the way he had watched you eat the blackberry as though the smallest movement of your mouth fascinated him. The way his eyes changed when you said you liked him.
Perhaps Wyld hunters were simply intense people.
Some men at court barely remembered the colour of your eyes after spending an entire dinner speaking about themselves. Dex had looked at you once and seemed to notice everything.
That was hardly frightening. It was flattering.
You turned another page.
The descriptions grew more… intimate.
A hunter learns the sound of their quarry’s footsteps before they ever see it. They can identify its scent beneath rain, smoke, or crushed leaves. Over time, they begin to anticipate where it would go before it had made the decision itself.
You smiled dreamily, picturing Dex somewhere in the western woods already knowing which path an animal would take.
Perhaps he would be waiting near the river. Perhaps there would be anemones beside the blackberry bushes.
You hoped there would be.
A final passage sat at the bottom of the page, separated from the rest by an inked border of thorns. You bent closer to read it.
Wyld fae are occasionally known to form attachments of extraordinary depth to their prey. Once a hunter has chosen, fixation may last years, centuries or the full span of an immortal life. Distance rarely weakens it. It may delay the pursuit, but seldom ends the attachment itself.
Well… that sounded a little excessive.
You turned the page quickly.
The next chapter concerned Wyld courtship.
Anemones appeared again in the illustration. You expected this part to be filled with poems and stories. Maybe an explanation of some elaborate fae ritual performed beneath a full moon. You expected several paragraphs at least.
Instead, the chapter contained a single sentence with letters that were larger than the rest of the book, boxed in black ink and surrounded by a border of thorns:
WARNING: WYLD FAE DO NOT RELIABLY DISTINGUISH BETWEEN COURTSHIP AND THE PURSUIT OF PREY.
Huh. You thought. How vague.
—
The next morning, your mother returned just after sunrise with thirty riders, two foreign ambassadors, enough sealed documents to keep the council occupied for a fortnight, and a potential husband.
Ugh.
The palace bells rang the moment her party crossed the outer gate.
Servants hurried through the corridors carrying fresh flowers, guards straightening their uniforms. Courtiers appeared from nowhere, already smiling before the queen had even dismounted.
Queens inspired that sort of efficiency.
Your kingdom had always been matriarchal. Daughters inherited crowns. Queens wore crowns and commanded legions while kings negotiated peace treaties.
Kings advised. Queens decided.
Which meant your marriage had always been your father’s responsibility. The fact that your mother was now getting involved meant one of two things: you were becoming a spinster, or your prospects have started to look so concerning, even the head of state had to lend a hand. In your case, probably both.
She embraced you only briefly before holding you at arm’s length. “You look tired.”
“I’ve been unable to rest, mother.”
There was the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. “You’ve inherited your father’s habit of avoiding sleep.”
She smoothed an imaginary crease from your sleeve before her eyes settled back into regal.
“I’ve brought guests.”
You looked past her, and one of them was already looking at you.
You recognised him immediately as Lord Edmund, though you’d never met him.
You’d heard enough.
You heard ladies from across the land whispering his name behind fans at winter banquets, and their maids lowered their voices when he walked past. A merchant’s daughter had once refused to dance with him at a feast, that she’d been sent away to live with an aunt before the week was over.
Nothing had ever been proven, but you heard these things happened because of his very unpleasant behaviour.
He was handsome enough, and more importantly rich enough, to make the rumours inconvenient.
“My lady.”
He bowed and took your hand. His thumb traced the inside of your wrist with lazy familiarity before releasing you immediately tucked your hand behind your back. “You’ve grown even lovelier than your portraits.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
He laughed.
Your mother looked between the two of you with quiet satisfaction. “Lord Edmund has spent the last month travelling with our delegation.”
“I’m honoured,” he gave a saccharine smile,
“You should be.” She said it lightly, but you knew that tone. She had already decided this alliance made sense.
Oh. No.
As her conversation moved elsewhere, you took half a step backwards, and Lord Edmund took half a step forwards.
No one noticed when his hand settled lightly against the small of your back with enough pressure that you felt every finger through the silk of your gown.
Your body stiffened.
“So tense,” he murmured.
You moved away, and of course mother turned just then.
“There you are.”
You forced yourself to smile.
The bastard looked every inch the perfect gentleman.
“Lord Edmund has mentioned going on a hunt tomorrow,” She mentioned, adjusting one of your curls behind your ear. “You’ll accompany him.”
Your stomach dropped. “Mother…”
“It will do you good to leave the palace.”
“I don’t enjoy hunting.”
“You enjoy forests.”
Not the same forest, you thought, Not the same hunter.
Your hesitation lasted a heartbeat too long.
Your mother frowned slightly. “You’ve refused every suitor your father introduced.”
“I barely know any of them.”
“Exactly,” her voice lowered. “You cannot know a person’s character across a dinner table.”
She glanced toward Lord Edmund, who was speaking pleasantly with your father.
“Watch how a man behaves when he’s armed.”
It was advice every queen passed to every daughter: A gentleman could lie, but a hunter rarely did.
“I think you’ll find him disciplined.”
Oh, you very much doubted that.
—
The next day, you did go hunting with Lord Edmund.
The only alarming detail was that you returned dragging his dead body behind your horse.
By the time you reached the palace gates, the rope around his ankles had rubbed the leather of his boots raw and left a dark trail through the dirt. His expensive hunting coat was torn open at one shoulder, caked with mud and dead leaves, and his head struck every uneven stone with a dull, ugly rhythm that made several of the guards flinch as they rushed to meet you.
You rode straight through the gates, eyes blank beneath the grime, skirts streaked green and brown from the forest floor, one hand wound tightly around the reins while the other still trembled despite your best efforts.
Your father reached you first. He looked relieved to see you alive, only to collapse into horror when he noticed what followed behind. Your mother arrived seconds later, still fastening the clasp of her cloak, and stopped so abruptly that the entire courtyard seemed to halt, too, as she looked down at Edmund.
You dismounted without assistance and untied the rope from the saddle. His entire body dropped heavily onto the cobblestones at your feet.
“He went into fae territory,” you said. Your voice sounded remarkably calm.
Your mother stared at the arrow buried cleanly through Edmund’s chest. Fae work, unmistakably.
You nudged his shoulder with the toe of your boot and looked down at him with exhausted contempt. “Very sad.”
What a lie.
The truth was that Edmund had never intended to hunt anything.
He had looked convincing enough when you left the palace that morning in fine hunting leathers and a freshly carved bow.
For the first hour, he thanked the servants, praised the hounds and kept his hands where everyone could see them.
Then, he began thinning the party.
The dogs were too noisy, so he sent the handlers east. The scouts had supposedly found fresh tracks near the ridge, so the huntsmen followed. The guards were told to wait with the spare horses near the stream because too many riders would disturb the game. His instruction sounded reasonable by itself, and even though you had been suspicious, you didn’t understand what he was doing until you were alone.
Only then did you notice that he had not examined a single track all morning. He had not tested the wind, drawn his bow or once looked into the bushes.
He had watched your body instead, not listening to what on earth you were saying. He hungrily watched the sway of your body in the saddle, and how your skirt shifted when you dismounted to cross a fallen tree. Whenever you tried to turn the conversation back toward the hunt, his attention slid away from the forest and returned to you with the same damp, crawling persistence.
By the time he guided you toward the border, silver mist was already visible between the ancient trunks.
You told him you wanted to turn back. You even pulled your horse around, but Edmund blocked the narrow path with his own and smiled at you as though your fear amused him.
There was no deer trail or quarry, no reason to be there except the isolation and the knowledge that no human voice would carry far enough for help to come.
That was when the performance ended.
He caught your wrist when you reached for the reins and dragged you down badly enough that your shoulder struck the side of the saddle. Your boots hit the ground unevenly, and before you could recover, his body pressed yours up against the horse.
You told him no, I’m not interested.
You said it clearly and shoved at his chest and tried to twist away, but he only laughed under his breath, as though refusal were a nervous habit he expected to train out of you after marriage.
And when his hand forced its way beneath your skirts…. An arrow came through the silver mist so suddenly that the air scarcely had time to whisper around it.
It struck Edmund through the heart.
You knew the arrow immediately. It was the same white arrow with black feathers, the same fine silver runes carved along the shaft. It was the same one he had used on the doe, except there was no Sleep of Rowan in his mercy.
Oh. This one hurt.
Edmund’s hand tore away from you at once, his face blank with shock as he staggered backward, looking down at the arrow as blood welled dark through his coat. He collapsed first to his knees and then onto his side, choking on a breath that would not come properly.
The mist moved between the trees, and somewhere inside it stood a hunter who had watched long enough to understand exactly what Edmund had intended.
Edmund was still alive when you walked over to him.
His eyes found yours, wide now, stripped of all his arrogance. His mouth opened as though he expected you to help. Perhaps he thought you would call for the guards.
Instead, you looked down at him, shaking with fury, and relief so vicious it almost felt like joy.
Then you spat in his face.
He died seconds after.
You stood over the body for several long moments, wrist throbbing where he had held you.
Dex had killed him.
Dex had seen and he had known exactly what was happening and had not hesitated for even the space of a heartbeat.
You should have been horrified, you should have looked at Edmund’s blood soaking into the moss and felt sick over the life extinguished at your feet.
Instead, you felt safe.
It took you nearly an hour to secure Edmund’s ankles and drag him back through the woods, following a vague trail of blackberries that ensured you made it back safely, knowing exactly who put them there. You didn’t remove the arrow; wanted your mother to see it.
Now, standing in the palace courtyard with your parents staring at the corpse, you folded your hands in front of you.
Your mother crouched beside Edmund and studied the entry wound. Her face remained composed, but her eyes flicked once toward the bruises around your wrist before returning to the arrow.
“He crossed the border?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And the fae killed him without warning?”
You met her eyes. “He should have known better.”
Your father looked stricken. Your mother looked unconvinced.
Neither of them asked why Edmund’s bow was still strapped neatly across his back, unused. They didn’t even ask why one side of your skirt had been torn near the hem.
Neither of them seemed to want to ask why you showed no grief.
—
That night, your mother sent you back to your chambers to sleep.
And you should’ve at least tried.
Instead, you lay tangled beneath your blankets, staring up at the canopy while your mind wandered helplessly back to the western forest, and the dead body of a potential suitor.
Soon enough, your mind wandered back to Dex.
His name alone made heat unfurl in your stomach.
It was ridiculous how easily he ruined you. He had barely touched you the one time he saw you. Tonight, he hadn’t even shown his face.
But somehow, before you called for him, Dex had known you needed him.
Your thighs pressed together beneath the sheets.
What a sick fucking thought, you scolded yourself, what a sick fucking mind I have, that this makes my core weep?
“No,” you whispered to yourself, but your body had no interest in your dignity.
But your hand was moving between your legs before shame could stop you.
Beneath the blankets, your fingers slipped lower, tentative at first, then less so as you imagined Dex with your eyes closer.
A soft gasp left your lips.
“Dex.” The name came out needy, more pathetic than you meant it to. Still, pleasure sparked through you at the sound of it.
You said it again, quieter this time.
“Dex.”
Your fingers moved faster.
You bit your lip and tilted your face into the pillow, trying to swallow the next sound, but it escaped anyway, in the form of a helpless gasp that made your whole body shiver beneath the sheets.
You were shameless, lying alone in your tower, touching yourself to the thought of the fae who had killed the man meant to court you.
Another tremor of pleasure rolled through you as your back arched faintly from the mattress.
“Dex,” you breathed again, a little broken now.
It felt like summoning him. It felt like a confession.
You imagined him at the foot of your bed, hearing exactly how his name sounded when it left your mouth like that. You imagined his head tilting, his eyes darkening, his perfect composure cracking because you were not afraid enough, because you wanted him. Because some wicked part of you had read all the cautionary tales about fair folk and and thought yes.
Yes, him.
Yes, please.
The thought made you whimper into the pillow.
Pleasure built slowly, then all at once, warm and dizzying. You chased it with your eyes shut and his name on your tongue, thinking blood on moss and the beautiful fae monster who had looked at you through the mist.
“Dex, please—”
You didn’t know what you were pleading for.
You only knew you wanted more than just your fingers. You wanted more of that shameful sweetness rolling through you.
Your fingers twisted in the sheets. Your lips parted around a mewling sound. The pleasure crested so suddenly you nearly sobbed, your body going tight and shaking beneath the blankets as his name fell from your mouth one last time, helpless and utterly damning.
For a while, you could only lie there, glassy eyes staring up at the canopy as though it had witnessed your fall from grace.
An absent-minded smile made its way to your mouth before you could stop it.
“You really are a terrible idea,” you sighed into the darkness.
The words held no conviction at all.
Outside your window, the raven landed silently upon the stone sill.
He watched you through all that, head tilted thoughtfully, black feathers gleaming blue beneath the moonlight.
That night, you didn’t notice him.
Nor did you notice that, for the first time since you had known him, he didn’t tap impatiently against the glass to ask you to let him in.
He simply remained where he was, keeping watch over the lonely tower until dawn.
—
By morning, you had decided you only wanted to thank him.
A perfectly reasonable thing, right? A man saved your life and your dignity, even if he was not exactly a man. It was only… polite.
You sat on the edge of your bed, fingers curled into the blankets, staring toward the window.
You… should know better.
But wanting never really came with a rhyme or reason.
So, you dressed quickly, perhaps too quickly.
Your fingers fumbled with the laces of your gown, and you had to redo them twice. Your hair refused to sit properly and reflection looked entirely too flushed, too guilty for a princess who had technically done nothing wrong.
Technically.
You leaned closer to the mirror and frowned at yourself.
“You are going to say thank you in person,” you said firmly. “That is all.”
Your reflection did not look convinced.
“You are only doing this, because he came to your rescue,” you continued, because apparently arguing with glass was where your morning had gone. “Like a civilised woman. You have manners, right?”
Still, your reflection looked at you as if to say that civilised women with manners did not usually wander alone into fae woods after spending the night thinking improper things about the fae in question.
You ignored her.
At breakfast, you had honeyed bread, the sugared fruit, the little cakes glazed gold beneath the kitchen light. You needed to eat, just in case. You cannot find yourself hungry in the presence of Wyld Fae!
You could not be tempted to eat or drink anything he gives you, that’s all. You needed a full stomach, because you weren’t foolish
Less than an hour later, you were slipping out through the western gate alone.
With your mother’s return, it was even easier to sneak out this time, as many of the guards were preoccupied with the queen’s every whims and needs. A queen, that your father loved to remind you, that you would one day be, too.
Still.
The morning air was damp, mist clinging to the grass beyond the castle grounds, thin as lace, and the forest stood ahead of you in a dark green wall of ancient trunks and tangled branches.
Eventually, you stopped at the edge of it.
The trees seemed to notice as it shifted though when there was no wind. Somewhere deep in the woods, a bird called once, then fell silent. The path you had taken yesterday was still there, winding blackberries between moss-covered stones and pale roots, but in daylight it looked… narrower.
Stranger.
You swallowed.
“Dex?” Your voice sounded terribly small.
Nothing answered an took one step beneath the trees.
The forest swallowed the sounds of the castle almost at once. The distant clatter of carts, the faint bells from the chapel tower, the servants calling to one another across the courtyard was barely noise behind you.
You walked for what felt like an hour.
Then another.
At first, you told yourself he would appear any moment. Dex seemed exactly the sort of person who enjoyed doing that. He would step from behind a tree, and ask whether you made a habit of wandering into dangerous places alone.
You had already prepared an excellent answer.
No, you would say. If I assumed I was in danger, I would not be here.
But Dex did not appear.
By midday, your boots were wet and the hem of your dress had collected half the forest floor. You had crossed the same fallen branch three times, which either meant you were walking in circles or the branch was following you. You had apologetically startled at least four rabbits, nearly tripped over a root that had definitely not been there a moment before, and apologised to a mushroom because it looked like it was wilting when you stepped too close.
“This is foolish,” you whispered.
Then, a branch shifted above you.
You looked up to see your raven friend sat on a low bough. His head tilted, bright eyes fixed on you with unsettling intelligence.
“Oh,” you said. “It’s you.”
The raven blinked.
For a moment, you could not move.
He looked exactly as he had outside your window: watchful and clever, as most corvids are.
Huh. You thought. He travels far, doesn’t he?
Because if this bird knew the forest, maybe he knew where Dex was, or at least where the most dense fae population was near the border. If he did, then perhaps you were not wandering blindly through the woods after all.
You took one step closer towards your friend. “I don’t suppose you could help me?”
The raven gave a small chirp.
Your mouth curved into the smallest smile. “I only want to thank him,” you said.
The raven stared as your smile faded.
“All right,” you whispered, finally admitting to him what you had failed to admit to yourself all night. “I want to see him.”
The raven dropped from the branch and landed lightly on the moss.
Behind him, the mist thickened between two dark trees.
It didn’t drift so much as gathered.
The silver-white started subtly glowing, curling over the roots like silk poured over bone. The path you had followed seemed to end there, as if the forest had brought you as far as ordinary courage could take you.
The raven stepped toward it, then looked back.
“No,” you whispered. “Stay, please. I don’t want to be alone.”
He only watched you.
The air cooled against your skin. Suddenly, the castle felt distant, like it belonged to another princess, a safer princess. A princess who would not follow a raven to the ends of the earth because she wanted to see a dangerous man smile.
And just after giving a little croak, the raven vanished into the white.
You stood at the edge, alone now, cloak ends pooling around your ankles.
For one moment, you thought you saw something through the mist, like gold flowers and black thorns along a path no human should walk. And deeper still, briefly, you could’ve sworn you saw amber eyes watching from the other side.
Your lips parted. “Dex?”
When no answer came, you should have turned back.
You knew that, but longing was not sensible. And whatever Dex had become to you since he met you… that was not sensible either.
You stepped forward and the mist touched your boots first. Then your hem, then your hands.
You should have turned back.
Instead, you took a deep breath and crossed the threshold.
—
Eventually, the mist disappeared.
It thinned around you in pale ribbons, peeling back from your face and shoulders until the forest revealed itself by degrees.
It took you a while to blink awake, looking around blankly at the white that was now retreating when…. Oh. Oh, wow.
It was beautiful.
Moss glowed faintly pink beneath your boots. The trees rose black and enormous on every side, their bark veined with silver, their roots twisting through the earth like sleeping serpents. Violet flowers bloomed among thorns, heavy-headed and luminous, turning slightly as you stepped forward as though even the plants wanted to look at you.
It was very clear that wherever you had gone, it was far away from the human realm.
You looked around, looking for your raven friend.
You looked through the strange trees, the unnatural sky, and the path of white stones winding away into the woods as if it had been waiting for your feet.
You found nothing.
Your strange little friend had vanished.
You turned in a circle, searching the branches above you and the curling mist behind you.
“Hello?” you called quietly.
Nothing answered.
You frowned, though your heartbeat was too quick for proper annoyance.
“You cannot just lead me through the mist and abandon me,” you managed to say. “It’s rude.”
A drop of water fell from a leaf somewhere overhead.
Still, no raven.
You took another careful step. The moss gave beneath your boots with a cushion-y feel that felt almost alive. “Where did you go?”
At last, a voice behind you said, “Lost, princess?”
