Summary: You’ve been Lena’s nanny for years. Now, with both of her parents gone, you and Pope Cody have been doing your combined best to take care of her. And yet, as much as you both love her, it’s not enough. Social services has already been sniffing around, and it won’t be long before she’s going to be taken into foster care.
But when Smurf tells you that married couples have a better chance of adoption… well, she’s right. And whatever scheme she may be planning doesn’t matter as long as Lena is safe.
Besides, it’s just paper. Right?
Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI: Swearing, Mentions of drug use, Gun use, Alcohol use, Violence, Smut!!, It's Animal Kingdom so buckle up its kind of got everything, Angst (lots and lots of angst), Married-to-lovers trope, Pope yearns A LOT, Spoilers!! (The timeline follows season 3ish), Craig has his own house and never moved into Baz’s, Mental illness (it's Pope), Smurf is manipulative of course, Brief mention of a traumatic childbirth, Please let me know if I forgot anything!!
Author's Note: We did it! The giant Pope Cody fic is here! Special thanks to our queen and bestie @flowersforbucky for proofreading as always! I honestly loved writing this one so much that I'm gonna miss it now that it's posted but hoo boy am I excited for you guys to read it! Please please let me know what you think!
-
“Are you sure about this?”
“Not really, no.”
Craig Cody runs both hands through his hair. Rests his elbows back on his knees. Stares at the pool, rather than at you.
You stare at the pool, too. You think, if you keep looking hard enough, you might see the stars twinkling on the surface of the water, despite the soothing blue lights shining beneath.
“Then why are you doing it?”
“For Lena.”
-
“What the hell are you talking about, Smurf?” Pope Cody’s voice is a low growl, but there’s shock behind the suspicion in his eyes.
You can’t hear anything through the thick glass wall, but you can see Smurf enunciate the words when she says “hand the phone to her”.
Her eyes are locked on you, something almost chillingly sure in her gaze. You’d wondered, when she’d demanded that Pope bring you with him to visit her, what she could possibly have been planning. Whatever it is, it’s Smurf, so you know it can’t be good. And with the way Pope has gone pale, something like shock cracking through his usually stoic demeanor, your fear seems to have been confirmed.
Pope doesn’t look at you when he passes the phone over. The plastic is cool on your ear.
“Married couples have a better chance at adoption.”
You look at her. She doesn’t even blink. You know what she means, and you do your fucking best to keep your eyes from trailing over to the man beside you.
Still, you find yourself echoing Pope’s words.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about keeping Lena out of the system. Both of her parents are gone. Pope may be taking care of her, but with his record? Social services is going to be coming by any day now, baby.”
You swallow, and grit your teeth as you search for a comeback. For any kind of answer or solution that isn’t…
“One day at the courthouse, one little party to make it look real, and Lena is safe.” Smurf’s words sound tinny through the phone. The rest doesn’t need to be said. Can’t be said, because every phone call is recorded. No foster care. No fighting the courts. Adoption.
Adoption because you’re married.
“Okay.” Your voice doesn’t sound like your own, but it sounds…firm. The decision isn’t hard, though it probably should be.
Just a piece of paper. That’s all. It’s just a piece of paper, and you can protect Lena from the foster system.
Pope does look at you now, but you don’t break your gaze from Smurf’s. Still, you can almost feel the surprise on his face. The intensity of his stare on the side of your head.
Smurf nods, smiling in that pleased, shark-like way she has when she gets her way.
And, quietly, this time to yourself, you repeat the word.
“Okay.”
-
“You’re gonna give up your whole life for the kid you nanny for?”
“Your niece.”
“Your whole life.”
“It’s not my whole life. It’s just…paper.”
Craig stares at you. You stare at the pool.
“You’re gonna be raising her. With Pope.”
“I don’t know if you remember, but I kind of have been raising her.” It’s not like Baz has been there for fucking anything but dropping off a paycheck with an extra couple hundred bucks and an apology for being gone a few more days than promised.
Pope was there. For ice cream at the beach. To help you out on nights you were exhausted and couldn’t get a hold of Baz. To sit with you on the couch. Always so quiet, but…there. A comforting presence amidst the chaos of caring for and worrying about a little girl that isn’t even yours.
Pope was there, and he’ll be there now. You have no doubt about that.
-
The ride back is dead silent.
So silent, in fact, that you nearly jump out of your skin with surprise when Pope speaks.
“You don’t have to do this.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off the road, or his hands off of the wheel.
“I know.” You kind of do have to. Smurf has a pretty uncanny ability to get her way, and it was more than obvious that this is what she wants you to do.
But even despite that, it’s for Lena. Lena who you all-but raised. Who you love. You would adopt her in a heartbeat, and you know Pope would too.
His hands grip the wheel a little tighter. You see a muscle jump in his jaw. “If you don’t want to-“
“I want to.” You interrupt, finally turning to him. “It’s Lena. If you think for one second that I’m going to let her get lost in the fucking foster system, you’re insane.”
“Smurf-“
“I don’t care about that. She’s right. This will work. Because right now, you paying me to help you take care of her isn’t exactly working. And if adoption is the way you wanna go, then that’s what we have to do.”
Pope doesn’t speak. He just nods, and stares at the road.
-
“This is different. This is… this is forever. This is like, building up a college fund-“
“Can’t be too hard, with your lifestyle-“
“Stop joking. I’m not kidding.”
You look at him, now. “I’m not kidding. She gets a cut. Every job, Lena gets a cut.”
“You really want to do this. Legally raise a kid that isn’t yours with fucking Pope.”
“I want her to be safe.” You finally snap, pulling your legs out of the pool so fast that you think it might splash him a little. “Why the fuck don’t you get that? Why doesn’t anyone else seem to care about this fucking kid?”
“Why do you care about her so much that you’re going to throw away your life?!”
“What life? I’m already wrapped up in this shit, and Smurf said-“
“You can’t trust Smurf.”
“She likes me. I’m not a threat to her. She has no reason to lie.”
“She always has a reason to lie.”
“Not about this. She wants Lena to be safe just as much as we do.”
Craig runs his hands through his hair again. Mumbles something about you being insane.
“I’ve watched this kid grow up. I love her.”
“More than yourself?”
“I mean…yeah.” Isn’t that what love is? You don’t think you know any other kind. “It’ll be the same as it always was. I’ll just have a rock on my finger, right?”
“This is legit marriage. And adoption. This is like, piles and piles of paperwork and shit. Plus, it’s gonna be a whole lot of lying.”
“Oh yeah, I’m really not used to lying. Where would I even start?”
Craig snorts into his beer, and you take the laughter as a win.
-
It’s a small ceremony. Just you and the Codys, save for Smuf for…obvious reasons.
There are no wide grins. No giddy family members. No flower girls or teary vows. The minister is monotone when he marries you, and Pope’s intense eyes don’t leave your face for a second.
It isn’t that you don’t like Pope. In fact, you get along with him better than anyone else in the family, save for maybe Craig, and that friendship still shocks the hell out of you sometimes. You aren’t sure when you started actually becoming friends with Craig Cody, but somewhere between him constantly hitting on you when you first started watching Lena and you rejecting his offer of drugs almost every damn night, you started actually getting along. There’s something about him that’s real, and maybe a little (or a lot) lost, and for some reason it seems to make you more patient with him than most.
But Pope. You’ve always gotten along with Pope really fucking well.
Since you started watching Lena, before he went to prison and before her parents died, you and Pope just seemed to…well, harmonize. You wash the sponges in the way he seems to like. You can sit with him in silence, and even get him to talk about things if it feels like the right time. Hell, you’ve fallen asleep on his shoulder when sitting together on Baz’s couch, and woken to him in the exact same position, like he was afraid that any movement might disturb you.
So maybe this won’t be so bad. It’s for Lena. To keep her out of the system. To keep her with the people who love her.
You expect your hand to shake a little when you exchange rings, but it’s surprisingly steady. Pope is still looking at you.
When it’s time to kiss the bride - Christ, the bride. You’re really fucking doing this - his hand comes up to your cheek, thumb brushing absently over your skin as he gives you a questioning look that is so sweet you almost laugh out loud because you’ve seen this man come home with bruised knuckles and bloodstains on his shirt. You nod, and he nods back as he ducks down and presses his lips to yours.
It’s a simple, gentle kiss - he doesn’t slam you against the wall and devour you or anything - and yet you feel a zing shoot down your spine and to your toes at the mere touch of his lips against yours. The sensation is so shocking, so good, that when he pulls away you almost reach up to pull him back to you just to see if you can feel it again.
You don’t, of course. You just meet his eyes, and try to smile.
And then you’re married. Just like that. One kiss. A couple signatures. And you’re just…married.
-
Andrew Cody has a terrible secret.
He is deeply, desperately, overwhelmingly in love with his wife.
Wife. Wife. Wife. You’re his fucking wife now. If it were any other circumstance, he might call this a dream come true. If he could just call you that for real, without the knowledge that you’re only married to protect Lena, he would be the happiest man in the fucking world.
And yet, as you all arrive back at the house and he watches that ring glimmer on your finger, remembers how your lips felt against his own even for just that one too-brief moment, he wonders if it would be fucked up to…pretend. Like he did in prison, when he kept a photo of you on the wall of his bunk and told his cellmates that the beautiful woman in the picture was his wife.
That was fucked up of him. He knows that. He knew that. But how would anyone have been able to check? He had gone to prison to protect his brother. He was serving a sentence that could potentially last much longer than three years. He was alone, and he was in love, and when someone asked him to explain the picture it just…happened. The fantasy he’d kept tucked safely away in the back of his mind had spilled past his lips, and talking about you had helped get him through the horror and monotony of those three years. In prison, you were his wife. The warm and sweet smile he would come home to, one day.
You’d visited him, too. You hadn’t taken Lena, but you’d come. Just a few times, always against Smurf’s wishes, but you’d checked on him. And he had wished with every part of his fucking being that you had come because he wasn’t just your friend, he wasn’t just Lena’s uncle, but because you cared about him. Because you missed him as much as he missed you. And he missed you and your lovely eyes and your gorgeous smile every. Fucking. Day.
This is for Lena. You’re both here for Lena.
And yes, he is almost positive that Smurf has an ulterior motive. That she knows exactly how Pope feels about you and that she’s going to use this to control him or even you, somehow. She’ll see this arrangement as her ‘giving’ you to him, as horrible as it may be. He’ll owe her for it.
But Lena will be safe. You’ll be safe. He can make sure of that.
And you won’t ever know how often he thinks about tilting your head back and sliding his lips over yours. About the noises he daydreams of hearing you make as his hands move over your body. Those hands have caused so much damage and pain for so long, but when they touch you they won’t be weapons. They’ll be as gentle as he can possibly make them as they slide over every perfect inch of soft skin he can reach.
And if he could just fall asleep watching a movie on the couch with you wrapped safely in his arms, with the smell of your perfume in his nose and the feeling of your steady breathing against his chest, he would truly be the happiest man in the world. You came close, once. When he sat with you for a while after Lena went to bed and he watched you fight yawn after yawn as you watched some random TV show together. Your head had finally thunked against his shoulder, and he had been too afraid to breathe lest he wake you and you stop touching him for even a second.
He had allowed himself to turn his nose into the top of your head. Had allowed himself one deep inhale.
He’d chased that memory for weeks, had felt so fucked up as he groaned your name into his pillow and imagined burying his nose into your hair and catching that scent of perfume and shampoo as you writhed beneath him. In those moments, alone in the dark of his empty house, his imagination would replace his own hand with you. His own labored breaths with the sound of your voice, breathing his name and begging for more as he made you feel so fucking good you would never be able to think of anyone else.
And then he would see you again the next day. He’d buy you and Lena ice cream and melt a little at the sight of your smile. He’d feel ashamed of the thoughts he had just the night before as his eyes lingered on the way your mouth wrapped around that little plastic spoon and he would nearly have to excuse himself and leave mid-conversation before he broke and slammed you into a picnic table to lick the mint chocolate chip from your lips himself.
And now you’re his fucking wife. You’re going to be living with him. Raising Lena with him. How the fuck is he supposed to keep himself together? How is he supposed to keep himself in check to be good for you?
And yet, despite how insane and wrong it might be, he’ll take this. He will wear the title of your husband, fake as it may be, like a badge of fucking honor that he will never deserve. He’ll think about kissing you, and touching you, and hold himself back from doing either of those things every single day of his life.
But he will be your husband. You’ll be his wife.
And maybe, secretly, horribly, he’ll pretend.
-
The after party, unlike the ceremony, is not small.
It’s loud. Chaotic. Takes over the entire backyard of the Cody house and makes you feel like you want to cave in on yourself. You don’t mind parties. You know Pope doesn’t like them. Even now, he’s sitting in the corner and nursing a beer, eyes still locked on you as you take a shot with Craig and do your absolute best to follow the plan. This party isn’t about having fun, at least not for you and Pope. It’s about optics. It’s about making it clear that you are now a complete, unarguable member of the Cody family.
For what might be the hundredth time tonight, your eyes drift to Pope’s. His remain locked on yours. You take a deep breath, and take another shot.
You aren’t drunk when he approaches you, but you are buzzed enough to be giggling at one of Deran’s jokes.
And then his voice is by your ear, low and soft. When his arm slides around your waist, tugs you back against him, you almost wonder if this is supposed to be part of the plan.
“You okay?” He asks, lips brushing the shell of your ear and voice so low you know you’re the only one who can hear him.
“And finally,” Craig shouts, raising another shot into the air and immediately drawing the attention of the group of people around you, “here comes the blushing groom!”
The room is suddenly filled with loud, drunken cheers. You tilt your head back, relaxing against Pope and leaning up to brush your lips over his jaw. You don’t imagine the way his arm tightens around you at the movement, but you plaster a wide grin on your face as you murmur back to him, “do you think we did enough? Can we leave?” Leave isn’t a very fitting word - the two of you are staying here tonight, but you’ll take anything that gets you away from the strangers and the chaos.
Pope smiles, and it doesn’t look entirely fake.
In a second, he’s reaching down and hooking his free arm behind your knees, lifting you against him and beginning to make his way into the back room without a word. Your own laugh is genuine, and you’re followed by cheers and whoops and some very suggestive noises as you disappear down the hallway.
-
“Are you…okay?” He keeps asking you that. You still don’t know how to answer.
Your head tilts toward his, one eyebrow raised.
“I’m in a sham marriage to ensure that a little girl I love doesn’t get forgotten by the system. I’ve had less weird days.”
“I mean…with me? Do you want me to sleep on the floor?”
“Would you? If I asked?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds uncomfortable.”
“I’ve slept in worse places.” Right. Prison. Shit.
“I didn’t know you even slept.”
He ignores your joke, your awkward attempt at deflection, and asks again. “Do you want me to move?”
“I…no.” You don’t. It surprises you how much you don’t.
You roll onto your side, tuck an arm beneath your head, and meet his stare. You’re both fully clothed, lying atop the covers of a large bed in a guest room, and you’re pretty sure that everyone at the party thinks you’re going at each other like bunny rabbits.
It’s quiet in here. It’s comfortable. Being around Pope Cody is always so comfortable. You genuinely don’t get why people are always so unnerved by him. He’s quiet, sure. Dangerous, maybe. But he has a presence that, at least to you, is calming and warm in a way you’ve never felt with anyone else before.
“Do you think this was a bad idea?”
He frowns. Furrows his brow. He rolls on his side to face you, too, and you see his hand twitch, just barely, like he might reach up and touch you.
“No. It was for Lena.” He pauses, brow crinkling again. “Do you regret it?”
“No.” For some reason, with the way the moonlight is hitting his face and alighting on the worried expression in his eyes, you can’t help but reach up, your new ring catching in the low light of the bedroom as you brush your fingers over his cheek. The gesture feels too intimate for your current arrangement. More than a little confusing. And yet, Pope blows out a shuddered breath, and leans into your touch.
After a moment, he returns the gesture, his own calloused fingers brushing the hair from your face, even as his eyes remain locked on yours.
You’re not sure how it happens, not sure who moves first, but in what feels like the span of a second and a thousand years all at the same time, his forehead is resting against your own, large hand still cradling your cheek and warm breath whispering over your lips on every barely-there exhale.
“Pope…” you murmur, and he leans helplessly closer.
“Andrew.” He murmurs back, noses bumping, brown eyes fluttering closed. “My name is Andrew.”
“Andrew.” You repeat, and you’ve hardly ever used his real name. Only hours ago, you said it in your ‘vows’, and even then it felt foreign on your tongue.
And then he kisses you.
It’s slow, careful like he’s worried he might break you with any too-sudden movements, and still it makes your heart hammer in your chest and drop to your stomach. He kisses you so slowly, so deeply, that you lose all track of time and thought. His hands are on your face, cradling you against him like you’re a delicate piece of glass that he may shatter at any moment if he holds it too tightly, and yet he kisses you like he’s dying. Like every movement of your lips against his is something he’s never even allowed himself to want, but now that he has it he’s going to cherish every fucking moment.
You stop thinking. You stop regretting. Stop worrying. You just let yourself…feel.
Your fingers curl in his hair as the kiss deepens, as he rolls atop you until you’re pressed between his body and the sheets and it feels so good you think you might pass out.
“Andrew.” You whisper again, the name nearly swallowed by his lips, and he groans so deeply at the sound that you can feel it in your fucking toes.
Your fingers fly up to the buttons of his shirt, desperation for more coursing through your veins like liquid fire. His own skate reverently up your thigh, pulling your simple white dress up with them, and he breaks away from you just long enough to duck his face down into the hollow of your throat.
“Tell me to stop.” He half whispers, and the sound of his voice alone pulls a whimper from your throat that has him groaning again as he rocks his hips against yours, hand slamming up to the headboard behind your head like he’s trying to keep himself still above you. “If we…I don’t think I can hold back.”
“Don’t.” You breathe, and this is stupid. This is a bad idea. “Don’t stop. Don’t hold back.”
He pauses, like he’s trying to collect himself.
If he is, he fails at it.
His mouth crushes against yours, and you give up on undoing his shirt and simply yank it apart, hearing buttons scatter as he reaches up to help you pull it off of him. He grabs the back of your thigh, all-but manhandling you beneath him in one swift movement as he pushes the hem of your dress up over your thighs and presses your body between the mattress and his own.
