5 times dex runs into you as daredevil + 1 time you finally see him for who he really is.
a/n: playing fast and loose with timelines here but my tags have more info if wanted. cant think of any tw’s to tag but let me know if u spot smth
1.
you didn’t know how you ended up here.
maybe it was because your friends had spent the night berating you for barely going out in between work, calling you boring and predictable in between teasing giggles. and maybe they had been joking and just trying to bait you into seeing them more often, but several drinks in you were feeling more sensitive than sarcastic, and so you’d taken it to heart even as you’d laughed it off because maybe you secretly agreed with them.
and after you hugged them all goodbye and promised to not be such a stranger, you couldn’t help but keep thinking about it as you walked home alone from the bar.
their words and your own tumbled around again and again in your head, growing crueller with each stumbling step you took. you needed to stop living scared and actually do something out of your routine for once. it didn’t have to be crazy; maybe a holiday weekend away or just going to the movies after work one evening. hell, maybe you’d ask that cute guy from the coffee shop out finally—
you stopped walking.
somehow, it was both the standard and wildly unexpected to see the devil of hell’s kitchen in person. though you supposed you weren’t often out to so late and you didn’t go out of your way to commit crimes, so it wasn’t like the opportunity to meet him often presented itself. plus, for the last few months it’d seemed like daredevil had packed up his suit and retired or moved on to protect a new city, no reports of sightings in the bulletin or on any social media sprouted a suspicious buzz among the locals and an ever growing brazenness from criminals.
well, you were no bulletin journalist, but you could happily report that he was, in fact, still in hell’s kitchen. you were looking right at him.
it was weird; knowing he was out scouring your neighbourhood at night while you were in your jammies watching psych was different to actually seeing him in action. the suit had always seemed so scary in photos, but looking at it now, you just had the urge to touch, like you were a kid with a scratch and sniff book again.
jesus, how many rounds had lisa ordered for the table again? you blinked slowly.
it was rare it ever happened, but you were at the level of drunk were instead of setting off your fight or flight instincts, classic warning signs had your curiosity piquing and your feet leading you off the beaten path without a second thought.
you could blame your friends for the quick drinking pace at the bar for your current inebriated state, but you knew you’d encouraged it. in fact, you’d bought the third round because seeing your friends smile always got your heart thumping more than the loud music. it wasn’t often that you all managed to make time to get together anymore, maybe monthly, whether they were busy with packed job schedules or growing families or you were playing hard to get to leave the house; it made it too easy to give in to wanting just a little more time with them while it was in reach.
so with all of that in mind, when you’d heard a gurgled choke; the drop of a metal pipe; and, finally, a heavy thud and a drawn out groan, you’d stopped and tilted your head towards the depth of the dark alley like a dog hearing the crinkle of a wrapper and watched avidly as daredevil wiped a tired hand over his mouth before sharply huffing, his breath visible in the evening cold.
you walked towards him without a second thought and didn’t make out the bodies on the ground until you were within arm’s reach of them. looking down, their avtf vests swam in and out of focus, causing a headache to begin to build at your temples.
blearily, you turned to the side to see daredevil himself slouched against the brick, his chest lifting with every ragged inhale as he stared back up at you.
“hi.” you felt your cheeks heat at your sudden loss for words, feeling dumbstruck and just plain dumb stood in front of the vigilante; but the feeling was quickly shadowed by the butterflies running rampant in your tummy when daredevil’s mouth split into a bloody grin. you didn’t want to think too much about why exactly the violent image got you so quickly flustered.
“hey,” he said back, clearly amused even as exhausted as he was. “nice night we’re having, huh?”
“i think it’s, uhm, technically early morning now,” you corrected, as you shuffled in place, your voice a little slurred from the alcohol. you turned your back towards the agents on the floor to focus on him as best you could, leaning towards him tipsily only to overcorrect your posture ramrod straight with an unsteady shuffle.
he tilted his head, as if studying a new piece of information he’d gained about you, filing it away somewhere safe in the back of his mind. “s’ppose you’re right. nice morning then.”
“do you need a hand?” you asked ignoring his correction, feeling fidgety under his pointed gaze. it was heavy even if his eyes were covered and you stood now between his stretched out boots looking down at him. he licked his lips before nodding, lifting a hand lazily from his lap to grasp yours when you eagerly held it out.
you braced yourself to tug him up with both hands wrapped around a thick, covered wrist, but in your tipsy state you did barely anything to help lift him and going by the grunt he let out as he stood, he felt it.
he stumbled forward once he was upright, his hands landing at your waist to steady himself. for a second you thought the pair of you would fall, feeling clumsy in your own skin at that moment, but his legs must have locked as he kept the pair of you stood upright. he held you closer than necessary, but you didn’t notice, your own hands hovering over the thick armoured plates on his ribs.
he ducked his head and huffed a shaky breath into your neck. it felt like an eternity with his warm breath raising goosebumps across your skin and you dared not move even as your fingers itched to touch. one of the horns on his mask brushed along your temple as he straightened back up after a minute and you shivered.
as he moved to step away, you dropped your hands to cradle his ribs carefully, trying to commit the feeling to memory to brag to your friends, inevitably letting them slip to his waist a second later as he pulled out of reach, his own hold on you falling away.
“thanks,” he whispered gravelly.
you swallowed thickly. “sure. are you ok?”
“oh, this?” he pointed to his split lip and pretended he wasn’t having to lean on his good knee. “i’ve got somewhere i can go.”
you nodded, staring at his lips longingly before a large, sudden yawn split your jaw with a crack. you belatedly covered your mouth with your hand and blinked up slowly at the amused vigilante.
“why don’t we get you home, sweetheart? i’ll escort you, make sure you don’t run into any trouble,” he offered. he looked down at the unmoving avtf team behind you and grinned unabashed, satisfied, “well, any more trouble.”
you nodded sleepily, your eyes getting heavier by the second.
you’d read your fair share about daredevil in the papers, but not even the most complimentary of journalists had ever talked about him taking the time to escort women home safely on dark nights. they focused on his bigger, flashier escapades.
it was nice of him, you thought as you struggled to get your apartment key into the lock. a broad hand steadied yours. it was nice that there was someone looking out for the smaller stuff going on, not just the increasingly frequent alien invasions. it was nice to not feel forgotten about by larger than life heroes.
—
when you woke the next morning, it was with a dry mouth and a pounding head, still wearing your clothes from the night before but tucked carefully under a blanket on your couch. you had vague memories of the red suit, men laid bleeding on the floor by your feet, but you didn’t linger on it, too busy nursing your sensitive tummy and sleeping on and off during the day. you felt too old to be drinking like that now, you didn’t recover like you did in your early twenties. you texted your friends the very same and laughed as they messaged back their own suffering.
what you didn’t tell them was that when you closed your eyes you dreamt of daredevil; how he walked you home and insisted on riding up the elevator with you to your apartment door, how you recognised now while sober that his smirk held a tint of concern as he made you promise to lock the door behind you and drink a glass of water before you crashed.
you looked at the half empty glass of water on the coffee table and declined to comment, even just to yourself in the empty apartment.
—-
2.
the second time you saw daredevil it was after a stint of murders near the docks earlier in the week. more avtf agents.
you were walking home from your late shift at work and you’d bought the newspaper on a whim after seeing daredevil’s blurry photo plastered across the front page, thanking the man running the stand distractedly as you hurriedly flipped to the right page for the full story.
they’d barely held back with the photos, a massacre on a two page spread, but it was just that one same blurry photo of the man guilty of it all framed at the side.
you read a couple of lines, but quickly grew to have had enough when you realised it was a paper owned by fisk, the writing heavily biased and trite. you didn’t like death and you didn’t necessarily agree with daredevil being the judge, jury, and executioner of these people, but you weren’t going to waste time reading about the avtf being innocent either. you’d seen the damage fisk and his task force were doing first hand in the city; how marginalised people were coming face to face with the negative impact more directly. the task force scared you and you weren’t going to fall so easily for the propaganda of ‘men just doing their duty’ when you could spot an excuse to act on prejudice a mile away.
as you walked down the emptying street, chuntering under your breath, you hadn’t realised just how distracted you were while scowling down at the paper until a voice spoke from over your shoulder.
“you should watch where you’re going,” he said softly into your ear. “there’re all sorts of bad people on the streets this late that could take advantage.”
you flinched in surprise, spinning around clumsily to face him, but his familiar broad hand steadied you at the waist and his chest pressed briefly to your shoulder before he let you go again. he fell into step beside you as though this was routine.
“oh, yeah? and are you one of them?” you asked daringly, heart rate still pounding. you waved the open newspaper in your hand.
he froze seeing the article before smiling a little stiffly, forced ease replacing his previously gentle teasing demeanour as he looked at the photos, of fisk sat in his mayoral office placed purposely away from the carnage on the page.
“depends on if you believe everything you read.”
you hummed at his answer and continued to walk, secretly pleased when he kept pace beside you.
maybe it was a slow night, and he had time to kill walking you back through the quiet streets again. maybe he had a soft spot for you.
you folded the paper back up messily and crammed it into the first bin you passed, sneaking a look at him as you went back to walk among the shadowed edge of the sidewalk. it made you want to laugh, seeing him act so normal, as if he wasn’t dressed head to toe in red kevlar as he walked down the quiet street with you. you supposed he’d have been less likely to join you if the evening had been livelier, the street not composing of just the two of you.
you were both quiet as you walked, but it didn’t feel awkward.
no, what put you on edge was the weight of his gaze that flickered to you every so often and the brush of his glove against the back of your hand when your gait would bring you close enough to whisper a touch. it felt like a live wire, and trying to guess when the next brief moment would happen and those butterflies back with a vengeance.
a nudge of his elbow brought your attention back from your wondering and he nodded to a cut through he’d stopped in front of, dark and dingy and the sort of street you knew you’d never set foot down.
“cuts out half of your walk,” he said.
your frown pulled ever slightly deeper. you didn’t want to know why he knew where you lived.
instead you just stared at him with raised eyebrows, putting all of your facial muscles into accurately conveying the ‘you’re fucking kidding, right?’ feeling you got when your eyes flickered to his proposed shortcut. disbelief wasn’t strong enough a word.
he laughed, grin stretched wide and teeth glinting in the muggy light of the chilled evening.
“you’re with me, i’ll keep you safe,” he promised, reading into your hesitance immediately.
“lucky me,” you mumbled sarcastically, growing bashful when he heard and snickered.
despite having no real reason to trust the vigilante, you felt no unease around him. so you followed, sticking close as he led you behind and between looming buildings, scuttling past squeaking rats.
“why are you targeting the avtf?” you asked suddenly. the quiet was suffocating with the sound of traffic feeling muffled the further you branched away down the alley.
“they’re bad people,” daredevil said simply. you frowned, finding the answer empty. he peered over his shoulder at you, “what, you disagree?”
“i— no…” you paused as you tried to find the right words, “but doesn’t it feel like there’ll always be more avtf agents no matter how many nights you spend… you know,” you stuttered out the last part, unable to say it out loud.
you didn’t want to acknowledge that he was murdering people and you weren’t running in the opposite direction when he was then offering to walk you home the very next night. it felt thick on your tongue to say what he was doing and you weren’t sure your conscience was ready to face agreeing with it. this vigilante’s life was so extreme, so starchly black and white in comparison to the quiet life you lived.
“doesn’t it feel endless?” you continued. sisyphus’ killing spree, you thought glibly.
“maybe.” he shrugged carelessly. “but wilson fisk isn’t so easy to get to and i don’t want to make him a martyr. i know it’ll be pissing him off seeing his toys get offed one by one.” he watched you as he spoke again, “plus it’s fun; kinda hope he doesn’t run out of assholes just so i can keep killing ‘em.”
your breath hitched, stomach swooping with thick dread and something less damning you daren’t name as you stared back. your lips thinned and you looked down at your shoes as he chuckled.
he didn’t have the same reservations as you, it seemed. but why would he when he was the one out there doing it? not just talking around it.
did you disagree with his methods? he was murdering people. people with families, friends, lives. he was a killer, simple as that. but… you’d seen the damage the avtf continued to do the more they got away with it; the alleged murders they just dismissed as disappearances, you knew they weren’t good people either. they were the bottom of the barrel angry cops, assholes with grudges and egos and a free-for-all pass to use violent force against an already suffering city. and although it felt out of character for daredevil to be suddenly leaving trails of bodies behind after so many years of leaving them to the police, maybe it made more sense not to trust the system with their own at the moment.
you felt your stomach roll as you came to a sobering thought. maybe you were ok with him killing fisk’s men if you didn’t have to see.
what did that say about you?
the flickering of streetlights had you looking up from your shoes, bringing you back from your moral quandary, and you realised you were already turning onto your block.
“martyr or not, i’d like to see wilson fisk found cold in an alley,” you mumbled suddenly without thinking, still focused on your spiralling thoughts.
as your tired brain caught up to your mouth, your lips pinched in contrition and your eyes flickered to daredevil where he stood silently beside you; a sentinel even as you deliberated over his actions. you worried for a second that he’d judge you, but it was naught as your brief admittance had his grin grow slanted, like he was impressed, and you had to avert your eyes once more as that unnamed feeling from earlier came back tenfold.
you could feel the weight of his gaze behind the cowl and regret pooled thick like honey at the back of your throat.
“look at that, a woman after my own heart,” he cooed.
heat flooded to your cheeks and you started to walk towards your apartment without looking back.
“thanks for walking me home, i should be getting inside,” you said, flustered, stubbornly facing forward even as his laugh broke through the still evening air.
—-
3.
the next time you saw him it wasn’t even dark out. instead, midway through the afternoon on your day off you were stopped by the sight of him running in the opposite direction across the street.
he ducked in between apartment buildings, the police mere steps behind him until he threw something over his shoulder with a grimace and knocked the first two officers out; the object bouncing off of one officer’s head and flying into the other’s. the pair dropped like flies and face planted the ground hard.
you flinched even as you stared, watching from across the road as daredevil scrambled up a fire exit, three more officers still on his tail, but slightly behind now. you felt tense, almost scared for him. it felt uncanny seeing him in the light, he was a monster meant for the shadows and moonlight. meant for late night walks.
a small crowd had begun to gather with you at the commotion as well as at the entrance of the alley near the fallen officers. their concern was palpable, but you watched entranced as a third officer dropped before he could even get a hand on the ladder.
the last two officers were on the steps with him now and you felt the need to call out a warning as one raised her gun to shoot up through the grated steps, but you held your tongue and kept your shoulders taut.
you didn’t blink, and you were grateful you didn’t as you watched daredevil throw a knife out diagonally only for it to pinball off a drainpipe and land in the officer’s wrist. the gun dropped as she cried out and you took in a shaking breath.
daredevil had reached the roof, no longer visible from your view on the ground, but you saw as a rock bounced over the lip like a targeted projectile as it smacked into the soft back of the last officer’s head, careening him forward into headbutting the steps. he didn’t move afterwards and you distantly heard his fellow officer call his name as she struggled to pull the knife from her hand.
you blinked and turned to continue on your way to the library.
there was a book you’d had on hold for a while and it was finally back in stock so you didn’t want to waste any time picking it up. maybe you’d stop on your way back to get a ginger ale to settle your stomach and a little treat from the bakery on 8th; you’d recently been meaning to go back when you had time.
—-
3.5
you think the fourth time seeing daredevil happens that same week; and though technically, yes, it is daredevil, it’s not your daredevil.
it’s on an evening again so it feels a little less like an intrusion to your usual boring life and you smile involuntarily when you notice him.
it was weird, you’d seen him more times in the last three weeks than you had the last three years living in hell’s kitchen. maybe it was because you were looking for him, he had always been there but you’d been too wrapped up in your own stuff to notice. it’d make sense considering you managed to spot him on a rooftop.
he was crouched low, holding onto the edge of the roof, his head tilted as if listening to the cry of the city. you wanted to laugh at the moody posture, especially when you knew what his personality was like, but still your heartbeat stumbled as you looked up.
it was far away so you couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t look like he was wearing his usual suit, no little horns catching in the streetlight from below. you recognised the black suit from his early days, back when papers were doing their best to catch photos and print stories on the new local hero tidying up the streets.
you watched him a moment longer and held a shaky breath when his head tipped towards you. hesitantly, you raised a hand and smiled a little, waving up at him.
a second later he turned away sharply and moved to the other side of the roof away from your view. you dropped your hand quickly, embarrassed at yourself and started walking once more with your head hung low to avoid any judgemental stares from passersby. you pouted in embarrassment as you headed into your favourite takeaway spot to pick up your order and made short conversation with girl behind the counter as you waited. you left a tip as a silent apology, feeling sorry for yourself but not wanting to take it out on one of the few people you usually liked to catch up with.
when you got home, you ate your food and skipped over the news channels when they continued to focus on fisk, the devil of hell’s kitchen, or the recent hunt for some disgraced fbi agent. you skipped onto a random movie channel and settled in when you saw it was a shitty horror from the early 2000s, the perfect distraction.
—-
4.
the real fourth time you see him is only a day later.
you were starting to feel like you’d had your fill of daredevil. you were oversaturated and still a little sore over him ignoring you the evening before even if you knew logically he probably just hadn’t seen you on the busy sidewalk. and it’s not like you could tell where his eyes had been looking behind the mask.
but still, as you walked home after work at a decent time for once, a growing part of you was still thinking about it, him, and wished he had seen you and had acknowledged you.
“penny for your thoughts?”
you jumped, your elbow swinging back wildly only to be caught with an unmoving but gentle grip before it could make any impact.
“fuck me,” you huffed, ignoring his amused smile. “you scared me, i need to put a bell on you.”
you didn’t think you’d ever get used to just how quiet he could be when he wanted to either. it felt supernatural, especially in comparison to the barking laugh you’d pulled from him before, or the haunting chuckle and low growl you’d caught on the wind when he’d been mid fight.
you’d spent many nights laid awake running the sounds of those bodies hitting the floor over and over again in your mind, left distracted at work because you couldn’t fathom how he never seemed to miss. but more shamefully, thoughts of his smile and his voice had kept you awake for just as long, if not longer.
“defeats the point if you can hear me coming,” he joked.
you hummed as your heart slowed back to its normal rate, your breathing not so shallow. you looked at him properly and frowned.
“you got your suit back already?”
his smile faltered, you could tell he was frowning behind the cowl even if the mask was moulded to a perpetual frown.
“never got rid of it,” he said stiltedly.
“i saw you yesterday, you were in the old one, no horns,” you said and lifted a hand to playfully tug at the adornment. he tilted his head towards your hand as it had gotten close, letting you gently shake him as you spoke, even smiling softly at you.
you let go self-consciously, biting back a smile of your own, and shoved both of your hands in your coat pockets to keep them from straying again.
“figured this was at the dry cleaners or something,” you finished lamely with a shrug.
“where’d y’see me?” he asked, his voice lower as he kept his head ducked towards you.
“over near the bodega on 40th,” you said, unsure why his jaw tensed when you mentioned the area. “you looked busy, must have missed me in the crowd.”
he paused and took a slow breath through his nose. he cracked a hollow smirk.
“i’m sorry, i don’t know how i could ever miss you,” he said softly, his charm back and laid on thick. “you’re bright, like the north star.” he watched you for your reaction as though that should mean something.
you simply smiled closed-lipped and shrugged again. you turned to start walking once more as the wind picked up, keeping your eyes on him to see if he’d be joining you and you felt butterflies when he didn’t hesitate.
“i realised though, that i take the same routes every day; it’s why we keep bumping into each other,” your tone was light and joking, not noticing how he went a little stiff as he hummed along. “i figured i should probably start switching up my routine, you know? just in case some weirdo decides to start following me home.”
you expected him to laugh, poke fun back at you for never shooing him off or to play into the not-so-faux stalker role you’d made him out to be but instead daredevil stopped and took hold of your wrist.
with his face devoid of emotion and his voice flat he rubbed a thumb distractedly along your pulse. “i’d get rid of them if they tried.”
“oh, i meant—“ you stopped. it didn’t look like he was in his usual playful mood tonight and although you liked the back and forth teasing the pair of you had, you didn’t want to push him while he was acting oddly. you still didn’t really know him, even if you felt like you did. you swallowed. “i don’t doubt that.”
he nodded, satisfied and squeezed your wrist once before letting go and continuing to walk by your side again.
your wrist felt hot from his touch and you stuttered through conversation with him. you didn’t hesitate to follow him down the shortcut. you didn’t know him, but you trusted him all the same.
—-
5.
it was a month to the date of the first time you’d met daredevil, you were once again out after your girls’ night, though decidedly sober after the memory of last month’s hangover still haunted you. this would be the fifth and final time you saw that signature grin beneath the mask. and like the first time you met him, daredevil was injured.
you got a sense of déjà vu when you spotted him, the way he was slumped against the same wall you’d first spotted him sat against. this time there were no avtf agents surrounding him and you could see he was bleeding profusely from beneath the helmet.
you were quick to kneel beside him, hands hovering over his cheeks, scared to touch for the first time and to accidentally make his injuries worse.
“looks like you’ve had a busy night,” you said nervously.
“you should see the other guy,” he coughed.
you huffed an laugh and looked up at the rooftops gingerly. “yeah, speaking of, they’re not following you here, right? or hiding around the corner waiting for you?”
“nah,” he shook his head, “disposed of ‘em. dropped his tail. came to find you.”
you froze, confirmation that he’d done his best to see you even in his woozy state was a boost to your ego and had your cheeks heating.
“that so? you know i’m not a nurse, right? i’m not sure i should be your first point of call when you’re beat to hell like this,” you cautioned, smiling softly at him and hoping he didn’t notice hos you could look at the blocked out cowl eyes for too long. even hindered eye contact felt too flustering still.
“‘s girls night, need to walk you home. you never take a taxi,” he slurred, voice growing tired and slow. your heart skipped a beat. you wanted to ask how he knew your schedule well enough to know you met your friends every month and that you always preferred to leave them with the pre-booked car, but his haggard breathing and lolling head were worrying you more in the moment.
you clicked the little latch on his cowl beneath his chin and felt his hand paw at your leg next to his in response. it flailed higher to nudge at your elbow and halt your hands where they were close to pulling off the cowl.
“don’t,” he whispered.
“you’re bleeding too badly, i can’t leave you like this,” you whispered back.
“‘m fine, just tired, promise.” he nudged his face into your hand, kissed the heel of your palm.
your lips thinned as you pressed them together tightly. your heart thundered in your chest.
“you’re not half as stubborn as i can be, so don’t even try,” you said finally, voice pitchier than you’d have liked, but still firm. he sighed and you started to lift the cowl.
his hand lifted again to rest lightly over your eyes.
“don’t look,” he asked again.
“do you think i’ll tell people what you look like?” you frowned behind his fingers, offended at his lack of trust but closing your eyes behind his hand all the same. you pouted when you heard him laugh at your petulant tone.
“careful or i’ll kiss that pout right off your lips, sweetheart,” he hummed.
you sputtered, cheeks heating beneath his gloved hand and only encouraging his cocky laughter. you nudged the cowl up just enough to reveal the hair at his nape and reached one hand back to tug meanly, cautious of his injury but a little pissed at him. he groaned at the light pain.
“you’re not helping my restraint,” he said shakily, almost breathily. he took the cowl off, dropping it by your side and with his free hand he guided yours to the cut on his head an inch in from his hairline.
your fingers jerked and flinched at the warm wetness, your breath stuttering at the gross feeling of the shallow cut. he hissed as you gently prodded around the area but he didn’t pull your hand away. it was superficial, a heavy bleeder but nothing serious and you sighed in relief.
“wasn’t expecting him so i had the helmet off, got me good but the rest was all through the suit.” you heard him pat at the suit, groaning lightly as he touched a sensitive spot too heavily when trying to indicate his other wounds audibly to you. you weren’t joking when you’d said you were no good at being his point of call for first aid, but you could assume his wheezing was from the hits he’d taken to his ribs and stomach. you couldn’t see, but he fingered at the new tears and cracks in the suit as he continued to speak, “damaged it pretty bad, i’ll need to patch it up or find a new one,” he muttered. “or maybe it’s a sign to hang it up for good,” he laughed drowsily.
your lips pinched, unsure of what to say and whether you needed to or if he was just letting out his frustrations after a bad night. like the vigilante equivalent of saying you’d quit your job after a shitty shift even when you knew you’d be back the next morning come rain or shine.
“looks worse than it is,” you said finally, letting your hand drop. “you should still clean it and put a butterfly bandage on it though.”
“that your expert opinion, doc?” he asked and you knew even with your eyes closed that he was wearing a shit eating grin, though perhaps more tired than usual.
“i worry about you,” you admitted. it felt too serious for the jokes he was making, his relaxed posture against your tense body, but you didn’t want to take it back.
he smiled, but not his familiar cutting and teasing look; his eyes immediately turned soft and dopey, half lidded as he stared up at you when your words registered.
you were curled towards him protectively without realising, your covered eyes stopping you from realising how close you were growing, and a soft pout formed once more. not being able to see his expressions, even just from half of his face had anxiety slowly grow, the possibility of having overstepped the boundaries of this relationship - you didn’t really know what to call what was going on between you - and potentially fucking it up was hellish.
“yeah?”
but it all vanished in an instance at his tone of voice; deep and longing and appreciative and aimed just at you.
you shrugged.
“maybe you should get a new profession or hobby… or whatever this is.”
he snorted.
“just give me a little more time, ok? just a little.”
you nodded behind his palm even though you didn’t know what he needed the time for, lifting your bloody fingers to keep his trembling hand steady against your face when it slipped from the motion.
he let his hand linger a moment then, slowly, he lowered it from your eyes, but you kept them shut loyally. his cowl was still on the ground by your knee and you weren’t going to betray his trust after all that, you could give him time. you felt and heard the helmet move as he sluggishly scraped it along the cracked asphalt and then pulled it back on with a groan, hissing at the unforgiving pressure against his wound once more.
patiently you waited for him to tell you to open your eyes, but instead he leant forward to ghost a kiss over your cheek, more delicate than you’d have ever suspected him capable of. you finally opened your eyes to look at him as he cupped your jaw and smudged the blood he’d left behind on your skin across your cheek, his mouth open and expression wanting as he looked at you.
“let’s get you home, you can tell me about what you got up to with your friends on the way. i’m tired of talking about my night,” he said finally, pulling away to try to push himself up to stand.
“ok,” you whispered, clearing your throat before taking hold of his arm and pulling him up with you.
—-
+ 1.
you tapped your middle finger against the book in your hand rhythmically but not impatiently as you waited in line, staring up at the list of drinks available despite knowing you’d go for your usual as always.
it was only a moment longer before you were at the front and you smiled at the barista behind the counter.
“iced caramel latte please, and a blueberry muffin too. thanks.”
“add on a black coffee, it’s on me. thanks,” a familiar voice spoke behind you. you span around, half expecting to see the flash of the red suit even in broad daylight, and faltering when you came face to face with a handsome man instead. you blinked, second guessing your presumption.
“thanks,” you said weakly as he leant by you to pay.
“no problem.” he grinned and your eyes flickered down. a smile of your own started to spread, an automatic response by this point, and you looked back up at his eyes. hazel. you’d always wondered what colour they were.
“haven’t seen you around in a while,” you said as you stepped to the side to wait for your order. it took all of your strength to take your eyes off of him for even a second. you felt excitement fizzle in your fingertips having him so close and so open for the first time.
“we should catch up then, huh? i can tell you about my new gig.”
you nodded eagerly.
“could even start by giving me your name,” you teased.
he blushed and dropped his head slightly, embarrassment meeting pleasure turning his expression bashful as he nodded and met your eyes again. he stuck his hand out.
— when jack first visited the philippines after he got married to a filipino nurse, he was very concerned about the sheer number of people calling him an "afam." he asks you if he should worry. you say no. it doesn't help. your niece calls him lolo.
— jack abbot is an adobo warrior, to the disappointment of his partner who prefers sinigang.
— he asks you to translate whatever princess and perlah are saying about him, but you refuse. "ang sungit naman ng asawa mong yan!" and it doesn't sound like a compliment.
— ever since you started living together, he takes off his shoes before entering the house and you help him with his prosthetic.
— your german shepherd rescue is named brownie.
— he has a lunch box all the other staff are jealous of, but rarely enough time to eat it. you have to shoo him to go eat his rice meal and a small bag of flat tops or werther's caramels.
— karaoke dates are great. he's not a great singer himself, but he likes hearing you sing the classics—alanis morissette, celine dion, theme songs from old shows you got him to watch on his days off.
— he adopts the little habit of calling you "boss" because you did it to him in the early days of your relationship.
— his favorite teleserye is please be careful with my heart.
— you put a little bottle of white flower in his backpack for when his head or muscles hurt during the day.
— he tried calling you "mahal" at some point but couldn't pronounce it the way you taught him, so you just laughed and said it was okay to just call you sweetheart.
description: romance had never really been in the cards for someone as morally absent, as directionless as dex, despite all the hard effort put into his meticulously structured lifestyle. and then you fell into his life, breaking that mold but offering him your humanity. you just didn’t realize you were nothing more than a compass until your heart had already grown around whatever organ that was beating in his chest.
pairing: benjamin “dex” poindexter x north star!reader
series warnings: 18+ mdni, canon-compliant(ish), non-linear timeline, explicit sexual content [see chapter warnings below], canon-typical violence, stalking, emotional manipulation, themes of mental health, neurodivergent!reader, fem!reader
chapter warnings: suggestive content, sentimental value (2025) spoiler, references to suicide attempts, alcohol consumption, this timeline is totally fucked rn so don’t think about it too hard. let’s pretend like dex stalking julie happened earlier than it did and that she rejected him before he was put on fisk’s detail, leading to his fixation on reader
author’s note: they’re prob both autistic or like extremely autistic-coded oops i can’t help it. they’re two people trying to conform to society’s notions of what a good relationship and its milestones look like. sorry it took me so long to update, i just honestly had no idea where i was going with this but i’m figuring it out (i think)
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The word stalking sounded so dirty.
Dex didn’t like that. He didn’t get off to following you around spending time with you, and he’d never even thought about taking a peek while you changed in the morning or before bed.
So when you’d called his “you time” that, he’d blanched, grimacing at even the slightest indication that he was some kind of sick pervert—which he wasn’t. He’d just found comfort in your presence in his life, no matter how distant that was, separated by bricks and glass windows and locked doors.
(Months ago, he watched you enter your apartment from his car. Through his monocular, he took one look at your doorknob and knew it would’ve been easily picked, even by some amateur. Of course, he could keep you safe, but that doesn’t mean he’d always be able to be there, with the growing demands of his job. So he brought this concern up to you when you first started dating, offering to change the locks himself. Naturally, he kept an extra copy of your key. It was easier to explain to nosy neighbors than picking the lock each time.
But the unknown visits stopped altogether after he followed you out to a bar one night, where he overheard you tell a friend you were picky about where things went and who touched what and what touched what. You had firm rules and “freaked out” if they were broken. In that moment, Dex felt like he understood you better. And even if you didn’t know it, you understood him more too.)
He was just getting to know you, so that when he finally worked up the courage to approach you without all these barriers, he would be able to easily slot himself into your perfect little life. Have a relationship with you where he could finally do all of the things he imagined with you. Rely on you when the job gets too hard and he doesn’t have a clear path forward.
And to his credit, it had been fairly easy.
He’d ran into you one too many times at the cafe you liked to do work at to continue being a mere stranger, becoming a daily patron there in hopes of catching you. Although you came in pretty often—often enough for the baristas to know your order and name—whatever it was you did held you for long, irregular periods during both weeks and weekends, much to Dex’s dismay. He had hoped your professional schedule would be a little more predictable, but he made do and quickly caught onto your habits. He’d figured out what hours on what days you liked to sit and work or read. Sometimes, you’d do nothing at all.
Your job must be tiring. His, too.
While you weren’t the type to initiate small talk, he had observed that you generally always reciprocated. Some days it was the barista, others it was the elderly man who came in each morning. Sometimes, it was a guy hitting on you, thinking he deserved any of your valuable time and attention, to which you’d smile politely and decline. Dex would wonder if you had a boyfriend each time this happened, but he knew you didn’t. You always went home, and you always went alone.
For the past six months, however, you no longer went home alone. Dex would be right beside you, waiting for you to unlock the door to your small but homey apartment, right in Hell’s Kitchen. The first few times, you’d shyly kissed his cheek and softly shut the door, and your tiny smile would be burned into his retinas for the rest of the week. Eventually, you’d grown bolder and invited him inside your apartment, among other warm places.
He was rather surprised how good he felt with you. Sure, the sex was beyond fantastic, but you’d been more gentle with him than anyone else in his life had. And he never intended to date you. He just couldn’t figure out a better way to enter your life, but it gave him an excuse to be near you constantly.
It was odd, though. You cared about his opinion and asked about his hobbies, although he answered that you were his hobby, and you thought he was joking. Really, though, before you, he didn’t really have many of those. Baseball, maybe, at one point in his life and nearly his career, but it had begun to bore him, being so good at it. He liked music: eighties bands from his shitty childhood. It would help calm him down when he felt like he was spiraling, but since meeting you (officially), it had been awhile since he’d felt that way. Perhaps being extraordinarily gifted at sharpshooting could also be considered a hobby, one he’d fostered since childhood. And not that he’d brag, but he was likely second to none in that regard.
He liked being the best.
“It’s not—not like that,” Dex defended to you, swallowing the awful lump forming in this throat.
“Then explain, because I sure as hell don’t get how you’d recall my whereabouts two weeks before we even met.”
After several blissful months, and with his bad habits (Of, yes, kind of stalking.) surprisingly at bay, he had finally slipped up. And what a simple, idiotic mistake it was. So simple, in fact, that you’d have hardly noticed had you not been looking at your calendar, making plans for an anniversary.
You couldn’t remember the exact date you met Dex, but you did remember that you saw Sentimental Value exactly two weeks before. Two weeks because you had been looking for tickets right before you met that day. Because you’d loved the movie so much, you wanted to see it again, even just two weeks later.
He remembers it well. He had sat a row behind you in the dim theater, way off to the side, so he could clearly see you. The film didn’t really speak to him the way it did you, with your bright eyes that grew teary when the movie revealed the main girl previously tried to kill herself. Been there, done that, he thought. But he imagined you turning your head, eyes and arms searching for him in the dark for emotional support.
“And I’d appreciate some honesty, Dex,” you added for good measure. “For once, apparently.”
He didn’t like the insinuation that he had been anything but truthful to you. Obviously, he conveniently left out all the, admittedly, creepy parts about his fascination with you back when you were no more than just two people who frequented the same cafe. But you seemed to change something within him that no one, not even Dr. Mercer or himself, could’ve predicted.
“You must’ve mentioned it at some point,” he reasoned, gesturing into the air before running a nervous hand through his dirty blond hair. “How else would I know?”
You scoffed like he’s made a bad joke. “Oh, cut the bullshit. I feel like I barely know you sometimes, yet it seems like you know everything about me! My daily routine, all my favorite food spots, where my dentist is—I haven’t even been this year! All this time, I just thought you had a really great memory, but how does someone run into their girlfriend in a random part of Brooklyn that neither of you once spoke about together? Obviously, you had to have been following me. You’re not a very good liar either, which is making me feel a little more stupid now. Guess I just wanted to believe you.”
“I’ve not lied to you—“
“All those times at Vivienne’s Coffee…” You exhaled slowly, blinking back the threat of angry tears. “Is your real name Fate or something? Were you only there because I was?”
He tried to swallow, thinking it might make the awful, awful fear curling around his throat go away.
“Yes,” he answered truthfully. “I went there every day because you did. Because you were sweet and beautiful and you paid for that homeless woman’s breakfast each morning. And I didn’t understand why.”
You stared at him in disbelief. “Because people need to eat, Dex.”
“But she doesn’t do anything in return for you.”
“By living another day, she does.” You huffed, frustrated arms practically flailing out to aid your point. “The city doesn’t give a shit about her or anyone else out on the street. Someone has to.”
“Why you?”
“Why not me? Why not you? Why not any of us, huh? We’re all people. What do we get out of not helping one another? We get to be alone and miserable for the rest of our lives like you sound right now.”
“I’m not alone.” Dex adamantly shook his head. Whether he’s saying this to reassure you or himself, he wasn’t so sure. “Or miserable. Not anymore because of you.”
“Well, congratu-fuckin-lations. Not everyone is so lucky.”
No, you’d not given him the direction he craved, like he thought you would. Under the guidance he received from Dr. Mercer in his childhood, he attached himself to you and your goodness, not expecting how firm your morality was. How strongly you felt about Wilson Fisk’s imprisonment, how unfair it was that a career criminal could get to live in the penthouse of the Presidential Hotel when there were people on the streets. He deserved to rot inside a cage for all the lives he’s destroyed, for his sick infestation of the city he called home.
And if the FBI needed to keep him safe, why give him a penthouse of all places?
You’ve never been very fond of the FBI, nor the police, nor pretty much any kind of authority. When he first told you about his occupation, you tried your hardest to mask your disdain but failed. If it was anyone other than you, he’d have been a bit more offended about it. He knew a lot of people in the city didn’t like the cops or the like, but he believed he was making a difference. At least, it gave him purpose and power, the reason and authority to pull a trigger. He wasn’t worth much else.
You apologized for your reaction immediately after, not revealing that you’d have probably not agreed to go out with him had you’d known well into your relationship. But you liked Dex well enough to continue entertaining his advances, despite your reservations regarding his line of work. Maybe you’d seen something inside him that no one else ever did: a fully functioning, capable heart.
But even if it did exist, it ran off with you when you left him that day.
“Jesus, you’re twitching.” You glanced over at Dex on your right, making a face. “The milkshake can’t be that good, can it?”
“Ha-ha,” he deadpanned, tapping his long fingers on the diner bar’s shiny metal counter. “It’s pretty good.”
You let out a long huff of air, spinning the bundled silverware. “Fine, I’ll indulge. I’m blaming you if I get a tummy ache though. Oh, finally, she’s coming over now.”
When the waitress came to take your orders, you happily ordered a burger, fries, and a vanilla milkshake. Dex got the same order but with a banana milkshake instead. Once she scurried away to the kitchen, he crossed his arms, laying them on the counter. The fabric of his dark blue bomber jacket strained against his biceps, catching your eye.
You looked back up at his face and smiled. Dex didn’t see it as a good sign. “Banana, huh?”
“What?” He sighed, half amused. “You got something against bananas?”
“Just didn’t peg you as the type. It’s interesting. Learn something new everyday.”
“And you got vanilla. It’s boring.”
“It’s reliable,” you argued. “Chocolate’s too rich for me. Strawberry tastes artificial.”
“And that’s why you’re weird.”
Your lips spread into a devilish grin. “Like calls to like.”
“Like calls to like,” he echoed, wrapping his arm around your neck. Your grin was immediately infectious. He pressed his mouth to your temple in a delicate kiss.
You stole a few of his fries later when he wasn’t looking, not like it bothered him that much. There was something so alarmingly disarming about you and the way you played into your childishness around him, like it was the only way you knew how to build a rapport with someone. But it was effective, because in the same way it made you feel closer to him, he felt closer to you.
They say, sharing is caring.
“How’s the… work thing?” you asked, sipping your shake.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Work thing?”
“What else am I supposed to call it?” Then, you lowered your voice. “The FBI’s not really in a favorable light to New Yorkers right now, even in Staten Island. And they used to love him.”
“Shitbag’s being annoying as always.” Dex shrugged at you. “Won’t shut up, even to eat his dinner. Just because I saved his life doesn’t mean I wanna chat.”
“Pft, I’m sure the dickhead talks just to hear the sound of his own voice. Men like him get off on it.” You paused, twirling your red straw through the thick drink. “It’s so weird that you have to see him every day. I don’t know whether I’d be pissed off or grossed out. Or both.”
“Both,” he answered for you. “Always feel like I need a shower after.”
“No wonder you get so needy after work. Sure the bald man doesn’t turn you on?” you asked teasingly.
Dex’s face fell at your words, scrunching into unbridled disgust. “Now, I really need that shower.”
Passing a bottle around was not exactly how you thought this day would go, but you also didn’t expect it to be so shitty either. Some days were fine. Some days weren’t. And some made you forget you were a person at all.
You and Dex were slumped against the wall of your tub, shoulders pressed firmly together, and asses growing sore the longer you sat on your thin bathmat. A dim, warm light from the hallway brought a quiet glow into the open bathroom. Your fingernails danced across the skin of his knee, inches below the hem of his gray shorts.
You swiped the back of your other hand over your mouth after the liquor you sipped threatened to drip off your face. Maybe you’ve had too much. Or not enough. Sleep tugged at your eyelids, making them fall shut for just a moment to quiet the world. Your eyes fluttered back open when the soft timber of his voice reached your ear.
“You’re good.” The way he said it made it sound so simple, like it’s a known fact of life. “Better than me.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” you whispered sullenly, leaning further into his warmth and the intoxicating scent of sandalwood and freshly washed skin. His thick arm wrapped around your shoulders, grounding to some kind of reality. “You know, comparison is the thief of joy, or some shit.” You exhaled long and slow. “I don’t feel like I’m doing anything important with my life. You’re out taking down bad guys, and I’m just… here.”
Dex snorted. “What happened to ‘comparison is the thief of joy’?”
“Well, my joy has certainly been stolen.”
“How can we steal it back?” He tried to be more comforting, but knew he couldn’t. It wasn’t what you expected either, so he only held you tighter, nuzzling into your cheek to breathe you in.
You didn’t answer for awhile, trying to come up with a fitting response. Nothing worked. You shook your head.
So instead, you talked and you talked, all your worst fears and doubts spilling out like waterfalls. Like dreams that never got to come true, but maybe, just maybe, if either of you said them aloud, you could speak them into an existence. If they died, then they could also be mourned.
“Would ya look at us?” Mirthless laughs left your mouth before you can stop them, tapping the rim of the empty bottle to your chin. “Pity party of two, Poindexter.”
When the Sandman finally came to ferry you to the dreamland, Dex spent a few selfish moments relishing in your presence before bringing you to your cozy little bed.
He slipped in right next you like he couldn’t bear to be away from your skin for too long. And when the Sandman entered for him, he hoped that he’ll take him right to you.
blurb idea but it’s Dex x reader who’s a ghost rider? Maybe a complex nuanced relationship like your other stories 😳 👉👈
Dex Falls in Love With You. Unfortunately, You’re a Ghost Rider.