You turned so quickly your cloak swung around your legs.
Oh.
Dex stood beneath a silver-barked tree.
In that moment, all your prepared thoughts vanished.
He looked less like he had walked here and more like the forest had grown him. He was as pretty as you last remembered him, eyes fixed on you with that calm attention that made your stomach tighten and your thoughts go embarrassingly pliant at the edges.
Your breath hitched as his eyes dropped briefly to your mouth, then lifted again.
You remembered yourself with effort.
You had found him, yes, but you had some dignity left in you. You weren't going to make this easy for him.
“Where is my friend?” You said instead.
He raised an eyebrow slightly, though he didn’t seem confused at all. “Your friend?”
“The raven.” You glanced over your shoulder, still half-expecting the bird to appear on a branch. “He was right here. He led me through, and then he disappeared.”
Dex looked past you with mild, infuriating faux innocence. “Ravens are difficult to command.”
“I did not command him,” you insisted, trying to look away, even as you have found what you came for. “I asked for help.”
Dex tilted his head. “Did he?”
“He did,” you nodded, “but then abandoned me.”
“Perhaps he thought you had arrived safely.”
You narrowed your eyes. “You say that as though you know where he went.”
“I know very little about the private affairs of true ravens.”
“That sounds like a lie.”
Technically, it wasn’t.
Dex’s mouth curved up, barely, enough to make heat lick up the back of your neck. “You crossed into fae territory to interrogate me about a bird?”
“No.”
“Then why did you come?”
The question should have an easy answer. In fact, you have practiced it on the walk through the outer woods, when the trees still looked ordinary and you still had the comfort of pretending this was a sensible errand. You had told yourself you would be calm and grateful. You would thank him properly and then go home.
But Dex was looking at you now, all that polite pretenses felt suddenly thin.
“I wanted to find you,” you said weakly.
You hated that the words felt so bare once spoken, because you didn’t even say I wished to thank you or I owe you a debt of gratitude. It didn’t sound like court manners or duty.
I wanted to find you.
Dex took one step closer and asked. “Why?”
You swallowed.
You had many things you wanted to say, none of them a good idea saying. You wanted to tell him you had not slept properly because every time you shut your eyes, you saw the arrow split the mist.
“I wanted to thank you,” you said.
Dex’s eyes stayed on your face. “For killing the foul creature who wished to touch you against your will?”
You looked down.
Your fingers twisted in the edge of your cloak. For a moment, the forest around you blurred into last evening: Edmund too close, his fingers where they had no right to be.
The memory made your skin go cold.
You looked up at him. “Yes,” you whispered. “For him.”
Dex came closer, slowly, like approaching prey.
He gave you space to step back, space to turn away. You didn’t.
“You do not need to thank me for that,” he said, “it was my responsibility.”
His responsibility?
It certainly was not.
You should’ve questioned it. But unfortunately, you had more… urgent matters in your mind.
“I want to,” you insisted.
His eyes flicked over your face, lingering on your flushed cheeks, your mouth, the rise and fall of your chest beneath your corset.
“And that is all?” He asked.
The air warmed between you. Or perhaps that was only your body betraying you.
You lifted your chin. “Yes.”
Dex’s eyes barely changed, but you knew he didn’t believe you for a second. “Princess…” he tsked, almost scolding in nature.
“I came to thank you,” you insisted, as if repetition could make it any less untrue. Still, you were unable to meet his eyes as you said it.
“I heard what you said.”
“It is the truth.”
“No.” He stepped closer again, close enough now that you could smell rain on leather and pine. “It is part of the truth, isn't it?”
Your back touched the smooth trunk of a silver-barked tree not realising you had stepped back.
Dex stopped immediately, one hand bracing against the tree beside your shoulder. He didn’t cage you in fully or press his body to yours. He simply stood close enough that your breath tangled with his, close enough that if you leaned forward even an inch, your mouth would find his.
“Do not pretend a you’re welcome is all you should expect from me today,” he murmured.
Your breath caught.
His eyes lowered to your lips. “It is frankly insulting,” he continued.
A scandalised little sound escaped you. “I do not expect anything from you.”
He smiled. “Liar.”
You should have been offended. You were, distantly, beneath the pounding of your heart and the sudden awareness of your own body, there was probably a very respectable princess who objected to being called a liar by a fae hunter in the middle of an enchanted forest.
Unfortunately, she was not currently in charge.
Dex lifted his free hand. You watched it rise, unable to move.
His knuckles brushed beneath your chin, tilting your face up to his in a feather-light touch.
“Look into my eyes,” he said softly. “And tell me you came only to thank me.”
You held his gaze, and you really did try to force it out, but would not come.
Dex’s thumb brushed the corner of your lips.
“There,” he murmured. “I thought so.”
Your throat went dry. “T-this is very unfair.”
“Is it?” Dex looked amused.
“You know what you are doing.”
“Yes.”
The honesty made something your stomach pull tight.
His eyes darkened, not with cruelty or triumph, but with want so restrained it almost looked like pain.
“Can I kiss you, princess?”
Oh.
You didn’t expect fae to be this… blunt.
Heat rushed down your throat and settle behind your ribs. It made you remember Edmund again,m, because Edmund had not asked. Edmund had pushed close and taken space and treated your refusal like a bug he could smother beneath his heel.
Dex asked.
Dex, who could have been terrifying without trying. Dex, who has killed for you. Dex, whose mouth hovered near yours and still waited.
“Yes,” you whispered.
Only then did he lower his mouth to yours.
He kissed you slowly at first. His lips brushed yours once, and for one second, he let you decide, let you lean in, and let you press yourself closer to him. You fingers curled into the front of his cloak as you kissed him back.
Then you made the neediest sound against his mouth, and his control snapped thin.
He kissed you deeper, his hand sliding to the back of your neck, fingers warm beneath your hair. The tree was cool against your spine, his body warm in front of you, and between them you felt held rather than trapped.
His mouth opened over yours with a hunger that made your knees buckle, but even then, even with his fingers tightening slightly at your nape, he kissed like you were the singular thing that gave his life meaning.
You clutched his cloak, body tilting toward him before your pride could stop it.
Dex groaned quietly into the kiss.
Oh, what a wonderful sound.
You pulled him closer, and his other hand found your waist. His grip was warm as though he needed to feel the shape of you. He kissed you until your lips tingled, until your breath came in shallow little gasps.
When he broke away, it was only to press his mouth to your jaw, then your throat.
You tipped your head back before you could stop yourself.
Dex’s mouth curved against your skin with a little hum.
You were already shaking. “Do not sound pleased with yourself.”
“But I am,” he mumbled.
His teeth grazed the side of your neck just enough to make your fingers dig into his shoulders.
“Dex.”
For all his composure, his reaction gave him away. He liked your voice like that. He liked you, breathless and honest, he liked that that you had come here dressed in gratitude and were now pressed against a silver tree, melting under his mouth.
His hand slid from your waist to your hip, then lower. over the fabric, dragging heat in the wake of his palm.
Your breath hitched.
Dex froze at once. “Can I touch you?”
Your eyes opened halfway.
He was watching you now, close enough that his lashes cast shadows against his cheeks.
“Yes,” you said, cheeks burning “Yes, Dex. Touch me.”
His hand tightened once on your hip before he kissed you again and gathered your skirts, agonisingly slowly.
He did so layer by layer, his fingers drawing the fabric upward, exposing your stockings, your garters, the bare skin above them to the cool air of the fae wood.
You should have felt vulnerable, and part of you did, but you were not afraid. The vulnerability made your heart pound harder and your mouth open against his.
Dex felt your thighs part before his hand had even reached them.
“Oh, princess.” It was filthy and wondrous at the same time.
Your face burned as his fingers brushed your inner thigh.
You gasped.
Dex’s eyes darkened as his hand slid higher.
The first touch between your legs made you jolt against him. He found you slick already, shamefully wet, soaked from his kiss and his voice and the humiliating truth that he had been right. Thank you was not all you had come for, not even close.
For one second, Dex didn’t move much.
He dragged his finger through, feeling the slick heat of you against his fingers and your hips giving the smallest helpless tilt toward his hand.
His teeth clenched hard enough to make the muscle jump.
“Oh,” he breathed again, rougher this time. “You really did come here wanting me.”
Your hand flew to his wrist to hold him there. “I c-came to thank you,” you insisted for the third time.
His fingers slid through your wetness, and the sound beneath your skirts was utterly indecent.
Your breath broke.
Dex’s mouth brushed the corner of yours. “Yes,” he murmured. “You are thanking me very well.”
The words made you clench around nothing.
Dex felt that too. His smile felt dangerous against your cheek.
“Ah,” he whispered. “Shameless little thing.”
You would have protested if his thumb had not found the puffy sensitive bundle of nerves, begging for his attention.
The touch was light at first, circling through the slick, making pleasure spark hot beneath your skin. Your head tipped back into his waiting palm. He kissed your exposed throat, open-mouthed, while his fingers learned you beneath your gown.
He was too careful to be rushed but too precise to be merciful.
Every movement had purpose. Every stroke, every firm circle. His thumb pressed a little firmer.
Your knees buckled.
Dex caught you with his body, pinning you gently against the tree while his hand kept moving.
His fingers slid lower. “Still only here to be polite?”
You made a strangled sound. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” you gasped. “I don’t.”
His first finger pushed inside you, and the sound of it could be heard within the hush of the forest.
Your mouth fell open on a mewl, and Dex’s forehead dropped to your collarbone. He held still for a heartbeat, letting you clenched around him.
You gripped his cloak with both hands. “No. More.”
His eyes nearly closed.
His composure cracked, hunger flashing naked and bright through the careful mask, and then he kissed you hard as his finger began to move, gently at first, slick and deep, curling inside you until pleasure jolted through your hips.
You cried out against his mouth.
Dex swallowed the sound like he had been starving for it. “There?”
You could not answer.
He curled his finger again, and your body jerked.
“Need words, princess.”
“Yes,” you gasped. “There. Please.”
His thumb circled while his finger worked inside you, the rhythm steady and wickedly exact. Every stroke made a pool of arousal gather around his hand.
His smile should have made you embarrassed.
Instead, it made you shameless, rocking down onto his hand with a broken little whimper.
Dex groaned.
“You hear that?” he murmured.
Your eyes squeezed shut. “Dex.”
“You do,” he said, kissing your cheek. “You hear how badly you want me.”
He added a second finger.
The stretch made your breath catch.
His fingers moved again, sliding into you with ease that made your face burn and your body melt. He curled them carefully, pressing deep, finding that same place until your thighs shook around his wrist.
Dex watched you like you were the only thing in the forest.
Not like Edmund.
Edmund had wanted you afraid. Dex wanted you ruined by pleasure.
Your hands clutched his shoulders. Your hips chased his fingers. You moaned into his neck, too far gone to care about the old stories warning girls never to follow fae men into the woods.
You had followed. You had crossed.
You were here.
So you might as well make the most of it, right?
“Dex,” you mewled as pleasure flared so bright you nearly sobbed.
“There,” he whispered. “Better than your own fingers, right?”
You should have noticed. You should have asked how he knew what you had done in your tower. You should have questioned how he knew his name had been in your mouth the night before.
But his fingers curled again and your thoughts scattered.
Dex smiled on your throat. “That’s what I thought.”
He didn’t give you time to recover.
His hand moved quicker now, fingers buried deep to his knuckles, thumb steady as pleasure climbed too fast and too high. Your whole body tightened around him, hips rolling shamelessly into his palm, chasing every stroke. You were wet enough that the sound of him touching you filled the space between your bodies, and Dex seemed to lose another thread of control every time he heard it.
“You are so sweet like this,” he murmured.
“Stop talking.”
“No.”
“Dex.”
“You like it.”
You did.
His thumb pressed harder as his fingers curled exactly right.
The climax tore through you in a hot, shaking wave.
You came with your face buried against his shoulder, mouth open on a broken cry, squeezing around his fingers as pleasure pulsed through you again and again. Dex held you upright through it, one arm firm around your waist, his mouth against your temple, his hand still moving beneath your skirts until every last shiver had wrung itself out of you.
Only then did he stop.
The forest around you seemed hazy and unreal, glowing moss beneath your weak knees. Dex withdrew his fingers, and your body gave one last helpless flutter at the loss.
You should have looked away, instead you watched as he lifted his hand between you, his fingers gleamed with your arousal.
Dex’s eyes stayed on yours as he brought them to his mouth and tasted you.
His eyes turned dark with satisfaction. “You really are sweet,” he said.
A scandalised little sound escaped you. “Dex,” you gasped. “You cannot say things like that.”
His thumb brushed your lower lip. “I can say much worse.”
“You should not.”
“No,” he agreed. “I should not.”
Eventually, he guided you carefully away from the tree.
Your legs were unsteady, dress rumpled. Your heart felt as though it had been taken apart and put back together. Dex kept one hand at your waist, watching you with a hunger that had not faded at all.
If anything, it had grown worse.
“How much more gratitude should I expect from you, princess?”
Your breath caught.
You knew you should be careful. You knew enough old stories to understand that words mattered here. Especially words spoken to beautiful fae men beneath magical trees and your heart no longer safely your own.
But then Dex’s hand slid into your hair, guiding you lower, his fingers threading through the loosened strands that your breath caught before you had even reached your knees. The moss gave beneath you, soft enough to feel unreal through the layers of your dress. Around you, the forest went uncannily quiet, as though the trees had closed their eyes and the flowers among the thorns had turned away out of courtesy.
Above you, Dex opened his belt. The buckle came free with a metallic click that seemed to echo as leather slid through its clasp, each small movement made unbearable by the way he watched you watching him. His blue-touched fingertips worked with the same terrible care you had seen when he handled his bow, and that precision made the moment feel even more indecent.
“As much as you want,” you whispered, holding his eyes, unshaded by how badly you wanted him to know the truth.
Dex smiled.
Your eyes lifted to his, licking the tip of his now-free length.
“There,” he groaned, thumb brushing your cheek as he pulled your mouth almost fully into him. “Now that feels like a thank you.”
You swirled your tongue as he closed his eyes. “Ah— fuck,” he breathed, voice barely controlled. “That’s it.”
You wanted more of that strained, beautiful sounds he tried and failed to hold back immediately.
So you let your lips and tongue become gratitude, letting every eager movement say what your mouth could not form into words.
Thank you for the arrow. Thank you for Edmund. Thank you for seeing what I wanted and waiting until I said yes.
Dex’s head tipped back slightly, a rougher, lower sound this time.
You took it as a reward.
“Princess,” he warned, though it sounded nothing like warning. It sounded like prayer.
Your eyes watered from the effort of taking all of him, from how much he was, from just how big he was that he barely fit in your velvety mouth.
Still, you looked up through wet lashes, and the sight seemed to make him twitch.
“Sweet, reckless thing.” he whispered.
You gave him more.
Dex groaned and the sound was beautiful.
This was better than court music under a chandelier during the autumn feast. This was the dangerous fae hunter above you losing pieces of himself because your mouth was warm and utterly devoted.
His pleasure was music to your ears and you wanted to make him sing.
“Look at me,” Dex said.
You did.
His amber eyes were dark now, fixed on your face, looking undone and hungry. His blue-touched fingertips glowed faintly where they rested against your cheek, wiping away a tear.
“Good girl,” he said.
You nodded, too full of want to be embarrassed properly.
His thumb stroked beneath your eye. “You are too sweet for your own good.”
You would have rolled your eyes if you had been capable of dignity.
Instead, you bobbed again, more frequent this time.
Dex’s breath broke as you tasted the first bead of arousal coming out of him, proof of how badly he wanted you.
His mouth parted around a breath that was nearly a laugh, nearly a moan.
“Do not look so shocked,” he murmured. “You did that.”
The words made heat flood through you all over again.
You should have felt shy. Instead, pride curled through your chest, wicked.
You had done that. You had made him sound like that.
So you kept going, tearful and greedy until he started murmuring curses in a language older than yours. You wanted him to remember this. You wanted him to know that you were no longer simply thanking him.
In an attempt to go deeper, to feel him in your throat as if you’ve trained all gag reflex away, you tilted your head slightly.
That’s when you saw the quiver of arrows lay in the moss beside you. It must’ve slipped off his shoulders at one point or another.
White ash arrows rested inside, carved with silver runes. You knew those arrows but it was not the arrows that stopped your heart.
It was the feathers that tipped the ends of the arrows, glossy blue-black beneath the fae light. You never noticed them before, but they were… raven feathers.
Your breath hitched.
Oh.
Oh.
Suddenly, you thought of the windowsill, your friend tapping at the glass. You remember his clever black eyes watching while you read aloud, lonely and foolish. The little creature had listened to your complaints, your restless dreams, your secrets.
The raven who had visited for years. The raven who had led you through the mist.
Your eyes lifted slowly.
Dex looked down at you with his amber eyes.
Oh.
All those mornings, all those evenings, all those years…
You should have known. You heard of stories of fae folk turning into woodland creatures all the time.
He was the raven.
Your hands tightened.
You should have pulled away and demanded answers. How long? How much had he heard? How many secrets had he carried away?
Oh, you had been so, so foolish.
You should’ve known from the first day you truly met in the woods. You should have questioned how he had known to call you princess when you had never told him what you were.
For a second, real fear flickered through your eyes. Not fear of him, Fear of the fact that some part of you did not hate it enough.
Dex’s face changed the moment you understood.
He knew the pretty princess he had been pursuing for years had finally had it all figured out.
Pleasure and guilt and hunger crossed behind his eyes in the same vein, you could barely separate them. His hand remained gentle in your hair, giving you room to turn your face away from him and the old magic curling around both of you.
You stared up at him, eyes wet, heart pounding.
You were frightened. But as your mouth kept working him, clearly, you weren’t frightened enough.
Instead, you had felt strangely, terribly cherished by the thought that the raven at your window had waited years to be touched by you like this.
As you quickened your pace, your eyes burned harder.
Dex’s thumb brushed another tear from your cheek, intended to be an apology in gesture.
You answered by giving him more.
His breath shattered.
You became greedy for his pleasure, greedy for every note you could draw from him. The forest blurred silver and green around you. The flowers bowed their heads among the thorns. Mist curled over your knees, hiding the path back, making you forget the safer version of yourself, who would have stopped the moment she realised the truth.
You were not her anymore.
You had crossed the line.
Dex’s moans were music to your ears, so controlled until they were not. Each one made your own heart pound harder, made your mouth react and your hands more certain. You wanted to ruin him kindly, to thank him until he forgot how to be anything but yours in that moment.
His head tipped back, and the sound that left him was almost helpless. It filled you with vicious pride. You wanted to keep it forever the way he had apparently kept pieces of you.
“You’re going to ruin me,” he said as the blue at his fingertips brightened.
His hand tightened in your hair, then loosened at once, still careful even at the edge of himself. His body went rigid above you, and the final sound he made was the prettiest yet.
His seed spilled into you as he reached his high and no textbook had warned you that a fae could taste like sweetness and binding magic.
Your throat worked once, eyes rolling back in a haze from the taste.
And you swallowed.
For a moment, you only knelt there, dazed.
Dex, finally catching his breath, finally looked down at you.
He laughed fondly, as though you had done something preciously foolish and still utterly expected.
“Oh, princess,” he murmured.