You reach up, trying to help him unclasp the back of the dress, and he makes a low noise in the back of his throat as he catches your wrists in one hand and slams them back against the pillows above you.
“I’ll do it.”
You meet his eyes, and they’re fucking burning. Dark and starved in a way that should probably make your survival instincts explode with some kind of trepidation. They don’t. Instead, your breath catches in your throat, and you nod.
His hand releases your wrists, sliding around your back until he’s pulling you up with him and you’re straddling his lap, nearly shaking with something between anticipation and restraint as he unbuttons your dress and slides it over your shoulders with a shaky exhale.
And then he’s kissing you again. Kissing your neck, your shoulder, your collarbone, only pulling back far enough to slide the garment up and over your head before his mouth is on yours once more, and your hands are tugging him out of his pants, and his own hand tangles in your hair as he lowers you onto your back.
He’s usually so…awkward, so quiet and still that his movements in this moment shock you to your fucking core. He moves atop you like he was born to, traces over your jaw with his tongue like he’s desperate for the taste of you. He just spent three years in prison, and you’re not sure what kind of human connection he’s had since then, but he still takes the time to slide his hand down your stomach and work you apart until every breath you draw is a sharp and desperate gasp into his mouth. Still crawls down your body and drags his blunt teeth up the inside of your thigh without ever once breaking eye contact like it’s a form of fucking worship.
The distant sound of the party still raging down the hall vanishes, taking every ounce of anxiety with it as he makes you fall apart once. Twice. Drags himself back up you and pulls your hand away from where it’s covering your mouth in a weak attempt to keep you from screaming his name.
“Don’t. Let me hear you.” He growls against your ear, and when he pushes inside of you for the first time you make a noise that has him snapping his hips forward so roughly that your nails might dig into his back hard enough to draw blood.
His groan vibrates through your entire body, but he still reaches up to brush the hair from your face, angling your head back to kiss you again even as he murmurs, “sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve got you.”
You forget everything that isn’t him as Andrew Cody pulls you apart piece by piece with his lips and tongue and words. Words spoken so softly against your skin that you would barely be able to hear them if he hadn’t made himself the center of your fucking universe tonight. If you could even dream of focusing on anything other than his mouth against your skin, his soft praise as you move with him, his growled expletives as your nails drag down over his back, his whisper of your name in your ear as he takes you like you are every vice ever created and he is ready to drown himself in the addiction.
And when it’s over, after you’ve nearly sobbed his name until you forgot your own and he bit down on your collarbone and pressed your joined hands into the pillow beside your head with a groan that ingrained itself into your very bones, you can’t remember how to pull yourself back to earth.
“That…” you try, and fail, “I’m…woah.”
Pope huffs a soft laugh against your neck, and pulls you into his arms until he’s on his back and your head is resting against his chest.
“Your legs are shaking.” He observes, sounding a little too proud of himself in that quiet way he has, as his fingers skate through your messy hair.
“Shut up.” You try, and he laughs again. The sound of it is so reserved, so soft and warm, that it makes you hum as you nuzzle your nose into his chest.
You’re asleep within minutes. Exhausted, sweaty, and more content than you can remember being in a very long time.
-
You wake before him.
You have no idea what time it is, but you know it must be early. Early enough, at least, for you to be the first one up. Everyone still hanging around after the party will likely sleep until the afternoon, but Pope usually wakes at dawn. And yet, now, his chest is rising and falling in a slow and steady rhythm beneath your ear.
You’ve never seen him sleep before.
You’re about to pull back to look at him, to drink in whatever expression may be on his face, when something else catches your attention.
There, on his bare stomach, your hands are joined together. Your wedding ring blinks up at you, and his own simple band rests just above it.
Married. You’re married. For Lena.
What happens if the two of you start something, and it doesn’t work out? All that kid has lost, all of the drama and horror she’s endured in her young life, and she would just be…abandoned again.
Shit.
You shift your head, just barely, and feel Pope stir. Light sleeper, then. Makes sense.
His fingers curl a little more tightly around yours, like he doesn’t even notice that he’s doing it, and you feel a soft breath against the top of your head as he realizes that you’re awake, too.
For a moment, he’s silent. It isn’t uncomfortable, just his usual version of quiet.
“Do you want to…borrow clothes?” He finally asks, lips brushing against the top of your head, and you almost laugh. Because this is how Andrew Cody works. He isn’t exactly one to wax poetic, even after a night like last night. He just takes care of you, like he always tries to take care of everyone, in his silent and sweet way.
His hand skates up over your bare back, the touch warm and reverent, and you allow yourself to lie with him for a moment. To enjoy this.
“I don’t think I can pull off one of those buttoned up shirts.” You joke, resting your chin against his chest and blinking sleepily up at him. Something in his brown eyes goes very, very soft as he looks down at you, and a part of you melts at the sight.
“I have t-shirts.”
You do laugh, now. “I know. Just kidding.”
“Do you…like the shirts?”
“I do, yeah.” You slide your fingers over his stomach, wrap your arms around him like he’s an oversized teddy-bear, and he responds with a hum as he pulls you closer to him.
And, despite your decision, despite the fact that you need to cut this off before it really starts, every muscle in your body relaxes as his lips find yours. As he kisses you so slowly, so languidly, so sweetly that you lose all track of time and space.
He feels so good, and this feels so right that it would scare you even if it weren’t for Lena. If it weren’t for all of the other fucking factors pulling you apart.
“I think…” his lips are on your neck, and his fingers are sliding up the inside of your bare thigh, and you can’t think. “We…shit, we shouldn’t do this.,” you reach down to stop his hand, and he acquiesces immediately, pulling back to look down at you with those lovely brown eyes.
“Are you okay?”
You nod. Swallow. “I don’t… if we start something, and it doesn’t work, Lena will get hurt. She’ll feel abandoned again.”
He pauses, and reaches up to smooth your hair back again, like he’s just trying to…touch you. Somehow. Any way he can. “You think it won’t work?”
“I…no.” You admit, almost instinctively turning your face into his palm. “But we can’t know for sure. I don’t want to risk it. Not right now.”
He frowns, thumb brushing your cheek, and nods. “Okay.”
And God help you, you lean up to kiss him again.
He makes a soft noise, somewhere between desperation and torture, and the feeling of his body pressing helplessly against yours makes any thoughts of responsibility fly out the damn window.
And when you pull back, and feel his fingers tighten in your hair and his breath ghost over your lips, it is very very hard to convince yourself that this is the right decision.
-
Pope Cody isn’t sure if he’s living in heaven or hell.
Heaven. Surely. Most of the time, he’s absolutely convinced it’s heaven. Because you’re with him all the time. He gets to hear your laugh. See your smile. Feel your presence every single day. He gets to sit with you on the couch with Lena, and watch the two of you as you help her color or do a puzzle or something equally…peaceful. It’s peaceful, this life. Sure, there are still the jobs. There’s still the guilt. But he gets to come home to you and Lena and he gets to smell your perfume on his pillow and watch your relaxed expression as you sleep beside him.
And sometimes, it’s hell. Because he wants more so selfishly that it feels like a fucking sickness. Maybe it was better before. Before he knew what you tasted like. What you felt like, moving beneath him and with him and moaning his name into his ear like the most beautiful music he’s ever heard. He knows what it feels like to wake up with you, naked in his arms, soft skin against his own and contentment like nothing he’s ever known swelling in his chest.
And he can’t have that again. Because you’re right. He loves you so, so much, but you’re right. If anything were to happen, Lena would be hurt by it. He’ll never stop loving you - he knows that more than he knows how to breathe - but something could happen. His life is chaos. Dangerous. He never knows what horror might come his way next.
But he can have you now, like this, and sometimes he can pretend. He can keep up appearances with you. Get to slide his fingers between yours and feel the ring on your finger when you meet with Lena’s teachers. Murmur something in your ear at one of the parties at Smurf’s house and feel you smile in response.
And he wants to kiss you. When you’re laughing at dinner, he wants to stand up from the table and stalk over to you and press his mouth to yours. He wants to make his way into the bathroom when you’re showering, and stand beneath the water with you until the sounds of your pleasure echo off of the tile. He wants to nuzzle his nose into your hair and inhale the scent of your shampoo when you sit on the couch with him. He wants to pull you into his arms in the mornings and whisper how much he loves you as you wake up. He wants you more, and it’s selfish and shitty because what he has now is already more than he could ever fucking deserve.
So he suffers, and is simultaneously the happiest he has ever fucking been. And he endures, and he loves you.
-
Your first fight happens on a Tuesday.
“She doesn’t need a therapist.” Pope says, in that low and intense way he always has, as he stands over the sink and meticulously scrubs the dishes.
Your eyes snap up, and you have to stop the incredulous laugh that nearly bursts from you at his statement. “Yes, she fucking does.”
“She’s fine.” He looks at you. Drops his eyes to the ring on your finger. Looks back up at your face. “She’s got us.”
He looks at the ring a lot. Like when the two of you take Lena for ice cream on the beach, and he wordlessly hands you a cup of your favorite flavor. Or when he makes Lena’s lunch for school in the morning, meticulously laying out the cheese on top of the ham on top of the lettuce like he’s performing some kind of surgery while you get so wrapped up in conversation with him that you don’t even notice that he’s made you one too until he’s handing you a little brown paper bag.
You curl your fingers a little, and do your best to keep your eyes from trailing down to your hand. To keep from looking at the gold band on his own.
“She needs more than just us.”
“What does that mean?” He’s still scrubbing the same plate.
“Her parents are gone, Pope. She lost them both in a year. And now she’s being raised by her nanny and a fucking bank robber and-“
Pope freezes, and turns to you, and the look in his eyes shuts you right the hell up.
“A what?”
You should probably take it back. Or at the very least, backtrack a little, but you’ve been married a month and social workers are already showing up to talk to you both and the adoption process is going fucking nowhere and you’re honestly sick and fucking tired of pretending to be more in the dark than you are.
“Come on, of course I know what you do. I’m not stupid. Or blind. Or fucking deaf.” And Craig has always been very stupidly candid with you about being stressed about a job or being pushed around by Baz and Pope and even Jay. “But that’s not the point. The point is that Lena-“
“How much do you know.” He doesn’t say it like a question, he says it like a command, and that pisses you off a little more than you want to admit.
“Enough, but not everything. I don’t want to know everything.”
He moves to the other side of the counter, eyes darker than you’ve ever seen them as he repeats the question. “How much do you know?”
You don’t back down. “Not. Everything.” You grit out, pushing back from your chair to plant your hands on the counter and stare him down. “I don’t need to. I know you rob places. I watch the news. I don’t need to know anything else.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to be the reason anyone gets hurt.” You snap, frustrated. “I don’t need to know anything that could endanger any one of you if the wrong people ask. Keep me in the fucking dark. But if you’re gonna be so damn secretive maybe stop mentioning jobs and banks and carrying fucking guns around the fucking nanny.”
“You’re not the nanny anymore.” His eyes drop to the ring again, before they dart back up to your face.
“And what am I then? Because the adoption process isn’t exactly going our way.” You lean closer, and you can feel your own eyes burning into his. “Safe and okay are two very different things, Pope. She’s neither of those right now. And shockingly, the ex-con marrying the former nanny isn’t tossing us to the top of the Good Future Parent list.”
To your surprise, Pope’s eyes drop to your mouth. And yet, his voice is still a furious rasp when he speaks again.
“Andrew.”
You blink. His gaze does not falter.
“My name is Andrew.”
For a moment, you can’t remember why you’re mad. All you can think about is the way he murmured that on your wedding night, the way his fingers tangled in your hair and he pressed his body against yours until you were moaning that name. Until you forgot every name that wasn’t Andrew.
“She needs therapy.” You try again, but the intensity of his gaze on your mouth feels like a kiss all on its own and you can’t remember how to breathe right.
“She doesn’t.”
“She will be taken away from us.” Your palm slaps against the counter. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look away from you.
He just frowns, and his eyebrows do that little twitchy thing, before his gaze flickers back up to your eyes.
“It didn’t work for me.”
“But it might for her.” You try, meeting his eyes. Fuck, he’s beautiful. “Andrew, we can love her, but we can’t help her. Not like that. It’s not enough.”
He stays quiet. He moves back to the sink, and starts scrubbing the dish again.
You move over from behind the counter, and catch his arm.
“Stop that.” Your voice is firm, and he doesn’t look up again. “Please.”
His eyes finally rise to yours, and he goes very still.
“Fight with me.” Your voice is too soft for this argument, but you don’t care. “I need you to fight with me. You have opinions. I do too. Stop scrubbing the paint off of that thing, and argue.”
His eyes drop to your mouth again, before they move back up to your own.
“I don’t want to get angry.”
“You’re already angry.” You don’t break his gaze.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.” You’ve never been more confident of anything in your life.
He sets the plate down, moves forward, and cages you in against the counter so quickly that you gasp. The air shifts, and his eyes are so dark that you wonder if you should be afraid. Better yet, if there’s something wrong with you because you don’t feel afraid.
“I don’t want to lose Lena.” When did the air in here get so thin? Why can’t you draw breath right? His nose ducks down, moving slowly up over your throat until he’s face to face with you again, gaze burning into yours. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t.” You swallow. “You won’t. She just needs-“
His hand is at the small of your back, forehead against yours and an intensity in his eyes that is so heavy it makes your knees wobble.
“She needs help.”
“She’ll think something is wrong with her.” He presses even closer, like he’s not aware that he’s doing it, and you can’t tell if he’s frustrated or seeking comfort. If this is how he gets frustrated with you, you aren’t sure if this or any argument is going to get very far.
“Did you think something was wrong with you?”
His lips are almost brushing your own. His hand slides up beneath your shirt, feeling the skin of your back. He doesn’t answer for a long, tense moment. Your skin burns beneath his touch and it feels way, way too good.
“There’s a lot wrong with me.”
You want him so badly it hurts. “This isn’t what I meant by fighting.”
“I can’t fight with you.” His lips brush yours for the briefest of seconds as his nose skates over your cheek. As his fingers curl against your back. “I want to. I’m trying. I can’t…”
You can’t remember how to breathe right for the life of you. Your hand moves up as if of its own accord, and your fingers slide through his hair. This is the closest you’ve been to each other since your wedding night. Sure, you sleep in the same bed, but he’s usually in bed after you and awake before you. He doesn’t linger. You wonder now if he’s been doing that on purpose. If this is what he’s been trying to avoid. If he was really so close to snapping that all it took was high emotions and you coming into his space for five fucking seconds.
The thought makes you shiver, and hand moves up over your back again, like he senses the silent question and his touch is the answer. His lips find the hollow of your throat. Just one soft, simple kiss, but it makes you feel like you’re on fucking fire.
“I…” you start, seconds away from pulling him back and slamming your mouth to his, when a soft voice makes you jump out of your skin.
“Can I watch TV?”
Pope releases you, stepping back, and you wonder how flushed your face must be as you look down to see Lena standing in the doorway, holding a stuffed bunny.
You blink, and try to focus on anything but the absence of Pope’s hands on your skin.
“Nightmares again?” You ask, and she nods.
And just like that, it’s over, and you spend the next hour sitting with Lena and watching cartoons as Pope returns to the dishes, gaze like a physical touch against your back.
And, not for the first time, you wonder how the fuck you’re going to manage this marriage.
-
Lena is gone.
And you kept it together. You kept it all together. You didn’t cry or scream or even try to fight with Pope after the social workers took her away. When she went into the system and you just had to sit there, helpless, and watch her get into that car.
And you showed up, when Pope went down to the office and made a scene. You all-but dragged him out of there, followed closely by security guards, and let him wrap his arms around you in the parking lot as you both shook with grief and worry and pain. You buried your face in his shoulder, and promised you would get her back. You both would. You’ll figure it out, because you love her, and you’re going to fight tooth and nail to make sure she knows how much you do.
And then Smurf, fucking fresh-out-of-prison Smurf, actually got her back. And it all went to shit.
“Why…” you pause, eyes scanning the room. The movers. The pink. She doesn’t even like pink. Why is there so much pink? “Why is it…here?”
“It’s just for now.” Smurf answers, flippant. “You just got her taken away. Andrew is an ex-convict. The courts will be a lot more lenient if she stays with me for a while.”
You feel cold. You fight the urge to fidget with your ring.
“But we’re…” married. You and Pope got married. That was supposed to help. She told you that.
She doesn’t even look up from where she’s folding yet another small pile of pink clothes. “You know, it would probably be best for you two to stay here, too. To keep her comfortable.”
Oh.
Oh fuck, you’re an idiot.
And then Lena is dropped off, and she’s miserable, and she wants to go home. Not home with you and Pope. Not home to the house. Home to her foster family, and her new sister.
And it all hits you like a fucking brick to the face.
This. This whole life is not safe for her. She has the opportunity to thrive, and grow, and live in a world where she will never be a pawn in someone else’s schemes. As much as you love her, as much as Pope loves her, this world is never going to be safe or healthy for her.
She’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna break your fucking heart, but she’s gonna be okay.
So you find Pope, and you fight your tears back, and you both take her back to her foster house. You take her home.
The car ride back to Smurf’s is silent.
It takes six minutes for you to break.
“Pull over.”
He does.
You lurch out of the truck, wondering if you’re going to be sick, and nearly stumble off of the side of a cliff before he catches you.
And he holds you too tightly. Tries to murmur something too sweet against your hair as the tears try to fight their way free. His arms feel too good around you. His touch is too comforting. You want to melt into him, and you can’t.
“This was all so fucking stupid.” You breathe, ragged and pained, and he holds you closer.
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not?” You whirl on him, try to shove him back, and he lifts you and spins you back towards the car and away from the cliff before he lets you go. “This whole fucking thing was just…we were just…” breathe. You can’t breathe right. “She tricked us. Don’t you get it? She fucking made me a Cody so she can control you through Lena and she can control me somehow and this is all so fucked up, Pope-“
“Andrew.”
You pause, momentarily distracted despite your horror and anger. “Why do you do that?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Why do you correct me when we’re fighting? Or…” Memories of your wedding night rip through you, threatening to overwhelm you even more. You push them back so quickly it nearly gives you whiplash.
