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Anatomy of a Smile

Summary : After breaking out of prison, you find out that Dex thinks you never broke up.

Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)

Warnings/tags hurt/comfort, fluff at first, hostage situation, guns, violence, blood, injury, death of a civilian, murder, moral corruption, grief, stalking, breaking and entering, obsessive behaviour, food, non-graphic sexual content. FBI Hostage Negotiator! reader. Starts three years before DD S3 and ends sometime after DDBA S1. (let me know if I missed anything!)

Word Count : 18.3k

Notes : A little canon divergence note, guys! Julie doesn’t exist in this universe. Dex’s season 3 spiral happens because you and him were on a break. Enjoy!

FBI was called in twenty-three minutes after the first 911 call. By then, the second shot had already been fired.

It was not fired at anyone, thank fuck. It was fired into the ceiling, according to the first responding officers who had backed off fast enough to keep the situation from turning into a massacre. What started as a robbery at a midtown bank had become a hostage situation in under twelve minutes.

There were three suspects and at least seven civilians were visible through the front windows before the blinds came down. One security guard was injured but moving. One suspect was pacing near the teller counter with a handgun.

Three squad cars were angled badly out front because patrol had arrived first. Now there were barricades, news vans sniffing at the edges, uniforms pushing civilians back, radios talking over each other, and a command post being built out of wobbly folding tables.

Usually, this was the part where everyone got grim. People knew that one bad word, one twitch, one wrong movement could turn a lobby full of frightened people into a massacre.

And then you arrived carrying two coffees and three boxes of pastries.

“Okay,” you said, stepping under the tape and handing two boxes to the nearest tech like you had just walked into an inconvenient staff meeting, “I brought croissants! If this goes horribly, at least we’d all have had a decent last meal.”

Three people turned and nobody laughed.

You looked around at the armoured vehicles, the blocked street, the negotiator phone being unpacked, the SWAT team moving into position across the road, and sighed. “Tough crowd.”

Your supervisor shot you a look. “Agent.”

“I know, I know.” You tucked the pastry bag under your arm and started shrugging into your vest. “Hostages, firearms, massive public safety issue. I’m taking it very seriously. I’m also saying you all probably haven’t eaten since six.”

“That’s not relevant.”

“It will be when I start making decisions with low blood sugar.”

That got half a smile out of one of the younger agents.

Good.

That was why you did it.

You weren’t careless. You understood what was happening behind those doors. You knew there were women and children inside lying on marble, trying not to cry. You knew someone had a gun in their hand.

But panic did not need more panic, and fear did not calm fear.

“Where’s my line?” you asked, clipping your radio into place.

The commander pointed toward the opposite building. “Fifth floor. SWAT sniper position has the best view into the front lobby. You can set up with them if you need eyes while you’re on the phone.”

“I do need eyes,” you said, nodding at him.

“Suspect one’s name is Eddie Marlow. Twenty-nine with prior for armed robbery. No confirmed fatalities today, but a guard took a round to the shoulder, still moving as of two minutes ago.”

You nodded, taking that in as you looked back at the bank.

“Right,” you said, almost too calmly. “So, normal Thursday.”

“Agent.”

“What?” You took a sip of coffee. “It’s Thursday.”

You took one last look at the bank, grabbed the phone, then crossed the street with two tactical agents shadowing you toward the building opposite.

—

Dex was stationed across the street on the fifth floor of an empty office building, flat behind his rifle with the blinds cut just enough for a sightline.That was where he belonged: above from the noise, above the mess. His scope was steady, breathing steady.

He could hear command in his ear. Entry team holding. Negotiation line was being established. Sniper one in position?

Dex didn’t answer until he needed to. “In position.”

The room behind him was dim and mostly empty, littered with grey carpet, abandoned desks, and a tactical gear set. His spotter murmured updates into comms as someone on the ground, a junior agent probably, dropped something metal. Sirens pulsed red and blue against the ceiling.

Then the door opened.

Dex didn’t look away from the scope at first.

People came in and out all the time during operations. Sometimes it was commanders, other times it was spotters or techs with updates, maybe agents carrying folders. Dex ignored them, usually.

That’s when you said, “Oh. Hi.”

He knew that voice. His eyes lifted from the scope.

You stood in the doorway with a vest half-zipped over your blouse, a negotiator phone tucked under one arm, and a pastry box balanced against your hip like you had wandered into the wrong brunch and decided to make the best of it.

Your eyes brightened. “Special Agent Poindexter.”

His spotter glanced over. In that moment, Dex forgot how to be normal about his own name. “You know me?”

Your smile widened. The New York office was big, but not that big. “Your reputation precedes you.”

His spotter looked down at his clipboard as if it became very interesting all of a sudden.

Dex knew you, too, though not personally. But he had seen you around the office forever. In elevators, at the coffee machine, walking through glass-walled conference rooms with files against your chest. You were always moving, always talking, always being pulled into conversations because people liked you.

Agents smiled when you passed and techs forgave you for stealing pens. Your supervisors pretended to be annoyed but really, they loved you. Even Ray Nadeem had spoken highly of you, said that his wife liked having you over for tea and that his kid liked you because you brought sweets to brunch. Dex had wanted to talk to you after that. So many people admired you, he just needed to see for himself, right?

He had stood in the same hallway as you, watching you laugh with a clerk from crisis response and thinking that he could say something. Anything. Nice work with the Port thing. Ray mentioned you. Are you training the new HRT recruits?

But there had never really been a clear reason to talk to you. And without a reason, there was no script. Without a script, there was only the blank space where courage was supposed to go. So Dex had never said anything.

“Is this the best view?” you asked.

Dex nodded. “Yes.”

“Can I?”

He shifted, even though there was barely enough space for two, which meant when you lowered yourself beside him, your knee pressed against his thigh and your shoulder brushed his arm.

“Sorry,” you murmured.

Dex looked at the place your knee touched his, then at you. “It’s fine.”

You leaned toward the cut in the blinds, careful not to touch the rifle. Your cheek came close to his shoulder, close enough that he caught a whiff of fragrant coffee on your breath, sugar on your fingers, and city air clinging to your uniform. Dex decided not to think too much about that.

“Talk me through it,” you said.

He looked back into the scope. “Suspect one in the green jacket is Eddie Marlow. Right hand dominant, pacing near the teller counter.”

“Is he scared?”

“Agitated,” Dex corrected.

“Mm.”

Dex glanced at you. “Suspect two,” he continued, “with the red cap. He had a shotgun and had been sitting behind the manager’s desk.”

Your face changed, only slightly. “And suspect three?”

“Not visible. He was last seen by the west wall with hostages.”

You leaned in closer, trying to see through the narrow slice of the lobby. Your shoulder pressed more firmly into his arm as hip bumped his side. “Sorry,” you said again, absentmindedly.

“You’re not,” he said.

“No,” you admitted. “But I keep doing it cause’ it sounds right.”

His spotter made a tiny laugh, and Dex ignored him.

Finally, you opened the pastry box. The smell of butter and sugar swirled into the dusty room, absurd and warm. You pulled out a croissant like there were not three armed men across the street.

His spotter stared. “Are you eating?”

You took a bite as the pastry cracked softly between your teeth. “I’m preparing.”

A few crumbs fell onto your vest. One landed on his sleeve. Both of you looked down at it. “Oh,” you said.

Before he could move, you reached over and brushed it away with your thumb. It was a tiny touch, almost nothing but your knuckle grazing the inside of his wrist.

Still, Dex’s fingers tightened once against the rifle.

Your gaze dropped to his hand, then rose back to his face. Your smile changed, smaller now.

“Sorry,” you said, quieter. This time, it almost sounded sincere.

Dex didn’t know why, but his mouth had gone dry. “It’s fine.”

You held the pastry box toward him. “Croissant?”

“No.”

“You sure? You look like a plain pastry kind of guy.”

Dex tilted his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Instead of answering, you only shrugged and took another bite. Dex noticed your vest was crooked because you had clearly zipped it in while walking. You looked entirely too kind for a sniper’s nest.

You settled closer again, eyes returning to the bank. “Eddie looks reasonable.”

“They’re criminals,” Dex scoffed, unimpressed. “When are they ever reasonable?” It was really just a line he repeated from his coworkers.

“Hey,” you joke-scolded, nudging his arm lightly with your shoulder. “We’re all people here.”

Dex didn’t look convinced.

Downstairs, command crackled in your ears. “Negotiation line almost ready. Stand by.”

You exhaled once and set the half-eaten croissant carefully beside his gear bag like it belonged there. Then you wiped your fingers on a napkin and stood up, reached for the phone on the table in the middle of the room.

Before lifting the phone, you glanced at him. “ Poindexter?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to need your eyes.”

For one second, he understood why people liked you. You made people feel wanted, needed. Then, briefly, he thought about telling you he already knew your voice. He already heard your laugh. He knew he had wanted to speak to you for months and never managed it because wanting was not the same as knowing how.

Instead, he lowered himself back to the scope. “You have them.”

You smiled at him one last time as you picked up the phone and the line clicked alive.

Pressed the receiver to your ear, one hand braced on the table, you said, “Hi, Eddie, I’m Special Agent—”

“I’m not talking to feds!” The shout cracked down the line loud enough that even the spotter looked up.

You didn’t flinch. You didn’t pull the phone away from your ear. You didn’t take offense to being screamed at by a man with a gun and a room full of innocent civilians.

You only nodded, like Eddie could see you.

“Okay,” you said. “That’s okay.”

“I said I’m not talking to you!”

“I heard you.”

“Then shut up!”

Dex’s jaw tightened.

Across the street, through the scope, Eddie Marlow was pacing so hard he almost tripped over his own foot. He could take him out so easily, Dex thought, but that wasn’t why he was here.

Because if he did, the other two suspects would probably open fire. There would probably be a bloodbath. That was why you were holding the phone, not him.

You leaned against the table like this was a normal phone call.

“You sound really upset,” you said thoughtfully.

“No shit!”

“Yeah,” you chuckled. “Fair.”

Dex blinked. His spotter stared at you for half a second, then remembered his job and murmured into comms, “Negotiator has contact. Suspect one highly agitated, still engaged.”

Eddie was breathing hard into the phone and you let him.

You were… patient. It was tender. You were letting this man be loud and terrified, and you weren’t punishing him for it. Dex had never understood that kind of kindness.

“Eddie,” you said, after the worst of his breathing settled, “what did you have for breakfast?”

Dex looked up from the scope. The spotter mouthed, What?

On the phone, Eddie went silent. “What?” he finally snapped.

“What did you have for breakfast?”

“What the fuck does that matter?”

“It might not,” you said. “I’m just trying to figure out if you’ve eaten today.”

“I’m in the middle of a fucking robbery.”

“I know. But you’re also a person with a body, and bodies make stupid decisions when they’re hungry.”

Dex’s mouth parted slightly. Oh, you were charming.