Then, his hand slid over the crown of your head in an almost patronising pat pat pat.
You blinked up at him, eyes glossy, mouth parted, still too ruined to be properly offended by the way he was looking at you, like you were helpless and had walked directly into his snare and thanked him for setting it.
“Poor thing,” he cooed, “you really don’t know, do you?”
Huh?
Your eyebrows pulled together, confused, mouth still dripping silver-white liquid. “W-what?”
Dex lazily pulled his belt on before crouching in front of you, amber eyes bright with wicked tenderness. His thumb brushed your lower lip, wiping away the last trace of him gently.
“You were right to refuse our fruit,” he said. “And you were right to refuse our wine.”
A strange warmth bloomed beneath your ribs.
Dex smiled wider. “But the old laws never distinguished between feasts and lovers.”
The words sank in slowly.
Your heart stumbled as looked down at your hands in the moss.
For one second, you thought the strange fae light was playing tricks on you. The glow of the flowers, perhaps old magic bending colour where it touched skin.
But no.
Your fingertips were blue at the very tips, like you had dipped them in moonlight and frost. The colour shimmered luminously beneath your skin, not stain, not paint that could be washed away.
A bond.
Dex made a pleased hum and took your hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the new colour as though admiring his own mark.
You should have recoiled or demanded answers. Maybe shouted at him
Instead, your lashes fluttered, and the golden thread beneath your ribs tugged you toward him until your body swayed towards him, not entirely magical in origin.
Because you truly believed, bond or not, you still wanted him.
Dex caught you.
His hand settled possessively at your waist, and you looked up at him with a weak smile that made his cold heart melt.
You had not known a lover’s offering could bind as surely as bread and wine. You had not known that he had turned your body into a feasting table and your mouth into a cup.
And the worst part was you did not care enough.
How could you, when Dex looked at you like you hung the moon and stars for him? How could you when the forest seemed to hum approval?
A distant, sensible part of you understood that you should have reacted. You should have stiffened in his arms, looked back toward the mist, thought of your mother and father, your kingdom, your guards, the frantic search parties that would soon spill into the western woods calling your name. Instead, you only curled deeper into Dex as though the sound had frightened you toward him rather than away from him, and his arms tightened around you at once, pleased by the surrender.
He gathered you closer, one hand beneath your knees and the other firm against your back, carrying you as though you weighed nothing at all. The thorn path opened behind him with a shiver of black branches, parting for their prince and the human princess he had finally claimed.
Dex kissed your temple once, his mouth lingering there as he murmured sweet little nothings into your hair. I never used the Sleep of Rowan until I wanted to become the kind of hunter you would not fear. I wanted to be good for you. You made me want to be kind. My North Star. My pretty girl. My princess.
The words should have mattered. A foolish part of you heard them and melted, heard the devotion beneath the old loneliness of centuries spent alone. Perhaps some corner of your heart truly did believe a creature like him meant every gentle thing he said, even while carrying you deeper into a realm that had just swallowed you whole.
All his pretty promises blurred into the darker truth humming through the old magic between you. He could not wait to show you his realm, his palace, his gardens, his bed. He could not wait to keep you spoiled as his lover and his plaything, the future mother to his heirs. You were for as long as the Wyld remembered how to hunger.
You should have been horrified, but you were too full of the sweetness you had swallowed, and the magic now curling through your blood like a second heartbeat. Your cheek rested against his throat, and when Dex’s hand stroked over your back, you sighed as though you were relieved, because being taken felt too much like being wanted.
For Dex, Prince of the Wyld, his three-year hunt for his mate was finally complete.
If he was being honest, he had thought it would take longer.
Summary : You fall for Dex, a faerie hunter. Little did you know, he has already decided you belong to him.
Pairing : Faerie Prince! Benjamin Poindexter x Human Princess! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Faerie au, fantasy au, dark romance, obsessive/possessive behaviour, stalking, shapeshifting, hidden identity, predatory courtship, manipulation by way of fae bargaining and loopholes, attempted assault by another character, murder, blood, explicit sexual content (afab reader with no explicit anatomical description), masturbation, fingering, oral sex, praise/degradation, implied captivity, food, north star! Reader. Reader is described to be a "spinster" and I picture her to be in her mid20-mid30s with the king and queen to be in their 60s, but open to interpretation, of course! (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 13.3k
Requested by : anon
Notes : The Title is Inspired by the song “Call Me Little Sunshine” by Ghost. Enjoy!
Being a princess was, in practice, spectacularly dull. Storybooks had neglected to mention that.
According to the bards, princesses spent their days dancing through rose gardens, befriending woodland creatures, and waiting elegantly by castle windows until the perfect knight arrived on a white horse.
The reality was considerably less glamorous, because reality included embroidery, war planning lessons, standing perfectly still while yet another seamstress held yet another gown against your shoulders and declared that ivory “brought out your breeding.”
The reality often was being escorted absolutely everywhere because, according to your father, kingdoms had a habit of declaring war over unmarried princesses.
You lived in the tallest tower of the royal palace, and not because you were imprisoned, but because it was traditional.
Your father insisted generations of royal sons and daughters had lived there before their weddings. The tower overlooked the capital, the forests beyond the walls, and, on particularly clear evenings, the silver mist that marked the border of the fae realm.
You were forbidden from going anywhere near it. So, naturally, it was the most interesting thing you could see from your window.
Sometimes, a raven came to sit with you on the sill.
He was a sleek, handsome thing with feathers black enough to reflect blue beneath the sunlight and eyes that seemed far too clever for an ordinary bird. He never startled when you moved too suddenly or tried to touch him. He simply watched you, head tilted, while you complained about your lessons, your father, and the latest dreadful man being considered for your hand.
The raven was your only friend.
You had started leaving scraps of breakfast for him, though he never really ate them. Most days, he seemed content merely to listen. Occasionally, he would tap his beak against the window sill or make a croaking sound at exactly the right moment, as though offering an opinion.
Every morning followed the same rhythm of breakfast before lessons, before war planning, before a walk in the palace gardens with no fewer than six guards pretending they weren’t following you, before fencing, before dinner.
Occasionally, your routine was interrupted by another prospective husband. Sometimes it was a prince, other times it would be a duke or a marquess. Once, it was an unfortunate count who spent twenty uninterrupted minutes explaining taxation while trying to court you.
Your father always watched these meetings with hopeful eyes.“What do you think of Prince Alistair?”
“He called me ‘adequate.’”
“He meant well.”
“He compared me to wheat,” you rolled your eyes.
He could only sigh. “Wheat is valuable.”
“I don’t want to marry a man who thinks my greatest quality is being agriculturally useful.”
Your father sighed, and it was the weary sigh of a king rapidly discovering that raising a stubborn daughter was considerably harder than negotiating peace treaties between entire territories. “You cannot refuse everyone.”
“I haven’t refused everyone,” you corrected, which was technically true.
“You’ve refused twelve.”
You held up a finger with a sly smile. “Twelve so far.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are one day going to become queen.”
“I know.”
“You need a husband.”
“I know,” you slumped to your seat, though the corset was now digging into your spine.
“A suitable one.”
“I know.”
“So what exactly are you waiting for?”
You glanced past him, beyond the castle walls, toward the ancient forest shimmering on the horizon.
“I don’t know,” you admitted. “But I feel like if I marry any of them…” You paused. “I’ll be settling.”
Your father smiled sadly, mistaking your hesitation for youthful nerves. “You’ll understand soon enough.”
You smiled back because it was easier than arguing.
The truth was, you already understood.
You simply wanted more than a political alliance and polite conversation over dinner. You wanted someone who made your heart race.
Someone worthy of becoming the subject of stories.
You looked out and simply wondered, if any human prospect was ever going to be remarkable.
—
You had never escaped six armed guards before, but today, you found out that it was surprisingly easy.
They were watching for assassins, kidnappers, enemy soldiers, perhaps even a dragon if the kingdom had been having a particularly difficult week. They were not watching for their princess to lift her skirts, squeeze through a gap in the palace hedge, and run directly into the trees.
By the time anyone shouted your name, you were already gone.
Why did she even do this? Your father would probably ask, but there was really only one answer: boredom.
You were bored of the same rooms, the same lessons, the same walks through the gardens. You were bored of waking each morning already knowing exactly how the day would end.
The raven had visited your windowsill that morning, but he stayed only long enough to tilt his clever little head at you, and then flew back toward the forest.
You had watched him disappear beyond the palace walls and thought, with a miserable pit in your stomach, if only I could be that free.
Perched beside you in the tower one moment, exploring the forest the next.
So you decided to do something about it and ran.
The forest began as ordinary woodland,
but grew stranger the farther west you went. The trees became older, their roots rising through the earth like sleeping serpents, and silver mist gathered between the trunks even beneath a clear sky.
That mist marked the border: Your kingdom ended on this side, and the fae realm began on the other.
You were not stupid enough to cross it.
You were still catching your breath by a rock when you heard something crying in the undergrowth.
The sound drew you deeper into the woods long before you saw its source.
It was not a cry of pain so much as a weary exhale, the sort a creature made after running farther than its body wished to carry it. The forest seemed reluctant to reveal where it came from, as ancient oaks stood shoulder to shoulder like old kings in round tables, their branches weaving together until only ribbons of sunlight reached the moss below. Blue-white motes drifted lazily through the shade, vanishing whenever you tried to follow them with your eyes
The doe lay only a few paces away, as though she had collapsed the instant she reached the safety of your kingdom. She was a beautiful hind with a pale face and enormous dark eyes that blinked sleepily rather than fearfully. The white arrow with black feathers rested against her flank, though when you looked closer your brow furrowed.
There was no blood or torn flesh.
The arrowhead shimmered with threads of pale gold that flowed over the deer’s body like sunlight through water. Wherever the light touched, the muscles beneath her coat relaxed. Her breathing remained calm.
“Oh.” You crouched beside her. “You aren’t hurt, are you, my love?”
The doe lazily lifted her head and nosed your shoulder before letting it fall again into the grass with contented resignation, determined to finish its nap.
You laughed nervously under your breath. “What have they done to you?”
“The Sleep of Rowan.”
The voice came from somewhere inside the silver mist, beautiful enough that it almost seemed to belong to the forest itself.
You looked up.
He stood where the mist was thickest, and somehow the trees seemed arranged around him rather than the other way around. His leathers were the deep blue of the ocean down by the south border, embroidered so finely with bronze thread that every movement caught the light like autumn leaves stirred by the wind.
A longbow rested loosely in one hand, carved from white wood that glimmered with faint silver runes. His hair was slightly tousled, sometimes dark brown and other times it was slightly golden. He was… Fair Folk.
There was no mistaking it.
He had pointed ears peeking through his hair, a strong jaw softened only by expressive lips that looked almost permanently on the verge of a knowing smile. His amber eyes were startlingly bright, flecked with molten gold, his fingers were glowing blue at the tips.
Then there was the scar, crossing one cheek in a narrow line, and one on top of the eye.
It should not have been there. Whatever had given him that one must have been vicious.
You knew now, that any sensible person would walk in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, you had never been particularly sensible.
“Sleep of Rowan?” you blinked.
He inclined his head toward the doe. “The arrow contains no iron.” His voice carried no arrogance, only certainty. “It numbs the body before it strikes. By the time the arrow lands, the creature feels only warmth. They grow sleepy.”
The doe punctuated his explanation by yawning.
Your heart immediately melted. “Oh, sweetheart.”
The fae watched you smile at the animal. His expression changed so subtly you almost missed it.
Interest, maybe. Recognition, perhaps.
You looked from the doe to the bow resting in his hand. “You mean to kill her?”
“When the forest gives permission.”
You blinked.
He nodded toward the ancient trees surrounding you, fingertips brushing across the carved wood of his bow.
“We never hunt mothers with young,” he continued. “Never more than the Court requires. Every hide is worn and every antler is carved. Every bone shall be returned to the old groves before the first snowfall.”
He spoke not like a man explaining himself, but someone with rules and guidelines so ingrained into his bones it might as well be prayer.
“We borrow a life,” he said quietly. “We are expected to return honour in its place.”
You looked down at the sleeping doe as she twitched once in her dreams.
“Then…” Your fingers drifted automatically to the white patch between her ears, stroking it with infinite care. “…couldn’t you borrow another?”
The fae regarded you with an expression you couldn’t begin to understand.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve already proved you could catch her.”
His brow lifted.
“You did.” You gestured toward the shimmering arrow. “She’s asleep.”
“She is.”
“So you’ve won.”
A tiny smile threatened the corner of his mouth. “I have.”
You looked back at the doe. “Please let her go.” The words escaped so quietly they were almost carried away by the breeze. “Please.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he looked only at you, but not at your dress or the small golden circlet resting in your hair, but into your eyes and then to the way your hand never stopped stroking the sleeping animal.
The silence stretched so much you began to wonder whether you had insulted him.
Then, without a word, he reached for the arrow. The runes dimmed beneath his fingers, the arrow dissolving into the afternoon air like scattered pollen.
The doe stirred, blinked twice, and climbed to her feet.
She stood for a moment, swaying gently as though waking from the deepest sleep she’d ever known. Then she nudged her nose against your shoulder in what could only be gratitude before disappearing into the trees with three graceful bounds.
Only then did you turn back. “You just… let her go.”
“Yes.”
“Because I asked?”
He smiled. “You asked kindly.”
“That can’t possibly be enough reason.”
“It appears to have been.”
“I’ve just ruined your hunt,” you managed a nervous laugh, “and you’re not angry?”
His eyes held yours. “No.”
“Why?”
He considered the question far longer than it deserved. “Because I preferred watching you.”
Unexpectedly, heat crept up into your cheeks.
There was nothing crude or flirtatious in the way he said it. It sounded like a fact.
He looked at you the way scholars looked at miracles and priests looked at altars: with complete attention, as though every movement you made deserved remembering.
“You have leaves in your hair,” he observed.
You huffed, taking one. “I escaped six guards.”
“I know,” he stepped ever so closer. “They’re still looking for you.”
“How do you know that?” You raised an eyebrow, taking a cautious step back.
His smile deepened ever so slightly. “They’re remarkably loud.”
“I suppose they are.” You sighed. “They worry too much.”
His expression remained pleasantly calm. “They are guarding a princess.”
You sighed, and he merely tilted his head.
After a moment’s silence, you simply asked, “Do… you have a name?”
“Dex.”
“Dex?”
“It will suffice.” You nodded.
“Very well, Dex.”
A brightness flickered across his face at the sound of the name in your voice. Approval, perhaps. Or satisfaction.
He rested the bow across his shoulder with effortless grace. “And you, Princess,” You didn’t even notice that he had done it again. “have convinced me to let my dinner wander off. The least you can do is point me towards the blackberry bushes.”
He knew the forest better than any living creature. Yet somehow, you found yourself leading him through it anyway.
And Dex, Crown Prince of the Wyld Fae, followed without the slightest complaint.
Because, according to every sacred law of the hunt he had ever been taught, once you found something worth following, you did not let it out of your sight.
—
The blackberry bushes grew wild along the riverbank, their thorny branches weighed down with fruit so dark they looked blue beneath the fading light. Dex moved through them selecting one berry from dozens as though there was an art to it. He plucked a particularly lavish one between two fingers and held it toward your mouth.
You stared at the blackberry, then at him. “I’m not stupid.”
Dex managed an infuriating smirk. “It appears you are.”
“Excuse me?”
His mouth pulled into a chuckle. “You think I’m trying to enchant you with fruit that grew in your own kingdom.”
You simply crossed your arms “I am smarter than eating or drinking anything offered by the Fair Folk.”
“The roots are in human soil,” he said, pointing to the roots of the tree. “Made of human rain and human sunlight. You will not be bound to me.”
Ah. Right.
Still, you narrowed your eyes. “No secret marriage?”
Dex looked more amused by your paranoia, as if enjoying toying with it. “No.”
“No hundred-year sleep?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“No waking up in your palace wearing a crown?”
Dex’s eyes dipped briefly to your mouth before returning to your eyes. “Not from the blackberry.”
You should have been more concerned by the distinction. Instead, you leaned forward and took the fruit from his fingers.
It was sweet enough to make you hum, wild and far richer than anything cultivated in the palace gardens. Dex watched you eat it with a satisfaction so singular it was almost ridiculous, as though convincing you to accept one perfectly harmless berry had been the greatest victory of his life.
After that, you talked, mostly about nothing. Then about everything.
You told him about the tower and how the wind made noise through the stones during winter. You complained about your governess, your embroidery lessons, and the latest nobleman your father intended to parade before you like an expensive horse. Dex listened with his full attention, asking questions in places where most people would have nodded politely and waited for you to stop speaking.
He told you about the forest in return, about flowers that only opened beneath eclipses and streams that remembered every person who crossed them. He showed you which mushrooms laughed when stepped on and warned you never to follow lanterns that moved. When you asked whether every fae hunter was as strange as he was, he told you that he was considered perfectly reasonable by the standards of his court.
You didn’t believe him.
The evening came around you while you wandered along the river, eating blackberries you picked yourself and talking until the light turned gold, then rose, then a deep violet between the trees. Dex stayed close. Sometimes, his hand hovered near your waist when you stepped over roots.
By the time the first stars appeared, you had almost forgotten you had escaped the palace at all.
That was until, the distant toll of the evening bell carried through the woods. You stopped beside the river. Dex stopped with you.
“I have to go.” The warmth left his eyes so quickly, and in its place was something coldly neutral. Still, you kept talking. “My father will be very furious.”
“Oh,”
It was all he could say.
You looked at him for a long moment, taking in the burnished gold hidden in his dark hair “I like you, Dex,” you said.
He went completely still.
It pleased you, strangely, to know you could surprise him. “Are all fae this kind?”
A glint passed through his mischievous eyes. “Is that what you think I am?”
“My mother says your kind are manipulative,” you said, “She says every gift is a trap and every kindness hides a bargain. She doesn’t trust your kind. Should I?”
Dex glanced toward the silver mist in the distance, then back at you. His frown had gone softer, though no less intent. “I suppose you will have to make up your own mind.”
You considered him as the fae hunter who had released a doe because you asked, as the stranger who had followed you through the forest, listened to every complaint, and fed you nothing that could bind you.
Before you could lose your nerve, you stepped closer and rose onto your toes and pressed a light kiss to the scar on his cheek.
When you drew back, he looked almost dazed, one hand lifting slowly toward the place your lips had touched. For a creature so graceful, so composed, and so clearly dangerous, he appeared wonderfully unprepared for affection.
“Goodnight, Dex.”
You began walking backward toward the palace path.
He remained by the river, watching you leave with that singular concentration.
“Will you be here again?” he asked.
You only smiled. You knew better than to give a promise to a fae.
But you thought the answer was obvious.
—
By the time you slipped back into the palace, dusk had swallowed the gardens.
Your father stopped you only long enough to ask where you had been. You could tell he was furious under his skin, having sent half his kingsguard on a fruitless search party.
You lied with the ease expected of royalty, telling him you've been reading in the reclusive west tower all afternoon. After all, you have been trained to lie to foreign dignitaries from birth.
“You are the Crown Princess,” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You should have told us if you wanted to be one. You cannot simply disappear.”
“I won’t do it again,” you said, fully intending to do it again.