He doesn’t answer again, and you glare so hard you think your eyes might actually be burning.
“It makes me feel better, when you say it. I don’t like it when you’re upset with me.”
“Why the fuck aren’t you upset?”
“I am.” His head ducks, and tilts to the side a little as he looks at you with that familiar intensity. And then, quieter, he repeats, “I am.”
You pause at the pain in his voice. Feel your heart constrict so hard it hurts.
“It didn’t work.” You finally say, agony and grief ripping through you like your soul has been tossed into a fucking wood chipper. “It didn’t work, and I’m… I’m not going to be a fucking pawn in whatever game Smurf is playing.”
“I won’t let you.” Pope says, fingers flexing like he might move towards you. “I won’t let her hurt you.”
“She already has. All of this shit is…it’s too…” you sniffle, to your humiliation, and run a hand through your hair. “It’s over. It didn’t work. This is done. It needs to be done.” Because you’re all that’s left, and she is going to use you to hurt him now, and you can’t let that happen.
It needs to be done.
-
You show up, of all places, at Craig Cody’s place with a duffel under your arm and tears in your eyes.
“Oh shit.” He has a bottle of tequila in his hand. He’s shirtless, and there are people inside.
“I’m…interrupting.” You mumble, suddenly feeling oddly small. Oddly pathetic. But that’s why you’re here, because he has never made you feel that way. Never spoken down to you, never shown you anything but respect despite his ridiculous lifestyle and poor decision making skills. Even when you were just the nanny, and he hit on you so much it was borderline ridiculous, there was something about him that was…good. Lost, of course, but good.
You turn to go.
“Nuh uh. Hey, c’mere.” He spins you, and suddenly crushes you to him so tightly that your noise of surprise is muffled by his chest.
“You smell like sweat.” You mumble, miserable, and he laughs so hard that you shake in his dumb gigantic arms.
“Just got back from the water.” His hand comes up to the back of your head, an odd brotherly touch that makes you actually start to fucking cry. He holds you tighter, smushing you even more against him, and drops his chin against the top of your hair.
“Want me to beat Pope’s ass?”
You shake your head.
“Want some coke?”
You puff an irritated breath, and he laughs again.
“Okay, okay.” He pats your back, and pulls back a little. “How ‘bout a shot?”
You take the bottle from his hand, and take a swig.
“There ya go.” You sputter a little, and he pats your back. “C’mon. You stayin’ here for a bit?”
You nod, and take another swig from the bottle.
“You’re lucky I’ve got a guest room.” Craig ruffles your hair, and you frown as he takes the bottle back from you. “My couch is uncomfortable as fuck.”
“Well, better than - wait, what are you - hey!”
He crouches, grabs you, and tosses you over his shoulder, duffel bag and all, and as he walks back into his house with a shouted announcement of his ‘new roommate’, you decide that maybe the Codys aren’t all bad.
-
“Ow. Ow. Ow.” You mumble, curled into a chair in the corner of Craig’s kitchen with your head in your hands.
“Pope’s freakin’ out, by the way.”
“Thank you. You’re really helping.” You cross your arms on the counter, and bury your face in them, muffling your next words. “How’re you not hungover?”
“I’m hungover as shit.” You hear the fridge open, and hear the frown in Craig’s voice as he examines whatever is inside. “We should get something delivered.”
“We should burn this place to the ground. Might be the only way to get it clean.”
“You sound like your husband.”
“Don’t call him that.”
You don’t lift your head, but you feel Craig lean against the other side of the counter. He chuckles, and ruffles your hair until you groan and try to squirm away. “Damn, I knew you didn’t party, but a few shots of tequila took you out.”
“Shut up.” It was more than a few. Actually, you vaguely remember him holding your hair back in the front yard at some point.
He ruffles your hair again, presumably just to mess with you, and you swat him away.
“Gotta go to Smurf’s in a few.” He finally says, popping open a beer as you peek an eye open to glare at him. “Want me to tell Pope that you’re here?”
You frown, and shake your head.
He frowns back. “He’s freaking out.”
“Why? Lena’s gone. Doesn’t matter.”
“You know you’re being a dick, right?”
“Rude.”
“And you know he’s like, obsessed with you.”
Your heart twists, and you narrow your eyes. “He’s not.”
He puffs a laugh, and takes a swig of his beer. “Sure, sure.” He pats your cheek until you look up at him, eyes squinted and head pounding.
“Damn, you still look hot hungover.” He says, grinning, and you glare harder. “Shoulda got to you first. You wouldn’t have gone for me, though. You’re fuckin’ perfect for Pope.”
“M’not-“
“Go back to bed. Sleep all day. Not like you’ve got anything to do if you’re gonna be in hiding.” Craig cuts you off, already moving to the door to pull his boots on.
“You’re a tool.” You grouch, settling your aching head back into your arms.
“You came to me.” He retorts, and you groan again as you hear the door shut behind him.
-
You don’t talk to Pope Cody for two months.
You don’t take the ring off.
Deran gives you a job at the bar, and you’re good at it. You work too hard, too much, just to shut your brain off for as long as humanly possible before you have to go home and think about Lena. About Pope.
Weirdly enough, living with Craig isn’t too bad. Sure, you have to deal with the parties, have to clean up beer bottles in the mornings and kick him awake sometimes as his phone blows up with calls from his brothers.
But even when he’s fucked up, even when he’s acting like an asshole, he’s always there for you. Sometimes he sits and watches TV with you, rather than going out. Sometimes you manage to drag him to the grocery store, or even get him to clean the house as he grumbles about how ridiculous and uptight you are.
One day, he comes home, and doesn’t joke. Doesn’t comment about you being a neat-freak (you’re not, but you’re not about to let him leave dishes in the sink for a fucking month), and sits on the coffee table across from where you lay on the couch.
You raise your eyebrows, having just flopped down onto the cushions, still in your work uniform and aching with exhaustion.
“You gotta go over there.” His voice is serious, and his eyes are doing that crazy intense thing. Kind of like Pope, but different. You’ve always blamed the drugs, but now you wonder if it’s a familial trait.
“To Smurf’s?” You frown. “Why?”
“He’s fuckin’ losing it, that’s why.” Craig doesn’t snap at you, but the tone of his voice is sharp enough to catch your attention. “All he ever does is sit in front of the TV or stand in the yard and break shit. It’s fucking creepy.”
“You always call him creepy.” And yet, your resolve is already cracking. Shit.
“I don’t get this. You married him. You get along great. Like, better than I’ve ever seen him get along with anyone. He’s obsessed with you. You fucked on your wedding night, but you tell me you haven’t done anything since and with all that damn staring I believe you- hey!”
You swat at him, eyes wide with horror. “How the fuck did you know that?”
“Jesus, chill. You hit me a lot, you know that?”
“Craig!”
“Dude, my room was right next door to that guest room. I was trying to hook up too, but the sound of my brother getting off is kind of a boner killer.”
“That and the pounds of coke.” You grouch, still trying and failing to hide your mortification.
“That’s never been a problem. I’m built different.”
“You’re the fucking worst. Seriously, I’m gonna-“
“Smurf’s got him fighting.”
And there it goes. The last bit of hesitation. Your eyes snap upwards, concern curling in your stomach.
“What?”
“Yeah. Boxing matches and shit.” Craig looks genuinely earnest. “He’s fucked up, dude. Something’s not right. He’s got this look in his eyes like…like he doesn’t give a shit what happens to him.”
That’s all it takes.
You’re out the door in five minutes.
-
When you find him, he’s sitting in the yard, staring at the moon.
You don’t think he even notices your approach as you make your way around the pool, but when you get closer, he turns to look up at you so slowly that you wonder if he’s been aware of your presence since you pulled into the driveway.
His eyes are dark. His face is bruised and cut and you can’t hold back a sharp breath at the sight. Fuck. He looks like he got put through a fucking meat grinder.
“Holy shit.” You whisper, crouching down beside him. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t tear his eyes away from you. Doesn’t even blink.
“Are you real?” His voice a whisper of gravel, and he’s looking at you like you’re an angel that fell from heaven and landed in the grass before him. Like he’s living up to his nickname and fucking worshipping you.
You nearly burst into tears. You feel something crack in your chest. Something deeper and more vital than your heart.
You reach out, and brush your fingers over a healing cut below his eye. And then, like a woman possessed, you move until you’re straddling his lap, knees on either side of his hips, and press your forehead against his.
“I’m real.” You whisper back, fingers sliding into his hair. “I’m real, Andrew.”
His breath rattles in his lungs. His hand shakes as it comes up to move over your back, pulling you closer to him when you don’t vanish with a gentle, aching desperation.
His head drops down to your shoulder, and he turns to bury his face in your neck. Your fingers continue to skate through his soft curls, and the sob that rips its way from his throat makes that final piece of your soul shatter like broken glass.
You hold each other like that for some time, silent tears streaming down your cheeks as Pope holds you like you could disappear any moment.
“Don’t leave again.” He finally whispers, and you hold him a little tighter.
“I won’t.” You murmur. “Not tonight.”
“Don’t leave ever. Please. Please, I’ll…I’ll do anything. Stay. Stay with me.” He crushes you to him almost too tightly, now, and your heart breaks.
“Andrew...” You whisper, but whatever you may have said is quickly cut off by his mouth as he kisses you. Hard. Desperate. Rough.
And you kiss him back.
The moment you do, he makes a noise that sounds almost pained, one large hand moving up to tangle in your hair as your breath stops in your throat. He shifts beneath you, lowering you until your back hits the grass as he slides his body atop yours and holds you to him like a mere inch of distance might kill him.
This is a bad idea. He’s clearly out of his mind. You’re both hurting too much.
And yet, it feels so fucking good you can’t think straight. Like this, this is everything you’ve been missing for all these weeks. You want to drown yourself in it. You want him to make it all better. You want to make it all better for him.
But you can’t. Even as you catch his lip between your teeth, arch your back beneath him, and hear him almost whimper as he presses you down against the grass, you can’t do this. Not now. Not like this.
You pull back, and he nearly sobs as he pushes you back down. As he uses his grip on your hair to pull your head back so he can trace his tongue over your jaw.
“P-Pope-“ you try, and he shakes his head, nuzzling closer and rocking his hips against yours.
“Don’t. Don’t make me stop. Please.” His voice is low. Desperate. “Let me touch you. I-I’ll make it better. I’ll fix everything. Everything. Just stay with me.”
Everything in you screams to keep going. To never stop chasing this feeling. He senses your hesitation, and kisses you again like he knows that your brain is short-circuiting and he’s just too desperate to care. Like he can convince you if he just keeps trying.
“Stop…” You whisper, squeezing your eyes shut as his hand moves down your side, up beneath your shirt, trailing sparks behind the touch that make you bite back a whimper.
He hears it, and he doesn’t stop.
“You want me. I know you do. I know you. I can…I can fix this. Please. Please, let me fix this.”
Your body betrays you, back arching a little beneath him again, and he makes a soft noise of approval as his fingers begin to work the button of your jeans.
This isn’t right. He’s out of his fucking mind right now. This isn’t right.
“Pope.” You try again, hand reaching down to catch his wrist as his fingers begin to skate beneath your waistband.
“Call me Andrew. Say my name.” He pleads, breath warm and ragged against your ear, and it takes every ounce of strength in your heart to pull at his wrist as his fingers slide lower. Lower.
“Stop.” You try again, and when he pulls back to kiss you, you turn your head away. “Pope. Stop.”
Finally, he freezes. His hand pauses, and you can feel his entire body shake with restraint and hunger above you. “Don’t make me.” One last, desperate plea.
“Stop.” You say again, and he moves back with a subtle, heartbroken little nod.
You re-button your jeans, and push yourself away as he pulls back a little more. He’s breathless. His eyes are still dark as they look over you, still pained and lacking clarity, and you nearly start to cry at the horrified tone of his voice when he asks his next question.
“Did I hurt you?”
No. God, no. You’re about to fall apart with how badly you want him. With how hard it is to keep from flinging yourself into his embrace again. But he’s asking, because he’s so out of it that he doesn’t know. And you’re fucked up for letting it get this far.
“I have to go.” You whisper, pulling yourself upright on shaky feet. “I’m sorry. I…I have to go.”
He doesn’t reach for you. He doesn’t follow. He just watches you as you walk to the gate, and you feel his gaze linger like the soft prickle of frost until he’s out of sight.
And even then, when you get home, you still feel it. And you cry.
-
You’re shutting down the bar when he comes in.
“We’re closed.” You say, barely bothering to raise your gaze as the stranger pushes himself through the door, and you’re a little surprised to be met with silence. No drunken apologies or insistence that they’ll ‘jus’ be here f’r one.”
You look up.
The man before you is smiling. And it isn’t a good smile.
“Cody.” He says, like a predatory growl, and you freeze as he moves closer. Even with a foot of bar between you, the way his gaze is raking over your body feels like a physical touch. “Right? You’re Pope’s wife.”
You don’t back up. Remind yourself not to show weakness. “…Yeah. I am.”
On paper, yeah. But you’ve been in and around this family long enough to know that the title holds a certain amount of power. Pope Cody’s wife. A member of the Cody family. Maybe the confirmation will make this asshole-
“Good.” He says, and snatches your wrist faster than you can form your next thought. He yanks you half over the bar, grabs the back of your head, and slams you onto it.
You’re out cold the moment your head makes contact with the wooden surface, and you don’t even have a quarter of a second to realize that you are absolutely fucked.
-
Your head is pounding. You taste blood. There’s warmth trickling down from your temple.
You’re on the ground, cold concrete pressed against your swollen cheek. Not good. Not good not good not good.
Somewhat shakily, you try to push yourself up, and a booted foot meets the small of your back to slam you back down hard enough that it pulls a sharp yelp from your throat.
“The fucking Codys…” the man grumbles, and you hear the pop of a beer bottle cap above you. Great. You just did inventory. Though that should probably be the least of your concerns right now. “They fucked me over, ya know? Met Pope in prison, he says when we get out we’ll do jobs, and then nothing. Not a fuckin’ word. He just comes home to his pretty wife and family and leaves me on the streets like a fuckin’ dog.”
You try to sit up again. The boot meets your back again. Your head screams with pain, and you have to fight the urge to curl in on yourself like a wounded animal.
“Gotta leave a message, sweetheart. You know how it is.”
Your focus is still swimming. Think. Think think think.
“Knew you’d be pretty, too. He talked about ya all the time. Gonna feel bad messing up that sweet face, though.”
You start to drag yourself up for a third time, but the man grabs your hair and yanks you quickly to your feet. It hurts. Everything hurts already, and you know that’s not a good sign. That it’s gonna hurt a lot more when the adrenaline wears off.
He slams you back against the bar, and his hand wraps around your throat until you can’t breathe.
He’s still holding your hair, hard enough that your eyes sting with tears of pain, and you can see a thousand horrible plans forming in his eyes as he looks you up and down. Your fingers scramble uselessly at the ones locked around your neck, and you blindly reach out to feel around the bar beside you with your free hand as your vision starts to swim with black spots.
“Thinkin’ I break those fingers first, sugar.” You can smell the whiskey and beer on his breath, a rancid mix that would probably make you choke if you weren’t already suffocating. You grit your teeth. You can feel consciousness slipping away, and you have maybe seconds before you pass out again from lack of oxygen. God knows how you’ll wake up after that. “Then we work down to that pretty little-“
Your fingers close around something metal, and you don’t think before you slam it hard into his neck.
He stumbles backward, hand flying up to where a fork now protrudes from his jugular, and you have never seen a man die before.
You don’t move. You watch every second. The way he falls to the ground. The way he convulses. The way his eyes begin to fog over and he stops trying to tug the fork out of his neck, body going limp before you.
You sink to the floor.
You can’t look away. For too long, you just stare at him. Watch the shaky rise and fall of his chest come to a shuddered halt as blood begins to pool beneath his body. So much blood. Too much blood. There’s no way a human body can have that much blood, is there?
Shock is cold and numbing. You can’t feel your fingertips. You can’t think. You don’t think you’re breathing, either.
He definitely isn’t breathing. He’s dead. You killed him.
Oh, fuck.
-
You should call the police. You should call Deran, the owner of the damn bar. Maybe Craig.
You don’t. You don’t even think to.
You call your husband.
He answers on the first ring. He’s on a job. They all are. You know better than to call any of them when they’re on a job.
The river of blood is spreading, and you kick away before it can reach your sneakers, until your back is pressed against the bottom part of the bar.
“Hey.” He sounds a little breathless. You hear a furious shout, and he mumbles a curse. “I’ll call you back in-“
“A-Andrew I…” Words. Words. You have to remember how to say words. “I’m s-sorry. I didn’t mean to-“
“What happened?” Pope’s voice is low. Gentle. Your ears are ringing.
“I-I don’t…I’m at the bar. I…he…” you shouldn’t say anything over the phone, right? You know that much. You can’t confess to killing someone over the phone. Oh God, you killed someone.
“Are you safe?”
No. Yes. You nod, before you realize that he can’t actually see you. “I think so.” You can’t stop staring at the body. You might be sick.
“I’ll be there.” Silence. A muffled argument. The slamming of a car door. And then, softer. “Don’t move, okay?”
You nod again.
It might take five minutes. It might take an hour. You haven’t moved. You’re not sure if you’ve even blinked. The phone is still pressed to you ear. You don’t remember when he hung up.
But Andrew Cody is suddenly crouching before you, hands painfully gentle as he reaches up to guide your hand and the phone gripped in it down into your lap. His jaw is tight, dark eyes more intense than you’ve ever seen them as he tilts your head to inspect what must be a nasty wound on your forehead. One side of your face hurts. You probably have a black eye, and your cheek feels warm with what is very likely blood.
“The body.” You whisper, eyes still locked on man on the ground, and this time he turns your face towards his own.
“Don’t look at that. Look at me.” Gentle. Soft. His voice can be so, so soft. He’s wearing what looks like a security guard uniform, with a heavy jacket and boots and backwards ballcap. It’s probably not appropriate right now to think that he looks unfairly good like this, and you wonder what they were robbing before you called him. You almost ask, still in too much shock to remember that you told him you don’t want to know.
