a few friends had gathered to celebrate a mutual friend’s engagement, and of course, to fawn over the giant rock sitting pretty on her left hand.
“it was the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen,” she says, eyes misting up. “flowers everywhere. candlelit dinner on this beautiful terrace. he even hired a string quartet.”
everyone awws at once.
you twist your own ring around your finger.
“you’ll never believe what james did for me!” someone else says, and like it always does when you all get together, it becomes less of a conversation and more of a contest.
they all take turns gushing over their partners and all the grand, romantic gestures that have happened recently, each story somehow bigger than the last. flowers. surprise trips. hotel rooms covered in rose petals. tickets to shows they had only mentioned wanting to see once.
all in some absurd, glittering attempt to prove who is adored more.
they all turn to you.
what had you and simon been up to recently?
you swallow.
the last date the two of you had been on had been watching a movie on Netflix, takeout and wine littering your coffee table, your legs thrown over his lap while he rubbed absent circles into your ankle.
it had been nice.
it had been normal.
but at this table, normal feels embarrassingly small.
“when you’ve been together so long, and with his schedule, it’s hard, y’know, to find those moments—”
another friend waves her hand, not unkindly, but ready to move away from what clearly wasn’t going to be an interesting enough story.
“that’s why you have to find those moments. what has he done for you lately? like for example, jack just planned this entire weekend getaway for us after my boss had been such an asshole and it was so romantic. he bought us tickets to—”
her voice begins to fade into the background.
you look down at your ring again.
it’s not that you think simon doesn’t love you.
of course he loves you.
he loves with the weight of his hand at the small of your back in crowded rooms. he loves with the way he always sleeps closest to the door. he loves with the way he notices when you are too tired to eat and sets something in front of you without asking. he loves with the way he comes home half-dead and still checks the locks, the windows, the thermostat, anything that might touch you before it touches him.
but sitting there, surrounded by candlelit dinners and surprise weekends away, a different question curls itself beneath your ribs.
does he still care?
you had already known what you’d signed up for when starting this relationship. simon was never one for giant declarations of love or grand, pretty spectacles. he didn’t perform affection well. never had.
hell, you couldn’t even remember the last time he’d brought you flowers or planned a proper date.
you shuffle in your seat.
“that’s really sweet,” you sigh.
rugby playing on the tv is what greets you, simon fully settled on the couch, a beer in hand.
his head lifts as soon as he hears your key in the door, shoulders falling even more relaxed at the sound of your footsteps entering the house.
usually, that would be your cue.
you’d toe your shoes off by the door, wander straight to the couch, and drop yourself onto him like it was the most perfect fit. he’d grunt like you’d knocked the air out of him, even though you both knew he could carry you around the house with one arm if he wanted to.
you’d recount whatever pointless gossip had been fed to you that morning, and he’d pretend not to be listening while remembering all of it.
instead, you busy yourself with the mail in the kitchen.
simon notices.
because of course he does.
you try the sink next, if only to give your hands something to do.
the tap sticks.
you yank it harder, and when nothing comes out but a high-pitched wheeze, you let out a frustrated groan.
simon is behind you before you can even turn around.
“probably clogged,” he says.
you sigh.
“i can call a plumber tomorrow.” then, before you can talk yourself out of it, you turn to face him. “we should do something tonight.”
his head tilts.
“we are,” he says, voice low and rough with confusion. “watching that new movie you wanted to see.”
you make a small noise under your breath.
his eyes flicker from the sink to you.
“no, si. i mean get dressed up. go out.” you swallow around the embarrassment already forming. “a real date.”
“why?”
your stomach lurches.
you know him. know he doesn’t mean it with any malice or cruelty.
but after an entire morning of listening to women talk about being chosen loudly, extravagantly, beautifully, that one word lands like proof.
why would he need to?
why would he think to?
why would he care to?
why would you ask for more when this is what you agreed to?
“forget it,” you say quickly, already stepping away. “i have a bit of a headache. ’m going to take a nap.”
simon says your name, but you don’t turn around.
the clanking of metal banging against each other is what wakes you.
for a moment, you don’t move.
you just lie there, blinking at the dim light of your bedroom, listening to the low metallic scrape from somewhere down the hall. the house is quiet around it, warm with evening, the television now turned down low enough that you can barely hear the commentator’s voice.
another clank.
a muttered curse.
you rub at your eyes and make your way to the kitchen.
simon has wedged himself inside the cabinet beneath the sink, broad shoulders barely fitting in the cramped space, one arm braced against the floor while the other reaches up into the mess of pipes above him.
“si?”
he grunts, focused on giving the valve one final screw and your gaze follows down to the toolbox lying next to his hip.
“line was damaged,” he says from under the sink. “it’ll need replacing proper, but i’ve got it for now. try it.”
wordlessly, you step to the sink and lift the handle.
water rushes out, hot and clear.
for some reason, it makes your eyes burn.
simon shifts, dragging himself out from under the cabinet with a quiet exhale. he sits back on his heels and looks up at you from the floor, forearms smudged, hair mussed, expression unreadable except for the little crease between his brows.
“i told you i could call a plumber,” you say.
he shrugs.
“got me right here, don’t you? i don’t mind.”
your chest tightens.
because it was never going to be flowers. it was never going to be candlelit dinners. it was never going to be a string quartet playing underneath a perfect night.
it was always going to be simon, sitting on your kitchen floor with a wrench in his hand, looking at you like the solution to a problem is obvious because he’s already there.
you sit down at your kitchen table, eyes already watering from overwhelm, when a memory comes so quickly it almost embarrasses you.
you, curled on the couch with him months ago with your laptop open, showing him a table from architectural digest with the sigh that you do when you’ve found something you absolutely loved.
“look at this, simon. isn’t it perfect?”
he had just hummed as you continued scrolling before you start laughing.
“absolutely not. who spends five thousand dollars on a table?”
simon hadn’t said much at the time. he rarely did when something lodged itself somewhere deep in his mind. continued stroking your hair, looked at the screen for a second longer than necessary, and went back to whatever match had been playing on the tv.
three weeks later, there had been lumber in the garage.
then sketches.
then sawdust tracked through the hallway.
then simon, scowling and cursing at a video tutorial, rewinding the same twenty seconds over and over until he understood the joint he wanted to make.
you’d laughed then.
you remember that, too.
you remember standing in the garage while he sanded the surface smooth, remember telling him he was insane, remember him saying it wasn’t that hard with all the grim seriousness of a man who had absolutely made it hard.
you remember the first night you ate dinner at it.
you remember how pleased he’d looked when you wouldn’t stop touching the grain.
you remember tearing up at the effort before sinking to your knees beneath that very table and thanking him so thoroughly that, to this day, he can’t sit at the damn thing for too long without his eyes darkening and his pants growing tight.
your eyes move across the room.
towards the cabinets he sanded down because you said the old ones made the kitchen feel too dark.
the backsplash he learned to tile because you had paused too long on a photo of handmade ceramic.
the wall he knocked through because you hated how boxed-in the room felt.
the bedroom he painted three times because the first two colors looked different once they dried, and he had only sighed, changed shirts, and opened another tin.
a house that had been perfectly fine when you bought it, just never quite yours, until simon got it in his head that he could make it so.
your heartbeat quickens.
the whole morning suddenly feels absurd in a way that makes your chest ache.
his gaze lands heavy as he watches every expression form across your face.
“you wanna tell me what got you in a mood earlier?” he asks.
his voice is even, but his hand drums once against his thigh.
your six-foot-four lieutenant of a husband, nervous at the thought of upsetting you.
you shake your head at first
then stop.
because no, that isn’t fair either.
he does love you. he loves you in fixed pipes and sanded wood and walls torn down to let in more light. he loves you in the things he can touch, carry, mend, build. he loves you so steadily that it has become the floor beneath your feet.
but you still want flowers sometimes.
you still want to be asked to put on a dress.
you still want him to look at you across a dinner table he did not build and make you feel, just for an evening, like loving you is not only something he maintains but something he celebrates.
“i know you care about me,” you say quietly.
his brow furrows.
“never said you didn’t.”
simon stills.
“i know that,” you repeat, softer this time, because you do. God, you do. “I just… I think I need more sometimes.”
something shifts in his face.
“more,” he repeats.
you huff a laugh, embarrassed now. “not more than this.”
your hand moves over the table again and his eyes follow the movement.
“just more…” You search for the words, then give up on making them perfect. “more on purpose, maybe. dinner. flowers. you telling me to get dressed because you made plans. stupid things.”
“they’re not stupid.” he immediately corrects you, firm and like he’s already offended on your behalf.
you look up at him and he pushes himself off of the floor.
you watch him stand, slow and heavy, wiping his hands on a rag before setting it aside. he comes toward you with that careful, deliberate look that always makes your stomach dip, like every bit of his attention has narrowed down to one target.
you.
“friday,” he says.
you blink. “friday?”
“dinner.” his gaze drops over you, not subtle in the slightest. “wear somethin’ nice.”
despite yourself, you laugh, small and wet in disbelief at how easy it is with him.
simon’s hand comes up, thumb brushing beneath your eye before a tear can fall.
“are you asking me on a date, riley?”
his mouth twitches.
“seems like i am.”
you look down at the table, at the careful seams, the polished wood, the impossible thing he made with his own two hands because you wanted it and he saw no reason you shouldn’t have it.
then back at him.
“good,” you say, standing slowly. “and since you fixed the sink…”
simon’s eyes darken.
you take one step toward him, then another, until your fingers catch in the waistband of his jeans and tug him close.
his hand finds the edge of the table behind you.
your table.
his eyes flick down to it, and whatever memory crosses his mind makes his jaw tighten.
you smile.
“careful,” you murmur. “you look a little proud of yourself.”
his hand settles heavy at your waist, lifting you to rest on the edge.
summary: after a break-in leaves your apartment unsafe, König insists you stay with him. what begins as one night under the same roof slowly becomes something neither of you can ignore.
pairing: könig x reader
word count: 5,017 words
themes: dark romance • gothic atmosphere • aftermath of violence • neighbour König • emotional slow burn • yearning threaded with dread • devotion mistaken for damnation • restraint and release • obsession softened by tenderness • sacred intimacy • body as sanctuary • grief for the life left behind • "I'll keep you safe" • religious imagery • healing through love • home as refuge • explicit intimacy • 18+ • slight mask kink
author's note: this is so blerg. but i can't get him out of my head. as always, listen to ethel cain while reading this <3 also can't get josh from lights out of my head so idk if thats where the mask thing came from k byeee
König woke to a scream.
Not slowly, not with the dull confusion of an ordinary man who was dragged unwillingly from sleep, but all at once, every nerve in his body snapping awake before his mind had decided where he was. For one suspended second there was only darkness, the faint silver of rain against the bedroom window and the low hiss of the radiator beneath it.
Then the sound came again—muffled this time, strangled somewhere behind a wall—and instinct finished what consciousness had begun.
He was already out of bed.
His hand reached automatically toward the bedside table, searching for a weapon that had not been there in years. His fingers found only the folded black balaclava, placed precisely where he always left it, and he dragged it over his head as he crossed the room. The fabric settled over his face with the familiarity of skin. There had been a time when he had worn it because anonymity was useful, because a man became something else when his features disappeared and all that remained were his eyes. Now he wore it because being seen without it felt more naked than undressing.
Another crash sounded from across the hall.
Wood splitting.
A man swearing.
Then your voice, sharp with panic. “Get away from me.”
Something inside König went silent.
Not calm, calm was human. This was the absolute stillness of an animal lowering itself into the grass before it struck.
“Liebling,” he breathed, though there was no possibility you could hear him through the wall.
He opened his apartment door.
The corridor beyond was narrow and dim, lit only by the jaundiced bulb near the stairs. Your door stood partly open, though not because you had invited anyone inside. The frame had given way around the lock, splintered wood hanging from the wall in pale strips. A crowbar lay near the threshold and one of your shoes had been knocked into the hallway.
The man inside your apartment had his back to König.
He was average in every way that mattered—average height, average build, the kind of man who had probably spent his whole life mistaking women’s fear for proof of his own power. He had one hand twisted into the sleeve of your shirt and the other raised in warning while you fought to pull away from him.
“Stop moving,” he snapped. “I said stop.”
You struck at him with your free hand.
It was a poor blow, clumsy with terror, but it caught the edge of his cheek. His expression changed instantly and whatever he had come there to steal became secondary to the humiliation of being resisted.
“You little—”
The floor creaked behind him.
The man turned.
At first he looked irritated, then his gaze travelled upward.
And upward.
The corridor seemed to contract around König’s body. He stood barefoot in black sweatpants and a dark shirt, shoulders so broad they nearly filled the doorway behind him. At over two metres tall, he had grown accustomed to making rooms feel inadequate, but in that cramped hallway his size became something obscene. The ceiling seemed to lower over his head and the walls appeared to close behind him, sealing the only way out.
The balaclava erased his face completely.
There was no mouth to reason with and no expression from which to measure mercy. Only two pale eyes remained, fixed without blinking on the hand gripping you.
He looked less like a neighbour awakened by noise and more like the thing the noise had summoned.
The intruder released your sleeve.
“What the fuck?”
König said nothing.
He stepped inside.
One step. Slow and measured.
The man stumbled backward.
There was something deeply wrong about the quietness of him. A man of König’s size should have moved heavily. He should have announced himself in groaning floorboards and laboured breath. Instead, he crossed the apartment with the silence of something that had spent years approaching sleeping men without waking them.
“Stay back,” the intruder warned.
König’s gaze moved briefly to you.
You stood beside the kitchen counter in a thin sleep shirt and bare feet, one hand pressed against your throat. There was a red mark around your wrist where the man had held you, and a thin line of blood at your temple.
You were alive.
But you had been touched.
The distinction mattered terribly.
“I’m here, Schatz,” König said, and the tenderness of the words was made monstrous by the way he continued staring at the intruder. “Look at me. Not him.”
Your eyes found his.
“That’s it,” he murmured. “Keep looking at me, mein Herz.”
The intruder reached down for the crowbar.
König crossed the room before the man’s fingers touched it.
The years of violence had taught him that speed was not frantic. Real speed was economical, that there was no wasted movement, no flourish, and no warning. One moment the man was bending toward the floor and the next König’s hand had closed around the back of his jacket, gathering fabric and flesh together in a grip so complete the man’s breath left him before his feet did.
König lifted him.
A grown man came off the ground as effortlessly as if gravity had chosen not to apply in König’s presence.
“What—wait—”
König drove him into the wall easily.
The plaster cracked outward behind the man’s shoulders and a framed print fell and shattered. Somewhere in the apartment your cat hissed, but König barely registered the sound.
The intruder clawed at his wrist.
König’s arm did not tremble.
It was not simply that he was stronger, strength implied a contest, but that this was something else entirely. The difference between them was so complete that the man’s resistance became embarrassing, the frantic kicking of an insect caught beneath a glass.
“You broke into her home,” König said.
His voice was quiet beneath the balaclava, almost gentle.
That was what finally broke the man’s nerve.
“I didn’t—”
“You put your hands on her.”
“Listen, man—”
König slammed him into the wall a second time.
“I am listening.”
The bulb above them flickered and for half a second König disappeared into darkness, and when the light returned he seemed to have moved closer without crossing the space between them.
The man began to choke.
He was beginning to realize that whatever rules governed ordinary violence did not apply here. There would be no shouting match, no exchange of threats, no opportunity to run while anger made the larger man careless. König was not angry in any recognizable way. He was attentive, deliberate and horribly present.
“Please,” the man whispered.
König tilted his head.
“You did not stop when she said that.”
Then, he threw him.
___
Later, when König caught you before your knees struck the floor, the violence vanished from him so suddenly it might never have existed.
One moment he had been kneeling over a ruined man with blood soaked into the fabric of his shirt and pants; the next his arm was around your waist, holding you with such restraint that even his fingertips seemed afraid of leaving another mark on you.
“I’ve got you, Liebling.”
“I can stand.”
“No.”
“König—”
“No, mein Herz.” His voice dropped until it was meant only for you. “You have been brave enough. Let me carry you now.”
He slipped one arm beneath your knees and the other behind your back. Your body left the floor without effort. There was no grunt of exertion, no need for him to adjust his grip. He simply rose, unfolding to his full, impossible height with you held securely against his chest.
Your cat brushed against König's boot, purring quietly before following a step behind him.
König glanced down briefly. "Persistent."
"So is he."
His eyes lifted to yours.
"Let's go."
____
When the officer told him to put you down, König’s arms tightened almost imperceptibly around you.
“Sir,” the officer repeated, his hand hovering near his holster, “put the woman down.”
König looked at him.
The officer was not a small man, but beneath König’s gaze he seemed to become aware of every vulnerable part of his own body. His throat, his wrists, the unprotected space beneath his ribs.
“She cannot stand,” König said.
“We have paramedics coming.”
“Then they can examine her inside.”
“You don’t give the orders here.”
König took one slow step forward and the officer’s hand closed around the grip of his weapon.
You felt the change move through König’s body. Not tension, but readiness. Beneath your cheek, his heartbeat remained unnervingly slow.
“König,” you whispered.
His eyes lowered to yours at once.
“Please.”
That single word did what the officer’s weapon could not and König stepped back.
“Of course, Liebling.”
The officer stared at you, then at the giant masked man who had obeyed you without hesitation and something like unease crossed his face.
Not because König was out of control.
Because he clearly was not, but because everyone in the corridor had just learned who controlled him.
____
The couch was comfortable.
More comfortable than you had expected, actually. König had argued against it the moment you insisted, standing in the middle of the living room like a dark, immovable monument while you pointed out the obvious.
You fit on the couch.
He did not.
Even sitting, his knees nearly reached the low table in front of it, and the thought of all six-foot-ten of him folded awkwardly beneath a blanket had been enough to make the decision for both of you. He had protested anyway, of course, his voice low and stubborn behind the balaclava, but you had refused to let the man who had already thrown himself through your front door and nearly beaten someone to death for you spend the rest of the night twisted painfully across a sofa half his size.
Eventually, he had given in.
Reluctantly.
Now, lying beneath one of his blankets with your cat curled against the bend of your knees, you almost regretted winning.
The fabric smelled like him.
Clean soap, something earthy, and the faint trace of gunpowder that seemed to cling to him no matter how many times he showered. It should have been comforting. Instead, it made you painfully aware that he was only down the hall, behind a half-closed door, separated from you by a few metres and every feeling neither of you had dared to name.
You stared at the ceiling until your eyes began to burn and the ache between your legs only spread hotter.
It was no use.
You shouldn't have been thinking about him like this, not after everything that had happened. But every time you closed your eyes, you saw him standing between you and the man who had broken into your home. You remembered how effortlessly he'd lifted you into his arms, how easily he'd carried you to safety, and the memory sent a slow wave of heat through your body that you couldn't bring yourself to fight.
Carefully, you eased your legs out from beneath the cat and stood. He lifted his head, blinked at you once, then tucked his nose beneath his paw and went back to sleep.
The hallway was dark, lit only by the weak silver of rain slipping through the windows. You moved quietly, though you knew it was pointless. König seemed to hear everything. A shift in breathing, the smallest catch of fabric, the soft press of bare feet against hardwood.
His bedroom door was open.
You paused outside it.
He was awake.
Of course he was.
König sat against the headboard with one knee drawn beneath the blanket, a book open in one hand and the lamp beside him casting a low, amber glow across the room. He had changed into a black T-shirt and loose sweatpants, but the balaclava remained in place like it always did.
The moment your shadow crossed the doorway, his head lifted and the book closed immediately.
“What’s wrong?”
There was no sleep in his voice. Only a quiet, instant concern that settled over you more completely than any blanket could have.
You curled your fingers against the doorframe. “Nothing.”
His eyes narrowed slightly at your unconvincing answer, and both of you knew it.
“I can’t sleep,” you admitted.
Something in his shoulders loosened, though not entirely. “Come here.”
The words came so quickly that for a second you wondered whether he had been waiting for you.
You looked at the bed, then back at him. It was large, made larger still by how little space he seemed to occupy despite the impossible breadth of him. He had kept himself confined to one side, as though some part of him had already imagined making room.
“König—”
“Liebling.” His voice softened. “Come here.”
That was all it took.
You crossed the room and slid beneath the blanket, keeping a careful stretch of mattress between you. The bed dipped beneath your weight, barely noticeable compared to the deep pull of his body beside yours.
König watched you settle.
Then he looked at the space between you.
“You can come closer.”
Heat climbed into your face despite the coolness of the room. “I’m fine here.”
“You came into my room because you couldn’t sleep.”
“That doesn’t mean I need to be on top of you.”
A pause.
“No,” he said, quieter now. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
Something in the way he said it made your stomach twist. You turned onto your side, facing him. “Were you reading?”
“Trying to.”
“You were waiting.”
His eyes shifted back to yours, but he did not bother denying it.
The silence that followed was different from the ones before. It was no longer empty. It felt full to the point of breaking, crowded with the weight of everything that had happened and everything that had nearly happened with it.
König set the book on the nightstand.
“I heard you moving around out there,” he said.
“You could have told me to come in.”
“I wanted you to choose it.” The words settled somewhere deep in your chest.
Outside, rain dragged slowly down the glass. Inside, the room felt too warm.
You moved closer before you could think better of it, not enough to touch him, but enough that the distance between you no longer felt deliberate.
König went still.
His breathing changed. Barely, but you noticed.
“You look at me like that,” he said after a moment, “and then you wonder why I cannot sleep.”
Your pulse fluttered. “Like what?”
“Like you do not know what it does to me.”
His voice was rougher now, stripped of the careful steadiness he usually held onto so tightly.
You swallowed. “What does it do to you?”
For a long moment, he only stared.
The mask hid almost everything, but his eyes had never learned how to lie to you. Not when he was angry, not when he was frightened and certainly not now, when they dragged over your face with a hunger so controlled it became more intense for all the restraint wrapped around it.
“It makes me want things I have spent a very long time trying not to want.”
Your breath caught.
“König…”
“I have been careful with you.” His hand shifted against the blanket, fingers curling into the fabric. “More careful than you know.”
You looked down at the movement, at the tension running through his knuckles.
“Why?”
A humourless breath left him. “Because once I start touching you, I do not think I will want to stop.”
The room seemed to narrow around you.
He turned his head away, as though the confession had cost him something.
“I have imagined it too many times,” he continued, each word quieter than the last. “What you would feel like beneath my hands. What sounds you would make if I touched you properly. How long I could keep you there before you forgot everything except me.”
Your whole body went warm.
He looked back at you then, eyes sharpening as if searching for any sign that he had gone too far.
“I should not be telling you this.”
“Why not?”
“Because tonight frightened you.”
“You didn’t.”
His gaze dropped.
“You saw what I did.”
“I saw what he did first.”
“That does not make me gentle.”
“No,” you whispered. “But you are with me.”
Something in him broke at that.
Not loudly, not completely, but just enough. His hand lifted, hovering near your face without touching. Even now, even after everything he had said, he waited.
You leaned into his palm.
The contact was immediate and careful. His hand cupped your cheek, warm and impossibly large, thumb resting just beneath your eye. The tenderness of it stood in brutal contrast to the memory of those same hands bloodied in your kitchen.
König’s breath left him slowly. “You should not make this so easy for me.”
“I’m not.”
“No?”
You shook your head against his palm, pressing a kiss to the calloused and rough skin. “You’ve been making it hard for both of us.”
For the first time that night, something almost like a smile softened his eyes before it disappeared again, swallowed by the weight of everything that had happened.
His thumb brushed lightly across your cheek, careful enough that you almost wondered if you'd imagined it.
"I've been trying very hard not to cross this line," he said quietly.
You searched his face, finding only your own reflection in his eyes.
"What line?"
"You."
The word barely rose above a whisper.
"You've been my neighbour for months." He let out a slow breath. "Every morning I'd hear your door before mine. Every evening I'd wonder if you'd made it home safely. I told myself it was nothing."
His gaze drifted away for a moment.
"It stopped being nothing a long time ago."
Your heart stumbled. "And tonight..." His jaw tightened beneath the balaclava. "When I heard you scream..."
He didn't finish the sentence, not that he had to.
"I thought I was too late."
The confession settled heavily between you. Before you could stop yourself, you closed the distance without thinking, your hand finding his where it rested on the blanket.
His fingers twitched beneath yours but didn't move.
"You weren't," you whispered.
"No."
"You found me."
His eyes closed briefly, as though hearing those words eased something that had been holding him together by sheer force of will. When he looked at you again, the guardedness he'd worn since carrying you out of your apartment had finally begun to crack.
"I don't want anything from you tonight," he said. "Not an answer. Not an explanation."
His thumb turned beneath your hand, carefully lacing your fingers together.
"I just needed to know you were alive."
Emotion tightened your throat.
"I am."
"I know."
His voice was impossibly gentle. "I've been repeating that to myself for the last two hours."
Silence settled between you again, softer this time and you shifted a little closer, until your shoulder rested against his arm. He looked down at the point where you touched, then back at you.
"Is this alright?" he asked.
You nodded. "It's more than alright."
Only then did he lift his hand to your face again, resting it lightly against your cheek as though he was still afraid you might disappear before moving down to cup your jaw.
You moved closer again, until your knee brushed his beneath the blanket and König’s fingers tightened lightly at your jaw.
“Liebling.” The warning in his voice was thin.
His eyes searched yours before the words that broke his composure tumbled from your mouth.
“Touch me.”
The air shifted and for one suspended second, neither of you moved.
Then König’s hand slid from your jaw to the side of your neck, his palm covering nearly all of it. His thumb rested beneath your jaw, feeling the frantic beat of your pulse. He drew you closer slowly, giving you every opportunity to pull away.
You did not.
His forehead pressed against yours, the fabric of the balaclava rough against your skin.
“Tell me if I frighten you.”
“You don’t.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“You don’t frighten me.”
His eyes closed.
It was the closest thing to relief you had ever seen from him.
His other hand found your waist beneath the blanket, settling there with such restraint that it almost hurt. He held you as though he had imagined this exact moment so many times that reality had become something sacred, something too fragile to rush.
“I want to touch every part of you,” he murmured. “I want to learn what you like. I want to know what you sound like when you cum.”
Your fingers curled into the front of his shirt.
“König…”
Your fingers caught the front of his shirt, tugging him toward you as you swung one leg over his lap. König's hands found your hips almost instantly, steady and impossibly warm as he guided you the rest of the way until you were settled against him. From where he sat, he had to tilt his head back to meet your eyes, his chest rising and falling beneath your hands as he kept you securely in his lap.
"This is better than I have ever imagined." He whispered.
Your hand slid from his shoulder to the edge of his balaclava, your fingers catching the worn fabric between your thumb and forefinger. You held his gaze the entire time, giving him every opportunity to stop you.
He didn't.
Slowly, you folded the fabric just high enough to uncover his mouth.
His lips parted on a quiet breath, but there was no hesitation in his eyes. If anything, they darkened.
"So," he murmured, his voice lower than before, "this is what you've been thinking about."
Heat rushed to your face.
"I..."
A corner of his mouth lifted into the faintest hint of a smile.
"I was wondering how long it would take."
Your fingers were still resting against the fabric when his hand closed gently around your wrist. Not to stop you, just to keep it there.
"You should know something before you keep looking at me like that, Liebling."
Your pulse hammered beneath his fingertips.
"If you kiss me..."
He leaned in until only a breath separated the two of you.
"...I'm not going to pretend it doesn't mean anything."
You searched his eyes for even the smallest hint of doubt, but you found none.
"Kiss me," you whispered.
"I was planning to."
The words had barely left his mouth before he closed the distance.
His lips found yours with quiet certainty—unhurried, deliberate, as though he'd imagined this moment enough times to know exactly how he wanted it to happen. One hand settled firmly at your waist while the other remained around your wrist, his thumb brushing absently over your pulse as he held you there for a heartbeat longer before finally pulling back.
When he opened his eyes again, they hadn't left yours once.
"...There," he said, his voice rough with satisfaction. "I've wanted to do that for a very long time."
You moaned softly when he rolled his hips up against yours. Shit, you thought, there was no way. He felt impossibly big under you, but the thought of being spread open like that, cunt stretching around him, only made your panties even slicker.
There was no turning back now. The look in König's eyes made that abundantly clear.
With effortless strength, he shifted your weight beneath him until your back met the mattress. This close, there was no mistaking the heat of his cock pressed against your core. He didn't say a word—he didn't have to. His mouth found the curve of your neck as one hand settled against your hip.
"Are you going to let me take care of you now, Schatz?" he murmured against your skin.
"Yes," you breathed, the word barely more than a whisper.
He barely looked human like this.
His eyes were dark with restrained desire, the balaclava still concealing most of his face, leaving only his mouth exposed. His jaw was tense, one sharp canine catching his bottom lip as though he was holding himself back by sheer force of will.
The thin fabric of your sleep shirt disappeared in one swift motion, leaving your skin exposed to the cool night air. A shiver ran through you as his hand settled at your waist, his fingers catching the waistband of your underwear while his gaze roamed over you with quiet, unmistakable hunger.
"I need to see you, Liebling," he murmured, his voice rough. "I need to taste you."
A low, restrained sound rumbled in his chest before he settled between your parted legs, staring at your begging cunt with nothing but greed in his gaze.
"Scheiße."
Then his mouth found you with a hunger that stole the air from your lungs. He lingered there, relentless and unhurried all at once, as though he couldn't get enough of you, as though every second only left him wanting more. Your body trembled beneath him, your fingers twisting the sheets while he held you there with unwavering focus, utterly consumed by you.
"You are," he licked a stripe up your pussy, "trembling" He sucked on your clit, popping it from his mouth only to look up and witness just how fast you were falling apart.
The laugh that left your lips was humourless. I'm going to die, you thought, when he slid two fingers into you and began pumping them in and out while hooking them deep inside of you.
You barely had time to recognize you were going to come, your walls clenching around him, legs shaking on his shoulders.
"That's it," Oh God, he was going to talk you through it.
Tears welled in your eyes, almost burning as hot as the knot in your core was.
"Stay with me." He said against your spasaming pussy. "I've got you, Liebling. I'll catch you."
You came apart beneath him, a broken sob catching in your throat as you bit down hard enough on your lip to taste blood. The intensity left your head spinning, every coherent thought slipping away while he kept you firmly beneath him, completely at his mercy.
"You have no idea what you've unleashed," König growled.
In one swift motion, he pulled his shirt over his head before discarding the rest of his clothes without ever taking his eyes off you. The balaclava remained firmly in place, concealing everything but his mouth as pale moonlight carved sharp lines across his broad shoulders and powerful frame.
"Fuck," you gaped at him.
His cock stood tall, proud at the way it twitched when his eyes focused on your dripping cunt. Big was an understatement, he was massive.
When he settled over you, his forearms braced on either side of your head, holding you effortlessly beneath him, you realized there was nowhere else you'd rather be.
"Will it..." you stumbled awkwardly, "fit?"
A faint smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth, followed by a low, amused chuckle.
"I will make sure it fits, Liebling."
With one hand at the base of his cock, he pushed the head through your folds, collecting the remnants of your orgasm and slick before you felt him prodding at your entrance.
"Breathe," was all he said before he inched in.
You forgot how. Every muscle in your body locked tight as tension swept through you. A low groan escaped him, and he let his forehead fall against your shoulder, lingering there for a moment as he fought to steady his breathing.
"Schatz," he nearly begged. "I won't ask twice. Breathe."
You exhaled the breath you were holding, willing yourself to relax and he pushed further and deeper in. The stretch burned, but the fullness was otherworldly.
When he bottomed out, his eyes met yours again.
"I knew I'd fit here." His voice wrecked as he applied the slightest of pressure on your lower belly.
Then, his hips snapped against yours. A brutal pace that cause his headboard to knock against the wall with such force you thought you'd end up in the apartment next door.
But you couldn't bring yourself to care—not when König looked as though he was hanging on by the thinnest thread of self-control. A mix of English and German falling from his lips while his eyes were locked on where he disappeared inside of you.
"König," his name fell from your lips naturally and you noticed how his rhythm stuttered when you did.
He liked hearing his name.
So you spoke his name again.
And again.
Until it became less a name and more a prayer, whispered into the darkness like a hymn neither of you deserved to hear. Each repetition unraveled another thread of his restraint, until the man who had survived battlefields and bloodshed sounded as though he was pleading for a salvation only you could ever grant.
"I'm yours, tell me, Schtaz. Tell me I'm yours." He begged as his hips bore in and out of you at a bruising pace and fuck how could you deny him.
"I'm yours. All yours."
A raw, broken sound escaped him as the last of his composure gave way. He sank his teeth against the curve of your neck, holding you with a fierce, almost desperate tenderness, as though he feared that if he loosened his grip for even a moment, you might disappear.
His cum came leaking out of you almost immediately, coating your thighs and the sheets as he barely held himself up over you, breath fanning over your face.
He looked at you for a long time, saying nothing. Whatever storm had lived behind his eyes all night had finally settled into something far more dangerous—certainty. There was no hesitation left, no doubt, only the quiet acceptance of a man who had reached the end of one life and stepped willingly into another.
"Whatever I was before tonight died in your apartment," he said, his voice so soft it almost disappeared into the dark. "Everything that lives after this belongs to you."
“uh… why is sensei doing push-ups?” yuji asks, when he, nobara, and megumi enter the classroom.
satoru’s pushing himself up and down with one hand because, according to you, normal push-ups weren’t enough. but even then, he’s barely breaking a sweat. and he’s grinning, while you stand over him, watching with your arms crossed.
his uniform jacket is folded over the back of a chair, leaving him in his compression shirt, arm bulging and back tensing with each lift and fall of his body.
“i upset my-- hah beautiful, smart-- hah strong, gorgeous, perfect wife,” he pants, “punishment fits the crime.”
he really is right where he wants to be.
megumi doesn’t even bat an eye - this was the least unusual thing that you and satoru do. he slides into a chair with a sigh.
“how many does he have to do?”
“a hundred,” you say. satoru lifts his head to look up at you, mouth parted, little pink hearts in his eyes peering at you over the rim of his glasses. “he’s on seventy-two.”
his grin widens. “you know, this isn’t a challenge for me. why don’t you sit on my back, sweetheart?”
you crouch down in front of him and his eyes light up. “i know what you want, and you don’t deserve my touch.” you push his head down so he’s facing the floor again, and he grunts when you press extra weight, forcing his body down. “only twenty-three left. you can do it, my love.”
if his heart wasn’t beating fast enough before, it definitely was now. especially with the saccharine tone you used at the end of your sentence.
god, was he down bad.