He understood what you were doing with that stupid, sweet little question, that was really a thread to his humanity. Just to calm him down, get him to think about something else other than the crime he was committing.

“I had coffee,” Eddie muttered.

“Okay. Just coffee?”

“Yeah.”

“No food?”

“I don’t know. A cigarette.”

You winced faintly. “Eddie.”

“What?”

“That is a terrible breakfast.”

For one bizarre second, Dex’s spotter made a strangled noise into his fist. Even Eddie went quiet, confused out of his panic. “You judging me right now?” He asked.

“A little,” you admitted.

Dex almost smiled.

Then Eddie’s voice cracked back into anger. “You think this is funny? You think I’m stupid?”

“No.”

“You think I’m some junkie idiot with a gun?”

“No, Eddie.”

“You don’t know me!”

“You’re right,” you said. “I don’t.”

That stopped him again. Then, you lowered your voice. “But I know you don’t really want to kill anyone, do you now?”

Through the scope, Dex saw that Eddie’s pacing has slowed down. It… worked. “You don’t know what I want,” Eddie said, smaller this time.

“No,” you said. “But you fired into the ceiling.”

“It was a warning.”

“I know.”

“I had to.”

“Okay.”

“I had to make them listen.”

“I hear you.”

Dex’s throat tightened. I hear you.

It was such a simple thing, and yet it sounded so easy coming out of your mouth. It was as if you were giving him a blanket, as if you were lowering yourself beside him on the floor instead of standing over them with a clipboard and a gun.

He wondered, suddenly, what it would be like to have your voice turned on him like that. And not your jokes or bright comments you tossed across rooms full of coworkers. This voice.

Dex wanted it so badly it almost made him angry.

The thought hit him hard enough that his finger twitched beside the rifle. He forced his eye back to the scope.

Eddie had stopped near the teller counter. His gun hung at his side now, loose in his hand.

“Green jacket has stopped pacing,” Dex said, “Weapon still in hand.”

The spotter relayed it immediately. “Suspect one stationary. Weapon lowered. Negotiator has him slowing down.”

You glanced at Dex and he held onto it like an idiot.

“Eddie,” you said, “the guard needs medical attention.”

“He’s fine.”

“Is he?”

“He’s moving.”

“That’s good,” you said. “Moving is good. But he’s bleeding, right?”

No answer.

“Eddie?”

“I didn’t shoot him.”

Your face changed into a compassionate frown. Dex hated how beautiful it looked on you.

“I know,” you said.

“He went for his gun. Rob panicked.”

The spotter’s head snapped down to his notes. “Second suspect possibly Rob. Pass to command.”

You didn’t react to the name. You didn’t make Eddie feel like he had made a mistake, or make him feel like he was snitching on his friends. You only said, “That must have scared you.”

Eddie laughed, but it came out ruined. “Scared me?”

“Yeah.”

All you got back was silence, longer his time. Dex watched Eddie through the scope and saw the second the your words got under his skin. His shoulders moved, head dipping. The gun lowered another inch.

You kept going, careful as hands over broken glass. “People make worse choices when they’re scared. That doesn’t mean you have to keep making them.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Okay,” you said. “Then breathe with me for a second.”

Eddie scoffed. “Fuck you, lady.”

“C’mon, man,” you said mildly. “Just… breathe.”

Dex’s eyes flicked to your mouth before he could stop himself.

You smiled faintly, not because it was funny, exactly, but because you were giving Eddie somewhere to put the panic, somewhere that was not a trigger. “Breathe in,” you said.

“I’m not doing that.”

“That’s okay. I’m doing it anyway.”

Then you did. Slow inhale. Slow exhale. Once. Twice.

On the other end of the line, Eddie cursed under his breath. But after a few seconds, his breathing started following yours. Dex heard it. Without realising it, Dex started to follow it too.

There was something hypnotic about your calm. The whole room had frozen around it. Even the radios seemed quieter, like the world was leaning into your warmth. Then, through the phone, you heard someone crying out inside the bank.

Eddie snapped away from the phone. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

Dex was back in the scope immediately. “Weapon coming up,” he said.

The spotter relayed fast. “Weapon rising. Suspect one agitated. Hold positions.”

Your hand lifted slightly, saying Wait.

Dex saw it and went still.

The shot was clean. Eddie was turned three-quarters away from the hostages, arm visible, head exposed. Dex knew exactly where the bullet would go. He knew what it would do. But your hand was up, so he waited.

“Eddie,” you said, firmer now.

No answer.

“Eddie, come back to me.”

The shouting on the other end cut off.

Come back to me. Dex gripped the rifle harder.

“Eddie,” you repeated, softer. “Come back to me. Don’t follow the noise. Follow my voice.”

He heard ragged breath. Then Eddie, frustrated now, said, “She won’t stop crying.”

“They’re scared.”

“I didn’t want this.”

“I believe you.”

“I didn’t want it like this.”

“I know.”

And somehow, you made it sound true, even though you weren’t forgiving him. You were not excusing him. You were simply giving him one human corner to stand in before the whole day swallowed him.

Dex had seen people beg. He had seen people lie. He had seen people pray. He had never seen someone be talked back into themselves.

“Eddie,” you said, “I think you can still keep this from getting worse.”

“It’s already worse.”

“It is,” you said. “But worse has levels. We don’t have to go lower.”

Eddie breathed hard.

“The guard,” you continued. “If he dies in there, this gets so much harder for everyone.” You paused. “You included.”

Eddie made a sound that was almost a sob, except he swallowed it too fast. “I’m fucked anyway,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” you said, so gently it hurt. “But not as fucked as you could be.”

Dex’s spotter blinked at you, but you kept your eyes on the bank.

“You can make one good decision,” you said. “Just one. I’m not asking you to become a different person in the next thirty seconds. I’m asking you to help the guard.”

“If I open that door, they’ll shoot me.”

“No.”

“They will.”

“They won’t unless there’s an immediate threat.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Eddie. There are guns outside.”

Dex’s teeth tightened again.

“There are snipers,” you said, glancing at the nest.

Dex blinked. What the hell were you doing?

“But they are there because people need to live,” you continued. “Not because anyone is excited to kill you.”

Eddie said nothing. You looked at Dex, knowing he wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if you gave the command.

“So,” you said, “put the gun down. Tell Rob to stay back and let the guard out slowly. You help me keep everyone calm, and I promise no one shoots unless there is an immediate threat.”

“You promise?”

Dex heard it, and Eddie almost sounded like a child.

“I promise,” you said. “But you have to help me keep that promise true.”

Across the street, Eddie turned toward the guard.

“He’s looking at the guard,” Dex said.

The spotter relayed, “Suspect one looking toward injured guard. Possible compliance. Medical team stage.”

“That’s it,” you whispered. “That’s good, Eddie. Stay with me.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to die!”

“You’re not going to die, this isn’t The Town,” you said, gentle and absurd, “It’s real life, not a Ben Affleck movie.”

Eddie let out a broken little laugh.

Dex closed his eyes for half a second. Jesus Christ. You were going to ruin him.

“Okay,” Eddie said shakily.

Your hand tightened around the phone. “Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll send him out.”

The spotter straightened his posture. “Possible hostage release. Guard extraction. All units hold.”

Dex went fully still behind the rifle.

“Calm,” you told Eddie. “Nice and calm.”

Through the scope, Eddie moved like his bones had turned to water. He bent toward the guard, said something Dex couldn’t make out, then flinched when the guard recoiled from him.

“He’s helping the guard stand,” Dex said. “Left hand on guard’s arm. No immediate threat.” The spotter repeated every word.

You nodded as if Eddie could see you. “You’re doing good.”

The door opened. Every rifle outside seemed to hold their breath. Dex tracked Eddie’s face in the crack of the doorway. He was pale, wet-eyed, terrified. A criminal, yes. But for the first time that day, he was not beyond reach, be you had put your hand into all that fear and pulled until what was left of his humanity surfaced.

“Send him out,” you whispered. “Then step back.”

The guard stumbled forward and medical moved in.

“Guard is clear,” Dex said, though his own voice sounded distant to him. “Medical has him.”

The spotter echoed, “Guard clear. No shots fired.”

You exhaled, and it was so small nobody else would have noticed. But Dex did.

“Eddie?” you said into the phone.

He let out a shaking breath. “Yeah?”

“You did the right thing.”

“I’m still going to prison.”

“Probably,” you said.

Eddie gave another broken laugh, almost crying now.

“But not for murder,” you said. “Not today.”

Dex looked at you then, like he couldn’t help it. You were standing in a dusty room, and down an armed man like kindness was not weakness, And Dex wanted to be spoken to that way.

He wanted your patience, your belief that there was something worth saving even in people who had done unforgivable things. Especially in people who had done unforgivable things.

Then you breathed in and kept going. “Okay,” you said. “Now I’m going to want some of the people out too.”

Eddie went quiet.

You gentled your voice even more. “Women and children first, okay?”

“I can’t just—”

“I know.”

“Rob’s going to lose his shit.”

“I know, Eddie.”

“And David, he’s—” Eddie stopped abruptly, like he had realised he had given you another name, before continuing, “I have to talk to them.”

“That’s okay,” you said, looking at the spotter to relay the third suspect’s name. “Talk to Rob. Talk to David.

“They think I’m folding.”

“You’re not folding,” you said. “You’re thinking. You’re making sure everybody, including them, makes it out of there alive”

Dex watched Eddie through the scope. The man had backed away from the doors, one hand over his mouth, gun at his thigh. He looked less like a criminal now and more like a man finally realising the size of the hole he had dug.

You leaned closer to the phone. “I’m going to let you go for five minutes,” you said. “Okay?”

Eddie’s breathing hitched, as if you were his one and only life support right now. “You’re hanging up?”

“Just for five minutes. You need to talk to them, and I need to talk to my people.”

“What if—”

“I’ll call back,” you said. “And you’re going to pick up.”

Eddie said nothing.

“Eddie.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re going to pick up.” It wasn’t even a question anymore.

After a while, you heard a small and frightened, “Okay.”

“Good,” you whispered. “We’re counting on you.”

Dex felt it like a hand around his throat. We’re counting on you.

You gave that trust to Eddie like a burden and a gift at the same time.

On the other end of the line, Eddie exhaled shakily. “Five minutes,” he said.

“Five minutes,” you promised.

Then the line clicked dead. Then, you glanced at Dex over the phone, and he felt the look land directly under his skin.

“You still with me, Agent Poindexter?” you asked, sighing.

Oh, so this did take a toll on you, however much you try to hide it.

Dex lowered his eye back to the scope because looking at you was becoming a distraction.

“Yeah,” he said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. Then, because he couldn’t help it, he repeated your tone, “I’m with you.”

—

Afterward, everyone kept calling it a success.

The guard had gotten out. Three hostages followed twenty minutes later, two women and a little boy with one shoe missing, shaking so hard the paramedics had to guide them by the elbows. Eddie had picked up every time you called. He had argued with Rob, shouted at David, disappeared from the phone twice and come back both times breathing like he had run through a wildfire.

