𓏲🪽˚. ˖ . ݁ ִ dex is a pervert, dirty thoughts, uhm...no sex..
eye fucking you
perverted benjamin poindexter who undresses you and fucks you with his eyes
you knew it the moment you started talking. the way his gaze settled on you. you kept your voice light and your gestures casual. playing dumb like you couldn’t feel him getting you naked with his eyes.
you were mid-sentence, gesturing about something. work, maybe, or that ridiculous thing that happened during your day. but the words dissolved into background noise. dex’s focus traced the curve of your lips. watching the way they parted, closed, or shaped each sound. the slight gloss from your lip balm caught the light. forgive him for his mind was occupied with the thought of how those lips would feel slick and warm under his tongue. how he’d slide it inside your mouth and taste every corner until you forgot whatever you were saying.
you let the silence stretch just a little longer than it should. you knew he hadn’t heard a word.
you paused, frowned, and tapped his arm. his pupils dilated as he snapped back, a low hum leaving his throat. “hmm? yes, baby?” his hand found your thigh instantly, palm warm and heavy.
“are you still listening?” your voice was perfectly measured. a flawless mask of half-annoyed and half-flustered.
he pinched your cheek gently, thumb brushing over the soft skin. “of course. keep talking, sweetheart.”
his attention dipped first to your neck, lingering on the faded purple marks near your collarbone. he was already planning again just where to put marks. below your ear where your pulse fluttered, the hollow of your throat, the delicate skin right above your shoulder blade. all perfect places to press his mouth and suck until you gasped.
then down to your shoulder, where the strap of your top sat. he wanted to bite there and leave crescent-shaped impressions that would ache sweetly for days.
his focus slid lower.
your chest rose and fell as you talked. his gaze lingering between the cleavage where your skin peeked through. fuck. all he has to do is pull the neckline down along with your bra and your tits would pop right to his face. is it too much to ask?
his gaze slid lower. down to your waist and your hips. he could already feel his fingers tugging the hem of your shorts and panties. digging into the soft skin there and leaving bruises that would bloom violets under his touch.
then lower.
your thighs pressed together as you sat. the way he could just slip his hand between them, rubbing through the fabric of your panties until they grew damp. hooking his fingers into the waistband... pulling it down to savor every inch of your skin slowly being revealed to him... orrr ripping them clean off.
his tongue traced the corner of his mouth. your own pussy fucking throbbed at the sight. you could practically feel his tongue on your clit. your hips shifted involuntarily, searching for friction that wasn’t there.
you knew exactly how he was looking at you. you’d known this whole time. you played dumb, pretending your skin wasn’t prickling and your thighs were not pressing together.
he watched the movement, his gaze dropping lower. he wanted to grip them, spread them, kiss up the inside until you trembled. oh he absolutely goes crazy whenever you wear a skirt. the way he could just push it up and have you right there, your legs draped over his shoulders. he wanted to kiss down your calves and your ankles. savoring how they shook from the pleasure he gave you.
his gaze climbed back up slowly and deliberately until it met your face.
your own little act crumbling under the weight of his return stare. your voice came out shaky when you tried to hold it steady. “you’re not listening.”
he tilted his head slightly. “i am.” his eyes softened just a fraction. but you knew the real intent. it was the look of a man who knew exactly what he was going to do to you. his tone was sweet but his eyes were something else. sticky. something that made your stomach flip and warmth pool between your legs.
your fingers curled into the cushion beneath you. your thighs pressing tighter together as if to contain the heat spreading through you.
he watched that micro-movement. seeing the way your breath hitched . a faint knowing smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
then his hands slid under your thighs, firm and possessive. he pulled you into his lap in one smooth motion. you were straddling him now. your knees on either side of his hips and your chest inches from his. his hands settled on your waist, thumbs stroking circles over the bare skin where your top had ridden up.
he looked up at you, lips parted slightly.
“now,” he said, voice low and rough, “you have my full attention.”
Movie about a depressed and rather morbid autistic man planning to commit suicide and picking up a number of odd jobs in an effort to raise enough money to meticulously plan and prepay for his funeral so his mother doesn’t have to worry about it after he is gone. He begins to connect with people and enjoy life for the first time while working part time as a greeter in the funeral home, helping an eccentric old lady organize her basement, walking 7 dogs and maintaining a feral cat colony for a guy with a broken foot, playing a number of bit parts in local ads and stocking the shelves at the convenience store at night. In the end, he has befriended many of his neighbors and he decides he does not want to die and goes back to school to become a funeral director instead.
He is popular at his funeral home gig because he keeps accidentally saying things that are very reassuring and death positive. Because he wants to die. He eventually donates his funeral fund to the old lady’s granddaughter after her sudden death so she does not have to sell her grandmother’s prized possessions to pay for her funeral.
The old lady gifts him one of her ceramic cats at the beginning of the film which he reluctantly accepts out of politeness. Near the end of the film, he adopts a friendly cat from the cat colony that looks remarkably like the ceramic cat and names it after her, signaling his commitment to surviving and caring for his cat the way the old woman lived for her ceramic collection.
You know that Margaret Atwood quote talking about how a major effect of existing as a women in a patriarchal society that objectifies women is that when you are a woman, even when you're alone, you can't escape that self-peception from the view of the male gaze?
The one that ends, "You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur."?
I really do think that pushing this concept precisely one degree further in the other direction would explain a LOT about how we ended up with this whole "Incel, looksmaxxing, manosphere" clusterfuck, I just need 20 minutes and an antidepressant to articulate how
LEVEL 1: "Man" and "Woman" roles are constructed; posed as a strict binary with discrete and disparate traits and roles.
LEVEL 2: Man wields power; Woman relies on Man's approval. One role is perceived and valued as better, stronger, smarter. Requiring Man's approval, Woman cultivates inner "man" in order to see herself from Man's perspective as a tool to better anticipate Man's desires.
LEVEL 3: Man perceives Woman's "inner man"; Man perceives anticipatory and appealing behavior as deceptive and manipulative. The potential ability of Woman to manipulate and deceive Man places Women in a position of power above Man, which Man perceives as a threat. In response, Man cultivates "inner woman": a tool which he uses to perceive the "inner man" who Woman uses to predict and appeal to Man.
LEVEL 4: Man "sees" the caricature of "Man" further distorted by the caricature of his conceptualized "Woman" and feels threatened and inferior, but at the same time trapped by the binary which generates this power struggle. Inside of him is a deceptive and threatening "Woman" who he rejects; inside of HER is the Ultimate Man, who this image of Woman supposedly desires the approval of.
If Woman can predict Man, then Woman is an opponent who leverages power through engagement with Man. The only way for "Man" to escape the Threat that Woman poses is to cease engagement. He retains "victory" (escape from woman) by maintaining distance from Woman, and because explicitly admitting the possibility that Woman could ever hold power over Man is Losing, has no option but to tell himself that this is not Fear of Losing Control, but a natural consequence of Posessing Control.
Man rejects any but the most surface-level engagement with Woman, but because "Hiding From Woman" means "Woman Is Threat", and BELIEVING "Woman Is Threat" is unacceptable, Man attempts to cut Woman from the narrative.
LEVEL 5: Man, possessing the "inner woman"'s "inner man" but determined to escape the influence of "woman", mentally erases "Woman" but retains the caricature's caricature of "inner man", who is desirable to BE.
Man possesses exaggerated image of Man, who now exists solely as the Ultimate Desireable Form. In order to achieve this form, Man must constantly see through his eyes, but in order to remain safe in his position of power over Woman, he must erase any trace of evidence that he is DOING this for Woman.
Man must Be the Ultimate Man, because [redacted], who requires Man's Approval.
Having bought in to this dichotomy and fearing the terror and uncertainty of the unknown, unable to shake the foundations of the reality he must now experience, Man forces himself into choosing between floating without purpose or structure in a void where he has no control at all over his environment, or a world where he Cannot be afraid of Woman, he is Superior to Woman, and there is nothing more important that Being The Ultimate Man Receiving Approval from the Ultimate Man
terfs and radfems fuck clean off by the way, I'm a trans dude and you're both weird, but ANYHOW
My theory is this:
If we construct an environment where the rules are
"There are two parties that cannot survive without assistance from the other"
"One party dominates the other"
"Control is domination", and
"To be dominated threatens your survival",
it's pretty much inevitable that at some point we will end up with a significant population of the Dominant party whose psychological state is very much like a traumatized sailor who, after cannibalizing his crewmates for survival, cannot recognize bread as food and instead attempts to eat his rescuers
one thing I haven't gotten critiqued on yet but that I can see looming on the horizon, is that I really like to have main characters who are non-human and autistic-coded. and I've seen the conversations about how it's not actually all that validating to have "autistic rep" if the character in question is just an alien or a robot or whatever, and I actually do agree with that (for real!), but unfortunately I want to be a creature so so bad, I just really really want to be a creature. or like a little gnome or bug or something. so a good number of my autistic self inserts will just be awful fuck ass creatures and I apologize for that.
Summary : You tell Dex he needs to earn the right to kiss you. His efforts are… interesting.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x Vigilante! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Romcom/dark comedy, Dex and reader being equally insane, canon-typical violence, stolen clothing, suggestive (sex implied), obsessive behaviour, you have a roommate called Mia. (let me know if I missed anything!) Set in DDBA S2!
Word Count : 5.6k
Requested by : Ko-fi request <3
Notes : This is so insane! A ko-fi request for a sequel that was originally a ko-fi request. Enjoy!
This could be read as a one shot, but was intended to be direct sequel to Little Monster
The second you told Dex he would have to earn the right to kiss you, his attention tunnel visioned onto the task.
You said it on your first date, if you counted sharing one terrible beer, killing Task Force agents together, and being walked home across rooftops as a first date.
Dex definitely did.
He walked you back to your fire escape afterwards, his shirt still hanging off your body beneath your jacket. You still had blood beneath your nails, and he still had your silver paint smudged beneath one eye.
At your window, he stopped.
Dex looked at your mouth, and for one brief second, he thought maybe this was it. Maybe walking you home like a gentleman would have been enough to earn you. Maybe you were finally going to lose that cruel smile and give him the only thing he had been thinking about since you kissed him through his own mask.
Instead, after handing the mask back, you placed one hand against his chest and kissed his cheek. “Goodnight, Dex.”
Then you climbed through your window and shut it behind you.
Dex stayed on the roof of your building for almost five full minutes, staring at nothing.
What was enough, then?
When he got home, he didn’t sleep.
Dex sat at his kitchen table until five in the morning with a notebook open in front of him, trying to work out how to earn you like it was a mission and a mathematical problem all at once.
He had never had this before, at least not romantically or properly.
He had wanted people before, sure. He had fixated and watched and needed. But he had never met someone he wanted to impress. This was different because it was you.
So Dex pulled up a notebook and started to brainstorm.
At the top of the page, in painfully neat handwriting, he wrote:
What can I do to earn it?
He stared at the sentence for a long time.
Then, because he had no idea what normal people did, he wrote the first thing that came to mind.
Jewellery?
He paused, but it seemed right. Women liked jewellery. He had seen his colleagues back at the FBI buy silver and gold for anniversaries, engagements, and apologies. He had seen men do it in restaurants, in movies, and in department-store advertisements with stupidly saccharine music every February.
Still, Dex knew you wouldn’t want something bought. That felt too ordinary, too impersonal. Anyone with money could buy a necklace, anyone could stand at a glass counter and let a bored sales assistant choose whatever they thought looked pretty.
That was not earning. To Dex, that was outsourcing.
Dex tapped the pen against the paper, before modifying it.
Stolen jewellery?
Better.
He underlined it once.
You liked flair, and a heist had flair. A heist required planning, timing, and risk assessment. It had alarms to silence, guards to drop, and glass to break.
Then he wrote:Necklace with red stones.
He paused, then kept brainstorming.
Clean first. Get a box.
He underlined clean first twice.
You would probably appreciate that he had been forced to kill his way through a collection of financiers, traffickers, and Task Force donors to get it. But you would appreciate the necklace even more if he cleaned every trace of their blood from it before he gave it to you.
See? He was learning.
—
A week later, you woke up to the report of a jewellery heist.
The story was already playing on the television in the kitchen by the time you wandered in, rubbing sleep from your eyes while the kettle hissed behind you. Blue police lights flashed across the screen, staining the marble frontage of some private gallery in a gray-ish intermittent colour. The windows had been shattered inward, glass glittered across the pavement like ice, and several black body bags were being wheeled past a row of reporters pressing microphones toward anyone wearing a badge.
Mia sat at the table with a bowl of cereal and the front page spread open beside her. She had placed an unloaded handgun across the article to keep it flat, which felt disrespectful to both journalism and breakfast but was hardly the strangest thing she had ever done in your kitchen.
You poured hot water over your coffee and leaned against the counter, only half listening as the reporter explained that the gallery had been used as a private showroom for a collection owned by three wealthy financiers. Between them, they had laundered money for traffickers, moved illegal weapons through shell companies, and funnelled anonymous donations into several Task Force operations.
Now they were dead.
The security team was dead too, although the report was careful to describe them as “private contractors,” which sounded much better than armed men paid to protect criminals and their stolen wealth.
Apparently, only one item had been taken.
The reporter’s image changed to an old catalogue photograph of a necklace laid against black silk. It was beautifully dramatic, set in dark metal with deep red stones that looked almost black before the studio light flashed.
You paused with the mug halfway to your mouth. “Huh.”
Mia glanced up from her cereal, spoon hovering near her lips. “What?”
“It’s pretty.” You looked at the necklace again.”
And that was the full extent of your interest.
That morning, it didn’t occur to you that Dex had done it.
Dex was many things, but he was not a thief. He took weapons when he needed them, and sometimes files, keys, evidence, ammunition. Those were practical things with a means to an end. You couldn’t imagine him breaking into private galleries for jewels. He had never shown any interest in luxury, money, or expensive objects for their own sake.
You finished your coffee, watched another body bag disappear into an ambulance, and thought no more about it.
—
Dex tapped on your apartment window shortly after midnight.
The sound was small enough that Mia didn’t hear it from her bedroom, but it pulled you out of the book balanced across your knees. You stayed still for a moment, listening.
Your hand went instinctively toward the knife tucked between the sofa cushions as you walked across the apartment. There was no shadow from the other side of the curtain, but when you saw Dex through the gap between the blinds you sighed.
Of course.
Dex stood on the other side, jacket zipped, his hair pushed back, and there was no visible blood on him anywhere. He held a small black velvet box between both hands with such care that, for a second, you wondered whether it might contain an explosive.