But when you look at his face, and feel the way his thumb is brushing featherlight over your cheek, you almost reel back at the rage in his expression. It isn’t directed at you, but it’s burning so deeply that you can’t make yourself look away. His hands are gentle on you, yes, but everything else about him is screaming danger.
Oh. That’s why people are so fucking scared of him, huh? You’ve never seen it before. Never really understood it until now. Still, you couldn’t be less afraid of him if you tried.
You feel really cold, and really numb in a way that scares you, and you don’t think you ever want him to stop touching you.
When you inhale, he nods, like he’s acknowledging that you’re doing a good job, and brushes his fingers through your bloody hair as you wince.
“Where else did he hurt you?” He asks, and you feel those fingers curl a little against the back of your head. His eyes fall down to your neck, which aches and burns in a way that tells you that you probably have angry red marks from the man’s fingers around your throat.
Slammed to the floor. Boot on your back. Fork in his neck. So much blood. Fuck fuck fuck fuck-
“Hey, hey. Look at me.” And you do, and you swallow.
Your shaky fingers come up to your throat. Neck. Fork in neck. Dead body and you’re the one that killed him.
“Can you stand?”
You nod again, and he lifts you to your feet, pulling you to him. He smells like gunpowder and bleach, and you press your nose into his shoulder and try to inhale the scent that you know better. The one that is soft and a little spicy and very much him.
He presses gently on the back of your head. “Here?”
You shake your head.
Lower, to your back. This time, you jump a little in his arms.
He nods, gentle and careful, and turns you to lift your shirt and inspect the wound.
You can’t see him, but you hear his breath get a little harsher. A little more shallow.
“Is it bad?” You ask, quiet and hoarse, and you feel him pull your shirt back down before he turns you and pulls you into his chest again. He’s breathing too shallowly. He’s holding you too tightly. He’s trying to keep himself calm, and it isn’t working.
“There’s a boot print. On your back.” He murmurs, and you wince at the memory of that boot kicking you back down.
You reach up, and slide your hands over his back, tucking your face into the crook of his neck, soothing him even as you seek comfort from him.
For a while, he holds you. Careful. Tight. Like if he loosens his grip even the smallest bit, something might rip you away.
Finally, he takes a deep breath, and presses his lips to the side of your head. Still gentle. Still soft.
“I’m gonna call Craig, okay? He’s gonna take you home, and then I’m gonna…take care of this.” The words are murmured into your hair, and you wince. Tense.
“No.” You feel so…weak. You fucking hate it, but you can’t think straight and the idea of Pope leaving you or even letting you go in this moment makes you feel fucking sick. “Don’t. Don’t go. Not right now.”
He goes impossibly more still, before he pulls back to trace his fingers over your bruised cheek, eyes searching yours with an intensity that makes your toes curl despite the situation.
“Okay.” His head tilts a little, in the direction of the back room. “Go in the back. Sit down.”
And you do.
You hear a few noises in the front room, the low sound of Pope’s voice on the phone, something being pulled from a storage closet, and then he’s crouching before you on the couch, fingers reaching up to brush over your neck once again before he pauses, like it just occurred to him that you might not want to be touched.
“Is this…okay?”
You nod. It hurts to speak, so you don’t bother to try. You don’t need to, with him. You never have.
He tilts your head to the side, fingers tightening imperceptibly on your chin as he sees the bruises once again, and for a moment you both just sit there in silence, staring at each other.
And maybe…maybe it’s because you’re alive. Maybe it’s because you just fucking killed a man. Maybe it’s because you haven’t seen him in over a month. Maybe it’s because you miss Lena and you miss him but…
But you pull him up with a hand fisted in the front of his t-shirt, and you kiss him like you’re fucking drowning.
He makes a soft, surprised noise against your lips, but he kisses you back. He kisses you back like he’s fucking drowning, too. Like he missed you just as much as you missed him.
His hands slide up to your cheeks, so gentle it almost hurts more than your wounds, and you drag him down with you onto the couch. He comes like he’s magnetized to you, lays you back beneath him like you’re made of glass and every millimeter of his skin against yours is heaven on fucking earth.
He braces himself atop you, pulling back to meet your eyes, and you grab his face in your hands and drag his mouth back to yours and it is incredible. He feels incredible and you missed him so much you finally feel like you’re breathing again.
He parts your lips with his own, groans as tongue sweeps into your mouth like the taste of you is a drug, and you arch against him as he presses you down into the couch, the feeling of his own need quickly making itself evident against your thigh. This. This this this. The feeling of his control cracking, of his desperation to touch you making him walk the line between gentle and rough until every touch sends sparks through your body, this is what you need. What you missed. This is making it all better.
You whimper, and he kisses you harder, and you are on fucking fire as his teeth catch your bottom lip, hand sliding up to your cheek as you begin fumbling with his belt and he rocks his hips against yours and-
And then his calloused fingers press a little too hard against your bruised cheek, and you jump as pain shoots down your spine, and he pulls back like you just burned him.
“No. No no no-“ you start, out of your mind with lust and the desperate need to forget. Just for a minute. When he’s kissing you, when he’s against you, you feel so much better when all you’ve felt is emptiness and pain for months.
Let me forget. Let me forget please don’t make me think about what just happened and Lena and how much I missed you please please please just-
“Stop.” He rasps, breath ragged as his hand slides beneath your head, cradling it as his nose brushes over your cheek. He’s shaking with restraint, and you’re sure that if you can just get his damn belt off he’ll cave but his free hand comes down to catch your wrists and you almost fucking cry. “You’re hurt.” And then, softer, closer to your ear and dripping with guilt and regret, “you’re hurt.”
“I don’t care.” And you don’t. And it’s a little scary how much you don’t care. You just want him. You haven’t even seen him in weeks, since that night in the backyard, and you feel like everything might be better if he just keeps touching you.
You reach up to scrape your fingers through his hair, and his forehead drops against yours, his hold tightening on your hip.
“I can’t.” His voice is a low rasp, nose bumping against your own as his eyes fall closed like the mere feeling of you touching him may be all that he needs.
“Please, Andrew.”
He grips you tighter, and leans back down.
And then the door to the bar slams open, loudly enough that the sound echoes into the back room, and he pulls away like he’s just fallen back to earth.
You almost protest, but then Deran and Craig are pushing their way into the back, and Craig is crouching before you.
“Oh, fuck. You look like shit.”
You laugh, and then, to your horror, you start to cry.
“Fuck. Fuck, okay. I’ve gotcha.” He pulls your face into his shoulder, like he might hide your ridiculous weeping, and turns his head to look at Pope. “You didn’t do any of this, right?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The level of danger in the other man’s voice nearly sends a chill down your spine.
“Chill, just checking.” Your head is pushed back again, surprisingly gently, and Deran hisses as he takes in the sight of you.
“Christ.” And then he’s beside you, touching the wound on your head. “She might need to go to Tijuana or some shit.”
“That’s for bullet wounds.” Pope snaps, eyes still on yours and body angled towards you like he might shove the two other men away at any moment. “She needs a few stitches. I’ve got her.”
“You’ve gotta take care of the…“
Body. The body. The body you made because you stabbed that guy in the neck and he-
“Take her home. I’ll be there soon.”
Craig nods, beginning to pull you to your feet. “Okay, c’mon. We can watch that dumb reality show you like. Just-“ he starts, and Pope stops him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Take her home.” He says, and the implication would make you frown if you weren’t still in shock. “Not to your place.”
Craig looks at you. You look at him. You look at Pope.
You turn back to Craig, and nod.
He steps back, and Pope moves forward to press his lips against your forehead, pulling back to tilt your chin up and look you in the eyes.
“I’ll be there soon. Is that okay?”
Always, always asking if you’re okay. Always checking on you. Always putting you first.
“Yeah.”
And when he leaves, and Craig takes you home, you feel his loss like a phantom limb.
-
Pope is gone for hours.
Craig fusses over your head for all three of those fucking hours.
“Fucking-ow!” You hiss, as he pulls the needle through your skin again, instinctively trying to shove him back for maybe the fiftieth time.
“Sorry. Shit, I usually have this done to me. Hang on.”
You sputter as he spills a shot of tequila over the wound again, and shove him some more.
“Knock it off. I’m disinfecting.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works.”
“Will you relax?”
“You’re definitely not doing it right.”
“Well it’s not every fuckin’ day I have to stitch up my best friend’s open forehead wound while she sits on my brother’s couch with a fucking boot print on her back.”
“Don’t act like you haven’t seen weirder shit.”
He stops, and crouches in front of you, one hand still holding the needle while the other rests on your shoulder.
“That’s it. C’mon, look at me for a sec.”
You do, and you’re still trying to glare, but with your puffy, red-rimmed
eyes and bruised face, you know it doesn’t hold much weight.
“You saved your own life tonight. You know that?”
“I killed someone.” Your voice sounds too small.
“He was gonna kill you. Probably worse.” Craig doesn’t get…intense, often. The way he’s looking at you now only proves just how dire the situation was tonight, and you have to grit your teeth to keep from shaking. He squeezes your shoulder, and offers you a small smile.
“You make a hell of a Cody, ya know that?”
Ugh. You might start crying again.
You hug him instead, stitches be damned, and he barely has time to maneuver the needle so it doesn’t rip your forehead apart before he’s hugging you right back.
“And,” he adds, one large hand rubbing soothingly over your bruised back, “if Pope doesn’t kill everyone that guy’s ever known, I will. No one’s gonna hurt you again. Promise.”
You laugh, as fucked up as it is, and you feel a whole lot better.
-
You’re leaning against Craig’s shoulder on the couch, aching all over and trying to lose yourself in the conversation, when Pope Cody comes through the door and sits down in front of you faster than you can even register that he’s home.
There’s blood on his face. Dirt on his hands.
“Are you okay?” His voice is quiet, fingers skating through your hair in that wonderfully familiar way as he inspects your wound.
“No.” There’s no need to lie. He’ll see right through it, anyway.
“Okay.” He traces a gentle, calloused touch over your cheek. Down to your neck, where the barely there pressure on the bruises on your throat make you flinch, less from pain than from memory.
Craig leaves with one more gentle ruffle of your hair, and then you’re alone. You let Pope touch you, let him move his eyes and fingertips over every single wound on your face and body. Watch the rage build in his eyes again as he takes in the state of you.
“I should have done your stitches. Craig never ties them right.” He pulls back, earnest like his next words might matter to you. “This is gonna scar.”
“I think I’m in love with you.”
What a truly fucked up thing for you to say right now. You just killed a guy. Pope just hid the body for you. He’s your fake husband and you’ve barely spoken in months.
He pauses, and pulls back to look at you. And then he looks at your head, like he’s inspecting the wound again.
“Stop. I’m not concussed. I mean, I don’t think I am.” You frown, and reach up to catch his hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said-“
“I love you.” He interrupts, and curls his fingers around yours. “I love you so much I can’t think. I can’t sleep without you. I can’t breathe right. You…” his eyes are intense, locked onto yours, but he’s fighting for the words. “You’re everything to me. You have been since I met you.”
That catches your attention. You blink at him, opening your mouth to try to find something to say, but he keeps going.
“I would die for you. I would kill for you. Sometimes I want you to ask me to kill for you, just so I can show you how much…” your eyes widen, and he frowns. “I won’t, though. But I…I would.”
“I think the way you measure love is a little fucked up.”
His lips quirk, like he’s fighting a smile. “I’m fucked up.”
“Yeah, you are.” You concede, and offer him a smile of your own. “But I love you.”
His smile falls, but his thumb is still doing that sweet thing where it brushes over your cheek. “I’ve killed people before.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to kill that guy tonight. I was hoping he wasn’t dead yet, so that I could kill him.”
“You’re not gonna scare me off, Pope.”
“Andrew.”
“Andrew.” You smile, and he leans forward to rest his forehead against yours. “You’re not gonna scare me off, Andrew.”
This time, when he kisses you, he doesn’t stop.
-
EPILOGUE - SOME TIME LATER
“I’ve literally never seen a baby look so pissed off all the time.” Craig’s hand drops to Pope’s shoulder, giving him a friendly little shake. “Congrats, dude. Definitely yours.”
“I think that’s just his poop face.” You cock your head down at the baby in question. “And his hungry face. And his…happy face.”
Pope makes a quiet noise, and moves forward to lift the dour-faced child into his arms. There’s something about watching him, scarred face and gigantic muscles and all, hold such a small bundle with so much fondness that it still makes you grin every time.
“You’ve gotta bounce him a little.” He says, in his rough and quiet voice, before doing exactly that, and then…
A quiet, cooing giggle. A tiny hand reaching up to grab at his father’s nose. And finally, brightest of all, Pope Cody grinning from ear to fucking ear.
“See, he smiles.” Pope reaches up to catch the baby’s hand, tiny fingers wrapping around his pointer, and you think your heart might explode.
“You look fucking scary like that, dude.”
“Oh, shut up.” You catch Pope’s chin, and pull him down for a quick kiss. He’s still smiling, and you smile back, and Craig groans. “He hasn’t slept in like, three days. He’s out of his mind. It makes him more smiley than usual.”
“I’ve slept.” He mumbles, turning back to the baby.
“You have not. You keep waking me up with your fingers on my pulse. Or standing over his crib.”
“The birth was traumatic.”
“The birth was three months ago.”
He grunts, and the baby coos, and he smiles again.
All jokes aside, he’s been doing that a lot lately.
And, a month or two back, when Lena’s now-parents let the two of you come over to the house to show her her new cousin, she had seen that smile, looked up, and smiled right back.
“What?” Pope had asked, looking down at the little girl the two of you had come together to raise so long ago. The little girl who also smiles more openly, now. Who giggles and comes to life more easily and is so excited to show the two of you her drawings from school and the new swing in the backyard.
“You guys don’t look sad anymore.” She said, simply, and you had burst into fucking tears, hormonal and happy and sleep-deprived as you were, and Pope had laughed out loud as he’d pulled you into his arms, sandwiching your baby between the two of you.
Now, you stand beside him by the pool, heart swelling in your chest again as you watch him smile, and he leans over to press his lips to the side of your head.
“We should renew our vows.” He hums, and you laugh.
“You really wanna throw another party?”
He smiles again, and kisses your cheek. “No. I want to marry you again. The right way.”
He’s said the same thing a few times, now. When you got pregnant, when you were pregnant, complaining about your swollen ankles and aching back, when you were lying in the hospital bed and half awake after the birth, when you were both half awake again holding your crying two week old on the couch…
And now, you finally answer.
“Ask me.”
He smiles again. The baby slaps fitfully at his cheek.
“Will you marry me?”
You grin right back at him, and lean up to press your lips to his.
𝙨𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮: how did one weekly dinner manage to ruin everything?
𝙬𝙝𝙤: Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter/Bullseye x Female!Murdock Reader
𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩: 2.5k
𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨: soulmate au, arguing, swearing, mentions of bodily harm, a forced kiss (I think), angst/hurt. If I have missed any please let me know!
part 3 of the "Glitch" Series
𝙣𝙚𝙭𝙩 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧: coming soon
𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧: I Can See You
𝙙𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙗𝙮: @uzmacchiato
𝗮/𝗻: Part 3 of this series! A bit of angst/hurt before these two start their journey. I really need to think of a name for this series. Any suggestions? Like before feedback is welcome!
“Flashes of the battle come back to me in a blur…“ — The Great War by Taylor Swift
The past three days had been unbearable.
Matt had called six times, Karen had texted eleven, and every single time your phone lit up with their names, guilt twisted in your stomach so hard that you felt sick.
You knew avoiding them wouldn’t solve anything and that it would just make them concerned and confused. But every time you went to answer their calls, your nerves made you panic. Because how were you supposed to tell them?
How were you supposed to look your brother and best friend in the eyes and tell them that the man who shot you is your soulmate and you keep letting him back in your life?
Sighing tiredly, you rubbed the mark on your collarbone as your phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.
Matt. Again.
You stared at it until the ringing stopped, and then a ping indicated that a text had come through. Dropping the spoon into your half-eaten bowl of cereal, you grabbed your phone.
Matt: Dinner tonight. No excuses.
You closed your eyes briefly before another ping sounded.
Karen: If you ghost us again I’m coming over there and dragging you out with us.
Despite everything, a weak laugh escaped you. God, you missed them. Which made your guilt even worse.
Your fingers hovered over the screen before finally typing and sending a single sentence.
You: I’ll be there.
The response from Karen came immediately.
Karen: Suspiciously fast answer. Are you dying?
You snorted softly.
Only emotionally, you thought to yourself.
⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄
Matt’s apartment smelled like pasta sauce and garlic bread.
Which made the dread clawing at your chest almost painful.
Karen stood near the stove with a glass of wine in hand while Matt finished plating dinner, movements smooth and precise despite his blindness.
For one horrible moment, you thought about lying again. Considered faking a smile and pretending that everything was fine.
“There she is.” Matt smiled when he heard you step inside.
Sliding off your shoes, Karen set down her wine glass as she walked over and hugged you tightly.
“You look exhausted,” she muttered against your shoulder.
“I’ve been busy.” You say, hugging her back.
“You’ve been avoiding us.” She said, hugging you tighter.
You forced a weak smile. “That too.”
Karen pulled back just enough to study your face before letting you go.
Matt’s head tilted slightly. “You haven’t been sleeping.”
You swallowed thickly. “No.”
The silence lingered a little too long for Matt to not notice your nerves.
“Dinner’s ready,” he said quietly.
The three of you settled around the small kitchen table, the room glowing warm under dim lighting while a soft breeze swept through it from the open window.
Normally this would’ve comforted you. Tonight it just made you feel trapped as Karen talked about work and Matt complained about a client.
Nodding at the right moments while barely tasting the food they made, your heartbeat refused to slow down, and you knew Matt could hear it.
It was halfway through dinner when Karen sighed and set her fork down.
“Okay,” she said carefully. “What’s going on with you?”
Your stomach dropped. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“Karen,”
“No! You’ve been avoiding us for days,” she interrupted. “You look miserable, you’re barely speaking, and don't think for a second we haven't noticed how weird you get when Poindexter is mentioned.”
