your fics are keeping me sane madam!!can I ask what your favorite part about writing this current series is? or what the most difficult part about writing dex is? :P
i am soo very happy to hear that i can help! <3 as for your questions--
fav part: thinking up ideas! i really wanted this series to be a mix of romance/humor/angst so i try to strike a balance with the situations. some ideas came from rewatching the show, some come from music. I really like the domestic type scenes like cooking or building furniture because they're a backdrop for exploring how it challenges their relationship to one another.
most difficult pt about writing dex: his dialogue is usually what gets tuned the most in editing. my characterization of him seems to internalize situations very heavily.
i always play out scenes in my head when they're being written which helps me translate those thoughts of his to dialogue but i still sometimes question it a little extra. i want him to say so much more but i really get caught up in his internal thoughts/feelings while im writing!
i really really loved this question as you can probably tell by how much i rambled but omg thank you so much for reading and sending in an ask!
I saw ur requests were closed so this isn't a request but I wanted to know ur thoughts on dex's SO getting a necklace (or piece of jewelry) with his name or initials on it? Idk if it would be more fun to show it to him or to not say anything and wait for him to notice bc he will immediately clock it lol
helloooo anon! you can find your question answered here. <3
anon: I saw ur requests were closed so this isn't a request but I wanted to know ur thoughts on dex's SO getting a necklace (or piece of jewelry) with his name or initials on it? Idk if it would be more fun to show it to him or to not say anything and wait for him to notice bc he will immediately clock it lol
Oh he’d notice immediately. Your mind anon...
This is a little nsfw I hope that's alright!
warnings 18+ (mdni) for suggestive content, gn!reader, kinda switch!dex
wc 500
He did a double-take when he saw it. Didn’t want to assume you were wearing it for him at first (especially if your name happened to start with a D, too). But he was possessed completely by how the metal initial looked contrasting your skin and pointed it out to test the waters.
“Is that new?” he’d ask, taking the hanging metal letter between two fingers.
“Yeah, do you like it?” your voice conveyed mischief and he knew he was being teased.
Which meant the initial was for his name. The nickname only you really referred to him as now.
Dex used the charm he was holding onto as leverage to pull you closer so he could steal a kiss off your lips.
He was on his knees on the kitchen floor for you in that same breath, his hand sliding under your thigh to rest it on his shoulder as the letter nestled between your collarbones glinted at him under the dim lights.
If you wore the necklace casually around the house, he had to get his tasks done before you woke up because it drove him crazy. His eyes would follow your figure, completely enamored by the fact that you chose to carry him with you everywhere you went–even to do mundane tasks like laundry.
And if you wore it to run errands, he’d ask to accompany you. Somehow this was the pinnacle of domesticity to him–proof that you belonged to each other. Grocery shopping with his initial over your heart gave him a greater adrenaline rush than when he was out on missions.
Dex would bite it between his teeth when you rode him, too. His lips against your neck, tongue catching the salty taste of sweat that gathered there from effort, trailing down until he reached the charm sitting pretty on your chest.
You’d tease him over that too, panting out a chuckle and grinning down at him knowing you’d found a way to put him in his place. His eyes were blown out with lust when he pulled back slightly to look at you. Wanting. Worshiping.
It gave you an idea.
After a particularly rough mission, Dex was finally back in bed with you. He was kissing up your body when you touched his shoulders to make him pause.
“I have something for you,”
You reached into the bedside table drawer, and pulled out a velvet box. When you opened it for him, his breath stuttered at the sight of it. A matching necklace with your first initial hanging off the chain.
He dipped his head so you could hook the chain around his neck and you tried to bite back a smile at how much it excited you.
“We match now,”
He delighted in how they tangled together when you hugged him, or when he could feel it pressing against his chest underneath his compression kevlar gear.
Pull on his necklace to choke him please, he would love it. He'd smirk as his lungs lost air, his gaze on you going lazy and dull. Don't let up, he's right where he wants to be.
Dex was already smitten, but your matching jewelry would take it over the top.
a/n (edit) the day i learn to write actual smut its over
synopsis dex is a little (read: very) upset with what you wrote about him in your diary and it forces you both to put your relationship into perspective—if what you had now could even be called a relationship.
notes hi everyone! i'm back with more dex after a busy two weeks :)
tags hurt/comfort, romance, humor, arguments, dex is petty af, implied neurodivergent reader, questioning of ideal relationships, mutual fear of abandonment, canon typical violence, suggestive content (just making out), semi-reader focused, dex somehow getting ragebaited by matt again
wc 5.3k
series masterlist • previous part • next part
‘July 8th.
I’ve been getting more sun now that the days are longer. The weather has been warm and stuffy but it’s good for me, I think, since I’ve been doing better lately.
Or maybe it’s not just the weather. It’s Dex, too.
But I haven’t seen him lately. He tends to disappear a lot with his work and it’s really a toss-up if I’m going to hear from him. He never uses his phone unless it's for work, so I barely get any communication on that end.
If I don’t ask him for the exact day he’s coming back before he leaves then I’m out of luck.
It’s not like he’s obligated to tell me, anyway. We’re not dating. Even though sometimes it feels like we are.
But that would never happen. Not in a million years. Dex and I are worlds apart. A disaster waiting to happen.’
The page crumpled in his fist and he shoved it deep into the pocket of his pants.
A disaster waiting to happen. That’s how you described you and him, only a week before he kissed you. It’d been a month since then. He was saving the page for a time he was away from you, something to keep him going when you were apart. But now he wished he never even read it.
It was an anecdote meant for your eyes only, hidden away in the pages of a diary kept by where you rested your head at night.
Dex wasn’t kidding himself here. He was all too aware that your new relationship was nothing short of unconventional, but he was going the extra mile to try and prevent you from noticing it too.
Paying for your coffee at the diner so you wouldn’t spend your hard earned money. Picking up errands for you on his days off so you wouldn’t have to lift a finger. Tailing you at night to make sure you made it home safe and sound.
But no, apparently you had already formed your opinion about him before he even had the chance to kiss you. He ‘doesn’t communicate’ and ‘disappears a lot’. Worst of all, the thought of dating him was apparently repulsing in your own words.
“A disaster waiting to happen,” he cursed under his breath. You thought a relationship with him was outlandish. A ticking time bomb. That he was a ticking time bomb.
His stomach twisted into a tangled knot of frustration.
Dex punched your number into his phone manually. Your contact was saved, but something about dialing each number was soothing to him–under regular circumstances, at least. He had the time difference logged onto his clock so he knew it was morning in New York.
“Dex–you ‘kay?” your voice groggily filtered through on the other line. He had woken you up.
“Yeah. Are you busy tonight?” he cut straight to the point. “We should have dinner.”
“Oh,” your voice was light and silvery with delight, “I would love to. There’s this new Italian place that opened up, but if you just want to stick to something familiar we can go to–”
“I like Italian,” he said. “Let’s order in, though. Your place.”
Your excitement to speak to him almost changed his mind about his stubborn behavior. It occurred to him that he was reading too much into what you wrote. It’s not like you ever expected him to find it. Hell, you didn’t even know he was walking around a foreign city with a ripped page from your diary like it was a breakup text.
But this wasn’t the only time you alluded to your relationship concerns. Dex recalled you once telling him that your best friend and fiance had what you referred to as, ‘the real thing’.
Whatever the real thing was.
You weren’t like your best friend, he noticed. She seemed to live a little bit more of a traditional life than you did. Perhaps you modeled your vision of love based on the relationships of your loved ones. Picket fence, dating then marriage then kids.
Or maybe you didn’t want that at all. He never asked.
It made him think about his vision of the future. His future with you.
Sharing a space together where he could come home to you everyday instead of lingering on a nearby fire escape to watch the light in your apartment. Where all of his clothes would smell like your fabric softener, where your distinctly scented bath products lined his shower so he could borrow them just to live in you, where your side of the bed would spill into his.
A small bubble where you and him were both understood by one another, and for once it was fine that you weren’t understood by anyone else. A corner of the world where his life wouldn’t catch up to him, and you wouldn’t be the one taking the brunt of the consequences.
To him, that was it. The real thing.
But you didn’t write about any of that. You only emphasized what couldn't give you.
Dex was home the same day. His body was exhausted from the flight but he had slept enough on the plane to still make his dinner plans with you.
Knowing he was missing out on some much needed rest just to have dinner with you warmed your heart. You were still getting used to your new arrangement, all the same. The small dates, sometimes just a walk in the park or meeting him on the rooftop of your apartment just to stargaze (and you not so subtly revealing you thought he looked pretty dashing in his gear when he’d rush to meet you).
You’d been wishing for it. No matter how much you tried to deny it, pushing the idea of a relationship with him out of your head because you weren’t even sure if he was looking for one. He had his own demons, own struggles, and you just couldn’t ask him to take on yours part-time too.
But he’d handled them with grace so far in the short month you’ve been together. Dex never made you feel like your internal battles were a burden on his own. They were just there alongside his own. Mountains for you both to conquer, a silent promise that neither of you had to deal with it all alone anymore.
It wasn’t long before you began to question it. It was in your nature to assume too much of a good thing meant something bad would follow. You pushed it out of your mind for tonight.
Now here he was across from you in your apartment as you rambled about your week. He always listened so attentively, adding his own comment here and there. But this time he was silent. Just staring straight ahead at you over your now empty plates.
You swallowed hard, face feeling hot with slight embarrassment. “Sorry, am I talking your ear off?”
“No. You couldn’t bore me,” he said pointedly. “Not in a million years.”
You frowned. He had said it like a catchphrase, or some kind of inside joke you were privy to.
“Everything okay…?” you asked him, voice dripping with concern. “You’ve been gone for a while. You must be really tired. Maybe we should–”
“Yeah, well, I’m not obligated to tell you, am I?” he tilted his head.
Okay, something was definitely up. You cocked your eyebrow suspiciously.
“What’s your problem?” you tried again, now a little frustrated at his behavior.
He was emphasizing all of these words and phrases like they meant something to you. But you just felt like you were on a prank show waiting for the big joke to reveal itself. It was unnerving, especially coming from him when you hadn’t seen him in a week.
“I don’t have a problem. I’m just communicating how I feel to you,” he crossed his arms. “That’s what you want, right?”
“I guess. Isn’t that what everyone wants?” you asked nervously, hoping it was the right answer. It’d been a while since you felt like you were being cold called on in a university lecture.
“Maybe I shouldn’t just assume what everyone wants.” he scoffed, “that’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
The words made your blood run cold–because they were your own. You remembered writing them down while tucked into your bed at night before falling asleep one night. The thoughts were quickly scrawled into your diary before you dropped it into the bedside table drawer and closed it to keep it away from prying eyes.
And now the prying eyes in question were staring back at you like you had betrayed him in some way.
“Dex,” you asked calmly, folding your hands on the table. “Did you read my diary?”
He stood up suddenly, reaching into his pocket for something and then tossing it out onto the table between you. It was a crumpled parchment resembling the same paper bound into your diary. You unfolded it and skimmed it.
Then, you set it down with pursed lips. The man across from you, military trained, FBI seasoned, now a practiced contract killer for the government, was picking a fight with you over something you wrote in your private diary.
“I guess that answers my question,”
“What is this?” he motioned between you both as he spoke slowly and drawn out. “Just some kind of experiment to you? How long until one of us calls it quits?”
“No,”
“Until one of us gets hurt and things fall apart?”
“God, no,” you stood up exasperatedly. “You’re the one who went through my things, Dex!”
This was getting out of hand quickly. You thought he was tired from being on his feet for days and from his flight. You thought he just wanted a quiet night in with you. This wasn’t how you thought your evening was going to go at all.
It wasn’t him going through your room that bothered you, if you were being honest with yourself. Your hands trembled and the pit in your stomach wasn’t faring any better.
“You’re afraid,” he nodded in satisfaction as if confirming a suspicion he had about you all along.
“No, I’m–” you shifted your weight from one leg to the other. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“But you are,” his voice was dusky and low. “You’re afraid of me getting to know you.”
His jaw tightened as he broke eye contact with you to stare at the table between you. Everything was placed in doubles. Placemats for the dinner plates resting atop them. Half empty glasses and taper candles coupled together. And yet, the two of you couldn’t be more separate in this moment if you tried.
“That’s not the same thing,”
“It is. You know it is,” the knowing smile he cracked made your chest tighten painfully.
It’s not like you were ever dishonest with him about your life. What he saw was exactly who you were, with smiles never concealed and confessions rolling off your tongue in rambles or short outbursts. Anyone your age had a trail of past mistakes, small triumphs, and lost loved ones mosaiced into you.
But that didn’t mean you had nothing to hide. That didn’t mean you weren’t trying to hide things from him. It was almost comical how scared you were of being judged by the man across from you with a past so decorated by pain and bloodshed.
Still, here you were. Afraid he’d run if he looked at you a little too closely.
Terrified of being known by him.
The change in your relationship with Dex had hit you so hard and fast you had no idea how to deal with it. Waking up with the sensation of him lingering on your lips, his weight still heavy beside you, and the intimate moment shared between you that no grand declaration of feelings could have surpassed. It all sent your system into shock.
“We don’t have to talk about what this is. We can just be.”
Those words were out of your mouth before you even whispered a good morning to him. His eyelids were still heavy, blinking slowly at you in the blue light of sunrise. He didn’t nod, didn’t agree with any show of mirth. You received a soft hum of acknowledgment and that was that.
Dates that weren’t called dates followed. Moving between your place and his, showing up dressed a little nicer or using gentler voices. Always ending every meeting with a kiss. He’d grip your sleeve on your way out so that you’d turn around and kiss him, arms wrapping around his neck as he smiled against your mouth.
You were content. You could live with it, could do that forever really. And maybe he could too, if you didn’t just admit to him in so many words that you were scared of it.
The real thing. With him, because if this blew up in your face the way love always seemed to, you were sure it’d be your end. So you never asked him for any more than he gave.
But right now, he was asking you for more.
“I’ve been open with you about myself from the beginning,” your wavering voice betrayed the indifference you tried to convey. “I’m not exactly a closed book.”
“Leaving things out of the truth is still lying,”
You hated the smug way he said it. How dare he use your own words against you.
“I don’t know why you care so much about my past, anyway,”
You did.
“Then maybe you should ask yourself why you cared so much about mine.”
You have.
The answer lingered in the little space left between you when you’d share a bed, just to hear one another breathe. It was drowned out by the CD’s you’d put on when you visited his apartment, wondering if he knew the meaning of the songs you picked.
The words you shared with him that day were untruthful. You didn’t want to ‘just be’. You loved him. As plain as the words looked on paper or as foreign as they sounded when you said them to yourself. You wanted labels, you wanted commitment. And you wanted what came after, whatever that might be.
Without letting another second of the miserable silence he left you in pass, you went to your bedroom. You opened the closet door and reached up to the top shelf where you stored old belongings and pulled down a dusty shoebox.
It was shoved into his arms when you returned. He had reached for the cover but you stopped him.
“Wait,” you swallowed hard. “Not here.”
Not in front of me.
Never in all of your years on earth did you think you’d ever share your diaries with another human being. Not your best friend, not your mother–who was also your best friend at one point–and certainly not Dex.
It was where your most personal thoughts went, no matter how embarrassing or inappropriate. About your life, about your family and home, about difficult classmates or your coworkers at your crappy jobs. Channeling your streams of consciousness onto paper was the only time you were ever truly honest with yourself.
And now, here you were being honest with Dex.
He wasted no time reading through them, piled up beside his bed in a neat stack so he could easily reach for the next one. Every diary was a volume of your life in a way. Entire years of childhood to adulthood compressed into small hundred-something paged books.
His own life could probably be summarized in footnotes. Dex was always moving from one place to the next. Orphanage to social work to the military and government jobs and coming home every day at the same time to the same empty apartment. It was rigid, it was comfortable.
But it was also all he knew. You, on the other hand, had lived a life. One so rich and different than his, at least it felt that way. Even with every struggle or troubling feeling, even with every awful occurrence you penned would be the ‘end of the world’, there was always another page that came after.
He read about the allergy you discovered while on a family vacation, and your middle school best friend who broke your heart when she moved away. The sibling you fought with growing up who you wish you were on better terms with now. The hobby you stopped practicing that made you realize not every skill is like riding a bike.
Every experience was just another piece of who you were now. When he looked at it that way, he couldn’t understand why you would be angry with him for wanting to read your diary. For wanting to know more about your life, and more importantly–his place in it.
Especially when he reached your current diary. The one he had torn a page from.
The date on the first page was marked for the past winter, only half a year ago. You were having issues with the heating in your apartment, becoming weary of your upstairs neighbors who only vacuumed their apartment at odd hours of the night, and how the cold made you feel a bit lonelier.