TW canon-typical violence, CLINGY!DEX, mentions of death, moral corruption, possession, obsessive love, toxic devotion, manipulation of divine vengeance for a loved one lol, she/her pronouns, Zarathos is the spirit of vengeance.
word count : 1.8k (I keep getting overboard)
Dex x Ghost Rider!Reader is not an “I can fix him” situation.
It’s hellfire itself looking at your boyfriend like a meal and you standing in front of it saying, Not this one. Pick another one.
Being the Ghost Rider doesn’t just mean you have a flaming skull and motorbike.
It means you are the human host for the Spirit of Vengeance. It means you are Zarathos’ favourite human meat bag.
You are nothing but a vessel for an ancient force who punishes people who have sinned beyond repair.
Zarathos isn’t really a spirit in the simple little horror-movie sense. It is older and stranger than that. It was literally made by the One-Above-All to hunt the guilty, drag sin into the light, and make evil answer.
Basically, you hunt sinners.
You are still you. You still have your own heart, your own mind, your own love, your own mercy. But under your skin, behind your eyes, there is something divine and monstrous that wants to turn every sinner it touches into dust.
Like every other Ghost Rider before you, you have the penance stare.
It forces a a sinner to feel every bit of pain they have ever caused. All of it comes back at once as punishment.
Dex has seen you do it.
He has seen what happens when the Rider takes over and your skull is on fire. He knows the smell of smoke and burning leather and the way your voice stops sounding like one person and starts sounding like a chorus of dark angels hunting for a thousand damned souls.
He has watched your flaming skeletal hands grip AVTF agents by the jaw and make them look into your eyes. He had seen them scream. Most go catatonic. Some hearts simply stop because the body could not survive the weight of its own sin.
So yes, Dex knows what lives inside you. And you know what lives inside him.
Because the Spirit doesn’t look at Benjamin Poindexter and see your boyfriend. It sees a man who needs to pay for his actions.
See, you can smell sin on people, and Dex is drenched in it.
Dex, who has thought terrible things, done terrible things, wanted terrible things. Dex, who would do more terrible things if someone gave him a reason and a clean line of sight.
The Spirit takes one look at him and goes: Sinner.
And you internally go, I know.
The Spirit says: Guilty.
And you say, I know.
The Spirit says: Burn him.
And that is when you bare your teeth and say, No.
Because you love him so much it is making you blasphemous. You love him so much you are arguing theology with the Spirit of Vengeance living in your ribs.
You love him so much you are standing in front of divine punishment saying, yes, I know he is guilty, yes, I know what he has done, yes, I know what he might do, but he is mine, he is my home, he is the only person who touches me like I am still human after the flames go out.
And Dex loves you for it.
In his defense, when he first fell in love with you, he didn’t know about the Ghost Rider.
He just thought you were a pretty girl with pretty eyes he could get lost in. A pretty girl whose voice made his whole world narrow down into one fixed spot. He didn’t know there was hellfire under your skin.
Then one day your eyes turned orange and your flesh burned away and suddenly the girl he loved was vengeance itself.
And Dex should’ve run.
He didn’t, because he knew you were still in there.
And honestly? He couldn’t care less about the Spirit of Vengeance.
He cares about you.
Dex loves like tunnel vision. Once you are the centre, everything else is just noise.
The Spirit hates him? Fine.
The Spirit wants him dead? Fine.
The Spirit wants him burned for every sin he has ever committed? Fine.
You warned him multiple times. Told him, “Dex, it wants to kill you.”
And Dex, an awfully devoted man, just looked at you like you had handed him a challenge, and boy does Dex love a challenge. Especially when the prize is loving you.
Still, there are good days and bad days.
On good days, when Dex is almost docile, Zarathos stays mostly silent as you go on your flamed bike and go hunt some other guilty soul instead.
But on bad days, when Dex kills and thinks about killing, he knows that loving him hurts you.
And he hates that.
Because for all the terrible things Bullseye has done, he wants you obsessively safe. Locked-door, checked-window, hand-on-your-back-in-a-crowd safe. He wants to protect you from every bad thing that has ever existed.
Except most of the time the bad thing is him. Because he is the one waking up the ancient spirit inside you. On these days, you actively have to bargain for his life to the Spirit.
And Dex is not selfless enough to leave. He loves you too much, wants you too much, needs you too badly to do the noble thing and disappear for your own good. He can’t. He won’t.
But it still wrecks him.
It’s obvious when he comes home bloody.
The second he steps into the apartment, everything changes.
The whites of your eyes disappear and they go black instead of orange. Then, you just stand there, staring at nothing.
Dex freezes in the doorway, blood drying on his skin, and his stomach churns because he knows you are fighting on his behalf.
You are somewhere inside your own head, teeth bared, pushing hellfire back down your lungs because Zarathos has seen him and smells blood.
SINNER.
You grit your teeth in your head. I know.
HE HAS KILLED.
I know.
HE WILL KILL AGAIN.
You cannot deny that.
You know Dex too well to think of him as innocent. You know the blood on his will never truly wash off. But the spirit lives in you. So if it wants to judge Dex, it has to go through you first.
The windows rattle.
The lights flicker.
Your eyes are somehow darker, darting back and forth as you are fighting a battle in your mind.
Dex is behind you now, blood drying on his sleeves, hands settling at your waist.
Zarathos snarls. HE BELONGS TO VENGEANCE.
No.
HE BELONGS TO JUDGMENT.
No.
HE BELONGS TO ME.
You bare your teeth inside your own skull.
You chose me, you hiss. You live in my bones. You use my hands. You wear my face. So listen to me for once.
In the physical world, Dex presses a kiss between your shoulder blades. Your fingers twitch.
You will not touch him.
HE HAS BLOOD ON HIS HANDS.
So do I.
In the real world, he presses another kiss, lower this time, through the fabric of your shirt. Dex’s mouth lingers there like he is trying to call you back.
HE IS DAMNED.
Then damn me beside him.
Dex’s arms fully slide around your waist. His forehead rests against the back of your shoulder.
“Baby,” he murmurs. “Come back to me.”
Zarathos roars.
The lights flare.
The air heats so quickly it feels like the apartment is about to catch on fire.
And then Dex, Benjamin fucking Poindexter, the man covered in blood, the man divine vengeance wants dragged screaming into punishment, kisses the side of your neck and almost whines. “Come on. I want a cuddle.”
Which is so ridiculous.
The Spirit of Vengeance is awake in your bones. Hellfire is crawling up your throat. An ancient force of punishment is trying to seize control of your body so it can burn your boyfriend’s soul clean out of him.
And Dex is behind you asking for a cuddle like a clingy housecat.
But that’s your Dex, alright.
And somehow, it works, because the Spirit is losing its grip on you.
Zarathos roars, all fire and ancient hunger.
But Dex kisses your shoulder. Then just under your ear.
These were little kisses. Sweet, stubborn, selfish kisses from the world’s most guilty man.
Insane.
Because what do you mean you are arguing with divine vengeance over Bullseye? What do you mean the Spirit wants him punished and you are standing there saying no?
The Spirit snarls.
YOU WERE BORN FROM WRATH TO DRAG SINNERS INTO THE FIRE.
I know.
Dex kisses your cheeks as his hands tighten at your waist.
But not this one.
The black in your eyes starts to break as you come back to the real world. You suck in a breath like you just crawled out of a grave, and Dex turns you around before your knees can give in
“There you are,” he whispers.
You are mostly you now.
Mostly.
Your breathing is still shaky. Your hands are still gripping his shirt. The apartment still smells like smoke and the windows have just stopped rattling. The lights are still pulsing.
But your eyes still have a flicker of orange there.
Zarathos, the spirit of vengeance, is quiet, but it’s not gone.
It’s watching and Dex knows it.
Of course he knows. Dex notices everything, especially when the ancient entity inside his girlfriend is staring at him like it’s time for dinner.
He knows Zarathos could kill him. He knows that thing could drag sin out of him and burn him hollow. He has seen what you can do. He knows the Spirit does not bluff.
And still, he smiles against your lips, that smug little fucker.
Because as far as he was concerned, The Spirit of Vengeance is being forced to watch its vessel kiss its prey. And Dex is just awful enough to enjoy it.
He kisses your cheek, your jaw, then your mouth again.
This time it’s slow and hot and a little mean with it, like every kiss is aimed at the orange glow behind your eyes.
“Dex,” you breathe, half warning, half plea, as if to say please don’t antagonise the ancient power in me.
He hums against your mouth, not even pretending to be sorry.
Because he loves that the Spirit wants him punished, and instead has to sit there in the back of your eyes while you let him pull you into his lap.
Such a fucking Dex thing to do.
He looks right at that little orange flicker and smiles, like he is baiting it. Like he knows exactly what he is doing.
Like he’s saying, look! Look at her choosing me again!
His thumb brushes your cheek, so gentle it aches, and his forehead presses to yours.
“I missed you,” he whispers.
And you melt a little, because fuck does he know how to bring you back.
So you kiss him again, blood drying on his shirt, your hands still trembling against him, the Spirit burning silent and furious behind your eyes.
Dex loves making it watch.
Because every time Zarathos reaches for him, you come back to Dex.
Every time.
And Dex loves that he is winning.
—
Note: I read Hellhunters, so Zarathos in this is more that flavour than the Mephisto-cursed version. I’ve also got a Bucky x Ghost Rider!Reader fic already, so I might fuck around and turn this Dex one into a longer one like that. Probably won’t be for a couple months though, so don’t hold me to anything.
Can anyone recommend me Bruce Wayne x batmom! Reader in which the reader has his baby… pregnancy progress or already having said baby, anything. I’ve been having baby fever but I only want him as the father??? PLEASE?? HELLOO???
summary. one stolen night with congressman barnes leaves you with more than memories: a positive test and a man who's determined to prove he's worth a second chance.
word count. 19.5k
warnings. age gap, accidental pregnancy, smut, MDNI, 18+, angst, bucky is an asshole for a second, pregnancy hormones, protected and unprotected pnv, pregnancy sex, oral (f receiving), no use of y/n.
notes. reader is said to have a blocked lactation duct and one of the treatment options is manual suction. it’s a little embellished for plot.
READ ON AO3
This is not your scene.
The chandelier must have cost a fortune just to hang there and look pretty. You know this because you spent the better part of your first ten minutes staring up at it with your mouth slightly open, trying to calculate how many months of your salary it would take to even come close.
You stopped at four years because it was getting depressing.
Sarah had promised you open bar and good food. She had failed to mention that you’d feel like a fraud the entire time.
“You look fine,” Sarah had said this evening, watching you smooth down the front of your dress in the mirror of her condo.
You had gone back and forth for longer than you’d like to admit. The dress is nice. It’s the kind of nice where you’d wear it to a birthday dinner, maybe a date somewhere with cloth napkins.
It is not, by any stretch, gala nice. The other women in this room are in floor-length gowns with jewellery that probably has names, and here you are in a midi dress off a sale rack.
“You’re a guest of a congressman’s daughter,” She’d reminded you, fixing her own earring. “Nobody’s gonna care.”
Nobody might care, but you sure do notice. There’s an ease to the way these people move around each other. There’s air kissing, the laughing at things that aren’t funny, the way they hold their champagne glasses by the stem like it’s second nature.
You hold yours like you’re scared of dropping it, which you are, because you’re fairly certain the glasses alone are worth more than your monthly metro card.
Still. Free champagne.
That part, at least, Sarah had been right about. You’ve had two glasses and are working steadily on your third, which is making the whole scene considerably more bearable.
The food is also ungodly good. You had swiped four of the little crab toast thingies off a passing tray and felt zero shame about it. You were coming off a forty-eight hour shift two days ago. You deserved the crab toasts.
Sarah, for her part, has completely abandoned you. Her father is a congressman from Virginia and this is his world, so she knows everyone in a twenty foot radius of wherever she stands. It hadn’t taken long before she was absorbed into a circle of people you didn’t know.
She’d shot you an apologetic look over someone’s shoulder, and you’d waved her off.
You’re fine. You’re a grown adult. You can stand by the tall cocktail table near the windows and people-watch by yourself like a normal person.
The problem with people-watching, as it turns out, is that occasionally the people watch back.
He’s been drifting in your periphery for a few minutes now. You clocked him when he walked in, because he’s the kind of man you can’t not clock when he walks into a room.
Easy forties, maybe pushing further than that, with dark hair and the kind of jaw that belongs on something carved out of stone. He’s in a suit that fits him the way suits are supposed to fit, which is to say, perfectly. There’s a slight silver threading through the dark at his temples. His left arm is gloved, metal just barely visible at the cuff.
You know who he is, vaguely. Congressman James Barnes. Before that, the Winter Soldier. You’ve seen him on the news twice and found him credible both times, which is not something you say lightly.
Not that this is relevant. You’re just noting that he’s across the room. That’s it. Just noting.
What is relevant, however, is the man currently sidling up next to you, because the man currently sidling up next to you has had considerably more of the open bar than you have, and he smells like it.
“Lovely evening,” he says, in the way that people say things when they are not actually talking about the evening.
You give him the polite smile. The one that says I see you, and I’m too tired to be rude. “It is.”
“You here with anyone?”
“My friend,” you answer, with a pointed glance across the room in Sarah’s general direction. “She’s just over there.”
He follows your gaze, disinterested, and then looks back at you. He introduces himself as something, and you honestly don’t catch it because your brain has already filed him under do not engage. He’s maybe mid-fifties, the kind of man who introduces himself at parties by his job title, and his eyes haven’t quite been at eye level this whole conversation.
“What do you do?”
“I’m in medicine,” you say, keeping it deliberately vague. In your experience, the vague answer is the one that ends conversations faster.
It does not, in this case, end the conversation. In fact, it seems to invite more of it. His hand lands on the cocktail table next to yours, he leans in like you’d asked him to, and the smell gets considerably worse.
“Beautiful and smart,” he says. “That’s dangerous.”
Gag.
“Mm,” you say, which is not agreement, but which he takes as agreement.
His shoulder shifts incrementally closer to yours, and your brain is already doing the math. How do you extract yourself from this without making a scene, because making a scene at a congressman’s fundraiser gala, at which you are a guest of a congressman’s daughter, feels inadvisable at best and catastrophic at worst.
You can’t exactly do what you’d do at a regular bar, which would be to simply say not interested and walk away, because this is not a regular bar and these are not regular people and you’re suddenly very aware that the champagne glass you’re holding probably costs two hundred dollars.
The man leans in further. “Can I get you a drink?”
“I have one,” you say, lifting your glass, which is clearly almost empty, which he also clearly notices.
“Let me get you another, then.”
And that is when, for the second time tonight, you make eye contact with Congressman Barnes. He’s a little closer now, not by much though. He’s watching the scene with an expression that you can’t quite place. It’s not pity, exactly. Not amusement either. It’s more like someone who has correctly identified a problem and is turning over how to address it.
You do the only thing that seems sane to you in this moment. You hold his gaze, and your expression says, if you speak even one word of fluent English right now I will owe you forever.
He receives it. You can tell by the slight shift in his posture, the barely perceptible nod. Then he’s making his way over, like he’s just wandering and it happens to be in your direction.
“Sorry,” he says, stopping at your side. Not to the drunk man. To you. Like he’s the one who’s late. “Got caught up.”
His voice is … nice. A lot different from TV.
The drunk man recalibrates visibly. He looks at Congressman Barnes, recognises him the same way you did. There’s that small double-take of oh, him, and suddenly the lean is gone, the arm is pulled back, the proximity becomes appropriate.
“Congressman,” the man says, in a completely different register than the one he’d been using on you. “Didn’t realize you two—”
“Good to see you.” Congressman Barnes’ voice is perfectly pleasant, perfectly even. He extends his hand and the drunk man shakes it, quietly excuses himself to the bar, which is where he should have stayed to begin with.
“Thank you,” you say, once he’s out of earshot. “I really didn’t want to make a thing of it.”
“I could tell.” His eyes are blue. A shade darker than you’d expected, up close. “He giving you trouble for long?”
“Long enough.” You take a sip of your champagne to have something to do with your hands. “I’m not really sure of the etiquette for telling a middle-aged man to leave you alone at a formal event.”
“Usually just telling him works.” The corner of his mouth pulls up, barely. “But I get it.”
He reaches past you for the appetizer that a passing server is offering, takes one of the small bruschetta thingies, and doesn’t immediately move away.
You notice that. He doesn’t immediately move away.
“You’re Sarah’s friend,” he says. It’s not really a question. “Jackson’s daughter.”
“Yeah.” You blink. “How’d you—”
“He mentioned his daughter was bringing someone tonight.” A small lift of a shoulder. “I know Richard well. He’s a good man.”
“He is,” you agree, which is true, having met Sarah’s father a grand total of three times. “She didn’t warn me that good meant—” you gesture vaguely at the chandelier, the room, the twelve-piece orchestra, “—all this.”
His face looks like he found that funny, but he also looks like he doesn’t want to give you the satisfaction. “First time at one of these?”
“That obvious?”
“Little bit. He doesn’t say it unkindly. “You’ve been staring at the chandelier for the most part.”
Your face does something embarrassing. “I was doing math.”
“Math.”
“About how long it would take me to afford it. On my salary.” You stop yourself, because that is possibly the most un-gala thing you could have said, and he is a congressman, and you are already wearing the wrong dress. “Which — never mind. I’m a resident. I don’t have the money for light fixtures.”
He does laugh at that, quietly, more of an exhale than a real laugh, but it counts. “What kind of medicine?”
“Emergency.” You set your now-empty glass down on the nearest surface. “I’m in my third year.”
“Long hours.”
“Long doesn’t really cover it.” You glance sideways at him. Up, technically, because he has several inches on you and you’re in heels. “But I’m not going to complain at a gala. It seems rude.”
“You can complain… I don’t care.”
Something about the way he says it is disarming, and you weren’t expecting that. You’d expected… you’re not entirely sure what you’d expected. Polished, maybe.
The kind of conversation that sounds like a conversation but is really just two people exchanging pleasantries until someone finds a more useful person to talk to. That’s what galas are, as far as you can tell. This doesn’t feel like that.
“How long have you been doing this? The congressman thing.”
“Six momths.” He picks up a glass from a passing tray. Water, not champagne. You notice that too. “Why?”
“I saw a clip of you once. About pharmaceutical pricing.” You pause, aware that this is maybe strange to bring up. “You didn’t let him deflect.”
He looks at you for a moment, and you can’t quite tell what he’s thinking. His face is not an easy read. “Most people don’t bring that up.”
“Most people here probably benefit from him deflecting.”
Another one of those almost-laughs. You’re starting to like those unreasonably. “Fair.” He turns slightly toward you, weight shifting, and it’s the kind of body language that says I’m not going anywhere yet, which you are reading, as positive. Possibly incorrectly. “What made you go into emergency medicine?”
“I like knowing the answer fast.” It is the honest version. “Other specialties… you wait for labs, wait for imaging, wait for rounds. Emergency, you have to think right now, decide right now. I like that. Also I’m bad at small talk, so at least in the ER nobody expects it from me.”
“You’re not bad at it.”
“I’ve been talking about chandeliers and my salary.”
“I liked it,” he says, like that settles it, and the frankness of it catches you off guard enough that you don’t have an immediate response, which almost never happens to you.
You tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. The orchestra has transitioned to something slightly livelier and a few couples have migrated toward the cleared floor at the center of the room.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How old are you?” The words come out before you can dress them up more politely, you wince slightly at the delivery. You’re three champagnes deep and apparently that’s what three champagnes does.
He doesn’t look thrown by it. If anything, he looks like he’s deciding how to answer, which is its own answer. “Forty-four or biologically a hundred and eight.”
You do the math without meaning to. The math is not small. “Right.”
“How old are you? Just so we’re both working with the same information.”
“Twenty-eight.”
He doesn’t look away from you. “So… age change anything for you?” His voice is quiet enough that it doesn’t carry anywhere.
Oh. We are going there straight. Okay.
The warmth that works its way up your neck is something, that even the air conditioning can’t seem to help with. You look down at your empty glass and think about how Sarah is absolutely going to scream when you tell her about this tomorrow.
“That’s—” you start.
And then Sarah materializes at your elbow like she has a sixth sense for inconvenient timing, slightly flushed and smelling like champagne and grabbing your arm with both hands. “There you are! My dad wants to say hi, he knows you’re here—” She clocks Congressman Barnes. Her eyes go very wide and then very carefully neutral, which is the least neutral expression you’ve ever seen on a human face. “Congressman Barnes, hi, I’m so sorry to interrupt—”
“You’re not,” he says easily, and he means it, you can tell, which is somehow worse than if he were being polite. He looks at you. “It was good talking to you.”
“Yeah.” Your voice comes out smaller than you want it to. “It was.”
He holds eye contact for exactly one beat longer. And then he nods, and turns, and Sarah is already dragging you in the opposite direction with her grip iron-tight on your wrist.
“Oh my god,” she hisses, the second there’s enough ambient noise to cover it. “Oh my God—”
“It was just talking.”
“It was not just talking—”
“Sarah—”
“He’s so hot,” she says, almost mournful. “He’s so hot and he was talking to only you for like twenty minutes and I need you to know that Bucky Barnes does not do that—”
“Bucky,” you say, and your stomach does a small stupid thing. “His name is Bucky?”
She stares at you. “Please tell me you got his number.”
You didn’t.
You are, the longer you stand here being dragged toward Sarah’s father, increasingly annoyed about that.
You find him again by accident.
That’s the part you’ll tell Sarah later. That it was an accident and she will not believe you, and she will be partially right not to.
Because when you excused yourself from the conversation with Sarah’s father after approximately nine minutes, you were not not looking for Congressman Barnes. You were getting another drink. Those are two different things that happened to involve the same direction.
The bar is less crowded, so there’s an actual open stretch of marble counter to stand at. You order a club soda because your limit is three champagnes and you reached it. You’re stirring it with the little cocktail straw and staring at the ice like it did something to you when someone stops next to you.
Not just anyone. You know before you look, from the proximity, from the particular way the air in the vicinity shifts.
“Club soda,” Bucky says, nodding at your glass. “Smart.”
“I’m a doctor… In theory.”
“In theory?”
“I mean residency.” You glance up at him. He’s looking straight ahead at the bar, not at you, and yet every part of you is acutely aware of him. “I know my limits.”
“Three glasses?” He sounds like he already knows.
“How’d you— Were you watching me?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. He signals the bartender for something and then he turns his head to look at you. The look on his face is the least congressman-like look you’ve seen from him all evening. It’s quieter than that. More direct.
“Yeah… I was.”
The bartender sets his glass down. You notice that it’s water again.
But Bucky doesn’t reach for it yet. He’s still looking at you.
You have been through four years of medical school and almost three years of residency, which means you have stood in front of attendings who looked at you like you were a problem they needed to solve, and you did not flinch.
You are flinching a little now. Just a little.
“You didn’t come find me,” you try to keep your voice even.
“You were with Richard.”
“For like eight minutes.”
Something moves across his face. Not quite a smile but in the neighborhood. “Were you counting?”
“I’m not answering that.”
He reaches for his water, finally, and takes a drink. You watch his jaw because you’re only human. There’s a scar that runs just beneath his jaw. You have the reflexive urge to ask how he got it, which is the emergency medicine in you, and also probably something else.
“I thought about asking for your number,” he says, and he says it the same way he says everything, like he just decided to set the thing down in front of you and see what you do with it.
“What stopped you?”
He considers you for a moment. “Didn’t want to do it in front of Sarah. Felt like a thing that shouldn’t have an audience.”
“That’s—” you press your lips together. “That’s actually reasonable.”
“I have my moments.”
The orchestra finishes something and starts something else, slower, and the lights in the ballroom dim imperceptibly.
You should go back. Sarah is probably wondering where you are. You have a club soda to finish and heels that are beginning to make their unhappiness known and a 6 AM shift on Wednesday that is always at the back of your mind.
His hand finds the bar just next to yours. The same way the drunk man’s hand had, earlier. Except nothing about it feels the same. Not even close.
“I have a suite upstairs… I stay here when I’m in the city for these.” A pause. “I’m not— that’s not—”
“I know what you’re saying.”
He looks at you. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
His pinky finger moves. Just barely. Just enough to press against the side of your hand, the lightest possible contact, and you feel it everywhere. “Tell me if I’m reading this wrong.”
You look down at where his hand is next to yours. You look back up at him. And then you do the most impulsive thing you have done since you signed a lease on an apartment you couldn’t afford because it had good light.
“You’re not reading it wrong.”
He walks slightly behind you toward the elevator, which is not nothing. It is discrete, and you appreciate that without saying so. His hand presses briefly to the small of your back as you reach the elevator, guiding you left. Even through the fabric of your dress, the warmth of his palm is enough to make your brain go briefly offline.
The elevator ride is quiet. It’s the kind of quiet that’s loud.
He’s not looking at you. He’s looking at the floor numbers. You’re doing the same. The back of his hand grazes yours and neither of you moves away, and by the sixth floor you have resigned yourself to the fact that you are going to be completely useless.
The suite is significant. Of course. You take approximately two seconds to register that the entryway alone is bigger than your apartment’s living room before you stop looking at the suite.
He closes the door. Turns around. And the way he looks at you when it’s just the two of you, without a ballroom background, is different. There’s nothing measured about his eyes right now.
“Hi,” you say stupidly, because your brain has officially handed in its notice.
“Hi.” And then he’s crossing the room and his hands are on your face and he’s kissing you. It is hungry in a way that makes your knees register a complaint.
Both of your hands come up to grip the lapels of his jacket just to have somewhere to put them.
He pulls back just enough to breathe. His thumbs are at your jaw.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Very,” you manage.
He kisses you again, slower this time but no less certain, and his hands slide from your jaw to your waist. He walks you backward until your shoulders meet the wall. You make a soft sound against his mouth that you are immediately embarrassed by.
“Don’t,” he says against your lips.
“Don’t what?”
“Do that thing where you get embarrassed.” He pulls back to look at you, properly. “Don’t.”
You open your mouth and close it. He’s still in the full suit — jacket, tie, the whole shebang — and you are suddenly very, very aware of that.
His hands find the zipper at the back of your dress. Watching your face the whole time like he’s making absolutely sure. The zipper gives and you feel the fabric loosen across your back, cool air reaching your skin.
“Arms up,” he says.
You raise your arms and he lifts the dress over your head, and sets it on the chair behind him like it matters, like he’s thinking about the fact that it’s the only dress you brought. Something about that short, practical gesture does more to you than it should.
And then he takes you in.
It’s for a long moment. His eyes move over you and there’s not a single thing performative about how he looks at you.
It’s not the look of someone who is trying to make you feel good, it’s the look of someone who genuinely cannot help himself.
You are standing in front of a congressman in a four-hundred-dollar-a-night suite in a bralette from Target and underwear that does not match it, and you are acutely aware of this fact.
“These don’t match.”
Your face goes hot. “I wasn’t exactly planning this.”
“No?”
“I was planning on eating canapes and going home by ten.” Your voice comes out more defensive than you intend. “So no, I didn’t— I didn’t put on a matching set, I just—”
“Hey.” He says it gently, and his hand comes up to tip your chin. “I’m not complaining.”
“You literally just pointed it out—”
“Because it’s cute.” His thumb traces your jaw. “Because you’re standing there looking like you can’t decide whether to be embarrassed or annoyed, and it’s—” something moves through his expression, “—it’s really cute is all. And I’m flattered”
You stare at him. “You’re a congressman.”
“I’m aware.”
“You give floor speeches.”
“Also aware.”
“You can’t just… say things are cute.”
“Sure I can.” He’s guiding you back toward the bed, and the backs of your knees hit the mattress and you sit down. He doesn’t follow you down. He just stands there, looks at you, still fully dressed, tie still knotted, and goes to his knees.
Oh.
Oh.
His hands slide up your calves, and he watches you watch him. You’re gripping the duvet with both hands because he hasn’t even done anything yet and you already feel like the floor dropped out.
“You don’t have to—” you start.
He looks up at you, and his eyes are very, very dark. “I want to.”
His fingers find the waistband of your underwear and pulls them down your legs with an efficiency that should not be as attractive as it is. Then his hands are on your inner thighs, pushing them apart. He looks at you one more time like he’s checking in, which he clearly is.
“Good?”
“Please,” you say, which answers nothing and everything.
He lowers his head. The first press of his mouth to your cunt makes you bite down on your lip hard enough that you taste something. He takes his time with it. There’s nothing hurried here, nothing obligatory, he moves against you like he has absolutely nowhere else to be and no interest in being there anyway.
His tongue finds the bundle of nerves at your center and stays there, slow and devastating, and you have to press the back of your hand to your mouth to keep the sound in.
“Don’t,” he says, again, pulling back just enough. His breath is warm against you and it’s its own kind of torture. “I want to hear you.”
“There are other rooms on this floor—”
“Thick walls,” he says, and then he’s back at it. You stop thinking about the other rooms.
He’s good at this in the way that makes you forget your own name temporarily. His hands are on your hips, keeping you from squirming away when it gets to be too much, which it does, quickly, because he has apparently decided to be completely merciless about this.
You have your fingers in his hair now. His perfectly styled hair, which you’re currently ruining, but do not care. And you are saying his name at a volume that would embarrass you under any other circumstances.
“James—” you breathe, and then, when he does that specific thing with his tongue, laving at your entrance, “—God, Bucky, please—”
He makes a sound against you that you feel everywhere. His fingers find the slick of you, and he looks up at you from where he is, which should be illegal, the visual of this is going to live in your brain for years. “This okay?” he murmurs.
“Yes, please, yes—”
He sinks two fingers into you slowly, and your head drops back. He works them against your walls while his mouth moves on your clit and you grip his hair tighter and he doesn’t tell you to let go.
The tension builds fast. Faster than you’d like, because you’d like this to never stop. When it breaks it breaks completely, your whole body pulls tight and then releases, the sound you make is completely beyond your control.
He works you through it. Every last second of it. His fingers slow but don’t stop, his mouth gentles but stays, until you’re twitching away from the sensitivity and pressing weakly at his shoulder, and only then does he pull back.
He stands, and he looks… composed, almost, except for the flush at the collar of his very nice shirt, the slick in his beard and the way his hair is thoroughly destroyed.
He’s still in the full suit. The tie is still knotted. You are lying on his hotel bed having just come completely apart and he looks like he’s about to chair a subcommittee meeting.
“That’s unfair,” you say to the ceiling.
“What is?”
“You.” You lift your head to look at him. “The suit. All of that.”
Chuckling, he reaches up and loosens the tie, pulls it over his head, starts on the buttons of his shirt. You push yourself up to sitting, because if he’s going to do that, you are watching.
He shrugs out of the shirt and underneath is a white undershirt, and underneath the undershirt — well. You were not unprepared for the shoulders. You were unprepared for everything else.
“Hi,” you say again. He should be tired of hearing it. He isn’t.
He almost smiles. He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, and comes up with his wallet, and from his wallet—
“You just… carry that?” you ask.
“I was hoping,” he says.
Something about the admission makes your chest do a complicated thing. You reach for him as he comes down onto the bed, pulling him in. He braces his forearm by your head and kisses you and you can taste yourself on his mouth, which makes the complicated thing in your chest considerably worse.
“Tell me if anything’s—”
“I will… I trust you.”
He pulls back to look at you at that. Just for a second. Something moves through his eyes that you don’t quite have a word for.
“Okay.”
He takes his time. He works you back up with his hands first, until you’re arching into him and your nails are at his back and the patience of it is making you slightly insane, and when he finally rolls the condom on and shifts over you and pushes in—
The noise you make is entirely involuntary. Because he’s big. No, that would be an understatement.
“Still with me?” Right by your ear.
“More than with you,” you get out, and he exhales a short laugh into your neck and then starts to move, and you stop being capable of full sentences.
He’s thorough about it in a way that makes your brain melt clean out of your head. He learned what makes you gasp and then does that thing again. His hand slides under your ass and tilts your hips and hits something that makes you dig your nails in hard enough that he hisses.
“Right there,” you say, uselessly, since he clearly already knows.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t stop—”
He doesn’t stop. He does exactly that, again, and you’re gripping his shoulders with both hands and talking without fully knowing what you’re saying.
He’s got his face pressed to your temple and his breathing is not steady anymore, which is information you file away with tremendous satisfaction.
“You feel—” he starts, and stops, like he doesn’t finish that sentence with people often.
“Tell me.”
He pulls back to look at your face. His hips don’t slow. “Perfect,” he says, like it’s a simple fact.
Your whole body clenches around him at that and he groans. His rhythm shifts. Deeper, more insistent, and you have completely stopped worrying about the other rooms on this floor.
His thumb finds your clit and you cry out. He watches your face while he does it, and there is something about being looked at like that, while he’s inside you, while he’s taking you completely apart for the second time—
You come with your face buried in his neck and his name on your lips and his hand pressed flat to your lower back like he’s trying to keep you together while he undoes you.
He follows not long after with a groan against your temple, his whole body tensing.
Then he’s still, and the room is just the sound of both of you breathing.
He doesn’t move immediately. He stays where he is, most of his weight on his forearm, his other hand moving to push your hair away from your face. It’s a gentle thing, automatic, like he did it without thinking. Like it was just the natural next thing to do.
You stare up at the very expensive ceiling of the very expensive suite.
“I came here for canapes,” you say.
He laughs. A real one this tim. Not the almost-laugh from downstairs, an actual laugh, and it does something devastating to his face. “How’d that work out?”
“Better than expected.”
He presses his lips to your temple, and it’s soft. It lingers for a second, and when he pulls back he’s looking at you with that look again. The one you don’t have a word for yet.
He gets up to deal with the condom, comes back with a glass of water that he sets on the nightstand next to you, and gets back into bed like he does this, like this is just a thing he does, take someone apart completely and then bring them water after.
He’s pulled on his undershirt and his briefs and he looks unfairly good in both, and you’re in nothing, and neither of you seems to have a problem with this.
“Bucky.”
“Mm.”
“What actually made you come over? Downstairs. Earlier.” You turn your head to look at him. “Before that drunken guy. You were watching me before that.”
He’s quiet for a moment. He’s on his back, looking at the ceiling, and his jaw shifts slightly the way it does when he’s thinking.
“You were looking at the chandelier,” he says. “Everyone in that room was pretending they belonged there. You were just standing there, looking up, in the wrong dress. I liked that.”
You look at him for a long moment. “I got it on a sale,” you say.
“I like that too.”
You press your face into the pillow so he can’t see you smiling, and he doesn’t say anything about it, which is possibly the most considerate thing anyone has ever done for you.
Light is the first thing you register. It’s not the thin, grey light that seeps through your blackout curtain at home. This is different, the kind that comes from curtains that cost more than they should and don’t quite meet in the middle.
For a moment you don’t know where you are, which is a feeling you’re familiar with from overnight call, that brief horrible second of complete disorientation before your brain catches up.
Then it catches up.
The sheets are softer than yours. The room is too quiet. And the other side of the bed, when you reach for it without opening your eyes—
Empty.
You open your eyes anyway. On the off chance. The suite looks the same as it had last night except for the light, and the way the silence in it has a different quality now. A full kind of silence. The kind where someone has recently left.
His jacket is gone from the chair. Your dress is still on it, folded carefully over the back. So carefully, actually, that it takes you a second to really process the image. He’d folded your dress before he left. Which means he’d been here, moving around the room, and you’d slept through it.
The glass of water he’d set on the nightstand is still there, half full or half empty or whatever. You stare at it for longer than you need to.
You didn’t expect anything. That’s not entirely true; you’re a grown adult and you know the difference between what you expected and what you’d maybe hoped, and those two things are not the same thing, and it’s fine, it was one night, it was always going to be one night, you knew that going in.
Still. You look around the room. Almost wanting to find something. A note on hotel stationery, his business card under the water glass, anything.
Some small proof that it happened to him too, that you didn’t imagine the careful way he pushed your hair back.
Nothing.
You check the bathroom. The bathroom is pristine and smells faintly like whatever he’d used from the amenity shelf, and there is no note on the mirror, no nothing.
Of course there isn’t. He’s a congressman. He has a schedule. He was probably on a 7 AM call somewhere, probably has a driver waiting downstairs, probably has twelve things on his agenda and last night was just one of them. Item six, maybe, between a donor dinner and a briefing.
You sit back on the bed. You pick up the glass of water and drink the rest of it.
Fine.
You find your underwear, the mismatched ones, and even now that makes your cheeks do something. And then your dress, and your heels, and you check your phone.
Three texts from Sarah that escalate in punctuation, one from your roommate asking if you’re alive. Nothing from a number you don’t recognize.
Obviously.
The elevator ride down is considerably less charged than the one going up. The lobby is already busy, morning check-outs and businessmen with rolling luggage, and you walk through it in last night’s dress and last night’s heels with your chin up, because you are an emergency medicine resident and you have walked into much worse rooms than this.
The glass of water, though. He’d gotten up and gotten you a glass of water and now he was just… gone. Without a word.
That part stings a little. You’d be lying if you said otherwise.
Seventeen days later, you are standing in your kitchen at six in the morning counting backwards on your fingers, and the number you keep landing on is not the number you want.
Your period is late. Not a little late. Late enough that you’ve noticed, which takes something, because your cycle has always run regular, every twenty-eight days, reliable enough that you’ve never had to think about it.
You think about it now. You’ve been thinking about it for four days with increasing focus, telling yourself it was stress, it was the hours, it was the back-to-back overnight shifts that had wrecked your sleep, because that’s what happens to residents, your hormones get strange when your cortisol stays high, it happens.
Except.
Except that two weeks before your missed period, which would put it at about a week after the gala, you’d had spotting. You had noted it the way you noted things and filed it under irregular and moved on, because you’d had a fourteen-hour shift and the last thing you wanted to do was think about your own body on top of everything else. You’d thought mid-cycle spotting, stress, nothing.
And the fatigue. God, the fatigue had been something else, but again you’re a third year resident. Fatigue is the baseline. Fatigue is just Tuesday.
Except implantation spotting typically occurs six to twelve days after fertilization. Except you are standing in your kitchen doing obstetric math at six in the morning, and the number you keep landing on is seventeen days post-ovulation, which is—
That’s too late for it to be stress.
You know this. You know this the way you know things you don’t want to know yet, the way you knew a patient’s CT wasn’t going to be clean before the radiologist called. You just know.
You get to the hospital forty minutes early, which is easy enough to explain away to anyone who asks. You’re always early, everyone knows you’re always early.
You take a detour to the ground floor pharmacy. You stand in the family planning aisle for probably thirty seconds longer than a person who is confident about what they’re grabbing would stand there.
You take one off the shelf and tuck it under your arm, and take the stairs up to the third floor resident bathroom, which has a lock that works and more importantly, privacy.
The instructions are not complicated. You’re a doctor. You know what two lines mean.
You sit on the edge of the closed toilet lid you look at the water stain on the ceiling tile for the full three minutes.
There’s a crack in it that branches from the fixture in a way that looks like the course of the facial nerve in the middle ear. You have stared at this ceiling before during bad shifts, during the kind of nights where someone didn’t make it and you had to go somewhere quiet for six minutes, and it has never felt quite like this.
You turn the test over.
Two lines.
Both of them dark. Two unambiguous, immediate, definitive lines.
You sit with that for a long moment. The tile. The test.
You’re pregnant.
You are twenty-eight years old and you are a resident and you had a one-night stand with a congressman whose number you do not have and you are pregnant.
You turn the test face-down again. Pick it up. Put it in a cover at the bottom of your bag under your stethoscope, which feels insane but you’re not leaving it in the trash where someone could see it.
You look at yourself in the mirror. Your face looks the same as it always does. That’s somehow the strangest part.
You unlock the bathroom door. You have a shift to get to.
But one thing you’re sure about is that, you want this baby. Be it a maternal impulse, or whatever it is you don’t have a name for it yet. You want this baby. You need this baby.
Two days of carrying it around inside you like a stone in your chest, and by the third morning you’ve made the decision, or the decision makes you.
Either way, you’re sitting on your bathroom floor at midnight with your back against the tub and the thing is settled.
He needs to know. Whatever happens after that is not something you can fully think about yet, but the part where he doesn’t know is no longer something you can live inside of.
The problem is getting to him.
You try the obvious thing first. His official website has a contact form. For constituents, it says, and you are technically not his constituent, but you fill it out anyway and it autoresponds within thirty seconds with something about being committed to responding within five to seven business days, and you close the laptop.
Five to seven business days.
His office number is listed publicly and you call it the next day on your lunch break. It rings three times before someone picks up.
“Congressman Barnes’ office, how can I help you?”
“Hi.” You try to keep your voice level. “I’m — I’m trying to reach Congressman Barnes. It’s a personal matter.”
There’s a small pause on the other end. “The Congressman has a full schedule. Can I take your name and a callback number? Please describe the nature of your inquiry.”
Right. The nature of your inquiry. “It’s — it’s a private matter. I’d really need to speak with him directly.”
“Ma’am, any personal correspondence for the Congressman goes through his office. If you can describe—”
“I know him personally.” You are aware of how this sounds. You are aware that people who call congressional offices claiming to know the congressman personally are, in fact, not people who know the congressman personally. “I’m not a — I’m not a constituent with a complaint. I’m a personal acquaintance and it’s urgent.”
“I understand,” the woman says, in the tone of someone who does not entirely believe you. “I can pass your information along and someone will follow up.”
Someone. Not him.
“Okay.” You give her your name and your number. You know with complete certainty that you will not hear back.
You dissociate for a minute after you hang up, and then you text Sarah.
You : Hey. Random question. Completely unrelated to anything. How hard would it be for you to get Barnes’ personal number from your dad
Three minutes of silence, which for Sarah is practically geological time.
Sarah: why
You: Sarah please.
Sarah: whyyyy
You: I'll explain later. Is it possible?
Sarah: my dad would notice if i asked. but his phone’s usually just sitting on the counter when he’s in the shower soooo. give me 12 hours and a good reason
You: I promise I'll explain everything.
Sarah: oh this is GOOD. this is so good. okayy
You put your phone in your coat pocket and go back inside.
Sarah texts at eleven seventeen the following night, which means Richard Jackson apparently showers late, and the text is just a phone number and then:
Sarah: okay i need the full story. not a summary. the FULL story. what did you DO??????
You look at the number for a long time.
You: Thank you. I’ll explain everything soon I promise.
Sarah: are you okay??
You think about the test at the bottom of your bag. The ceiling tile with the crack in it. The empty side of the bed with the sheets still warm from him.
You: Yeah. I'm okay. Thank you Sarah.
You add the number to your phone. You just stare at the digits, and your chest is doing the complicated thing again, and you have no idea what you’re going to say when he picks up.
If he picks up.
The first time, it rings five times and goes to voicemail.