But he came back. By the fourth call, his voice had started to sound empty. By the sixth, he was crying and pretending he wasn’t. By the end, the remaining hostages came out with their hands over their heads, Eddie was the one who told Rob to put the shotgun down.

It wasn’t perfect, but it ended without another shot fired. So people congratulated you.

Your supervisor clapped a hand on your shoulder. The commander called it “excellent work.” Someone from crisis response said, “That was textbook,” even though it hadn’t felt textbook. It felt like pressing your palm to a cracked dam and smiling while water pushed through your fingers. You smiled anyway.

You accepted the praise and filled in the early notes. You let people tell you how good you were, how calm you were, how you had saved lives.

And for a while, you let yourself believe them, because the only injured person— the guard— had been alive when they loaded him into the ambulance.

He had been breathing. So it counted. It had to count.

Four hours later, you heard a knock on your office door.

You were halfway through typing your report when your supervisor stepped in with sweat beading on her forehead.

Your hands went still over the keyboard. “No,” you said.

She didn’t answer fast enough then, and that’s how you knew the guard had died at the hospital.

Not from the bullet, exactly. That was what she told you, as if the distinction mattered. It was a mix of vascular complication and too much blood loss, which in your head translated to: too much damage already done by the time you had convinced Eddie to open the door.

Still, you nodded like a professional.

“Okay,” you said.

Your supervisor watched you carefully. “Agent.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be.”

But you smiled anyway, because if you didn’t smile, you were going to cry, and a full grown woman was not supposed to cry for doing her job well. “I’m fine,” you repeated.

She didn’t believe you, but she left anyway.

For a while, you just sat there. The HRT floor was quieter at night, reduced to the hum of printers, distant phones, the occasional murmur from junior agents walking past with a folder tucked under one arm. Your office smelled faintly like cold coffee.

Your report blinked on the screen, trying to finish it up: Guard extracted at approximately…

You stared at the sentence until it blurred. You pressed the heels of your hands against them hard, like you could shove the tears back where they belonged. Like grief was just a reflex you could discipline out of yourself.

What a fucking joke. You didn’t even know the guy!

Then, a knock came at the door.

You inhaled quickly, wiped under one eye with the side of your thumb, and sat up in your chair. “Come in.”

To your surprise, Dex opened the door.

He was out of the tactical gear now, in his dark quarter zip with his badge clipped at his belt, hair slightly mussed like he had dragged his hand through it too many times. He stood in the doorway awkwardly, too tall for a room this small.

“Special Agent Poindexter,” you said, and your voice came out almost normal.

“I wanted to check on you,” he said. It was a lie. Or not a lie exactly. This was just an excuse to hear your voice again.

In truth, he had rehearsed the sentence and hated every version of it. He had walked past your office twice before gathering enough nerve to knock.

You tried to smile and it almost worked. “Oh,” you said. “I’m okay.”

Dex looked at you, seeing your smile trembled at the corner.

His eyes dropped to your hands, clenched too tightly together on top of your desk. He knew the anatomy of a smile. Yours was not real.

“You’re not,” he said.

Your smile stayed on because it had nowhere else to go. “I…” you started. Fuck. What was the point in lying? He had been there. He had seen the injury. He deserved to know, too, if he didn’t already. “The guard didn’t make it.”

Dex froze. “Oh.”

You nodded once, a bit too quickly. “Complications or something, I don’t know. They said a lot of words and I retained absolutely none of them.”

Your laugh came out wrong. Dex hated it immediately. He hated the way you were trying to make the room easier for him. Even now, with your eyes threatening to spill with tears and your mouth trying not to shake, you were still smoothing your own hurt down so he else would not have to feel awkward around it.

You looked exactly like you had on the phone with Eddie towards the end of the call.

Dex stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He was in the room with you, mission accomplished. What was he supposed to do now? “You got him out alive.”

You nodded. “And it still didn’t matter.”

Dex only looked down, unsure of what to say.

You shook your head, smiling harder now, which was worse than crying. “I know. We saved the hostages. We de-escalated the situation.” Your voice thinned. “All things considered, it was a good outcome”

Dex didn’t know what to do with his hands. He wanted to touch you, though he didn’t know if that was the right call. Maybe he should put a hand on your shoulder. But he didn’t know if that would help. He didn’t know if he was allowed. He didn’t know how to comfort you without making it strange.

So he stood there uselessly, watching you try not to fall apart.

“Poindexter, I…,” you said, quieter, “I talked to him for hours.”

Dex swallowed. “Dex.”

You blinked at him. “What?”

“My name.” His voice came out rough. “Call me Dex.”

For some reason, that was the thing that broke your smile, just enough for the tears to gather properly.

“Dex,” you repeated.

His name in your voice was catastrophic. He had wanted you to say it all day. He had it in that warm, coaxing tone you had given Eddie through the phone. Now you said it like you were standing at the edge of crying. And he would have given anything to fix it.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted.

That surprised you, maybe because people usually tried to fill grief with more grief. But Dex only stood there, honest and stiff and visibly uncomfortable with his own helplessness.

“I don’t either,” you whispered, and your face fell for half a second. You turned it away immediately, pressing your fingers under your eyes. Your smile was still trying. Dex had never seen anything braver or more painful in his life.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Smile.”

For a second, you forgot you were an agent in her office, staring at a report waiting on the screen. There was only you, too full of grief to keep pretending it was professionalism.

The first tear slipped before you could stop it. You looked furious with yourself, so Dex did the only thing he could think of.

He pulled the chair from the corner of your office, sat down across from you, and stayed.

You looked down, laughing under your breath as another tear fell. “You’re accidentally very nice, Dex.”

He swallowed. It was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him. “I’m not trying to be accidental.”

You laughed again, and this time, it sounded a little less ruined as Dex sat there, listening to your voice tremble and come back to itself, pretending he had only come to check on you. Pretending he hadn’t come because he wanted to hear you again.

That night, after he walked you to your car, Dex didn’t go home right away.

He wandered back into the building instead, into your supervisor’s office. Dex knew where the recordings were kept. He knew the system, he knew the labels, he knew exactly how to make it look like nothing had been touched. The hostage negotiation tape was logged under case number, time, location. His hand hovered over it for one second, before he copied it into his private drive.

At home, he sat on the edge of his bed with his headphones on in the dark and listened to your voice, steady and impossibly kind.

“Eddie,” your recording voice said, gentle as a hand against a fevered forehead. “Come back to me.”

Dex closed his eyes, jaw tightening. His hands curled over his knees. He knew it was wrong. He knew normal people didn’t steal recordings just to hear a woman speak kindly before bed. But then your voice came again. “Come back to me, Eddie.”

And in the dark, with his breathing gone shallow, Dex let himself change it in his mind: Come back to me, Dex.

For the first time in days, he slept well.

—

Dex kept finding reasons to talk to you.

At first, they were almost believable: A clarification for the report. A detail about Marlow’s prosecution. A question about the hostage order, even though he had heard every word of it through comms and then, later, through the stolen tape in his apartment.

Then the excuses got worse. Apparently, he found one of your pens near the fifth-floor sniper position and returned it. He asked whether you wanted a copy of the incident timeline, then stood awkwardly in your doorway while you told him you already had three. He brought you a file that belonged to someone else entirely.

You looked at the name on the tab, then up at him. “Dex,” you said carefully. “This is for Agent Alvarez.”

He tried to look confused, which failed. “Right.”

“Different floor,” you smiled. He hated how much he liked that you were kind enough to pretend not to notice.

For two weeks, he learned the sound of your laugh. He learned that you clicked your pen when you were thinking. He learned that you always forgot your coffee until it went cold, then drank it anyway. He told himself it was harmless. It was most definitely not.

Then one morning, he showed up at your office holding a paper bag.

You looked up from your desk tiredly, hair a little loose around your face. “Morning.”

Dex stepped inside and the bag crinkled in his hand. “I got you breakfast.”

You blinked. “Oh.”

He placed the bag on your desk like it might explode. “A croissant,” he said.

Your mouth into a small smile. “You remembered.”

Of course he remembered the crumbs on your sleeves and the sugar on your thumb. He remembered everything about that day. “Yeah,” he said.

You opened the bag and looked inside, then back at him. “Thank you, Dex.”

He nodded too quickly. “You’re welcome.”

He should have left. This was the normal time to leave. Instead, he stood there in the doorway, hands empty now, heartbeat hard in his throat.

You tilted your head. “Was there something else?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He paused, then turned back“Yes.”

Your eyebrows lifted, and Dex looked briefly furious with himself.

Then he said, all at once, “Do you want to have dinner with me?”

You went very still. He immediately wanted to die.

“Not professionally,” he added.

Your lips parted. Did he… make it worse?

“I mean, it can be professional if that makes it less—” he stopped himself now, sighing to himself, “No. I don’t want it to be professional. I’m asking you on a date.”

You stared at him. Dex stared back, rigid and catastrophically earnest.

Then you looked down at the croissant, before looking back up at him. “Did you bring me a pastry as a bribe, Special Agent Poindexter?”

His face fell slightly, and you chuckled a little. “Dex,” you corrected gently.

His breath caught in itself.

You smiled properly then, almost merciful. “I’m just teasing.”

“I know that.”

“You don’t look like you know that.”

“I’m… processing.”

A sweetlaugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. There it was, the sound he had been trying to earn for two weeks. Dex’s shoulders loosened by a fraction.

You leaned back in your chair, still smiling, when you looked up at him through your lashes and said, “Okay.”

His face went blank. “Okay?”

“Yes, Dex. I’ll have dinner with you.”

For one second, he looked almost boyish and stunned. Little did you know, he had prepared for rejection, confusion, pity, maybe even HR involvement, but not you saying yes.

“Oh,” he said.

You bit back a smile. “That’s usually the desired outcome when you ask someone on a date.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I think so.”

You laughed again and reached for the croissant.

“Tonight?” he asked, a little too fast.

You raised an eyebrow.

He swallowed. “Or another night.”

“Tonight is good.”

He nodded once, then turned like he was going to leave before either of you could ruin it.

“Dex?”

He stopped immediately.

You held up the croissant. “Thank you for breakfast.”

His eyes lowered, barely. “You’re welcome.” Then he left your office with his heartbeat still pounding.

Behind him, you took one bite of the croissant and smiled into your coffee. Absolutely terrible at flirting. Very good pastry, though.

—

The date was cute, even though it had every right to be awkward. You were both still in work clothes, making it feel less like a date at first and more like two agents walking down the street after a long day, badges tucked away.

When you sat down at the restaurant, you noticed that Dex looked… nervous. “You look like you’re about to be interrogated,” you chuckled.

“I’m not.”

“Dex.”

“Am I?” He looked concerned for a second, because he knew you handled interrogations sometimes.

That made you laugh, and his shoulders loosened slightly, like he had survived the first round of af a boxing match.