Halfway through, he reached the first mention of his name. The note he wrote to you on the plane was taped to the page. You had kept it like a receipt of your first encounter. He wondered if you cracked your diary open just to reread it in the days following.
‘If I see him again, I’m not going to miss my chance to say hello!’
It was the first time he saw you use actual punctuation in a while, a stark contrast to the bleakness of your earlier entries.
Then there was your entry about seeing him again, how it was a total miracle and coincidence as if he hadn’t been planning the moment carefully for two whole weeks. Then, you wrote a cheesy anecdote about how the jukebox fixing itself was some kind of divine message.
‘I think this is a sign. Things are about to change.’
And change they did. You wrote about how seeing him every single day had been a reason to get out of bed in the morning. He smiled when you admitted to dressing a little nicer, spending a bit more time on yourself. Wearing your hair in a style he commented on more, or colors that seemed to draw his attention.
‘It’s nice to feel like someone is waiting for me for once. I don’t want to mess this up.’
He never knew you felt that way. Of course he waited for you but it was because he had built a routine around it hoping you’d realize he wasn’t going anywhere. He’d even order your coffee a little sweeter some mornings so you’d associate him with something positive, completely unaware you were doing the same thing in your own way.
Dex had to reread the paragraph you spent complimenting his cooking the day he invited you over. You went as far as to say you wished you took leftovers.
‘It’s not just about the food. I haven’t had anyone cook for me since I moved out years ago. I forgot what it was like to be considered in that way. To have someone care about my needs enough to want to take a load off me.’
Your words should have validated him. After all, he spent the past month trying to take things off your plate so you’d depend on him. But all it really did was make him more self-aware of how he always weaponized a good deed to win your love. To earn his keep.
He shook that off before it could agitate him any further. He turned the page. Some ramblings about work and your commute being a little more pleasant in the springtime. How much you appreciated his help with wedding prep for your best friend. You were conflicted about the jeweler thinking you were dating him, but hoped he saved a dance for you at the wedding.
‘I’ve been thinking about him this entire week. He’s been gone for work and I can’t believe how much I actually miss meeting him in the mornings.’
The agitation didn’t stop gnawing at him just because he turned the page, though. It only got worse, memories of your argument swirling in his head. He relived how he had let you down, saw your crestfallen face in his head, and snapped the diary shut.
Yes, he messed up that time. But you’d forgiven him, right? That was months ago. By now, you might have even forgotten it entirely. He certainly hadn’t, though. He had done a lot since then to prove to you that he was reliable, that he was exactly who you thought he was. That he was the Dex you wrote about in your diary.
He opened the aforementioned book back up again to continue where he left off. You wrote about how he helped you build your cabinet you’d been putting off for weeks. Even more surprising, you had described that it had awakened something in you.
‘I thought I was going to pass out but the heat had nothing to do with it.’
The war in his head briefly calmed to allow room for amusement. Then he read about how dependable he was in your eyes and considered taking the entire page out for himself again. But he reminded himself of the argument that came from the first time he did it and held back with a clenched fist.
‘It’s just like me that the first friend I make in a while is a supervillain. Whatever the word ‘supervillain’ means these days.’
Then you just had to go and write a whole thinkpiece about vigilantes and your thoughts about Daredevil. He didn’t know how to describe the feeling that came over him reading that guy's name in your diary. It stuck out beside his. Didn’t belong there, in his opinion. Sure, he and Dex were on more or less neutral terms now; but he’s still not sure what business you could possibly have with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.
‘Sometimes I can’t tell when he’s just joking around. But right now, I really wish I knew.’
You were writing in reference to the message he left you on his knife. You’re cute. Just two words and he had you in the palm of his hand–at least, that’s how he saw it. But the words came from a place of honesty. It was a thought that echoed ceaselessly whenever you spoke to him through a smile as if you couldn’t contain your delight to have him as your conversation partner.
Of course you’d read it as a gesture of humor rather than confession. He kept that in his back pocket for later. Be more direct–if that was even possible.
The next page was torn out. His own doing. But there was still the page after it, which he hadn’t gotten the chance to read before you interrupted him that day.
He pulled the page out of his pocket and placed it back into the diary, connecting it to the missing piece of the puzzle.
‘July 8th.
I’ve been getting more sun now that the days are longer. The weather has been warm and stuffy but it’s good for me, I think, since I’ve been doing better lately.
Or maybe it’s not just the weather. It’s Dex, too.
But I haven’t seen him lately. He tends to disappear a lot with his work and it’s really a toss-up if he’s going to be there the next day. He never uses his phone unless it's for work, so I barely get any communication from him.
If I don’t ask him for the exact day he’s coming back before he leaves then I’m out of luck.
It’s not like he’s obligated to tell me, anyway. We’re not dating. Even though sometimes it feels like we are.
But that would never happen. Not in a million years. Dex and I are worlds apart. A disaster waiting to happen.’
Continued.
‘I can’t help wishing, though. Especially lately. It feels like we’ve become closer and I can’t ignore how that makes me feel anymore. But I just don’t know if he sees that kind of a relationship with me.
His job is so dangerous, too, and I think that makes him hold back from me at times. At the same time, he can’t seem to stay away, either. All of these mixed signals between us are driving me crazy.
How does he really feel about me?
Maybe it’s better not to know at all.’
It didn’t seem fair that you were going through just as much grief about this as he was. He wanted to keep being angry with you for holding back from him. But you let him read about your entire life, just because he asked.
No, not your entire life. Just pieces of it, fragments of things you only shared to the pages. What you showed to him outwardly was just as much a part of you. You only placed the missing pieces in his hands.
He didn’t call before he came over. The itch to see you was too urgent to ask for permission. If you were out, he’d wait for you to come home. If you were asleep, he’d wake you.
You were just coming home when he got to your door. Keys in hand, a convenience store bag hanging off your arm. When you saw him, your eyes widened for a spell, and then you chewed your lip as you remembered what transpired between you the night before.
“Do you want to come in?” you asked, taking notice that he hadn’t been here to return your diaries judging by his empty hands.
He accepted with a nod, and you shut the door behind him. He heard your uneven breaths, your lips parted as you mulled over what to say to him. But he spoke first.
“I read them. The diaries.”
“And?” you asked. Instead of the anger you were exuding last night, you seemed nervous. It was like a switch flipped. The veil was lifted. You weren’t deflecting it anymore–you were afraid.
“I used to have them too,” he said, then quickly corrected himself, “not diaries. My therapist kept tapes for me when I was a kid.”
“Tapes of your sessions?” you asked, and he watched your shoulders relax.
“Yeah. She let me talk to her about anything. Didn’t judge me. It was…helpful.”
“I didn’t know you were in therapy that long.” you admitted softly.
“There’s a lot you still don’t know,” he said bitterly. “About before you. But you can ask.”
Your gaze softened, lips pulling into a guilty frown. “Yeah?”
That only seemed to frustrate him more.
“Yes. I’m your–” his lips pursed.
Your breath hitched.
Silence stretched between you for a moment. And you understood.
“You were right,” you stepped towards him. “I left things out of the truth. About us–about how I feel about you.”
His eyebrows were still scrunched as you spoke. “What, you don’t want to just be?”
“Do you get thrills out of quoting me to myself, or do you just like hearing the sound of your voice?” you scoffed at him incredulously. “Use your own words.”
That smoothed him out, his frown melting to mild amusement instead. His eyes flitted to the spaces in your apartment he occupied. Shoes by the door, keys placed neatly where you’d thrown yours, and remnants of a shared meal on your table.
“Would be nice if you told me what you wanted. Instead of your diary,” he said in his usual low timbre.
You crossed your arms, apprehensive.
“I want you to tell me the wheres and whens. I hate not knowing when you’re going to come back. Or…if.”
He squinted at you. “What else?”
Of course he wasn’t going to let you get away with just that. He started this entire argument for a reason, after all.
“I want labels,” you forced the words out, no matter how tightly fear was gripping your heart. “I at least want to put a name on what this is.”
Dex’s smile was genuine instead of mocking, now, indicated by the soft lines forming beside his eyes. He had you right where he wanted you. He sealed the deal with a hand on your arm, sliding under your elbow to draw you closer. You let him guide your hand to his chest and the rhythmic beating of his heart grounded you.
“And what is this?” he tried.
Love. Plain and simple. But you still weren’t quite ready to give him that answer. Not yet.
“Something real,” you whispered, and then stammered to add, “and exclusive.”
If only you knew how obsessed he was with you.
If only you knew that he counted how many times his name alone appeared in your diary. Fifty three and four more counting his alias (more than a certain other vigilante’s, which counted for a lot). His lips twitched.
He leaned down to kiss you, your mouth against his an anchor in the troubled sea of his mind. Your intimacy was saved solely for him. Your lips on his skin, your touches through his hair, all for him alone. Maybe you were just as obsessed as he was.
That thought sent a burning heat through him that he only kindled further by tasting you, groaning into your mouth with every brush of your tongue against his and his fingers held your jaw tighter when your fingers tugged his hair.
Yeah. Definitely obsessed.
You were reading in bed that night beside him, laminated bookmark resting idly between your lips. It occurred to you that he never returned your diaries. The idea of him keeping them didn’t bother you as much as you thought it would. He was guarding your secrets in a way.
“Hey,” you bookmarked your book and set it down, watching him clean his pistol where he sat at the edge of the bed. “I never asked you what you wanted.”
His eyebrow cocked, pausing his fingers for a moment.
“In our relationship.”
The way his lips curved made you wonder if he questioned you just to hear you say it again. That he was yours.
“My lease is up soon,”
Your eyebrows shot up. You didn’t think he’d want to move that fast.
“I think you mean Tony’s lease is up soon,” you smirked.
He put his gun on the bedside table and looked at you, stern and slightly irked you were taking this as a joke. But it didn’t perturb you in the slightest, even as his face shoved into your neck.
“I’m being serious.” he spoke against your skin with a hint of vexation.
“How soon?” you questioned, your arm around him.
“Seven months,”
Not soon in your opinion. But you had a feeling the time would fly by anyway.
“Let’s talk about it then.” you said. A promise not to his request, but that you’d still be around by then. A demand that he’d still be around all the same.
‘August 11th
I got my current diary back from Dex. He taped the stolen page back in before he returned it. So many of the pages were dog-eared, too. Which bothered me until I realized he only did that on the entries he was mentioned in.
I wonder how many times he reread them.
Things are good between us now. Maybe I was a little right about us being a bit of a disaster. But it’s nothing we can’t work on together–I’m sure of it.
I’m ready for what comes next.’
a/n they’re so just for me by pinkpanthress. no fr they lowkey wanna eat each other. thank you for reading as always! feedback welcomed and appreciated.
synopsis dex is bleeding half to death and becomes obsessed with how you look when you sleep. meanwhile you're trying to make him understand why you won't let him turn your apartment into a hospital room.
notes this is the end of 'part 1' so to speak :) thank you to everyone following this series so far!
tags hurt/comfort, romance, some humor, patching up, gendered nickname used, canon typical violence, descriptions of wounds, suggestive photographs, dex's spinal scar and chronic pain hcs, some suggestive content, discussions of suicidal ideation, mentions of religious beliefs
wc 6.7k
series masterlist • previous part • next part
There was a loud thump outside on your fire escape.
Hearing it should have frightened you out of your skin. It could have been a burglar and the unlucky apartment chosen happened to be yours. It could have been the sound of your upstairs neighbor’s ashtray falling off their railing and onto yours (which you already had to talk to them about twice before).
But you knew it wasn’t either of those things when you heard a second thump. This one louder, heavier. And then a stretch of silence that made you hold your breath.
Nausea turned in your stomach and an unwelcome thought forced its way into your mind.
You couldn’t explain it, but you knew what–or who–it was before you were even outside. The blanket over your lap was thrown off and forgotten as you shot up from the couch and ran for the balcony door.
All your fears were confirmed when you slid it open.
What Dex told you about his job hadn’t made you blink twice since you last spoke. You told yourself that the man who could turn any item into a bullet just by wielding it had no reason to fear death. The man who had escaped prison not once, but twice and got away with murdering the matriarch of the Fisk underground crime ring had no choice but to believe he had nine lives.
But that lost all meaning to you the moment you saw him sitting on your fire escape, slumped over and holding his side. There was a trail of dark crimson blood on the metal stairs that ended at his shadow visible in the pale moonlight.
Cold fear tightened your lungs.
Dex was hurt. Badly bleeding still, his breathing shallow and barely there. He must have dragged himself up the fire escape steps and gave up, falling against the railing once he saw the light coming from your door.
“Oh my god,” your voice broke as you dropped beside him. “Dex?”
He lifted his head when he registered you were speaking to him, and leaned back against the railing with a grunt of effort.
“I’m fine.” he said through gritted blood stained teeth, lips quivering into a pleased smile. “You had to live on the second-highest floor?”
Without wasting a second to respond to his smug statement, you reached for his arm and pulled it around your shoulders.
“You’re bleeding, so I’ll move slow.”
You were trying to stay calm at the sight of his blood seeping through his compression shirt, darkening the blue fabric. But your voice was shaking and giving you away.
“I can handle a little pain. Nothing I’m not–” he groaned when you helped him lift off the ground. “Fuck–not used to…”
“Stop talking.” you pleaded, dragging him into the threshold of your apartment.
“Yes ma’am,” he dropped onto your couch like dead weight and you don’t even think about the blood he’s soaking into it.
Anger bubbled up in your chest. How could he be so casual about this when you were about to lose it on him? He’s bleeding out, still shivering despite being in the warmth of the apartment now.
“How long have you been like this?”
You grabbed one of your dining chairs and sat across from him. He gave you a barely registered nod of consent when your trembling hands hovered over the harness on his chest.
“Don’t know,” he winced when you unlatched his chest harness and dropped it onto the floor. “Saw you through the window. Your light was still on. Followed it without thinking.”
You gasped at the sight of the wound when you lifted his tight shirt. A long gash spread across his skin, definitely needing stitches and you were far from equipped to mend him. Tears brimmed in your eyes.
“Not sure why I even came,” he mumbled, eyes glassy and unfocused, and panic gripped you harder at the sight. “Maybe I’m selfish. Wanted to…be with you. Even if it meant seeing me die.”
The tears came all at once, rolling down your face and clinging to your lashes. His gloved hand raised to your cheek, catching a salty tear and smearing your skin with his blood in the process.
You shoved his hand away, rejecting his touch. He wasn’t doing it for your comfort, anyway.
The crying never stopped even as you began cleaning the wound. You would wipe your tears on your sleeve when your vision became too blurry to continue. Then you’d check his eyes, gaze on you sometimes piercing, sometimes vacant as he was slipping in and out of consciousness. But always on you.
You knew he could tell you were checking for signs of life when you did it because he still had half a mind to twitch his lips into an exhausted smile. As if it was satisfying to him that you were fretting over him. Sobbing over him. Mourning him even though he was right in front of you.
His eyes shut again, listening to every sharp breath you took from crying, every sob you tried to hush, and imagined the salty taste of your tears on his lips.
Dex woke before sunrise. The only light in the room was the living room lamp, painting you both in soft dusky yellows.
He was lying on your couch with an uncomfortable sting in his side and foggy memories of you stitching him back together. Pleading for him to stay awake, keeping him warm when he started to twitch and quiver from the blood loss.
You had paused with every few agonizing tugs of the needle to wipe your tears away. Or at least the ones that he hadn’t felt drop onto his skin while you worked. His shirt and gloves had been removed by you at some point but he must have been passed out during that part.
And there you still were beside him, with your chair pulled a little closer to the couch than he remembers. Your cheek rested on his thigh, head turned away from him so he couldn’t see the red streaks on your face from the crying or how you looked when you slept.
Dex didn’t stress over the inevitable crick in your neck you’ll get from your position. He just thought about how much he wanted you there, worried sick to tears over him and staying the night by his side in case his body went cold for good.
If you had the means, you’d give your own blood to keep him breathing. He heard it in the uneven rhythm of your breaths as you slept and the occasional frantic whisper that fell from your lips.
You talked in your sleep. He’d remember that. If only you had elected to sleep with your head turned in his direction. Whatever image he was forming in his head, he knew you looked so much sweeter in reality.
Another sharp pain shot through his side and he involuntarily twitched his leg that you were sleeping on.
He held his breath. Prayed. Don’t move. Not yet.
But your head shot up quickly when you woke, having never managed to make it to a deep sleep when you were so sick over him.
“Dex,” you called his name before you even processed you were awake, and that made his chest tighten.
“I’m good,” his voice rasped when he spoke. “I’m alive. Somehow.”
That was the wrong thing to say, apparently. He saw how your face scrunched up angrily at him.