“… call us when you’re done,” megumi says, already out of the classroom.
silly thought inspired by this video HAHA can you tell he makes me a little a lot insane
“you know my husband’s going to find me right?” you drawl with your chin resting on your cupped hand, which rested on your knee.
a pose much alike your beloved.
“and he won’t be haaappyy” you elongated your words clearly weighed down by boredom and also the shackles around your waist tied to the wall.
you’d been ambushed, caught off guard wandering outside of sukuna’s shrine, clearly past the waypoint he’d told you to stay in.
was it your fault the night sky was clearer away from the ominous aura of your husband’s residence?
“shut up, wretched woman!” your abductor shrieked, you couldn’t see his face, the blindfold obstructed any such view, however you flinched under his voice. not from the volume or fear but rather the unpleasantness of the sound.
you tapped your foot impatient, surely your husband had noticed your absence, why was he stalling?
the ropes had started to dig into your waist indicating how much time had past since you’d been misplaced.
your time was precious, you ought to have a word with him about his lack of regard for his poor wife!
“m-master we ought to sell her” one of the lackeys probably, spoke up. such a brilliant idea, you thought, your husband would have their heads for even the suggestion.
the sound of footsteps approached you with a gust of wind bringing such stench! you recoiled away from the presence, the man infront of you seized your chin, inspecting your face.
“hm, pretty, she’ll fetch a good price”
slash—
the piercing sound reverberated, your shoulders sagged with relief and recognition.
“tch.” a sound you knew all too well.
“took you long enough, my lord” you teased trying to hide your smile. sukuna was here.
“remove her blindfold”
you blink hard, the cloth now removed, eyes adjusting to the surroundings, some dark dungeon with low visibility, a few chains along the wall and your savior at the centre of it all.
the four-armed beast, your beloved husband.
you furrow your brows at uraume, waiting for them to untie you, but they don’t as if already instructed not to.
“careless woman, you find much humor acquainting yourself with trouble.” sukuna states, a teasing lilt to his voice.
“release me at once” you pout.
“i have started to turn gray from your antics” he continues, ignoring your request.
“my wedded lord,” you whine, “to care for one’s appearance.. is it not much beneath your likeness?”
“hmm, perhaps i am a changed man” he drops to his haunches infront of you, his much welcome manly musk invading your senses.
“consider me a changed woman too” you grin at him, waiting for him to inquire further.
his lower hands move forward to untie the ropes around your waist, his care with it showcasing such tenderness. his upper hand comes to caress your face, four eyes darting about checking for harm.
“hm?” he inquires.
“well, i don’t fear anything now” released from the shackles you rub your waist trying to soothe out the pain from being tied up all this time “because i know you’ll always find me”
a low chuckles escapes his lips, eyes glinting he gazes into yours and just as effortlessly his lower arms grab you by your legs.
lifted off the ground into his arms, you melt, easily pliable to his touch, his following words making you shudder:
“i’ll save you” said much heavier than before, a tone he reserved for your private chambers, as he carried you home.
firefly; to my fellow pittlings please imagine that last sentence by kuna in the same tone as “i’ll pay for it” by dr abbot (iykyk)
“sixeyeyn or rottensatoru? chat are you guys making a ship name? this was worse than last time…” 𓆩♡𓆪
suguru read the chat amused while he looked at the viewership on his stream increasing. why? because rottenyn and sixeyesatoru keep edging their fans on their “situationship” relationship thing that was going on, and the one and only streamer!satoru was there, in suguru’s stream.
suguru initially wanted to do a gameplay, but when he realized that he accidentally invited satoru prior, he realized he might as well profit off this situation his friend finds himself in.
“pay no mind,” streamer!satoru said. “they’ve done that in my tiktok and insta comments too.”
as much as he wanted to deny it and keep it cool in front of the chat, streamer!satoru had to keep his image—despite the fact that he dms you every night. he managed to get your number and play the occasional game pigeon, play some private 1v1 sessions, and even watch a movie on a discord call twice a week…however it would be preferable to do it in person, but you are just so considerate on getting clipped and taking to consideration streamer!satoru’s career. god you really were cool…
after sukuna’s streamer get-together, his feed went on fire due to the camera showing your interaction in the background. it got clipped all over social media and not to mention, people were now starting to pay attention to how satoru even interacts with your posts, always liking it in minutes and commenting “nonchalantly”.
and that…that was the best thing to have come out of the stream.
he didn’t want to admit it, but satoru loved the ship names spammed in the chat and even his fans coming up to him and asking about you. he got approached at a popmart store and clipped. then, his timeline went on fire, why? streamer!satoru said popmart was overrated; but who likes to open popmart figures? streamer!yn.
streamer!satoru couldn’t lie—he found it so funny when his fans asked you about him. because then he would come across clips of the stream on twitter and see how flustered you’d get, then give a response with a cute smile on your face. streamer!satoru loved sending those clips and teasing you.
“lmao he’s so invested in his phone i bet he’s texting yn. yeahhh i think so too.” suguru laughed, invested in the chat more than on his valorant session. “got any ship name ideas? how about sato-y/n? or maybe y/n-toru?”
he frowned. “shut up i’m buying something.” to which suguru leaned over to see. “a zimomo? hmmm interesting. what’dya gotta say about that, chat? personally, i think they’re fugly as shit but i know a certain someone really likes those…”
the ping! of the chat increased linearly, then suguru spoke again. “by the way, our special guest is coming soon. we can play like flee the facility or something.”
“who?” satoru asked, still scrolling on his phone for more trinkets to buy for your next 'unboxing stream'.
“dunno if you know them. but she should be—,” then the doorbell rang. “ah. she’s here.”
“she-?”— “get the door, satoru. i’m busy…”
satoru hummed, thinking that suguru got a streamer!yn of his own (but you’re totally wayyy better) and gasped when he opened the door. he sure as hell didn’t expect you..but he isn't inherently complaining about it either.
“oh! hey satoru!”
satoru froze, pouted, and let you in. “wait what the hell? i didn't know you were coming? why didn’t you text meeee? yn?”
you giggled and kissed his cheek—resulting in his face burning red like a tomato. “sorry toru, i’ll let you know next time. thanks for the sonny angels. i’ll be sure to shout you out next stream—,”
"toru, huh?" suguru’s gaming chair wheeled back and he cleared his throat. “guys, don’t forget that when you’re on stream, people can hear you. yeah. people have ears. get over here and let’s play flee the facility.”
once you and satoru pulled roblox up on your phones, suguru began laughing. you forgot that suguru was showing his screen so when viewers noticed the two matching roblox avatars next to suguru's customized one, the chat's ding-ing became more apparent.
“awh matching avatars? how cute.” he mocked.
it was safe to say that your entire feed went on fire with more possible ship names.
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if i were to make another part of this streamer series, what would you guys want to see? vnlinewnelbwlkq (lmao should i make jjk streamer university and add it into this or smt, i say as i'm watching this youtube video essay on how funny streamer university is)
After a tragic accident erased your memories, you no longer remember the man you married. Unfortunately for you, Ryomen Sukuna remembers everything. And he'll do whatever it takes to make you remember him too.
Everything was so much weird.
When you first opened your eyes, the world was a blur of harsh lights and a rhythmic, annoying beep that made your head throb. A crowd of people were hovering over your bed, their faces twisted into expressions of pure horror and desperation. It felt like they were looking at a ghost or maybe a god that had suddenly fallen from the sky. The moment you blinked and stared back at them with blank, unrecognizing eyes, the room dissolved into quiet, breathless weeping.
You were completely utterly lost. Who was the woman with the dark circles under her eyes calling herself Shoko? Why was she gripping your hand like her entire world was ending? You knew your own name y/n echoed clearly in the empty caverns of your mind, but beyond that single fact, there was only a vast, terrifying void. You understood the modern world. you knew what a smartphone was, you recognized the concept of Wi-Fi, and when you mumbled those details, the doctors in the room let out collective, gasping sighs of relief.
But the real shock came twenty minutes later.
The heavy door to the hospital room burst open with a violent slam. A man lunged inside like a madman, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. You had never seen anyone look like him. His hair was a soft, striking shade of pastel pink so pretty and unexpected that you wondered for a fleeting second if he had dyed it just to stand out. Dark, intricate tattoos mapped across his skin, curling around his sharp cheekbones and framing his eyes. And those eyes... they were a piercing, burning red, swirling with a volatile mixture of terrifying rage and profound, shattering sadness.
You just sat there in your oversized, faded blue hospital gown, looking small and fragile as your confused gaze met his. The man froze, roughly brushing a strand of pink hair out of his face. His clothes were covered in a layer of grey dust and dried grit, looking as though he had sprinted straight off a construction site the second he got the news.
"Fucking... God. Hey, princess... fuck, don't you ever scare me like that again" he breathed, his deep, gravelly voice cracking as he took two massive strides toward your bedside, staring down at you with a desperation that made the air feel heavy.
You shrank back into the pillows, your brow furrowing. Princess? Were you in some bizarre historical simulation? Did kings and horses still exist? No, the blinking medical monitors around you disproved that immediately.
"Mr. Sukuna, please. I need to speak with you in private for a moment" a woman in her mid forties interrupted, her expression incredibly grave as she stepped between you and the huge man. She glanced at the other people lingering by the door. There was a teenage boy, maybe sixteen, who had the exact same pink hair as the tattooed man, his face streaked with tears. Beside him stood another boy with unruly, spiky black hair and a dull, stoic expression that couldn't quite hide the anxiety in his eyes. At the doctor's quiet command, they all slowly filed out into the hallway.
Left alone for a moment, you stared at the stark white walls, the untouched glass of water on the bedside table, and the crushing, dull monotony of the room.
When the door clicked open again, the female physician returned, holding a thick medical chart. The tattooed man followed closely behind her. He tried to offer you a small, reassuring smile, but it looked incredibly strained on his rugged face. His crimson eyes locked onto you, tracking every breath you took as if you might literally vanish into thin air if he dared to look away for a single second.
"Hello, y/n. I am Dr. Jennifer" the woman said kindly, stepping up to the mattress. "Do you know why you were brought here today?"
You frowned, looking between her and the towering man. "No."
The syllable was short and hollow. Beside the doctor, Sukuna’s entire frame stiffened. His jaw clenched so hard a muscle feathered violently beneath his tattoos, his knuckles turning white as he balled his hands into fists.
"Right. But you do remember your name?" she pressed gently.
"Yes... y/n I am Y/N." you answered firmly. You knew the name belonged to you, even if the history attached to it was completely gone.
"And do you know where you are right now?"
"A hospital?"
"Correct" Dr. Jennifer nodded, opening the document in her hands. "Look, I am going to explain exactly what happened, and I need you to listen very carefully, alright?" You gave a small, hesitant nod. "You were in a severe accident yesterday evening. You were walking home from the local market when a car veered off the road and hit you. It is a miracle you walked away with minor physical injuries, but the trauma to your head has caused a severe case of retrograde amnesia. Honestly, it's a surprise you even remember your name right now."
You let out a quiet hum, your eyes drifting down to your own hands resting on the thin blanket. That was when you noticed it a slender, platinum band set with a brilliant, flawlessly cut diamond resting securely on your left ring finger. It looked incredibly expensive, classy, and entirely foreign
So you were married.
"Y/n" Dr. Jennifer’s voice pulled you from your thoughts. You snapped your head up to look at her. "This man standing beside me... he is your husband."
The doctor tilted her head toward the giant. He was massive easily over six feet of raw, intimidating muscle, his tattooed face giving him a terrifying, dangerous aura. Your very first instinctual thought was that this man looked incredibly scary.
Sukuna didn't say a word. He just stood there, letting you analyze him, before he offered you a tiny, incredibly vulnerable nod. You tilted your head, staring into his intense red eyes, desperately searching for a single spark of familiarity. Did I really marry this giant?
"His name is Ryomen Sukuna, and he is going to take care of you" the doctor continued, closing her chart. "For the next few weeks, you need to let your brain rest, but you also need to gently stimulate it to try and regain those lost memories. Spending time in a familiar environment, in your own home with your husband, is going to be the best medicine for you."
You nodded mutely. You didn't exactly have a choice. You were being handed over to a complete stranger who happened to hold a legal claim to your entire life.
"Alright then. I wish you a safe and speedy recovery" Dr. Jennifer said with a final, empathetic smile before slipping out of the room.
The heavy silence that followed was suffocating. Sukuna cleared his throat roughly, taking a few slow, tentative steps toward the edge of your bed. He moved with an immense amount of caution, as if he genuinely believed a sudden movement might break you into pieces. He pulled up the small plastic chair, sinking into it.
"Hey" he said softly. Even in a whisper, his voice was incredibly manly, deep, and rough.
"Hello" you replied shortly, your eyes tracking his hands.
To your surprise, his large, scarred fingers were trembling slightly as he fidgeted with them, refusing to meet your eyes. When he finally looked up, you realized the piercing red of his irises was completely glossy, swimming with unshed tears.
"Yo... you're getting discharged today" he choked out, taking a deep, ragged breath as if the mere act of speaking was causing him physical pain. "I'm going to go sign the paperwork, and then I'm taking you to... our house. I'm going to do whatever the fuck it takes to help you remember, princess."
You stared at his rugged, tattooed face for a long moment before letting out a soft, distant hum.
An hour later, you were sitting in the passenger seat of a sleek, black Jeep, The man Sukuna kept his left hand firmly on the steering wheel while his eyes flicked toward you every sixty seconds, his intense gaze making a nervous flutter erupt in your stomach.
You stared out the window, watching the city buildings, sprawling neighborhoods, and vibrant green trees blur past. Intrigued by the warm breeze, you raised your hand, pressing your palm gently against the glass as if you wanted to touch the passing leaves. Instantly, the window smoothly rolled down. Startled, you turned your head to find Sukuna adjusting the master controls, his eyes locked onto you with an unreadable warmth.
"Can I ask you something-" you murmured softly.
"Yes." The answer came incredibly fast, almost desperate. He was hanging on your every word, practically begging for you to speak to him.
"How... how did we meet?" you asked, leaning your elbow on the door frame as the wind whipped through your hair.
"We met in high school" he answered quickly, navigating a sharp turn onto a quiet, "We've been married for seven years."
"High school?" You tilted your head, a faint smile touching your lips as you extended your hand just slightly out into the rushing air. "Were we friends back then?"
"Careful" he commanded firmly, though there was no real heat in his voice. You obediently pulled your hand back inside. A faint, nostalgic softness crept into his red eyes as he looked ahead. "Friends? no. You could say we didn't liked eachother each other when we first met. You thought I was a loud, arrogant mannerless jerk and I thought you were a stubborn, bossy brat."
He smoothly pulled the Jeep into a long brick driveway, coming to a stop in front of a breathtaking, modern two story house. It was painted a crisp, elegant white with sleek charcoal-grey accents, boasting massive, floor to ceiling windows that caught the afternoon sun.
"This is...our house" Sukuna murmured, his voice dropping an octave. "We've been living here for about four years."
He killed the engine, threw his door open, and practically sprinted around the hood of the car to open your door before you could even reach for the handle. He extended a massive, tattooed hand toward you, his palm open and waiting. You stared at his hand, your eyes traveling up the thick muscles of his forearm, before you deliberately stepped down onto the driveway without taking it.
Sukuna’s hand froze in mid-air. You watched his fingers slowly curl back into a fist before he pulled his arm away, a flash of pure, agonizing heartbreak crossing his features before he quickly masked it with a stoic expression.
As your feet hit the pavement, you looked up at the towering structure, desperately begging your brain to spark even a single ounce of familiarity. Nothing came. But as you turned around, you caught a glimpse of the man standing beside you. He was on the absolute verge of tears. His chest was tight, his jaw locked as he stared at you. You were his entire world, his beautiful wife, and yet you were looking at him like he was a total stranger. He suddenly felt a wave of profound hatred for every single time he had ever been mean or stubborn with you in the past, even in jest. He just wanted his girl back. His sweet innocent girl.
"The house is beautiful" you murmured gently, walking toward the porch.
'The house.' Not our house. The detached wording made Sukuna’s jaw clench painfully.
"Of course it is. I built the damn thing" he muttered, following closely behind you.
It was your exact dream house. Years ago, back when you were just broke college students dating in a cramped apartment, you had traced a clumsy design on a napkin, telling him you wanted a modern white house with endless windows, three bedrooms, and a kitchen large enough for the two of you to bake and slow-dance together while listening to old jazz records. Sukuna had kept that napkin. The moment he made his fortune, he hired a crew but did the vast majority of the heavy structural work with his own two hands. He had gifted you the keys on your third wedding anniversary, and he could still vividly remember the way you had wept tears of joy, throwing your arms around his neck and kissing him until you were both breathless. He wanted that smile back. He would give anything just to have you look at him the way you used to.
You stepped inside, ignoring the heavy emotion rolling off him. Sukuna quickly gathered your small hospital bags and followed you into the foyer, shutting the door behind him.
Your eyes immediately gravitated toward the kitchen. It was vast, open, and undeniably stunning, featuring a massive quartz island and a huge sliding glass door that opened directly into a manicured backyard garden. The entire layout felt strangely perfect.
"Let me show you... around" Sukuna offered quietly.
He spent the next half hour guiding you through the corridors of what was supposed to be your life. But as he showed you the grand master bedroompointing out the side of the bed where you used to curl into his chest every single night your face remained entirely blank. You felt a twinge of heavy guilt pooling in your stomach. He showed you the living room, drawing your attention to a collection of large, breathtaking canvas paintings hanging on the walls.
"You painted those" Sukuna noted, a faint trace of pride in his rough voice. "You're a brilliant artist, princess."
You blinked in genuine surprise, looking down at your hands. "I drew these?" You were suprised, you don't even remember touching a brush in your life. But this is your new life. New start.
"Yeah." Sukuna stopped at the edge of the hallway, looking down at you with completely bloodshot eyes. He hadn't slept a single second since the hospital called him about your accident. All he wanted to do was wrap his massive arms around your waist, pull you flush against his chest, and bury his face in your hair until the nightmare ended. But he couldn't. "Look... you can sleep in the guest bedroom down the hall, or you can take our bedroom and I'll stay in the guest room. Whatever makes you feel comfortable. I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable you."
"Okay" you hummed softly.
His heart broke a little more at the compliant, distant tone. "I'll go start on some dinner, and then I'll get your medication ready. If you need a single damn thing, you just call out for me, alright? Your clothes are all in the dresser, undergarments in the top drawer, pajamas in the second..."
You nodded, offering him a polite murmur of thanks before retreating into the guest room. You changed into a simple, comfortable t-shirt and sweats. A little while later, his deep voice echoed up the stairs, announcing that dinner was ready. You walked down to the dining room, sitting at the large table like a polite houseguest waiting to be served.
"Do you need help?" Sukuna asked, carefully sliding a steaming bowl of homemade chicken soup and a large spoon toward you. You shook your head, grasping the utensil and taking a quiet sip. He sat across from you, his own bowl entirely untouched as he just stared at your face. "Y/n... you really don't remember a single damn thing about me?"
His voice cracked completely on the last word, the raw vulnerability of a ruthless man exposed right in front of you. You looked up, meeting his glossy red eyes.
"No... I don't. I'm really sorry" you whispered genuinely.
He let out a slow nod, swallowing the lump in his throat as he forced himself to look away. "Don't apologize. It's not your fault."
"Do I... do I have parents? Or friends?" you asked, a sudden curiosity about your own forgotten life bubbling up.
"Yeah. You have parents. Your father—"
"Where are they?" you interrupted quickly, leaning forward. "Do they know I was in an accident? Why aren't they here?"
"They haven't spoken to you in over seven years. Not since the day you married me" Sukuna said, his tone dropping into something cold and bitter.
"Why?"
"Your family is rich as fuck. Extremely strict, arrogant aristocrats" Sukuna explained, his red eyes locking back onto yours. "They completely forbade you from seeing me because I was just a rough, tattooed bastard from the wrong side of the tracks with a criminal record and a unstable future. They told you that if you walked out that door with me, you’d be cut off permanently."
You stared at him, a sudden spark of heat flaring in your chest. "Well, that's so stupid of them. It sounds like a good thing we don't talk to them then."
The sheer, unyielding loyalty in your voice made Sukuna’s lips twitch, a genuine, heartbreaking smile threatening to break through his stoic mask. Even with a wiped memory, his sweet wife still possessed that exact same fiery, protective spirit.
"Yeah" he chuckled hoarsely, letting out a long sigh. "You have an incredible best friend named Shoko. You two are both doctors. you work in the exact same surgical unit at the city hospital. We have a ton of mutual friends we met back in our high school days. And those kids at the hospital? The pink-haired teenager is my nephew, Yuji, and the dark-haired one is Megumi, our friend's kid. They practically worship the ground you walk on, princess. You love those brats to death."
"Can I see them?" you asked, a genuine smile finally breaking across your face.
"Of course. Whenever you want." he promised, his eyes tracking the way your lips curved.
Sukuna let out a sudden, rough snort, a wicked glint flashing in his eyes. "Old or not, woman... you're still completely breathtaking."
A deep, violent blush instantly stained your cheeks. You hadn't been around an attractive man or any man, for that matter in your conscious memory, and having this giant, dangerously handsome individual throw such a raw compliment at you made your heart do a chaotic somersault. You quickly looked down at your soup, missing the way his eyes softened at your reaction.
Over the next three weeks, the fragments of a life began to surround you, even if the puzzle pieces wouldn't quite lock into place.
Yuji and Megumi came over to the house constantly. Yuji spent hours enthusiastically teaching you how to make his signature protein shakes and weird jello molds, his loud laughter filling the quiet house, while Megumi sat nearby with his usual serious expression. But the moment you offered Megumi a soft, encouraging smile, his sharp features would instantly melt into something deeply tender. Yet, beneath their smiles, you could see the underlying sadness in their eyes every time you failed to remember a shared inside joke.
When Shoko finally visited, she broke down completely, throwing her arms around your neck and sobbing into your shoulder. It was a bizarre maybe stupid too, overwhelming feeling being fiercely loved by people you couldn't even remember and a heavy weight of guilt began to settle deep in your chest. You even met Toji, Megumi's father, a tall, stoic man who didn't say much but looked at you with a quiet, profound pity that made you realize just how broken your situation truly was.
And then, there was Sukuna.
Your husband spent every single day patiently guiding you through your routines, driving you past your old university, cooking your favorite meals, and trying every gentle trigger possible. But your mind remained a stubborn, locked vault. Sukuna was growing desperate furious and completely fucked up by the stagnation.
To make matters worse, just one week before the accident, you had playfully taken down every single one of your framed marriage photographs to rearrange the living room gallery wall, hiding them away in a "genius spot" that Sukuna had completely forgotten more like you didn't even told him. He had spent hours frantically tearing the house apart while you were out, searching for a single modern photo of the two of you together.
He was completely unraveling. He couldn't sleep. The woman he loved was sleeping in the room next to him, yet she looked at him with the polite, distant eyes of a stranger. He felt like a ghost haunting his own home. One evening, he sat alone in the dark kitchen and wept the third time he had ever cried in his entire life. The first had been tears of pure joy on your wedding day when he saw you walking the aisle. the second had been out of terror when the ER doctor told him a car had struck you. and now, he was crying simply because he missed his wife so damn much
His phone offered no help either. his gallery was filled entirely with candid photos he had taken of you you stepping out of the shower with a towel wrapped around your head, you laughing in a department store dressing room, or a hilarious picture of you biting into a raw lemon and making a completely disgusted face. He had no photos of the two of you together on his device, you had always been the one insisted on keeping the physical, printed albums. The only joint photos he could find were a few faded, wrinkled prints from your high school days, showing a younger, wilder version of himself wrapping his arms around you from behind while you laughed into the camera. When he showed them to you, you just stared at them blankly. It was killing him.
At the end of the third week, Sukuna was sitting heavily on the living room sofa, completely exhausted after another failed search through the house. He was mindlessly scrolling through the candid photos of you on his phone, a faint, melancholy smile touching his lips. His fingers traced your face on the photo, your bright smile. your bubbly laughter at his most unfunniset jokes, now all of that are vanished.
The heavy front door clicked open. Shoko had taken you out for an afternoon of shopping to get you out of the house, and she had just dropped you off at the curb. You stepped into the foyer, balancing several shopping bags in your arms.
Sukuna instantly locked his phone, shoving it into his pocket as he stood up, his red eyes drinking in the sight of you. "Had fun, princess?"
"Yes, I did. And thank you... for letting me use your credit card" you said softly, walking over to the coffee table and gently sliding the black card back toward him.
"You bought dresses?" he asked, pointing toward the bags. Honestly, he didn't give a single fuck about the money. you could have emptied his entire bank account and he would have gladly signed it away just to see you happy.
"I bought a few things..." You cleared your throat nervously, your fingers twisting together. "But... I actually bought something for you, too."
The words hit his chest like a physical blow. Even with her mind completely wiped, your beautiful, kind soul was still looking out for him. "Really?" he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. "Can I see it?"
You gave a small nod, walking over to the couch and tentatively sitting down right next to him. The close proximity made his heart start to hammer against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"I don't know if it's really your style, or if you'll even like it..." you mumbled bashfully, reaching into a small velvet pouch and pulling out a heavy, intricately braided silver bracelet studded with raw, brilliant red stones. "The color... it just immediately reminded me of you. Of your eyes."
You gently reached out, grasping his massive, calloused wrist to drape the metal over his skin. Oh God, if you only knew how fast his heart was racing beneath his chest. Your soft, warm fingers lingering against his pulse point was pure, exquisite torture.
"It looks incredible, Y/n. Thank you." he whispered, a genuine, breathtakingly soft smile spreading across his tattooed face as he looked down at the crimson stones.
"Thank you... for being so incredibly patient with me" you said quietly, looking up at him through your eyelashes.
Sukuna let out a long, ragged sigh, his hand hovering over yours for a fraction of a second before he pulled back. "I will always be patient with you, princess. Always."
You looked directly into his burning red eyes, and for the first time in three weeks, a warm, genuine smile broke across your face. Sukuna felt his breath hitch. he was entirely certain he was about to pass out from the sheer weight of his love for you.
"Can you stay right here for a bit? I need to go jump in the shower real quick. I'll be fast" he muttered hoarsely, his hand instinctively reaching out to gently ruffle your hair a comforting, domestic habit he had carefully maintained. You let out a soft chuckle at the gesture.
The moment his heavy footsteps disappeared up the stairs and the sound of running water echoed through the pipes, you stood up, wandering aimlessly around the quiet main floor. Your feet pulled you toward the small, cozy library nestled just off the living room. The walls were lined with hundreds of books some ancient leather volumes, others modern art textbooks. You pulled one off the shelf, flipping through the pages before sliding it back into place.
As you stepped back, your eyes caught a glimpse of something hidden on the absolute highest shelf, shoved far back into the shadows near the ceiling. It looked like a massive, heavy frame leaning flat against the back wall, obscured by a decorative ceramic vase. Intrigued, you stood on your tiptoes, stretching your arms up as high as they could go, blindly reaching for the top edge of the wooden frame.
Your fingers caught the molding, but as you pulled, the heavy ceramic vase shifted, losing its balance.
Crash!
The vase shattered against the hardwood floor with a deafening, echoing smash. Startled, you let out a sharp cry, stumbling backward as the massive hidden frame came tumbling down from the top shelf, striking the edge of the desk before landing flat on the rug. The backing of the frame split completely open upon impact, and a massive cascade of loose, glossy photographs erupted across the floor hundreds of them, scattering like playing cards across the room.
You gasped, placing a hand over your racing heart as you looked away from the broken pottery, your eyes drifting down to the sea of images covering the floor.
You froze.
Right at your feet lay a massive, professionally printed portrait. In the photograph, you were sitting securely on Sukuna's lap. You were wearing a breathtaking, flowing white lace wedding dress, holding a vibrant bouquet of sunflowers, and laughing so brightly your eyes were crinkled shut. Sukuna was clad in a sharp, tailored black tuxedo, his massive arms wrapped fiercely around your waist from behind, an absolutely massive, unbothered, triumphant grin plastered across his face.
Your breath hitched violently. You stumbled forward, falling to your knees as your hands frantically snatched up another photo from the pile. In this one, you were hoisted high up on Sukuna's broad shoulders at a crowded, flashing outdoor music festival; your mouth was wide open in a breathless scream of laughter, while his large hands were clamped firmly around your thighs to keep you safe, both of your faces painted with pure, unadulterated euphoria.
You grabbed a third photo, and the entire world stopped spinning. It was a quiet, intimate shot taken right in the backyard garden outside. You were sitting cross-legged on the green grass, wearing a simple summer dress with a soft, shy smile, while Sukuna’s heavy head was resting completely in your lap. He was looking up at you with an expression of such pure, unconditional adoration it made your soul ache, while your fingers were woven gently through his soft pink hair.
Pink hair.
The backyard.
The jazz music.
The napkin.
A sudden, violent explosion of memories ripped through the barriers of your mind. It wasn't a trickle; it was a catastrophic, roaring tidal wave. Seven years of laughter, fierce arguments, passionate late-night apologies, the smell of his skin, the exact weight of his body pressing you into the master mattress, the sound of his deep voice whispering "I've got you, princess" into the dark. It all hit your brain at once with the force of a freight train.
The sheer, overwhelming velocity of the memories made the room spin violently. Your vision blurred into a vortex of white light and crimson eyes. You let out a choked gasp, your strength entirely giving out as your body collapsed sideways onto the hardwood floor with a loud, heavy thud, the scattered photographs of your life pooling around your unconscious form.
When you finally opened your eyes again, the harsh glare of the ceiling lights was gone, replaced by the warm, dim ambiance of the living room. You were laying flat on the soft fabric of the sofa.
"She's waking up! Sukuna, look, her eyes are moving!" Yuji’s panicked, loud voice cut through the quiet room.
You blinked heavily, your vision slowly focusing. Megumi was standing right beside his cousin, his dark eyes wide and completely swimming with anxiety. Shoko was hovering over you, a small medical flashlight in her hand, her face pale as she checked your vitals.
But your heart didn't care about any of them. Your eyes frantically scanned the tight circle of people, instantly landing on the massive, tattooed man standing frozen at the foot of the couch. His pastel pink hair was damp from the shower, his chest heaving under a plain black t-shirt, and his face was a mask of pure, absolute terror.
As your eyes met his, a single, heavy tear spilled over your eyelid, tracing a hot path down your cheek. The vast, terrifying void in your mind was completely gone, replaced by the roaring, beautiful fire of your reality.
"Ryo..." you choked out, your voice a broken, breathless sob.
Sukuna froze, his entire frame visibly violently shuddering at the sound of the nickname the private, intimate name only you were ever allowed to call him.
Before anyone else could even blink, you threw yourself forward off the sofa cushions, completely ignoring the dull ache in your muscles. You lunged straight into his space, your arms wrapping fiercely around his massive neck. You buried your face in the crook of his collarbone, gripping the fabric of his shirt with a desperate, white-knuckled intensity as you pressed a hard, crying kiss directly against his tattooed jaw.
"I remember... us" you sobbed violently into his skin, your entire body trembling as the tears flowed freely. "I remember everything, Ryo... I remember you."
Sukuna’s mind completely blanked. For a single, breathless second, he couldn't even process the words. And then, a raw, ragged sound escaped his throat a mixture of a sob and a laugh. His massive, powerful arms came crashing down around your frame, pulling you so close against his chest you could barely breathe, lifting your knees entirely off the floor as he buried his face into the crook of your neck.
And there, in the middle of his living room, surrounded by his family and the scattered photographs of your love, Ryomen Sukuna closed his eyes and wept for the fourth time in his life.
"I fucking love you" he whispers
(not me me writing all night just for 36 like and one reblog😣🙏🏾)
first day, first lecture, actually. he stepped in late, and the only empty seat left was beside you. you both stared at the professor in pure, utterly confused silence, question marks probably floating on top of your heads as you tried to gather anything. after five minutes, you simply turned and asked him to let you pass so you could leave.
he grabbed his stuff, joining you. he asked if you wanted to grab coffee, and that’s how it all started.
three years later, you were the untouchable sukuna ryomen’s girlfriend. your relationship was private, no one knew any details (it wasn’t like anyone would dare to ask sukuna, especially with the way his resting face was a terrifying glare to everyone else) and you two preferred it that way.
no one knew the details. no one knew how sukuna was deeply and utterly smitten— the scowling, terrifying, muscular 6’4 man turning immediately into lovesick puppy for you. clingy, needy, obsessed, your guard dog of a boyfriend never ever let you doubt his love. he always made it clear, whether it was his arm’s wrapped around you every chance he got, or him spamming your phone whenever you weren’t around, using any excuse to talk to you, or the way he dropped everything for you, making it clear you were his first priority, or the way he listened intensely to every word that left your mouth and noticed everything about you— which showed when he referenced your words from months ago, or bought you gifts you didn’t even mention, or could tell you weren’t okay from a single glance.
it really was not a lie that sukuna ryomen loved you. he knew it. you knew it. his frat knew it. everyone that really knew sukuna knew he loved you.
which was why the break up broke you.
that night didn’t even seem real. he had ignored you for a total of three days, replying to your texts dryly, which was already odd. then, he showed to to your place in the middle of the night, jaw clenched, eye bags dark, like he hasn’t slept in days. he didn’t elaborate, didn’t explain— simply told you he was tired, that he couldn’t do this anymore, and walked away.
like he didn’t just ruin you. like you two weren’t discussing your shared future a few days ago. like you two hadn’t already agreed what stupid fucking roses you wanted at your wedding. like he hasn’t kissed you so softly just a few days ago, murmuring soft pleads for you to never leave him.
to make it worse, he didn’t disappear after. he attended your shared lectures as usual— sitting behind you, always behind you, like he needed to keep you in his vision. he left your notifications on, which you knew because he remained the first to view every story until you blocked him. he kept going to your favorite cafe beside campus (he didn’t even like their coffee) at the exact same time you always did, his sad eyes set on you, buying a single water bottle each time, until you stopped going. you even had to stop going to the library late at night, because he would always be there, blank notebooks open as he pathetically pretended to focus when his eyes wouldn’t leave you alone. even late at night, when you would scroll through your chats, you would see his bubble. tying. erasing. there.
it was worse, because it was obvious that he still loved you.
it made you want to scream, really. it would have been better if he just… pretended you didn’t exist. ignored you. blocked you first. flirted with girls in your vision. did anything to make you feel like he didn’t care anymore. like he didn’t give a fuck, so you could move on. so you wouldn’t get the stupid urge to show up to his place and ask him what the fuck his issue was. so you could hate him.
but again, unfortunately for you, sukuna was never good at hiding his love for you.
it was going to be okay, though. because sukuna already broke it up, and moving on was clearly the only good solution. it wasn’t like he will ever come back, anywa—
bzzz.
dilf420: bro. ur fucking bf is sulking and ruining my party. can you come pick his drunk ass up. ill pay u.
you blinked once at the notification, then twice, then immediately opened it. you really should have blocked the whole frat.
you: broke up. no longer my bf. also, ur broke.
toji replied immediately.
dilf420: idc that u two broke up he’s drunk and blabbering about missing his fucking wife come pick his ass up
you stared at the dm blankly, eyes staring at the words like it would disappear if you blinked.
his fucking wife.
your throat felt dry. heart physically hurting, like someone’s fingers were digging into the muscle and squeezing it the way sukuna used to squeeze your fingers before kissing each knuckle. it hurt, so much, your vision slowly blurring the longer you stared at the three words.
on the other side of the phone, sukuna was pressed against toji, shoving his face into the cracked screen, face flushed from the alcohol, lips almost pouting, hair messy from running his hands through it so many times. “is she answerin’?” he muttered, voice slurred. “my pretty wife, is she comin’?”
toji sighed. “nah, man. she left me on read. you’re so fucked.”
sukuna groaned, stumbling slightly before he was leaning on the wall, eyes shut in pure devastation. “she hates me. what if she doesn’t wanna get back?”