His voicemail. His actual voice, which you were not prepared for. You hang up before the beep because you don’t know what you’d say and you can’t practice it out loud yet. The words exist inside your head in a specific order that you’ve rearranged a hundred times since eleven seventeen last night, and none of the arrangements feel right.
You set your phone face-down on your kitchen table. You make coffee you don’t drink. You sit there for twenty minutes and then you pick your phone back up.
It rings three times. You are working out, specifically, how to begin. Not hi, too casual. Not hello, Congressman, too formal and possibly insane. Maybe just his name, just Bucky, like you have any right to—
“Hello.”
Just that. One word. And your heart does something it has absolutely no business doing.
“Hi. This is— It’s — we met at the fundraiser, I mean the gala. About three weeks ago. Sarah Jackson’s friend.” A pause, because you can’t tell if any of this is registering. “The one in the wrong dress.”
“I know who you are.”
Something in his voice. Something that is not nothing. You press your free hand flat to the kitchen table just to have something solid.
“Okay. Good. Hi.”
“Hi.” And there it is, threaded through the single syllable — a smile. The same almost-smile from downstairs at the bar. “It’s good to hear from you.”
You close your eyes for a second. You had not let yourself think about whether it would be good or awkward or somewhere cold in between, because thinking about it felt like jinxing it.
“I need to—” The arrangements in your head are all wrong again. “Is there any chance we could meet? In person. I have something I need to tell you, and I’d rather not do it over the phone.”
“Is everything alright?”
“Yeah.” The word comes out before you can think about whether it’s true. “I just — it’s better in person. I think.”
“I can do tomorrow. I am free tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow works.” Your voice is admirably steady, and you are giving yourself full credit for that. “Wherever’s easiest for you.”
“There’s a place on 54th. Briar something — Briar & Co. You know it?”
“I’ll find it.”
“Two o’clock?”
“Two o’clock,” you confirm. And then neither of you say anything for a second, and you don’t know who should end this.
“It’s good to hear from you,” he says again. Quieter this time, like maybe he’s saying it more to himself than to you.
You don’t know what to say to that. “Right. See you tomorrow.”
You hang up.
You sit back down at your kitchen table, look at your untouched coffee going cold. You breathe in and out very carefully for a minute, and you do not let yourself think about what it meant that he said it twice.
You’re not going to do that. You’re going to be a reasonable adult who goes to work and eats lunch and sleeps normal amounts, and tomorrow you are going to sit across from Bucky Barnes in a coffee shop and say the thing that needs to be said.
That is the plan.
You’re three minutes late. When you push through the glass door and scan the room you find him immediately, because he’s not a man that takes effort to find.
He’s already there. Of course he’s already there, he’s probably never been late to a thing in his life.
He looks like something out of a campaign ad, which is annoying, because you are in your off-duty jeans and the overcoat you’ve had since forever.
He’s at a corner table, which is a thing you file away and he’s got a coffee in front of him already.
He looks up before you reach him. Like he sensed it.
You pull out the chair across from him, sit down and unwrap your scarf. The whole time he’s watching you with an expression you cannot read, which is the same as before, which should not feel as familiar as it does.
“Finally,” he says.
You blink. “Am I late? I thought I was only — what time is it?”
“You’re not late.” The corner of his mouth pulls into a smile. “I’ve just been— Never mind.”
He said finally like he was waiting for you. But he wasn’t waiting long. Does that mean he meant that you finally called? But how would you call if he didn’t leave a number?
No. Nope. You’re not going there.
You look down at the menu you don’t need and tell yourself firmly that it doesn’t mean anything, that he is a politician and politicians are good at making people feel like the only person in the room, it is literally a professional skill.
You’ve rehearsed this. You’ve rehearsed it on the subway here, in the shower last night. You had a version that started with some context, that built up gradually, that eased both of you into it. That version is somewhere on the sidewalk because you don’t have access to it right now.
“I have to tell you something.”
He sets his cup down. “Okay.”
“It’s—” You press your hands flat to your thighs under the table. “It’s not a small thing.”
“Okay.” The steadiness of it is almost its own problem.
Just say it. Say the thing. Spit it out.
You have said hard things before. You have sat across from people and told them their person wasn’t coming home, you have held those conversations together with nothing but your hands and your voice, you can say six words to one man in a coffee shop on 54th Street.
“I’m pregnant.” The words land flat on the table between you. “It’s yours. It’s from — from the gala. That night.”
Silence. Absolute deafening silence.
Not the kind that means he’s gathering himself to respond, or the kind that means he missed it. You can tell from his face that he didn’t miss it. It’s a longer silence. The kind you have to sit with no idea what’s on the other side.
You watch his face. You had run through versions of this moment in your head. There’s shock, the obvious thing, or anger, or some careful measured political blankness.
But it isn’t quite any of those. His jaw is tight and his eyes are on you and he is… not here, quite. He’s somewhere slightly behind his eyes, somewhere you don’t have access to.
“Bucky,” you say, because the silence is going somewhere you don’t like.
He comes back. Just slightly. His hand around his coffee cup tightens and releases.
“Are you sure it’s mine?”
You hear the words. You take a second to make sure you heard them correctly.
“I wore a condom,” he says, and his voice has changed. It’s careful, like he’s walking on ice. “I just — I want to be sure that we’re—”
“Yes.” The word comes out sharp, which you didn’t mean, or maybe you did. “Yes, it’s yours. I’m sure.” You make yourself hold his gaze. “I haven’t slept with anyone else.”
Something shifts in his expression. You can’t tell if it’s belief or the beginning of it or something else entirely.
“We can do a paternity test,” you say, and your voice is admirably level and you hate that you have to say this, you hate that you’re sitting here offering this like it’s a reasonable next step. “If you want confirmation. That’s — that’s available to you. I understand.”
Then you both speak at the same time.
“I didn’t come here asking for anything,” you say.
“What do you want?” he asks.
If only you’d spoken a moment sooner.
Four words. They’re not unkind, exactly. But they land cold, because of what they assume, maybe, or because of what they don’t. What do you want.
As if the only reason you’d be here is because you want something from him specifically, as if this is a transaction he’s being presented with rather than a fact of his life, as if you’d spent three weeks carrying this alone and called his number and rearranged the words a hundred different ways just to want something.
You feel it move through your chest before you can stop it.
“Nothing… I don’t want anything.”
You can clearly see his face change. “That’s not what I—”
“I have to go.” You reach for your scarf. Your hands are steady and you’re glad for it. “I shouldn’t have — I thought you should know. That was the only reason. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
“That’s not—hey—” He’s half out of his seat. “That’s not what I meant—”
“It’s fine.” You stand. You loop your scarf once around your neck and your body is doing the automatic things while your brain is somewhere else entirely, somewhere a little removed and glassy. “I’ll be in touch about next steps. Whatever you want to do. If you want the test, just—” You stop yourself before you finish the sentence because your voice is doing something you don’t want it to do. “I’ll be in touch.”
And then you’re walking. Through the small tables, out through the glass door that lets in a rush of cold air that you are grateful for because it hits your face and gives you something to feel that isn’t this.
The sidewalk is busy, you merge into it and walk because walking is something you can do. You’re not going anywhere in particular. You’re just walking.
“Hey.” His voice is behind you. Close. “Just — stop.”
You don’t stop immediately. You take two more steps, which is honest.
“Please.” His hand closes around your arm, just above your elbow. There’s barely any pressure in his grip, but you stop because ‘please’ is not a word he uses easily, you’ve already gathered that, and the way he said it is not a politician’s please.
He’s standing there without his coat. He left it inside, apparently, didn’t stop to grab it. He looks like a person, suddenly. Not a congressman anymore.
“That came out wrong.”
“It’s fine.” It’s something you have said twice now, which is increasingly not true.
“It’s not.” He runs a hand through his hair. The same dark hair you’d pulled at in a hotel suite three weeks ago, but you cannot think about that right now. “I panicked. I said something stupid and it came out wrong and I— I’m sorry.”
“You asked me what I want,” you keep your voice low. “Like I was — like this was something I came to negotiate.”
“I —”
“I’ve been sitting with this for two weeks by myself.” You hadn’t meant to say that part, hadn’t meant to let him know, but there it is. “Two weeks of figuring out how to even find your number, two weeks of—” You stop. You are not going to do this on 54th Street, you are absolutely not. “I’m not asking you for anything. I just thought you deserved to know.”
He’s looking at you with an expression that you can’t name and have never seen on him before. Something stripped of the careful management, the controlled stillness.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
The wind picks up and he doesn’t even flinch at it, no coat, and you look at him and you are… tired. You are so, so tired, and you don’t have the energy to hold onto any of this out here on the street.
“I have to get back. I have a shift.”
“Can we— Can we try this again? Somewhere. When you’re ready.” He holds your gaze. “I’d like to do that right. If you’ll let me.”
You look at him for a long moment. The sweater. The cold. The line of his jaw that you’d had your hand against on a different night in a different context. The fact that the two things are the same person is almost too much to hold at once.
“I’ll think about it.”
It is not a yes. It is not quite a no. He seems to understand this, because he doesn’t push.
You turn and don’t look back. You get half a block when your phone buzzes in your pocket.
Bucky: I’m sorry. I mean it.
The phone is an inconvenience right now. It’s him.
You stare at it for two full rings.
Then you pick up, because you are apparently a person who does that.
“Hey.” The same voice that said I’m sorry on a windy sidewalk six hours ago, except now it’s evening and you’ve been on your feet since noon and you have considerably less patience available than you did then.
“I’m in the middle of a shift,” you say, instead of hello.
“I know, I just— Have you eaten?”
You open your mouth. Close it. Look up at the ceiling for a moment, which is a habit you’re developing, apparently. Ceilings when you need a second to not say the first thing that comes to mind. “Bucky.”
“It’s a simple question.”
“It is not a simple question, it is a—” You lower your voice because a nurse just walked past and you do not need this. “Can you just not, please? I’m working.”
“Have you eaten?” he repeats, like he didn’t hear the second half of what you said, or heard it and decided it wasn’t load-bearing.
“I had lunch.”
“It’s 8 PM, I’m not asking about lunch—”
“I’m a resident. Having lunch is a privilege.” You hear an ambulance. “Gotta go.”
“I’ll —”
You don’t let him finish.
At eleven thirty, one of the nurses at the front desk — Maya — stops you in the hallway with an expression that is doing something specific.
“There’s a guy at the front desk.”
“…Okay.”
“He brought food.” She pauses. “A lot of food.”
You look at her. She looks back at you with the energy of someone who has decided this is the best thing that has happened on this shift and possibly this month. “He’s very—” She searches for the word.
“Maya.”
“He’s asking for you specifically.”
You close your eyes for exactly one second. Then you go to the front desk.
There’s a paper bag on the desk in front of Bucky and he’s talking to the security guard with the easy manner of a man who talks to people for a living.
When he sees you coming, his expression shifts into something that is not quite relief but is in the direction of it.
“You didn’t have to do this,” you say, before he can say anything.
“I—”
You don’t let him finish. “I’m working.”
“I’m not staying.” He nods at the bag. “It’s just food. You said you hadn’t eaten.”
You look at the bag. You look at him. Maya, behind you, is doing an absolutely terrible job of pretending to type something. “You didn’t have to drive here.” You keep your voice quiet enough that it stays between the two of you. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why are you here?”
His jaw does the tight-release thing. “Because after you left I felt like an ass… and I need you to know that I’m sorry. Not over a text. In person.” He pushes the bag slightly toward you. “And because you said you hadn’t eaten.”
You stare at the bag. Thai food, from the smell of it, something with lemongrass. Your stomach, which has been ignoring you all evening, suddenly has opinions.
“This doesn’t fix what you said.”
“I’m not trying to fix it. I’m trying to—” He stops himself, and you can see him editing, which is strange to watch on a man who normally seems to say the exact amount he means to. “I’m showing you I’m sorry. That’s all.”
The energy to process this is something you don’t possess now. You pick up the bag. It’s heavier than it looked. “Thank you.” It comes out stiff and you don’t have the bandwidth to soften it. “You should go home.”
“Right.”
“I mean it. You don’t have to — this isn’t something you have to do. Standing in hospital lobbies with Thai food isn’t gonna be your thing, okay? We’re not— that’s not what this is.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Get some food in you.”
“I was going to,” you say, which is not strictly true, and he seems to know it. But he doesn’t say so, which you are choosing to be grateful for.
He nods once, and walks back toward the entrance. You watch him go for exactly two seconds before you make yourself turn around and go back to work.
Maya spins her chair to face you the moment you’re within range. You point at her before she can speak.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Maya.”
“He’s so—”
“I will give you a terrible evaluation.”
She turns back to her computer, failing entirely to hide her smile, and you take the bag to the break room and eat the whole thing. It’s very good, which you resent.
Six hours later, at ten past two, you come out of the hospital into the cold. Your brain is running on fumes, and the black car in the far corner of the parking lot does not immediately register.
Then the door opens.
“You have got to be kidding me,” you say, to no one in particular. To the night. To whatever version of your life this is.
He gets out slowly, like he hasn’t spent six hours in a parking lot. He’s in the same coat and he looks it. A little, around the eyes.
“Bucky.” Your voice comes out flatter than you intend.
“I—”
There’s a pattern developing here, the way you don’t let him finish talking. “You’ve been here this whole time.”
“I fell asleep for a bit.”
“In your car. In the hospital parking lot. Why?”
He stops a few feet from you. His face looks tired in a way it hadn’t the other night, something honest about it. “I wanted to make sure you got home okay.”
“I do that everyday… I’ve been doing that everyday for almost three years.”
“Right.”
“Then why—” You stop. You’re too tired for this. The cold is getting into your coat and your feet hurt and you are twenty-eight years old and you do not have the reserves for whatever this is. “Go home, Bucky. Please. Get some actual sleep.”
“Let me drive you.”
“I have my car.”
“You’ve been on your feet for—”
“I have my car.” You hitch your bag up on your shoulder. “Thank you for the food. I mean that. But you can’t just— sit outside my hospital all night, that’s not— you can’t do that.”
He’s looking at you with that expression again. The unreadable one that isn’t quite unreadable anymore, or maybe you’re just too tired to not see it. “I handled it badly yesterday… or today — I don’t know — I said something that I would take back if I could.”
“I know. You said that.”
“I’m saying it again.”
“Bucky—”
“I need you to understand that I’m not— I’m not the guy who says something like that and means it. What I said, the way it sounded. I need you to know that’s not— that isn’t who I am.”
You look at him for a long moment. The parking lot is quiet. A couple of birds somewhere. A car turning out onto the street.
“I know.” Because you do, or you think you do, or you’d like to. “I just need you to give me some room to figure out—” You gesture vaguely between you. “All of this. Okay? I can’t think straight when you’re standing in my parking lot.”
Something moves through his expression at that. He looks down at the ground and then back at you, and the corner of his mouth shifts. “Okay. I’ll go.”
“Thank you.”
He holds eye contact a beat. “Drive safe.”
“You too,” you say, which is automatic, which is ridiculous, and you turn before your face can do anything about it.
You think about him walking to his car in an empty parking lot, and you think about him falling asleep in there, and you don’t do anything with that. You file it somewhere.
You go home. You sleep for nine hours straight. It’s the best you’ve slept in three weeks.
He calls two days later.
You’re off shift, sitting on your couch with an unopened anatomy refresher on the cushion next to you because you’d told yourself you were going to be productive and had instead been staring at nowhere in particular.
You pick up on the second ring. “Hi.” His voice is the same, which isn’t entirely a good thing to your composure.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Tired, but that’s— that’s normal.”
“Oh?”
“The fatigue is normal first trimester. The nausea I’ve been managing, mostly… I’m not telling you this to update you, I’m just— you asked.”
“I’m glad you told me.” His voice is quiet. Careful in a way that doesn’t feel like walking on ice anymore, more like he’s choosing things with intention. “I want to know how you’re doing.”
When you don’t say anything, he continues. “I want to come to your appointment.”
You close your eyes. “Bucky.”
“Hear me out—”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I — I want to.”
“You said that in the parking lot too, about the food, and I told you—”
“This is different. This is— this matters. I want to be there. I know I gave you every reason to tell me to stay out of it. What I said at the coffee shop— I know. But I’m asking you to let me— I’m asking… please”
For some reason, you think about the hotel room. The folded dress. The empty bed. The water glass. You think about a parking lot at two past midnight and a man who fell asleep in his car because he wanted to make sure you got home safe.
“It’s at my hospital… next Tuesday. Eleven.”
“Eleven,” he repeats.
“And if you say anything—” You hadn’t meant to go there, but you’re going there. “If you say anything like what you said on that day, I will walk out. And that’ll be it. I mean that.”
“That’s fair.” Without hesitation. Like he expected it and meant to agree to it.
“I’m serious, Bucky.”
“I know you are. I know.”
You nod, even though he can’t see it. “Okay. Tuesday.”
“Okay… Thank you.”
You don’t say you’re welcome. You don’t say anything for a second.
“Get some sleep,” he says. It’s like the water glass. The automatic thing, the thing that comes out before he decides whether to say it.
“You too.” This time it doesn’t feel ridiculous.
You hang up and open the textbook on whim. You read four pages before you fall asleep on the couch with the lamp still on.
He’s standing at your door at ten thirty with peonies.
Actual peonies, fat and pale pink, the kind that look like someone made a decision.
You open the door in your coat already because you’d been about to leave, keys in hand, and the two of you look at each other for a second in the doorway.
“How do you know where I live?”
“Sarah.”
Of course. You make a mental note to have a word with Sarah, except Sarah will laugh at you and you both know it.
You look at the flowers and then at him and he has the decency to look slightly uncertain, which is the most uncertain you’ve seen him look, and it does something small and involuntary to your chest.
“You didn’t have to—”
He just holds them out, without saying anything.
You take them because leaving them in his hands would be strange. They smell like something expensive and vaguely like outside, and you stand there for a second not knowing what to do with them.
You turn back into the apartment and find a glass in the cabinet and fill it with water, which is not a vase but it will have to do.
Setting them on the counter, you look at them. White and pink against your very normal kitchen, and something about the image makes you feel things you don’t have the time or inclination to examine.
The waiting room at the OB practice is warm and aggressively neutral, the kind of beige that has been carefully selected to be soothing. It achieves the opposite.
You sign in at the front. Bucky sits beside you, and he doesn’t make small talk, which you’re grateful for. He’s looking at something on his phone with the focused stillness of a person who is trying to be unobtrusive, and you watch the fish tank in the corner for lack of anything else to do with your eyes.
Your name gets called and you both stand. There’s a second, while walking towards the exam room, where you’re very aware of him behind you and you don’t know what to do about that.
The room is what it always is. Exam table with the paper that crinkles, the blood pressure cuff on the wall, the small screen angled toward the bed. You hop up on the table without being asked.
The nurse takes your vitals and says the doctor will be in shortly. Then it’s just the two of you in the room.
Bucky takes the chair in the corner.
“You can sit closer,” you say, because the chair in the corner feels like he’s been sent there. “You don’t have to be all the way over there.”
He moves the chair, just enough, and sits back down.
“How are you feeling?” he asks. Same question as the phone call, except in person it is different.
“Okay. A little nauseous this morning but it passed.” You look at your hands. “I have to go back on in the afternoon so I’m hoping the appointment doesn’t run long.”
“I can have you back by one.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” Right. That’s his line.
You don’t argue with it this time.
Dr. Reyes comes in five minutes later and doesn’t react to Bucky’s presence in any visible way, which you appreciate, because you’d anticipated some version of aren’t you. Congressman Barnes or Winter Soldier.
You did not want to deal with that today.
She’s warm and efficient in the way of someone who has done this enough times, and she goes through the questions with you and you answer them like the doctor you are. Last menstrual period, no significant history. Bucky stays quiet in his chair and you don’t look at him.
Then Dr. Reyes reaches for the gel.
“This’ll be cold,” she says, and you nod. She picks up the transducer and you are doing the thing you planned to do. Stay clinical.
Except your resident-brain has never been on this end of a transabdominal ultrasound before and it turns out those are two different things.
The screen fills with the grey static of it. Dr. Reyes adjusts the angle, and—
There.
The flicker. Fast and insistent, one hundred and fifty beats per minute or close to it, the cardiac activity clear enough on the doppler even before she turns the sound on, but then she does turn the sound on.
It’s the sound that gets you.
You’ve heard fetal heart tones a hundred times. A thousand times. You’ve stood in rooms while other women heard this for the first time and you’ve read the chart and noted the rate and moved on, because it was clinical, because it was data.
Except right now your body is doing something entirely outside of your control, something warm moving through your chest without asking permission, and you press your lips together and breathe.
“Strong heartbeat,” Dr. Reyes says, with the particular quiet of someone who knows what this moment is. “Right around a hundred and fifty-four. Looking good.”
You nod. Your throat is doing something it shouldn’t.
From the chair beside you, you hear Bucky exhale. Like he’d been holding something and set it down.
You turn your head and look at him.
He’s looking at the screen, not at you, and his jaw is tight and his hands are braced against his knee. His expression is… soft. You know because it’s the same on your own face.
“Can I—” His voice comes out different than you’ve heard it. Rougher. He clears his throat. “Can I get a copy of that? The image.”
Dr. Reyes glances between you, and you nod. “Of course,” she says.
He looks at you then. Quick, like he’s checking whether that was okay. When you nod, he immediately turns back to the screen.
Dr. Reyes does the measurements. Everything is how it should be, and she gives you the due date. Mid-July. Which you’d already calculated, but hearing it out loud is its own thing.
She goes through the first trimester expectations with you and you listen to all of it with the clinical half of your brain taking notes while the other half is somewhere else, somewhere watching the flicker on the screen and not knowing quite what to do with itself.
When she hands you the printout of the image, you put it in your bag. She hands one to Bucky too, without being asked again, and he takes it with both hands and looks at it for a second before sliding it into his inside coat pocket. Like it’s something he doesn’t want to bend.
He drives you back. You sit in the passenger seat and watch the city go by.
Neither of you speaks for a while, which is fine. Which is easy, actually, and you resent that a little.
You’d like to be uncomfortable. Discomfort is useful.
“Thank you. For letting me be there.” He’s the one to break the silence.
“You asked,” you say. Which is true, but not the full answer, and you both know it.
He doesn’t push.
In front of your building, he puts it in park. “Do you need anything? For the apartment, or groceries, or I could pick stuff up—”
“I’m okay.” You’re already half out of the seat.
“Prenatal vitamins, or—”
“Bucky.” You pause with one foot on the curb. “I have prenatal vitamins. I ordered them the morning after I tested. I’m a doctor. I know what I need.”
He has a hand on the steering wheel and he’s looking at you, and there’s something in his face that isn’t quite hurt and isn’t quite frustration. More like a person who wants to do something and doesn’t know how.
“I know you do.”
“I’m not—” There’s a version of this that comes out wrong, and you navigate around it. “I’m not keeping you out of it. That’s not what this is. I just— I don’t need you to manage things. Okay?” You look at him. “I’ll call you when there’s something to call you about.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Okay.”
“The heartbeat. That was… yeah. It was good.” You don’t know why you said that, only you didn’t want that to be the last thing you told him.
You’re already inside your place by the time you hear his car pull away.
The peonies are still in the glass on your counter when you get back in, and you stand there looking at them.
You are a person who has her prenatal vitamins already ordered and her charting caught up and her shifts covered, and you are also a person who left a one-night stand’s flowers in a water glass because they were too nice to throw out.
You said no three times.
The first time was on the phone, two days after the appointment, when he called with what he’d clearly prepared as a reasonable proposition. He delivered in the tone of someone who has won arguments in rooms full of people who didn’t want to lose.
His apartment was twelve minutes from your hospital by cab. Your commute was forty, on a good day. The first trimester fatigue was going to get worse before it got better. He had a spare bedroom. It was just practical.
The second time was a week after that, in person, when he’d swung by your hospital on his way from somewhere official to somewhere else official. He’d shown up in your break room with a coffee you hadn’t asked for and had the conversation again.
He laid it out like he was briefing someone. The proximity to your hospital, the fact that his building had a doorman and a parking garage and an elevator, the fact that your building had none of those things and three flights of stairs that were already becoming a thing you noticed at the end of a long shift.
The third time was on a Tuesday when you’d gotten home at midnight and stood at the bottom of your stairs for longer than you’d like to admit before making yourself go up them.
You’d texted Sarah about it not entirely meaning to, and Sarah had apparently mentioned it to her father, and her father had apparently mentioned it to Bucky. Your phone had rung at twelve fifteen.
How does news travel so fast?
The fourth time you said no it was because you’d run out of actual reasons and had to fall back on principle, which he received with the patience of someone who understood the difference and was content to wait.
That patience, somehow, was the thing that wore you down. Not the logic of it.
He’d just set the option on the table and waited with his hands in his pockets while you turned it over and found fewer and fewer things wrong with it.
That time you’d said, “Fine. A month. We’ll see how it goes.”
His apartment is on the fourteenth floor of a building that has a lobby with actual plants in it and a doorman named Gerald who learned your name on the second day and now says ‘good morning’ like he means it.
The spare bedroom has a window that faces east, which you hadn’t expected to care about. But find that you do, when the morning light comes in early and clean.
The first few days felt like moving around a furniture arrangement that hadn’t fully settled. Two people with established routines in one space, both of you figuring out the other.
You learned that he woke up early, always, and that the coffee was made before you came out of your room.
You learned that he watched the news in the living room in the evenings with the sound low and that he didn’t talk during it. Which suited you fine because you had charts to finish.
You learned that he stocked the fridge with things you’d mentioned offhand once, twice, in passing.
The ginger tea appeared on the third day, on the shelf above your coffee mug. You hadn’t said you needed it. But you’d been slightly more nauseous every morning and apparently he’d noticed, because there it was, three boxes of it, like it had always been there.
You’re fourteen weeks now. Which means you’d started to show in the way that is noticeable if you know what you’re looking for, the small firm curve of it below your navel that your regular clothes are beginning to politely argue with.
Looking down at it in the mirror still does something to you that you don’t have a clean word for.
Bucky doesn’t comment on it. That might be the thing you appreciate most.
What he does is quietly rearrange things. The stuff on the highest shelves moved down without discussion. A non-slip mat appeared in the shower.
He started being in the kitchen when you came home late, putting something together, and there was always enough for two.
You’d tried to protest the first time and he’d handed you a bowl of whatever it was and said ‘sit down, eat’, and something about the directness of it had short-circuited your objection.
The dynamic between you had shifted in a way that was hard to articulate. He made you laugh twice last week, genuinely. Once about something on the news and once about something Gerald had said in the lobby. You’d felt the laugh leave your body and thought afterward, with some surprise, that you hadn’t been performing it.
You still felt the thing from the coffee shop, underneath. You didn’t think you’d stop feeling that for a while. It is something that won’t stop hurting when you think of it often, and you think of it often.
Tuesday morning, you’re off until noon.
Off, for a resident, means you slept until eight instead of five and only have emails to deal with instead of a full shift, but still.
You come out of your room in your robe and your thick socks, hair in the kind of chaos that only nine hours of actual sleep can produce, and you’re running through the schedule of the day in your head when you turn the corner into the kitchen and stop.
Bucky is at the stove.
In a towel.
Just a towel. White, knotted at his hip, his hair still damp against the back of his neck. He clearly just stepped out of the shower and he’s got the skillet on and he’s doing something with eggs, fully concentrated on it.
You should say something. You should announce yourself, the way a normal person would, and give you both a second to reorient.
You don’t.
You’ve seen him in suits, casuals at home, you’ve seen him in the sweater from the coffee shop, you’ve seen him in the dark of a hotel room. But this is different in a way that your body is entirely on board with and your brain is slightly behind on.
He’s solid, broad across the back and tapered down, and the towel sits low on his hips and the morning light in the kitchen is doing things you’d like it to stop doing.
His left arm, the metal one, catches the light differently than his right, the lines of it tracing the shape of a shoulder, a forearm, fingers curled around the handle of the pan.
You’ve always been a normal amount of attracted to him. You’ve been telling yourself that it was circumstantial. Hormones, proximity, those things. And that it would settle down, because that was the sensible thing for it to do.
It is not settling down.
You press your lips together and look at the ceiling briefly and remind yourself that you are a grown adult in her first trimester who is going to behave appropriately. The first trimester is notoriously unkind when it comes to this, your body does not always know what’s good for it.
“Morning,” you say.
He turns around. To his credit, he doesn’t look particularly thrown. A little caught, maybe, but he rolls with it. “Hey. Sorry… I was running late, I figured I’d just start breakfast before I—” He gestures vaguely at himself with the spatula, which you choose not to find charming. “Didn’t hear you get up.”
“It’s fine,” you say, and you get yourself to the coffee maker and give yourself something to do with your hands. “What time is it?”
“Eight-forty.” He turns back to the eggs. “I would’ve had it ready before you got up usually. Woke up late.”
“You know you don’t have to make me breakfast every single day.”
He shifts the pan off the heat. “I was making eggs anyway. Seemed wasteful not to.”
You look at his back. His very… whatever. You pour your coffee. “Are you going to put clothes on?”
“Yeah, I— are the eggs okay first or should I—”
“The eggs are fine,” you say, which possibly comes out with slightly more feeling than the eggs require, and you turn and look very deliberately at your mug.
He dishes the eggs onto two plates, sets yours on the counter in front of you with a piece of toast that has appeared from somewhere.
Then he takes himself and his towel situation to his room.
You sit at the kitchen counter and stare at your eggs and feel extremely normal about everything.
Hormones. First trimester. Completely explicable.
You eat your eggs. They’re good. They’re always good, which is its own kind of inconvenience.
He comes back in grey sweatpants and a t-shirt with his damp hair and sits across the counter from you with his own plate.
The thing about Bucky Barnes in grey sweatpants is that it is somehow worse than the towel because you cannot blame it on anything. You cannot say you were caught off guard.
He is just sitting there in normal clothes eating scrambled eggs and looking at his phone. This is just your morning now. This is what your mornings are.
“You have the afternoon appointment Friday?” he asks, not looking up from his phone.
“Two o’clock.”
He nods. Puts his phone down. Picks up his coffee. “I can drive you.”
“I can get there.”
“I want to be there.”
You consider pointing out that he says that a lot. You decide not to. “Okay.”
The scrubs have been sitting in the bottom of your bag for three weeks. The dark navy set, the ones you’d bought in your first year when you finally had enough shifts under your belt to feel like they were earned.
You’d packed them when you left your apartment and told yourself it was practical, that you’d need them before the end of your residency, that they’d still fit by then.
Today is the final week. Last stretch before your exams, before whatever comes after, and you’d woken up this morning with the particular weight of an ending sitting on your chest. The bittersweet kind, the kind that doesn’t fully resolve into either sad or glad and just sits there asking you to feel both.
You’d thought about your locker at the hospital, the mug you kept in the break room, the nurses who knew your name and your coffee order and the specific way you liked your charts organized. You’d thought about who you’d been when you started, which felt like another person’s life viewed through glass.
The scrubs had seemed right. Nostalgic. The way you might put on an old sweater, or drive past your childhood home. Just to remember what it felt like.
That was the theory.
In practice, you’re standing in front your mirror at eight in the morning and the scrub top is bunched at your midsection, stuck there, going neither up nor down.
Your stomach has done what stomachs do at nineteen weeks. It is present, unmistakably, the firm round curve of it that you’d spent weeks watching appear like something surfacing through water.
The scrub top, which had been fitted-ish even before, has no interest in accommodating it. The fabric is straining across your chest in a way that would be funny in a different context, because your chest has also done what chests do, which is become something you are still getting used to seeing in mirrors.
The whole picture is that the scrub is basically a crop top, currently. The bottom six inches of your stomach are exposed. It will not go down.
You already know. You knew the moment you got it over your arms.
Still. Something cracks anyway.
It’s not rational. You’re a doctor, you understand what’s happening to your body better than most people get to. You’d read the weekly summaries without sentimentality. You’d taken your vitamins and gone to your appointments and been, all things considered, fairly functional about the whole thing.
But there’s something about the scrubs specifically that you hadn’t accounted for. Three years of who you were, and they don’t fit. You cannot explain why that particular fact is the one that finds the crack, except that it does. And your eyes are burning before you’ve fully registered that they’re going to.
You pull at the hem once more anyway. Just to try. It doesn’t move.
“Hey—” Bucky, in the hallway, knocking twice before he pushes the door slightly open. He does that, announces himself before the door, which you’d noticed in the first week and filed away as a thing you appreciated without saying so. “Breakfast is—” He stops.
You’re not crying. You’re at the stage just before, the one where your face is doing something you can’t control and your eyes are bright and your throat has that specific tightness. And you’re wearing a scrub top bunched up to your ribcage with your stomach completely exposed and your bra visible and your hands still fisted in the fabric.
He comes into your room properly, and stands behind you. You look at him in the mirror. He looks at you.
“The scrubs don’t fit.” Your voice comes out steadier than you expected.
“Yeah,” he says. Like he’s agreeing with whatever the real sentence is underneath the one you said.
“I know they weren’t going to.” You let go of the hem. “I don’t know why I thought—” You press your lips together. The burning behind your eyes is doing what it wants to regardless, and you look up at the ceiling briefly and breathe.
“It’s the last week,” you say, after a second.
Bucky doesn’t say anything right away. Your eyes meet in the mirror and there’s nothing in his face that looks like he doesn’t understand.
“I know.”
The simplicity of it helps more than anything elaborate would have. You breathe again and feel the tightness in your throat ease a fraction.
His hands find the hem of the scrub top, and he looks at your face in the mirror first. When you give the smallest nod, he eases it up and over and off.
You stand there in your bra and maternity leggings.
In the mirror, his eyes make a trip south that he doesn’t intend you to catch. Quick and involuntary and immediately corrected, back to your face. But you caught it. The fraction of a second where they landed, where they stayed, before he pulled them back up.
You don’t say anything.
You’d spent weeks rearranging your sense of your own body, cataloguing the changes the way you would with a patient.
Maintaining the clinical distance had always been your competence.
But clinical distance has a way of not applying when someone’s eyes do what his just did.
This is not the hungry look from a hotel room. This is the helpless half-second kind. The involuntary kind. The honest kind, the kind a person can’t manufacture.
The fact that it was involuntary is the part that does something.
“Breakfast is probably cold,” you say, because you have to say something and the other things aren’t available yet.
“I can reheat it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ll reheat it.”
You look at yourself in the mirror. You don’t look like yourself in the way you’ve always expected to look like yourself.
And you can’t tell yet whether that’s loss or just change, whether there’s even a meaningful difference between those two things.
“Bucky…. Thank you.” For the way he’d come in and just stood there and let the thing be what it was without trying to fix it or reframe it or promise you it would be fine.
The anatomy scan is at twenty weeks, which you know from the part of your brain that has been doing obstetric math since the positive test.
It is the one where they can tell you. If you want to know. If you ask.
You hadn’t decided, going in.
Bucky hadn’t asked whether you were going to find out, which you’d appreciated. He’d just shown up, same as always, jacket and the particular stillness that he brought into medical spaces with him.
The scan takes twenty minutes. You lie on your back with the transducer moving over your stomach while Dr. Reyes takes her measurements and narrates in the calm voice she has.
Bucky sits in the chair and watches the screen.
The anatomy is normal. All of it—the cardiac chambers, the spine, the cerebellum, the face. You listen to Dr. Reyes confirm each structure and your brain files it the way it always does, methodical.
Underneath the methodology there is something that is not methodology. something that has been building since the first scan, something that you have been calling various things and none of them have been entirely right.
“Do you want to know the sex?” Dr. Reyes asks.
You look at the ceiling. Then you look at Bucky.
He looks back at you. His expression says it’s up to you, the same way it said that about the apartment, about the appointments, about all of it.
He’d been very careful, the whole time, not to lean on decisions that were yours to make. You’d noticed. You’d been noticing for months.
“Yeah.”
Dr. Reyes smiles, and moves the transducer.
A girl.
You hadn’t had a preference, or you’d told yourself you hadn’t, but when she said it you understood something, like—oh. Oh, of course. Of course it’s her.
You don’t cry in the office. You make it to the elevator.
Its the sudden, quick kind. Two breaths worth, your hand pressed to your mouth, and then it passes.
You’re left standing in an elevator with your eyes bright, and Bucky is beside you looking at your face with the expression that isn’t unreadable anymore.
“Sorry,” you say, which is stupid, crying is a completely normal response to—
“Don’t.” He puts his arm around your shoulder and you let him.
By the time you’re in the lobby you’re fine, or close enough.
“A girl,” you say out loud, just to hear it.
“A girl.” Something in his voice makes you look at his face, and what’s there stops you. He’s looking straight ahead, jaw working slightly, and he looks like a man who has just understood the full size of something and is very quietly being changed by it.
His arm comes down from your shoulder but his hand finds yours briefly, just for a moment.
The first kick happens on a Thursday evening at twenty-three weeks.
You’re on the couch. You’ve been on the couch for an hour, which has become a thing you do now. Come home and decompose horizontally for a while before you can face anything requiring vertical effort.
Bucky is somewhere in his officr and you’re watching something on the television that you’re not fully watching.
It’s not what you’d expected. It isn’t a kick exactly, it’s more like something — someone really — turning over. A rolling flutter from the inside, unmistakable once it happens, unmistakable in the way that means you’d know it anywhere forever.
You go completely still.
It happens again. Clearer this time. More definite.
“Bucky.” You don’t mean to say it at volume. It just comes out.
Following footsteps, you see him. He reads your face immediately and crouches beside the couch without asking ‘what’s wrong’, because whatever your face is doing right now clearly isn’t wrong.
“She’s moving.”
His eyes go to your hands on your stomach. “Now?”
“Just now. She—” It happens again, and your face does something you’re completely not in control of. “There.”
He looks up at you and then at your stomach and then at you again. “Can I?”
“Yeah.” You take his hand and put it where yours is, your palm over the back of his.
For a moment nothing happens, and you think maybe it’s stopped, and then—
His face.
You’ve catalogued Bucky’s expressions for months. You know the almost-smile and the real one and the careful one and the behind-the-eyes one, but this is none of them.
This is something you haven’t seen before and can’t name, something stripped entirely of everything else, just… pure. Open in a way his face almost never is. His eyes are bright and he is looking at your stomach like it is the most astonishing thing he has ever encountered.
“That’s her.” His voice is not steady.
“That’s her.”
He doesn’t move his hand. You don’t move yours. The kick comes again. The two of you stay like that on the couch, with his hand under yours, her making herself known between you.
There are things between you still. Not resolved, the coffee shop, his words you seem to can’t get past.
But right now it’s quiet.
“She’s strong,” he eventually says. A little undone. Trying not to show it and not quite succeeding, which you love. Which you note, quietly, that you love.
He looks up at you and something passes between you that doesn’t need words, something that would have been impossible five months ago.
His thumb moves slightly on your stomach, a small unconscious thing, a hello from the outside. You let your head fall back against the cushion and close your eyes and feel her move again.
Today you notice that your left breast is tender in a specific way. Your colostrum has been leaking for the better part of five days.
Now there’s this localised tenderness. You press two fingers against it, and find the spot immediately.
Blocked duct. Clean and obvious. You’d diagnosed it in approximately four seconds.
The knowing doesn’t make it hurt less.
You get in the shower and let the hot water run directly on it, and you work at the tissue the way you know. Gentle, firm strokes toward the nipple, drained before it blocks further.
It helps a little. Enough to get dressed and eat breakfast and tell yourself it would resolve on its own by afternoon, which it might, which blocked ducts sometimes do when caught early.
By afternoon it hasn’t resolved.
By evening it’s worse.
Bucky makes dinner and breakfast and lunch. It’s something he took it upon himself, and no matter what you did, he insisted he wanted to. You decided that was the least he could do, since you’re already growing a whole human.
You’re on the couch when he brings you your plate, but don’t really eat it, which he notices. Because Bucky notices things. That is one of the more inconvenient facts about living with him.
“You’re not eating.” An observation.
“I’m eating.” You take a bite to demonstrate.
He sits down on his end of the couch, his own plate, and looks at you in the way he looks at things when he’s decided something. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”
“You’ve been holding your left side since you sat down.”
You look at him. You hadn’t realized you were doing that. Your hand is braced just below your ribs on the left, the pressure of it a reflex you hadn’t consciously authorized. You move it to your lap.
“I’m fine.”
“Okay.” He eats a bite of his dinner. “What’s wrong?”
The repetition startles a short laugh out of you. “Bucky.”
“I’ve got time.”
You look at your plate. The thing about the past several months is that you’d stopped performing fine quite so much. You still did it sometimes. Habit, mostly.
But the effort of maintaining it in the face of someone who was going to sit there and wait it out had started to feel like more work than just saying the thing.
“Blocked duct.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means one of the milk ducts is… blocked”
“You’re… producing?”
“Yeah, for like five days. It’s normal. Don’t worry.”
“Normal? You’re in pain.”
“The milk part is normal. The blocked part is not normal even after delivery.”
“So, what do we do? What’s the treatment?”
Of course. Of course that’s the immediate question. You set your fork down. “Warm compress, massage, expression. In that order.”
“Have you tried all of that?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And it’s… helping. Some. Not fully resolved.”
He’s quiet for a second, and you can hear him thinking, which is a thing you’ve learned to recognize. “Do you want me to— I could help with the massage. If that’s— if it would help.”
Something happens to your body that you are immediately and completely dismissive of. You are thirty-eight weeks pregnant and you are sitting on a couch across from the man who is the father of your child and who is also just a person asking a practical question.
Your body’s response to that question is frankly embarrassing and entirely the fault of the third trimester hormonal profile.
“I’m fine,” you say, for the third time, which even you can tell is getting less convincing.
“You said that.” He puts his plate on the coffee table. “What else is there?”
“What do you mean?”
“For the duct. If massage doesn’t work, what else is there?”
Your face does something you are not responsible for. You think about how to answer this question, which should be simple, which is a medical question with a factual answer, and yet.
“Suction.”
“A pump?” He’s already standing with his not even half finished place. “I’ll go buy one—”
“It’s not the pump.” The words come out before you’ve decided to say them. You look at him.
He looks back at you.
“Tell me what it is.” His voice is even.
You hold his gaze for a second. There are thirty-eight weeks of something between the two of you, not all of it clean, most of it good, and you are in pain that has a solution that you are not asking for.
“Manual suction would be equally effective than the pump. It’s also direct. You don’t have to— I don’t need you to do anything. It’ll resolve.”
He’s very still. “Will it?”
“Probably.”
“Probably,” he echoes.