“Somehow?” you rubbed your eyes and leaned closer to his stomach, examining the bandages. “I spent a good hour trying to keep you from meeting God. That’s how you’re alive, you asshole.”
In his delirium he found your slip-up amusing, a smirk painting his lips.
Meeting God after the life he’s lived. Dex didn’t believe in that stuff anyway. He wasn’t even sure if you did. If there was a God, he sure wasn’t looking out for Dex.
You were, though. And his smirk melted into something softer.
“You are, by the way–selfish for coming here,” your voice trembled with indignation. “Making me drag you to my couch and soaking it with blood. And what would I have done if you died?”
“Could tell the police you caught me for them,” he suppresses another pained groan.
He paused when he saw the resulting anguish in your eyes.
“That’s not what I meant.” Your voice was small. Hurt.
You couldn’t believe that after everything, he thought you were asking what you’d do with his body. Not what you’d do without him. Not if he had died on your watch, with you being the last to have touched him, the last voice he heard.
Maybe that’s why he came–so you’d be haunted by him forever. It both sickened you and sent a rippling ache through your heart.
Dex let his head fall back onto the couch in resignation. His fingers twitched, tapped the couch a few times. Your words must have gotten through to him.
You reached out, gripping his fidgeting hand in both of yours.
“You need more rest.” you whispered. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
A beat of silence between you.
Then, to your surprise, you watched him push himself further against the back of the couch. Just enough, like he'd admired your body from afar enough times to know exactly how much space to leave for you.
He wasn’t looking at you, though. Like he was trying to save himself the trouble if you didn’t catch the meaning of his gesture.
A plethora of excuses came to your mind. I shouldn’t irritate the wound or it won’t be comfortable with us both.
They were all abandoned when you rose from your stiff dining chair and pressed your knee onto the couch, the weight sinking beneath you. You lowered your body beside him and his arm had slid beneath you as you did, lying on your side with your head rested on his arm. It was much easier on your neck than your earlier position.
It terrified you how icy his skin still was. So lifeless and frail. Nothing like the usual heat you felt whenever he was near.
You stared at him in the dim living room light. He was already staring at you. Not willing to let you escape his wish to see what you looked like as you slept.
It was silent, but not uncomfortably so. Even with your heart pounding rhythmically, and your chest rising and falling a little faster from the proximity. It was the kind of quiet that spoke louder than any words you could say to one another right now.
With your eyes scanning his face, you lifted your weight onto your elbow. It was easier to see him this way since he was confined to lying on his back. He watched you look down at him, gaze flickering over your face. Cataloguing every flaw and feature to memory even though by now he could place your lips alone out of hundreds of pairs.
You were doing the same. Remembering when you first saw him, the glance you stole when he was unaware. You hand lifted to his cheek. His chest stuttered when you dragged your thumb over the jagged scar he had there. Back and forth, slowly, your lips parted ever so slightly.
He watched you for as long as he could. His slow blinking became occasional squints as he tried to keep his eyes open, but once you heard his shallow, even breaths you knew you had lulled him to sleep.
You stayed right where you were. The sight of his face, relaxed for once instead of tense from his mind running faster than he could catch up to it made you tender. But then, that awful, harrowing thought made you hollow again.
That you almost lost him.
The sight of him gasping and bleeding was all too sobering. It reminded you of a fact you had spent too long ignoring, too caught up in uncovering what he hid beneath the surface to acknowledge. That Dex wasn’t invincible.
Eventually, his nine lives would run out.
So you stayed bent over him, listening to him breathe until the cusp of blue hour broke through the window. Afraid the room might become silent of his breaths if you didn’t watch over him, or that his body would go cold if you weren’t there to keep him warm.
The restlessness in your bones made your joints tingly and numb. Exhaustion crept into your body and with a gentle push off the couch, you sat up. Looked about the room.
The gear you had haphazardly stripped from him was strewn on the floor at your feet. You reached for the leather chest harness he kept his gun in.
The dull sound of the metal latch involuntarily put the memory of removing it from him into your mind. Your fingertips ran over the cool leather, caressing it the way you did his skin moments before.
Your fingers stopped when you reached the small pocket meant for a smaller throwing knife. When your fingers tucked into the pocket, you felt the worn texture of old paper.
As if this night couldn't get anymore complicated, you pulled it out. This moment was so familiar to you and even pulled a soft laugh out of you.
Remembering the first time you found this folded up square in a CD case in his apartment. Dex hiding it from your eyes before you came over so you wouldn't think he was a creep.
But now, to find it in the harness he wore to his very dangerous job, in the very pocket that rested just over his heart...
It was so unfair of him. The way that he cared for you was tender and punishing at the same time. Loving you from a distance. Loving you as an observer and never sharing himself with you. Loving you, whether that love be platonic or not, and not caring if you loved him too by walking into danger every single night.
You wished he knew how it felt for you. To be cared about in a manner that's self-serving. To do things for yourself and not considering how it might affect him.
But on the contrary, that was the only love he knew. At least, before you.
That thought softened your resolve.
Fine. You could cut him a break—but you wouldn't let him get away with it completely.
Dex’s mind was quiet when he slept for once. Whether to credit the blood loss making him delirious or your body heat keeping him grounded during the night, he didn’t know. But he was certainly partial to one of those in particular.
It was the sensation of his phone vibrating in his pocket that woke him. Anticipating the call to action had become a constant he relied on, but lately it felt like he was only getting sent away when he was with you. But it’s not like he had many career options left.
Speaking of, you seemed to have left him during the night. Slipped away, likely into your bedroom. He was watching your closed door unwaveringly the entire time he was getting ready. The pain still echoing in his side from the still fresh wound was nothing compared to the wanting thoughts coating his mind.
He wanted into your bedroom. Badly.
Dex never got to see your sleeping face like he wanted to because he fell asleep first the night before. He was almost pissed off at you for taking his chance away like that after he let you sleep beside him.
Even while he was on his mission, stalking his target with the deadly stillness of deep water, his mind was on that closed bedroom door. Taunting him with the morning light that shone from under the crack. Beckoning him closer.
The urge to turn the knob and take a peek at you sunk its claws into him. He knew most people kept their most intimate items where they slept, too. Old family photos, poorly written poetry, keepsake boxes kicked under the bed. Dex wanted to know if you had any of them.
But he had resisted for one reason alone: you hadn’t invited him in.
It was a strange feeling to be stuck outside your door with some invisible force keeping his boots rooted to the ground. Like he was a vampire who needed permission to enter a home. Like he was above sneaking into your room while you slept.
You hadn’t invited him in.
Did he ever ask you permission for anything before? No. So why now was he suddenly unable to act?
That question plagued his mind as he stepped out of hiding to take out his target. By now, completing a mission like this was second-nature to him; but he went a little overboard on securing his kill so he could feel his stitches tug and sting.
When it was over, Dex slipped his mask off to breathe the cold night air into his lungs, catching his breath. He reached into the pocket of his gun harness as he always did afterwards and pulled the folded square he knew would be in his pocket.
This was his ritual after a mission. It kept his thoughts at bay, kept his mind quiet.
But when he pulled it out in his gloved hand, he immediately noticed something off with it. The paper wasn’t worn and flexible from being folded and unfolded time and time again. The red ink that had become splotched and runny wasn’t visible on the back anymore.
He quickly unfolded it.
Oh.
That’s not right.
When you had found the photo in his harness, you didn’t just find it touching. You saw it as an opportunity. If he wanted to play around with his life and show up scaring the soul out of you, then you could have your own fun too.
You had taken the stolen photo back and replaced it. With your beach photo. He’d seen it before, your figure lying on the sand with a silk veil draped over you. The outline of your body was barely visible through it, every curve or straight line appearing like carved stone. You looked like art, in short.
It wasn't like you gave him a nude—your pose and some help from the natural shadows covered enough to make it barely not x-rated.
Dex didn't find any of this as amusing as you did. It sent blood rushing away from his head and he was supposed to be calming himself down. Not working himself up. He was caught between irritation and arousal, both combining into a frustrating cocktail of inconvenient emotions he wasn't expecting to feel when he reached into his pocket initially.
And after he was so nice about not coming into your room earlier, too. He took some comfort in the fact that the correct photo was at least safe with you, but still. Not cool.
That photo was his.
He took another look at you posed on the sand. Ignored the burning heat on his skin. Folded it up into a square. And shoved it back into the holster.
He'd deal with you once he got home to New York.
The dull pattering of rain outside the window was a welcome start to your Saturday evening. It was thundering, the grey sky flashing with lightning and the air outside muggy and uncomfortably warm.
You were safe and sound in your apartment with a hot cup of tea, because no one in their right mind would step out into weather that bleak and unfavorable.
None except Dex apparently.
You were standing in your kitchen when you heard a drop onto your fire escape. This time, not producing a sound that sent you into cardiac arrest.
The mug in your hand was set down in favor of stepping out into the living room and looking at your fogged up screen door. You could see his shadow outside the door and your lips curved into a smile.
Dex,—still clad in his full Bullseye suit and gear—pointed to the door handle, signaling for you to open up for him. You shrugged your shoulders in a mock question, as if you couldn’t understand what he was asking.
You watched him raise a gloved hand to the foggy glass. He dragged his finger across it, drawing a target symbol into the window. Then, he pointed at you through the center of the target. That got a giggle out of you.
When you slid the door open, he came in dripping wet. He must have just returned from his mission. One you wanted to punch him for going on considering he had just been gravely injured the night before.
You almost flipped out when you left your room in the morning and saw that he and all his things were gone. Leaving behind only the blood stained into your sofa and memories that made you short of breath.
“Where is it?” he asked, not even bothering to greet you first.
“What, you don’t use the front door anymore?” you crossed your arms over your chest and looked into his eyes. “Is this some kind of villain protocol I wasn’t aware of?”
“The photo,” he emphasized through tightened lips, which he only did when he was wound up. Your joke on him must have really hit a nerve.
“Who’s asking? Bullseye?” you gestured to the mask he was wearing. “Because I believed it was Dex who that photo belonged to.”
You were trying to get on his case, yes. And you did think he was hot with the mask on, yes. But you liked his face a whole lot more. You knew he’d oblige if you asked, too.
He huffed out a breath and slipped the mask off his face. The way his blond hair stuck up for a moment made your smirk widen. Cute. Like a vicious golden puppy.
“What, you didn’t like the new one?” you teased.
“I–” you watched his throat twitch as he swallowed hard. “I like it. But.”
The other one is special.
Your heart leaped at the unspoken words. Even with your (artistically) revealing photo in his possession, he was still missing the original.
“Okay, fine. You can keep both.” you sighed out mockingly, like this was all a big inconvenience for you.
His shoulders relaxed.
“Follow me, I’ll get it for you,” you said over your shoulder, starting down the hall. “It’s in my bedroom.”
Then his body went taught.
Permission. Explicit, intentional permission for him to enter your bedroom. To think he had been driving himself mad the past 24 hours, trying to find a reason for his reluctance to sneak inside, and now here you were with an open invitation.
It was like you could read his mind. Anticipate just what he wanted from you without having to ask. But you were still always asking him anyway, just to rile him up. And he would entertain your questions because he was always rewarded for it.
Such as now, as he stood in the door frame of your bedroom. Different than he envisioned when he was outside of it yesterday morning, but still so you that it almost suffocated him.
His eyes went straight to your bed (which you forgot to make this morning). Not because he was curious about the colors and patterns of your sheets. But because he had a suspicion to confirm.
The shark plush was, in fact, there on your bed. Dex just knew you slept beside it nightly based on how it was partly concealed by your quilt.
He had the urge to hide it from you. It came over him so quickly he didn’t know what to do with it. So, he let it keep reeling.
He had finally gotten a taste of what it was like to be that plush in the photo. Taking up a space at your side, being pressed to you until his scent was indistinguishable from yours. And now he wanted more.
Without it, you'd still need something to hold at night.
He stepped into your room finally, watching your back. You were digging through your dresser drawer, searching for the photograph you owed him.
No one ever gave him their back. Not anymore. It was too big a risk. But there you were, knowing anything in your bedroom could be weaponized against you by him, and still–you trusted him.
When you turned back around, folded photo in hand, he didn’t have the chance to fix his face into something more pleasant for you.
His hand brushed yours when he took the photo from you and he tucked it away into his pocket.
Your gaze dropped from his face down to his side. He had half a mind to think you may have been checking him out before his erratic brain remembered your fingers had been digging in his wound just two days ago.
“How’re your stitches doing?” you asked, concern veiling your voice.
Dex thought back to the feeling of them pulling apart during his mission last night. “Could use a touch-up.”
While he was eager to get you fussing over him again, he also knew you’d have to leave the room to get the first-aid supplies.
And you did, not before giving him a gentle scolding that he was reckless and needed to take it easy. “I’ve still got blood stains on my couch, by the way."
“Comes out easy with hydrogen peroxide.” he called after you.
“I’ll ignore how fast you answered that.”
Once your voice was far enough away, Dex walked to your still open dresser drawer and peered inside. As he thought, it was an underwear drawer so he diverted his attention quickly beside it and spotted your laundry hamper.
Resting on top was a crumpled pajama set with a blur of navy blue mixed into the pile.
His hoodie. On your pajamas. You wore it to bed. It wasn't a question in his mind. There's no other reason for it to be there, tangled up in your sleep clothes. Dex tore his eyes away from the sight when he felt a tug at his heart.
He stepped away from the hamper and moved to your bedside table.
Slow and stealthy, he pulled the top drawer open and catalogued what you kept inside. Supplements. Meds. Sleeping pills. An expensive chocolate bar you were saving for later. Half-stamped rewards card for a local book store. Wired earbuds.
He shut it and opened the bottom drawer. Raspberry gum. Receipt for the overpriced chocolate bar. And pressed to the very back of the drawer—a worn journal.
That urge, much like before, rushed through his veins without warning. Take it. It wasn’t so much a thought as it was a need to be met. An itch he couldn’t ignore.
With a quick glance at the door to make sure you weren’t coming, he pulled the journal from the drawer. It was closed securely with an elastic cord he pushed aside.
Dex flipped to the last page. It was dated back a week ago. He didn’t even read what was on the page. Just skimmed to see if his name was written. Eyes darting to every capital D on the page until...
“Sorry it took so long,” your voice called from the hall.
It startled him from his snooping and he tore the page out, shut the journal closed, and shoved it back in the drawer.
You appeared in the doorway holding the kit.
He was sitting at the edge of your bed, resting weight on his hands behind him. You sat beside him and opened the kit up on your quilt, grabbing tweezers and a cotton ball.
“Let’s see the damage,” you requested, “probably just needs to be cleaned since you don’t seem to be bleeding through your clothes this time.”
“Sure thing doc.” he murmured sarcastically at your jab.
You watched him unlatch the chest harness and remove his gloves. Unblinking, eyes half-lidded following his hands. Not to watch for the off-chance he might use them against you, though. He realized when he saw how your chest rose and fell a little faster. Your lips parted. This time, you were definitely checking him out.
He lifted his shirt haphazardly with no regard for his injury, tossing it over his head.
You winced at the sight. “You can afford to be more careful, Dex.”
But all he could focus on was the cadence in which you said his name. There was some dried blood underneath the bandages, indicating he had bled a little from the pulled stitches during his mission.
You tutted and shook your head. The sight pleased him and he didn’t bother hiding that on his face, leaning back on his hands again.
With the cotton ball squeezed between the tweezers prongs, you began cleaning up the wound.
“Have I mentioned I hate your job?” you mumbled.
“Didn’t need to.”
He watched your face. How your eyebrows scrunched together in concentration. How your tongue peaked out when you were focusing. Both more than reason enough to crawl to you every time he got hurt from now on.
"Well, I do," you spat. "And I hate how much you don't seem to care what happens to you."
Oh, he realized. So that's what had you so pissed at him.
“How’d you deal with this before me?” you asked, reaching back into the kit for another cotton ball. “Better question, how have you never succumbed to your injuries by now?”
“A lot of luck. And some help,” he hissed when you pulled at his stitches. Maybe on purpose. For some reason his mind went back to that racy photo of yours when you did.
“Yeah, well.” you pulled away and closed the kit. “Good thing you’re so popular.”
A breathy laugh escaped him at that. Then, he leaned down to reach for his shirt and heard you gasp. A horrified, sharp intake of air.
When he turned back to you, brow furrowed, you had your hand over your mouth. It reminded him of your expression when you found him bleeding out on your fire escape.
You motioned with your hand for him to turn his back to you again.
Oh. Right. That.
He assumed you had just wanted to see his scar again out of morbid curiosity. It was pretty gnarly, a crooked red centipede-like line down his back that never healed right.