“Shhh,” you pulled a finger to your lips, and Dex only tilted his head.
You pulled back the window, his eyes found your face immediately, then flicked down toward your mouth before returning upward.
“What are you doing here?” You tried not to smile as you stepped into the fire escape and pulled the window back down behind you before Mia could wake up and discover Bullseye standing outside with what looked alarmingly like a romantic gift.
The metal steps were cold beneath your bare feet, and the night air smelled of rain, rust, and old brick. Traffic moved several storeys below, tyres whispering across wet roads while the glow from nearby windows softened the edges of Dex’s face.
For all you knew about him, he looked almost nervous.
The box remained cupped in his palms. When he finally offered it to you, his fingers lingered against the velvet for half a second before releasing it.
You looked at him, then down at the box, Dex watching your face like he was waiting for a verdict.
You opened it.
For several seconds, you didn’t understand what you were looking at. The stones were darker in person, a deep garnet red that seemed to hold light inside them. The metal had been polished until every curve gleamed. It was old, heavy, and far too beautiful to have belonged to any of the men who had kept it locked inside that gallery.
Then the television footage came back to you.
You lifted your eyes slowly.Dex didn’t look away.
“You did the heist,” you whispered, eyes wide now.
It was not really a question, but he nodded anyway, enough so that the cold air touched the back of your teeth while your thoughts rearranged themselves around the fact that Benjamin Poindexter had robbed a jewellery vault.
He had never been a thief before. Apparently, you had turned him into one.
The realisation hit you, so unexpectedly absurd that a tiny bit of laughter escaped before you could stop it. You lowered your head, one hand tightening around the box as the sound spilled into the alley below.
Dex’s face changed immediately. His shoulders drew in slightly, and for one second, he looked as if he thought you were laughing at him rather than the situation he had created. He had killed his way through a private gallery, stolen one necklace from an entire collection, cleaned it until it reflected fucking lasers, found a box, and knocked politely on your window.
All because you had told him to earn a kiss.
You pressed your lips together, trying to stop giggling long enough to speak.
“Dex,” you whispered, grabbing his arm, “I genuinely didn’t know this was you.”
His brow furrowed. “You didn’t?”
“You don’t steal jewellery.”
“I do now.”
That nearly started you laughing again.
You looked back down at the necklace instead. Up close, you could see the tiny details in the metalwork, dark vines curling around the stones like thorns. There was not a smear, fingerprint, or trace of blood anywhere on it. Dex must have cleaned it meticulously, working over every setting until nothing remained of the people who had guarded it.
You lifted the necklace carefully from the box. The chain slid over your fingers with a cool, satisfying weight. “It’s beautiful."
He was relieved all at once, you could tell when his jaw loosened and his shoulders dropped.
You turned the necklace over in your hands.
Of course he chose this one out of everything in the gallery.
His gaze drifted toward your throat, lingering there just long enough to answer the question you hadn’t asked: he had chosen it because he had imagined it on you in more ways than one, you were willing to bet.
You gathered your hair away from your neck and fastened the clasp yourself. The stones settled against your skin with a cold shock before gradually warming to your body. They rested directly over your collarbone, against your throat.
Dex’s eyes followed the necklace downward, tracing the chain and the red stones before returning to your face. His hands stayed still at his sides, but there was tension in every finger, as though not touching you required the same concentration as hitting an impossible target.
You had thought the gift was simply a gift, but then you saw the way he kept looking at your mouth.
Oh.
Oh.
How sweet.
You bit your lip. “This… was about the kiss.”
Dex’s face went still, and you could almost see him deciding whether denying it would help. He didn't bother.
“Did I earn it?”
There was something so painfully sincere in the question that your chest tightened. Dex hadn’t treated your teasing like flirtation. He had treated it like a task, or a standard he could meet.
You stepped closer.
The fire escape shifted faintly beneath your weight, metal creaking as you tried your hardest to still not make noise. You simply couldn’t bear to hear Mia fucking talk your ear off about manners anymore.
You touched the front of his jacket. His body went rigid beneath your palm.
For a second, you let him believe it.
You tilted your face toward his, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath. His eyes dropped to your mouth, his lips parted slightly, and every single part of his consciousness seemed to narrow onto the tiny distance remaining between you.
Then you turned your head and kissed his cheek.
Again.
This time, you let it linger as your mouth rested against the scar on his cheekbone while the red stones he had stolen for you pressed coldly against your throat. Dex closed his eyes, his breath leaving him in a wounded exhale.
When you drew back, he looked dazed.
You smiled and touched the necklace lightly. “It’s incredibly sweet.”
His gaze moved from the stones to your mouth. “But?”
“But not quite.”
The disappointment flashed across his face before he could hide it. It lasted only a second, and he quickly replaced it with a familiar, frightening focus. Then, very quietly, he said, “I’ll do better next time.”
You probably should have been worried. Instead, you smiled.
“I can’t wait.”
—
The second attempt involved your cutting off your ex-boyfriend’s pinky finger.
Dex hadn't gone looking for him. At least, that was what he told himself. He had simply seen the man leaving a bar one evening while he was on his way back home. Unfortunately for your ex, he'd made the mistake of bragging about his ex being a dangerous and wanted vigilante, loudly enough for Dex to hear.
"I used to have her wrapped around my little finger,” He laughed loudly, as if that would impress the girl he was currently talking to.
Ugh.
The package appeared on your fire escape the following morning, wrapped in brown paper and tied neatly with butcher’s string, with anote that said : Though he shouldn’t have this anymore.
It was small enough to fit in your palm, though the dark stain beginning to spread through one corner gave away that it was definitely not jewellery this time.
You found Dex that evening on the opposite rooftop, watching your apartment with anticipation, waiting to hear whether a gift had been received. You should have been horrified. Instead, you kept thinking about the specificity of it. He had not killed the man, because apparently Dex had decided death would be too impersonal. He had taken the exact part of him that he had mentioned and removed it with surgical attention, leaving your ex alive to understand why.
When you met him on the roof, Dex straightened. Hope appeared on his face almost immediately, fragile beneath all that lethal stillness. You stepped into his space, rested your hand against his chest, and kissed his cheek in the same place as before.
Dex watched you leave with his fingers pressed against the place you had kissed, already reconsidering the scale of the gesture.
The third attempt happened during one of your outings together.
Calling it an outing was generous. You had spent most of the evening following a Task Force accountant through Hell’s Kitchen while Dex moved along the rooftops above you, appearing occasionally in dark windows and reflective surfaces like an omen. The job ended early, leaving the two of you walking without urgency through streets still wet from rain. You stopped for food from a cart, shared greasy hotdogs beneath the awning of a closed shop, and let yourself pretend for several minutes that this was what normal situationships did.
The man who ruined it came out of a bar angry. His shoulder struck yours hard enough to spill the drink in your hand, and instead of apologising, he grabbed your wrist when you turned toward him. His fingers tightened. He called you a bitch.
Dex knew you could more than take care of yourself, but instead of letting you deal with it, his head thought ding, ding, ding! This is your chance to earn it!
Without waiting to see what you would do, Dex killed him with his hands because the offence had been physical, and a primitive part of him apparently believed the answer should be too. By the time you reacted to them, the man’s face had already gone slack beneath the dirty wash of the streetlights. Dex remained crouched over him, breathing evenly, blood along his knuckles and the cuff of his sleeve.
He looked up at you without remorse, as if the man’s hand created a simple problem and Dex had solved it in the most direct way available.
You… looked disappointed, almost sad that you weren’t given the choice to end him yourself.
You should have scolded him. Instead, you crouched and wiped a thin streak of blood from beneath his eye.
His eyes dropped to your mouth before you had even begun leaning closer, and for a brief second, the hope on his face made you consider giving him what he wanted.
You kissed his cheek again.
This time, your mouth landed nearer the corner of his lips, close enough that Dex inhaled and turned his face by instinct, chasing an act you had already withdrawn. You smiled, tracing your thumb once over his bloodied cheekbone before leaving him kneeling beside the body with his restraint hanging by a thread.
His fourth attempt was less impulsive and considerably more elaborate.
Someone had begun watching your building. You noticed the same dark sedan twice in one week, though it always disappeared before you could approach it. Mia found a listening device beneath the kitchen windowsill, hidden so badly it was frankly insulting. T
Three nights later, an entire surveillance crew disappeared.
Their operation had been housed in a rented office two streets from your apartment. Dex dismantled it room by room. The people inside had worked for a private intelligence firm funded by Task Force donors, and Dex killed the ones who had apparently fucking photographed your bedroom, even if he had done the same himself. He left the technician who had installed the device alive with both hands broken and every hard drive stacked beside him.
Then Dex brought you the files.
He arranged them across your kitchen table while you slept, pages separated into neat categories: From the names of the donors, their addresses, their routines, and the amounts they had paid to look into your life.
You found him later that night when you stepped onto the fire escape, crouched between his knees, and held his face in both hands. This time, your kiss landed at the edge of his cheek, close enough to his mouth that the corner of your lips brushed his for less than a second.
He went rigid.
The contact on his lips had been so slight it might have been accidental, but both of you knew it wasn't. Dex followed when you pulled away, stopping himself only after his mouth had moved an inch toward yours. His eyes had gone unfocused, his breathing suddenly uneven as he stared at the tiny distance you had created.
You thanked him for the files, and told him not quite.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
—-
Dex ran out of ideas three days later.
The almost-kiss had destroyed what remained of his ability to think rationally. He could still feel the exact place you had pressed your lips to his skin, which he thought about often enough to become embarrassing.
You had been so close. Closer than ever before.
That would have meant he was improving, right?
Instead, he sat at his kitchen table until nearly dawn, staring at the same notebook he had used after your first date.
The original page looked almost childish now. Jewellery? was written in black ink, followed by notes about red stones, boxes, and cleaning off the blood. That had seemed like such a strong idea at the time. He had been proud of it. He had planned the heist meticulously, selected the necklace from an entire private collection, and polished every link of the chain himself.
You had loved it.
Still. It was not enough.
Everything he had tried afterwards filled the next several pages. Names, addresses, little reminders of things that bothered you and people who no longer had the opportunity to do so. Some of the ideas had been crossed out because they were too excessive, although Dex’s definition of excessive remained alarmingly generous. Others had been completed and marked with neat dates in the margin.
Beside each attempt, he had recorded the result.
Cheek.
Cheek again. Slightly longer.
Corner of mouth. Almost.
Pathetic. It really was fucking pathetic.
Dex stared at that final entry until the words began to blur.
He could do more, obviously. There were always more people to kill, more enemies to drag to your feet like a sad cat.
But Dex had begun to suspect that scale was not the problem.
He picked up his pen and wrote: bigger jewellery heist?
Then he crossed it out.
He wrote: kill Task Force Leader?
That one remained on the page for several minutes before he reluctantly crossed it out too. Powell definitely deserved it, but you had never mentioned him specifically. Killing someone you hadn’t complained about felt like guessing, and Dex was starting to understand that guessing wrong could push him farther away instead of bringing him closer.
He considered returning your ex’s other pinky finger.
No, he thought, too repetitive.
He considered finding every man who had ever frightened you and arranging them alphabetically in a warehouse.
Impractical, he thought. That idea had flair, but he could not work out what you would do with one.
By six in the morning, the notebook contained several increasingly desperate fragments and one entire page where Dex had written WHAT DOES SHE WANT? hard enough to leave the words embossed through the paper beneath it.
The answer didn’t appear.
For the first time since you had told him to earn the kiss, Benjamin Poindexter had no plan.
—
Mia discovered him outside your kitchen window at two in the morning.
She had come in for water wearing an oversized pyjama set, her hair twisted into a loose knot that had mostly collapsed. The apartment was dark except for the light above the stove, and she nearly walked past him before she noticed the shape crouched on the fire escape.
Dex tapped once against the glass.
Mia flinched hard enough to spill water over her hand. “What the…”
Within seconds, she had a pistol aimed directly between his eyes.
Dex had expected that.
Mia stared at him through the window, exhausted because she had repeatedly asked you to stop contributing to her life becoming stranger and had been consistently ignored. Her eyes moved from his face to his empty hands, checking for blood, weapons, packages, or severed pieces of anyone she recognised.
There was nothing, and that seemed to concern her more.
She unlocked the window but only raised it several inches, leaving enough space to talk without giving him room to climb through.
“She’s asleep,” Mia said quietly.
“I know.”
Her eyes narrowed. Of course he did.
Dex looked past her toward your bedroom door on the side, which was closed. He could picture you behind it, curled beneath the blankets, breathing into your pillow. He forced his attention back to Mia before the thought became distracting. “I need help.”
Mia’s grip shifted on the pistol.
For several seconds, she seemed unsure whether she had heard him correctly. Dex understood that he didn’t ask people for help. Help created debt and uncertainty, and it was usually more efficient to solve the problem himself.
Unfortunately, he had tried that.
Mia raised the window another few inches, though the gun remained.
Dex took the notebook from inside his jacket and passed it through the gap.
Mia didn;t lower the pistol as she took it. She placed the notebook on the counter, flipped it open with one hand, and began reading. Her expression changed as she moved through the pages: Confusion, followed by disbelief, then amusement.
Dex watched her read the record of his attempts, and when Mia reached the page headed POSSIBLE NEXT ATTEMPTS, she stopped.
The list beneath it included stealing a deed to a building, acquiring a tiger, and locating the person responsible for cancelling the brand of hot chocolate you liked three years ago.
Mia looked up. “A tiger?”
“She likes cats,” Dex shrugged.
Mia sighed. “That doesn't mean she wants a tiger.”
“I crossed it out.”
She looked at the notes again. “It says here you researched three private zoos.”
“I needed to know whether it was feasible.”
Mia shut the notebook and pressed her fingertips against her forehead. The gun was still in her other hand, but it had lowered toward the floor, apparently because exasperation had temporarily overtaken self-preservation.
Dex waited for her to provide an answer.
Instead, she looked at him through the narrow opening and began to laugh, and it was not the same laughter you gave him. Yours eventually made his chest warm. Mia’s laughter made him feel as though he had failed the test at every hurdle.
He thought about hurting Mia for making him feel humiliated, but then decided against it because you’d probably hate him for it.
“I’m serious.”
“That’s the problem,” Mia managed, keeping her voice down so she wouldn’t wake you. “You are thinking about this like you’re trying to overthrow a government.”
Dex didn’t see how that was relevant. Overthrowing a government required less guesswork.
Mia opened the notebook again and flicked through the pages, staring at each carefully planned act of violence. The laughter eventually faded, leaving behind a reluctant sympathy that Dex disliked even more.