“…you showed up at three in the morning and broke up with her without giving her a reason, bro. on gojo’s soul, she does not want to get back.”
it was silent for a few seconds before a quiet sniffle echoed in the room, and toji’s head snapped to the untouchable, scary figure sliding down the wall, face buried into his hands, shoulders trembling. toji’s eyes widened briefly, but sukuna grunted, the sound shaky. “not a fucking word.”
the next monday, you were still recovering from toji’s dm as you slid into your morning, 8:30 am lecture. you were half-asleep, buried in sweatpants and a hoodie, hood up in an attempt to hide from the world. your eyes were drooping sleepily, head slowly slipping from where your head rested on your palm, the tip of your pen slowly seeping ink into the paper.
someone slides beside you, and you freeze. you knew that cologne. you bought that cologne.
you didn’t move a muscle, shoulders tense, eyes suddenly focused as they stared ahead. you could feel his gaze, his thigh pressing against yours in the annoyingly small seats. you could feel the heat from his skin, even from the thick fabric of your sweatpants.
…what the fuck was he doing?
your jaw clenched, before you took a quiet deep breath, convincing yourself he must have not looked properly when picking a seat. it takes a few minutes, but you’re finally able to focus back on your professor again, ignoring the way you could feel his gaze shifting to you ever few seconds.
“…i’m sorry.”
you sucked in a sharp, annoyed breath, gaze still ahead, fingers tightening around the pen in your grasp, eyes unamused. he slowly placed a cup on your desk— your favorite coffee, from your favorite cafe. you froze, and you could see him wincing from your peripheral vision.
“…give me a chance explain, please?”
you carefully pushed yourself up, grabbing your bag and notebook, and silently stepped out of the hall. outside, toji was standing, a sigh on his lips as he caught up with you despite how you only spared him an annoyed glare.
“he loves you, you know that.” toji murmured. “give him a chance to explain.”
“no.” you muttered. “he’s a coward who left me without an explanation. now he wants to give me one?”
toji grimaced. “that wasn’t his brightest moments, but… come on, he’s your sukuna.”
“he made it clear he’s not.”
that night, you were dragged to one of their parties, curtesy of gojo begging you to show with tears and snot running down his face, using a lame excuse about how everyone in the frat misses you. you didn’t buy it, but you had to stop the embarrassingly loud bawling boy on your doorstep.
now, you sat in their kitchen, perched on the counter, an overly sweet drink between your fingers, and a staring ex-boyfriend on the other side.
sukuna was sulking.
eyes set on you, lips pursed, arms crossed— he ignored everyone who stared at him just so he could keep his eyes on you. geto and nanami sighed as they passed, geto offering him a bottle casually, and sukuna grabbed it, eyes still on you before he tilted his head back and drowned half the bottle down, only stopping when nanami pulled it back while snapping about expensive liquor.
the thing about sukuna? he was a lightweight, and an emotional drunk. that usually manifested in a shorter temper when he wasn’t with you, and him being unbelievably clingy with you, and now, a few hours after gulping random drinks down?
it manifested in him dragging himself to stand in front of you, lips wobbling and eyes tearful, looking like a kicked puppy instead of the frat bro everyone was terrified off. “baby…”
you hated how your own heart clenched, fingers digging into your palm to prevent yourself from cooing at him and tugging him into your hold safely. you only narrowed your eyes at him, and his eyes glossed even more. he opened his mouth, probably to beg, only to halt dangerously.
you, unfortunately, knew him too well. you let out a loud groan, quickly jumping off and dragging him to an empty bathroom upstairs, shutting the door just in time for him to drop to his knees and empty his stomach out into the toilet. he let out a choked sob between retches, and you sighed, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, a hand slowly rubbing his back. “dumbass.”
“i miss you so much,” he immediately whimpered, eyes shut painfully. “i miss you so, so, much. please, angel, forgive me, please— i want you back, i need you back, ‘m a stupid son of a bitch for every breaking it off, i need you in my life, please—“
he was interrupted with another gag, and you sighed, resuming to rub his back as he continued, your own vision blurry, heart shattering at the broken sob he let out once he was done.
“breathe.” you murmured softly. “come on, kuna, breathe for me. you can do that, yeah?”
“no,” he choked out. “i can’t— can’t even breathe without you, baby. please, please, forgive me for being a dumb idiot, i need my wife back, please—“
“if you breathe now, and we can talk tomorrow.”
it was almost humorous how he immediately straightened up, red, watery eyes wide, nose red and cheeks flushed from the alcohol. you sighed, reaching over to wipe his tears away, and he let out a pathetic whine, immediately leaning into your touch. you finally helped him up, forcing him to brush his teeth before you opened the door, quietly leading him into his room.
inside, he immediately flopped into bed, tired, sad eyes staring up at you. “you’ll… talk to me, right? please, baby?”
“tomorrow,” you murmured, throwing him a pair of shorts. “just sleep now, okay?”
he nodded frantically, eyes shutting quickly, obediently.
no one would believe this was the version of sukuna ryomen you knew— now when everyone else got the loud, short-tempered, rude, asshole version of him. you stared at him softly, watching his breathe even out, eyes fluttering shut, before you sighed softly, and stepped out of his room.
the next morning, you woke up to sukuna in front of your door, hair messy and eyes exhausted, yet holding a bouquet of your favorite flowers and your favorite coffee, the other messily trying to adjust his shirt to look more presentable. the second you opened your door, eyes sleepy and hair messily, lips pulled into a frown, he froze.
red eyes widened softly before his body relaxed, eyes softening, and breathed out slowly. “…hi.”
you reluctantly opened the door wider, letting him in. he stepped in, 6’4 solid figure suddenly seeming small, gently setting the items down, hands that are used to throwing punches leaning down to carefully adjust a delicate petal before he straightened up, eyes falling back on you, so full of unsaid emotions that they were already glossing over.
after a few seconds, he swallowed harshly, throat bobbing before he took a step closer. “i missed you.”
you frowned, eyes narrowing. “why did you break up, sukuna?”
“please,” he choked out the second the name escaped your lips, eyes wide in pure devastation. “please, angel. ryo, kuna, baby, pretty boy— anything but that.”
your frown deepened. he let out a defeated, shaky breath, and stepped even closer. “i broke it because i was a fucking idiot. i… i never loved someone so much, angel, i never cared about someone so much. you made me the happiest person alive, and… i knew you deserved better.”
you froze. he sniffled, taking another step closer, eyes desperately and voice breaking. “angel, i… i’m a selfish, possessive asshole, and you deserve someone perfect. i was so scared that you’ll wake up one day and end it, so i… just did.”
your vision clouded with tears, and he dropped to his knees, eyes wet with unshed tears. “i was a stupid, fucking idiot. i should have stayed, talked to you, got the reassurance i know my angel would give me, but i didn’t want to be selfish… i thought i was doing what’s best for you…”
he let his head drop, face falling to press against your abdomen, a loud, pained whimper escaping him. “turns out i was a fucking idiot for ever considering letting you go. i… i have been miserable, angel, bawled my fucking eyes out an embarrassing amount of times. i miss you so much, baby, i can’t— i can’t live with you. i can’t sleep, eat, breathe,” he gasped, hands trembling as they slowly reached to hold into your waist, and let out a louder sob once his fingers touched your body, tears soaking your shirt. “i need you in my life, angel. please, i can’t live without you. my heart only exists to beat for you. i was a fucking moron to ever think about letting you go. you deserve so much better— and i promise, ‘ll be better. i’ll be a better boyfriend, a better partner, a better everything— just, give me a chance,”
you sniffled. the second you did, his head snapped up, eyes wide and tearful and horrified, and he immediately shot to his feet, ignoring his own soaked face as gentle fingers slowly cupped your cheek, wiping your tears away. “please don’t cry, i can’t handle you being upset, please—“
“you idiot.” you finally whispered. he froze, eyes wide and pained, and you only stepped closer, letting your head drop into his chest. his arms immediately wrapped around you, pulling you until no space existed between you both. “are you stupid?”
“i am. i’m sorry, baby,” he whispered back. “i’m so sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m—“
“shut up.” you croaked out. “you’re an idiot. i love you as you are, you asshole.”
“i know, baby. i’m sorry.” he buried his face into your neck, his tears damping your shirt once more. “i’m never leaving you again, angel. not even physically— i’ll be so clingy you’ll get sick of me. i can’t live without you, i’m sorry, i’m sorry.”
you let him hold you, eyes shut tiredly. “…idiot.”
he let out a sharp laugh, holding you even tighter, pressing wet kisses all over your face until a smile broke on your pretty lips, and you could physically feel him finally breathing normally, still pressing kisses to your face, gentle and needy and desperate. “i know, angel. only an idiot would ever walk away from you. never, ever again. i love you. never, ever again. i’ll marry you, my love. never leaving you again.”
a/n i hate tumblr i had to write this three times </3 anyways hi ^^ still obsessed w these headers…
Was the first thing Simon said when he met you, after you asked him if his broken arm didn't hurt or if he wanted a shoulder to cry on.
"love I told you I don't cry" Whispered Simon shakily, hugging you back tightly two years later when you hugged him after you found him mourning his lost family in a cementery.
Simon let out a choked laugh of joy, feeling the sting of tears of joy when you accepted to be his girlfriend six months later after the cementery thingy.
"Boys do cry honey, it's normal we're humans"
You said, crying of joy too.
"It's ridiculous I don't cry" was what he snapped back to Johny with fat tears the moments he saw you walk around the aisle looking as beautiful as the day he met you.
"I'm not crying you're crying" he mumbled while signing the documents of the house you two bought together, you nodded, sobbing and smiling widely "I do cry, you big softie"
You could just stay there, years later, smiling gently while Simon hugged you, crying on his shoulder after you showed him the positive pregnancy test.
"but baby you do cry!" You teased softly, exhausted and next to him, five years after getting married and buying a house seeing him cry with trembling yet secure hands while holding his newborn little boy.
And now, as he knelt down on the grass of his big house, with you reading a book on the bench and Riley the dog playing around, grey hairs now adorning his once golden locks, when he looked down at his six year old son Ethan after the little guy tried to contain his tears thanks to a rough fall, he smiled softly.
"Don't worry champ, boys do cry, and it's completely normal"
He mumbled gently, lifting up the crying little boy and holding him close to his chest while your heart melted not too far away.
Author note: crying is completely okay, regardless of the gender (sorry I didn't edit the colors I'm exhausted 😃)
You look from your place in bed, glasses almost sliding off of your nose. You glance around the room once before pointing at yourself. Simon gives you a dead-serious nod of his head, drilling holes into you with his eyes.
“Huh, what’d I do, Si?”
“All that. I’m tellin’ you t’ stop bein’ a tease.”
You take yourself into account. You are sitting in bed in your ugly, mismatched pajamas, reading a book with everything about you totally undone. You were just nodding off when he walked in. What’s Simon on about?
“I’m-… Are we playing around? Joking? I don’t get it.” You’re about as un-sexy as you can be.
He huffs and walks up to the edge of the bed, reaching under the covers to wrap a large hand around your ankle and pull you to the edge, locked under his gaze as blankets crowd around you. “Look at ya, love. Quit playing games.”
You finally find it in you to laugh at his ambiguity, watching the corners of his mouth quirk. He shifts on his feet uncomfortably, tightening his grip around your ankle. “I don’t understand. I’m very unattractive right now. Startlingly so.”
“Don’t say tha’.” He mutters, leaning over to shove his face into the crook of your neck, humming in relief as he presses into you. You wrestle your arms free to throw around him, curling into his heavy body. The moment goes on sweetly until his hips roll lazily against you, exhaling shakily.
neighbor!simon riley risking bodily harm to help you out (again, without you asking)
pt. 1 — pt. 2
things have been going, for the most part, smoothly. you still haven't managed a full conversation, but he's helped you with everything you've asked for, including planting pretty flowers at both his and yours house—you insisted on matching ones and he couldn't refuse.
but with the way it's been pouring down rain for the past few days, you haven't seen him. it's not like you would've dragged him out of the comfort of his house so he could come help you.
so you relaxed on your arm chair with a warm drink and your kindle, taking another lazy day to read with rain pattering in the back. until you heard a noise that was too loud to be rain. it sounded like heavy footfalls on top of your roof—impossible, it's pouring rain and slippery as hell.
another thud jolted you, and you threw your head back with a gasp. okay, who the hell is on your roof? they're disturbing the peace, and frustration mounts with every bump and thud.
grabbing the nearest jacket without bothering to put on shoes, you stormed out the front door—the sounds came from the front of the house the loudest. you couldn't see anything from the protection of the porch, forcing you under the spray of pounding rain.
and who do you see but simon.
you had a suspicion it was him, but seeing his dark silhouette on your roof made your heart flutter and something in your abdomen warm. the rain quickly soaked your hair and clothes, but it couldn't be worse than him. he looked like a wet dog.
"what are you doing?" you called out over the pummeling rain.
he scowled when he finally noticed you. "wot the fuck are you doin'?" his voice boomed louder than the occasional thunder.
"I asked you first!"
with a grunt, he climbed down the house with ease, manifesting at your side like your own rain cloud. his body shielded you from the spray of rain that fell at an angle.
"y'could get sick." he nudged you towards the ajar front door.
you roll your eyes, ignoring the flutter over your body. "you could get sick!" you parroted but allowed him to guide you back inside. without being asked, he stepped out of his soaked boots and shrugged his dripping coat off. underneath, his white shirt was completely see through, clinging to the divots of his abs and chest.
you fought the swallow in your throat and the warmth that bloomed over your face. jesus. you'd seen him without a shirt before—when he fixed your car—but this was different, sinful.
if he notices your stares, he doesn't say anything. just pushes past towards the closet, that he somehow knows where it is, to grab towels. you think he's helping himself before he's taking off the coat you're wearing, that's soaked, and replacing it with a warm towel.
why is he fussing over you? he's the one who's been outside in the rain for god knows how long.
"mind telling me what you were doing on my roof in the pouring rain?" no doubt, it was him finding another way to help you. as you wait for his explanation, you grab him by the belt and tug him further into your house.
"gutter's were clogged."
you wait for him to say more, but he doesn't. he lets you drag him along until you're in your tiny hallway bathroom. it fits you just fine, but with him looming over your shoulder, it feels crowded. you've noticed in the past just how massive he is, but now that he's beside you, your arm grazing and bumping his abdomen, the size difference really is astonishing. heat radiates from his skin, and it could be feverish.
"you could've waited until the rain had stopped." you scold. "what if you got sick?"
he just shrugs, and a groan of frustration rumbles in your chest. his eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement, and he swipes a stray drop of water from your hair off your neck.
"you're impossible, simon." you turn your back to him, setting the towels you grabbed on the countertop. "you should shower unless you really want to get sick. leave your clothes outside the door and i'll dry them for you."
without waiting for a response, you leave. the door clicks shut, and you're left in the hallway, listening to the rustle of wet clothes as he undresses. you shake the thought of him naked from your mind, heading down the hall to start a warm drink for him. while the water warms, you go back to collect his clothes and throw them in the dryer—after ringing out the excess water trapped in the fabric.
when the water's done heating, you prepare a drink you think he'd enjoy. too wrapped up in the preparation, you don't hear the water shut off down the hall, the door, or the soft falls of his footsteps—to be fair, he walks like a ghost. turning around, he's just there. against the doorframe, towel low on his hips to expose the veins that disappear past it. he tied one around his head, concealing his face while his other mask was getting dried. it almost made you laugh.
your throat goes dry again, and with shaky hands, you set the mug down and slide it towards him. "here. you should drink this." the words are hoarse when spoken. "your clothes are almost done, I can go check."
he shakes his head, disappearing from the kitchen. its annoying how well he knows your house. simon's only gone for a minute, maybe less before he appears—still shirtless. you think he's about to put on his shirt because he's holding it, but he thrusts it towards you.
"go change." he orders.
it remind you that you're still wet from the rain, which you hadn't even noticed because you were too focused on him. you still are, considering he'd been out there for longer. but you listen to him regardless, slipping into the same bathroom to change. it was really only your shirt and pants that got wet, so you stripped and put his shirt on. it's massive on you, the hem falling to your knees and the neckline slipping off one shoulder. it still reeked of him, and you couldn't help but hold the fabric over your nose and inhale deeply. it's a warm scent.
when you emerged back down the hall, there was another mug to join the one he sipped from. he put his coat back on, but it was unzipped to expose his bare chest underneath. hyper aware of your lack of clothes, you settled on the stool next to his. steam curled over your face, and you took a moment to let it. it warmed what the rain had frozen, but something else was burning your skin. simon's eyes were trained on the side of your face, just watching and observing like you were the most fascinating thing on earth.
you turned to meet his gaze, noticing the pink that tinged the skin under his eyes and across his nose.
"you're an anomaly, simon." you whispered before taking a sip of your drink. it's made exactly the way you like it. weird. simon doesn't reply. you didn't expect him to. you sat in silence, drinking your warm beverages.
pairing ۶ৎ childhood best friend!bucky barnes x childhood best friend!reader.
summary ۶ৎ in which, a butterfly flies liberated from its cocoon, absorbing what the world has to offer. it soars through life, but it’s wings gradually grow tiresome, and has no cocoon to safely return to.
warnings ۶ৎ angst, reader has a terminal illness, time skips ( one scene when they’re kids, the rest when they’re adults ), mentions of war, medical treatments ( not completely accurate since i wasn’t alive in the 1940s, but i did some research ), pda, fluff, pet names ( peach, baby—f!receiving, darling—m!receiving ), kissing, allusions to spiciness ( not explicit, just mentioned in a couple sentences and a small convo about it ), timings may have been altered to fit with my plot, reader has hair that can be braided/plaited, reader has a surgery scar on her chest, letters are in italics, no use of y/n.
a/n ۶ৎ there are parts i love, parts i’m unsure about, but either way i’m happy i finished this!! i proofread this really quickly so if there’s any mistakes, i apologise!
word count ۶ৎ 10.4k | divider creds ۶ৎ @/diviniyae
JULY 19TH, 1926
“You don’t have to carry me, Bucky.”
“Yes, I do. I need to show off my strength.”
At nine years old, you’ve learnt not to take life for granted. It’s why, every moment you’re blessed with, you consume everything, snapping a mental picture of the scenery, inhaling the smells, and basking in the company.
The verdant field stretches on for miles, tall grass weaving with splashes of white and yellow: daisies. The sun pulses amongst the clear, blue sky, but your frilly hat blocks it out.
The aroma of fresh floral is welcomed into your senses, a contradiction to the powerful medical scents you’re accustomed to smelling while staring at the same mundane walls. The company you acquire is favourable too. Instead of sick patients coughing away, informing you that could be your fate one day, you’re graced with the crickets of grasshoppers and your best friend who’s carrying you on his back.
You giggle, your little arms around his neck tightening slightly, “There’s no one else around, who are you showing off to?”
“I thought you were smart.”
“I am smart!”
“Then how can you not see I’m tryna show off to you?”
Shyness creeps into your bones, making them feel light and fuzzy, and you bury your face into his neck. A laugh, so childlike and blissful, escapes him. It’s contagious, encouraging a smile to spread across your mouth.
He has no obligation to flex around you. You already comprehend he’s the utmost wondrous person to walk on this earth.
Your parents are at work despite it being a weekend. Your mother a waitress and your father off mining coal. They need the money to pay for medical bills and your diagnosis’s. Your family isn’t poor. You have a nice home with nice things. Your father engraves that into you when the kids at school mock you for wearing handmade clothes your mother stitched herself.
Yet, you’re defective and it’s high-priced.
“Where are we going anyways? Your mom said not to go too far.” You ask curiously as you lift your head, scanning the surroundings. His house is in the distance, and you can faintly view the outline of little Rebecca Barnes through the window, playfully tugging on Winnifred’s hair.
You’re not worried though. You know Bucky will never take you somewhere an adult isn’t able to reach you quickly in case something bad happens.
“It’s a surprise.”
“Bucky, tell me.”
“No.”
“Bucky.”
“Don’t say it like that!” His resolve always crumbles around you, “You sound like a weepin’ puppy and I love puppies.”
“And me. You love me too.” You teasingly quip.
There’s no hesitation when Bucky answers, “More than a dog with its bone.”
“You’re strange.”
Before he can reply with something witty, something to knock the cotton socks off your feet, he reaches the top of the hill and halts.
Your eyes widen.
An oak tree stands, so vast and beautiful it appears as though it’s from a fairytale. Spirally, green leaves wave hello on the thick branches that loop and intertwine with others. Acorns form a group in every nook and cranny while its bark wears age lines. Dandelions sprout from the dirt beside the stump, swaying gently under the shade it’s protected by.
“Cool, right?” You can hear the grin his voice, eager to have shown you this, “Reminds me of the front cover of that book you’re always readin’.”
Cheeks flushing at his memory, you slide off his back and grab his hand, dragging him into the bed of grass and soil.
It’s usually been like that. Wherever your feet step, his does too.
Time passes, the dirt blemishing the hem of Bucky’s shirt that’s become untucked proof. Your fingertips are stained with pollen from linking daisies together, creating a crown.
“Here, lemme…” Bucky gently takes the completed flower chain from you and sets it upon your head, “…there,” he grins triumphantly, “You’re just missing a ring.”
“A ring?” You tilt your head in confusion.
He plucks another daisy, it’s stem tall, and ties it carefully around your finger.
"Yeah. The crown is your veil, and this is the ring. Now, we're married." He says simply, as if it's the easiest decision he's ever made.
Laughter bubbles within your chest, “That’s not how it works, Bucky.”
“Pretend then.”
“Okay, husband.”
“Okay, wife.”
Your cheeks ache from smiling incessantly. You part your lips, words on the tip of your tongue, but your eyes flit towards a low branch that quivers mildly.
A chrysalis stands out amongst the greenery, and a gasp escapes you at the sight of a wing emerging, ocean waves swirling with black accents. The faded blue of the lower wings that appear suddenly glint off the sunlight.
A beacon of new life.
Then, it flies away elegantly.
“Bucky, Bucky, look!” You excitedly exclaim, swiftly rising from the ground.
You don’t give him a chance to turn his head, you just begin chasing after it, ignoring the scuff of his shoes and his worried yell.
“Wait— you’re not supposed to run fast!”
You run through the field, your eyes set on the creature. You laugh as it swirls in the air, and it almost seems like it’s inching closer with each moment. The grass tickles your legs, the gentle breeze letting wisps of your hair dance.
You keep following it like it’ll lead you to a covert cove that’ll unveil a magical world, and, just for a moment, you wonder if this is what it’s like to experience a normal childhood.
“Bucky, come on!” You call back, “It’s… it’s…”
Your words are stolen as your lungs feel as though they’re being stretched then compressed, closing in second by second as your ankles radiate pain, an invisible rope tightening around your skin, leaving a burning ache.
You slow down.
The butterfly soars further.
The ringing in your ears is faint.
Are you coughing?
Your legs give out.
And, through the heaviness of your eyelids, the butterfly disappears.
Before you can hit the ground, arms tuck under yours and gently lowers you with him, your back against his knees. Your heart thumps swiftly. Harshly. You’re sure the organ wants to jump out of your chest and nestle in another body—a healthier, fitter one.
Bucky settles your hat aside so he can see you better, his hands hovering in the air, unsure and hesitant, “Hey, hey, you’re breathin’ funny again. Should I go fetch my Ma?” He tries his hardest to sound calm, but the slight crack in his tone reveals the inner-panic.
No!
If he gets his mother then she’s going to call yours at work and she’ll take you home. You can’t be the reason she loses pay or worse: fired.
You cause her enough trouble already, and you want more time with Bucky.
You shake your head frantically against his stomach, eyes wide and breathing stertorous. Your body is hungry for air, yet it’s not being served.
Until his hands carefully cups the back of your neck, his thumb a feathery motion soothing over your pulse point.
It jumps back into place.
“Okay, okay,” he reassures, “How does it go again? Uhm— relax your neck and shoulder.”
You focus on his touch, his voice, the way his face blocks out the rest of the world as you gaze up at him. His fingers are soft, not hardened by the working universe yet. He’s upside down in your vision, a crease in his forehead that shouldn’t be there for someone so young.
Gradually, your limbs grow slack.
“Good… good. Now, breathe in through your nose for two counts.”
The fuzziness clouding your mind is pierced while you repeat his instruction. You remember what to do, so you purse your lips and exhale slowly through them to the count of four.
Minutes pass, but the air no longer rejects you. Your chest rises and falls into a steady rhythm, your heartbeat returning to as regular as it can be, and all that remains is the fatigue.
The world comes back into motion, and a tranquil silence surrounds it. A peaceful apology for the disruption of your fun.
“That butterfly wasn’t worth it,” Bucky states, breaking the quietness, “Y’know how scared I was for you just now?”
Guilt glazes over your eyes, your bottom lip wobbling. You can bear the weight of your episodes, and you can handle the medicine you’ll no doubt be ingesting tonight instead of cookies and milk other kids receive.
But, you can’t handle him upset because of you.
“Sorry.” You whisper, voice slightly scratchy.
His shoulders lower, the crease hiding away until another moment like this occurs. You witness him soften like snow melting under the sun.
“Just… don’t do that again, okay? Please. I don’t wanna lose you,” he quielty and pleadingly says, “You’re my best friend.”
A beat passes.
“Bucky?”
“Yeah?”
“You reminded me of that butterfly.”
“I reminded you of an insect?”
A small smile graces your face at the amusement in his tone, the atmosphere shifting back into place like nothing happened.
“Not like that,” you softly say, rubbing your eyes gently, “Butterflies represent good luck sometimes. And, when I’m with you, I’m lucky.”
“How’re you lucky?” Bucky questions, the light in his eyes shining as bright as a firefly.
“I can breathe with you.”
SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1935
The autumn air nips at your nose, the bustling noise of cars in the distance intertwining with the sound of a rake scraping against the cobblestone to rid the mahogany nature from being stepped on.
Ten minutes have been swept away, but it‘s akin to a year for you. Everything’s slowed, every little noise muffled. Your eyes are glued to the ground as you’re perched upon a ledge outside the hospital. To anybody passing by, they’d assume you’re watching the earlier morning rain residue that’s stuck between the pavement and the road.
To you, however, you’re thinking. And, right now, alone, that’s a dangerous place to be.
Your mind feels like it’s been split into two, battling against each other to infiltrate every nerve in your system.
One side is a maddening, heavy flurry. It’s concrete crumbling as the hammer swings down on it. Future plans are gone, abandoned in a pile of rubble.
The opposite side is light. A relieving sensation that the carry-on of your body working overtime has finally been identified.
Heart valve disease.
That’s what you’ve been diagnosed with.
The balance between crying and smiling rages within you, but luckily you don’t have to focus on it for too long as a voice, as warm as honey, encourages your head to rise.
“Hey, honey,” Mrs. Rogers, clad in her nurses uniform, greets kindly. Her bouncy, blonde curls frame her features, an angel in disguise that roams through the hospital halls, offering comfort to anyone in need, “Do you need a lift home?”
You choose to smile, because why dampen someone else’s day?
“That’s okay, Mrs. Rogers. I’m just waiting for a friend, thank you though.”
“How long have you known me, hm? Six years and you still call me that. Sarah will do just fine.” She says, voice tinged with a hint of playfulness.
Before becoming best friends with Steve Rogers on the playground, there was his mother. A sweet soul who sat with you when your parents conversed in a hush discussion with the doctors. She would never ask how you’re doing, but instead inquired about your interests and favourite foods, making you feel like an actual human being and not just a patient.
A knowing glint shines in her sky-blue eyes, “Say hi to Barnes for me, will you, hon? And that he owes me a batch of lemon squares.”
The mere mention of him has your heart skipping, a small laugh tumbling from your mouth. The memory of him ‘taste testing’ one lemon square at Steve’s ended up turning into accidentally eating them all, while sneaking their golden retriever some crumbs, is still fresh in your mind.
“Will do, Mrs— I mean, Sarah.”
She gifts you one of those fond, mothering gazes before walking away.
The light at every corner of the earth dims again. Flickering. Waiting.
Yet, the dullness fighting to accompany you loses at the sight of Bucky jogging over. You smile at the sight of his trousers damp at the hem due to working at the docks.
“Did you go swimming in your clothes?” You quip, swaying your legs back and forth gently.
“Hm?” His chin tips downwards at himself, then chuckles, “Oh, right. I was searching for pearls to give to you.” His flirtatious, oceanic eyes meet yours, and everything stabilises.
“Any luck?”
He shakes his head and clicks his tongue at the roof of his mouth, perching beside you, shoulder brushing against yours, “I didn’t look hard enough.”
Are you imagining the hint of disappointment in his voice?
“My mind was too preoccupied with how you’re doing.” He says, tranquil yet worried.
You don’t respond. You can’t. There’s a thick lump in your throat that’s forbidding the words to roll from your tongue.
How do you tell the boy you’ve watched grow into the purest form of a gentleman that you have a life-threatening disease?
It’ll tone down his laughter. It’ll sprout worst case scenarios into his mind until they’re suffocating every cell in his brain. It’ll puncture his amiable heart until it eventually mirrors yours.
…Right?
“Hey,” Bucky murmurs, your silence hurting his ears, “You don’t have to tell me right away, peach. I can wait.”
For the moment, all of the weight you’ve been carrying dissipates, replaced by a gooeyness.
His calloused hand lays upright in the air and you instantly intertwine your fingers with his. Gently squeezing your hand, he tucks them both away into his toasty pocket.
“Peach?” You repeat the nickname he called you, brows raised.
“Yeah,” he nods adamantly, “You’re a little bruised, but the marks on the outside don’t define the sweetness inside. Like a peach.”
A beat passes.
“Couldn’t just stick with ‘doll’?”
“Too common nowadays,” Bucky brushes it off, “‘Sides, you deserve your own nickname.”
You take a moment to just gaze at him.
Raven locks, mussed as though he ran his fingers through them endlessly. You appreciate how he didn’t brush his hair before arriving. That he just let himself be with you. You count the faint creases by his eyes—there from illuminating the world with his smile when the sun hides from the fog.
His lips, a shade of maroon under the golden rays of autumn, are a pair you won’t dare kiss, because they’re probably stained with someone else’s.
Clearing your throat quietly, you slip your hand away from his, goosebumps rising to plead with the bitter air.
“How was your date last night?”
You don’t sound jealous. You have no right to be. However, a sense of longing wraps around your words. A yearning for what you forbid yourself from having.
You force yourself to ignore the way his brows knit together when you pulled away. How his fingers left his pocket and twitched towards you, but stopped.
“It wasn’t great,” he exhales a long breath. “Terrible, really.”
Concern strikes you like a lightning bolt, pupils dilating, “Why? What happened?”
“She wasn’t you.”
She. Wasn’t. You.
Three words that can spark a generator back to life.
But you make it stall.
For years, Bucky has been confessing his feelings for you like it’s the only thing he knows. If he’s not outright saying it, then he’s slipping sweet notes into your bag as he walks you to the Library where you work, or he’s attempting to draw butterflies for you that you stow in your purse.
His love is loud, whereas yours is quiet.
It wasn’t thrusted into your palms, but it was something that brewed throughout the years. Slow, delectable, with time mastering it until your thoughts became enshrouded with him.
Yet, you’ve always shut him down. Guilt gnaws at you, the fabric of yourself growing threadbare. You know you’re letting him down. You’re aware you’re crushing him despite the unruffled demeanour and boyish grin he wears after.
You just can’t condemn him to a life of misery.
You clutch the edge of the ledge tight, “Why do you think they have cobblestone as a path to the hospital?” You ask, changing the subject, “They should really replace it with a flat walkway.”
“You can’t avoid me, this—” Bucky gestures between the two of you with his index finger, “—us forever,” his voice softens, “I won’t let you anymore.”
Frustration becomes your defence despite no attack taking place.
“I don’t understand you sometimes, Bucky.” You mutter, hopping onto the ground and dusting your hands on your coat.
“Why not, huh?” He mimics your movements and falls into step with you as you begin embarking down the path, “I make myself clear everyday how I feel about you.”
“Well, then, maybe you should stop.” You firmly say.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“…Yes.”
He laughs humourlessly, grasping your elbow gently and halting you both, “You’re a terrible liar.”