But then he felt your hand on his back. A warm contrast to the cold that always crept onto his skin there from the cogmium replacing what was once bone and rushing blood.
He let out an involuntary groan when your nails inadvertently met the indent in his skin.
You pulled your hand back quickly. “I-I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”
He shook his head. God no. It was the exact opposite.
“No,” he rasped. “First time in a while it’s stopped hurting, if you can believe it."
His eyes fell shut as he anticipated the next touch of your hand now that he had eased your worries. When it came, he let out a deep, pleasured sigh.
Your fingertip traced his scar from between his shoulder blades all the way down to his lower back, stopping just at the waistband of his pants.
“How did this happen?”
Your voice was so small. You weren’t asking about the cause. You wanted to know who did this to him. Who would hurt him like this.
“Same thing that always happens to me.”
His words were intentional. Void of any responsibility. Unwilling to acknowledge his part in any of it. As if nothing was consequence to him. As if things were just done to him with no rhyme or reason.
“I wouldn’t have let that happen to you.”
He had to laugh at your words even though they were far removed from humor. It was an automatic reaction caused by a sudden breathlessness in his chest. A sound akin to a cough, trying to get air back into his lungs while he tried to derive meaning from your simple phrase.
But maybe there was some truth to it. You weren’t just a presence to aspire to, or just a constant he could guarantee in his otherwise out of control life like he thought you’d be to him.
You were more. More than his pain. More than his self-loathing. More than his anger.
He thought this was about getting to know you. Dissecting you. Taking your photos and ripping out diary pages and ordering the same food as you at breakfast to know what you were tasting.
But you were dissecting him, too, and he was too distracted to notice. Taking his knife and leaving it hung on your wall, soaking your hands in his blood, wearing his hoodie to bed so you’d smell his presence beside you.
You craved him just as much as he did you.
And it wasn’t clarity that hit him in that moment. It was a gripping terror that seized him, sinking its claws in deep around his heart. Because everyone who’s ever been close to him has wound up dead, by his own hands or otherwise.
That swarmed in his head mercilessly. His body trembled. He couldn't quiet the onslaught of fear that settled in his mind and blocked him from hearing anything but shrill, unrelenting noise.
Then, soft pressure on his back. Warm and inviting between his shoulder blades. He’d traced the shape of your lips with his gaze enough times to know you had them on his skin. Kissing the ugly scar he had just revealed to you.
A violent shiver ran down his back. But pleasant. Then cold again when you pulled away.
“Again.” he knew it sounded demanding. But really he was begging. “…Please.”
It was unfair how easily you remedied his pain. And now that he had proof that it was you who made all of it better, tangible in the way your lips calmed the chronic ache in his body, and the one in his mind telling him he was broken--he wasn't going to give you another chance to slip away from him.
In a motion so swift it nearly startled you, Dex turned towards you and slid his hand through your hair to grip the nape of your neck. Using the leverage to pull you closer to him as he leaned down to your level, his fingers pressing against your skin where he held you.
You gasped sharply when his nose brushed yours, and he felt your breath on your lips. Quick, uneven. But not afraid. Never afraid.
He swallowed hard, his grip on your nape tightening as if he was trying to hold back. The only thing preventing him from having you was that annoying voice in his head again. Permission.
“Dex…” your lips trembled out his name.
And then he was done for.
His fingers pressed into your nape, guiding your lips to crush against his. You let out a surprised wince at the feeling of your teeth clashing, hands flying to his face so you could fix you both into a softer angle.
But he thought you were trying to pull away, and he let go of you swiftly. If he didn't release you from his grip entirely right then, he wasn't going to have the strength to.
You, on the other hand, weren't done just yet. You weren't going to let him sink into dejection when you so clearly wanted him. Needed him.
So you took his face into your hands, turning his head back towards you and pressing your lips against his in one smooth motion. Only relaxing into it when you felt him kissing you back again with just as much desperation.
With your eyes half-lidded, you caught him watching you. You had only been trying to check for his expression, and it tore you up inside to realize he already had his eyes on you. Wanting to see your face for himself as you both kissed, every micro-expression as you melted between want, fondness, and most prominent in the way your eyebrows scrunched as you bit his lip—greed.
It was a good thing you were both sitting, because your knees weakened when you felt his tongue brush yours. A soft grunt into your mouth from his throat that made your other hand fly to his hair. Pulling on dirty blond strands, tugging roughly just to hear him crumble from how much you needed him. Because you were falling apart at his proof of how much he needed you, too.
His hands reached out to guide you when you shifted onto your knees on the mattress, crawling into his lap without breaking the kiss. Your lungs burned and you could tell his did too when your hands fell to his chest and found it motionless from his lack of air intake.
But you wouldn't part just yet. You were too busy devouring him, tasting the lies he fed you on his tongue and how they unraveled into sweeter truths over time.
And he was just as gone as you were, soft groans leaving his mouth. Possessive, but also frustrated that he couldn't consume you completely. That he couldn't read your thoughts just by kissing you. Something this intimate should let him peer into your mind, he thought. His hands gripped your hips tighter, squeezing over your hipbones and then groping the flesh of your stomach above it in a way that made you shiver and finally break from his lips.
His hand lifted back up to the back of your neck, keeping you there against him. Not letting you stray too far. He wanted you to breathe against him just like that, with his forehead pressed to yours so only he could have the air from your lungs.
Dex's hands then dropped back to your middle, pulling you against him until no space remained. He dropped his head against your chest, no longer panting for air but still trying to get a grip on himself. Your lips pressing a kiss to his head in that same instance both soothed and tortured him more.
He retaliated by gripping your hips again and flipping you both, letting you fall back against your unmade bed with a gentle bounce. He leaned over you, watching your coy smile melt into timidness the longer he stared.
“Have you blinked in the past ten minutes?” you teased, lips stretching into a grin.
Dex, unimpressed by your comment, leaned down to swallow your laugh with another kiss. His teeth sank into your bottom lip as punishment and he delighted in the pained whine from your throat that followed when he bit you harder.
He pulled back to look at you again.
“I let you get away with a lot.” he said. “Not anymore.”
“We’ll see about that,” you hummed gently, your hands around the back of his neck. “And just so you know—if you show up at my door on the brink of death again, I’m making you sleep outside.”
“What, like a dog?” he huffed, leaning down to catch your lips again. But you turned your head, making him press against your cheek instead. “I think a bullet in the side is punishment enough.”
“Dex.”
Your voice came out so stern it made his blood run cold. He pulled back to look down at you.
“I used to have my coffee by myself every morning. Then I’d work all day and come home to my empty apartment, and all I’d think about was how the next day would be the same lonely routine. I'd stay up late just to put it off,” your voice wavered. “But I don't lose sleep anymore. Because you’re always around."
His chest tightened.
“Don’t make me go back to being alone," you pleaded.
Don't go where I can't reach you.
You weren’t mad at him for being away. You were terrified of the very same thing he was—that every goodbye would be the last.
He had people who wanted him dead, and you had…well, him. The man who was cursed to be alone, death tainting every person who ever got close enough to touch him.
If that curse took you next...
“I could say the same to you.”
You gave him a watery smile. “I told you before. I’m not going anywhere.”
Dex believed you, because he wasn’t going to let you out of his sight ever again. He wouldn’t give anyone the chance to take you away from him.
Instead of going to the diner, you both had tea in your apartment. You let the rain be a backdrop as he helped you clean his blood off your sofa that afternoon, music playing from your speaker as you did.
You asked Dex to stay the night. You didn't want to part from him just yet. He didn't tell you that he planned to stay anyway as he accepted your invitation.
And as you lied beside him in your messy sheets, curling yourself into his chest to listen to his steady heartbeat, he made sure not to fall asleep first this time. Observing your face in the moonlight creeping through the curtains as you dreamed away. Stealing a kiss from your sleeping lips before letting you rest.
The page he ripped from your diary was still in his pocket, too. He couldn't wait to read what you'd written about him.
a/n i had this absolutely amazing art in mind when writing part of the kiss. i def believe dex would have his eyes wide open while kissing someone especially for the first time.
feedback always welcomed and appreciated! tysm to everyone in my taglist for following the story so far. and to everyone reading regardless of course!
your dex fics are giving me life got me kicking my feet and giggling in bed 🙈 you are a superb author! when should we expect another update for your series (in the least desperate manner lol)
im so glad that you enjoy reading them!! your message has me kicking my feet and giggling in bed 😽😽
i am a full time student currently in uni so i have been writing in my free time. now that i have been updating regularly though, i have a brief outline of how i plan for it to continue, so updates pretty much happen as ideas come to mind -> then writing -> then editing which usually happens over 3-4 days.
this most recent part was originally meant to be two but since i combined them, the wait for the next part may be a bit longer.
tldr very long rant of mine just to say that you can expect one in the next week or two! :)
synopsis you finally have a reason to invite dex to your apartment and it quickly spins out of your control. at least you get to keep the knife.
or, dex keeps getting in your head when you're trying to get into his.
notes this was originally two parts but i combined them because i saw no way to separate them.
tags suggestive content (mdni), nothing crazy just sexual innuendos, fluff, humor, awkward situations (i mean it this time), fantasizing, descriptions of violence, suicidal ideation, feelings, flirting, morally gray reader (?), mentions of sexual assault (not by dex), discussions of canon events
wc 6.2k
series masterlist • previous part • next part
The knife you swiped from Dex stayed in your kitchen drawer for a week.
You had tossed it in among the other mismatched knives you used for cooking when you made it home from his place, and there it remained.
It was slightly menacing, both blade and handle inky black compared to the sea of metal it swam in.
It was there every time you opened your drawer to cook dinner, large and commanding, appearing as a poorly hidden weapon among your cutlery. Cryptic like a cursed object you were storing away from the wrong hands.
I.e., your clumsy ones.
You’d be lying if you said you were never enticed by the idea of using it for your dinner prep. It was much sharper than any regular kitchen knife, and would probably slice through your veggies like paper.
The thought made you shiver.
You pulled it from the open drawer and squeezed the handle tight, taking notice of how the metal pressed indents into your palm–likely the very same ones that graced his.
It was lighter in your hand, the blade jutting out thicker than its handle making it aerodynamic. You ran your finger along the blade and realized it wasn’t sharp like you assumed.
It was dull–even more blunt than your kitchen knives which made Dex’s throw a lot more impressive than you once thought.
He must have thrown it on a whim, a straight shot into the stereo console with just a flick of his arm fueled by distress and rage.
He certainly had the upper body strength for it.
You held the knife up and scanned your kitchen walls for something you wouldn’t miss—no pun intended.
The walls were sparsely decorated because you took most of your hangings down for a stick-on wallpaper project and hadn’t gotten around to putting them all back up.
There was that old painting of the moon you thrifted when you first moved in. It was bought just for the sake of covering your white walls so you wouldn’t feel like you lived in an asylum, and now it wasn’t really your style anymore.
With the moon in the center of the painting as a focal point, you took a breath and flicked your wrist out, releasing the knife from your grip.
It zipped to the wall, sticking right into a spot beside the painting’s frame.
“Oh god,” you rushed over to pry the blade from your stick-on wallpaper. “Definitely not getting that deposit back.”
A firm knock at your front door startled you out of your panic.
In your eagerness to play badass secret agent, you totally forgot you had only been goofing off because you were waiting for the owner of the knife you were throwing around to show up at your apartment.
See, your admiration of his physique the other night hadn’t just been you plain objectifying him. You had a giant box in your living room waiting to be opened up and assembled into a lovely walnut display cabinet.
And Dex still owed you that favor for leaving you all alone at the wedding.
While you could have put it together yourself, you had repeated that exact sentence in your head every time you passed the cardboard eyesore (or stubbed your toe on it) ever since it was hauled into your apartment a month ago.
So why not spare yourself the back pain?
The favor was requested by you the night you went to his place after the wedding. Just before you left, standing in the doorway of his apartment, you were suddenly struck with the perfect way for him to finally make up for his string of disappointments.
“Can you come over and help me rearrange my living room this weekend?” your eyes were lit up like Christmas morning.
He coughed awkwardly and nodded. Then, gave you a quiet goodbye as he closed the door.
It took you ten minutes of sitting in your cab before you realized what his problem was.
“Oh my god,” you audibly gasped, which made your driver briefly look in the rear view mirror. “I think I just invited my friend over to sleep with me.”
You thought your request was normal enough, but maybe it was the context in which you asked that made him pick up on an innuendo that wasn’t intended.
It was late at night, both of you having just made up after a difficult fight, you left wearing his hoodie, and then asked him to make it up to you by coming over.
It sounded like you were asking him to come rearrange something else.
The thought made you burn up and you wished the ground would open up and swallow your entire taxi whole.
At least your driver didn’t mind you venting the entire story of your friendship to him. He called you a hot mess as you were getting out but at least he was a good listener.
To make matters worse, Dex was out of the city for the past week so you didn’t even get the chance to clarify that there was actual work to be done, and not on you.
Before you rushed to the door, you considered pushing the furniture box into the middle of the living room just so he’d see right off the bat that there was a very real cabinet that needed to be put together.
But then, he knocked again and you were out of time for any other protective measures.
A small prayer was said in your mind as you held the doorknob. You don’t know why you were so freaked out over a slip-up.
A small part of you wondered what would happen if you just went with it. He still showed up at the address you texted him, so did that mean he was…down?
You tried to blame the twist of desire in your stomach on anxiety.
It was also the hottest day of the year, and you were about to be in your enclosed living space with him for an hour putting together furniture…
You press your cold palms on your face to sober up. Now, when he was literally outside your door, was not the time to be having these thoughts.
You pulled the front door open.
“Kept me waiting,” he said, and it almost annoyed you that he was observing rather than chiding. And that he seemed a lot more unbothered than you were.
You were already uncomfortably hot, and it wasn’t because of the failing A/C in your unit.
“You deserve it a little bit,” you put a hand on your hip in a playful manner. “After you kept me waiting.”
You weren’t still angry with him about the wedding. You just wanted to get on his case for being so casual about all of this when you were close to running a fever.
Like a frisky kitten trying to rile up her littermate.
And Dex took the bait. His lip pressed into a line, a tendon in his neck twitched.
Then, he walked past you into your apartment like he was owed entry.
You felt his hard body brush against yours as he did, and hated how you caught yourself mapping the feeling of him against you to memory.
He stood in the middle of your apartment and you shut the door after recovering.
“Come on in, why don’t you.”
“You were going to let me in anyway.” Amusement laced his tone. He spotted the large box in the corner taking up enough space to count as a second dining table. “Is that the one?”
So he did think he was here to build furniture. You should be wiping sweat off your forehead right now.
“That’s the one!” you answered a bit too fast, causing him to raise an eyebrow. You motioned to your open toolbox on the coffee table. “I’ve got a box cutter in there.”
He gave a quick shake of his head, as if to silently say ‘don’t need it’ and pulled the box tabs open with his bare hands. The tape went taut and pulled apart without much effort.
“Suddenly you’re above using knives?” you chimed quietly, mostly to yourself.
You both began pulling the walnut stained particle board out, organizing them by order of the instruction booklet you found in the bottom of the box.
If only the entire process of building the cabinet had been that smooth.
While the parts list made perfect sense, the instructions were an odd collection of pictures that didn’t look anything remotely like what you were building. All accompanied by one word instructions.
Screw. Hammer. Slide.
It was messing with your head more than the heat.
You took turns flipping the instruction booklet upside down and right side up, trying to make sense of it until finally resorting to improvising.
Which went well enough until you turned a page and saw a picture that did make sense.
“Uh,” you wiped sweat off your brow. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but we made a mistake.”
He moved to stand behind you. So close you could feel the heat of him against your back and you were forced to remember how it felt to have him against you.
“What did we do wrong?”
Right. Maybe you should stop imagining him pressing you up against your half-built display cabinet and answer him.
You cleared your throat. “We were supposed to attach the doors while the cabinet was still lying flat...”
“Hmm,” he grunted and you felt it low your stomach. “One of us will have to hold the door while the other screws it in place.”
The doors had to be screwed in from three hinges, at three different heights to support the weight.
And to reach the lowest hinge, the person with the screwdriver would have to be on their knees.
This is what you get for letting your imagination run wild while he was breathing the same air as you. The universe was punishing you–or, maybe your filthy mind subconsciously brought this reality closer to you as a gift.
You swallowed hard, throat bobbing. “Right. Okay, I’ll hold the door.”
He frowned. “It’ll be heavy. But okay.”
It could weigh a ton for all you cared–you weren’t going to get on your knees in front of him right now.
So you ignored the trembling in your arms from the weight and tried to silence your pathetic whine of effort as you lifted the cabinet door and lined it up at the hinges. You had to balance it against your hip to keep from dropping it.