Once safely inside your tower, you dismissed your ladies, locked the door, and collapsed onto your bed with a sigh.
The ceiling stared back, and so did your thoughts.
You, of course, thought about Dex.
You smiled before you could stop yourself.
You knew the fae hunter was a terrible idea. But he was beautiful enough that every story your mother had ever told suddenly felt painfully believable.
You rolled onto your side, hugging one of the embroidered pillows to your chest. It was only harmless fun, right?
You weren’t making bargains. You weren’t wandering into Faerie. You weren’t accepting enchanted feasts beneath silver trees.
You knew the rules.
You couldn’t eat his food, but surely…
Surely you could have some fun with him.
That wasn’t forbidden.
…Probably.
You buried your face in the pillow with a groan. “This is how princesses end up cursed.”
Suddenly, you heard a gentle tap against the window, followed by another a few seconds later.
You turned immediately, your smile widening as familiar black feathers came into view. “There you are.”
The raven hopped onto the stone sill as it had done a thousand times before, folding his wings neatly against himself before fixing you with that strangely thoughtful stare of his.
You opened the window, and he stepped inside as though he’d always belonged there.
He gave one little chirp.
You laughed under your breath, pretending to be able to talk to him, because you always seemed to pretend he knew everything on your mind. “I know.”
He hopped a little closer.
“He’s a bad idea.”
The raven blinked.
“A very bad idea.”
He seemed to furrow his amber eyes, which was ridiculous to even imagine, right.
“…But he’s awfully gorgeous.”
The bird made a small little croak.
“I know.”
You smiled helplessly, as he nuzzled to your fingers.
Your heart melted immediately. “Oh, you.”
You gathered him carefully against your chest, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. His feathers were warm beneath your cheek, damp with the scent of leaves and evening air.
“You’re still my favourite,” you half-promised. “Even if Dex is very pretty.”
The raven settled into your arm, satisfied.
You held him while looking toward the distant forest, completely unaware that he had arrived much later than usual.
—
You had not slept properly in three nights.
Every time you closed your eyes, you saw Dex was waiting beneath the trees. Sometimes he stood beside the river with evening light caught in his hair. Other times he was close enough that you could see every tiny fleck in his eyes and the faint silver edge of the scar you had kissed. Once, in a dream so vivid you woke with your heart racing, he had simply watched you from the other side of the mist while you tried to find the path back to him.
By the third night, lying awake and pressing your face into a pillow had begun to feel undignified.
So you abandoned your bed, pulled a cloak over your nightdress and crept down to the oldest part of the royal library with a candle cupped between both hands.
The palace was unnervingly still at that hour, thanks to the portraits watching you pass through dark corridors, and every floorboard that determined to announce that the crown princess was wandering barefoot toward a locked collection of forbidden books because she could not stop thinking about a beautiful stranger.
The books concerning the Fair Folk were kept beneath the main library, behind an iron gate whose hinges had bled rust into the surrounding stone. Your mother kept the key in her study, hidden beneath a false-bottomed drawer so obvious that you suspected she had never once considered you might look.
The lower level library smelled of old leather, damp parchment and extinguished fires. Shelves climbed toward the vaulted ceiling, crowded with books no one had touched in decades. Some of them were even bound shut with iron clasps. Others had charms stitched into their covers or warnings written across their spines in three different languages.
You found the passage about the Wyld Court in a green leather volume, frail with age.
Several dried anemones had been pressed between its pages. Their white petals had yellowed around the edges, and one crumbled beneath your thumb when you turned to the chapter on the Hunt.
The first few pages were almost reassuring.
Human stories called the Wyld savage because they hunted often, but the account insisted this was ignorance rather than truth.
The Wyld do not kill for purely sport. Their hunters study the land before taking anything from her, sometimes watching a herd through an entire season to understand which lives could be spared without leaving young unprotected or weakening the group before winter. They never hunt during birthing months. They never took more than the court required. Every part is used and every hunt ends with a rite beneath the oldest trees.
You smiled.
You remembered Dex's voice when he explained why he wasn’t ashamed to hunt. He had simply believed it should be done with his ancient ritual.
The next section described how Wyld hunters selected their quarry.
They never choose impulsively.
A hunter watches first. They learn where the animal drank, where it sleeps, which trail it favours and how it behaves when startled. They study the rhythm of its body, the sounds it makes when content, the direction it turns when frightened and the places it instinctively returns to when it believes itself safe.
You shift the candle closer.
It was practical, of course. A skilled hunter had to know what he followed.
Dex had been like that with the doe, you supposed.
The book continued.
Once the quarry has been selected, the hunter begins appearing along its path, never close enough to alarm it, and never so often that it flees the territory entirely. They learn of its world before stepping inside it, careful not to disturb the habits they wish to understand.
That sounded…. strangely gentle.
You imagined Dex moving through the forest without snapping a twig, following the doe from somewhere beyond the trees.
A note in the margin had been written in a shakier hand than the rest:
The Wyld considers attention an act of reverence.
You traced the words.
“Mmm,” you whispered, though there was no one there to agree with you.
He had seemed to have undivided attention.
Dex had listened to you with the same concentration gave the forest.
You had assumed he was simply considerate.
The book described a hunter’s patience in borderline devotional language.
The hunter does not chase too early. He lets the quarry become accustomed to his presence, appearing at familiar places until their presence no longer causes alarm. If it looks toward them instead of away, that is considered progress. If it remains nearby willingly, it is a sign that the pursuit has entered its next stage.
Your mouth curled up. The doe, freed, hadn’t remained near Dex.
You had, but surely it must be different. You were not prey.
You barely entertained the intrusive thought before returning to the page.
The Wyld believes pursuit should be quiet. A careless hunter frightens away what they hope to bring close. A patient one learns how to make his presence welcome. They leave signs along familiar paths, small objects chosen with care that the quarry would recognise they have not appeared by accident. They remove thorns and stones from frequently used trails. They frighten away other predators before they are ever seen.
You pressed your thighs together beneath the table without thinking.
It was not fear that you felt. It was the memory of Dex following you beside the river, the way he had watched you eat the blackberry as though the smallest movement of your mouth fascinated him. The way his eyes changed when you said you liked him.
Perhaps Wyld hunters were simply intense people.
Some men at court barely remembered the colour of your eyes after spending an entire dinner speaking about themselves. Dex had looked at you once and seemed to notice everything.
That was hardly frightening. It was flattering.
You turned another page.
The descriptions grew more… intimate.
A hunter learns the sound of their quarry’s footsteps before they ever see it. They can identify its scent beneath rain, smoke, or crushed leaves. Over time, they begin to anticipate where it would go before it had made the decision itself.
You smiled dreamily, picturing Dex somewhere in the western woods already knowing which path an animal would take.
Perhaps he would be waiting near the river. Perhaps there would be anemones beside the blackberry bushes.
You hoped there would be.
A final passage sat at the bottom of the page, separated from the rest by an inked border of thorns. You bent closer to read it.
Wyld fae are occasionally known to form attachments of extraordinary depth to their prey. Once a hunter has chosen, fixation may last years, centuries or the full span of an immortal life. Distance rarely weakens it. It may delay the pursuit, but seldom ends the attachment itself.
Well… that sounded a little excessive.
You turned the page quickly.
The next chapter concerned Wyld courtship.
Anemones appeared again in the illustration. You expected this part to be filled with poems and stories. Maybe an explanation of some elaborate fae ritual performed beneath a full moon. You expected several paragraphs at least.
Instead, the chapter contained a single sentence with letters that were larger than the rest of the book, boxed in black ink and surrounded by a border of thorns:
WARNING: WYLD FAE DO NOT RELIABLY DISTINGUISH BETWEEN COURTSHIP AND THE PURSUIT OF PREY.
Huh. You thought. How vague.
—
The next morning, your mother returned just after sunrise with thirty riders, two foreign ambassadors, enough sealed documents to keep the council occupied for a fortnight, and a potential husband.
Ugh.
The palace bells rang the moment her party crossed the outer gate.
Servants hurried through the corridors carrying fresh flowers, guards straightening their uniforms. Courtiers appeared from nowhere, already smiling before the queen had even dismounted.
Queens inspired that sort of efficiency.
Your kingdom had always been matriarchal. Daughters inherited crowns. Queens wore crowns and commanded legions while kings negotiated peace treaties.
Kings advised. Queens decided.
Which meant your marriage had always been your father’s responsibility. The fact that your mother was now getting involved meant one of two things: you were becoming a spinster, or your prospects have started to look so concerning, even the head of state had to lend a hand. In your case, probably both.
She embraced you only briefly before holding you at arm’s length. “You look tired.”
“I’ve been unable to rest, mother.”
There was the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. “You’ve inherited your father’s habit of avoiding sleep.”
She smoothed an imaginary crease from your sleeve before her eyes settled back into regal.
“I’ve brought guests.”
You looked past her, and one of them was already looking at you.
You recognised him immediately as Lord Edmund, though you’d never met him.
You’d heard enough.
You heard ladies from across the land whispering his name behind fans at winter banquets, and their maids lowered their voices when he walked past. A merchant’s daughter had once refused to dance with him at a feast, that she’d been sent away to live with an aunt before the week was over.
Nothing had ever been proven, but you heard these things happened because of his very unpleasant behaviour.
He was handsome enough, and more importantly rich enough, to make the rumours inconvenient.
“My lady.”
He bowed and took your hand. His thumb traced the inside of your wrist with lazy familiarity before releasing you immediately tucked your hand behind your back. “You’ve grown even lovelier than your portraits.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
He laughed.
Your mother looked between the two of you with quiet satisfaction. “Lord Edmund has spent the last month travelling with our delegation.”
“I’m honoured,” he gave a saccharine smile,
“You should be.” She said it lightly, but you knew that tone. She had already decided this alliance made sense.
Oh. No.
As her conversation moved elsewhere, you took half a step backwards, and Lord Edmund took half a step forwards.
No one noticed when his hand settled lightly against the small of your back with enough pressure that you felt every finger through the silk of your gown.
Your body stiffened.
“So tense,” he murmured.
You moved away, and of course mother turned just then.
“There you are.”
You forced yourself to smile.
The bastard looked every inch the perfect gentleman.
“Lord Edmund has mentioned going on a hunt tomorrow,” She mentioned, adjusting one of your curls behind your ear. “You’ll accompany him.”
Your stomach dropped. “Mother…”
“It will do you good to leave the palace.”
“I don’t enjoy hunting.”
“You enjoy forests.”
Not the same forest, you thought, Not the same hunter.
Your hesitation lasted a heartbeat too long.
Your mother frowned slightly. “You’ve refused every suitor your father introduced.”
“I barely know any of them.”
“Exactly,” her voice lowered. “You cannot know a person’s character across a dinner table.”
She glanced toward Lord Edmund, who was speaking pleasantly with your father.
“Watch how a man behaves when he’s armed.”
It was advice every queen passed to every daughter: A gentleman could lie, but a hunter rarely did.
“I think you’ll find him disciplined.”
Oh, you very much doubted that.
—
The next day, you did go hunting with Lord Edmund.
The only alarming detail was that you returned dragging his dead body behind your horse.
By the time you reached the palace gates, the rope around his ankles had rubbed the leather of his boots raw and left a dark trail through the dirt. His expensive hunting coat was torn open at one shoulder, caked with mud and dead leaves, and his head struck every uneven stone with a dull, ugly rhythm that made several of the guards flinch as they rushed to meet you.
You rode straight through the gates, eyes blank beneath the grime, skirts streaked green and brown from the forest floor, one hand wound tightly around the reins while the other still trembled despite your best efforts.
Your father reached you first. He looked relieved to see you alive, only to collapse into horror when he noticed what followed behind. Your mother arrived seconds later, still fastening the clasp of her cloak, and stopped so abruptly that the entire courtyard seemed to halt, too, as she looked down at Edmund.
You dismounted without assistance and untied the rope from the saddle. His entire body dropped heavily onto the cobblestones at your feet.
“He went into fae territory,” you said. Your voice sounded remarkably calm.
Your mother stared at the arrow buried cleanly through Edmund’s chest. Fae work, unmistakably.
You nudged his shoulder with the toe of your boot and looked down at him with exhausted contempt. “Very sad.”
What a lie.
The truth was that Edmund had never intended to hunt anything.
He had looked convincing enough when you left the palace that morning in fine hunting leathers and a freshly carved bow.
For the first hour, he thanked the servants, praised the hounds and kept his hands where everyone could see them.
Then, he began thinning the party.
The dogs were too noisy, so he sent the handlers east. The scouts had supposedly found fresh tracks near the ridge, so the huntsmen followed. The guards were told to wait with the spare horses near the stream because too many riders would disturb the game. His instruction sounded reasonable by itself, and even though you had been suspicious, you didn’t understand what he was doing until you were alone.
Only then did you notice that he had not examined a single track all morning. He had not tested the wind, drawn his bow or once looked into the bushes.
He had watched your body instead, not listening to what on earth you were saying. He hungrily watched the sway of your body in the saddle, and how your skirt shifted when you dismounted to cross a fallen tree. Whenever you tried to turn the conversation back toward the hunt, his attention slid away from the forest and returned to you with the same damp, crawling persistence.
By the time he guided you toward the border, silver mist was already visible between the ancient trunks.
You told him you wanted to turn back. You even pulled your horse around, but Edmund blocked the narrow path with his own and smiled at you as though your fear amused him.
There was no deer trail or quarry, no reason to be there except the isolation and the knowledge that no human voice would carry far enough for help to come.
That was when the performance ended.
He caught your wrist when you reached for the reins and dragged you down badly enough that your shoulder struck the side of the saddle. Your boots hit the ground unevenly, and before you could recover, his body pressed yours up against the horse.
You told him no, I’m not interested.
You said it clearly and shoved at his chest and tried to twist away, but he only laughed under his breath, as though refusal were a nervous habit he expected to train out of you after marriage.
And when his hand forced its way beneath your skirts…. An arrow came through the silver mist so suddenly that the air scarcely had time to whisper around it.
It struck Edmund through the heart.
You knew the arrow immediately. It was the same white arrow with black feathers, the same fine silver runes carved along the shaft. It was the same one he had used on the doe, except there was no Sleep of Rowan in his mercy.
Oh. This one hurt.
Edmund’s hand tore away from you at once, his face blank with shock as he staggered backward, looking down at the arrow as blood welled dark through his coat. He collapsed first to his knees and then onto his side, choking on a breath that would not come properly.
The mist moved between the trees, and somewhere inside it stood a hunter who had watched long enough to understand exactly what Edmund had intended.
Edmund was still alive when you walked over to him.
His eyes found yours, wide now, stripped of all his arrogance. His mouth opened as though he expected you to help. Perhaps he thought you would call for the guards.
Instead, you looked down at him, shaking with fury, and relief so vicious it almost felt like joy.
Then you spat in his face.
He died seconds after.
You stood over the body for several long moments, wrist throbbing where he had held you.
Dex had killed him.
Dex had seen and he had known exactly what was happening and had not hesitated for even the space of a heartbeat.
You should have been horrified, you should have looked at Edmund’s blood soaking into the moss and felt sick over the life extinguished at your feet.
Instead, you felt safe.
It took you nearly an hour to secure Edmund’s ankles and drag him back through the woods, following a vague trail of blackberries that ensured you made it back safely, knowing exactly who put them there. You didn’t remove the arrow; wanted your mother to see it.
Now, standing in the palace courtyard with your parents staring at the corpse, you folded your hands in front of you.
Your mother crouched beside Edmund and studied the entry wound. Her face remained composed, but her eyes flicked once toward the bruises around your wrist before returning to the arrow.
“He crossed the border?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And the fae killed him without warning?”
You met her eyes. “He should have known better.”
Your father looked stricken. Your mother looked unconvinced.
Neither of them asked why Edmund’s bow was still strapped neatly across his back, unused. They didn’t even ask why one side of your skirt had been torn near the hem.
Neither of them seemed to want to ask why you showed no grief.
—
That night, your mother sent you back to your chambers to sleep.
And you should’ve at least tried.
Instead, you lay tangled beneath your blankets, staring up at the canopy while your mind wandered helplessly back to the western forest, and the dead body of a potential suitor.
Soon enough, your mind wandered back to Dex.
His name alone made heat unfurl in your stomach.
It was ridiculous how easily he ruined you. He had barely touched you the one time he saw you. Tonight, he hadn’t even shown his face.
But somehow, before you called for him, Dex had known you needed him.
Your thighs pressed together beneath the sheets.
What a sick fucking thought, you scolded yourself, what a sick fucking mind I have, that this makes my core weep?
“No,” you whispered to yourself, but your body had no interest in your dignity.
But your hand was moving between your legs before shame could stop you.
Beneath the blankets, your fingers slipped lower, tentative at first, then less so as you imagined Dex with your eyes closer.
A soft gasp left your lips.
“Dex.” The name came out needy, more pathetic than you meant it to. Still, pleasure sparked through you at the sound of it.
You said it again, quieter this time.
“Dex.”
Your fingers moved faster.
You bit your lip and tilted your face into the pillow, trying to swallow the next sound, but it escaped anyway, in the form of a helpless gasp that made your whole body shiver beneath the sheets.
You were shameless, lying alone in your tower, touching yourself to the thought of the fae who had killed the man meant to court you.
Another tremor of pleasure rolled through you as your back arched faintly from the mattress.
“Dex,” you breathed again, a little broken now.
It felt like summoning him. It felt like a confession.
You imagined him at the foot of your bed, hearing exactly how his name sounded when it left your mouth like that. You imagined his head tilting, his eyes darkening, his perfect composure cracking because you were not afraid enough, because you wanted him. Because some wicked part of you had read all the cautionary tales about fair folk and and thought yes.
Yes, him.
Yes, please.
The thought made you whimper into the pillow.
Pleasure built slowly, then all at once, warm and dizzying. You chased it with your eyes shut and his name on your tongue, thinking blood on moss and the beautiful fae monster who had looked at you through the mist.
“Dex, please—”
You didn’t know what you were pleading for.
You only knew you wanted more than just your fingers. You wanted more of that shameful sweetness rolling through you.
Your fingers twisted in the sheets. Your lips parted around a mewling sound. The pleasure crested so suddenly you nearly sobbed, your body going tight and shaking beneath the blankets as his name fell from your mouth one last time, helpless and utterly damning.
For a while, you could only lie there, glassy eyes staring up at the canopy as though it had witnessed your fall from grace.
An absent-minded smile made its way to your mouth before you could stop it.
“You really are a terrible idea,” you sighed into the darkness.
The words held no conviction at all.
Outside your window, the raven landed silently upon the stone sill.
He watched you through all that, head tilted thoughtfully, black feathers gleaming blue beneath the moonlight.
That night, you didn’t notice him.
Nor did you notice that, for the first time since you had known him, he didn’t tap impatiently against the glass to ask you to let him in.
He simply remained where he was, keeping watch over the lonely tower until dawn.
—
By morning, you had decided you only wanted to thank him.
A perfectly reasonable thing, right? A man saved your life and your dignity, even if he was not exactly a man. It was only… polite.
You sat on the edge of your bed, fingers curled into the blankets, staring toward the window.
You… should know better.
But wanting never really came with a rhyme or reason.
So, you dressed quickly, perhaps too quickly.