You froze as your breath stuttered, and across the table, Matt went completely still.
The apartment suddenly felt suffocatingly quiet as your already racing heart got faster.
“Wait.” He whispered.
Your chest tightened painfully as Matt turned towards you, and in that moment you realised by the look on his face that he already suspected your secret.
“That’s why,” Matt said quietly.
Your eyes burned immediately. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Karen stared between the two of you, confused. “Is this another one of those twin things?”
“Say it,” Matt said.
“Matty,” your voice cracked as your fingers shook around your fork.
“Bug,” Matt softly said your childhood nickname. “Just say it.”
You swallowed hard as you looked down at your barely touched dinner.
“Dex is my soulmate.” You finally whispered.
Your eyes lifted as the room fell silent at your confession despite your chest feeling a little lighter.
“Oh my God.” Karen's words came out angry as she looked at you like you'd physically struck her.
“No,” she said immediately after. “No.”
Beside her, Matt sat motionless.
“Does he know?” He asked.
You almost released a bitter laugh because, of course, that would be Matt’s first question.
Not are you okay? Or has he hurt you? Or are you seeing him?
But does he know? Because Matt understood exactly what it meant if Dex did.
“Yes.” You say.
Karen let out a disbelieving laugh. “You told him?”
“I didn’t have to.” You tell them.
Matt’s jaw tightened slightly. “How long?”
Your throat closed. “Since the night he shot me.”
Karen inhaled sharply, and Matt looked sick for the first time all evening.
Because now they understood.
Dex had known the entire time. While imprisoned, while isolated, while unmedicated and unstable.
Obsessing about you.
“Oh my God,” Karen whispered, horrified now instead of angry.
You stared down at your hands in your lap. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“You should’ve stayed away from him.” Karen exclaimed, standing abruptly from the table.
You twisted your fingers tightly together, hoping the slight pain would ease the tightness in your chest.
“I tried.”
“He shot you.”
“I know.”
“He nearly killed Foggy.”
Your breath caught painfully as your eyes stung with tears.
The apartment went quiet again.
Karen’s eyes filled with frustrated tears. “And you still let him into your apartment?”
You flinched as a tear ran down your cheek. But that wasn't the worst part because what was worse was the fact that you wanted him there.
Matt's voice was steady when he spoke again, “Has he been contacting you?”
“Yes.” You confirm wiping the tear off your cheek.
“How?”
Matt’s expression hardened when you hesitated too long.
“Has he been seeing you?”
You looked away as your heart began racing again.
Karen stared at you in disbelief. “You can’t see him.”
Something inside you snapped slightly at her words. “Karen.”
“No,” she interrupted sharply. “Absolutely not. He is dangerous.”
“I know he’s dangerous.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
You froze at her question.
Because he notices me. You thought to yourself. Because he makes me feel seen. Because I want him to keep coming back.
Matt’s voice cut through your spiraling thoughts.
“How can you possibly want this?”
Your throat tightened at the crack in his voice. Because your brother wasn't angry, he wasn't judgmental. He was hurt.
Your eyes burned again. “You think I don’t ask myself that every day?”
Neither of them answered.
So you kept going. Mouth moving before you could stop it.
“I waited years for my soulmate,” you whispered shakily. “Years. And then it was him.”
Your voice cracked.
“Do you think I wanted it to be him?”
Karen’s expression faltered slightly.
But the words wouldn’t stop now that the hurt and suffering you had kept locked away for months had broken free.
“I know what he’s done,” you continued. “I know who he is. I know what people think when they look at him.”
Your breathing shook as you looked them in the eyes.
“But every time I try to stay away from him…” your voice softened painfully, “… I can’t.”
Silence filled the apartment for the third time that night. This time heavy and miserable.
Matt’s face tightened again. “He’s already attached to you.”
“Don't,” you looked at him sharply. “Don't use that against me. Against him.”
Matt’s jaw flexed once. “I can hear it every time his name comes up.”
Anger twisted low in your stomach. Because Matt was right, Dex was attached, and you knew that from his gifts and his relaxed attitude whenever he broke into your apartment.
But so was a part of you.
Karen sank slowly back into her chair, rubbing at her face.
“You’re my best friend,” she whispered. “And I’m terrified he’s going to destroy you.”
The anger in her voice finally cracked enough for the fear underneath to show.
Your eyes burned harder. “I know.”
Because that was the horrible truth. You knew exactly what this could become, how this could end.
And still you wondered about the what-ifs and the maybes and the possibility that this might not destroy you.
The apartment suddenly felt suffocating.
You pushed your chair back abruptly. “I should go.”
Karen immediately looked guilty. “Wait.”
But you were already sliding on your shoes.
Matt stood quickly too. “Hey, bug.”
You paused near the door, coat on only one shoulder.
Matt’s expression was a mix of protective, worried, and nervous all at once.
“You’re not alone in this,” he said quietly.
But somehow that only made your tears burn harder because, despite his words, you had never felt more alone.
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The rain had soaked through your coat by the time you got home.
Your chest still hurt, but at least your tears had stopped. Karen’s voice still echoing in your skull.
He shot you.
God. You knew that.
Hands trembling slightly, you unlocked your apartment and stepped inside. The lights were off, but you immediately felt his presence.
“You told them.” Dex’s voice came quietly from the darkness.
You switched the lights on and slowly shut the door behind you.
Dex sat on the sofa, half-hidden by shadows. His head tilted as he watched you again.
You suddenly felt exhausted down to your bones. “Yes.”
Silence filled the apartment as rain tapped softly against the windows.
Dex’s eyes moved slowly across your face, studying every emotion there.
“They’re upset.” He said.
A sad, humourless laugh escaped you. “That’s one word for it.”
Dex stayed quiet for a moment. “What did they say?”
You dropped your wet coat onto the chair. “That you’re dangerous.”
His expression didn’t change. Because that wasn’t news to either of you. “And?”
You looked away first. “They don’t understand why I keep letting you come back.”
The second the words left your mouth, anger shifted on Dex’s face.
Sharp and immediate.
Your chest tightened when you saw it.
“You told them why?” he asked quietly.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is to me.”
Of course it was. To him you're not just soulmates, you're fate, you're destiny. And you knew that because Dex had always looked at you like you were it for him.
But for you? Nothing about this was simple.
“You don’t understand what this is doing to my life, Dex, to me,” you whispered tiredly.
Dex stared at you. “You think I don’t?”
“You have killed people, Dex.”
Your words cracked through the apartment sharply.
“I know.”
“You nearly destroyed my family.” You could feel the tears forming again.
His jaw tightened immediately. “I know.”
“You shot me.”
Your words were sharp, and you saw the emotions immediately on his face.
The guilt, the anger, and the frustration.
“Do you think I wanted to do that?” he snapped suddenly.
You blinked, stunned as Dex stood up and stepped closer.
“I didn’t know,” he said harshly. “I didn’t know who you were then.”
“But you know now.” You felt the first tear fall.
“Yes.”
“Then you know why this feels impossible for me?”
Dex’s breathing came out sharper than before. Because this conversation was turning into something he couldn’t fix.
And it was terrifying him.
“You keep pushing me away,” he said quietly, gently cupping your face.
Your chest ached at his words and actions. “Because I don’t know what to do.”
“I do.” He said as his thumbs gently stroked your cheeks.
A bitter laugh escaped you.
“No, you don’t.”
“I know you’re mine.”
The words hit like a punch as his name burned hot on your collarbone.
“I’m not a possession.” You snap, putting your hands on his chest, ready to push him away.
Dex stepped closer again.
“Baby, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” You asked, ignoring your heart fluttering when he called you that.
His eyes searched yours desperately, like if he could just make you understand his view, everything would stop hurting.
“You feel it too. The connection between us. Our bond.”
Your breath caught.
Because that was the problem, you did feel it.
You felt it in every glance, in every touch, and in every moment he looked at you like you were something precious.
Something his.
You felt all of it, and you were too tired to deny that you didn't want more.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” you whispered shakily and knew that it was a lie.
Dex looked genuinely confused by the question.
“You.”
The simplicity of his answer made your heart flutter and break at the same time.
“You can’t just,” your voice cracked as more tears fell, “you can’t just come back after everything and expect this to be easy.”
“I don’t expect easy.”
“Then what?” You pushed against his chest, but he barely moved.
Dex stared at you for one long, awful second.
“You keep acting like loving me is the worst thing that could happen to you.” He whispered.
Your eyes widened.
Because that wasn’t what this was.
That wasn't what you meant.
But before you could explain, Dex suddenly closed the distance between you.
One hand moving to the back of your head while the other wrapped around your waist.
And then he was kissing you.
Desperate and impulsive, like if he could get close enough, this distance you kept between you two would finally disappear.
For a second you froze.
Because this was your soulmate, and you had imagined this moment for years. But also because this was Dex, and half of you wanted this.
Then reality slammed back into you.
Your hands shoved hard against his chest. “Stop.”
Dex stumbled back instantly, his hands leaving your body.
The apartment fell silent except for your uneven breathing, but you could see his expressions shifting.
From confusion to realisation and then panic. Like he’d only just understood what he’d done.
Your own mixed emotions made your head spin.
“You can’t do that,” you whispered.
Dex looked wrecked. “I thought.”
“I know what you thought.” Your tears were flowing freely now.
“But you can’t fix this like that.”
Silence filled the apartment again, and for the first time since meeting him, Dex looked uncertain.
And you hated that look on his face. You never wanted him to feel uncertain around you, but why is this situation making you feel like you have to choose between your family and your soulmate?
“Leave me alone.” Your throat tightened painfully.
The words shattered something between you instantly.
Dex went completely still, and the look on his face nearly made you take the words back. Because for the first time since you met him, he looked scared.
Scared of losing you.
But you forced yourself to hold his gaze anyway, and after a long, horrible moment, Dex nodded once.
Then, without another word, he stepped backwards toward the open window and stopped as if he was waiting for something before disappearing into the rain.
Leaving you standing alone and crying in the middle of your apartment, feeling like a fool for believing that you could have had it all.
How Aerion became my favourite child I really don’t know, little spoiler for later in this series but Eggs dragon imprints on Vermithor 👀 Pure fluff as the gods intended
Araxx is Maekar’s, Vermithor is Baelors, Shrykos is Valarr’s, Tessarion - Daeron, Merax - Aemon, Syrax - Daella.
“Aerion what are you wearing?” Baelor asks his third son, the boy walking down the hallway with his red dragon R'hllor, flapping along behind him. “And why has R'hllor got the rope from my dressing gown around him?”
“My riding gear.” The six year old responds, ignoring the second question, wearing Maekar’s dragon riding shift with Valarr’s trousers and Daerons boots. None of it fitting the small boy.
“None of that is yours.” Baelor says, amused by the boy. “And you already have riding gear so why don’t you go put on your clothes and we can go to the stables.”
“I don’t want to ride chestnut, I want to ride R'hllor.” The stubborn boy says stomping his foot as he crosses his arms over his chest. R'hllor sitting next to Aerion, the dragon wagging his tail, now the size of a large dog.
“R'hllor is too small to be ridden and you’re far too young to ride a dragon on your own.” Baelor responds knowing this would happen eventually as his third son has always been obsessed with dragons.
“But Valarr-.”
“Is 10 and rode on Araxx with your father, he still hasn’t gone behold hovering with Shrykos yet.” He interrupts knowing what Aerion was going to say.
“Then can I ride Araxx?” Aerion asks practically begging, despite to ride a dragon.
“No.” Baelor says trying to hide his smile.
“But-.”
“You can ride Vermithor with me.” He says a smile now visibly on his face, “and R'hllor can fly with us.”
“Really!?” He asks jumping on the spot in excitement. “Thank you Kepus! Can muña watch!”
“Go ask her little dragon, I’ll get changed.”
-
“Muña! Muña! Muña! I’m going to ride Vermithor!” Aerion shouts running into the family solar, happy it was just you in there as Aemon and Daella were down for their naps. “Isn’t that amazing!”
“Does Kepus know?” You ask, setting the dragon blanket you were working on for the boy to the side, not putting it past Aerion to try and ride Vermithor on his own.
“Yes! Can you watch?” Aerion asks jumping on the spot, full of excitement with the biggest smile on his face.
“Watch what?” Maekar asks entering the solar with a yawning Daeron following behind him having been forced to train.
“Kepus is letting me ride Vermithor!” Aerion responds still jumping as Daeron sits next to you on the sofa, resting his head on your shoulder.
“He is?” At your nod in confirmation, he looks over at his second son. “Daeron would you like to ride Araxx with me as you haven’t ridden yet?”
“No, I’ll stay on the ground with mother, Aemon and Daella.” Your cuddly son says to scared.
“I’ll ask Valarr then.” Maekar responds not pushing the boy who had just done sword training.
“But Valarrs already ridden Araxx and I want everyone to watch me.”
“Why don’t you and Kepus go ride and then father and Valarr can join you later.” You offer knowing Aerion wants some time with just Baelor as he’s often very busy.
-
“Poor Vermithor.” You say to yourself as you watch R'hllor try and play with the old dragon, who’s been followed around by the young dragon since he hatched and basically imprinted on the old boy. Laughing slightly when Vermithor nudges the dragon away but R’hllor just keeps trying to get his attention. “This was meant to be his retirement.”
“He’s just being dramatic.” Baelor says from his spot next to you in the dragon pit, you both waiting for Aerion to get changed so he can go for a ride. Araxx sleeping with Tessarion, Shrykos, Merax and the newest dragon Syrax in a big pile further into the pit. “He loves the annoying little dragon.”
“R’hllor or Aerion?” You ask laughing again when Vermithor places his wing on R’hllor to try and stop him as Aerion runs up to you. Now dressed in proper dragon riding gear, that’s slightly too big for him. “You look so handsome sweetheart.”
“Kepus I’m ready! Can we go now? I’m really excited! So’s R’hllor, he loves flying!”
“Yes.” Baelor says winking at you before kissing your cheek and taking Aerion’s hand to stop the boy from running up to the dragons. “Remember to be careful, Vermithor is a lot older than R’hllor so you have to be polite.”
-
“Muña! Did you see? We went so fast!” Aerion says with the biggest smile on his face as he runs up to you after climbing off Vermithor. “Kepus even let me steer!”
“I saw, it was incredible sweetheart. Did you have fun?” You ask your hyperactive child as he explains everything he did.
“So much fun! When are father and Valarr joining us?” He asks somehow still full of energy as he doesn’t stop moving. “Can you ride with us?”
“They are just getting ready now, and we’ll see.”
-
“Can I ride Vermithor?” Valarr asks stood in his riding gear clearly having forced Daeron to get changed as well, as your second son stands next to you also in his riding gear. “I haven’t ridden him before.”
“But I’m riding Vermithor.” Aerion says liking riding with Vermithor as R’hllor likes flying next to him, landing on the older dragon when he gets tired.
“He can fit you both, he could fit all of us.” Baelor says happy to have both children ride with him. “Daeron can ride with Maekar.”
“I’m good.” Daeron say playing with his fingers.
“Can muña ride with us?” Aerion asks wanting you to also ride a dragon, him never seeing you on one.
“Why don’t we ride together?” You say quietly to Daeron, knowing the boy wanted to fly he just gets scared. You not having ridden the dragons in years. “We can ride Araxx with your father and go slow.”
“Promise we’ll go slow?” He asks his eyes lighting up at the thought.
“Promise.” You say to him before speaking up.“Daeron and I will ride with Maekar, I want to go slowly through.”
“Fine.” Maekar says rolling his eyes before giving you a thankful look, him and Baelor having been asking Daeron to ride for the past year. “We’ll go slow.”
-
“Wow.” Daeron says in awe as Araxx glides through the clouds. Daeron sat in front of you as Maekar is behind you, kissing your neck every so often in thanks. “This is amazing.”
“Do you like it?” Maekar asks Daeron smiling at the sight of you and his second son on his dragon.
“I love it.” He laughs, not having looked so care free in years since his dreams started tormenting the boy.
“Woooo!” You hear Aerion shout as Vermithor flying through the sky making fast turns every so often. “This is the best day ever!”
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like dying insects.
Cold. Constant. Unforgiving.
The hallway smelled like bleach, blood, and something metallic rotting beneath the walls.
Billy Butcher stepped over the body of a dead guard with barely a glance, assault rifle hanging loose in his grip as smoke drifted through the underground corridor.
“Christ,” Hughie muttered behind him. “How big is this place?”
“No clue,” Butcher answered. “But Vought’s clearly compensating for something.”
Somewhere deeper underground, alarms screamed through the facility.
Red emergency lights flashed across steel walls.
The entire compound felt wrong.
Not like a normal lab.
Like a prison.
Behind them, Soldier Boy walked in silence, heavy boots echoing against concrete. He looked bored on the outside—almost annoyed—but Butcher had noticed the tension building in him ever since they entered the facility.
Ben had been quiet the whole mission.
Too quiet.
MM moved ahead carefully, weapon raised. “This doesn’t look like Temp V testing.”
“No,” Frenchie said softly, eyes flicking across shattered containment windows. “This looks older.”
Much older.
The deeper they went, the stranger things became.
Observation rooms.
Medical restraints bolted into floors.
Destroyed chambers blackened from explosions.
Half-melted equipment.
On one wall, Hughie spotted claw marks gouged into reinforced steel.
His stomach twisted.
“What the hell happened here?”
Nobody answered.
Then—
A sound.
Not an alarm.
Not machinery.
Breathing.
Everyone froze.
Soldier Boy’s head turned first.
The sound came from the end of the corridor.
A massive vault-like door stood partially open, sparks falling from broken wiring above it.
Inside was darkness.
Butcher lifted his gun immediately. “Movement?”
MM narrowed his eyes. “I can’t tell.”
Another breath echoed through the room.
Weak.
Shaky.
Human.
Soldier Boy moved before anyone else could stop him.
“Ben—” Hughie started.
Too late.
The old supe shoved the heavy door open with one hand.
Metal screamed against concrete.
The room beyond slowly revealed itself in flickering red light.
And suddenly nobody spoke.
The chamber was enormous.
Circular.
Cold vapor curled across the floor from ruptured pipes overhead.
Computer monitors blinked with corrupted files and medical data.