Dex was changing the screw-head at your toolbox, taking his sweet time while you were standing there beside the cabinet shaking like a leaf.
Oh, you realized, this is a game to him.
Of course he didn’t protest to you holding the door that was clearly too heavy for you. He wanted to watch you struggle and beg for his help.
Well, you weren’t going to. You wouldn’t let him get the upperhand on you with that stupidly handsome concentrated glare of his as he fiddled with your tools.
“There we go,” he held up the screwdriver for you to see, and then approached the door, “keep it steady.”
A bead of sweat rolled down your neck as if on cue.
“I’m sure you can manage, Mr. ‘I work for the CIA’,” you said breathlessly. “What do you do for them anyway?”
Now probably wasn’t the best time for asking questions. It was so hot that the glass door you were holding had begun to fog up from your mingled labored breathing.
But you had to distract yourself from how close to you he was standing.
“Their dirty work, mostly.”
He had alluded to something like that before. Contract work he called it.
Good thing you didn’t use that knife of his to cut salad like you were planning to. It could have been in someone’s skull before, and you didn’t want to be haunted for trying to eat healthy.
Once the first hinge was screwed in, it took some of the weight off your poor arms.
“So you’re a lapdog?” you provoked.
The middle hinge was secured after, and you were about to breathe a sigh of relief. But then you noticed the intense gaze he was directing at you.
Cold. But not like you were on the other end of his knife. He was looking at you like you put him on the other end of yours.
“I’m not their lapdog,” he said. “They call and I answer.”
You swallowed hard. “Okay, so more like a merc. Noted.”
He didn’t like your insinuation that he was owned by someone. Got it.
“Yes, more like a merc,” he confirmed.
He rested the screwdriver on the cupboard so he could grab a few loose screws from the bag left behind in the box.
“Dex, can you hurry?” your arms were starting to tremble again. “It’s getting really heavy.”
He was likely punishing you for your remark, making you wait because you insulted him. But how were you supposed to know? It’s not like he ever gave details on his own. You had to interpret everything yourself unless you asked directly.
“Yeah. If you hand me the screwdriver.” he requested, returning to your side.
You balanced the door against your upper body so you could grab the screwdriver and hold it out for him to take.
He smiled at you gratefully, like your handing him the screwdriver was doing him some sort of favor, and grasped the other end.
Only, he wouldn’t take it from you. Just held onto it. Your fingers just far enough apart to not touch.
And then still holding your gaze, he knelt onto the ground in front of you. The movement was slow, drawn out as he balanced his weight on one knee. He was looking up at you now.
Your mouth went dry.
“Thanks.” Dex finally took the screwdriver out of your hand.
You swallowed hard and squeaked out a “sure” like you didn’t just have the dirtiest image possible conjured into your mind.
You weren’t entirely convinced he hadn’t been scheming to put those pictures in your head, either.
The low hinge was right by your hips, and you could feel his hand brush your skin over your shirt with every turn of the tool in his calloused hands.
Once the last screw was in, you let go of the cabinet door and stepped away from where he was kneeling beside you.
“Your turn to hold the door,” you stammered out. Kneeling in front of him didn’t seem like such a bad punishment after what he just put you through.
“Too heavy? I won’t say I told you so.”
“Good, then don’t,” you huffed, waiting for him to balance the other door without breaking a sweat.
He didn’t even have to balance it against his hip like you did.
Show off.
With a soft breath tumbling past your lips, you focused on screwing the door to the hinge.
It was a little taller than your height, so you had to reach up to get the screw in. Your fingers trembled with effort as you lined up the first screw up at the top.
Your gaze flickered to his face. Dex was watching you.
Another bead of sweat slid down your neck. His eyes followed it, unbothered that you caught him looking.
The screw slipped from your clammy fingers and slid across your wooden floors.
“Need help?” His tone was void of concern.
“No. My hands are just sweaty,” you huffed, and picked up the screw that rolled towards the couch. “It’s hotter than hell in here, if you haven’t noticed.”
You tried to ignore his leering by lining the screw up again and twisting it into the hinge.
The second screw went in smoother than the first.
“You’re not making this easy for me, just so you know,” you murmured, grabbing another screw from the bag.
“How can I make it easier for you?” he asked.
You decided to ignore him. You didn’t trust your voice right now.
Now for the last hinge.
“Want to switch again?” His tone was overly saccharine, like he was a concerned neighbor or something.
“You’re not funny,” you muttered, lowering to your knees. You turned the screw in slowly, careful not to drop it this time.
When you stood from the floor, your head spun. You were already faint from the heat, and getting up too fast was turning your brain to mush.
A soft groan left your lips and you rubbed your temple to ward off an oncoming headache.
“Just sit back,” you heard him say in your daze, “I’ll do the rest of the work.”
You were too spent to argue. You took a few steps backward til the heels of your feet hit the couch and you let yourself sit down.
The cabinet was fully built with the glass doors you two just secured onto it, so he got to work pushing it into the exact spot against the wall you had shown him earlier.
You were grateful he was attentive enough to remember exactly where you wanted it.
The sound of furniture sliding across the floor barely registered in your mind. Then you heard your refrigerator open.
Before you could succumb to your heat-exhausted stupor, something cold was pressed to your cheek.
You blindly reached for it and your eyes fluttered open to see him standing above you. He was pressing a cold water bottle to your face, and you took it from him gratefully.
“Drink up.”
“Thanks,” you obeyed, unscrewing the cap. “Your debt is officially repaid.”
As you tilted the bottle back, letting the cool liquid quench your thirst, he began wandering your apartment.
His glances around were a lot more subtle than yours when you were eyeing his place.
You watched him peer down the hall at the closed doors and could guess what he was thinking with that focused, analytical expression darkening his eyes.
Which was your bedroom? Your bathroom? He was making a mental map of where you lived. Where each room stood relative to the other.
Then, he looked at your kitchen. At the indent in your wall from where you had chucked the knife–his knife–into the wall by accident.
He pointed to it. “What happened here?”
You shrugged. “Just a scuff.”
Like he’d buy that. He probably recognized the exact outline of the knife model he used.
But he left it alone anyway, letting you get away with your terrible attempt at a lie.
“Right.”
You missed the knowing smirk he wore.
It was late by the time the apartment was cool enough for you to feel like moving around again.
You were organizing books and thrifted ornaments into your new cabinet. They had been on the floor of your closet for a month, waiting to be shelved and now you had Dex to thank for their new home.
Heat prickled your skin every time you opened or closed those cabinet doors, remembering what it took to get them attached.
You had made a huge mistake showing him how easily he could get under your skin.
You wouldn’t be participating in a cat and mouse game with him if it wasn’t thrilling for you too, but that didn’t mean you were happy about him somehow making you the mouse again and again.
Deflections and taunts weren’t enough to put him in his place. He was too familiar with that game.
Dex managed to disarm you with simple brushes. He never even directly touched you once–not with his hands, anyway.
Not when he walked into your apartment. Not when he stood behind you to read the instructions. Not when he was holding the other end of the screwdriver. Not when he was handing you a water bottle in a manner that felt a little too similar to aftercare…
Yet still, you were undone by him.
You shut the cabinet doors with a loud thud, and stopped when you were about to pass by the indent you left in your kitchen wall.
He definitely knew you had his knife. That you were using your wall like a dartboard instead of treating it like the weapon it was.
You recalled the way he, too, stopped to admire the notch before he left your place. You lifted your hand to run your fingers over the crease.
The jagged stretch of the ridge in the wall against your skin pulled your thoughts to the rough scar he had running across his cheek.
It was always tempting you to reach out and touch it when he spoke to you. Distracting you, pulling your eyes to it and making you wonder how he got it in the first place.
Your hand pulled back slowly, returning to your side.
Maybe it was time you looked his name up on the internet.
The blue light on your laptop screen strained your eyes as you sat at the kitchen counter.
A bowl of popcorn was strategically placed next to you–which was for your nervous chewing habit, not because you thought you were about to be particularly entertained by anything you found.
This was your friend you were going to be digging up dirt on. Someone you had come to care about deeply. Not just some random name you heard on the news.
Your skin tingled from anticipation as you typed his full name into your internet browser.
Benjamin Poindexter.
The search pulled up a number of links for you to click. All of them referenced a lengthy criminal record attached to him dating back nearly ten years, along with a publicized psychiatric record.
That part tugged at your heart. It seemed too invasive to release something like that online for anyone to read. So you ignored it.
You perused the Bulletin articles that named him as one of the FBI agents complicit in Fisk’s crimes.
You remembered hearing about that corruption case because every New Yorker at the time was talking about it. But with how busy your life was back then, how were you expected to have retained the names of every single agent involved in that case?
It’s not like you ever thought you’d be involved with one of them.
There was more focus on Dex than the other agents in the article, though. His name was connected to the attack at the very journal you were reading from, where he was dressed in a fake Daredevil costume.
He had a trail of bodies behind him. And not just the ones he was ordered to kill–innocents, lives taken out of his own volition.
You had expected it. It still didn’t prevent the sweat gathering in your palms. You distracted yourself with caramel popcorn.
Another article from two years ago. Dex spent six years in jail, then was let out on mysterious circumstances where he assassinated a target and multiple innocent bystanders.
The bowl of popcorn beside you was half-empty now. You’d hate to be his lawyer during the trial for this case.
It wasn’t hard to find the videos online of said trial. You skipped to the end where his life sentence was being read, focused on the way his lips were pulled into a lopsided smile.
You couldn’t understand why he seemed so pleased with himself. Maybe he knew prison wouldn't keep him long.
As they led him out of the courtroom, something caught your eye. Something that pieced together the rest of the story.
You had it all wrong. The knives were never his weapon. It was his hands.
The comment section of the video confirmed it for you, with half of them being about the alias ‘Bullseye’ and theories connecting him to different attacks that happened just before he was arrested again.
Wait.
You thought back to a few weeks before your flight.
Your best friend was hosting her engagement brunch so you had skipped your usual morning at the diner. When you got home, you saw on the news that Bullseye had attacked AVTF soldiers and they were closing it for investigation.
You were a little more concerned about making breakfast at home for the next week rather than the attack. That sounded bad, but you were just desensitized from years of living in proximity to Hell's Kitchen.
But it was different now. You knew the attacker.
Part of you wondered what would have happened if you were there that day. He hadn’t attacked any bystanders according to the articles, so it’s not like you would have been hurt.
Would you have still been able to form a bond with him if you had seen him killing in front of you like that?
You weren’t completely numb or anything–you’d have been terrified. Probably hiding in the very booth you now sat with him at every morning.
But you’d been harassed repeatedly by the AVTF on your way to work just for the crime of crossing paths with one of their patrol routes.
And they didn’t show you any mercy with inappropriate comments, ‘random’ searches, or vaguely offensive remarks you had to bite your tongue at.
So a little part of you would have been grateful to see them get handed back the same respect they showed you tenfold.
You snapped your laptop lid shut with trembling hands.
It should have disgusted you more. He’d taken innocent lives. Tore families apart.
But his actions in the past didn’t require justification or forgiveness from you. He never asked you to absolve him of his sins.
Just acknowledge them. See them for what they were. No amount of exaggeration journalists added to his crimes distracted from the fact that his crimes were heinous, so he knew exactly what you’d find when you eventually researched him.
Maybe that’s why he told you in the first place. He knew you weren’t going to run.
You always gave him grace, gave him solace from the memories of being manipulated, used for murder, and discarded again and again.
Dex would tell you who he was, and you would stay every time.
Your hands brushed the bottom of the bowl when you reached for more popcorn.
Time for a refill.
You rolled out of bed early the next morning. Mostly because you didn’t get much sleep last night–but more importantly, you were determined to get to the diner before Dex.
He was always there before you, claiming your table before anyone else could. You’d watch him remove his headphones as you sat across from him and thank him for the coffee he ordered for you while he waited. Always piping hot, because by now he knew how to predict when you’d come in to drink it.
Today, though, you were making it your job to claim the table.
You were hyperaware of everything in the diner when you sat down. The silverware on the table wrapped in a cloth napkin, the wooden stirrers by the coffee pot.
Above all, the empty spot in the middle where the lobster tank used to be. In the past, it was so insignificant to you that you didn’t even realize it was gone when you came back to the diner after it stopped being a crime scene months ago.
But after reading the attack details last night, it was impossible to ignore how peculiar it was that Dex–or, Bullseye–deliberately chose to involve the lobsters in his grudge against the AVTF.
The bell above the door rang, and your eyes followed him. His expression shifted a moment when he saw you there at your usual table, early for once.
Knowing how analytical Dex could get (especially over you) he probably suspected something was up immediately.
That was alright with you. It’s not like you were trying to hide from him.
When he sat down across from you, before he even got a word in, not even a hello, barely even a breath—you reached into your bag and stuck his knife down onto the table.
You did so casually and without any regard for the permanent score it would leave on the surface of the table. It was about time you carved your signatures into it, anyway.
Dex’s eyes fell to the knife, and then looked up at you. Not asking questions yet, just watching. Gauging your expression. Searching your eyes for malice or contempt.
When he confirmed you weren’t angry with him, he leaned forward, hands folded on the table.
“So?”
“I looked up your name,” you explained calmly. “Your full name.”
He nodded, and then tilted his head. “You think you know everything now?”
He was asking in a roundabout way if you knew he was Bullseye.
“I put some of it together on my own already. But I know you’re…” you trailed off. You glanced around to check for any eavesdropping customers, and then dropped your volume. “Familiar with the lobster tank.”
Dex chuckled at your retort. He picked the knife up from where you had stuck it in the table and twirled it between his fingers.
It wasn’t just a neat trick to show off for you. His eyes were dead set on you. Watching you for signs of fear. Checking if your pupils would dilate, for the slightest flare of your nostrils indicating your breathing quickened.
But you were the very picture of calm. Content, even. Maybe even a little hungry since you waited an hour for him.
“I still have questions though.” you leaned back, crossing your arms.
“You always do.” he quipped.
“Just to piece the rest of the story together,” you clarified. You read the news, but you wanted to hear him tell it. “Three years ago you were sprung out of nowhere and then you….”
You made a gun cocking gesture with your pointer finger and thumb–just in case anyone was listening.
He was looking down at the knife in his hands.
“I made a deal with Vanessa Fisk. She let me out in exchange for,” he copied your gun gesture with his hand. “I didn’t have a choice. I was…out of my mind.”
You had a feeling that had more to it than just being incarcerated.
“Did they have you on some kind of drugs?”
He stayed silent. Not because he didn’t want to answer, but because he was deep in thought. You were bringing him back to a time he likely didn’t want to remember.
You didn’t want to push his head underwater like that. But there was one more thing you had to know.
“What I don’t understand is,” you tapped your nails against the table idly. “You ended up back in prison anyway.”
Dex looked up at you. His eyes met yours but he was far away.
“Wasn’t a fight I planned on coming back from.”
His words knocked the air from your lungs.
The psychiatric record you found last night came to mind. You had been so wrapped up in getting to know him, you never even thought about the idea of losing him.
And not just to any old threat. Losing him to himself.
“Oh…” your voice came out barely above a whisper. “Um, so. Vanessa Fisk–did you…you know, out of revenge?”
He shrugged. “It was more like a favor.”
“A favor?” You were intrigued. The fact that he met with you everyday clued you in that he didn't really see anyone else outside of work. “A favor to who?”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” he quoted to you, putting the knife in his jacket pocket.
It was just a saying he used to satiate your curiosity. But you took it as a riddle. Your eyes narrowed as thoughts turned in your head.
You remember reading that there was another vigilante at the scene during the mayor’s boxing match.
“You mean Daredevil?” the corners of your lips twitched up.
His brow furrowed in annoyance. “Yes. Daredevil. Why do you care?”
“It’s really cool that you know him, that’s all. I mean, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen?” your voice went all high pitched, and it made his eyes narrow more. “He’s an underground symbol of hope. He’s badass.”
Dex didn’t seem to share your sentiment.
“Will you introduce me?”
“No.”
“What? Why not?” your lips formed a pout.
You were cooking dinner in your apartment alone later that night. It was fortunate that your throwing knife was now safe and sound with its owner, no longer calling you to use it for peeling potatoes.
It was also probably lodged in someone’s throat now. At least, that's what your imagination fed you. You'd never actually seen Dex in action.
Did giving Bullseye back one of his knives make you complicit? Hopefully not.
Soft music played from your speaker over the sizzling of the pan on the stove and low hum of the exhaust fan above it. You were humming along, idly passing the time while you watched your rice cook and fluff up in a sauce pan.
A small smile was etched onto your lips as you recalled your meeting with Dex this morning.