Your fingers fumbled with the laces of your gown, and you had to redo them twice. Your hair refused to sit properly and reflection looked entirely too flushed, too guilty for a princess who had technically done nothing wrong.
Technically.
You leaned closer to the mirror and frowned at yourself.
“You are going to say thank you in person,” you said firmly. “That is all.”
Your reflection did not look convinced.
“You are only doing this, because he came to your rescue,” you continued, because apparently arguing with glass was where your morning had gone. “Like a civilised woman. You have manners, right?”
Still, your reflection looked at you as if to say that civilised women with manners did not usually wander alone into fae woods after spending the night thinking improper things about the fae in question.
You ignored her.
At breakfast, you had honeyed bread, the sugared fruit, the little cakes glazed gold beneath the kitchen light. You needed to eat, just in case. You cannot find yourself hungry in the presence of Wyld Fae!
You could not be tempted to eat or drink anything he gives you, that’s all. You needed a full stomach, because you weren’t foolish
Less than an hour later, you were slipping out through the western gate alone.
With your mother’s return, it was even easier to sneak out this time, as many of the guards were preoccupied with the queen’s every whims and needs. A queen, that your father loved to remind you, that you would one day be, too.
Still.
The morning air was damp, mist clinging to the grass beyond the castle grounds, thin as lace, and the forest stood ahead of you in a dark green wall of ancient trunks and tangled branches.
Eventually, you stopped at the edge of it.
The trees seemed to notice as it shifted though when there was no wind. Somewhere deep in the woods, a bird called once, then fell silent. The path you had taken yesterday was still there, winding blackberries between moss-covered stones and pale roots, but in daylight it looked… narrower.
Stranger.
You swallowed.
“Dex?” Your voice sounded terribly small.
Nothing answered an took one step beneath the trees.
The forest swallowed the sounds of the castle almost at once. The distant clatter of carts, the faint bells from the chapel tower, the servants calling to one another across the courtyard was barely noise behind you.
You walked for what felt like an hour.
Then another.
At first, you told yourself he would appear any moment. Dex seemed exactly the sort of person who enjoyed doing that. He would step from behind a tree, and ask whether you made a habit of wandering into dangerous places alone.
You had already prepared an excellent answer.
No, you would say. If I assumed I was in danger, I would not be here.
But Dex did not appear.
By midday, your boots were wet and the hem of your dress had collected half the forest floor. You had crossed the same fallen branch three times, which either meant you were walking in circles or the branch was following you. You had apologetically startled at least four rabbits, nearly tripped over a root that had definitely not been there a moment before, and apologised to a mushroom because it looked like it was wilting when you stepped too close.
“This is foolish,” you whispered.
Then, a branch shifted above you.
You looked up to see your raven friend sat on a low bough. His head tilted, bright eyes fixed on you with unsettling intelligence.
“Oh,” you said. “It’s you.”
The raven blinked.
For a moment, you could not move.
He looked exactly as he had outside your window: watchful and clever, as most corvids are.
Huh. You thought. He travels far, doesn’t he?
Because if this bird knew the forest, maybe he knew where Dex was, or at least where the most dense fae population was near the border. If he did, then perhaps you were not wandering blindly through the woods after all.
You took one step closer towards your friend. “I don’t suppose you could help me?”
The raven gave a small chirp.
Your mouth curved into the smallest smile. “I only want to thank him,” you said.
The raven stared as your smile faded.
“All right,” you whispered, finally admitting to him what you had failed to admit to yourself all night. “I want to see him.”
The raven dropped from the branch and landed lightly on the moss.
Behind him, the mist thickened between two dark trees.
It didn’t drift so much as gathered.
The silver-white started subtly glowing, curling over the roots like silk poured over bone. The path you had followed seemed to end there, as if the forest had brought you as far as ordinary courage could take you.
The raven stepped toward it, then looked back.
“No,” you whispered. “Stay, please. I don’t want to be alone.”
He only watched you.
The air cooled against your skin. Suddenly, the castle felt distant, like it belonged to another princess, a safer princess. A princess who would not follow a raven to the ends of the earth because she wanted to see a dangerous man smile.
And just after giving a little croak, the raven vanished into the white.
You stood at the edge, alone now, cloak ends pooling around your ankles.
For one moment, you thought you saw something through the mist, like gold flowers and black thorns along a path no human should walk. And deeper still, briefly, you could’ve sworn you saw amber eyes watching from the other side.
Your lips parted. “Dex?”
When no answer came, you should have turned back.
You knew that, but longing was not sensible. And whatever Dex had become to you since he met you… that was not sensible either.
You stepped forward and the mist touched your boots first. Then your hem, then your hands.
You should have turned back.
Instead, you took a deep breath and crossed the threshold.
—
Eventually, the mist disappeared.
It thinned around you in pale ribbons, peeling back from your face and shoulders until the forest revealed itself by degrees.
It took you a while to blink awake, looking around blankly at the white that was now retreating when…. Oh. Oh, wow.
It was beautiful.
Moss glowed faintly pink beneath your boots. The trees rose black and enormous on every side, their bark veined with silver, their roots twisting through the earth like sleeping serpents. Violet flowers bloomed among thorns, heavy-headed and luminous, turning slightly as you stepped forward as though even the plants wanted to look at you.
It was very clear that wherever you had gone, it was far away from the human realm.
You looked around, looking for your raven friend.
You looked through the strange trees, the unnatural sky, and the path of white stones winding away into the woods as if it had been waiting for your feet.
You found nothing.
Your strange little friend had vanished.
You turned in a circle, searching the branches above you and the curling mist behind you.
“Hello?” you called quietly.
Nothing answered.
You frowned, though your heartbeat was too quick for proper annoyance.
“You cannot just lead me through the mist and abandon me,” you managed to say. “It’s rude.”
A drop of water fell from a leaf somewhere overhead.
Still, no raven.
You took another careful step. The moss gave beneath your boots with a cushion-y feel that felt almost alive. “Where did you go?”
At last, a voice behind you said, “Lost, princess?”
You turned so quickly your cloak swung around your legs.
Oh.
Dex stood beneath a silver-barked tree.
In that moment, all your prepared thoughts vanished.
He looked less like he had walked here and more like the forest had grown him. He was as pretty as you last remembered him, eyes fixed on you with that calm attention that made your stomach tighten and your thoughts go embarrassingly pliant at the edges.
Your breath hitched as his eyes dropped briefly to your mouth, then lifted again.
You remembered yourself with effort.
You had found him, yes, but you had some dignity left in you. You weren't going to make this easy for him.
“Where is my friend?” You said instead.
He raised an eyebrow slightly, though he didn’t seem confused at all. “Your friend?”
“The raven.” You glanced over your shoulder, still half-expecting the bird to appear on a branch. “He was right here. He led me through, and then he disappeared.”
Dex looked past you with mild, infuriating faux innocence. “Ravens are difficult to command.”
“I did not command him,” you insisted, trying to look away, even as you have found what you came for. “I asked for help.”
Dex tilted his head. “Did he?”
“He did,” you nodded, “but then abandoned me.”
“Perhaps he thought you had arrived safely.”
You narrowed your eyes. “You say that as though you know where he went.”
“I know very little about the private affairs of true ravens.”
“That sounds like a lie.”
Technically, it wasn’t.
Dex’s mouth curved up, barely, enough to make heat lick up the back of your neck. “You crossed into fae territory to interrogate me about a bird?”
“No.”
“Then why did you come?”
The question should have an easy answer. In fact, you have practiced it on the walk through the outer woods, when the trees still looked ordinary and you still had the comfort of pretending this was a sensible errand. You had told yourself you would be calm and grateful. You would thank him properly and then go home.
But Dex was looking at you now, all that polite pretenses felt suddenly thin.
“I wanted to find you,” you said weakly.
You hated that the words felt so bare once spoken, because you didn’t even say I wished to thank you or I owe you a debt of gratitude. It didn’t sound like court manners or duty.
I wanted to find you.
Dex took one step closer and asked. “Why?”
You swallowed.
You had many things you wanted to say, none of them a good idea saying. You wanted to tell him you had not slept properly because every time you shut your eyes, you saw the arrow split the mist.
“I wanted to thank you,” you said.
Dex’s eyes stayed on your face. “For killing the foul creature who wished to touch you against your will?”
You looked down.
Your fingers twisted in the edge of your cloak. For a moment, the forest around you blurred into last evening: Edmund too close, his fingers where they had no right to be.
The memory made your skin go cold.
You looked up at him. “Yes,” you whispered. “For him.”
Dex came closer, slowly, like approaching prey.
He gave you space to step back, space to turn away. You didn’t.
“You do not need to thank me for that,” he said, “it was my responsibility.”
His responsibility?
It certainly was not.
You should’ve questioned it. But unfortunately, you had more… urgent matters in your mind.
“I want to,” you insisted.
His eyes flicked over your face, lingering on your flushed cheeks, your mouth, the rise and fall of your chest beneath your corset.
“And that is all?” He asked.
The air warmed between you. Or perhaps that was only your body betraying you.
You lifted your chin. “Yes.”
Dex’s eyes barely changed, but you knew he didn’t believe you for a second. “Princess…” he tsked, almost scolding in nature.
“I came to thank you,” you insisted, as if repetition could make it any less untrue. Still, you were unable to meet his eyes as you said it.
“I heard what you said.”
“It is the truth.”
“No.” He stepped closer again, close enough now that you could smell rain on leather and pine. “It is part of the truth, isn't it?”
Your back touched the smooth trunk of a silver-barked tree not realising you had stepped back.
Dex stopped immediately, one hand bracing against the tree beside your shoulder. He didn’t cage you in fully or press his body to yours. He simply stood close enough that your breath tangled with his, close enough that if you leaned forward even an inch, your mouth would find his.
“Do not pretend a you’re welcome is all you should expect from me today,” he murmured.
Your breath caught.
His eyes lowered to your lips. “It is frankly insulting,” he continued.
A scandalised little sound escaped you. “I do not expect anything from you.”
He smiled. “Liar.”
You should have been offended. You were, distantly, beneath the pounding of your heart and the sudden awareness of your own body, there was probably a very respectable princess who objected to being called a liar by a fae hunter in the middle of an enchanted forest.
Unfortunately, she was not currently in charge.
Dex lifted his free hand. You watched it rise, unable to move.
His knuckles brushed beneath your chin, tilting your face up to his in a feather-light touch.
“Look into my eyes,” he said softly. “And tell me you came only to thank me.”
You held his gaze, and you really did try to force it out, but would not come.
Dex’s thumb brushed the corner of your lips.
“There,” he murmured. “I thought so.”
Your throat went dry. “T-this is very unfair.”
“Is it?” Dex looked amused.
“You know what you are doing.”
“Yes.”
The honesty made something your stomach pull tight.
His eyes darkened, not with cruelty or triumph, but with want so restrained it almost looked like pain.
“Can I kiss you, princess?”
Oh.
You didn’t expect fae to be this… blunt.
Heat rushed down your throat and settle behind your ribs. It made you remember Edmund again,m, because Edmund had not asked. Edmund had pushed close and taken space and treated your refusal like a bug he could smother beneath his heel.
Dex asked.
Dex, who could have been terrifying without trying. Dex, who has killed for you. Dex, whose mouth hovered near yours and still waited.
“Yes,” you whispered.
Only then did he lower his mouth to yours.
He kissed you slowly at first. His lips brushed yours once, and for one second, he let you decide, let you lean in, and let you press yourself closer to him. You fingers curled into the front of his cloak as you kissed him back.
Then you made the neediest sound against his mouth, and his control snapped thin.
He kissed you deeper, his hand sliding to the back of your neck, fingers warm beneath your hair. The tree was cool against your spine, his body warm in front of you, and between them you felt held rather than trapped.
His mouth opened over yours with a hunger that made your knees buckle, but even then, even with his fingers tightening slightly at your nape, he kissed like you were the singular thing that gave his life meaning.
You clutched his cloak, body tilting toward him before your pride could stop it.
Dex groaned quietly into the kiss.
Oh, what a wonderful sound.
You pulled him closer, and his other hand found your waist. His grip was warm as though he needed to feel the shape of you. He kissed you until your lips tingled, until your breath came in shallow little gasps.
When he broke away, it was only to press his mouth to your jaw, then your throat.
You tipped your head back before you could stop yourself.
Dex’s mouth curved against your skin with a little hum.
You were already shaking. “Do not sound pleased with yourself.”
“But I am,” he mumbled.
His teeth grazed the side of your neck just enough to make your fingers dig into his shoulders.
“Dex.”
For all his composure, his reaction gave him away. He liked your voice like that. He liked you, breathless and honest, he liked that that you had come here dressed in gratitude and were now pressed against a silver tree, melting under his mouth.
His hand slid from your waist to your hip, then lower. over the fabric, dragging heat in the wake of his palm.
Your breath hitched.
Dex froze at once. “Can I touch you?”
Your eyes opened halfway.
He was watching you now, close enough that his lashes cast shadows against his cheeks.
“Yes,” you said, cheeks burning “Yes, Dex. Touch me.”
His hand tightened once on your hip before he kissed you again and gathered your skirts, agonisingly slowly.
He did so layer by layer, his fingers drawing the fabric upward, exposing your stockings, your garters, the bare skin above them to the cool air of the fae wood.
You should have felt vulnerable, and part of you did, but you were not afraid. The vulnerability made your heart pound harder and your mouth open against his.
Dex felt your thighs part before his hand had even reached them.
“Oh, princess.” It was filthy and wondrous at the same time.
Your face burned as his fingers brushed your inner thigh.
You gasped.
Dex’s eyes darkened as his hand slid higher.
The first touch between your legs made you jolt against him. He found you slick already, shamefully wet, soaked from his kiss and his voice and the humiliating truth that he had been right. Thank you was not all you had come for, not even close.
For one second, Dex didn’t move much.
He dragged his finger through, feeling the slick heat of you against his fingers and your hips giving the smallest helpless tilt toward his hand.
His teeth clenched hard enough to make the muscle jump.
“Oh,” he breathed again, rougher this time. “You really did come here wanting me.”
Your hand flew to his wrist to hold him there. “I c-came to thank you,” you insisted for the third time.
His fingers slid through your wetness, and the sound beneath your skirts was utterly indecent.
Your breath broke.
Dex’s mouth brushed the corner of yours. “Yes,” he murmured. “You are thanking me very well.”
The words made you clench around nothing.
Dex felt that too. His smile felt dangerous against your cheek.
“Ah,” he whispered. “Shameless little thing.”
You would have protested if his thumb had not found the puffy sensitive bundle of nerves, begging for his attention.
The touch was light at first, circling through the slick, making pleasure spark hot beneath your skin. Your head tipped back into his waiting palm. He kissed your exposed throat, open-mouthed, while his fingers learned you beneath your gown.
He was too careful to be rushed but too precise to be merciful.
Every movement had purpose. Every stroke, every firm circle. His thumb pressed a little firmer.
Your knees buckled.
Dex caught you with his body, pinning you gently against the tree while his hand kept moving.
His fingers slid lower. “Still only here to be polite?”
You made a strangled sound. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” you gasped. “I don’t.”
His first finger pushed inside you, and the sound of it could be heard within the hush of the forest.
Your mouth fell open on a mewl, and Dex’s forehead dropped to your collarbone. He held still for a heartbeat, letting you clenched around him.
You gripped his cloak with both hands. “No. More.”
His eyes nearly closed.
His composure cracked, hunger flashing naked and bright through the careful mask, and then he kissed you hard as his finger began to move, gently at first, slick and deep, curling inside you until pleasure jolted through your hips.
You cried out against his mouth.
Dex swallowed the sound like he had been starving for it. “There?”
You could not answer.
He curled his finger again, and your body jerked.
“Need words, princess.”
“Yes,” you gasped. “There. Please.”
His thumb circled while his finger worked inside you, the rhythm steady and wickedly exact. Every stroke made a pool of arousal gather around his hand.
His smile should have made you embarrassed.
Instead, it made you shameless, rocking down onto his hand with a broken little whimper.
Dex groaned.
“You hear that?” he murmured.
Your eyes squeezed shut. “Dex.”
“You do,” he said, kissing your cheek. “You hear how badly you want me.”
He added a second finger.
The stretch made your breath catch.
His fingers moved again, sliding into you with ease that made your face burn and your body melt. He curled them carefully, pressing deep, finding that same place until your thighs shook around his wrist.
Dex watched you like you were the only thing in the forest.
Not like Edmund.
Edmund had wanted you afraid. Dex wanted you ruined by pleasure.
Your hands clutched his shoulders. Your hips chased his fingers. You moaned into his neck, too far gone to care about the old stories warning girls never to follow fae men into the woods.
You had followed. You had crossed.
You were here.
So you might as well make the most of it, right?
“Dex,” you mewled as pleasure flared so bright you nearly sobbed.
“There,” he whispered. “Better than your own fingers, right?”
You should have noticed. You should have asked how he knew what you had done in your tower. You should have questioned how he knew his name had been in your mouth the night before.
But his fingers curled again and your thoughts scattered.
Dex smiled on your throat. “That’s what I thought.”
He didn’t give you time to recover.
His hand moved quicker now, fingers buried deep to his knuckles, thumb steady as pleasure climbed too fast and too high. Your whole body tightened around him, hips rolling shamelessly into his palm, chasing every stroke. You were wet enough that the sound of him touching you filled the space between your bodies, and Dex seemed to lose another thread of control every time he heard it.
“You are so sweet like this,” he murmured.
“Stop talking.”
“No.”
“Dex.”
“You like it.”
You did.
His thumb pressed harder as his fingers curled exactly right.
The climax tore through you in a hot, shaking wave.
You came with your face buried against his shoulder, mouth open on a broken cry, squeezing around his fingers as pleasure pulsed through you again and again. Dex held you upright through it, one arm firm around your waist, his mouth against your temple, his hand still moving beneath your skirts until every last shiver had wrung itself out of you.
Only then did he stop.
The forest around you seemed hazy and unreal, glowing moss beneath your weak knees. Dex withdrew his fingers, and your body gave one last helpless flutter at the loss.
You should have looked away, instead you watched as he lifted his hand between you, his fingers gleamed with your arousal.
Dex’s eyes stayed on yours as he brought them to his mouth and tasted you.
His eyes turned dark with satisfaction. “You really are sweet,” he said.
A scandalised little sound escaped you. “Dex,” you gasped. “You cannot say things like that.”
His thumb brushed your lower lip. “I can say much worse.”
“You should not.”
“No,” he agreed. “I should not.”
Eventually, he guided you carefully away from the tree.
Your legs were unsteady, dress rumpled. Your heart felt as though it had been taken apart and put back together. Dex kept one hand at your waist, watching you with a hunger that had not faded at all.
If anything, it had grown worse.
“How much more gratitude should I expect from you, princess?”
Your breath caught.
You knew you should be careful. You knew enough old stories to understand that words mattered here. Especially words spoken to beautiful fae men beneath magical trees and your heart no longer safely your own.
But then Dex’s hand slid into your hair, guiding you lower, his fingers threading through the loosened strands that your breath caught before you had even reached your knees. The moss gave beneath you, soft enough to feel unreal through the layers of your dress. Around you, the forest went uncannily quiet, as though the trees had closed their eyes and the flowers among the thorns had turned away out of courtesy.