“You’re thinking too much,” she told him.
The statement felt insulting. Thinking was how he avoided mistakes. “She told me to earn it.”
“I know. She told me everything.”
Dex’s attention sharpened. “Everything?”
Mia ignored the question. “You keep acting like there’s a secret combination of murder and theft that unlocks her mouth.”
He reached under the window for the notebook, but Mia pulled it back before he could take it. “She’s just a girl, Dex.”
He stared at her, because she wasn’t making sense.
You were not just anything. How fucking dare she insinuate that?
Mia seemed to read the objection on his face.
“I know she’s a fucking lunatic,” she continued. “I live with her. I’ve helped her sink bodies. Just… stop trying to earn the kiss by making her owe you.”
Eventually, she released the notebook back to his custody.
That had never been his intention. He didn’t want you indebted to him. He wanted you to be impressed, delighted. But perhaps those things were not as different as he had believed.
Perhaps the gesture had the undertone of the same question:
Was that enough? Do I get it now?
Mia had seen it. You probably had too.
Dex looked down at the notebook in his hands and the pages felt heavier than before.
Mia started lowering the window, apparently done with his bullshit for the night. She paused with only a narrow gap remaining. “Again,” She started, “She’s just a girl. Don’t overthink it.”
Easier said than done.
—
For once, Dex listened.
The next time he came to see you, nobody had died.
There was no breaking-news report waiting for you that morning, no stolen artefact displayed across the front page, no mysteriously vanished Task Force officials, and no parcel on the fire escape leaking through its paper wrapping. The day passed so uneventfully that by evening, you had started to suspect Dex was planning something truly catastrophic.
You checked the news twice. Nothing.
You glanced toward the window whenever a shadow shifted outside, but the fire escape remained empty. It was nearly eight when someone knocked on the apartment door.
You looked up from the sofa.
Mia looked up from the weapon catalogue spread across her lap. She was in her bedroom with the door ajar. “You expecting someone?”
“No.”
Mia turned another page. “Weird.”
There was no urgency in the knock, no coded pattern, and no scraping sound suggesting someone was trying to slide a body across the hallway carpet.
When you opened the door, Dex was standing beneath the weak yellow light with a bunch of flowers in his hands.
For a moment, you only stared.
They were not arranged professionally. The paper around them had been folded precisely in some places and crushed in others, as though Dex had spent far too long trying to hold them without damaging anything. There were no red stones, no bloodstains, and no expensive velvet box. Just a slightly unruly collection of pale flowers and greenery, fresh enough that tiny droplets of water still clung to the petals.
Dex looked almost painfully uncertain.
He had faced rooms full of armed men with less visible tension. His shoulders were held too squarely, his fingers carefully positioned around the stems, and his eyes kept moving between your face and the flowers as though he expected one of them to tell him what to do next.
Oh. this was new.
“You… brought me flowers.”
“I uh…” Dex nodded, “yeah.”
Your eyes narrowed with suspicion as you accepted them. The paper rustled beneath your fingers, damp where the stems had been wrapped. “Did you steal them?”
“No.”
“Threaten the florist?”
He had another pause, just long enough to become concerning. “No.”
“Dex.”
“I paid.”
You looked up properly at that.
His eyes looked… defensive, as if buying flowers had required more courage than stealing a priceless necklace from a fortified vault. Maybe it had. Violence gave him a shield to hide behind. This was only Dex standing outside your door with a simple gift and no proof of obsession beyond the fact that he had remembered you might like flowers in your favourite colours.
You looked down at the flowers again.
They smelled green somehow, faintly sweet but not overwhelming. A little piece of leaf had caught against the paper near your thumb. One stem was slightly bent, probably from Dex gripping the bouquet too tightly on the journey over and then attempting to straighten it before knocking.
The imperfection made it strangely charming.
There was no note demanding that you understand what he had done for you, though you had at least expected it. There was no list of names or severed pieces of someone who had wronged you. He hadn’t even brought them as evidence that he could protect you, avenge you, or remove inconvenience from your life.
He had brought you flowers because Mia had told him you were just a girl.
And sometimes girls liked flowers their will-they-won’t-they situationship brought for them.
Finally, after all his increasingly elaborate attempts, he had tried doing something… simple.
“They’re beautiful,” you smiled,watching relief pass over his face so openly you nearly melted.
Dex’s eyes flickered toward your mouth out of habit, but he stopped himself almost immediately. He didn’t ask whether he had earned it, he didn’t even step closer or look expectant. He only stood there in the hallway, hands empty now, waiting to see whether you wanted to invite him inside.
Oh, Dex.
You stepped into the hallway and placed the flowers carefully on the console table beside the door. Dex watched you do it, cautiously hopeful, but he still didn’t move.
Without any warning, you grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him down, pressing your lips to his.
His mouth was warm beneath yours, parted slightly with surprise, and for one suspended moment he did absolutely nothing.
Apparently, he had failed to consider that flowers might work.
Eventually, though, he kissed you back carefully at first, as if the kiss might disappear if he wanted it too much. His hand lifted toward your waist but stopped just short of touching, every part of him still suspended between hope and disbelief.
You pulled away.
Dex followed without meaning to, his mouth chasing yours by an inch before he caught himself. His eyes opened completely dazed, and the devastation on his face made your stomach twist.
At that moment, he seemed to think that was all he was getting.
Then you smiled, tightened your fist in his jacket, and pulled him back.
The second kiss was deeper, and Dex made a soft, wrecked sound against your mouth as his hands finally settled around your waist. The restraint he had been pushed down for weeks cracked beneath your fingers. He kissed you like he had memorised every near miss: every cheek, every corner, every cruel fraction of an inch you had left between you.
Behind you, Mia peeked out her bedroom door.
Mia took one look at Dex leaning down on you in the doorway, your hands gripping his jacket and the flowers abandoned beside the door, then silently reached around the frame and pulled the door shut again.
You laughed into the kiss, breathless against his mouth.
Dex felt it in his bones, not quite believing the fact that you were finally kissing him back without a tally to settle or another task waiting. When you eventually pulled back, he followed helplessly until his forehead rested against yours. His breathing had gone uneven, and his eyes kept dropping to your lips as if he still expected you to change your mind and put unbearable distance between you again.
“D’you wanna come in?” you asked.
Dex nodded far too quickly. “Mhm.”
It came out so pathetic and eager that you smiled, caught his hand, and pulled him through the doorway. The flowers stayed forgotten on the little table while you dragged him toward your bedroom, kissing him again before you had even made it down the hall.
Mia’s door was still shut, and Dex briefly considered knocking to offer her headphones.
Then your hands found his belt loops in his waist, your mouth moving hungrily against his, and he decided she could survive one noisy night after advising him on how to win your physical affection.
After all, she had been right.
You were just a girl, and all Dex had ever needed to do was bring you flowers.
—end.
NOTE : I genuinely love seeing all your requests in my asks, but I do get a lot and I physically can’t write every single one. I usually write the ones that catch my eye, and it’s probably every 1 in 5.
That’s why I have Ko-fi! If you request there, it’s pretty much guaranteed I’ll write it within a month of responding as a token of appreciation (keep this post in mind for July and August 2026). If I’m uncomfortable with the request or don’t think I can do it justice, I’ll let you know and we can brainstorm something else.
Please remember I run this blog for free, so any support means a lot, only if you’re able to give it! Love y’all and thank you for reading!!! <3
hiii! first of all i loveeeee your SMAUs fr! i wanted to make a request for how would each batboys (and anyone else from DC if you’re up for it) react to be sent a pretty picture for a fit check or to post and then be deleted to ragebait them or because reader didn’t feel that cute (whichever you want tbh!!) i hope you have a nice day!! :)
Sucker for you
featuring: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Duke Thomas, Bruce Wayne, Wally West, Clark Kent, Hal Jordan
A/n: first writing post on this account kinda nervous hehe. Pointdexter you have bewitched me with your psychopathic tenancies and sweet little grin, I’ve started writing something long form for him too but going to warm up with some hc first! Happy Friday :p
Tags/warnings: Benjamin Pointdexter x afab!reader, Dex being possessive, a little controlling, stalking tendencies, general Dex stuff.
Sfw
⌖ big sweet tooth, you’ll often find him sucking on a sour sweet barley making a face at the taste.
⌖ is very attentive overbearing needs to be in or orbiting around your space constantly.
⌖especially if you’re ill he’s there every hour on the hour with meds, food, water, making sure you’re getting enough rest; anything and everything you could need. Sometimes gets to point where you want to tell him to go away, but even if you do, he won’t, he’ll linger near doorways just to watch the rise and fall of your chest.
⌖clean and methodical to a point where it’s diagnosable, its more than likely a hand off of his BPD but if this man looses his routine, he’s off for the rest of the day. It’s strict, thorough that when you two do move in together he struggles a lot to try and fit his routine in along side yours, he gets there slowly.
⌖ Dex is the type to pull you back in to bed in the morning, arms wrapped firmly around your waist, head snuggled in to the crook of your neck and mumble a “don’t go to work today, stay with me” you smile, it’s cute, and you’ll yield for another 5 minutes before you actually do need to get up. Little do you know, he’s not joking, he can support you both easily, you both know that. And with you home he can keep an eye on you, keep you safe.
⌖ Dex knows you well, maybe too well. He knows how you take your tea in the morning, and has it in a thermos waiting on the counter top for you . He knows when you should take your pills every morning and when you actually do, and if it strays past that time, he’ll walk over to you, the little tinks of the tablets hitting against the plastic holder, he’ll slide them towards you across the table, along with a glass of water and a small knowing smile. But he also knows more personal things, things maybe he shouldn’t know, but he does because he needs too. Needs to worm his way under your skin, carve bits of him in to every bit of your life.
⌖doesn’t sleep well, jerks himself awake with muscle spasms, sits up with a start gasping in lungfuls of air as his brain replays scenes that scare him half to death over over like bad re runs of a show he knows like the back of his hand. The only thing that eases it is when he’s next to you, he knows it sounds cliché but after sleeping like a baby for a few nights with you he hasn’t been the same. When you left and he went to bed that night he was a woken up after an hour, the rest of the night he had broken and fragmented sleep.
Nsfw
⌖ I don’t think initially he’s overly bothered by sex, he’s human at the end of the day, but his end goal is not to get in your pants. He gets off far more on the very essence of you. Getting to know you, what you like, what you don’t like, what makes you tick, your favourite things, what you do with your spare time, just to name a few. Sex and closeness come gradually for him and it’s often further down the line.
⌖pull his hair, with how much it’s done in the show I’d be wrong to not put this down. Grab a handful of the back of his hair when he’s in between your legs, as you grind against his face, you can almost feel the grin on his lips as he laps between your folds, his big hands on your thighs keeping them pried open. Both of your hands threading through the back of his hair, pulling him closer, tugging at his hair and pulling him back as he sucks your bottom lips between his teeth, biting down.
⌖ a biter, never enough to draw blood but enough to leave a purpleish tinge peeking from under the collar of your shirt. His head is angled down as he tries to fight off the grin that pulls at his lips. Later on he comes up behind you, slipping his arms around your waist, pulling your back against his chest and placing gentle kisses over them.
⌖he loves when you have your hands on him, in any capacity really, your hand wrapped around his in a big crowd, squeezing tighter when you get pulled a little too far away. Your arms wrapped around him, fingers lightly dancing over his stomach and chest with your cheek pushed against his back. But when you’re hand is wrapped around his cock, pumping him slowly, your other hand cradling his cheek as you switch between peppering his face and neck with kisses and whispering in his ear, he never lasts very long, loves having your attention on him, undivided and absolutely, just you both completely absorbed in each other.
Okay sorry it short and sweet, going to get back to writing my fic now, hope you enjoyed hopefully see you soon with more Dex stuff!
Summary : Dex finds your ex-boyfriend bleeding and crawling through your bedroom window.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x Supersoldier! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : fluff!!! Angst!!! established relationship, jealous!Dex, possessive!Dex, blood/injury, gunshot wound, knives/guns, violence, handcuffs used non-sexually, Bucky Barnes is mentioned to be your ex but you do not have feelings for him anymore (Let me know if I miss anything!) set after DDBA Season 2.
Word Count : 15.9k
Notes : Took me so long to write this but oh well. The title is taken from AM song. Enjoy!
Could be read as a one-shot, but is technically a sequel to No Absolution. All you need to know is that Bucky rescued reader from Siberia during the events of Civil War and they broke up before the events of Thunderbolts*. Dex and reader got together after Mr. Charles assigns them on the same mission post-DDBA season 2.
Boyfriend was a stupid word.
Dex hated and loved it at the same time.
It had once been a word that made a chasm of hunger open up inside his chest. Back before he had you. He wanted that word so badly, back when wanting you had been a private habit he fed in pieces, in glances, in the sound of your voice through comms, in the days you woke up after “casual sex” that didn’t feel casual at all. Back when you were just his work partner, his fuck buddy, his fixation in the safehouse hallway, and he had wanted the word boyfriend so much it had started to feel pathetic.
Your boyfriend.
It sounded normal.
He had imagined you saying it casually to someone else during a mission. He had imagined you introducing him as My boyfriend. Like he was not Benjamin Poindexter, like he was not a weapon Mr. Charles kept pointing at problems, like he was just a man who came home to you, who knew how you liked your tea, who had a side of the bed and a toothbrush beside yours and permission to touch your waist when passing behind you in the kitchen.
And then he got it. He got you.
He was your boyfriend now.
And somehow, it was not enough.
Girlfriend was what people called the woman they brought to weddings. Girlfriend was dinner reservations and spare hoodies and lazy Sunday mornings. Girlfriend was small enough to fit into people’s mouths without scaring them.
You were not small. You were not mild.
You were the hand around the back of his neck when he was one bad second from a bad decision. You were not his girlfriend like a cute title. You were his alibi, his home, his open wound, his last nerve.
You were his collar, though you only called yourself that when you wanted to watch him lose focus for you.
And Dex wasn’t your boyfriend in any ordinary way either.
He wasn’t all about flowers and movie dates, though he had brought you flowers once and then spent thirty-seven minutes rearranging them in a vase because he decided the florist had done a lazy job and nothing could ever possibly be good enough for his girl. He wasn’t normal morning kisses, though he kissed you every morning like he had to prove you were still his. He wasn’t good at easy affection, except when he was, and then it was almost worse, because his gentleness always had teeth around it.
So yeah, boyfriend and girlfriend sounded a bit too tame for what you were to each other, but you’ve been together for six months.
Six months was not a long time.
Six months was nothing.