You falter by his warm touch, but you shrug yourself from his grasp, forcing yourself to put space between you, “I refuse to hold you back in life, Bucky.”
Stilling and shoulders tensing, Bucky blinks in bewilderment, “Hold me back in life? You know I could listen to you for hours, but what are you talking about? And will ya—” his chest rises and falls with a pained breath, “Will you quit pulling away from me, please?”
“You need someone fresh,” your wavering voice betrays the confidence of your tipped chin and feet firm against the pavement, “And that’s not me. I’m a wilting flower. Not enough sun or water is going to keep me alive for long.”
The pain of not merely today, but your past and future, is infused into a singular tear that trickles down your cheek.
“I’d just be a burden to you.”
The sky fades into mesmerising swirls of pink and orange, a dusk worshipping the pumpkin patch behind the nearby cafe. It’s bell hanging on the door dings faintly, muffled noises of greetings flowing into your ears.
And Bucky stands there.
Quiet. Calm.
No fisted hands, no clenched teeth, no darkening eyes.
His breaths are steady and gentle, and a part of you selfishly wishes his oxygen could hug you.
Then, he speaks, his voice a soothing wave that laps at your ankles, inviting you deeper into the ocean. His ocean, “Why don’t we get a drink, okay?”
“Now who’s avoiding talking.” You cross your arms, looking away.
“I’m not avoiding us, peach,” Bucky says, achingly soft, “I just don’t want you standing in the cold anymore.”
You close your eyes momentarily, exhaling through your nose, and nod feebly as the world is revealed to you again.
A brush paints the canvas of his face in relieved colours, and his steps fall in rhythm with yours as you embark slowly towards the cafe, granting you enough time for your head to clear.
Opening the door for you, Bucky follows you inside, warmth caressing your skin and the aroma of coffee wafting into your nose. Muted, checkered tablecloths layer over evanescing, wooden tables that waitresses weave around. A radio poses underneath crinkled parchments of posters hung upon cobweb-collected, brick walls.
Harmonies of jazz plays tenuously in the background, interlacing with Bucky’s voice, “Go sit. I’ll order for us.” He murmurs, but he doesn’t meet your gaze.
He’s lost somewhere.
As thought it’s muscle memory, you slip into the booth by the window, your ankles sighing in relief. They’ve been swelling all day, caged as a prisoner beneath the straps of your shoes.
Not much time passes until Bucky’s returned, setting your favourite drink in front of you, and a black coffee for him as he settles opposite.
His fingers interlock around the mug, pads of his skin tapping against it.
This is unbearable.
“Can you say something, please?” You softly ask.
Finally, his eyes flit to yours. A world of emotions on display, yet the strongest of all is what you’re afraid of.
“Do you honestly believe that I’ll agree with everything you said?” He rhetorically questions. “That I think of you like that?”
He’s calm as he speaks, and you’re beginning to wonder if he brought you here so you’d remain calm in front of others too. Not just for his sake, but for yours also, because arguing with him are like needles pricking under your skin until eventually the sharpness bursts through.
And he knows you’d bleed for him.
You part your mouth to converse, but close it, knowing now is Bucky’s time to talk.
“You’re grieving something—us—while we’re still breathing.”
The truth of his words makes you look down. You won’t deny it. You’ve already picked up a shovel and began digging deep into the dirt, ready to bury dreams and hopes you won’t experience. Maybe one day someone else would uncover it and have it as their own.
But Bucky won’t allow that. He’s taking the shovel from you and guiding you away from the wreckage, with your future still cradled to your chest.
Your vulnerable defences are slipping.
Sitting up straighter, his thumb and forefinger grip you chin, tilting your head up to face him. The hitch in your throat wasn’t unnoticed by him—his eyes momentarily darting down to your neck, and he soothes his thumb under the curved of your bottom lip.
“To me, you are so strong. Storms will pass by but you stay firmly planted in the ground. And that strength is admirable, peach,” he earnestly says, “I want to be by your side throughout it, even on the worser days so you can lean against me. In sickness and in health.”
James Buchanan Barnes’ loyalty is greater than the cosmos. Cowards shrivel up under in his presence, his shine burning them, and other men aspire to be a star like him.
His loyalty to you is locked tight. Nothing can break through it. Not the plans God has, not the course of turbulence expected to come, and definitely not your stubbornness.
“You’re acting as if we’re married, Bucky,” you say, “Not that we could afford that with all my medical bills.”
One last humoured try.
A mix of fondness and miff rolls around in his eyeballs, “For richer for poorer, peach,” he responds, “I’d spend my entire life’s worth of earnings if it means you’ll get better.“
He lowers his hand, grasping yours and stroking your ring finger. Your heart stutters as he traces a daisy, the same one that you wore until it wilted on your finger when you were kids. You never informed him you kept the petals in a small pouch under your pillow.
“I take vows very seriously,” he winks with a smirk, “And, when we were nine, I declared I was going to marry you. Nothing is ever going to change my mind about that.”
Alone in your bedroom, when you’d picture marrying someone, Bucky always sprung to mind. But your coughing would quickly turn your imagination to grey until it disappeared.
Now, it’s glowing bright. Staying.
Your lips turn upwards.
“You’re not proposing to me in a coffee shop.” You state, and he chuckles.
“Of course not, but I am plannin’ on kissin’ you in front of all these people.” He grins, achingly sweet your suprised his teeth haven’t rotted.
Your mug, raised to your mouth, quakes slightly at his sudden declaration.
Probably how you’ll be feeling in a minute.
“Wha—”
Before you can react properly, he sets your drink down and slides out of the booth, wrapping an arm around your waist and gently tugging you up.
Everything moves too fast until it slows down when he quietly asks, “Can I?”
You nod immediately.
His lips connect with yours. Slow and tentative. He’s giving you a chance to pull away.
You don’t.
Your arms snake around his neck while his palm sends ripples of warmth through your clothing. He presses into your lower back, inching you closer, chests brushing.
His lips feel like the finest of silks against your lips, velvety and warm. You yearn to be wrapped in him forever, keeping you safe from the coldest of evenings. The dash of bitterness you taste from his coffee grounds you from getting lost in the moment—remaining with him.
You can feel the thumping of his wild heart, the passion in his movements, the adoration he’s pouring out and into your mouth.
It’s raw and undeniable. A poet’s love confession floating down your throat and resting beneath your ribs, healing where once was an ache.
“Aww’s” from kind voices and “get a room” from grumpier one’s sound out over your mingled, soft breaths, but you and Bucky simply grin against each other’s mouth before parting for air.
Nothing else matters but this.
Your touch soothes the goosebumps that have risen on the nape of his neck, your lovesick gaze matching his, “I love you, Bucky.” You whisper, only for his ears.
He cups the back of your head, fingertips sifting through your hair, and guides your forehead to his lips, his words seeping through your skin and becoming the forefront of your mind.
“I love you too, peach.”
Butterflies dance and cheer in your stomach. They don’t just represent luck, but new beginnings too.
DECEMBER 23RD, 1941
Every night, when you drift off into the realms of sleep, you relive your wedding. It’s not a dream. You’ve done enough dreaming for it to finally come true. It’s Polaroid photos projecting off your eyelids, and you flick through every single one, studying carefully, never missing a detail.
A pathway of petals trailed to the oak tree, bushy leaves parting for golden rays to gleam upon you and Bucky standing front-centre of the trunk. The flowers and grass settled behind, amongst the guests, silently commending.
The neckline of your wedding dress was a scoop, fitting the high-back. Your collarbones were bare, for you desired them not to be marked with jewellery, but the summer air’s congratulations. A waterfall of white cascaded to your ankles—pure, ivory linen with net lace protecting it. You requested your mother to embroider florals around the upper chest and sleeves that reached your elbows.
He didn’t waste a dime on his suit, not a missing piece, needing to be complete. Trousers that fit like a glove, a collar waistcoat, and blazer, all executed in the smoothest of grey fabric, with a white shirt and navy tie. A daisy peered out from his chest pocket too.
His feet were clad in the shoes his father wore when he wed Winnifred ( which were stored away in her attic ). They were vintage and decrepit, not enough polish to make them proper, but they were meaningful, and it reminded you of the tree’s aging bark.
Slicked-back hair you were desperate to run your fingers through, his gaze fixated on you the entire time.
Enamoured, zealous, proud.
You saw him in a different glow, and it was heavenly.
His vows held buckets of emotion it began welling in his eyes. His touch was incredibly tender as he slipped the ring on your finger.
But the kiss? Oh, it was passionate. It felt like pouring every ounce of yourself onto a love letter.
The branches shook their leaves in applause while others clapped, the sunlight burned brighter, failing to out-do you two, and the coldness of his ring against your cheek was a sighing relief against the air’s humidity.
It wasn’t a grand wedding, but it was yours.
Before another moment your sleep-induced mind can spectate, it costively flickers then disappears upwards as your eyes open by a light weight against your head.
Blinking a few times to rid the bleariness of exhaustion, your husband is crouched by the bed, stroking your hair lullingly. The decorative bulbs on the Christmas tree filter through the open door and into the darkened bedroom, enlightening his features.
“You were smiling in your sleep again,” Bucky says, before a teasing lilt takes over, “Dreaming of me?”
You shift so your face isn’t half-covered by the pillow, “Our wedding day.”
“Oh, so you were dreaming of yourself?” He grins, “‘Cause you were the brightest there. No one could even look at me.”
The giggle that escapes you is frangible. If you reached out to touch the sound, it’d crack.
Bed rest. That’s what the doctors prescribed you ever since tornados of dizziness struck you. Black pixels would invade your vision, closing in, making your feet sway until you’ve hit the ground. Yet, overtime, you’ve learnt to carry yourself to the couch.
When you’d return to reality in a cold sweat, a headache would arrive, pounding like an incessant drum within the left side of your head.
You continue carrying on with life, picking up the odd few jobs since you were laid off by your work, but lying in the haven of your bed has been occurring more frequently than not recently.
“What’s the time?” You quietly ask.
“It’s six, baby.”
“Six?!” You spew out too quickly, coughs following soon after that you cover with a frail hand. Bucky rubs your back soothingly, “I’ve been asleep for six hours… I haven’t even started dinner yet.”
“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t beat yourself up about it, okay?” He soothes, “It’s fine, peach. You must’ve needed the sleep. ‘Sides, we can cook together now.”
He’s so understanding it hurts.
You hum languidly. Then, slowly, your brows knit together.
“If it’s six, you should’ve been home an hour ago.”
A smirk graces his devishly handsome face, “I was doing some last minute shopping.”
“Bucky…”
“I know, I know,” he holds his hands up in mock defence, “You said you didn’t want anything, but I’m going to give you everything you don’t ask for anyways.”
Shaking your head with a feeble smile, you muster the energy you always reserve for him and grasp his collar, pulling him onto the bed and slowly slotting your lips against his as you recline against the pillows. His body hovers over you, and you feel as though you may become one with the plushness of the mattress.
Bucky’s hand cups the back of your neck, tilting your head so he can delve deeper into the velvet walls of your mouth. Meanwhile, you grip his waist, urgent he moves closer, needing him to consume you whole. You don’t care if you lose any air, or if your heart can’t candle the exertion. If kissing him is the last thing you do, you’ll kiss him like you’re marching into battle.
You’re so lost in the precious whirlwind of him, you don’t feel your hair being brushed to the side, nor the sound of something skilfully clipping around your neck until a chilled weight rests on your chest.
Gasping when you break the kiss, you glance down as he tattoos your skin with his lips against your temple, cheek, and finally the corner of your mouth.
“Merry early Christmas, baby.” He whispers against your mouth.
A delicate chain glints off the celestials peeking through the window, and, in the centre, sits a butterfly charm.
“James.” You whisper in awe.
He props himself up with his arm by your head, “You couldn’t catch that butterfly, so I thought I’d buy you one.”
Describing love is tough, because there's not enough words in the dictionary. But you know how it feels. You know that your illness has become bearable, almost forgettable at times, all because of Bucky.
Carefully, as though it’ll crush under your touch, you trace the ridges and lines of the wings.
“It’s beautiful. Thank you,” you whisper, pressing a chaste kiss against his cheek. You lightly pat his chest, “Sit up, I have something for you too.”
Raising an inquisitive brow, he obliges, “Yes, ma’am.”
Your limbs protest as you sit up before he can help you, wanting some form of independence that keeps you sane. After turning the bedside lamp on with quivering fingers, you rummage through the bottom drawer of the nightstand and grasp an envelope, extending it to him.
“What’s that?” Bucky curiously asks, taking it, letting his fingers linger against yours.
“A pigeon,” you sarcastically murmur, “It’s a letter, darling.”
He shakes his head, smiling at your regular self making an appearance.
It’s rare nowadays.
“I know it’s a letter, but what kind? A cheesy love one?”
“No, I only send those to Steve.”
He lightly pinches a space of your calve that isn’t littered with bruises and you yelp.
Inspecting it as he turns it over, noticing it’s already been opened, he takes the paper out, and you nervously analyse how his eyes scan the inked words.
How his breath hitches.
How his fingers grip the paper tighter.
How the world shifts.
“Surgery?” He swallows thickly, eyes slowly darting to yours, a sheen of water glossing over.
“I’ve been put onto a waitlist,” you carefully admit, “They don’t know how long it’ll be, but I have a chance to get better. To be me again.”
His Brooklyn accent is prominent as his voice wavers, “You’ve always been you, peach. You just had some obstacles in the way.”
“…Bucky?”
“The survival rates are low, baby.”
He rubs at his chest like his words have physically injured him.
“Since when did you look on the bad side of things?” You inquire worriedly.
“Since this letter is saying a surgeon is going to jam their finger into my wife’s heart,” concern poisons his words as he stabs his own finger against the parchment, “What if they make a mistake, hm? What if this doesn’t help, but makes it worse?”
“Bucky, listen to me,” you cradle his face in your hands, “There are numerous what-if situations. The only one I’m thinking about right now is what if this makes me healthier? I could finally work again, I could breathe normally, I could live instead of survive.”
Bucky rests his forehead against yours, seeking solace, “You truly want this?” He asks quietly.
“I do,” you honestly, pleadingly, say, “I’m so tired. I can’t walk for more than thirty minutes without feeling like I’m going to collapse. I just want to be normal.”
It’s evident that your words strike a chord in him, coaxing a tear to trickle down his face which you wipe away.
“Okay, baby,” he whispers, wrapping his arms around your waist and gently pulling you onto his lap, “So damn proud of you.”
Relief courses throughout you. He buries his face into your neck and presses a kiss to your pulse point.
“We’re going to be okay.” You whisper, gliding your hand up and down his back, feeling him melt under your touch.
“I know we are, peach. You’ve always been strong enough for the both of us.”
You don’t comprehend how true that is until two days later and Bucky’s own future is being determined by a letter.
Drafted into the Army.
JUNE 14TH, 1943
“Bucky, I’m recovering from surgery, not incompetent.” Your laughter, a sound full of life, bounces off the walls.
Four months has passed since your surgery took place, a scar on your chest to prove the events. Within two of those months, you remained at the hospital for recovery, medication pumped into your system and therapies to coax your body into regular movements flowing.
Every day, Bucky was by your side. Holding your hand and replacing the vase of flowers with fresher ones. He voiced his contemplation of quitting his job just so he could spend more time with you, to which you gave him a firm no as a response.
You can’t be more thankful to have him in your life, to be so lucky that he stayed throughout the whole journey.
You returned home three months ago. The process of healing is long, but gradually, your limbs are no longer bruising, but clearing up. And your heart is beating normally. No more of those random skips, no more of it feeling like it was being dropped from a mountaintop.
For once in your life, you’re happy with your body.
Make-up, hair products and handed-down jewellery are spewed across the bed which you’re perched upon, the bright evening sky casting light into the bedroom.
“I know, but this is my last night until being shipped off, and if I wanna take care of you, I’m gonna take care of you.” Bucky asserts with a cheeky smile.
“There’s a difference between taking care of me and dolling me up.” You joke, smiling knowingly.
You’re aware of why he’s being like this—why he’s determined to ensure you won’t lift a finger right now. It’s not because he thinks you’re delicate, and it’s certainly not because he thinks you can’t do things for yourself.
Bravery is mustered from experiencing fear, and apart of his brave-self, there’s cracks of fear that he won’t have the chance to do anything like this with you again.
So you let him, because he’s entering a place where his life will be risked every second.
He’s done your make-up surprisingly well due to watching you apply it throughout the years. You only needed to touch it up a little, but the lipstick is faded—most likely from him kissing it off.
Next is…
“Hair,” he scratches the back of his neck, “I only know how to braid hair from Becca.”
You shrug, “You can braid my hair.”
Swivelling around, your back to him, you gaze towards the open window, allowing the slight breeze to wash over you. The air is a sweet relief to your lungs, poison ivy no longer tightening around them until its bitterness has bled through.
His fingers entangle in your hair, weaving and letting his fingertips brush the back of your neck. It’s a simple action, but every stroke of his touch feels like he’s connecting to your soul.
“You’re going to be tripping all over my feet.” Bucky teases, his breath fanning the back of your head and encouraging wisps of your tresses to dance.
“Are you doubting my dancing skills?” You ask, feigning hurt.
“Baby, you haven’t danced in nearly three years.” Bucky points out.
A beat passes.
“I have a good memory. It’ll be fine.”
“Hmm, and if my feet are bruised by tomorrow, I’m blaming you,” he lovingly tugs on your completed hairstyle, “There. Now, I’d like my payment in the form of a kiss.”
Facing him, a grin hurting your cheeks, you slowly dive in for a kiss, before swiftly turning and kissing his cheek.
“Tease.” He mumbles.
You rise and approach the tall mirror, admiring your braid and emphasised features, “You could run a salon, you know.” You compliment while beginning to undress.
“And ruin my street cred?”
“Street cred?” You raise your brows, “You mean punching people in alleyways.”
You can recall the generous amount of times he’s returned home with bruised knuckles you’ve cleaned up.
“Punching douchebags in alleys.” He corrects slyly.
Rolling your eyes jokingly, you slip on the dress that was hung on the mirror. You reach around to do the zipper, but fall short, sighing quielty.
“Bucky?”
“Already on it.”
He towers behind you, zipping the back of your dress antagonisingly slow. You watch him through the mirror, watch as he ducks his head and kisses your shoulder, feel how his hand glides across your shoulder, down to your arm, then wraps both of his around your midsection.
“Your wings are growing, peach.” He quietly praises, swaying you both side-to-side in a steady rhythm.
Your body melts into his warmth, your back against his chest, your head against his collarbone.
“We can always stay home if you’re not feeling up to tonight,” Bucky offers, “I’d still be just as happy as long as I’m with you.”
“I know, Bucky. But my body is itching to dance, okay?”
“That’s my girl.”
۶ৎ
Dancing was made for you and Bucky. You spun together like everyone else disappeared into thin air. You laughed together in harmony of the music. Where your steps went, he followed. When your hands intertwined, so did the ocean meeting the shore.
You didn’t dance in the shadows, but front and centre, under the gleaming yellow lighting. You were a whirlwind of starlight, dazzling in every movement, and Bucky was by your side, burning with merriment.
It had been so long since you let yourself be carefree, and you had never felt more beautiful.
The loud of the night fades as you enter your home, shutting the night away as Bucky closes the door and locks it. Immediately, your arms snake around his neck as he turns, crashing your lips against his. He stumbles momentarily, before pressing his hand’s against your lower back, melding you closer together.
Your heart bucks wildly, gallivanting in ways you didn’t think possible. Fingers sift through his hair in rhythm with his sliding across and caressing your waist in burning strokes.
The kind of burn inside of you that you enjoy.
You half expect him to move this forwards as your mouths reconvene the dance your bodies did earlier, but as he departs from the kiss… he doesn’t.
A loving brush of his lips against your forehead and a light, almost apologetic, squeeze of your hip is all you receive, then he trudges off into the kitchen, putting distance between you physically.
Your shoulders slump dejectedly, mirroring the downturn of your lips. You can’t recall the last time he carried you to bed and undressed you with a fervour of lust. Perhaps on your wedding day? It’s not a necessity you’re desperate for—his profound love is more than enough. Yet, as you stand alone while the faint sound of cupboards closing and pill bottles rattling reaches you, insecurities invade your mind.
‘Did I become too sick to be looked at in that sense now?’
‘Is he repulsed by me? Worried I’ll ruin it by having a coughing fit?’
The thick layer of hurt stuck to the roof of your mouth is a harsh swallow, but you do it anyways and venture to where your husband is, desperately needing to quarrel these intrusive thoughts of yours.
You don’t believe them—you’re making yourself not to believe them, but him turning away at any given opportunity is beginning to toy with your head.
Stepping into the homely kitchen and rounding the counter, you poise near the sink, where Bucky is turning off the tap. A light thud and the drip of excess water reverberates after he sets a glass beside your medication.
But those pills can’t help the mental storm brewing inside you.
He parts his mouth to speak as his head raises to meet yours, but his features instantly change at the sight of your hurt expression, “Hey, what’s wrong?” He asks, taking a concerned step closer.
Exhaling steadily, you cross your arms in attempts to appear confident when all you yearn to do is fall into his chest. But you can’t always rely on him. You need to do this for yourself.
“James,” you begin, tone forcefully even, “I’ll respect your decision if you don’t want to touch me, okay? I just need to understand why. Do…” Ignoring his perplexed, widened eyes, you continue, “…do I disgust you? Has my appearance changed—”
"Peach."
"—changed for the worse? Is this something you've been carrying for a while? Do you need my permission to go off with other—"
Before you can feel the tears stinging your eyes, his lips collide into yours, silencing you. The impact is harsh at first, knocking your breath away, but as it achingly softens, your heart restarts.
So does your head.
Your arms grow slack by your sides, and his large hands smooth up them, skating across your shoulder blades and cupping the nape of your neck. His thumbs press into either side of your jaw, tilting your head up further so there's barely any space between you.
"I'm sorry," he whispers against your mouth, nudging his nose against yours tenderly, "I just had to stop you from speaking about yourself like that."
"James." Your voice finally wavers.
Your plea must have flowed into his mouth, because he bitterly chews on it that his jaw trembles and squeezes his eyes shut briefly.
"God, baby, I'm so fucking sorry for putting those thoughts into your head," his voice is thick with guilt and regret, "I've been so busy worrying about how sex might affect you physically, I overlooked how me pulling away must've been messing with this beautiful mind of yours."
His thumb rubs circles into your temple while slowly opening his eyes. They're consumed with emotions a man wouldn't normally share in this day and age, but he does because he isn't like any other man.
He's yours, and with you, he can express himself liberatingly.
"What if it gets too much and your heart can't take it, hm?" The question leaving his mouth breaks into tiny pieces, yet you cradle each one so you can mend the outcome together.
"My heart can't take this distance, Bucky." You whisper, a tear sliding down your cheek.
Bucky catches it with the tip of his thumb instantly, and you turn your face ever-so-slightly and brush your lips against his skin.
The collapse of his shoulders is enough to inform you the guilt of potentially harming you has been haunting him for a while.
Carefully, you cradle his hand and slowly guide it down. You press the warmth of his palm where your heart lays beneath the surface of yourself and feel his fingers expanding to touch more of you.
"It's beating to its fullest potential because of you," you earnestly admit, "Yeah, I had surgery, but I couldn't have survived this long if you weren't by my side."
"Peach..." He trails off, doubt burdening his tone.
"It's true!" You exclaim, the corners of your swollen mouth upturning, "I'm alive because you, my husband, have been my biggest supporter since we were kids. You have been my lifeline, darling, and as long as you're alive and happy, then so am I."
This time, his care for you is expressed in a globule escaping the corner of his eye after blinking. You watch it slide down his cheek before you poise on your tip-toes and kiss it away.
Your lips linger against his face long enough for his breathing pattern to change. It remains steady, deliberate, but peeking between each exhale is a quivering hunger that went into hiding, now coaxed out by your deep devotion.
Pulling back your face, your small and nimble hand covers the back of his against your chest, "You told me my wings are growing, and they are, but they flourish with you.”
"I love you," Bucky confesses for the umpteenth time, though now it’s layered with his insecurities bare and open, "I love you so damn much that I don’t even think the word love is strong enough to describe how damn mad I am over you."
His thumb and index finger pinches your chin, inching your faces closer, breaths becoming one. Both of your cravings are edged further, and you lock your fingers between the gaps of his, trailing his hold on you further down until a heat strokes your lower abdomen.
"Then show me,” honey drips from your voice, sweet and addictive, “Show me how much you love me, Bucky."
Your encouragement beholds an undeniable strength, alleviating the hesitance inside of him. He carries you to your shared room, he cradles you ever-so protectively, and he unveils every pent up desire in caresses and strokes—in edges of lust that are softened with his undying love.
Every sound coaxed from the depths of your chests—breathy and low and extremely unfiltered—have become your new favourite melody. Every passionate movement between yourselves, wrapped in each other’s embraces, is the epitome of comfort and pleasure rolling around together. Every reassuring word spoken, or kiss peppered against your scar, gifts you the most safest crescendo one can possibly experience.
Throaty laughter arrives afterwards, rippling through the haze of serenity. Bucky smoothes his palm over every inch of yourself, leisurely gliding over bumps and crevices, checking for anything amiss, but all that remains is your blissed-out self and his proud grin.
And when the dreaded day of his departure reaches, he disembarks from the very docks he helped build, carry the memory of the night before closest to him.
Because it marks the night you finally started soaring.
AUGUST 2ND, 1943
Two months have slipped by without the warmth of your husband by your side. All that remains is the ghost of his presence wherever you venture, the letters stacked neatly in a wooden chest, and the sneaky, hushed telephone calls.
Closing the front door behind you, you waste no time in tearing the seal apart and unfolding the crisp parchment. His handwriting coaxes a smile on your face, the bold strokes carefully crafted despite his cursive being a tad bit sloppy.
Your eyes begin ingesting the words he’s unleashed from the depth of his soul. The last time you heard his voice, it was muffled through the terrible signal of the General’s telephone.
Now? Now, it echoes clearly in your ears, so close you can almost feel his presence.
My love,
The camp is bleak and pitiful, hope ebbing away the further we advance to the front lines. I try my hardest to maintain morel and uplifting the other soldiers, but even my struggle is becoming noticeable the more I’m away from you.
I wake up on this stiff cot, facing the roof of the tent, and being reminded of where I am. I close my eyes in the few moments I have to myself and picture us sprawled out in the field we claimed as ours. The image of the sun casting golden rays against you remains vivid in my mind. All seasons compliment you, peach, but summer bathes you in a newfound light.
How is Brooklyn’s Summer this time around? Is it warm enough for you? You know I’m not the religious type, but I pray each night you’re able to fall asleep without any trouble. I know how the steam from the scolding roads used to affect your breathing.
You were fighting a war every day, and you came out victorious. It’s your unyielding strength and bravery that encourages me to lead myself and my infantry into battle.
I will win this war, peach. I’m not winning it for my country anymore, I’m winning it for you: my beautiful, one of a kind wife who I love more than a dog with its bone.
Your darling,
James.
Exhaling shakily, you press the paper to your chest, as though the ink will bleed off the page and sink into your heart.
Bucky Barnes has been your crutch for as long as you can remember, and while you’re his too, you just wish it was under different circumstances—not the fear of death looming over him every second he’s separated from you.
Thoughts spark in your mind, each one illuminating another idea of how to make sunshine pour into your letter so his bleak whereabouts will have a bit of shine.
You take a step towards the living room when a searing pain slices through your chest, reopening what was mended.
A pained whimper rips from your throat as your nails dig into your chest instinctively. Your feet stumble. The letter drifts onto the floor as your other hand uses the coat hanger for stability.
Everything rotates fast. You squeeze your eyes shut, denying the dizziness of its foggy, enclosing effects. You’re still standing, two feet firmly planted into the floor.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” You choke out through laboured exhales.
The technique of settling your strenuous breathing slips back into place with ease, and you familiarise it for a few moments before you’re stable enough to slowly crack your eyes open.
The ache in your chest fades, replaced by a hollow dread. You shove it down immediately. It’s just high emotions physically pulled out from Bucky’s sentimental letter, that’s all….
It’ll pass soon.
Everything will return to normal when he’s home.
OCTOBER 17th, 1943
The campsite is peculiarly quiet this evening, no alarms shrieking nor any barked orders making the weeds flinch. While his comrades have ventured to town, gulping down what could be their last drink, Bucky stayed behind.
Something off has been accumulating in the pits of his stomach all day.
It could be nothing. It could simply be the enemy inching closer each day, as that’s become the normal nowadays, but his mind wanders to you and your most recent letter.
Shoulders hunched and perched on the edge of his cot, he grips the paper firm enough so the gust of wind drifting through the tent won’t snatch it.
It’s still your enchanting words, each stroke of ink letting him in on a glimpse of warmth. However, overtime, your handwriting has grown noticeably shaky, no longer appearing neat and barely readable.
He manages too, anyways, because he’d be damned if a letter of yours isn’t deciphered like it’s full of important codes.
Determining he’s just overthinking, he sighs and shakes his head. You’re a woman made of iron that's been hammered and molded into something even stronger.
He swaps your letter on the rickety nightstand for the polaroid of you he’s kept close. The glow of the lantern illuminates your gorgeous features, but a photo can only do so much. It doesn’t capture the playful melody of your teasing, and it doesn’t play your dance movements.
Luckily, every moment spent with you was unforgettable. A picture can only do so much, but it can also evoke memories that stretches a smile across his mouth.
In a feather-light motion, his thumb traces every curve and crevice of yourself, worshipping you even when your physical self is nowhere in sight. The entrance of the tent flaps in defence of the force of nature picking up, but if he just pinpoints his focus on the image of yourself, he can almost hear the thrum of your heartbeat.
Almost.
Quickly replacing it is a rough clearing of a throat, though Bucky’s brow perks up at a second one following. Softer, perhaps sympathetic, trying to override the first one.
He lifts his head and straightens up at General Smith entering. A solemn expression is written into his face, rubbing out the typically guarded one he equips.
Bucky rises to salute him, but is stopped halfway by a slow raise of Smith’s palm, “Sit, Sergeant.” He orders calmly.
For a man who usually reeks of confidence, hesitance conflicts Bucky’s senses as he slowly sits back down.
“Sir?”
Marching the front lines seems dauntingly in front of him.
“Bucky… hell, there’s no easy way to say this,” General Smith sighs and shifts uncomfortably, “Your mother-in-law rang.”
Rocks have piled onto Bucky’s tongue, his next three words managing to slip out through the cracks, “Is everything alright?”
“No, son,” he replies in a fatherly tone, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you…”
Bucky pales.
“Your wife passed last night.”
Those five words don’t reach his ears correctly.
They’re blocked out, muffled by the pounding of his heart while yours apparently lays still.
No.
Nonononononono.
He watched you wave him off at the docks. He listened to you converse about your day through the phone. Your heart was fine then. Cracked from his departure, but thumping healthily.
Speaking suddenly feels like the most strenuous action he can do, “She— ah…” his voice breaks, “She had a successful surgery. She can’t… she can’t have…”
A life without you doesn’t make sense.
Pain shoots through his chest, but he can’t see any bullets flying around.
His vision blurs with unshed tears. His lungs are too tight to accept breath properly.
The General’s voice remains a faded cadence, fragments piercing Bucky’s soul deeper.
‘Failed surgery.’
‘Couldn’t retain enough oxygen.’
‘Wasn’t alone.’
Head hanging low, eyes reddening swiftly, a broken noise is tugged from his throat. It doesn’t reach the sound-waves just yet, trapped in the confines of his aching self.
“It’s not true. It’s not true. It’s not true.” He mumbles repetitively and brashly cards his fingers through his hair.
The hollow pit inside his stomach fills with nausea.
You were suffering and he was unaware.
Angels recruited you and left him behind in the trenches… a place fit for a guilty man like him to be buried in.
OCTOBER 26TH, 1943
Rage never correlated with Bucky Barnes. His emotional intelligence didn’t let it simmer for long, but you were the one feeding him knowledge. Without you, the fury arose to the extremity of public humiliation.
At the time, he didn’t care when he stormed into the hospital, a body functioned by grief spitting at the ones who should’ve done more to save you.
Because they failed you.
He failed you.
No one flinched at his outburst, except for your father who heartbreakingly dragged him outside. To the medical workers, it was if that’s an every day occurrence and your death’s just another percentage in the charts.
He’ll go back and apologise later, comprehending how unfairly he directed his blame onto them. It takes the remains of his willpower not to blame you either for your stubborn mouth that was sealed tight throughout the months of his departure.
A weekend off was granted to him to get his head ‘straight.’ His teeth grind at the thought of returning to a place with hollowed men and no one yelling his name during mail-calls anymore.
Being drafted stole the time he had left with you, so a weekend to himself is a generous gesture.
Except, no one writes a manual on how to grieve properly. He’s transitioned into a new part of life without his permission, leaving him utterly lost and unable to cope.
Bucky’s legs forbid him from entering the Barnes home. The closest he reached was the door, thudding his bag to the ground in sync with the collapse of his knees.
An unopened letter of his, curled at the corners and dampening from his downpour of tears, taunted him from the welcome mat.
Now, he ventures where his heart navigates.
The oak tree slouches on the faded hill, silently battling against the invisible pollution that’s accumulated due to the war. The leaves are paralysed and the acorns have sorrowfully dropped, buried beneath layered of time and dirt. Weeds surround the stump like soldiers guarding their barracks, forbidding anyone from trespassing.
His boots are heavy against the cracked soil. A thick lump shapes in his throat and he forces it down. A ghost of vows and daisies flicker before him, but the grief rips it apart.
Bloodshot eyes roam the aging tree, noticing the lines in the bark have grown profusely. Maybe if his heart were to be x-rayed, there’d be jagged strikes too.
A sudden gust of wind pushes against him, or perhaps it’s trying to envelope him in a hug he’s unconsciously rejecting. The tickle of the breeze coaxes a twitch from his reddened nose, and his eyes drop to the ground as something featherlight sways in the air.
Immediately, Bucky glances upwards to the branch you once gazed at with child-like wonder, then drops his eyes to what’s fallen before him.
An envelope.
Shaky cursive writing.
James.
His hands tremble beside him.
You knew he’d visit.