“Yes.”
He’s looking at you with the expression that isn’t unreadable anymore, hasn’t been for a while, the one that means he’s made a decision and is waiting to see if you’ll come to the same one. “You’re in pain.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve said that four times and eaten approximately one bite of dinner.” His voice is quiet and not unkind and leaves absolutely no room. “You’re in pain, and there’s something that would help, and you’re sitting there not asking for it. So I’m asking. Do you want me to help?”
“It’s not— This isn’t—”
“I know what it is and what it isn’t. I’m asking if you want me to help.”
The honesty of the question, the way he’s asking plainly if you want him to, does something to the knot of your refusal, loosens it.
“Okay.”
The bedroom lamp is on low, which you’re grateful for. You’re sitting against the headboard in just your tank top because bra is compression and compression makes the pain worse.
Bucky is sitting beside you. You’ve walked him through it in the voice you use for medical explanations. Impersonal, methodical, this is the direction of drainage, this much is the pressure we’re aiming for. He’d listened the way he listens to everything, completely, without interrupting.
“Tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”
“You’re not.” You’d watched his hands and the technique was right, working from the periphery inward the way you’d told him.
The heat of it was immediate, the specific relief of pressure moving in the right direction, and you let your head fall back against the headboard and breathe through it.
It hurts. It hurts in the way that relief sometimes hurts, the way that unkinking something that’s been kinked for too long. You press your lips together and exhale.
“Still okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” Your voice is not entirely steady. “Keep going.”
The blocked duct is stubborn in the way they get when they’ve been compressing for a day. The massage alone was never going to be enough, you’d known that, you’d known it since Wednesday morning and done it anyway because asking was harder.
But his hands are warmer than yours, the pressure more sustained, and the way his fingers glide over your swollen skin sends an unexpected shiver through you, the warmth pooling not just in relief but in a deeper, aching need between your thighs.
When his mouth closes over the nipple, the sensation is overwhelming at first.
The sound you make is entirely involuntary and you press your hand to your own mouth immediately.
His hand stills on your ribs. He doesn’t stop. The suction is careful and rhythmic and nothing about the way he’s doing this is anything other than what it is.
Yet your body does not seem to fully understand the assignment. The wet heat of his mouth envelops you, his tongue pressing softly against the sensitive peak as he draws gently, each pull sending a spark of unwelcome arousal straight to your core, making you clench involuntarily around nothing.
You tell yourself you’re not turned on by him relieving your pain. You’re wrong.
Just for a fleeting moment, you wonder, if it's affecting him too. If the intimate act of tasting you, feeling your body respond under his lips, is stirring something in him the way it's unraveling you.
With continued suction, the colostrum releases slowly, the hard cord of tissue beginning to soften under his hand. You feel the pressure shifting, the acute point of pain diffusing.
And your eyes fill without your permission, the specific relief of it after a day of something that just quietly hurt and hurt and hurt.
“There.” Your voice breaks on it, just slightly.
He pulls back. Looks at your face. And then without discussion he puts his arm around you and pulls you into his side carefully. His hand finds the top of your bump in the way he does sometimes without thinking and you let him.
“You’re okay,” he says into your hair. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
You breathe. The ache is fading and you are okay.
But the lingering warmth of his mouth on your skin, the ghost of his breath against your nipple, has left you throbbing with need.
There’s this heat in you that has nothing to do with pain or hurt or blocked ducts. And everything to do with him and his proximity. You don’t think you can blame it on your hormones anymore.
You’re focused on not doing anything more. Because you don’t know how he feels. Just because he’d offered to help doesn’t mean he’s into this. Into you.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
You don’t know what he is talking about.
You lift your head a little. “What?”
His hand moves slightly on your back, a small motion, like he’s deciding how to continue. “The morning after the gala.” He’s not looking at you directly. “I had an early call. I had to be out by 5.30. I didn’t want to wake you.”
That morning comes rushing back like it was yesterday. The empty side. The folded dress on the chair. The glass of water.
“I left my number on the hotel notepad, by the lamp. I thought— I thought you’d call.”
“What—”
“Left side of the lamp. I figured maybe you didn’t want to. And then weeks went by and I thought—” He doesn’t finish that sentence. He doesn’t have to. “And then you called. And I picked up and heard your voice and I thought, okay. Okay, she called.”
If only you’d looked properly.
You close your eyes. Your brain does the math. How close you’d been to something, how much the last eight months might have looked different… if only you’d looked properly.
“And then the coffee shop. I said something— I said something I would take back ten times over if I could. The look on your face.” He finally glances down at you, and his expression is the honest one, the one stripped of the management. “I’d been thinking about you for weeks, and then there you were, telling me something that big, and I panicked and I said the worst possible thing, and I’ve been—”
“Bucky…”
“I’ve been trying to show you that I’m not that… Since then. That — that isn’t who I am.”
“I know.” You mean it fully. “I know.”
His hand hasn’t stopped moving on your back and you’ve gone completely loose against his side.
You turn your face slightly into his shoulder. He smells like the same thing he always smells like.
Something clean, something his.
You look up. He’s looking down. At you.
”I looked, I searched… I — I am so sorry, Bucky.”
He shakes his head, “you have nothing to be sorry about.” His voice is a whisper, gently wiping something off your face, only then do you realise you’d been crying.
Later if you thought about it, you could not have said who moved first. Maybe it was you, maybe it was just the proximity and the angle and months and months of near misses.
But his mouth is on yours and it is nothing like the hotel room. Nothing at all like that.
That had been hunger and dark and mutual want in its simplest form, and this is something else, something that has been earned in increments. When you kiss him back you feel the whole weight of it.
His hand comes up to your jaw, the right one, and he kisses you the way he does things when he means them. Slow. Sure. Like he is not going anywhere and wants you to know it. This time there’s no tears.
When you pull back, his thumb is on your cheek and your foreheads are together and you’re both breathing.
“Hi,” you say, which is what you always seem to say when he takes you off guard.
Something changes in his expression. Soft and a little helpless and very, very him. “Hi.”
You kiss him again, slower, and his hand slides from your jaw to your neck, and when you shift against him you feel him go still.
“I don’t want to—” He pulls back enough to look at you, and his face is flushed, and he’s trying to be responsible about something and finding it difficult. His eyes go briefly, helplessly, to your stomach, and then back to your face. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
You look at him. Something warm and fond moves through you, which is perhaps not the most practical emotion for this particular moment, but there it is.
“Sex is not contraindicated,” you say.
His brow furrows slightly. “How do you—”
“Bucky.”
“I just—”
“It’s actively encouraged in the two weeks before the due date.” You hold his gaze. “Prostaglandins in semen help with cervical ripening. And orgasm stimulates uterine contractility, which—”
“Okay.”
“—can help initiate labour at term, which is why—”
“Okay.” He’s slightly flushed. “I get it.”
“Do you? Because I can explain the mechanism—”
“How do you know that?” He asks with the expression of a man who has already realized the answer.
You cock your eyebrow.
“Right. You’re a doctor.” He looks like he’s genuinely embarrassed, with the kind of blush you have never seen on him before in eight months of looking at his face. “Sorry.”
You press your lips together so you don’t smile too much, because this is not the moment for I told you so, except that it is a little. “It’s okay.”
“I just—I didn’t want to—”
“I know.” You put your hand on his jaw, the same way you’d put it on his jaw in a hotel room eight months ago in a completely different life. “I know. She’s safe. I’m safe. Okay?”
This is different from the hotel room in every way that matters.
“You’re beautiful.” He says it simply, like it’s the truth.
“I’m enormous.”
“Yeah.” He says it like those are the same sentence. Like enormous is included in beautiful, like the distinction doesn’t exist.
You pull his shirt over his head and he lets you, and then his hands find your tank top and he eases it off fully. His eyes move over you the way they’d moved that day in the mirror, except now there is nothing to look away from, and he doesn’t.
“Tell me what feels good. Tell me what doesn’t.”
“You’re going to make me talk the whole time?”
“I’m going to make you talk when I need to know something.” His mouth moves to your jaw, your throat, and his voice is warm against your skin. “Which will be often.”
Your hands find his hair and you hold on.
His hands learn it the way you’d watch him learn anything else. With attention, nothing half-done.
He finds your hip, your thigh, and his fingers trail up the inside of it with the unhurried patience of a man who is not going anywhere. When they reach the apex of your thighs and slip between your folds, finding you slick and swollen, he exhales slowly against your neck.
“Jesus.”
“I told you it was—”
“Not the physiology… Just— you.” His fingers part you gently, circling your clit with soft strokes, and your grip on his hair tightens. “This.”
You stop talking.
His fingers are gentle in a way that is its own undoing. He’s learning, finding the places that make your breath change and staying there, pressing and rubbing with just enough pressure to send heat pooling low in your belly.
You’re on your side, which is where he’d guided you with the easy practicality of someone who’d done their research and wasn’t going to make a thing of it.
His chest is warm against your back and his hand is over your hip and everything about the angle lets his fingers delve deeper, one sliding inside you while his thumb works your clit.
He keeps going until your thighs are shaking and you’re saying his name with your face pressed to the pillow and when his fingers slow, you make an undignified sound
“Don’t stop—”
“I’m not stopping,” he says into your shoulder. “Just changing.”
He shifts, settling behind you, and you feel the warm blunt pressure of his cock at your entrance, the head nudging against your wetness.
He pauses there. His hand is on your hip, his mouth is at your temple. “Okay?”
“Yes… Please.”
He pushes in slowly. All the way slow, inch by inch, stretching you, giving you time to feel every ridge and vein as he fills you completely. You exhale through it and he stays still when he’s fully seated, buried to the hilt. You feel his chest chest rising and falling against your back. “Okay?” he asks again.
“More than okay,” you manage, which makes him exhale a short, warm laugh against your neck.
He moves. The kind of pace that builds rather than rushes, his cock sliding out almost to the tip before thrusting back in. His hand on your hip holds you in place, and you feel every movement everywhere, the particular fullness of him inside you, pressing against that sensitive spot with each stroke, the particular closeness of his body wrapped around yours.
His hand slides from your hip to your stomach and just rests there and something about that, the fact that he thought to do that, his palm warm and open on the curve of your belly while his cock moves inside you, does something to you that is beyond physical.
“Bucky.” It’s not a request for anything, just his name in your mouth, just needing to say it.
“I’m here.” His arm tightens around you. “I’ve got you.”
His other hand finds your clit again, fingers slick with your arousal, rubbing in tight, slow circles that match the rhythm of his hips. You feel the tension building in slow long waves, nothing like the urgent snap of the hotel room, this is the accumulative kind, the kind that climbs and climbs, your walls clenching around him with each thrusts.
His mouth is at your ear and he’s saying your name, just your name.
When you come, you come with his name on your lips and his arms around you and his hand on your belly.
It moves through you like something warm breaking loose from somewhere it had been held for a long time, your body pulsing around his cock, drawing him deeper. You feel it in your chest as much as anywhere else.
His hips stutter and slow and he presses his face into your neck and follows you, spills inside you. His arm fully wraps around you, and then everything is still.
You lie there with his heartbeat at your back, fast still and slowing.
This time there’s no condom to dispose. But he does move, and comes back with a washcloth and a glass of water. A glass of water, again.
His hands are soft and his touch gentle when he cleans you, wiping away the mix of your release and his from between your thighs.
After a while, after he’s made you drink half a glass of water, and you’re settled into him, his hand moves on your stomach. “Hey,” he says. To her. Like a hello.
You press your hand over his.
Something moves under your palms and you realise it’s a hello back from the inside.
my masterlist !
extras. if this flops, i’ll cry. also why was this so long lmao 😭
I'll Try Too ~ Benjamin 'Dex' Poindexter x Fem!Reader
⟢ Word Count: 1.6k
⟢ Content: Smut. Set after s2 of DDBA but I wrote this before the ending so hopefully the season finale is good. Free Use. Small domestic fluff. Vaginal Sex. Vaginal Fingering. Face sitting. Brief mention of blood.
⟢ A/N: Dex will not leave my mind I had to write something about him. Please enjoy!
“You ever heard of free use?” Dex asked, closing a book he’s reading.
“Uh, not really.” You said while folding laundry right next to him. “What is it?”
He doesn’t speak for a minute. There’s a slight twitch to his brow, like he’s trying to understand the concept himself. “We…would have sex anytime. Whenever we want. It doesn’t matter where we are or what we're doing.”
“Oh.” You don’t stop folding, his eyes on you. Waiting for you to add more input. You didn’t have much to say, but the idea sounded interesting. It wasn’t like you and Dex were strangers to sex. “Where did you get that from?”
He motioned to the bookcase. The various books he'd been reading about a wide range of topics. He picked up more and more since you two started living together. A nice hobby to regulate his mind. “I found one that helps couples spice up their relationship. Didn't think I'd get a lot of…kinks in there.”
You bite your tongue to hold back a laugh, “Wanna tell me what kind?”
“No thanks.”
A snort escaped you, “I didn’t know we needed to spice up our relationship.”
“We don’t.” Dex turned to you, deep brown eyes flooding with concern, hoping he didn't offend you. “I was curious. I wanted to make sure I'm doing things right.”
“You are. I'd tell you if you weren’t.” He nodded, but you're unsure if he completely understood. “So, we'd use each other any time right? You wanna try it?”
Another pause. Dex rubbed his thighs in circular motions, matching his thought process. You can never tell what he’s thinking. If he’s ecstatic at the idea or if he’s disgusted by it.
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” You quickly said. “It sounds fun.”
He nodded once more, body stiff. “Then I’ll try too.”
You smiled at his casual willingness. He’d probably say no if you said no. Dex typically never tried anything unless you introduced him to it. The fact that he’s bringing a topic like this up sparked intrigue. Before he always mentioned that he was strange, that he isn’t too familiar with romantic relationships due to his mindset.
But he was still willing to try.
You waited for him. When he took over the household chores, vacuuming the rugs, doing the dishes, you expected something. A wrap around your waist, a passionate kiss which led to your back on the rug or right along the fridge. Dex unbuckling his pants in haste, pulling off your pj pants before pushing himself inside you.
At night, when you smoothed the last bit of facial cream on your cheeks as your boyfriend rinsed toothpaste from his lips. He didn’t smash his lips along yours. Take in the light pomegranate scent while stealing your breath away. The tip of his nose trailing from your own to your jaw as his thick fingers go under your nightgown, pulling those panties to the side to circle around your clit.
There was nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Just your dirty fantasies as Dex cozied up beside you.
He might have stuff on his mind; dealing with the Anti-Vigilante Task Force and the fact that if he lingered outside for too long Fisk would have his head. There wasn’t time to indulge in sex the way he liked. That’s why you took an initiative to ease some of that burden. The thoughts that ran a mile a minute inside.
You straddled his waist one night watching Lord of the Rings. The extended version since he managed to find a DVD box set. Thirty minutes in, heavy kisses were exchanged. Dex’s groan laced with need, the grip on your sides match the intensity of the embrace. No hesitation when you palmed that growing bulge. When you pulled his bottom lip back with your teeth. His eyes rolling back.
Your sweatpants and panties were gone, his pants unzipped and pulled down, cock springing free and gleaming from pre against the glow of the tv. Prep was hardly needed when you sunk down on him and rode him into oblivion. His low gasps and groans, scrunched up face spurring you on. A hand on your back to keep you steady.
Neither of you lasted long. You coming undone under his arms, his seed spilling inside you. A brief respite as the movie continued blaring in your ears. Dex doesn’t hesitate to kiss your forehead, saying ‘that was good’, before he cleaned you up.
While you’re glad to help provide some relief, does he not like the idea of using you whenever he wanted?
Did his brain shut down that idea despite saying yes to you? In order to not disappoint you?
You wanted to talk to him about it. Since that little escapade, he hadn’t used you in return. Like he should. Like he could. You wanted to say it’s okay if he doesn’t like that idea. That you two can stop.
You’d understand. You really would.
You’re prepared to bring it up when the door forcefully opened and he’s stumbling inside. Limping. Bleeding.
“Oh god, Dex.” You fly to his side, quickly closing and locking the door. His mask pulled off, hair disheveled, blood leaking from his nose. His jaw unhinged like it’s been locked for sometime. “What happened? Did Fisk found out where you are? Do we have to move?”
You’re only in a shirt and underwear, but you can easily slip into pants and shoes to run.
Dex shook his head, a groan erupted like he needed to get the pain out. “AVTF jumped me, shot at me, probably broke a rib…”
The wet, red patch on the side of his neck proved his story.
You lead him to the bedroom, forcing him to sit on the bed after a quick comment he made about getting blood on the sheets. You’ll wash them later. If he doesn’t get to them first.
You return with the med kit from the bathroom, quickly examining his frame. With a tug off his shirt, his torso was covered in splotches of red and purple. There wasn’t any gunshot wounds though. Thank god.
You press a cloth against the cut on his neck to stop the bleeding, heart jumping at his flinches. A wince past his lips. You thought you were used to seeing him get hurt like this. But every time a piece of you crumbles away at the sight.
Once the bleeding stopped, you patch up his neck. You’re close, his steady breath fanning your forehead, eyes closed as he let you work. His fingers tracing your hip. You can’t help, but enjoy the touch. It was soothing, centering you back to the reality that he managed to make it back to you.
“Sit on my face.” Dex muttered, lips pressed against your head with a gentle sniff.
You blinked, ready to question if this was from the blood loss. Before you can, he held you up, using one hand to pull off your panties. He lied back, moving you up so you can find his face.
You wanted to push that he’s injured. Fisk was probably searching for him as they speak and maybe followed his blood trail back to the house. You don’t say that. You hover above him, gripping those locks.
“I didn’t say hover.”
Dex wrapped his arms around your thighs to push you down and latch on to your cunt. His tongue flattened along your clit with a long lick that made you hold back a whimper. He does another one to turn that whimper into a moan.
He hummed when you tugged on his hair. It didn’t get him to stop, but relish every time he made you cry out. Your thighs squeezed along his head. Every lick, suck, made your toes curl. He’s relentless. You don’t even know where this came from, but you’re not complaining.
Not when he’s flicking your clit in such succession that made you twist and jerk. Dex doesn’t let you move too much, those strong arms locking in those thighs. Trapping you into each precision of the tip of his tongue. That’s determined to make you cum above him. To make himself feel better.
“Dex…” You moaned, stomach pooling with that familiar sense of pleasure. “don’t stop…”
He doesn’t. A thick arm went under your shirt, palming your breast. The nipple underneath getting hard during each motion. Your hand went on top, copying each grope of his, influencing each roll of your hips on his face.
That gave him motivation to go faster. Suck harder. Drag that orgasm out like he’s never done before. That pinch to your nipple made you jolt, electrifying your skin, your body, your cunt. Causing you to come undone right above him. Dex moaned against your lips, prolonging your orgasm with small licks to your sensitive bud. It’s almost too much, too good to last forever.
Then his muscles tightened. A drawn out groan beneath you, the bed sightly moving. The grip Dex kept gets tighter, but not painful. Just something for him to hold on to until he’s done with his high.
He helped you back down, a dark patch in his jeans catching your attention. His lips gleamed with a mix of your arousal and blood.
“That was great. Better.”
You forced out a laugh at his approval. “And here I thought you didn’t like the free use idea.”
“I do. It’s useful for when you might get mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“Upset then.” A hand ghosted over the patch on his neck. “I don’t like when you’re upset. You should be happy. Just happy.”
You gently stroke the light hairs along his chest, finding his steady heartbeat. “I am happy. I just want you to be more careful. Okay?”
“Okay.” He cupped your cheek, stroking it with his thumb. You leaned into his embrace for a bit, taking in the dark, but comforting space. Dex trailed down your face, past your breast, your hip, thigh before going in between your legs. A finger dipped into you, a smirk at your slickness.
Summary : Meeting Dex for the first time in two years doesn’t go as planned.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x new avenger! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : violence, injury, gun use, self-inflicted injury, Dex licks your blood, grief, reader used to be a good friend of Matt, Karen, and Foggy. Dex is obsessed with you, codependency, suggestive content, sex is heavily implied, freak4freak, dex in handcuffs, bondage is mentioned, emotional manipulation-ish?, both reader and Dex desperately need therapists. Food. Overall just angsty. Set in DDBA season 2 episode 6 (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 8.1k.
Notes : would you look at that? Another freak4freak. The fic is inspired by the song Supervillain by Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes. Enjoy!
Your phone rang.
To you, it was just noise. It was loud, but it didn’t even startle you. It was nothing compared to Bucky giving orders in your comms, or John talking about extraction windows and airspace and things that feel important.
When you realised it wasn’t just white noise, it dawned on you: Your phone wasn’t supposed to ring.
It didn’t anymore. Not for real people.
Everything you do now was encrypted, filtered, approved, routed through people with clearance levels that didn’t include personal calls.
So when it rang, you ignored it.
You kept moving, eyes forward, hand steady on whatever weapon they’ve put in your grip this week— Val had sourced an experimental firearm, similar to a 9mm, modified to house adamantium bullets. She gave it to you and told you to get used to it, to practice assembling and disassembling it. So yeah, you’ve been doing that for the past thirty minutes in the tower’s common room.
Your phone rang again. You ignored it again.
Ava said your name. You answered automatically. She asked what you were having for dinner. You said you’ve already had dinner; Yelena accidentally ordered too much Chinese takeout.
It rang again in the middle of disassembly.
That pissed you off. You were trying to get a sub-10 second time, but that just frayed your focus.
You turned the sound off on your phone and didn’t even bother to check who was calling. It was probably Bob, asking you if you were up for a game of Catan. Or maybe Alexei, calling to ask whether or not his request to get a (highly illegal) Soviet missile launcher from the Smithsonian has been approved.
The answer would most likely be no.
Focus. Focus.
You looked at the tool, the mat, and the stopwatch.
You turned it on again.
One. Left thumb hit the magazine release, falling into your palm. Two. Right hand pulled the slide back, checking the empty chamber—clear. Three. Let the slide fly forward. Four. Grip the rear of the slide, pulling back just a millimeter while you index finger and thumb push down the takedown lever simultaneously.
Five. The slide slid off into your hand.
Six. Recoil spring pulled out. Seven. Barrel slid out.
Disassembled. Five seconds down.
You didn't even pause to breathe.
Eight. Barrel back into the slide. Nine. Recoil spring snapped into place. Ten. Realign the slide with the frame rails, sliding it back on. Eleven. Rack the slide once. Twelve. Pull the trigger to lock it in. Click.
Thirteen. Magazine back in.
You stopped the timer. 9.2 seconds.
You set the tool back down on the mat and looked at the timer.
Perfect. Some bastard’s gonna get fucked up by getting adamantium between their eyes.
Breathing the moment, your phone vibrated again.
You pulled it out, already irritated. Who could it be? Mel? Charles? The fucking president? The secretary general? If they wanted an answer, it better be one of them.
Unknown number.
You stared at it. Huh. Weird.
Your thumb hovered, debating if you should decline it.
You answered instead.
“Hello?” You said it flatly, professionally.
For a second, nothing answered you.
“Hi.”
Everything stopped.
Suddenly you weren’t where you are anymore.
You were back in a cramped office with bad coffee.
You were at a bar with Foggy, laughing too loud.
You were at a funeral trying not to look at anyone, trying to get the fucking hell out of here—
You stopped breathing.
“Matt?” you said, and it came out quieter than you meant it to.
There was a pause on the other end, like he wasn’t sure you’d say his name at all. Maybe he wasn’t even expecting you to recognise his voice.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s me.”
You swallowed, throat feeling tight for no reason you want to examine.
You didn’t ask how he got this number. You didn’t ask why now. You didn’t ask anything.
Because he wouldn’t call you after two years of silence unless something had gone very, very wrong.
Matt exhaled softly.
“I—” he started, then stopped. You could hear him recalibrating the way he always did when things mattered too much to get wrong.
“You’re… okay?” He asked, finally.
It’s such a Matt question.
Careful, yet loaded with everything he wasn’t saying. And out of everyone you knew, you weren’t going to let him do his lawyer thing on you.
You almost laughed.
“Yeah,” you said automatically. “I’m fine.”
The lie came easy, but he didn't call you out on it. You almost forgot he couldn’t tell if you’re lying through the phone.
Another bout of silence stretched, and you felt it settle between you.
Something’s wrong.
You swallowed. “What happened?” you asked. You were tired of small talk.
For a long, unbearable second, you thought he might hang up. Like maybe hearing your voice again made him reconsider. Like maybe he didn’t actually want you here, or needed you for whatever he thought he needed you for.
You wouldn’t have blamed him. Not after everything that happened.
But it was you he was talking to.
Sure, you had talents that made you suited to the vigilante life more than most, but you were more than just another fist in the streets of New York— you were both Matt and Karen’s friend.
You had been Foggy’s friend too.
And for whatever reason, all those years ago, you had gotten attached to him.
Benjamin Poindexter.
Matt still didn’t understand it. He wasn’t sure he ever would.
It didn’t make sense. You didn’t just wake up one day and decide to fall for a man like that.
But you saw something in him. Something broken you recognized. Something that reflected back pieces of yourself you didn’t talk about. You saw someone worth saving.
Matt called it a coping mechanism. Said you needed to believe people like Dex could be saved, because otherwise… What did that say about the rest of them?
Karen thought it was your pattern. Your history with men who needed help, who gave you just enough to keep you trying. She said you were always one for the “I can fix him” trope.
Foggy…
Foggy had just shrugged, and said it was love. He never attempted to condone it, but he understood it. He said sometimes love had no rhyme or reason. He trusted you enough to not question your decision to keep visiting, day in and day out, making sure he was okay.
He was right.
You just… couldn’t help it.
Still, even Matt couldn’t help but have teeny tiny growing resentment for you because of it.
After all, the last time you met, and the real conversation you had was at Foggy’s funeral. And even then, it was only a few clipped sentences. You had gone from trusting Matt and Karen with your life to being distant overnight. You changed, just as Foggy’s death had changed every single one of you.
You weren’t even at the trial. You went even at the sentencing.
It had made sense— the man you loved had killed one of your closest friends.
There wasn’t a guidebook for surviving something like that.
After that, you were just… gone.
He knew you had been doing black ops for a little under six years now, one day mission at a time for a mysterious woman you called “Val.” After Foggy died, you had thrown yourself at the job. You’ve disappeared for months to another continent until you had no time to even text a simple “how are you?” to any of them. Perhaps, you had needed all the distraction you could get.
And Matt and Karen weren’t the only ones who felt the impact of what you left behind. You had gone from visiting Dex at least three times a week at the mental institution, to not even once visiting him in prison. Matt didn’t know why, but he could… assume.
Then, one day, Karen had turned on the TV to the announcement of the New Avengers. She had joked that they had gotten the greatest hits of earth’s mightiest heroes’ rogue gallery, from the Winter Soldier to Ghost… until the camera panned to you. Even Matt flinched when they said your name.
You were part of this now. Whatever this was. You were monitoring space and shooting off in jets. You defeated a void of a monster, and he didn’t even know how.
But if you weren’t gone before, you were definitely gone now. Avenger-level gone: Classified missions, neutralising world-ending events, things he only heard about in pieces, if he heard anything at all.
Your world had gotten bigger than New York. Your problems had gotten bigger, too.
Anyway.
“We have him.” Matt said simply, bad phone signal slightly distorting his words.
Oh.
The world dropped out from under you.
There was only one person that could mean. Your grip tightened around the phone so hard it almost hurt.
“Dex?” you whispered.
The nothingness you were met with was answer enough.
You closed your eyes. For a second, everything you’d buried— the blood, Foggy, the way you couldn’t even look at Dex without feeling like you were going to come apart— came rushing back so fast it made you dizzy.
“He’s alive,” Matt said quickly, as if he heard it in your breathing. “And he’s hurt.”
Alive.
You didn’t know what to do with that word.
You knew he was out there somewhere, but hadn’t built a version of the world where he was tangible.
You’d built one where he was gone, or locked away, or not your problem anymore. This dragged everything back into reach.
“I don’t know who else to call,” Matt added.
And there it was.
He didn’t call for forgiveness. Or reconciliation. It was simply a necessity.
You pressed your thumb harder into the side of the phone, grounding yourself in the pressure.
“We haven’t spoken in two years,” you said. It came out quieter than you meant it to. You said it almost as a reminder. To him, or to yourself? You weren’t sure.
“Yeah,” he exhaled. “I know.”
There was an exhaustion in his voice. It was worn down.
“I—” you started.
I’m sorry. That was what you meant to say. You needed to choke it out. The words sat right there, overdue by two years. “I’m—”
“No.” Matt cut you off immediately. “I don’t—” he stopped, then tried again. “Don’t.”
You went quiet.
“Just… don’t,” he said, gentler now but no less certain. “I wouldn’t have called you if it wasn’t this.”
He was right. This wasn’t the moment for apologies. Not after everything. Not when the only reason he was even speaking to you was because he had no other choice.
You swallowed hard, forcing the word back down.
“Okay,” you said. It felt like swallowing glass.
“You were the only one…,” Matt started, and there was something strained in it now, “…we’ve ever known to talk him down.”
You closed your eyes again, just for a second.
“Can you come?” He asked like he didn’t know if he still had the right. “Karen just… she can’t watch him. I…” he trailed off, not knowing what to say or how to say it. “I’m out of options.”
You didn’t answer right away.
Because this was the line you’d drawn. The one that kept you moving forward without looking back.
If you crossed it… you might as well drown yourself in your sorrow now.
What the hell.
“Send me the address.”
—
You found the building quickly.
There were no complications, just a straight line from the coordinates Matt sent you to a door that looked like nothing in an unassuming building.
You stood in the hallway outside it longer than you should have.
You should’ve known it was a safehouse from the dim lighting and faint hum of electricity.
And yet, behind that door…
You swallowed.
He was there.
Close enough that if you reached out and opened the door, you’d see him.
Your hand hovered near the handle, but didn’t touch it as footsteps approached from the other end of the hall.
“You’re early.”
You turned, and there he was.
Matt Murdock, no, Daredevil.
The suit surprised you first. Stark red under the chipped black paint, the mask unchanged. He held himself ever so slightly differently than before. A bit more… uptight, believe it or not.
You hadn’t seen him up close in years.
Not since…
Foggy at the bar, knocking his shoulder into yours, slurring slightly, insisting he was not drunk while ordering another round anyway. “C’mon, you’re the worst liar I know—”
You managed to blink, dragging yourself back.
“Good to see you, too” you shot back automatically, the words slipping into place like muscle memory. “Is it just us?”
He didn’t react.
“Karen needs time,” he said, straight to it.
Right.
You let out a breath, glancing at the door beside you, before looking away again. “Let me guess, she wants to kill him?” you asked, a dry, almost disbelieving edge creeping in. “Is that it?”
A short, humorless laugh left him. “Is this funny to you?”
Matt had spent years learning the shape of you without sight— your voice, your breath, the rhythm of your pulse when you lied and when you didn’t. He knew what you’d become long before tonight. You killed. Not recklessly, not blindly, but when the line you drew in your own head said there wasn’t another way.
He hated that line, argued against it. He pushed against it until it put a strain on your friendship. And still, he’d learned to live with it.
Not comfortably. But he trusted your judgment, even when it made his stomach turn, even when it sounded like everything he stood against.
Rebuilding with you, though? Going back to what you all were, what you were to him, a good friend— that was something else entirely. That, he didn’t know how to do.
You shook your head, folding your arms loosely. “I forgot how preachy you can be, Murdock.”
“Yeah, well.”
Your eyes drifted back to the door without meaning to. Your mouth, however, found a safer topic to latch on to: Karen.
“She’s a ticking time bomb, Matt,” you sighed. “She always has been.”
“Would you rather she kill him, then?”
That pulled your attention back to him.
“It’s not his fault,” you said abruptly. You forced yourself to breathe, slower this time. “It’s not his fault,” you repeated. Your eyes dropped, unfocused. “Foggy…”
His name caught in your throat like it didn’t belong in the air. You pressed your lips together, trying again.
“Foggy didn’t just—” you stopped, teeth tightening hard.
You could see him, leaning over your shoulder, complaining about paperwork, stealing fries off your plate like you wouldn’t notice. Sitting between you and Matt and Karen, always talking, always there…
“He didn’t… ,” you said, voice rough now, thinner than you wanted it to be. “He didn’t deserve to… to die. He shouldn’t have died.”
The hallway felt smaller. Even Matt flinched.
“But that’s not on Dex,” you continued, resolute. “It’s my fault. I could’ve prevented this.”
You barely heard yourself say it.
But Matt did.
“What?” he said immediately, like he thought he misheard you. He started listening for irregularities in your heart beat and found none. So yes, you were telling the truth. At least you thought you were.
“It’s something I’d rather not unpack with you,” you said, brushing it off like it didn’t matter. Like it wasn’t clawing at your ribs.
“C’mon,” you said, nodding toward the door even as your chest tightened. “We didn’t come here to chat, right?”
—
The door opened, and there he was.
Dex was on a narrow cot, wrists cuffed on either side, bruises dark and blooming across his face and throat, breathing shallow like even that took effort.
Your chest tightened so hard it hurt.
And your brain, traitor that it was, dragged you into the memory of the last time you had a saw him.
The visitor room of the mental institution had always been too bright for your liking.
It was clean and controlled. It looked like it was designed to remind you that nothing in it was normal, no matter how hard you tried to pretend otherwise.
But you’d gotten used to it because of him.
Dex was already there when you walked in that day. He sat straight-backed at the table, hands folded too neatly, like he’d been waiting long enough to start counting seconds.
And the second he saw you, his entire nervous system lit up like fairy light behind his eyes.“You’re late.”
You huffed out a laugh, already walking toward him. “Relax,” you said, leaning down to press a quick kiss to his temple, like you always did. “It’s been, what? A day since I last saw you. You can handle five minutes of me being held up in security.”
“It’s not enough,” he said immediately. His eyes tracked you still, even if the movement was a bit slower from the meds.
You paused, just for a second, pulling back enough to look at him properly. “You see me every other day.”
“I know,” his eyes stayed on you, finger tapping the table. “It’s still not enough.”
You swallowed it down, forcing a lighter tone as you dropped into the seat across from him.
“Wow,” you said, reaching into your bag. “And here I thought I was doing something nice.”
That got his attention. “What?”
You pulled it out with a small flourish, holding it up between you. “Don’t you ever say I don’t bring you anything good.”
His eyes locked onto it instantly. “is that…?”
“Banana flavoured marshmallows,” you confirmed, a little smug.
There it was, a smile.
“You remembered,” he said. You had a mission in South Korea five months ago— you were barely there for a day, but you managed to grab one of those for Dex at the airport. You remembered how much he liked it, so you had managed to source an importer. It took a while, but there were very few things you wouldn’t do for him.
“Of course I did,” you replied.
You slid the bag across the table toward him, your fingers brushing his. He opened the plastic and picked one up carefully, turning it between his fingers like he was committing it to memory before taking a bite.
You watched him, watched how his shoulders relaxed.
Just like that, all the effort was worth it.
“You okay?” you asked after a moment, your voice lowered now.
He didn’t answer right away. His eyes lingered on the table, on the half-eaten marshmallow in his hand.
“Better when you’re here,” he said finally.
You looked away for a second, like that might make his words easier to stomach. You leaned forward and put your hands on his. “Yeah?”
“I think about it,” His eyes lifted back to yours, steady, unguarded in a way he rarely allowed himself to be. “When you leave.”
“What do you think about?” You tilted your head.
“When you’ll be back,” he said. “How long it’s going to take.”
He said it carefully. It’s as if he didn’t want to push too far but couldn’t help saying it anyway.
“I’ll always come back,” you reassured him.
That mattered. You saw it in the way his focus sharpened, in the way he leaned just slightly forward like he was holding onto the words. He readjusted his hand and squeezed your palm.
You sat with him that day and talked about nothing and everything. Let your knee bump his under the table like it was normal, like you weren’t separated by a bureaucratic line you so desperately want to tear down.
And when the visiting hours finally ended, you didn’t want to leave.
You never did. You would give anything to listen to him talk for more than a few hours at a time. You would give anything to coax another laugh, another smile from him.
“You’re going to be back soon?” he asked as you stood up, showing the smallest crack in the certainty he tried to keep around himself.
You smiled at him. “Soon.”
You leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. It was brief, but it still made his day.
When you pulled back, he nodded. “Soon,” he repeated under his breath.
You nodded. ‘Soon’ was good. ‘Soon’ was non-specific.
Because little did he know, you’d already agreed to a seven-day mission. Val had barely given you a choice.
You’d never been gone that long before.
Usually, missions were two days. Three days, max. And even those ones were few and far between. And then you’d come straight back to him, no matter how exhausted you were, no matter what you had to wade through to get there.
But you decided he didn’t need to know about this… extension.
You told yourself it wasn’t a big deal. That he’d be fine. That telling him that you would be gone three times as long as you usually do would only make him spiral, make him worry, make him count every hour in a way that would hurt more than help.
So you kept it to yourself.
On the sixth day of the mission, Foggy was dead.
You snapped yourself out of it.
Because now you were here, standing in front of a man you haven’t seen in more than two years.
Dex didn’t move at first.
For one horrible second, you thought he was still out, chest rising too shallow under the dim light, like whatever it took to bring him in had hollowed him out and left the shell behind.
Then when he realised someone else was in the room, his head turned slowly, and then… his eyes found you.
Oh.
For a second, he stared at you like you weren’t real. Like this was a hallucination his brain had made up to cope with his injuries. His lips parted, but nothing came out at first.
“Y-you…” his voice cracked. He swallowed hard, throat working like it hurt. “You came back.”
What he had in his voice wasn’t relief. It wasn’t even hope. It was disbelief so raw it sounded like it might collapse in on itself.
Of course this was how he reacted.
Because he had waited, back in the institution he was assigned to. He waited for every sound in the corridor. Every footstep that wasn’t yours. Every door that didn’t open.
On the fourth day, he started asking the facility staff over and over, until the answers became rehearsed, clipped and annoyed. They said you were “busy,” “not scheduled,” or “unavailable.”
Still, he waited.
On the fifth day, a staff member told him he had a visitor.
And for the first time in while, he lit up.
It had to be you, right?
He sat up too fast, eyes fixed on the door before it even opened, already bracing for the moment you’d step through and make the last five days feel like a misunderstanding he could recover from.
The door opened and… it wasn’t you.
It was Vanessa Fisk.
The light in him shut off instantly.
As he sat down, he had a hollow, sinking realization that he might’ve wrong to expect you at all.
Maybe you had gotten sick of visiting him. Of not being able to touch him as much as you wanted, of not being able to hold him as much as you wanted. After all, why would you settle for a broken man when you could have a free man?
Behind you, Matt went completely still, listening, measuring, probably hearing the way Dex’s heart was starting to race, the way his breathing kept catching like it didn’t know how to settle.
“You came back,” he said again, gentler now, like he was afraid saying it too loud would make you disappear. His eyes dragged over your face, searching frantically. “I thought… I thought you wouldn’t. I thought you—”
“I know, ” you said, but it came out thinner than you meant, as if the words had to fight their way out.
Your voice alone was enough to undo him further.
His breath hitched again, like your voice made it real in a way his eyes alone couldn’t.
“You’re here,” he repeated, and now there was something fragile in it. “You actually… y-you came back.”
He tried to push himself up, instinct overriding his senses, the cuffs snapping tight with a harsh metallic sound that made his whole body jolt. It didn’t stop him immediately. He strained against them anyway as he got on his knees, like he could get to you if he just tried hard enough.
“I-I…” his voice came faster now, stumbling over itself. “I thought you left, I thought—”
“Dex…”
“You said soon,” he cut you off, the words rushing out like he’d been holding them in for two years too long. “You said you’d be back soon.”
Your stomach dropped.
His eyes were shiny now. Not crying yet, but right there on the edge of it.
“You didn’t come,” he said. “I waited. I kept…I thought maybe you got held up, I thought maybe—”
His breath stuttered, like the memory of it was catching up to him all over again.
“And then you didn’t,” he finished, voice thinning.
Behind you, Matt shifted slightly.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” Matt said, directed at you, but Dex flinched anyway, like any sound that wasn’t yours was an intrusion.
His gaze snapped onto you, almost panicked now, like he thought he might take you away again.
“You’re here now,” he said quickly, like he could rewrite the past by insisting on the present. “You came back.”
The words were breaking apart as he said them. He needed them to be true.
Your chest ached so bad it felt like it might cave in.
“Leave us alone.” It came out rougher than you meant.
“He’s not stable,” Matt said again, more firmly this time.
He was right. You could hear it in every fracture, every broken piece.
But Dex was still looking at you like you were the only thing holding him together, barely.
“Matt,” you said, and your voice almost gave out on his name. “Please.”
You knew he had somewhere to be anyway. Why was he even here, with you? Did he just now realise that this might be a bad idea? That you ever had one true weakness, and that it was him? Did he just now realise that if he left, he might just come back later tonight to an empty room?
Dex didn’t move now. Didn’t even try to fight the cuffs again.
“You came back,” he whispered like a prayer.
Behind you, Matt exhaled reluctantly. “You don’t know what state he’s in.”
“I do,” you said, and he had no idea. You knew him better than anyone in the world, so Matt insisting on playing chaperone was only irritating you. “Please.”
You heard him sigh.
The door opened, then closed.
Just like that, he was gone, footsteps disappearing down the hall.
It was just you and Dex now.
Dex let out a breath that almost turned into a laugh, except it fractured halfway through.
You had no buffer. No witnesses.
You stepped forward without meaning to. “What did you do?”
You knew, of course. You’ve seen the news. You just wanted to hear him say it, you needed him to know what he thought he did and why he thought he did it.
“I fixed it,” he said immediately, a little too quickly. “You don’t have to… I fixed it.”
“What did you do?” you asked again.
Against all odds, Dex looked pleased. “I balanced it.”
“No,” you let out a deep breath you didn’t realise you were holding, “you didn’t.”
“I did,” he insisted, words starting to tumble now. “I took something from you, so I took something from him, it’s even now, it’s—”
“Dex.”
“I killed your friend, I killed Foggy,” he said flatly. “So Vanessa had to die.”
Oh. So that was what this was about.
It might not make sense to you, but you could see now, how it would make sense to him. How it would twist the cords in his mind and pretend to untangle it.
“I balanced the scales,” he said again, faster now, unraveling, beads of sweat travelling down his temple, to his neck, to his bare chest as the restraints rattled. “You don’t have to hate me anymore, it’s equal, it’s fixed, you can love me now, I can die knowing you love me—”
“What?” you snapped, putting a hand on your face. “You want to die? What the fuck does you that have to do with anything you’ve done?”