He probably wasn’t expecting you to let him explain himself to you. To let him give you his version of the events. You just wanted to hear his perspective, not judge his actions. You took them for what they were. He seemed to understand that.
The vibration of your phone on the counter startled you.
Dex’s contact name he had typed in himself popped up. You lowered your music–ignoring the thudding of your heart against your ribs now audible in its absence–and answered.
“Hello?” you wondered if he could hear the smile in your voice.
“You should open a window while you’re cooking,” he said. “It’s a lot more efficient than a fan.”
“I don’t know if that’s true–”
Your stomach swooped.
“Can you see me right now…?”
You walked to the balcony window where your curtains had been pulled open. All you could see past the glass was the city lights reflecting in from other skyscrapers and apartments.
With a small tug, you slid your balcony screen open.
“Dex?” you called into the phone.
Before you could take another breath, something zipped past your head and into your apartment. You whipped around, facing the kitchen wall.
A knife–the very same knife he had stolen back–was lodged into your kitchen wall. Next to your painting of the moon. The very same spot that you had accidentally carved into your wall yesterday.
Your phone was still pressed to your ear as you approached the blade in the wall.
There was a message etched into the onyx blade.
You’re cute.
A soft syllable of laughter fell from your lips. You reached up to trace the white etchings in the blade, imagining how long he sat up at his vantage point, looking into your open curtains and carving that message just for you.
“Very funny Dex,” you turned towards the window again, unable to wipe the grin off your face. “You’d come say it to my face, if you were brave.”
You held your breath for a beat. Come over. Please.
“I would. But I like the view.”
You sighed, wistful and disappointed as you walked back to your balcony.
“Seriously, where are you?”
You squinted in the dark of the night, closely watching the nearby rooftops for the slightest of movements, indicating someone was there. That he was there.
Finally, you spotted a dark form on a nearby rooftop.
“Just wanted to return what’s rightfully yours,” his voice rasped into the phone. “Figured it was my turn to deface your souvenir.”
You thought back to the red pen you left on the back of the photograph he still has. You wondered where it was now. If he still kept it in that CD case, or if he had it hung on his wall. Or maybe…he carried it with him.
The idea of that made your heart skip.
You slowly lifted your hand up and waved. Hesitantly, not quite sure if the lump on the roof you were looking at was really him.
But you got a vague wave back from the dark figure.
“Coward,” you said into the phone pointedly, your face hurting from how hard you were smiling now.
“I’ll see you soon,” he said.
“Sooner than I’ll see you, apparently,” you jabbed before he could hang up. “How long have you been up there?”
“Hmm,” he hummed into the line. “Lost count. I’m multitasking. Watching my perp.”
You squinted. He was technically working. He must have been watching you through a rifle lens.
“Well, watch your perp and let me finish cooking dinner,”
“Enjoy your stirfry.”
“How did you–?” the line went dead.
You laughed and walked back to your food on the stove.
Then, a dizzying thought crossed your mind. He must have been watching your building because his target was in your area.
You looked behind you in your kitchen, where the knife was still stuck into the wall. It was hung up exactly where you planned to rehang all of your expensive art.
You were planning on turning it into a gallery wall anyway.
a/n when you try to get over your crush by researching their social media but it backfires and you like them more now.
feedback always welcomed! especially for the beginning. i struggle writing anything smut adjacent.
taglist @bakameeee @not-the-teen-witch @snowwythegloww @altgojo @ficcharsimpsblog @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @thecityofspareparts @that1weirdweebgirl @mariayjws5 @doesanyonereadthis @nghtwngs @angel113431 @star-yawnznn @ethereal-athalia
i just caught up on “back to the old house” and oh em gee probably my favorite dex x reader on tumblr!! i love the way you write dex as having all these internal thoughts but not being able to say them out loud because he’s constantly overthinking himself and i feel like it’s so accurate to him as a character! i love that reader was able to steal one of his knives since he stole her photo. I can’t wait for the next chapter <333
hi! omg thank you so much for such a lovely message. writing him sometimes is a little challenging but very rewarding for sure. i try to find the sweet spot between interpreting his character accurately and my own assumptions of his behavior, especially since now he has less of a focus in the show (as sad as it is to say </3).
i like to think he and reader are greedy about each other lol. just collecting things from each other instead of actually bothering to say how they feel. i'm so glad you're enjoying the story so far! <3
— synopsis a chance meeting on a flight and sharing headphones with a stranger somehow leads to building your (fairly unusual) lives around one another.
or, a series of connected oneshots that follow your atypical relationship with dex
— general tags some suggestive content (mdni), fluff, humor, hurt/comfort, awkward situations, slowburn, canon typical violence, stalking, ddba!dex, implied neurodivergent reader, references to music
Part I
01. don't dream it's over [1.7k]
02. keep your picture on the wall [2.0k]
03. all i need [2.7k]
04. everybody here wants you [4.8k]
05. kinky love [6.2k]
06. blood-stained blond [6.7k]
Part II
07. if you hear a sound, its just my heart breaking [5.3k]
synopsis your best friend's wedding is in two weeks, so now is the perfect time to cash in that favor dex owes you. you failed to consider that your life is not as normal as you think it is--and neither is his, apparently.
notes chekhov's wedding. sort of a longer one! i also want to thank everyone for your support :) it means so much to me!
tags fluff, humor, awkward situations, hurt/comfort, canon typical violence, reader wears a dress, discussions of marriage and relationships, diagetic music, emotional outbursts, mutual abandonment issues, sort of codependent behavior, dex is still unmedicated
wc 4.8k
series masterlist • previous part • next part
You weren’t in the diner that following morning.
Dex always got there a little earlier than you, making sure to claim the same booth every time. It was that same one you shared the very first time you sat together in this diner.
When the clock hit 8:15, give or take a few minutes, he would hear the bell above the door and the shuffling of your shoes.
Then your smiling face came into view as you slid into the seat across from him and rambled about whatever inconvenience struck that morning.
Small things you’d tell him as a greeting, probably expecting he wouldn’t think twice about it.
Like, that your walk over took an extra few minutes because you forgot your umbrella. Or you spilled coffee on your blouse and had to change it. There was a cat you stopped to take a photo of.
But today, no sign of you by the time it hit 8:45.
On the weekends you always lagged a bit because you’d sleep in an extra ten minutes but even accounting for that, you were late.
Not fashionably so, either.
He began to think you weren’t going to show at all. Maybe you were punishing him for the photo incident between you, even though you had scribbled that cheeky note on the back of it before you left his apartment last night.
Did he misinterpret the situation? Were you actually angry after all? Creeped out? Was there something written between the lines he failed to pick up on in your message to him?
The thoughts were infiltrating his mind before he could quiet them. Loud and incessant, bouncing off the inside of his brain.
“Dex?” He heard your voice through the fog.
You were standing beside the table, tilting your head, gaze warm and curious at the same time.
“Where were you?” You asked as you slid in the booth across from him.
He could ask you the same thing.
“I was distracted,” he motioned to the porcelain mug on the table. “I ordered you coffee but it’s probably cold by now.”
You took a sip, “that’s okay. Sorry I’m late, I was caught up in a phone call.”
He couldn’t believe he was almost done in by a simple phone call running over. But you were here now, and that’s what mattered.
You took another sip of coffee, and the moment the mug left your lips he could see the smirk you were sporting. Not good.
“About that favor,” you rested your head in your hand on the table.
“Cashing it in already?” His smirk mirrored yours. “What can I do for you?”
Dex had spent the previous night imagining what you’d ask for in return. Especially since with his line of work, any time someone was calling in a favor, they would ask him to kill someone.
And he was pretty sure you weren’t about to ask him to do that–even though he probably would if you did. But now wasn’t the time for him to unpack that.
“First, you should know I put a lot of thought into this. My first idea was to ask you for a photo you in return.” Your smile went wider at that and he tried not to think about what that implied.
Even though he felt excitement stir in his chest at the idea.
“And you thought of something worse?”
“Much worse,” you said. “I want you to be my plus one.”
He looked at you, puzzled. “Plus one to what?”
“To my best friend’s wedding,” you declared like it was obvious. “We talked about it on the plane, but you probably don’t remember.”
Which, to be fair, Dex did remember. Of course he did. Your voice was in his head constantly when he was on missions now, keeping him stable enough to do what he needed to do.
He’d involuntarily repeat your dialogue in unconnected strings and your conversation about your best friend’s wedding did cross his mind recently.
Still, that didn’t mean he ever thought you’d ask him to accompany you to something like that.
He wasn’t even sure what being a plus one entailed. Did you want him to meet your friends? Wear a suit? He could.
Wait, was he your date?
“Okay,” he nodded, and all of those questions seemed to die on his lips. The urge to be the one to put that inevitable look of relief and gratefulness in your eyes won out for him.
And yeah, the way you lit up in excitement was worth it. He’d figure out the rest later.
“Really? Thanks Dex!” You cheered. “It’s on the 25th. But make sure you actually have that day off though, because you tend to disappear a lot for work…”
“I’ll make sure they don’t need me that night.” And he would. This was the one thing you’d asked of him, and he was going to see it through.
You reached into your bag and pulled out a berry red filofax. “Good, because I’ve got a checklist for today.”
He raised his eyebrows. “A checklist?”
“For the wedding, duh.” You were flipping the pages in your organizer. “You’re plus one to the maid of honor, which means you’re gonna help the maid of honor finish her duties.”
Dex could tell he was being roped into way more than he signed up for. But he was going to put up with it for your sake. But as far as he could tell, you felt that he owed you, and he decided he was going to honor that.
You didn’t actually expect him to agree to drive you around for the day, though. Especially on such short notice. As you listed off the tasks from your filofax, he nodded after each one, in an almost robotic fashion.
He’s good at following orders, you mused internally.
After finishing coffee and a quick breakfast together, you were in the passenger side of his car.
“Can I play music from my phone?” You eyed the center console. “Or do you only use CDs?”
He scoffed at your teasing remark as he turned the car on. “It has bluetooth. Go ahead.”
Once you had music playing, you turned from the window where you were watching buildings go by and broke the silence between you.
“Speaking of CDs. Should we talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
“The photo of me, why you took it,” you listed.
His hands gripped the steering wheel tighter.
“I don’t know. Should we talk about it?” He deflected.
“Well, you didn’t take the semi-nude, so I know it wasn’t for perverted reasons. I don’t know if that weirds me out more or not, though,” you teased.
Dex didn’t find it as funny as you did. He wasn’t angry with you, but judging by the look on his face he knew he was being reprimanded for something he did.
“I wasn’t trying to–” he huffed. “I wasn’t taking it to be a ‘pervert’.” He repeated your phrasing like it disgusted him. Like the word didn’t describe him at all.
That’s what it was–frustration that you didn’t understand his intentions.
“I just liked the photo,” he explained, softer.
“What did you like about it?” You were intrigued now.
And he realized you weren’t judging him after all. You were trying to understand him.
He took the chance to speak freely.
“I like how you look in it.”
Drenched in blue from the aquarium lights, yet still smiling in a way that juxtaposed such a melancholy atmosphere. Holding that stupid little shark plush to your heart like it meant something to you even though you probably bought it minutes before the photo was taken.
Maybe he envied you.
Maybe he wanted that photo of you hung on his wall so he could look at you, remind himself of your perspective of the world and try to embody you.
Then, what began as the desire to mimic bloomed into the desire to have. He wanted that smile to be directed at him. He wanted you to carry him close to your heart.
That’s why he was careful about what aspects of his life he let you see.
Dex knew the type of person you were. If you saw beneath the surface, you would run. And he wasn’t going to give you the chance to.
You, on the other hand, were oblivious to all of this. You were too caught up in interpreting what his words meant.
I like how you look in it.
Something was hidden between the lines there, waiting to be uncovered. But you just didn’t know what it was.
He was always so push and pull, letting you believe you knew so much about him but really it was only curated aspects he would drip feed you.
But instead of satisfying your curiosity, he only ever made you want more.
The checklist took the better half of the day, morning drawing to a close when you were halfway through and the afternoon sun beaming down when there was one last task to complete.
You made it to the jeweler to pick up the rings. It was simple enough of a responsibility, but the most important one on the list. Your best friend and her fiance couldn’t get married without the rings, after all.
When you and Dex stepped inside, you walked straight to the counter and gave your name, which the happy couple put the order under. All you had to do was make sure the rings were matte gold and had the proper engravings on it.
The jeweler gave you the padded velvet box with the receipt tucked under it. You opened the royal blue box and began to analyze the rings closely.
Both were matte gold, and the personal messages and dates were correct.
But you couldn’t breathe a sigh of relief yet.
The name of your best friend, which you had read and wrote dozens of times in the eternity you had known her for, was spelled wrong. A simple vowel switch but noticeable–definitely not the standard you held for her.
Your chest tightened. Now, two weeks out from the wedding, was not the time for this.
Dex seemed to notice your distress and stepped closer in quiet concern.
You turned to him frantically, and then to the jeweler. “Excuse me, but the engraving on this ring is misspelled.”
The jeweler at the counter frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. Can I have your name?”
“My name?” You didn’t register what the question was for at first.
“For the ring.”
Warmth crept up your neck. You turned to look at Dex, flustered.
Did the jeweler…think the rings were for you two? That you and Dex were a couple?
Dex caught onto the mix up and an amused smile tugged at his lips. But he didn’t interject. He probably enjoyed watching you squirm.
“Uh, I’m sorry, we’re not the…” You stuttered. “The rings aren’t for us.”
The jeweler looked unimpressed. As if that detail didn’t matter to him–but it did to you!
“The name on the order, please.” He clarified.
Now you were even more embarrassed.
“Oh, right.” You fumbled for the receipt in your hands.
The jeweler helped resolve the situation but informed you that the engraving would need time to be redone.
No amount of arguing or pleading could get you an earlier date than the very morning of the wedding though.
Dex could tell you were stressed out about it because your knee was bouncing up and down as you sat across from him at lunch.
“I’ll pick it up with you in the morning,” he told you, not offered.
You sighed out and gave him an appreciative smile. “Thanks. I just don’t like loose ends. She’s counting on me.”
“You were panicked about more than the ring.” He had brought it up as an observation, but you must have taken it as him teasing you, because you smiled sheepishly.
“Oh, you mean…the mix up?” You looked down at your pasta. “Well, maybe he shouldn’t assume every pair of people who walk into a jeweler are a couple.”
“We were picking up wedding rings.”
“So?” You huffed and crossed your arms.
Something was clearly bothering you.
“Does marriage freak you out?” He asked, because it was more comfortable than asking if being mistaken as dating him freaked you out.
You looked back up at him, almost ashamed. Like you thought he was going to judge you for it.
“Yeah. A little. It didn’t used to, but when my best friend got engaged…I don’t know,” you explained softly. “I haven’t had the best luck with relationships. My last one ended…not amicably to say the least. I’ve had trouble trusting anyone enough since then.”
Dex hadn’t ever asked you about your romantic history. He wasn’t curious about it in the slightest. Whoever you had been attached to before him–if you even were attached to him–wasn’t his concern.
But he let you continue anyway.
“And every first date I’ve been on since then has been horrendous–don’t ever agree to blind dates, word of advice.” You pick at your pasta. “I don’t want to get married just to avoid being alone, either.”
“Is that why your best friend is getting married?”
“Huh? Oh god, no. She found someone good. They have it–you know, the real thing. One day she was introducing me and the next they were getting married,” you chuckled sadly. “Life is strange like that, I guess. It moves fast…always moves on without me.”
Dex understood what the underlying issue was. You thought you were being left behind by your best friend. And by helping her get married, you were helping her leave you.
“How about you?”
“Marriage? I don’t know. I don't think about it." The question caught him off guard. “Never been able to open up to anyone like that.”
“Why not?”
Dex was hoping you wouldn’t ask.
He should have put something together in his head before he spoke because you caught on right away.
“You’ve never been in a relationship.” You observed quietly. But kindly.
“Yeah. You got it.”
He was almost embarrassed with the way your eyes widened when he confirmed your suspicion. It made his heart leap in a way he wasn’t prepared for.
“You’re serious?” You leaned forward over your pasta, lips pulling into a coquettish smile.
He didn’t like how your reaction tripped up his ability to form sentences.
“Never had the time. My old job…” He swallowed hard. He hadn’t thought about his old life in a while. “My old job was a lot more time-consuming.”
“Workaholic.” You accused him with a gentle smile.
“It was good for me,” he replied honestly.
He wondered if things would be different if you met him back then. He had less to hide. Before Fisk. When he was still on meds. When he didn’t have to use a fake name just to get around. You still didn’t even know his real, full name.
“Still. Having a busy schedule doesn’t make people around you blind.”