At the center of the room stood a massive glass containment cylinder.
Cracked.
Damaged.
Inside—
A girl.
Young.
Barefoot.
Curled tightly against the back wall of the chamber like a wounded animal.
Wires disappeared into bruised skin along her arms and neck.
Fresh blood stained the thin white fabric hanging from her body.
Her breathing was uneven.
Terrified.
Hughie stared. “Oh my God…”
The girl lifted her head slowly at the sound of voices.
And every monitor in the room exploded.
Glass burst outward violently.
The lights overhead flickered.
A shockwave ripped through the chamber hard enough to shove Hughie backward.
Frenchie cursed.
MM nearly lost his footing.
But Soldier Boy didn’t move.
The girl’s eyes locked onto him through fractured glass.
Fear.
Pure fear.
She looked ready to kill every person in the room.
But underneath it—
Confusion.
Like she didn’t understand why they were there.
Why he was there.
A scientist’s corpse lay near the containment pod, throat crushed inward almost unnaturally.
The chamber door hissed open.
The girl immediately recoiled deeper into the corner.
“No sudden movements,” MM warned quietly.
“Yeah, no shit,” Butcher muttered.
The air itself began vibrating.
Tiny pieces of debris rose from the floor around her feet.
Telekinetic instability.
Hughie swallowed hard. “She’s doing that?”
Then Soldier Boy stepped forward.
“Ben,” MM snapped. “Back up.”
But he ignored him.
Of course he did.
The girl’s breathing became ragged the closer he got.
The room trembled harder.
Cracks spread across the walls.
Every instinct screamed that she was about to explode.
But Soldier Boy crouched slowly instead, elbows resting on his knees like he was talking to a scared stray dog.
For a moment, he simply looked at her.
Really looked.
Too thin.
Covered in bruises.
Track marks covering both arms.
Burn scars.
Restraint wounds around her wrists.
And eyes that had clearly stopped trusting people years ago.
Something dark flickered across his face.
Not pity.
Something worse.
Recognition.
One of the monitors crackled suddenly to life beside them.
A distorted recording appeared on-screen.
SUBJECT 19
CONTINGENCY PROGRAM
STATUS: UNSTABLE
Another line flickered underneath.
ANTI-HOMELANDER VIABILITY: SUCCESSFUL
Everyone in the room went still.
Butcher slowly turned toward the screen.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
Hughie looked pale. “They made… another one?”
The girl flinched violently at the noise of their voices.
The room shook harder.
Glass shattered across the floor.
A metal tray launched into the wall hard enough to dent steel.
“She’s panicking,” Frenchie warned.
“No kidding,” MM growled.
But Soldier Boy still hadn’t moved away from her.
The strange thing was—
the closer he got—
the calmer the room became.
Not completely.
But enough.
Enough for the lights to stop bursting.
Enough for the debris to slowly lower back onto the ground.
The girl stared at him with wide, exhausted eyes.
Then her gaze dropped to the Russian words tattooed faintly along his arm.
Recognition flashed across her expression.
Fear changed instantly.
Not gone.
Just different.
Like she knew exactly what kind of place had made him too.
Soldier Boy’s jaw tightened.
“What’s your name, kid?”
Silence.
The girl’s lips parted slightly.
But no sound came out.
Like she either couldn’t speak—
or had forgotten how.
Behind him, Butcher stepped closer carefully. “Ben, move away from the bloody superweapon.”
The girl immediately jerked backward again.
The room trembled.
Soldier Boy’s expression darkened instantly.
“Back off.”
It wasn’t loud.
But every person there heard the warning underneath it.
Butcher scoffed. “You serious right now?”
“She’s scared.”
“She’s dangerous.”
Ben stood slowly without taking his eyes off her.
“So’m I.”
The silence that followed felt heavy enough to crush concrete.
Then the girl finally moved.
Slowly.
Carefully.
She crawled out of the containment chamber barefoot, flinching at every sound around her.
Not threatening.
Not violent.
Just terrified.
Hughie’s heart broke a little watching it.
She stopped the second Butcher shifted his weapon.
The overhead lights flickered violently again.
Soldier Boy stepped directly between her and the others without hesitation.
Protective.
Instant.
Possessive.
Like the decision had already been made somewhere inside his head.
Nobody touches her.
MM looked genuinely stunned. “Ben…”
The old supe never looked away from the girl.
“She comes with us.”
Butcher laughed once in disbelief. “Absolutely fucking not.”
The girl’s breathing quickened again.
The walls trembled.
Soldier Boy’s voice dropped lower.
“I said—”
A distant explosion suddenly rocked the facility.
Dust rained from the ceiling.
Emergency sirens blared louder.
The compound was collapsing.
Frenchie looked up sharply. “We need to leave. Now.”
But no one moved immediately.
Because the girl had done something strange.
She reached toward Soldier Boy carefully—
hesitating halfway—
before grabbing the sleeve of his jacket with trembling fingers.
Not because she trusted him.
Not yet.
But because somehow—
out of everyone in that room—
he felt the least dangerous.
And for Soldier Boy?
That tiny gesture hit harder than a bullet ever could.
summary: you should’ve known Dex would have unusual ways of keeping an eye on you.
who: Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter/Bullseye x Female!Murdock Reader
word count: 2.9k (i got carried away again)
warnings: soulmate au, mentions of stalking, break-ins, and blood. If I have missed any please let me know!
divider by: @uzmacchiato
previous chapter: Willow
a/n: Part 2 of this series! It should hopefully have 12 main parts total if all goes well 🤞🏻. Like before feedback is welcome!
“I could see you being my addiction…“ — I Can See You by Taylor Swift
It’s been two weeks since you last saw Dex.
Two weeks of pretending that he wasn’t there that night, two weeks of spending your time at the apothecary and the back-alley clinic, and two weeks of smiling at your brother and friends, pretending you still hadn’t met your soulmate.
In those two weeks, Dex never came back to your apartment while you were home.
But he’d been there.
You knew because he left gifts.
Like a book you liked left three days earlier, your favorite snacks in the kitchen, and a smooth rock placed on your coffee table that you still hadn’t figured out the meaning of.
So the pretty red flower sitting on the counter when you and Karen entered the shop for a day of restock and date checking didn’t surprise you as much as it should have.
“What’s that?” Karen asks, already reaching for it before you can say anything.
She turns it between her fingers, brows knitting slightly before a teasing grin grows on her face. “Have you got a secret admirer you haven’t told me about?”
You only shrug in response.
Because you know exactly where it came from and who left it.
“…hun?” Karen asks, now frowning in worry. “You okay?”
“It’s nothing.” You say stepping forward and plucking the flower from Karen’s hand a little too quickly. “Just a flower.”
“A pretty flower,” Karen says teasingly, watching you twirl the flower. “Do you know what type it is? What it mean?”
“It’s a red salvia.” You force a small smile. “It means forever mine.”
But your grip tightens around the stem as you tell her the meaning.
Karen’s teasing expression softens slightly as she watches you turn the flower between your fingers. “Well,” she says slowly, “that’s either very romantic or mildly concerning.”
You snort quietly. “Probably the second one.”
“Hm.” Karen narrows her eyes at you for a moment like she’s trying to piece something together. “At least your mysterious admirer has good taste.”
You roll your eyes, moving past her towards the shelves lined with herbal teas. “You say that now, but wait until he starts leaving dead animals on my door like an unwanted cat.”
Karen gasps in mock horror. “Are those the standards these days?”
You hum noncommittally, carefully placing the flower back on the counter before throwing an apron towards Karen and putting on yours.
The rest of the morning passes quietly.
You and Karen work your way through the apothecary together, checking dates, organising shelves, and restocking the herbal remedies that always sold quickly once flu season hit.
Normally, this monthly routine soothed you.
But today every time the shop bell rings, you find yourself tensing, and every tall silhouette outside the frosted window makes your stomach tighten for a second.
It annoys you that he’s affecting you like this.
By the time the shop closes for the night, your feet and head ache.
“You’re distracted today,” Karen says casually while pulling on her coat.
“I’m tired.”
“You reorganised the same shelf three times.”
You pause halfway through locking the door. “… Did I?”
The look Karen gives is filled with worry.
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The warmth of the diner feels welcoming compared to the cold outside.
Sitting across from Matt and Karen, you’re happily stealing fries off your brother’s plate while Karen animatedly tells a story involving a customer she had this morning, and for a little while you manage to relax like everything's normal.
Until the second Karen casually says, “Oh, and someone left a flower for her this morning.”
You nearly choke on a stolen fry.
“What kind of flower, you ask?” Karen continues, clearly enjoying herself.
“Red salvia,” she answers before you can stop her. “It’s romantic.”
Matt’s fork stops halfway on his plate.
“It’s a flower.” You say it with a smirk, ignoring your brother’s stare.
“It’s not just a flower,” Karen corrects, standing with her empty glass. “It's from your secret admirer.”
That makes Matt go quiet, and you can feel his full attention on you.
“You’ve been distracted lately.” Matt comments after a moment.
“It’s nothing,” you reply too quickly. “Just work.”
“You have been working more hours at the clinic recently,” Karen adds concerned. “Are you sure it’s nothing?”
“You’re both making this a bigger deal than it is." You force a laugh, pushing your empty glass towards Karen. “Go get us those drinks, would you.”
“You sure you’re okay?” Matt asks quietly a few minutes after Karen arrives at the bar. “You can tell me anything, remember?”
You glance toward him. Even with the glasses hiding his eyes, you can see the worry written across his face, and for a second you want to tell him everything.
About Dex, about the bond, the break-in, and the gifts. About the way your stomach pleasantly twists every time you think about him.
Instead, you force a smile. “I’m fine, Matty. Really.”
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Dinner with Matt and Karen had left you feeling lighter than you had felt in days as you walked inside your apartment building.
That last Manhattan cocktail had been exactly what you needed, keeping you warm beneath your coat as you rode the elevator upstairs, your cheeks still flushed from shared laughter.
The apartment is warm and cozy when you step inside, making sure to lock all the locks before sliding your shoes off and shrugging your coat onto a nearby chair.
Walking into the kitchen, you pour yourself a large glass of water while already dreading the dehydration you'll have tomorrow morning after tonight’s drinks.
Sipping from the glass, you make your way to the living room for an hour of mindless television before bed when something on the coffee table catches your attention.
A familiar cardboard box sits neatly in the middle of the table.
“Seriously?” you mutter quietly. “What is it this time?”
Because somehow, despite locking every window before leaving that morning, Dex had apparently been inside your apartment… again.
Sighing softly, you place your glass down before grabbing the box and lowering yourself onto the sofa.
Cardboard damp beneath your fingertips as you carefully lift the lid to see what he’s left you this time.
Your brows pull together slightly as you reach inside and pull out the knife resting in it.
It’s smaller than the ones you have in your kitchen, the handle worn in a way that shows it's often been used, and beneath the warm glow of your lamp, you can see the dried blood staining parts of the blade.
“Jesus Christ, Dex.” The words leave you quietly, more exhausted than alarmed. “This is the worst one yet.”
You turn the knife slightly in your hand, seeing where he had attempted to wipe the blood away.
The sight should concern you more than it does, but after everything that has happened over the past few weeks, you often find yourself feeling irritated, in disbelief, and occasionally flattered.
But this? Who leaves someone a bloody knife as a gift?
Setting it carefully back into the box, your mind drifts to the other gifts left in your apartment by Dex when you weren’t home.
A pretty purple hyacinth had been the first thing he left, followed by your favorite snacks, a book you’d wanted to read, and lastly the smooth rock sitting on the table.
Which you’re still confused by.
For a long moment you stare at the knife inside the box before laughing under your breath.
“Next he’ll bring me dead animals like a stray cat,” you mumble to yourself, putting the box back on the coffee table and grabbing your glass of water.
You know you should throw it all away, the knife especially.
But instead, you pick the box back up and carry it towards the hallway cupboard where the others already sit neatly on the top shelf.
The sight of them all lined up together makes something uncomfortable twist in your gut. Because somewhere over the past two weeks, this had become normal.
The gifts. The break-ins. Dex finding his way into your apartment whenever he pleased.
You hate how little it all unsettles you.
Carefully sliding the newest box beside the others, your thoughts lands on the first one he left. A purple hyacinth that has since been pressed and turned into a bookmark.
A bookmark that now rests inside the book that has made itself a home on your coffee table, half-finished after too many late nights spent reading instead of sleeping.
And the flower from this morning now sat in a glass of water beside the till because part of you couldn’t bring yourself to throw that away either.
Instead you close the cupboard door and head towards your bedroom.
The apartment is quiet as you complete your nightly routine, trying not to think about the fact that Dex had once again been inside your home while you were gone.
Outside, the chilly wind had turned into rain that tapped softly against the windows as you finally slide beneath your blankets.
Exhaustion pulls heavily at your body, helped by the drinks and the lingering comfort from dinner with Matt and Karen.
You reach over to switch off your bedside lamp, your thoughts drifting toward the smooth rock in the living room.
“What does a rock even mean?” you mumble tiredly to yourself.
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The next day unusually sunny for New York.
The city moves at a gentler pace than usual, a soft breeze blowing through the park while birds sing through the noise of traffic.
Arms linked with Matt, you two walk at an easy pace that makes it harder to hide how distracted you are.
“You’re quiet today,” he says after a while.
“It’s a nice day for quiet,” you reply, adjusting your grip on the ice cream in your hand.
“I’m serious,” Matt continues, slowing until you both come to a stop. “You’ve been… distant lately.”
“Work, the clinic, life in general.” You let out a small breath that could almost be a laugh if it weren’t so forced. “Take your pick.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
You don’t answer immediately.
Because you know exactly what he means but you don't know how to explain it.
Not the gifts. Not the feeling of being watched. Not the way your apartment no longer feels like just yours.
“It’s nothing,” you say, a little too quickly, gently tugging him to walk again. “You’re imagining things.”
Matt doesn’t respond again.
He just walks beside you, quiet in a way that he usually is when trying to understand you.
For the rest of the walk, you fill the silence. Talking about the apothecary, about how the clinic has been busier lately, about anything that comes to mind.
Anything that doesn’t remind you of him.
⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄
By the time you got home that night, rain had started falling again.
Droplets clung to your jacket as you unlocked your apartment and step inside. Shrugging your jacket off you throw it over the sofa before freezing.
Sitting in the middle of your coffee table was the medium-sized rock. Brows furrowing as you picked it up and admired the unique colours of it again.
Pretty, you think to yourself, running your thumb over the smooth texture before a deep voice speaks from your bathroom.
“It’s the same colour as your eyes.”
You gasp as you turned sharply, your arm now raised in a position to immediately throw the rock in your hand if needed.
There, in the doorway of your bathroom, stood Dex. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he wiped blood from his hands with a damp cloth.
Your eyes immediately scanned him. The healer in you searching for any injuries that might need attention but not finding any.
Good. You were far too hungry to be dealing with that again.
Lowering your arm, your gaze dropped back to the rock in your hand.
“The same colour as my eyes?” you repeated.
Dex threw the cloth into the hamper as he left the bathroom, flicking the switch as he walked out and into the living room. His hair was still damp from the rain as his eyes stayed fixed completely on you.
“Yes.” He said, stopping a foot away from you as his eyes roamed your body.
Your fingers curl gently around the stone. Nobody had ever noticed something like that before. Sure, Matt knew how to read you like a book, but you doubted he remembered the colour of your eyes.
But Dex did.
Your mouth slightly curves before you could stop it.
Dex stilled the second he saw it grace your face, his eyes focusing on your smile like he’d never seen anything more beautiful before. A small smile of his own appeared.
You felt your cheeks flush as you looked away, clearing your throat. “You better have not bled all over my bathroom floor,” you muttered.
Dex’s expression shifted slightly. More teasing this time.
“It’s not much blood.”
“Say that to my sofa.”
“That was also not much blood.”
You snorted softly despite yourself.
Oh God. This was becoming dangerously normal.
Setting the rock carefully back on the coffee table, you walked towards him before noticing the streak of dried blood he’d missed near his jaw.
Without thinking, you pulled the sleeve of your shirt over your hand and gently wiped the remaining blood from his face.
"There," you murmured quietly.
Dex didn’t move, didn’t blink. His eyes focused on you with the same intensity as two weeks ago. The same look that made your chest feel too tight.
Neither of you stepped away.
Your warm fingers still lightly brushing against his jaw as his name on your collarbone tingled pleasantly.
“How did you even get in here again?” you asked softly, taking a few steps away from him.
“The bedroom window.” Dex answered, his footsteps following yours as if the distance was something he couldn’t bear.
Your eyes fluttered closed as you sighed.
“You know I have a door, right?” you ask, turning around to make your way to the kitchen.
“The windows work,” he says, shrugging.
“You keep leaving them open,” you reply, rummaging through your cupboards for a quick meal.
“I close it.” He states, following you.
“Not properly,” you say, now rummaging through the fridge. “My heating bill is going to kill me.”
“Windows are quieter.” He tells you while sitting at the island.
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.
Dex’s expression softened at the sound, looking at you like he was memorising it.
Your chest tightened again as you stopped laughing. This is bad, you thought to yourself.
Because two weeks ago Dex had been an escaped prisoner bleeding on your sofa, and now he’s sitting barefoot in your apartment after just using your bathroom to wipe blood from god knows where off his hands and after weeks of him bringing you gifts like a stray cat.
But what was worse was the realisation that you wanted him here.
Dex’s eyes slowly scanned your face as you moved towards the island, a tray of chocolate-covered strawberries in hand.
“You’re exhausted,” he noted quietly, reaching for a strawberry.
“I’m fine.” You dismiss him while grabbing two bowls.
“Your hands are shaking again.”
Your fingers curl slightly. “I worked all day.”
“And then went to dinner instead of resting.” He stated.
You frowned. “Were you following me?”
“No.” The answer came too quickly.
You narrowed your eyes at him, still holding the bowls.
Dex blinked once. “… Mostly no.”
"Dex." You stared at him in disbelief.
“You looked happy.” He commented.
The irritation that was rising quickly turned into something warm that made your stomach clench because the way he said it sounded almost relieved.
Like your happiness was important to him.