Six months was barely a “serious” relationship to normal people. Six months in a relationship was still pretending you didn’t notice each other’s flaws. Six months was still acting like you had boundaries, hobbies, independent lives, and a reasonable amount of emotional distance in case of a breakup.
You and Dex had skipped all of that.
Dex moved in officially by month three, which was funny, because unofficially he had moved in after month two. First it was a spare shirt, then a toothbrush, then a drawer, then three drawers. Then, he started hiding his knives under your bed, his gun taped beneath your kitchen table, his boots by your door, his shampoo in your shower, his body in your bed every single night like he would rather peel off his own skin than sleep somewhere you were not.
By the time he actually started paying bills (two weeks of staying around), it felt less like a milestone and more like paperwork catching up to the fact that he obviously lived there.
He belonged there. He belonged to you.
And fuck, you liked it.
You liked that he was insane about you. You liked that he wanted to know where you were, who you were with, how long you would be gone, whether you had eaten, whether anyone had looked at you wrong, whether anyone had said your name in a way he needed to correct. You liked the way his devotion took all the space out the room. You liked that loving Dex felt less like dating and more like being worshipped.
It was important to understand that you weren’t just the poor, helpless, naive girl who knew nothing better of his obsession. Please. You were a supersoldier with a body count. You could have snapped his wrist the first time he got too possessive. You could have kicked him out the first time he started acting like your apartment was his if you didn’t want it.
Instead, you bought his favourite coffee and cleared space in your wardrobe. Instead, you let him fold himself into every corner of your life. Instead, when you found the tracker he inserted in your bracelet, you didn’t throw it at his head.
You just held it up between two fingers and said, “Dex.”
He had gone completely still. He didn’t look guilty. Instead like a dog caught with blood on its mouth, waiting to see if you were going to send him away.
You should have been furious. Maybe part of you was. But another part of you, the part that had been made in laboratories and freezers, made to go on missions by Hydra where nobody came back for you, looked at that tiny little tracker and thought: Aw. He wants to find me.
Because you know Dex didn’t want to use you. You weren’t an asset.
He just wanted to find you. To know where you were.
So you sighed, handed the bracelet back, and said, “can you at least make sure it’s waterproof?”
Dex looked at you like you had just handed him your heart and a loaded gun and told him to be careful with both.
After that, after confirming that the tracking chip was indeed waterproof (and shatterproof), the bracelet stayed on at all times.
Of course, you had a tracker on him, too. You put it in one of his knife holsters that he never left home without.
It was probably, by any normal metric to any normal couple, unhealthy. But to you, it was sweet.
And it worked because neither of you had to translate the ugly parts. Dex didn’t have to pretend he was less intense. You didn’t have to pretend you wanted gentle, normal, polite love. He wanted to crawl under your skin and live there. You would let him if you could.
You had gotten together on a mission, because Mr. Charles paired you and Dex together. You were a close combat specialist with terrible aim, so naturally, he became your partner. You had your similarities, of course. You both were weapons who had learned to talk back. You were both very, very good at making people disappear.
You were supposed to work together.
Instead, Dex watched you rip a door off its hinges with one hand and fell a little bit in love. You watched him put a bullet through three moving targets with one ricochet and thought, Oh, he’s dreamy.
By the end of the mission, he was bending you over every flat surface he could find.
When you returned from that months-long mission, he was in your apartment.
Now it was his apartment, too, legally.
And today, you were late in coming home.
Not late-late. Not missing. Not in danger, according to the little dot on his phone that he had refreshed seven times in the last ten minutes.
You had texted him and said “the line in the DMV was way longer than I expected. Going to be 15 minutes late :(“
Which was fine. It was fine. You had let him know. You were doing exactly what you’d promised: communicating every tiny thing before his mind could turn it into a crime scene. Now, though, according to the app, you were four blocks away.
Then three and a half.
Then the dot stopped.
Dex stared at the screen anxiously.
He zoomed in and realised it was your favourite Chinese place.
You were probably picking up takeout. You had texted him earlier asking if he wanted the usual, and he had stared at the message for nearly a full minute because the usual made this warm and needy feeling curl warmly in his chest.
The usual meant you knew him. The usual meant he had routines with you. The usual meant he wasn’t temporary.
Still, you had stopped moving there for five minutes. Then ten minutes.
Dex refreshed the app.
You still haven’t moved.
He refreshed again.
You still haven’t moved.
His thumb hovered over your name in the contacts.
He could call. He wanted to call. He wanted to hear your voice, wanted to ask who was near you, wanted to tell you to come home now, wanted to go to you himself and remove every variable between your body and his.
He didn’t. Because you had told him, very gently, very lovingly, that if he interrupted one more meeting by appearing silently behind you with a gun, someone was going to report the incident. And if that report escalates into legal matters, Charles was probably going to assign you both into different missions next time.
So Dex stayed on the couch.
He had a gun within reach, a knife in his thigh holster, phone in his hand. His eyes were still locked on the glowing little proof that you were still there, still coming back to him.
Because knowing you were safe was not enough. Knowing where you were was not enough. Dex wouldn’t relax until he heard your key in the door, until he heard your voice saying his name.
He had become addicted to the proof of you. He became obsessed with your shoes next to his by the entrance. Your jacket over his, your mug in the dishwasher. Your blood on his sleeves. Your laugh in his lips. Your body under his at night, comfortable and alive and his, his, his in the only way that mattered.
He refreshed the tracker again.
You were moving now.
Good. Good.
He exhaled through his nose and looked toward the door like he could summon you by way of wanting hard enough.
Then, from the corner of his eyes in the living room, he could see through the doorframe that the bedroom window was now half open.
Dex froze.
Huh.
The window slid higher, and this time, he could hear hard breathing in the dark.
And not in the familiar, tired little sigh you made when you came home after a long day. This was someone else.
Besides, you had keys. Why would you go through the window?
Dex looked down at his phone. Your location blinked back at him. You were still two blocks away.
You were enough that his chest had already started relaxing. Not close enough to be the person forcing their way into your bedroom.
He put the phone down without locking it and went into the bedroom.
The gun was in his hand before the intruder’s first boot hit the floor.
A body dragged itself through the window, broad shoulders catching on the sill, one hand gripping the frame, hard enough to make the wood creak. Whoever it was landed on one knee with a rough sound of pain.
Blood painted the floor before Dex ever saw his face.
And there was a lot of blood.
The man stayed hunched for a second, one hand pressed hard to his side, breathing like the air had teeth. He had dark tactical gear, long hair half-fallen into his face. Then he saw a metal hand catching the city light.
Oh, fuck off.
Bucky Barnes looked up from the floor of the bedroom, pale and bleeding and still somehow arrogant enough to look annoyed by the gun pointed at his head.
Of course, of all the people in the world who could crawl bleeding through your window, it had to be the ex, who you broke up on decent terms with, who you were still friends with. Of course it was the ex who rescued you from your cryo chamber in Siberia. Of course it was your ex who you called for work emergencies, because those emergencies were usually Hydra-related ones. Of course it was your ex who was a supersoldier, like you.
There were a lot of things Dex had imagined saying to him. Most of them involved you not finding the body.
Instead, Dex forced himself to smile and clicked the safety off. “Rough night?”
Bucky blinked once, unimpressed.
“Oh,” he rasped, as if he was surprised he was here. “You.”
Dex forced himself to smile. “Me.”
Bucky’s eyes moved past him, taking in the room in detail for someone who was supposedly bleeding. He could see a second cologne on the dresser, an extra cabinet that wasn’t there before, two pairs of pyjamas folded nearly on top of the duvet.
Then Bucky looked back at him. “You’re the new boyfriend, right?”
Dex tilted his head. “You’re the trespassing ex-boyfriend.”
As if he had never trespassed before.
“Sorry.” Bucky made a sound that might have been a laugh if his ribs were not actively leaking. “I was aiming for charming entrance.”
“You missed.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Dex stepped closer, gun steady. “You want to tell me why you’re bleeding in my bedroom?”
Bucky’s eyes lifted at that.
Huh.
Dex could immediately see it in his eyes. Bucky clearly felt petty, exhausted, and jealous in a way he clearly hated himself for being.
“Yours?’” He echoed.
Dex’s finger shifted lightly against the trigger. “Our bedroom.”
Bucky’s mouth twitched as he scoffed. “That was quick.”
Dex almost shot him for the tone alone.
But even when injured, Bucky was fast. His metal hand knocked the gun aside. Dex was already too close for it to matter. He drove his fist into Bucky’s side, exactly where the blood was coming from.
Bucky’s breath snapped out of him. “Cheap,” Bucky grunted.
Dex leaned in, eyes bright. “Expect me to fight fair, old man?”
Bucky caught him by the shoulder and turned, driving him into the wardrobe hard enough to crack the door. Dex hit wood, bounced off it, and came back smiling with blood on his lip.
Dex lunged, driving Bucky back to the table. The mirror rattled.
A bottle of your perfume tipped over and shattered against the floorboards, spilling glass and rose scent into the blood-stale air.
Bucky caught his next hit badly. He was too slow on one side, too stiff on the other, blood slick under his fingers where he was still trying to keep pressure on his ribs. Dex slammed into him anyway, agitating the liquid on the floor until the scent rose.
And Bucky hated, genuinely hated, how fast that smell got under his skin.
For half a second, he was not in your bedroom with a gunshot wound and your new boyfriend trying to rearrange his face.
He was in a safehouse, a bathroom mirror fogged after a shower. Your towel abandoned over the sink. Your shoulder brushing his in a safehouse hallway because neither of you had ever been good at giving each other space. Your perfume on the collar of his shirt after you stole it and gave it back. Your neck against his mouth before everything went sour. Your laugh in the dark. Your hand on his wrist. Your voice saying his name when you still said it like it belonged to you.
Bucky missed you. The realization hit him, and it was almost worse than the bullet.
Bucky didn't miss the idea of you. He missed you. Your smile, your face, the smell of you in the room like a ghost that had not asked permission to haunt him.
Dex saw that tiny, stupid pause. The way Bucky’s eyes dropped for one second too long to the broken glass. The way his jaw tightened like he had just swallowed something sharp.
Dex’s face went cold.
“Oh,” he said softly. “That hurt.”
Bucky’s eyes snapped back to him. “Shut up.”
Dex smiled. “No.”
Bucky shoved him back, harder this time, using more strength than he should have. Dex hit the wardrobe, the wood splitting behind his shoulder, but he came off it laughing under his breath, blood bright on his lip and jealousy alive in every line of his body.
“You miss her.”
Bucky’s expression shut down.
Dex stepped closer. “You do. That’s funny.”
“Nothing about you is funny.”
“No?” Dex tilted his head, eyes flicking over him. “You crawled through her window bleeding, looked around my bedroom, smelled her perfume, and forgot how to breathe. Seems pretty hilarious to me.”
Bucky swung.
Dex ducked under it and drove his fist into Bucky’s side.
Bucky’s knees dipped.
The pain tore a raw sound out of him before he could stop it.
Dex moved in close, almost gentle in the way a knife could be gentle if it liked where it landed.
“You should’ve gone to a hospital.”
Bucky grabbed him by the shirt. “Her place was closer.”
Dex’s smile vanished.
“Our place,” Dex scowled under his breath. The correction was quiet enough that it shouldn't have hit as hard as it did, but Bucky’s eyes lifted to him anyway. Blood was leaking between his fingers now, dark and slick against the black of his tactical gear, dripping steadily onto the floorboards Dex had polished two weekends ago. You smiled at him and helped, because you said you liked spending normal, domestic afternoons with him between missions. Dex remembered the way you had smiled at him from your knees with a rag in your hand, wearing one of his shirts, and the memory made the blood on the floor feel wrong.
Bucky’s mouth curled. “Didn’t realize she was taking in strays now.”
Dex stared at him for one flat second. Then he smiled, and it wasn’t a smile you would have liked. “Funny, coming from you.”
It shouldn’t have pleased him, seeing Bucky like this. But really?
This was the man Dex had been threatened by in his own head for months? This was the ex-boyfriend with the history, the metal arm, the kind of name that came attached to wars and redacted files and the unreadable look you got whenever Siberia came up?
He was weak, bleeding, breaking into your room because he had nowhere better to be.
Still, Dex knew that wasn't a fair assessment. Bucky was only manageable because he was injured. If he were whole, if his ribs were not torn open and one side of his body was not stiff with blood loss, this fight would go in favour of Dex’s side. Not here, at least.
Close quarters were made for men like Barnes, men built like battering rams, men who could crush bone with one hand and keep walking. Dex was better from a distance. Give him a bullet, a blade, a coin, a shard of mirror glass, anything he could send across a room, and he would put Bucky down before the man could say your name.
But Bucky was here, bleeding in your bedroom, and Dex had never needed fair to feel righteous.
He moved again, driving his fist into Bucky’s wounded side with deliberate cruelty. Bucky’s breath broke out of him in a brutal, unwilling sound, his body folding toward the impact before his pride could catch up. Dex grabbed the front of his vest and shoved him back into the dresser now that he was getting weaker and weaker. The wood cracked against the wall, your little tray of rings and hair ties skittering over the surface. Bucky’s metal hand shot out and slammed into the dresser edge for balance, and the wood splintered under his palm.
There. There he was. Even hurt, even half-dead and leaking blood all over your nice floor, Bucky was still strong enough to split furniture by accident. Dex felt the danger, but jealousy made him step closer instead of away. Bucky swung with his human hand, and caught Dex across the mouth hard enough to snap his head sideways. Blood bloomed over Dex’s tongue. The room went bright for a second, white at the edges, and then he laughed under his breath because Bucky had finally hit him like he meant it.
Bucky hated that laugh. Bucky’s eyes narrowed, though his face flattened like he could turn himself into a wall if he just refused to feel enough things. It didn’t work.
Dex had seen Bucky look at the broken glass. He had seen that humiliating pause, the grief flickering across his face before he wiped it. He missed you, and Dex hated him for it.
So Bucky smiled back, faint and mean through the pain. “She still get fussy about the sock placement in her wardrobe?”
It wasn’t an innocent question. Nothing in Bucky’s face was innocent. He knew exactly what he was doing, knew that mentioning an intimate detail would get under Dex’s skin faster than any punch. He was ragebaiting him and bitter enough to make himself cruel just to stop feeling pathetic. Dex knew that too, and it didn’t help.
He approached him in two steps. Bucky tried to brace, but Dex dipped under the metal arm and slammed his elbow into the wound again, not hard enough to end the fight, just hard enough to make Bucky’s knees soften.