Above you, Dex opened his belt. The buckle came free with a metallic click that seemed to echo as leather slid through its clasp, each small movement made unbearable by the way he watched you watching him. His blue-touched fingertips worked with the same terrible care you had seen when he handled his bow, and that precision made the moment feel even more indecent.
“As much as you want,” you whispered, holding his eyes, unshaded by how badly you wanted him to know the truth.
Dex smiled.
Your eyes lifted to his, licking the tip of his now-free length.
“There,” he groaned, thumb brushing your cheek as he pulled your mouth almost fully into him. “Now that feels like a thank you.”
You swirled your tongue as he closed his eyes. “Ah— fuck,” he breathed, voice barely controlled. “That’s it.”
You wanted more of that strained, beautiful sounds he tried and failed to hold back immediately.
So you let your lips and tongue become gratitude, letting every eager movement say what your mouth could not form into words.
Thank you for the arrow. Thank you for Edmund. Thank you for seeing what I wanted and waiting until I said yes.
Dex’s head tipped back slightly, a rougher, lower sound this time.
You took it as a reward.
“Princess,” he warned, though it sounded nothing like warning. It sounded like prayer.
Your eyes watered from the effort of taking all of him, from how much he was, from just how big he was that he barely fit in your velvety mouth.
Still, you looked up through wet lashes, and the sight seemed to make him twitch.
“Sweet, reckless thing.” he whispered.
You gave him more.
Dex groaned and the sound was beautiful.
This was better than court music under a chandelier during the autumn feast. This was the dangerous fae hunter above you losing pieces of himself because your mouth was warm and utterly devoted.
His pleasure was music to your ears and you wanted to make him sing.
“Look at me,” Dex said.
You did.
His amber eyes were dark now, fixed on your face, looking undone and hungry. His blue-touched fingertips glowed faintly where they rested against your cheek, wiping away a tear.
“Good girl,” he said.
You nodded, too full of want to be embarrassed properly.
His thumb stroked beneath your eye. “You are too sweet for your own good.”
You would have rolled your eyes if you had been capable of dignity.
Instead, you bobbed again, more frequent this time.
Dex’s breath broke as you tasted the first bead of arousal coming out of him, proof of how badly he wanted you.
His mouth parted around a breath that was nearly a laugh, nearly a moan.
“Do not look so shocked,” he murmured. “You did that.”
The words made heat flood through you all over again.
You should have felt shy. Instead, pride curled through your chest, wicked.
You had done that. You had made him sound like that.
So you kept going, tearful and greedy until he started murmuring curses in a language older than yours. You wanted him to remember this. You wanted him to know that you were no longer simply thanking him.
In an attempt to go deeper, to feel him in your throat as if you’ve trained all gag reflex away, you tilted your head slightly.
That’s when you saw the quiver of arrows lay in the moss beside you. It must’ve slipped off his shoulders at one point or another.
White ash arrows rested inside, carved with silver runes. You knew those arrows but it was not the arrows that stopped your heart.
It was the feathers that tipped the ends of the arrows, glossy blue-black beneath the fae light. You never noticed them before, but they were… raven feathers.
Your breath hitched.
Oh.
Oh.
Suddenly, you thought of the windowsill, your friend tapping at the glass. You remember his clever black eyes watching while you read aloud, lonely and foolish. The little creature had listened to your complaints, your restless dreams, your secrets.
The raven who had visited for years. The raven who had led you through the mist.
Your eyes lifted slowly.
Dex looked down at you with his amber eyes.
Oh.
All those mornings, all those evenings, all those years…
You should have known. You heard of stories of fae folk turning into woodland creatures all the time.
He was the raven.
Your hands tightened.
You should have pulled away and demanded answers. How long? How much had he heard? How many secrets had he carried away?
Oh, you had been so, so foolish.
You should’ve known from the first day you truly met in the woods. You should have questioned how he had known to call you princess when you had never told him what you were.
For a second, real fear flickered through your eyes. Not fear of him, Fear of the fact that some part of you did not hate it enough.
Dex’s face changed the moment you understood.
He knew the pretty princess he had been pursuing for years had finally had it all figured out.
Pleasure and guilt and hunger crossed behind his eyes in the same vein, you could barely separate them. His hand remained gentle in your hair, giving you room to turn your face away from him and the old magic curling around both of you.
You stared up at him, eyes wet, heart pounding.
You were frightened. But as your mouth kept working him, clearly, you weren’t frightened enough.
Instead, you had felt strangely, terribly cherished by the thought that the raven at your window had waited years to be touched by you like this.
As you quickened your pace, your eyes burned harder.
Dex’s thumb brushed another tear from your cheek, intended to be an apology in gesture.
You answered by giving him more.
His breath shattered.
You became greedy for his pleasure, greedy for every note you could draw from him. The forest blurred silver and green around you. The flowers bowed their heads among the thorns. Mist curled over your knees, hiding the path back, making you forget the safer version of yourself, who would have stopped the moment she realised the truth.
You were not her anymore.
You had crossed the line.
Dex’s moans were music to your ears, so controlled until they were not. Each one made your own heart pound harder, made your mouth react and your hands more certain. You wanted to ruin him kindly, to thank him until he forgot how to be anything but yours in that moment.
His head tipped back, and the sound that left him was almost helpless. It filled you with vicious pride. You wanted to keep it forever the way he had apparently kept pieces of you.
“You’re going to ruin me,” he said as the blue at his fingertips brightened.
His hand tightened in your hair, then loosened at once, still careful even at the edge of himself. His body went rigid above you, and the final sound he made was the prettiest yet.
His seed spilled into you as he reached his high and no textbook had warned you that a fae could taste like sweetness and binding magic.
Your throat worked once, eyes rolling back in a haze from the taste.
And you swallowed.
For a moment, you only knelt there, dazed.
Dex, finally catching his breath, finally looked down at you.
He laughed fondly, as though you had done something preciously foolish and still utterly expected.
“Oh, princess,” he murmured.
Then, his hand slid over the crown of your head in an almost patronising pat pat pat.
You blinked up at him, eyes glossy, mouth parted, still too ruined to be properly offended by the way he was looking at you, like you were helpless and had walked directly into his snare and thanked him for setting it.
“Poor thing,” he cooed, “you really don’t know, do you?”
Huh?
Your eyebrows pulled together, confused, mouth still dripping silver-white liquid. “W-what?”
Dex lazily pulled his belt on before crouching in front of you, amber eyes bright with wicked tenderness. His thumb brushed your lower lip, wiping away the last trace of him gently.
“You were right to refuse our fruit,” he said. “And you were right to refuse our wine.”
A strange warmth bloomed beneath your ribs.
Dex smiled wider. “But the old laws never distinguished between feasts and lovers.”
The words sank in slowly.
Your heart stumbled as looked down at your hands in the moss.
For one second, you thought the strange fae light was playing tricks on you. The glow of the flowers, perhaps old magic bending colour where it touched skin.
But no.
Your fingertips were blue at the very tips, like you had dipped them in moonlight and frost. The colour shimmered luminously beneath your skin, not stain, not paint that could be washed away.
A bond.
Dex made a pleased hum and took your hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the new colour as though admiring his own mark.
You should have recoiled or demanded answers. Maybe shouted at him
Instead, your lashes fluttered, and the golden thread beneath your ribs tugged you toward him until your body swayed towards him, not entirely magical in origin.
Because you truly believed, bond or not, you still wanted him.
Dex caught you.
His hand settled possessively at your waist, and you looked up at him with a weak smile that made his cold heart melt.
You had not known a lover’s offering could bind as surely as bread and wine. You had not known that he had turned your body into a feasting table and your mouth into a cup.
And the worst part was you did not care enough.
How could you, when Dex looked at you like you hung the moon and stars for him? How could you when the forest seemed to hum approval?
A distant, sensible part of you understood that you should have reacted. You should have stiffened in his arms, looked back toward the mist, thought of your mother and father, your kingdom, your guards, the frantic search parties that would soon spill into the western woods calling your name. Instead, you only curled deeper into Dex as though the sound had frightened you toward him rather than away from him, and his arms tightened around you at once, pleased by the surrender.
He gathered you closer, one hand beneath your knees and the other firm against your back, carrying you as though you weighed nothing at all. The thorn path opened behind him with a shiver of black branches, parting for their prince and the human princess he had finally claimed.
Dex kissed your temple once, his mouth lingering there as he murmured sweet little nothings into your hair. I never used the Sleep of Rowan until I wanted to become the kind of hunter you would not fear. I wanted to be good for you. You made me want to be kind. My North Star. My pretty girl. My princess.
The words should have mattered. A foolish part of you heard them and melted, heard the devotion beneath the old loneliness of centuries spent alone. Perhaps some corner of your heart truly did believe a creature like him meant every gentle thing he said, even while carrying you deeper into a realm that had just swallowed you whole.
All his pretty promises blurred into the darker truth humming through the old magic between you. He could not wait to show you his realm, his palace, his gardens, his bed. He could not wait to keep you spoiled as his lover and his plaything, the future mother to his heirs. You were for as long as the Wyld remembered how to hunger.
You should have been horrified, but you were too full of the sweetness you had swallowed, and the magic now curling through your blood like a second heartbeat. Your cheek rested against his throat, and when Dex’s hand stroked over your back, you sighed as though you were relieved, because being taken felt too much like being wanted.
For Dex, Prince of the Wyld, his three-year hunt for his mate was finally complete.
If he was being honest, he had thought it would take longer.
House hunting in the suburbs with Dex and your son?🤞
Finding the Perfect House with Dex
TW: domestic fluff!!!!! A bit suggestive towards the end. Set after DDBA season 2. You and Dex have a son called Leo, Husband! Dex x Wife! Reader (lmk if you I missed anything)
WC: 1.7k
Could be read as a one-shot but this is technically part of What Makes a Good Man?
House hunting with Dex had been great, actually.
Which was weird, because eight years ago your husband was imprisoned for multiple counts of murder. Because not too long ago, your husband was breaking out of prison, and now he was standing beside you at house viewings, asking estate agents questions about roofing, school districts, and whether the windows were double-glazed.
Most of this happened because Dex had a stupid amount of CIA money now, which meant you had a stupid amount of CIA money, too.
Mr. Charles paid well, like, “thank you for doing morally grey things in countries we will never admit you visited” well.
And Dex was legitimate now. Technically.
Charles was his handler, as per his government contracts. He had the paperwork to prove it. He wasn’t sleeping in safehouses anymore, not showing up at the apartment bleeding because he “had it under control.” He was coming home after a week-long mission in Madripoor, kissing you hello, showering, putting Leo to bed, and then sitting at the kitchen table with a laptop open looking at mortgage calculators.
So suddenly your Saturdays had become house viewings.
So fucking many house viewings.
He had a spreadsheet and a calendar specifically for viewing times. He packed snacks for Leo and carried him when he got tired. He started asking realtors questions about roof age and damp surveys and driveway sizes. He held your hand through front doors, and you loved watching him check locks without even realising he was doing it. You loved the way Leo ran from room to room yelling, “This one! No, this one! No, this one!” like every empty bedroom could be his.
But there were so many not-perfect houses.
One had a backyard that was technically a yard in the same way a crisp packet in a puddle was technically a water feature. Another had carpet in the bathroom, which should have been illegal. Dex said one had “not good enough sightlines down the stairs.” The last one you saw had “loads of potential,” which meant “please imagine this house after spending ninety thousand dollars.”
Sometimes, a house would be perfectly fine, on the outside. But then Leo would tug on Dex’s sleeve, look up at him very seriously, and say, “Daddy, I have bad feeling about this.”
And that was it, viewing over.
You and Dex would just exchange one look like, knowing Leo must’ve sensed something very wrong with the house. You wouldn’t even go upstairs. You’d just tell the estate agent something like thank you for your time, goodbye forever.
Because you both knew better than to question your son’s supernatural premonitions.
Then, this week you got to the house.
And, oh, you loved it immediately.
It wasn’t super-fancy. It was a Goldilocks-level of just right.
The hallway had enough space for Leo’s shoes, because Dex, who could never say no to his son, had been buying him every possible pair of dino shoes to the point that you had to buy an extra cabinet just for your little boy. The kitchen had beautiful lights. The living room had a corner where Dex would pretend he wasn’t watching you read. Upstairs, Leo found a bedroom with a window facing the garden and his eyes went as wide as dinner plates.
Then he saw the backyard.
It was bigger than you expected. It had a tree and a cute little swing set near the fence.
Leo stepped outside holding Dex’s hand and looked up at him with his own hopeful little eyes staring back at him. “Is this all mine?”
Oh, fuck off. That. Was. So. Cute.
Dex crouched, brushed Leo’s hair back, and said, “Whatever you say, buddy.”
Whatever you say.
Of course he didn’t say “maybe” or “we’ll see” or “don’t get your hopes up, kid! Only if the offer goes through.”
And right then and there, you knew Dex was gone gone.
You should’ve scolded him for possibly giving his son false hope, but then you watched Leo run to the swings and your stupid heart began rearranging itself.
You could see it now: Dex would stand by that kitchen window with coffee and you would complain about the school run. Leo would bring in worms and call them friends.
This was it, wasn’t it? This was the house.
Then the little girl appeared at the fence.
You were the only one close enough to hear, and Dex was inside with the estate agent, asking something about the boiler.
Leo was on the swing, pushing himself badly and loving every second of it, when the girl leaned over from next door.
“Hi!”
Leo lit up. “Hi! I’m Leo Poindexter.”
He always said it now, because Dex had taught him how to say his full name, slowly, syllable by syllable, but he got there eventually. Le-o Poin-Dex-Ter, he would practice again and again in the mirror, finally being able to legally use his father’s name, even though he didn’t know why he couldn’t before.
He said it to nurses, shop assistants, delivery drivers, dogs, one pigeon, everyone. Apparently, to his future neighbor.
“Hi!” The girl smiled. “I’m Danielle Cage.”
And your heart dropped.
Cage.
CAGE.
As in Luke Cage? As in Jessica Jones? Hello????
You stood there with a polite smile stapled to your face while your brain started going through every fucking scenario possible.
Leo said, “Do you want to see my Iguanadon socks?”
“Sure!” Danielle Cage climbed over her side of the fence and landed in the garden without even breathing hard.
Right. If you had any doubts that that girl might not be the Cage, it was erased right there and then.
Your son, delighted, showed her the socks. And Danielle nodded, telling him her daddy was going to build her a swing too one day.
You said nothing, because what were you supposed to say?
Sorry, sweetheart, I’m sure you’re lovely, but can you go home because your parents are too competent and inconvenient for our family dynamic?
You let Leo play for a few more minutes because he was happy and you were weak. Then you left the house with Dex beside you, Leo half-asleep in the back seat of your car, and your stomach somewhere around your ankles.
That night in the apartment, after Leo finally passed out clutching one of his dinosaurs, you told Dex.
“The neighbour’s kid is Danielle Cage.”
Dex paused, but only for a split second. He took off his watch and set it on the dresser.
“Dex,” you sighed, “are you even listening to me?”
He looked at you and walked across your bedroom slowly.
You stepped back, pointing at him. “Don’t do that.”
He kept walking you back until you hit the edge of the bed with the back of your knees. Still, he said nothing. He was calculating.
“Luke Cage would live next door,” you said, because you were still trying to be reasonable. “Jessica Jones would live next door. That woman will take one look at us and know we’re hiding things.”
For example, your son’s mutation.
Dex’s hands eventually settled on your waist.
“Leo loves it,” he murmured.
“Leo loves cheese puffs. That doesn’t mean we buy him a factory.”
His head dipped and kissed the corner of your mouth.
You stopped mid-breath.
Oh. So this is what he had resorted to now.
“Cheap trick,” you whispered.
Dex hummed against your skin.
Oh, you hated him.
Except you didn’t. You were catastrophically in love with him, and Dex knew it. Worse than that, he knew you. He knew when you needed to spiral and when you needed to be held and when your brain was building a doomsday bunker out of perfectly valid concerns.
He had learned, very early into marriage, that kissing you could be a strategy.
You had a lot to say, but Dex had discovered that if he kissed you gently enough, touched you carefully enough, your arguments would start dissolving
And he was a competitive man.
“You can’t seduce me into agreeing to move next door to the fucking Cages,” you said.
Dex placed a well-timed kiss under your jaw.
You closed your eyes. “Dex.”
His fingers tightened slightly at your waist. He wasn’t trapping, and you could have pushed him away.
But you didn’t because you liked it.
“You’ve made up your mind,” you realised, weaker now.
He laid you on the bed gently, hovered over you, and kissed you properly then.
Eventually, your thoughts drop one by one until all that was left in your mind was Dex, Dex, Dex.
You clutched his shirt as he smiled against your mouth.
“Don’t be so smug,” you breathed.
He kissed you again.
Bastard.
You were still trying. Kind of.
“She’s the best private investigator in the city,” you mumbled when he resorted to giving you open-mouthed kisses to your throat.
“We’re gonna have a bulletproof neighbour,” you held back a moan, because Leo was asleep in the next room.
He went back up, kissing the sensitive spot under your ear.
“They probably have a super strong child.”
You felt him laugh silently against your neck. “At least Leo doesn’t have to be different alone.”
Oh.
Oh, right.
Dex lifted his head, and his face was close. His eyes were on you like you were the only future he had already decided to build.
“We’ll handle it,” he said.
You hated that you loved that certainty.
You loved that Dex could still be scared of so many things and yet not this. How could he be scared of Leo having a yard? How could he be scared of that perfect attic you would turn into your private library?
He kissed you again before you could speak, because, frankly, he had learned this trick too well.
Your hands slid into his hair.
By the time you could think again, you were tucked against his chest, his arm around your waist, your legs tangled under the blanket.
“You weaponised your kisses again,” you whispered.
His fingers moved through your hair and kissed the top of your head. “Mm.”
You playfully pinched his side, and he caught your hand and held it against his chest.
For a while, neither of you said anything. Then, because apparently you had no survival instincts left, you sighed.
“Fine,” you finally said, “We can put in an offer.”
Dex’s arms tightened around you.
And that was how your husband, newly legitimate CIA asset, former walking red flag, kissed you into agreeing to maybe move next door to Luke Cage and Jessica Jones.
(Later, Dex would bring up the fact that Luke couldn’t exactly judge him for the whole Charles thing when he used to work for Charles, too.)
House hunting in the suburbs with Dex and your son?🤞
Finding the Perfect House with Dex
TW: domestic fluff!!!!! A bit suggestive towards the end. Set after DDBA season 2. You and Dex have a son called Leo, Husband! Dex x Wife! Reader (lmk if you I missed anything)
WC: 1.7k
Could be read as a one-shot but this is technically part of What Makes a Good Man?
House hunting with Dex had been great, actually.
Which was weird, because eight years ago your husband was imprisoned for multiple counts of murder. Because not too long ago, your husband was breaking out of prison, and now he was standing beside you at house viewings, asking estate agents questions about roofing, school districts, and whether the windows were double-glazed.
Most of this happened because Dex had a stupid amount of CIA money now, which meant you had a stupid amount of CIA money, too.
Mr. Charles paid well, like, “thank you for doing morally grey things in countries we will never admit you visited” well.