“My job here is done.” he shot back, agitation spiking. “You’re just not seeing it yet, but you will, you always do—”
“Stop.”
He didn’t.
“I did it for you,” he pushed on, voice rising, cracking, desperate. “So you’d come back, so you would forgive me, and once you do, I can finally—”
“Stop talking,” you put your hands through your hair, exasperated.
“You’re here now, see? It worked, it—”
“Shut up, Dex!”
He froze for half a second, but the silence didn’t last long. He snapped right back into his spiral, this time worse.
“I fixed it,” he insisted, louder now, breath coming fast, shoulders jerking against the restraints. “You don’t get it, I had to make it even or you’d never come back before I go, you’d never—”
Fuck.
Fuck’s sake.
Did you really have to do this?
You grabbed your concealed gun from under your shirt and raised it into his view.
His eyes snapped to it instantly. “What are you—”
You pressed the barrel under your chin.
“Hey!” He pulled on his restraints. If there weren’t dents in the metal before, there were definitely now.
You stared at his angelic hazel eyes as you clicked the safety off.
Dex broke. “No!”
He surged forward, the cuffs yanking him back hard with a metallic crack. The cot screeched against the floor as he thrashed, sanity tearing loose under his skin.
“No, no, no! Don’t do that—don’t…”
Metal slammed, his whole body jerking, twisting, fighting restraints that didn’t give.
“Please,” he choked out, voice breaking apart as he pulled on the cuffs as if he could rip through them, wrists straining, breath turning wild. “You don’t… p-put it down! put it down right now—”
“Dex…”
“NO!” he barked, frantic, eyes locked on the gun like it was the only thing in existence. “Not you, not you, not you…”
You sighed, resting your finger on the trigger. You could pull at any second now.
“Dex!”
He didn’t stop.
“I fixed it for you,” he was spiraling now, words slurring into each other desperately. “I made it right, I made it equal, you’re here now so it worked, just put it down, j-just—”
“Goddammit, Dex!” You shouted, and it echoed through the room.
He finally stopped, and you finally spoke a language he understood: that the only way to get him to listen was to threaten to hurt you.
“Shut up and fucking listen!” you snapped, voice shaking with an emotion hotter than anger, “or you’re going to have to fish an adamantium bullet out of my cold dead body until your fingers are smeared with my liquified brain, you understand?”
All you got from him now was silence.
It worked.
His chest was still heaving, eyes wide. They were glued to you, on the gun, on your finger, on the very real, very immediate possibility of losing you again.
So you stepped closer.
The gun stayed where it was, pressing even further into your skin. The rest of you gave in, closing the distance inch by inch until you were standing right in front of him, close enough to feel the uneven rhythm of his breathing.
Dex didn’t retreat.
He was still there on his knees on the cot, shoulders drawn.
His eyes tracked you like you were the only fixed point in a collapsing world.
You raised your free hand slowly and reached out slowly, giving him time to flinch, to recoil…
He didn’t.
Your hand found his face, cupping it carefully, thumb brushing over the scar carved into his cheek. He hadn’t had it the last time you saw him.
You had assumed that Matt had given it to him at Josie’s on the night that Foggy died.
That scar was a reminder of what he had done. And he had to carry it everywhere.
You exhaled, your touch softening without thinking, tracing it again like you could map the moment it happened, like you could undo it just by understanding its shape.
Dex made a whiny sound. It was small, broken, as if it sat between a breath and a moan. His eyes fluttered for half a second, leaning into your touch before he could stop himself.
You studied him. It had been a while since he was this close to you.
He was… pretty.
You’d always thought so. Not in a conventional way, or a safe way. It was almost unnatural, the kind of beauty that wasn’t meant to comfort, but to unsettle. It was the kind of beauty you imagine ancient gods to possess: radiant and terrible all at the same.
Your thumb moved from the scar to his mouth. You pressed lightly against his lower lip, testing.
He parted for you immediately. He didn’t even have to think about it. It was pure instinct.
His breath hitched as your thumb slid past his lip, resting against the warmth of his tongue.
Fuck, he missed this.
His tongue moved, brushing against your thumb in a slow, searching motion, as his eyes rolled back slightly to the back of his skull.
It was trust, desire, and recognition all the same.
You didn’t pull away.
Instead, you pressed down slightly, feeling the way his breath faltered around it, the way his body went still again, utterly focused on you and what you were allowing. What you weren’t taking away.
After a moment, you drew your thumb back out, slow enough that he followed the motion without meaning to, lips parting just slightly before he caught himself.
You didn’t give him time to think about it.
Your thumb brushed across his lower lip again, smearing the moisture of his spit there, grounding him in a physical sensation.
“Nothing…” you choked, then tried again. “Nothing you do will balance the scales,” you finally managed to rasp out.
His breathing hitched again.
“Foggy’s death…” you paused, forcing the words through the tightness in your throat, “…was my fault.”
For a second, he just looked at you. For once, he was the one trying to make sense of your beliefs and judgement..
“No,” he murmured against your skin. “It’s not.”
Your breath hitched, but you didn’t pull your hand away. Your thumb stayed near his cheek, your palm still cradling his jaw, holding him there even as your fingers tightened slightly.
“It is,” you said firmly.
His head shook faintly against your hand, rejecting it. It’s as if he physically couldn’t let it settle.
“But you hated me for it,” he said, voice thinner now, searching your face for confirmation, for a fact he could anchor himself to.
“No.” You shook your head immediately, your grip on his face tightening without meaning to. “No, no, sweetheart. I never hated you.”
What?
“But you didn’t come back,” he said, a swell of tears spilling down his cheek. You caught it and wiped it away. “You didn’t go to the trial. You didn’t go to the sentencing. And you… you don’t visit anymore.”
It fucking hurt to see him this was.
“I didn’t go,” you said slowly, each word dragged up from the pit of your stomach, “because I couldn’t look at you… and see what I made you do.”
His brow furrowed immediately, confused.
“I should’ve told you,” you cut in, your voice tightening now, the words starting to spill faster. “About the mission. I should’ve told you I’d be gone that long. I should’ve—”
Your hand trembled against his face, but you didn’t stop.
“I didn’t think, I didn’t know… I didn’t know Vanessa would know I was gone,” you continued, choking on your words, “I didn’t know she’d take advantage of that. That she’d come to you when I wasn’t there to talk you down—”
“No.” Dex shook his head harder now, the movement pressing into your palm. “That’s not—”
He couldn’t even finish it, because he believed there was no version of this where you were the one at fault. Not in his mind. How could you possibly do anything wrong?
“You’re not—” his voice hitched, desperate now, like he was trying to put a puzzle piece of the truth into place, “you’re not responsible for that. You didn’t make me do anything. I—”
“What did Vanessa tell you?” you interrupted suddenly.
He blinked. “What?”
“What did she say would happen,” you pressed, your thumb brushing his cheek again without thinking, “if you helped her?”
Dex hesitated for a second. “She said… I could be free.”
Your chest tightened.
“That I wouldn’t have to be…” he swallowed, eyes flickering down for half a second before finding you again, “…half a man for you anymore.”
Fuck.
“Dex,” your hand tightened on his face again, your other still holding the gun in place beneath your chin, the barrel pressing harder now as your jaw shifted with every word. “Don’t you see?”
“No.”
“If I hadn’t gone on that mission,” you pushed on, faster, louder, the words tumbling over each other, “if I was there, I would’ve talked you out of it. I always do.”
Your fingers trembled against his skin, but you didn’t let go.
“I would’ve stopped you,” you said, convinced with terrifying certainty. “I would’ve stopped your fucking rampage, I wouldn’t have even let you get that far! I….”
The barrel pressed harder into your skin as your mouth moved, your grip tightening around the gun without realizing it.
“Don’t you see?” you repeated, voice cracked. “It’s my fault.”
Dex’s eyes snapped to the gun.
He hadn’t stopped watching it, but now he saw it. The way your finger trembled on the trigger. He saw the way it pressed deeper every time you spoke, every time you believed what you were saying a little more.
“No,” he said.
Dex’s breathing turned uneven again, but not the same as before. Not frantic in the way it had been when you walked in.
“No,” he said again, louder this time, his body tensing against the restraints as far as they’d allow. His eyes flicked between your face and the gun, tracking every movement of your hand. “You don’t get to—” his voice strained, tightening with every word, “you don’t get to say that and then—”
His breath hitched when your finger shifted slightly.
“—and then do that,” he finished, voice breaking at the edges now.
Because now, he could see the way you were starting to believe you deserved it. “Put it down. Please.”
But you didn’t hear him.
“Balance, huh?” you whispered, almost taunting.
Your thumb drifted back to his scar beneath your palm, tracing the line of it again, like you were committing it to memory in a different way now.
If you believed that you were as responsible for Foggy's death as he was, and you did, shouldn’t you have something to remember it by, too? Something you had to carry everywhere, too?
Dex’s breath hitched.
“You want balance, Dex?” you asked, genlter this time, but you sounded off.
His head shook immediately, frantically pressing his face into your hand like he could stop you just by being close enough.
“Not like this,” he said, voice tightening. “No.”
“You want it so bad,” you went on, almost like you weren’t hearing him anymore, your attention flicking between his face and the gun still pressed beneath your chin. “You killed Vanessa to make it even, right?”
“No. No, that’s not—”
You tilted your head slightly, considering him, your grip on the gun shifting. “Then let’s make it even.”
The resolution in your voice made his entire body go rigid.
“Please,” he said again, panic breaking through. “No, don’t—”
You adjusted your wrist, quickly angling the barrel. It was not directly under your chin anymore, titled it forty-five degrees.
“Stop,” he choked out, pulling hard against the restraints, metal biting into his wrists. “Stop, baby, please. Please…”
You were tired of this. Tired of him thinking he deserved it when you knew for a fact you were the deciding factor in why Foggy had died…
So you pulled the trigger.
The sound boomed through the room, deafening in the confined space. You stumbled back, hand pulled away from his face, as your grip on the gun faltered. It clattered to the other side of the room
For a split second, you didn’t move.
Then you felt the pain.
It was white-hot and blinding, tearing across your cheek as the adamantium round grazed your skin instead of ending your life.
Dex flinched.
Your hand shot up, fingers brushing the wound.
You stared at the blood on your fingertips like it was exactly what you wanted.
Then you laughed.
It came out wrong. It was a little too high, like one of those cute little giggles that he adored so much.
You could already feel the vertical cut on your cheek, matching the horizontal one on his face.
You were his mirror drawn in flesh.
It was unwise, you knew, especially because it wasn’t just any weapon. It was experimental, and even you weren’t fully briefed on it. Adamantium rounds weren’t meant to graze skin. They were meant to pierce, to hold, to do things that conventional physics couldn’t. It was meant to kill supersoldiers. It was meant to cut through thick alien skin. You had no idea what they would do to living tissue at a superficial angle.
But right now, you didn’t give a shit.
You pressed your hand back to his face anyway, smearing blood across his cheek with the same gentleness as before.
“Balance, Dex,” you said again, voice shaking now but still smiling.
You lowered yourself onto the cot, the thin frame creaking under your weight, your balance still slightly off, but you didn’t care. The room still rang faintly in your ears, your thoughts moving too fast, too sharp, like they were skipping steps.
Dex moved closer the second he could reach.
He pressed his forehead to yours like he needed to make sure you were real. His eyes snapped to your cheek again, to the blood that hadn’t stopped, a thin line still slipping down your skin.
“You’re bleeding,” he said, tighter.
You let out a breath that almost turned into a chuckle.
“I know,” you said, a little too brightly. “It’s fine. It’s…” you shook your head faintly, like you were trying to catch up with your own thoughts, “… it’s good.”
He frowned, but didn’t argue.
Instead, he leaned in. His breath touched your cheek ghosting over the blood like he was measuring where to start.
And then he licked you.
The tip of his tongue brushed lightly against your skin, just at the edge of the blood. He was testing, making sure you wouldn’t pull away.
You didn’t.
Why would you? You liked it. Even when it stung a little.
“It’s okay,” you said, relaxing your head back a little, letting Dex clean up the red from the start of the wound, all the way to the liquid that had made its way down. “We’re okay.”
Dex leaned in closer, lapping up nearer to the wound. He didn’t rush it, like he was trying to clean you without hurting you further.
Your head tilted slightly, giving him more space without thinking.
“We both paid,” you said suddenly, almost thoughtful. “See? That’s what you wanted, right?”
He shifted closer, his breath catching faintly between each pass, his focus narrowing completely to the cut, to the blood still lingering there. His tongue moved slower, tracing near the edge of the wound but never pressing into it.
His hand shifted as much as the restraints allowed, fingers brushing against your arm, then settling there. He was holding you in place, or maybe holding himself steady.
He licked the stream down your neck, and you gave him a breathy, angelic moan of pleasure that sent a jolt of satisfaction straight down his spine.
“It matches,” you whispered, like it was a revelation. “We match.”
As much as he hated seeing your scar, he couldn’t help but smile a little.
“You’re not supposed to get hurt,” he mumbled against your jaw, teeth red now.
You let out a breathy laugh.
“Too late,” you said.
What had been slow, deliberate licks turned lighter and shorter. It became less about cleaning, more about touch. His lips brushed your skin in their place, tentative at first.
A pressed a soft kiss near the edge of the wound. Then another just beneath it. Then again, closer to your jawline.
These kisses came unevenly in scattered, small, points of contact, like he was trying to map you back into his memory. Each one lingered a fraction longer than the mass, his restraint slipping away.
You didn’t stop him.
Your breathing had slowed, but your head still felt light, your thoughts still running a million miles an hour.
He just kept pressing those small, almost reverent kisses along your cheek, your neck, your temple, your face until they edged closer to your mouth.
There, he hesitated.
He was close enough that you could feel his breath against your lips, like he remembered exactly what this was, exactly what it meant, and didn’t trust himself to take it without permission.
So you were the one who closed the gap.
You pressed your lips against his. Your hands came up fast, wrapping around the back of his neck, pulling him in like you needed to prove he was still human.
He made a small, broken sound against your mouth as he kissed you back.
Fuck, your lips.
For him, it hit all at once.
You were as warm, as soft, as sweet as when he first kissed you all those years ago. You had remained unchanged, like no time had passed at all. It was just as he remembered, just as consuming, just as euphoric. It was as if everything else in the world disappeared the second you touched him.
It was like breathing after drowning.
His whole body reacted to it, straining forward, instinctively chasing more as his hands pulled hard against the restraints with a sharp metallic clink. He tried to close the distance further, like the cuffs were an insult now. It was just another unbearable barrier between him and what he’d been missing for two years.
The kiss deepened quickly as you tightened your grip at the back of his neck, fingers threading into his hair, holding him there as much as pushing yourself flush against his bare chest.
more, closer, don’t stop, he thought.
The restraints rattled again, louder this time.
He was breathing harder now, frustrated, his hands flexing uselessly against the metal as he tried to reach you properly, to touch you the way he wanted to.
The sound was loud enough to grab your attention that time.
You pulled back just enough to look at him. His eyes were blown wide, locked onto you, his whole body pulled tight with restraint in more ways than one.
You glanced toward the other side of the room. It was a pair of keys hanging by the door. It most likely belonged to the handcuffs.
“If I let you go…” you said, looking back at him. You trailed your hand down his stomach, settling on the waistband of his pants “…will you behave?”
“Yes,” he said immediately, breathlessly, desperately. “Yes, please. I’ll…” his voice hitched, then he rushed out, “I’ll do whatever you tell me.”
You could tell he pathetically meant it, too
He just wanted to touch you. He needed to.
His eyes flicked back to your lips like he couldn’t help it, like he was already half gone again just from the memory of it.
So you made a choice.
A very you kind of choice.
Let’s just say…. you had no idea what you were going to say to Matt when he came back.
You had no idea how you were going to explain why you were the one chained to the bed (you very much asked for it), wrists pulled taut, skin flushed and marked in ways that you liked. You had no idea how you were going to explain why your breathing was still uneven as Dex sat free at your side, patching up a bullet graze wound on your cheek with the kind of focus that felt indecent after what you’d just let him do to you.
So yeah.
It’s safe to say that you made up.
-end.
extra note: I cannot stress this enough, the song this fic was inspired by is so Dex x reader coded. I strongly suggest reading this while listening to the song.
Batmom!Reader who just loves bonding with Damian so much.
At first it was all done carefully when the boy just arrived in your life, what approach should a new stepmom even have when it comes to someone like him? The only thing you could give was time, and maybe that’s exactly what he needed judging by the fact that he warms up to the place under your guidance, helping him get used to the nooks and crannies of the manor, driving him to school and back even though Bruce had insisted on just asking the chauffeur to do so, staying up late to get familiar with his comfort foods and how to make them, always making sure that he had freshly brewed tea and cut up fruits when it’s time to do homework.
You loved seeing him be just a kid in his element, making time to take him to the arcades in southern Gotham, visiting new cafes together, getting him familiar with the amusement parks or taking him on walks to buy sweet treats after a class with his tutors.
The boy eventually had to introduce you to Talia, both of you were important to him, just in somewhat different ways. Seeing the relief on both of your faces when you realised that there’s always another person that loves him like a son meant the world to him.
You realised one day that Damian liked seeing you in your element, whether it was at work, where he’d sometimes stick around in your office at the Wayne Tower, watching you reviewing papers from Lucius after you’ve ordered food delivery for three, knowing that Bruce didn’t have lunch yet either, or at home, when you’d be arranging bouquets of fresh flowers from the garden with soft lighting falling on your pyjamas.
In the Wayne house, beside Alfred-thee-butler, you were the only one Damian trusted with handling Titus and Alfred-the-cat when he was away. It became a tradition of sorts, to send the boy photos of his dog playing or the cat laying somewhere in the library, sleeping beside your side of the bed with Alfred eventually just spread around the pillow like a halo.
No matter where you are or how afar from each other Damian will make sure to consult with you when it comes to what to wear, pairing various pants, tops and jackets on a video call, asking what should he wear and sneaking into your walk in wardrobe to steal a bracelet or two (under supervision, that is).
batmom!reader who also helps Damian with revising material when he’s in med school teehee
𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: bruce wayne x wife!reader (+ batmom!reader x platonic!jason)
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: bruce had promised he would always come back to you, his last mission makes his word difficult to keep. when news spread of mrs. wayne being all alone, suitors and trouble start to appear. all while your husband is trying to return to your side!
𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: angst, crack, fluff, violence, happy ending, sexual innuendos, diana + clark + dick cameo, pervy men, bitchy women, a little bit of everything, bruce being the #imissmywife final boss, 11k words, this was absolute HELL to edit so if there are mistakes please tell me and i’ll happily fix them! REALLY recommended to play somethin’ stupid by frank + nancy sinatra, you’ll know when to play the song trust, also idk if the format is weird PLEASE tell me if it is
THE artificial hum of the Batcave buzzes around you, the only glow coming from the massive screen of the Batcomputer, its harsh glare in the dark making you squint.
You wrap your robe closer to yourself, softly rubbing the silk between your fingers for more comfort. In the late hours of night, the steel walls and long shadows of the cave don’t feel familiar— the glint of metal or the actual depths of the place make it all feel more distant.
Your eyes get used to the screen’s light and you make out the message that’s written in a computer font.
COMPLICATIONS IN MISSION. DEEP SPACE. MAY BE ANOTHER MONTH. I LOVE YOU.
Your heart drops and you’re all too aware of the cold in your body, not the one that comes from the chilly breezes of the place. No; it’s the coldness you get when the other side of the bed is empty, the cold bathroom without its vapor because no one has used it before, the cold that comes when you miss an essential part of your being.
Luckily, crime has been low. Dick and his hero friends have taken over patrol and are doing a fantastic job. Jason tags along for the easier missions. He’s not getting into any dangerous situations under your watch any time soon, thank you very much.
You pinch the silk again, but it slides through your digits. You had forgotten to bake brownies for Dick and his friends. Oh well, you can do it now— there’s no point coming up to bed again— you haven’t been getting much sleep anyway.
You check the time: 3:29. With a small sigh, you go up to the kitchen, careful not to wake Alfred. By four, there’s a fresh batch of fudgy, crusted-top but gooey-inside brownies. You bite one; the hollow feeling in your stomach is still there. You take another bite, it just feels like throwing crumbs into an empty space.
I love you too.
Next morning you’re in a chirpier mood, humming a familiar tune under your breath (Frank Sinatra). Jason is grumbling sleepily beside you, stuffing his mouth with toast and eggs and really everything else on the table— including the no-sugar cookies he claims taste like cardboard. That kid will eat about anything, and with Flash speed.
You open the morning paper before pushing your plate of eggs towards Jason.
“No, Ma, it’s your breakfast.”
You smile softly, brushing some of his loose curls, the end of the newspaper flopping forward. “It’s okay, baby, I’m not very hungry.”
Jason doesn’t look too convinced, but after a bit more insisting he happily gobbles them up.
Your stomach drops when you read the heading of today’s article.
IS THE WAYNES’ FAIRY TALE LOVE STORY OVER?
Bruce Wayne hasn’t been seen in Gotham for over a month, and despite Wayne Enterprises claiming it’s for business reasons, close sources to the family confirm this is a lie. Apparently, he and Mrs. Wayne are undergoing a long and tumultuous divorce. For some reason— yet to be uncovered— he’s left their adoptive son (Jason Todd-Wayne) and the ancestral Wayne home under her care. Something doesn’t add up, and this reporter will find out what! While I personally rooted for the young couple, life happens and it is often not easy…
The article continues, droning on about possible reasons why the divorce might have happened and blah blah blah. You finish your coffee and turn to the economy section; the gossip always makes your stomach churn. It has gotten better with time, of course, but this particular topic… there’s not much you can do about it, only choosing to ignore it.
Besides, who reads the gossip section of the Gotham Gazette?
Apparently, everybody.
While you drop Jason off at school, the other mothers look at you with a mixture of pity and thinly veiled disgust. You just give them a polite smile before getting into your car again. Inside— and hidden by the tinted windows— you pinch your nose and put on some more Frank Sinatra. The weekend can’t come soon enough.
You start the car and secretly stare at the other mothers from the rearview mirror; they’re still huddled amongst each other, their designer purses brushing as they lean closer to talk in hushed tones. One of them glances at your car and her lips turn into a mocking smile while she laughs with the others.
You drive away.
When you’re going through Old Gotham— where the trees are more naked and time is more evident on the wasted bricks of buildings and the gothic elements crowning certain places— Lucius calls you.
The music halts at the same time as the light turns red.
He greets you with your name. “I assume you’re on your way.”
“Yeah, I’ll be at the office in five.” The light turns green. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know,” the man sighs, “two of the board members were acting a bit… weird— it’s probably nothing, but I thought I’d tell you just in case.”
“Weird how?”
“Whispered conversations mostly. Again, it’s probably nothing. But with Bruce out of town they might get funny ideas.”
Shortly after the League was funded, Bruce created a protocol; if he had to be away for more than three weeks, all of his power as owner and CEO and major stockholder of Wayne Enterprises would go to you. You insisted it had to be Lucius, but it was legally easier for it to be you. The downside is the other board members don’t respect you as much as they respect (or fear?) Bruce. But so far they haven’t been out of line.
You hope they don’t start now.
“Thanks, Lucius. I’ll be on watch just in case.”
You say your goodbyes as the familiar Wayne building comes into view; bright, sleek, impossibly tall, with that massive W looking down at you.
The moment you enter the office you feel the stares, from interns to higher-ups. People at the Wayne building always react the same way to you. Just like clockwork, you think.
They’ll look at the length of your legs, settle on your hips, climb a little higher and— oh. Finally, your face and a soft smile that greets them.
Some try to initiate conversation, but you don’t want to be late, so you just make polite small talk before continuing your path to the elevator. The moment the metallic doors close, the outside world, and your smile slips, you blink at the metal and press the button for the last floor.
You’re looking at your phone— checking if either Alfred, Dick or Jason need something— when the doors slide open.
The neutral female voice announces the floor the person clicked. Huh, the same as yours. You lift your eyes from the screen and meet his.
You immediately recognize him; medium build, blonde fine hair, an elongated nose, and startling blue eyes like two pale beams. Nolan Morrison, one of the main shareholders of the company.
“Mr. Morrison,” you greet, “good morning.”
He grins, a phony thing that makes your eyes narrow. “Mrs. Wayne.” His eyes study your figure. “Looking as good as ever.”
You flash your ring, the great rock catching the light of the elevator. “You’re too polite.”
He laughs. “Oh, don’t be modest. You surely know the effect you have on people.”
Your stomach starts tightening and you don’t allow yourself to look at the rising elevator numbers, just pray the doors open.
Nolan doesn’t notice your discomfort.
“That’s probably why Bruce married you, huh?”
Your eyes snap back. “Excuse me?” Your tone lacks all of its characteristic warmth.
He still grins— that stupid, stupid grin— he must think himself very smart. “You’re still hot.” He laughs, amused by himself. And you’re too in shock to put into words everything you want to say to this man. “I don’t mind you being someone’s seconds, is all.”
“Mr. Morrison,” you snap, “I’m still very happily married, thank you very much.” You force yourself to slow down and flash your ring— oh honestly! How do you miss a ring that big?— “You’d do well in remembering that until Bruce comes back, which he is, I’m your boss. So either you treat me with respect or I’ll be forced to take action.”
Nolan opens and closes his mouth, his grin wiped off, and you internally smile. However, it’s quickly replaced with a sneer and the upward tug of his mouth.
Before he can reply, the doors finally slide open; smiling softly is Lucius, a cup of coffee in each of his hands. He greets you by your first name, and you reciprocate with an even brighter smile.
Your heels click against the floor, and you don’t even spare Nolan Morrison a glance.
“Oh, Nolan, hello.” Lucius hands you one of the coffees. “The rest are already there. Why did you leave?”
You look at him, waiting for his response, but he doesn’t dare even flick his eyes your way. “Just stretching my legs.”
“Good, good.” Lucius turns to you again and you both leave for his office, leaving a very humiliated man.
When you’re out of earshot, Lucius’ voice drops. “Did something happen?”
You snort. “He’s just unbelievably rude, that’s all.”
Lucius doesn’t look calmer. If anything, his eyebrows sink even further. “He’s one of the two I saw whispering.” He opens the office doors for you.
You hum and step into the familiar space. “Figures.”
After revising some shared notes on the meeting and other miscellaneous matters, you and the man go to the main room where the shareholders’ meeting will be held.
Everyone is already seated, chatting amongst themselves, but the noise quickly dissipates as you two step inside.
Lucius takes the seat closest to the door, while you have to walk the length of the long table until you reach your seat.
You neatly set your notes down and take out a nice blue ink pen, clicking it open. “Where should we start?”
First comes the heavy-loading company numbers and more technical matters. You write clean notes on your pad and the rhythm of comments and feedback flows seamlessly.
Then comes the new integration to the multinational insurance plans for outside Gotham.
“So,” you look at your printed notes, “we now cover alien damage in Metropolis?”
Margaret, the shareholder in charge of the project, nods. “We cover what LexCorp covered, with the addition of pet and emotional damage.”
You smile. “Perfect. How are the results coming along?”
Margaret shares the numbers, and they’re actually really good.
“But what about Queen Industries?” someone else asks. “They’ve also gotten into the insurance business.”
You wave your hand lightly. “We’re Gotham-based. Anything happens in this city on the daily and we survive. People buy our insurance because we have a credible background— the worst thing that can happen in Star City is if a cat gets stuck in a tree.” The whole table laughs and nods in agreement. You obviously know this is not true; Oliver works incredibly hard to keep his city safe, but a little humour doesn’t hurt anybody. “Plus, our packages are cheaper.”
Things go well until the last point on the agenda comes up; the Martha Wayne scholarships. You and Bruce had started the initiative a few years ago, and apparently its success was… rocky at best.
You have a stack of a hundred papers or so in front of you, not a single corner out of place, just simple crisp white papers. But your gut is tugging down.
You try to read the first page, but it’s only a simple compulsory introduction for legal requirements. The wrongness in your gut expands to your stomach.
“Is there something wrong?”
You snap your eyes away, but you don’t move to grab your pen and sign. “Not at all, I’ll just sign them later. Let’s go back to this month’s numbers,”
you dart at your notes despite knowing there’s nothing amiss, “the IT department could ease up on the company’s spending on that nearby bakery.”
You miss the worried glances (everyone else does, as a matter of fact), and the uncomfortable feeling in your body hasn’t left you.
Your dress glitters like moonlight and flows like the sinuous waters of a river. Beside you, Jason tugs at his tie.
He huffs. “I hate these stuffy galas.”
You laugh and crouch down to his eye level. “We just have to be here for an hour and then we can go back home.”
“And we can continue reading Emma?” he asks excitedly.
You smooth his tie and kiss his forehead, slowly rising again. “Mm, no. You have school tomorrow.”
He groans. “Why can’t Bruce be here to deal with this?”
“He’ll be back soon enough,” you reply easily.
Jason hums, and the topic quickly shifts to his day at school. People greet you both, pinching his too-rosy cheeks and assessing your figure. As always, pleasantries are exchanged until the next batch of people arrives.
But tonight is unlike past galas; you feel more… stared at. Jason has disappeared to the dessert table and you talk with some shareholders, but you can’t ignore the looking and whispering.
You internally roll your eyes. It appears everyone does read the gossip section of the Gazette.
You politely excuse yourself and go to the bar. As you make your way there, you see one of the moms from school whispering to another group of women. You meet her eyes and she smiles brightly at you.
“A martini, please.”
The bartender nods and begins mixing your drink.
“Mrs. Wayne?”
A chair scrapes beside you and a man sits down. You recognize him as one of the company’s seniors.
“Mr. Carlisle, hello.” You greet.
He smiles, pleased to be recognized. “I just wanted to thank you in person.”
The bartender slides your drink over to you, the stem cold under your fingertips. “For what?” you smile curiously.
“The Martha Wayne scholarship,” he replies with a slight blush, “my daughter is studying medicine thanks to it.” He smiles. “She’s in her second year now.”
You feel light in your chest. “That’s great! Does she know what she wants to specialize in already?”
He nods. “Yes, yes. She wants to be a paediatrician.”
You are about to reply when suddenly the entire room falls silent.
“And you don’t get to say that about my Ma!”
Your back stiffens; you recognize that voice. You rush a goodbye to Mr. Carlisle and hurry toward Jason.
The people are still frozen, almost caught in a spell, as they watch Jason shout at a man.
You have to shove a woman aside to reach him.
“What is going on here?” you glare at the man and squeeze Jason’s shoulder, your hand settling at the small of his back.
The man scoffs, his face red and the flute of champagne in his hand dangerously empty. “Tell this kid to respect his elders.”
“Maybe his elders should learn to behave first.”
Someone gasps behind you.
“Let’s go, Jason.”
Jason’s chest is rising and falling too quickly, the anger practically radiating off him. The moment the cold air of the street hits your skin, you text Alfred to pick you up.
“Jason,” you meet his eyes, “what happened?”
“Nothing,” he bites out.
“Jason,” you say softly. “Things are easier when you share them.”
He sighs, and the rhythm of his heart slows. “They were saying mean things about you,” he looks down at the pavement. “And I got angry.”
You wrap him in a hug, his small head pressed against your stomach. He hugs you back. You tighten your hold and press a kiss to his hair. “People always have something to say. The best thing we can do is ignore it. They’ll eventually get bored.”
He pulls back slightly. “But it’s wrong— what they were saying. It doesn’t matter if they stop or not, they can’t say that stuff.”
You’re not going to ask what they said. “You already fight as Robin. I don’t want you fighting for me too.”
He hugs you again. “I love you, Ma.”
Your eyes sting, and your heart is practically going to burst with the love you hold for this boy. Your son in everything but blood. “I love you, Jay.”
You sit crossed legged in Bruce’s chair, the cold leather sinking under your weight. The scholarship papers are spread out before you. Your pijamas— which consists of one of Bruce’s shirts and a pair of sweatpants— are losing their scent, you inhale the cotton and realise his perfume is much fainter now than a month ago.
You perk up the moment the study’s door open, thinking it’s Alfred again reminding you to sleep. It’s not, it’s Jason. Rubbing his eyes and hair sticking in odd angles, he comes up to you.
“How long have you been here?”
“A little while only.” About an hour give or take. “You should be sleeping, baby.”
He nods, now reading the papers. “Yeah well, you should too.”
You laugh but don’t reply. “See anything interesting?”
A beat passes. “Yeah actually,” he points at one of the papers, “this neighbourhood doesn’t receive the Martha Wayne scholarship money.”
Your stomach falls. “What?”
He notices your worried face. “No, no. I say it because they don’t need it. This neighbourhood is under Penguin, and a year ago some of his senior goons unionised.”
“Penguin has to deal with unions?”
Jason nods. “Yup. So anyways, he now offers funding for those kids who have great grades.”
You blink slowly and pick up a bright yellow highlighter, you swipe it evenly through the name of the neighbourhood. “That’s actually really helpful.”
“So I can help you?” His eyes light up.
“Hah, no way.” You pick up your computer and the papers. “But we can move to the couch, you sleep and I finish this.”
He pretends to think about it. “I think it’s a deal.”
When you call Lucius to cite an emergency board meeting for this same afternoon, you’re actually in a better mood than yesterday.
Luckily, you don’t bump into Nolan into the elevator. But when you step into the room, he and the others look slightly worried.
“Good afternoon,” you sit in your place, “this is about the Martha Wayne scholarships, and I understand the entire board has to be present for this.” You look at the woman from legal, she nods.
You pull the stack of papers down. “I will not be signing none of these until I see the evidence that the money is going where it’s needed.”
You show them the third page. “Everything that’s in yellow are the discrepancies, I’ve already sent the copies to the department.”
“But that’s going to take us another week,” one of the shareholders says— Conrad, you think. “We don’t have time.”
“Time for what? Last time I checked your department is in charge of energy.”
He goes red. “I’m just saying.”
“Well, this is what is going to happen.” You look at Nolan. “I understand your department does this sort of thing.”
He nods slowly. “We do, but Conrad is right, time is tight.”
You pinch your eyebrows. “Don’t we have interns? It’s a simple task. Just check that the money is going where it needs to.”
Nobody else says anything, and you internally smile.
You and Nolan are the only two people in the elevator. And again, it’s moving far too slowly.
You’re staring at the elevator doors, painfully aware of his eyes trained on your face. Someone else comes in, you sigh in relief, they come out again.
“Is something wrong?” You ask, finally acknowledging him.
He works his jaw. “There is.”
You’re two seconds away from getting off the next floor. “Is something related to Wayne Enterprises? Our HR department—"
“You’re an absolute bitch,” he snaps and grabs your wrist. His thick hand exerting pressure on your skin and bones.
You immediately bring your knee to his crotch while simultaneously, with his free hand, you punch his throat. “Don’t you even think about touching me.”
Nolan is gasping, knees crouched and a hand on his heaving chest. You slam the button for the next floor, desperate to get out as blood rushes in your eyes.
But the moment a thread of light slowly appears, Nolan hits you cold in the head.
The first time Bruce was in space, he found it magnificent. Now? He’s two seconds away from gauging his eyes if he sees another fantastical boulder.
Everyone is working at their full capacity to make the ship work, but the damage is big and the distance to Earth— to you— too large.
Bruce inhales, taking up precious oxygen. He doesn’t really mind. He’s focussed on stepping away from a moment, go behind that massive boulder and take out the only thing that has been keeping him sane for this past month.
The moment he knows he’s alone, he greedily grabs the picture. It’s a dog eared thing about the size of his outstretched hand. In it, Alfred, Dick, Jason, Bruce and you. You’re all smiling at the camera, your arms wrapped around him, the picture doesn’t show it, but his hands were settled on your hips.
He has a small smile gracing his lips, eyes locked on your face. Alfred is looking all softly at the camera, Dick and Jason are both grinning but he remembers they were shoving each other and bickering for the past five minutes.
His eyes meet yours— or well, the picture version of yours.
He feels your absence like a ghost limb. A cold, hollow, feeling lives in his chest and isn’t going anywhere until he sees you. His hold body feels submerged by absolute cold and in the depths of the night, his mind doesn’t stop playing you— your voice, your scent, your face, your jokes and your quirks— until daylight comes. Then he has work to do in order to come back home. It's exhausting, he's exhausted.
“Bruce.”
Clark and Diana are there, with a swift movement he hides the picture. “Any news?”
Diana shakes her head. “No, we just came to check up on you.”
Clark nods slowly. “You’ve been acting… strange, during this past week. Disappearing a lot.”
“Hal was convince it was to—" She shakes her head. “That’s not important. What’s important is that you’re our teammate, our friend, and we’re here to help you.”
Bruce stares at them without making a sound.
Clark rubs the back of his head. “Are you going to say something?”
Another beat of silence. Then a long sigh. He decides to give up.
“I just want to go back to Earth.”
Clark watches him carefully, his arms are folded across his chest, cape resting heavy against his back.
Diana tilts her head slightly, eyes narrowing. Her gaze is not unkind, just assessing like it usually is.
“You miss your family,” she says finally. It’s not phrased like a question, its ’s a fact. Her voice is even. “Your wife.”
Bruce doesn’t respond immediately.
His gaze stays forward, fixed somewhere past the bulkhead. His hand rests beside him. He appeares calm but his posture is too rigid, too precise.
Clark notices the tension in his posture immediately. The way his shoulders sit just slightly too sharp for someone standing still.
Bruce exhales through his nose; slow and controlled, but he isn't really feeling calm. His fingers flex once against the great boulder's wall. A small movement, but it’s enough to show pressure building somewhere underneath. The gaping hole in his chest flutters.
Bruce finally looks at them.
“You are not as alone as you behave,” Diana says. “Stop acting as if you are.”
Clark nods once, small but firm. “We’ve got your back,” he says simply. “But you don’t get to vanish on us and call it fine, Bruce.”
The man exhales slowly through his nose again, deeper this time. “I know how to get back,” he suddenly says.
Diana’s gaze sharpens instantly. “Then stop standing still,” she replies.
The three of them quickly move to join Barry and Hal again, impatient to get to work.
Bruce can’t wait to have you in his arms again.
The ropes burn against your skin, your head is heavy and there’s a slow but strong beat of a drum inside it— shaking up all of the bones of your crane.
You try to remember what had happened; cooking with Alfred, picking up Jason from school, the meeting, Nolan—
“What the fuck are we going to do?” A voice snaps. “This is Mrs. Wayne, for crying out loud. Everyone will notice her being gone.”
“Oh relax, we’ll figure something out.”
“You messed up Nolan,” a familiar voice says, “she saw your face. What do you think she’ll do if we let her go?”
“She didn’t see ours,” the first voice says, “we still have a chance to get out.”
You screw your eyes tight, before relaxing them trying to appear still unconscious.
Nolan lets out a sharp laugh. “If I’m going down you’re going down with me.”
You hear footsteps against concrete but before you can think of anything else, a sharp crack resonates through the room as the skin of your cheek flares up with pain
“Dude!” A gasp. “You don’t hit girls!” A voice calls through the sharp ringing in your ears.
Your eyes snap open and see three men staring down at you; Nolan, the shareholder that questioned you at the meeting, and the man from the gala’s bar…
Nolan rubs your painfully raw cheek, nothing about the caress is comforting. If anything it makes bile rise up your throat. “Morning.”
Your head is blaring with panic and fear— and pain, but you desperately try to keep your composure.
Nolan sighs. “You just had to sign the scholarship papers like Bruce does.” He mock pouts and takes a step away from you. “Now you’re here."
“You’re stealing from children who need it,” you rasp out and look at the others, “why? You already have money.”
Nobody says nothing for a moment, then the other shareholder shrugs. “You can never have enough.”
“So,” you swallow painfully, “what’s going to happen now? Are you going to kill me?”
Mr.Carlisle winces. “You just have to sign the papers.”
Immediately, a plan forms in your head.
You let your body go slack, like something in you has snapped clean in half. Your breathing stutters, shallow and uneven, and you drop your gaze to the floor, watching the faint smear of dirt dragged across the concrete by the shareholder’s shoe.
“Fine,” you whisper, voice thin, fraying at the edges. “I’ll sign it.”
Silence follows.
Nolan studies you, eyes narrowed, but greed wins— it always does with men like him.. You see it in the way his shoulders loosen, in the slight curl of his lip.
“Thought so,” he mutters.
Carlisle hesitates. “Untie her.”
The ropes scrape as they loosen, fibers dragging harshly over your skin. It burns; sharp and raw, like your wrists have been peeled open. You swallow the reaction, biting it down until it settles somewhere deep and sharp like little crystal shards.
Your hands fall into your lap, numb for a second before the pins and needles start— violent, prickling, almost worse than the ropes.
They shove the papers in front of you. Those damn papers, with the Wayne name stamped across the top mocking you.
A pen follows, cheap and plastic, nothing like your elegant ones. You take it, but your fingers slightly tremble and this is not part of the act.
“Right there,” Nolan says, tapping the line with the tip of his long and bony finger.
Your heart is pounding so hard it feels like it might crack your ribs open. You lean forward slightly. A small pause, pretending they buy your dizzy act.
Then—
You move.
It’s fast enough but the angle is wrong and desesperation curls out of you like a bad stench. The pen lurches forward with everything you have, jamming into the soft space just beneath Nolan’s jaw.
For a split second, reality stops. You just feel like a puppet with your limbs being tugged by a strange entity your adrenaline made up to save you.
There's some resistance from the skin at first, before the initial force and despondency do the job. Then it gives. Nolan chokes— a wet, broken sound— stumbling back as his hands fly to his neck, eyes wide in shock more than pain.
Nobody moves, the other two men simply stare in absolute shock.
You shove yourself up, legs screaming in protest, and slam into Carlisle’s shoulder hard enough to knock him sideways as you run past.
“What the—?!”
You’re already out the door; your footsteps echo— loud and uneven, the pattern is all wrong. Behind you—
“GET HER!”
You run like you've never before. Your lungs burn almost immediately, your calves ache and dragging in air feels too thin, too sharp on your frail lungs. Your legs threaten to fold with every step, muscles shaking from disuse and adrenaline. But you force yourself to not look back.
You don’t—
A hand claws on the flesh of your back, near your hip. You let out a raw, animal sound.
It yanks you sideways, slamming you into the wall hard enough to knock the breath out of you. Lights flash in your vision and you gasp with pain.
Nolan.
There’s blood— too much of it— slicking his pure white collar, his hand pressed desperately to his neck, but his other hand is on you, fingers now digging into your throat.