Bucky grunted and caught Dex by the shoulder, throwing him sideways with enough force to send him into the ground. The door cracked behind his back. Hangers clattered down around his head, your dress slipping off one of them and brushing his arm as it fell. Dex saw Bucky’s eyes flick to it for one second too long.
Dex came off the floor with his knife halfway out before he had fully decided to draw it. Bucky’s metal hand caught his wrist mid-motion, fingers closing like a vice. Pain flashed bright up Dex’s arm, sharp enough that his fingers twitched around the hilt, but he refused to flinch. He pushed into it instead, smiling with blood on his teeth, watching Bucky watch him. For one long second, Bucky looked at the knife, then at Dex’s face, and thought…
Oh.
For that second, Bucky genuinely thought Dex was going to kill him.
Not threaten him or play jealous boyfriend in the bedroom of a woman they had both loved in violently different ways. He thought Dex was going to kill him. Put the knife and leave him bleeding out beside your dresser before you got home with takeout in a plastic bag.
Bucky’s fingers tightened around Dex’s wrist, not out of confidence this time but calculation. He was deciding whether he had enough strength left to stop him. He was deciding whether you would forgive either of them for what happened next.
Dex saw the thought cross his face and smiled wider.
Bucky, because apparently pain had made him stupid, leaned into it. “Careful,” he rasped. “She might not like finding me dead in her bedroom.”
That was enough to make him falter.
Dex saw the scenario too clearly: you walking in, your face changing when you saw Bucky on the floor and Dex standing over him with the knife. You rarely cried, and it was part of what made it unbearable when you did. But if he killed Bucky, you would, and Dex would rather stab himself a dozen times than be the reason you cried.
You cared about Bucky. Dex didn’t understand it, not really, but you had reassured him it was platonic now, you had said it with your hands on his face with soothing shushes, as if jealousy was a wound you could press your palms over until it stopped bleeding. Platonic. As if that word meant anything when Bucky still came to your window when the world went wrong. Dex hated him for it. Dex hated that some part of you would hurt if Barnes died here. More than that, he hated that it mattered enough to stop his hand.
His grip tightened until the knife trembled once.
“Our bedroom,” Dex said, and drove his forehead into Bucky’s face instead.
The impact cracked through both of them. Bucky staggered back, blood bright at one nostril now, and Dex used the opening to twist free. He went low, sweeping into Bucky’s bad side, viciously accurate. Bucky went down hard on one knee. The floorboards shook under him. Blood splattered out from beneath his hand when he caught himself, and the smell of iron rose thick enough to choke on.
Dex was on him immediately, one hand fisted in Bucky’s hair, yanking his head back just enough to make it insulting. Bucky’s metal hand came up, but Dex angled away from it, staying too close and too awkward, forcing Bucky to spend strength he didn’t have.
The fight became ugly in the cramped space beside the bed. Bucky was stronger, but he was slow on the wounded side. Dex was weaker, but he was precise.
Bucky, breathing hard now, bared his teeth. “She tell you about the scar under her ribs yet?”
Dex’s grip in his hair tightened so hard it had to hurt.
Bucky knew it was cheap. He knew he was saying it because he wanted Dex to lose control, because rage made people sloppy and Bucky needed Dex sloppy if he was going to survive. But the cruelty had teeth because it was true: Of course Dex knew about your scar, but there were parts of you Dex hadn't been there for. There were wounds on your body and in your history that had Bucky’s fingerprints around them, not because he caused them, but because he had been there when Dex had not.
He slammed Bucky sideways into the vanity. The mirror cracked behind him in a thin, branching line, splitting Bucky’s reflection into several broken versions of the same infuriating face. Dex grabbed the front of his vest and hauled him close, mouth near his ear now, voice poisonous. “You’re making a mess.”
Bucky gave a breathless, humorless laugh. “You started it.”
It was a juvenile insult, but it got to him anyway.
Dex hit him again, with pure and ugly anger. Bucky went with it, one hand clamped over his wound, teeth gritted so hard he looked like he might bite through the pain. For one second, he didn't get back up. Dex stood over him, chest heaving, knife fully drawn now, the blade angled down and catching the dim city light from the open window.
Don’t.
The thought cut through Dex’s thoughts so abruptly it almost felt divine intervention. Don’t, don’t, don’t. You’re going to disappoint her.
Dex’s hand tightened around the knife until his knuckles ached. He could still do it. He could still put Bucky down before the bastard got another word out. But then what? You’d walk in, see the blood, see him, see exactly what he had chosen to do in your home, and Dex knew with horrible clarity that you wouldn’t look at him like he was protecting you.
You would look at him like he had hurt you.
His teeth clenched.
You think she’s going to forgive you if you do this?
Bucky looked up at him from the floor, and the smile finally thinned into something quieter.
Dex could see him thinking it again. He could see the exact moment Bucky wondered whether he had pushed too far, whether needling the new boyfriend had been funny right up until the new boyfriend turned out to be a psychopath with perfect aim and no audience to behave for. Bucky’s metal hand flexed against the floor. His human hand pressed harder to the wound. He was too hurt to spring properly, too proud to crawl, too stubborn to ask for help.
Dex, somehow finding mercy, crouched slowly, knife in hand, eyes never leaving his face.
“Were you followed?” he asked.
For a second, all the jealousy and violence had nowhere to go. Dex leaned in, the knife close enough now that Bucky could feel the idea of it against his throat. This was not just possessive anymore. This was practical.
Bucky swallowed, throat shifting near the blade. “No.”
Dex’s stare didn’t move. “Try again.”
“I said no.” Bucky’s voice was rough, irritated. Pain had made him pale, and the mention of being followed had dragged the soldier back through the jealous ex. “What do you think I am, an amateur?”
“Tonight?” Dex said. “You sure as hell look like one”
“I was shot,” Bucky sneered.
“Everyone’s got problems.”
Bucky huffed a laugh despite himself, then immediately regretted it when the movement tugged at his side. His face tightened, and he looked away toward the window, toward the city beyond it. “Hydra cell uptown. I lost them before I came here.”
Dex tilted his chin. The jealousy didn’t vanish; it compressed, hardened, became the point of a needle.
Hydra was near you. Hydra was close enough that Bucky Barnes, bleeding and stupid and still half in love, had decided your apartment was the nearest safehouse. Dex wanted to gut him for that. Dex wanted to check the hallway, the roofline, the stairwell, the little black dot on his phone that proved you were almost home. Dex wanted to drag Bucky into the bathroom, stitch him badly, and throw him out the window he came through. Mostly, Dex wanted you behind him where he could see every door between you and the world.
He pressed the knife a fraction closer, enough for Bucky to understand that he was being allowed to keep breathing as a courtesy.
“If you brought them to our door,” Dex said, voice tender with threat, “I’ll kill you before they get the chance to disappoint me.”
Bucky looked at him, breathing through his teeth. The old bitterness came back, but weaker now, frayed by blood loss and the dawning awareness that Dex wasn’t bluffing for the romance. “She know you talk like that?”
Dex smiled. “She actually likes it.”
Bucky’s muscles twitched again, and Dex took such vicious pleasure in it that it almost made up for the blood on the floor.
He could see Bucky trying not to look around, trying not to notice the proof of Dex everywhere: the shirt over the chair, the spare boots by the wardrobe, the second cologne on the dresser, the life he had moved into.
Then they both heard it.
The lock turned.
The entire room held its breath. Dex’s hand tightened once in Bucky’s vest before he let go just enough to stand, knife still hidden against his thigh. Bucky stayed on the floor, breathing hard, blood spreading beneath him, eyes flicking toward the bedroom door like even he hadn’t expected the timing to be this catastrophic. From the hallway came the rustle of plastic bags, the kick of the front door closing, the familiar little clink of your keys landing in the bowl.
“Baby?” you called, tired and completely unaware. “I’m home.”
Oh, shit.
Dex moved first, but only because Bucky couldn’t.
Dex straightened, his mouth split, his collar torn, one shoulder pressed strangely forward like he was trying to block your view of the wreckage with the sheer force of boyfriend entitlement. Bucky was still half on the floor, one hand clamped to his side, breathing hard through his nose, looking less like the Winter Soldier and more like a man who had picked the worst possible window in New York to bleed through.
“Stand up,” Dex hissed.
Bucky turned his head toward him. His face was damp with pain, and absolutely furious at being asked to perform under these conditions. “How?”
Dex’s eye twitched. He glanced at the door, then at Bucky, then at the dark red spreading beneath his knee like this was inconvenient. “I don’t care. Just don’t look like I did this.”
Bucky stared at him.
Dex scowled. “Fine. Don’t look like I did all of this.”
That, unfortunately, made Bucky almost laugh. It came out more like a wounded exhale, but it was enough to make Dex bare his teeth. They both knew what this looked like. It looked exactly like what it was: your psychopathic boyfriend and your assassin ex-boyfriend caught in the middle of a territorial bloodbath in your bedroom. There was no version of this where either of them came out looking reasonable. Even Bucky couldn’t look you in the eyes and say: I definitely did not start trying to piss your boyfriend off the second I saw him.
So they tried.
Dex grabbed Bucky under the arm and hauled him up with the stiff, resentful care of a man moving a bomb. Bucky bit down on whatever sound nearly escaped him, metal hand catching the dresser hard enough to make the wood creak. For a second, they were stuck like that: Dex bracing Bucky upright, Bucky leaning too much weight on Dex because he had no choice, both of them breathing through pain and rage and the horrible dawning knowledge that you were going to open that door and see everything.
“Stop bleeding,” Dex whispered.
Bucky’s eyes cut to him. “I’ll get right on that.”
Dex’s grip tightened enough that Bucky’s mouth flattened. “Do you want her mad?”
That shut him up.
Bucky wasn’t afraid of many things.He had been tortured, frozen, shot. But you were different. You had a way of going quiet when you were truly angry, a way of looking at a person like you were deciding whether to forgive them or break them in half. Bucky remembered that look. Dex knew that look. Both of them, stupidly in love with you in their own awful ways, understood at the same time that getting punched, stabbed, or shot would be easier than disappointing you.
So Bucky forced himself higher. Dex shoved the knife behind his own thigh like that helped, as if you didn’t know him well enough to clock a hidden weapon from the angle of his wrist alone. Bucky wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and only succeeded in smearing blood across his jaw. Dex looked at him with disgust, then glanced down at his own torn shirt and bleeding lip, and seemed to realize he had no moral advantage whatsoever.
From outside the bedroom, your footsteps slowed.
“Dex?” you called, closer now.
Dex’s entire body changed at your voice. His face gentled by force, badly, like a wolf trying to remember how poodles behaved. Bucky saw it happen and, despite the blood loss, looked vaguely surprised by how quickly Dex rearranged himself to be somewhat sweet for you. Then Bucky did the exact same thing, standing straighter, pushing his pain down, pretending he was not half a second from sliding down the dresser.
You paused outside the cracked bedroom door.
There was a thin line of light between the frame and the wall. Through it, Dex could see your shadow shift as you looked at the damage visible from the hallway.
You didn’t come in immediately. That was worse, because it gave them both of time to become acutely aware of every sound in the room: Bucky’s uneven breathing, Dex’s blood dripping from his mouth, and the plastic rustle of takeout bags settling somewhere in the living room.
“Uh,” you said slowly. “Dex, who are you talking to?”
Dex opened his mouth.
Bucky gave him a warning look, which was insane, considering he was the one actively trespassing.
“Work,” Dex managed to croak.
Bucky closed his eyes. That was really the best he could do?
You opened the door.
For one long second, you just stood there with your coat still on, one hand on the doorknob, taking in the scene with a calm that made both men instantly wish you had screamed instead.
Your eyes moved from the open window to the blood on the floor, from the cracked mirror to the broken wardrobe, from the shattered perfume bottle to your ex. Then your eyes moved to Dex, and suddenly the room became very small.
Bucky, who had faced firing squads with more composure, gave you a faint nod. “Hey.”
Dex looked at him like he was going to kill him after all.
You blinked once.
“What,” you said carefully, “am I looking at?”
Dex immediately pointed at Bucky. “He came through the window.”
Bucky’s head snapped toward him. “He hit me in the gunshot wound.”
“You bled on her floor.”
“I was bleeding before I got here.”
You lifted one hand, and both of them stopped.
It was almost embarrassing, the speed of it. Dex shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked. Bucky went silent too, looking annoyed that he had obeyed at the same time as Dex.
“My perfume,” you said.
Dex’s face shifted with instant, tragic guilt.
Bucky looked down.
That was the first real victory of the night, apparently. Your perfume bottle, shattered on the floor, managed to frighten them both into shame.
“It was an accident,” Bucky said carefully.
Dex’s head turned toward him very slowly.
Bucky seemed to remember, at the last second, that angering your boyfriend in front of you while bleeding in your bedroom was not a survival strategy. His mouth closed.
You stared at them for another second. Dex stood perfectly still, and. Bucky looked like he wanted to sit down, pass out, and win the argument. Both of them were waiting for your verdict.
Finally, you sighed.
It wasn’t a forgiving sigh. It wasn’t even a tired sigh. It was the sigh of a woman who had left for forty minutes and returned to find her past and present trying to murder each other in her bedroom like unsupervised coyotes.
“Were you followed?” you asked.
Bucky hated that he had to answer that twice.
“No,” Bucky said, straighter now. “‘Was dealing with a hydra cell uptown and you were closer."
You sighed, as if to say, good. Then, you saw your boyfriend's hand move behind him, and you could only shake your head. “Dex,” you said.
He froze.
“Don’t.”
His hand revealed the weapon, as if making it visible made it any better.
Bucky, apparently determined to survive only by accident, muttered, “Good call.”
Dex smiled without looking at him. “Talk again.”
“Boys!” you snapped.
You stepped into the room at last, carefully avoiding the glass, and looked around with increasing disbelief. The closer you got, the worse it became. There was blood on the dresser, blood on the floor, a dent in the wall, a crack through the mirror, one of your shirts knocked from its hanger and lying in the wreckage like a surrender flag.
You stopped in front of them, and neither man moved.
You looked at Dex. “Knife.”
He handed it over immediately, handle first.
You looked at Bucky. “Gun.”
Bucky hesitated for half a second.
“I know you have one,” you tilted your head.
It was then that he pulled it from his hidden holster and gave it to you. Dex’s mouth twitched like he was pleased Bucky had also folded. Bucky saw it and looked like he wanted to bite him.
You took both weapons, set them on the dresser and pressed two fingers to the bridge of your nose.
“I was gone,” you said, very evenly, “for three hours.”
Dex glanced at Bucky. Bucky glanced at Dex.
