Two minutes per side
Summary: Dex talks to an old friend while trying to untangle feline nutrition. When something comes out bloody he takes it. Always will.
Rating: T — violence/ death mention
Just a quick little Dex character study ✨🍳
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Benjamin Poindexter living in proximity to goodness. Isn’t that the damnedest thing?
After all he’s done?
Dex stared out the window of his living room. Scratched glass that pointed straight to the peaks of Clinton Church.
Named for the neighborhood it served. Something that belonged to the people who lived here, a reflection of community and values.
Now he paid rent here, too.
Very generous of them.
Killed a guy there before. A father. At least one kind, don’t know about the other. Though you’re usually not allowed to be both at once.
Rules everywhere, huh?
Didn’t know his name when he did it. Just something in the way. A body to be optimized through, not around. That’s what no one understood about him back then.
People move through this world in curves, but—
Curves stall.
Lines cut.
He was a line.
“Fuuuuucking hell, Eileen.” The headphones over his ears sat the way they always did. Not because they were the same pair, though. He lost those in 2016.
Lost a lot of things in 2016.
These were the closest an EBay auction and hundred dollar budget could get him to that ghost.
The old tapes didn’t hold anyway. Therapy given to a small-town tween working overtime to serve a big-city adult.
His tongue raked the fake tooth in his mouth once. Canine. Defanged by a devil and refanged by a back alley dentist.
Funny that either of those things exist.
“How do you optimize cat nutrition?” The recorder stayed in his left hand, thumb holding down the button that made his voice architecture.
The right scrolled through a blog titled Feline-to-Five.
“High-protein, moderate-fat, low-carb.” His thumb moved, hovering briefly over an image of a tabby happily tearing into a fried egg.
He has those. Cheap, protein-packed, and absolutely repeatable on a level that would slot efficiently into his morning.
“So. Tony. I thought about the name.”
Phone went on the counter, Eileen stayed with him as he moved.
Pan.
Spatula.
Carton.
Oil.
Blog didn’t say anything about seasonings. Dex hated them, thought the cat might too. It’s just shit you put on entrees to improve their optics.
Cook it right and you don’t need support.
“It’s useful. Same genre as the rest of them. People in this building rarely have names over six letters long, and if they do they won’t get used.”
Vegetable oil in the pan. One circle nesting in another and another.
When the knob turned fire came up, ready to burn unless you could control it.
Sixty seconds at medium-low for the variables to align. Time enough to rake his plan cleanly through black ribbon.
“I just need one good deed, Eileen.” His eyes flicked to the window again. Stained glass nested in brick older than him.
Pretentious.
“Not the kind you buy with wine and wafers.”
He laughed a little at that, the absurdity of it. New York standing in a line to absolve themselves. Acting like Sunday mass and pre-packaged communion could wash it all away.
“The kind I’m uniquely qualified to pull off.”
Fifty-nine seconds. Time for the eggs.
His free hand pushed the paper tabs in until white ovals revealed themselves. Two rows, perfectly aligned. All slots counted for. No imperfections. No discoloration.
Crack.
Crack.
Goo and yolk went into the heat. One textbook.
One red.
“Huh.”
Dex turned the shell over. Pristine on the outside, edges sloped and smooth like the others.
“Guess I know which one’s mine.”
His thumbnail pushed into the spatula handle for a second, then released.
Protein is protein, a little blood notwithstanding. Would be wrong to waste it.
“Anyway,” back on track again while he watched clear edges turn to fog over fire. “The Fisks.”
Opulence in the shoulder strap of a goddamn narcissist—
No, worse.
A liar.
Plenty of people in this city would love that lifestyle. Galas. Crystal. Penthouses. All things men like him used to refract.
An image of the Mayor and his wife here.
A video of him denouncing crime there.
The idea of this—this lavish domesticity braided so neatly into violence that New York thanks him when he pulls the trigger.
And why wouldn’t they? Dex did once. Twice, actually.
The spatula wedged perfectly beneath the first task, its edges lined up with yellow and white.
Flip
“He said he understood me, Eileen. Said that with him I would…be useful. That he cared that—“
Fake fang bit into his bottom lip, rounded porcelain not giving him the sharpness he was looking for.
“He understood.”
Bloody egg needed an extra couple seconds.
“We all know how THAT turned out.”
The image of Juli in that freezer was his brain’s natural pull. Eyes wide and licked with frost. Dex had spent so much time thinking about those eyes.
Now they judge in a different way.
“What’s that old saying? ‘Fool me once, shame on you?’ ”
Prison wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Not the structure of it, at least. Could’ve been better if they let him use his hands.
Well, to be fair, they did during a single visit.
Signed his life away to Vanessa Fisk with a felt-tip marker.
“Fool me twice? Well—”
Egg’s ready.
Flip
“Fuck me.”
The math ran automatically, just like it had the time before that.
“How many people—”
Did he kill for them?
Would it take to get to them?
Would they kill if he did nothing?
“One good deed to prove I’m still me.”
Shot that guy for her—the one who ran for DA years ago.
Would Matt even work with him after that?
…Can I call him Matt?
Dex shook his head. Irrelevant. Matt—lawyer—devil. Hands do the same thing, and that’s what he needs.
His hands.
The fire beneath dissipated with the turn of a knob. First was plated for him, red streak still jiggling beneath thin membrane.
The other went into a small dish he lifted from the hallway.
Meow!
“Sorry, I know our session is a little short this time.” He huffed, looking at the door. Already recognizing what waits for him on the other side. “Someone’s expecting me for breakfast.”
Cracked his neck.
“See you next week.”