And Dex was legitimate now. Technically.
Charles was his handler, as per his government contracts. He had the paperwork to prove it. He wasn’t sleeping in safehouses anymore, not showing up at the apartment bleeding because he “had it under control.” He was coming home after a week-long mission in Madripoor, kissing you hello, showering, putting Leo to bed, and then sitting at the kitchen table with a laptop open looking at mortgage calculators.
So suddenly your Saturdays had become house viewings.
So fucking many house viewings.
He had a spreadsheet and a calendar specifically for viewing times. He packed snacks for Leo and carried him when he got tired. He started asking realtors questions about roof age and damp surveys and driveway sizes. He held your hand through front doors, and you loved watching him check locks without even realising he was doing it. You loved the way Leo ran from room to room yelling, “This one! No, this one! No, this one!” like every empty bedroom could be his.
But there were so many not-perfect houses.
One had a backyard that was technically a yard in the same way a crisp packet in a puddle was technically a water feature. Another had carpet in the bathroom, which should have been illegal. Dex said one had “not good enough sightlines down the stairs.” The last one you saw had “loads of potential,” which meant “please imagine this house after spending ninety thousand dollars.”
Sometimes, a house would be perfectly fine, on the outside. But then Leo would tug on Dex’s sleeve, look up at him very seriously, and say, “Daddy, I have bad feeling about this.”
And that was it, viewing over.
You and Dex would just exchange one look like, knowing Leo must’ve sensed something very wrong with the house. You wouldn’t even go upstairs. You’d just tell the estate agent something like thank you for your time, goodbye forever.
Because you both knew better than to question your son’s supernatural premonitions.
Then, this week you got to the house.
And, oh, you loved it immediately.
It wasn’t super-fancy. It was a Goldilocks-level of just right.
The hallway had enough space for Leo’s shoes, because Dex, who could never say no to his son, had been buying him every possible pair of dino shoes to the point that you had to buy an extra cabinet just for your little boy. The kitchen had beautiful lights. The living room had a corner where Dex would pretend he wasn’t watching you read. Upstairs, Leo found a bedroom with a window facing the garden and his eyes went as wide as dinner plates.
Then he saw the backyard.
It was bigger than you expected. It had a tree and a cute little swing set near the fence.
Leo stepped outside holding Dex’s hand and looked up at him with his own hopeful little eyes staring back at him. “Is this all mine?”
Oh, fuck off. That. Was. So. Cute.
Dex crouched, brushed Leo’s hair back, and said, “Whatever you say, buddy.”
Whatever you say.
Of course he didn’t say “maybe” or “we’ll see” or “don’t get your hopes up, kid! Only if the offer goes through.”
And right then and there, you knew Dex was gone gone.
You should’ve scolded him for possibly giving his son false hope, but then you watched Leo run to the swings and your stupid heart began rearranging itself.
You could see it now: Dex would stand by that kitchen window with coffee and you would complain about the school run. Leo would bring in worms and call them friends.
This was it, wasn’t it? This was the house.
Then the little girl appeared at the fence.
You were the only one close enough to hear, and Dex was inside with the estate agent, asking something about the boiler.
Leo was on the swing, pushing himself badly and loving every second of it, when the girl leaned over from next door.
“Hi!”
Leo lit up. “Hi! I’m Leo Poindexter.”
He always said it now, because Dex had taught him how to say his full name, slowly, syllable by syllable, but he got there eventually. Le-o Poin-Dex-Ter, he would practice again and again in the mirror, finally being able to legally use his father’s name, even though he didn’t know why he couldn’t before.
He said it to nurses, shop assistants, delivery drivers, dogs, one pigeon, everyone. Apparently, to his future neighbor.
“Hi!” The girl smiled. “I’m Danielle Cage.”
And your heart dropped.
Cage.
CAGE.
As in Luke Cage? As in Jessica Jones? Hello????
You stood there with a polite smile stapled to your face while your brain started going through every fucking scenario possible.
Leo said, “Do you want to see my Iguanadon socks?”
“Sure!” Danielle Cage climbed over her side of the fence and landed in the garden without even breathing hard.
Right. If you had any doubts that that girl might not be the Cage, it was erased right there and then.
Your son, delighted, showed her the socks. And Danielle nodded, telling him her daddy was going to build her a swing too one day.
You said nothing, because what were you supposed to say?
Sorry, sweetheart, I’m sure you’re lovely, but can you go home because your parents are too competent and inconvenient for our family dynamic?
You let Leo play for a few more minutes because he was happy and you were weak. Then you left the house with Dex beside you, Leo half-asleep in the back seat of your car, and your stomach somewhere around your ankles.
That night in the apartment, after Leo finally passed out clutching one of his dinosaurs, you told Dex.
“The neighbour’s kid is Danielle Cage.”
Dex paused, but only for a split second. He took off his watch and set it on the dresser.
“Dex,” you sighed, “are you even listening to me?”
He looked at you and walked across your bedroom slowly.
You stepped back, pointing at him. “Don’t do that.”
He kept walking you back until you hit the edge of the bed with the back of your knees. Still, he said nothing. He was calculating.
“Luke Cage would live next door,” you said, because you were still trying to be reasonable. “Jessica Jones would live next door. That woman will take one look at us and know we’re hiding things.”
For example, your son’s mutation.
Dex’s hands eventually settled on your waist.
“Leo loves it,” he murmured.
“Leo loves cheese puffs. That doesn’t mean we buy him a factory.”
His head dipped and kissed the corner of your mouth.
You stopped mid-breath.
Oh. So this is what he had resorted to now.
“Cheap trick,” you whispered.
Dex hummed against your skin.
Oh, you hated him.
Except you didn’t. You were catastrophically in love with him, and Dex knew it. Worse than that, he knew you. He knew when you needed to spiral and when you needed to be held and when your brain was building a doomsday bunker out of perfectly valid concerns.
He had learned, very early into marriage, that kissing you could be a strategy.
You had a lot to say, but Dex had discovered that if he kissed you gently enough, touched you carefully enough, your arguments would start dissolving
And he was a competitive man.
“You can’t seduce me into agreeing to move next door to the fucking Cages,” you said.
Dex placed a well-timed kiss under your jaw.
You closed your eyes. “Dex.”
His fingers tightened slightly at your waist. He wasn’t trapping, and you could have pushed him away.
But you didn’t because you liked it.
“You’ve made up your mind,” you realised, weaker now.
He laid you on the bed gently, hovered over you, and kissed you properly then.
Eventually, your thoughts drop one by one until all that was left in your mind was Dex, Dex, Dex.
You clutched his shirt as he smiled against your mouth.
“Don’t be so smug,” you breathed.
He kissed you again.
Bastard.
You were still trying. Kind of.
“She’s the best private investigator in the city,” you mumbled when he resorted to giving you open-mouthed kisses to your throat.
“We’re gonna have a bulletproof neighbour,” you held back a moan, because Leo was asleep in the next room.
He went back up, kissing the sensitive spot under your ear.
“They probably have a super strong child.”
You felt him laugh silently against your neck. “At least Leo doesn’t have to be different alone.”
Oh.
Oh, right.
Dex lifted his head, and his face was close. His eyes were on you like you were the only future he had already decided to build.
“We’ll handle it,” he said.
You hated that you loved that certainty.
You loved that Dex could still be scared of so many things and yet not this. How could he be scared of Leo having a yard? How could he be scared of that perfect attic you would turn into your private library?
He kissed you again before you could speak, because, frankly, he had learned this trick too well.
Your hands slid into his hair.
By the time you could think again, you were tucked against his chest, his arm around your waist, your legs tangled under the blanket.
“You weaponised your kisses again,” you whispered.
His fingers moved through your hair and kissed the top of your head. “Mm.”
You playfully pinched his side, and he caught your hand and held it against his chest.
For a while, neither of you said anything. Then, because apparently you had no survival instincts left, you sighed.
“Fine,” you finally said, “We can put in an offer.”
Dex’s arms tightened around you.
And that was how your husband, newly legitimate CIA asset, former walking red flag, kissed you into agreeing to maybe move next door to Luke Cage and Jessica Jones.
(Later, Dex would bring up the fact that Luke couldn’t exactly judge him for the whole Charles thing when he used to work for Charles, too.)
Summary : Dex was doing just fine being the only prisoner in Enhanced Supervision Housing until they put you in the cell next door.
Pairing : DDBA!Benjamin Poindexter x mutant!reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : hurt/comfort! Meet cute at Rikers, prison isolation, mutant!reader, thermokinetic!reader (controls temperature, pyrokinesis and cryokinesis), restraint jacket/straitjacket, institutional neglect, arson and murder mention, Foggy’s death mentioned, blood, injury, prison break, guard death, violence, through-the-wall romance, hurt/comfort, first kiss, Set in DDBA S1, including part of the episode 8, where Dex uses his tooth to break out of prison. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 6.3k
Notes : Need more mutant! reader in this fandom. The title is inspired by Impossible by Nothing but Thieves. Enjoy!
Dex had spent five months alone in Rikers’ brand-new Enhanced Supervision Housing after killing Foggy Nelson.
Of course, the city had decided that Benjamin Poindexter was not a man you put in general population, or solitary, or protective custody, or any other place built for your run-of-the-mill violent offenders. Apparently, if a person could kill his way out of most situations with a paperclip, a loose screw, or the edge of a dinner tray, the state had to start getting creative.
So they made a new building just for him and called it Enhanced Supervision Housing. ESH for short.
It was funny. As if calling what he could do an enhancement instead of a talent meant anything when they still fed him through a slot, restrained his hands before opening the door, and had three men with rifles posted behind reinforced glass every time he was escorted anywhere.
There were eight cells in ESH. Eight beautiful little boxes built with reinforced doors, observation panels, pressure sensors, thermal cameras, anti-ligature fixtures, shatterproof windows, and enough cameras to make privacy feel like a fairy tale told to a child.
Dex had seen the brochure when one of the guards had left paperwork too close to his cell during intake, and Dex had read it upside down through a reflection in the polished floor.
It was made for “high-risk enhanced detainees” with “special containment protocols” and “behavioural isolation.”
Cute.
The problem was, there were no other enhanced detainees. After all, not every day did somebody with a weird little gift or near-superhuman talent get arrested in New York. Not every day did someone land in Rikers with enough justification of being locked in a concrete aquarium, and half of them were in the supermax across the country, and the other half was in The Raft.
So it was just Dex.
Eight cells, seven empty. A whole hallway built for monsters, and only one monster inside it.
It was isolating, sure. But it was fine. There were worse places to be in the world. Maybe. Meh.
Rikers still had a rhythm. Even the ESH had one, if you were trapped long enough to learn it. He learned that the lights dimmed but never went fully off and guards passed every twelve minutes unless the night shift was bored, then every nine. The vents clicked twice before the air shifted temperature. Camera four made the smallest electric whine when it adjusted focus. Guard Velasquez dragged his left foot when he was tired and guard Miller breathed through his mouth and smelled like cheap coffee.
Dex knew all of it, and it helped with the silence creeping in sometimes.
The silence was the worst part, probably, not the restraints. Not even the meals so bland they felt punitive on a spiritual level.
This type of silence made his thoughts louder and made the walls seem closer at night, when he lay on the thin mattress with his hands folded over his stomach, staring at the ceiling like the ceiling might someday blink first.
Sometimes he thought about Foggy Nelson, but not in the way people probably wanted him to. He didn’t feel guilty; he did what he thought he had to do. He thought about that chapter in his life like a splinter under skin– impossible to forget without digging too deep and making it worse.
Sometimes he thought about Fisk. Sometimes he thought about his spine. Sometimes he thought about how easy it would be, if someone made one mistake.
Just one.
If someone would just accidentally give him the wrong set of cuffs. If a new guard would just be standing too close to the bars with his badge clipped to the wrong side of his belt.
But no one had made a mistake. Yet.
Then, in the middle of June, in the middle of the night, the hallway suddenly erupted.
The far door opened with a metallic groan, then another. Buzz. door one. Buzz. door two. Buzz. door three.
Eventually, boots flooded the corridor, and Dex counted twenty guards. Maybe more.
He could hear the metallic clangs of rifles and the plastic bounce of shields as static popping over radios. A guard whispered., “Keep moving,” like whatever they were escorting might change its mind if they hesitated.
Dex sat up.
The lights snapped brighter overhead, white and ugly, turning his cell blind at the edges.
He didn't move to the door. He stayed on the bed, head tilted slightly, listening.
There was a slightly smaller set footsteps beneath all the others.
This one must be the prisoner. It dragged, but not fighting. Perhaps this person was sedated? No. There was a little bit of struggle. Maybe they weren’t sedated enough. Whoever it was kept resisting the pace without ever fully stopping.
Metal clinked as someone cursed under their breath.
Then came a sound like fabric straining, and he could tell it was heavy fabric. Then, he heard thick restraints being adjusted. Not ordinary cuffs, and definitely not a chain.
Dex tilted his head. Interesting.
The procession stopped in front of the cell next to his.
The guards shifted around the door, blocking his view through the narrow panel in his own cell. He caught pieces of you, though nothing whole. He could see a bit of your hair, and the corner of something white and reinforced strapped across your torso. Your rikers-issued shoes were planted firmly against the floor, like you were refusing to be placed anywhere by anyone.
One of the guards knocked twice on Dex’s door with his baton. “Got a neighbor now, Poindexter.”
Dex looked at him.
The guard smiled like he’d said something funny, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. In fact, none of them looked relaxed.
Tonight, they were not afraid of Dex. They were afraid of you.
The door to Cell Two opened and they moved you inside.
You didn't scream, threaten, or beg, even if you were half-awake.
Weird, Dex thought, people usually did one of the three when they arrived in a place like this.
You were shoved past the threshold in silence, and the guards backed out fast. The door shut with a brutal final sound, locks engaging one after another, heavy and layered and unnecessarily dramatic. A guard gave an all-clear over the radio. Another laughed once, shakily, then stopped abruptly when nobody joined in.
Dex stayed very still as the guards filed out, one by one, until the hallway swallowed their footsteps one by one.
Eight cells, two occupied.
For the first time in five months, Dex was not alone.
He waited for you to make a sound, but he couldn't hear any noise, not even crying from the next cell. You weren’t pacing, like he did on the first night, and you barely even rattled whatever restraints they put on you. Most notable, you didn’t even attempt to make contact through the wall.
Dex stared at the wall between his cell and yours: solid concrete, thick enough that he shouldn't have been able to feel anything through it.
He did, though he didn’t know how to explain it. The only measurable metric was that somehow the room had felt cooler than it had been an hour ago.
He lay back down eventually.
From the other side of the wall, you still said nothing, no sound at all except the occasional shift of fabric and once, very quietly, an exhale through your teeth.
Dex almost smiled. That’s when he saw the window.
At first, he thought the glass had caught the overhead light strangely. ESH windows were narrow, reinforced slits. You could see a suggestion of the sky if you stood at the right angle, but mostly you saw the garden roses and your own reflection staring back like a bad idea.
Tonight, the glass was… clouding.
What?
Dex sat up again.
A thin white film crept across the corner of the window, delicate and pretty. Tiny veins of frost branching outward in lacy patterns, spreading over reinforced glass that had no reason to be cold.
Why was his window frosting up in the middle of summer?
—
For the first couple of days, Dex assumed you were asleep. Or unconscious. Or dead.
It was hard to tell with the wall between you and him. Still, the guards checked on you often enough that he knew you must technically be alive, but they did it through the panel, never through the door unless there were at least six of them and one of them had the long black shock baton they liked pretending it was not a weapon.
Dex had seen criminals arrive angry. During his time in the bureau, he had seen them arrive screaming, pleading, spitting, promising lawsuits, promising revenge, promising innocence. He had seen prisoners break under silence in twelve hours and start telling the ceiling their childhood nicknames.
You did none of that. In fact, you barely moved.
That was the strangest part, not the frost, not even the straitjacket, which was still interesting in a funny way to him, because they had Dex’s hands restrained any time they opened his door like he was going to start flicking femurs through skulls, but you must be special. After all, you had arrived wrapped up like a badly behaved present.
By the second day, he started actively listening for you.
It was pathetic, maybe, but there were very few things to do in Enhanced Supervision Housing besides become intimately familiar with the sound of your own breathing and develop opinions about fluorescent lights, so a new person on the other side of the wall was not nothing.
You shifted sometimes, when he heard a small scrape of fabric against concrete. He could hear the faint clink from whatever additional restraints they had attached to the jacket. Once, your head hit the wall with a dull little thud, and Dex turned his face toward the sound before he could stop himself.
Then… nothing. Nothing but a drag of breath through your nose.
The guards did not like you either, that became obvious pretty quickly.
They liked Dex, in a way. Obviously, they didn’t like him as a person, they were not stupid. But they understood him. They had made a little mental box for him: former FBI agent turned murderer. They had rules: keep your distance, keep his hands restrained, do not let him near anything that he could throw.
You, they did not understand.
They approached your cell like prey approaching a sleeping animal in the wrong enclosure.
On the third morning, one of them brought your breakfast and stood too close to the slot.
Dex heard a soft crackle before the guard even reacted. Then the man swore and stumbled back. “What the fuck—”
“Don’t put your hand in,” another guard snapped.
“I didn’t put my hand in!”
“Then stop whining.”
“She froze my fucking fingers, man!”
Dex sat on his mattress, elbows on his knees, staring at the wall. Interesting.
Your cell stayed silent and the breakfast tray was shoved in with much less dignity after that.
Nobody asked if you were hungry. Nobody asked if you were hurt. Nobody asked if you needed the jacket loosened, even though Dex could hear the shallow and held in breath, clearly struggling for air half the time. It was as if the straps cut across your ribs and you were trying not to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing it bothered you.
By the fourth day, Dex had decided you were either extremely disciplined or extremely broken. Possibly both.
He had also decided that the silence was annoying. This was unfair, because he had hated the silence before you arrived, and now that the silence had another person inside it, he hated it more.
He tried not to care, but that only lasted until evening.
A guard walked past and muttered, “Crazy bitch still hasn’t said a word.”
Dex’s head lifted.
The guard kept walking, probably feeling very brave because there were reinforced doors and rifles between him and the consequences of being stupid.
Dex watched him go. He didn’t say anything, and neither did you.
The night after that, the frost came back, but not just on Dex’s window this time. They were crawling up the walls.
It crept from the seam where the concrete met the floor, thin and white under the dimmed lights. At first, he thought it was moisture, a product of bad ventilation and Rikers being Rikers. Then the frost branched, crawling in little veins across the wall between your cells.
Dex got up and walked over, putting two fingers against the concrete. It was painfully cold.
On the other side of the wall, you breathed out, and frost thickened under his fingers.
Dex almost knocked. That felt ridiculous.
What was he going to do? Tap his knuckles against reinforced concrete and ask the stranger in the murder-prison next door if she was making the building colder because she was sad?
No. So he went back to bed, but did not sleep.
By day five, the guards had stopped pretending this was normal.
Maintenance came in wearing insulated gloves, and even gave Dex a thicker orange jumpsuit, even though he never minded the cold. They took temperature readings in the hallway, checked the vents, checked the windows. They argued about condensation. One of them said it was probably a system fault, and then immediately shut up when a thin line of ice crawled over his boot.