Both of them seemed to understand, at the exact same time, that blaming each other would technically be honest but also spiritual suicide.
So they said nothing.
That, finally, was smart.
You stared at the two of them for a few seconds longer, then exhaled through your nose like you had to physically, actively choose to protect your peace or whatever.
“I’m going to get water and plate up dinner,” you said, voice calm in a way that made both stand straighter. “Dex. Put Bucky on the bed and stitch him up.”
Dex’s face went blank. Bucky’s did too, but for completely different reasons.
“No,” Dex said before he could stop himself.
You looked at him.
He swallowed, eyes flicking once to Bucky, then to the bed, then back to you with the betrayed eyes of a man being asked to personally tuck a grenade under his pillow. You stepped closer before he could make it worse, cupped his face with one hand, and kissed his cheek.
“Dex,” you frowned, quieter. “Please?”
Oh, you ruined him.
Bucky saw it happen and immediately wished he hadn’t. Dex’s shoulders lowered by a fraction, his mouth tightening around whatever insane argument he had been building, and the affection in him clicked into place so visibly it made Bucky want to look at the floor.
“Fine,” Dex said, like it cost him blood.
Bucky made the mistake of looking amused.
Dex turned to him with murder in his eyes. “Move.”
Bucky looked at the bed, then at the blood on his hand, then back at Dex. “She said put me on the bed. Not throw me.”
Dex grabbed him by the collar before he could say anything else. It was not gentle, but it was careful in the resentful way only he could be. Bucky bit down hard as Dex hauled him upright, metal hand catching the dresser for balance, the strain pulling fresh blood through his fingers. Dex leaned close enough that you couldn’t hear him from the doorway.
“Smile,” Dex murmured, “and I’ll make the stitches uneven.”
Bucky’s expression went carefully blank.
You gave them both one last warning look before leaving for the kitchen. The second your back was turned, the bedroom became awful again. Dex half-carried, half-dragged Bucky to the bed, looking offended by every inch of contact. Bucky tried to help and hated that he couldn’t. When he finally sank onto the edge of the mattress, breathing hard, Dex spread an old towel underneath him with sharp, angry efficiency.
“Don’t get comfortable,” Dex muttered.
Bucky sank onto the edge of the bed, breathing hard. “Believe me, this isn’t my fantasy either.”
Dex, remembering that with the serum, you were still within hearing distance, shut up.
The stitching was silent after that. Dex took his shirt off and worked with clean hands, cutting away ruined fabric, wiping blood from Bucky’s side, pressing gauze down harder than necessary but never hard enough for you to come back in. Bucky could tell every sting was measured. Dex was not losing control; he was choosing exactly how much it hurt.
The first stitch went in neat and mean.
Bucky’s metal hand flexed.
Dex didn’t smile, even though Bucky could tell he wanted to. He kept his head down, eyes focused, fingers steady as he pulled the thread through. Every movement said he knew what he was doing. Every tug said he hated doing it.
“If you tell her you came here because you missed her,” Dex said under his breath, “and I’ll reopen it.”
Bucky stared at the ceiling, breathing through his nose, all the old bitterness dragged out across his face. For once, he didn’t rise to it. Maybe because he was tired. Maybe because you were in the kitchen.
And when you came back with water and plates, Dex was wiping blood from his thumb with gauze. Bucky was stitched, furious, and silent on your bed.
You looked at the wound, then at Dex.
“Did you make it hurt?” you asked.
Dex paused, and Bucky stared at the ceiling.
Dex wiped blood with a square of gauze and said, very carefully, “A little.”
—
Bucky stayed for dinner because throwing him out with a fresh row of stitches would have made you feel guilty, and because Dex didn't want you to sulk all night.
So the three of you ended up in the living room like the world’s worst domestic painting. You sat cross-legged on the couch with your plate balanced on your knee, trying very hard to pretend there was not a bleeding supersoldier in the armchair and your boyfriend sitting beside you with the posture of a guard dog told not to bite. Bucky had one hand resting carefully near his ribs, still stubbornly upright. Dex sat close enough to your side that his thigh touched yours, his hand loose on your knee, thumb moving once every few minutes like he was reminding himself you were still there and not a hallucination caused by rage.
Dinner lasted seven minutes before it became a crime scene again, just with food.
You had tried. Fuck, you had actually tried.
For a while, nobody said anything. Dex kept eating in small bites, fist tight enough to crack porcelain. Bucky kept staring at his plate like the noodles had disappointed him. You looked between them, took one bite of rice, and felt your patience leave your body.
“So,” you said, too brightly, because apparently you were determined to suffer. “Are we going to talk about the Hydra cell uptown, or are we all just going to chew angrily until somebody has an aneurysm?”
Bucky grunted.
Dex made a similar sound
You put your fork down. “Thank you both,” you said sarcastically, “Very productive.”
Bucky shifted in the chair and winced before he could hide it. “It’s handled.” which really meant, I wanted to catch up with you but your psychopath boyfriend is in the fucking way.
Dex looked up immediately. “You got shot.”
“And still lost them.”
“You ran here.”
“I came here because it was close.”
“No,” Dex said, his voice going small in the way that meant he had picked a vein and was about to press his thumb into it. “You came here because you knew she’d let you in.”
Bucky’s face hardened.
“I was bleeding.”
“You keep saying that like it makes this less pathetic.”
“Dex,” you warned.
He looked at you at once, and for half a second you saw him try. He really did try. His hand found your knee under the coffee table, not possessive this time but grounding, almost apologetic. Almost, sorry, I can’t help myself. Then Bucky laughed under his breath, one bitter little sound, and Dex’s eyes snapped back to him like a moth finding light.
“What?” Dex asked.
Bucky leaned back, mean with pain. “Nothing. Just funny watching you heel.”
The room went still.
You said, “Bucky.”
But Dex had already smiled.
It wasn’t his good smile. It wasn’t the sweet one he gave you in the kitchen when you kissed the corner of his mouth, not the private little pleased one he did when you called him baby in public. This was unkind and ugly and delighted to have been given permission to be cruel. “That bother you?”
Bucky’s hand tightened around his fork. “No.”
Liar.
“It does.” Dex’s thumb went still on your knee. “You hate that she can tell me to stop and I do.”
Bucky’s jaw flexed. “I hate that you think that makes you good for her.”
You felt yourself sit straighter. “Okay. No. We are not doing this.”
They didn’t hear you, or worse, they heard you and kept going anyway.
Dex leaned forward, elbows on his knees now, all that careful obedience peeling away under jealousy. “Better than disappearing and calling it noble.”
Bucky’s face changed so quickly it almost hurt to watch. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you left.”
“You know what she told you.”
“I know she doesn’t wake up looking for you anymore.”
That one landed too close too home.
You stood up. “Dex.”
Bucky stood too, or tried to. It was a bad idea. His side pulled, his face went grey, and he had to catch himself on the arm of the chair, but pride dragged him upright anyway. “Say that again.”
Dex rose with him,, one hand already half-reaching for a weapon you had taken from him. “She doesn’t wake up looking for you anymore.”
Your voice came out louder this time. “Enough!”
Bucky laughed, but there was nothing amused in it. “You think you won because you sleep in her bed?”
Dex stepped around the coffee table. “I know I won.”
As if it was ever about winning and not just a pissing contest between two men who cared about you so much, they didn’t know what to do with it half the time.
You moved between them before either of them could take another step,heart hammering with not fear exactly, but it close enough to make you furious. “Both of you shut up. Right now. I mean it.”
For one second, they looked at you. Dex’s eyebrows furrowed when he recognised in panic at your tone. Bucky’s mouth parted like he might actually apologise. Then Dex saw Bucky looking at you, saw the old familiarity there, saw the guilt and grief and care that had no business surviving all these years, and whatever fragile ceasefire you had forced together snapped cleanly in half.
“She’s not your safehouse,” Dex said.
Bucky’s head turned slowly. “Don’t talk about her like she’s a place you own.”
“She is my home.”
“She was mine before she was yours.”
You, by now, had long gone silent.
And not because you had nothing to say. You had too much. It filled your throat all at once, impossible to sort through. You stared at Bucky, then at Dex, and neither of them noticed immediately because they were too far gone. Two trained killers, standing in your living room and turning your life into a battlefield because neither of them knew what to do with the fact that you had existed before and after them.
Dex’s voice rose again first. “She’s not a territory you lost.”
“I was there when it mattered.”
“And where were you after?”
Bucky’s face twisted, souring. “Trying not to ruin her life.”
Dex laughed, loud and cruel now. “How’s that working out?”
They were shouting. Actually shouting now, voices overlapping, old wounds dragged out and thrown at each other like knives. Bucky’s voice was rough from pain and rage. Dex’s was colder, nastier, even when he was losing control. You stood between them for another few seconds, watching their mouths move, watching them say things that were not really about each other at all. They were talking about guilt. About who had failed you better. About who deserved to stand closer.
Then something inside you simply turned… off.
Bucky was saying something about Siberia now, about extraction, about choices made in difficult situations. Dex was throwing back something about staying, about not making abandonment sound like sacrifice. Their voices filled the living room, bouncing off the walls, ugly and masculine and wounded all the same, and you felt suddenly, violently tired.
Not sad. Not even angry anymore. You were just tired in a way that settled behind your ribs.
You stepped back.
Still, they argued.
You looked at the cold food on the coffee table, at the stain of Bucky’s blood on your rug, at Dex’s split lip, at the two men who would kill for you but apparently could not stop talking over you. Your teeth pressed together until your bones hurt. Then you turned your head slightly toward the hallway, toward the bedroom that still had broken glass on the floor and your perfume drying into the wood.
Dex was the first to notice.
Not because he was calmer, but because some part of him always tracked you, even in the middle of his own worst impulses. His voice cut off mid-sentence. His whole body turned toward you by instinct, anger draining out of his face so quickly it left a hollowness behind.
Bucky kept going for half a second longer. “You don’t know what she—”
Then he stopped too.
At this point, you were not looking at either of them. You were standing very still, arms loose at your sides, face quiet in a way that made Dex look like he had been stabbed. Bucky’s eyes shifted more slowly, anger collapsing into guilt as he realised you had gone somewhere neither of them could follow with volume.
Dex said your name.
You didn't answer.
He took half a step toward you, careful now, all the violence gone from his hands. “Baby.”
“No.”
He froze.
You finally looked at him, and whatever he saw on your face made his mouth close.
“No, babe,” you said, trying to hold it together. “Pretend I’m not here. Go fight.”
Neither of them moved.
You gave a small, humourless nod, like that proved the point. “Right.”
Then you turned and walked toward the second bedroom that had been turned into an office.
Dex followed immediately.
He didn’t even look at Bucky. Dex, who had spent the entire night bristling at him, needling him, measuring him, hating him by default and by choice, didn’t even glance back. The second you walked away, Bucky stopped existing to him. Dex followed you down the hall with panic in his shoulders, saying “baby” once more, quieter this time, like he knew he had broken a thread and didn’t know whether he was allowed to touch it.
Bucky stayed in the living room alone.
For a long while, he stood there with one hand pressed to his side, listening to the muffled sound of Dex behind the office door and the absence of your voice answering him. Then his legs gave out enough that he had to sit back down in the armchair.
For once, he had nothing left to say.
—
Dex followed you into the office like he had been pulled by the throat.
Bucky could have stood up, stolen a weapon, climbed back out the window, or died dramatically on your rug, and Dex wouldn’t have noticed unless you did. You had gone quiet, and that was worse than shouting.
You went straight to the office, pushed the door open, and stood in the middle of the room with your arms crossed like you had no idea what to do with your own hands. Dex came in behind you and stopped just inside, careful not to crowd you, which made it worse because he was trying so hard. There was dried blood at his lip, and he looked wrecked, keyed-up, guilty, furious, and terrified all at once.
“Baby,” he said.
You laughed once, but there was no humour in it. “Don’t baby me right now.”
He flinched like you had put your hand through his ribs. It made you angry all over again because of course that got to you. Of course the sight of him looking hurt made your own chest tighten, even when you were the one trying not to cry. That was the horrible thing about Dex. He could be violent and possessive and completely out of his mind, but the second you were upset, he went pliant in the most devastating way. Not calm or healthy, and not flinching like panic. He became pliant like worship. Pliant like he would rather tear his own heart out than survive you going cold on him.
You turned away from him, pressing your fingers hard against your eyes. “I am so tired.”
“I know,” he said immediately. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
You weren’t convinced, because you knew him, and you knew he would say anything to win you back, no matter the cost.
“Are you?” you snapped, whirling back on him. “Because you were in there acting like he came here to steal me. He’s bleeding, Dex. He was shot. He came here because he trusted me.”
Dex’s nervous flexed at that, but he swallowed whatever first answer rose in him. You could see it. The jealous monster in him wanted to bite. The boyfriend in him wanted to crawl. The boyfriend won because you were crying now, your breath catching in your throat like you hated yourself for doing it.
Dex walked up to you slowly, like approaching a wounded animal, and lowered himself to his knees in front of you as if it was second nature.
“Don’t,” you said, but your voice cracked.
He looked up at you, hands hovering near your thighs without touching until you let him. “I can’t see you like this,” he said, voice low and ruined. “I can’t. Be mad, yell at me, hit me if you need to, but don’t go quiet. Please don’t go quiet.”
You were never going to hit him, of course, and that broke your heart.
See, when you two fought, you fought so differently then when you did with Bucky.
Because with Bucky, when it had been bad, it had always been explosive. The two of you had fought like weather systems, and then one of you would go silent. Sometimes him. Sometimes you. Whole rooms would be left full of things unsaid. You’d spend whole nights spent with your backs to each other.
Dex was not like that.
Sure, before you started dating, when you were just friends with benefits, you’d fight. But now that he had a title he could lose? Dex couldn’t bear distance. He could not sit in another room and wait you out. He didn’t know how to leave anger alone to cool. The idea of you lying awake furious at him while he gave you space would destroy him faster than a bullet. He would beg too early, apologise too fast, kneel before his pride even understood it had lost. He didn’t always understand how to be good, but fuck, he wanted to be good for you so badly it hurt to look at.
You covered your mouth, breath hiccuping.
Dex’s hands settled carefully at your hips. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m sorry I made it worse.”
“He’s my friend,” you said, and the words came out small despite how hard you tried to make them loud. “I care about him. He saved my life, Dex. He pulled me out of that chamber. He was there when I didn’t even know if I was still a person.”
Dex’s face soured, but not with malice. With jealousy he hated and couldn’t smother fast enough.
“I know,” he whispered.