“You—” he gasps, voice wrecked, “you fucking cunt— think you can—”
His grip tightens, you gasp.
Your vision sparks. Your hands claw at him, nails scraping, trying to pry him off, but he’s heavier, stronger, fueled by something frantic and dying— And then he’s gone.
Not pushed or pulled. No, literally ripped away from you. Your neck goes from the extreme pressure of his hold to cold, you sofly rub it with your fingertips as you greedily breathe in air.
He hits the ground hard, dragged back by something that moves too fast to track. Your heart recognises him before your eyes do.
Batman.
He doesn’t hesitate.
The first punch lands with a sickening crack, snapping Nolan’s head to the side. The second follows instantly. Then another. And another.
Nolan tries to fight back, but it’s sloppy and the hits-- if you can even call them that-- land weak, his limbs and movements futile against the assault.
Batman grabs him by the front of his shirt and slams him into the wall.
Again.
And again.
The sound echoes down the hallway and reverberates through the walls.
“Stop—” Nolan chokes, barely conscious now.
Batman does not stop.
His grip tightens, gauntlet curling into fabric and skin like he might just—
“Batman!” Your voice tears out of you, still raw.
He freezes. So subtle is almost not there, but just enough to reprieve Nolan of the next hit.
His head turns slightly toward you.
“Don’t,” you manage, pushing yourself upright, your legs shaking violently, he notices and his hold around the man tightens. “Please don’t do it.”
A beat too long.
The tension in him coils tighter— then breaks; he lets Nolan drop.
The man crumples, barely more than dead weight now.
Batman turns to you fully. And in two strides, he’s there. For the first time in months, you feel all of the cold fizzle away, for the first time in months, you relax.
His hands are on you instantly; checking, grounding, moving over your arms, your shoulders, your face like he needs to confirm you’re still in one piece. Oh his touch, so delicate and tender... despite the cool texture of his suit, you feel eneloped in a cocoon.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine,” you breathe, even though your throat burns and your wrists feel flayed open and your whole body is trembling. “I’m okay.”
He pulls you into him. He holds you tight, almost desperate— steals the air from your lungs in a completely different way. You can't feel his hearbteat, but its thundering in his chest just as yours is now.
Your hands fist into him without thinking.
For a moment, everything else falls away. Then he pulls back just enough to look at you.
And then he kisses you.
It’s not soft or careful. It’s quick, urgent— like he needs to make sure you’re real, not a figment of his imagination, that you’re really here and alive.
Your breath catches.
“There’s more,” you say, voice still uneven, pointing weakly back toward the room. “Inside. The other two.”
“Stay.” He commands, but the tone is... off. Was Batman put out by a kiss?
You nod, sinking back against the wall as your legs finally give out beneath you.
He’s already gone.
The hallway swallows him in seconds.
Then— noise. Thuds and some shouting. The sharp, controlled rhythm of a fight that doesn’t last too long. It ends quickly as it usually does.
Sirens split the air open, their jarring noise ricocheting through the hallway.
Red and blue lights flood the space, washing over everything; Nolan’s unconscious body, the blood, you. You’re sprawled against a cold wall, trying to calm your heart and quiet your head.
Batman doesn’t come back; he’s not there as the paramedics rush you into the ambulance, or as the cops flood the scene like ants around honey.
You desperately search for his figure in every face, every dark crook. At some point, you ask where he is. The paramedics reply that your family are on their way.
“Mom!”
You look up from where you’re sitting. Rushing through the crowd are Jason and Dick.
Immediately, Dick scans you for any possible injuries the paramedics might have missed. He hugs you, and you melt into him.
“Is your hair longer?” You ask.
“Mom,” he frowns.
You brush a rogue strand from his face, just like he did when he was much younger. “Dick.”
Jason is on you like a tiny leopard, clutching your body like it’s a lifeline.
“Uh, Jay, Mom is a bit—”
He nuzzles his head into the crook of your neck. “I don’t care.” He looks up at you. “We were so worried. We thought—”
You rub soothing circles on his back. “I’m okay now.”
Jason hides again.
Your eyes spot a worried Alfred walking in your direction, his breath slightly uneven.
Your eyes meet his above Jason’s body.
“My dear—”
You soften immediately. “Hi, Alfred.” You frown. “You don’t have to worry,” you look at Dick too, who is still looking at you like you might disappear if he blinks, “I’m fine now.”
His eyes flick over you, taking everything in. “We shall have words about your definition of ‘fine,’” Alfred says gently. He mutters something about you and Bruce being annoyingly stubborn.
You almost smile.
But then the entire world— the whole of planet Earth with its billions of inhabitants and thousands of living creatures— stops. Everything stops the moment his voice reaches you.
“Where is my wife?”
Bruce’s voice is nothing but stern and demanding. Both Dick and Jason turn toward the source.
Jason unpeels from you and goes to stand between Alfred and Dick.
Your eyes find Bruce’s instantly, and before you even realize it, he is in front of you, cradling your head in his hands, consuming you with a kiss.
You’re alive. You’re here. I didn’t lose you. I love you.
He tries to say with just the language your lips and his can speak.
“Hello to you too, Bruce,” Dick says.
Bruce’s forehead is pressed against yours, the kiss broken but his face still close. “Children.”
He spins around, and before anyone can say anything else, he pulls Dick and Jason into a tight hug.
“Let go!”
A laugh rumbles in his chest. “Can’t.”
You four end up at Batburger; huddled in one of the booths at the back to avoid people staring.
Bruce hasn’t left your side for a second, even on the ride there. It was Alfred who drove. Jason and Dick ordered enough food to feed an army, while Alfred pretended to disapprove and only ordered a glass of water. You weren’t really hungry, but occasionally dipped your spoon into your Mr. Freeze ice cream.
Bruce has an arm around your waist, your body and his impossibly close. So close he can hear your heartbeat— though you suspect that’s one of the reasons why.
As Jason and Dick steal fries from each other, Alfred laughs, and you and Bruce finally allow yourselves to rest against each other.
The pier is mostly quiet, aside from the soft lapping of waves at the shore and the chatter and laughter from nearby restaurants.
You and Bruce walk under the moonlight, your bodies sharing the same warmth. Alfred, Dick, and Jason have already headed home, but you two needed this alone time.
“I missed you,” he says.
You laugh, a soft and crystalline sound ringing through the night. “I was about to say the same thing.”
“I thought I had arrived too late,” he confesses. “I saw his hands on you and I just lost it—”
“But you didn’t. You stopped, Bruce.” You rub his knuckles with your fingers, your wedding ring brushing against his, a testament to your love.
Suddenly, a soft familiar song begins playing. You cannot see the source, but it’s probably one of the street musicians that roam Gotham, especially near restuarant areas.
Bruce perks up. “That’s our song.” He softly grabs your hand, the other settling around your waist.
You smile and begin swaying to the music.
The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red.
Bruce spins you, and you cannot help the laugh that bubbles out of you. His small smile widens into something rare and honest; his blue eyes sparkle, and you wonder how anyone can love someone the way you love him.
Frank Sinatra’s voice continues as you let your bodies do the talking. It doesn’t feel like just flesh and bones— it feels like your souls are intertwining, his soul not only touching yours, but kissing, craddling, caressing, it too.
⤿ BRUCE WAYNE was a stubborn and fiercely independent man, which meant that his children were too. Unfortunately for you, that meant that scolding one of them was practically a moment to scold both.
!! fluff. wife!reader. batmom!reader. LITTLE DAMIAN. domestic bruce sorta. established relationship. do NOT ask about the timeline or logistics of bruce's custody of damian. implied damian is talia's bc shes perf but interpret it however you want. bruce being a menace. reader is also a menace. so is damian. no one save bruce bc he's right where he wants to be. ENJOY.
The manor was quiet in the way it only ever was right before trouble.
You stood in the middle of the sitting room with your arms crossed, trying very hard to look like a united parental front while the small, stubborn hurricane you both loved very much sat on the edge of the couch, chin tilted up in defiance.
Across from him stood your husband, the formidable, terrifying, brooding legend of Bruce Wayne.
At the moment, however, he looked less like Gotham’s Dark Knight, and more like a man who had just been given news about his son at school and didn't know what the hell to do with it.
“Do you want to explain,” you began calmly, “why your teacher called to inform us that you refused to participate in group work because — and I quote — ‘I work better alone’?”
The small boy crossed his arms. “Because it’s true.”
Bruce nodded at that, his arms crossed as he flicked his gaze from his son to you, as if waiting to see how you would respond to such a factual statement. Instead, you just slowly turned your head toward your husband.
He cleared his throat. “It is… sometimes true.”
Smack.
Your palm landed lightly against the back of his head.
Bruce blinked in stunned betrayal.
“Not helping,” you said sweetly through a tight lipped smile.
Damian’s eyes widened. “Mother, did you just hit Batman?”
You pointed at him, your eyes slowly leaving your husband's to meet your son's. “I hit your father. Don’t get ideas.”
Bruce straightened, rubbing the back of his head with a wounded expression that made Alfred close his eyes to compose himself. “I was simply suggesting that independence is an.. admirable trait.”
“Independence is admirable,” you agreed. “Being uncooperative and telling your teacher that ‘authority is a suggestion’ is not.”
There was a beat of silence, one that was only broken by Bruce's cough. You had been expecting some sort of back up from him, but you should've known better considering all of the behavioral issues Damian's teacher mentioned... were ones Bruce still exhibited.
Smack.
“I did not say that,” Bruce defended quickly, his eyes narrowing in a lighthearted way.
“You didn’t have to. It’s written all over your DNA.”
Damian looked between you both, clearly weighing his options. “She said I had to apologize.”
“And?” you prompted, hoping to god he didn't say what the brooding man besides you always did.
“I don’t think I was wrong.”
God damnit. Bruce opened his mouth, but you didn't even have to look at him this time.
Smack.
“I didn’t say anything!” He defended, his hand coming to try and catch yours but you quickly turned it into a sharply pointed finger that was jutting in his direction.
“You were about to.”
He pressed his lips together to hold back a smile, eyes narrowing slightly, but he wisely chose to stay silent.
You crouched in front of your son so you were eye level. His little jaw was set in the exact same stubborn angle you saw every time Bruce argued with Lucius about safety protocols.
“Sweetheart,” you uttered gently, brushing a piece of hair off his forehead, “being right isn’t the only thing that matters. Sometimes we apologize because we were disrespectful, not because we were incorrect.”
He frowned. “But she was wrong.”
“Maybe,” you allowed. “But you still can’t roll your eyes and say you’ll ‘handle it yourself.’”
Bruce shifted behind you, taking a deep and audible breath through his nose. You knew what that meant. You shot your hand back without turning.
Smack.
“That one was preemptive,” you informed him.
He stared at you. “I'm being disciplined in my own home.”
“Yes,” you agreed calmly. “You are.”
Damian’s defiance started to crack, mostly because watching his father get smacked repeatedly was far more entertaining than the lecture.
“But Dad works alone,” he tried.
Bruce looked hopeful at that, because he did work alone. Surely you couldn't find a way to turn that into a lecture directed at him! But then, you stood up slowly, and he knew it was coming.
“Oh, I’m so glad you brought that up,” you said, smiling in a way that made both of them tense. “Tell me, my darling husband, how many times has working alone ended with you injured, unconscious, or brooding dramatically on a rooftop instead of asking for help?”
Bruce folded his arms. “That is not relevant.”
“It’s extremely relevant.”
You turned back to your son. “Your father is brilliant. Brave. Capable. And a man that is absolutely worth looking up to.”
Bruce’s chest puffed slightly with pride, this was a statement he could wholeheartedly agree with.
“But, he's also,” you continued, and Bruce's eyebrow shot up, “so stubborn he once tried to reset his own dislocated shoulder because he ‘had it handled.’”
The boy's eyes widened and shot to his father. He was conflicted, that sounded impressive, made him respect his father's resilience even more... but your tone suggested he shouldn't feel that way
Bruce looked offended. “It was handled.”
“You passed out.”
“That was momentary.”
You didn’t even need to look this time.
Smack.
Alfred’s faint, traitorous chuckle echoed from the hallway all the while your son tried very hard not to smile.
You softened your voice. “We don’t punish you because you’re strong-willed. We love that about you. We just want you to learn when to bend a little.”
He looked down at his shoes. “I don’t like when people tell me what to do.”
Bruce nodded very solemnly.
Smack.
“I was agreeing with you.”
“I know.” You shrugged, shooting him a wink over your shoulder.
You crouched to sit besides your son, pulling him gently into your side. After a moment of resistance, he melted into you, small arms wrapping around your waist.
Bruce’s expression softened immediately, no longer did he have a playful irritation creased into his brow, he now was simply admiring the gentle sight in front of him.
“Your dad,” you practically whispered, glancing at Bruce with fond exasperation, “has made a whole career out of not liking being told what to do.”
“That’s not entirely-...”
Kick.
He huffed.
“But,” you continued, stroking your son’s hair, “he also learned that he can’t do everything alone. He has people. Family. A team.”
Bruce looked at you then, something warm replacing the mock irritation.
“And that’s not weakness,” you shook your head, tilting Damian's round face so he would look at you. “It’s strength.”
Your son peeked up at Bruce. “So I still have to apologize?”
Bruce hesitated, his eyes flicking towards you briefly. All he needed to see was your raised eyebrow and he was nodding sternly.
“I think that apologizing would demonstrate maturity,” Your husband agreed all too quickly.
You smiled approvingly.
“No smacking?” he mumbled cautiously.
“Not if you keep that up.”
Damian groaned dramatically but nodded. “Fine. I will apologize.”
“Good,” you hummed, pressing a kiss to his temple. “And maybe next time, try saying ‘I disagree’ instead of ‘I’ll handle it.’”
He considered. “May I still handle it?”
“In your head? Absolutely.”
Bruce gave him a subtle thumbs-up behind your back, which you caught in the reflection of the window.
Smack.
“Unbelievable,” Bruce grumbled, rubbing the back of his head and his arm where he had been brutally assaulted by your flurry of smacks.
Your son let out a small laugh, finally dissolving the last of the tension.
You stood and offered him your hand. “Go wash up for dinner.”
He slid off the couch and ran toward the hall, calling, “I fear you are in trouble, father.”
“I am not in trouble,” Bruce called after him, yet, when you turned slowly once your son was our of earshot, he immediately straightened. “Hypothetically.”
You stepped closer, lowering your voice. “You realize he learned half of that from watching you.”
Bruce tilted his head. “He learned confidence.”
“He learned dramatic silence and brooding eye contact.”
“That's an intimidation strategy.”
“It is not useful in second grade.”
Bruce tried not to smile at that, which was too obvious to a well trained eye like yours.
You poked his chest. “You are supposed to back me up.”
“I was backing you up.”
“You were validating him.”
Bruce leaned down slightly, lowering his voice to that gravelly murmur that had once terrified criminals and now mostly annoyed you when he used it for comedic effect. “I happen to admire stubbornness.”
“I know,” you said. “You married it.”
There was a pause, then his lips pulled into a boyish smile. You tried to keep up the frustrated look, but at the sight of his grin you couldn't help but smile yourself.
He reached for your waist. “You hit me six times.”
“Eight, if we're counting the kick,” you corrected.
He huffed a quiet laugh. “I face down supervillains regularly.”
“And yet,” you said sweetly, tapping his forehead lightly, “this is what keeps you in line.”
He caught your hand before you could pull it away, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. “You enjoy this.”
“Oh hell yeah I do.”
From the hallway came a small voice. “I can still hear you.”
Bruce cleared his throat, instantly shifting into overly serious father mode. “Wash your hands properly!”
“Yes, Father.”
You shook your head, smiling as you leaned into your husband’s side.
“He’s just like you,” you murmured.
Bruce wrapped an arm around you, resting his chin briefly against your hair. “He’s better.”
You looked up at him, one eyebrow quirked in curiosity. You knew Bruce wasn't the egotistical maniac that the public made him out to be, but you also knew he wasn't necessarily this humble.
“He has you,” Bruce added simply. That was all it took for your expression to completely soften, the teasing melting into something warmer.
“Don’t get sentimental,” you warned gently, your arms coming to wrap around him.
He smirked. “Would you hit me again?”
“Without hesitation.”
He laughed quietly, the sound low and rare and entirely yours.
Down the hall, little footsteps pounded again.
“Mother, Father... do I have to apologize tomorrow or can I email?”
You and Bruce answered at the same time. “Tomorrow.” The boy groaned and you both could hear his little footsteps fade off down the hallway.
Bruce glanced at you. “See? Unified.”
You narrowed your eyes playfully. “Keep talking.”
He held up his hands in surrender.
And somewhere in the manor, Alfred allowed himself a small, satisfied smile, because Gotham’s most stubborn vigilante had finally met the only force strong enough to keep him — and his equally stubborn children — in check.
Never used to death || Bruce wayne x reader (+ platonic!batfam)
— Bruce Wayne had lost a lot of people in his life, but nothing compares to you, in any way. or your ex-husband and children don't know how to react to your death.
!!: HEAVY ANGST no comfort. major character death. gn!reader. batparent!reader. no use of y/n. English is not my first language. 906 words.
[dc masterlist]
You weren’t going to come back.
But Bruce couldn’t accept that reality.
He had lost too much during his life. He had lost his parents right before his eyes. He had lost Jason by The Joker. He had lost Alfred. And now, he had lost you too.
This was not like previous times, back when you both decided that getting a divorce was better than having to deal with each other’s grief after losing your second son.
Back when you came back for the first time, because you didn’t want to let down Tim, and still left some years after because things between Bruce and you weren’t the same anymore and your relationship wasn’t working.
You came back for a second time. This time was the final one. You were going to stay. Because you loved your children, and because Bruce had changed for good and he was still the man you loved with every fiber of your heart, and he loved you with the same intensity. You couldn’t give up on him.
But now it was all gone and you weren’t going to come back.
This was not like the last two times, because during those breaks he saw you. He heard the news about you. He saw your face in the cover of magazines almost daily; and it broke him every time, seeing you looking like a literal angel, but without ‘Wayne’ on your name.
Because you were once his, and now you weren’t even yours.
Dick had been the one who found him first. In the middle of Robinson Park. Holding your broken and cold body against his chest, warm and alive. Your blood engulfing his arms, impregnating his suit like a memory, a statement. You will always be with him, the permanent stain that would never go away, the ghost that would haunt him until the end of his days, like Bruce Wayne didn’t have enough ghosts.
You hadn’t left him by choice that night; you had left by chance. You had died—brutally tortured and murdered by the Joker—and reporters had been forced to televise it.
Bruce’s mind kept repeating—like a broken mantra—how this was his fault. Not Dick’s, because he never got to arrive on time. Not Jason’s, who unfollowed every rule just to get to you, but Poison Ivy got him first. Not Tim’s, nor Damian’s. Or Cass, or Steph, or Duke. Not even Barbara, who was crying of frustration, while trying, without success, to end your death’s livestream.
It was all Bruce’s fault.
He hated himself. He could save a million people, but never the ones he loved. Never his parents. Never his son. Never the man who had stayed with him since the very beginning of his life. Never the love of his life.
Dick didn’t hug Bruce that night. He froze on his spot the moment his feet touched the ground. The sight in front of him felt unreal, and it shattered every nerve of his body. Overwhelmed by anger and sadness he just stood there, with a blank expression.
Tim commanded the others to return to the cave, while he watched the interaction from a distance.
Everything had stopped that night. Your heartbeat. Bruce’s life. Gotham streets were silent for once—traumaticed by the event.
It wasn’t until Jason arrived that the clock started ticking again.
“I will kill that bastard.” He said. And for once, Bruce didn’t scold him, he chose silence. He chose to stay those very last moments he had with your body in silence.
Not because he needed time, but because your two sons needed you and didn’t know how to show except through their mere presence.
Dick didn’t move an inch. He didn’t talk, or breathe properly. He was just taking in the sight. This was definitely not the first time he’d lost a parent, but it was the most crude one.
On the other hand, Jason. Oh, your sweet Jason. The one who swore he didn't cry, at least not in front of people, let the first tear fall from his eyes. He cried in silence, the loudest silence anyone had ever witnessed.
And from above, Tim made his appearance, falling right next to Bruce, next to you.
Your three boys, all there for you, for your death. And Bruce—the man who would have moved heaven and earth just for you, to see you happy, to try again, to have you back—was holding your lifeless body like delicate flowers—because he knew you could shatter this time if he held you tighter.
The four men mourning your loss.
And in the batcave Barbara cried, Cass cried while Steph, trying to hold her tears, hugged her. Duke waited, he waited for Bruce to come back with you, just so he could thank you and say goodbye to you one last time.
And Damian. He had left the batcave. In between bouts of weeping, he had made his way up to the manor, to his father’s room—your room. He got under the covers and just waited. He waited for you to come back.
Damian Wayne Al Ghul. The son of an assassin, the boy who had been trained to kill, the one who understood death better than anyone. He stayed under the covers, waiting patiently for you to arrive home—radiant and alive—and kiss him goodnight. Your strange habit he swore he hated was now his deepest desire.
A/N: everybody say thank you to my toxic ex for giving me all this sadness. Hope you guys liked this. As always reblogs and comments are appreciated 🫶🏻
Bruce Wayne taglist: @princesstrunkz @currentblasphemy @planetevermore @astraeasworld @andraax2
after carrying your son around in your stomach for 9 months, and pushing through 8 hours of intense labour, you are now staring down at your beautiful baby boy with tired eyes.
he is beautiful, but he looks exactly like his father.
you huff. "he looks exactly like you"
"don't sound too excited" sukuna jokes, smoothing over yujis scarce pink hair.
you inspect the baby further, peering at his pink hair, the exact same shade as his daddy's, as well as the same skin tone and his little mouth laying perfectly flat along his face while he sleeps. your eyes follow his chubby arms and fingers and belly, baby fat almost promising that he will get as big and strong as his dad.
then you look up to his father, kuna's face resting in the same serious line while you watch him watching yuji. you reach up and cup sukuna's cheek. when his gaze meets yours you take in the details of his pretty eyes, his tattoos, and his markings below his eyes.
you snap your head back to yuji.
"kuna he even has your little markings" you whine, "he looks nothing like me... i pushed out your fatass baby and carried him for 9 months the least he could do is look a little like me.." you continued on.
sukuna holds back a laugh and smooths over your hair, "the next one will look exactly like you.. maybe a pretty little girl."
you grumble a little more but inevitably settle down and lay back onto the pillow. with yuji in your arms, and sukuna leaning over you both, carressing yujis face, you all sit there for a while.
yuji babbles a little in his sleep and cracks a little smile. "he must be dreaming" you softly mumble with a smile.
sukuna looks back and forth between you too. "he has your smile"
if you weren't so tired, you would've jumped for joy. "really?" you tuck yourself against sukunas chest, nuzzling him slightly.
Summary : Benjamin Poindexter finds his North Star in a sweet librarian who probably should’ve run. Still, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x Librarian! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : North star! Reader, fluff (?), angst, hurt/comfort, obsessive love, unhealthy attachment, codependency, possessive behavior, stalking, morally grey reader, explicit sexual content (no anatomical detail as per usual), sex, orgasm denial, oral sex implied, voyeurism/exhibitionism themes, breeding kink, blip mentioned, conjugal visit, institutional abuse, canon-typical violence, murder, hostage situation, grief, food, pregnancy, towards the end you and Dex are mentioned to have a child called Leo. Dex isn’t the most traditional father in any sense but he eventually does love him for very specific reasons I won’t spoil. Starts two years before Daredevil season 3 and ends during DDBA season 1 (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 22k (whoopsie)
Requested by : A mix of these requests: X X X ( @faszomiskivan )
Notes : This story spans about nine years, so buckle up! Reader basically takes on Julie’s North Star role in canon, and yes, this story does explain how we get there. Enjoy!
FBI Special Agent Benjamin Poindexter didn’t know what to do with pretty.
He understood attraction in the detached, observational way he understood most things. He understood what people found objectively attractive was symmetry, pleasing aesthetics. He would observe little changes in a room when someone “beautiful” entered it. He went through it like a list: people looked longer, their voices gentled, posture adjusted without realising it. Dex knew how to recognise attractiveness because other people gave themselves away around it, because the world was always telling on itself if you paid close enough attention. But pretty was different when it was you.
Pretty was not supposed to make him forget the next thing he meant to say. Pretty was not supposed to sit under his skin like a fever. Pretty was not supposed to be you a school librarian in a pastel cardigan, with a pencil tucked through your hair and ink on your fingers, kneeling between two shelves while a little boy cried into your blouse because another child had laughed at him for reading too slowly.
Dex was at the school for an FBI community safety outreach visit. Nothing serious, nothing field-critical. It was just one of those public-facing assignments meant to make parents feel reassured and administrators feel prepared. He was supposed to stand beside the principal, nod at the right times, talk about emergency response based on a script made by the Bureau, and leave.
Instead, at the end of the day, he stood near the library doors and watched you lower your voice to soothe a child.
“Hey,” you said softly. “Don’t make yourself smaller because someone else was mean to you.”
Dex went still. The principal kept talking beside him. Something about lockdown protocols, fire exits, parent pick-up procedures, and perhaps thanking him for the visit. Dex didn’t hear any of it. He watched the little boy rub his face with his sleeve, watched you reach into your cardigan pocket and produce a tissue because of course you had one ready, because of course you had walked through life expecting the world to hurt these precious little things and had prepared yourself to help.
“Reading slowly just means you get to spend more time with the words,” you told the boy. “That’s not a bad thing.”
The boy sniffled, and you smiled at him.
Dex felt that smile land in his cold heart, somewhere it had no business being.
It would have been easier if you were only beautiful. That would have been manageable. Uncomfortable, maybe, but manageable. Beauty was a fact. Beauty could be observed, catalogued, eventually put away. You were beautiful in a way that seemed unaware of itself, unpolished and terribly human. The cardigan sleeves falling too far over your hands, the loose strand of hair stuck to your cheek, the worn soles of your cheap flats, you smiling so easily for children who probably forgot to thank you for it.
Dex thought you were gorgeous with an alarmed resentment, as if his own body had betrayed him by noticing before his mind had given permission. Then you looked up at him.
Your eyes met his across the library, and for half a second, Dex forgot what face he was supposed to be wearing. You smiled politely, like he was just another adult in the building, not a man with a gun under his jacket teaching staff how to react in case of a school shooting.
“Hi,” you said. “Sorry, do you need the library?”
The principal brightened. “This is our librarian.”
You gave Dex your name. He repeated it silently once. Then again. Then a third time, because it felt like something he should store somewhere safe, somewhere no one else could touch.
“Special Agent Poindexter,” he said, holding out his hand.
You shook it, and your hand was warm. Dex noticed that there was a tiny paper cut near your thumb.
You were still smiling at him. Not because he was FBI, and not because he was handsome, though he was. You smiled because you were kind.
Fuck. That’s inconvenient.
Pretty made him look, but good made him stay.
That first visit should have been the last. Dex knew that. There was no operational reason for him to return personally. The school’s safety review was a basic one. The principal had his notes, but the follow-up could have been handled by email. A junior agent could have dropped off the printed materials. Anyone could have gone.
But Dex went. That second time, he poked his head to the library, and said hi. You said hi back, right after you told two boys that no, the beanbags were not for wrestling, and yes, you were very impressed by the creativity of the attempt.
Dex couldn’t stop thinking about it for a week.
The third time, he told himself it was because the library’s rear exit needed another assessment. It was technically true. The lock was old, the corridor outside had basically no surveillance, and the staff entrance was too far from the main office. He made it seem like a legitimate concern, when really, it was a neat little justification. Dex was excellent at finding those.
You were reshelving books when he appeared in the doorway, balanced on the tips of your toes as you reached for the top shelf. The hem of your blouse lifted slightly at your waist. It was nothing indecent. Barely anything at all.
Still, his mind went briefly blank.
He cleared his throat.
You startled, turned, and smiled. “Agent Poindexter.”
Dex liked the sound of it from you. That was inconvenient too.
“Sorry,” you added, stepping down. “Am I in the way?”
“No.”
“Good. Because if you were about to tell me my fiction section is a security risk, I might cry.”
His mouth twitched before he decided to let it. “I’ll leave fiction alone.”
“Very generous of the DOJ.” That’s when he realised you were teasing him.
Dex looked at you and thought, you have no idea what a dangerous thing that was.
After that, the visits became a pattern.
Not obvious, because Dex was never sloppy when he could help it. He didn’t go every day. He didn’t stand outside the library staring like some lovesick idiot with no self-control. He knew how to make repeated contact look procedural.
His supervisor barely looked up from the file the fourth time it happened. “Poindexter, you handled the school outreach last week, right?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve got some updated compliance questions. I can send Nadeem.”
Dex immediately shook his head. “I’ll take it.”
His supervisor paused, but Dex kept his face still. “I’m already familiar with the layout,” he said, and what a good excuse that was.
The whole truth was that he had thought about you every day since the first visit. You came to him through triggers. When he saw children’s drawings in a hallway. A cardigan on a mannequin The smell of old paper. A mug with painted stars on it in a café window, because you had one on your desk.
You were good, and you were pretty, and that combination felt less like attraction and more like orientation. As if Dex had spent his whole life moving without a fixed point and then walked into a school library and found one.
So, yes, he came back to the school. And, yes, eventually, he followed you home.
The first time, he told himself it was because you were the last staff member to leave again and the car park lighting was poor, so he had to make sure you were safe. It had rained earlier, leaving the pavement slick and black. You walked out with a tote bag over one shoulder and an armful of books pressed to your chest, juggling your keys between your fingers.
Dex sat in his car and watched until you pulled out of the lot. Then he followed. He learned the route to your apartment in fourteen minutes. He cleared that you lived in a building with a front door that did not latch unless pulled hard, that the hallway light on your floor flickered, that your window faced the street and your curtains were thin enough to turn your silhouette suggestive when you moved past them with nothing on.
He hated your building immediately. The lock was bad. The street was worse. Your neighbours were careless. The man in 2B smoked on the front steps and watched women walk past like a fucking creep. The laundry room was in the basement. The side gate did not close properly.
Dex catalogued every vulnerability, then sat in his car for twenty-three minutes after your lights went out and told himself this was a reasonable concern.
He was trained to notice risk, and you just had so much of it. You were too open, too trusting, too underpaid to live somewhere safe enough.
He found out about the money without needing to try very hard.
He figured out your exact job title, your district, and salary ranges within twenty minutes. He knew what you could afford, what you probably couldn’t, what your grocery budget looked like if your car needed work or if the school asked you to buy supplies out of pocket again. And you did, apparently. He saw the receipts in your hand one afternoon when you came out of a discount store with construction paper, glue sticks, tissues, and children’s stickers paid for with your own money.
That bothered him more than it should have. It enraged him. Not because you were helpless. Dex didn’t think that. You were competent in the way good people often were, holding ten pieces of a room together while everyone else assumed the room simply stayed whole on its own. But you were tired and stretched thin. You loved your job, the children, the library with its peeling posters and overhandled paperbacks, but love didn’t pay rent.
I could, he thought. Dex could pay your rent without noticing. He could buy groceries without checking his account. He could fix the lock. Replace the car. Put you somewhere safe and close. That’s… a good reason to ask you out, right?
If he ever had the courage.
By the fifth visit, you laughed when you saw him. “Again?”
Dex stopped in the library doorway, because he insisted to the bureau that some of the teachers were security risks. “Again.”
“Should I be worried about the state of our emergency preparedness?”
“No.”
“Should I be worried about you?” That caught him off-guard. Your tone was teasing, but your eyes were warm and curious.
Should I be worried about you?
Yes, he thought. Probably.
Instead, he said, “No.”
You narrowed your eyes in mock suspicion. “I don’t know. Five visits to the school. Either we are extremely unsafe, or you really like laminated evacuation maps.”
Dex looked at the map beside your door. “It’s a good map.”
You burst out laughing.
Dex loved the sound immediately and started to memorise it so he could copy it when you made a joke. More than that, he wanted to be responsible for it. He wanted to know what your laugh sounded like in his car. In his kitchen. Against his mouth.
The thought came so suddenly that his teeth clenched.
You noticed. Your smile softened, and Dex had the devastating impression that you thought you had embarrassed him. “I’m sorry,” you said. “I didn’t mean to make fun of you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Okay.” You tilted your head. “Good.”
Good. The word followed him home.
So did you, though not physically. Not yet. But your image, your voice, the way you said his name after he told you to call him Dex, the way you remembered he took tea plain after seeing him drink it once in the staff room. The way you handed him a paper cup and said, “I made too much,” as if generosity was just something that spilled out of you naturally.
And then there were the guys around you.
He had watched a math teacher who lingered at your desk too long after school, making you laugh over some stupid story about a parent email. A divorced father at pick-up who asked whether you ever took private tutoring work and then smiled in a way Dex didn’t like. A man you met for coffee one Friday evening, two neighbourhoods over, at a café with steamed windows and terrible parking.
Dex hadn’t meant to follow you there. That was a lie.
He had followed you there because you had worn lipstick, the kind you probably put on in your rearview mirror after work, thinking no one would notice.
The date was unremarkable. The man was unremarkable. He wore a blue shirt, laughed too loudly, and checked his phone while you were talking. Dex watched from across the street with his hands still on the steering wheel and felt jealousy move through him.
The man was wrong for you.
He was careless, dull, and too impressed with himself. He made you pay for your own tea. That alone felt like a crime.
You left to do some off-the-clock work, and your date stayed. Dex waited until the man left to use the bathroom, then walked into the café and passed close enough to his table to see the phone he had left face-up beside his plate. He saw a message from someone named Laura lit the screen with a heart attached.
Dex smiled. That was useful.
The next morning, he sent an anonymous message to Laura. The following week, you didn’t see blue-shirt again.
You looked a little sad about it on Monday. Dex hated that. Then he hated the man more for making you sad. Then he told himself it was better this way.
It became easier to scare off your dates after that. All it took was an inconvenient scheduling conflict, a resurfaced truth, a gentle nudge. One man had an outstanding warrant for unpaid fines. One was married. One was simply easy to scare with the right look from the right federal agent in a parking lot.
By the sixth visit to the school, there was no reason good enough to fool anyone but himself.
A “Penultimate walkthrough,” he called it, before the final walkthrough next week.
The principal seemed pleased, though you looked amused. “Penultimate?” you asked when Dex appeared outside the library.
“Yes.”
“Should I be honoured?”
“You should feel secure.”
“I do. The biography section has never been safer.”
He looked at you, and you smiled like you were proud of yourself. Dex couldn’t help but copy that smile back. Your expression changed when you saw it, going still for one second, like you liked him, too.
That day, he walked through the library with you while you pointed out doors and windows and places the children liked to hide during reading hour. This corner was where the overwhelmed ones went. That shelf had the books no one returned on time because they loved them too much. The lamp near the beanbag was too warm if left on all day, but you kept it anyway because the kids said it made the corner feel cozy.
“This is where they go when they need silence,” you said, gesturing toward a little space tucked behind a low shelf. A lamp. A basket of soft toys. Books with soft edges. A handmade sign that read: take a breath.
Dex looked at it.
You had made a place for children to be afraid safely. Of course you had.
“You did this?” he asked.
You shrugged, suddenly shy. “It’s not much.”
Dex looked at you. “It is.”
You met his eyes, and for a moment, the library noise faded behind you.
After that, he wanted to give you things. He wanted to give you better shoes. Better locks. A safer car. A warmer apartment. Groceries you did not buy with mental arithmetic running behind your eyes. A kitchen where your tea sat beside his coffee because it belonged there. A bed you didn’t have to assemble yourself. A life where you did not walk to your car alone. He wanted your life folded into his so completely that you never again had to stand unprotected in the world.
It was raining the day he finally asked.
The sky had turned the school windows grey, and the car park outside shone black under the streetlights. Most of the staff had already left. The corridors had emptied, and you were the last one in the library again.
Dex had lingered through a conversation with the principal he barely needed to have after the final walkthrough. He had checked the same exit twice. He had waited near the lobby until your light was the only one still glowing down the hall.
Then you came out with a tote bag sliding down your shoulder and a cardboard box of donated books pressed against your hip. Your umbrella refused to open, and you stared at it like it had stabbed you.
“Need help?”
You startled, then relaxed when you saw him. “Dex.” You laughed, breathless and embarrassed. “Do you just appear whenever I’m losing a fight?”
“Your umbrella is inside out,” he pointed out, before taking the box from you.
You tried to hold on. “I can carry that.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you take it?”
“Because it’s raining.”
You looked at him for a second, then smiled, soft and helpless and too fond for his sanity.
“Okay,” you said, as if letting him carry a box was nothing. As if it didn’t make a dark and pleased thought settle low in his chest.
He walked you to your car and put the books in the back seat. He noted the old jumper on the passenger side, the stack of overdue returns, the half-empty water bottle, the evidence of your life that was still not his.
You stood beside him under the broken umbrella, rain misting your hair.
You were gorgeous, he thought.
It struck him then in the stupidest way. No analysis or clinical separation. Just so pretty it made him feel young and strange and almost angry with himself.
“What?” you asked, smiling like you could tell he was staring.
Dex could’ve said nothing. He could have smiled, stepped back, wished you a good night, returned to his car, and come up with another reason to see you next week.
Instead, he looked at you and thought of your whole life together. Then he said it. “Have dinner with me.”
Your smile faded into surprise. The rain tapped against the broken umbrella between you. You blinked once. It wasn’t really a question, was it? “With you?”
“Yes.”
“As in…”
“A date.”
Your cheeks warmed. Dex watched the colour rise and tilted his head.
“Oh,” you said softly. Then, after a second, you smiled. “Okay.”
Just like that, he got what he wanted.
—
The first date was dinner at your favourite restaurant, though you couldn’t recall ever telling Dex that.
You paused outside the little place with the handwritten menu in the window, your hand tucked into the crook of his arm. “Oh,” you said, surprised. “I love this place.”
Dex looked down at you, calm as anything. “Do you?”
You laughed. “I come here all the time.”
“I didn’t know that.”
The lie was smooth, but Dex said it with such calm that you accepted it because you wanted to. So you smiled up at him and said, “Then we have similar taste.”
His eyes held on your face. “Maybe we do.”
“Maybe we belong together then,” you joked.
Dex’s brain went to a catastrophic halt.
You didn’t see it from the outside, not really. His face barely changed. Maybe his eyes went a little too still. Maybe his fingers pressed once, carefully, against your hand where it rested on his sleeve.
But inside him, his heart lit up white-hot. Belong together.
You had said it so lightly. Dex heard it like a verdict. Like the universe had leaned down and put a hand on his shoulder and said, yes, that one.
He opened the restaurant door for you and followed you inside with your words still burning through him.
You had no idea he had chosen this restaurant because he had followed you there three weeks before, parked across the street while you sat by the window with two friends and laughed over a bowl of pasta. You had no idea he had watched you order the same thing twice. You had no idea he knew which seat you liked, which dessert you split with your friend and pretended not to want more of, which route you took home afterward, how tightly you held your coat closed when the wind picked up.
But yeah, dinner was great.
The second date was coffee because you were trying to take things slower.
He was already there when you arrived, sitting by the window with your drink waiting in front of the empty chair. Your exact order, right size, right syrup. He claimed similar taste innocently again.
You should have been alarmed. Instead, you chuckled and sat down.
Coffee turned into a walk. The walk turned into him standing beside your car, close enough that your shoulder brushed his sleeve. He looked at your mouth once, then back at your eyes. “Can I kiss you?”
You didn’t even answer. You just stood on your tip toes and kissed him, carefully at first. But his hand came to cup your face, so you made a hum into his mouth and felt him unravel.
When he pulled back, his eyes were dark. You smiled, dazed.
The third date was dinner at his apartment.
He cooked for you, because apparently Dex did everything like it was a mission and feeding you was no exception. His apartment was neat and perfectly arranged, but then you were there with your jacket on the back of his chair and your laugh in his kitchen, and he kept looking at those little disruptions were worth you being here.
The food was good, so you smiled and pushed a little harder. “You’re very good at taking care of me.”
Dex went still, and you could’ve sworn his ears went pink.
After dinner, you kissed him on the couch. That was all it was supposed to be: A kiss.
Yes, maybe Dex made it feel a little too deep. Maybe it was too hungry. Maybe it was a little reckless, considering this was only the third date and you weren't the kind of woman who did things like this. You didn’t tumble into a man’s bed after three dates and let your body make decisions your brain would have to defend in the morning.
Your brain was trying, to be fair. The little voices there had formed a whole committee meeting about it.
This is too fast. This is insane. You have work tomorrow. You barely know him.
Unfortunately, Dex was kissing you, open-mouthed and desperate, his hands tight on your waist, breathing against you like every second of restraint physically hurt him, and your body didn’t seem particularly interested in attending the discussion.
You climbed into his lap because there was nowhere else you wanted to be.
Dex let out a breathy moan when you settled over him, his head tipping back against the couch. His shirt was still on, but you had already pulled half the buttons open, enough to get your hands on skin, enough to feel his chest rise under your palms every time your mouth found his again.
Your skirt was hiked high around your thighs, his fingers trembling at the hem of it.
Dex, who could easily take what he wanted, sat beneath you with his hands on your thighs and waited for you to tell him he was allowed.
You kissed him harder for it.
His mouth opened under yours immediately, wet and so eager that you felt your stomach twist. You threaded your fingers into his hair and tugged once, just to steady yourself, just to feel him closer.
Dex sighed into your mouth.
“Oh,” you whispered, breathless.
His eyes opened, fixed on you. You smiled because you understood then that Benjamin Poindexter liked being told what to do.
He wanted to be good for you. He wanted to earn every sound you made.
You shifted in his lap, and his whole body reacted. His fingers slid higher under your skirt, then stopped again.
“Dex,” you breathed.
His throat worked. “Tell me.”
You leaned down, your lips brushing his as you spoke. “Touch me.”
He obeyed so fast it made you gasp.
Your panties were pulled to the side with clumsy, shaking urgency, his pants shoved down just enough because neither of you had the patience anymore. It was filthy how desperate it was. There was no time for the bedroom, no careful undressing, no pretending this was slower than it was. It was you in his lap, his open shirt under your hands, your skirt bunched around your waist, both of you panting into each other’s mouths like you had been struck by fucking lightning.
He was so intense you expected him to take over. Because he could’ve flipped you under him. He could have pinned you to the couch and made you forget every thought you had ever had. He had the body, he had muscles, he had the skills.
Instead, he looked at you like he needed permission to breathe. “Like that?” he breathed.
You nodded, nails dragging over his chest nodding frantically. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t.