He crouches down to pick it up, but it slips from his grasp.
“Shit,” he curses, vigorously wiping the specks of dusty soil off it.
When he’s sure it’s safe in his grasp, he slowly lowers himself to the ground, the bark brushing against his back like a reassuring pat.
After rubbing his eyes with his thumb and pointer finger, clearing any tears so he can read clearly, he expels a forced, steady breath. He doesn’t wish to have a heavy conscience when your literacy can float inside his chest instead.
My darling James,
A choked sound claws from his throat already.
He looks away, the taste of salt poisoning his lips as trails of pain dampen his face. It takes every bit of strength in him to return to reading.
My darling James,
I remember when you first introduced me to the oak tree. I had never felt so special in my life. I had already felt rejected by the world, barely scraping by, but you carried me outside and showed me there’s still hope and beauty out there.
That’s a feeling I’ll never be able to repay, no matter how much you say my love is enough, and I’m so sorry for the heartache I’ll leave behind when I’m gone.
I couldn’t tell you the surgery had failed. Selfishness took over; I didn’t want our final months together to have the impending grief looming over us. I was terrified it’d affect your sanity out there, and I needed you focused so you won’t lay to rest like me.
I lived longer than I expected. I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I know loving you gave me a purpose and I was clinging onto that for as long as my heart could. Being with you made the pain bearable. I even forgot it at times when you’d hold my gaze with eyes the colour of the butterfly I chased.
You never left me, but I’m afraid if you’re reading this, I have left you. Butterflies are doomed with a small lifespan. I can relate to that a bit too closely.
When I pass, I will no longer experience that crushing sensation in my lungs. I’ll be light, soaring with my fully-grown wings, only feeling the comfort and safety you gave me.
I know it’s a lot to ask—you’ve done so much for me—but please keep that bravery inside of you pumping. Please live for me as I lived for you.
I love you with my entire being.
Goodbye, James.
Your love, peach.
Everything’s quiet.
The word has stopped to mourn you with him.
Yet, something foreign flushes throughout his body, lulling his aching bones. Closure’s arrival isn’t loud; it creeps in, slow and steady, and will take time to grow, but it’s a brave start, and he promises to forever be brave in your honour.
A slow, fluttering melody drifts into the environment. Landing on the parchment, littered in tiny damp splotches, is a butterfly.
A butterfly.
For the first time in days, Bucky’s lips curve upwards.
"things i find extremely attractive" trend with dex
"c'mere" and pulls you towards him and tucks his face into your neck
it doesn't matter if you're in public or not for dex to do this. when he wants you near, when he needs to be close to you, he'll whisper "c'mere," sweetly to you as he's already yarding you towards him. dex'll tuck his face into you neck and inhale, softly kissing your hair/neck and hum.
fixing/playing with your hair
it started with dex tucking your hair out of your face to see more of you. over time he got more bold, running his fingers through your hair before gently tucking it behind your ear. when he noticed you shiver as he ran both hands through your hair as he made a makeshift ponytail is what decided dex to experiment. he loves listening to your little 'mm's as he played with the hair at the nape of your neck, and just simply adores how soft your hair is.
leaning down and the little "hm?" to talk to you
he is so tall, it's like second nature to dex to lean down a bit when he wants to focus his attention on you. when you mutter something, especially in public, he'll lean down into your space and hum softly, pretty head tilted to the side.
long eye contact in crowded rooms
he doesn't want to lose sight of you across the room. he'll look at you whether you're looking back or not. when you catch his eye the corner of his mouth might twitch for just a second, and he feeds on the way you stare just as intently back at him, ignoring the people or things around you/him.
messy makeouts
dex lives for messy makeouts with you. kissing you softly and with intention and it derailing into you pinned against something, both hands cupping his jaw as his hands roam. he doesn't even care if it leads to anything more or not, and doesn't make a move unless you do, but he's always painfully hard.
popcorn kisses
he loves your face. sometimes, when you're talking, he'll become so overwhelmed by the sight and sound of you he'll grab your face and kiss your face all over. his heart swells when you giggle and he'll kiss your face a few more times before giving you a rough kiss to your mouth.
carefully observing you when you're doing something
yeah okay we all know dex, do i even need to elaborate? it's one of his favorite things to do. he could watch you for hours, he could watch you watch paint dry. he loves to witness all the little way your face contorts when you focus, when you're frustrated.. the way you fidget, your favorite ways to fidget. he stores it all away in his mind for safekeeping.
rubbing their thumb on your hand while holding hands
dex likes to move his hands, he likes to fidget. when holding hands with you, it translates to rubbing soft circles on your skin. it comforts him, being able to gently squeeze your hand and feel your warm skin on his.
smiling as you do small things for them (tying their shoes, picking off lint, etc)
he loves when you pick a small piece of lint of his shirt mindlessly, as if you were almost unaware you did so until you see him smiling down at you. when you gently fix his hair and are slow to look back at him, making sure his hair looks just right.
standing close behind you
it's important to dex that everyone around you acknowledges that you are his, and his alone. he is so big and broad and warm it's impossible to not notice him standing so close behind you.
when they correct someone's perception of you or what you prefer "no she's allergic to that" / "her favorite color is green, not pink"
it irks dex when someone who claims to know you says something totally wrong. he keeps his anger in check, monotonal as he supplies the person with your actual favorite color, your proper pronouns. he also can't stand when someone is just so blatantly wrong about you. "what did you call her? hard to speak to? they're an introvert, and anyway i've always found them easy to speak with. you just don't know how to, i'd guess you're the harder one to converse with."
knees touching but not moving away
grrr ruff ruff.. he has to be touching you. it doesn't matter how. he will deliberately manspread to touch his large knee to your quaint one. it calms him.
scolding you but not stopping you
it's no secret dex is a brat tamer. he could easily get off on scolding you, making you pay, restraining you to stop you... but sometimes he likes to let you play, just a bit. you want to test your luck with him? okay, he'll scold and warn you but wants to see how far you'll really go.
lying for you
lies roll of his tongue for you easily. he doesn't even need an inkling of idea of why he needs to, he just simply does it. late for something and a friend is upset? 'they lost track of time studying for an important exam.' bruise(s) on your knee and embarrassed about it? 'slammed into the bedframe pretty hard, heard it from the living room.'
replying to you when you call their name with your name
his mouth curls upwards when you call for him. he'll call back to you with the same infliction and your own name on his lips while he makes his way towards where your sweet voice came from.
when they acknowledge it's wrong but they're too far in to stop
"baby, sweetheart..." he's breathing hard, fingers digging into your waist. "fuck, hun, we really shouldn't be doing this," but he can't help himself. "tell me to stop, baby." he can't stop, even if your soft voice begged him to.
synopsis ⠀:: ⠀ the way they cope after your death.
including ⠀! ⠀ matt murdock. benjamin poindexter. ✶
contents ⠀! ⠀ fem reader. obsession. angst. both matt and dex are fucked in the head. dead dove? not really. nsfw in matt's part. gifs by @.emziess. masterlist. english is not my first language. ✶
MATT MURDOCK
Sex.
He will have sex constantly.
Every morning. Every night. Sometimes in the middle of the day when the silence becomes too much.
He fucks women who wear the exact same perfume you used. The one that still makes his cock twitch when he catches it on the wind.
He seeks out women whose heartbeats sync almost perfectly with the rhythm he still hears in his sleep. Women who moan his name in that same breathy pitch you once did, right before you cum on his tongue.
Matt always growls your name when he cums inside. Every single time.
“Y/n—” torn out like a prayer as he spills into a stranger’s cunt, hips stuttering, eyes squeezed shut so he can pretend it’s your wet heat milking him.
He knows it’s disgusting. He knows it’s vile.
But it’s the only way he can bury the grief, the guilt, the self hatred that rots him from the inside like maggots in a open wound.
Because he couldn’t protect you.
Because he didn't do shit.
He's daredevil isn't he? The devil of hell’s kitchen. The hand of god himself.
And yet he couldn’t keep one woman safe. One fragile, beautiful woman.
It’s his fault. All of it. Every fucking second of it.
Because he was selfish. Because he loved the suit more than you. Because he wanted to be superior to Fisk, better than the devil whispering in his ear.
Because he was a hypocrite who preached justice but did nothing when you needed him.
What a pathetic piece of shit.
If he had just been faster... If he had been stronger… If he had just killed—
Yeah. If.
It's always "what if."
Would it bring you back?
Would it let him taste your skin one more time instead of some stranger’s sweat?
What would you think if you saw him like this?
His face between another woman’s thighs just because her laugh sounded a little like yours for three pathetic seconds?
Would you be mad?
Disgusted?
Disappointed?
Or happy?
Are you happy now?
Are you smiling now? Do you laugh when he’s like this? Broken, leaking cum and tears into someone who isn’t you?
You must be.
You hated him, after all.
That’s when the hysterical laughter starts bubbling up while he’s still balls deep inside some poor woman’s pussy.
She is freaked out. He can tell by her heartbeats.
What was her name again?
Emma?
Emily?
Y/n.
Fuck.
He misses you.
He misses you so much. So much it feels like his ribcage is caving in, bones splintering inward to stab his heart.
He can't breathe.
There’s a stone lodged in his throat, heavy and sharp, and he doesn’t know if he wants to swallow it or vomit it up along with everything else rotting inside him.
His dick goes soft instantly. And then the tears come, hot and ugly, while some stranger holds him like a broken child, stroking his hair as he sobs your name into her tits.
Please come back.
Please.
He be better.
He do anything you want.
Just come back.
Please...
BENJAMIN POINDEXTER
The day you died, he had a mental breakdown.
His brain simply couldn't accept that you were dead.
You were not dead. You could not be dead.
Of course you're not dead.
You're sleeping.
You're sick.
You're tired.
You just need rest.
That's all.
That's all.
That's all.
You’re resting in the other room. You’ll wake up soon and smile at him with those pretty eyes that made him feel like he was on cloud nine.
You would never leave him.
You said it yourself. You said you loved him. You said you liked his eyes. You said he was good. You love him. You said you’d stay. You promised. You said you’d stay forever. You said— you said—
Ah.
He burned the eggs again.
Shit.
It’s fine. You can have pancakes today. You always liked them better. Extra syrup, just how you want it.
And apple juice. Cold. Fresh. Sweet.
He has to go get some right now.
Where are his keys? Where’s his keys? Where’s his keys? Where’s his fucking—
“Y/n? Have you seen my keys, baby? I need to get your apple juice.”
No answer.
Hmm?
“Baby?”
…why won't you answer?
“Y/n?”
Nothing.
A chill crawls down his back, slow and wet like melting ice. His pulse hammers in his ears.
Dex immediately runs to your room. Heart beating so fast it feels like it might burst through his chest.
What if you fell? What if you hurt yourself? What if you’re dea—
Shut the fuck up. Shut up shut up shut up.
Then he opens the door and—
Oh.
Ohhh.
Haha.
So you’re still sleeping. Alright.
Ok ok ok, everything's fine.
Look at you.
So lovely. So perfect. So peaceful.
You look so cute like that, don’t you?
Cute?
Yeah. So cute.
What’s so cute about a rotting corpse, Dex?
…what?
He stands there smiling, head tilted, fingers twitching at his sides. The delusion cracks for half a second, then seals itself again like a fresh wound.
You’re just sleep. You’ll wake up. You have to. Because if you don’t… if you really left him…
No. No no no.
He’ll make breakfast anyway. He’ll set the table. He’ll sit across from your cold body and talk to you about his day, stroking your stiffening hand while the smell gets worse and the flies start to gather at the corners of your eyes.
Then he crawls onto the bed beside you, careful not to disturb the way your stiff limbs have settled.
He brushes a strand of hair from your forehead—skin cold, slightly slick now—and presses a kiss to your dry lips.
“It’s okay. You’re just tired. I’ll take care of everything. I never leave you.”
He curls around your decaying body, nose buried in your neck where the rot is sweetest, breathing you in like his life is depends on it.
His hand strokes down your side, over the bloating beginning in your belly, fingers tracing the places he used to mark with his teeth when you were warm and moaning.
You’re not leaving. You can’t. You promised.
And in the quiet of the apartment, with the flies humming their little hymn above you both, Dex smiles against your cold skin and whispers the same things he told you every night when you were alive.
“I love you. I love you. I love you.”
He’ll stay right here until you wake up.
Even if it takes weeks.
Even if the smell gets worse.
Even if pieces of you start to slip off when he holds you too tight.
You’ll wake up.
You have to.
Because you promised.
Right?
If you want to be in my daredevil taglist let me know :)
Summary : Benjamin Poindexter, monster to everyone else, is the only person who could keep your mind from falling apart.
Pairing : DDBA!Benjamin Poindexter x mind reader! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Angst, Fluff, hurt/comfort, canon-typical violence, panic attacks, sensory overload, mind reading, intrusive thoughts, trauma response, mentions of medical experimentation, murder, blood, protective/obsessive behavior, codependency, morally complicated love, hurt/comfort, domestic Dex, very brief mention of sex. Reader is mentioned to be an OXE medical experiment (Set in the last Episode of DDBA Season 2) (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 15.8k
Requested By : Anon
Notes : Please send me an ask if you would like to be added to the taglist, sometimes it gets lost in the comments. Enjoy!
Matt Murdock told himself it was a welfare check.
Which was stupid. Obviously it was stupid. Calling anything involving Benjamin Poindexter a welfare check was almost funny, if Matt had been in the mood to laugh at anything anymore.
Dex had shot Buck Cashman outside the Supreme Court and forced a makeshift siege. Of course he’d act like people were just moving targets. Of course, if the city was falling apart, Dex was probably the one person who could make it worse.
But the courthouse was done now.
Sort of.
Matt had stood there in front of God, Fisk, Karen, the cameras, all of New York, basically, and said it. He had torn the last piece of himself open with his own hands.
He was Daredevil.
There was no putting that back.
Fisk took the plea, and he was finally out of office. Fucking finally. The city had helped, and for better or for worse, the streets had bled because of it. Riots broke out, and sirens were everywhere. The whole city sounded like it was trying to crawl out of its own skin.
And Matt knew his days of moving freely were numbered.
It would not take long for the paperwork to be in order. It would not take long for the police to get their arrest warrant.
His name would spread through every system he had spent years trying to evade. Matthew Michael Murdock, Daredevil.
Whatever he was to people; Catholic boy, blind lawyer, vigilante, hero, hypocrite, all of it? That meant nothing. He was just a criminal who had to pay for breaking the law now.
So, fine.
But before all of that happened. He needed to tie up loose ends.
That was what he told himself as he put on a hoodie the morning after the courthouse, at 2 AM.
He crossed rooftops and fire escapes, ribs aching, lungs burning, sweat cold beneath his hoodie.
He was gonna check on him, that’s all. Make sure Dex was not out there killing people for the love of the game. Make sure the city didn’t have one more monster loose before he was taken away.
This better be quick, because would really rather spend his time with Karen before getting locked up.
By the time Matt reached Dex’s apartment building, the riot noise had thinned, like thunder moving farther away without ever really leaving.
Outside, New York still burned in fragments. Inside the building creaked. Old pipes ticked in the walls. Someone two floors down whispered angrily behind a locked door. A television murmured emergency coverage through cheap speakers. The exhaust fans gave a faint metallic complaint above him.
Matt climbed the stairs, knowing Dex’s apartment was ahead.
And then… Matt heard sobbing.
He stopped at the door.
It wasn’t theatrical, not the kind of crying meant to pull attention from the other side of a wall.
It was smaller than that. It almost made it… worse.
It came through Dex’s door in little broken pieces, like your body had run out of strength before it had run out of panic. One shaky breath, then another, then a thin, wet sound you tried to swallow and failed. You were trying to be quiet, Matt could tell. You were trying not to make noise and still the hurt kept leaking out of you anyway.
Matt stopped dead and assessed the situation.
There was a woman crying inside Benjamin Poindexter’s apartment.
For one second, Matt thought about every horrible thing he already knew about him.
Foggy, Father Lantom, all the other bodies he left in his wake.
All of them were there in his head at once, not as memories, but as evidence. As proof against Dex. As a case already built and closed in his mind.
Dex had never been someone Matt could afford to give the benefit of the doubt, not after what he had done. Not after who he had taken. Not even after all that bullshit about one good deed, about evening out the scales, as if taking another life could balance out the lives he had destroyed.
So Matt listened.
And then Dex spoke. “Baby, breathe. Come on. I’m here.”
Matt’s stomach tightened.
Baby?
From anyone else, maybe it would have sounded the way it was meant to: a soft comfort, words meant to soothe.
But coming from Dex, the words twisted in Matt’s ears.
Still, Matt knew it sounded… sincere.
Soft, but not fake-soft. Not mocking. Not cruel. Not even controlling.
It sounded… exhausted and careful. It frayed apart at the edges, like he had been kneeling there for hours, saying the same few words over and over because he was terrified you would disappear somewhere he couldn’t pull you back from.
“I’m right here,” Dex murmured. “You’re okay. You’re with me.”
You made a small, broken sound.
It was this heartbreakingly helpless, breathless little noise that caught in your throat and dragged itself out anyway. It was as if your body was trying to keep crying after you had already run out of strength for it.
Your breathing was too fast; Matt could hear every jagged inhale scraping up short in your chest, every failed attempt to steady yourself. Your heartbeat fluttered, frantic and uneven, skipping over itself like it was trapped.
You were on the floor. He could tell by the way your sobs hit the wood first, the way it sounded low and folded down. You were curled into yourself, maybe.
And Dex was too close. He was close enough that his voice barely had to rise. He was close enough that Matt could hear the shift of his body beside yours, the drag of fabric against the floor, the way he moved like he knew exactly which sounds would hurt you and which ones would not.
Everything Matt heard told him Dex was not hurting you.
The care was there. The patience was there. The way he kept his voice quiet enough not to startle. The way he didn’t grab at you, didn’t bark orders, didn’t crowd too fast. He seemed to be making himself smaller just to keep from adding to whatever was tearing through you.
Benjamin Poindexter sounded…. kind.
Matt hated that. his senses were giving him one answer and his memory was giving him another.
His senses said Dex was helping you. His memory said Dex hurt people.
His senses said Dex was gentle with you. His memory said Dex had killed Foggy.
His senses said there was love in the room. His memory said Benjamin Poindexter didn’t know how to love correctly.
His mind immediately assumed the worst.
Had he held you here? Kidnapped you? Had he convinced himself he loved you, and was he trying to convince you to love him, too?
Your sob hitched again.
“I can’t,” you whispered, voice shredded thin. “I can’t, Dex, I can’t—”
“I know,” Dex said immediately, and Matt could hear his skin on yours, rubbing gentle circles on your arm. You weren’t pulling away. “I know. Stay with me.”
There it was, the softness again.
That was an almost desperate patience in his voice, and still, Matt couldn’t make himself trust it.
Not with Dex crouched close enough for his voice to brush your skin. Not with you breathing like the room itself was killing you. Not with the door locked and the city screaming outside and no one else coming.
Then your breath snagged hard “Dex.”
“I’m here.”
“No.” Your voice thinned, almost terrified. “Someone else is h-here.”
Matt went completely still.
Behind the door, the apartment changed.
It was just a shift in the air. Dex went quiet all of a sudden. Matt understood, somehow, that you knew he was there.
For one suspended second, no one moved.
Your breathing trembled in the silence. Then Dex’s heartbeat slowed as he turned.
That was what made Matt decide. The sudden stillness of a killer turning his attention toward the door.
Whatever comfort Matt had heard before, whatever gentleness had almost confused him, it collapsed under the weight of everything else he knew:
A woman was crying in Dex’s apartment. Dex was too close to you. Ergo, Dex was hurting you and Matt had to get you out.
So Matt stepped back once he kicked the door down, and it broke inward. The sound tore through the apartment, wood splitting against the wall.
Matt stepped, expecting you to recoil.
He expected you to scramble backward on the floor, away from Dex. He expected fear to pull you toward the farthest corner, toward the broken doorway, toward him.
Anything but what actually happened.
You moved toward Dex.
It was a clumsy, desperate little scramble, knees dragging over the floorboards, one hand slipping against the wood as you tried to push yourself up and failed. Your breath came in miserable pieces, your whole body folded around the panic like it hurt to exist inside your own skin.
“Dex,” you choked.
Dex was already moving. He closed the distance before you could reach him properly, like he couldn’t stand the sight of you having to cross even that little distance alone. His hands came out, open, and you clambered into him.
There was no other word for it.
You climbed into his arms like you were trying to get beneath his ribs. As if you pressed close enough, hid deep enough, the rest of the world might lose track of you. Your fingers caught the front of his shirt and twisted there, tight and frantic, pulling yourself higher until your face was buried against his chest.
Dex caught you with his whole body. One of his arms was wrapped around your back. The other came up over your head, shielding your face, tucking you under his chin. He bent around you so gently it was almost painful to process, all that deadly mass turned into cover, into shelter.
Matt froze.
You… were not trapped.
Your cheek was pressed to his chest, hands fisted in his shirt. Your body shook against his, but the second he held you, your heartbeat changed. It was still too fast, still terrified, still broken up with panic, but it reached for his rhythm like a drowning man reaching for shore.
Dex lowered his mouth to your temple.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “I’ve got you, baby.”
You made a devastated sound and curled tighter.
Your knees drew up against his thigh. One of your hands slipped from his shirt to his shoulder, then to the back of his neck, gripping there like you were afraid Matt might pull him away from you.
“He’s loud,” you managed.
Dex’s eyes stayed on Matt, who still hadn’t said anything. “I know.”
“He’s loud, Dex, he’s so loud.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
You shook your head against him, hiding your face harder in the hollow of his throat. “Baby,” you whispered, voice barely there. “He thinks you’re hurting me.”
Dex went still.
“I’m not,” he said.
“I know.” Your voice cracked on it. “I know. But he thinks it and I can hear it and it hurts.”
Matt’s throat tightened. What did that even mean?
He heard it then, not just the panic and sobs. He heard the trust.
Your fear was everywhere, all over the room, spilling out of you in ragged breaths, but it was not aimed at the man holding you. Dex was the only place in the apartment your body seemed to recognize as safe.
You kept trying to disappear into him.
Every time Matt shifted, even slightly, your fingers tightened. Every time the broken door creaked behind him, your breath snagged and Dex’s palm moved slowly over the back of your head, as if smoothing you back into yourself.
“Don’t listen to him,” Dex murmured against your hair. “Listen to me.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
“It’s too much.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
Matt took half a step forward. Dex’s head snapped up. “Don’t.”
The word was quiet to not startle you, and that was enough to stop Matt anyway.
Dex shifted on the floor, turning his body more fully between you and the doorway. You followed without thinking, clinging to him as he moved, your face still hidden against his chest. He kept you tucked there, one arm firm around your back, the other curved protectively around your head like he could keep Matt’s thoughts from touching you if he just covered enough of you.
“Poindexter,” Matt started, and it was smaller now.
Dex’s expression did not change. “Get out.”
“I thought—”
“I don’t give a shit what you thought.”
You trembled harder at the anger in his voice. Dex felt it instantly. His eyes flicked down, and when he spoke again, it wasn’t to Matt.
“Not you,” he whispered, pressing his mouth briefly to your hair.
You made another broken little noise and pushed closer, like the words had gone straight through your heart.
Dex held you tighter, not possessively in a way that trapped, but just enough to tell your body there was he was around it.
Matt stood there in the wreckage of the door, listening to your heartbeat try to steady itself against Dex’s chest, and for one awful second he didn’t know what to do with what his senses were telling him.
Because Benjamin Poindexter was still the reason too many people Matt loved were dead. But you were curled into him like he was the last quiet place in New York.
“He’s still here,” you whispered.
Dex’s eyes lifted. “I know.”
Dex’s face changed, but not by much. Matt doubted anyone else would have noticed, but he did. He heard it in Dex’s breathing, in the shift of his weight, in the sudden burst of restraint. The city outside was loud. The riots were loud. Matt was loud. His suspicion was loud. His righteousness was loud. His judgment was loud.
And somehow, you could hear all of it.
“I don’t want him here,” you said.
That was it. Whatever patience Dex had left for Matt died right there on the floor.
His hand stayed gentle on your back, but his voice didn’t. “Get the fuck out.”
For once, he did what Dex told him to do.
Matt stepped back into the hallway and got out.
The ruined door dragged crookedly against the floor when he pulled it mostly shut behind him. The lock was useless now, broken out from the frame, hanging loose in splintered wood, but Matt still closed it as much as he could.
He stood there in the hall, one hand still near the broken door, breathing quietly through the dust and old paint and the faint metallic tang inside the apartment.
He should have left. He knew that.
You had wanted him gone. Matt had seen enough, heard enough, to know he had been wrong about at least the first thing: Dex hadn’t been hurting you.
But Matt still could not make himself walk away.
Because Matt has convinced himself that love, in the hands of someone like Benjamin Poindexter, could become a locked room so easily.
Matt stayed.
Not close enough to push the door open again, but not far enough to pretend he wasn’t listening.
Inside, your breathing was still ragged.
Dex was still on the floor with you.
Matt could hear the tiny, frantic movements of your hands in Dex’s shirt. The tremor in your inhale. The way you kept trying to tuck yourself into him like the world might stop finding you if there was enough of his body between you and everything else.
“He’s still out there,” you whispered.
Dex’s answer came after a second of consideration. “Is he, now?”
Your breath hitched. “He didn’t leave.”
Fuck.
Matt stood very still in the hall.
“I’ll take care of him,” Dex murmured.
Your breath snagged. “Don’t hurt him.”
There was a pause. It wasn’t long, but long enough.
Then Dex said, “I won’t kill him.”
“Dex.” You didn't sound convinced.
“I won’t kill him,” he repeated, softer this time. “Promise.”
“You’re mad.”
“I know.”
“It’s sharp,” you winced.
“I know, baby. I’m sorry.” Inside the apartment, Dex went quiet in a way that felt less like guilt and more like being seen too clearly. “I won’t hurt him unless I have to.”
“Dex.”
“I won’t hurt him,” he said, and this time there was no loophole in it. There was only surrender, because it was you asking. “Okay? I won’t.”
Your breathing shuddered as Dex shifted on the floor.
“I’m going to move you, okay?” he said. “Just to the bed. I’ve got you.”
You made a small sound, and Matt could picture it too clearly now. You curled in on yourself, face hidden, body shaking from too much of whatever it is you could sense.
Dex crouched slowly, though he was already close. Like even now, even with you clutching at him, he was careful not to startle you. He slid one arm under your knees and the other behind your back.
You clutched at his shirt with shaking fingers. “I’m sorry,” you whispered.
“No.” His voice went firm immediately. “No, don’t say things like that.”
“I ruined your night.”
“You didn’t ruin anything.”
“I came here and I—”
“You came to me.” Dex pressed his mouth to your temple, quick and fierce. “That’s all. You came to me.”
You made a broken little noise against him.
Matt stood in the hallway, just outside the ruined door, listening to Dex lift you from the floor.
He heard the way your breath caught when your body left the ground. He heard your hands grip for a better hold. He heard Dex adjust instantly, pulling you closer.
“I’ve got you,” Dex murmured. “I’ve got you. I know.”
“You’re going to leave.”
“No.”
You sounded so small when you said, “You are.”
Dex carried you to the bed like every step had been chosen before he took it. Like he knew which floorboards made noise and which ones didn’t. Like he had learned how to move through this apartment in a way that made the least amount of noise for you.
“I’ll take care of him, okay?” Dex murmured. “I’ll make him go away.”
Your breathing hitched as you started to say something, but Dex shushed you gently.
“Yes, I know,” he said, softer. “I know you don’t like it when people see you like this. I know. It’s just gonna be me and you, okay? Just me and you.”
The mattress dipped down under your weight.
“I’ll close the door,” Dex continued. “I’ll turn the lights off. I’ll come right back.”
Your fingers caught the fabric of his shirt again. “Don’t leave.”
“I’m not leaving.” Dex let out a slow breath. “I’m right here.”
“You’re thinking about going.”
“I’m thinking about making him leave.”
“I can’t tell the difference.”
Dex went quiet.
Matt heard him sit beside you instead of standing right away. The mattress shifted again as the room settled around the two of you.
You cried a little, more exhausted now, as if the panic had torn through you and left you hollowed out behind it.
Dex’s hand moved over fabric in a slow, repetitive pass. Matt realised he was making the sheets smooth for you as he laid you down.
His hand slid up from your back to the side of your face, thumb hovering near your cheek, not quite wiping the tears away until you leaned into it first. “Look into my mind, baby.”
Matt’s head tilted from the hallway.
What?
Inside the studio, everything went still except for your breathing.
The room was not large enough for privacy. Not really. The bed sat pushed into the far corner. The broken front door was too close. Matt was too close. The whole world was too close.
But Dex bent over you like he could make distance with his body alone.
“Go on,” he murmured. “Look at me.”
You stared up at him through wet lashes, face blotched from crying, lips parted around breaths that still would not come right. Your fingers trembled against his shirt, twisted in the fabric so tightly the seams strained.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then your grip loosened by a fraction.
Your eyes fluttered.
A shaky breath left you, not calm, not even close, but relieved enough that Dex’s shoulders almost caved in with it.
The answer was immediate. No room for doubt. No space for the thought to grow teeth.
But then your expression crumpled again.
“You’re mad.”
Dex closed his eyes for half a second.
He didn’t deny it. He couldn't, even if he wanted to. Not to you. “I am.”
Your breath caught so suddenly it sounded like it hurt.
Dex’s whole face changed. The anger was still there, Matt could hear it in him, running hot under the skin. But with you looking at him like that, terrified because his fury had no color, no label, no clear direction once it got inside your head, Dex felt almost sick with it.
“I’m not mad at you,” he said, urgent in a way that made the words rough. “Never at you.”
Your mouth trembled and repeated yourself. “You know I can’t tell the difference sometimes.” It came out so pained Matt felt it in his own chest.
You said it like an apology, like you hated needing him to explain the direction of his anger because you could feel it anyway, and feeling it didn’t mean understanding it.
Dex swallowed. His hand curved more fully around your cheek now, warm and steady, thumb finally catching one tear before it slid down to your jaw.
“I know,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
You looked at him for another second, searching his face like your own mind wasn't enough tonight. Like even seeing inside him had not made your body believe it yet.
Then he lowered his voice. “I have to make him leave.”
Your fingers tightened again, not as badly this time.
Dex did not pull away. He leaned in instead, pressing a short kiss to your forehead, then another to the corner of your temple, like he could nail the promise into place with his mouth.
“I’m going to turn off the lights, okay?”
You nodded, barely, as breathing scraped in and out through your nose.
Dex shifted only when you let him. He eased you back against the pillows in the bed, not putting you down so much as arranging the room around your collapse. One hand stayed on you the whole time, a constant point of contact while the other reached for everything else.
He crossed the few steps to it and slid the window shut with painstaking care, catching the frame before it could knock. Street noise dulled at once.
Then he pulled the curtains together until the thin spill of city light vanished from the wall and your face disappeared into darkness.
As promised, he clicked the lamp off.
The studio fell dimmer, warmer, reduced to the weak strip of hallway light bleeding through the ruined front door.
The phone was next. He picked it up from the small table beside the bed and silenced it without looking, thumb moving from memory. He put it back, screen turned down.
A radio sat near the kitchenette, cheap and old, still plugged into the wall. Dex crossed to it barefoot and pulled the cord free. The plastic scraped faintly against the outlet, and even that made your breathing tremble.
Then, he opened a drawer near the bed.
Something rattled softly as he picked it up. A pill bottle, maybe? No, it could be earplugs in a little tin.
He came back with them in his palm.
You must have watched him through the dark because your breathing changed when he got close again, sounding less lost than before.
Dex sat on the edge of the mattress.
He tucked the blanket around you, drawing it up over your shoulder, smoothing the edge down like he was sealing the world out inch by inch. His hand lingered there after, broad against the blanket, feeling the shake of you through the fabric.
The apartment had become smaller. Every sound had been answered. Every light had been put down. Every little edge of the room had been softened, covered, turned away from you by hands that knew the ritual too well.
He had done this before. Like he had learned, piece by piece, how to make the world survivable for you.
At some point, you must have reached for him again, because Dex’s voice dropped inaudibly. “Hey,” he whispered. “I know.”
The bed creaked as he leaned closer.
A kiss touched your skin. Your forehead, maybe. Then another, lower. Your temple. The damp line of your cheek.
“I’ll be right back,” Dex breathed.
You made a small sound.
He stayed another second, maybe two. Long enough for your fingers to loosen.
Then he stood.
Dex walked to the other side of the apartment without turning on a single light. He made no wasted movement, not a single sound he didn’t mean to make.
At the broken front door, he paused and looked back once.
Matt could hear the small turn of his head. The habit of making sure you were still under the blanket, still breathing, still there.
Then Dex slipped into the hall and pulled the ruined door mostly shut behind him.
It couldn’t latch. But he cracked it closed as carefully as if it still mattered, leaving only a narrow gap of darkness between the apartment and the hallway.
He was keeping the light out. He was keeping Matt out.
When Dex turned, he stood half-shadowed in the corridor, eyes red-rimmed and flat with exhaustion. His face was calm in the way loaded weapons were calm. His voice stayed quiet, almost gentle, but not for Matt.
He did it for yous
“I told you,” Dex said, “to get the fuck out.”
For a while, Matt didn’t say anything.
The hallway held them in the aftermath of what Matt had done. The door hung crooked in its frame, pulled mostly shut even though the lock was split and useless, the wood around it cracked open where Matt’s boot had forced its way through. It couldn’t protect you anymore. It could barely pretend to be a door. Still, Dex stood in front of it as if his body could replace what Matt had broken, as if he could become the lock, the wall, the whole goddamn building if he had to.
Matt could hear the anger in him as clearly as he could hear traffic below: hot, contained, and viciously focused. Dex wanted to do something with it. Matt knew that, but he kept it buried beneath his ribs because you were behind that broken door, and if he let the rage rise any higher, you would feel it.
That was what Matt could not stop noticing. Not the anger. The restraint.