When the waiter came, you ordered first. Dex closed his menu immediately. “I’ll have that too.”

You blinked at him. “You don’t even know what I ordered.”

“I heard.”

“You can order something else.”

“I want what you’re having.”

You looked at him for a second, then smiled into your water glass, thinking that’s either very sweet or very concerning.

And then, it got easier. It didn’t go smooth, exactly. Dex answered questions like he was afraid there was a correct version and he had missed the briefing. But he listened like every word out of your mouth belonged carved in a stone tablet.

You told him about terrible tea on the HRT floor. He told you about a sniper qualification day where a rookie threw up behind a barricade. You laughed so hard you had to press your napkin to your mouth, and Dex looked at you like he had just learned a new way to breathe.

By the time the food came, the candle between you had burned golden. You took one bite, hummed happily, and pointed your fork at him. “Okay. Can I tell you a secret?”

Dex stilled, a little more alert. “…Yes.”

You leaned forward over the table. “I went to Quantico a year after you.”

His eyebrows drew together. “You did?”

“Mhm,” you grinned. “Our shooting instructor mentioned you all the time.”

Dex froze.

You sat back, delighted. “Oh my God. You didn’t know how much he loved you?”

“No.”

“Dex.” You put your fork down. “You made my life a living hell.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“You were spiritually there”

His lips parted slightly, offended and confused. “How?”

You dropped your voice into a gruff instructor impression. “‘Poindexter could do this with his eyes closed.’ ‘Poindexter cleared this drill ten seconds faster.’ ‘Poindexter didn’t need three tries.’ Poindexter this, Poindexter that.” You pointed at him. “Fuck, man.”

Dex stared at you before the corner of his mouth lifted. “You were bad at shooting?”

You gasped. Was that… a joke? “I was not bad at shooting.”

“Sounds like you were.”

“I was excellent,” you swallowed your food, “I was just not you.”

His smile got worse, almost smug.

“Our instructor once said, and I quote, ‘Poindexter could hit this target in a blackout with a concussion.’”

Dex looked down at his plate, but you saw the smile pull at his mouth anyway.

“He was exaggerating,” he said.

You raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, before laughing. And there it was again — that look on his face. He didn’t know how to hide his adoration fast enough.

“You made my target practice time a living hell,” you admitted. “Agent Benjamin Poindexter. Destroyer of confidence. Patron saint of aiming at moving targets, apparently.”

The restaurant noise blurred around the two of you. The cutlery, conversation, music from the speakers, all of it bled into the background.

“But then I saw you in New York,” you continued. “and thought, oh. That’s him.”

Dex’s throat moved. “And?”

“And,” you said, gentler now, “I thought you looked lonely.”

Dex glanced down at the table, fingers curling once near his glass. For a second, you worried you had gone too far, too honest.

Then he said, very quietly, “I noticed you too.”

You lowered your eyes a little, suddenly shy in a way you had not expected to be. “Yeah?”

Dex nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “Ray talked about you a lot after that Wall Street blackmail corruption case you both worked on together.”

Your face softened at the mention of him. “Ray’s lovely.”

Dex nodded.

“I get along with his wife better, actually,” you added, glancing back up. “Seema gave me a really good chole recipe and now we’re bonded forever.”

Dex looked faintly confused by that detail, but he listened anyway, like he was storing it somewhere important.

“She said I was doing the spices wrong,” you continued, your smile widening. “Which, to be fair, I was. That, and I handled the chickpea wrong, apparently.”

That got a small laugh out of him, eyes flicked from your mouth back to your eyes.

“I’ve… wanted to talk to you for a while,” he admitted.

Your smile faded into a furrow of your brows. “You have?”

Dex looked down at the table, at his untouched water glass, at the candle between you, anywhere that wasn’t your face. “I just never had reason.”

The words sat there, painfully honest. He didn’t even try to be charming in the way guys usually tried to be with you. Still, it was sincere enough that it made your heart ache.

The candle flickered between you, gold light catching along the sharp line of his cheekbone. For a second, Dex looked almost panicked by the silence, like he had accidentally handed you a confession and had no idea what you were going to do with it. So you reached across the table and touched your fingers lightly to his wrist.

“Well,” you said softly, “good thing you finally brought me a croissant.”

Dex looked at your fingers, then back at you. And this time, when he smiled, it was not an imitation of anything or anyone.

—

You agreed to a second date. That was the easy part. The hard part was actually having one.

The next week turned into a mess before either of you could do anything about it. HRT got pulled into a fugitive barricade situation in Queens. Dex got sent out on a protection detail that lasted two days longer than expected. Your supervisor dumped three active threat assessments on your desk.

So the second date kept moving. Tuesday became Thursday. Thursday became Saturday. Saturday became, “I’m so sorry, Dex, I might actually die under this paperwork.”

Dex, who had appeared in your office doorway with his jacket still on, only looked at the files stacked across your desk and said, “That would be inconvenient.”

You stared at him before laughing so hard you dropped your pen.

After that, you started finding time to take your lunch together. The first time, Dex showed up with two coffees and a paper bag from the place down the street.

“I was passing by,” he said.

“On the HRT floor?”

“Yes.”

You let him in, obviously. Then it kept happening.

Sometimes you ate in your office with the blinds half-closed and your shoes kicked off under the desk. Sometimes you found him in the break room already sitting at the corner table, pretending not to wait for you while leaving the chair beside him empty. Sometimes he brought you pizza because you had forgotten to eat again. Sometimes you brought him coffee because he drank his like punishment and you had made it your mission to introduce him to flavour.

So the second date never officially happened, but he knew your lunch order. Still, Dex kept appearing during your break, and you kept pulling the extra chair closer to your desk until eventually he was sitting beside you instead of across from you, both of you hunched over paper bags and plastic containers and case files like this was a normal blossoming relationship.

One afternoon, you were both sitting so close your chairs were practically conspiring. Dex had brought sandwiches and one pain au chocolate “in case,” which made you stare at him until his ears went faintly pink.

“You really know how to treat a girl, Dex.”

Dex looked down at his pastry. “I’m being practical.”

You laughed and bumped your shoulder into his.

He looked at you then, and the whole office seemed to shrink. You were close enough to see the little shift in his breathing, close enough to notice his pupils drop to your mouth and shoot back up like he had been caught committing a federal offence.

“Oh,” you said, grinning. “That’s what’s happening.”

Dex went very still. “What?”

“You’re trying not to kiss me.”

“I’m not.”

“Dex.”

“I…” he trailed off. What was the point in lying anymore. “I’m trying not to do a lot of things.”

That startled a laugh out of you so badly you had to cover your mouth. And then he smiled.

You leaned closer, still laughing a little. “You can, you know.”

His face changed. All the awkwardness turned… stunned. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He leaned in like he was afraid you might disappear if he did it too quickly. One hand came up, careful against your cheek, and then his mouth was on yours, almost polite at first. It lasted maybe three seconds before you smiled into it, grabbed lightly at the front of his shirt, and kissed him properly.

Dex made a tiny sigh against your mouth.

The kiss went from sweet to a little desperate all at once, like both of you had been starving for weeks and then remembered you both kinda fell too much too quickly. His hand slid from your cheek to the side of your neck. Your chair squeaked as you shifted closer. His knee pressed between yours and you laughed into his mouth because the whole thing was ridiculous, hot, and happening in your office beside a half-eaten sandwich.

Dex pulled back just enough to breathe.

You both stared at each other, “Hi.”

He looked utterly ruined. “Hi.”

You laughed again, breathless, and his forehead dropped lightly against yours.

“This is not lunch,” he said.

“No,” you agreed, still holding his shirt. “It's not.”

—

The second date happened two months after the first.

By then, calling it a second date felt ridiculous. You had eaten lunch together a dozen times. He had kissed you in your office, in the stairwell, once against your car with his hand braced on the roof.

Dinner was a little awkward, still, because Dex would probably be a little awkward until the end of time, but sweet. He listened to you talk about your week like it was testimony under oath. He remembered tiny things you had said offhandedly weeks ago. So, when he took you home that night, it didn’t feel sudden.

He was sweet about it at first. His hands hovered before they touched, his mouth kept coming back to yours like he was checking he was still allowed, and every time, you sighed.

Then he got braver and messier. His shirt was half-open, your hands were in his hair, and he had you pressed back against his pillows when he suddenly leaned close to your ear, voice serious, and said, “You like that, sweetheart? Tell me you’re mine. Tell me nobody else gets to make you feel this good.”

It might have been fine if it hadn’t come out of nowhere, weird and aggressive, zero to a hundred with absolutely no warning. Hell, your trousers weren’t even off yet. So what the fuck?

You went still. Dex went still too. There was a little pause before you slowly turned your head to look at him. “Dex.”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“What was that?”

His face fell. “Was it bad?”

“It was…” You pressed your lips together, trying not to laugh. “It was very committed.”

“Was it bad?” He insisted.

“I just…” you held back a chuckle, “Where did you learn that?”

Dex looked like he didn’t want to answer. He eventually did, though. “I… researched.”

You stared at him. He stared back, very embarrassed, and very clearly hoping the word researched would be enough of an explanation.

“You researched sex?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God,” you whispered. “Dex.”

“I wanted to be prepared.”

“That sounded like it came from a man named Stepbrother Number Four.”

His ears actually went red. You covered your mouth, but the laugh escaped anyway.

Dex looked wounded, almost confused. “I thought it was appropriate.”

“It was… something.”

“It worked in the video.”

You stopped laughing and raised your eyebrows. “Video?”

His teeth locked. He had said too much.

Little did you know, a week earlier, Dex had gone through your phone in the office while you were in the bathroom. He had found your browser history, your saved tabs, your filthy little private collection. He sent them to himself and deleted all evidence of it, of course. He wasn’t an amateur.

And then he had watched six hours of porn, studying it like a psychopath. It was not pleasure or fun. It was Dex in the dark, dead serious, analysing the links you saved, what you watched, even if some of them might have been an accidental click. He was taking notes in his head, trying to become a sex symbol you would want.

Now he was above you, flushed and mortified, realising that pornography was apparently not a good idea to imitate.

“Dex,” you said carefully. “Is this your first time?”

His whole body went tense under your finger. “Yes,” he admitted, barely a breath.

Your heart folded in on itself. “Oh, baby.”

His face tightened like your kindness hurt. “I should have told you.”

“Yeah,” you whispered. “You should’ve.”

“I didn’t want you to change your mind.”

You reached up and cupped his cheek. “C’mere.”

He hesitated, so you said it softer. “Come here, Dex.”

He came down to you, like your voice had hooked into his ribs and pulled. You kissed him again, slower this time. Your hands smoothed over his shoulders until he stopped waiting to be corrected.

“No more lines,” you murmured against his mouth.

As you wished, he stopped performing. He stopped trying to be the man from whatever awful tab he had studied too seriously. He touched you like himself instead: careful, intense, a little overwhelmed, listening to every sound you made as if it mattered more than anything. And fuck, that was better.