“No, you don’t. You don’t get to make me feel guilty because I care about someone who mattered before you.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“You are.” You shoved at his shoulder, not hard enough to hurt him, but enough to make his hands fall away. “You are, and I can’t do this. I can’t have you two tearing each other apart every time you’re in the same room. Just get along. Be civil. Be normal for five minutes. Do it for me, you jealous prick.”
Dex blinked up at you. Then, very carefully, he said, “You’re jealous too.”
“Of what, Dex?” You spat. “You’ve never had a girlfriend before me.”
He didn’t say it like a weapon. He said it gently, almost sadly, like he was placing fragile blade between you because pretending not to see it would insult you both.
“Julie,” he said.
You looked away immediately, and that was answer enough.
Dex’s hands moved back to you, palms warm through the fabric of your trousers. “Baby.”
“Don’t.”
“You found out about her and stayed up until three in the morning asking me questions.”
You remembered that night with a humiliating clarity.
It had started so quietly, with you in bed beside Dex, both of you half-dressed and exhausted, his hand warm on your thigh under the blanket while the room sat blue and still around you. You had asked one question about Julie because you thought you could handle one question. Then one became five, then ten, then suddenly it was three in the morning and you were sitting upright with your knees pulled to your chest, crying like a stupid little girl over a dead woman who had never even been your rival.
Dex had looked devastated by it. Not irritated or defensive. Devastated, like your jealousy had hurt you first and him second. He kept trying to pull you back into him, careful and frantic at the same time, one hand cupping the side of your face while the other rubbed slow circles into your hip. “Baby,” he had said, over and over, voice wrecked. “It wasn’t romantic. It was never romantic. I don’t love her like that. I don’t think about her like that. I don’t think about her at all unless you ask me to.”
“But if she was alive,” you had whispered, hating yourself as soon as the words came out. “If she was still here, would you still be with me?”
Dex’s face had gone still in the dark, stunned that you could even ask him something so clear to him. Then he moved closer, both hands on you now, holding you like he could physically keep the thought from hurting you any more than it already had. “Of course,” he said, immediate and absolute. “Of course I would. That’s not even a question. You’re not competing with her. You’re not competing with anyone. I want you. I love you.”
You had cried harder then, because the answer should have fixed it and somehow it didn’t. It only made you feel pathetic, mean, ridiculous. Jealous of a ghost. Jealous of some old, lonely part of Dex that had latched onto the idea of a woman because he hadn’t known what else to do with his moral compass. And Dex, because he loved you, hadn’t made you feel small for it. He had just pulled you into his lap, pressed his mouth to your temple, and held you through every ugly question until you ran out of shame and fell asleep against his chest.
Truly, the two of you were a match made in heaven. Or hell. Definitely somewhere dramatic and poorly supervised.
Your throat tightened. “That was different.”
“I know,” Dex said quickly. Too quickly. “I know it’s different.”
You looked at him, breathing unevenly.
He swallowed, still on his knees in front of you like he was afraid you might pull away if he stopped touching you for even a second. “Julie was a fixation,” he said, voice low, urgent, trying so hard to make it better that he didn’t hear himself making it worse.
You went still.
Dex kept going for half a second too long, because Dex, when scared, could be frighteningly honest. “Bucky was your boyfriend. He’s alive. He was with you. He knew you. He—”
Your breath hitched.
Dex stopped.
His face changed immediately. The argument drained out of him, all that desperate need to be understood collapsing into horror as he realized what he had just put in your hands. Bucky was alive. Bucky had been real. Bucky had loved you in a way Julie never had with him. Bucky could still walk into your apartment bleeding and make him sit down for dinner.
And Dex had said it like that was a wound he was allowed to press.
“Baby,” he said, softer now. “No. I didn’t mean—”
“You don’t have to remind me,” you whispered, and the shame in your voice made you sound younger than you were. “I know that makes me worse.”
You hated yourself for it sometimes, how Julie’s name had lodged under your skin. She was not an ex. She was not some woman Dex had kissed, loved, lost, and secretly measured you against. Julie was a dead girl Dex had fixated on in a way that did not fit neatly into romance or grief. You could resent a living woman. But Julie was a ghost.
“I can’t help it,” you admitted, tears spilling over before you could stop them. “I know it’s not fair. I know you don’t love her. I know you never loved her like this. But I still—”
Dex rose enough to gather you into him, careful and frantic all at once.
“I’m sorry,” he said into your stomach, arms tight around your waist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be mean.”
You pressed your hands over your face, crying harder because he was right and because you were right and neither of those things fixed anything.
Dex held on like letting go would kill him. “What I meant to say is—,” he said, voice wrecked. “I know what it feels like. I know.”
Your fingers slid into his hair despite yourself.
He turned his face into your touch at once.
“I can’t help it, either,” he whispered.
You looked down at him.
“…But he saved my life.”
That, Dex didn’t have an answer to.
You made a broken little sound, and Dex rose just enough to wrap his arms around your waist. He held you carefully at first, then tighter when you folded into him, his face pressed against your stomach, his breath warm through your shirt. You cried harder then, angry and exhausted and humiliated by how much all of it hurt. Dex shushed you like it hurt him too, one hand rubbing slow circles at your back, the other gripping like.
“And it’s not like he still loves me,” you said into his hair.
Dex was silent for a beat too long.
You pulled back, wet-eyed and furious, knowing he didn’t buy it. “He doesn’t.”
Dex looked up at you with those eyes. “Baby.”
“He doesn’t,” you insisted, even as your voice broke. “And even if he did, I don’t care. I don’t love him that way. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“It is.”
“Then act like it.”
His eyes closed.
You touched his face, thumb brushing just under the blood at his lip, and the anger in you crested and fell despite yourself. “I want you to get along with him.”
Dex opened his eyes again, devastated.
“I know,” you said, before he could argue. “I know you hate it. I know it feels awful. But he’s my friend. He saved my life. He matters to me, and you matter to me, and I am not spending the rest of my life refereeing two guys who both think suffering quietly counts as emotional maturity.”
He almost smiled, but then your eyes filled again and it died instantly.
“I’ll try,” he said.
You looked at him for a long moment, searching his face. Dex let you.
Dex meant everything when it came to you. Every promise, every apology, every awful possessive impulse, every desperate attempt to be better.
But I’ll try is not I will, now is it?
You bent down and kissed his forehead. Then, you stepped away.
Dex’s hands fell slowly from your waist.
You wiped your face with both hands and took a long breath. “I need air.”
His face changed immediately. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
Oh.
You walked past him to the office cabinet and pulled open the bottom drawer. Dex watched, confused and wary, as you took out the adamantium handcuffs Charles had given you for your next mission, along with the reinforced rope packed beside them. His eyes narrowed.
“I…,” he said carefully. “What are you doing?”
“Solving my problem.”
You walked back into the living room with Dex following close behind. Bucky was still in the armchair, plate abandoned on the coffee table, one hand pressed to his freshly stitched side. He looked up when you came in, saw your tear-streaked face first, then his gaze dropped to the adamantium cuffs.
His expression went flat. “No.”
“Yes.”
Bucky knew that look. He knew your stupid little get-along strategy because you had done it before, years ago, during the Flag Smashers ordeal, when he and Sam had been pretending not to hate each other so much it became everybody else’s problem. You had locked them in one of Sarah’s spare room, taken the weapons, and told them you didn’t care if they talked, fought, cried, or started a podcast, but they weren’t coming out until they stopped acting like divorced dogs.
Sam had called you messed up, which wasn’t false. Bucky had called you evil, even though he loved you then. Still, it worked.
So yes. He knew exactly what you were about to do.
Dex was a little slower, but not by much. He looked to the cuffs, to Bucky, to the dining chair, then back to your face.
“Wait,” Dex said.
“Nope.”
Bucky tried to stand. He made it about three inches before pain and blood loss turned the attempt into something embarrassing, his metal hand catching the arm of the chair as his stitched side pulled meanly. Dex, still not fully accepting the plan but loyal to your orbit by instinct, caught him by the shoulder before he could tip sideways. The second he realized he was helping, his face went sour.
You dragged two dining chairs back to back, and pointed “Sit.”
Bucky and Dex stared at you.
You stared back, tear tracks still drying on your cheeks, cuffs hanging from one hand, absolutely done with both of them.
They sat.
It wasn’t elegant. Bucky was injured and annoyed. Dex was baffled and visibly trying to decide whether his obedience extended to being trapped with your ex. Unfortunately for both of them, you were a supersoldier and in absolutely no mood. They both knew you overpowered Dex, and Bucky in this state. So within a minute, Dex and Bucky were back-to-back on the chairs, wrists locked in adamantium cuffs, rope looped around their torsos for good measure.
Bucky looked over his shoulder as much as he could. “Are you serious?”
Dex tested the cuffs once, then stopped when you looked at him. He said your name, but you didn’t respond.
You put your coat back on.
Both of them went very still.
“I need some air,” you said, voice raw but steady now. “You better figure out your differences by the time I come back”
Dex’s face went pale with panic. “Baby, please—”
“No.” You grabbed your keys from the bowl. “You two want to fight so badly? Great. Use your words.”
Bucky shifted against the rope and winced. “This feels unnecessary.”
You opened the door. “You two are assassins. Bond.”
That shut him up.
Dex leaned forward as much as the cuffs allowed, eyes fixed on you like the leash had gone too long. “Don’t go far.”
You paused at the doorway, you looked like you were going to say something, but instead, you just closed the door and left.
Dex stared at the door like he could will it open again, simply because he cannot remember the last time you left the house without a goodbye kiss. Bucky stared at the opposite wall, side aching, wrist cuffed to a man who clearly wanted him dead and loved you too much to move.
Finally, Bucky exhaled.
Dex said, very quietly, “I hate you.”
Bucky closed his eyes. “Yeah. I got that.”
—
For a long time, neither of them spoke.
The silence was not a peaceful one either. It had weight, heavy as blood drying into the rug.
It felt like some humiliating group therapy exercise designed by a woman who had finally had enough. Neither of them tested the restraints for long. They both knew you. They both knew Charles, Val, and the likes of them. They both knew you hadn’t used anything either of them could break without tearing the chair, their shoulders, or each other apart in the process.
Eventually, Bucky shifted, just enough to take pressure off the stitches in his side.
Dex’s voice cut through the room immediately. “Stop moving.”
Bucky shut his eyes. His shoulders were stiff against Dex’s back, and every shallow breath dragged at the wound, feeling like punishment. “I’m bleeding through stitches because you put them in like you were sewing up a punching bag.”
“You’re alive.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I’m managing.”
Bucky breathed out through his nose, almost a laugh, but the movement pulled at his side and killed the sound before it became anything. The room went silent again, only meaner this time, because the adjustment had brought their backs closer together. Dex could feel the hard line of Bucky’s body against his, even tied down. Bucky could feel the cogmium steel in Dex’s spine, the tension locked through him like he was barely pretending to be human.
“You always treat her like she’s gonna disappear if you blink?” Bucky asked.
It was meant to be an insult. Bucky meant it as a jab at the anxious attachment, the codependency Dex seemed to have with you that Bucky never had. The problem was Dex didn’t see it as a flaw. Loving you meant watching. Loving you meant knowing where the exits were, where your coat was, how long you had been gone, what your voice sounded like when you were about to shut down.
Dex’s mouth hardened. “You would know something about disappearing.”
Bucky’s voice dropped. “You don’t know anything about what happened.”
“I know enough.”
Neither of them could move properly, but for a second, it felt like the fight might restart anyway, like they would throw their weight against the chair until something broke.
“Why?” Dex asked eventually, forcing the words through.
Bucky said nothing.
Dex’s voice roughened. “Why did you leave her?”
The question didn’t come out of jealousy this time. It came out confused, almost offended, like Dex had found a hole in Bucky’s logic so stupid he couldn’t stop looking at it. He could understand fear. He could understand obsession. He could understand damage, violence, love so consuming it made a person distasteful to everyone except the one person who mattered. What he could not understand was having you in his arms, feeling you settle against his chest, hearing your breathing even out because you trusted him enough to sleep there, and then choosing to leave.
It made no sense to him! When Dex held you, there was nowhere else in the world he’d rather be. No mission, no freedom, no version of himself without you waiting for him. The thought of breaking up with you felt less like a choice and more like suicide. So what the fuck was Bucky’s excuse? How did a man get loved by you and still manage to walk away? Was he stupid? Was he blind? Was he just a fucking dumbass?
Bucky didn’t answer for a long time. When he finally spoke, the words came out flat, like he had scraped all the pride off them first.
“I started my campaign for Congress,” he said. “Sam talked me into it. She tried to talk me out of it. I thought it was the right thing. I thought if I chose office and a stable paycheck, I could take care of her.”
Dex listened unwillingly.
“When I got elected, I told her to stop the vigilante work,” Bucky continued. “Told her it was going to get her killed. She said the job wasn’t me. She said every speech made me look like I was burying myself alive and asking people to clap for it.”
“Was she right?” Dex asked.
Bucky didn’t answer straight away.
He could still remember a particularly bad fight like the back of his hand.
You were in the kitchen of the old Brooklyn apartment, one sleeve shoved up because there was blood on your wrist and you had sworn it wasn’t yours. He was still in his campaign shirt, collar open, tie pulled loose, standing between you and a stack of donor notes like any of it had ever belonged to him. You and Bucky had always been fire against fire. There was no Dex-like affection that turned into apology the second your voice cracked. Bucky loved you, but he fought you like someone who expected you to talk back. And you always did.
“You don’t care that it’s dangerous,” you had snapped. “Don’t lie to me, it’s insulting.”
Bucky sighed. “You think I don’t care if you die out there?”
“I think you care that it’s not good for your job,” you shot back, voice rising. “I think you care that future Congressman Barnes can’t have a girlfriend coming home with blood in her pretty little dress because it isn’t good enough for the cameras. It doesn’t fit the nice little “reformation” story they’re trying to sell about you.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it?” you demanded. “Because you didn’t have a problem with what I did when we were both in the mud. Now you’re wearing a suit and smiling for donors, and suddenly I’m the problem?”
“I’m trying to build something,” Bucky shouted back. “For us.”
“No,” you said, and your voice broke because you wanted so badly for him to understand. “You’re trying to make us presentable.”
You gripped the marble, then you shoved his speech draft off the counter and the papers scattered across the floor like the whole campaign had finally become as ridiculous as it felt.
“You hate this,” you said, furious and crying now, which only made you angrier. “You hate the speeches. You hate the cameras. And you want me to stop fighting because if I stop, maybe you can pretend you stopped too.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“That is exactly what this is.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“And you’re going to stand behind a podium and call that living?” you threw back, stepping closer, close enough that he could see the tears caught on your lashes. “I can’t stand there pretend this is your passion. Watching you do this is breaking my fucking heart.”