Dex enjoyed that a lot, actually. It was the first entertainment he’d had in months.
By the fifth night, Dex woke up to snow.
At first, he thought it was dust falling from the ceiling. But then a single cold snowflake landed on his cheek.
Dex blinked.
For a moment, he lay very still, staring up at the ceiling where tiny white flakes drifted down from nowhere. Another landed on his chest. Then another. Soon there were dozens, small, delicate, almost shy.
Dex sat up slowly.
The floor was beginning to powder white. His blanket had caught a fine layer of it. The air was cold enough now that his breath was visible.
He looked toward the wall, and for the first time in five days, he spoke to you. “You doing this, neighbor?”
Nothing but silence.
Dex waited.
The hallway outside was quiet, which meant either the guards had not noticed yet or they were all standing very still pretending they had not noticed yet. Dex watched snow gather on the toes of his prison-issued socks.
Then, from the other side of the wall, there was the faintest shift.
And then your voice, rough from disuse. You sounded almost… bored. “...mmhm.”
Dex’s mouth curved up. Ah. She speaks.
He leaned back against the wall, feeling the cold bite through the cotton of his shirt. “Should I be concerned?”
Then, barely louder than before, you said, “Probably.”
Dex laughed once under his breath.
His own sound surprised him, because it sounded wrong in the cell. Too human then he had ever been.
The snow kept drifting down. It should have made him uneasy. It should have made him think about containment failures and emergency protocols and what the guards might do if the whole unit iced over. Instead, Dex sat there with his shoulder pressed to the wall between you, watching winter collect in his lap.
“Good to know,” he said.
You didn’t answer. But a few seconds later, the snow slowed down.
—
After that, Dex learned how to read you. It was not subtle, once he understood what he was looking at.
When you were sad, you were cold so it made sense that in the first month, it snowed almost every day.
You barely spoke during those days, you barely even moved.
The guards asked questions through your door and received nothing but silence. The nurses came by with clipboards, asking if you had eaten, if you were injured, if you needed medical attention, if you understood where you were. You gave them nothing.
Sometimes, actual ice sealed your food slot shut. Snow collected in the corners of Dex’s cell.
His blanket went damp and cold and his breath fogged when he sat up. Even the guards stopped making jokes when they passed Cell Two because nobody wanted to laugh in a place that had started to feel like a morgue.
Dex sat with his back to the wall and listened. That was all there was to do: listen and wait for proof that you were still in there.
Then, eventually, the cold would begin to cease.
The frost on his window would sweat and snow would melt into silver lines down the concrete. The air would warm by a degree, then another, like your body was remembering that it was summer.
And then, and only then, you would speak. “Neighbor?”
His eyes opened in the dark. “What?”
You inhaled, as if you had been thinking about this for days. “Do you think they’d let me have a hairbrush?”
Dex stared at the ceiling. “No.”
You were quiet for the rest of the night, but the cells suddenly became as warm as a hug, as if someone had reminded you that human connections were possible.
Then, the next day, you called out again. “Poindexter, right?”
“Mm,” he replied.
You paused, as if considering whether or not the question was stupid, but said it anyway. “Do you think pigeons know they’re ugly?”
Dex blinked. “I don’t think pigeons care.”
“Good for them.”
Then, a few hours later, after hearing a prison guard during dinner time call you this, you said, “Dex.”
The name came too naturally from your mouth for someone who had never said it before.
He turned his head toward the wall. “What?”
“I have an itch.”
He waited. You said nothing else.
“Okay.” he finally said.
“I’m in a restraint jacket.”
“I figured.”
“It’s under my shoulder blade.”
“That sounds inconvenient.”
“It is,” you sounded very, very annoyed.
The room heated so fast it made the steel bars creak.
Dex smiled into the dark.
You were quiet a moment longer, then said, “They keep calling it that.”
“What?”
“A restraint jacket.”
“That’s what it is.”
“No,” you said. “It’s a straitjacket.They just call it a “fireproof restraint jacket” because that sounds nicer with the taxpayers, and straitjacket makes me sound like I’m supposed to be in a basement eating wallpaper.”
Fireproof, huh?
Dex found your comparison amusing and laughed under his breath. “You’d prefer that?”
The wall warmed. You heard him. He knew you did, because the warmth stayed.
“At least it’s not an inhibitor collar,” you muttered finally.
Dex went still. “They have those?”
“Not anymore,” you said, though Dex didn’t ask for any clarifications that day.
For a while he stared out quietly.
After a moment, you asked, “Are you in one?”
“An inhibitor collar?”
“A straitjacket, genius.”
“No.”
The temperature dropped, but only in a small enough increment. “You’re not in a straitjacket?”
“No.”
“That is so fucked up.”
Dex closed his eyes. “Is it?”
“Yes,” you scoffed, “What makes you so special?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is discrimination.”
Dex, who couldn’t miss if he wanted to, looked around to see nothing in his cell that he could throw or ricochet with. And if he was imagining you right, your hands must be the main conduit to your power. You didn’t need an object to break out if your hands were free. “I don’t think that’s what that is.”
“It is to me.”
After that, you told him your name. You said it at two in the morning, half-muffled through concrete, like it had slipped out by accident.
Dex repeated it once.
The heat that bloomed through the wall felt almost shy.
After that, Dex started sleeping with his shoulder closer to your side of the cell, though he told himself it meant nothing: The bed was narrow and the room was small, that’s all. There were only so many places to put a body inside a box. But every night, somehow, he ended up turning toward you, listening for your breathing through concrete like it was the only sound in Rikers that mattered.
And when you went quiet for a bit too long, Dex would listen in, panic blooming, and it would not calm until you shifted or sighed or muttered something ridiculous about prison oatmeal, and then he could breathe again like an idiot.
That was when he understood the other half of you.
When you were in a good enough mood, your powers weren’t icy anymore. You’d run hot.
The first time it really hit him, Dex woke up sweating with his shirt clinging to his back. The window was fogged over and the snow had vanished completely, and the whole cell felt damp and tropical, like a greenhouse in Rikers.
And you were talking. God, you were talking.
You were talking your ass off, giving him whole floods of thought, fast and impossible to hold still.
“Do you think they built this place because of you specifically,” you asked once you realised your rambles had shook him awake, voice bright through the wall, “or do you think someone made a budget request years ago and then got really excited when you gave them a reason?”
Dex looked to the wall. You didn’t wait for an answer.
“Because eight cells is very ambitious. Someone must’ve sat in a meeting going, no, trust me, we are going to have so many enhanced criminals. And then it was just you for like, half a year.”
Dex sat up, and the air was even warmer.
On the other side of the wall, you shifted in the jacket, fabric rasping hard against concrete.
“Also, do you think enhanced is offensive? I can’t decide. It feels offensive. Like I didn’t ask to be labelled like a skincare serum.”
Dex’s mouth twitched up a little. “You done?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“I also think the eggs are powdered.”
“They are.”
“I knew it.”
Then you laughed, and it was a half-controlled laugh this time, wild around the edges. The temperature in Dex’s cell jumped so fast it felt like someone had opened an oven door.
Dex now knew how your powers worked: when you were kinda sad, things frosted over. When you could barely move, it snowed.
Good mood meant warmth. Full manic meant tropical.
It was ridiculous and fascinating all the same. Sometimes, the whole unit went damp and sticky, other times the reinforced windows fogged over, the walls sweating like the building was nervous.
Eventually, it got warmer and warmer, and you would be pacing, five steps one way, five steps back, talking out of your ass like language had become a pressure valve.
You talked about everything. The guards’ schedules, the ceiling tiles, how ugly prison socks were, whether corporations should be burned down in alphabetical order or by severity of moral failure.
Dex listened to all of it.
He learned of who you were without ever seeing your face. He knew when you were smiling because the wall warmed before your voice changed. He knew when you were pretending not to cry because the frost came fast, like you were trying to hide it and failed anyway. He knew the difference between your tired silence, your angry silence, your sad silence, your plotting silence. So he knew you.
And you knew him, too, in ways no one alive had earned before. You knew when his guards had pissed him off before he said anything. You knew when his spine hurt from the way he breathed through his teeth. Once, when he had gone too silent, you knocked your forehead lightly against the wall and said, “Dex, don’t go wherever your mind just went.” He had stared at the concrete for a long time after that, because nobody had ever come looking for him inside his own head before.
That's why, when you talked, he listened.
Some of it was nonsense. Some of it was clever. Some of it was both. You talked like someone sprinting downhill with no interest in stopping, fast and too amused by terrible things. You even told him what you did: apparently you burned down a warehouse and office of a company called Meridian Dynamics. They made suppression tech: Inhibitor collars, cuffs, injectables, sold to prisons and private security. Apparently, you planned to burn the building down during a very important board meeting, which resulted in your two counts of arson and twenty four counts of murder.
And, inevitably, you started talking about escape.
“I’m getting out,” you told Dex one night.
He was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, sweat dampening his collar. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You can’t burn through reinforced doors.”
“I could if I had my hands.”
Dex looked down at his own, free, for now. He was still dangerous. His hands had always been the part of him people watched first, the part they feared, the part they restrained before opening any door.
He understood, suddenly, the cruelty of having your body treated like a weapon even when you were just sitting there, breathing.
You shifted in the jacket, and the fabric rasped like it hurt.
“Obviously,” you said, trying for lightness and missing by inches, “I don’t have them.”
Dex stared at the wall. For once, he did not know what to say.
You laughed, but it came out thin. “I can feel them. That’s the worst part. They’re right there. I just can’t use them.”
The heat dimmed.
“That why you keep talking about chewing through your jacket?”
You shrugged, though it hurt. “Maybe.”
“You’ll break your teeth.”
“You care about my teeth?”
“I care about not listening to you complain.”
“You care.”
He should have denied it, but he didn’t.
Dex had spent his entire life understanding attachment as a liability, something people could weaponize until he became useful or pathetic or both. But with you on the other side of the wall, this attachment didn’t feel temporary. It was clear in the way he measured his nights by whether you spoke. He had an ache of wanting to see your face and being terrified that if he did, it would only make this feeling worse.
The silence stretched, warmer than it should have been. Then you said, very quietly, “I don’t think I could actually chew through it.”
“No,” Dex said. “Probably not.”
“I still might try.”
“Don’t.”
That made you laugh for real. The wall warmed beneath his palm. For a moment, it was almost gentle.
One night, after hours of heat and pacing and a long speech about how prison architecture lacked imagination, you went suddenly quiet.
Dex waited.
The wall was warm against his shoulder. Then you whispered, “Dex?”
“What?”
“Do you think I’m going to be like this forever?”
Dex looked at the concrete between you, at the damp shine where the heat had melted old frost.
“No,” he answered.
It was the closest thing to a promise he could make through a wall. He wanted to say more, but everything else felt too fake.
He didn’t know why, but he had the urge to tell you that you were not an object or a containment problem. He wanted to tell you that if the world had built eight cells for monsters, then fine, let the world call him one, because he had found you in the next cage over and suddenly the world didn’t feel so lonely anymore.
Instead, Dex pressed his palm flat to the wall.
A second later, warmth bloomed under his hand. Not enough to burn, but enough to meet him.
—
Dex getting moved to general population should have made him think about the Fisks.
It should have made him think about the obvious thing first, which was that Vanessa Fisk wanted him dead.
Being moved to genpop was not a transfer. To him, a former FBI agent in a room full of convicts who has also pissed people off by working for the Kingpin, it was a death sentence. Genpop was a fancy term for a room full of men, any one of them purchasable, any one of them stupid or desperate enough to try him with a sharpened toothbrush, a melted piece of plastic, a hand around his throat in the showers.
But when the guards dragged him out of ESH when you were asleep in your cell, that was not what Dex thought about.
He thought, with a sudden, sick clarity, that you were going to be alone.
You would be alone like he had been alone for five months, rotting in a hallway built for people the world didn’t know how to categorize.
Alone with no one but the guards who would never understood your moods.
So he called Matt and offered him a lifeline: tell him who hired him to kill Foggy Nelson in exchange for freedom.
Of course he didn’t think Matt would forgive him. But Matt had believed in the law. And mercy too, whether he wanted it or not. Dex needed both, and hated needing both, and hated more that he was not even asking just for himself.
Need sat wrong in his head. It had always felt like weakness or an exposed artery, as if anyone could just hook a finger into and pull. Needing Matt Murdock was bad enough. Needing Matt Murdock for you was humiliating in a way that Dex didn’t have vocabulary for, because it meant there was something in the world he could not take, kill, steal, or aim to fix.
See, he wanted an appeal for you, too. He had this whole speech of how in another life, Matt would defend him. About isn’t that what good men do? Defend their worst enemies? About I’m bargaining for our life here, counsellor.
Our life. Not mine. Ours.
“Oh,” Matt said. “That’s what this is.”
Dex said nothing.
“So fell in love in prison?” Matt said sarcastically. “Sweetheart, what do you want me to do? Want me to get a couple of murderers out of prison, want me to get an appeal?”
Dex didn’t answer, because answering would have made it sound too… juvenile.
Love was not a strong enough word for a woman he had only known through a concrete wall and had fallen for anyway. It was not right for experiencing snow in a prison cell, or feeling heat through the wall, or your voice talking nonsense at three in the morning. It was not right for the way he had started sleeping closer to your side of the room.
Matt saw enough of it anyway, and maybe that’s why he had a glimmer of sympathy. Maybe it was disgust. Maybe he thought again of Foggy, and before he knew it, Matt was slamming his head on the metal table.
Dex barely had time to register it before pain flared through his mouth and his head snapped hard enough against the metal that the room flashed white, blood filling his mouth.
Then, he felt something small and hard come loose against his tongue.
A tooth.
A projectile.
“Thank you, counsellor,” he smiled.
The guards pulled Dex back, and he let them haul him away, head bowed, blood dripping down his lip, the tooth hidden carefully.
Killing the doctor and the guard was child’s play after that. Navigating the prison with the dead guard’s badge was even easier.
He would break out and kill Fisk in his black and white ball. But for now, he had something else to do in this hell hole.
He wouldn’t escape without you.
Dex moved through Rikers with blood still drying at the corner of his mouth.
When he reached ESH, he killed the two stationed guards with medical tools stolen from the infirmary.
And when he got in, the hallway was frozen.
Ice crawled over the floor in white veins. Frost had swallowed the observation glass. Snow had gathered in the corners like the building had been abandoned for winter. Your food tray sat untouched outside the slot because the mechanism had sealed shut.
Dex stopped outside Cell Two and looked through the narrow panel.
This was the first time that Dex ever really saw you.
He had seen flashes between guards, maybe a reflection from one of the guard’s shields during training drills.
You were curled on the floor in the fireproof straitjacket, knees drawn up as much as the restraints allowed, cheek resting against the concrete. Your hair was messy. Your lips were discolored from the cold, frost clinging to your lashes like a lifeline, delicate as glitter, cruel as evidence.
You looked… smaller than he had imagined, but no less beautiful.
He had built you in his head as strong as weather, a voice bright enough to make lights flicker. But through the glass, you were just a girl in a white straitjacket, cold and alone and trying not to disappear.
Dex pressed his bloody hand to the door.
He looked at the jacket and the lock and and thought of every hand that had put you in there and every person who had looked at you like you were a weapon before you were a human being.
He broke the door open with the stolen keycard first.
When the door gave out, the cold rushed out around him.
You stirred, eyes opening slowly.
For one second, you only stared at him like he couldn’t possibly be real. Like maybe the cold had finally started making things up for you.
Then the frost nearest his feet began to melt.
“Dex?”
You looked confused. As if it was a guess.
That's when you realised… you had never really seen him, either.
He nodded, stepping inside.
Snow fell between you, unnatural and absurd beneath the fluorescent lights. Your eyes moved over his face to the blood on his mouth and the stitches on his forehead. You knew him, finally, after months of knowing him only as a voice through concrete.
Your voice sounded broken. “Is that what you look like?”
Dex almost smiled, thrilled that you looked anything but disappointed. “Yeah.”
You blinked at him, dazed and trying very hard to make your mouth curve up like this was funny. Like you had not been left alone, and that loneliness without him had turned the building into a snowy wasteland.
He crouched in front of you.
For the first time, there was no wall between you.
Dex reached for the straps.
You flinched, but not because you were afraid of him, but because the last person who reached for the jacket had touched you like you were an object, and you had burned him by accident, and then they had hurt you for it.
Dex saw all of that cross your faces so he stopped.
His hands hovered over the buckles.
“I’m taking it off,” he said, “that’s all.”
You looked at him, considering your choices. Then, just a little, you nodded.
Dex broke the first strap, the fabric strained under his grip before giving in with a harsh snap. The sound echoed through the frozen cell. Your breath caught, and his eyes flicked back to yours immediately, checking if you were okay.
You were.
So he broke the next one.
Then the next.
Each strap breaking felt personal, and each piece tearing loose felt like he was taking something back from everyone who had decided your hands were too dangerous to belong to yourself.
When the last strap snapped, the jacket loosened.
Then your arms slipped free. You did so slowly, like you had forgotten they were ever yours.
Your hands trembled in your lap.
Dex looked at them.
So did you.
You had not seen them for months.
The snow thinned at first, then eventually, it stopped, the last few flakes drifting down and melting before they touched the floor. Warmth bloomed from you in a fragile little wave.
This time, it wasn’t manic heat. Instead it was warmth, like spring breaking after a cold winter.
You lifted one hand carefully, almost shyly, and the first thing you did was touch the scar on Dex’s face.
He went perfectly still.
You brushed the blood at the corner of his mouth with your thumb, your eyes furrowing.
“You came back,” you whispered, which, to Dex translated to: I thought you left me forever.
Dex leaned into your touch before he could stop himself. “Yeah.”
There were alarms somewhere in the distance, but ESH was far away, out of security. It would take them a while to get here. And by the time they did, it would’ve been too late.
Dex didn’t move. Neither did you.
Then your fingers curled lightly against his chin, and before he could think better of it, Dex bent forward and kissed you.
It was small, nothing but a brush of his mouth against yours, warm and bloody from the missing teeth.
You froze for half a second before you kissed him back.
You were sweet and a little clumsy, because your arms were stiff and your hands were shaking and neither of you had any business being tender in a prison cell full of evidence of your sadness and isolation.
When he pulled back, you stared at him.
The frost on the walls ran down in thin silver lines.
Then you smiled, sheepish and dazed, like you were embarrassed by your own warming heart.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” you admitted.
Dex looked at you and he had no answer.
The ruined straitjacket was still in his hands, your fingertips still against his face, and the warmth of your lips lingering on his mouth.
Outside, the prison began to panic. Inside, you smiled at him like he had brought summer with him.
And Dex, who had spent five months alone in a place built for monsters, thought there was no better reason to become one again.
—end.
Extra note: I reread this before posting and realised I may have accidentally written reader as bipolar-coded, which is very me😭😭😭 I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around a decade ago, and it’s manageable now, but this fic ended up feeling way more personal than I expected. This is the first time I’ve ever written mood disorder x mood disorder so I hope I did alright. So please be kind with this one. She’s special to me 🫶
Please send in an ask or message if you want to be added to the dex general / series specific taglist! Comments get lost sometimes! Let me know if I missed anyone!