His mouth against your skin, your fingers in his hair, his name leaving you in sighed until he started to understand that was what you liked.

Afterward, he lay beside you in the dark, warm one arm tucked carefully around your waist like he was still asking permission to exist in your vicinity.

You brushed your thumb over his wrist. “Good job, pornstar,” you teased.

Dex groaned into your shoulder, but struggled to hide his smile at the praise. “Please don’t.”

“You were so brave.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

He went silent, arm tightened just a little. “No,” he admitted with his lips against your skin. “I could never.”

It was quite the opposite, actually.

He would tell you that for years after. Sometimes with his words, sometimes with his hands, sometimes with the way he looked at you like you were the only fixed point in a world constantly trying to move away from him.

But you were a federal agent who argued and calmed down very bad men for a living. Of all people, you should have known better. You should have known good things rarely ever lasted.

—

Ten Years Later...

You came home with blood on the heel of one shoe and a headache lodged so deep behind your eye it felt like someone had driven a nail into your skull.

You weren’t a federal agent anymore. You hadn't been one for a very long time. There were still people who talked about what happened ten years ago like it had just been one bad year. One scandal, one chapter the Bureau could close with a press conference and a few resignations.

If you closed your eyes, you could see everything clearly.

It happened three years after your started dating. Wilson Fisk in a white suit. FBI agents on his payroll. Dex told you, in confidence, that he had killed the remaining Albanians on the motorcade. You told him that you needed to go on a break because of that. You put in your annual leave to visit family because your boyfriend had just confessed to using lethal force after the enemy surrendered. Apparently, that’s why and when his spiral started, because when you came back, Ray Nadeem had a bullet in his head. Daredevil was framed and hunted while your boyfriend wore the suit. The Bulletin. The church. Father Lantom, who you didn’t know of but learned of later.

After that, faith in anything became difficult. Faith in institutions, faith in badges, faith in men who said they were protecting people while selling their souls behind closed doors.

So you left and built your own private security company from spite, savings, and sheer exhaustion.

You did everything from executive protection to crisis negotiation. Threat assessment, asset recovery, and corporate extraction. All very nice words for work that often felt like pulling teeth. And the thing about running your own company was that the job didn’t stop when you clocked out.

You still had payroll to approve and contracts to review. Clients to placate, insurance renewals, background checks, three missed calls from your operations manager, and junior associate who had accidentally offended la Russian client’s nephew. Just yesterday, you had a driver who quit over text as you received invoice from an arms consultant that made you genuinely consider crime in a more administrative capacity.

Sure, sometimes less-than-ethical people hired you. Triads, Russians, Italians, Irish. But at least, unlike the bureau, they never pretended to be saints. Monsters, you had learned, were never the real danger. It was hypocrites.

Tonight, you had spent fourteen hours in the back room of a private club, brokering a deal between a triad member and a client too rich to be as stupid as he was. Everyone had been polite. Everyone had been armed. You had spent the whole night dragging grown men away from their own worst impulses one careful sentence at a time.

No one died, and the client paid double. By your current standards, that was almost a success.

Still, by the time you got home, you were so tired your body felt like it was running on borrowed time. Your blouse clung damply to your back and your feet were screaming. Your phone had not stopped buzzing once, and you had started fantasising about throwing it into the river.

You unlocked your front door in the dark.

You stepped inside your apartment, dropped your keys into the ceramic bowl by the door, and kicked it shut behind you with one exhausted foot.

You stood barefoot in your own hallway and sighed.

You had listened to the radio the whole way home, a force of habit, really. Its just today, you found out that your ex-boyfriend had broken out of prison and tried to shoot Fisk at some gala.

Wow. Shocker.

Honestly, you would rather shut all of it out and go to bed. Thinking about him, about the man you had loved more than anything in the world, would only break your heart all over again.

Then you saw the paper bag on the kitchen table with your favourite bakery’s logo stamped neatly on the front. Your favourite croissant was inside.

For one long second, you only stared at it and a Post-it stuck to the paper bag, written in a familiar, careful handwriting: You haven’t eaten today.

You stared at the croissant for a long time, long enough for your phone to buzz itself toward death inside your bag.

You didn’t touch the paper bag, and not because you thought it was poisoned. Dex didn’t need poison. If Dex wanted you dead, which he almost certainly did not, you would already have a knife in your throat.

You were thinking more about how Dex had been inside your apartment. It wasn’t surprising, unfortunately. You exhaled, using the name you reserved only when you were mad at him. “Jesus Christ, Benjamin.”

You moved through your own home like you were clearing a client’s building. First the hall closet. Then the bathroom, bedroom, ensuite, guest room, and kitchen. You checked under the bed because you weren’t stupid, behind the shower curtain just in case, and the balcony because Dex had always been incapable of using a normal door when being unhinged would do.

Nothing.

Still, you found the kitchen window open three inches. You stood in front of it for a second, staring at the gap before you shut it and locked it. Then, you checked the lock twice.

Then, because you were tired and petty, you went around the apartment and did every other lock too. You even checked the little latch on the tiny laundry room window that no full-grown man should have been able to fit through, although Dex had a history of doing things no full-grown man should be able to do anyway.

Eventually, you took the croissant out of the bag, held it for one long second, then put it back.

“No,” you told the empty kitchen. “I have standards.”

You made it exactly five minutes before you came back, tore off one angry bite, and ate it standing over the sink because he had been right. You haven’t had a proper meal today.

What were you going to do now? Call the cops? And say what? Hello, officer, my ex-boyfriend broke out of prison, tried to kill the mayor, apparently swung by my apartment, broke in, and left me a croissant because he noticed I skipped dinner. Yes, that Benjamin Poindexter. No, I am not currently being held hostage. Yes, I own a private security company. No, I don’t need medical attention. Yes, this is going to jeopardise my brand and I’ll probably never get a client ever again.

Ha!

You threw the Post-it into the kitchen drawer then you went to bed.

You slept badly. Once, half-asleep, you thought you heard your name in the hallway, and your hand slid under the pillow before you remembered you had put the knife in the bedside drawer because apparently some part of you still believed in “healthy boundaries.”

By morning, you were still exhausted. Your alarm went off at six-thirty. You slapped it silent, lay there for ten seconds, then dragged yourself upright with the suffering of a woman who had payroll, a prison break, and a quarterly review of her employees all waiting for her before breakfast.

The city outside your window was grey and wet. New York rain hit the glass in thin lines. Your head still hurt. Your phone had nine missed calls, four news alerts, and one message from Seema that simply said: Please tell me you’re alive.

You typed back: Unfortunately.

Then came the three firm knocks on your door and you froze in the middle of tying your robe.

You moved to the door, silent on the wood floor, and checked the peephole to see an empty hallway.

You undid the locks one by one, slow enough to make a point to nobody, and opened the door with the chain still on.

There was no one there. Only a coffee cup sitting neatly on your doorstep. Beside it, a burner phone.

You stared. The coffee was from your favourite place. Extra shot with, because you had once mentioned a decade ago that nutmeg tasted like dust and cinnamon was better.

On the cup, in careful black marker, were three words: Can we talk?

You stared at it for so long the neighbour’s door opened at the end of the hall.

Mrs. Banerjee from 4B peered out, hair wrapped in a scarf, eyes immediately dropping to the coffee, then to the burner phone, then back to you.

“Morning, love,” she said.

“Morning.”

She looked at the cup again. “Secret admirer?”

You looked down at the burner phone. The screen lit up to one message.

Unknown Number: Please.

You closed your eyes and Mrs. Banerjee made a small, interested noise. You picked up the coffee and the phone. “Ex-boyfriend.”.

—

You really did think about turning in the burner phone. Or maybe you should call your lawyer. You could call your operations manager, who was a former private investigator. You could walk it straight to 15th precinct, drop it on Brett’s desk, and say, congratulations, you have one prison escapee’s attempt at courtship. You even considered crushing it under your heel and leaving the pieces in the hallway like a very clear, very mature message: Get the fucking hint.

But because you were an idiot, because apparently ten years of therapy, firearms training, and owning a private security company had not cured you of Benjamin Poindexter, you did not crush it.

You brought it inside and locked the door.

Then you sat at your kitchen table, took the back off the phone, and found the tracker chip in under twelve seconds. Of fucking course the burner phone he left like some pathetic little peace offering was also a locator. Of course Dex could not simply say can we talk without also making sure he knew where you were when you ignored him. You should have expected nothing less of him.

You held the tiny chip between your fingers, looked at it under the kitchen light, and felt both rage and nostalgia twist behind your ribs. “Romance really is dead,” you muttered.

When you dropped the chip into a glass of water, the phone buzzed in your hand almost immediately.

Dex: Did you take it out?

You stared and sent nothing back, shoving it into your bedside junk drawer beneath batteries, old keys, a tape measure, and three expired pepper sprays.Over the next week, Dex kept finding ways to leave things for you.

On Monday, you found a paper bag with your favourite chocolate bar between an invoice and a threateningly glossy real estate flyer. You stared down at it in the lobby while Mr. Kowalski from 2A walked past with his pug. “Breakfast?” he asked.

“I think so,” you said.

On Tuesday, there was a carton of chocolate milk waiting on your window sill. Outside. Four floors up.

You opened the curtains and nearly had a stroke.The carton was balanced there neatly, like New York wind, gravity, and basic human decency didn’t exist.

You opened the window, grabbed it, and looked down at the street and found no sign of a psychopath in a tactical black suit making eye contact from across traffic like this was a part of the healing process. You drank it anyway, because you were angry, not wasteful.

On Wednesday, you found a book on your balcony.

That one actually pissed you off, and not because it was on your balcony. You had accepted, against your will, that Dex was apparently treating your apartment like a very emotional obstacle course. It pissed you off because it was a first edition of the stupid out-of-print novel you had complained about not being able to find for years. You had mentioned it once, maybe twice, back when you were still together, curled into the corner of his couch with your feet under his thigh and your hair wet from his shower.

There was a note tucked inside the front cover: I saw it and thought of you.

You looked at the note. Then at the sky. Then back at the note. “Are you kidding me?”

You brought the book inside. You didn’t read it. You put it on the kitchen counter, facedown.

On Thursday, there was a pastry box on your office desk.

Your actual locked private security office with cameras, keycards, a receptionist, two former Marines on the morning shift, and a very expensive alarm system you had installed.

You walked in at eight-fifteen, stopped dead in the doorway, and stared at the little white box sitting beside your keyboard.

Your assistant, who had followed you in talking about insurance renewals, went quiet. “Is that yours?” she asked.

“No.”

“Do we need to evacuate?”

You opened the box. Inside was one pain au chocolat and a folded napkin. You unfolded it: You forgot lunch yesterday.

You sighed, “no.”