Really, maybe that had been the cruelest truth. You were different people by then, or maybe you had finally stopped pretending you weren’t. Bucky wanted peace so badly he was willing to sacrifice his life’s calling. You wanted him alive, but not hollowed out.
It was never going to work out after that.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “She was right.”
Bucky’s jaw flexed. “Yeah.”
Dex had expected a speech, maybe some self-righteous old-soldier bullshit about duty and sacrifice. Instead, Bucky just said it plainly, but Dex should’ve expected it. Of course you had been right.
“She just had to scratch the itch,” Bucky said. “That’s what I thought then. I hated that I was trying to build something for her and she still didn’t want me in office. I hate the she didn’t want the life I thought I was making safe.”
Dex swallowed once, staring at the floor.
“I left,” Bucky said. His voice had gone lower now, stripped of rage and charm and anything that might make him sound better than he was. “Because I thought if I stayed, I’d start hating her for not becoming the person I needed her to be. And I thought she’d start hating me for asking her to change.”
Bucky’s shame sat heavily in the room.
“So you were a coward,” Dex said, like it was the only possible conclusion.
“Yeah.”
Dex pictured you angry and exhausted, standing in front of a man in a suit who wanted peace so badly he tried to make you stop being who you were. “You had her,” Dex said. “And you left.”
Bucky tipped his head back against the chair. “Yeah.”
“She’s perfect.”
“She’s not,” Bucky said.
Dex went rigid. If he could throw something at him, he would’ve.
Bucky felt it immediately and exhaled, tired and pained. “I don’t mean it like that.”
“Then say it right.”
“She’s reckless,” Bucky said. “She’s brutal and she’s never been good at pulling her punches. She gets a goal in her head and won’t let it go even if it ruins her. She’s not perfect.”
Dex knew every word was true, and hated that Bucky knew it too.
Bucky’s voice lowered, “But she is. Somehow.”
Dex looked down at the cuffs around his wrists.
“By the time I figured out she was right about congress, it was too late,” Bucky said. “She didn’t want me back.”
Dex frowned. “What?”
“You didn’t know?”
Dex said nothing.
Bucky made a quiet, bitter sound. “She didn’t tell you.”
Dex hated the words before he even understood why. “Tell me what?”
“After I joined the New Avengers, I went back to her place,” Bucky said. “I brought flowers, gave her a speech about how I never should’ve run for office.”
Dex’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Flowers?”
“Shut up.”
“She hates being surprised with flowers after a fight. She says it feels like a cop-out.”
“I know that now.”
Dex went quiet again.
“I told her I loved her,” Bucky said. His voice was rougher now. “Told her I was wrong. Told her I should have listened. Told her I wanted to try again. I thought if I admitted it, maybe there was still something to save.”
Dex’s breathing slowed.
“She let me talk,” Bucky said. “Then she said she loved me—”
Dex tensed before he could stop himself.
Bucky felt it and didn’t comment. He forced himself to come out the rest of the sentence instead. “She said she loved me, but not in the same way anymore. Said she couldn’t go through the same heartbreak twice. She said if she let me back in, she’d spend every day waiting for me to decide I knew better than her again.”
Dex stared at the door.
“Then she told me to go home,” Bucky said.
Oh.
Dex didn’t know what he had expected. Maybe some part of him had always imagined Bucky as a door you had left open, a threat waiting to happen, a man who could come back and claim you by knowing the right scars. But that was not what this was.
“You still love her,” he said.
Bucky didn’t answer quickly enough.
Dex’s teth tightened. “Don’t lie.”
Bucky looked at the wall. “Yeah.”
Dex’s voice went cold. “Then why are you sitting here pretending this visit was anything but wanting to see her again?”
Dex knew the Avengers Tower was not that far. If Bucky had wanted medical care, if he had wanted backup, he could have gone there. But he had come here, because the wound gave him an excuse to reach for the one person he was not supposed to want anymore.
“I’m not pretending anything,” Bucky said.
“You want her.”
“I don’t get to want her.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Dex turned his face away, nostrils flaring once. He hated him. He still hated him. Maybe more now, because Bucky’s love was not clear enough to dismiss and not active enough to fight.
“She’s happier with you anyway,” Bucky said.
Dex froze.
It sounded like it hurt Bucky to say that. He wasn’t being generous. He sounded almost angry, like your happiness had betrayed him by proving him unnecessary.
“She’s more relaxed,” Bucky said. “Even tonight. When you looked at her, yeah, she looked tired. Pissed off. Ready to kill both of us. But she looked… here. Like this is her life now. She doesn’t want to run away from this the way she wanted to run away from me.”
Dex didn’t move.
Bucky swallowed. “I think I loved her for the person she could be.”
Dex’s throat tightened.
“You love her as she is,” Bucky said, voice low with the humiliation of telling the truth to a man he still disliked. “You love the part of her I kept trying to talk down. You love her because she is who she is.”
Dex stared at nothing.
“Fuck,” Bucky managed a scraping laugh. “You’re perfect for each other.”
For once, Dex had no insult ready. He just sat there, back pressed to the man who had once loved you badly and still loved you enough to tell the truth.
You love her as she is.
Oh.
Of course he had known he loved you. His love for you was the central fact of his life now. But he had never heard it put like that. He had never understood that the thing Bucky had failed to survive was the exact thing Dex held onto with both hands.
He loved you now. As you were. Bloody, stubborn, brilliant. Too much, and yet never enough to scare him away.
Bucky shifted behind him and winced. “Don’t make that face.”
Dex blinked. “You can’t see my face.”
“I can feel it. It’s probably disturbing.”
Dex’s mouth tightened, but the bite was weaker now. “I still hate you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want you near her.”
“I know that too.”
“But she wants you alive,” Dex said, the words dragging out of him like a confession he resented. “And she wants you in her life.”
Bucky was quiet.
Dex shook his head. “So don’t make me regret not killing you.”
Bucky looked down at his bound hands, then toward the door you had walked out of. “I’m not trying to take her from you.”
Dex listened for the lie.
There was love, grief, want, regret. But not a plan. Not a claim.
“I know,” Dex said finally.
The silence after that was still uncomfortable. They were still tied together, still angry, still would probably never like each other, but the hatred had less room to move now. In its place was a human recognition that they had both loved you, and one of them had loved what you might become, while the other was waiting for you to come home exactly as you were.
Bucky tipped his head back, exhausted. “She’s going to be mad I said all that.”
Dex looked at the door. “I won’t tell her.”
Bucky turned his head slightly. “Why?”
“Because it would hurt her.”
Bucky sighed and said, “Good.”
Dex’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t approve of me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
Bucky almost smiled, then thought better of it because his side hurt and because Dex would probably take it personally. “Fine.”
They sat there in silence again, still waiting for your key in the door.
It was not peaceful, but it was kinder than before. The fight had burned down, leaving only the uncomfortable knowledge that you had been right to leave them there.
Eventually, Bucky shifted, careful of his stitches. “We’re supposed to get along, right?”
Dex stared at the front door. “I don’t want to.”
“Neither do I.”
Bucky exhaled through his nose. “Find one thing, then. One thing we don’t hate about each other. That’s probably what she wanted.”
Dex’s mouth tightened. “That’s a stupid strategy.”
“It worked on me and Sam.”
“I’m not Sam.”
“No,” Bucky said dryly. “You’re much worse.”
Dex almost answered. He almost gave him a mean enough comment to make the room normal again. Instead, he stayed quiet for so long Bucky thought he was refusing the whole thing on principle.
Then, Dex looked down and said, like the words had to be dragged out of him, “I admired you.”
Bucky went still.
“In the military,” Dex continued. “They taught us about the original hotshot World War Two sniper.” He sighed, recounting what he learned. “You were a benchmark.”
Bucky looked down at his metal hand.
For a second, the living room felt very far away. He was back France, younger, with a rifle settled against his shoulder and Steve’s voice behind him. He remembered having hands that felt like his. He remembered trusting the weapon without thinking about it. He remembered the awful focus of a target through glass.
“Not anymore,” Bucky said.
Dex turned his head slightly, as much as the rope allowed.
Bucky flexed his metal fingers once. “My hands got too heavy.”
Dex didn’t offer pity, which was maybe the first decent thing he had done all night. He just sat with it, understanding the mechanics before the grief: hands were tools. Bodies were weapons. And sometimes the weapon changed and everyone still expected you to aim the same.
“You compensate,” Dex said eventually, “You’re still good.”
Bucky’s mouth twitched upwards. “That your version of comfort?”
“It’s an observation.”
“Right.” Bucky breathed out something close to a laugh, then stopped when his side pulled.
After a moment, Bucky said, “You’re good too.”
Dex’s eyes narrowed. “I know.”
Bucky rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Jesus.”
And just like that, there was recognition, only because lying would be disrespectful. They sat there with it, no longer pretending there was nothing in the other worth understanding.
Dex looked toward the door again.
“She’ll be cold,” he said.
Bucky’s eyes before he could stop it. “Yeah. She always says she won’t be.”
“She’d be lying.”
Bucky didn’t argue. For once, there was nothing to argue with. They both knew that about you: the stubborn little tilt of your chin, the way you would rather freeze than admit you wanted anyone to notice, the way you made needing care look like a personal failure.
Dex stared at the floor, hating that Bucky knew things like that. But under the hatred, there was one truth Dex couldn’t make himself resent: you were alive because of him.
So, very quietly, he said, “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you pulled her out of that cryo chamber.”
The words landed harder, maybe because Dex meant them. Maybe because Bucky knew what it cost him to say it. Maybe because for a moment, all the hatred in the room had to make space for the fact that they both loved you enough to be grateful you had survived.
Bucky breathed in once, and did not trust himself to answer.
Neither of them spoke after that.
There was nothing left to say that would not make both of them feel worse.
—
When you came back, they were free.
For a second, you just stood there with your key still in the lock, cold air slipping in around your legs, staring into your own living room like it had rearranged itself while you were gone. The chair was empty. The rope had been loosened and coiled beside it. The adamantium cuffs sat neatly on the coffee table, gleaming under the lamp like evidence at a trial.
Bucky was standing near the armchair, pale but upright, one hand resting carefully over his stitched side. Dex was by the window with his arms crossed, his split mouth set in a hard little line, watching you with an expression so forcibly neutral it immediately made you suspicious.
You blinked.
“Uh.”
Neither of them moved.
You pointed slowly at the chair. “Did I not leave you two tied up?”
Bucky looked faintly embarrassed. Dex looked like he had been waiting for this question and still hated having to answer it.
“We worked together,” Bucky said.
Dex glanced to him. “He needed to piss. I wasn’t letting him do it on our floor.”
That was apparently the whole explanation.
Huh.
The apartment was kind of clean now.
Even the bedroom, somehow, was as clean as it could be. The mirror was still cracked, the door still needed dealing with, and the ghost of your perfume still clung to the floorboards, but the blood had been wiped up, the glass swept away, the sheets changed, the ruined towel folded in the dirty laundry. Apparently, at some point between being handcuffed to the same chair and deciding not to murder each other, Dex had made Bucky help him clean.
Still, nobody was shouting. Nobody was bleeding more than they already had been. Nobody was dead.
The bar, unfortunately, was on the floor.
At one point, Bucky said he should go.
You nodded, but when he moved toward the door, you caught his sleeve before he passed you and drew him into a hug. He went still at first, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to have that anymore. Then his arm came around you, gentle and familiar, his hand flatwarm between your shoulders.
“We’ll catch up,” you said quietly.
Bucky’s eyes closed for half a second. “Yeah,” he murmured. “We will.”
Across the room, Dex froze in a way that was technically progress because it was not murder.
His eyes fixed on Bucky’s hand on your back. Then on your cheek pressed briefly to Bucky’s shoulder. Then on the relaxed expression in Bucky’s face when he looked down at you. Dex’s jaw clicked once, twice, and you could practically feel the jealousy being dragged through his body by a leash made of your name.
He lasted exactly three seconds.
“Yeah, okay,” Dex said, voice tight. “That’s too long. Get off her.”
You looked at him over Bucky’s shoulder.
Dex’s mouth shut, but his eyes stayed huge and miserable, like a dog ordered not to bite while the mailman danced in front of him.
Bucky, because he valued his life a little more now than he had earlier, released you first. He looked at Dex once. Dex looked back, less murderous than before, but still with the promise that Bucky was alive on a technicality.
Bucky was alive because you didn’t want him dead.
Bucky left after that, limping only a little, dignity held together by stitches. The door closed behind him, and the apartment went quiet.
You stood there for a second, coat still on, shoulders finally sinking now that there was no one left to manage. Dex stayed where he was then crossed walked towards you slowly.
He looked at you with those wide, wounded eyes, and swallowed.
“I didn’t kill him,” he said.
Your anger thinned at the edges despite yourself.
He looked at you like that mattered. Like not killing Bucky had cost him real effort, real restraint. Like he wanted you to see that he had done it for you. Only for you.
You sighed, then reached up and touched his cheek.
“I’m proud of you, baby.”
Dex’s eyes gentled immediately.
“So proud,” you murmured, thumb brushing carefully near the blood at his lip. “My good boy didn’t murder my friend.”
His breath hitched, just a little.
“You’re making fun of me,” he said, but his voice had gone warm.
You sighed with a slightly amused smile. “A little.”
Dex leaned into your palm anyway.
You stepped closer, and that was all it took. His restraint broke as he wrapped his arms around you like he had been starving for permission all night, pulling you carefully into his chest, careful of his bruises, and even more careful of yours that you gained from your last mission. He tucked his face into your hair, his hands spread firm over your back, and for the first time since you had opened the door and found blood on your floor, he let himself breathe properly.
For the first time all night, he felt good about himself.
He wasn’t normal of course, whatever that meant. He was never going to be suddenly reasonable about Bucky Barnes existing within a five-mile radius of you. But good, because you were in his arms and you had called him baby and Bucky was alive and somehow Dex had managed to give you that. He had behaved. Barely, maybe, but barely still counted.
He kissed you then, carefully, like he was asking whether he was still allowed. When you kissed him back, his arms tightened around you, warm and helpless. The apartment still smelled faintly like antiseptic and takeout and broken glass. But you were kissing him, and your hands were on his face, and behind his skull, Bucky’s voice echoed again:
Perfect for each other.
Dex smiled into your mouth.
Yeah.
He could live with that.
—end.
Extra Note: Lowkey should I make this into a miniseries??? I love writing their dynamic so much.