For a moment neither of you spoke as you slid a bowl towards him and his growing pile of strawberries.
“You ate the food.” He said, looking towards the empty takeout wrappers.
“I was hungry.” You shrugged, shoving a strawberry into your mouth.
“You forget to eat when you’re tired.” He said, adding more strawberries to his bowl.
“Ugh, you sound like Matt.” You groaned, dropping your head onto the counter.
Dex’s jaw tightened at your brother’s name. “He notices too?”
“Matt notices everything.” You say grabbing a handful of strawberries after noticing how full his bowl was getting.
“I notice more.”
The words landed like a slap. Too honest, too intense, too real, and you think you should’ve shut this down sooner.
Should’ve reminded him that none of this changed what he’d done, should’ve said that none of the gifts were working, and should’ve reinforced the boundaries you created in your head.
“Are you hurt?” You ask instead.
Dex looked down at his bruised hands. “Not badly.”
“You could stop doing stupid shit.” You tell him.
“You’d stitch me up anyway.” He replied.
You hate how right he was.
Dex leaned in closer, his eyes never leaving yours. “You smiled,” he said quietly.
Heat immediately flushed your face.
“It’s just a rock.” You say.
“It made you smile.” He smirked.
God, you wanted to punch him.
Looking away quickly, you hated how those simple words affected you, how your heartbeat sped up when he smiled, and how a rock, of all things, gave you butterflies.
“You should probably go,” you uttered softly.
Dex stayed quiet for a moment before he nodded once, getting up and putting his empty bowl in the sink.
He moved towards the living room window before pausing. “The flower looked nice by the till.”
Your eyes widened. “You were watching the shop?”
Dex glanced back at you. “I was watching you.”
Then he disappeared out the window and into the rain.
Your gaze drifted towards the rock sitting on the table, and butterflies filled your stomach again before your eyes lowered to your bowl only to frown.
summary: prison was never going to stop Dex from finding you again.
who: Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter/Bullseye x Female!Murdock Reader
word count: 2.9k (i got carried away)
warnings: soulmate au, mentions of blood, injuries, break-in, imprisonment, emotional tension, and obsessive themes. If I have missed any please let me know!
divider by: @uzmacchiato
“Wherever you stray, I follow…” — Willow by Taylor Swift
It was the uncomfortable pain in your shoulder that woke you from your restful sleep.
A pain that was no longer sharp, not like it was that night, but one that still lingers as a pinching, persistent ache that settles deep in your shoulder on cold and wet nights like tonight.
Rolling onto your back, you lie there for a moment, staring at the ceiling and breathing through the pain as you gently massage three fingers against the ache, hoping it will pass and you won’t have to leave the coziness of your warm bed.
Feeling the rough scar beneath your fingers, you lie there trying to ignore the memories of how you got it, but when the sirens pass your apartment building, you find yourself slipping back into your memories of that day.
The day your life changed forever.
You, Foggy, and Karen had just left Josie’s Bar to check on Cafaro when the loud crack of a gunshot filled the air and pain hits you from behind. It rips through your right shoulder, taking your breath away before you fully understand what’s happened, as the force of it sends you stumbling forward.
But what made you stiffen was the blood splatter on Karen’s face as you realised that the bullet had exited your shoulder and hit Foggy, who had collapsed onto the ground as people around you screamed in horror, and for a few seconds you froze in pain and panic before adrenaline kicked in and you were moving before your mind caught up.
Yelling for someone to call an ambulance, you press your hands firmly against Foggy’s wound, willing your powers to stop healing you and to heal Foggy.
To keep him breathing, and to keep him stable. To keep him with you.
You were so lost in your panic that you didn’t even notice when Karen put her hands against your shoulder until she pressed down hard enough to make you gasp in pain as she tried to keep as much of your blood where it should be.
“Stay with me.” Her voice broke as each word filled with more panic. “Both of you, please.”
But you don’t answer. You can’t.
Not when you're forcing everything you have into Foggy. Not when you can hear your brother fighting on the roof of Josie’s Bar, knowing that he’s listening to Foggy’s heartbeat, to your blood dripping onto the street.
With your body begging to heal the hole in your shoulder, your vision blurs as you push through the pain, putting everything you have into Foggy. You hadn’t even realised that you'd been repeating the same things over and over.
“Keep breathing. Just keep breathing. Stay with me.”
But the strain keeps building, becoming sharper with each passing moment, when a heavy impact lands behind you three. Your breath catches as your powers flicker for just a moment as you silently pray that you won’t lose them both tonight. Not Foggy and Matt.
Not your brothers.
Breathing deeply, you steady your hands, channel your powers, and check that Foggy is still breathing as the paramedics that have just arrived rush to help before you turn your head and let out a sigh of relief.
Not Matt.
You slouch into Karen's waiting arms, your pain finally catching up with you as you fully turn to look at Benjamin Poindexter on the ground, barely conscious, and as you make eye contact, it happens.
The pleasant burning feeling on your left collarbone. The sign you've been waiting nearly your whole life for.
The sign that you have met your soulmate.
And yours has just shot you.
Breathing deeply, you push the memory out of your mind, reminding yourself that you’re in your apartment tucked away in your warm bed and not bleeding in the arms of your friend.
But the ache is still there, still pinching, and you realise that no amount of gentle rubbing is going to relieve it tonight. Sighing you toss your covers back, slide your feet into your soft slippers to make your way to your kitchen, where you last put the pain relief balm.
Slowly you push yourself to stand, your aching shoulder throbbing in protest as you put on your fluffy robe, fingers brushing against the scar, and take a deep breath.
Checking your clock that reads 1:44 AM, you tighten the robe and step into the hallway.
The apartment is pitch black except as you make your way towards the kitchen, you don’t bother turning on any lights, using the moonlight to help lead you to the balm left on the center island.
Opening it, you gently massage the soothing gel onto your scar, letting out a sigh of relief as you feel it take effect. Placing the lid back on the tin and tucking it into your robe's pocket, you turn back towards the bedroom when the sound of fabrics moving against each other comes from the darkness of the living room.
Slowly you grab a knife from the wooden block and move carefully towards the sound, slippers gently slapping against the wooden floors. Keeping your breathing as quiet as possible, you slowly crept around the corner and quickly flicked the lamp on, flinching at the brightness and nearly dropping the knife when you saw who was sitting on the sofa.
Benjamin Poindexter was supposed to be imprisoned and serving multiple life sentences. Not casually sitting on your new sofa.
Blood darkening the side of his shirt as one of his hands pressed tightly against it, though a slow trickle of blood slips through his fingers. His head lifts the second the light turns on, and for a moment he doesn’t move; he just stares at you with a look in his eyes that you can’t quite place.
For a few seconds, neither of you speak. You just look at him, cataloguing everything that has changed since you last saw him. He’s bigger and bulkier than before, as if he had nothing to do in prison except gain more muscles. You ignore how it makes your heart stutter.
Dex’s eyes flicker briefly towards the knife clutched in your hand, and a smirk appears on his face as he looks you in the eyes. “Are you going to use that?” he asks quietly.
“Why are you here?” Your voice comes out stronger than you expected. “What do you want?”
Soulmate or not, this is still the man who shot you.
Dex’s eyes lower briefly to the blood staining his side. His hand still tightly clutching the wound. “I needed help.”
Then his eyes lift back to yours. “And I wanted to see you.”
Something tightens in your chest because part of you understands exactly what he means.
For a moment you stay where you are, knife still low at your side, eyes flickering once again towards the blood dripping from his hand and staining your sofa.
“You’re staining my sofa,” you say, placing the knife on the shelf, hands more steady than you feel.
Dex tilts his head, eyebrows twitching in confusion. “What?”
“My sofa is brand new, and you’re ruining it.”
“Oh,” he says, finally noticing his blood soaking the cushions. “So I am.”
You exhale slowly, feeling the last bit of adrenaline leave your body. When your brother told you this morning he was going to see Dex in prison, this wasn’t how you expected your night to go.
“Let me see it,” you say.
Dex stills at your words, his hand moving to his ribs, his eyes slightly hopeful.
“Your injury,” you sharply say, face flushing red. “Not that.”
His eyes stay on you for a second before he slowly moves his hands away from his body. Blood immediately gushes through the tear in his shirt, a stab wound from what you could see and probably a few hours old.
You swear softly under your breath. “You should be at a hospital, especially with those face wounds as well.”
“No.” His answer was quick but certain. “Just you, only you.”
You don’t bother arguing as you step closer, removing your robe and setting it below you on the coffee table. He looks worse up close, pale even in the light of your warm lightbulb, and the left side of his face was bruised.
But his eyes never left you, slowly roaming up and down, taking in your light blue PJs, and smirking at your fluffy cow slippers.
“What?” you ask, reaching for the box of medical supplies you kept in the ottoman. Usually you would have used your powers, but tonight you were too tired and drained from helping out at the back-alley clinic your boss ran.
“Fluffy cow slippers?” His amusement was clear in his voice.
“Shut up,” you say, putting all your supplies on the table beside you. “They were a gift from Karen, and they’re very comfortable.”
Dex snorted. “Sure.”
“Are you armed?” you ask, pulling on gloves and sliding to your knees.
“Yes.” He said, spreading his legs to give you more room.
“… Are you planning on using it?” You ask, facing your supplies.
“No.” His answer was quick and certain again. “Not on you, never on you.”
Again. You couldn’t help but think.
“You’re nervous,” Dex says quietly, still watching you, and you begin to wonder if he’s even blinked.
You snort at that. “You broke into my apartment in the middle of the night and are now bleeding all over my sofa.”
“You’re still helping me.” He says like this means something.
You refuse to answer that as you reach for his shirt because deep down it does.
“Lean forwards.” You say quietly.
Dex obeys immediately and you lift his shirt. The movement exposing his defined muscles, and a few inches above the wound in black letters was your name. Unblemished, like he had done everything to protect it.
You freeze slightly at the sight of it, feeling the rush of emotions that happened every time you thought about him. Shaking the feelings away, you grabbed the disinfectant and soaked a gauze.
Silence settled between you as you dabbed at the wound, soaking up as much blood as you could before grabbing a fresh gauze.
“You didn’t come to see me,” he whispered breaking the silence, his eyes leaving you and going towards his blood-soaked hand.
“Don’t,” you say quietly, pressing the alcohol-soaked gauze harder against the wound than intended.
Dex barely reacts as his eyes move back to you. “Don’t what?”
“Talk like this changes anything.” You whisper, grabbing a new gauze to wipe away the remaining blood.
And for the first time since you walked into the living room, something shifts in his expression. Not anger, not hatred, but something you didn’t expect to see on him.
Hurt.
“I was in prison,” Dex continues quietly. “You knew, but you never came.”
You still at his words because what was there to say? For months you’ve refused to talk about what happened that night, focusing on your family and pushing every thought or feeling about him away.
For months you’ve kept your bond with him to yourself despite how much you wanted to cry and rant to someone about it without being judged or scorned.
You force yourself to keep working, fingers steady despite the sudden tightness in your chest. “Yes,” you say evenly. “I knew.”
The quiet is heavy as it fills the room before you clear your throat, reaching for the needle and thread in the kit. “You need stitches.”
“Sit up properly if you can,” you instruct, pulling all the necessary items closer to you.
Dex watches you for a second longer before pushing himself upright from the cushions, his jaw as he straightens himself up.
“Take the shirt off.” You say, preparing everything that you needed to stitch him up.
Dex drops the blood-soaked fabric onto the table behind you, exposing the full extent of the wound. The weapon grazed more than it pierced, but it still tore enough flesh to make a mess of his side.
Wiping the surrounding area with a fresh gauze, you gently rubbed some numbing cream around the wound and threaded the needle while waiting for it to dry.
“This is going to hurt.” You say, leaning closer towards him.
Dex goes still at your words, his attention once again focused fully on you.
You try to ignore his eyes on you, focusing completely on stitching the wound perfectly and not on how close he was now that you’re kneeling between his legs and leaning against him to get better access to the wound.
“You should’ve had this cleaned hours ago,” you mutter nearly halfway done.
“I was busy.” He answers as his hand gently brushes against your shoulder.
“With?” You ask, eyes still not leaving the wound but not shrugging his hand away.
His eyes scan your face. “Finding you.”
Your hand slips slightly. Not enough to hurt him, but enough for him to notice.
“You already knew where I lived.”
“I wanted to see you.”
There’s that sentence again. So honest, like there was nothing else more important.
Silence settles between you again, broken only by the quiet rattle of paper as you open fresh gauzes and the sound of rain against the windows. Focusing once again on your task, you quickly lose yourself in what is familiar.
Then Dex quietly says, “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
You tie off the last stitch before grabbing more gauze and soaking it in antiseptic alcohol. “Most prisoners send a letter.”
“I didn't think you’d like letters from me.”
You couldn’t stop your quiet snort.
“Did you think about me?” he says quietly after a while. Hand tightening on your shoulder like the answer to this question could hurt him more than his wound.
You press the gauze against the stitches, cleaning them and the surrounding area. “You were all over the news, quite hard to miss.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He says cupping your face and forcing you to look at him.
His face is blank, but his eyes are looking at you like he’s already decided you belong in his life.
And maybe you did. But it causes that familiar complicated feeling to twist in your chest.
“You shot me,” you say softly before you can stop yourself. “I waited years for you, and you shot me.”
Your confession settles heavily between you, and for the second time that night, Dex looks away.
“I know.” He says his face filled with something you couldn’t place—guilt, maybe.
The apartment smells faintly of antiseptic, rain, and blood. Outside the storm gets stronger.
Inside the living room, neither of you move.
“You’ll live,” you say, taking off your gloves.
Dex looks down at the neat line of stitches crossing his side before his gaze drifts back to you. “I know.”
Standing up, you move all the soiled items aside so that you can toss them in the kitchen bin. “You should go before the numbing wears off.”
Moving back to the table, you pack up the remaining medical items, making a mental note to restock and place them back in the ottoman.
Leaning down to grab your robe, your breath catches as Dex reaches out his hand, gently grabbing your wrist, his thumb gently pressing against your pulse.
“You’re shaking,” he says quietly.
“I’m tired.” You say, making no move to pull away.
“You’re drained.” He states.
You almost deny it. But what would be the point? He noticed everything else about you tonight.
“I’ve had a long night,” you remind him.
“And you still helped me.” He states like this means something.
Before you could reply, Dex’s gaze drops to your shoulder. To the scar barely hidden by your shirt. His expression shifts into the same look as earlier.
“I didn’t mean to hit you,” he says honestly. “You moved in front of him so quickly I didn’t have time to stop.”
You look away at his admission, part of you wanting to believe him while the other part wants to shoot him to make it even.
Rain hits the windows harder as you begin to feel it again, that persistent and wanting pull between you becoming tighter the longer he stays.
“You need to leave,” you say quietly.
Dex looks at you for a long second. “Why didn’t you come to see me?”
The question hit you like a punch to the gut. Months of knowing exactly who he was to you, and you’d done nothing.
No visits. No letters. Nothing except pretend the name on your skin didn’t exist.
“I was in prison,” Dex continues quietly. “You knew where I was.”
You couldn’t force yourself to hold his gaze. Not when you knew what he was really asking. Why didn’t you come? Why didn’t you choose me?
But you can’t answer that. Not honestly. Not when the truth was that every day you wanted to see him, to betray your friends and your family just to get a day with him.
“You need to leave.” You say, instead of spilling the truth, pulling your wrist out of his grip.
For a second, you think he might argue. His stare fixed so intensely on you that you almost cave and spill the truth.
Then he stands, pulling his shirt back over his head, and makes his way towards the window. Pushing it open wider, as storm blows cold air and rain into the living room as he tosses one leg out before he pauses and turns to look back at you again.
“I’m going to see you again.” He states.
Then he disappears into the night, and you’re left standing alone in your living room.
Your fingers slowly brush his name on your skin, and you can’t stop the feeling of wanting to see him again.
A/N: This is my first one-shot written so feedback is welcome!
“The medieval warrior, realizing the consequences of his impulsive act, immediately approached the owner of the drone and offered to pay for the damage.
The owner of the drone was so impressed by the brilliant attack that he suggested organizing a competition for bringing down “dragons” with short spears next year.
Drone owners have another year to develop a unique “dragon-like” design for their flying machines.” (x)
I am 100% cooler with this knowing that the spear-thrower realized “oops maybe I shouldn’t have done that” and tried to make it right, and that the guy who the drone belonged to was cool with it
Nina's Remarks : Thought about this the night before the S5 premiere. [4.4k]
tw : pregnancy, allusions to sex, birth, language, slight ooc, homelander is ben and reader's son
Homelander had been doomed from his childhood. The sterile environment doctors and nurses provided him growing up shaped him into the person he was today. Even he, in his deranged state, knew it was no place for a kid to be. He never stood a chance, who could blame him for how he turned out ?
But now, in front of him, laid the answer to all his questions, his father. Soldier Boy. Or Benjamin Hargrove, as he'd come to learn. His mind still had yet to fully comprehend that Soldier Boy was indeed his dad. His whole life he had idolized the man, and when he finally met him, his dreams were brutally crushed.
Soldier Boy suddenly began to stir before opening his eyes for the first time in years. His vision was blurred for a few seconds as he tried looking around to assess where he was. He used his hands to stand himself up, part of his body still feeling too numb to move.
He caught his breath as if he'd been running a marathon. He was on edge, unaware of where he was and what had happened since the last time he was conscious. His gaze finally met the only other person in the room, Homelander. "You, what the fuck ?" He said, his voice coarse from the lack of use of his vocal cords over his time asleep.
He tried getting up, ready to fight if needed, but his legs could not keep him standing. "You were on ice for two years at a CIA black site, but you're safe here. We found you this morning during a raid."
Ben was about to make a crude joke, but decided to hold his tongue for once. He looked at the man walking towards him. He noticed his son's nose, it reminded him of someone. Someone he hadn't seen in a very long time.
As Homelander explained to Ben his plan to catch William Butcher, Soldier Boy couldn't help but be unfocused. Everything reminded him of her. Even Homelander's mannerisms seemed to be inherited from a woman he'd never met.
He was cut from his thoughts by Homelander. "Hey, are you even listening ?"