Dex listened like obedience was devotion, like your pleasure was a commandment, like the only thing in the world that mattered was keeping you exactly like this: skirt up, mouth open, shaking in his lap while he looked up at you like you were holy.
You knew this was too quick. You never had one night stands. Even three dates was way too quick, by your standards.
But his hands were on your waist, his shirt was open, his breathing was breaking, and when you whispered, “Fuck, baby,” he shuddered so hard beneath you that all your remaining common sense died on the couch.
Afterward, you stayed folded against him, both of you warm and breathless, your face tucked into his neck.
Dex’s hand moved slowly up your back, careful now.
You lifted your head enough to look at him. His hair was wrecked. His mouth was red. His eyes were softer than you had ever seen them, though there was still a frightening stillness underneath, satisfied and hungry and already too attached.
You touched his cheek. “I should probably go home.”
Dex went still.
He looked at you from beneath those dark lashes, still flushed, still breathing hard, still beautiful enough to make bad decisions feel like fate. “Stay the night,” he said, trying not to say please.
You swallowed. “I have work tomorrow.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“My things are at home.”
“You can wear something of mine.”
“I need my toothbrush.”
“I have a spare.”
A laugh slipped out of you, helpless and fond. Of course he did.
Dex’s mouth barely moved, and it was always a smile.
He looked at you like he needed you to say yes and hated that you could tell. Like letting you leave after this would physically hurt. Like you had crawled into his lap and accidentally turned yourself into the centre of his orbit.
You should go home. Your sensible little inner committee was banging on the table now.
But Dex looked at you like he was unaware he had puppy dog eyes, and you couldn’t say no to that, right?
So you kissed him once. “M’kay, baby,” you said.
Dex held you tighter then, giving an upbeat little whine as he peppered kisses on your collarbone.
Little did you know, there was no going back now.
—
The next day, Dex picked you up from work, even though you hadn’t asked him to.
He had driven you that morning as promised, his hands on your waist while he kissed you goodbye like he was trying not to follow you into the school library.
You had spent the whole day after that with his shirt on, but it was terribly oversized on you. Still, you managed to make it look intentional under your blazer, tucked and adjusted just enough that no one could tell. You had pinned your hair neatly, put your librarian face on, and acted very normal. Very professional of you, honestly.
Then the final bell rang, the library emptied, and by the time you stepped out of the front entrance with your bag over your shoulder, Dex was already there, waiting by his car with a suit jacket on and badge hidden.
You stopped mid-step. “Oh,” you said, lighting up. Beside you, Jonathan stopped too.
Jonathan, the music teacher. Nice Jonathan. Harmless Jonathan. Jonathan who lived two streets away from you and always carried a canvas tote bag with an embarrassing number of reusable water bottles inside it. He had been walking with you because you didn’t have your car with you and he offered to drive you home because you were both headed in the same direction.
Dex’s grip tightened around his keys.
You were still wearing his shirt, and this man wanted to take you home? Cute.
“Dex?” you called, surprised.
Dex barely spared Johnathan a glance. He came to you instead, handsome in that frightening l way, his attention fixed you that it made the other man feel like background noise.
“What are you doing here?” you asked.
“Picking you up.”
You blinked, then laughed softly. “Why?”
Because you were wearing my shirt. Because I spent all day knowing you were out of sight. Because I don’t like it when you’re not with me.
“Your car’s not here,” he said, and that was reasonable enough, right?
“Oh.” You glanced back. “Jonathan was going to offer me a ride. He lives a few blocks away, so—”
“No.” The word came out flat.
You tilted your head, confused. You tried to recover, sweet thing that you were, turning half toward the man beside you. “Dex, this is Jonathan. He’s the music teacher. Jonathan, this is—”
Dex opened the passenger door. “You’re coming with me.”
Jonathan stopped with his polite smile halfway formed.
You looked at Dex for a second, and your sensible little inner voice probably tried to say something about how this was strange.
Then Dex looked at you, and you melted, because fuck! Some foolish, lovesick part of you found that endearing. He came all this way for me?
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jonathan,” you said gently.
Dex shut the passenger door after you climbed in and stood there for one extra second, hand still on the handle, the word burning through him. What did that mean?
He got into the car.
The drive started silent. You settled beside him, and Dex saw you cozy up one the corner of his eye and had to tighten both hands on the wheel.
“Tomorrow?” he asked finally.
You looked over. “Hm?”
“You said you’d see him tomorrow.”
A little smile pulled at your mouth. You leaned across the console and kissed his cheek, like you thought jealousy was cute when it came from him.
“We work together, Dex.”
Oh. Okay. Okay. That’s fine, right?
Normal boyfriends were fine with that, right?
Still.
Then, asked if you wanted to come over to his place again because he couldn’t help himself. Because having you in the passenger seat made it feel obscene to let you leave again. Because you were already dressed in his things and smelled faintly like his apartment and he couldn’t understand why the day had to end anywhere else.
You looked down at yourself and laughed. “Dex, I am literally wearing your clothes. I need to go to mine.”
He kept his expression calm, but his fingers went still on the wheel.
You noticed enough to furrow your brows. “I’ve got work stuff to do,” you said. “I’ll call soon, okay?”
He nodded. He could do that. He could be normal. He could drive you to your car and let you go back to your apartment with its bad lock and pathetic hallway light and no trace of him except the marks he had left under your clothes. He could.
He pulled up beside your car outside your building and watched you unbuckle your seatbelt. You said your goodbyes and were halfway out when he blurted out, “I love you.”
You stopped.
Fuck. Fuck!
He had not planned it like that. Not in the car, and definitely not with you leaving. But there it was.
You turned back to him slowly.
For a second, you bit your lip in shock.
It was quick. Too quick to say that. You’ve been going on dates for what? Two weeks?
You supposed he’d been around the school for two months now with the outreach program. But even that didn’t really make sense, right?
So now, your inner committee was no longer holding a meeting. It was pounding on the table, screaming that this was insane, that love wasn’t supposed to arrive between a third date and a school pick-up, that normal people didn’t do this.
But Dex was looking at you like you hung the stars for him.
So leaned back into the car and kissed him. Gently first, then deeper, because his hand found your jaw like he had been waiting for permission to touch you again since the school gates.
“I love you, too,” you whispered.
Oh. Oh.
You left before you could take it back.
Dex watched you wave from your door, hands resting on the wheel, mouth curved in a small, helpless smile he couldn’t seem to stop.
She loves me.
The thought repeated all the way home.
She loves me. She loves me. She loves me.
By the time he reached his apartment, he was still smiling.
Then he opened the door, and the smile vanished immediately because you were not there.
The apartment was exactly the same as it had been that morning, clean and perfectly ordered, but suddenly none of that mattered. The couch was empty. The kitchen was empty. The bed was empty. All those neat, controlled rooms had become useless because you weren’t inside them.
Dex stood in the doorway with his keys in his hand and felt his stomach in him turn over.
You loved him, so why were you not here?
The question sat in his head with terrible simplicity.
You loved him. He loved you. He could take care of you. He had the space, the money, the locks, the discipline. Your apartment was unsafe. Your building was bad. Your neighbours were careless. Jonathan from music lived too close. The world kept touching you and taking from you and making you tired.
Here was safer. Here, it made sense. Here, he could see you.
The thought came fully formed before he knew to stop it.
He could go get you.
He could get in the car. Drive to your apartment. Knock. Tell you that you should change your mind. Tell you the city was unsafe. Tell you your lock was bad. Tell you to pack a bag. Tell you you belonged in his apartment. Tell you until you believed him.
If you said no, he could still bring you back.
He was stronger than you. Faster than you. He was trained. He knew exactly how to move you without hurting too badly. He could overpower you, get you inside his apartment, lock the door, hide the keys, take your phone just for a while. He’d you keep warm. Feed you. Talk to you until the panic passed. He’d do that just until you understood. Because you would understand.
You loved him, so eventually you would understand that this was not cruelty, right? This was not punishment. This was him seeing the truth faster than you did. This was him making the hard decision because someone had to. This was him saving you from all the places that were not him.
It took him an embarrassingly long time to realise that was kidnapping.
Actually, legally, literally kidnapping.
Kidnapping. False imprisonment. Coercion. Felony. It was bad.
“Oh,” he whispered. Then, after a beat, “Shit.”
His breath went wrong. The heat in him snapped into panic so quickly he nearly staggered. He saw himself then, not as a man in love, not as someone protecting his girlfriend, but as exactly the kind of thing you would need protecting from.
No.
No, no, no.
He backed away from the door like it had opened onto a cliff.
He loved you. He loved you. He wasn’t going to make you afraid of him. He wasn’t going to put his hands on you. He wasn’t going to lock you inside his life and pretend that was the same thing as being chosen.
Even if some awful part of him wanted to. Especially because some awful part of him wanted to.
Dex went to the drawer with shaking hands and pulled out the tapes.
Dr. Eileen Mercer’s voice filled the apartment through a soft crackle of static. “Your internal compass isn’t broken, Dex. It just works better with a North Star to guide you.”
Dex sank onto the couch.
North Star.
That was what you were.
Of course you were. You, with your kind heart and your gentle voice and your stupidly good heart. You, making safe corners for children.
He had simply made the catastrophic mistake of falling in love with the star. Which complicated things.
Because you were supposed to guide him, not belong to him. You were supposed to be fixed above him, untouchable enough to follow. Not in his apartment. Not in his bed. Not wearing his shirt and saying I love you in his car like you had any idea what those words would do to a man like him.
Dex pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes and forced himself to breathe while the tape kept playing through the static.
The apartment was still wrong without you. His hands still shook. The need to leave and get you didn’t disappear just because he had named it correctly. The desire sat there, dark and patient, waiting for him to mistake it for devotion again. But he stayed where he was.
He stayed on the couch with his teeth clenched so hard it ached, listening to the tape like it was the only thing holding him in place.
He loved you. That had to mean something better than possession. It had to.
So Dex sat in the empty apartment and tried, breath by breath, to become the kind of man who could love his North Star without building a sky small enough to trap her.
—
Dex barely made it through the week by hearing your voice through the phone.
You were busy with the school, chaperoning a trip, dealing with children and permission slips and packed lunches and museum gift shops, so he did the good thing, the normal thing. He didn’t show up. He didn’t follow the bus route. He didn’t appear outside your apartment just because he knew you would be exhausted.
Well. Maybe he just did it once, but he didn’t even stop! He just took a quick peek around the block to make sure you got home safe.
After that, he took it one day at a time.
At night, he lay in bed with the phone pressed to his ear and listened to you talk when you called. You told him about the children, the chaos, the little girl who tried to correct the tour guide, the boy who cried because his sandwich got crushed in his bag.
He hated that he couldn't tell if you were warm enough. Hated that you sounded exhausted and he wasn’t there to put a blanket over your shoulders or press his mouth to your temple or make the world stop asking things of you for five minutes. But he behaved.
When you said, “I’m so tired, baby,” he closed his eyes like the world wrapped a hand around his throat.
When you said, “I miss you,” he pressed his fist against his mouth until the feeling passed enough for him to answer normally.
“I miss you too.” An understatement so violent it almost made him laugh.
Then you came back to regular life, and started spending more time with him.
And naturally, you started spending more nights at his place.
It was easy. His apartment was closer to the school. His shower was better. His fridge always had food you liked. Your tea was already in his cupboard. Your toothbrush was still in his bathroom from that first night, and the spare charger by his bed somehow became yours without either of you discussing it.
One night a week became two. Two nights a week became most of the week.
Your laundry ended up in his machine. Your favourite cardigan stayed folded in his bedroom. Your substitute teaching papers got graded at his kitchen table while he made dinner. Your commute became easier because he drove you when he could, and when he couldn’t, he made sure your car had petrol, the tyres were checked, and the weird noise under the hood had been fixed before it became a problem.
It was dangerous, how much easier he made your life.
Dangerous because you were a school librarian on a school librarian salary, and Dex had big boy FBI paychecks and paid for groceries without mentally rearranging the rest of the month around it.
You tried to argue about that once. He looked genuinely offended.
“I should help,” you said.
“You do.”
“I mean with bills.”
“You buy supplies for children who are not yours because no one else will. Let me pay for dinner.”
That shut you up, not because it was fair. But because it was kind. Or because it sounded kind. Or because, with Dex, the difference had started to blur.
Your car made a noise; he had it checked. Your shoes wore thin; a new pair appeared by the door. You mentioned once that you were out of your favourite cereal, and the next morning there were two boxes in his cupboard.
By five months, you were barely at your own apartment.
You still paid rent. You still had mail there. Technically, you still lived there. But most nights, you went home to Dex.
Then one night, while you sat at his kitchen table grading reading logs and wearing one of his shirts under your cardigan, Dex said, “You should move in.”
You looked up. “What?”
“You should move in here.”
He said it so calmly. Like he was pointing out the weather. Like he had not been waiting weeks to say it. Like he had not already measured the space in his closet, looked up your lease date, and made sure there was room for your books.
You felt your inner committee rise from the dead.
Babe. What the fuck. Five months. Are you actually considering this? What’s wrong with you? Huh?
So you pushed back, but not very well.
“Dex,” you said, looking around his apartment. “We’ve been dating for five months.”
“I know.”
“Moving in would be very quick.”
“I know.”
But would it? You were at his kitchen table in one of his shirts, your papers stacked on his coffee table, your mug in his sink, your shoes by his door. Half your life was already there.
Suddenly, Dex leaned down and kissed you before you could keep arguing.
He did it because he had seen men do it in movies when they wanted to calm the woman they loved.
That was how affection started with him, really. He imitated touch. He put a hand on your waist because that was what boyfriends did. He rubbed circles over your hip because that was what loving partners did.
But then you melted under his hands and sighed into his mouth. Your fingers curled lightly into the front of his shirt.
And Dex thought, oh. So that was what it was supposed to feel like.
So after the first time, it no longer felt like pretending. It was no longer fake, no longer a costume he wore to convince you he could be normal.
He liked this. He liked the warmth beneath his palms. Liked the trusting weight of you leaning into him. Liked that touching you made him feel whole. His thumbs kept moving in slow circles at your hips, more because he wanted to than because he remembered he was supposed to.
“I love you,” he murmured.
You closed your eyes like the words had done exactly what he hoped they would. “Dex…”
“You love me too.”
You laughed softly. “That is a terrible argument.”
“It’s my best one.”
Unfortunately, it was.
You hummed, but you were smiling now, and Dex felt his whole chest go warm.
He kissed you again, a little braver this time, still rubbing those gentle circles into your hips like he had finally found a love language that made sense in his hands.
You sighed, and he smiled against your mouth. It surprised him, even after five months, how much he wanted to be good at this.
“Okay,” you whispered.
Dex went very still.
You opened your eyes and looked up at him, soft and doomed and already half his. “Okay, baby. I’ll move in.”
—
People got weird when you told them you had moved in with Dex.
Your friends did that careful-smile thing. Your mother went quiet on the phone before saying, “Already?” like the word had three question marks and a police report attached. One coworker just blinked at you over her mug and said, “Wow. That’s… fast.”
You kept giving the same answers. My lease was ending. His place is closer. It makes sense financially. He takes care of me.
Jonathan was the most obvious about it.
You told him in the staff room, after he was complaining about one of his classes committing recorder-based psychological warfare. “I moved in with Dex,” you said, trying to sound casual.
Slowly, he turned around. “Your fed boyfriend?”
“He has a name.”
“Agent Intense?”
“Dex.”
“Right. Your fed boyfriend.” He stared at you. “That’s so fast.”
You sighed. Here we go again. “My lease was ending.”
“You’ve known him for six months.”
“If you count his school outreach, seven actually”
“That’s not better.”
You crossed your arms, already defensive. “He’s not bad.”
“I didn’t say bad,” he shrugged, “I think more like… creepy.”
“Jonathan.”
“What? He once looked at me like I was trying to steal you because I offered you a ride home.”
“He’s just protective, that’s all,” you huffed.
“I’m gay.”
“I know that.”
“Does he?”
“He does now,” you said.
“Does he care?”
You opened your mouth and closed it. Because no, Dex didn’t care when you told him. Johnathan was still just another person standing between you and him, platonic or romantic or whatever. Jonathan could have been gay, married, celibate, and allergic to women, and Dex still would have watched him with that flat suspicion the second he stood too close to you.
Jonathan pointed his teaspoon at you. “Exactly.”
Your phone buzzed before you could answer.
Dex: Did you eat lunch?
You smiled and held up the phone like evidence. “See? He’s sweet.”
Jonathan looked at the message, then at you. “Sure,” he said carefully. “Sweet.”
You texted back yes, baby, and when Dex replied within seconds, Jonathan sighed. You ignored him.
After all, Dex cared. That was all.
—
The people who thought the move-in was quick were in for a treat, because one month after you moved into Dex’s apartment, he asked you to marry him in the back seat of his car.
See, you had shown up because summer holidays had made you stupid with missing him. You were bored. You had no school, no library chaos, no children asking where the glitter glue went. Just too much free time and the embarrassing realization that you had become the kind of woman who missed her boyfriend at eleven-thirty in the morning like an addict running out of nicotine patches.
So you brought him lunch and went to his workplace. That was a normal girlfriend thing, right? Except the lunch did not get opened.
Dex had barely gotten the car door shut before you were kissing him, and he had barely made it through the first breath of your mouth before his hand slid under your thigh and dragged you into his lap in the back seat.
“Dex,” you laughed into his mouth.
He made a low and lewd sound into his mouth. Then his hands were on you again, pushing your skirt up around your hips with a little too much force, a little too much need, until the seam gave with an unmistakable rip of fabric.
Dex stared at the torn fabric in his hand with the horrified focus of a man who had committed a federal offence against cotton blend. “I’ll buy you another one.”
“That is not the point,” you chuckled.
“I’ll buy you five.”
You should have been annoyed. But his eyes were black with want, and there was something so obscenely flattering about Benjamin Poindexter accidentally ruining your clothes because he needed you too badly to be careful. So you tightened your fist in his tie and pulled. “Later,” you whispered.
Dex obeyed, because liked it when you pulled him by it. He liked the pressure, the direction, the filthy little reminder that he was still half-dressed for work while you were undoing him in the back of his own car. His mouth opened under yours, hands clamped on your hips like he was trying not to lose the last piece of his mind.
Your inner committee, exhausted from the moving-in situation and still technically on unpaid leave, attempted to return to service.
Babe. This is his workplace. This is a federal garage.
Babe, your skirt is ripped.
Babe, we cannot keep replacing clothes every time this man gets horny and emotional.
Then Dex kissed down your throat and the committee immediately lost quorum.
By the time you were done and either of you remembered he had to go back inside, the windows were fogged at the edges. His hair was ruined from your hands. His tie was loose and crooked. His shirt was open at the collar, your lipstick low enough on his skin that he would need to button all the way up and pray no one noticed. His mouth was swollen.
You sat in his lap, skirt torn and shoved badly back into place, one hand still looped lazily around his tie. “You have to go back in,” you whispered.
His forehead rested against yours. “I know.”
“You look…”
His eyes lifted to yours.
You smiled. “Compromised.”
Dex’s mouth twitched. His thumbs moved on your thighs, circling through the thin fabric of your ruined skirt.
You tugged his tie gently. “I should let you go.”
His hands tightened, only barely.
“Marry me,” he said suddenly, as if he would die if he let you leave without saying it first.
For a second, you just stared at him. Somewhere inside your head, your inner committee walked back into the room, saw the situation, and immediately considered retiring.
Babe, no. Babe, absolutely not. Babe, stand up for yourself!
“What?” you managed to choke out.
“Marry me,” Dex calmly, like the idea had been sitting in him for weeks, waiting for the right opening, and apparently the right opening was you flushed and breathless in his back seat.
“Dex.”
“I love you.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Your inner committee sighed so hard the lights flickered.
“I love you,” he said again, quieter. “You love me. We already live together. It gives you legal protection. If something happens to me, you’re taken care of. If something happens to you, they call me first.”
“You are making a case,” you realised, though you shouldn't have been surprised.
He just shrugged. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t get married.”
There it was, the simple Dex logic of it: I love you. You love me. Why wouldn’t we?
It was reasonable if you ignored the fact that he was clearly halfway to losing his mind and had probably been planning this long before he said it out loud. And underneath that, there was the thing he did not say. Because sure, the practical reasons were true. But underneath all that, there was the darker, sweeter logic he kept tucked behind his teeth. If you were only his girlfriend, you could change your mind. You could wake up one morning, decide he was too much, pack a bag, and walk out before he had time to kiss you and remind you how gentle he could be when he was trying. A girlfriend could leave in one terrible conversation. A wife had to take steps.
And Dex loved steps. You’d have to go through lawyers, papers, and waiting periods. A marriage would buy him time, and time meant he could come to you, he could hold your face, and remind you that you loved him as much as he loved you. He would never hurt. But if the law could slow you down long enough for him to convince you that leaving was a mistake, Dex couldn’t help loving that, too.
He didn’t say that, though. He only looked at you with his hair mussed and his mouth ruined and said, “It makes sense.”
Your inner committee made one last brave attempt: Babe. Please. We JUST moved in.
But you banged the gavel at the head of your imaginary table and pouted. But look at him! He’s so hot!
In the real world, Dex was looking at you like you were already his wife, like the ring was only a formality. Then he kissed you, tenderly this time.
“I love you,” he murmured against your mouth.
The committee dropped their clipboard. Fine, you win, they seemed to say, Whatever you say, handsome.
You laughed weakly into the kiss, and Dex pulled back just enough to look at you.
“What?”
You touched his face, thumb brushing over his cheekbone, and felt him lean into it like affection was still new enough to surprise him.
“Yes,” you whispered, hand tightening in his tie. “Yes, baby. I’ll marry you.”
For a second, he looked almost scared by how happy it made him. Then his arms locked around your waist and pulled you close, his face turning into your neck, breath hot and uneven against your skin.
“But you really do have to go back inside,” you whispered with a chuckle.
Dex lifted his head. He looked ruined, happy, and possessive in a way that should have made you run but somehow only made you kiss him again. “I have ten more minutes.”
You giggled and pulled him in by the tie.
Your inner committee walked directly into the sea, never to be seen again.
—
Dex let you pick the rings.
The engagement ring first, because he said you were the one wearing it, so you should love it. Then the wedding bands, including his, even though he tried to act like he didn’t care what his looked like. That lasted until you slid a simple band onto his finger in the shop and watched his whole face go still, almost overwhelmed.
A month later, you married him at the courthouse.
It was too soon for anyone around you to feel truly comfortable about it. Your family came anyway. Your friends came anyway. Even Jonathan, looking like he had accepted his role as the last remaining voice of reason, and still failing anyway. On Dex’s side, there was a couple of coworkers standing near the back in neat suits, polite and reserved, present more like witnesses than family.
Dex had no parents, no siblings, no cousins, no childhood friends with embarrassing stories. No one who could say they had known him when he was young. No one who could reassure your parents he was a good person through and through. Just coworkers, Ray congratulating him as the rest of his coworkers stood on the courthouse hallway while your side filled the room with nervous affection and badly hidden concern.
You saw the way your mother looked at him. The way your friends glanced at one another when they realised there was no one on his side who really belonged to him. It made them uneasy, and because you loved him, you rushed to explain it in your head before anyone even asked. His parents were dead. He grew up alone. It was complicated. He didn't have people the way other people had people.
You said little pieces of that aloud, as if it explained half of it away. Maybe to you, it did. Maybe that was a teeny part of the reason you kept choosing him. Dex had no one, and then he had you. But it was also tender, in its own damaged way. He stood across the room in his suit, eyes finding you every few seconds as if checking that you were still real, still walking toward him eventually. He looked alone until he looked at you.
The problem was not that Dex didn't love you. Anyone with eyes could see that he clearly did. That was half the horror, really.
He loved you devoutly, too much for such a small courthouse. His attention followed you like a sniper scope. When someone hugged you, his eyes moved there. When Jonathan made you laugh, his face soured. When you looked at him, though, everything in him relaxed so completely that even your worried friends had to see it.
The ceremony itself was almost absurdly short, just a few legal words. A few signatures. Then came the ring that he slid on to your finger with a reverence that made your throat ache. His thumb lingered over the band once it was in place, brushing the metal like proof, like possession he was trying very hard to make gentle.
Your family saw it. Your friends saw it. Ray probably saw it too. But no one said anything anymore. They had tried to warn you. They had tried to tell you it was fast, intense, worrying. They had tried to point out all the red flags. But standing there, with Dex looking at your ring like the world had finally given him permission to keep the one good thing he had found, you knew why none of their warnings had worked.
Because you knew they were not entirely wrong. You just loved him anyway.
When Dex kissed you, it was gentle enough to make your mother cry. His hand came to your cheek, and his mouth touched yours like he was afraid of doing it wrong in front of everyone. But you felt the restraint beneath it, the hunger and devotion. The way he kissed you softly because that was what you deserved, even when every dark part of him wanted to hold on harder and bruise and mark his territory.
—
Two years later, Dex was in prison.
Jonathan tried not to say I told you so. To his credit, he really did try. He stood in your apartment after everything went public, arms folded too tightly, mouth pressed into a line while the news tore the FBI corruption apart in digestible pieces. Even family and friends looked at you like this was the ending they had feared from the start.
But you knew better.
Not because Dex was innocent. He wasn’t. You loved him too much to lie about that. He had done terrible things. There were parts of him that had always been hungry for direction, always been too easy for the wrong man to use.
And Fisk had used him perfectly.He had found every fracture in Dex and pressed his thumb into it. The instability, the need to be useful. The desperate, obsessive love Dex had for you.
Fisk kept you in a basement beneath one of his shell properties and let the world mourn you.
That was the cruelty of it: Fisk did not need you dead. Dead was final. Dead meant there was nothing left to use. But alive, hidden in a cold and windowless place? That made you useful. That made you leverage. Fisk could keep your body locked away while giving Dex a grief designed to break him.
So Fisk staged your death. He built the lie piece by piece. He staged an accident, a fire. The reports say that the body burned beyond recognition was yours, and even had an urn with someone else’s ashes in it with your paperwork attached just in case people started asking questions.
Dex believed it, because why wouldn’t he? Fisk made sure every piece fit. Even Matt believed it for a while. Everyone did.
So when Dex found it, he carried the urn like it was alive. He thought he figured out that Fisk was manipulating him, which was correct. He thought that Fisk had killed you, which was false.
He put the ashes in the passenger seat. He drove to the hotel with one hand on the wheel and the other reaching over sometimes, hovering near the metal like it might feel lonely. He talked to it in that broken voice of his, the one he would have been humiliated for anyone living to hear. He told the urn things. He apologised. He told you he loved you.
Then Dex’s spine broke.
And you were found by the cops shortly after, alive. Bruised, starved, shaking under a blanket in the basement Fisk had buried you in, still asking for Dex before your voice had fully come back.
So when they told you he went into surgery under guard, he had fought your way into that hospital room on the only ground no one could deny: you were his wife, his next of kin, his legal family. You should be allowed in, and you eventually got what you wanted.
During recovery, he looked wrong under hospital lights. The tubes and monitors and bandages made him look less like the terrifying thing the news kept replaying. Guards stood by the door. His wrists were shackled to the bed rails, his ankles too. You scoffed at that but couldn’t do anything about it, really.
When his eyes opened, he came back fighting. His hands jerked against the restraints, chains snapping taut with a hard metal sound that made one of the guards shift forward.
“Don’t,” you said quickly. “Dex, don’t.”
His head turned and saw you. Suddenly, thoughts halted to a stop.
You had seen Dex angry. Jealous. Focused. You had seen him desperate in your bed and gentle in your kitchen. You had seen him worshipful, frightening, almost boyish with love.
You had never seen him look like that. Like he was staring at a ghost and trying to decide whether believing in it would kill him.
His mouth parted, but sound came out.
You stepped closer, hands trembling. “Hi, baby.”
Dex’s breath broke. “You’re alive.”
Your chest caved in. “yeah.”
“No.” His voice cracked in disbelief. “No, I saw— Fisk said—”
“I know.”
“You’re alive,” he said again, louder now, almost frantic. “You’re alive. You’re alive.”
“I’m here.”
The chains snapped tight again when he tried to reach for you. Pain tore across his nerves, but he barely seemed to feel it. His eyes stayed locked on yours,wild and terrified, like if he looked away, you would vanish and the whole nightmare would become true again.
“I thought you were dead,” he whispered.
“I know, baby.”
You moved to him before anyone could stop you. Your fingers found his hand where the shackle allowed, careful around the bruised skin. His grip closed around yours instantly, weak but desperate, like even broken he could not help trying to hold on.
Your wedding ring caught the light. It was a reminder that he was still yours, you were still his, and whatever was left of him seemed to collapse under the proof.
“You’re alive.”
—
Dex was incarcerated after he healed enough to be moved.
Not rehabilitated. Not treated. Incarcerated.
They put him in solitary confinement like that could contain him. Like isolation would ever make him better. Like locking him away from voices and faces and human contact would somehow fix a man whose worst injuries had always come from being left alone too long with his own head.
You hated it. So for three years, you fought to get your husband moved somewhere that might actually help him.
Three years of forms, lawyers, psychiatric evaluations, and rejected petitions. Three years of people looking at Benjamin Poindexter and seeing only what he had done, three years of people looking at you, Mrs. Poindexter, as if you were insane because you still loved him. Three years of explaining, again and again, that solitary confinement was not treatment. And Dex had always been dangerous when he was quiet.
Your old school library job no longer paid enough to carry the life Fisk had torn apart, so you took a better job at a public library. It's a better salary, but longer hours. More responsibility. You now had to think about staff rotas, community programmes, council meetings, difficult patrons, funding cuts, late nights under fluorescent lights while you built displays and answered emails with your wedding ring flashing every time your hands crossed the keyboard.
Every other day, you went to the prison.
Sometimes straight from work, your blazer wrinkled, your tote bag full of library paperwork, your lipstick faded from too many cups of coffee. Sometimes on your days off, when you could pretend the visit was the centre of the day instead of an activity squeezed between legal calls and grocery shopping and a life you had never wanted to live without him in it.
Dex always noticed when you were tired before you said it. He noticed when your shoes were new. He noticed when you had cut your hair, even slightly. He noticed when you had skipped lunch and lied about it. Even in prison uniform, even under the dead light of the visiting room, Dex was still your husband in all the ways that made people uncomfortable and all the ways that kept you coming back.
You told him about your days. You told him about the elderly man who came into the library every Wednesday to read the newspaper and complain about the chairs. The little girl who asked for “a book with a dragon but not a mean dragon because mean dragons have bad vibes.” The teenager who pretended not to care about poetry and then checked out three collections when his friends were not looking. You told him about staff meetings, leaky ceilings, broken printers, new shelving systems.
There were visits where he barely spoke. But even then, his eyes stayed on you. Even then, his fingers moved toward yours. Even then, when you said, “Baby,” parts of him came back to the surface.
You kept fighting because he needed help.
Then one afternoon, after three years of pushing against walls that did not move, one finally gave. The blip, after all, freed some space up. Though you really shouldn't celebrate such a tragedy, it was hard to ignore the fact that this time, it worked in your favor. That day, you carried the news into the visiting room.
His eyes moved over your face, your hands, the folder tucked beneath your arm. “What’s that?” he asked.
You smiled, biting your lip, “I have good news.”
You reached across the table. This time, they let you hold his hand. It was a small mercy. His fingers closed around yours immediately, like he could feel the tremor in you and wanted to steady it without frightening it away.
“A facility we applied to reviewed your case,” you said. “It’s looking good. The transfer is pending final approval.”
Dex didn’t move. You kept going before fear could steal the words from you.
“It’s a secure psychiatric institution. It’s not freedom, I know that. But it’s not solitary. You’d have doctors, actual treatment, scheduled therapy, medication reviews. You wouldn’t be in shackles.”
His face remained controlled, but you knew him too well. You saw the tiny shift in his breathing.
“It’s going to be better,” you whispered. “Okay? Not perfect. Not easy. But better. You won’t be alone in a box, and we get longer visitation hours, okay?”
Dex was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded once. “That’s good.”
Your laugh came out broken, because part of you still found that endearing. “That’s good? That’s all you have?”
His mouth almost softened, guilty at the thought of offending you. “It’s very good,” he amended.
You squeezed his hand, and for one rare second, the visiting room didn’t feel quite so much like a cage. It felt like a door opening somewhere far away.Then Dex looked up again. “But I hope my request gets approved before I get moved.”
“Request?” You blinked. “For what?”
He held your gaze with the seriousness of a man discussing nothing more important than bills. “A conjugal visit.”
For a moment, your mind simply stopped. “What?”
“A conjugal visit,” he repeated, as if you might not have heard him the first time.
You stared at him. Of course he had thought of that.
In three years of legal petitions, medical reviews, prison visits, and fighting to have him treated like a person instead of a weapon, you had somehow not allowed yourself to think about that part. About being his wife in that way still. About how long it had been since he had touched you without guards and tables and rules between you.Dex had, though.
“Dex,” you said softly, rubbing slow circles on his hand.
“What?”
“You are in solitary confinement.”
“I know.”
“You’re probably not getting approved for a conjugal visit.”
“Probably not.”
His expression didn't change, but he squeezed your hand and your stomach turned over despite yourself. You leaned forward as much as the table allowed. The guard near the door shifted, but you ignored him. You kissed the edge of Dex’s mouth, brief and soft, but still enough to make his breath catch.
“Let’s focus on this, yeah?” you whispered.
His eyes stayed on yours. For a second, the hunger in him quieted, almost obedient. He nodded once. “Okay.”
Your hand stayed in his until the guard told you time was up. Dex didn’t let go until he had to.
—
He got approved. Somehow, Benjamin Poindexter got approved for a conjugal visit.
You read the notice three times in your kitchen, work bag sliding off your shoulder, lanyard still around your neck, your shoes aching from a long day on your feet. The letter was painfully plain and administrative. But it was approved nonetheless.
You stared at it until the paper blurred. “What the fuck?” you whispered.
Because there was no way. There was no reasonable, lawful way that your husband, a convicted killer, a high-risk prisoner, had been granted that kind of access.
You knew then that Dex had done something. Nothing obvious enough to get the request pulled. He might have threatened a guard. Maybe Dex had mentioned a name, a detail, some small piece of information he shouldn’t have known and let them do the rest.
You should have been horrified. Mostly, though, you pressed the paper to your mouth and laughed once, breathless and disbelieving, because all you could think was: That’s how badly he wanted me. That’s how much he loves me.
—
When the day came, you waited in the room alone.
You had done the paperwork, gone through twenty locked doors to get here. You came knowing you had a couple of hours with your husband. And forthe first time in three years, there would be no table between you, no visitor chair bolted too far from his. No guards close enough to hear every word. No one telling you not to lean too far across the table when all you wanted was to touch his face.
A couple of hours was not enough.
You smoothed your hands over your blouse, then over your skirt, then clasped them together in your lap to make yourself stop fidgeting. You had dressed too carefully without really thinking about it. You had a white blouse, a nice skirt, because Dex liked seeing you in skirts. You were wearing the cardigan you were wearing when you met him.
You stared at your wedding ring until Dex stepped inside. For a second, neither of you moved.
He looked different. That was your first thought, blunt and stupid and immediate. He looked different, because of course he did. Years had happened. Prison had happened. Surgery had happened. His hair was shorter. His jaw looked sharper. But he was also bigger.
You noticed from your previous visits, of course, but seeing him a bit closer now, it was evident. His shoulders filled out the plain prison shirt. His arms looked stronger than they had in the hospital, muscle sitting heavy under institutional fabric, like all the recovery and physical therapy and whatever routines they let him have had made him sturdier.
You blinked before you could stop yourself. What were they feeding him?
Dex’s eyes found your face first, gaze locked onto you. For one fragile second he did not look like a prisoner at all.
He looked like Dex. Your Dex. Your husband, seeing you after being forced to miss you for too long.
“Hi,” you whispered.
His mouth parted slightly. When the door closed behind him, the lock turned, and whatever restraint he had used to walk in there like a normal person vanished.
You barely got to stand before his hands were on your face and yours were on his chest, and the first kiss was so clumsy it almost made you laugh. Your noses bumped. His mouth missed yours by half an inch and caught the corner instead. You made a tiny sound, half sob and half laugh, and Dex froze like he had done something wrong.
“No,” you said quickly, already smiling through the sting in your eyes. “No, come here.”
You took his face in both hands and kissed him properly, softly at first. Then again. And again.
These were little, ridiculous kisses. The kind you had imagined giving him in every prison visit where a guard stood too close. You kissed his mouth, the corner of it, his cheek. You kissed the line beside his nose, the skin under his eye, the edge of his mouth again.
Dex stood there and let you love him, as if he couldn’t believe you still did at all.
His hands stayed at your waist, almost uncertain, like after all this time he still didn’t fully trust that he was allowed to hold you without someone telling him to stop. But the longer you kissed him, the more his fingers settled. The more his body leaned into yours. The more the tension in his shoulders slowly started to melt.
“I missed you,” you said between kisses.
Dex’s eyes closed. “I missed you, too.”
“I missed you so much.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” You kissed his cheek again, because apparently now that you had started you couldn't stop. “I missed you in the kitchen. I missed you in our bed. I missed you when I had to fix the shelf myself because you would have been so annoying about doing it better.”
His mouth twitched. “You fixed a shelf?” he asked.
“I tried to.”
His eyes opened with attentive focus you had missed so badly. “What happened?”
“It’s currently leaning.”
Dex stared at you, then he laughed. It wasn’t loudly, or freely. It was small, rough, and almost startled, like his body had forgotten how to make the sound and needed you to remind it.
You broke a little. “Oh,” you whispered, smiling like an idiot. “There you are.”
His expression changed before he leaned in and kissed you again, not clumsy this time. A kiss that said yes, here, I’m here, I came back up when you called.
His arms moved around you properly then, and fuck, he was solid.
You had expected him to feel fragile, because part of you still remembered the hospital bed, the shackles, the bruised skin around his wrists after surgery. But this Dex was heavy and strong under your hands. When your palms slid over his shoulders, you felt muscle there making your stomach drop and go hot at the same time.
Still, he stayed sweet for a little while.
You had both expected the hunger. But before that, there was Dex touching your hair like he had thought about the texture of it more than once. There was you smoothing your thumb over his cheekbone, relearning him up close. There was him pressing his face into the side of your neck and breathing in once like he had been living on memory for years and memory had never been enough.
“I missed how you smell,” he said, voice muffled against your skin.
You laughed. “That’s creepy,” you said, but smiled into his hair anyway.
Your fingers drifted to the back of his neck, then lower, over the ridge of his shoulder. You felt him shiver when your touch found the edge of the scar beneath his shirt. You paused, but he shook his head against you. “It’s okay.”
So you kept touching him gently. Through the fabric first, then at the collar where your fingers could slip just beneath. The scar was there, and Dex’s breathing changed when you traced it. Not with pain, exactly. It felt more… intimate.
“My baby,” you whispered before you could stop yourself.
His hand flexed at your hip. This time, when his mouth opened under yours, the sweetness warmed.His body crowded yours a little more. His hands moved from your waist to your back, then down again.
“You got…” You swallowed, then laughed softly because there was no graceful way to say it. “You got big.”
Dex blinked. For half a second, he looked genuinely confused. Then his eyes dropped to where your hands were spread over his chest. “Big?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I had physical therapy.”
“That is a criminal understatement.”
His mouth twitched again as you dragged your palms over his shoulders, shameless now, because you had earned this. You had earned the right to be stupid about your husband’s arms after three years of prison visits and legal calls and sleeping alone.
“You’re very…” You squeezed his bicep lightly. “Recovered.”
Dex looked at you. “You’re flirting with me.”
You shrugged, but didn’t deny it.
The sound he made was almost an arrogant chuckle.
He kissed you again, and this time there was no mistaking the heat under it. Then, his hands settled on your blouse.
Not grabbing yet, but touching the fabric at your waist, thumbs moving slowly over the buttons as if he had only just realised there was something between his hands and your skin.
You were still smiling when his eyes dropped.
Suddenly, his eyes were fixed on the small gap where one button had loosened, where the fabric had shifted just enough to reveal a flash of black lace underneath.
Dex recognised it at the same time you remembered. “Is that…”
Your face burned hot as you nodded.
It was the black teddy he had bought you for your first wedding anniversary.It was sheer lace at the cups, delicate straps, a low satin-trimmed neckline. Dex remembered the first time you tried it on. You stood at the foot of your bed, pretending not to be shy, while he sat there ruined, looking at you like his brain had briefly stopped receiving oxygen. And now, you had worn it here.
Dex’s thumb brushed the edge of your blouse, right where black lace disappeared beneath it. His eyes darkened. “You wore my anniversary gift under your blouse,” he said.
Your stomach flipped. “When you say it like that—”
“How should I say it?” He demanded, and it was a little mean. But that always did turn you on.
“I don’t know,” you whispered. “Less like you’re about to lose your mind.”
Dex looked back up at you, too focused, too hungry. “I am.”
Oh.
Your hands tightened in his shirt.
The room felt smaller after that, less like a prison facility and more like the bedroom he remembered, the one with your knees pressed into the mattress and his hands shaking at your waist because he hadn’t known a piece of lace could make wanting feel that violent.
His grip settled firmer on your hips. “You have no idea,” he murmured, mouth brushing your ear. “What you do to me.”
Your eyes fluttered shut. There he was. Your husband, touch-starved, breathing against your neck like he had waited years to find out if he could still make you tremble.
You smiled, kind and doomed all the same. “Show me.”
Oh, he had a list.
Dex was undressed before you could blink, all broad shoulders and blown pupils, moving with a focused urgency that made the sterile little room feel suddenly too small to hold him. The white walls, the bolted table, the narrow bed, the chemical-clean smell of the sheets, and none of it stood a chance against the way he looked at you.
He had been counting down to this for years. Every prison visit, every supervised touch, every night alone in a cell had led into this exact moment.
His hands were already on your blouse, quick but not careless, tearing through buttons, ripping them off with a precision that would have been funny if his breathing had not been so rough. The black teddy appeared inch by inch beneath the fabric, lace and satin and memory, and Dex looked ruined.
First on the list: his mouth between your legs.
You understood that the second he dropped to his knees. Dex had barely gotten the teddy off before his hands were already under your skirt, gripping your thighs.
Then his mouth was on you, and every thought in your head broke apart.
“Oh,” you gasped, one hand flying to his hair, the other twisting in the clean white sheet beneath you.