You spent the next hour reviewing security footage and getting progressively more furious because, of course, there was nothing useful. There was nothing more than a camera flicker and a ten-second blind spot. The side door alarm that had been disabled and re-enabled so quickly it looked like a system error.

By Friday, you were in a mood so bad people started physically moving out of your way when you walked down the hall.

You went home late, half hoping there would be nothing and you were right. For once, your hallway was empty. Your mailbox was empty. Your windowsills were empty. Your balcony was empty. You checked all of them twice anyway, because apparently this was your life now. Nothing.

You made actual dinner out of spite: rice, protein, vegetables. You ate it standing in your kitchen because sitting down felt too intimate. Then you showered, changed into sleep shorts and an old quantico T-shirt, and tried not to think about the fact that you were kind of disappointed by the lack of gifts. Which was humiliating.

You were a grown woman. You ran extractions for millionaires and negotiated with armed mob bosses before breakfast. You were not going to have feelings because your escaped-convict ex-boyfriend skipped one day of stalking.

Then, at eleven at night, you heard tapping against your window.

No one was there when you opened it, but there was an envelope stuck to the outside of the glass.

You stared at it, then walked over, opened the window, and peeled it off. Inside was a note: Why are you mad at me?

You blinked and read it again.

For a second, you genuinely thought you were hallucinating. Then you looked down to your fire escape below your window to see a bouquet of daisies, the ones he used to buy from the deli down the street because you said you always like them.

“Oh my God,” you whispered to the empty apartment. “He actually thinks I’m playing hard to get.”

You picked up the flowers. And, because you were a very reasonable person, you leaned out the window into the damp New York night and shouted, “DEX!”

Somewhere below, in the dark, a car alarm chirped. A dog barked. Someone yelled, “People are sleeping, lady!”

You ignored them. You held up the flowers like evidence at trial. “‘WHY AM I MAD AT YOU?’ IS THIS A FUCKING JOKE?!”

Nothing, for a moment. Then your burner phone buzzed from the drawer. You stormed over, yanked it open so hard the batteries rattled, and dug the phone out from under three dead pens.

Dex: Are they the wrong flowers?

You stared and slowly sat down on the kitchen floor, because if you didn’t, you were going to throw the phone through a wall.

Because surely, surely, you had misread that. Surely the man you once had thought of as the love of your life, had not just asked if you were mad after he killed your mutual friend seven years ago.

The phone buzzed again.

Dex: I can get different ones.

You closed your eyes. For a moment, you thought you could feel your soul physically leave your body, look down at the situation, and decide it wanted no part in this, because he kept acting as if the issue was floral. As if this whole thing could be solved by a better bouquet and not, for example, an apology, a therapist, a complete understanding of privacy, and maybe not breaking into your apartment.

“Fuck,” you muttered.

Whatever, you thought. I don’t give two shits

You very much gave two shits. You gave several shits. You gave a whole municipal waste facility’s worth of shits.

In truth, you cared so much it made you furious. You had spent seven years telling yourself Benjamin Poindexter was not your problem anymore. Seven years building a life from the ruins he left behind. And now he was back in your life!

The phone buzzed again

Dex: Please talk to me.

You stared at the screen before you stood up. “No,” you said aloud.

You were not doing this through a burner phone. You were not typing out a long, literate paragraph about boundaries to a man who had apparently decided stalking was a valid love language. You were not texting your fugitive ex-boyfriend the basics of human decency. If he wanted to talk, he could talk face to face.

And because you knew Dex better than anyone should know a man like Dex, you knew exactly how to make that happen without sending a single message.

You went to your bedroom and changed, pulling on jeans, boots, a warm coat, and the black scarf with hidden pockets because practicality was important, even during emotional breakdowns. You hid a knife in your sleeve and a compact pistol at your back.

You walked back into the kitchen and looked at the burner phone on the floor.

Dex: Are you there?

You picked it up, turned it over once in your hand, then dropped it into the fruit bowl like it deserved to be punished among the bananas.

“I’m going for a walk,” you said to your empty apartment, before grabbing your keys and left.

—

Central Park at midnight was, objectively, a stupid place to go. You knew that. You literally charged people money to know that.

You had written entire security briefs for clients with more cash than survival instinct, and half the advice boiled down to: do not go into isolated places at night to meet emotionally unstable violent criminals.

Still, there you were, walking through the park under a wet black sky, boots clicking against the pavement, the city humming behind the trees like it was pretending not to watch.

Every instinct you had spent the last seven years wanted to look back: look at the tree line, benches, shadows. Check reflection in puddles and windows across the street. But you didn’t look, because looking meant admitting you cared whether he was there.

The path curved ahead of you, slick with rain and scattered leaves. A few lamps burned gold through the mist. The park was not empty, exactly, but it felt emptied out. You could hear footsteps and cyclists passing too fast. You kept walking. Past the fountain. Past the little bridge, until you reached the bench.

It had the same black metal arms, same damp wooden slats, same stupid plaque dedicated to someone’s grandfather who had loved chess and spring mornings.

You and Dex had found this bench years ago after a date went wrong because work interrupted dinner. He had been stiff beside you, still in his work shirt, tie loosened. You had shared cold fries out of a paper bag. You stole one from his carton and he let you.

After that, the bench became yours in the stupid unofficial way things became yours when you were in love. After late shifts and bad days, arguments you both pretended were not arguments. You kissed here stolen under orange lamplight, hand hovering near your lower back before finally touching.

You sat down anyway. The bench was wet. “Perfect,” you muttered.

You crossed one leg over the other and leaned back, looking straight ahead.

For one minute, nothing happened. Then two. Then three.

You almost laughed. Maybe this was it. Maybe you had finally overestimated him. Maybe Dex had left the flowers, sent the texts, and vanished into the night.

Maybe you had dragged yourself into Central Park at midnight for nothing. Maybe you were the unwell one.

Then, a sound came from the trees behind you, barely anything at all.

You didn’t turn around.

From the darkness behind the nearest tree, Benjamin Poindexter stepped out of the shadows. He looked older, bigger, still beautiful in that awful, inconvenient way that made you want to throw something at the sky.

Dex stopped a few feet away from the bench. For once, he didn’t come closer.

The mist clung to his shoulders. The lamplight caught the scar on his cheekbone. Then, he said, “Hi.”

Your mouth felt dry. “Hi,” you said back. Stupid. Pathetic. Human.

Dex looked at the empty space beside you, then at your face. “Can I sit?”

You almost laughed. Now he wanted permission? “Sure,” you said, voice flat. “Why start respecting boundaries now?”

He flinched like you’d rub salt in a wound. He sat anyway, carefully, as if the bench belonged to you now and he was only borrowing the edge of it. His thigh was too close to yours, so scooted away.

Dex noticed. His eyes dropped to the wet space you’d put between you, then lifted again.

For a while, neither of you said anything. The park filled the silence: dew ticking through leaves, traffic muttering.

Dex’s hands rested between his knees, visible, like he knew you were checking and armed.

“How are you?” he asked.

Of all the things he could have asked. Of all the impossible, cruel, stupid things.

How dare he ask like this was a coffee run. Like seven years had not happened. Like he had not crawled back into your life through windows and burner phones and pastry boxes, leaving little proofs of memory everywhere, every single one saying, I still know you, I still know you, I still know you.

You smiled and it was fake, Dex could tell.

“Oh,” you said brightly. “Great. Coping. The last seven years have been very normal and relaxing for me.”

Dex looked down.

You kept going because if you stopped, worse thingswould come out.

“I built a company. Paid taxes. I learned how to read insurance contracts without wanting to walk into traffic. Got eight hours of sleep, never. Oh, and I developed a fun little stress headache that lives behind my right eye.” You looked back at the path. “You know. Girl stuff.”

“That must have been hard,” he said quietly.

Your eyes closed. Fuck off. That one repetition you knew Dr. Mercer gave him that you told him was cute once. You opened your eyes and rolled them instead. “Don’t sound sad on my behalf.”

“I am sad.”

“That’s the fucking bare minimum. Catch up”

He took that, and you almost wished he wouldn’t. You almost wished he would snap back like you had always expected him to.

But seven years had changed parts of him. Dex, whose anger had been manipulated, had sat down on the prison floor and trained himself not to succumb again. Then he said, “I saw your apartment.”

You looked at him. “What about it?”

He hesitated, and you could see him trying to choose the right words, which was almost funny, considering he had broken into your home without needing words at all.

“It’s.. modest,” he said.

For a second, your brain refused to process it. Then you turned toward him fully. “I’m sorry?”

Dex’s eyes flickered. “That came out wrong.”

“You’re insulting my apartment?”

““I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Oh, please.” You laughed once. “Go on, Bullseye. Tell me what the fugitive home inspector thinks.”

His face changed at the moniker. “I meant,” he said carefully, “you always talked about more.”

Your throat tightened before you could stop it.

Dex looked past you toward the path, like maybe the memory was sitting there too.

“You said you wanted a house in the suburbs,” he said. “You said you wanted no less than five bedrooms and big windows. A kitchen with the blue tiles you liked. A bathroom with a copper bathtub that would’ve been hard to clean.”

You had been half-asleep when you told him that. Years ago, your legs in his lap, his thumb moving over your ankle bone, the TV murmuring some terrible late-night movie neither of you were watching. You had been talking nonsense because you were tired and happy and safe.

You swallowed the memory down hard. “I can’t afford more,” you said.

Dex frowned. “You can.” You owned a private security firm. You should be able to. Dex had seen the numbers you were bringing in.

“You don’t know anything about my life anymore,” you said, and your voice cracked just enough to make you furious.

His eyes stayed on you.

“I can’t because I… I pay two mortgages,” you said, words coming out quieter than you meant them to.

Dex’s brow furrowed.

“One for my apartment.” Your hand curled against your knee. “One for Seema.”

He stopped breathing for half a second.

You kept your eyes on the wet path because if you looked at him, you would see exactly when he understood, and you didn’t want him to see that.

“And I…I’m putting Sami through college, too,” you added, proud of the boy he had become. “He’s going to be a structural engineer.”

You thought of visiting Seema once in a while. You folded bills into drawers and pretended it was nothing. Seema pretending she didn’t notice. You were just two women building something survivable out of the wreckage men left behind.

Dex stared at his hands. “Oh.”

You smiled without looking at him. It hurt. “Yeah,” you whispered.

He looked smaller, though not physically. Dex still took up too much space. But he was folding inwards, like he had finally stepped on a loose floorboard and realised there was a whole room underneath the house.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“No.”

“I would have—”

You turned to him then, anger saving you from the softer thing trying to crawl up your throat. “Don’t tell me what you would have done,” you said. “Don’t sit here and offer me imaginary help from prison like that does anything for anybody.”

Dex wanted to say the right things so desperately, you could tell.

You held up a hand before he could speak, “Stop.”

He knew that voice, that tone. He had stolen it from evidence and slept to it in the dark.

You saw the moment it hit him, so you hardened again. “Why are you here?” you said.

Dex looked at you for too long. “I wanted to see you.”