Inside the apartment, you shifted under the blanket. It was only a movement of fabric, barely anything, followed by the small uneven catch of your breath as you tried to settle yourself in the dark corner Dex had made for you. Dex turned his head at once. Not fully, not enough to take his attention off Matt, but enough that Matt realised that some part of Dex had never left the room with you. Some part of him was still sitting beside the bed, counting your breaths, waiting for the slightest sign that you needed him again.
For one moment, Matt didn't feel like he was looking at Bullseye. He was looking at a man furious enough to kill and still aching to go back inside because the woman he loved was trying to remember how to breathe without him there.
Matt swallowed. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”
Dex looked back at him and the answer was obvious. Matt had no right to know. No right to ask. He had no right to stand there in the hallway after frightening you and pretend the question was harmless.
“I didn’t tell you.”
His voice was flat and guarded, the words set down like a barrier. Matt’s mouth tightened.
Behind the door, your breathing hitched again, smaller this time, like the sound of voices through wood was still enough to scrape against you. Dex heard it too. The anger in him shifted immediately, folding smaller, tightening down.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked.
He knew it was wrong the second it left his mouth. The words were too blunt, too harsh, too clinical. He had meant, What happened? He had meant, Is she going to be okay? He had meant, What did I just walk into, and how badly did I make it worse? But none of that came out. What came out sounded like you were a problem.
“Nothing is wrong with her,” Dex said, and Matt could tell he was trying his hardest not to snap.
Matt didn’t move. Dex stepped closer by the smallest amount, and the entire hallway seemed to narrow with him. His face had gone hard, but not empty.
“Nothing,” Dex repeated, each syllable harsh enough to cut. “She’s perfect.”
Matt exhaled slowly through his nose. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes, you did.”
Dex didn’t have to snarl. He didn’t have to raise his voice. The accusation sat there between them, plain and ugly, and Matt couldn’t defend himself from it because part of it was true.
Inside, you were quiet now. Not calm, but silent in the way people became when they were trying very hard not to take up too much space with their hurt. Matt listened to the small tremor and felt the pieces beginning to arrange themselves in his head.
You had known he was outside before Dex opened the door. You had reacted to him even before he even stepped inside. You had known Dex was mad but couldn’t tell where that anger was aimed. Dex had told you to look into his mind with the ease of someone offering proof, not metaphor, not comfort dressed up as poetry, but a real thing he knew you could do.
Oh.
Matt looked back at Dex and stated the painfully obvious explanation. “She can read minds.”
Dex’s expression changed only a little, but Matt heard the rest. The brief tightening of his mouth. The instinct to protect you by lying took over, followed almost immediately by the realization that lying to Matt Murdock was pointless.
Dex looked away, and said, “Yes.”
His voice had changed, still rough around the edges, but the explanation seemed to cost him a part of his soul. Every word about you had to be handled carefully because it belonged to you first. He kept his eyes on the door as he spoke, as if even describing your pain required him to make sure it had not worsened.
“She hears thoughts, feelings. Most days she can keep it out, or keep it separate, or read one mind at a time. She knows how to get through the day.” His teeth clenched, and he looked down for half a second before forcing himself to continue. “But when there are too many people, when emotions run too high, it stops being individual thoughts and turns into noise.”
Oh.
Oh shit, Matt thought as he realized that last night hadn’t only been bad for you. It had been a disaster built exactly out of the things that hurt you most.
Last night, protests clashed with Fisk’s Task Force. Bodies were pressed shoulder to shoulder in the streets, voices raised, officers behind their shields, civilians furious and terrified and righteous all at once. Fisk’s fall had moved through the city like a shockwave. Matt Murdock’s confession that he was a Daredevil had made a home on every screen, in every mouth, in every disbelieving mind.
His confession had not stayed in the courtroom. It had spilled outward, turning into rumor and revelation and riot, and you had walked straight into all of it because you thought Dex was hurt. Because you missed him.
Matt felt his stomach sink.
He thought of you moving through that crowd, not just hearing the sirens and shouting like everyone else, but taking in the thoughts beneath them. Panic layered over rage layered over grief. Thousands of minds all pushing against yours with no space between them. A whole city losing control at once, and you were caught in the middle of it, trying to find one person.
Dex’s face tightened as if he could see the same picture and hated it more because he had already lived the end of it. He hated that he had found you like that.
Matt understood that without being told. Dex had found you shaking apart in this same apartment, or near it, or on the street outside, too overwhelmed by everyone else to find yourself. He had found you and brought you here and spent the night closing windows, killing lights, silencing phones, making the world smaller with hands that had done unspeakable things.
“She came looking for me,” Dex said.
The words were almost stripped of anger now. Dex looked at the door again, and his body softened before he could stop it. But Matt heard it in the way Dex’s breath caught around your existence on the other side of the wall.
Benjamin Poindexter loved you.
Matt didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to have to make room for it inside the shape of the man he hated. He wanted Dex to stay simple. A killer. Someone with a label simple enough to condemn without complication. But love was written through him now in ways Matt couldn’t ignore.
Matt’s voice came quieter when he asked, “Does she need a doctor?”
Dex scoffed. “Doctors are what made her like this.”
Matt went still.
Dex didn’t explain. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe Matt hadn’t earned that part of the story. But still, he was opening just enough of a door for Matt to picture the white rooms, fluorescent lights and people calling pain research, behind him.
Dex looked back at the broken door, and for half a second, the rage in him gave way. “She has good days and bad days,” Dex said. His mouth tightened, and when he spoke again, the grief in it was almost unbearable. “And she was having a good week.”
That mattered.
Matt couldn’t possibly understand the full weight of that sentence, but Dex did. A good week meant sleep. It meant you could eat without feeling nauseous. It meant you had mornings where you didn’t wake up already bracing against other people’s thoughts.
You’ve had several really good weeks, actually.
It mattered because Dex had met you on a bad day.
—
Twelve months ago…
OXE hired him to kill you.
A freelance gig, really.
The file was from the private medical trial branch of the corporation. It said that you were a failed participant. You were a liability. You were just a woman whose condition had become unpredictable.
They sent Dex a name, a photograph, an address, and a warning not to engage longer than necessary.
The house they had sent him to had no security. It was an old, empty place with drawn curtains and stale air and dust gathered thick in the corners.
You hated it.
Dex found you in the attic under the slanted roof, sitting in the weak orange spill of late afternoon light, one wrist was handcuffed to an exposed pipe. Your knees were drawn up close to your chest. Your hair stuck damply to your face, and your lips were bitten raw, like you had spent hours trying to keep something inside your mouth by force.
The key was across the room.
It was kicked. Dex could tell from the scrape in the dust where it had skidded away from you, just far enough that your fingers couldn’t reach it unless you pulled hard enough to tear the skin around your wrist. The cuff had already bruised a dark, ugly ring on your skin.
You looked at him once.
A small, breathless laugh left you. It wasn’t happy, not even close. It was more like your body had mistaken despair for humor because it had run out of other ways to hold it.
“You’re…” Your voice cracked. “You’re here to kill me.”
Dex didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
Your eyes moved over his face, and something strange passed through them.
Then you laughed again, barely. “You think I’m pretty, Dex.”
The attic went still as dust drifted in the light between you.
Dex’s finger rested near the trigger.
“How do you know my name?”
You looked at him like the question itself was tired. “Mind reader,” you said. “Obviously.”
Dex stared at you for a long moment.
You didn’t look like what OXE had described.
Dangerous, yes, maybe. But not in the way they meant. You looked exhausted, cornered, and afraid of yourself than of him. Your whole body was tense against the cuff, but you weren’t trying to get free anymore.
Dex’s eyes flicked to the key, then back to you.
“Why lock yourself up here?”
For the first time, you looked ashamed. “Because it’s loud.”
Dex glanced around the empty attic.
You heard the thought before he could speak.
“Not here,” you said, swallowing, then pointing to your head with your free hand, “but here.”
Your hand then curled briefly around your own throat, not pressing, just remembering.
“I kicked the key away,” you whispered. “So I’d have time to stop myself.”
“From what?”
You closed your eyes. Your voice came out small. “Strangling someone.”
Dex didn’t move.
You opened your eyes, wet and miserable, and looked past him because looking right at him was suddenly too hard.
“He was loud. He wouldn’t stop. He kept thinking and thinking and thinking, and I kept hearing it. I told him to stop to shut up, but they couldn’t, because people can’t just stop thinking, and I knew that, see, I knew that, but I—
Your breath broke as you looked down at your cuffed wrist. “So I locked myself up here. Before I kill someone again.”
Dex should have killed you. That was the job.
OXE had paid him to remove a problem, and there you were, handcuffed beneath a slanted roof, bruised and filthy and shaking because the world had made you into something you were terrified of becoming.
He should have pulled the trigger. Instead, he lowered the gun.
Your face fell immediately, like mercy was its own kind of threat.
“Don’t,” you whispered.
Dex paused.
“If you’re going to kill me, just do it,” you said, voice cracking.
Dex’s mind went quiet.
He had no idea what to do with that. No idea what to do with you.
So he did the only practical thing he could.
He walked across the room and picked up the key.
You cried then, silently at first, tears spilling over without sound as he came back and crouched in front of you. Dex moved slowly. He set the gun down beside him, close enough to reach, far enough that you could see both his hands.
“I’m going to unlock it,” he said.
You stared at him.
“You can read my mind,” he added, awkward and blunt because gentleness was not a language he spoke well yet. “So you know I’m not lying.”
Your breath shook.
You looked at him, really looked, and you squinted your eyes in the smallest, most painful disbelief.
Dex unlocked the cuff.
The metal fell away from your wrist.
You didn’t move.
You only stared at your freed hand like it belonged to someone else. The skin beneath the cuff was swollen and angry, the bruise already darkening. Dex looked at it for too long.
Then he took off his jacket.
He draped it over your shoulders.
You were shaking so hard the leather fabric around you.
Dex did not ask if you could walk. He already knew the answer. He saw the way your legs failed when you tried to gather them beneath you, saw the way your hand went out blindly toward the pipe, toward the wall, toward anything that would keep the room from tilting.
So he picked you up slowly, one arm under your knees, one behind your back, no grip tighter than necessary.
You went rigid in his arms for half a second, then sagged, exhausted past the point of fear.
“Why are you doing this?” you whispered.
Dex looked down at you.
He didn’t know how to answer out loud.
Because I know what it means to be made wrong for the world, too.
Maybe, now that we’ve found each other, we don’t have to be alone anymore.
He said none of that. But you said, “okay.”
He carried you down from the attic and took you back to his apartment because he didn’t know where else to take you.
You sat on the edge of his tub in his jacket while he ran the water warm.
Dex kept looking away, not because he was embarrassed, but because he understood, somehow, that being looked at was another kind of noise. He handed you a towel, found some soaps and put a clean shirt on the sink.
When you could not lift your hands without trembling, he helped.
He helped you into warm water and rinsed dust from your hair, cleaning blood from your bruised wrist. His hand was steady on your skin when you started crying again.
He didn't ask you to stop.
He only said, once, very quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
And because you could read his mind, you knew he meant it.
Benjamin Poindexter had been hired to kill you.
Instead, he took you out of the attic and bathed you.
—
Over the next couple of days, you were mostly good.
Mostly.
Because Dex learned quickly that good didn’t mean cured. It meant you slept more than you usually did. It meant you could sit by the window without pressing your palms to your ears. It meant you could make tea in his kitchen and smile at some thought he hadn’t meant to give you.
Within the first week, his apartment changed because of you. He installed wall panelling first, because the building was old and thin and the neighbors came through the walls too easily when everything felt hollow. Then, he gave you thicker curtains, then rugs. Then a new refrigerator because the old one hummed at a frequency that made you bare your teeth and say it tasted wrong.
Dex didn’t ask what that meant.
He just replaced it.
After all, your mind was already susceptible to being invaded by foreign thoughts, he didn't want you to be overstimulated by your senses, too.
That was how it started with him, really. Not with declarations. Dex loved in corrections, adjustments, and threat assessments. He noticed what hurt you, and then he removed it. He learned the signs of your bad days and built around them, one practical act at a time.
You fell in love with him so fast it should have scared you.
It didn’t, but mostly because you knew he had already fallen too.
You could hear it.
He thought he was being subtle, which was almost funny. Dex, who could control his breathing to take a shot, couldn’t hide wanting you to kiss him for more than a week.
You could hear his thoughts every time you came too close.
Not words, exactly. More like flashes of your mouth, your hands in his mind. The curve of your shoulder when you wore one of his shirts. The split-second image of him leaning in, followed by a disciplined thought-wall of don’t, don’t, don’t, because Dex could kill a man without blinking but apparently touching you first was too much.
You let him suffer with it for six days, mostly because you were giving him time to change his mind.
He didn’t.
On the seventh, he was fixing one of the new panels in the kitchen, teeth clenched because the wood refused to sit straight. You were sitting on the counter with one of his old FBI academy shirts that had since gotten too small for his bulk now, bare legs swinging, watching him pretend he was not acutely aware of your knees on either side of his ribs when he stepped between them to reach the wall.
You had laughed from where you sat.
He looked over at you. “You think that’s funny?”
You tilted your head. “You’re thinking about shooting the wall.”
Dex stared at you, setting the screwdriver down too carefully.
“You shouldn’t go digging around in my head.”
“I didn’t dig,” you said. “You’re loud when you’re annoyed.”
That should have bothered him. It did, maybe a little.
But then you smiled at him like his mind was not a terrible place to be. Like you could look at all the terrible things in there and still find him underneath. Like understanding him did not disgust you.
Fuck, he thought, don’t do things that make me want to—
“You want to kiss me,” you interrupted his train of thoughts.
Dex went so still it was almost sweet. Then he turned his head. “You shouldn’t listen to that.”
“You know I don’t mean to.” You hooked two fingers in the front of his shirt and tugged him closer.
His eyes dropped to your mouth, and that was answer enough.
So you kissed him.
Gently at first, just to see what he would do with it. Dex froze under your hands like his body had forgotten every instruction except stay. Then he made this small, ruined sound against your mouth and touched your waist like you were a fragile crystal he had been warned not to break.
After that, neither of you stood a chance.
Neither of you did anything halfway. Dex didn’t know how to want normally, and you didn’t know how to be wanted normally. Kissing turned into touching, touching turned to stumbling into his bed, and being in his bed turned into Dex curling into you afterward like he had found heaven and was furious nobody had warned him it would feel like this.
Sex with a mind reader should have terrified him.
But after the first time he understood what it meant with you. There was no pretending or hiding behind control. He couldn’t pretend to be calmer than he was. He couldn’t hide how badly he wanted to kiss you again, how much he liked your hands on him, how ruined he got when you said his name in that breathless sigh. You knew when he was overwhelmed and you adjusted. You knew when he needed to slow down. You knew when he was thinking too much and when he needed you to pull him out of his own head.
You kissed him through it. You talked him through it. You touched him like his wants were not shameful just because they were intense, like the inside of him was not too much for you.
And you loved him for it.
You loved the strange, violent tenderness of him. The way he checked your face before his hands moved. The way he liked when you told him what he wanted.
“You love me,” you whispered after the second month, half asleep against his chest, your fingers tracing lazy shapes over his ribs.
Dex went still beneath you.
You smiled into his skin. “Don’t panic. I love you too.”
He didn’t say it back then because he didn’t have to.
But his arms tightened around you like the thought of you leaving had become physically unbearable. His mouth pressed to the top of your head, then your temple, then the corner of your mouth, almost desperate.
He loved you with every ruined, desperate, loyal part of himself. He loved you like gravity, like a fixation, like a religion he had invented alone in the dark and then accidentally found living in your body.
You smiled up at him, eyes wet.
“I know,” you whispered. “I can hear you.”
Dex’s hand came up to the back of your neck and kissed you.
You heard it in him constantly after that, and not like a normal man thinking I love you in a normal way.
Still, there were rules.
You didn’t care that he killed AVTF agents and assassination jobs. You had heard enough of their minds to know duty didn’t make most men good. You didn’t hate him for coming home with blood on his hands.
If anything, Dex loved that about you. Because for once, he didn’t have to explain himself.
He didn’t have to come home and build a careful human-sounding justification for the violence. He didn’t have to say he had no choice, or they were a threat. You already knew. You reached into his mind, found his reasoning, and understood it before he even greeted you.
And you would look at him and say, “That’s fine.”
Not because you were naïve. But you knew exactly what he was.
You knew the terrible things he had done. You knew the sound of his mind when he decided someone had to die. You knew how quickly he could make peace with blood if the reason made sense to him. And somehow, you accepted it.
But proximity to killing was a different thing altogether. A hurt mind was a loud mind and a dying mind was worse.
You explained it after an agent got too close to the apartment.
Dex knew that he couldn’t risk a search. He knew he couldn’t risk him writing down the address. He couldn’t risk OXE finding you again.
So he killed him outside, close enough for you to feel the pain.
By the time Dex came back in, you were on the floor beside the bed, hands pressed to your ears even though that never helped. Your face was pale, eyes unfocused, like you were still hearing dead thoughts long after the body had gone limp.
“A hurt mind tastes like TV static,” you whispered.
Dex stopped with blood drying on his sleeve.
You tried to explain because he needed to understand, and with you, Dex always listened like the answer might save your life later.
“I don’t hear words when they’re hurt. Pain turns everything white and icky. It buzzes behind my eyes.” You swallowed hard, breathing through it. “And dying is worse. A dying mind clings to anything it can. A face, a smell, a prayer. Some room they were in when they were little. Anything to stay. It’s so loud, Dex. I can’t filter it, I can’t, I-I… can’t.”
Dex didn’t look sorry for the dead agent, that was not how he worked. But he looked… hurt. He was hurt because you were.
“I know why you did it,” you said, eyes wet. “I know he got too close. I’m not mad.”
That was worse, because he could’ve handled anger. He didn’t know what to do with forgiveness. “I just can’t be near it,” you whispered. “Please.”
It had never been easy for him to change rules, but just like that, because you were hurt, he changed it.
He promised no killing within half a mile of the apartment. He promised there would be no bodies in the building. If danger came near and you were close enough to feel it, Dex would send you away first.
And if he had no choice, if someone had to die and had to die fast, Dex dragged the body away before the mind finished breaking.
He’d drag them down alleys, around corners, behind dumpsters, far enough that their minds could get loud somewhere it wouldn’t reach you.
For a while, that was enough.
Then one day, Dex came home and you weren’t in the apartment.
The door was locked. The curtains were drawn. The lights were low the way you liked them. The kettle sat cold on the stove, even though it was time you usually had tea. Your blanket was half-folded on the chair, one sleeve of one of his shirts hanging off the armrest where you had left it that morning.
But you weren’t there.
Dex stood in the middle of the studio and listened.
He couldn’t hear bare feet shifting against the floor of the bathroom. He could hear breathing from the corner beyond the bed, where you usually were when you were overwhelmed.
Nothing.
His body reacted before his mind did.
A bloom of panic opened behind his ribs.
“Sweetheart?”
No answer.
He checked the bathroom, the closet, the fire escape. The bed, even though he could see you weren’t in it. Then again, because panic didn’t care about logic once it got its hands around his throat.
No.
No, no, no.
For one sick second, all he could think was OXE.
Someone had found you. Someone had gotten in while he was away. Someone had taken you from the little box he had built to keep the world out, and he hadn’t been there to stop it.
Then he heard you.
You were… down the hall?
You let out a sob muffled through someone else’s door.
Dex turned toward it so fast the room seemed to tilt.
He knew that sound. He knew every version of your crying by then. The small ones you tried to hide, the sharp ones that meant you were hurt, the breathless ones that meant too many minds had gotten in and you couldn’t find your way back out.
This one was worse.
This one sounded like shock and the beginning of self-hatred.
Dex was already moving.
The neighbors’ apartment door was unlocked.
He pushed it open and found you on the floor.
You were curled up near the kitchen tiles, knees drawn tight, hands pressed over your mouth as if you were trying to hold the sobs in with your fingers. Your whole body shook.
You were barefoot. Your hair was a mess. One side of your face was wet with tears.
Then Dex saw the bodies around you, and it belonged to the couple who lived there.
The ones who screamed through the walls so often their voices had become part of the building. The ones whose arguments rotted into your apartment at night. The ones whose thoughts were worse than their mouths, according to you. They were bitter and poisoned all the way through.
He knew pieces of them because you knew pieces of them.
You told them they had a son who didn’t live there anymore. The grandparents had taken him in because the father’s anger had become too physical and the mother’s neglect had become too easy to pretend not to see. The child’s room was now turned into storage.
They had been horrible people.
That did not change the fact that you had killed them.
You looked up at Dex. “I’m sorry.”
Your hands fell from your mouth to your throat, fingers hovering there like you could still feel what you had done.
“They were so loud,” you whispered.
Dex stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
Your eyes darted to the bodies, then back to him, wild and wet and ruined.
“I knew it would hurt,” you said, words coming faster now, tumbling out of you before you could stop them. “I knew. I knew dying minds hurt me. I knew it would be loud when they died, I knew it would get in, but they were already so loud, Dex. They were already in my head I couldn’t think.”
Your breath hitched hard.
“They were fighting again. Not just out loud outside, but inside. Inside was worse. He was thinking about what he wanted to do to her, and she was thinking about what she should have done to him years ago, and then they were thinking about the boy, and neither of them even missed him right. They just—”
You choked on it.
Dex took one slow step closer. You shook your head, frantic. “No. Don’t. I’m awful right now. I’m so loud.”
“You’re not too loud for me.”
That made you sob harder. You curled forward, forehead nearly touching your knees.
“I tried to go back,” you whispered. “I tried to go back to our apartment. I tried to shut it out, but they kept going and going and going, and I couldn’t tell what was mine anymore. I couldn’t tell if I hated them or if they hated each other or if the whole hallway hated them, and then I was here.”
Your hands twisted in your lap.
“I was just here.”
Dex understood, because it was you.
Because your mind had been filled past the point of reason by two people who had made a life out of being loud, and by the time you understood what your hands were doing, they were already dying.
“I made it quick,” you said.
Your voice was so small it barely reached him.
Dex’s teeth tightened. You looked at him like you needed him to believe that one thing, if nothing else.
“I did. I promise. I didn’t want them to hurt. I didn’t want to hear that part for long. I just needed it to stop, and they were going to hurt each other anyway, and they were horrible, Dex, but I—” Your face fell. “I killed them.”
There was no justification, no defence.
“I killed them,” you said again, and it sounded like you were trying to make yourself understand it.
Dex crouched in front of you, and your eyes flicked to his hands.
Dex knew too much about violence to be shocked by it. But seeing you like this, seeing the toll of it hollow you out from the inside, he understood one thing: The city was killing you.
It was simply too loud, too full for your mind.
“Look at me,” he said.
You shook your head. “I can’t.”
“Look at me.”
Your eyes lifted.
Dex reached for you then, slow enough that you could stop him.
You didn’t.
The second his hand closed gently around your wrist, you collapsed forward into him with a sound so broken it made his throat tighten. He caught you against his chest, one hand to the back of your head, the other arm locked around you while you sobbed into his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” you gasped.
Dex held you tighter.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to be like this.”
“I know, baby.”
“They were so loud.”
“I know.”
And he didn’t mean it the way you meant it. He couldn’t. He would never know what it was like to have a dying mind claw through yours, to feel someone’s last panic splinter behind your eyes. But he knew enough. He knew you. He knew what this had cost you.
He looked over your shoulder at the dead neighbors, and there was no pity in him for them.
Only calculation. He was going to clean up this mess, maybe make it look like a murder-suicide, and make sure the investigation didn’t even look your way.
You were crying so hard you could barely breathe.
Dex pressed his mouth to your hair.
“You’re okay,” he whispered, more to himself than to you. “You’re okay.”
That night, after he cleaned what needed cleaning and got you back behind your own door, after he tucked you into the bed and sat with you until exhaustion finally dragged you under, Dex stayed awake beside you and stared at the ceiling.
The panelling he put there was not enough. The blackout curtains he installed were not enough.
The quiet refrigerator, the rugs, the rules about killing, the way he had tried to make one studio apartment survivable — none of it was enough if the city could still get to you through the walls.
By morning, Dex had made up his mind.
He started taking bigger jobs after that, better paying ones.
All with one thing in mind: relocate you from the city.
—
After that, every job had one purpose.
You.
And Dex had always been better when he had a purpose.
Every payment, every account number, every envelope, every favor owed became a way out of the city, a way to buy air your mind could survive.
But money was never quite enough. Money could buy a place, maybe, but money left a paper trail. Dex needed a cleaner solution.
He got what he wanted when the property mogul came to him.
The man owned half a skyline and wanted another man dead over a development dispute he kept calling “a complication.” He met Dex in the private lounge of a building with marble floors and windows too high above the street for anyone inside to remember people lived below them.
He offered a number first.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
Dex did not react.
The mogul smiled like he thought he had accepted the offer.
Then Dex gave him his price. “Two hundred thousand dollars,” he said, “and land.”
The mogul blinked. Dex leaned back in his chair.
“Upstate, and no close neighbors within half a mile radius. I want twenty acres at least. I want an existing cabin if you’ve got one. If not, build one.”
The man stared at him for a second too long, like money had made him forget people could ask for things that weren’t numbers. Dex’s expression didn’t change.
“You want him gone by Friday?” he tilted his head. “That’s my payment.”
The mogul laughed uncertainly.
Dex didn’t.
By the end of the week, the man was dead, the dispute was gone, and a plot of land upstate had quietly changed hands through three shell companies and a fake name.
There was a cabin on it already.
It was small and slightly weathered, far enough from the nearest road that the city couldn’t reach it easily. It was enough from the nearest neighbor that even your mind would have to stretch to find another person.
Dex stood on the porch the first time he saw it and listened.
Nothing but birds and wind through the trees.
Perfect.
Dex wanted to surprise you, which was adorable, because he had been thinking about the cabin constantly.
Not just the cabin itself, either. He had been fixing and sanding and checking the locks. He had managed to put extra shelves in the kitchen and fixed the creaky steps. He was planning to replace the bedroom window before you ever saw it because the old one rattled when the wind hit wrong and you’d hate it almost as much as he did.
He wanted it perfect before he brought you there.
So you pretended not to know.
You let him come home with sawdust on his sleeve and plans tucked behind his eyes, let him sit beside you on the bed while thinking very loudly about the porch and curtain rods and whether the trees were far enough from the house to make you feel safe instead of watched.
“You’re in a good mood,” you said.
Dex glanced at you too quickly. “No.”
You smiled into your book. “Okay.”
Then, flatter, he realised, “You know.”
You looked up, trying so hard not to smile because he looked genuinely upset. “I know.”
Dex sighed through his nose. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did,” you said, reaching for the front of his shirt. “I’m surprised you thought you could surprise me.”
And poor Dex, murderous, meticulous, hopelessly in love Dex, let you pull him down into a kiss anyway.
Of course, when he took you there the week after for the first time with your duffel bags in tow, you loved it.
You loved the curtains. You loved the little fire pit he built after you told him fire felt like the good kind of white noise in your head. You loved watching him chop wood with unnecessary precision. You loved sitting on the porch with a blanket around your shoulders while he checked the perimeter for the third time that day, because Dex couldn’t love normally. He loved like a security system with attachment issues.
And Dex loved that you knew.
He didn’t have to explain the strange shape of his obsession. You could reach into his mind and find the answer before he ever opened his mouth.
Why did he reinforce the back door?
Because if someone comes through it, I want three extra seconds.
Why did he move the bed away from the window?
Because glass breaks inward.
Why did he buy six bags of birdseed?
Because you smiled at the cardinals.
That one made him glare at you.
“You’re not supposed to listen all the time,” he said.
You sat on the porch railing, grinning into your mug. “You’re not supposed to think so loudly.”
“I don’t.”
You shrugged. “You do sometimes.”
Your favorite part, though, was watching him practice.
He set up a target in the clearing behind the cabin, a clean round board nailed to a tree stump far enough away that any normal person would have missed half the time.
Dex never missed.
He would stand there in the cold morning air, sleeves pushed up, knife balanced between his fingers with that beautiful focus he had. Then his hand would flick, quick as a blink, and the blade would bury itself dead center.
Again.
And Again.
You sat on a log nearby, chin in your hand, trying very hard not to smile. “You’re showing off.”
Dex did not look at you. “I’m practicing.”
“You’re showing off because you know I’m watching,” you said, “You’re thinking, She likes when I do this.”
The knife hit the target with a sharp thunk.
Dead center.
Dex turned then, eyes narrowing.
You smiled sweetly.
Poor thing. He was terrifying to everyone else. To you, he was just your murderous little cabin boyfriend who would rather die than admit to liking your sweet little praises.
“You know,” you said, “you don’t have to impress me.”
Dex pulled the knife from the target.
That one got him.
Dex walked across the clearing toward you, knife still loose in his hand, expression flat in that way that would have scared anyone who didn’t already know his mind was doing the emotional equivalent of tripping over furniture.
“You think you’re funny,” he said.
“You love me.”
Dex stopped in front of you.
The woods were quiet around him. Birds were shifting in the trees. Firewood was stacked by the shed. Morning light caught in his hair and across the sharp line of his cheek. His mind softened before his eyes did, and you felt it bloom warm in your chest before he ever touched you.
I do, he thought. More than anything in the whole goddamn world.
You smiled up at him. “I know.”
Dex bent downs, caught your chin carefully between his fingers, and kissed you. It was ridiculously gentle for a man called Bullseye.
When he pulled back, your eyes were still closed.
“You’re going to do it again,” you murmured.
“The knife throwing?”
“No.” You opened your eyes and smiled. “Kiss me.”
Dex managed a smile. And because he never missed, he did.
—
Dex still went back to the city sometimes.
He had scales to level, as he put it. Important vigilante work, in his head. It was the kind of work that involved blood and ledgers and moral math only Benjamin Poindexter could make sound reasonable. You never argued with him about that part. You could read his mind. You knew his reasons.
Still, leaving you at the cabin always hurt him.
Not because the cabin was unsafe. It was practically a fortress by then, even with enough stored food to survive whatever apocalypse Dex had apparently been personally expecting.
But he still checked everything twice.
“You’ll call if anything feels wrong,” he said.
“I’ll call.”
“If someone comes up the road—”
“I go to the back room.”
“If the radio cuts out—”
“I use the satellite phone.”
“If you hear something near the woods—”
“I don’t go investigate like a stupid horror movie girl.”
Still, he never left for more than three or four days.
Never.
By the second night, his thoughts would start turning back toward you. By the third, they got restless. He’d think about whether you remembered to eat. Whether the firewood was dry. Whether the road was clear. Whether you were wearing his sweater because you missed him or because the house was cold.
Both, usually.
When he came back, it was almost always late.
You never waited inside.
You would be on the porch before he reached the steps, blanket around your shoulders, eyes bright from missing him too much. Sometimes he didn’t even get the Bullseye mask off before you had both hands on him.
“Missed you,” you whispered, then you’d kiss the mask, right over where his mouth should be.
And his brain would go completely, embarrassingly haywire with love, relief, home, you, you, you.
You laughed softly against the fabric surface of it. “You’re loud.”
Dex’s gloved hands found your waist. “I missed you too.”
“Mmm,” you hummed, “I know.”
He would pull the mask off properly after that, just to kiss you properly. And when his mouth finally found yours, you could feel the city fall away from him.
—
This time, Dex was gone for seven days.
He didn’t tell you why, and not because he wanted to scare you. Because in Dex’s mind, silence was kinder than worry. If he told you that he had played a part in killing the mayor's wife and had been injured, and now needed to do one last assassination before signing a contract with a government agency so he could start providing better for you, you would panic before he could get back to you.
So he kept quiet.
And that was worse.
By day five, the cabin stopped feeling peaceful and started feeling empty. By day six, you were sleeping in his sweater, radio in your lap, listening for a voice that never came. That’s when you realised his lines were non-active. By day seven, every crackle of static sounded like him dying.
He had never been gone that long.
So you left.
It took you hours to walk to the nearest train station, but you managed to do it.
The train, once you got on, was too crowded, and you suddenly were reminded why Dex had moved you away. There were too many shoulders, too many minds packed into one metal tube, all of them thinking too loudly at once. Fear about Fisk, about Daredevil. Anger at the Task Force. A woman was praying under her breath. A boy was trying not to cry. Someone was watching the footage of the protests on their phone.
You focused.
You filtered.
You had gotten good at that, hadn’t you? Dex had helped you get good at that. One mind at a time. One thought at a time. Find the edge of yourself. Stay there. Don’t let the fear become yours just because you can hear it.
And for a while, you managed.
Even with New York getting louder the closer you came. Even with every station spilling more panic into the train. Even as you got out, as the protests moved through the city like a fever, anger and terror and hope all tangled together until nobody’s thoughts came out clean anymore.
You pressed your nails into your palm and breathed.
In.
Out.
Find Dex.
That was all you needed to do.
Find Dex and everything would be okay.
You could be overstimulated. You could be shaking. You could have the whole city scraping against the inside of your skull and still make it to him, because you had done hard things before. You had survived OXE. You had survived bad days. You had survived yourself.
You could survive a train ride and a trip to the city.
You were managing.
Barely, but managing.
Until…
Somewhere in the city, a Task Force Agent shot a man.
You felt it.
You didn’t even see it.
But you felt the impact, the shock, the guttural animal panic of a mind realizing too late that the body was failing. His last thoughts clawed outward, grabbing at anything. He thought about a mother, a kitchen light, the taste of coffee, please, please, please — and it slammed through you so hard you thought you were the one dying.
Too much.
Too much, too much, too much.
By the time you reached Dex’s apartment, you could barely separate yourself from the city.
You stumbled up the stairs with his sweater twisted in your fists and let yourself in with shaking hands and a spare key he kept in the cabin. The old apartment still smelled like him. The wall panelling he had installed for you was still there. The bed you loved was still there.
So you crawled into it.
You curled up small in the old place where he used to hold you through bad nights, pressing your face into his pillow because it was the only thing close enough to a hug you could get.
And when Dex finally found you, you were shaking in the bed, sobbing like the city had followed you all the way in.
—
Present day…
For a while, neither of them said anything.
The hallway held the two of them in the weak yellow light, close enough to fight, close enough for Matt to hear Dex's slight chatter behind his teeth.
The anger was there.
It moved through Dex like a live wire, and viciously restrained. Matt could hear through his heartbeat how badly he wanted to do something with it. He could hear it in the slight shift of Dex’s weight, in the way his fingers flexed once at his side, in the careful control of his breathing.