Dex made a sound against you that was almost a groan, almost a laugh. His hands tightened on your thighs, holding you open for him, keeping you there like he was afraid you might disappear if he let go. He was not gentle, like he used to be. He was focused, hungry, and touch-starved enough that every reaction you gave him seemed to make him worse.
“Fuck,” he breathed against you, voice rough and ruined. “You taste so fucking sweet.”
Your whole body went hot. “Dex—”
He didn’t let you finish. His mouth returned to you, and the room became nothing but the wet heat of him, the harsh sound of his breathing, the narrow bed creaking under the way your hips moved despite yourself. The sterile little room had no right to hold something this filthy.
He was still so good, it was unfair.
Dex had always been terrifying when he focused. When he learned something, he learned it completely. And you realised, breathless and shaking, that he remembered everything. Every place that made you gasp. Every rhythm that made your hand tighten in his hair. Every tiny, helpless sound you tried to swallow and failed.
You tried to move back once, overwhelmed, but his hands slid under you and dragged you closer with a low, possessive sound that made your stomach twist.
“No,” he murmured. “Stay.”
So you stayed while he buried himself there like he could spend hours between your thighs if time were not an issue. You stayed while his fingers dug into your skin, while his mouth made you forget the guards outside, the transfer, the years, the ugly world that had kept him from you. You stayed while he took you apart with the kind of devotion that felt less like softness and more like obsession given a mouth.
At some point, you said his name too loudly, and Dex groaned like that was the point.
Of course he wanted them to hear. Of course he wanted the men outside that locked door to know that whatever they thought they had taken from him was still his. You were still his.
When you finally broke, Dex did not stop right away.
He held you through it palms spread over your thighs, breathing you in like the end of the world had tasted sweet and he couldn’t make himself pull away.
Only when you tugged weakly at his hair did he lift his head.
Dex looked up at you like he had just crossed the first thing off a list and still had every intention of finishing the rest.
Number two on the list should have been obvious when he suddenly looked shy.
“Can I ask you something?” he murmured.
Your breath was still uneven. “Dex.”
His mouth pressed briefly to the inside of your knee, like he needed one more second to gather himself. “I want your mouth.”
Oh.
Your stomach flipped so hard you almost laughed. Who were you to deny this man anything?
You slid off the bed and onto your knees in front of him, and Dex went very still.
His hand came to your cheek, careful at first, thumb brushing your skin like he needed to touch you gently before letting himself want. His breathing changed when you looked up at him. His pupils were blown wide enough to make him look almost feverish.
“Baby,” he said, voice rough.
You smiled before giving him what he asked for.
Dex’s hand stayed in your hair, not forcing, not taking. His head tipped back. His throat worked. His eyes squeezed shut and opened again because he seemed to hate missing even one second of you.
He was big in every way you remembered and worse because you had missed him.
Too much, almost. Overwhelming enough to make your eyes water, enough to make your hands press at his thighs when you needed a second, and Dex stopped immediately each time.
His hand softened in your hair. “Too much?” he rasped.
You shook your head, breathless, stubborn, and a little ruined yourself.
Dex looked like that might kill him. Then you kept going, and he fell apart beautifully.
He moaned your name like a warning, like a plea. His hand stayed on your cheek against your cheek, his thumb brushing away the wetness at the corner of your eye with such tenderness that the gesture felt obscene in context.
“You’re perfect,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Fuck, you’re perfect.”
You felt him getting close, and you wanted nothing more than feeling him down your throat, but he pulled back, stopping himself so abruptly you almost protested.
Dex stared down at you, chest heaving, eyes wild, mouth parted like he had just survived something.
You blinked up at him.
He gave a rough little laugh, almost pained. “No,” he said, voice hoarse. “Not yet.”
You smiled slowly. “Not yet?”
His gaze darkened again. He reached down, thumb brushing your lower lip, still shaking from the effort of denying himself.
“I have two more things on the list,” he reminded you, making your thighs pressed together.
Dex helped you back onto your feet with hands that weren’t quite steady, then kissed you so deeply you tasted the restraint he had forced himself to keep.
“Bed,” he murmured against your mouth.
Number three on the list was taking you from behind, of course.
He turned you toward the bed with hands that were still shaking his mouth at your shoulder, your neck, the back of your ear.
He moved slowly at first, because even like this, rough and ruined and half-mad with missing you, Dex was still Dex. He still listened to every breath, every shift of your body, every little sound that told him whether you were overwhelmed or wanting more. The stretch of him made your hands fist in the sheet, your body tensing around the sheer shock of having him again after so long without. His mouth pressed to your shoulder. “Breathe,” he rasped. “I’ve got you.”
He took his time even though you could feel restraint burning through him. The way he cursed softly against your skin when you finally relaxed into him, when your body remembered him properly and pulled him closer.
“Fuck,” he breathed, voice breaking. “You’re so—”
He cut himself off with his mouth against your shoulder, like the words were too much, like saying them would make him less controlled than he already was.
Then he started moving. God, he hadn’t forgotten you, so of course you were loud almost immediately.
The first sound broke out of you before you could stop it, your whole face burning. Dex’s hand tightened at your hip, and the next lewd mewl came worse. He made a low sound behind you, smug and satisfied in a way that made heat crawl up your spine.
You bit down on your own wrist, trying to muffle yourself.
His hand slid up your body and gently pulled your arm away. “No,” he said, voice rough. “I waited three years to hear you.”
Your whole body went hot. “Dex—”
“Let me hear you.”
And then he made sure you did.
He got rougher, hungrier. His body covered yours, his mouth dragging over your neck while his hands held you exactly where he wanted you. The bed creaked under you. The sheet twisted beneath your fists. Your voice filled the room because he kept pulling it out of you, again and again.
At some point, there was a knock on the dorm but unfortunately Dex did not have enough self control to stop.
You looked over your shoulder, cheek pressed flush into the sheets.
The little window opened and a guard looked in. They were worried, you realised. You had been so fucking loud.
The humiliation should have swallowed you whole. Instead, your stomach flipped.
“You okay?” the guard called.
You could barely speak. “Hmmph, Y-yes!” you managed.
Dex’s hand slid over your stomach, keeping you pressed back against him.
The guard moved away when he realised what he was seeing, face red.
The second the shadow disappeared, Dex’s mouth was at your ear. “You liked that.”
You shivered.
“You liked him checking,” he murmured, darker now. “Liked him hearing what I do to you.”
You should have denied it, but you could not bring yourself to lie, Dex made a rough, broken sound against your neck and moved again, deeper into the heat, rougher now because he was jealous, because some stranger had seen even a glimpse of your face like that and Dex couldn’t stand it. He kissed your shoulder hard and held you like he could erase the guard’s eyes from the room by making you forget anything existed except him.
“Mine,” he breathed.
You answered with his name, exactly how he wanted it.
Number four on the list started with him denying you an orgasm.
That was how you knew prison had changed him.The old Dex, the one who melted when you praised him, the one who went doe-eyed and obedient under your hands, had been buried under three of whatever this was.
Dex flipped you over before you could come undone.
Your gasp broke against his mouth as your back hit the narrow mattress, the white sheet twisted beneath you, your body sore in the best, most aching way. You were already too close and he knew it. Of course he knew it. He knew your body like he had studied it for a test he refused to fail.
“Not yet,” he murmured.
You made a helpless little sound, half protest, half plea. Dex’s hand slid up your waist, and he was inside you again in no time.
Oh. you realised, he wanted to look at you when you came. That was all. So sweet. So cute.
But then you felt him twitch, and you realised that he was close before he did. Or maybe he knew, and he was just too far gone to care about anything else.
“Dex—” Your voice caught. “Dex, I’m not— fuck, I’m not on birth control.”
He didn’t stop completely. His whole body stuttered above yours, rhythm faltering, breath punching out of him like you had hit him in the chest.
“Hmph—fuck.” His forehead dropped against yours. “I know.”
Your eyes snapped open. “You know?”
His hand slid over your stomach, possessive, and the sound that left him was almost pained.
“I know,” he said again, rougher. “I know, baby.”
The words should have sobered you, but you loved him, and you loved that he was still above you, still shaking, still so close you could feel every tremor of restraint tearing through him.
“Dex,” you gasped.
“I thought about it,” he said, voice low and wrecked. “Every night.”
Your body went hot. His hand pressed a little firmer over your stomach, not forcing, just holding there like the thought had been living in him for years.
“You in our apartment,” he murmured, words breaking between breathless little sounds. “My wife, wearing my old shirts. Sleeping alone. Fighting for me. Sitting across from lawyers and doctors while I sit in a– hmmphh— a fuckin’ box.”
“Baby—”
“And all I could think was… fuck—all I could think was I should have left you something.”
Your breath caught so hard it almost hurt.
A baby, he meant.
A living tether. Something that would tie you to him in a way no prison door, no court order, no transfer file could undo. And sure, if you were going to leave him, you would have done it already. No court in the world would blame you for divorcing a killer. No friend, no family member, no sane person would call you cruel for walking away.
But you stayed. And fuck, somehow, staying was still not enough for Dex. He needed proof that some part of him could still belong to you permanently.
In his mind, twisted and tender as it was, this was not a trap. It was a gift.
His eyes locked on yours, blown dark and terrifyingly attentive even through the haze.
His mouth was against yours, then your jaw, then your throat, never settling anywhere long enough to be gentle. He kept touching you like he could not decide what he needed more: your face, your waist, your hips, the heat of your body.
“You feel that?” he rasped, voice wrecked as you squeezed him a little. “How bad you want it?”
You did want it, but you could barely answer. Every breath came out wrong, caught somewhere between a moan and his name. Your thoughts had gone useless, scattered apart by the obscene tenderness of his palm resting low and possessive like he was already imagining the seed taking root there.
“Dex—” you sighed, trying to bury your face in his ned
“No, baby.” His mouth brushed your ear, rough and hot, as he pulled your hair back gently to look into your eyes. “Don’t get… shit— shy now. Not after that. N-not after the sounds you’ve been making ‘f me.”
Your face burned, but your hands only tightened on him.
His voice dropped lower, filthier, the words breaking between harsh breaths. “My pretty girl wants something from me, huh?”
Your whole body went hot.
Dex’s palm pressed a little firmer over your stomach. “S-she wants me to leave her with something.” His breath hitched, and for a second his voice almost failed him. “Wants to walk out of here carrying more than m-my… hmm— fingerprints.”
You made a helpless sound.
“There it is,” he murmured. “You like that, fuck! You like thinking about it.”
“Dex-please—”
“Yeah?” His mouth found yours, messy and desperate, before he pulled back just enough to look at you. His pupils were blown wide, his face flushed, his control hanging by a thread he was clearly ready to let snap. “My pretty girl wants my baby, huh?”
Your breath caught so hard it hurt.
Dex saw it the way your body answered before your mouth could.
His face changed, hunger folding into something sickly sweet, almost tender in the worst possible way. “Fuck,” he whispered. “You do.”
Your eyes stung.
You hated and loved how well he knew you all the same.
“Wants something of mine when they t-take me back,” he breathed, mouth dragging along your cheek. “Something they c-can’t put in a cell. Something that— hnghhh — still has me in it.”
You were shaking now, overwhelmed and aching and so far gone that language felt like a thing happening on another planet. Dex was talking to you like he knew exactly where every dark little want lived under your skin, like he had spent three years locked away with nothing but the memory of you and all the ways he wanted to make himself permanent.
“Say it,” he murmured.
You couldn’t, not properly. Dex’s eyes darkened further.
“C-can’t even talk,” he whispered. “That’s okay. I know you.” His thumb moved slowly over your skin. “I know what my wife wants.”
Your breath broke.
His forehead pressed to yours, and for one second, under all that hunger, he was shaking with the effort to hold himself back.
“But you gotta tell me,” he said, voice raw. “Tell me no and I’ll stop.”
The restraint from him was phenomenal. Your hands slid up to his face, holding him there, forcing him to look at you while you gave him the answer.
“D-don’t you fucking dare stop,” you whispered.
“Yeah?” he asked, like he needed it again, like one yes was not enough to survive on.
“Yes–Fuck! Yes, baby.”
His mouth crashed back to yours, swallowing the rest of your answer, and the room disappeared into heat and the terrible intimacy of choosing this with him. His hand stayed over your stomach the whole time, almost reverent, like the fantasy had become real the second you let him have it.
He kept talking against your mouth, the words coming apart as badly as he was.
How good you were. How much he had missed you. How he had thought about you every night. How he wanted to leave something behind. How you would be going home with him in a way no guard could take from you.
You clung to him through it, nails catching on his shoulders, then his back, then the scar along his spine. Dex shuddered when you touched it, a broken sound leaving him before he buried his face against your neck and held you closer, closer, closer, like he could press three lost years into the space between your bodies and make them disappear.
When he finally came with you, he did it with your name on his mouth and his eyes fixed on yours, like he needed you to see every second of what he was giving you.
His forehead dropped to yours afterward, both of you breathing too hard.
For a while, neither of you spoke. The guards outside were silent. The room was wrecked in small damning ways: twisted sheets, scattered clothes, your blouse half on the floor, the black lace halfway off the bed.
Dex kissed your cheek. Then your jaw. Then the corner of your mouth.“I missed you,” he whispered, and this time it sounded almost broken.
You closed your eyes and held him there. “I missed you, too.”
—
The knock came fifteen minutes later, and you hated it. “Poindexter,” a guard called, “Time.”
Dex was still against you, face buried in your neck, one arm locked around your waist like pretending not to hear it might make the door stay shut. For a second, neither of you moved. His breathing was still uneven against your skin, and your fingers were still in his hair, and the narrow bed beneath you looked absolutely ruined.
Another knock. You touched the back of his neck. “Baby.”
“I know.”
He didn’t sound like he knew. He sounded like leaving you there might kill him.
You both moved in a rush after that, half-dressed and breathless, trying to put yourselves back together before the guards came in. The sheet was twisted. Your skirt was crooked. Your blouse was missing buttons because Dex had been too impatient, so you had to clutch the fabric closed with both hands while smiling like an idiot anyway.
Then the guards stepped in. One of them looked at the bed, then at you, then at Dex. His face went carefully blank.
“Hands,” he said.
You stepped forward before Dex could turn around.
The guard sighed. “Ma’am—”
“One second,” you said.
Dex bent instantly, like he had been waiting for permission. You kissed him once. Then again. Then to his nose, because one kiss was not enough and never would be.
“I love you,” you whispered.
He looked like he might cry. “I love you, too”
Then they cuffed him.
You hated the sound of metal around his wrists. It meant the world taking him back. At the door, Dex looked over his shoulder, and you stood there still holding your blouse together, still smiling, still ruined.
The guard muttered, “Filthy animals,” as they disappeared into the hall.
Then you heard Dex chuckle, low and rough and proud. Like being filthy with you was the best thing anyone had ever called him.
You stood there for a second, and then you laughed under your breath, too.
Because you loved it. You loved being disgusting with him. Loved that the room looked wrecked. Loved that the guards knew. Loved that Dex would carry that insult back to his cell like a compliment, and that you would go home with the same stupid, shameless pride in your chest.
Filthy animals.
Yeah. You smiled to yourself, still holding your blouse together. Maybe you were.
—
You were pregnant.
You found out before the transfer, while Dex was still in prison, still waiting to be moved to the secure psychiatric facility you had spent three years fighting for. For three days, you carried the secret around yourself like a forcefield. You went to work, answered emails, helped patrons at the public library. You smiled politely at everyone while your whole body felt like it had become a locked room with a miracle inside.
When you told Dex, he knew something was different before you even sat down. His eyes went to your face, then your hands, then the way you kept pressing your palm nervously against your stomach. “What happened?”
You laughed once, shaky and soft. “Nothing bad.”
Dex didn’t relax, so you reached across the table and took his hand as much as the cuffs allowed. His fingers closed around yours immediately. “I’m pregnant.” For a second, it was like the whole visiting room lost sound. Then his eyes dropped to your stomach. “What?”
You smiled through the tears already coming. “I’m pregnant, baby.”
The chair scraped back before the guard could stop him.
Dex moved toward you on instinct, cuffed hands reaching for your face, not violent, not thinking, just desperate to touch. The chain between his wrists caught on the edge of the table, but he barely seemed to feel it. His palms found your cheeks, and then he was kissing you across the table like the whole room had disappeared.
“Poindexter,” the guard snapped.
Dex didn't hear him. Or he did, and for one dangerous second, he didn’t care.
You kissed him back, crying into his mouth, fingers gripping the front of his prison shirt because this was your husband, your baby’s father, and he was making this broken sound against your lips.
Another guard came over. “Back. Now.”
They had to pull you apart. Actually pull you apart.
They had one hand on Dex’s shoulder, another on his arm, dragging him back while his cuffed hands strained toward you and yours reached for him across the table. His eyes stayed locked on your face the whole time amazed and almost frightened by the size of what he felt.
The transfer happened not long after.
The institution was better than solitary. You reminded yourself of that every day. He had doctors now. Treatments, structure. He was not locked alone in a box anymore.
But he still was not free. He wasn’t there when your stomach first started to show, but the institution had better visitation rules than the prison, and the first time you came in visibly pregnant, Dex was allowed to touch you. His hand settled over the curve of your stomach so carefully it made your throat ache, like he was afraid the smallest wrong movement might cost him the privilege.
He wasn’t there when the baby kicked for the first time either, but later, during one of those visits, the baby kicked beneath Dex’s palm. Dex went completely still, eyes dropping to your stomach.
Still, he wasn’t there for the smaller, lonelier things. He wasn’t beside you in the maternity shop when you cried because nothing fit right and you wanted him there so badly it hurt. He should have been there making some too-serious comment about proper shoes, back support, and whether the changing room bench was structurally safe enough for you to sit on.
But even then, you told him everything. Every appointment. Every craving. Every scan. Every tiny development you could turn into words and carry to him.
Then Leonard was born. Leo, for short, named for his father.
Dex wasn’t allowed to be there.
That hurt him in a way he didn’t know how to hide. You didn’t know this, but one of the nurses told you he had become erratic after the call came through that you were in labour. Not violent, but frantic, pacing, asking the same questions over and over, trying to negotiate with people who had no authority to give him what he wanted. By the end of it, they had to force a couple pills down his throat so he could just calm down.
So when you finally called, exhausted and crying, with your son against your chest, the silence on the other end felt too careful.
“He’s here,” you whispered. “He’s here, baby.”
Dex didn’t answer right away. For a moment, all you could hear was his breathing, thin and controlled, like he was holding himself together by force. Then, very carefully, he asked, "Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes.”
You could almost picture him sitting there, hand curled too tightly around the phone, trying to make himself calm enough to deserve hearing this.
“Tell me,” he said.
You told him Leo had blonde hair. You looked down at the baby curled against you, tiny and furious, with pale hair against his head and features that already made your chest ache because there was no denying whose child he was.
“He looks like you,” you whispered.
Dex didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice sounded stripped bare.
“He does?”
“Yeah, baby.” You smiled through tears, touching Leo’s tiny cheek. “He looks like his father.”
Still, after weeks, then months, then years of hearing about Leo through you, Dex began to know him in fragments.
Children were not allowed inside the institution, so Leo had never met his father. Dex knew him through the stories you told him in visitation rooms, through the photographs you were allowed to bring, through the change in your voice whenever you said his name. You gave him a picture of Leo asleep with one fist tucked under his cheek. Leo with blond hair and your eyes. Leo scowling at the camera in a way that looked so much like Dex it made him go silent the first time he saw it.
But he didn’t love Leo properly yet. How could he? He had never held him. Never felt the weight of him against his chest. Never smelled his skin, never rocked him through a cry, never watched him fall asleep in his arms. Leo was still partly an idea to him, a child made real through your love before Dex could reach him with his own.
But he loved Leo, in a way, because you loved him.
That was easier. You loved that baby, so Leo mattered. Your face relaxed when you spoke about him, so Dex learned to relax around the sound of his name too. And somewhere in the darkest, neediest part of him, he thought he owed Leo his life because he made you stay.
Leo was Dex’s gift to you, because he didn’t want you to be alone.
So Dex loved Leo in the only way he knew how at first: because Leo was yours, because Leo was his, because Leo looked like him, and because Leo kept a piece of him in your life while the rest of him was locked away. He loved him for your sake, before he knew how to love him for his own.
—
Leo was three years old when Vanessa Fisk made Dex kill Foggy Nelson.
He was three, serious-eyed, stubborn in the exact way that made your mother sigh and say, “That’s probably his father,” under her breath. Leo had Dex’s watchful stare, Dex’s unnerving ability to go quiet when he was thinking too hard. But he was still a toddler, so the quiet never lasted long. One minute he would be silently studying the wheels of a toy truck like he was investigating a crime scene, and the next he would be shrieking because his banana had “broken wrong.”
He loved dinosaurs, but only “scary ones.” He refused to wear socks that had seams in the wrong place. He called the moon “the night light” and cried once because you explained he couldn’t take it home. He had Dex’s face in miniature and your habit of talking to himself while concentrating, which meant you spent most mornings watching your tiny blond child line up toy animals on the floor and whisper, “No, no, you go there. No, you not listening.”
You were a good mother. You packed snacks. You remembered nursery forms. You cut grapes in half. You kept emergency wipes in every bag you owned. You sang the same bedtime song three times if Leo asked, even when your throat hurt and your body felt hollow from work and worry and loving a man the world had never stopped punishing.
Dex knew all of that through you. Leo liked peas this week. Leo hated peas this week. Leo asked why cats had no eyebrows. Leo threw a shoe at the wall because bedtime was, apparently, “a bad idea.” Leo had asked about Daddy again.
You and Leo had become the one fragile architecture that kept Dex going. Vanessa understood that because Vanessa Fisk understood devotion, even when it was ugly.
So when she found out about you and Leo, it was over.
She came to Dex with ammo in her metaphorical gun.
This was no way to live, she told him, taking away the meds. Was this what he wanted? To hear about his son in secondhand stories? To let you raise a child alone while other men opened doors for you, helped carry groceries, taught Leo to kick a ball, to ride a bike, to be brave? Raising a child was hard, wasn’t it? You were young. Lonely. Exhausted. Beautiful. How long before someone else started looking less like help and more like a replacement?
Didn’t he want to be a husband? A father? Didn’t he want to come home?
Then, she gave him a photo of you at home, hair tied back, Leo on your hip. How… did she get this photo?
Then she gave him structure: Kill Foggy first. Then he could go to you and Leo.
That was the order of how it went. It was a task, a reward, a way back to the only life he still cared about. And Dex had always been most dangerous when someone took his pain and turned it into a sequence.
So he killed Foggy Nelson. And afterward, when they dragged him back into court, you wanted to see him.
Not because you excused murder. Not because Foggy didn’t matter. But because you were his wife, and you knew that Dex didn’t kill like that out of nowhere.
He wouldn’t simply go on a rampage. He didn’t wake up one day and decide he would burn every bridge that led to you. He loved you too much for that. So you came to the conclusion that someone must've reached into the most frightened part of him, and aimed him again.
You knew that, but the court didn’t care. This time, the court issued an order. It was for your son’s sake, they said. An injunction, no contact. You and Leo were not to be in the same room as Benjamin Poindexter. Not in court, not in visitation, not anywhere a judge could prevent it.
You stood very still when they told you this.
Leo was at home with your mother, probably refusing lunch because the sandwich had been cut into triangles instead of squares.
You didn’t cry. Not when the injunction was read. Not even when Dex was sentenced for the second time. You just listened. Then you got to work.
Because crying would come later, probably in the shower, probably with one hand over your mouth so Leo wouldn’t hear. But right then, there were lawyers to call, motions to file, and records to request. You knew your husband. You knew what manipulation looked like when he was the one pointed like a weapon.
And after court, you went back to Leo. He was sitting on the living room floor in dinosaur pyjamas even though it was the afternoon, blond hair sticking up at the back, one sock on and one sock missing for reasons nobody could explain. He looked up when you came in, toy stegosaurus clutched in one hand.
“Mama,” he said seriously, “Nana said no more crackers.”
You knelt in front of him, your knees cracking with the exhaustion of the day. “Your grandma is probably right.”
Leo frowned like you had betrayed him on a legal level. “I need snacks.”
“You had a snack.”
“I need more snacks.”
“You need dinner.”
He considered that, then lifted the stegosaurus. “Dino needs crackers.”
“Dino can have pretend crackers.”
Leo stared at you with Dex’s eyes. For one awful second, you almost laughed and almost cried at the same time. Instead, you reached out and smoothed his hair down. It sprang back up immediately.
“Daddy has that face too,” you whispered.
Leo blinked. “Daddy?”
You had never lied to him. You told him Daddy was away. Daddy loved him. Daddy couldn’t come home yet. All true, and yet, none of it was enough.
“Yeah,” you said softly. “Daddy.”
Leo looked down at his dinosaur, then back at you. “Daddy like dinos?”
You smiled even though your throat hurt. “I think Daddy would like whatever you like.”
Leo nodded, satisfied by that, and shoved the stegosaurus into your lap. “Then Daddy like this one. He bite.”
You held the toy carefully, like it was evidence. “Yeah,” you whispered. “He bite.”
Leo climbed into your lap after that, all knees and elbows, and you wrapped both arms around him. He smelled like shampoo and the strawberry yoghurt he had somehow gotten on his sleeve. He pressed his face into your shoulder for exactly four seconds before wriggling away again because three-year-olds loved affection on their own schedule.
You let him go. You watched him return to his line of dinosaurs, babbling to himself, head bent in concentration.
You opened your notes app and started another list: Lawyer. Injunction appeal. Facility records. Contact restrictions. Dex’s medication logs. Visitor records.
You could be heartbroken later. Right now, you were Leo’s mother. Dex’s wife. And someone had used your family to turn your husband into a weapon again.
And you were going to find out why.
—
A year later, you were watching the news while Leo played on the carpet.
Not watching, really. You were letting it sit on in the background while you moved through the living room with half your attention split into a dozen places at once. Leo’s sippy cup was on the coffee table. His toy dinosaurs were arranged in a careful little line near your foot. There was a basket of laundry on the chair you had been meaning to fold since yesterday, and your laptop sat open on the sofa beside you, full of documents, court filings, old visitor logs, psychiatric reports, and all the research you had been collecting like ammunition.
You had been working for weeks. You had names, dates, transfer notices, facility records, connections that were too neat to be coincidence. You had followed the clues until your stomach turned. Dex was going to be moved into general population, and it was not an administrative error. It was not random. It had the Fisks’ fingerprints all over it, even if she was careful enough never to leave them where a normal person could see.
After all, it hadn’t taken you long to find out about the Red Hook charter. That part had been almost laughably easy. Child’s play, really.
The public library had a stack of old municipal records tucked away in the back, half-forgotten beneath outdated notices and donation forms. Someone had slapped a label on the box years ago — NEEDS TO BE SHREDDED — and then, by some miracle of underfunded bureaucracy, no one ever had.
So you had done the one thing you could think of and sent Matt Murdock an anonymous tip. You didn't give a signature or explanation. It was just enough information to make him look where he needed to look. It was just enough to prove to him that Dex was not acting on his own.
Matt went to see him that morning. You knew because you still had someone inside the prison willing to tell you what the official channels never would. A friend, barely. A contact, more accurately.
Then, that night, the news broke: Benjamin Poindexter had escaped from prison and attempted to assassinate the mayor.
Your husband’s name was on every channel again. Your husband’s face was dragged back into the world as a threat, a headline, a monster with a body count and no context anyone cared to say out loud.
You stood frozen in the middle of your living room, remote in hand, while the news anchor spoke over footage you could barely process. On the carpet, Leo lifted his plastic stegosaurus and made it bite the sofa cushion.
“Rawr,” he said seriously.
You looked down at him and how completely unaware he was that his father had just broken out of prison and tried to kill a man.
Leo was too busy frowning at the stegosaurus with Dex’s whole face in miniature, pale brows pulled together, mouth pressed into a stern little line. “No,” he told the dinosaur, pushing its plastic nose away from the triceratops. “No bully.”
The stegosaurus apparently disagreed, because Leo made it chomp again. Then he gasped, offended by his own storyline. “No. Bully bad.” He picked up the stegosaurus, turned it toward the triceratops, and shook it gently. “You say sorry.”
You stared at him.
Leo bumped the stegosaurus’s head carefully against the triceratops. “Sowwy,” he said in a deeper voice.
Then he made the triceratops pat the stegosaurus on the head. “Okay. Be kind now.”
Your chest tightened so hard you had to sit down.
Leo looked up. “Mama?”
“I’m okay,” you said too quickly.
He stared at you with your own eyes, unconvinced.
You turned the volume down, but not off. You couldn’t make yourself turn it off. You sat there with Leo at your feet and the whole city falling apart on-screen, trying to understand the sequence. Matt’s visit. The transfer. The Fisks. Dex escaping. The mayor. None of it random. None of it was out of nowhere, and you probably were the one to set this into motion the second you gave the anonymous tip.
“Mama,” Leo said again, holding up a toy. “Dino hungry.”
“Dino is always hungry,” you whispered.
“Need snack.”
“Okay,” you said, because your voice was already too close to breaking and arguing with a four-year-old about a plastic dinosaur felt like the one thing you could actually survive. “Let me check what we have.”
You stood and crossed into the kitchen, still listening to the news. The fridge light came on cold and white across your face. You stared into it without really seeing anything: half a punnet of strawberries, Leo’s yoghurt, and Leftover pasta. A little container of cut grapes.
The news anchor said Dex’s name again. Your hand tightened around the fridge door.
You reached for Leo’s yoghurt, then stopped because he had asked for a snack for the dinosaur, not himself, and for one absurd second that distinction mattered enough to make you laugh under your breath.
Then you realised that Leo was… silent. He wasn’t babbling. He wasn’t talking to his toys. Is he okay?
Worried, you looked back into the living room.
Leo was standing in the middle of the carpet, one dinosaur clutched in his hand, his small body frozen in a way that made the back of your neck prickle.
He was waving at the window.
No. Not the window. The fire escape.
Beyond the glass, half-hidden in the dark metal lines of the fire escape, was his father.
Oh.
Little did you know, Dex had already been there for fifteen minutes.
Fifteen whole minutes of being half-hidden in the dark, one hand braced against the cold metal railing while he looked into the life he had only known through your stories. At first, he watched you, moving through the living room with the television flickering against your face, beautiful and alive, one hand absently touching your wedding ring while you tried to hold the world together through the sheer refusal to give up on him.
But when his eyes found Leo, Dex forgot how to breathe.
He knew what his son looked like from photographs. He knew he had blond hair, serious eyes, and that little frown you always said was his. But seeing Leo in person was different. It was jarring, how much he actually looked like him. Leo was now a real person to Dex, sitting cross-legged on the carpet in dinosaur pyjamas, scolding a plastic stegosaurus for biting another toy.
Dex watched Leo make the dinosaur apologise. He watched Leo say that bullying was bad. He watched his son choose kindness with no one guiding him toward it.
Oh. Leo looked like him, but he was good in a way Dex had never been able to be without help. Dex had always needed a North Star, someone outside him to point toward right when his own internal compass spun uselessly in the dark. He would always need you that way, always look to you when the world blurred at the edges and everything started to feel lost.
But Leo did not need a North Star. Leo had one inside him. Leo had a functioning moral compass in a tiny body with Dex’s face and your kindness. Dex’s focus, but not his emptiness. Dex’s intensity, but not his fracture. Dex, if someone had loved him correctly from the start.
And that was when Dex understood that he loved him. And not in the distant, complicated love he had forced himself to. Not just because Leo was yours, or because Leo was his, or because Leo had kept you tethered to him while the rest of the world tried to take him away.
Now, he loved Leo because Leo was a good version of him. Because protecting Leo suddenly felt a lot like self-preservation. Like if Dex could keep this child safe, if he could make sure the world never reached into Leo and broke the compass before it had a chance to grow, then maybe some part of himself could be saved too.
Then Leo noticed him.
Dex saw the exact second it happened. Leo’s head turned, eyes lifting past the kitchen table, past the window, to the dark shape crouched on the fire escape.
For one breathless second, Dex couldn't move. He had been caught. Not by the police. Not by guards. Not by Daredevil. By a four-year-old boy.
Leo didn’t scream. He didn’t cry. Of course not. He was your son, too. He was brave, like you.
He only blinked, then lifted one small hand and waved.
Because Dex didn't want to scare him, because he did not know how fathers were supposed to wave at sons they had never held, Dex lifted his hand and waved back.
That was when you noticed.
And fuck, he couldn’t wait to be in your arms again.
The second you got the window open, Dex came through it, one hand catching the frame, the other already reaching for you. The sniper rifle was still strapped across his back, cold against the warmth of your apartment.
You barely had time to say his name before his hands were on you.
He pulled you into him so quickly your feet left the floor, spinning you half across the living room with a strength that startled a laugh out of you before it broke into a sob. His arms locked around your waist, your hands flew to his shoulders, and then his mouth was on yours. The kiss was clumsy in the way only grief and longing could be clumsy. He kissed you like every locked door, every court order, every year stolen from you both had narrowed into this one second.
He tasted like blood and rain.His lip was split. One of his teeth was missing. There were stitches along his forehead and dirt at the edge of his chin, but he was here. Your husband was in your living room with his body against yours and his hands on your back like he was trying to convince himself you were not another trick his mind played against him.
“I missed you,” you breathed against his mouth.
Dex made a broken sound and kissed you again. “I missed you.”
“No, baby,” you whispered, laughing and crying at the same time as you pressed kisses to his mouth, his cheek, the corner of his cheekbones, the scar you’ve yet to trace there. “I missed you. I missed you so much.”
His forehead dropped to yours. For a second, he just held you there, eyes closed, breathing you in like he had forgotten the world. His fingers moved at your waist, not quite gripping, not quite letting go, that old helpless need in him trying so hard to be gentle and failing only because there was too much feeling in one body.
Then a small voice behind you said, “Mama?”
It went through him all at once, the way a person remembered fire after touching a flame. His hands stayed on you, but his whole body locked up, breath caught, eyes opening with a kind of fear you had never seen in him.
Because no, Benjamin Poindexter had no defence against a four-year-old boy in dinosaur pyjamas.
Slowly, you turned in his arms to see Leo stood in the middle of the carpet with one sock missing and his stegosaurus tucked under one arm. His round little face was serious, sleepy, and curious. He looked much like Dex, it made your chest hurt, but he was smaller, untouched by every cruel thing that had made his father into a weapon.
“Mama,” Leo asked, pointing the dinosaur toward Dex, “who’s this?”
Dex’s breath hitched, you felt it under your palm.
For a moment, you couldn’t answer. You had imagined this introduction a hundred different ways over the years. Maybe in a supervised visitation room. Or through a phone call. Maybe one day in some future where paperwork finally gave way and Leo was old enough to understand more than he should have to. You had not imagined Dex standing in your apartment with a rifle on his back, blood at his mouth, wanted by half the city, looking down at his son like the universe had placed his missing pieces in a boy that looked like a mirror.
You swallowed.“Leo,” you said softly, voice shaking. “This is Daddy.”
Dex inhaled like the word had gone straight through him.
Leo blinked up at him. “Hi daddy,” he repeated, testing the shape of it.
Dex was still trying to keep himself held together with force and habit and whatever discipline had survived. But a foreign emotion moved across him as you felt your own eyes fill again.
“Hi, Leo,” he whispered. His voice was wrecked.
Leo studied him with the grave suspicion of a child encountering an adult who looked both interesting and badly assembled. His eyes moved over Dex’s face. Then his little brows pulled together.
“Your teeth is missing,” Leo said.
You made a small sound, half laugh, half sob.
Dex blinked at him. “What?”
Leo took one step closer, stegosaurus still tucked under his arm like backup. “Your teeth is missing. Are you okay?”
And that was what broke him.
Not the years he had lost. Not even the word Daddy, though that had nearly taken his knees out. It was the concern in his son’s voice, the immediate, unprompted softness. The way Leo saw something wrong and, instead of flinching from him, asked if he was okay.
Dex lowered himself slowly to one knee, as if sudden movement might shatter the moment.
The rifle shifted against his back, so violently out of place beside your son’s little bare foot on the carpet. Dex seemed to realise it too. His hand moved as if to take it off, then stopped, uncertain, afraid to do anything too fast with Leo so close.
“I’m okay,” Dex said carefully.
Leo looked unconvinced. “Mama has plasters.”
Dex looked up at you.Your hand went to your mouth, and you cried properly then, because Leo had no idea what he was offering. No idea that his father had come through the window carrying a weapon and a history no child should have to understand. No idea that asking about a missing tooth and suggesting a plaster was the kindest thing anyone had said to Dex all year.
Dex looked back at him, and saw a person. A tiny person with Dex’s hair and Dex’s nose and Dex’s mouth, but he was human, in the way he never was. He was kind.
Leo was everything Dex had wanted to be and never knew how. Leo was a good version of him.
For the first time in Dex’s life, he looked at someone smaller than him and thought, with stunned humility, that he might have something to learn.
From his son, his better self.
Leo tilted his head. “You want Dino?”
Dex looked at the stegosaurus like it was sacred.
Then he held out both hands, slowly, carefully, letting Leo decide.
Leo stepped closer and placed the dinosaur into his palms.
Dex took it as if it weighed more than the rifle on his back. As if this battered little plastic toy had more power to undo him than any weapon ever made.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Leo nodded, satisfied by the manners, then moved closer. His small hand lifted and patted Dex’s cheek, not quite where the scar was, gentle in the imprecise way of toddlers trying their best.
Dex’s eyes snapped to yours. There was panic there. Wonder. A silent, helpless question: What do I do?
You sank down beside them, one hand on Leo’s back, the other reaching for Dex’s face. “You’re doing okay,” you whispered.
Leo patted him again, then leaned forward and, with the sudden trust only children could offer, pressed himself into Dex’s chest.
Dex stopped breathing. Then, slowly, so slowly it made your heart ache, his arms came around your son.
Leo fit against him like he had always belonged there, his same-colored hair tucked beneath Dex’s chin. Dex held him as if the whole room might punish him for wanting it too much, as if any wrong movement would prove he didn;t deserve this.
You watched his hand spread carefully over Leo’s back. The same hand that had hurt people. The same hand that had held weapons. That same hand that now shook from the effort of touching his son gently enough.
Leo looked up from Dex’s chest. “Are you cold?”
Dex swallowed. “A little.”
Leo considered that, then turned to you. “Mama, Daddy need blanket.”
You laughed through tears. “Yeah,” you whispered. “Maybe he does.”
Dex closed his eyes.
His face bent toward Leo’s hair, and for a second he didn’t quite kiss him, He only breathed there, close enough to smell the child he had made and never held. Shampoo. Crackers. Life. His son smelled like life.
When Dex opened his eyes again, they were wet. He looked at you over Leo’s head, and the room seemed to fold around the three of you.
“I missed everything,” he whispered.
You moved closer, pressing your forehead to his shoulder, one hand covering his where it rested on Leo’s back. “You’re here now.”
It was not enough, you both knew that. It was nowhere near enough.
But Leo wriggled in Dex’s arms and said, “Daddy, Dino hungry,” with the complete seriousness of a child who had accepted this new adult into his world and immediately assigned him responsibilities.
Dex looked down at him. Then at the dinosaur. Then back at you, for instruction. You tilted your chin like, go on.
“What does Dino eat?” he managed.
Leo gasped, scandalised that his own father didn’t know. “Crackers.”
Dex looked at you, and you nodded, so he also nodded, “Okay.”
Dex knew now that he was meant to love Leo because Leo was his second chance in miniature.
And Leo had no idea his father would burn the world to keep him safe. Because in the end, that's what makes him a good man, right?
—end.
Extra note : I keep getting distracted from my Dex x reader / ex!Bucky fic, but I promise it’s on its way. In the meantime, my immediate thought after writing this is a sequel where Reader and Dex finds out Leo has powers (is a mutant) and that’s why Dex starts killing anti-vigilante task force. Because he wants to protect his son. (No promises, but let me know if anyone’s interested!)
Dex taglist : @itsdynotdaddy @diabolicallydownbad @doesanyonereadthis @meicore @pixie2k5 @bibiishin @starlitflora @pearlstiare @glorybeat @stardustworlds @castawaybarnes @supervampireflame @not-the-teen-witch @billybonesxx @ultimatewolverine @treetrees-world-of-imagiation @bitch-spaghetti-o @lostinthes4uce @cotton-eee @weallhaveadestiny @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @moonbug333 @yujyujj @mattdexx @lostfallenangelsblog @bloomsberryfairy @flimsysquid @abbotfan @leonetta2014 @ficcharsimpsblog @odairtrqsh (Let me know if I missed anyone. If you want to be added, please ask/messege! it gets lost in the comments sometimes!)
You closed your eyes contentedly as the hot stream of water rained down on your aching body. There was nothing like washing away the struggles of the day with a shower. Especially when Bruce joined you.
Fingers gently traced the wet skin of your shoulder, goosebumps rising in their wake. “Come here, baby. Let me wash your hair.” Bruce’s voice held that soft kind of affection that he reserved for only a select few. Of course, you—his darling wife—were amongst them.
Silently, you opened your eyes and took a step backward, into Bruce’s expectant arms. Your back hit the hard planes of his front, and just like clockwork, your husband reached over to your fancy shampoo bottle.
After turning off the water, he squeezed some of the expensive product into his palm and got to work. While Bruce massaged the shampoo into your hair, you relaxed the way your husband always wanted you to.
Bruce turned the water back on to rinse the shampoo out of your hair, and then, his curious hands slipped down your nape. It took them only a second to rest comfortably on your heated skin. One hand found its way right beneath your breast, the other wrapped around your neck.
Soft lips pressed against the side of your head, and you couldn’t help your little moan as Bruce took care of you the way only he knew how. You leaned further into his embrace, throwing your head back onto his chest. Eager to hand the reins over to Bruce, the corners of your mouth tugged upward in excitement for what you knew he would do with you.
“Didn’t you say the kids would be back from patrol in twenty minutes?” His face was right next to yours, so you could feel his cocky smirk.
“We both know that there’s a lot we can do in twenty minutes.” Well, he wasn’t wrong, was he? After all, you lived for the thrill of taking risks.
And if the prominent hardness pressing into the back of your thighs impatiently was any indication, Bruce was definitely thrilled and ready.
Hopefully, your children wouldn’t make it home earlier than expected.
Because they wouldn’t be able to look at their sweet mom the same if they ever found out what you two actually tended to do in the shower.
em’s masterlist | bruce wayne masterlist wc: 0.4k request: no
˙⋆✮ a/n: this scenario has been in my mind for like a month, soooo yeah, i can’t rly write much atm, but take these crumbs for now 🙏
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