It didn’t, that was true. He used to get hit on regularly back when he was still FBI, so he was at least somewhat aware of what he looked like. But all of his focus was on his rigid structure, not forming attachments.
His perspective was a bit different nowadays, though. Instead of trying to fit attachments into said structure, you were a part of it.
He dropped you off at your apartment when you finished lunch.
“We should exchange phone numbers so that things go smoothly on the day of the wedding,” you suggested, still sitting in his passenger seat. “It’s about time, anyway, don’t you think?”
You handed him the phone you were still playing music on his stereo from. There was an empty contact screen, and he smiled down at the blinking blue line where he was supposed to type his name into.
“I know I asked this as a favor,” you started softly, “but I really appreciate you doing this for me, Dex.”
He wanted to hear you say it again.
In that brief moment, he thought about what else he could do to help you get more favors out of him. For you to keep needing him.
“Sure. Tell me if I can help with anything else.”
“I’ll see you next Saturday morning.” You left him with a sweet smile for him to keep in his mind on the drive home.
To help your best friend with the wedding planning in the final two weeks, you told Dex you’d be taking a rain check from your morning meetings. But he told you over the phone he had to take a work trip anyway.
“But you’ll be back by the 25th, right?” You asked into the phone.
“I’ll be back by the 25th.”
Dex told you that because that’s what he was promised–that this was a quick mission where he could be in and out within the week.
But now it was midnight on the 25th, and he was stuck in some godforsaken city across the map.
And he wasn’t happy about it.
He made sure the people tasting the other end of his blades knew it, too. He told you he would be there for you in the morning to help you pick the rings up. He told you he would be there for you.
That thought was pounding in his head like the drums of war, growing louder every time he threw another knife.
But even if he got on a plane right now, he wouldn’t be back in time.
It was seven in the morning when you were up, ready to pick the rings up before helping your best friend get ready. Dex hadn’t returned your texts you sent the night before to remind him, though, nor had he returned any of your calls.
An hour passed and you realized he wasn’t going to come. With an annoying lump in your throat, you got a cab and picked the rings up–made sure the engravings were correct this time–and then went back to the hotel you were staying at for the wedding.
You had a curling iron in your hand when your best friend got your attention.
“Didn’t you say you were bringing a plus one?” She asked you.
You looked at her in the mirror, and caught a sulky frown you didn’t know you were sporting.
“I did say that,” you gave her a tight smile. “He got caught up with a work trip, though.”
She sighed. “I really wanted to meet him.”
“It’s not a big deal. He’s just a friend, anyway,” you tried to brush it off, like you weren’t disappointed too.
“You’re with him every morning though.” She smiled at you knowingly with her expertly painted lips. “It’s okay if you’re upset with him. It’s not your fault he’s got an overly mysterious job.”
“He does have an overly mysterious job.” You scoffed, putting the curling iron down.
You redirected the conversation to her after that. It was your best friend’s day after all, and you didn’t want the pinch in your heart at being stood up to deter you from doing your job as maid of honor.
After all, what if this is the last day she needs you?
You shake the awful thought off.
The wedding was perfect, going off without a hitch just the way your best friend planned it. You cried when she read her vows, and cried harder when she thanked you. Not for being her maid of honor, but for being her best friend.
Your feet hurt by the end of the night. You did a lot of running around to make sure things were perfect, and a lot of dancing too. It stung a bit when you had to endure a slow song playing and watch the couples out on the floor with your mind only blinking back to one person.
Who couldn’t make it.
Damn him and his mysterious job.
Maybe it was the liquor in your system, or the emotional roller coaster from the wedding giving you an adrenaline rush, but you ended up standing outside Dex’s apartment building at the end of the night with your heels in your hand.
It was past midnight, and you were jamming your fingers into the elevator button like it owed you money. You knew he was back because he had his location on.
He didn’t even bother sending you a text to let you know he was back in New York.
Was this a bad idea? Probably. But you only asked him for this small favor–to just show up–and he couldn’t do it.
It was made all the worse by helping someone get married today while you stood watching alone from the sidelines.
You felt guilty thinking that way when your best friend was so dear to you. But when was someone going to show up for you?
So you were going to give Dex a piece of your mind.
You knocked on his door. There was shuffling on the other side, but no answer.
You knocked again. “Dex, I know you’re home.”
A shadow passed under the door and you stepped back.
Dex answered, looking down at the floor. Disheveled. Jaw clenched.
“Well?” You asked, not in the state of mind to consider his frazzled disposition.
“I just got back.” His voice was steady, as if he was trying to keep his composure.
“Yeah, that’s clear,” you crossed your arms. “You couldn’t have at least called and told me you weren’t going to make it?”
His lips tightened. “I tried to get here in time.”
You scoffed. “Glad to know I came here just to hear you say you tried. I was counting on you—”
“I did everything I could, I don’t know what else you want me to say,”
“—I was counting on you to not make a fool out of me, Dex!” Your voice broke. “I was alone. I told you that I haven't been able to trust anyone in a long time. I feel like I lost my best friend tonight too, and I…really needed you.”
That broke him.
You knew in your heart you weren’t really losing your best friend. She married someone good, someone who would make her happy. That’s all you wanted for her.
But that gnawing feeling that life was moving on without you, that she was moving on without you was pushing you over the edge right now.
And now you were taking it out on him.
He swallowed hard, his throat twitching when he did. Then, he let go of the door handle and stepped back into his apartment, leaving you standing there, disappointed in your emerald green dress.
You followed him inside, because you took him not shutting the door on you as a silent invitation.
When you looked around at the state of the place, your anger melted into concern.
There was broken glass on the floor of the living room, strewn out before the stereo system. You caught sight of the handle of a pocket knife sticking out of it.
“Dex,” you dropped your heels by the door, stepping towards him cautiously. “What happened?”
You weren’t trying to placate him. There were many things you didn’t know about him, sure. But one thing you knew for certain is he wouldn’t hurt you. You don’t know why you trusted him when he hadn’t given you a reason to.
You just did.
He shook his head, looking at the floor between you. “I know why you’re here. Just say it and go.”
Your gaze softened. “Why am I here, Dex?”
“I tried. I swear, I told them I'd leave if they pulled another stunt like that again.”
“Can you look at me?” You pleaded, barely above a whisper.
“You're done with me.” He grunted the words out so finally, like he was so sure it was decided before you even said anything to him. “So just go already. Before I...”
“I'm not going to leave.” You reached for him, and he paused, watching your hands. Waiting to see where they were going to land. “I'm not leaving.”
You approached closer, slowly. Your hands took his, just holding them. Your thumbs brushed over the backs of his hands and it’s all he could focus on.
“I’m not leaving, but there’s things you’re not telling me,” you swallow hard. “And if we’re going to keep…spending time together, I need you not to lie to me.”
“I never lied to you,” he argued.
“Leaving things out of the truth is still lying, Dex,” you reminded him. “And that hurt me today."
“Fine,” he gritted out. He glanced about the room, taking in the state of his living space.
You knew it was making him uncomfortable to stand in the aftermath of whatever struck him.
“Let’s go outside.”
He let you lead him towards the fire escape.
“Wait.” He stopped you, and you turned to see him grab something off the back of his chair before handing it to you.
It was a hoodie.
You shivered when you stepped outside into the crisp evening air, and slipped it on over your dress. It smelled like gunpowder and the undertones of cedar from whatever cologne he always wore.
You leaned against the railing, letting him stand beside you. His eyes were on you, just watching you like you were grounding him. And you remembered what he said to you in his car.
I like the way you look in it.
So you let him eye you, standing there in his hoodie and the dress he didn’t get to see you in tonight.
“Do you want to talk now?” You tried, watching him nod slowly.
He was noticeably calmer than before.
“What held you up?” You asked, now feeling a little guilty for your outburst earlier.
“I work for the CIA,” he said. You raised an eyebrow. “They have me working around the states, sometimes overseas.”
That wasn’t too far off from what you were expecting. His secrecy had you expecting him to be some kind of government agent. You’re still not sure why he would lie about it, though.
“Okay.” You nodded. “And the fake name…?”
“I needed a fake identity to get an apartment,” he explained. “My real name never would have worked.”
“Why not?”
There was a long stretch of silence after your question. You heard the sounds of sirens in the distant streets. The overexcited squealing laughs of drunk passersby on the sidewalk below.
“My real name is Benjamin Poindexter.”
You waited for some big, dramatic moment of realization to hit you. But it never did. The name meant nothing to you.
Well, besides the fact that it was his of course. Maybe you should read the local news more.
“Alright.” Your lips quirked into a playful smile. “You’re definitely not a Tony, by the way.”
He shook his head at you, half in disbelief, half in amusement.
“Too late to change it now.”
“As long as we’re in agreement that I’m not going to call you that,” you chuckled. “Dex is just fine, in my opinion.”
There were still things left unresolved. Like the apartment being a huge mess, his hesitance to reveal his full name, or what exactly his job entailed for him to be traveling so often.
But he was opening up to you, and you didn’t want to rush him. No, that wasn’t accurate.
You weren’t ready to hear the answers to those questions yet. What you heard from him today was plenty for you to dwell on.
“Do you want help cleaning up?”
He still seemed a little intimidated by the mess. The fact that you had to go to the fire escape for him to be able to clear his head made you want to give him a hand.
You couldn’t just clean quietly though. The stereo didn't survive the knife attack, so you played music from your phone again. Something softer that you hoped wasn't giving you away.
And as you reorganized CD’S back onto his shelf, you told him about the wedding. How happy you were for your best friend, and how silly you felt moping over losing her to marriage.
Then, you realized, you viewed Dex as a constant, too. He was there every morning, waiting for you. In the exact spot, at the exact same time.
You took for granted that he would always be there for you and the one time he wasn’t, you panicked.
It was unfair of you, you realized. Especially when you saw how upset he was over letting you down. How afraid he was that you would punish him for it by leaving him behind.
You noticed how intently he hung off your every word as you were recounting a boring story about how the cake ran out before you got a chance to try it.
Dex was tinkering with the broken stereo, but…your voice was his main focus. He looked the same as he did when he was listening to music on the plane beside you. Calm.
Did your voice really have an effect on him like that?
You tried to ignore the butterflies that formed in your stomach at the thought. Instead, you shrunk deeper into the hoodie he had given you because he didn’t want the midnight chill to touch your skin.
“You still owe me, by the way,” you reminded him as he swept up the glass. You pretended not to notice his arms as he did.
“I gathered that, yeah,” he chuckled. “Feel free to cash in that photo of me you wanted.”
“Tempting,” a smile danced on your lips, and you were pretty sure you were being totally unsubtle now, gaze flickering back down to his thick arms. “But I’ll think of something more interesting and get back to you.”
You thought back to the knife in the pocket of your hoodie. You had been the one to remove it from the stereo's console when you both started cleaning.
And upon closer inspection, you noticed it wasn't just a regular pocket knife like you initially thought.
⤷ ゛ ˎˊ˗ befriending your cat
sum your cat isn't a big fan of you bringing dex around the apartment
⤷ ゛ ˎˊ˗ fake!bullseye goes after you
sum dex puts a stop to a revenge plot against you just in time
⤷ ゛ ˎˊ˗ back to the old house [mini-series masterlist]
sum a chance meeting on a flight and sharing headphones with a stranger somehow leads to building your (fairly unusual) lives around one another.
synopsis you're too tired to cook and sick of ordering out. dex has a solution for both of those problems.
notes based on my hc that hes a good cook. i took many liberties here with the ddba timeline just go with it.
tags fluff, humor, stalkerish behavior again not to be taken too seriously, getting winedrunk, happens to the best of us, more music headcanons
wc 2.7k
series masterlist • previous part • next part
The week was going by torturously slow at work. You were going home every night only wanting to collapse in bed rather than worry about what to cook.
You saw the icon of your food delivery app more than your own face in the mirror by the time Friday came around.
“I’m actually starting to get sick of my favorite fast food place,” you complained, as if it was the worst possible reality for you to live in.
Dex sat across from you at the diner, drinking his coffee, listening to you rant before you’d be off for another mind-numbing day.
It had become routine for you both for the past month, starting one day and neither of you yet breaking the newfound tradition.
“I could cook for you,” he said.
Of course, his invitation was accompanied by undertones you couldn’t see. He was more eager to have an excuse to see you in his space than he was to help you break your fast food habit you were concerned about.
But you agreed in an instant. You were dying to eat a home cooked meal that you didn’t have to make, and admittedly, you had been curious about how he lived.
While he did tend to drop the occasional detail about himself in conversations, you had trouble prying much out of him with direct questions.
You sensed that being in public was what made him hesitant to share things, so an invitation to his apartment was an added bonus to the promised meal.
Maybe you were too trusting to agree to meet him behind closed doors when it felt like you still knew so little about him.
But it was a bit late for those thoughts now that you were literally in the stairwell of his apartment building with a tote of cheap wine. The scent of cigarettes, damp wood, and old hallway carpets invaded your senses as you climbed the steps.
It still smelled better than your building.
As you were walking down the hall towards his door, you were met with the sight of Dex already speaking with someone. He was standing in his doorway, trapped in a conversation with whom you assumed was a neighbor.
She was speaking to him in a rather affectionate tone, holding a tray of saran-wrapped sweets.
You stood idly by, not wanting to disrupt their interaction just yet. It was kind of a relief to see he was at least friendly with his neighbors.
Now you felt better about coming to the apartment of a man you barely saw outside of the diner.
He thanked her, taking the tray from her hands and she patted his cheek with an almost maternal fondness.
The woman was saying her goodbyes to him when she turned and spotted you in the hall. Her eyebrows raised and she looked between you and Dex almost knowingly.
“Oh, you invited a girl over?” She asked him adoringly in her heavy slavic accent. “Why did you never bring her around before?”
Your lips quirked in amusement. Nosy neighbor.
“She’s a friend of mine, Ms. Smithers,” he explained to her with the ghost of a smile on his lips.
Ms. Smithers then walked up to you, speaking in a lower tone only you could hear.
“You let me know if he gives you trouble,” she advised lightheartedly, “But my Tony is a nice boy.”
Tony? Your eyebrows knit together for a moment as Ms. Smithers left back to her own apartment.
Before you could ask any questions about the strange name, though, you made eye contact with Dex. He opened the door wider, gently flicking his head to the side in a gesture silently asking you to come in. No—telling you.
You had no legitimate reason not to listen. It briefly occurred to you that you’d probably be easy to kidnap.
The inside of his apartment was, in one word: neat.
The soft, yellow tinted lighting emitting from the sconces on the wall gave his studio an air of comfort, safety. It drew you in closer as you removed the wine tote from your arms which he then took from you.
You thanked him, hearing him carry the wine bottle and the tray from his neighbor into the kitchen behind you. You took the opportunity to continue shamelessly ogling his living space.
In your brief survey of the apartment, you came to a conclusion you’d suspected since you first met him.
The rather eclectic style kitchen, the CRT television in the small living room that bled into his bedroom. The CD collection stacked beside a stereo. The headphones and MP3 player he used on the plane. How his music taste rarely seemed to breach the 2000s…
“You’re really into the vintage scene, aren’t you?” You turned to him.
He tilted his head in a silent question.
You gestured vaguely to the television in the corner of the living room.
“I guess I am,” he chuckled under his breath, like your observation caught him off guard.
“Are you a collector, then?”
“No, I just prefer it over the newer stuff. I use a cellphone for work, but the ‘vintage’ stuff is…” He trailed off. “I’m used to it.”
In your brief time knowing him, you’d picked up that he was a bit different. Then again, you were too.
You made a mental note of the quirk triumphantly. You wanted to keep pressing him for details.
But dinner had to be cooked by someone.
When you suggested helping him cook, you thought you were imagining the flicker of distress in his eyes. Now you knew it was definitely real.
He was a little bit of a control freak in the kitchen apparently, because he had you chopping vegetables you were pretty sure didn’t even go to the recipe he was making.
You watched him expertly mincing herbs on a cutting board across from you on the other side of the counter, eyebrows knit together in concentration as he did. He was pretty handy with that knife of his.
“So,” you started, and saw how his expression briefly relaxed to attention when he heard your voice. “Tony?”
His knife paused for a moment. You took mental note of that.
“Yeah, Mrs. Smithers misheard me and I never corrected her,” he explained, like what he said just made any sense at all. “Sweet old lady.”
“How the hell did she get Tony from Dex?” You laughed at the absurdity.
“She’s hard of hearing, I guess.”
You accepted his answer, even if you didn’t think he was being completely honest. What reason would he have to lie to other people about his identity, anyway?
“What is it that you do, by the way?” Your gaze fell to how each vegetable in the bowl was cut at precisely the same length and width. “You’re not a cook, are you? ‘Cuz I would totally believe that.”