“Cut the shit,” You leaned closer, not because you wanted to be near him, you told yourself, but because you needed him to hear you. “Why are you here, Dex?”

Barely above a whisper, he said, “I wanted to see my girlfriend.”

For one second, you couldn't move. Girlfriend?

You stared. “I’m not your girlfriend anymore.”

Dex looked genuinely confused, not pretending or manipulating.

“We never broke up,” he said.

Your stomach turned. “Oh, fuck.”

“We didn’t.”

“We were on a break when you got arrested! I never visited you in prison, either, Dex!” you snapped. “Take the fucking hint.”

His face went sout first. Then his eyes changed, helplessness flashing there, quickly buried, but not quick enough. He was hurt, almost boyish in its disbelief, like it had never occurred to him that your absence was a hint at all.

“No, no,” he insisted, and you could almost see the story he made up in his head. “You didn’t visit because it wasn’t safe,” he said.

Your mouth opened slightly.

He kept going, voice gaining force desperately. “Because of the Bureau and your firm. Because if anyone saw you with me—”

“No.”

“I know why you didn’t visit,” he said “You had to protect yourself. I understood that.”

“No, Dex.”

“You needed time.”

You scoffed. “I needed more than time.”

“You were angry.”

“I was grieving.”

“You loved me.”

“Yes!” you snapped, and the word tore out of you so violently both of you went silent. It was the ugly, irredeemable truth. You swallowed, but it did nothing.

“Yes,” you repeated, smaller. “I loved you. I loved you so much I almost ruined my life because of it.”

His face broke open for half a second and You couldn’t look at him

“I sat outside that prison once, after you killed Nelson,” you said.

Dex let out a deep breath.

You laughed under your breath, but it came out nearly ruined. “I drove there after work. I parked across the street. I was in my car for forty minutes like an insane person.”

“You came?” he whispered.

“I didn’t go in.” you said, finally looking at him. Your eyes burned so badly it made the lamps blur. “Because I knew if I walked inside, I was done. I knew if I saw you, if you looked at me, if you said my name in that voice, I would forgive things I had no business forgiving.”

Dex was breathing shallowly now.

Oh.

He reached for you, too quickly, when he realized he was losing your attention. His fingers closed around your wrist and pulled, hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t,” he said.

For half a breath, you froze. Seven years ago, you might have let him. Seven years ago, you might have let him pull you close because he was hurting and Dex hurting had always made you stupid. You might have said his name. Might have touched his face. Might have coaxed him back to you gently, patiently, like he was one of your frightened men with a gun and a locked room full of hostages.

But you were not that girl anymore. Your wrist turned, thumb pressing to a weak point. You twisted down, stepped in, and pivoted, making him release you.

His eyes flashed, more surprised than hurt.

You caught his arm, moved behind his shoulder, and slid the knife from your sleeve with one clean motion, pressing the blade on the curve of his neck .

Dex went still, some part of him, some sick part of him, had been waiting seven years to be close enough for you to hurt him, if that was all you would ever give to him.

Your mouth was near his ear. “Don’t,” you said, “grab me like that again.”

Dex swallowed. You felt it against the blade. His eyes were fixed forward, dark in the lamplight.

Even now, you could feel yourself trying to regulate the room. Keep him calm. Keep yourself calm. No sudden moves. Name the feeling. Give him a choice. Bring him back to his own.

You almost laughed. Once a hostage negotiator, always a hostage negotiator. Even when you were brokering arms deals most of the time now.

“I left you alone,” you said. “For seven years, I left you alone. That was the kindest thing I could do for both of us.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not.”

Your hand tightened around the knife. For a second, you couldn’t speak, because you knew what he meant. You had not given him closure. You had not given yourself closure either. You had simply walked out of the burning building and refused to look back in case he was still inside screaming.

He said your name, like he still had the right to use it. “You don’t want to kill me,” Dex said.

Your eyes burned so badly it made the park blur at the edges. You laughed once, but it came out broken. “Don’t be so sure.”

Dex didn’t flinch. He looked at the knife in your hand, then back at you, and his voice dropped.“If you wanted me dead,” he said, “I would already be dead.”

Fuck. Fuck.

Your heart broke again, and this time you almost heard it.

“Leave me alone,” you whispered. You stepped closer, teeth clenched, tears hot on your face. “Leave me alone, or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Then you flipped the knife in your hand, turned the butt of it toward him, and struck him hard under the temple to knock him out.

You stood over him for one second too long, breathing like an animal, waiting for yourself to regret it. You did, but you left anyway.

When Dex woke up, you were gone.

—

For the next couple of months, Dex actually left you alone. Which was good, right? You had to remind yourself that you did tell him to leave you alone or you’d kill him. It was a very clear instruction, a very reasonable boundary. It was very mature of him to respect it.

So why did it make you feel insane?

You told yourself this was healthy. You told yourself that, actually, most women would be thrilled if their escaped-convict ex-boyfriend respected a boundary after years of moral devastation. But apparently, you were not most women. Apparently, you were a fucking idiot.

At work, people started noticing. One of your freelancer caught you staring at a blank wall for too long and said, carefully, “You okay, boss?”

“Hm?”

“You’ve been holding that folder upside down for five minutes.”

You looked down. Ah.

Seema called twice asking you to come over for dinner. Both times, you said no. “It’s not safe,” you told her.

Then Seema sighed, and that hurt worse than yelling. “You always say that when you are punishing yourself.”

You hung up after promising to call again. You didn’t call, even though you kept the checks going.

Then one morning, every phone in your office buzzed at once. That was never good. Apparently, many of your clients wanted extra protection against an “unknown threat.

You wondered why until your assistant handed you a newspaper with the headline: THREE ANTI-VIGILANTE TASK FORCE AGENTS FOUND DEAD IN BROOKLYN.

Your whole body went cold.

You read the article, and that was all the confirmation you needed. You knew what Dex’s violence looked like. You knew he did this.

Your assistant said your name again. You looked up, and whatever was on your face made her stop talking.

“Cancel my morning calls,” you said as you phone buzzed.

Brett Mahoney: Do not get involved.

You almost laughed.

You knew then, that he had not left you alone because he stopped loving you. He had left you alone because he was trying to be good. And something, or someone, had just reminded him he wasn’t.

—

You started following Dex on his little crusade. It didn’t take you long to find him, really. You had once loved him too thoroughly to be normal about him now.

You knew which rooftops he would choose because they gave him height and had three clean exits. You knew he hated wet alleys unless they led to fire escapes. You knew he would never use the obvious door. You knew the little rituals he had during work.

So yes. Fine. You started stalking Benjamin Poindexter.

Fuck. How pathetic. You were a grown woman. You ran a firm. And now, apparently, you had a new hobby: following your fugitive ex through New York like a ghost with a concealed carry permit.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

You told yourself it was professional. AVTF had been leaning on your clients hard, forcing them into hiding, turning protection details into extraction jobs, calling it public safety while they raided apartments without warrants and threatened families in parking garages. They were dickheads, so yeah, you had no sympathy for them.

You followed the bodies, the rumours, the gaps in camera footage, the silence in neighbourhoods that had been loud twenty minutes before. And the more you followed him, the more you felt him following you back.

You noticed a shadow on a rooftop opposite your office, a reflection in the window of a closed deli. The certainty that when you walked home at night, something in the dark was following you.

You knew Dex had clocked you the first night and, instead of losing you, instead of warning you off, the sick bastard started letting you get closer, though not enough that you could grab him, never enough that you could put a bullet in him if you finally developed common sense. But enough.

Apparently, even when you kept saying you wanted him gone, your body didn’t get the memos

And Dex… Dex wasn’t any better.

Dex was worse. Dex was leaving you openings like love notes. He would stop too long on rooftops. He let you see the edge of his shoulder before he vanished. He let a camera catch half his face, just enough for you to know he was thinking of you.

Once, you found a dead AVTF agent slumped in an abandoned office with a heart shot into the wall beside him.

Fuck.

Eventually, you stalked his home. Well. Home was generous.

Dex didn’t have a home so much as he had a room to return to when the city stopped needing him bloody for five consecutive minutes.

It was a third-floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen, rented under a name so fake it was almost insulting. Tony? Where did he get that, huh?

He had no doormats or plants. He had no personal mail. You found it in four days. You told yourself that was because you were good at your job.

You watched the building from across the street with coffee going cold in your hand. Like a creep, like him.

The first night, he didn’t come home until 3:12 a.m.You saw him slip through the alley, hood up, shoulders tense, blood dark on one sleeve. He paused before unlocking the side entrance.

Dex knew you were there and the bastard still turned his head slightly, just enough for the streetlamp to catch the side of his cheek, the bruising near his mouth. Then he went inside.

You sat there with your hands curled around the steering wheel and hated him for being alive.

After that, you came back, but every night. You had clients to protect and employees to encourage into filling out paperwork properly.

Obviously.

—

One night, you followed him to the docks.

You told yourself it was reconnaissance. You told yourself it was work. You told yourself a lot of very reasonable, very professional things while walking into a half-rotted maintenance building with a pistol at your back and your heart trying to climb out of your throat.

But by then, you had stopped pretending you weren’t actively choosing him.

The building sat by the water like a body left to die, with rusted metal, wet concrete, and black windows. Task Force had picked it because they thought isolation made them clever.

It didn’t. Instead, it made them predictable.

You slipped through the side entrance and knew immediately something was wrong when you smelled blood, oil, and gunpowder in excess.

Your stomach turned. Not him, a terrified part of you thought before you could stop it. Please, not him.

When you were fully in, he had already been through the first two. One agent was at the bottom of the stairs. Another near the service corridor. A third was dragging himself across the floor, one hand pressed to his side, the other reaching for his radio.

He saw you, a stranger, and desperately rasped, “Help me.”

You looked at the badge on his vest; AVTF.

Then you looked toward the room ahead, where another gunshot went off so loud the whole building seemed to echo around it.

Your blood went cold. Dex.

You stepped over the agent, who was begging for you to save his life. “No.”

You ran instead, because you knew, somewhere in that building, Dex could be hurt. Dex could be cornered. Dex could die.

And the thought was so unbearable it stripped every lie out of you.

No. No. No. Not him. Not after a decade of caring about him. Not after you spent all that time hating him just to realise that hate was probably just you punishing yourself.

You reached the room and saw him. Dex was backed near the far wall, one hand braced against a pipe, blood at his mouth, shoulders heaving. His eyes were dark and wild, and still, somehow, he found you the second you entered.

For half a second, nothing stopped.

The agents. The prison. The motorcade killing of surrendering men. Ray. Fisk. The suit. None of that mattered anymore. Not really.

Then you saw the agent next to him, lifting his gun, Finger tightening to the trigger.

Dex didn’t see. He was distracted. He was watching you. Dex was watching you like you were the only thing in the room that mattered.

But you saw the gun, the angle. You saw the split second before the world took him from you.