But Dex didn’t move.
He stood in front of the broken door like his body could make up for the lock Matt had destroyed.
Behind him, inside the apartment, you made a small sound.
Dex’s head turned at once, not enough to take his eyes off Matt. But enough for Matt to understand that half of him had never left the room.
It was awful, seeing that.
It was awful because Matt struggled to see past his sins. He didn’t want to see past his sins.
But the man in front of him was standing outside a bedroom he clearly wanted to return to, choosing not to kill because you had asked him not to.
Matt swallowed. “Does she need help?”
Dex looked at him. His face went cold enough that Matt knew, instantly, he had said it wrong. “She has help.”
Matt’s mouth tightened. “You?”
Dex stepped closer by half an inch. Not a threat, but rather a correction. “Yes.”
Matt let out a slow breath. “I—”
“No.” Dex cut him off. “You don’t get to stand there after kicking my door in, after scaring her half to death, and think you’re the reasonable one here.”
Matt’s jaw flexed. “I heard someone crying in your apartment.”
“And what?” Dex crossed his hand over his chest. “You decided she needed saving from me?”
“You’ve given me plenty of reasons to think that.”
Dex almost smiled. It was a terrible thing. It was humorless, dead before it reached his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said. “I have.”
Matt went still.
Dex didn’t deny it. He didn’t reach for innocence he had no right to hold.
“I know what I am,” Dex said, voice low now. “You don’t have to remind me.”
“I don’t think you do.”
Dex’s eyes sharpened.
Matt took one step forward, careful, measured. “You think because you think you love her, that makes this different.”
Dex’s face changed. Matt heard the hit land.
Dex didn’t hide his agitation well, because in his mind he was thinking how dare you even fucking insinuate that I think I love her. I know I love her. How dare you?
Inside, you must’ve felt the frustration flare, because shifted again, sheets whispering under your trembling body, and Dex turned his head immediately, rage folding down so fast it almost hurt to witness.
His voice dropped toward the door, not Matt. “Sweetheart, I’m okay.”
You didn’t answer, but your breathing slowed.
Matt listened until it settled by a fraction.
“You hear that?” Dex asked with a sigh.
Matt said nothing.
“You hear how she breathes when I’m here?”
Matt’s throat tightened.
Dex leaned in slightly, voice still controlled. “You heard her when you came in. You heard what happened when you kicked the door down. She didn’t run from me. She ran to me.”
Fuck. He had a point.
Matt’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “I’m not trying to hurt her.”
“You already did.”
The words landed flat in his chest and Matt flinched despite himself.
Dex saw it.
“You came in here loud,” Dex said. “You brought in your thoughts, your judgment, your anger. You dragged all of it into the room with you and dumped it on her while she was already drowning.”
“I—“ Matt shook his head, turning it slightly down, “I didn’t know.”
“No,” Dex said. “You didn’t.”
The accusation wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.
Behind the door, you gave another small, broken breath.
Dex’s hand twitched once at his side, like every instinct in him wanted to turn around and go back to you.
“You should go,” Dex said through gritted teeth.
Matt didn’t, at least not right away.
You were quiet now.
Not calm, Matt could hear that much. Your breathing still came unevenly from somewhere beneath the blanket, frayed at the edges, worn thin from crying. But you were quieter than before, and every time Dex shifted even slightly away from the door, your heartbeat changed.
Matt wanted to believe he was looking at Bullseye. At the man who had turned a courthouse into a warzone. At the man whose name belonged on a tip line, in a police report, on every alert system New York still had running after the riots.
Benjamin Poindexter was standing right in front of him.
Matt let him go only a couple of days ago, yes, but hasn’t he been pushing for transparency over the last twenty four hours?
He should believe in the law. Especially now. Especially after what he had said in front of the whole city. He had torn his own mask off for accountability. He had asked New York to believe there was still a line between justice and vengeance and was prepared to pay the price anyway.
So why was he standing here, letting a murderer guard a broken door?
Dex watched him think it.
His mouth barely moved.
“You want to hate me?” Dex said. “Fine. Hate me downstairs.”
Matt’s jaw clenched.
Dex stepped closer. His voice stayed low, but there was nothing soft in it now. “Just don’t do it near her.”
Matt shook his head and Dex shifted towards the door, like keeping Matt’s attention off you was as natural as breathing.
“She isn’t yours to protect,” Matt said quietly.
Dex’s eyes went flat. “No,” he said. “She’s mine to take care of.”
The words should have sounded wrong. Maybe they were wrong. But behind him, your breath hitched at the sound of his voice, and some tiny broken part of it steadied after.
A year ago, Matt would have heard that and called it delusion.
But tonight, he heard the window shut. Dex silenced the phone. Dex killed the lights and unplugged the radio. Dex tucked the blanket over you. He heard love in all the small, practiced mercies Dex had done without needing to be told.
Matt’s hands curled slowly at his sides.
He could still do it.
He could leave the building and call in an anonymous tip. That Bullseye was here, and they could go non-lethal because you were here and there was no way in hell Dex would kill near you. Matt could tell Brent this address, this floor, this door.
He could do it because it would be right.
Because Dex was dangerous.
Because the law had to mean something.
Because Foggy—
Matt’s throat tightened so sharply he almost moved.
But Matt understood, with a sick twist in his stomach, that if he took Dex away tonight, he didn’t know who would be left to tend to you. Who would know how to keep you from drowning in a city full of minds.
Because Matt had heard what one broken door did to you.
If cops came into that apartment with radios crackling, boots pounding, fear and adrenaline spiking out of every mind, you would fall apart. And if they took Dex away, then you would be well and truly fucked.
He didn’t know what doctors would want their hands on you. He didn’t know who would look at you and see a woman before they saw a weapon.
Dex was dangerous.
But maybe that was exactly why he knew how to keep danger away from you.
“She asked you to leave,” Dex said again, quieter this time. “So leave.”
Matt stood there a moment longer. Long enough to feel every reason not to. Long enough to know he might regret it. Long enough to know he would think about this hallway again, maybe for the rest of his life.
Then he stepped back.
Dex didn’t relax.
Matt took another step. Then another, until he reached the stairwell and stopped with one hand near the railing. His face angled slightly toward the apartment again, toward the woman he could still hear crying in the dark.
For a second, Dex thought he might come back.
Then Matt said, very quietly, “If she ever asks for help from someone else, don’t stand in her way.”
Dex’s fingers flexed.
The answer came immediately. “If she asks, I’ll listen.”
Matt could hear that he was telling the truth. His fingers tightened once around the railing.
Still, he stayed there for one more second.
Dex waited him out, because if Matt needed to drag his reluctance down the stairs one breath at a time, fine. He could do that. Dex could stand there all night if he had to. He could become the door until morning if he had to.
Finally, Matt lowered his head and made his way down.
Dex stayed in the hallway until Matt’s footsteps disappeared down the stairs.
Only when the last sound disappeared down the stairs did Dex turn back toward the apartment. The door was ruined, the lock hanging uselessly from splintered wood, the frame cracked where Matt’s boot had forced it inward.
For one second, Dex stared at it.
His anger flared, then he swallowed it down.
Not now.
Not near you.
He stepped inside and pulled the door closed as much as it would go. It dragged wrong against the floor, crooked and broken, but he eased it shut anyway. Then he picked up the kitchen chair instead of dragging it, because the first scrape of wood had made your breathing catch from the bed.
Everything had to be quiet.
He wedged the chair beneath what was left of the handle and pushed once, testing it.
The door held, only barely. It hurt him that it was imperfect, but it had to be good enough for tonight.
Then he turned back to you.
You were still crying, but not like before. Not the full panic that had torn through you until you couldn’t breathe. This was smaller, yet more exhausted. Like your body had run out of strength but your heart hadn’t figured out how to stop breaking yet.
You were curled on his bed under the blanket, face wet, shoulders shaking in little miserable tremors.
Dex crouched beside you so carefully, like one wrong sound might split you open again.
“Hey,” he whispered.
Your mouth trembled. “I wanted to hurt him.”
Dex went still as your eyes squeezed shut, fresh tears slipping down your cheeks.
“I wanted to,” you whispered, horrified by yourself. “After he scared me, after he thought those things about you, after he came in so loud, when he was outside with you and he upset you, I wanted to hurt him, Dex. I did. I did, I—”
“Shh.” Dex’s hand came up slowly, waiting.
You leaned into it before he touched you, and only then did his palm settle against your cheek.
“Shh, baby.”
“I wanted to make him stop.” You shook your head, crying harder now, broken open by the confession.
Dex leaned closer until his forehead almost touched yours. “So did I, baby,” he whispered, rough and aching, “so did I.”
You opened your eyes.
Dex looked at you like it cost him to be that honest and he would pay it anyway if it calmed you. “But we didn’t.”
Your breath caught.
“We didn’t,” he said again, softer. “You stayed with me. I stayed with you. He left. It’s over.”
Your face fell, and Dex shifted up onto the bed then, slow enough not to startle you, and gathered you carefully against him. You folded into his chest with a broken little sound, fingers twisting weakly in his shirt.
He held you like he was trying to put your body back around your soul.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered into your hair. “I’ve got you. I know. I know, sweetheart.”
You sobbed once, small and ruined.
Dex pressed his mouth to your temple. “We’re going back to the cabin first thing tomorrow.”
Your fingers tightened. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” His hand moved over your back, slow and steady. “You can sleep the whole way if you want.”
Your breathing shook against him.
“And my new work doesn’t start for two weeks,” he said, like he was offering you the only miracle he had. “So that’s two weeks, okay? Two weeks of nothing.”
You pulled back just enough to look at him.
Dex’s thumb brushed beneath your eye.
“Just me and you,” he whispered. “No one else. No noise. No city. Just us.”
Your mouth trembled and he kissed your forehead.
“I’ll chop wood. You can sit on the porch. We’ll keep the fire on. You can wear my clothes and sleep all day if you want.”
Another tear slipped down your cheek before you could help it, and he caught it.
“And I won’t leave,” he said. “Not for two weeks. Not for anything.”
You stared at him through wet lashes, searching his face first. Then, his mind.
He was thinking about…
The cabin.
You sleeping in the passenger seat.
You on the porch.
You wrapped in his sweater.
You, safe.
And underneath it all, over and over, so constant it almost broke you…
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Your breath hitched.
His face softened. “There you are,” he whispered.
You made a tiny sound and tucked your face back into him. “Okay,” you breathed.
Dex’s shoulders nearly gave out with relief. “Okay?”
You nodded against his chest. “Okay.”
He closed his eyes and held you tighter for one second, just one, like he needed to feel the word inside his own body. Then he kissed your temple again. “That’s my girl.”
Your crying slowed after that.
It didn’t stop, but it gentled into little exhausted shudders against his shirt while Dex kept his hand moving over your back, the way he knew helped. He stayed until your fingers loosened. Until your breathing stopped tripping over itself. Until your mind, still bruised and raw, found the steady line of his thoughts again.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
You could focus on it now.
Not the city. Not Matt. Not the broken door.
Just Dex and his thoughts, warm and obsessive and constant, wrapped around you from the inside out.
Finally, Dex pulled back enough to look at your face.
“I’m gonna clean up,” he whispered.
Your eyes opened again, instantly afraid. He shook his head before the fear could grow.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” he said. “That’s all.”
You swallowed.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” he promised. “You should go to sleep, okay?”
You didn’t answer.
Dex kissed your temple. Then your cheek. Then your lips, so gently you almost started crying again.
“Try,” he whispered, because he knew you were so, so tired. “Just try for me.”
You nodded, barely.
Dex eventually eased himself away, slowly and careful, leaving the blanket tucked around your shoulders and the chair braced beneath the broken door.
The bathroom light stayed off, and the door stayed open.
Water ran low in the sink.
You appreciated it more than you could say. The sound filled the little apartment gently, not enough to crowd your head, not enough to become another thing pressing at the inside of your skull. Just enough to give your mind somewhere simple to latch on to.
Dex didn’t need to read minds to know that running water settled you the same way fire did. It had the same white-noise hush. It had the same clear, constant sound that didn’t want anything from you. Fire and water didn’t think. It didn’t feel. It didn’t ask to be understood.
It just moved.
And Dex knew that. He knew you.
So you laid there in the dark, still hurting, still broken in places you could not name, but now, you were present.
You took a shaky breath.
For a while, there was only the water running low in the bathroom sink and Dex moving quietly through the dark.
You could hear him in pieces.
You heard the careful pass of his hands under the faucet, the soft drag of fabric as he wiped his face. The small, practical thoughts he kept lining up for tomorrow.
Cabin first thing.
Full tank of gas.
No tunnel.
Back roads.
Blanket in the passenger seat.
Radio off unless she asks.
Two weeks.
Just me and her.
You focused on him. On the shape of his mind. On the tenderness he had no idea how to say without turning it into a plan, a route, a locked door, a fixed window. Even now, Dex was thinking about firewood and the bedroom window and whether the car heater would be too loud for you in the morning.
It made you smile.
Then… oh.
Something else reached you. Someone else.
It wasn’t Dex; this thought came from outside.
It was a thought that came from out the street, clear and heavy through the thin glass:
I hope I’m doing the right thing.
Your eyes opened. For one second, you lay very still beneath the blanket.
Dex was still in the bathroom. But outside, across the street, Matt Murdock had not gone far.
You got up slowly and turned your head toward the window.
The curtain hadn’t been pulled perfectly shut. There was a narrow gap where city light slipped through, pale and dirty against the floor. You shifted, leaning just enough to see past it.
There he was, across the street, half-shadowed beneath a streetlamp, hood pulled up, face tilted toward the building like he was still listening to the apartments.
Matt Murdock stood there with one foot turned away and the rest of him refusing to follow.
He was hesitating.
His thoughts were still loud, but not loud like before.
It was no longer crashing through you with suspicion and anger and judgment. This was different. His thoughts now were coherent, almost. They came to you in pieces, clear enough to understand.
Benjamin Poindexter is still a dangerous man.
I shouldn’t leave him with her.
But she asked me to leave.
But she’s calmer when he’s near.
Your throat tightened.
Matt’s thoughts vibrated around the shape of Dex, for lack of a better word. There was still blood there, grief there, a wound so deep it had a name you didn’t touch because it hurt even from a distance.
But there was something else in his thoughts now, too.
You.
Because you could read minds, you knew he had heightened senses, and you knew you didn’t have to speak loudly to reach him. You only had to speak clearly.
So you turned your face toward the narrow gap in the curtain, toward the street where Matt Murdock stood beneath the weak glow of a lamp, and whispered into the dark, “I know what he is.”
Across the street, Matt went completely still.
You saw the subtle lift of his head, the tightening through his shoulders. His attention snapping back to your window because he could feel where you were.
He heard you. You knew he did.
You curled your fingers into the blanket.
“But he’s not that to me.”
Matt didn’t move.
You could feel his mind presently listening now. Not as Daredevil. Not as the man who had kicked down the door. Not as someone trying to decide what kind of danger you were.
“He loves me,” you whispered.
Matt’s thoughts shifted.
He does. Even a blind man could see that.
The thought came so clearly it almost hurt.
You blinked, tears slipping sideways into your hair. “He’s good to me.”
You remembered him now, when it was Dex’s hand that unlocked the cuff, how he put his jacket over your shoulders. You thought about the cabin and the chair beneath the broken door. That man was in the bathroom, washing up with the door open because he promised he wouldn’t leave you alone.
You breathed in, shaky but steadier. “He’s a good man for me.”
Across the street, Matt’s face changed.
It was a small, tiny furrow of the brow. But then you heard the thought that followed.
I believe you.
Your breath hitched
Above all the doubt, above all the grief, above all the things Matt Murdock would never be able to forgive, that one thought came through clean.
I believe you.
Not Dex.
You.
He believed you knew what you were saying. He believed you were not trapped. He believed you understood the man beside you better than anyone else in the city possibly could.
And maybe that was the most Matt could give.
You, behind the glass, exhausted and half-broken in Dex’s bed.
Matt, across the street, carrying a truth he didn’t want and yet couldn’t put down.
Because maybe Benjamin Poindexter was not only defined by violence. Maybe there was something else buried deep under him, warped and wounded and difficult to look at, but human anyway.
A person.
Someone capable of loving. Someone, somehow, worthy of being loved.
Matt didn’t forgive him. But for the first time, he saw him differently.
Then he lowered his head and gave you a small nod.
Then Matt Murdock turned away.
This time, he truly left.
You watched until the dark took him, until his thoughts faded into the rest of New York and you could no longer separate him from the city.
But you knew.
You knew that Matt was starting to look at the man you loved differently.
— end.
Extra Note : Like the reader in this story, we all have good days and bad days. Please remember that needing help doesn’t make you weak, broken, or too much. It just makes you human. If you are struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or contact a crisis/support service in your area. You deserve care, patience, and support on your bad days too, lovelies! 🫶💕❤️
Soulmate (n.) – a person ideally suited as a close friend or partner, with whom one has a unique, deep connection based on mutual understanding and acceptance.
~ Word count: 11,832 - Tw: self harm, suicide talk, death and murder, torture, angst with comfort I promise. ~
Fate was a sick bitch. A hopeless romantic, sure. But she was plenty cruel as well.
Everyone has a soulmate, as it is destined for everyone. It starts from age 5 with the initials. Your soulmate’s first and last name initials appear somewhere random on your body and your soulmate will have the matching placement but with your initials. But then, immediately, you begin to feel the things that your one true pairing can feel.
Fear from them is a spike of hairs on your neck. Sadness from them, a depression deep in your chest. But it goes beyond emotion as well. Soulmates can feel physical happenings as well. The most common thing that every soulmate can remember or feel often is pain. Unlike emotions, where you feel the soft tingle of what they might feel, pain is always fully fledged out for your soulmate.
You might be able to see where this would be a problem for children. A little girl cries because her stomach felt like it got kicked in. A young boy is angry because his arm felt like it was scratched by a cat. For those who have soulmates in abusive households, things can become very dark and upsetting. Parents are unable to do anything but help their child when they get a black eye or a sliced lip. The wounds never stayed, luckily for most. Instead of scars, what looked like faint birthmarks would appear instead. Reminders.
In your case, well, you really wished your soulmate died.
From the moment you turned 5 or 6, you were in constant hell. It was obvious to the officials that you would need to be watched over by hospital staff. There was a specific unit in the hospital that took care of cases like you. The constant gashes and wounds, the bullet holes that showed up as you grew older, they were constant. They did calm down eventually; you were 18 when it did. But the painful reminders were there. Therapy was every two weeks, and it helped a little bit.
But resentment persisted. You hated your soulmate, whoever it was. You’ve read endlessly that soulmate meet-ups were magical and heartwarming. You’ve seen the videos of people accidentally recording their first time meeting, and ones where people spoke online and met in real life to see if they found their person. And they were inspiring, really. But you couldn’t imagine your meeting this person to be as happily ever after as all these videos made them seem.
If you ever met him, this S.R., you’d punch him for all the things he’s put you through.
You can’t say you haven’t tried to hurt him back.
Stupid, you realized now. A moment of anger (or weakness) that you knew wasn’t rational. You stole a knife from the kitchen and stormed to the sink. Frustration bubbled up inside of you. You were just so tired-
And you gasped when the knife went through your palm, just like that. The knife fell from your hand and you remembered being bought to the hospital once again, put on suicide watch for two weeks. That was pretty miserable too.
You missed the sting of a blade across the back of your thumb. You never noticed it while you were recovering. The silent reply.
A few more years down the line, the occasional gut punch, right hook to the face. No more bullet wounds, lucky you. Sometimes you got a slice on your hand or finger. But nothing as brutal as when you and your soulmate were younger…
Sometimes, you could still feel the hook in your spine, pulling as if holding you up. The sharp tang of metal invaded your tongue and you felt nauseous every time. The feeling of having your fingernails torn off. The memory of crying and screaming at the doctors to kill you. A weight on your chest – you were sure that your soulmate nearly suffocated.
Breathe. Breathe.
Shake it out. It’s over with now.
Breathe.
“Are you listening?” Your therapist tilted her head as she watched you blink in surprise. “I said, I think you should take your summer vacation out of the city.” She looked at her computer. “You haven’t left the city since you were born. Besides the occasional family vacations-“
“That were cut short.” You interrupted and then cleared your throat. “They never really felt like vacations.”
She nodded. “I know. I know.” She looked down at her desk and then at the window. “But you’re an adult now. Without your parents’ restraint, and your soulmate not causing you so much trouble anymore. You should begin a new chapter.” She stood up and opened her drawer. She pulled out a brand-new notebook and a pen. It was a set that came with a sticky notepad. “I’m giving you an assignment. Brand new notebook, new pen. A new start.”
She handed them to you, and you looked over the items quizzically. You briefly looked over your hands, looking at the many little birthmark scars, many referred to them as soul scars. The only real scar was the one on your left hand. Your self-inflicted wound. “Am I supposed to start writing a diary?”
“You could think of it like that. But inside, I wrote some prompts. Questions for you to ask yourself and reflect on.” She sat back down across from you. “Some of these questions might be hard for you. Answer them on your own time. And at the end there are some blank pages. For notes, jotting down feelings or thoughts.”
You rolled your eyes as you looked away. “A diary.”
She sighed but put on a smile. “You’re making progress. I see it every time we meet up. And I want you to push through this barrier. Healing from trauma isn’t a goal. There’s never really an end to it because it’ll always be there. Like the soul scars on your body for example. You can’t wash them away, you can’t hide it with clothes.” You felt your hands grip the jeans on your thighs. “But, you can learn to accept that they are there to stay.”
You nodded along. It made sense, of course it did. Your brows raised a little in surprise at her words. “I just…” You shrugged. “I guess you’re right. But what if I ever meet him?”
“It may not seem like it, but soulmates click when they meet. Pain and misery subsides for a few minutes when your body feels that connection finally clicking. What you do next is up to you or your future soulmate.”
You knew you shouldn’t have asked. It made you kind of sick when she got all…soft about soulmates.
She had hers, after all.
“Alright. That concludes our session today.” She went to her computer and typed a few things. “Vacation. I want photos, I want you to at least answer five prompts or write five days of feelings.”
“Yes ma’am.” You stood up and tucked the notebook away in your satchel bag. “I’ll try to do just that.”
She walked you out of the office, wishing you a good summer break. College just let out so you have the free time.
Maybe a vacation didn’t sound so bad.
~~
You packed, called ahead to a cabin rental deep in the woods and just waited for the weekend. Some days later, you were standing in the kitchen with your mom and dad, your mom smiling at the thought of you taking a ‘vacation for yourself. “Oh, that sounds so nice dearie. You could roast marshmallows and read books and swim in the lakes nearby.”
Your dad’s brow twitched. “But you really want to go alone? I mean, if you told us before, we could have planned a family trip together-“
You shake your head. “No no. I’ll be fine dad. Really.” You gave them both a soft smile. “My therapist said it might be good for me if I went by myself.” You rolled your eyes and your mom immediately caught on to what you actually thought. “Said it would be a good way to start a new chapter for myself.”
“Uh huh.” Your mom put her hands on her hips. “Well tell us what you think first.” She came up to you and gently took your hands in hers. “What do you think about the whole thing? Is it worth it, do you think? Do you think you’ll like it?”
You smiled a little. Leave it to your mom to be your biggest supporter. She always had your back, always asked your opinion. She told you once that you were born with a different gaze, seeing more than what she or your father could. She loved you half to death and she made sure you knew that.
“I think, she might be trying to get rid of me for a while.” You shrugged. “But I also think this might be good for me too. Some me time, self discovery, you know as all the youngsters say.” You chuckled and pat your mom’s hands before letting them go. “Maybe I’ll find out that I love wrestling with bears and fishing with my teeth and I’ll live out the rest of my days as a wild woods creature.”
Your father laughed nervously. “Ah…I hope not.” He got a soft jab in the ribs and he laughed again. “I’m just saying that I want my Babygirl here with us! But, I won’t restrain you either.” He walked up to you and kissed the top of your head. “If you think you’ll be okay on your own. I won’t worry about you too much.”
Your mom joined in, squeezing you into her and your father in one big group hug. “Oh my little girl, growing up too fast.” She fake sniffled. “You’re like twenty-something and in college. But you’ll always be our sarcastic little ten-year-old.”
You may have had a painful soulmate experience, but you were damn lucky to have parents that loved you so much.
As you got into your car and punched in the coordinates for the cabin, you felt claw marks across your forearm and then your face. You hissed and covered your cheek, quickly pulling down the visor mirror to check yourself. Four claw marks across your face went down your cheek, not enough to bleed, luckily. On your forearm was the same. A sigh left your lips and you put your car in drive. “I swear, sometimes I think he’s a serial killer or something.” You laughed so softly and began to drive.
~~
The cabin was actually really nice, small, but cozy. It was some corporation owned website that you booked on, so you didn’t have a host to welcome you inside. But the cabin was small enough that you couldn’t get lost.
There was a patio, two large windows that showed the inside. There was some outside furniture, a rocking chair and some sofa looking chairs that you were sure had to be soaked from the rain. Or at least moldy on the inside. The outside wasn’t decorated too much but the inside was. With a taxidermy deer, a few taxidermy ducks, pictures hanging that framed old black and white photos of people standing proudly by some deer or bear that they killed. Not all of it was hunter themed, as there were some photos of places you didn’t recognize. Miners in tunnels, tipping their hats toward the cameraman with weary smiles.
Besides the various framed photos, the furniture was comfortable looking as well. A deep burgundy couch with heavy looking blankets on the back of it. Decorative pillows with moose or bear on the fronts and a few plaid patterns as the backgrounds. There was a very old tv, you could tell because of the box that hung onto the back and the antenna that sat atop of it.
Various candles and incense items were hidden below the coffee table, and you took out the one you liked the most and let its fragrance lift about the room.
The kitchen was quaint, with a more up to date stove, a thin fridge, and a deep sink with a dish rack on the side. You checked the cabinets and fridge and found that there was food already inside. A note on the shelf of the fridge informed tenants that foods were restocked for customers at free of charge. “That’s sweet.” You mumbled while putting the note back.
You ventured down the hallway and found the bathroom, simple green and white tiles with some blues. A toilet, shower and bathtub, and a cabinet full of towels and wash rags. You moved on and finally found the bedroom. A queen-sized mattress, made up with dark grey sheets hidden beneath the deep green and brown quilt patterns of blankets. You ran your fingers along the zig-zag quilt square and sat on the edge of the bed. The pillows looked fluffy. Above the pillows, dozens of fake vines hung across the wall and onto the ceiling. Upon further inspection, you find that they were fairy lights.
The room was big enough; you were kind of upset that you only got four days to live here. In this room, there was another tv only this time it was a tiny flat screen.
You laid back across the bed and closed your eyes, letting your arms spread across the mattress.
Breathe.
It was finally time to relax.
Let your guard down, just a little bit.
~~
Simon tilted his head, watching you slowly spread out across the bed. You stood up and began walking around the cabin once again. Cute little thing, he thought to himself. He was hunting along the trail when he heard a vehicle. No cars were allowed through this road unless they were renting out the retreaters' cabin. So, of course, he had become curious.
He watched you as you unloaded your bag from the pickup truck and got settled inside. Usually, he would go and greet himself to appear friendly. It got visitors to trust him. He’d offer to fix any broken sinks or light fixtures (that would be caused by him.) And give a sense of comfort.
It was a hoax, of course.
Simon had been using these woods as a hunting ground for years now. It was animals at first, but he needed something more. A challenge. He could kill deer and buck with his throwing knives, for sure. But then he found he could also hunt people. And they seemed to put up much more of a fight.
The indomitable human spirit, as the folks would say.
A couple of snobby hippie hikers go missing here and there, but mainly, he would find the homeless who scout the woods to leave filth and shoot up on crack. He was doing the forest a favor, if he was being honest. It was the thrill of the hunt that he was after. A new challenge with every person that stepped foot.
He didn’t hunt down ‘every’ person that came through the woods, he wasn’t trying to get caught by investigators. He had a system. And as impossible as it seemed, he had morals too. No killing families, no killing children, no taking of valuables; anything that keeps him in the green zone.
He licked his lips as he tracked you around the house. You walked back into the bedroom and he slowly walked around the cabin to follow. You were a sight, too. There’s never been a woman out in the cabin by herself.
He clicked his tongue as he thought of his plans to introduce himself. Maybe he could swoon you into sleeping with him. He’s had plenty of women swoon or flirt with him -in front of their own soulmates if you could believe it – and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the confidence boost every time. Plus, you didn’t look like the type to pollute the forest, you didn’t look like you were here to cause trouble.
Before he made his way to the front door, however, you began to strip off your clothes.
Well. Maybe he might just stay and enjoy the show instead. Just for a few minutes.
You walked over to the mirror in the bedroom and slowly stripped off your shirt, then your pants. Simon had carefully stalked closer to the window to get a better look at you.
But something suddenly itched. His skin tingled and he brushed it off around his wrist area. You did the same, looking down at your wrist and itching at it.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
S.R. Clear as day printed on your wrist, right where his own little mark was placed. His eyes widened momentarily, but he growled and shook his head. “Fuckin’ lunatic.” He whispered to himself. There’s an infinite number of people with the same letters as him. So what if she had them? Didn’t prove anything.
Although…
Those scars. Soul scars as people called them, looked familiar as well. He looked over your body, his arousal forgotten as trained eyes searched your body. You turned in the mirror, and his eyes landed on the large soul scar in the middle of your back, along with the many that lined the expanse of your skin.
No.
Simon pulled out his knife but his eyes kept trained on you through your window. He held up his forearm and suddenly sliced across it.
And you jumped with a hiss, holding your arm up. An exact cut along your forearm.
He nearly dropped his knife, looking down at the two letters that plagued his wrist then up at you. Oblivious, you walked to the bathroom with a calm expression, mumbling something he couldn’t hear.
Fuck.
Fuck!
He slinked back into the darkness of the woods and made a beeline for his home. This shouldn’t be happening to him. Not now of all fucking times. His soulmate was here on his hunting grounds.
Anger coursed through him, then frustration. Questions plagued his mind as he slammed the door of his house closed. What brought you here? Why now? What was he going to do?
What was he going to do with you…
~~
The wound on your forearm finally stopped bleeding. By tomorrow, it would become a faint off colored mark on your skin. Added to the collection. You took this time to take a shower, change into your barely-there pajamas and go to sleep.
You realized that the curtains of your bedroom were open. A snort left your lips. “Wonder if any weirdos were watching me out there.” You walked to the large windows and closed the curtains. Briefly however, you did shiver at the thought of some creep perving on you. But you shoved it away and reasoned that there shouldn’t be anyone around for miles.
You sighed, climbing into bed finally and sliding into a comfortable spot. You took out the book you started reading, some dark romance with way too many crazy sex scenes, and continued reading from where you left off. But hours later, you had drifted off to sleep, the book in your hand landing on your chest as you fell limp.
Unbeknownst of the man watching you from the hallway.
~~
Simon was glad he waited. He came back and easily broke into the cabin, and watched as you drifted off to sleep. Cute, he thought once again.
You had been asleep for about twenty minutes, so Simon came into the room. He was an imposter, a large, darkly dressed man with tactical gear and too many scars to count, standing in a room that looked like it was pulled out of a pinterest girl’s wet dream. Not that Simon knew what Pinterest even was. But he knew he didn’t belong in here.
The skull mask he was wearing pretty much sold that idea as well.
He calmly walked around your bed, combat boots quiet and measured. Your body was spread out in the bed, the fairy vine lights hanging above you cast a warm glow across your features. He knelt down and took it all in. Your messy hair, your lashes as they fluttered, your parted lips as you breathed softly.
His gaze moved down, glancing over the filthy novel and snorting quietly. But then his eyes landed on your wrist. Face down over the book. He reached out and turned it over, gazing at the initials printed over your skin in dark ink. And he looked at his own mark, as if comparing them.
You were younger than him, he could tell. It made him grimace when he started thinking about it. How old were you when he was captured and tortured? He could guess you were in your early 20’s, so doing the math… you were only a kid when you had to endure what he went through.
Simon briefly became furious, for you of course. How could fate do this to you? Pairing you to him, at such a young age? He carefully brought your wrist to his face and kept staring at the letters. You probably hated him.
But of course, he could argue that he didn’t purposely put you through that hell. He had to experience it first hand. Simon was captured, tortured, beaten, starved, assaulted, nearly killed plenty of times. He had no one. But you? You probably had medical personnel by your side, treating your wounds and helping you through your trauma.
He scoffed then, getting a little jealous. But he shook the whole idea out of his mind for now.
He had to ignore it. Otherwise, he would leave you and never come back from guilt. That’s what he should be doing, right? No matter what fate says, there’s no way in hell that you were meant for him.
More importantly, there’s no way he was meant for you.
The thrumming in his chest said otherwise. An invisible pull, a string that kept tugging him closer, that’s what it felt like. You shifted in your sleep, your arm pushing closer to him as you shifted your legs beneath the blankets. He stared at your unconscious form, then lifted the bottom of his mask. He took your wrist and brought it up to his lips.
The smell of your lotion hit first, and he closed his eyes. ‘Focus Riley, don’t get hard.’ But damnit did you smell so good. And then he pressed his lips against your skin. Soft, delicate skin. It made his cock twitch, and he laughed out of frustration. ‘Traitor.’ But he pressed another soft, slow kiss against your wrist, below the letters of his name. He didn’t want to touch the letters that cursed you.
He still hasn’t decided how he wants to play this. He’ll have to introduce himself at some point. Maybe he could pretend to be someone else…
“What to do, what to do, sweetheart…” He mumbled as he stood up. But before he left, he pushed some of your hair out of your face, turned off the fairy lights, and moved your book aside.
He was still half hard, but he ignored it for now. He’s heard somewhere it can be a natural reaction when you’ve found your soulmate. He didn’t read up on those articles too much, but he did like to eavesdrop when he was in town.
He quietly left your room and went into your kitchen, bending down and tightening a screw under the sink. This would make it so the water wouldn’t come out. His back up plan for when he finally introduced himself to you.
But you’d let him into the cabin for a cup of tea wouldn’t you?
You’d probably get a good feeling about him when you first meet him tomorrow.