"You're so much like her." Soldier Boy simply mumbled, having no interest in their previous conversation. A small smile appeared on his face, it shocked Homelander, he'd never seen his father express any emotion other than frustration towards him. Ben saw the confusion on his son's face. "Your mother." He said, his usual annoyed tone coming right back.
Homelander's face dropped, his serious demeanour disappeared and his voice was no longer sure of itself. "My mother ? How could you have known her ? She was a random runaway Vought found."
Soldier Boy huffed. "Is that what they told you ?" He said, as though it was the worst thing Vought had ever done. "Your mother was Starspangle."
Homelander knew who she was. She'd been a member of Payback and Soldier Boy's recent wife at the time of his disappearance. Why had he never thought of this ?
"But her name was Y/N. She hated that bullshit alias Vought stuck on her." Homelander sat down next to his father, as he took in the news. He remembered seeing her in films and books, how blind he had been. "I still remember the day she told me about you. She was terrified, but not because of what would happen to her. She was afraid of what would await you."
You bit your lip as you tried to hold back your tears. Positive. Fucking positive.
You didn't know whether to be thrilled or scared. A supe baby ? Vought was a morally corrupt company and unfortunately, they quite literally owned your body. What would they do if they got their hands on a naturally born super-abled child ?
You threw the test away and quickly wiped your eyes, hoping your cries weren't visible. You stormed out of the washroom, fearful for what was about to come for you and your baby.
As you walked through Vought Tower, you kept your head down. The last thing you needed now was to be seen in this state. And obviously today you were out of luck, as when you turned into the next hallway, you ran into someone's chest.
You felt a pair of hands grab your shoulders to stabilize you. "You alright, sweetheart ?" Soldier Boy. Ben. Your husband.
Your relationship had an uncommon start. Vought brought you in to strengthen Ben's appearance as America's golden son. You met in late 1970s, and back then nothing was more patriotic than being a married man with three kids. Luckily for you, as your partnership went on, this fake relationship you'd put up for the public, slowly became real.
Ben before and after you, were like to separate entities, at least to you. Before he officially met you, he had the reputation for being quite the womanizer, or in other words, a man whore.
But once Vought made him sign papers stipulating that he could not be seen in public with any other women, he calmed down a little. He had no plans to stay loyal at first, after all what was the use of it to him ? He was famous, might as well use his influence to get some action.
But after spending so much time with you, he made a realization. He didn't need a hundred women, not when he had one who not only satisfied all his needs, but he felt good being around. You weren't there for his money or his fame, you had your own, and you certainly weren't there to brag about sleeping with him, you had no need for that.
He looked down at you with real concern in his eyes, you knew you wouldn't be able to hide this from him. You pulled him into the nearest empty room. You looked around to make sure there were no cameras, and confessed your truth.
"I'm pregnant." You simply stated.
Ben's eyes went wide, almost with a sense of relief. "I was startin' to think I was shooting blanks, especially considering we're at it like rabbits." He joked, unsurprisingly, as he wrapped his arms around your frame and brought you close to him. "This is great news baby."
As much as you truly wanted with all your heart to share his excitement, you were unable to. Tears began dripping from your eyes and he pulled you away to look at your face. "What's wrong ?"
"I'm scared."
"There's nothin' to be scared about, you're not the first dame in history to push out a baby."
You gave him a slight chuckle before sharing your concerns. "I'm scared for the child. I don't want Vought involved in their life the way they are in mine. But at the same time, I'm greedy. I want this baby so badly, but I couldn't bear giving them my life. I don't want to give Vought another lab rat."
Ben knew you were right. Vought had never showed mercy to anyone, not even children, so why should yours be an exception ?
Homelander huffed. "She knew."
Ben wondered why he kept on talking, or why he was even talking in the first place. Homelander was the strangest person he'd ever met, and he had never felt the need to have a real conversation with his son. But in that moment, for reasons beyond him, he wanted to speak.
Maybe it was because his brain was still half-frozen, or maybe he just missed you and this was the closest he could get to you. Homelander was technically what was left of you available to him.
"She always knew." Soldier Boy said. "We planned to keep you a secret and run away. Back then, goin' off the grid wasn't too difficult. We were gonna raise you on a farm in Montana." Ben almost laughed at the thought, maybe then he could've raised his son to be a real man. "But that fucker Mindstorm and Countess ratted us out to Vought. And they were so damn happy."
You were sitting at your designated chair in the Payback conference room, reading over some files from Vought's latest report. As you turned a page, something was thrown in front of you. The test you'd taken earlier.
Your eyes went wide. You slid the test on the ground as quickly as possible to make sure no one else had seen it. You looked up to see who had tossed it your way. Crimson Countess.
She stood tall in front of you with her arms crossed, that spiteful expression on her face she only ever reserved for you. "You little whore. Not even a year married and you get yourself knocked up."
"What the fuck are you talking about ?" You said, on edge.
"Don't even bother playing dumb, that act may work on everyone else, but not on me. Mindstorm looked into your filthy mind and confirmed it all."
You knew she resented you. When she and Ben had broken up, for some reason you weren't aware of, Vought wasted no time trying to clean up their moneymaker's image. You were the perfect accessory, the girl America wanted.
You were younger, more willing to comply and exactly what Ben's public image needed. To say the concept of a friendship between you and Countess would've been difficult was an understatement.
"Countess-"
"Aren't you lucky ? Pumped full with his kid, isn't that the wet dream of every woman in this damn country ?"
Countess' relationship with her ex was an odd one. Although it was obvious to anyone with a working pair of eyes that she held a great deal of animosity towards the man, she still couldn't let him go. Not even after he'd moved on himself.
You tried to stay calm as you begged her not expose your secret. "Listen, please don't tell anyone about this."
"Why ? Are you afraid Vought's gonna have you kill the parasite or keep it ?" She chuckled.
The moment the words left her mouth, you were getting ready to jump up and attack her, but before you could, someone burst through the door. "Let me go !" It was Mindstorm, battered and bruised, his hands tied behind his back and a rag placed onto his eyes, being lifted off the ground by Ben.
"Ain't it weird that Vought employees are congratulatin' me when I walk by ?" Ben said as he threw his teammate at Countess' feet. "You bitter old cunt. Can't you get it through your thick skull that you're no longer hot shit at Vought ?"
Countess rolled her eyes, masking the way his insults did in fact hurt her. She paused, thinking about what to say next. "You're the last person on Earth who should be a father. We all know it."
Ben was not one to be affected by the way people insulted him, or at least not publicly, but you saw the shock that covered his face for a millisecond when Countess spoke.
You knew Ben had some unresolved problems regarding his father, and he had yet to tell you much about it, but it seemed Countess knew this was something to bring up in order to catch him off guard.
Suddenly Countess turned back towards you. "And you, how stupid do you have to be to let this happen. All your beauty and all your youth, down the drain for a man almost three times your age !"
Before Ben could interfere, you confronted your teammate yourself. "Sounds to me you're just frustrated because fifty years from now no one will remember your name."
"Like you're any different ? 'America's sweetheart' ? Your brand is built on your looks and your age, once that's gone they'll find you a replacement."
"Like they did you ? Jealousy is a disease Crimson." You said, specifically using the nickname you knew she hated the most.
You were surprised she didn't clap back, she simply walked away. She gave you a look as she slammed the door behind her, thinking to herself 'I hope that pest rips you apart'.
"What a bitch." Ben simply said.
You hummed in agreement as you joined him in the middle of the conference room. Too tired to speak, you placed your arms around his neck. He instinctively put his hands on your hips and tilted his head to make sure he was properly looking at you.
You brought his face closer to yours and softly placed your lips on his. His right hand moved from your hip to the small of your back, pulling you towards himself.
The advance slowly became more and more intense. Ben lifted you up and sat you down on the table, placing himself between your thighs.
The sound of your lips was interrupted by a shout and the door opening at the same time. Ben stopped his advances, but stayed where he was. He looked at Mindstorm then the Vought employee who had just walked in. "Everyone here is such a cockblock !" He said, genuinely annoyed.
The employee looked at the floor out of embarrassment as he spoke. "Starspangle is demanded in Mr Edgar's office."
"Noted." You said as he quickly ran out of the room.
"These fucking people..." Ben grumbled as he detached himself from you. "You better get to Edgar's before he sends more of his lackeys."
"Do you think it's about..." Ben simply nodded to confirm your fears.
You got off the desk and took a deep breath in to calm your nerves. Before you left, Ben grabbed your upper arm and gave you a look, silently saying 'stay strong'.
As he watched you go, he knew you would be alright. You were a strong woman, if you weren't you never would've made it in this world, supes were ruthless.
He looked back at Mindstorm, his hands on his hips. "Now what the hell am I gonna do with you, rat ?"
You walked into the offices of the newly appointed Vought CEO, Stan Edgar. The room was cold and devoid of any warmth. He got up from his chair and walked over to you to shake your hand before inviting you to sit down.
"I believe congratulations are in order." He said with a smile, but you could tell that he wasn't happy for you, he was happy for his company.
"Thank you." You said keeping up your act, too afraid to do anything other than to comply.
"Although, I do wish you would've informed me or one of my subordinates first."
You stopped yourself from scoffing. "I'm sorry, Mr Edgar. I was just so shocked by the news. This was truly something unexpected."
"This child will do great things for yours and Soldier Boy's rating. The public loves a perfect family." As you'd suspected, the only thing that truly mattered to Vought was money. Maybe for a slight second, you'd thought otherwise, but it was truly a foolish idea. "We will do a lot of publicity to make sure everyone in the country is aware of the good news."
You took a deep breath before asking the question that was burning your mind. "What will happen after the birth ?"
"Oh, well I don't have a definitive answer for you now, but I would venture to guess we'll give you and Soldier Boy that classic American family storyline. And once the child is of age, maybe they will take the mantle and lead Vought's next generation of heroes. Who knows ?"
You mentally sighed in relief. It could've been worse.
Oh boy, how things couldn't have gone more wrong.
Once you started to show, Vought shipped you and Ben to the top of their priorities list. Interviews, photoshoots, documentaries, the whole package. You were certain even people on the other end of the world who'd never heard your name knew you were expecting. Your face was on packaging for pre-natal vitamins and pregnancy tests, what a nightmare.
After a long day of keeping a perfect smile constantly on your face, you were exhausted. By the time you'd made it back to your appartement, you fell back on your bed. Ben was already there, lying to your left.
You slowly turned your head to the side to look at him. His hand reached towards your shoulder to grab the strap of your babydoll nightgown. He rolled the fabric between his fingers, teasing whether or not he would move it away.
He gave you those eyes you knew oh so well. You chuckled. "Not today. I've got no energy left."
He stood himself up using his elbows, and looked down at you. He sighed with a smirk. "Whoever said pregnant women were hornier is full of shit. I feel like I won't be gettin' lucky these next few months."
You huffed. "Well, this is the result of your actions, mister." You said, holding onto your stomach. "You put yourself in this position."
"Pretty sure if anyone was puttin' anyone in positions, it was me puttin' you places, darlin', and you enjoyed it." You gave a sarcastic laugh.
You suddenly felt something move in your abdomen. The baby, it was kicking. You lifted up the skirt of your dress and looked down. There it was, your skin moving up and down on its own, proof of the life in you.
You looked at Ben who seemed almost mesmerized by what he was seeing. He sighed and his demeanour slowly shifted as he softly placed a hand on your belly. "Kid ain't even here yet and I would burn the world down for him. Give him the life I didn't get."
"Him ?"
He looked back at you. "Trust me, I know."
"Well, I think he's lucky to have you."
After all these years of partying, Ben was ready to leave that life behind and focus on the present, on who really needed him. That little boy needed someone to take care of him, and Ben felt it was his responsibility to give him what he never got.
"After I woke up, the first time, I did my research. I wanted to know what had happened to her since I left for Operation Charly. She had to stay back 'cause she was 'bout nine months then. She didn't want me to leave that day, I shouldn't've."
Soldier Boy looked at Homelander, he had his face nestled between his hands and his eyes were fixed on the floor. He might've looked distracted, but in reality he had never been more focused in his life.
"Maybe if I didn't, you wouldn't have been... such a fuck up."
Maybe I could've loved you, he wanted to add. But he knew Homelander was erratic, and in his weakened state, he was in no mood to start a fight.
The morning after Ben left for Nicaragua, you started your day as normal. You ate, brushed your teeth, changed into your redesigned costume and made your way to the conference room of Vought Tower. But on your way there, you felt something slowly trickle down your leg.
"Fuck !" You yelled. What were the chances your water would break the moment your husband left the country ? You stayed calm despite your frustration and managed to make it to the infirmary.
You were accompanied by a team of almost twenty doctors for six hours, but the only person you needed there was nowhere to be found. You could see the almost fearful looks on their faces. What could they expect from this child ? This was a first.
During the last stretch, you were phasing in and out of consciousness, but you distinctively remember a member of Vought personnel, coming into the room to whisper something into the ear of the lead doctor.
Not long after that, you were injected with more sedatives. "He's been neutralized, let's move to plan B."
You could barely form a thought about what you were hearing. What was happening around you ?
Your confusion was broken by the sound of a baby's cries. Your heart stopped. "It's a boy." Said one of the nurses. Ben's bet had been right.
You tried to look at your son, but he was hidden by the people holding him. The only thing confirming his presence to you, was the noises he was making.
"Please, let me see him." You said, your voice slurred. Your pleas went ignored. You became more and more erratic, why couldn't you see him ? You tried catching your breath, but it felt like your lungs were blocked. "Please." Water began forming at your eyes.
The baby's cries became stronger and suddenly a burst of red light emitted from where he was. The nurse almost dropped him from shock. He'd burned a hole in the ceiling. He was super-abled.
When your mind came to that realization, you couldn't help but cry. What would they do to your boy ? What would they do to your innocent boy ?
You'd hoped he would have been born normal, so you could've run away. Raise him somewhere far from all this, in a normal house, without any powers or responsibilities. But from the moment your son was born, he was nothing but cattle to the world.
For a slight second, you thought about Ben. Where was he now ? Had someone told him the news that he was a father ? How had he reacted ? Was he disappointed he missed it ?
Through all your begging, the nurses and doctors seemed to refuse to let you see him. So you tried to get up, disregarding the pain your body was in. Out of all the combat you had been involved in, nothing compared to this.
You soon noticed that your wrists and ankles had sneakily been attached to the hospital bed. You tried to shake out of them using your strength, but you were too exhausted. All you could do was cry, as your screaming fell upon deaf ears.
You felt the bed you were on being rolled into the hallway. You were surrounded by personnel on all sides, making them the only thing you could see.
You felt something sting your lower arm, you didn't need to look to know they were injecting you with something they weren't supposed to. It burned your veins, worse than anything they'd ever given you before. You felt your heartbeat slowdown, your eyelids becoming heavy and your vision going black.
Homelander exhaled, flabbergasted by this new revelation. Everything was a lie. He could've lived the life he so badly wanted, but Vought ruined it for him. He was so shocked by everything he'd been told, his mind went blank. For that moment, he forgot all about Butcher or his plans to conquer the world. All that mattered now was the life he was robbed of for money.
"Now, whatever the fuck you've got planned, that's the last thing your mother would want you to do."
"How could you leave ?" Homelander asked as he got up, completely ignoring his father's previous advice. Soldier Boy scoffed. "Why would you fucking leave so close to her due date ? Surely you knew how close it was."
"I didn't have a fucking choice. A mission is a mission. And Soldier Boy was needed there. I didn't know I was gonna be sold out to the reds."
Homelander clenched his fists, his mind confused by everything, but he was unable to put his thoughts into words. He looked at his father one last time and stormed out.
He quickly made his way to the elevator, ignoring every person who passed by him. They were insignificant compared to what he was searching for.
"Homelander, I was thinking-" He heard The Deep say, but he just walked past him, as if no one had addressed him. He could hear his subordinate call for him, but his voice became more and more distant as he reached the elevator. He got in and was surrounded by Vought employees and low-level supes.
"Out." He simply said, and they did as he commanded out of fear. As the door closed in front of him, he clicked on the elevator's last button, designating the lowest floor of the Vought building, the archives.
When he walked out, he was surrounded by miles of shelves holding hundreds of boxes, each holding thousands of documents and Vought artifacts. He calmly walked towards the 'S' section of the floor. His eyes analyzed each label until he reached for the one he needed, 'Starspangle - Classified'.
He grabbed the box and immediately began reading through all the paperwork. It started with the beginning of your career, explaining where you came from, your family lineage, the first designs for your costume and branding. Then came your introduction to Payback and Soldier Boy, later on the plans for the two of you to have a relationship to calm his image.
Then Homelander stumbled on the files confirming everything. In summer 1980, you had gotten pregnant, without the intervention or approval of Vought. The company took the opportunity and ran with it, making the whole ordeal a publicity stunt. In spring of 1981, the same day Soldier Boy disappeared, you gave birth to a super-abled baby boy dubbed 'John'.
Homelander was shaking, from anger or sadness, he didn't know, but he kept reading. The document ends stating that you were neutralized that same day. The rest of the files in the box explain the conspiracy coverup to create a Mandela effect surrounding the fact that you were ever pregnant and announcing your death alongside Soldier Boy's.
The papers fell from Homelander's hands. He began losing his balance as he felt the room spinning around him. He held onto one of the shelves for support, but he still managed to slightly fall backwards. He bumped into what he thought was a wall, but he heard the sound of fabric falling behind him.
When he turned around, he discovered a human-sized capsule. The pod's glass was cloudy due to the ice that had accumulated on it. Homelander was suspicious, but he felt the need to know what was in there. He took off his glove and wiped his hand on the cold surface, revealing what was hidden underneath. What he saw made him fall to his knees.
Here you were, asleep, in the flesh. The closest you'd ever been to your son since the moment he was born, and you weren't even aware. This whole time, the person he longed for the most, had been an elevator ride away, and he never knew.
Your skin was pale due to the amount of time you'd spent in the cold, but your chest was rising and falling, confirming that you were indeed, alive and breathing. He thought you were dead, they all did.
But after all, why would Vought kill the asset that gave them the first naturally born supe ? You were the prize cattle.
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