No.

There was a sawn-off shotgun on the floor beside a dead man’s hand.

You picked it up before morality could catch up. The blast tore the room open.

The agent dropped. Your hands moved on instinct efficiently. You loaded in another shotshell. Another shot. The second agent went down before he could turn his weapon. Then the third.

Then nothing but smoke and ringing silence and your own breath coming out broken and a little too loudly.

Dex turned toward you slowly with blood on his cheek, mouth parted, his eyes locked on yours.

You had saved him, yes. You had crossed a line for him, yes. But Dex didn’t look surprised, not even a little.

He looked at you like he had always known, like he was waiting for you to come out of the dark and choose him. Like he had loved every version of you: the woman with pastries in a federal sniper nest, the woman with a knife under his jaw in Central Park, and now this woman, holding a shotgun because the idea of him dying had made her forget every boundary she had ever built.

Your throat closed. You wanted to scream at him. You wanted to kiss the blood off his mouth. You wanted to hit him for making you care this much. You wanted to fall apart against him and have him hold you like no time had passed at all.

You hated him. Or maybe you loved him so badly it felt like a heart attack.

Dex’s eyes dropped to the shotgun in your hands, then rose back to your face, so in love with you it was almost frightening.

You swallowed hard. “I don’t actually want you dead,” you admitted.

Oh. Oh, fuck.

Then the shotgun slipped from your hands. It hit the floor with a dull clatter, and it made you flinch for the first time in years.

Dex said your name, but you didn’t answer.

Your knees gave out before you decided to kneel. One moment you were standing there with smoke in your lungs and blood ringing in your ears, and the next you were on the concrete, palms braced against the floor.

Fuck. Fuck! What did you do? What the fuck did you do?

The agents were dead because you had killed them. You didn't even try negotiating or de-escalating. You didn’t even try buying time.

You had picked up a gun and blown three men apart because he had been about to shoot Dex.

“Oh my god,” you whispered, sounding thin and very much unlike the person you had convinced yourself to be.

Your eyes dropped to the shotgun on the floor, then up to your bare hands. Your… fingerprints were on it. Shit!

Your DNA and your hair maybe, your shoe prints in the blood and river grime. You had stupidly dragged your goddamn life into this room because you had followed a man you swore you hated into a trap and saved him as if he was still yours to save.

You had jeopardised everyone; your employees, the contracts and the clients. Seema and Sami and their mortgage payments and tuition fees. If you went down, they went down with you.

Your breath hitched so hard it hurt. “No,” you said, but it came out like a sob. “No, no, no.”

Dex moved toward you, boots scraping concrete, his body dropping down beside yours. You jerked back on instinct. “Don’t,” you choked out, though you didn’t know what you were telling him not to do.

Dex stopped for half a second, but he reached for you anyway, carefully this time.

His arms came around you from the side, one hand sitting between your shoulder blades, the other wrapping around your back like he could hold your life together by force if you just asked him to.

“It’s okay,” he said, even though it was the wrong thing to say. Nothing was okay, but in the end it was still Dex’s voice.

“It’s okay,” he said again. “I’ve got you.”

You made a sound, and you would have been embarrassed by it if you had any semblance of self preservation.

“Dex,” you gasped.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t- my fingerprints, I touched it, I touched the gun, I…. ” Your words tripped over each other, useless and frantic. “They’ll find me. They’ll know. My firm finished. Seema won’t… I-I—Sami’s tuition, Dex, I pay his tuition, I can’t— fuck! M-my employees, they’ll lose their jobs, I,… everything is tied to me, everything…”

“I know,” he said.

“You clearly fucking don’t!”

“Listen to me,” he said again, hand pressed against your back.

You shook your head, because listening meant being in the room. Listening meant admitting this had happened. It was basically a fucking confession.

Dex moved ever closer, until his chest was against your shoulder, his lips by your temple. “Nobody has to know,” he said.

Your breathing stopped abruptly, looking at him through the blur of your own tears.

His face was bruised, blood at the corner of his mouth, eyes so focused on you that it made you want to collapse all over again.

“Nobody has to know,” he repeated. “I’m going to help.”

You were terrified. You were relieved.

Dex knew what to do. Dex knew what to do with bodies, right? He can make this all go away, right? Right?

You needed him. Needed.

You turned into his chest, hands grabbing at the front of his jacket, fists twisting in the fabric, clinging to him with a desperation you had not shown to anyone in years. Your forehead hit his chest and then, before you knew it, you were letting out full-bodies sobs into his tactical suit.

Dex’s arms tightened around you immediately. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”

You buried your face harder against him, shaking so badly you swore your teeth were gonna fall off. “I need you,” you said into his chest, barely audible.

Dex froze for a second, his hand sliding up to the back of your head, holding you there. “I know,” he whispered.

You clutched him harder. “I need you.”

—

Your body had been buzzing with too much adrenaline, your vision swam in and out of existence, and you barely remembered what happened. When you came back to yourself, you were in Dex’s bed.

His studio was small, nothing but one dim lamp in the corner, one chair, and one table. It should have felt temporary, but the sheets smelled like him,and that alone made you feel comfortable enough to ignore everything he had done in the past decade.

You were wearing his old FBI shirt, fabric hanging too loose on your shoulders, logo cracked from years of washing, like a cruel relic from a life neither of you got to keep. Your own clothes were gone: coat, jeans, scarf, and everything that had touched that you, or that warehouse.

The shotgun was gone, too, and you were willing to bet the same for the bodies. All of it had been taken care of by the one man you had spent seven years trying not to need.

Maybe he burned the clothes and sunk the agents. Maybe he sunk the shotgun, too. There was horror, but you felt sick, shameful relief all the same.

He stood near the sink with his shoulders slightly hunched, blood still drying near his mouth. He had washed his hands too many times; you could tell from the red and raw skin around his knuckles, as if even he could not scrub tonight off completely. When he turned the tap off, the apartment went quiet again.

You stared at him, and he stared back, and suddenly seven years were in the room with you. Seven years of pretending he was just another ex. Seven years of saying you hated him because hating him was easier than admitting that some nights you still reached across the bed in your sleep and woke up furious that he was not there to hold you.

You started shaking again. What the fuck were you doing here?

Your whole body felt like it was stuck on vibrate, teeth clenching, hands curled uselessly in the hem of his shirt. You hated yourself, because even after the hard-earned distance you tried to keep, you tried to earn, piece by piece, it was Dex’s room you fell apart in.

Dex walked toward you carefully, as if he had learned the hard way what not to do. He wasn’t going to let himself be taken over by sudden movement, so he just sat on the edge of the mattress, waiting for your next move.

You should have told him to stay away. You should have said thank you and left. You should have put your feet on the floor, gone home, burned his shirt and called this what it was: A mistake, or a relapse. It was just a catastrophic, near career-ending lapse in judgement.

Instead, a little sob came out of you. And that was all it took for his arms to come around your body.

You were so angry at how badly you needed that touch that you grabbed him, by way of both hands in the front of his shirt, fists twisting in the fabric, dragging him close like you were drowning and he was the only source of oxygen left in the world.

You cried into him. It was a heartbroken chest-breaking sob that you couldn’t swallow down. You cried because you had killed three men that hadn’t even been looking at you. You cried because you had wanted Dex to live so badly you have compromised the safety of everyone else in your life.

He held you tighter, hand finding the back of your head like muscle memory, fingers sinking into your hair with a familiarity that hurt so much you might as well have been stabbed.

“Come back to me,” he whispered.

You hated him for saying your line, but you hated more that it fucking helped. So you pressed your face deeper into the crook of his neck, breathing him in like a pathetic kitten that had been abandoned on the side of the road starving for years.

You missed your Dex, and not the one you had made into a monster, and not Bullseye. You missed this one.

“You shouldn’t have helped me,” you said, but it barely came out as a cohesive.

His mouth planted a kiss on your hair.

“I-I shouldn’t have needed you.”

Dex said your name so kindly it didn’t even sound like him.

You pulled back enough to look at his red-rimmed eyes. You had seen men beg before. You had heard confessions, threats, and prayers. You had talked far more dangerous killers into handcuffs and frightened boys away from ledges. But nobody had ever looked at you the way Dex looked at you now.

“But I did,” you whispered, then kept going because you had already bled too much to pretend you were fine.

“I needed you to make it go away. I needed you to know what to do. I needed you to hold me, and I hate that after everything, I still knew you would.”

Dex didn’t look away. “We have always needed each other,” he said.

You wanted to slap him for that, because he was right. Even when you stayed away from the prison,some shameful, locked-up part of you had always known that if the world suddenly wanted to swallow you whole, it was Dex you would look for in the belly of the beast.

Because he was yours. And love, real love, did not follow reason. It didn’t care what made sense or what was deserved. It barely had to read case files or prison records or moral philosophy. It just… endured.

You touched his face with shaking fingers. His eyes closed instantly. You brushed the dried blood away with your thumb.

You leaned in first. Maybe you meant only to press your forehead to his, or you had only meant to sync his breath to his.

But when you felt his breath on yours, you couldn’t help but kiss him.

Dex made a surprised little sound, caught off-guard.

Soon enough, his hand tightened in your hair and he kissed you back. It was desperate and clumsy with relief, his mouth opening against yours as he couldn’t believe you were letting him have you like this again.

You grabbed at him harder, morals be damned.

He shifted closer immediately, angling his body toward yours with one knee pressing into the mattress. His hand slid to your waist through the old shirt.

He was careful, even when you could tell he was losing control. Fuuuuck.

Dex, who had broken into your apartment, tracked you, killed for you, covered up a triple homicide for you, still needed to know that you wanted him as much as he wanted you.

At this point, his lips were split. You tasted blood and yet didn’t pull away. You kissed him until the room blurred into a void. And when you pulled back, you only did it because you had to breathe. Still you didn’t pull back far.

“I… I don’t know what I’m doing,” you whispered.

He had no answer to that.

You were doing this against your better judgement, against every red flag that had been waved to warn you. But in the end, you were doing it anyway.

“You’re a fucking criminal,” you said, as if thinking out loud. Dex saw it exactly for what it was: you, trying to talk yourself out of this, and failing miserably. Still, you continued, “you were the one who told me once that they’re never reasonable.”

In that moment, you saw the memory pass through him. He remembered it as vividly as you: that first proper meeting on the fifth floor of an abandoned building. You were both much younger then, much more naive in what the world would eventually offer to the two of you.

His hand slid up to the side of your neck, finding your artery and pressing his palms there.

“We’re all people here,” he said.

Oh.

You were just a person. You were just human.

You could not be reduced to a principle or a badge anymore, not when you were willingly staying in the bed of the horrible man you loved, wearing his shirt, unable to regret what you had done to keep him alive. And maybe because you were human, it wasn’t your fault that you could not resist him.

So, this time, when you kissed him again, you kissed him with a genuine smile.

—end.

Note: these are the five songs I listened to over and over again while writing this!

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