~~
The rays of sunlight fell perfectly between the curtains to blind you as you woke up. A sleepy laugh left your lips while you fought with yourself to get up. But you realized you didn’t have to struggle too long. You felt really good today for some reason, like you wanted to smile at the sunrise and dance around in the kitchen.
Which you did after putting on your music from a favorite playlist.
You giggled and made coffee but found that the sink wouldn’t turn on. Well, your dad taught you a lot about house work, so you opened the bottom and checked it out. Sure enough after some testing, you found that one of the screws was put on too tightly. Probably something they did to keep the water bill from running. You shrugged it off and continued your rainbows and sunshine morning-
Then you paused to rest and quietly questioned what was wrong with you. Because this wasn’t normal for you. You would usually wake up, think about sleeping in some more, sleep some more (by accident probably) wake up again with body aches, before you’re finally forced out of bed because of your bladder. Of course some days are different than others.
So what made today different? You didn’t eat anything new or different, you don’t think you inhaled any happy gas. Though, who would really know if they ‘did’ inhale happy gas? What even is happy gas?- Not important. But maybe you were overthinking. Today you were just happy and you didn’t want that to stop. So you brushed off any negative thoughts and made your coffee.
Some hours passed, now nearing 1 or 2 in the afternoon when you get a knock at the door. You’re confused and albeit a little scared. So with a knife clutched in your hand behind you, you peak through the blinds and see a man. He’s kind of tall, blonde buzzcut hair hidden behind a ballcap. There’s a little bit of stubble on his jaw as well. He was wearing a mask however, which was odd. A mask out in the woods?
His clothes seemed almost ‘too’ normal, blue jeans, hiking shoes, and a dark green long sleeve t-shirt. But he had a bulky looking utility belt around his hips with a pair of leather construction gloves hanging at his side. Something felt weird about this guy. But you cracked the door open with the chain lock still attached. “Hello?”
~~
“Hello?” Your voice called his attention back to the front door. Simon looked at you and crinkled his eyes for a second to make it look like he gave you a smile.
“Afternoon. I’m the maintenance man for the cabin.” He cleared his throat. “I forgot to leave my number for the cabin the last time I fixed the pipes. Came to leave it with the renters this week.” And he held up a little rectangular card.
You stare at it, seeing the number scribbled as well as the word ‘MAINTENANCE’ above it. You look back up at him. “What’s your name?”
Simon blinked, then easily lied. “John.”
“John?” You nodded slowly. “You don’t look like a John.”
This made him smirk from behind his mask, though you couldn’t see it. “That so? I don’t think anyone has the gull to tell me somethin’ like that to my face.” He looked up at the door, then back down to you. “Guess they still don’t.”
You blushed suddenly. “That was rude, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, I um-“
“It’s fine sweetheart, wasn’t tryin’ guilt you.” He chuckled.
Simon was fighting inner demons. Seeing you get flustered because of him? Gods above, he didn’t realize this would be so hard.
“Before I leave, if you’re comfortable with it, would you mind me checkin’ the water heater and the kitchen sink inside? Just wanna make sure they didn’t kick off again.”
You looked away, looking around at something he couldn’t see past the door, then closed it. Simon raised his eyebrows until the door opened all the way without the lock keeping it closed. “Yeah, come on in.” You walked over into the kitchen as he followed inside and closed the door behind him. From the corner of his eye, he could see you putting a knife back into its block. And his member twitched at the idea of you hiding behind the door with it. He sharply bit his tongue, maybe too hard because you then gasped and covered your mouth. “You okay?” He asked.
“I’m fine. Soulmate just, bit his tongue I guess.” You sounded more like you weren’t sure, rubbing your bottom lip.
Simon walked down the hall, opening a closet door and looking over the large water heater. You shuffled over to watch, and he smiled at how much smaller you were when he was standing next to you. “Soulmate runnin’ round tryin to hurt you?” He asked while he pretended to mess with one of the meters.
“Oh, well, no I don’t think he does it on purpose. God I hope not. I’ve never met him anyways.” You sighed, not paying attention to what he was doing. Simon closed the closet and looked at you.
“Heater looks fine. Has the sink given you trouble yet?”
You lead him over to the kitchen sink while speaking. “The tap underneath was screwed on too tightly this morning, but I managed to loosen it.”
He raised his brows for the second time today. “Smart girl.” He got down to his knees and opened the cabinet, peering inside. Suddenly Simon felt a wave of arousal run through him and he shivered a little. Looking up at you, you were turning your head away while rubbing your cheek, your ears tinted a red hue. ‘Were you getting turned on from him kneeling in the kitchen?’ He suddenly chuckled, unable to help himself. When you looked at him, he shook his head. “Sorry sorry, wasn’t laughin at you sweetheart. Laughin at this old pipe system. Owners don’t wanna put in the money for a new one.” He touched where he had tightened a bolt last night, still impressed that you knew how to do that.
“Have you met your soulmate yet, Mr. John?”
Simon almost hit his head on the cabinet and looked up at you. “Please, just John is fine. And uh, no I haven’t.”
“How old are you?”
“41.”
Your lips pressed together. “You’ve been waiting a while then.”
He stares up at you still, watching your lips, then your hands where they crossed over your chest. “Yeah.” He stood up, fingers tapping the kitchen counter. “Don’t mind it though.”
Surprise crossed your features. “You don’t?” Simon shrugged. “You’re the first, I think.”
He smiled a little. “Don’t know if I ever wanted my soulmate to meet me. I’m too old now.”
You smiled, and Simon’s heart skipped. Why did you have to be so pretty? “Don’t say that. There’s been records of people older than you meeting their soulmate.”
He licked his lips from behind his mask. Then he tilted his head a little. “You wanna meet yours then? You’re young, I’m sure you do.”
You had shifted and shrugged. “That’s a tricky question. Because I do want to meet him, but not for the same reason others do.” A sigh blew from your lips. “My soulmate has been through a lot of pain, real life pain. And I had to suffer half of it. And I’m afraid-”
“Afraid of him?”
“I’m afraid that I’ll hate him.”
~~
You weren’t sure why you were spilling this out to this poor maintenance man. It felt right, the words flowing easier than when you were with your therapist. You were sure he didn’t want to be here listening to you ranting. But he was staring at you, as if he was studying you. He wasn’t showing any signs of unease.
“It’s just- I shouldn’t be angry at him for the terrible things he’s endured, right? But at the same time, they messed me up too!” Your hand went to your wrist, rubbing the letters in your skin. You didn’t notice ‘John’ clenching his own fist. “I’m not worried that he’s going to be a maniac. Although, at this rate, with how many soul scars I get from him, you’d think he was either a masochist or a murderer!”
John coughed suddenly and you held your hands up, apologizing softly. “No no love, I’m fine don’t worry.” He then pointed to the stove. “Would you mind if I made myself some tea?”
“Oh god- no no I’ll make some for you. No manners, I’m sorry.” You apologized once again and began walking around the kitchen to put a kettle boiling on the stove. “I’m sorry, I’ve been rambling like a mad man.” You remembered also that this man was a stranger. You looked up at John and your brows furrowed. “You’re not a murderer, are you?”
He chuckled then. “Me? No.” He glanced away, then looked at you. “Unless you count hunting as murder.”
You felt another smile tug at your lips. “I’m not keen on hunting, but I’m not against it either.”
“You ever wanna try it?” He crossed his arms, making the muscles under his longsleeve bulge out just a little. You felt heat pooling in your stomach and your face felt hot again.
‘What the hell is WRONG with you? Pull it together girl!’ You swallowed. “Kind of but I don’t know if I would want to use a gun.”
John shifted and stepped a little closer to you, his head tilted down to look at you. “Don’t have to use a gun.” You could smell his cologne, or was it body wash? It was something musky, mixed with something generic like Mahogony or sandalwood and it was making your head spin. “Could use a knife.” He glanced at the kitchen block that had the various types of knives and you did as well. You remembered the one you were hiding behind your back when he first arrived and it made you swallow nervously. His voice was lower when he spoke again. “But then you’d have to get real close to what you’re hunting. That can be too personal.”
He tilted his head, studying you. Testing you. “Think you can handle that? Do you think you could sneak up on your prey, knife in hand, and take its life while it’s unaware?”
Why was he so close? You could almost feel the heat his body gave off, you almost felt his breath from where it escaped behind his mask. But you didn’t look away, you weren’t going to act shy. This man was dangerous, and you knew that now. “What, you don’t think I could?” You were mentally proud of yourself from how solid your voice had stayed.
You could see his cheek twitch almost into a smile. His eyes danced between your eyes and your lips. “I think anyone could, given the right situation.”
The right situation?
His phone started to chime and he stood up straight, turning and taking his phone out of his side clip. He put the phone to his ear, grunted into the speaker, then turned to you while hanging up the call. “Maintenance call at another cabin.” He turned and started walking to the door, pausing and looking back at you. “Thank you for the tea.” And he left through the door quickly.
You brows furrowed, looking at the pot of water that only just started to boil.
~~
After you put away the tea pot and made yourself lunch, you put on a tv show and rested on the couch, deciding that tomorrow you would go and check out the lake or maybe go and pick a few wild berries. There was a brochure left on the counter about the right and wrong berries to pick, as well as a little map that lead from the cabin, around the area, and back. You had briefly flipped through it and thought it wouldn’t hurt. Plus, you had John’s number. So maybe if you got lost you could give him a call?
You shook the idea out of your head. You shouldn’t think like that. When people are waiting to meet their soulmates, some never date until then. Some stay celibate too. A lot of the older generations see it like marriage, to wait for your soulmate. But in recent years, younger generations have accepted that it’s okay to date before meeting your soulmate, because they know that it possibly won’t be temporary. The only circumstances that would lead to someone not ending up with their soulmate is if one of them dies before they meet them.
You shiver at the idea. Apparently, you can feel when your soulmate dies. People say it’s the worst thing on earth. Many people don’t date after their soulmate dies. But in cases where a person never met their one true love before they died, they found it easier to move on. Still, there’s a sting. An empty pit in their chest. People say that it can feel like you’re one breath away from never breathing again. Or, like you have to manually push yourself to move otherwise you might just linger. Waiting.
Lost.
Depression doesn’t begin to describe it, and you have to try and force your brain out of the train of thoughts. So turn the tv up louder and focus on the plot there. But soon, you fall asleep.
~
When you woke up, it was dark outside. And you thought the increasing pounding noise was coming from the tv, but it continued. Then the screaming from outside sounded and you jumped off the couch.
Walking quickly towards the front of the cabin, you see an older woman banging her fists against the front door. She was dirty, bloodied, crying and screaming. It made the hairs on your body stand on end. You debated letting her in but you hesitated. Ultimately, you let her inside. She ran in and closed and locked the door. “Thank you!” She turned to you and sobbed, holding your arm. “He’s after me! He killed my boyfriend a-and he’s trying to kill me next!”
Your blood felt like it ran cold. You helped her to the living room and calmed her down as best as you could. “Okay, I’m gonna call the police. Can you tell me what happened? What’s your name?” You knew you were asking her too many questions. You had to swallow the lump in your throat to calm down a little. You noticed an odd strong scent coming off of her, as well as sores around her arms that didn’t look new. The same sores were around her face too.
The woman nodded, whimpering. “Meg. I-I- we, my boyfriend and I were hiking. We hike plenty of woods and w-we found this location. So we just found a trail and began to walk it. But we got lost.” She sniffs as she tried to get her words out without stuttering. “And we found this old cabin not far from here. We went to ask for help but the man that lives there, he’s a murderer!”
You stare at her, but she doesn’t continue. “Okay, okay calm down, let me find my phone and then-“
“Wait.” She was staring at your arms. Her hands were still shaking as she gripped your wrists. She was looking down at your wrists, at the letters. “Oh my god.” You tried to pull your hands away but her eyes snapped up to look at you. “You! You liar!” She shoved you away suddenly, causing you to stumble and fall to the floor. You watched her as she ran to the kitchen and you sat up.
“Lady- Meg! What the hell?!” She stood at the kitchen entrance, gripping the same knife you were holding earlier today. “Whoa! Stop! Please I just want to help! Let me get my phone and I’ll call the police, please!”
“The fuck you are!” She was breathing heavily, clutching the knife with both hands. “What’s your name? Tell me your fucking name right now!” You swallowed but said your name. Her eyes looked like they glazed over. “You’re with him…he killed my soulmate, you sick fuck!” She started to stomp after you and you grabbed one of the candles from the coffee table.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” You yelled, dread filling your chest as she got closer.
There was a hard kick at the door, then another. Both of you stare at the door until it was kicked in and a large body stepped through the shattered door. Your fear of being butchered was replaced by the terror that this man flooded the room with. You felt Meg grab your shoulder and you leaned back into her touch, not realizing she was now holding the knife up to your throat. “I-is that him?” You whispered.
Meg gripped your shirt and then pressed the knife closer to your throat. “Don’t! Don’t come any closer!”
[Urban Operations outfit, more or less.] The man in question was dressed to be hidden. Dark clothes, camo gear that looked military. Combat boots, dark jean pants and a vest that seemed to be riddled with extra weapons. However, what really made you stare was the mask. Under the hood of his jacket, he was wearing a full-face mask of what seemed to be a skull. It was a human skull, and it looked real.
You couldn’t see his eyes, it was too dark. But you could feel him staring and assessing. Meg whimpered. “Let me go! I know she’s yours and I’ll let her go if you don’t kill me!”
“What are you saying!?” You shifted in her grip. “I’m not his! I don’t know this lunatic!” You were so confused and horrified. You realized you were still holding the candle in your hand, the glass jar weighed heavy in your grasp. “Meg please, let’s-“
“Shut up!” She hissed. “No…no- you know what? I’m not going to let him win. He killed ‘my’ soulmate, he took him away, and I can take away ‘yours’.” She was glaring at the masked man who had said nothing, nor did he move from his spot. The knife went up to your throat again, pressing harder. “I can still feel the pain in my head!” She nearly sobbed. “So now you can live the rest of your life with the burning at your neck-“
You slammed the candle straight into her face, up against her nose. She made a grunting choked sound and you pushed the hand away that was holding the knife while crawling away from her hold. She roared, taking a step towards you until there was a knife suddenly lodged in her head. Another one followed, and she fell to the floor on her knees before falling back against the wall behind her. You slowly looked at the man, seeing his arm slowly falling back into place at his side.
You were breathing heavily, eyes going back to the unmoving woman while blood trickled down her face. The knife she was holding was on the ground in front of you, but you knew the man had fucking throwing knives and could lodge one into you right now. Just as you thought of reaching for it, the man walked calmly across the living room towards the dead woman. He kicked the knife away from you, then knelt down in front of her. You couldn’t see it, but you heard him dislodging the knives out of her head and you gagged at the sound.
The man chuckled darkly, making your skin prickle with fear. He was standing and turning towards you, wiping his knives off on his pants. You backed away until you were pressed against the other side of the living room wall. You were closer to the tv that you could possibly block yourself behind it, but what if he used it to kill you? The tv was large, he could probably drop it on you. Or use the wire to wrap around your neck…
Now that you think about it, the killer could probably just kill you with his bare hands. He had gloves on with skeleton fingers printed on the backs of them. How poetic, you thought bitterly. He could strangle you and death would be hoisting you up with the same type of hands. You were going to die here, realistically.
Tears flooded your eyes, not because you were scared – you were – but because you couldn’t see your parents again. You took this stupid trip because your stupid therapist said it would be good for you. And now you were going to get murdered. You hiccupped, shoulders jumping while you hugged your knees to your chest. “I-…” You wanted to beg for your life, but didn’t you want to die with dignity too?
The man bent down and picked up the candle, some blood on the edge of the cracked glass. He read the scent, then lifted it to his nose and sniffed it. You gagged again and turned your head away. “Still smells like cinnamon. Stop getting sick.” He placed the candle on the coffee table and slowly stepped closer. He finally kneels beside you and taps your knee. “C’mon. Look at me.”
“N-no…”
He sighed. “Please?”
“No.” You shook your head and turned your body away. “If you’re gonna kill me, do it as painless as possib-“
He was grabbing your face, turning your head to look at him. His fingers squished your cheeks and made your lips pucker together. You shook your head and he loosened his grip, but he didn’t let go. “Not gonna kill you.” That made you look at him finally. He pulled his hood off, but the mask covered his whole head. The only thing you could see were his eyes. His gloved hand touched your cheek and he looked down at your arm. “Give me your hand.”
“Why?”
He didn’t ask again this time, reaching down and yanking your hand up. He gazed down at your mark, the letters dark and bold. Then he held up his own wrist, pulling his glove off and pushing his sleeve up. There, your initials were printed in the same style as yours.
You felt like you would get sick again. “No…no that’s-“ But he touched the soul scar on your forearm, interrupting you with a huff.
“Had to make sure when I saw you.” He looked up again, rolling the sleeve up to show the cut on his forearm, now scabbing over. “Sorry. That one was on purpose.”
You were speechless. The words left your brain as the air left your throat. There were so many things you had planned to say to him when you met him. So many ugly, sorrowful, hateful things. Questions too. Questions like, ‘What kind of hell were you dragged through?’ and ‘How are you still alive after what I felt?’
But brand-new questions, new emotions bubble in your head like a stew. And the words were too thick to spit out. Your head was going a million miles a second, nothing could come to your head fast enough.
He seemed to realize this and spoke up for you. “Do you wanna talk about this now, or do you want me to get the dead body out of the house first?”
You threw up instead.
Luckily (for him) the killer jumped out the way with a sharp curse falling from his mouth. You hunched over and whimpered, feeling your stomach lurch again at the memory of the sounds.
“Right. I’ll get it out of here.” He sighed and stood up. “Stay here. I mean it. And go in the room so you don’t have to look at the mess.” His tone was commanding and you looked at him in disgust. He didn’t look back at you as he went over to the dead woman.
“Why did you kill them?” Your tone was not as panicked as before but there was still stress.
The killer bent down, pulling the womans arms above him and then hauling the rest of her body over his shoulder. Blood spilled out onto the floor in puddles and you turned away, shivering at the sounds. Why were you so sensitive to the sounds? Maybe because you never expected to hear something so gruesome in your life.
“Cause, her and her boyfriend were tryin’a break into my house.” He looked back down at you. “They were junkies. Meth heads. They steal what they can to trade it off for drugs.” He rolled his shoulder as he walked out the cabin. “Fuckin’ hate junkies – can still smell the stuff on ‘em.”
He exits. You sit there. Thinking.
This was the worst possible outcome, you think briefly. You had imagined more crying, hurtful words maybe. Possibly even screaming. But this? Vomiting, bloodshed, dead junkies, and masked serial killers…
You were getting the fuck out of here.
You stand and look out the window, seeing the dark figure of the man walking into the woods, just barely lit up by the porch light. You crept towards the front door and watched him disappear further into the woods. Where he was heading, you didn’t care. You didn’t know how long you had, so you picked up your phone and-
It was dead.
“Fuck I am the dumb bitch in horror movies!” You slammed the phone on the ground and went back to the front door. You weren’t completely helpless, you remembered your truck. You grabbed the keys hanging on a little board by the door and rushed out to the truck. You got inside, turning the ignition and nearly cried from relief when it rumbled to life. You looked around, throwing the vehicle in reverse and quickly turning around. You flicked the headlights on and jumped when you saw the killer standing a few feet in front of the truck.
Neither of you moved, and you shivered.
“Get out of the damn truck. Now!” He barked, starting to walk towards you.
You shook your head and quickly shifted the truck into drive. You’ve screamed at too many horror movie protagonists to run over the monster or killer with their car, to make the same mistake as them. You stepped on the gas and the tires threw the dirt up behind you. The vehicle barreled towards the man and you expected him to either jump out the way or just get ran over.
What you didn’t expect was for him to step to the side and grab the bed of the truck as you were driving. In the review mirror, you glimpsed him hauling himself into the bed and quickly crawling closer to the cab of the truck. “Fuck!” You suddenly slammed the breaks and watched his body slam into the window in the back. You felt it as well and groaned, grabbing your head. But you didn’t wait and started driving forward again. You just had to hope that he didn’t try to-
His foot breaks through the back glass and he reached inside. “Pull over right fuckin now!” His arm wasn’t long enough to reach you in the drivers seat since there was a whole back seat as well. He couldn’t reach the doors either.
“Get off my fucking truck!” You jerk the wheel so the truck would turn at hard angles. The man held onto the back, cursing under his breath.
“You’re gonna get us both killed if you keep this up!” He sat back in the bed of the truck and started to kick in more of the window. The glass started to break, and you tried to focus on following the path. You heard the rest of the glass give in and then a huff of aggravation. “Stop the truck right now.” You heard him climbing into the truck in the backseat and suddenly slammed the breaks. The man’s body flew into the radio and dash of the truck. You didn’t put it in park and quickly climbed out. “Damnit- Stop running!”
Your leg hurt, sore from him kicking in everything (the front door and now the back of the window). But you’ll be damned if you stopped running now. You limped/ran straight into the woods. You were now heading back the way of the cabin, but you weren’t positive. You didn’t have your phone so you didn’t have directions. You didn’t even know if you were going North or South, did it even matter? No.
A painful whimper left your throat as you kept running. Your lungs burned and your head was pounding, but adrenaline coursed through your veins. You were so utterly lost. What were you going to do when you got back to the cabin? You’d have to barricade yourself in your room. Make sure you had your phone so you could charge it. You probably won’t have long until that psycho starts to kick down the door like a human battering ram.
You didn’t hear the thudding quick footsteps until it was suddenly right behind you. A scream left your throat as you were tackled to the ground. You wrestled with the masked killer, growling and kicking as he turned you over to face him. “What the hell were you plannin’ back there huh?” He grabbed your wrists and pressed them into the dirt above your head. “Look at me damn it!”
You glared up at him, biting your lip hard to keep the tears from flooding out. His chest was puffing in and out quickly as he regained control of his breathing. You were doing the same.
“Answer me.” His tone held authority. There wasn’t any patience left. “Were you plannin’ on killin’ me? Tell me, what were you gonna do when you ran me over, squished me flat under your tires? Just keep goin’ all rainbows and sunshine? Did you think about the consequences of yourself, and what you would have felt too?” Distress laced his words as if he had been scared.
“I’ve been through worse, and you know it.” You finally answered. Your words made him freeze. Something passed through his gaze while he turned his head to the side to look away from you. For a moment, you regretted your words. But then the memory of that woman came back and you struggled against his grip. “Let go of me! I want to go home!”
“You’re not goin’ anywhere princess.” He was still holding you down, pinning your hands to the soil above your head. “I asked you nicely. I even allowed you to do it yourself, walk to your room and wait for me so we could talk this out. But ‘no’. You had to try and escape as if I had you in fuckin chains and rope.” His voice was low, heated. He leaned down, the skull mask getting closer. “Now I’m gonna give you one last chance. You’re either gonna walk back with me to the cabin, or I’ll carry you like a sack of potatoes over my shoulder. Which is it sweetheart?”
~
You chose to walk. Though a few times during the trek, you had slowed down and considered running again. Which, your captor - your dreaded soulmate – could tell and steered you forward by grabbing your arm. For a moment, you thought he had growled at you. But then a flash of light cutting through the sky caught your attention, realizing it was just thunder that you heard. Of course it was about to start raining.
Just as the clouds let warm droplets rain down upon you two, you’d both made it to a cabin. It wasn’t the cabin you had rented.
It was a little bigger - wider than it was taller. There was a porch around the cabin but only one chair, a small table on the side with an ash tray sitting atop it. There was a black truck parked out front, a nicer newer model than yours. As you both got closer, you noticed what looked like a bag and some trash laying near the steps. But when you got closer, you gasped at seeing it was the bodies of the couple. Meg and her boyfriend.
The murderer came around you and covered your eyes. But you panicked, thinking he was going to hurt you and tried to push him away. He grunted, using his other arm to wrap around your body and your arms. “Just keep walking. Don’t look at them.” He lead you up the stairs and took back his arm to unlock and open the door. “Didn’t want you pukin’ on my deck.” He muttered.
You were led inside and you slapped his hand away. “Okay - just stop!” Your frenzied tone made him pause, only moving to close the door behind him. “Who are you?”
He stares at you; as if he didn’t have an answer for your question. “Your soulmate.” His low voice answered.
You wanted to pull your hair out in frustration, groaning and then finally shoving your wrist forward. “Your name!”
His eyes followed down to where you offered your wrist. His eyes softened but then darkened in one continuous sequence. Something was going through his mind, swirling behind his eyes.
Your only passage through this man was through his eyes.
He moves forward, slowly taking your hand and leading you to the couch in the living room. It was warm, more worn out than the one in your rented cabin. You followed, maybe shock was wearing you down or fatigue that made you more compliant. He sits across from you on a coffee table, too close that you could smell his sweat and the last cigarette he had.
He doesn’t let you say anything and instead he starts to remove his gear. The vest, jacket, the belt around his hips. He drops them behind him, far from your reach. Finally, his thumb hooks under his mask and he lifts it off his face and his head.
The first thing you think is that this isn’t fair.
This stranger is a murderer. He killed people while sporting a mask and stalked the woods. He jumped on your truck while you were trying to get away (never mind that you were trying to run him over.) And you wanted him to be devastatingly disturbing; anything to match the horrible morality he’s presented thus far. But no.
He was beautiful in a rugged way. He had a hard gaze before, but accompanied with the scars littering his face, it made his stare all the more intense. A broken nose with a large ridge. His lips were thin but they were soft looking when you expected them to be chapped or bitten. His jaw was strong looking, a stubble wrapping around it. Messy, short, dirty blonde hair on his head made you realize he looked oddly familiar.
“John?” Your brows furrowed in utter confusion as your eyes darted to the initials on your wrist.
He smiled. “Simon Riley.”
“Simon.” You repeated with narrowed eyes. "Then why John?" He sniffed and sat up a little, looking away instead of answering. And this made you upset. You had too many thoughts and questions, and you had so much to say! You had a plan for this very moment!
"I wanted to meet you before I fully revealed myself." He started to say, smiling slightly. "I know you probably-" And you punched him across the face, the pain blossoming across your own cheek. But it didn't hurt hard enough. It didn't feel like enough. So you went to punch him again but he caught your fist, then he caught your other hand. He didn't look like he was struggling to hold you back which pissed you off even more. "You'd do something like that." He sighed, watching your face as tears formed in your eyes. "C'mon then, let it out."
"Shut up!" You cried. "Fuck! I just- I didn't want to meet you! Because I knew what would happen! I'd be mad, and I'd be sad and then this fucking bond thing would make me forgive you, and then I would be okay with the shit you put me through!" Your throat was tight, your face was hot with tears. "I don't want to forgive you! Why would the universe do this to us?"
He looked surprised at your choice of word, 'us'.
"Why would they put a kid through the things you went through and then expect me to be okay with it? Why would it make me resent you!" You sobbed. You couldn't look at him. Your chest felt like it was tearing and your body was caving in on itself. "You're supposed to have someone who loves you no matter what but I want to hate you for what you put me through...God! It hurt so much! And I begged them to kill me so often..."
Simon let out a deep breath and squeezed your hands. He moved around you, and you felt him lift you before you were in his lap, sitting sideways while his arms wrapped around you. You couldn't-, wouldn't move for the moment. His chin rested on your head and you could hear his heart beating where your ear pressed to his chest. You thought you could feel something wet hit the top of your head. "Go on." He whispered. "Talk to me, tell me."
You hiccuped/sobbed. You expected him to yell back. Maybe scream about you being selfish. Not this. "I asked them to kill me for the first time when I was 12 or 13, I think. I don't remember the age, but I remember the...knives. When they were in my arms it was tolerable. But then they moved to..." You took a deep breath.
"To my stomach, nearly gutted me alive." He mumbled in your hair. "I was terrified. I thought I would die then, truly. And, I thought for a moment that, at least whoever you were, you'd get some peace of mind."
You had opened your eyes and were staring at his arm where it was holding you close to him. You swallowed and spoke softly. "What happened when um...I could barely breath. The doctors were stuffing me with oxygen tubes and said this might be the one. Where you would die for sure."
You remembered the doctors looking horrified. You remembered the whispered words. Like how one doctor was silently cursing at your soulmate for torturing you like this. And you didn't like that. You thought: what if there was a little kid your age going through this without doctors to help?
Simon hummed, "They buried me alive. I had to use...someone's jawbone to dig myself out. I think I felt the tubes they were puttin' in your lungs."
You didn't feel yourself choking like you thought you would. Every time your mind went to that memory, you could feel yourself about to have a panic attack. But it didn't come this time. Instead, you took a deep filling breath. "And, what was the thing they did to your back?"
"Meat hook." He answered.
"I wanted them to kill me after that, too." You replied. He nodded against your head. "What happened after that?"
Simon's hand was at your arm, his thumb was rubbing against the side of our elbow. "I escaped. I got back to the military and...well I guess I nearly got my brains blown out my skull there. But, after I recovered I couldn't just leave it. The military was all I knew." You understood a little. "I was always jealous of you." He continued. "Never felt anything from you. Just, little emotions. Things I could handle, and I was mad. You must have had a good life, compared to what I had. Then one night I felt it." He moved so he could show you his hand where his soul scar was. He laughed. "Spooked me, but when that happened, I realized you were alive, you were real."
You slowly lifted your own hand, looking at the physical scar on your hand. "Well I was mad at you too. And I guess I wanted you to know that."
"I figured that." He gently took your hand and turned it over, showing you the small cuts he left on your thumb. "Thought you wanted to play a game of tic tac toe or something."
You saw the soul scar there and let out a sharp surprised laugh. You sat up and wiped your eyes before replying. "That's not funny... They put me on suicide watch for two weeks and they took my phone away."
Simon raised a brow at you. "Oh yeah, two weeks without a phone to play on is devastating." He smirked. Then he looked back down at your hand. "I decided to retire a few years later. Desk work was never my thing anyways. So I moved out here and-"
"And you became a serial killer?"
"I wasn't killing everyone I saw." He mumbled again. "But there were certain people who...lost their way, an weren't trying to find their way back. Especially those that came out here to do things that they wouldn't do in front of others." He looked down at you. "Wasn't just drug addicts out here."
You didn't like the thought of that, and you felt yourself cringe a little. You looked back up at him, then looked away again. Now the question remained. "What are we supposed to do?"
~~~
Simon knew the question would come, but he still didn't know how to answer. He watched you, your eyes puffy from crying, cheeks still red. It was like he had an angel in his lap, and he wasn't worthy of it. But he thought that tonight was a lot, for both of you. "Let's get some sleep. We can talk about the rest of this in the morning. I'll cook breakfast and make us some tea."
Your lips twitched and you asked, "No coffee?"
Simon narrowed his eyes, reaching down to lift up your wrist with his initials on it. "You sure this ain't some other bloke's letters?" And that seemed to get another laugh out of you, even if you looked away to try and hide it.
About 30 minutes later, you were both dressed for bed. You were borrowing his pajamas, at least three sizes too big on you. And he liked how it looked. He had to remind himself you could feel what he felt, so he tried to think of other things. He didn't want to make you uncomfortable because he was slightly horny. Though, when he remembered going to the cabin while you were there, and you were checking him out while he was fixing your sink, he decided he gets a pass.
The sleeping situation was settled quickly. He wouldn't let you sleep on the couch, and you didn't want to be alone in the room. So you both took the bed but with a barrier of pillows between you. He didn't mind, and truthfully he was glad that you hadn't kicked him to the couch or tried running again.
The night became quieter, but he knew you hadn't fallen asleep yet. And he had a question. "How do you feel, now?"
Silence. "About you?"
"About the soulmate thing. Does it feel like its making you like me?" He waited in the dark of the room, the crickets and frogs singing outside the window.
"I don't know," you whispered. "I want to believe its the soulmate thing that's making me feel like this. Calmer, not as angry."
Simon stared up at the ceiling. He didn't want you to be angry anymore, he didn't want you to be upset at all. He thought about the things you both shared earlier, then he nodded slightly. "You can still be angry at me. But, I need to teach you how to punch a man properly first." He heard your scoffing and what he hoped had been a snort of laughter. "I felt more pain in your fist than in my face, love."
"I've never had to punch anyone before, can you blame me?"
"No, but I believe you."
"And you're gonna teach me how to hunt too, John?"
Simon smiled, chuckling softly. "I could if you want to learn." He turned his head to look at the little barrier between you both. "John is close friend of mine. He's a good man, was a good leader." He sniffed and looked back up at the ceiling.
"Is that why you used his name instead of yours?"
"Yeah. And, I thought you'd like someone like John more than me." He paused then added, "And i was trying to get to know you in secret."
"Well," You yawned mid sentence. "I don't blame you. After how I reacted I guess."
"You had a right to react how you did. I put you through a lot. Today...and before." Simon spoke softer, his eyes still looking at the pillow wall. Which he was starting to hate.
"Doesn't make it okay." You mumbled. "You went through it too."
Simon shrugged. "Well I'm a veteran, love." He wanted to defend you a little, even though before, he had been somewhat jealous of the support you had growing up. But now? He didn't really care. So what if you had doctors and therapists at the ready? It was what you needed and in the end, you were alive. You stayed, and you were here with him. And he was indebted to the universe that you were still breathing.
He could feel how tired you were, and he sighed. "Get some sleep, I know you're tired." You had hummed in response and he realized you would get sleepier when he spoke. It made him want to laugh again, but he held it in, smiling at the ceiling. "I used to be in a task force. Price- er, John was our captain. There was also Gaz and Soap. Those two were a handful, like brothers. Gaz was a damn good soldier, didn't know how to stay inside a moving heli though." He laughed softly. "Johnny was a chatterbox, but a funny lad. He got a bullet against the head, same as me, took him to retirement earlier than I had. Still doesn't know how to shut up..." He looked over, then carefully lifted his head to look at you.
You were fast asleep, your head turned towards the window, lips parted as your breathing came in and out slowly. Simon watched you for a few moments. Then, he flattened the pillow and moved it lower. He didn't want to remove it completely, he just wanted to see you. With the pillow out the way, he turned on his side so he could watch you for a while. He didn't know for how long, but eventually he had fallen asleep.
A/N: This was 26 pages in Google Docs, lol. I can write some more of this I just don't know when. Apologies to any Megs reading this.
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