“No,” he turned towards the stove and you didn’t miss the slight smile on his lips. “Contract work mostly.”
“That’s pretty vague,” you pointed out, but your comment was soon drowned out by the sizzling of the pan on the stove.
Could have been intentional on his end. Or, could mean nothing.
So he was a mysterious guy–but lots of people are! You even considered yourself to be mysterious.
Even though you were the same person who shared photos of you and your friends on vacation to a man you met once. And then agreed to go to his apartment and let him cook for you. Found out he gave his neighbor a fake name, then showed off crazy knife tricks in front of your eyes…
All of the above could maybe raise an eyebrow, but it wasn’t enough for you to go take up Ms. Smithers on her earlier offer to rescue you or anything.
Dinner was also delicious enough for you to forget about all of that pretty quickly. He opened the wine you brought too, and once it was in your system you couldn’t care less about anything but how relaxed you were after such a terrible week.
And Dex had made that happen for you. He once again turned a distressing situation into a fond memory, and all of your doubts and questions from earlier melted into gratitude.
“You are definitely a better cook than you gave yourself credit for,” you laughed, putting your glass back down on the table.
He gave you a nod of appreciation that only encouraged you to sing his praises.
“Seriously, don’t be so modest, Dex.”
The man was practically blushing, avoiding your gaze by staring at the crimson wine still pooled in your glass. It was endearing how easily some simple praise could penetrate the cooler exterior he seemed to maintain.
You remembered the CD collection you spotted earlier and strode over to it, grabbing your wine glass with you on the way over.
“What do you have here?”
As you flipped through each jewel case, you barely registered him in the corner of your vision, still at the table. He was watching you, having gone completely still.
“Let’s see…” You took another sip of your cheap wine. “How about this one?”
The album you held up was by Radiohead’s In Rainbows. It contained one of the songs you listened to together on the plane, and in your nearly winedrunk state you thought it would be cute to reminisce on that moment.
But the second you showed it to him, he was shooting up from his chair.
It almost startled you, and you turned to look at him with raised eyebrows.
His hand clasped around your wrist, the other taking the case from your hand. You gasped. Not out of fear, but confusion.
He was still holding your wrist, chest rising and falling in even breaths. You noticed how delicate his grip was compared to the urgent seizing of the item that was just in your hand.
You wondered if he could feel how warm your skin was becoming under his hand.
“Just–leave it. The disc’s already in the stereo.” He lowered his tone as he released you, and placed the jewel case back into the stack of CD’s.
You laughed bashfully, not thinking anything of it. You were too focused on the contact you'd just had. “Oh, alright.”
With your finger pressing into the console’s buttons, you kept fast forwarding until it reached the track you had in mind.
It was sort of melancholy for the current atmosphere, but you hadn’t really recalled that fact until you heard the slow hum of the distorted bass fill the apartment.
He still seemed on edge as he remained standing beside you, and you felt a little bad for the slip-up. Maybe you shouldn’t have been touching things without permission.
“Sorry, I didn't mean to kill the mood.” You put your wine glass down on the coffee table.
“Don’t apologize,” he muttered, looking at you again finally with his jaw barely clenched.
You noticed how close he was standing at that moment. How little space was between your bodies.
Your pulse throbbed beneath your skin, your brain muddled from the wine. He was gazing down at you with something unreadable in his eyes.
Not affection. Not lust.
Your breath hitched.
The stark vibration of his phone on the kitchen table made you both draw back.
Dex cursed under his breath as he went to retrieve his phone. “I have to take this.”
You watched as he put the device to his ear and stepped out the door into the hall, leaving you alone in his apartment.
The crescendoing of the piano flowing from the stereo broke you out of your daze, and you felt the sudden urge to change the CD.
That song clearly hadn’t done the both of you any favors.
Your hands fumbled for the jewel case, knocking a few from the stack in the process. You clicked it open and something slipped from the inside when you did.
You thought it was the insert booklet at first. But when you looked at the ground you saw it was actually a smaller paper folded into a small square.
As you knelt to pick it up, you felt a dull pang in your head from the alcohol. You stood back up, unfolding the square without thinking.
Your breath caught.
There you were, staring back at yourself with a gleeful smile. Completely unaware of what the present version of yourself had just discovered.
He had the missing photo this entire time. Judging by how strictly he insisted you didn’t touch this jewel case, he didn’t want you to know he had it, either.
Why had he chosen this one to take home, you wondered, instead of the dozens of other ones on the table?
If you never noticed his hand reaching to swipe one of your photographs, then you knew he didn’t just grab the first one he saw. He could have picked any of them. Multiple, potentially.
Out of the other photos of you smiling, posing–or the one of you suggestively laid out on the beach–he deliberately chose the one of you in the aquarium.
More importantly, why the hell did he take it in the first place?
You quickly stood up, looking around for the one thing that could get you out of this.
Out in the hallway, Dex was hanging up his phone with an exasperated sigh. They told him they wouldn’t need him tonight, but now he had to find a way to cut the night short.
Things were going a little differently than planned anyway. While you were impressed by his cooking and the unexpected praise was nice, you were behaving very unpredictably.
Asking him too many questions about his work, and his neighbor certainly didn’t help by showing up right when you arrived, revealing his false identity to you.
Then there was you snooping around and nearly finding the photograph he took from you. He knew he should have hidden it better but he thought plain sight would have worked well enough. Not well enough for you, apparently.
That definitely didn't mean he wanted you to go, though.
When he returned to the apartment, he saw you sitting at the kitchen table again. The music was playing in a lower volume now, and he was relieved to hear you didn’t try to change the CD while he was gone.
“I don’t want to end the night like this,” he began, which was the truth, “but something came up and I have to take care of it.”
Your lips stretched into an easy smile, “that’s alright. It’s getting late, anyway.”
To anyone else, your smile and words would have seemed natural. The typical response to what he led with.
But to Dex, who’d spent ample time memorizing every way your lips moved and learned your mannerisms down to the subtlest quirk of your eyebrows knew that something was off.
Your speech was practiced. Performed.
You had found it. That was the only explanation for your behavior shifting so suddenly after he left.
“Let me drive you home.” He said, already reaching for his keys.
“No, I’ll hail a cab,” you insisted, securing your tote over your shoulder as you walked to the door. “Thank you again for inviting me over.”
He could feel you slipping away like sand between his fingertips. For a moment, he wondered if he could blow off work and try again to convince you to stay. To not leave.
Don't leave me.
But you were out the door before he could act on it.
He went straight for the CD case.
He popped it open and the photograph was still there, though, folded into a small square.
Had you really not found it after all?
Dex plucked the folded photograph from the case and unraveled it. When he held it up, it looked the same as it always did when he admired it.
But with the light from the living room beaming down on it he noticed markings shining through, like there was something on the back.
He flipped it over. Red ink.
'Not cool, Tony.
Find a way to make it up to me.'
Your first initial was signed beside the message, just as he did the first time he left you a note.
Even in the midst of his crisis, you got a chuckle out of him. Okay, maybe you did find out. But you weren't freaked out by what he did, clearly.
If you took the time to write out a joke for him to find, maybe what he interpreted as fear was...smugness?
The thought amused him as he was slinging his holster around his hips.
Oh yeah, he'd definitely make it up to you.
a/n and i pull from my hat...another misleading ending.
synopsis dex makes good on his word and finds you at the diner. and god, do you really want to stop hearing that song over and over.
notes a part two to this but can be read as standalone! i had a lot of fun writing this one.
tags fluff, humor, slight stalkerish/possessive behavior from dex but not too serious, mention of suggestive photos, brief description of hairstyle, dex works for mr. charles, count the number of times the word photo appears
wc 2.0k
series masterlist • previous part • next part
There were three things commonplace in your Saturday morning routine.
The earthy aroma of your foamy latte, the shuffling newspaper of the man in the booth behind you, and the fizzling melody emitting from the jukebox that was threatening to give out any moment in the corner of the diner.
You were organizing printed out photographs taken during your recent trip. They were spread out on the table in front of you like cards on a casino table, your lips curved into a smile as you reminisced on each memory.
Your best friend with her arm around you, the sun basking on your grinning faces. It was taken in the morning just as dawn was breaking on the beach. Another taken in the darkness at a foreign club, your skin illuminated by pink and red neon lights. You were so plastered that you pulled some of your friends onto the tiny karaoke stage for an impromptu concert.
A small laugh shakes your shoulders. One that’s immediately interrupted when you hear the jukebox begin to stutter in the middle of its current song.
Not again. You groan as the familiar guitar strums filter into the diner. The one that looped and looped and never stopped. Now you know it was futile to hope that it would have been fixed while you were away.
“Maybe it’ll only play once this time.” Yeah right.
You rubbed your temples, at your wits end with this damn song.
Unbeknownst to you, a few tables down, someone had been observing your every move since you entered the diner. He had been seated at the counter, anticipating your arrival for your morning cup.
Dex hadn’t even needed to turn around to know it was you walking through the door this morning. Just the hands of the clock on the walls pointing to the right numbers, recognizing the exact cadence of your favorite pair of shoes on the vinyl floors when the glass doors opened.
It had been about two weeks since he returned from handling some dirty work for Mr. Charles. Since touching back down in New York, he had swapped out his noon diner visits for morning ones, effectively syncing his routine with what you had mentioned yours to be on the plane.
He still remembers the surprise in your eyes when he revealed you’d been in the same place everyday, only missing each other by a few hours apart. It was a coincidence, but certainly not an unwelcome one in his opinion.
Your nervousness seemed to melt away the more you spoke to him and he was so used to the opposite reaction. Years of being in the military, then FBI, before ending up as Bullseye gave him that effect on people even when he tried to make them feel at ease with practiced speech and small talk.
You, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind it much.
It took you about one week after him to start coming back into the diner once you returned from your trip.
Dex didn’t want to show himself to you right away; he just wanted to see you as you were. Catalogue your coffee and complicated breakfast order to memory. Watch your reaction to the broken jukebox you ranted to him about. Try to understand how someone like you took comfort in him.
He could still feel the weight of you on his shoulder. How your hair tickled his skin. The rhythm of your breathing as you slept, even over the sounds of his music and the plane’s engine.
Dex’s body tensed when he saw you stand from your table, the quarter he was shuffling in his hands pausing too.
You trudged to the corner of the diner to the jukebox, jamming a coin into the slot and pressing a combination of letters and numbers on the keypad.
Instead of the godforsaken song actually changing like you requested it to though, it looped. Again.
You gave the thing a light frustrated kick but straightened up when you saw the newspaper man lean over his booth and give you a judgmental stare.
Instead of letting you return to your booth defeated, though, Dex found himself standing from the counter seat and making his way over to you.
You hadn’t noticed him until he held the quarter in his hand out to you, and it glinted at you.
“Need another quarter?” He said it like he was coming to your rescue–which he was.
“Oh, it’s you–Dex, right?” Your expressive eyes lit up in surprise like he knew they would when you saw him again. Your gaze then fell to the quarter pinched between his fingers. “Uh, yeah, the machine ate mine.”
You moved to tuck your hair behind your ear before remembering you had tied it back this morning, and your hand fell to your side instead.
Oops.
You bit your lip trying to conceal a bashful smile. Maybe he didn't notice your nervousness.
Dex inserted the quarter to the machine and pressed the keypad again, the same combination he had seen you enter from afar.
“Let’s see if it actually works this time.” He mirrored your smile.
“I hope it does. I really don’t want to hear that song anymore.” You chuckled and pointed behind you towards your booth where you left your items unsupervised. “Did you want to join me?”
He thought you’d never ask. He followed you back to your booth and slid in across from you.
“Oh, sorry, I’ll gather these up.” You seemed flustered as your hands quickly swept up the prints, “I just got these printed and I was looking through them.”
Dex was a little surprised you just left them unattended. Anyone could have walked by and swiped one without you noticing.
“No, don’t worry about it. Are these from your trip?” He pointed to one that showcased you standing in front of a popular monument.
“Oh, yeah,” you laughed, looking down at the photo. “I was hungover in this one, actually.”
“I thought you said you weren’t going there to party,” he said with the ghost of a smile on his lips.
You hated that he seemed to remember your conversation on the plane better than you did. Then again, at least you were saving yourself the embarrassment of recalling what you said to him when you were nervous about the flight.
“I was trying to save face in front of a stranger. So what, everyone parties.” You held up the photo of you in the club with a smirk on your face. “It was a bachelorette trip, anyway. Or did you forget that detail conveniently?”
Of course he hadn’t forgotten. He remembered everything you said down to the tone of your voice when you said it. He was looking down at the rest of your photos, trying to memorize every single one of them that had you in it.
You posing in a flower garden with a bouquet of daffodils in your hands. You in an aquarium holding a plush shark from the gift shop. You…scantily clad on the beach.
His blood ran hot under his skin.
Before he could get another look at that one, your hand had smacked down onto it, palm covering it.
“Oh god, I forgot that one was here.” The words tumbled from your lips in a hurry, voice thin as you tucked it underneath another photo, hiding it from his view.
Dex cleared his throat awkwardly, “right. Seems like you did a little bit of everything on your trip.”
You were still avoiding his eyes. The photo wasn’t just a regular bikini picture or something. You weren’t nude but it had definitely been taken for…artistic reasons.
He instead focused on that aquarium photo again.
You were grinning wide in front of a giant fish tank, carrying the plush in your arms like it was a stray cat or something. He wondered if you put it in your bedroom when you returned from your trip.
Before either of you could break the stretch of silence, there was a sudden resounding quiet in the diner. No strumming of that same guitar you’ve heard for the past hour, no lyrics that were ingrained on the insides of your brains…
Just silence.
You both shared a confused glance, and then, the mesmerizing tune of synths instead flooded in through the speakers. It was the song you requested. Or at least, the one Dex requested after the poor excuse for a jukebox ate your quarter.
Your lips stretched into a grin. “Hear that?”
“I hear it.” Dex was just as amused as you were. Even he thought the jukebox was a lost cause.
When you began flipping through your photos again, he wondered how long he could keep you talking about your trip. Would he be able to stall you here the whole morning? Maybe stretch it out until lunch?
But his plans were ruined once his phone vibrated in his pocket. It was ‘work’ which he couldn’t just ignore to his dismay. If they did send someone after him for bailing, he could easily deal with them but he didn’t want to risk the little structure he finally rekindled in his life.
Especially now that he had decided to add you into his routine.
“I have to get going,” he said with an air of reluctance as he stood from the booth. It’d have been easier to leave if you didn’t pull your lips into that adorable pout when he did.
“That’s a shame,” you sighed, slightly disappointed. “But I’ll see you around, right?”
His lips slanted into an easygoing smile. “You definitely will.”
When you returned to your apartment that night, you were on the phone with your best friend. You were discussing your trip together, a glass of wine in one hand and the collection of printed photos in the other.
“Did you print out that one of us when we went to dinner altogether?” Your best friend's voice crinkled jubilantly on the other line.
“I printed all of them out. They had a deal to print 20 for dirt cheap.” You shuffled through the collection of photos and frowned. “Hold on.”
“What is it?” She asked.
You looked down at the rows of five you spread out on your dining table. One of the rows only had four photos.
“There’s one missing.”
You knew you shouldn’t have been so careless at the diner. Spreading photos of yourself out all over the table and then leaving them unsupervised to change the music in the jukebox.
Or it could have slid off the table, slipped between the booth seats–it could be anywhere, for anyone to find. It made you feel exposed.
“Which one is missing?” She asked on the line.
Hopefully the missing photo isn’t…oh no. Your beach photo.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the city in the evening glow of street lights and aroma of cigarette smoke, Dex was climbing the fire escape to his apartment balcony after a tough job.
He removed his mask, stepped inside, and then pulled a folded photograph from the pocket of his pants.
He took a pin and stuck the photo onto the wall beside his front door, smiling at it. It had ended up in his pocket as he was leaving the diner. It was his favorite in the bunch you showed him, even if he couldn’t quite pin down why.
There was just something about the way you were smiling in front of the fish tank, illuminated by the glowing blue behind you as you held tightly onto that chubby shark plush that made him want to have it for himself.
You breathed a sigh of relief when you spotted your racy beach photo among the collection on your table. At least it wasn’t that one that went missing. Although, you did look exceptionally amazing in it if you do say so yourself.
Warmth rushed to your face remembering how you accidentally let Dex get a peak at it. You probably wouldn't mind it if that photo somehow ended up with him...
“No idea.” You said into the phone, sitting on your bed beside your new shark plush you bought during your trip. “I’ll cross reference it with my camera roll later.”
Dex was sure you wouldn’t miss it too much.
a/n i imagine the song requested together is i'm not in love by 10cc.
tangentwithtanner
titsay
2087